Bacacay

by Witold Gombrowicz

  Oh, I simply cannot convey how terrifying our Self becomes when it is displaced to a domain in which it is alien—nor how inhuman a person can become when he is used as a probe, nor the extent to which inhumanity surpasses any evil a person may encounter. Yet this was not what I meant to speak about, in fact—rather I wish to describe the manner in which I managed to escape from my plight. Well then: All of a sudden, unable to stand it any longer, I began to thrash and toss myself about, to jump up as high as I could and knock against the walls with all my strength (and this certainly figured into the plans of the black man, who was waiting patiently up above)—I began with all my power to push, to smash, to attack the steel, crashing into it, to clench my fists, strain, and thrust until I produced some result. This futile frenzy evidently produced some movement, some friction outside. I don’t know if the chain broke, perhaps rusted through, or if the loop of the chain slipped off the hook, or if the ballast had been poorly constructed and had fallen apart at the slightest jolt; suffice it to say that suddenly there came liberation, deliverance, relief ... The sphere moved upward with increasing speed and a few minutes later, driven by massive pressure, I shot into space like a cork, to a height of one kilometer or more.

  I was soon unscrewed by the crew of the merchant ship Halifax. I do not know what became of the black man. Perhaps the sphere smashed his yacht as it fell; or perhaps, entirely satisfied with what had happened, he had sailed away to reminisce. In any case, for the longest time I lost sight of him. The Halifax put into Pernambuco, from where I returned to Poland to take a rest.

  At this same time a gigantic flaming meteor fell into the Caspian Sea, which evaporated in its entirety in a single moment. Bulging, swollen layers of cloud encircled the earth and hovered just above it, threatening a second great flood; and sometimes the sun burst out from between them with a cluster of hot rays. A great despondency reigned. No one knew how to drag the huge sluggish bodies safely back to the seabed they had come from. Finally someone began to tickle one of the clouds—just as it happened to be approaching the empty sea—at the darkest purple place on its drooping, distended torso. It opened its sluices. Then, when it was completely emptied, into the blue vacuum created by its disappearance there began to float other clouds and one after another, mechanically and automatically now, they poured out their waters and formed the lake once again.

  3

  Returning to my home in the country, in Sandomierz province, I rested, hunted a little, played some bridge, rode out to visit the neighbors ... and on one of these visits there was a young person whom I would gladly have clothed in a veil and wedding gown. Everything had quieted down. The black man, as I said, had vanished somewhere, or perhaps he did not exist at all; moreover, fall was coming, leaves were falling, and the air, crisper every day, inclined a person to exhortations, speed, longing, and playfulness. Just for fun I started thinking about constructing an excursion balloon of the Montgolfier type. And soon this balloon of mine was ready. It was covered with a special impermeable canvas that was extremely light yet strong, and its lifting power was heated air. That is to say, at the bottom the canvas was pulled tight around an iron band in such a way as to leave a sizable opening—into the opening was put an ordinary kerosene lamp fixed on two iron prongs attached to the band. One had only to light the lamp and turn the wick up a little for the balloon to inflate and stretch the cords linking it to the basket. I was easily able to store the rolled-up material of the balloon in a barn—and when I filled it with air (which always took about an hour) its diameter was between thirty and forty meters.

  Such a simple solution to something of the greatest difficulty—that is, the use of a tiny lamp with a balloon of such dimensions—I attribute less to my own technical abilities than to a certain sluggish unrestrainedness which at that time had swept over nature. But I do not deny that the first time I sat in the basket, I took fright at the sight of the immensity that was becoming reality above me —but it was an immensity that was light and empty inside, and gentle as a child.

