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I am a redundancy salesman, whose work involves travelling about Poland, meeting with strangers whom I have no desire to meet, and spending time with them – which costs a calculable sum, but brings no advantage at all – before returning to Warsaw or going on to some other place, (...)
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| | You think you’re going to experience something, and you may even actually experience it, but then suddenly you realize that you didn’t experience anything, and it doesn’t bother you at all. It doesn’t bother you that you can’t remember anything about what you didn’t experience and what you experienced. It doesn’t (...)
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Sławomir MrożekA Collection of Short-stories
For decades Slawomir Mrozek's dramas and prose works have entertained and intellectually stimulated readers and audiences world-wide. The pieces that earned him this international reputation - his early works from the 1960s - comprise a grotesque social satire of a moralistic nature.
Since 1988, Mrozek has been publishing short stories in the Krakow weekly Tygodnik Powszechny. In them, his earlier moralism and didacticism have been replaced with a gallows humor more suited to a world seriously divested of traditional values, in which readers, bored by moralizing, any longer are impressed only by brute demonstrations of the rawest truths of human existence - social and individual alike. The stories dealing with individual existence, written at times in a poetic of pure nonsense, have a universal character and will no doubt attract and intrigue readers from any country of so-called Western Civilization who share Mrozek 's views on the fundamental questions of life. But readers from countries belonging to other than European cultural spheres will find much to interest them as well. The stories dealing predominantly with political and social changes in Central and Eastern Europe will naturally be of greatest interest for readers from post-communist countries. But the range of effect that those changes have had is sufficiently wide, and they have had significance for the remaining part of the world, as well - so it would be worthwhile for inhabitants of that region to get to know them, too.
The Hole in the Bridge
There was a river, and two little towns stood on the opposite banks of the river. These two little towns were connected by a road that ran across a bridge.
One day, a hole appeared in the bridge. The inhabitants of both little towns agreed that the hole needed fixing. A controversy arose, however, over who should repair it. The thing is, that each of the little towns regarded itself as more important than the other. The little town on the right bank held the opinion that the road led to it, and that the little town on the left bank should therefore fix the hole, since the town on the left bank had more need of the bridge. The little town on the left bank regarded itself as the destination of every trip, so that repairing the bridge lay in the interest of the town on the right bank.
The argument went on, and the hole stayed there. The longer it was there, the greater the antagonism between the two little towns.
One day, the local vagrant fell into the hole and broke his leg. The inhabitants of both towns asked him whether he had been going from the right bank to the left, or from the left bank to the right. His answer would indicate which town bore the responsibility for the accident. However, he did not remember, since he was drunk that evening.
Some time later, a coach fell into the hole and broke an axle. Since the traveler in the coach was only passing through, he was not travelling from one little town to the other, or vice-versa, and so the inhabitants of both towns regarded the accident with indifference. Angry, the traveler got down from the coach and asked why the hole hadn't been repaired. When he found out why, he declared: "I will buy that hole. Who is its owner?"
Both little towns simultaneously proclaimed their rights of ownership.
"It's one or the other," he said. "Whoever owns the hole should prove it."
"How can it be proved?" the representatives of the two communities asked in unison.
"It's simple. Only the owner of the hole has the right to repair it. I'll buy it from whoever repairs the bridge."
The inhabitants of both little towns set about working, while the traveler smoked a cigar and the coachman changed the axle. The bridge was repaired in a flash, and then they announced that they were ready to receive payment for the hole.
"For what hole?" asked the traveler, flabbergasted. "I don't see any hole. I've been looking around for quite some time now for a hole to purchase, and I'm ready to pay big money, but you folks have no hole to sell. Do you take me for a fool, or what?"
And he got into his coach and drove off. The two little towns reconciled their differences. Residents of both towns now lurk on the bridge, and whenever a traveler appears, they stop him and beat him up.
Translated by William Brand
Slawomir MROZEK (b.1930) - a playwright, satirist and master of the short story. He has lived in Paris, the USA, Germany and Mexico. Since 1997, he has published cartoons and columns in Gazeta Wyborcza, the largest Polish daily newspaper. He is probably the Polish playwright whose works are staged most often both in Poland and abroad, and for years he has been, along with Stanislaw Lem, the most popular writer in Poland. He has become a part of the Polish language: particularly nonsensical everyday situations are described as "straight out of Mrozek".
Plays: Policja (The Police)1958, Tango,1964, Emigranci (The Emigrés),1974, Milosc na Krymie (Love in the Crimea), 1993.
Polish edition by Oficyna Literacka NOIR SUR BLANC
German edition by Diogenes: Zürich 1995
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There are more than 31,000 publishers registered in Poland. However, the market is highly concentrated. The 300 largest publishing firms still hold almost 98 per cent of it. More »
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