The author let his imagination run free by encrypting the context, which was his way of messing with the censorship of the People’s Republic of Poland. However, the censors had no reason to prohibit printing of Memoirs, since the gloomy institution introduced in the novel, responsible for the surveillance of everything that moves, had a transoceanic etymology hidden in the scraps of its not fully deciphered name (‘Cap-i-Taal’). Still, its methods of persuasion were clearly of Eastern European provenance, and many readers of the 1961 novel might have even come into contact with them.
None of the censors tried to find any allusions to the regime of the People's Republic of Poland in the novel’s climate of criminal totalitarianism and oppressive state, as this would confirm that something was wrong with it. It was therefore in their well-understood interest to pretend that they did not understand the allusion, even if they understood it well (especially at that time). Stanisław Lem's literary genius consisted, among other things, in the fact that, through the prism of futurological fantasies, he judged the real actions of particular (now more or less bygone) authorities, and he was able to express himself in an absolutely indisputable manner.
The titular memoirs were found by archaeologists about thirty centuries after their creation. The diary survived as a relic of the past – as the only known trace of a human hand left on paper. It happened that in the years preceding the invention of other forms of recording, for example electronic, there was a catastrophe of ‘papyrolysis’ (‘In those times there was no “mnetamnetism” nor technique for crystallising information’). At that time, all the paper-based records of mankind irretrievably disintegrated; it was only by chance that this manuscript survived, feverishly supplemented night by night by a newly appointed secret agent.
The anonymous hero hid his manuscript from unauthorised eyes under the bathtub, which was enough for it to survive (as if in an armoured safe) the effects of a disaster – a volcanic lava spill. The extraction of the notebook from underneath the bathtub, filled with fossils that had three millennia to form, significantly enriched the poor general knowledge of the distant times of the second half of the 20th century and allowed mankind to form a certain view on unconventional methods of recruiting the so-called ‘young people capable of civic service’. Of course, it was in the name of the noblest (albeit vague) goal, for the benefit of the omnipotent (but equally vaguely understood) intelligence centre, and more broadly: in the name of the state whose emblem was in the intelligence centre’s coat of arms.
The hero was involved in a Mission of the utmost importance because the so-called Headquarters dealt with only such missions. Before the agent had been delegated to it, he understandably had to undergo the entire training and initiation procedure. The matter was promising to be a very serious one. It was one of those missions which was – colloquially speaking – ‘top-secret, burn the message before opening’ or ‘secret/confidential’.
The guarantee that the newly appointed agent would be successful with the riskiest tasks was his creativity, which also translated into the success of this Mission. So when a cabinet with another supervisor, to whom he was to report, turned out to be inaccessible because it was fortified by secretaries who did not react to any stimuli other than the boss's orders (‘She was an absolute secretary: she did not pay attention to anything that was beyond her competence’), he unceremoniously entered everywhere where the door did not resist. He soon became convinced that this was the only right way to go, though extremely dangerous: he saw things that should absolutely not happen in this particular company (e.g. a uniformed individual photographing top-secret documents).
As it soon turned out, the Headquarters were completely inert in terms of organisation, which made it a parody of itself. No one was in control, busy keeping up the appearances of their indispensability. An officer he met in the cafeteria – an aficionado of diagonal photographs – confessed to the protagonist that this is his way of making money on the side to supplement his low salary and that the photographs given to residents of foreign intelligence bureaus are not of the slightest importance for the security of the state and its allies.
After all, it is well known that both sides of the world divided into two parts are just deceiving one another. Therefore, treason is possible and even necessary. This contributes to the relative peace of mind, and at the same time provides the necessary occupation for the intelligence organs (ours and others).
