Authors: Witold Gombrowicz
The lunch … miserable yet marked by hidden dynamics, abounding in exuberant crescendos and imbued with contradictory meanings, blurry, like a text written within another text … Vaclav at his place next to Henia—he must have had a talk with her and “won her over with his respect,” because they both showed a great deal of attention to each other, now and again exchanging pleasantries, she became more refined and he became more refined—they both became more refined. As far as Fryderyk was concerned—loquacious as always, sociable, but obviously pushed into the background by Siemian, who imperceptibly took the reins. … Yes, even more than when he first appeared, there was a contagion of obedience and inner tension with regard to his wishes, the tiniest ones, which began with him as a request and ended with us as commands. Since I already knew that it was wretchedness dressed up, out of fear, in his former, now lost, imperiousness, I saw this as a farce! At first it was masked as the good-heartedness of an East Poland officer, a bit Cossack-like, a bit swashbuckling—yet gloom began to ooze from all his pores, gloom, as well as the cold, apathetic indifference that I had noticed yesterday. He was turning dark and ugly. And this entanglement, taking place within him, must have been unbearable to him, while before our eyes and out of fear, he was taking shape as the old Siemian he no longer was, whom he feared more than we did, whom
he could no longer match—the old, the “dangerous” Siemian, who was the one to give commands and use people, the one to order one man to put another man to death. “I’d like to ask you for a slice of lemon”—it sounded so good-natured, charmingly East Poland, even somewhat in the old Russian style, but it had claws, somewhere deep down it was marked by disrespect for the existence of others, and he, sensing it, was frightened, and his terror fed on his fear. Fryderyk, I knew, must have been soaking up this simultaneous accumulation of terror and fear rolled into one. Yet Siemian’s game would not have become so unrestrained if Karol had not teamed up with him from the other end of the table, supporting Siemian’s imperiousness with his whole being.
Karol was eating soup, buttering bread—yet Siemian immediately took control of him just as he had done at their first encounter. Again the boy had a lord over him. His hands became soldier-like and dexterous. His whole undeveloped existence instantly and smoothly surrendered to Siemian, surrendered and submitted to him—when Karol ate it was to serve him, he buttered his bread with Siemian’s permission, and his head promptly submitted itself to him with its short-cut hair swirling softly on his forehead. He was not expressing it in some manner—he simply became it, like someone who changes with the lighting. It’s possible that Siemian wasn’t aware of it, nonetheless, a relationship was soon cemented between himself and the boy, and Siemian’s gloom, that unfriendly cloud loaded with imperiousness (now
only feigned) began to seek out Karol and pile itself upon him. And Vaclav helped it along, Vaclav the refined, sitting next to Henia … Vaclav the just, demanding love and virtue … watched the chief made dark by the boy, the boy—by the chief.
He must have sensed it—Vaclav—that this was turning against the very respect which he had been defending and which was defending him—because between the chief and the boy there was evolving none other than actual disdain—disdain first and foremost for death. Wasn’t the boy giving himself to the chief, life and death, exactly because the other was afraid neither to die nor to kill—this is what gave him sovereignty over others. And in the wake of such disdain for death and life came other possible debasements, whole oceans of devaluations, and the boy’s ability for disdain bonded with the man’s gloomy, imperious nonchalance—they acknowledged one another, for they were not afraid of death or pain, one because he was a boy, the other because he was the chief. The matter sharpened and grew because phenomena elicited artificially are more unbridled—since, after all, Siemian was making himself a chief simply out of fear, to rescue himself. And this artificial chief, whom the young one was changing into reality, was strangling him, choking him, terrorizing him. Fryderyk must have been soaking up (I knew) the sudden gain in power by the other three, Siemian’s, Karol’s and Vaclav’s, heralding the possibility of an explosion … while she, Henia, was calmly bending over her plate.
Siemian was eating … to show that he was now able to eat like everyone else … and he tried to charm with his charm from the steppes, a charm which was, however, poisoned by his corpse-like chill and which, in Karol, was immediately transforming itself into violence and into blood. Fryderyk was soaking this up. But then it so happened that Karol asked for a glass and Henia handed it to him—and perhaps that moment, when the glass went from one hand to the other hand, was a little, only slightly, prolonged, it seemed that she was late by a fraction of a second in withdrawing her hand. It could be so. Was it? This trifle of evidence reached Vaclav like a bludgeon—he turned gray—while Fryderyk brushed them with his oh so indifferent gaze.