  The very process of heating the balloon, of the swelling of that huge sphere, the tautening of the ropes, the growing elasticity, the hissing of the lamp—this alone provided great satisfaction. I had to wait a considerable time for the air to expand sufficiently. At last the balloon unexpectedly and quickly began to rise. I hurriedly turned down the wick; nevertheless, it stopped ascending only above the highest trees in my garden. A mild breeze carried it over the fields in the direction of that familiar neighbor’s house. I floated across the woods and the river, then the village, from which the delighted populace sent me shouts and greetings—and I found myself at a height of fifty meters over the familiar courtyard, before the columned entranceway familiar and so dear to me. I turned down the wick, and the balloon landed softly on the lawn; next to it the house looked like a child’s toy. What astonishment there was! How much laughter and applause, how many compliments for me and for the balloon! Nothing like it had ever been seen! Supper was interrupted to come and marvel—then I was invited to have coffee with cheese and preserves, after which I took one single passenger into the basket and turned up the wick.

  The physical delight of this ride above all came from the fact that the balloon was huge and inflated, and also from the following: 1) that one could float right over people’s heads, yet out of reach of their outstretched hands; 2) that on encountering a house or a tree, one could rise up higher and then return to just above the earth; 3) that the balloon, though immense, was extraordinarily sensitive, quiet, and responsive to the slightest caprice of the air, while we in the basket were exactly the same as the balloon, and took on its mild, childlike soul; 4) that a gust of air, which would do no more than graze the cheeks of other people, would in our case lift us up, and it was never possible to predict our movements in space; 5) that there was no machinery at all except for a single kerosene lamp, not even any gas, but only canvas, ropes, a basket, and us in the air, canvas, ropes, a basket, and us in the air; 6) and lastly—the magnificent spherical shadow passing over the lawn. But to me personally the balloon’s passenger brought more joy than the balloon itself. Over the meadows, fields, and groves I grew acquainted for the first time in my life, I grew acquainted without a break and ever more closely, and she listened to me so willingly that I would have kissed her small, attentive, comprehending ear a thousand times over. But despite the fact that women are supposed to love romanticism, I said nothing to her about the black man or about my other adventures—on account of a puzzling yet burning sense of shame that warned me not to say too much.

  The day came for us to exchange rings—then the wedding day began to approach. During all this time I had not once had any bad thoughts; I had driven away all my memories, and lived only for her and the balloon; I lived from today, from yesterday—unless I hastened into the future, on a calm, level road of happiness—and even bad dreams forsook me. Never ... not one deviation ... not one glance toward what had after all once truly existed ... but had vanished ...—and a birch tree was a birch tree, a pine—a pine, a willow—a willow.—And here is what happened.—One day, a week before our wedding ceremony in the local church, when a mysterious, joyful prenuptial shiver was running through me, and everyone was congratulating and sending good wishes, I suddenly got the urge to try a balloon ride on a stormy night. I just wanted to experience swinging in a violent gale—I swear I had no other intentions, no bad desires. However, the gale swept me away with furious force (and in fact it was probably not the gale, but the black man himself), and when after many hours the curtain of dawn rose with alarming rapidity, I could not believe my eyes—beneath me lay the Yellow Sea.

  I realized at once that the other matter was over, and once again ... it had started ... and ... and ... some fearful Oriental things awaited me—I bid farewell forever to the birches, pines, and willows, and the familiar countenance and eyes, and I opened myself submissively to the crooked pagodas, bonzes, idols, mandarins, and dragons. As the last drop of ke
rosene was burning down in the lamp, the basket dropped into the water off the shore of a small islet. From a nearby thicket a Chinaman emerged—he shouted when he noticed me and ran up, but I began to wave at him to stop, because (of course) he was a leper. He stood undecided, looked at me watchfully, gave a nondescript grunt, as if in surprise, touched his hideous, lumpy exterior—and led me to a dozen or so wretched reed shacks that could be seen in the distance. He went on staring at me attentively, and I could not figure out what that stare meant. I already sensed something ... yet despite this, I continued to follow him.

