Bacacay

by Witold Gombrowicz

  “Couldn’t say ...”

  I asked one more question:

  “And where does the young master sleep?”

  “Downstairs, next to the dining room.”

  I got up and dressed with care. Hmm ... hmm ... So, if I was not mistaken, here was one more thought-provoking piece of evidence—a curious detail. Whatever one might say, it was intriguing that a week before her husband’s death his wife should move out of their shared bedroom. Could she possibly have been afraid of being infected with heart disease? That would have been an extravagant fear, to say the least. But there must be no premature conclusions, no rash moves—and I went down to the dining room. The widow stood by the window—with folded arms she was staring at her coffee cup—and she was murmuring something in a monotone, earnestly shaking her head, with a wet handkerchief in her hands. When I approached, she suddenly moved around the table in the opposite direction, still murmuring, and waving her hand, as if she had lost her reason—nevertheless, I had already recovered the poise I had lost the previous day and, standing to the side, I waited patiently until at last she noticed me.

  “Ah, farewell, farewell,” she said absently, seeing that I was bowing—“It’s been a pleasure ...”

  “Pardon me,” I whispered, “I ... I ... I’m not leaving just yet; I’d like to stay a while ...”

  “Oh, it’s you, sir,” she said. She mumbled something about a funeral procession, and even favored me with a wan question about whether I would stay for the service.

  “It would be a great honor,” I replied piously. “Who could refuse that final duty? Might I be allowed to visit your husband one more time?” Without answering and without looking back to see if I was following, she mounted the creaking stairs.

  After a short prayer I rose to my feet and, as if meditating on the enigma of life and death, I looked around. “That’s strange!” I said to myself; “that’s interesting! Judging from appearances, this man undoubtedly died of natural causes. True, his face is swollen and livid like someone who has been asphyxiated, but there are absolutely no signs of a struggle anywhere, either on the body or in the room—it really would seem that he died peacefully of a heart attack.” Nevertheless—I suddenly went up to the bed and touched his neck with my finger.

  This slight movement had an electrifying effect on the widow. She started.

  “What are you doing?” she cried. “What are you doing? What are you doing? ...”

  “My poor lady, don’t be so upset,” I replied, and without further ceremony I conducted a thorough investigation of the corpse’s neck and the entire room. Ceremony is good up to a point! We wouldn’t get very far if ceremony stood in the way of carrying out a detailed inspection when the need arose. Alas!—there were still literally no signs either on the body or on the chest of drawers, or behind the wardrobe, or on the rug next to the bed. The only noteworthy thing was an immense dead cockroach. On the other hand, a certain sign appeared on the widow’s face—she stood motionless, watching what I was doing with a look of befuddled consternation.

  At this point I asked as circumspectly as I could: “Why did you move into your daughter’s room a week ago?”

  “I? Why? I? Why did I move? How did you ... My son persuaded me to ... So there would be more air. My husband used to suffocate in the night. But what do you want? ... What do you actually want? Why are you ...?”

  “Please forgive me ... I’m sorry—but ...” I finished my sentence with an eloquent silence.

  She seemed to understand somewhat—as if she had suddenly realized the official character of the person with whom she was talking.

  “But still ... How is it? Surely—surely you can’t have ... you haven’t noticed anything?”

  In this question fear could distinctly be heard. I responded merely by clearing my throat. “Be that as it may,” I said dryly, “I’d like to request ... I believe you mentioned something about a funeral procession ... I’d like to request that the body remain here until tomorrow morning.”

  “Ignaś!” she exclaimed.

  “Exactly!” I replied.

  “Ignaś! How can that be? It’s not possible, it’s out of the question,” she said, staring dully at the body. “Ignaś!”

