Memoirs found in a bathtub

I couldn't seem to find the right room - none of them had the number designated on my pass. First I wound up at the Department of Verification, then the Department of Misinformation, then some clerk from the Pressure Section advised me to try level eight, but on level eight they ignored me, and later I got stuck in a crowd of military personnel - the corridors rang with their vigorous marching back and forth, the slamming of doors, the clicking of heels, and over the martial noise I could hear the distant music of bells, the tinkling of medals.

Now and then janitors would go by with steaming percolators, now and then I would stumble into rest rooms where secretaries hastily renewed their make-up, now and then agents disguised as elevator men would strike up conversations - one of them had an artificial leg and he took me from floor to floor so many times that after a while he began waving to me from a distance and even stopped photographing me with the camera-carnation in his lapel.

By noon we were buddies, and he showed me his pride and joy, a tape recorder under the elevator floor.


Translated from Polish by Michael Kandel & Christine Rose