Authors: Witold Gombrowicz
I wondered what to do with this conundrum! Should I throw the flower into the sink? Stick it into the bearded beggar's trap? Yet these mechanical and artificial measures would merely help to circumvent the real difficulty, no, the flower had to be destroyed right where it was, not by physical violence but by psychological violence. The bearded man, the green twig in the thicket of his beard, stood true and steadfast under the window, a fly buzzed on the windowpane, and from the kitchen came the housemaid's tedious clamor as Kneadus tried to prevail upon her to be his farmhand, somewhere in the distance a streetcar squealed around a bend in the tracks—I stood among those strains and stresses, smiling dubiously—the fly buzzed louder. I caught it, tore off its legs and wings, I turned it into a suffering, dolorous, frightful, and metaphysical little ball, not quite round, but most definitely abysmal, I placed it in the flower, and softly lay both inside the shoe. The sweat that at this moment covered my brow had more power than the flowerlike tennis-shoe sweat. It was as if I had set the devil on the modern girl! The fly, through its numb and dumb suffering, vitiated the shoe, the flower, the apple, the cigarettes, the schoolgirl's entire household, while I stood there with an evil little smile, listening to what was now going on in the room and within me, studying the ambiance, I and a madman, we were like two peas in a pod—and I thought that it's not only little boys who drown cats and torture little birds, big boys sometimes also torture, just for the sake of ceasing to be schoolgirls' boys, just to get the better of their schoolgirl, yes, the schoolgirl! Wasn't this why Trocki tortured? Or Torquemada? What was the nature of Torquemada's schoolgirl? Quietly, quietly.
The bearded man, decked in greenery, stood at his post—the fly suffered mutely in what was now a Chinese, a Byzantine shoe—my dance was still taking place in the Youngbloods' bedroom—I now began to rummage through the modern one's belongings. I reached into the built-in closet where she kept her underwear, but her underwear fell short of my hope. Her modern panties didn't bespoil the girl, her panties were just panties—no more domestic than sea shanties. However, in a drawer that I pried open with a knife—there were stacks of letters, the schoolgirl's love letters! I pounced on them while the bearded fellow, the fly, and the dance continued their work, unceasingly.
Oh, what pandemonium in the modern schoolgirl's life! What substance this drawer contained! Only then did I realize what awesome mysteries are lorded over by contemporary schoolgirls, and what effect it would have if one of them chose to reveal the secrets entrusted to her. But, like a stone cast in the water, everything sinks into those girls, they are too good-looking, too beautiful to tell. . . and those who don't have beauty as their handicap don't receive such letters... It's a wondrous thing that only those constrained by beauty have access to certain essences of man's psychology. Oh, a girl, that receptacle of shame, under beauty's lock and key! It was here, to this sanctuary, that man, whether young or old, brought such things that, rather than have publicized, he would probably prefer to die three times and be roasted over a slow fire . . . And the face of this century—the face of the twentieth century, the century of all centuries gone mad, lurked ambiguously like Silenus in the thicket...
There were, among other letters, love letters from pupils in our school, as unpleasant, irritating, irksome, awkward, puerile, deplorable, shameful, and embarrassing as any ever beheld by History— either ancient or medieval. And if some fellow (of the same age as these pupils) from Syria, Babylon, Greece, or medieval Poland, or even a simple pauper from the time of King Sigismund Augustus, ever read them, he'd certainly blush, he might even bash their faces. Oh what horrible cacophonies they emitted! What falsehoods rasped in their love songs! It was as if Nature herself, in her boundless disdain for those wretches, for those stuffed coxcombs, had silenced them in relation to the Girl, unwilling to let the race of those formalists procreate and multiply. And only the letters that out of fear expressed nothing were bearable:
Zuta with Marysia and Olek to the tennis court, tomorrow, give me a call, Heniek.
Only those were not degrading ... I found Mizdral's and Hopek's letters, two each, their contents vulgar, their form coarse, and aspiring to maturity with incredible hubris. They swarmed like moths to a flame, knowing full well that they would burn ...
