B005GEZ23A EBOK Read online

  The doors to the porch barricaded—the shutters reinforced by iron bars—our coziness by the lamp, at the table, intensified by the threat of the unbridled expanse outside—objects, clock, wardrobe, shelf, seemed to live their own life—in this silence and warmth, their precocious carnality was also growing stronger, swollen with instinct and the night’s business, creating its own atmosphere of excitement, a closed circle. It even seemed they yearned to attract the darkness of that other, the outdoor fury circling the fields, they needed it … even though they were calm, maybe even sleepy. Fryderyk was slowly putting out his cigarette on the saucer of an unfinished cup of tea, and he was taking a long time putting it out, unhurriedly, but when a dog barked somewhere in the barn—then his hand squashed the cigarette butt. With her slender fingers Madame Maria was enclosing the slim, delicate fingers of her other hand as one encloses an autumnal leaf, as one smells a wilted flower, Henia stirred … Karol also happened to stir … this motion, binding them together, burst forth, raged imperceptibly, and her white knees threw (the boy) onto his dark, dark, dark knees, his immobile knees in the corner. Hipolit’s reddish-brown paws, thick with flesh, the paws that cast one back into antediluvian times, were also on the tablecloth, and he had to endure them because they were his.

  “Let’s get some sleep,” he yawned. And he whispered: “Let’s get some sleep.”

  Well, this was unbearable! Nothing, nothing! Nothing but my own pornography preying on them! And my fury at their bottomless stupidity—the kid, stupid as an ass, she an idiot goose! Because only stupidity could explain this nothing, nothing, nothing! … Oh, if only they were a few years older! But Karol sat in his corner, with that lantern of his, with his boyish hands and legs—and he had nothing else to do but to work on the lantern, concentrating on it, turning the screws—and, so what if his corner of the room was desired, precious, so what if great happiness was concealed there, within that not quite developed God! … He was tightening the screws. While Henia was dozing at the table, with her weary hands … Nothing! How could it be? And Fryderyk, Fryderyk, what did Fryderyk know about it, putting out his cigarette, playing with the bread pellets? Fryderyk, Fryderyk, Fryderyk! Fryderyk, sitting here, seated at this table, in this house, in these nocturnal fields, in this swirl of fury! With his face that was one great provocation because it was, above all, steering clear of provocation. Fryderyk!

  Henia’s eyes were sleepy. She said good night. Soon thereafter Karol, having carefully wrapped the screws in a piece of paper, went to his room upstairs.

  And then I said, trying to be cautious, looking at the lamp with its whirring kingdom of insects: “A nice couple!”

  No one responded. Madame Maria touched a napkin with her fingers. “Henia,” she said, “will be engaged any day, God willing.”

  Fryderyk, who went on rearranging the bread pellets, and not interrupting his activity, asked with polite interest:

  “Really? To someone in the neighborhood?”

  “Why, yes. … A neighbor. Vaclav Paszkowski from Ruda. Not far away. He drops in on us quite often. A very decent man. Extremely decent.” She fluttered her fingers.

  “A lawyer, mark you.” Hipolit brightened up: “He was going to open an office before the war. … A gifted fellow, serious, a good head on his shoulders, quite so, educated! His mother, a widow, manages the affairs in Ruda, a first-rate estate, sixty acres, three miles from here.”

  “A model of saintly virtue.”

  “She’s actually from southeastern Poland, née Trzeszewska, a relative of the Gołuchowskis.”

  “Henia is a bit young … but it would be hard to find a better candidate. He’s a responsible man, gifted, exceptionally well-read, an intellect, you know, when he arrives here, gentlemen, you’ll have someone to talk to.”

  “Unusually thoughtful. Noble-minded and upright. Exceptionally pure morally. He takes after his mother. An unusual woman, of deep faith, almost a saint—steadfast Catholic principles. Ruda is a moral mainstay for everyone.”

  “At least no mere riffraff. You always know what’s what.”

  “At least we know who we’re giving our daughter to.”

  “Thanks be to God!”

  “Be that as it may. Henia will marry well. Be that as it may,” Hipolit whispered to himself, suddenly becoming thoughtful.

