Truth & Consequences

THE ELEPHANT by Slawomir Mrozek. 176 pages. Grove. $3.95.

A prudent lion refuses to rend Christians in the arena--not because he cares about them but because he senses that they may soon take political power in Rome and he wants his act of neutrality to be on record.

A well-heeled small-town matron, thinking a canary too common a pet, keeps a live revolutionary caged in her drawing room instead.

A Communist radio announcer de scribes the tag end of a May Day parade: "We can already hear the noise of stamping and shuffling," he says with enthusiasm. "Yes, here they come. Our glorious incomparable rehabilitated invalids. A spirited detachment of legless men who are swinging their crutches with gusto. Wooden legs reflect the sun. Two men who have lost an arm each get together so they can clap."

Slawomir Mrozek, author of these and scores of other weird vignettes, is a brilliant young Polish satirist. His brief mixtures of fey anecdote and topsyturvy fable have as their most persistent source of humor the howling gap that exists between the world as it is depicted by Communist rhetoricians and the world as it really is.

In one story, Mrozek zeroes in on the absurdity of Communist hortatory jargon that often lends heroic titles to mundane party functionaries, hoping to inspire them. A group of civil servants is likened to eagles, and Mrozek takes the elevation literally. Warsaw clerks suddenly begin flying around their offices. They soar away from their desks, take to the mountains in southern Po land, and even begin carrying off lambs. Lead weights, which authorities cagily attached to their shoes, did no good, Mrozek records with relish--"they escaped in their socks."

Journeying in the country, one of Mrozek's imaginary commentators comes on a much vaunted new telegraph line. But it turns out that the poles have been stolen and the wires were never delivered. Officials, however, have replaced them with a "more modern" system--men stationed every 100 yards to shout the messages. "There is no storm damage to repair," a local man proudly explains. "And the postmaster has gone to Warsaw to ask for megaphones."' Then comes a shouted message. "Father dead. Funeral Wednesday."

Mrozek's fantasies, not always political, are often enigmatic, and frequently most haunting when most bizarre. A housewife has trouble talking about marriage troubles to a priest confessor because he can think only of adultery, and her secret is that she has just discovered her handsome spouse is made entirely of plasticene. "An annulment, Father?" she says, when he finally offers advice. "But we have three children."

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