  And—curious!—all at once she broke off in mid-sentence, went stiff, crushed me with a look, and then left the room in high dudgeon. I ask you—what could there possibly have been to offend her? Is a husband dying of unnatural causes a source of offense to a wife if she didn’t have a hand in it? What could possibly be offensive about death from unnatural causes? It may be offensive for the killer, but surely never for the corpse or his family? However, for the moment I had something more urgent to do than pose such rhetorical questions. Left alone with the corpse, I once again set about conducting a scrupulous investigation—yet the longer I worked, the more my face betrayed my astonishment. “Not a thing,” I whispered. “Nothing aside from the cockroach behind the chest of drawers. It truly might be concluded that there’s no basis whatsoever for further action.”

  Ha! Now here was a stumbling block—in the form of the corpse, who loudly and clearly confirmed to the expert eye that he had died of an ordinary heart attack. All these appearances, the horses, the animosity, the dissembling, argued for something suspicious, whereas the corpse gazed at the ceiling and proclaimed: I died of a heart attack! It was physically and medically self-evident, it was a certainty—no one had murdered him for the simple and conclusive reason that he had not been murdered at all. I must confess that at this point most of my fellow magistrates would have closed the investigation. But not I! I was too ridiculed, too vengeful, and I had already ventured too far. I raised my finger and frowned. “A crime does not come of its own accord, gentlemen; it must be worked upon mentally, thought through, thought up—dumplings don’t cook themselves.

  “When appearances testify against there having been a crime,” I said wisely, “then let us be cunning, let us not be taken in by appearances. Whereas when logic, common sense, the obvious finally become advocates for the criminal, and appearances argue against him, then let us trust appearances, let us not be deceived by logic and the obvious. Very well ... but with all these appearances, how on earth—as Dostoevsky says—can we make rabbit stew with no rabbit?” I stared at the corpse, and the corpse stared at the ceiling, announcing his innocence with an unblemished neck. Now here was a difficulty! Here was a stumbling block! But what can’t be removed must be jumped over—hic Rhodus, hic salta! Which is to say, could this dead object with human features which I might, if I wished, have taken in my hand—could this frozen face present any real resistance to my own mobile and changing physiognomy, which was capable of finding an expression suitable for any occasion? And while the corpse’s visage remained the same —calm, if a little swollen—my face expressed solemn cunning, foolish arrogance and self-confidence, just as if I had said: you can’t teach your grandmother to suck eggs!

  “Yes,” I said with gravity, “it’s an obvious fact: the dead man was asphyxiated.”

  The lawyer with his prevarications might try to suggest that he was asphyxiated by his heart? Hmm, hmm ... Not for us such legal maneuvers. “Heart” is a very flexible term—symbolic, even. Who, springing to their feet on hearing that a crime has been committed, would possibly be satisfied to hear the reassuring reply that it was nothing—that his heart had asphyxiated him? I’m sorry, but which heart? We know how tangled and ambiguous the heart can be—the heart is a sack into which a great deal can be put —the cold heart of a murderer; the ashen heart of a libertine; the faithful heart of a lover; a warm heart, an ungrateful heart, a heart that is jealous, envious, and so on.

  The crushed cockroach seemed not to be directly related to the crime. For the moment one thing had been established—the dead man was asphyxiated, and this asphyxiation was connected with the heart. It could also be said, bearing in mind the lack of any external injuries whatsoever, that the asphyxiation was of a typically internal character. Yes, that w
as all ... nothing more—internal, connected with the heart. No premature conclusions—and now it would be good to walk around the house a little.