  IV

  Nights passed smoothly, imperceptibly. Luckily I had a separate room, so I didn’t have to put up with Frydeiyk’s sleep. … The open shutters revealed a bright day with little clouds above the bluish, dew-covered garden, the low sun pierced keenly from the side, everything was as if cast diagonally in a geometric, elongated view—a diagonal horse, a cone-shaped tree! Cute! Cute and amusing! Horizontal surfaces rose to the top, while verticals were diagonal! Such was the morning. Here I was, fevered and almost sick from yesterday’s incandescence, from that fire and glitter—because one must understand, of course, that it all fell upon me unexpectedly, after those swinish years, stifled, debilitated, gray and madly twisted, during which I had almost forgotten what beauty is, during which there was nothing but the stench of cadavers. And now suddenly there blossoms before me the possibility of a hot, springtime idyll to which I have already said good-bye, and that reign of disgust gives way to a wonderful appetite for those two. I no longer wished for anything else! I was fed up with agony. I, the Polish writer, I, Gombrowicz, ran after this will-o’-the-wisp as if after a lure—but what does Fryderyk know? My need to be sure if he knows, what he knows, what he’s thinking, what he is imagining, became an outright torture, I could no longer be without him, or rather be with him, the unknown! Should I ask him? But how could I ask? How could I put it into words? Better still—leave him alone and watch him—see if he will accidentally give himself away by his own excitement. …

  The opportunity arose when, following afternoon tea, the two of us sat on the porch—I began to yawn, I said I’d take a brief nap, but after I left I hid behind the curtains in the drawing room. This required a certain … no, not courage … daring … it had, after all, the character of a provocation—yet he himself had a lot in common with provocation, this was therefore a “provocateur’s provocation.” And hiding behind the curtain was on my part the first, clear breach of our association, the beginning of an illicit phase between us.

  And besides, whenever I happened to look at him while he was busy with something else and he didn’t return my glance with his glance, I felt as if I were committing a shameful deed—because he had become shameful. Nonetheless, I hid behind the curtain. He sat for quite a while on the bench as I had left him, his legs outstretched. He was looking at the trees.

  He stirred, then rose. He proceeded to walk slowly around the courtyard, he circled it about three times … before he turned into a double row of trees that led into the park. I followed him at a distance so as not to lose sight of him. And I now thought I was on his trail.

  Because Henia was in the orchard, by the potato field—was he possibly heading in that direction? No. He ventured into a side lane leading to a pond, he stopped by the water and looked, his countenance that of a visitor, a tourist. … So his strolling was merely a stroll—I was about to leave, gradually becoming certain that everything I had dreamed up was simply my fata morgana (because I thought this man should have a nose for this business, and therefore, if he hadn’t sniffed it, it wasn’t there)—when suddenly I noticed that he was returning to the double row of trees. I followed him.

  He strode unhurriedly, stopped here and there, lost in thought, he looked at the bushes, his wise profile bending over the leaves, absentmindedly. The garden was quiet. My suspicions were being dispelled, but one poisonous one remained: he’s pretending to himself. It seemed he was moving about the garden too much.

  I was not mistaken. He turned twice more in various directions—deeper into the orchard—then moved on a bit, stood still—yawned—looked around … while she, about a hundred paces from him, on a pile of straw in front of a root cellar, was sorting pot
atoes! Astraddle a sack! He glanced at her fleetingly.

  He yawned. Oh, this was truly unbelievable! What a masquerade! In front of whom? For what? This prudence … as if he were not allowing his own person to fully participate in what he was doing … but I could see that all this circling about was tending toward her, toward her! Oh … now he’s going farther away in the direction of the house, yet no, he reappears in the fields far, far away, pausing, looking around, pretending it’s a stroll … and yet, with a huge arc, he’s aiming at the barn, and now, most definitely, he will go to the barn. Realizing this, I ran as fast as I could through the bushes to take up an observation post behind a shed and, as I sped to the sound of cracking sticks in the damp thicket by a ditch where they threw the cat carcasses, where frogs were jumping, I realized that I was admitting the thicket and the ditch into the secret of our little intrigues. I ran behind the shed. And there he stood, behind a wagon which they were loading with manure. Suddenly the horses pulled the wagon away, and he found himself facing Karol who, on the other side of the barn, by the carriage house, was looking at a piece of iron.

