Bacacay

by Witold Gombrowicz

  To which the old man in his second childhood replied:

  “Everything has a child within.”

  Philibert’s Child Within

  A peasant of Paris had a child toward the end of the eighteenth century; that child had a child in turn, that child in turn had another child, and again there was another child; and the last child, as tennis champion of the world, was playing a match on the center court of the Parisian Racing-Club, in an atmosphere of nail-biting tension and with endless spontaneous rounds of thunderous applause. And yet (how terribly perfidious life can be!) a certain colonel of the zouaves in the crowd sitting in the side stands suddenly grew envious of the faultless and captivating play by both champions and, wanting to show the six thousand spectators gathered there what he too was capable of (the more so because his fiancée was sitting at his side), all at once he fired his revolver at the ball in flight. The ball burst and fell to the ground, while the champions, unexpectedly deprived of their target, for a short time went on waving their rackets in a vacuum; but, seeing the absurdity of their movements without the ball, they leaped at each other’s throats. Thunderous applause rang out from the spectators.

  And that would probably have been the end of it. But an additional circumstance occurred: the colonel, in his excitement, had forgotten or had failed to take into consideration (how important it is to consider things!) the spectators sitting on the opposite side of the court in the so-called sunlight stand. It had seemed to him —it was unclear why—that once the bullet punctured the ball it ought to stop; whereas unfortunately, it continued its course and struck a certain industrialist and shipping magnate in the neck. Blood spurted from the severed artery. The injured man’s wife’s first reaction was to throw herself at the colonel and wrest the revolver from his grip, but since she could not (as she was hemmed in by the crowd) she simply smacked her right-hand neighbor in the chops. And she did so because she was unable to vent her outrage in any other way and because in the deepest recesses of her being, driven by a purely feminine logic, she thought that as a woman she was entitled to, for who could do anything to her in return? It turned out, however, that this was not the case (how everything must constantly be taken into consideration in one’s calculations!), since her neighbor was a latent epileptic who, as a result of the psychological shock brought on by the slap, had an attack and erupted like a geyser in twitches and convulsions. The poor woman found herself between two men, one of whom was bleeding at the neck, the other foaming at the mouth. Thunderous applause rang out from the spectators.

  And then a gentleman who was sitting nearby, in a terrible panic jumped on top of a lady sitting below him; the latter picked him up and leaped onto the court, bearing him along at full tilt. Thunderous applause rang out from the spectators. And this would probably have been the end of it. But another circumstance arose (how everything always needs to be anticipated!): not far away there sat a certain modest, latent retired dreamer emeritus from Toulouse who for a very long time at all public events had dreamed of jumping on top of those sitting below him, and up till now had only by force restrained himself from doing so. Carried away by the example, he instantly leaped onto the lady sitting below him, who (a junior clerk newly arrived from Tangiers in Africa), believing that this was the appropriate thing to do, that it was the necessary thing, that this was how things were done in the big city—also picked him up, trying as she did so not to betray any awkwardness in her movements.

  And then the more well-mannered segments of the crowd began to clap tactfully in order to cover up the scandal in the presence of representatives of foreign legations and embassies who had come in large numbers to the match. But here too there arose a misunderstanding, for the less well-mannered segments took the clapping as a mark of approval—and they too climbed onto their ladies. The foreigners manifested ever greater astonishment. In such a case, what else could the more well-mannered segments do? So as not to attract attention, they also climbed onto their ladies.

  And this would almost certainly have been the end of it. But then a certain Marquis de Philibert, who was sitting in a courtside box with his wife and his wife’s family, suddenly remembered that he was a gentleman and went out onto the court in a light summer suit, pale but determined—and asked coolly if someone was trying to insult the Marquise de Philibert, his wife, and if so, who? And he tossed into the crowd a handful of visiting cards bearing the inscription: Philippe Hertal de Philibert. (How terribly careful we must be! How hard and treacherous life is, how unpredictable!) A deathly silence ensued.