  I went back downstairs. Entering the dining room, I heard the sound of light, quickly fleeing footsteps—probably Miss Cecylia? —Now then, running away is not a good idea, young lady—the truth will always catch up with you! Passing the dining room—where the servants setting the table watched me surreptitiously—I slowly looked in on the other rooms, and at one point, somewhere through a door, I caught a glimpse of Mr. Antoni’s retreating back. “Since it’s now a matter of internal, heart-related death,” I reflected, “then it must be admitted that this house couldn’t be better suited for it. Strictly speaking, there may not be anything clearly incriminating here—and yet ...” I sniffed—“nevertheless there is consternation, and in the atmosphere there is an odor, a characteristic odor—an odor of the kind that is bearable when it is your own, like the odor of sweat—an odor that I would describe as the odor of family affection ...” Still sniffing, I noted certain tiny details that, though small, seemed not to be entirely without significance. Thus—faded, yellowed lace curtains—hand-embroidered cushions—an abundance of photographs and portraits—chairs worn by the backs of many generations ... and in addition to this: an unfinished letter on lined white paper—a pat of butter on a knife on the windowsill in the drawing room—a glass of medicine on the chest of drawers—a blue ribbon behind the stove—a cobweb, lots of cupboards—old smells ... All this together created an atmosphere of special solicitude, of great warm-heartedness—at every step the heart found sustenance for itself—yes, the heart could make use of butter, lace curtains, a ribbon, smells (and bread was carried, I noticed). And it also had to be acknowledged that the house was exceptionally “internal,” a quality that manifested itself principally in the window filling, and in a chipped saucer, and in a dried-up sheet of flypaper left over from the summer.

  But, so it should not be said that I was set pig-headedly on one internal direction and had ignored all other possibilities, I took the trouble to check whether indeed from the servants’ quarters there was no access to the family rooms other than through the pantry—and I ascertained that there was not—and I even went outside and, pretending to take a stroll, I walked slowly all around the house in the wet snow. It was unthinkable that through the door, or through the windows, which had heavy shutters, someone could have entered the house in the night. From which it followed that if any act had been committed in this house in the night, then no one could be suspected except possibly the serving boy, Stefan, who slept in the pantry. “Yes,” I said shrewdly, “it must have been Stefan the serving boy. No one else but him, the more so because he has a bad look about him.”

  Saying this, I pricked up my ears—because through an open casement I heard a voice that was oh-so-different from the voice I had heard not long before, and so exquisite, so full of promise, the voice no longer of a woebegone queen, but one that was wracked with dread and unease, atremble, weakened, a woman’s voice—a voice that, it seemed, raised my spirits, wishing to help me out.—“Cecylka, Cecylka—look outside ... Has he gone yet? Look outside! Don’t lean out, don’t lean out—he might see you! He might come in here—poke around—have you put away your underwear? What’s he looking for? What has he seen? Ignaś! Oh Lord, what can he have been looking at that stove for, what did he want with the chest of drawers? It’s awful, all over the house! It doesn’t matter about me—with me he can do whatever he wants; but for Antoś, for Antoś it’ll be too much. For him this is sacrilege! He went terribly pale when I told him—oh, I’m afraid that he won’t have the strength.”

  Yet if the crime, as could be considered established in the course of the investigation, was internal (I thought on)—then duty forces one to confess that murder committed by the serving boy, probably with a view to robbery, could in no manner be regarded as a crime of an internal nature. Suicide is a different matter—when people kill themselves and everything happens internally—or parricide, when, whatever else one might say, blood kills its own. As for the cockroach, the murderer must have crushed it in his haste.

  As I reflected on these remarks I took a seat in the study and lit a cigarette—then all at once Mr. Antoni came in. On seeing me he offered a greeting, though a little more modestly than on the first occasion; he even appeared somewhat out of countenance.

  “Your family has a beautiful house,” I said. “It’s exceptionally cosy, hearty—a real family home—warm ... I’m reminded of my childhood—I’m reminded of my mother, my mother in her dressing gown, of chewed fingernails, of lacking a handkerchief ...”

  “Our home? Our home—of course ... There are mice. But that’s not why I’m here. My mother was telling me—apparently you ... that is ...”

  “I know an excellent remedy for mice—Ratopex.”

  “Yes, I really must start dealing with them more vigorously— more vigorously, much more vigorously ... Apparently this morning you visited ... my father ... or rather, pardon me, his body ...”

  “I did.”

  “Ah!—And ...?”

  “And? And what ?”

  “Apparently you ... found something there ...”

  “Actually I did—a dead cockroach.”

  “There are lots of dead cockroaches too; that is—just cockroaches ... I mean to say—cockroaches that aren’t dead.”

  “Did you love your father very much?” I asked, picking up an album with views of Kraków that lay on the table.

