Cosmos

by Witold Gombrowicz

  “Signs? Perhaps you can even see some from here.” (Fuks said this.)

  “I beg your pardon. Come again?”

  “Who can assure you that there are no other signs, even right here, in this room . . . signs that we haven’t noticed yet?”

  “And you? Don’t you suspect anyone?” I asked Lena.

  She cowered . . . “I don’t suppose anyone wishes me ill . . . ” (At that very moment I realized that I did not wish her ill . . . oh, to die! No longer to exist! What a burden, what a millstone! Oh death!)

  Leon turned to us, complaining dolefully:

  “This is so . . . so . . . unpleasant, gentlemen, so disagreeable . . . So . . . malicious! If one only knew which end of the stick to grab, but why, no one knows, not from over the fence, nor from inside, so who could it be, neither from the right nor the left, what quirkiness, I’d call the police, but what would that do, start tongues wagging, it’s laughable, they’d just laugh, one can’t even call the police, and yet, gentlemen . . . and yet, cat or no cat, it’s not just the cat itself, the whole thing is abnormal, crazed, an aberration or something, suffice it to say that a whole field of thought is opening up, one can think, imagine whatever one likes, mistrust everyone, suspect everyone, and who can assure me that it’s not one of us sitting right here, after all it’s madness, perversion, aberration, so there, it can happen to anyone, to me, and to my wife, and to Katasia, and to you gentlemen, and to my daughter, if it’s an aberration there are no safeguards, none at all, an aberration fiat ubi vult, ha, ha, ha, as they say, it can happen everywhere-um, within everyone, within every person and in any shape or form, ha, ha, hum, hum! Such wickedness! It’s such a . . . swinishum, befouled thingee . . . in my old age, to have a home, a family, and not even be sure of the company I’m keeping, what sort of place is this where I’m like a stray dog in my own home, where I can’t trust anyone, where my own house is like a lunatic asylum . . . that’s why all my life I . . . all my work, my efforts, concerns, exertions, my entire life’s battles that I can’t even count or remember, entire years, God be merciful, years, and within them months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds, impossible to count, impossible to remember, a mountain of these seconds of mine imbued with toil . . . and now I can’t trust anyone? Why? What have I done to deserve this? One could say I’m dramatizing and that the cat is insignificant, and yet, gentlemen, the matter is unpleasant, unpleasant, because who can assure me that it will end with the cat, that after the cat it won’t be a bigger beast, if there is a lunatic in the house, what can one know, of course I don’t want to exaggerate, but there’s no question of peace any more until this is cleared up, even in one’s own home one is at the mercy of . . . I say, at the mercy of . . .

  “Be quiet!”

  Pained, he looked at Roly-Poly:

  “I’ll be quiet, I’ll be quiet, fine, but I’ll think . . . To think, that I will not stop!”

  Lena said aside through her teeth “you’d better stop,” and I thought I noticed something new in her tone, something that wasn’t part of her before, and yet . . . what can one know? I ask you, what can one know? A rickety cart carrying people went by on the road, I only glimpsed their heads as they passed the last bush, dogs were barking, a shutter on the floor above, a child whining, a general rustling inside the house, universal, widespread, in unison, while on the cupboard there is a bottle, a cork . . .Would she be capable of killing a small child? She, with such a gentle gaze? But, if she were to kill, this would immediately meld with her gaze into a perfect whole, it would turn out that the child-killer can have a gentle gaze . . .What can one know? The cork. The bottle.

  “What are you two up to? . . . ” Leon said, getting on his high horse.

  “Perhaps you can give us some advice?” Fuks responded meekly. “Let’s look at the arrow and the stick . . . ”

  It was hot, one of those moments in small rooms on the first floor when it’s sultry, when one can see the dust in the air and be overwhelmed by exhaustion, my legs hurt, the house was wide open, and constantly there was something, somewhere, a bird flew by, a humming everywhere, Fuks was saying: “ . . . here I agree with you, director, in any case it’s good that we came to an understanding, and if anyone should see anything new, we should immediately, ladies and gentlemen, share it with one another . . . ” Drozdowski. Drozdowski. All of this—digging itself out with difficulty from under this sticky grease, lost in a crowd like someone who has managed to crawl halfway out, who is already on his knees but at any moment will fall back again, so many, so many details to consider . . . I remembered that I hadn’t had any breakfast . . . I had a headache. I wanted a cigarette, I put my hand in my pocket, no matches, the matches were at the other end of the table, next to Leon, to ask or not to ask, finally I showed him my cigarette, he nodded, extended his arm, pushed the box in my direction, I reached for it.