  When, however, we reached the settlement, my skin began to cry for help—it contracted, it crawled, it tightened, it went mad from terror! The entire village without exception was composed of lepers: the old folk, and the men, and the women, and the young girls, and the young boys, apart from a few small children who were set glaringly apart by their smoothness. This particular form of the illness was called, to the best of my knowledge, lepra anaesthetica, or perhaps lepra elephantiasis; everything was rough, lumpy, carbuncular, tumid, and excrescent, in dull white, brown, or dirty red blotches, in pustules, scales, calluses, hardenings, in chronic ulcers. But they were not humble or modest like their brothers in the cities of Asia who warn of their revolting presence from far off with a cry. Oh no, not at all; it must be acknowledged at once that they had nothing in common with modesty or humility! Quite the reverse—they formed a circle around me and crowded in on me so inquisitively and shamelessly, and they reached toward me so with horny and twisted fingernails, that I threw myself at them, screaming and waving my fists. They instantly disappeared into their shacks. I left the village at once—but when I turned my head a few hundred paces on, I saw that the mob had come back out and was following me at a distance. I stamped my foot. They disappeared, but a moment later they reemerged.

  The island was no more than fifteen square kilometers in area, and it could be said that it was entirely uninhabited; the greater part of its surface was covered by a dense forest. I walked along not particularly quickly and yet without a pause, not particularly nervously and yet stiffly, not particularly fearfully, and yet with a slightly quickened pace—for the whole time I could sense the blotchy monsters behind my back. I didn’t want to turn around; I wanted to pretend that I knew nothing, that I could see nothing, and that only my back warned me of their slow approach. I walked and walked ... I walked in various directions like a traveler, like a tourist, like a searcher, first here, then there, more and more hurriedly, like a person with urgent business, but in the end I ran out of space and, having exhausted all the unwooded places, I started down a path into the tangled depths of the forest. They drew significantly nearer—they were already right behind, and I could hear their whispers and the rustle of the branches. Spotting someone’s lumpy skin creeping along behind a bush, I turned sharply to the left, jumped to the side as I caught sight amid the lianas of something like a hand in an advanced state of elephantiasis—and came out onto a little clearing. They followed me. Again I stamped my foot—they retreated into the jungle. I walked on; they thronged forward again, persistent as rats, and their whispers, prods, and nudges were becoming ever bolder. Every hair of mine was stiff as a wire—what had these carbuncle-people seen in me? What were they after? Women know this—when all at once they’re accosted from behind with filthy jokes by an unruly band of good-for-nothings, while they scurry along with lowered head—and that is just how it was with me, exactly the same, point for point ...

  What did they want? I did not yet understand, I did not immediately grasp the new idea, but I already mentioned the resemblance point for point ... and if one went deeper into the essence of the situation from which I had been torn and suddenly transported onto this island—into that premarital anxiety, the church and the veil—then things could not have been any different ... In a word—it had become clear that I excited them, that I excited them in a particular way—and though I could not fathom the source of this excitement, nor the meaning of their exclamations, their laughs, their revolting jokes, nevertheless the filthiness, the licentiousness, the lasciviousness were palpable—and in the voices of the men-monsters I sensed the lustful brutality, and in the voices of the women-monsters the spiteful amusement, which tended without exception to be brought out in human beings of all races and latitudes in only two cases—innocence or immaturity... Oh, I would have accepted the leprosy alone; but not leprosy and eroticism together, oh no, for the love of God, erotic leprosy? I took flight like a madman. Seeing this, they rushed after me with a shout. But their plodding elephantine shanks were no match for my mad panic! I hid in the spreading crown of a tree, armed myself with a stout cudgel and swore to myself I’d crack the skull of the first one who came near.

  And there gradually was revealed to me the infernal combination—the infernal substance of this torture ... I discovered the entire complex mechanism of probabilities that made this fantasy real. No ship had visited the island for two or three centuries; it had been forgotten, as sometimes happens with such small and infertile little islands. Its inhabitants had never seen a stranger here either in their own lifetime or that of their parents.

