Alcohol. Schnapps. An inebriating adventure. An adventure like a shot of strong drink—one more jigger—though this was slippery drunkenness, each moment threatened a downfall into filth, into depravity, into sensual muck. Yet how could one not drink? In truth, drinking became our mental hygiene, everyone used whatever he could to stupefy himself, in any way he could—so did I—though I did try to salvage something of my dignity by preserving, in my drunken state, the demeanor of a researcher who, in spite of everything, keeps watching—who gets drunk in order to watch. So I watched.
The fiancé left us after breakfast. It was decided, however, that the day after tomorrow the entire household would go to Ruda.
Then Karol arrived at the porch in an open coach, a britzka. He was supposed to go to Ostrowiec for kerosene. I offered to accompany him.
And Fryderyk was just about to open his mouth and offer himself as a third—when he fell into one of his unexpected difficulties. … One never knew when this would happen. He was just about to open his mouth, then closed and opened it again—he remained, pale, in the claws of this tormenting prank, while Karol and I took off in the britzka.
The horses’ trotting rumps, the sandy road, expansive vistas, slow circling around hills that were cropping up one behind the other. This morning, in this expanse, I with him, I next to him—both of us surfacing from the Poworna ravine, both of us visible, and my coarseness toward him was exposed to the jeopardy of being visible from afar.
I began thus: “Well, Karol, what were you up to with that hag yesterday, by the pond?”
He asked somewhat warily, to better gauge the nature of my question, “Why?”
“Everyone saw it, after all.”
My opening remark was not precise—just to start a conversation. He laughed, just in case, to make it lighter. “Nothing to it,” he said and cracked the whip, he didn’t care. … Then I expressed my surprise: “If only she were good-looking! But she was the lowest of the low, and an old slut too!” Since he didn’t answer, I stressed the point: “Do you go for old hags?”
He nonchalantly cracked his whip at a bush. Then, realizing that this was the appropriate response, he snapped the whip at the horses, and they jerked the britzka. His response was clear enough, though impossible to translate into words. We rode more briskly for some time. Then the horses slowed down and, when they did slow down, he smiled with a friendly flash of his teeth and said:
“What’s the difference, old or young?”
He laughed.
This worried me. A slight shiver ran through me. I sat next to him. What did this mean? First of all one thing hit me in the eye: the immeasurable meaning of his teeth that were at play here, they were his inner whiteness, all-purifying—and so his teeth were more important than what he was saying—it seemed that he was talking for the sake of his teeth and because of his teeth—he could be saying any old thing because he was talking for pleasure, he himself was a game and a delight, he knew that his teeth, so high-spirited, would be forgiven every revulsion and disgust. Who was this, sitting next to me? Someone like myself? Not at all, it was a being essentially distinct and delightful, native to a blossoming land, he was full of a grace that was transforming itself into charm. A prince and a poem. Why then did the prince harass old hags? That was the question. Why did it amuse him? Was it his own desire that amused him? It amused him that, even as a prince, he was also in the throes of a hunger that made him desire even the ugliest of women—was it this that amused him? Was his beauty (connected to Henia) so devoid of self-respect that it was almost indifferent as to how it satisfied itself, and with whom it took up? Here darkness was being born. We went down a hill into the Grocholice ravine. I was discovering in him a kind of sacrilege carried out with satisfaction, and I knew that this was something that affected his very soul, indeed, it was something, in its very nature, desperate.
(It’s possible, however, that I was devoting myself to those speculations merely to maintain, during the drinking, the semblance of a researcher.)
But perhaps he had pulled up the hag’s skirt to show that he was a soldier? Wasn’t this like a soldier?