  And all at once, at a walk, bareback, on slender-fetlocked, elegant, fashionably dressed women, no fewer than thirty-six men began to ride up to the Marquise de Philibert so as to insult her and remember that they were gentlemen, since her husband, the Marquis, had remembered he was a gentleman. She in turn, out of fright, gave birth prematurely—and the whimpering of a child was heard at the Marquis’s feet beneath the heels of the trampling women. The Marquis, so unexpectedly finding a child within, provided with and complemented by a child just as he had stepped out alone as a grown and self-sufficient gentleman—became embarrassed and went home—while thunderous applause rang out from the spectators.

  On The Kitchen Steps

  At the gray hour, at the time when the first street lamps are lit, I liked to go into town and accost maids, maids of all work. This imperceptibly became a habit, and as is commonly known, “consuetudo altera natura.” Other employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and all the attachés of the embassies (those who were not married, of course), also used to go out on the streets and accost one thing or another, according to taste, whim, or temperament; but I would always accost fleshy, beshawled maids, maids of all work. To such a degree that when I was assigned to Paris as second secretary—a considerable honor for a man of my years—after a certain time a powerful nostalgia obliged me to return home. I was too distressed by the foreignness of the calves, those slender, tense calves sheathed in stockings, shown by the maidservants of that country. The murderous nimbleness, the hideous nimbleness, unbearably Parisian, was just too fine, and clicked its slim little heels too much, and on the Place de l’Etoile or even in the neighborhoods on the left bank of the Seine one would look in vain for an ordinary frowze with a basket over her arm, leaving a household goods store or a corner grocery. Weyssenhoff writes: “The thrilling rhythm of the Parisienne’s dainty feet.” It was precisely this rhythm that was the death of me; I sought a different rhythm and a different melody ...

  It would take place in the following way: spotting a maid of all work in the distance as she plodded sluggishly along on podgy legs, I would quicken my pace and follow till she turned into the gateway of an apartment building. I would catch up with her on the kitchen steps and would start by asking: “Does Mrs. Kowalska live here?” and then: “Perhaps we could get acquainted.” There was nothing concrete in this, for instance, no kissing, though in the course of some five years I must have approached well over a thousand maids; no, they were too timid, no doubt because their mistresses were too strict. I had no substantive gain from all this, other than the fact that perhaps it made it easier for me to live...

  But one time I was indiscreet and was seen by one of my friends who, as was to be expected, told our mutual acquaintances:

  “Guess what: yesterday I saw Filip on Hoza Street; I’m telling you, he was eyeing some revolting slattern!”

  It went the rounds; the tenth or twentieth gossip started poking fun at me and congratulating me on my taste, saying that apparently I was fond of fresh turnip, while others made snide remarks along the lines of: “I know something, but I won’t say a word.” You can imagine how alarmed I was. It was of course true that all sorts of things happened in the Ministry; as is always the case, different people were fond of different things. But after all, a fashionable stocking is one thing; quite another was this embarrassing object, a vulgar, barefoot maid of all work. If they had at least been comely and firm—then I could
have said something about fresh turnip, that I prefer a fresh turnip to the unhealthy delicacies of the city. But basket-laden maids, maids of all work have nothing in common with turnip—rather with lard, frying grease, or coconut butter. Often, in their rancid ugliness I bitterly perceived my own personal ill luck, some malign star; why was it, I wondered, that in any class or sphere one could find a maiden, or a girl, or a lass, in a word—poetry, while it was only the maids of all work who were doomed to be devoid of beauty and grace? It was only later that I discovered the rule of unnatural selection: It was the mistresses who unnaturally selected the most unsightly drudges, misshapen, bloodshot, or overweight, with horrendous backsides, broken noses, smashed right in the face by some unknown fist—for a housemaid has to look like this so that none of the gentlemen of the house should feel drawn to her by the will of God.

