Authors: Witold Gombrowicz
“Of course I like her.”
He said, pointing with his whip: “Do you see those bushes? They aren’t bushes, they’re the tops of trees in the ravine, in Lisiny, that connects with the Bodzechów forest. Sometimes there are gangs in there. …” He squinted at me, suggesting we were in collusion as to the meaning, and we continued on, passed a figurine of Christ, while I returned to the subject as if I had never left it. … A sudden calm, the cause of which I was not aware, allowed me to disregard the time that had elapsed.
“But you’re not in love with her?”
This was a much more risky question—it was reaching to the heart of the matter—it could, in its obstinacy, betray my dark exultation, mine and Fryderyk’s, which had began at their feet, at their feet, at their feet. … I felt as if I were touching a sleeping tiger. A groundless fear. “Naw … after all we’ve known each other since childhood! …” And this was said without a shadow of an arrière-pensee. … One might expect, however, that the recent event in front of the carriage house in which we had all been secret partners would make it somewhat difficult for him to answer.
Not in the least! Apparently the other was for him something in the background—and so now, with me, he was disconnected from the other—and his “naw,” so drawn out, had the flavor of caprice and irresponsibility, even of roguery. He spat. By spitting he cast himself even more as a rogue, and all at once he laughed, his laughter was overpowering, as if it
deprived him of the possibility of a different reaction, and he squinted at me, with humor:
“I’d rather make it with Madame Maria.”
No! This could not be true! Madame Maria with her teary skinniness! So why did he say it? Was it because he had lifted the old hag’s skirt? But why did he lift her skirt? … what absurdity, what a tiresome riddle. Yet I knew (and this was one of the canons of my knowledge of people gained from reading literature), that there are human actions, apparently nonsensical, that a man finds necessary because in some manner they define him—to give a simple example, someone may be ready to commit a useless act of folly simply not to feel like a coward. And who, more than the young, need to define themselves? … I was therefore more than certain that most of the actions or pronouncements of this green youth who sat next to me, with reins and whip, were just such actions “committed on himself—one could even suppose that our, mine and Fryderyk’s, hidden yet admiring gaze excited him in this game with himself more than he realized. Well, then: he went with us yesterday on that walk, he was bored, had nothing to do, he pulled up the hag’s skirt to introduce a touch of debauchery that he perhaps fancied, for the sake of shifting from being the one who is desired to the one who desires. A boy’s acrobatics. Well and good. But why was he now returning to this topic and confessing that he would prefer “making it” with Madame Maria, was there a more aggressive intention hidden here?
“Do you think I’m about to believe you?” I asked. “That you prefer Madame Maria to Henia? What nonsense!” I added. To which he replied with stubbornness, plain as day: “Well, I do.”
Nonsense and a lie! But why, to what purpose? We were already approaching Bodzechów, we could now see the huge chimneys of the Ostrów plants in the distance. Why, why was he defending himself against Henia, why didn’t he want Henia? I knew, yet I didn’t know, I understood and didn’t understand. Did his young age really prefer elders? Did he prefer to be with “the elders”? What was his idea, his aim—the awesomeness of it, its burning-hot sharpness, its dramatic aspect instantly threw me on the trail—because I, now in his domain, followed his excitement. Did this kid desire to roam around in our maturity? Of course—nothing is more common than for a boy to fall in love with a beautiful maiden, then everything develops along the lines of natural attraction. But, possibly, he wanted something … wider, bolder … he didn’t want to be just “a boy with a young girl,” but “a boy with adults,” a boy who is breaking into adulthood … what a dark, perverted idea! But behind him were, after all, experiences from the arena of war and anarchy. I didn’t really know him, I couldn’t have known him, I didn’t know what and how things had formed him, he was as unfathomable as this landscape—familiar yet unfamiliar—and I could be sure of only one thing, namely, that this scoundrel had left his swaddling clothes long ago. To enter into—what? This was exactly the unknown—it wasn’t clear what or whom he fancied, so perhaps he wanted
to play with us and not with Henia, and he was constantly letting us know that age should not be an obstacle. … How so? How so? Well, yes, he was bored, he wanted to have fun, to play at something he was unfamiliar with, something he hadn’t actually thought about, out of boredom, by way of digression and without any effort … with us but not with Henia because, in our ugliness, we could lead him farther, we were more unrestricted. Therefore (considering that event in front of the carriage house) he was letting me know that he’s not disgusted. … Enough. I was sickened at the very thought that his beauty sought my ugliness. I changed the subject.
