Ferdydurke (35 page)

That's how he spat out the threat of a slap in the face! I knew what he was up to. He wanted to discredit the face that had been hit in the mug by peasantry, he wanted, by hitting it, to remove it from the list of lordly and honorable faces.

Fortunately, uncle Konstanty heard these threats as he came into the room.

"What do you mean by 'Mr. Kneadalski'?" he exclaimed. "Who is it you want to slap in the face, my dear Zygmunt? A callow, school-age whippersnapper? Spank the brat's pupa instead!"—and Zygmunt blushed and faltered in his honorable undertaking. After hearing my uncle's words he couldn't slap the face, he, a twenty-two-year-old, really couldn't honorably hit the green youth, barely eighteen years old, especially since the "eighteen-year-old" aspect had been underscored and brought into relief. The worst of it was that Kneadus was actually at a transitional age, and, while their lordships could consider him a mere pup, to the peasantry, which matures earlier, he was a fully fledged lordship, his face had for them the full value of a lord's countenance. How was it then—a face good enough for Valek to hit as a lord's face, but not good enough to give their lordships satisfaction? Zygmunt looked at his father with fury for this injustice of nature. However, Konstanty wouldn't even entertain the thought that Kneadus was anything but a brat, Konstanty, who at dinnertime drank to Kneadus like a fellow traveler on homoerotic terrain, was now denying all commonality with him, and treated him like a green youth, a brat, and used his age to trivialize him! His pride wouldn't let him behave otherwise! His race was in revolt, his race! This lord whom History, in its merciless progression, was depriving of his estates and of his power, had remained after all a thoroughbred in body and soul, but particularly in body! He could endure agricultural reform and legal and political equalization in a general sense, but his blood boiled at the thought of personal and physical equality, at fra . . . ternization of his person. At this point equalization encroached upon the most murky recesses of his person—into the primeval backwoods of race, which were guarded by an instinctual, hateful reflex, by disgust, horror, and abomination! Let them take away his estate! Let them introduce reforms! But don't expect his lordship's hand to seek out the farmhand's hand, let not his noble cheeks seek out the boorish hand. To strive toward peasantry out of sheer longing for them, how can that be? Isn't that betrayal of one's race—this adulation of servants, this naive and downright adulation of a servant's body parts, movements, and utterances, this love of a yokel's very existence? And what would be the position of a lord whose servant was the subject of such flagrant tribute from another lord—no, no, Kneadus wasn't even a lord, he was an ordinary green youth and a sniveling brat! These were bratty excesses resulting from Bolshevik propaganda.

"I can see that Bolshevik trends hold sway among the school youth," he spoke as if Kneadus were a revolutionary schoolboy and not a lover of another race. "Spank his pupa!" he laughed, "spank him!"

And suddenly shuffling and squealing came through the halfopen casement from the bushes by the kitchen. It was a warm evening, Saturday . . . Farmhands from outlying cottages were visiting the kitchen wenches and necking . . . Konstanty stuck his head out the window.

"Who's there?" he shouted. "Off with you, I forbid you to be there!"

Someone darted into the thicket. Someone laughed. A stone spun in hard under the window. And someone beyond the bushes, in a voice changed intentionally, shrieked to high heaven:

A wagtail, a wagtail wags on a tree Who's slapped in the mug, who can it be? His lo'dship, hee, hee!

And once more someone squeaked and laughed! The peasantry got wind of everything. They knew what had happened. The kitchen wenches had spilled the woid to the farmhands. It was to be expected, yet the squire's nerves couldn't stand the impudence with which they were singing under his windows. He stopped trifling, red blotches appeared on his cheeks, and, without a word, he took out a pistol. Fortunately, auntie appeared in the nick of time.

"Kostie, dear," she called out with kindliness, wasting no time on questions, "Kostie, put it down! Put it down! Put it down, I beg you, I hate loaded weapons, if you want to have it by your side, at least unload it!"

And, just as a moment ago he had trivialized Zygmunt's threats, so auntie was now trivializing him. She kissed him—he was being kissed while holding a pistol in his hand—she adjusted his tie, thus totally invalidating the pistol, she closed the casement because of drafts, and with other similar actions she tirelessly belittled and itsy-bitsied everything. She cast onto the balance of events the rotundity of her person, aglow with a gentle, motherly warmth, which swathed her like a wad of cotton wool. She took me aside and furtively gave me some candy that she kept in a small bag.

"Oh, you rascals, you," she whispered with a kindly reproach, "what mischief you've created! Zosia is sick, your uncle is upset, oh dear, this love affair with the peasantry! You need to know how to treat the servants, you can't hobnob with them, you need to know them—these people are like children, ignorant and immature. Your aunt and uncle Stas' son Kiki also went through a phase when he blindly idealized the peasantry," she added, scrutinizing my face, "you even look like him, yes, here, at the corners of your nose. Well, I'm not cross with you, but don't come down for supper because your uncle doesn't wish it, I'll send up a little dish of fruit preserves as a consolation—and do you remember how our former butler, Ladislas, gave you a thrashing because you called him a slob? What a mean man, that Ladislas! I'm still shaking when I think of it! I dismissed him on the spot. Imagine hitting such a little angel! My little treasure! My all and everything! My thousandfold darling!"