  In fact, I too felt no passion, at least of that sort—no passion, but a great bashfulness, sweet as can be, from somewhere deep within me. It remained in me from my childhood years, when with bated breath and pounding heart I would stare at our maid of all work. As she was serving dinner, scrubbing the floor, bringing breakfast ... or during spring cleaning while she was washing the windows ... I would stare fervently, bashfully, through half-closed eyes. Today I wouldn’t be crazy enough to suggest that such a revolting, common maid meets needs of an aesthetic or any other character; but at that time, I recall, if she had a gumboil, for me in my bashfulness that gumboil was more wonderful than all the potted geraniums of the window-washing, and, I recall, it was all in all a miracle before which one lowered one’s gaze. Later, of course, there came lessons both pedagogical and non-pedagogical; there came “good manners,” patent-leather shoes, neckties, the brushing of teeth and the cleaning of fingernails, there came success, awards and five-o’clock teas, there came Paris and London; but the bashfulness that was suppressed by refinement had already conceived an enduring affection for kitchen frowzes crowding around corner grocery stores, and found consolation in them. And not despite the fact, but precisely because of the fact that I was one of the most elegant employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, I liked to love beshawled maids and, beneath my bowler hat and my English overcoat, to revive my former giddiness, the former pounding of my heart. It seemed that in this lay my homeland.

  But it was bashfulness. If only it had been boldness. If only it had been boldness—as they say, a young girl, or a night on the town, or a private room at a restaurant and then to a hotel, something merry, something flashy, I’d pay no heed to the tittle-tattle and would simply say that I was a wolf. But since it was bashfulness, what could I do, how could I defend myself, how could I explain myself ?

  “Just imagine, Filip once eyed a beshawled maid of all work.”

  I took fright—to such an extent that soon afterward I married a person who constituted the absolute antidote to a maid. I was afraid of ridicule. There is tyranny! I renounced maids, wiped them from my memory, released them all from the first of the month and slammed the door of my inner being upon them. Did fleshy calves planted on shuffling feet still flash by on Krucza or Hoza Street? Perhaps—but for me that was terra incognita. My wife was immensely soothing and calming. Her legs were supple as lianas, long, slender at the fetlock; she constituted the best possible evidence of my taste; and her figure too was slender and elegant—in every respect this union made an excellent impression. Furthermore, we engaged a nimble girl who did not in the slightest resemble a basket-carrying maid; she bustled sprucely about the table in a white lace cap.

  My wife set our home on its feet; those feet were refined, purebred, with a high arch, a hundred miles from those other fallen, sunken, irreparably flat feet. In actuality hardly anything changed; only two parenthetic twilight hours disappeared, and otherwise from one morning to the next everything remained the same, since even in her moments of ardor my wife was able to remember that I worked for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. As for me, I moved around the apartment and kept repeating to myself: “Ah, quelle beauté, quelle grâce!” I did so with all the more self-denial because somewhere deep down lurked the nagging suspicion that my wife and my friends, and even the girl in the nimble cap, had guessed at certain things, and that I was undergoing treatment and being observed. For how else could it be explained? ... such curious acts of cruelty ... that they perhaps too often, too thoroughly brushed their teeth, scrubbed those teeth too severely, that the pumps they wore seemed too pointed, their patent-leather shoes too shiny. My wife, for instance, bathed every day, and did so I believe not without certain tyrannical intentions. There was too much cruelty in this, and too little heart; too much of a kind of cold hydrotherapy. It appeared as if they meant to stifle even the shadow of a longing, the very fancy of a fancy, the memory of a memory ...

  For my part, I obediently appreciated and admired my wife, just as I had once admired the Arc de Triomphe in Paris; but the Arc had lacked a certain characteristic straddling quality, a certain grotesquery, and that was why I had returned home. Why did I not have the strength to act in the same way with my wife, who equally lacked grotesquery; why, instead of roaming indubitably marvelous yet foreign lands and seas, had I not settled permanently at home—is that not a prime duty, that a person should live in his own country?