  chapter 6

  They buried it behind the fence, by the road. Ludwik took charge when, returning from the office, he heard the whole story. Disgusted, he mumbled “what savagery,” he hugged Lena and then proceeded to bury the cat in the ditch. I loafed around . . . it was out of the question to study for my exams, I went out on the road, came back, wandered about in the little garden. From a distance, cautiously, so no one would notice, I had a look at the spruce, and at the trunk that Roly-Poly had pounded, at the door to Katasia’s room, at the place around the corner of the house where I stood when I heard the din from the second floor . . . in those places and things, in the juxtaposition of those places and things, was hidden the path that had led me to the strangling, if I could appropriately decipher the arrangement of those places and things, I might find out the truth about my having strangled the cat. I even walked into the kitchen on some pretext to check up on Katasia’s mouth one more time. But the trouble was that there was so much of everything, the labyrinth was expanding, lots of things, lots of places, lots of events, isn’t it so that every pulsation of our life is composed of billions of trifles, what is one to do? That’s it, I didn’t know what to do. I had absolutely nothing to do. I was unemployed.

  I even went into the empty guest room where I had first seen Lena and her leg on the iron mesh of the bed, I returned and stopped in the hallway to recall the creaking of the floor when, that first night, I had gone out looking for Fuks. I identified the little arrow on the ceiling, I looked at the ashtray, and, gazing around, I found the little piece of cork on the neck of the bottle—but my looking around was mindless, I did nothing more than look, among the minutiae I felt as weak as someone convalescing from a severe illness, whose world boils down to a small beetle or to a patch of sunlight . . . and at the same time like someone who, after time long passed, tries to re-create his unfathomable, inscrutable history (I smiled because I remembered Leon with his minutes, his seconds) . . . what was I looking for, what was I looking for? Some basic tone? A leading melody, a core round which I could re-create, compose the story of my life. But the distraction, not only within me, intrinsic to me, but also flowing in from without, from the diversity and overabundance, from the entanglement, did not allow me to concentrate on anything, everything was equally important and equally unimportant, I just came and went . . . The cat. Why on earth did I strangle her cat? Looking over the clods of dirt in the garden, those that Fuks and I had inspected during our progress along the line indicated by the arrow (when I was marking the direction with the broom), I thought that it would be easier to find an answer if I were less puzzled about my feelings for her. What did I feel for her?—I wondered, separating the blades of grass, the same ones as before—what did I feel? Love, love—my foot, passion, yes, but what sort? It all began because I didn’t know, just didn’t know who she was, what she was like, she was complex, blurry, inscrutable (as I had thought while staring at the continents, archipelagos, and nebulae of the ceiling), she was intangible and tiresome, I could imagine her this way or that, in a hundred thousand situations, consider her from one side or another, lose her, then fi
nd her again, turn her every which way (I wove my trend of thought as I was looking over the terrain between the house and the kitchen, watching the little white trees tied to stakes with ropes), but there could be no doubt that her emptiness was sucking me in, soaking me up, it was she and she alone, yes, yes, but, I wondered, as my eyes became lost in the twists and turns of the bent, damaged drainpipe, what did I want with her? To caress? To torture? To humiliate? To adore? Or did I want something swinish, or angelic, with her? What was important to me: to wallow in her, or to embrace and cuddle her? I don’t know, don’t know, that’s just the point, that I don’t know . . . I could take her under the chin and look into her eyes, how am I supposed to know, how . . . Or spit in her mouth. And yet she weighed on my conscience, emerging as if from a dream, with a heavy despair that trailed like flowing hair . . . And then the cat seemed even more horrible . . .

  In my wanderings I visited the sparrow—even though it bothered me more and more that the sparrow played a role disproportionate to its significance and, even though it could not be linked to anything, it kept emerging, heavy and motionless in the background. However (I thought, walking slowly down that burning-hot road and going deeper through the dried grasses), one could not deny certain concurrences, such as the cat, the sparrow, they were somewhat related, a cat eats sparrows after all, ha, ha, how sticky is this cobweb of connections! Why does one have to suffer from the favor and disfavor of associations?