In a sudden surge of mawkishness she kissed me and again gave me candy. I quickly walked away with the candy of my childhood in my mouth, and, as I did so, I heard her ask Zygmunt to take her pulse, and the young master took her wrist and, looking at his watch, took her pulse—he took the pulse of his mother who, having slumped into a sofa, gazed into space. As I was returning upstairs with the candy, I had a feeling of unreality, because in relation to this woman everyone became unreal, she had a strange knack for melting people with her kindness, of dunking them in illnesses and confusing them with other people's body parts—was it out of her fear of the servants, by any chance? "She's good so she can put the squeeze on us"—I remembered Valek saying. "She puts the squeeze on us, so why shouldn't she be kindly?" The situation was becoming dangerous. They trivialized each other, my uncle out of pride, auntie out of fear, thanks to all of which there had been no shooting thus far— neither had Zygmunt hit Kneadus, nor had my uncle fired his pistol. I was anticipating our departure with joy.

I found Kneadus on the floor, his head tucked between his arms—

he now gave himself to covering his head, wrapping and enfolding it in his arms, he didn't move, and with his head tucked in, he plaintively sang of youth and meadows.

"Hey-a, hey," he mumbled, "hoy, hoy, hoy-a hoy!" and other words without rhyme or reason, words gray and coarse like the earth, green like a young hazel tree, peasantlike, rustic and callow. He lost all sense of shame. Even when Francis came in with our supper he didn't stop his lamentation, nor his quiet, pastoral moans; he had reached the point where he was no longer ashamed of longing for the servants in their presence, nor sighing for the valet in front of the old butler. Never before had I seen anyone from the intelligentsia sink so low. Francis didn't look his way, but his hands shook with disgust when he placed our tray on the table, and he slammed the door as he left. Kneadus didn't take a single bite, he was inconsolable—something in him went on a-chattin', a-croakin', a-longin' and yearnin', in mist envelopin', he scuffled and tussled, he groaned, some kin'a laws deducin' . . . Now and then a pure and simple vulgar fury would catch him by the throat. He blamed my aunt and uncle for his debacle with the farmhand, it was their lo'dships' fault, yes, their lo'dships', if it weren't for their interference and meddling, he surely would have fra . . . ternized! Why did they stand in his way? Why sack Valek? I tried in vain to convince him that we had to leave the next day.

"Ah'm not leavin', ah tell ya, ah'm not leavin', ah tell ya! Let 'em leave, if they wanna! Here's Valek, here's me too. Wit' Valek! Wit' me very own Valek, hey, hey-ho, ho, wit' me farmhand!"

I couldn't communicate with him, lost as he was in the farmhand, all earthly considerations having gone by the boards. When he finally understood that it was impossible for us to stay, in terror he begged me not to leave the farmhand behind.

"Ah'm not leavin' wit'out Valek! Ah'm not leavin' Valek to 'em! Let's take him—ah'll work for our livin', for our home—ah'll drop dead before ah leave this Valek of moin! For chrissake, Joey, not wi'out Valek! If they throw us outa' the estate, ah'll find me a place in the village, at the crone's," he added with venom, "ah'll settle in wit' the crone! How about that?! They won't chase me outa' the village! Anyone has the roit to live in the village!"

I had no idea what to do with this conundrum. It was not outside the realm of possibility that he would move in with Zygmunt's hapless crone, the
widah,
as the valet had called her, and he would harass the manor and humiliate my aunt and uncle, and squeal on the secrets of the manor in this vulgar tongue—a traitor and an informer—and a laughingstock for the yokels!

Suddenly, in the courtyard just outside the window, we heard a tremendous slap in the face. Everything jangled, the dogs barked as one. We pressed our noses to the windows. On the porch, in the light coming from the house, uncle Konstanty stood with a rifle, gazing into darkness. He brought the weapon up to his cheek and fired again—the bang sounded in the night like a rocket. It rang out into the distance over the dark reaches of the land. The dogs ran riot.

"He's shootin' at the fa'mhand!" Kneadus clutched at me, "he's aimin' at the fa'mhand!"

Konstanty was firing warning shots. Had the farm servants sung something more? Or did he fire because his nerves gave out, or because he'd been primed to shoot from the moment he took his pistol from the drawer in the smoking room? Who knows what went on inside him? Did this act of terror arise from haughtiness and pride? The angered lord was announcing with a boom far away and down the most distant roads, to the lone willows along country lanes, that he stands guard, fully armed. Auntie ran onto the porch and quickly offered him candy, she flung a scarf around his neck and pulled him into the house. But the boom had already spread beyond recall. When the dogs on the estate calmed down for a moment, I heard the faraway response of the dogs in the village, and for a moment I imagined the peasants' excitement—the farmhands, the wenches, and the peasants asking each other "what's goin' on, why are they shootin' at the manor? Is it his lo'dship shootin'? Why's he shootin'?" Then the tittle-tattle about the mug-slapping, that the young master Kneadus got it in the snoot from Valek amplifying from one mouth to another, provoked by the resounding and vainglorious firing of the rifle. I couldn't contain my anxiety. I decided to run away that very moment, I feared the night, here, in this country manor, its subterranean forces unleashed and full of noxious vapors. Run! Run away at once! But Kneadus wouldn't go without Valek. Therefore, to speed things up, I agreed to take the farmhand with us. He was going to be dismissed anyway. We finally decided to wait until everyone in the house was asleep, then I would go to the valet and persuade him to run away—order him if need be! I would return with him to Kneadus, and then the three of us would decide how to get out to the fields. The dogs knew Valek. We would spend the rest of the night in a field, then take the train to the city. To the city, on the double! To the city, where man is smaller, better settled among people, and more like other people. Minutes dragged into eternity. We packed our belongings and counted our money, and we wrapped the supper we had hardly touched in a handkerchief.