I asked (changing the subject for the sake of propriety—I had to watch myself). “What do you fight with your father about?” He wavered, surprised, but he realized instantly that I must have heard it from Hipolit. He replied:
“Because he’s harassing my mother. Won’t let her be, the son of a bitch. If he weren’t my father I’d …”
His response was beautifully balanced—he was able to confess to loving his mother because at the same time he was confessing to hating his father, this protected him from sentimentalism—but, since I wanted to press him to the wall, I asked directly: “You love you mother very much?”
“Of course! If mother …”
Which meant that there is nothing peculiar about it, because it’s acceptable for a son to love his mother. Yet this was strange. Looking at it more closely, it was strange, because a moment ago he was pure anarchy throwing itself onto an old hag, while now he became conventional and subject to the law of filial love. So what did he believe in, anarchy or law? Yet, if he so obediently gave in to custom, it was not to add to his worth but to devalue himself, to turn the love of his mother into something commonplace and unimportant. Why did he always devalue himself? This thought was strangely alluring—why did he devalue himself? This thought was pure alcohol—why, with him, did each thought always have to be attractive or repulsive, always passionate and full of vitality? We were now climbing, beyond Grocholice, on the left there were banks of dirt, yellow, with cellar holes dug for potatoes. The horses went at a trot and—silence. Suddenly Karol became talkative: “Sir, could you find some work for me in Warsaw? How about in the black market? I could help out my mom a bit if I was earning money, because she needs it for medical treatment, as things are, my father just keeps carping that I don’t have a job. I’m fed up with it!” He became talkative because these were material and practical matters, he could talk, and plenty, it was also natural that he was turning to me with this—and yet, was this so natural? Was this not just a pretext to “reach an understanding” with me, the older man, to come closer to me? Truly, in these difficult times a boy must gain the goodwill of older people who are more powerful than he, and he can achieve this only through personal charm. … But a boy’s coquettishness is much more complicated than the coquettishness of a girl, whose sex comes to her aid … so this was surely a calculation, oh, an unconscious, an innocent one: he was simply turning to me for help, yet he was really concerned not about work in Warsaw, but rather to establish himself in the role of someone who needs to be taken care of, to break the ice … the rest will take care of itself. … Breaking the ice? But in what sense? And what was that “rest”? I knew, or rather, I suspected, that this was an attempt on the part of his boyishness to make contact with my maturity, and I knew from other sources that he was not averse to this, and that his hunger, his desire, made him approachable. … I went numb, sensing his hidden intention of drawing closer to me … as if his whole domain were to assault me. I don’t know if I’m making myself clear. The association of a man with a boy is generally based on technical matters, protection, cooperation, but, when it becomes more direct, its drastic aspect turns out to be very noticeable indeed. I sensed that this human being wanted to conquer me with his youth, and this was as if I, an adult, were to succumb to irrevocable discredit.
But the word “youth” was not permissible to him—it was not proper for him to use it.
We had climbed a hill, and an unchanging view of the land appeared, rounded off by hills and swollen with its own immobile undulation in the slanting light that swirled here and there under the clouds.
“You’d better stay put here, with your parents. …” This sounded uncompromising because I spoke as his elder—and it actually allowed me to ask in the simplest way and as if continuing our dialogue: “Do you like Henia?”
This most difficult question fell so easily, and he too replied without difficulty.
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.”
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?”
She: “Look what a big earthworm.”
Karol kept rocking, his legs spread apart, she raised her leg to scratch her calf—but his shoe, resting just on the heel, rose, made a half-turn, and squashed the earthworm … just at one end, just as much as the reach of his foot allowed, because he didn’t feel like lifting his heel from the ground, the rest of the worm’s thorax began to stiffen and squirm, which he watched with interest. This would not have been any more important than a fly’s throes of death on a flytrap or a moth’s within the glass of a lamp—if Fryderyk’s gaze, glassy, had not sucked itself onto that earthworm, extracting its suffering to the full. One could imagine that he would be indignant, but in truth there was nothing within him but penetration into torture, draining the chalice to the last drop. He hunted it, sucked it, caught it, took it in and—numb and mute, caught in the claws of pain—he was unable to move. Karol looked at him out of the corner of his eye but did not finish off the earthworm, he saw Fryderyk’s horror as sheer hysterics. …
Henia’s shoe moved forward and she crushed the worm.