  That’s when he gave himself away. Exposed by the shift of the wagon, he lost his nerve because of the open space between him and his object—instead of standing calmly, he quickly skipped behind a fence so that Karol wouldn’t see him—and he stood still, panting. But the sudden motion unmasked him, and so, alarmed, he rushed onto the road to return home. Here he met me face-to-face. And we walked toward each other along a straight line.

  There was no room for hedging. I had caught him red-handed, and he—me. He saw the person who was spying on him. We advanced on each other and, I must confess, I felt uncomfortable, because now something had to radically change between us. I know that he knows, he knows that I know that he knows—danced around in my brain. There was still quite a distance separating us, when he called out:

  “Ah, Mr. Witold, you’ve come out for some fresh air!”

  It was said theatrically—the “ah, Mr. Witold” was claptrap on his lips, he never spoke like that. I replied bluntly:

  “Indeed …”

  He took me by the arm—he had never done this before—and again he said in a no less well-rounded manner:

  “Oh, what an evening, and the trees are so fragrant! Perhaps we can avail ourselves of a pleasant stroll together?”

  I replied with an equally minuet-like courtesy, because his tone was contagious:

  “But of course, with the greatest pleasure, I find this quite delightful!”

  We directed our walk toward the house. But this march was no longer an ordinary march … it was as if we were entering the garden in a new incarnation, with due ceremony, almost to the sound of music … and I suspected that I was in the talons of some decision of his. What happened to us? For the first time I sensed him as a malevolence, threatening me directly. He continued to hold me by the arm in a friendly manner, but his closeness was cynical and cold. We passed the house (while he continued to exalt in the “gamut of light and shadow” brought about by the sunset), and I realized that we were taking a shortcut, across the lawns, to her … to the girl … while the park, saturated with sheaves of glitter, was indeed both a bouquet and a luminous lantern, black with the firs and pines that spread wide, bristling. We were walking toward her. She looked at us. She was sitting on a sack, with a clasp knife! Fryderyk asked:

  “Are we disturbing you?”

  “Not at all. I’m done with the potatoes.”

  He bowed and said loudly, in a rounded manner:

  “Can we therefore entreat this young lass to accompany us on our evening walk?”

  She rose. She unbuttoned her apron. Such docility … it might, after all, be no more than courtesy. It was an ordinary invitation for a stroll, in a somewhat exaggerated tone, old-bachelor style … but … but in this way of coming up to her, of approaching her, there was, in my view, an indecency that one could define this way: “he’s taking her with him to do something with her” and “she’s going with him, so that he can do something with her.”

  Taking the shortest way, across the lawns, we headed for the barnyard, and she asked: “Are we going to the horses?” His goal, his obscure intention cut across the branching patterns of lanes and footpaths, trees and flowerbeds. He did not reply—and the fact that he provided no explanation while leading her somewhere became suspect again. A child … this was only a sixteen-year-old child … but here was the barnyard right in front of us, black, its slanting ground, encircled by the stable and the barns, with a row of maple trees by the fence, with the whiffletrees of wagons sticking out by the well … and a child, a child … but there by the carriage house the second youthful child who, while talking with the wheelwright, is holding a piece of iron in his hand, next to them a stack of boards, metal rods, and wood chips, close by a wagon with sacks and the aroma of chaff. We were approaching. Across the bulging, black incline. Having arrived, the three of us stopped.

  The sun was setting, and a peculiar kind of visibility set in, bright yet dark—which made the trunk of a tree, the angle of a roof, a hole in the fence impressively and clearly themselves, manifest in every detail. The blackish-brown dirt of the barnyard spread as far as the sheds. Karol chatted about something with the wheelwright, slowly, country-style, an iron wheel in hand, leaning against a post that was supporting the small roof of the carriage house, and he didn’t interrupt his conversation, he merely glanced at us. We stood with Henia, and suddenly this meeting acquired the meaning of our having brought her to him, especially since none of us spoke. And even more so because Henia didn’t speak … her stillness released embarrassment. He put the iron wheel aside and approached us, but it wasn’t quite clear whom he was approaching—us or Henia—and this created a kind of duality within him, an awkwardness, for an instant he looked confused—yet he stood next to us quite at ease, cheerful even, and youthful. However, because of our general awkwardness, the silence stretched for a few seconds more … and this allowed the crushing and strangling despair, the grief, and all the nostalgias of Fate, of Destiny, to swirl above them as in a ponderous, drifting dream. …