  Very well—but how should one understand the bawdiness, the lascivious jibes, the fearful pursuit, and the desire to accost? Oh, it was easy! It was easy—one had only to enter into the psychology of the black man’s Spirit, which had arranged all this (and in this respect I had already notched up certain experiences). Since time immemorial, perhaps several generations, perhaps four, leprosy had afflicted them—and over the years they had assimilated it, accepted it as a natural quality of humankind .... Blotchiness was, in their eyes, as natural to human beings as colorfulness is to butterflies; lumps were as natural as a rooster’s comb; and it would have been no easier for them to comprehend a person without carbuncles and pustules than it would have been for us to comprehend a person without a single hair on his skin. And since they had not renounced love—since their children were born healthy, smooth, and pure—since it was only after a few years that they yielded to the pestilence, and the time when the skin began to thicken and form scales coincided with puberty ... coming at the time of the first kiss ... the first charms of love ... accordingly, seeing me ridiculously smooth, utterly uncarbuncled, amusingly thin, just some hopping creature with a little pink face (oh yes, for them carbuncles, blotches, calluses, star-shaped and spindleshaped pustules were what colors are for a butterfly, and what for us is the hair that turns a child into a man)—they had to think what they thought. They had to nudge one another, taunt, mock, and torment, and when they realized that I was afraid of them, that, embarrassed and disgraced, I was running away—they had to send their monstrous maturity in delighted pursuit of my timid innocence, by the same infernal law that governs boys in school!

  On that island I survived two months of a monkey’s existence, hiding in the hollows of trees, in dense bushes and the tops of palms. The monsters organized formal hunts for me. Nothing could have amused them better than the embarrassment with which I rushed from their touch—they hid in the undergrowth, jumped out unexpectedly, ran along with a merry and lascivious roar—and had it not been for the characteristic odor hircinus, had it not been for the decrepitude of their degenerated limbs, and the desperate fear that augmented my strength, I would have fallen into their clutches a hundred times over. And above all, if it had not been for my skin—my skin, contracting without a moment’s rest, susceptible, chapped, terrified, exhausted, in eternal perturbation. I ceased to be anything else but skin—with it I would fall asleep and wake up, it was my only, it was my all.

  In the end I discovered by chance a few bottles of kerosene that had probably come from a shipwreck. I managed to patch up the balloon—and I sailed away .... But when I saw once again the beeches and pines, et cetera, and the familiar eyes, what on earth was I to do? What was I to do, I, who was after all smooth, without lumps, without blotches, without calluses, without scales or ulcers, thoroughly unca
rbuncled? ... What was I to do; could I now, pink and childlike, look into those eyes?

  But since I could not—then I could not—and I parted from that which parted from me .... Besides, soon afterward I was swept up by other adventures; oh yes, I never lacked for adventures. I remember that in 1918 it was I and no one else who broke through the German line. As was common knowledge, the trenches reached all the way to the seashore—it was a true system of deep, dry channels that stretched unbroken for five hundred kilometers or so. And I was the only one who conceived the idea of irrigating those channels. In the night I crept up, dug a ditch, and linked the trenches with the sea. The water, surging uncontrollably, flooded them along the entire front, and the astonished Coalition armies saw the Germans soaked to the skin and jumping up in panic in the faint light of a misty morning.

  The Events on the Banbury

  1

  In the spring of 1930, I decided to undertake a trip by sea—for personal reasons—to do with health and relaxation. It was mainly that my situation on the European continent was becoming more disagreeable and indistinct with every day. So I wrote to a shipping magnate of my acquaintance, Mr. Cecil Burnett of Birmingham, to request that he find a berth for me on one of his numerous ships —and in no time at all I received a short reply by telegraph: “Berenice Brighton 17 April 09.00 sharp.” But at Brighton, at the docks, there were so many sailing ships and steamships at anchor, and my baggage hindered my movements so, that I was a little less than fifteen minutes late, and the sailors and stevedores starting calling out urgently, as they always do—“Over there, over there, hurry up, sir, you can still make it!—hurry, hurry—get a move on, sir! You’ll get there in time!” I caught up with the Berenice by motor launch, though without my luggage. A rope ladder was lowered, up which I climbed onto the deck, in my haste not reading the name painted in large letters on the port side of the hull.