But only from the opposite end, with great precision, saving the central part so that it could continue to squirm and twist.
All of it—was insignificant … as far as the crushing of a worm can be trivial and insignificant.
Karol: “Near Lvov there are more birds than here.”
Henia: “I have to peel the potatoes.”
Fryderyk: “I don’t envy you. … It’s a boring job.”
As we were returning home we talked for a while, then Fryderyk disappeared somewhere, and I didn’t know where he was—but I knew what he was into. He was thinking about what had just happened, about the thoughtless legs that had joined in the cruelty they committed jointly to the twitching body. Cruelty? Was it cruelty? More like something trivial, the trivial killing of a worm, just so, nonchalantly, because it had crawled under a shoe—oh, we kill so many worms! No, not cruelty, thoughtlessness rather, which, with children’s eyes, watches the droll throes of death without feeling pain. It was a trifle. But for Fryderyk? To a discerning consciousness? To a sensibility that is cable of empathy? Wasn’t this, for him, a bloodcurdling deed in its enormity—surely pain, suffering are as terrible in a worm’s body as in the body of a giant, pain is “one” just as space is one, indivisible, wherever it appears, it is the same total horror. Thus for him this deed must have been, one could say, terrible, they had called forth torture, created pain, with the soles of their shoes they had changed the earth’s peaceful existence into an existence that was hellish—one cannot imagine a more powerful crime, a greater sin. Sin … Sin … Yes, this was a sin—but, if a sin, it was a sin committed jointly—and their legs had united on the worm’s twitching body. …
I knew what he was thinking, the crazy man! Crazy! He was thinking about them—he was thinking that they had crushed the worm “for him.” “Don’t be fooled. Don’t believe that we don’t have anything in common. … Surely you saw it, didn’t you: one of us crushed … and the other one crushed … the worm. We did it for you. To unite ourselves—in front of you and for you—in sin.”
This must have been Fryderyk’s thought at this moment. Yet it’s possible that I was suggesting my own idea to him. But who knows—perhaps at this moment he was, in the same way, suggesting to me his idea … and he was thinking about me in a way that was no different from the way I was thinking about him … so it’s possible that each one of us was breeding his own idea by placing it in the other. This amused me, I laughed—and I thought that perhaps he too had laughed.…
“We did it for you to unite in sin in front of you.” …
If they really wanted to convey to us this hidden meaning with their nimbly crushing legs … if that’s what it was supposed to be … surely, no need to repeat it twice! A wise brain needs no twain! I again smiled at the thought that perhaps Fryderyk was smiling at this moment and thinking that I’m thinking the following about him: that any laborious decisions to depart have vanished from his head, that he is again like a hound on the trail, full of suddenly awakened hope, his blood roused.
Giddy hopes—perspectives—were indeed opening up that had been contained within the little word “sin.” If this little boy and this little girl suddenly craved sin … with each other … but also with us … Oh, I could almost see Fryderyk sitting somewhere and thinking, his head resting on his hand—that sin pervades us at the deepest level of intimacy, bonding us no less than a hot caress, that sin is our common secret, private, clandestine, embarrassing, leading us as far into another person’s existence as physical love leads into the body. If this were the case … then it would surely follow that he, Fryderyk (“that he, Witold”—thought Fryderyk) … well, that we both … are not too old for them—in other words, their youth is not inaccessible to us. What is the purpose of a sin committed jointly? It’s as if sin is created to illegally marry a boy’s florescence with a girl to someone … not so enticing … to someone older and more serious. I smiled again. They were, in their virtue, closed off from us, hermetic. But in sin, they could roll about with us. … That’s what Fryderyk was thinking! And I almost saw him, a finger to his lips, looking for a sin that would let him chum up with them, looking for such a sin—or rather, perhaps he’s thinking, perhaps he is suspecting that I am the one looking for such a sin. What a system of mirrors—I was a mirror for him, he for me—and so, spinning daydreams on each other’s account, we were arriving at designs that neither of us would dare to consider as his own.