Although the college students' letters were no less timorous, their fear was more deftly disguised. One could see how each student trembled and suffered as he put pen to paper, how watchful he was as he weighed his words in order not to tumble down an incline straight into his own immaturity, down to the calves of his legs. That was why I never found any reference whatsoever to those calves, instead there was a great deal about emotion, about public affairs and social issues, about making a living, bridge playing, and horse racing, even about changing the country's political system. Student politicos in particular, those loudmouths from the "college life," hid their calves with the utmost skill and care as they systematically sent the schoolgirl their programs, appeals, and ideological declarations.
Dear Miss Zuta, perhaps you would like to become acquainted with our program—they
wrote, but in those programs there was nothing clearly stated about the calves of their legs either, unless occasionally there was a
lapsus linguae
when, for example, instead of "onward, don't lag behind," they wrote "onward, don't leg behind." Also some citizens from the town of Lemno made a typo, and instead of "we— Leninites" wrote "we—Legnites." Aside from these two instances, the calves of their legs never made any appearance. Similarly in magazines, which were otherwise rather lascivious and with the help of which old aunts, writing articles for the press on the subject of "the jazzband era," tried to bond spiritually with the schoolgirl and to restrain her on her downward course to ruin, the calves were very strictly camouflaged. When reading all this, one had the impression that it had nothing to do with the calves of legs.
Furthermore—whole stacks of those minor and now commonplace little volumes of verse, no fewer than three or four hundred, lay scattered about at the bottom of the drawer, and actually—one had to admit—were neither opened nor read by the said schoolgirl. They were furnished with dedications in a personal tone, upright, sincere, honest, that exhorted the girl most vigorously to read their poems, compelled her to read them, censured her in most elaborate and murderous phrases for not reading them, while others extolled and praised her to high heaven for reading them or threatened to exclude her from cultural society for not reading them and demanded that she read them for the sake of the poet's loneliness, the poet's work, the poet's mission, the poet's role, the poet's suffering, the poet's originality, the poet's calling, and even for the sake of the poet's soul. Strangely enough, even in this context there was no mention of the calves of legs. And stranger still, there wasn't an ounce of calves in the titles of these little collections. Only Pale Dawns and Dawning Dawns, and New Dawns, and New Dawning, and Era of Struggle, and Struggle in the Era, and Troublesome Era, and Young Era, and Youth on the Watch, and Youth's Watchfulness, and Struggling Youth, and Youth Advancing, and Youth at a Standstill, and Hey, the Young! and Bitterness of Youth, and Eyes of Youth, and Lips of Youth, and Young Springtime, and My Springtime, and Springtime and I, and Springtime Rhythms, and Machine-gun Rhythm, and Fire a Salute, and Semaphores, and Antennae, Propellers and My Kiss, and My Precious, and My Yearnings, and My Eyes, and My Lips (not a whit about calves of legs anywhere), and everything was written in a poetic tone, in delicate assonance, or without delicate assonance and in bold metaphors, or else with a subterranean melody of words. And yet, almost nothing about calves, or very little, disproportionately very little. The authors deftly and with great poetic skill hid behind Beauty, Perfection of Craft, behind Inner Logic of Composition; behind Ironclad Sequence of Associations, or behind Awareness of Social Class, Struggle, Dawning of History, and other similar, objective, anti-leg matters. But it was clearly visible at the outset that the little poems, in their convoluted, forced, and useless art, were nothing but a complicated code, and that there must have been a real and not a trifling reason which made those numerous, scrawny, minor-league dreamers compose such odd charades. Therefore, after a moment's profound reflection, I managed to translate the substance of the following stanza into comprehensible language:
The Poem Horizons burst like flasks a green blotch swells high in the clouds I move back to the shadow of the pine— and there: with greedy gulps I drink my diurnal springtime My Translation Calves of legs, calves, calves Calves of legs, calves, calves, calves Calves of legs, calves, calves, calves, calves— The calf of my leg: the calf of my leg, calf, calf, calves, calves, calves.