Another one, a distinguished old man in a top-ranking officer's uniform, who liked to tear off epaulettes, break sabres and slap officers of more modest ranks for embezzling (a constant ritual before their collective shooting; the higher rankings had the right to be independent and facilitated by a pistol carried on a velvet pillow – ‘with stripes’ for the most noteworthy), took a liking to the protagonist, who during the ceremonial degradation, was assigned the task of polishing the floor. He was the only one who did not wear a uniform; thus the leader discovered a born undercover agent in him and immediately promoted him to a personal bodyguard. Unfortunately, the promising career of the adjutant to the commander-in-chief was not successful, as the commander-in-chief, after taking an impressive dose of medication, while listening to the rightful complaints of his orderly, sailed straight into Morpheus' arms in his chair.
The extraction of any guidelines concerning the purpose and tasks of the first Mission of the freshman agent from the higher charges apparently exceeded the powers of the successive officials of the Headquarters and always took the same course, interrupted by a lofty tirade about professional secrecy, sometimes revealing problems with memory (‘it is not good to remember too much in our profession’), and ended by sending the annoyance back to anyone else, that is making him run Hither and Thither and Yon. From various ambiguities or understatements during the endless journey through the corridors, one could conclude that, contrary to appearances, nothing happened by chance in the building –the novice’s every step was the subject of pedantic preparations and, of course, a thorough investigation. During it, no one was himself, everyone had their own legend and played the role assigned to them.
The clever young scout was well aware that he couldn’t leave the headquarters on his own – he would not get far. But here? He could enter wherever he had access, and also, his newly acquainted colleagues told him of their most intimate embezzlements against the Headquarters (‘When everyone is crazy, nobody is’) intelligently justifying them with the overwhelming need to preserve the remains of personal dignity. In doing so, they gently pointed out that a possible loss in a constant race to denounce others could have irreversible consequences for the marauder.
In order not to lose contact with reality (‘what here, on one level, is a conversation or a joke, on another level turns out to be an implemented procedure, and on yet another one – a competition among divisions’), the protagonist made a bold attempt to write down the course of the following days. This could result in severe sanctions but proved to be lifesaving. For a rookie wandering around in the twisted guts of an institutional molehill, the diary became his last resort.
One could spend a long time enumerating tropes from this novel. Stanisław Lem turned out to be not only a master of allusive provocation, but also a curator of the most valuable traditions of European prose, starting from following the motifs present in the works of giants such as Shakespeare, Calderon and Kafka, but also the prose writers from our backyard: Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz, Bruno Schulz, Witold Gombrowicz or Tadeusz Breza. Lem's expansive metaphors contained in Memoirs Found in a Bathtub achieved a special emotional tone, placing the action of the novel on the borderline of genres – experts on the subject describe it as buffo fantasy.
The book was published five years after the ideological corset loosened in October 1956. The country was once again ruled only by the holier-than-thou idea from Kremlin, zealously implemented by the first secretary of the party, comrade Władysław Gomułka, called the watchmaker (because he was still going to Moscow for directions). Polish prose remained in lethargy, from which broke out only Sławomir Mrożek (Escape to the South), Wilhelm Mach (Mountains by the Black Sea) and Stanisław Lem, with four titles: Mortal Engines, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Return from the Stars and Solaris.
One does not have to be an expert on the publishing market to answer the question which of these books are still being reissued, read, translated into foreign languages and fiercely discussed (not only among historians or literary theorists). The phenomenon and strength of Stanisław Lem's work lie in the fact that the writer had found a cypher (‘The cypher should resemble everything except the cypher’), i.e. the most appropriate way of describing the world in which we have to live, which the eye of the most overzealous controller will not be able to perceive. Of course, it is a representation that is not very direct, which does not change the fact that in every latitude, and at all times, we can relate to this prose.
Stanisław Lem
Memoirs Found in a Bathtub
Original title: Pamiętnik znaleziony w wannie
Seabury Press, 1973
Translators: Kandel Michael, Rose Christine
hardcover
number of pages: 188
ISBN 0-8164-9128-3
Originally written in Polish by Janusz Kowalczyk, translated into English by P. Grabowski, December 2020