“Do you go to church? Do you believe in God?”
A question calling for seriousness, a question protecting me from his treacherous levity.
“In God? Whatever the priests say, that …”
“But do you believe in God?”
“Sure. But …”
“But what?”
He fell silent.
I was going to ask: Do you go to church? Instead I asked: “Do you go whoring?”
“Sometimes.”
“Are you popular with women?”
He laughed right away.
“No. Not at all! I’m still too young.”
Too young. Its meaning was degrading—that was why this time he could use the word “youth” with ease. But, as far as I
was concerned, God and this boy had all of a sudden combined with women in some kind of grotesque and almost drunken quid pro quo, his “too young” sounded strange, like a warning. Yes, too young in relation to a woman as much as to God, too young in relation to everything—and it wasn’t important whether he believes or doesn’t believe, whether he’s popular with women or not, because he was “too young” in general, and none of his emotions, or his beliefs, or his word could have any meaning—he was incomplete, he was “too young.” “Too young” in relation to Henia and to everything that was arising between them, and also “too young” in relation to Fryderyk and to me … What was then this slim, tender age of his? Karol meant nothing to me after all! How could I, an adult, place all my seriousness in his nonseriousness, to listen intently and with trembling to someone who was not serious? I looked around the countryside. From here, from the hilltop, I could already see Kamienna, and we could hear the barely audible rumble of the train that was approaching Bodzechów, the whole river valley was before us, and the highway too—while to the right and left was the yellow-green patchwork of the fields, and, as far as the eye could see, a sleepy age-long past, but now gagged, quashed, its yap muzzled. A strange odor of lawlessness permeated everything, and here I was, in this lawlessness, with this boy, who was “too young,” a light-headed lightweight whose insufficiency, incompleteness became, under these conditions, the primary power. How was I, deprived of any buttress, to defend myself from him?
We drove onto the highway, and the
britzka
began to shake across the potholes, the iron rims of its wheels making a grinding sound, then more and more people, we passed them as they emerged walking along a pathway, this one wearing a cap, another a hat, farther along we came across a wagon full of bundles, someone’s entire belongings—moving step by step—while farther on a woman standing in the middle of the road stopped us and came up to us, I saw a fairly refined face draped in the kind of scarf usually worn by countrywomen, her huge legs in men’s knee-high boots sticking out from under a short, black silk skirt, she was dressed in a low décolletage, ballroom or evening gown style, elegant, and in her hand she held something wrapped in a newspaper—she began waving it—wanted to say something, but then she buttoned her lip, and again she wanted to say something, but instead she waved her hand, jumped aside—then continued to stand in the middle of the road as we moved away. Karol laughed. We finally reached Ostrowiec with a loud clatter, bouncing on the cobblestones that made even our cheeks shake, we passed German sentries in front of a factory, the little town was the same as ever, ever the same, chimneys of the huge furnaces of the factory piling up, the wall, farther on a bridge on the Kamienna, railroad tracks, and the main street leading to the market square, and on the corner was Malinowski’s café. Just one thing, an absence that was palpable, namely, there were no Jews. There were, however, lots of people in the streets, hustle and bustle, quite animated in places, here an old woman throwing garbage
from a hallway, there someone walking with a thick rope tucked under his arm, a small group in front of a food store, a little boy with a stone taking aim at a bird that had settled on top of a chimney. We bought a supply of kerosene and made a few other purchases, then we left this strange Ostrowiec, and when the soil of a simple dirt road received our
britzka
on its soft bosom again, we sighed with relief. But what was Fryderyk doing? How was he managing, left there to his own devices? Was he sleeping? Sitting? Walking? I certainly knew his meticulous attention to propriety, I knew that if he were sitting it would be with all precaution, yet I began to worry that I didn’t know how he was actually spending his time. He wasn’t there when, having arrived in Poworna, we sat down to a late lunch, then Madame Maria told me that he was hoeing. … What? He was hoeing a path in the garden. “I’m afraid … he’s probably bored here,” she added not without worry, as if he were a guest in prewar times, while Hipolit came to inform me as well:
“Your companion, mind you, is in the garden. … He’s hoeing.”