Furthermore—it was here that the schoolgirl's real pandemonium began: behind these letters there was a heap of confidential letters from judges, attorneys, public prosecutors, pharmacists, businessmen, urban and rural citizens, doctors and such—from those high and mighty who had always impressed me so! I stood there astonished while the fly suffered in silence. Did these men, pretense notwithstanding, socialize with the schoolgirl? "Unbelievable," I went on repeating, "unbelievable!" Were they so oppressed by their Maturity that, unbeknownst to their wives and children, they had to send long letters to a modern schoolgirl? And here, of course, there was even less about calves of legs, on the contrary, each one of them explained in detail his reasons for the "exchange of thoughts," that he felt that "Miss Zuta" would understand him, that she wouldn't misconstrue etc., etc. They then went on and paid homage to the modern one in words that were long-winded yet servile, imploring her, in between the lines, to deign dream about them, in secret, of course. And each one, not mentioning the calves of his legs, not even once, underlined and emphasized to the utmost his modern boyishness.
A public prosecutor:
Even though gowned, I am nothing but a messenger boy. I am well disciplined. I do as I'm told. I have no opinions of my own. It's the chief justice's prerogative to rebuke me. He recently called me an ignoramus.
A politico was assuring her:
I'm a just a boy, a purely political boy, a history-making boy.
A noncommissioned officer with an exceptionally sensuous and lyrical soul wrote as follows:
I am bound by blind obedience. I must lay down my life on command. I'm a slave. Indeed—our leaders call us "boys," regardless of our age. Don't believe my birth certificate, that's a purely extraneous detail, my wife and children are mere appendages, I am no knight in shining armor, just a military boy, with a boy's blind and faithful soul, and in the barracks I'm just a dog, a dog!
A landowning citizen:
I've gone bankrupt, my wife has taken on housecleaning, my children have gone to the dogs—I'm no citizen, I'm a boy in exile. Secretly, I'm in a state of bliss.
Nevertheless, calves of legs were not mentioned
en toutes lettres,
not even once. In their postscripts they begged the schoolgirl for secrecy, pointing out that their careers would be ruined forever if a single word of these confidences were to become public.
This is for You alone. Keep it to yourself. Don't tell anyone!
Unbelievable! These letters made me finally realize the extent of the modern schoolgirl's power. Where wasn't it present? Inside whose head were the calves of her legs not stuck? And, as I thought about it all, my legs also trembled, and I would have danced in honor of those aging Boys of the twentieth century who had been drilled and driven, egged on and flogged with a whip, when suddenly, at the bottom of the drawer, I noticed a large envelope from the school superintendent's office, addressed quite obviously in Pimko's handwriting! The letter was dry and blunt.
I will no longer tolerate,
Pimko wrote,
your disregard and outrageous ignorance of matters pertaining to the school curriculum.
I summon you to present yourself in my study—at the superintendent's office, the day after tomorrow, Friday at 4:30 p.m., the objective being explanation, lecturing and tutoring you on Norwid, to fill this gap in your education.
Please note that I am summoning you legally, formally, officially, and with all due civility, as your professor and educator, but, in case of any recalcitrance on your part, I shall write a letter to the dean of girls suggesting your dismissal from school.
I wish to point out that I can no longer tolerate thersaid gap and, as your Professor, I have a right not to. Please comply. T. Pimko, Ph.D. and Professor Honoris Causa Warsaw...
So that's how far it has gone between them? He was threatening her, was he? Really? She had wooed and courted him with her ignorance until she forced the prof to show his claws. Pimko, unable to make a date with the schoolgirl as Pimko, was summoning her in his capacity as professor of middle and higher education. He was no longer satisfied with frolicking with her only in her home, under her parents' eyes—he was now taking advantage of the authority of his status, he wanted to force Norwid on the girl by entirely legitimate means. Since he could not do it in any other way, he was going to use Norwid so that he could play a prominent part in her life. I was astonished as I held his letter in my hand, I stood over the pile of papers not knowing whether the revelation was, for me, bad news or good. However, under his letter there was in the drawer yet another sheet of paper—torn out of a notebook, a few sentences in pencil— and I recognized Kopyrda's handwriting! Yes, it was Kopyrda's, no doubt about it, it was Kopyrda's, no one else's! I feverishly grabbed the note. It was concise, crumpled up, careless—which meant that it had been tossed through the window.
I forgot to give you my address
(here followed Kopyrda's address).
If you want me, I want you too. Let me know. H. K.