  This question clearly took him by surprise. No, he was not prepared for it; he bowed his head, looked to the side, swallowed—and muttered with inexpressible constraint, almost with repugnance:

  “I suppose.”

  “You suppose? That’s not very much. You suppose! Only so much?”

  “Why do you ask?” he said in a muffled voice.

  “Why are you so artificial?” I replied sympathetically, leaning toward him in paternal fashion, the album in my hands.

  “Me? Artificial? Why do ... you ... ?”

  “Why did you just turn pale?”

  “Me? Turn pale?”

  “Oh yes! You’re scowling ... You don’t finish your sentences ... You expatiate about mice and cockroaches ... Your voice is too loud, then too quiet, hoarse or somehow shrill, so it pierces the ears,” I said solemnly, “and such nervous movements ... In fact, all of you here are somehow—nervous and artificial. Why is that, young man? Wouldn’t it be better just to grieve in a straightforward way? Hmm ... You ... ‘suppose’ you loved him?! And why did you persuade your mother to move out of your father’s bedroom a week ago?”

  Utterly paralyzed by my words—not daring to move hand or foot—he was barely able to stammer out:

  “Me? What do you mean? My father ... My father needed ... fresh air ...”

  “On the night in question you slept in your room downstairs?”

  “Did I? Of course, in my room ... in my room downstairs.”

  I cleared my throat and went to my bedroom, leaving him on a chair with his hands on his knees, his mouth tightly shut and his legs pressed stiffly together. Hmm—he obviously had a nervous nature. A nervous nature, bashfulness, excessive sensitivity, excessive heartfeltness ... But I was still keeping a tight rein on myself, not wishing to frighten anyone prematurely. As I was in my room washing my hands and preparing for dinner, Stefan the serving boy slipped in and asked if I didn’t need anything. He looked like a different person! His eyes darted about, his figure displayed a servile cunning, and all his mental powers were aroused to the highest degree! I asked: “So then, what can you tell me that’s new?”

  He answered in a single breath: “Well, your honor, you were asking if I slept in the pantry the night before yesterday? I wanted to say that on that night the young master locked the pantry door on the dining room side.” I asked: “Has he ever locked that door before?” “Never. This one time he locked it, and he probably thought that I was already asleep, because it
was late—but I wasn’t sleeping yet and I heard him come up and lock it. When he unlocked it, that I couldn’t say, because I dropped off—it was only at dawn that he woke me to say the master was dead, and by then the door was already open.”

  And so in the night, for unexplained reasons, the deceased’s son locks the pantry door! He locks the pantry door?—What could this mean?

  “Only please, your honor, don’t say that I told you.”

  I was not wrong to have labeled this death an internal one! The door had been locked so no outsider should have access to the death! The net was closing in; the noose tightening around the murderer’s neck was ever more visible.—Yet why, instead of manifesting triumph, did I only give a rather foolish smile?—For the reason that—alas, it must be acknowledged—something was missing that was at least as important as the noose around the murderer’s neck, and that something was the noose around the neck of the victim. True, I had jumped over this stumbling block, I had leapt naively over his neck, which glowed with an immaculate whiteness; but nonetheless it’s not possible to be permanently in a state of absolving passion. Very well, I agree (speaking aside), I was in a fury; for whatever reason hatred, repulsion, resentment had blinded me and forced me to persist in the face of a glaring absurdity—this is human, this anyone will understand; yet the moment will come when one must—settle down, there will come, as the Scriptures say, the Day of Judgment. And then ... hmm ... I’ll say—he is the murderer, and the corpse will say—I died of a heart attack. And then what? What will Judgment say?

  Let’s suppose Judgment will ask: “You claim the dead man was murdered? On what basis?”

  I will reply: “Because his family, your honor, his wife and children, and especially his son, are behaving suspiciously; they’re behaving as if they had murdered him—there’s no doubt about it.”

  “Very good—but by what earthly means could he have been murdered, since he was not murdered, since it’s blindingly obvious from the forensic report that he simply died of a heart attack?”