Eric Maas’s Reviews > The Empusium > Status Update

Don’t get attached to him, my boy. He hasn’t much time left.

Given Wojnicz got the same advice about the ducks that Jóseph brought home in his youth and ended up hanging upside down bleeding out from their necks, this sounds even more ominous than it would normally. After all it’s getting near to November and someone is bound to perish in a Health Resort Horror Story…

Even the toughest men melt like jelly when they’re subjected to women’s tricks. And that includes women acting from beyond the grave.

7. Woe, woe is me!

Gloom and gold. (On the Saint Emerentia icon) (p124)

To be a man means learning to ignite whatever causes trouble. That’s the whole mystery.

The horrible sight of the dark red, almost broken blood congealing on the stump forced him with painful ambivalence — to feel afraid, while also feeling a strange indescribable fascination close to pleasure, far mightier than picking scans off his knees, or teasing an already wobbly milk tooth. (p116)

…the bleeding, feathery shred tired to the edge of the stove filled him with despair and induced doleful, helpless weeping, which he was obliged to hide from his father, his uncle and even Józef. They would have said he was whining like a woman.

What was happening inside him seemed far more intense than the world’s most dramatic political events.

6. The patients

…it was hard to rid oneself of the impression that Lukas despised others. This contempt was like s skeleton; without it he might have collapsed and dissolved like a melting snowman. But inspire of that, Wojnicz thought he seemed weak, as if made of flimsy material that looked good from the outside but would not last.

Attaboy Wojnicz!