  This, however, was secondary; it actually seemed to me that something was slowly breaking through to the foreground, something more significant, something even importunate . . . arising from the fact that I not only strangled the cat but also hanged it. Granted, I hanged it because I didn’t know what to do with the carcass, it occurred to me mechanically to hang it, after so many adventures with the sparrow and the stick . . . I hanged it out of anger, furious that I had let myself be drawn into this stupid venture, so for the sake of revenge, also to play a trick, to have a good laugh and at the same time to turn the suspicion in another direction—granted, yes, granted—but I had indeed hanged the cat, and this hanging (even though it was my very own, taking its origins from within me) became linked with the hangings of the sparrow and the stick—three hangings, no longer two hangings, that was a fact. A naked fact. Three hangings. That’s why hanging began to rise in this totally cloudless heat, and it wasn’t entirely senseless to walk toward the thicket, to the sparrow, to see how it hung—this came to me who, after all, was lost, who was waiting for something to finally emerge, to take over. To see how it hung? . . . I stopped at the edge where the bushes began, and I stood, one foot in front of the other, in the grass, better not, let it be, if I go there the hanging will gain in power, obviously, one has to be careful . . . who knows, indeed, it’s almost certain that if we hadn’t gone to the sparrow, it would not have become so . . . better be careful here! And I stood in one spot, knowing full well that any hesitation would only increase the weight of my moving forward, into the bushes . . . which is what happened. I entered. Shade, it was pleasant. A butterfly took wing. I’m already here—the dome of bushes, a recess, it’s darker here, it hangs there on a piece of wire . . . here it is.

  Always busy with the same thing, doing the same thing—it hung just as when Fuks and I had entered—it hung and hung. I watched the dried-up little ball that resembled a sparrow less and less, funny, I could laugh, no, better not, but on the other hand I didn’t quite know what to do because, after all, since I was already here it was more than just to look at it . . . I lacked some appropriate gesture, perhaps a wave of my hand, saying something . . . no, better not, let’s not exaggerate . . . Oh, how the blotches of sunlight spread over the black earth! And that beetle! The tree trunk, the rounded fir! Since I came here to bring my hanging of the cat to the sparrow, it has become clear that it is not at all a trifle, it is a deed that I have inflicted upon myself, amen. Amen. Amen. The little leaves are curling at the edges from the heat. What could there be in that discarded can, who discarded it? And the ants, I hadn’t noticed them before. Let’s go. It’s great that you’ve linked your hanging of the cat with the hanging of the sparrow, now this is something totally different! Why something different? Don’t ask. Let’s go, what’s this rag? I was back and opening the gate to the garden, the sun scorched me from the diffuse, trembling sky. Supper. As always, Leon was jokie-jokie, meatie-pie Roly-Polieee feediedum, and yet the artificiality and tension engendered by the cat were infecting us, and even though everyone was making an effort to be totally at ease, this naturalness actually smacked of the theatrical. Not that they suspected each other, no, not at all, yet they were in a net of circumstantial evidence, already entangled in spying, the intangibility of it pressed on, creating a kind of tangibility in the air . . . no, no one suspected anyone else, yet no one could vouch that the others were not suspecting him, so they treated each other politely, kindly, just in case . . . slightly embarrassed that in spite of their efforts they were not quite themselves, so that this, the easiest thing in the world, was becoming difficult for them and forced. For this reason their total behavior had somehow undergone a kind of distortion, relating to the cat and to all the strange discoveries connected with it, whether they liked it or not, Roly-Poly, for example, came out accusing Leon, or Lena, or both of them, that they had forgotten to remind her of something and this was, on her part, in some way cat-related, as if she had done something or other because of the cat . . . and Leon’s talkie-talk also contained within itself a slightly morbid distortion, peeking in that direction . . . This was familiar to me, they were following in my footsteps, their gaze became labored, it began to avoid direct contact with another face, it ferreted in corners, ran deep, searched around, checked, on the shelf, behind the wardrobe . . . and the familiar wallpaper, that family backdrop, became a jungle or else it stretched into the giddy distances of the archipelagos, those continents on the ceiling. What if . . .What if . . . Oh, at first these were minor aberrations, tics, an insignificant affectation, still innocent, they were far removed from the state in which, as if in a fever, one carries out crazy calculations, computing the relation of squares in the floor to stripes on a rug, because what if, what if . . . And, of course, they did not avoid the subject of the cat, indeed, they talked about the cat as well; but they talked about the cat only because not talking about the cat would have been worse than talking about the cat, and so on, and so on, etc., etc., etc.