And something in his voice indicated that the man was beginning to be a burden to him—he was embarrassed, unhappy, and helpless. I went to Fryderyk. When he saw me, he put away the hoe, and with simple courtesy asked if our trip had been a success … then, his gaze cast sideways, he proposed the thought, carefully worded, that perhaps we should return to Warsaw, because, when all is said and done,
we can’t be of much help here, and a prolonged neglect of our other little business may end unfavorably, yes, actually this trip here had not been thought through enough, perhaps we should pack our bags … He was paving his way to a decision, he was imperceptibly making it stronger and stronger, getting himself … me, the neighboring trees, used to it. What did I think? Because, on the other hand and in spite of everything, it is better to be in the country … and yet … we could leave tomorrow, couldn’t we? Suddenly his questioning sounded urgent, and I understood: he wanted to deduce from my response whether I had reached an understanding with Karol: he surmised that I must have probed Karol, now he wanted to know if there was a shadow of hope that Karol’s boyish arms would some day embrace Vaclav’s fiancée! And at the same time he was furtively letting me know that nothing he knew, nothing that he had looked into, entitled us to such illusions.
It’s hard to describe the disgusting aspect of this scene. An older man’s countenance is held up by a secret willpower aimed at masking his disintegration, or at least at organizing it into a pleasing whole—but in his case there was disappointment, he renounced magic, hope, passion, and all his wrinkles spread around and preyed on him as if on a corpse. He was meekly and humbly vile in the surrender to his own repulsiveness—and he infected me with his swinishness to such an extent that my own vermin swarmed within me, crept out and crawled all over me. However, this was not yet the pinnacle of revulsion.
The ultimate grotesque horror came from the fact that we were like a couple of lovers, let down in our feelings and rejected by the other two lovers, and our aroused state, our excitement, had nowhere to discharge itself, so now it roamed between us … now there was nothing left except ourselves … and, disgusted with each other, we were still together in our awakened sensuality. That was why we tried not to look at each other. The sun was burning us, the stink of Spanish flies emanated from the bushes.
I finally understood, during this secret conference between us, what a blow the now doubtless indifference of the other two was to us. The young girl—as Vaclav’s fiancée. The young boy—totally unconcerned by this. And everything drowned in their young blindness. The ruin of our dreams!
I replied to Fryderyk: who knows, perhaps our absence in Warsaw was not advisable. He latched on to this immediately. We were now under the sign of escape and, moving slowly along the alley, we were becoming used to this decision.
But around the corner of the house, on the sidewalk leading to the office, we happened upon them. She with a bottle in her hand. He in front of her—they were talking. Their childishness, their utter childishness, was obvious, she—a schoolgirl, he—a schoolboy and a kid.
Fryderyk asked them: “What are you up to?”
She: “The cork slipped inside the bottle.”
Karol, holding up the bottle to the light: “I’ll get it out with a piece of wire.”
Fryderyk: “It’s not so easy.”
She: “Perhaps I’d better look for another cork.”
Karol: “Don’t worry … I’ll get it out.…”
Fryderyk: “The neck is too narrow.”
Karol: “As it went in, so it will come out.”
She: “Or it’ll crumble and mess the juice up even more.”
Fryderyk didn’t respond. Karol was rocking stupidly on his heels. She stood with the bottle. She said:
“I’ll look for corks upstairs. There are none in the pantry.”
Karol: “I’m telling you, I’ll get it out.”
Fryderyk: “It’s not easy to get inside that neck.”
She:
“Seek and ye shall find!
”
Karol: “You know what? How about those little bottles in the cabinet …”
She: “No. Those are medicine bottles.”
Fryderyk: “Could be washed.”
A bird flew by.
Fryderyk: “What kind of bird was that?”
Karol: “An oriole.”
Fryderyk: “Are there a lot of them here?”