After midnight, having checked through our window that all the rooms were in darkness, I took off my shoes and went through a small hallway, barefoot—making sure that I reached the pantry as quietly as possible. When Kneadus shut the door it cut off any remaining light, and I began my venture, my secretive incursion into the sleeping house, I realized how mad my undertaking was, how crazy my goal—penetrating space to kidnap some farmhand. Isn't it action that, in the final analysis, reveals all the madness of madness? I advanced step by step, the floor creaked, rats gnawed and squealed in the timbers above the ceiling. In the room behind me was Kneadus, gone rustic; below me on the first floor were my uncle, auntie, Zyg-munt, and Zosia, to whose servant I was proceeding soundlessly and barefoot; ahead of me in the butler's pantry was the said servant, the object of all these endeavors. I had to be very careful. If someone were to spot me in the hallway, in the darkness, how would I explain the meaning of this escapade? How do we find ourselves on these tortuous and abnormal roads? Normality is a tightrope-walker above the abyss of abnormality. How much potential madness is contained in the everyday order of things—you never know when and how the course of events will lead you to kidnap a farmhand and take to the fields. It's Zosia that I should be kidnapping. If anyone, it should be Zosia, kidnapping Zosia from a country manor would be the normal and correct thing to do, if anyone it was Zosia, Zosia, and not this stupid, idiotic farmhand. And in the semi-darkness of this little hallway the temptation to kidnap Zosia seized me, a crystal-clear and simple kidnapping of Zosia, oh yes, it was crystal-clear— kidnap Zosia!

Hey, to kidnap Zosia! To kidnap Zosia in a mature, lordly fashion, just as had been done many times of yore. I had to fend off that thought, convince myself how unsound it was—and yet, the farther I fought my way over the treacherous floorboards the more tempting normality seemed, the simple and natural kidnapping as opposed to this convoluted kidnapping. I tripped over a hole—there was a hole under my toes, a hole in the floor. Why was the hole there? It seemed familiar. Hello, hello—this is my hole, I made this hole years ago! My uncle had given me a little hatchet for my birthday, and it was with this hatchet that I had chopped the hole. Auntie had rushed in. She stood right here, yelling at me, I remembered as if it were yesterday— the loose fragments of her scolding, the snatches of her shouting— and I—hack! I hacked her leg from below with my little hatchet! "Oh, oh!" she screamed. Her scream was still here—I stood as if the scene had caught me by the leg, the scene which was no more, and yet it was here, at this very spot. I had hacked her in the leg. I now clearly saw in the darkness how I had hacked her, God knows why, in spite of myself, mechanically, and I heard her screams. She screamed and jumped. My actions now were mixing and intertwining with my actions of the past, of the long-gone past, and suddenly I began to shiver, my jaws clenched. I could have chopped off her leg, for God's sake, had I swung harder, luckily I didn't have the strength, oh, blessed weakness. But now I did have the strength. Perhaps, instead of going to the farmhand, I should go to auntie's bedroom and hack her with an ax? Begone, begone childishness. Childishness? But, as God is my witness, the farmhand was also childishness, if I was going to the farmhand I could equally well have gone and hacked auntie, one was as good as the other—hack, hack! Oh, childishness. I carefully felt the floor with my foot, because any loud creaking could have betrayed me, and I thought that I felt the floor as if I were a child, as if I now walked it as a child. Oh, childishness. The childishness latched on to me in three different ways, I could have handled one way, but there were three. The first was the childishness of the pursuit of the valet—the farmhand. The second was the childishness of what I had lived through here, years ago. The third was the childishness of lordliness, because now, as a lord, I was also a child. Oh, there are places on this earth and in life that are more childish or less childish, but a country manor is probably the most childish place of all. Here the lords of the manor and the peasantry entrap and hold onto each other in childishness, here everyone is a child to everyone else. Walking barefoot farther and farther and concealed by blackness, I strode as if into a lordly past, into my own childhood, while a sensuous, carnal, infantile, and unpredictable world was enfolding me, pulling on me and sucking me in. Blind actions. Automatic reflexes. Atavistic instincts. Lordly-childish fancy. I walked as if into the anachronism of a gigantic slap in the face, which was simultaneously a tradition of many centuries and an infantile smack, and it liberated, in one fell swoop, the lord and the child.