The memories include, of course, the city’s patisseries and their sweet assortments. In his description of the inventory of Ludwik Zalewski’s locale at Akademicka Street, the writer, sensitive about it until his final days, comes close to poetry. Let us quote at least a small fragment:
I remember pink pigs with chocolate eyes, and every variety of fruit, mushroom, meat, plant; and there were forests and fields, too, as if Zalewski could reproduce the whole cosmos in sugar and chocolate, using shelled almonds for the sun and icing for the stars. In any case this great master knew how to capture my yearning, anxious, untrusting soul in a different way each season, to conquer me with the eloquence of his marzipan carvings, etchings of white chocolate, Vesuviuses of whipped cream whose volcanic bombs were heavily candied fruit.
Another point that caught the attention of Stanisław on his way to school was a kiosk on the corner of Ducha Square stocked with the products of Mr Kawuras, from whom he bought halva. He only had enough pocket money for this purchase at the beginning of the week, and as early as Wednesday already had to do without. In a word, the idyllic interwar period in Lviv tempted Lem offers that were impossible to resist.
Despite everything, there was no shortage of moments of awe-inspiring drama, such as when, during his holidays in Tatarowo, the future writer scared his uncle to death by stepping under the steam-gushing engine of a train that was preparing for departure. The curious little boy decided to break off an icicle hanging from under the steam engine’s cylinders: ‘I was full of fear that the train would move and cut off my legs, but evidently I desperately needed to get hold of that icicle.’
Another excess, after years self-critically evaluated as ‘shameful’, was a desire to impress the junior high school Polish teacher, Mrs Lewicka, with his homework. The student, who had not caused any problems so far, got carried away by his creative urge to such an extent that in his description of life on the planet Venus – where imagination took him – he used a large piece taken from Professor Wyrobek’s book about the wonders of nature: ‘So my literary career began, in gymnasium, with a simple act of plagiarism.’
What did we know about any of our teachers? We were taught by Professor Ingarden, also mathematics; even then he was a philosopher of European renown, but in our school nobody knew that. Ingarden didn’t stay long or devote much effort to us, and no wonder, since our collective resistance to mathematics was more than a match for the greatest pedagogical talent.
A place often visited by the young man was the junk shop in Lviv, where for relatively little money one could buy all sorts of ‘electrical-mechanical junk [...] derailed, worn out, abandoned, and which are given for the last time a chance to exist’. In the description of these innumerable treasures, which, after strenuous efforts, could possibly be given a second life, Lem’s memoirs take on a slightly metaphysical edge, coming close to the prose of Bruno Schulz, who lived in the nearby Drohobycz and worked as a junior high school drawing and handicrafts teacher. Boxes of these degraded parts, very useful in scientific experiments, began to fill the remaining free space on Stanisław’s bookshelves.
The first experiments of the juvenile Lem allowed him to work out the secret to scoring coveted prizes in the amusement park games. When his toss turned out to be successful and the properly prepared coin did not slip from the cellophane on the convex lid of the box with sweets, a man with impressive shoulders came up to the lucky recipient and hissed in his ear: ‘”Beat it, you little shit!”’ I wisely took his advice – and at home the chocolates turned out to be inedible, either mouldy or rock-hard with age.’