Compote was served. Siemian fell silent. Now he sat, increasingly unpleasant, as if he had run out of politeness, and he seemed to have finally given up on pleasing, as if the gates of horror had opened wide before him. He was frigid. Henia began to play with her fork, and it so happened that Karol was also touching his fork—actually it wasn’t clear whether he was playing with it or just touching it, it could be pure happenstance, indeed the fork was close at hand—nonetheless Vaclav again turned gray—was it indeed happenstance? Oh, of course, it could have been happenstance—so trivial it was almost imperceptible. Yet it was conceivable … what if this trifle was actually giving them permission for a prank, oh so slight, so lightweight, so microscopic that (the girl) could be submitting to it with (the boy) while not violating her virtue with
regard to her fiancé—indeed, it was all totally imperceptible. … And wasn’t it this very lightness that was tempting them—since the lightest movement of their hands hit Vaclav like a blow—perhaps they couldn’t restrain themselves from their little amusement that, being almost nothing, was at the same time—for Vaclav—a crushing defeat. Siemian finished eating his compote. Even if Karol really was teasing Vaclav, oh, perhaps imperceptibly even to himself, this in no way violated his fidelity toward Siemian, since he was amusing himself like a soldier, ready for death and therefore behaving recklessly. And this too was marked by the strangely unbridled behavior that artificiality bestows—since the little game with the forks was, after all, merely a sequel to the theater on the island, the flirting between them was “theatrical.” I thus found myself, at this table, between two perplexities, more intense than anything reality could muster. An artificial chief and an artificial love.
Everyone rose. Lunch had come to an end.
Siemian stepped up to Karol.
“Hey you … kid …,” he said.
“What’s up?!” Karol replied, delighted.
Then the officer turned his pale eyes to Hipolit, coldly, unpleasantly. “Shall we talk?” he suggested through his teeth.
I wanted to be present at their conversation but he stopped me with a curt: “You—no. …” What was this? A command? Had he forgotten how we talked last night? But I complied with his wish and stayed on the verandah, while he and Hipolit
walked away into the garden. Henia was next to Vaclav and placed her hand on his shoulder as if nothing had taken place between them, faithful again, but Karol, standing at the open door, didn’t fail to place his hand on it (his hand on the door—her hand on Vaclav). And the fiancé said to the young girl: “Let’s go for a walk.” To which she replied like an echo: “Let’s go.” They went away down the lane, while Karol was left behind like an unrestrained joke that nobody could get. … Fryderyk muttered, “This is ridiculous!” as he watched the betrothed couple and Karol. My imperceptible smile answered him … for him alone.
After a quarter of an hour Hipolit returned and summoned us to his study.
“We have to get rid of him,” he said. “The job has to be done tonight. He’s pressuring us!”
And, dropping to the couch, he repeated to himself with pleasure, lowering his eyes: “He’s pressuring us!”
It turned out that Siemian had again demanded horses—but this time it was not a request—no, it was something that made Hipolit unable to regain his balance for quite a while. “Gentlemen, he’s a scoundrel! He’s a murderer! He wanted horses, I said I didn’t have them today, maybe tomorrow … then he squeezed my hand with his fingers, he took my hand in his fingers and squeezed it, I tell you, like a typical killer … and he said that if by ten tomorrow morning the horses weren’t there, then …
“He pressured me!” he said, terrified. “The job must be done tonight, because tomorrow
I will have to
give him horses.”
And he added softly:
“I will have to.”
This was a surprise to me. Apparently Siemian couldn’t sustain the role we had planned yesterday, and instead of talking cordially, soothingly, he was threatening. … It was clear he had been invaded, terrorized, by the ex-Siemian, the dangerous one that he had called up during lunch, and this created a threat within him, a command, pressure, cruelty (which he couldn’t resist, since he was more afraid of these than anyone else). … Suffice it to say, he again became a threat. At least it was good that I no longer felt solely responsible for him, as I had felt last night, in my room, since I had passed this matter on to Fryderyk.