Next morning we were supposed to travel to Ruda. The expedition was the subject of detailed deliberations—which horses, what route, which vehicles. It so happened that I went with Henia in the britzka. Since Fryderyk didn’t want to decide, we cast a coin and fate designated me as her companion. The morning was immense, its bearings lost, the road distant over the rising and falling of the undulating terrain with roads cut deep into it, their walls yellowish and sparsely adorned with a bush, a tree, a cow, while in front of us the carriage with Karol on the coach box appeared and disappeared. She—in her holiday best, her coat white from the dust and thrown over her shoulders—a fiancee traveling to her fiance. And so, infuriated, after a few introductory sentences, I said: “My congratulations! You’ll get married and start a family. You’ll have children!” She replied:
She replied, but the way she said it! Obediently—fervently—like a schoolgirl. As if someone had taught her the lesson. As if, in relation to her own children, she herself had become an obedient child. We rode on. Horse tails in front of us and horse rumps too. Yes! She wanted to many the attorney! She wanted to have children with him! And she was saying this while there, in front of us, was the outline of her underage lover’s silhouette!
We passed a heap of rubble discarded on the side of the road, and soon thereafter two acacia trees.
“Do you like Karol?”
“Sure … after all, we’ve known each other…”
“I know. Since childhood. But I’m asking whether you feel anything for him?”
“Me? I like him a lot.”
“‘Like’? That’s all. So why did you crush the worm with him?”
“What worm?”
“And what about the pants legs? The pants you rolled up for him by the barn?”
“Pants? Oh, yes, they were too long after all. So what of it?”
The glaringly smooth wall of a lie told in good faith, a lie that she did not feel to be a lie. But how could I demand truth from her? This creature, sitting next to me, small, frail, ill-defined, who was not yet a woman but merely a prelude to a woman, this transience that existed solely to cease being what it is now, that was killing itself.
“Karol is in love with you!”
“Him? He’s not in love with me, or with anybody else. … All he wants is, well … to go to bed with somebody …” and here she said something that pleased her, she expressed it as follows: “After all, he’s just a kid, and besides, you know … well, better not talk about that!” This was of course an allusion to Karol’s uncertain past, but in spite of everything, I thought I was also catching a friendly tone toward him—as if there was the shadow of a “limited” friendliness hiding here, somewhat collegial, she did not say it with disgust, no, but rather said it as if it pleased her to some degree … and even intimately in some way. … It seemed that as Vaclav’s fiancée she was judging Karol severely, but also, at the same time, she was associating herself with his tumultuous fate, common to all born under the sign of war. I latched onto this right away, and I too struck the chord of intimacy, I said, nonchalantly and like a colleague, that after all, she must have slept with more than one man, surely she’s no saint, so she could go to bed with him too, and why not? She accepted it easily, more easily than I expected and even with a certain eagerness, with a strange obedience. She promptly agreed with me that “she could of course” and especially since it had already happened with someone from the Underground Army who stayed overnight at the house, last year. “Don’t tell my parents, of course.” But why was this young girl introducing me so easily into her little affairs? And right after her betrothal to Vaclav? I asked whether her parents suspected anything (with regard to the one from the UA), to which she replied: “They suspect it, since they caught us at it. But actually they don’t suspect it. …”
“Actually”—a brilliant word. With its help one can say anything. A brilliantly obfuscating word. We were now descending down the road toward Brzustowa, among linden trees—shadow is bathed in sunlight, the horses slow down, the harness moves forward on their necks, the sand creaks under the wheels.