  Lena’s hand. On the tablecloth, as always by the plate and just next to the fork, and in the light shed by the lamp—I saw it, as I had recently seen the sparrow, it lay here, on the table, as the other hung on the branch . . . the hand here, it there . . . and with a great effort I tried, as if a lot depended on it, I tried to be clearly aware that while the hand is here, the sparrow is there . . . it is there, like the stick and like the cat . . . it is in its thicket, in this evening’s approaching night, on the other side of the road, in the bushes, while the hand is here, on the tablecloth, under the lamp . . . I pursued this by way of an experiment, out of curiosity, with all my might, indeed by the sweat of my brow, I worked hard, but what of it, the sparrow was there, the hand was here, my strivings, my efforts could not go beyond this, it was all inept, no, it would not connect—and her hand lay quietly on the white tablecloth. For naught. For naught. Oh, oh! Her hand picks up the fork, it picks up—no, doesn’t pick up—it moves its fingers closer, covers the fork with its fingers . . .My hand, next to my fork, moves closer, it picks up—doesn’t pick up—but instead it covers the fork with its fingers. I silently lived the ecstasy of this mutual understanding, albeit false, albeit one-sided, concocted by me . . . But, there was a spoon nearby, half a centimeter from my hand and, exactly in the same way, a spoon lay half a centimeter from her hand—should I lean the side of my hand against the spoon? I can do it without attracting anyone’s attention, the distance is tiny. I’m doing it—my hand has just moved and is touching the spoon—and I see that her hand has also moved and is a
lso touching the other spoon.

  All this within time that was reverberating like a gong, filled to the brim, cascade, vortex, swarm, cloud, the Milky Way, dust, sounds, events, this and that, etc., etc., etc. . . . Such a trifle on the very boundary of chance and non-chance, what can one know, maybe yes, maybe no, her hand has moved, maybe intentionally, or maybe half-intentionally, half-unintentionally, fifty, fifty. Roly-Poly removes a lid, Fuks tugs at his cuff . . .

  Next morning we left early for an excursion in the mountains.

  This was Leon’s idea, nothing new, something he’s been chattering about for quite a while, saying I’ll deal you something new, I’ll let you in on a strange sweetness in those fatherland mountains of ours, I’ll whirr-in a real tidbit for you to chew on, never mind the Turnias, the Kościeliskas, the Sea Eye, which are, if you’ll pardon the expression, oldie, postcard-like slippers, licked and crumpled, ha, ha, old-socks guano tourism, they are nothing, but from a certain mountain panorama I’ll spin you a yarn of yarns, a fistful of sights, I tell you, first class primo, I’ll set your soul hopping for the rest of your life, a treasure and a dream, miraculum miraculosum, the one and only dream-like enchantment. Where did I get this idea, you’ll ask. The answer is that I accidentally lost my way, how many years ago was it? . . . twenty-seven . . . in July, I remember it as if it were today, I lost my way in Kościeliska, I crawled along, came upon a vista valley panorama the likes of which you’ve never seen, a couple of miles off the main road, you can get there in a horse cart, there’s even a chalet, though abandoned, the bank bought it, yes, I inquired about it, they were supposed to submit proposals, let me tell you, what a sight! . . . A vision, I’d say, draped with nature’s garland, a grassy reverie, a flowery and tree-like reverie, a brook-like babbling poetry, with alpine hills and dales in the spirit of dark greenery, and yet with a lofty and singular loftiness, hey, hey, O my God, tutti frutti, finger-licking! We could go for a day, for two days, by horse carts, with bedding and delicious travel morsels, on my word of honor, for one’s whole life, for life, once one has set his dreaming eyes upon it, ha, ha, ha! I live on it to this day, I swore to go there once more before I died, O God, O God, years pass, I’ll keep my vow! . . .