Hipolit rose. “Gentlemen, well, how shall we do it? And who?” He pulled out four matches and twisted the little head off one of them. I looked at Fryderyk—I waited for a sign—should I reveal my nocturnal conversation with Siemian? But I saw that he was terribly pale. He swallowed saliva.
“Excuse me,” he said, “I don’t know whether …”
“What?” Hipolit asked.
“Death,” Fryderyk said briefly. He was looking aside. “To k-i-l-l him?”
“What else? These are the orders.”
“To k-i-l-l,” he repeated. He wasn’t looking at anyone. He was tête-à-tête with this word. There was no one else—just
he and to k-i-l-l. His chalk-white paleness couldn’t lie, it came from the fact that
he knew what it was to kill
He knew it—at this moment—to the very depths. “I … will not … this …,” he said and shook his fingers somehow sideways, sideways, sideways, somewhere behind him. … All of a sudden he turned his face toward Vaclav.
It was as if a suggestion of something appeared on his paleness—before he even spoke I knew with certainty that he had not broken down but was continuing to direct events, that he was maneuvering—not letting Henia and Karol out of his sight—in their direction! What then? Was he scared? Or was he chasing them?
“Not you either!” he turned directly to Vaclav.
“Not me?”
“How could you do it … with a knife—because it must be done with a knife, not with a revolver, that’s too loud—how could you do it with a knife when just recently your mother was … also with a knife? You? You and your mother, and a Catholic too? I ask you! How could you possibly manage to do it?”
He was becoming tangled in words, but they had been thoroughly lived through, supported by his face that, while shouting “no,” was glued to Vaclav’s face. Undoubtedly—“he knew what he was talking about.” He knew what it meant “to kill,” and he was at the end of his endurance, and unequal to the task. … No, this was not a game, nor tactics, at this moment he was genuine!
“Are you a deserter?” Hipolit asked coldly.
In reply Fryderyk smiled helplessly and stupidly.
Vaclav swallowed saliva as if he had been forced to eat something inedible. I think that up to now he had been approaching this just as I was, that is, in the mode of war, that this killing was for him one of many, one more killing—repulsive yet after all ordinary and even necessary, and unavoidable—but now it was extracted for him out of many and placed separately, as something immense. Killing as such! He too went pale. After all, his mother! And the knife! A knife identical to the one that his mother … He would in this case be killing with a knife that had been pulled out of his mother, he would be aiming with the same thrust and would be repeating the same act on Siemian’s body. … Yet it was possible that behind his tensely wrinkled brow his mother became mixed up with Henia, and it was not his mother but actually Henia who became the deciding factor. He must have perceived himself in Skuziak’s role, administering the blow … but then, how was he to endure Henia with Karol, how could he resist their coupling, resist Henia in the (boy’s) embrace, the not yet matured Henia in his arms, Henia brazenly be-boyed? … To kill Siemian just as Skuziak had done—but who would he then become? Another Skuziak? But what would then counter that other force—the juvenile one? Had Fryderyk not isolated and overblown the Kill … but now it would be a Kill, and this blow with the knife would strike at his very dignity, his honor, virtue, everything he had used
to fight against Skuziak for his mother, against Karol for Henia.
This was probably why, turning to Hipolit, he announced bluntly, as if stating something already known:
“I can’t do it.…”
Fryderyk said to me, almost triumphantly, with a tone that demanded a reply:
“And you? Will you kill him?”
Ha! What? So this was merely a tactic! He was driving at something while feigning fear, forcing us to refuse. Inconceivable: this fear of his, pale, sweating, trembling, so extreme, was merely a horse on which he was galloping … to the young knees and hands! He was using his dread for erotic ends! A pinnacle of fraud, unbelievable baseness, something unacceptable and unbearable! He treated himself as he did his horse! But his onward rush seized me, and I felt I had to gallop with him. And, clearly, I did not want to kill. I was happy that I was allowed to squirm out of it—our discipline and unity had already cracked. I replied: “No.”
“What a mess,” Hipolit rejoined coarsely. “Enough of this baloney. In that case I’ll do the job myself. Without anyone’s help.”
“You?” asked Fryderyk. “You?”
“I.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Nnno …”
“Listen,” Hipolit said, “just think of it. One can’t be a swine. One needs to have some sense of duty. This is duty, sir! This is military service!”