“Good! Well, then! Why not? If with that one from the UA, why not with this one?”
“No.”
The ease with which women say “no.” This talent for refusal. This “no,” always at the ready—and when they find it within them, they’re merciless. Yet … could she be in love with Vaclav? Is this where the restraint came from? I said something to this effect: it would be a blow for Vaclav if he found out about her “past”—he who worships her and is so religious, so principled. I expressed the hope that she would not tell him, yes, better to spare him this … spare the one who believes in their total spiritual understanding … She interrupted me, offended. “And what do you think? That I have no morality?”
“He has a Catholic morality.”
“Me too. It’s the truth, I am a Catholic.”
“What do you mean? Do you take the sacraments?”
“Do you believe in God? Literally, as a true Catholic?”
“If I didn’t believe, I wouldn’t be going to confession and Holy Communion. And don’t think anything to the contrary! My future husband’s principles suit me just fine. And his mother is almost a mother to me. You’ll see, what a woman! It’s an honor for me to become part of such a family.” And after a moment’s silence she added, hitting the horses with the reins: “At least when I marry him I won’t be screwing around.”
Sand. Road. We’re going uphill.
The vulgarity of her last words—what was that for? “I won’t be screwing around.” She could have put it more subtly. But the undertone of her sentence was double-edged. … It contained a desire for purity, dignity—and at the same time it was unworthy of her, degrading in its actual wording … and exciting me anew … exciting me … because it again brought her closer to Karol. And once more, as with Karol earlier, a fleeting discouragement came upon me—that we can’t find out anything from them because everything they say, or think, or feel, is only a game of excitement, a constant teasing, a kindling of a narcissistic savoring of themselves—and that they are the first to fall prey to their own seductions. This young girl? This young girl who was nothing but a captivating force, an attraction, a greatly appealing element, unceasing, lithe, soft, absorbent coquetry—and she was like this as she sat next to me, in her little coat, with her little hands that were too small. ‘When I marry him I won’t screw around.” This sounded severe, taking herself in hand—for Vaclav, because of Vaclav—but it was also an intimate, and oh how seductive, admission of her own weakness. She was therefore exciting even in her virtue … and in the distance ahead of us was the carriage, mounting a hill, and on the coach box next to the coachman was Karol … Karol … Karol … On the coach box. On the hill. In the distance. I don’t know whether it was the fact that he appeared “in the distance”—or that he appeared “on the hill”—yet in this configuration, in this “rendering” of Karol, in this appearance of his, there was something infuriating me, and, furious, pointing my finger at him, I said:
“But you like to crush earthworms with him!”
“Why are you stuck on that earthworm? He stepped on it, so I stepped on it.”
“You both knew quite well the worm was suffering!”
“What do you mean?”
Again nothing was revealed. She sat next to me. For a moment the thought came to me to let go—to back out. … My situation, my bathing in their eroticism—oh, it was impossible! I should get busy with something else as soon as possible, something more appropriate—busy with more serious matters! Would it be so difficult to return to normal, to the truly familiar state in which other things seem interesting and important, while such antics with young people become worthy of nothing but disdain? But what if one gets excited, loves one’s excitement, excites oneself with it, and everything else is no longer alive! Once more pointing to Karol with my shaming finger, I emphatically declared, my intent being to press her to the wall, to wrest an admission from her:
“You’re not just for yourself. You’re for someone else. And in this case you’re for him. You belong to him!”
“Me? To him? What put that into your head?”
She laughed. This laughter of theirs, constant, unceasing—hers and his—obfuscating everything! What misery.
She was pushing him away … by laughing. … She was pushing him away with laughter. This laughter of hers was short, it soon ceased, it was merely a hint of laughter—but in this brief moment I saw his laughter through her laughter. The same laughing mouths with teeth inside them. This was “cute” … unfortunately, unfortunately, this was “cute.” They were both “cute.” That’s why she didn’t want it!