  Instead, like a traitor, a turncoat, with a false admiration I gazed at the hostile, icy realm of my wife, at her smooth white panoramas, at details that for me were extinguished and dead, like moonlight. “A charming hillock,” I thought, watching her as she slept; “it’s round, small, snow-white. The slim outline, the supple waist —how sinuous they are, how fashionable, how aesthetic! A delightful leg—how harmonious it is as it streams in serpentine white down the snowy bed sheets.” It was an abominable lie. It was the moon, while mother earth had gone to ruin somewhere. Yet my wife was able even in her sleep to prevent the very thought of rebellion or resistance—and there was something despotic in the way her leg narrowed downward, as if only this were permissible.

  Oh, that delicate, pure, high-arched little foot, its arch equally Parisian, equally triumphal—I’ve already spoken of setting our home on its feet—my wife was capable of maneuvering that little foot with absolute authority, slipping it out from under the quilt like a once-and-for-all established truism. I kissed it with cold lips and went into raptures about it being so small, every toe as pink as could be; see, everything was correct, finished, fashioned. Across the entire expanse of her skin, nowhere, nowhere was there a single blemish—only infinite whiteness and smoothness. Only cold, statuesque moons, only aesthetic views, only trimmed hedges, Chinese and Japanese lanterns! It was a fantastical sight. And it bore alien names, in foreign languages, beginning with “manicure,” through “coiffure” all the way to “savoir vivre” and “bon ton.” And I too was European, I was washed clean, I was purified. And in the outside world too everything was purified and treated, everything was a glistening pump, a patent-leather shoe, a walking cane, a fashionable peignoir.

  And how easy it all was, how accessible; it required only agreed-upon signals. With the help of a small number of these I won my wife’s heart, and in the Ministry too everything took place with the aid of agreed-upon signals. The manicurists, secretaries, and chorus-girls who constituted the usual quarry of the employees of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs also required only agreed-upon signals, a handful of operations—movie, dinner, dance club, and sofa—like slot machines they gave out caresses when the right switches were pressed. True, everywhere there gleamed English snap fasteners; but these gave way so long as one knew their abracadabra and turned the appropriate key. In this way, the most thoroughly armored women (and I’m convinced that this included my wife) opened like oysters when one uttered the right, time-honored words and performed the ritual gestures. Everything was as smooth, facile, fluid as my wife’s conventional leg, and likewise everything narrowed downward into a teensy little foot, and everything depended on the following few words: “Did you invite the Piotrowskis to te
a?”

  But the other thing with the maids was different, a little harder; let’s recall, incidentally, how it was with that thing. There, on all sides appeared stubborn resistance, and in addition a sort of dreadful arousability; my eyes, nose, touch did not want it, only I wanted it. I’m walking along, staring intently from a distance, and I see—she’s walking along, waggling her rump, plodding sluggishly on her short, fleshy calves, bare in summer and in winter wrapped in thick white cotton stockings. I quicken my pace; but here already my overcoat and bowler hat make themselves felt, already the difficulty and the torment are beginning. Because of course I want to see her face, to see what she’s like; yet how can I look at her, she’s an object of embarrassment. What will the ladies say, what will the elegant hats think of my bowler? And so I pass the maid, walking at a smart pace; then I turn around on some pretext (and now it’s already harder to walk, I can already feel my movements being hindered beneath my English overcoat), I cast a fleeting glance, and at last I know what she’s like. Is she one of the red-faced and saucy ones, or one of the pallid and puddingy ones, or one of the browbeaten and timid ones, or a shrill one, or a giggling one? And when, after numerous household goods stores and numerous idle chats with her friends, she turns into a gateway, then I rush forward, catch her on the kitchen steps, and ask breathlessly:

  “Does Mrs. Kowalska live here?”

  The maid doesn’t yet suspect anything; she diligently heaves her shapeless legs onto the steps and says she doesn’t know. In the meantime my ear listens for a rustle, ascertaining that no one is coming down from upstairs nor up from downstairs, that no mistress is about; then quietly, bashfully (with my heart pounding) I suggest:

  “Maybe we could get acquainted.”