Grabinski’s subsequent novels, Klasztor i morze (The Cloister and the Sea, 1928) and Wyspa Itongo (Itongo Island, 1936), failed to make an impression on the book market, though they contained unique concepts and highly original passages. His final short story collection, Namietnosc (Passion, 1930), was maturely full-bodied, but likewise failed to make a mark.

Grabinski’s fragile health began seriously to affect his output in these later years. He died of complications from tuberculosis on 12 November 1936, in poverty and neglected by society and the literary establishment. Before he died, he complained bitterly about having been misunderstood and forgotten in his native land. Yet vindication would come.

Interest in ‘the Polish Poe’ began to rise in Poland in the late 1950s and increase in the 1960s and 1970s, with reprints of many of his stories, including a collection edited by the Polish science-fiction master, Stanislaw Lem. Several films based on his work were produced for Polish television, and a feature film based on Grabinski’s early short story ‘At the Villa by the Sea’ was exhibited in theatres. West Germany picked up on the fascination with German translations. In the United States, my home-manufactured journal, The Grabinski Reader (1986–90), heralded the first translations of Grabinski’s work in English and became favorably noticed by such writers as Robert Bloch and Colin Wilson. These translations, and other stories translated by me for horror fiction magazines, were collected in The Dark Domain (Dedalus/ Hippocrene), published in England at the end of 1993.

Grabinski’s influence increased when young film-makers outside Poland began adopting the author’s stories for noteworthy short films. One such film-maker, Holger Mandel, even held a Stefan Grabinski evening at the Museum of Literature at Oberrhein, Germany on 12 June 2004. His two Grabinski short films were exhibited, and readings and a musical performance were held. Surely, this was the first such literary event in Grabinskiana.

The growing, steady recognition of Stefan Grabinski means that the future looks bright for an author who was once dismissed in his own country and then forgotten, and whose work was, at one point, completely unknown outside Poland. As with the creations who blossomed to life from pure thought in Grabinski’s ‘The Area’, the stories of Grabinski, emerging from his imagination nearly a century ago, are ready to live again and impress with their wonderments and instruct with their thrilling, tenacious suggestions.

 

 

MIROSLAW LIPINSKI

August 2005

 

ENGINE-DRIVER GROT

 

 

FROM THE RAILWAY STATION at Brzan came the following dispatch to the stationmaster of Podwyz: ‘Be on the alert for express number ten! The engine driver is either drunk or insane.’

The stationmaster, a tall, bony blond with sandy sideburns, read the roll once, twice; he cut off the thin white ribbon that had spun out from the block and, coiling it in a ring around his finger, slipped it into his pocket. A quick glance thrown at the station clock informed him that there was still enough time for the train in question. So he yawned in boredom, nonchalantly lit up a cigarette, and went over to the adjoining room of the cashier, the fair-haired, squat Miss Feli, a casual ideal in moments of boredom and in anticipation of a better morsel.

While the stationmaster was so suitably preparing himself for the reception of the announced locomotive, the suspect train had already travelled a considerable distance beyond the Brzan station.

The hour was most wonderful. The hot June sun had past its zenith and was sowing golden rays throughout the earth. Villages and hamlets with flowery apple and cherry trees flashed by, meadows and haystacks were flung backward in green sheets. The train sped along at full steam: here it was snatched up by the arms of rustling pine and spruce forests, there, emerging from the embrace of trees, it was greeted by bowing grain fields. Far in the horizon, a misty blue line indicated a range of mountains….

Leaning against the flank of the engine, Grot set a steady glance through the little oval window at the space unreeling in a lengthy, grey course framed by the dark rails. The train crept along these rails lightly, predatorily, straddling them with an iron system of wheels and eagerly sweeping them underneath.

The engine driver felt an almost physical pleasure from this continual conquest, which, never satiated, lets go of the already fallen prey with disregard and speeds on to new conquests. Grot loved to vanquish space!

Looking intently at the line of track, he would frequently become thoughtful, contemplative, forgetful of the world, until his stoker had to tug at his arm and give notice that the pressure was too great for the station already close at hand. Yet Grot was a first-class engine driver.

He loved his occupation above all and would not have changed it for anything in the world. He had entered railway service relatively late, when he was thirty, but, despite this, he immediately displayed such a sure hand at running a locomotive that he quickly surpassed his more experienced comrades.

What he had been before, no one knew. When questioned, he would reluctantly answer this and that, or else remain stubbornly silent.

His colleagues and the railway authorities held him in evident respect, singling him out from others. In his brief words, parsimoniously distributed among people, he revealed an uncommon intelligence, a compelling sense of honour.

There were various, frequently contradictory rumours afloat about him and his past. Yet everyone held the unanimous opinion that Christopher Grot was a so-called stray individual, something of a fallen star, one of those who should have gone along a higher path, but, thanks to the fatalism of life, became stranded on the rocks.

He seemed unaware of this situation, however, and did not feel sorry for himself. He performed his duties willingly and never asked for vacations. Whether he had forgotten about what had once occurred, whether he did not feel called upon to attain higher aims—no one knew.

Two facts had been established from Grot’s past: the first, that he had served in the army during the Franco-Prussian campaign; the second, that he had lost his beloved brother at that time.

Despite all sorts of endeavours by the curious, no one was able to draw out any further details. Finally, people simply gave up, content with the meagre biographical bouquet of ‘Engineer Grot’.