Cosmos

by Witold Gombrowicz

  Yet it wasn’t until after the cat that the prospect of taking fresh air, of entertainment and change appealed to us to the same degree that the house became stifling . . . and Roly-Poly, after saying “you thought and thought and finally thought up something” and “enough talk, Leon, enough,” began to view this project more favorably, especially since Leon remarked that this would be a convenient way to reciprocate socially toward Lena’s two girlfriends from Zakopane. Finally then, Leon’s insistence on “emerging from his boar’s den” was answered by Roly-Poly’s culinary and other activities, making sure that the said social reciprocation would turn out first class.

  And so, while the configuration: stick—sparrow—cat—mouth—hand and so on, and so on (with all their offshoots, ramifications, tentacles), while, like I say, this configuration persisted, a fresh, healthier trend emerged, everyone happily assented, in a fit of good cheer Roly-Poly cautioned me and Fuks: “it will be sweet,” because both Lena’s friends are newlyweds, therefore no less than three cute couples “in the honey state” will be taking part in this excursion, it will be a pleasant, social diversion, so much more original than the usual excursions to places already “banalized.” Of course this too was happening in connection with the cat. The cat was the spiritus novens, if it were not for the cat no one would have been eager to go on this excursion . . . in any case this activity distracted us from the cat . . . brought relief . . . in the last few days some kind of torpidity had settled in, no one felt like doing anything, suppers, one after the other, as regular as the nightly moon, unchanging, while constellations, arrangements, configurations suffered a certain wear and tear and paled . . . I had begun to worry that everything would slow to a snail’s pace, like a chronic illness, a chronic entanglement . . . So it was better for something to happen, even this excursion. Yet at the same time I was somewhat surprised at Leon’s zeal, he constantly returned to that day twenty-seven years ago when, lost, he stumbled upon such a fantastic sight (so strike me, beat and torture me—I can’t piece it all together—I was wearing my old shirt, take note, the color of coffee, the one in the photo, ah but which pantaloons, eh? . . . dear God, y’ know, I dunno, all lost and vanished, something was there somehow somewhere, and my legs, I was washing my legs, washing where, washing in what, dear, dear God, something is coming back, not coming back, sweet Jesus and Mary, oh, my tormented pate, thinking and thinking . . . ), and I found this surprising, this concurrence seemed more and more significant, namely that he and I were both sinking, each in his own creations, in his own way, he in the past, I in all those trifling details.

  Needless to say my suspicions rose again, did he or did he not have a hand in it . . . the sparrow . . . the stick . . .How many times had I told myself, nonsense! Yet there was something about him, yes, something about him, his bald and spherical, bespectacled face grimacing with pain, but also like that of a glutton, his gluttony was obvious, and a sly gluttony at that . . . suddenly he takes off from the table and promptly returns with a dried weed: “This here is from there-hum! It’s my keep-a-sakum to this day! Yes from there, that astonishing-marvelosum place, yet devil only knows . . . did I pick it in the meadow? . . . or by the roadside? . . . ”

  He stands there, weed in hand, his head bald, while something is running through my head: “Weed . . . weed . . . stick? . . . ”

  Still nothing.

  Two days, three days passed. Finally, one morning at seven o’clock we were boarding our horse carts, one could imagine that we were indeed parting ways: in front of us stood the house, already in a state of abandonment and stamped with imminent loneliness, it was to remain under Katasia’s care, she was given instructions concerning various precautions, that she should keep an eye on everything, not leave the doors ajar—in case of emergency, Katasia, knock on the neighbors’ door—yet these orders concerned something that would soon be separate from us, left behind. And that’s what happened. In the listless dawn the trusty horses set out along the sandy road, the house disappeared, the pair of dappled mares trotted, the mountain peasant sat ahead in the driver’s seat, the cart shook and squeaked, Ludwik, Lena, and I sat on well-padded seats (Fuks was traveling with the Leons in the first cart), our eyes heavy from lack of sleep . . . after the house disappeared only movement remained, bouncing in the ruts, sleepy noises of the ride and things passing by . . . but the excursion had not quite begun, first we had to drop by a pension to pick up one of the young couples. More jolting. We arrive, the young couple scrambles into the cart with all kinds of small packages, laughter, barely-awake kisses with Lena, conversation, though listless, everything faint . . .

  We emerged onto the main road and dropped into the countryside opening before us, we are moving. The horses are trotting, slowly. A tree. It approaches, passes, vanishes. A fence and a house. A little field planted with something. Sloping meadows and rounded hills. A rack wagon. A sign on a barrel. A car passes us at full speed. Our ride is filled with shaking, squeaking, rocking, trotting, the horses’ rumps and tails, the mountain peasant with his whip, and above it all the early morning sky, and the sun, already wearisome, already beginning to burn our necks. Lena was bouncing up and down and swaying with the cart, but that wasn’t important, actually nothing was important in the slow vanishing that makes up a ride, something else was preoccupying me, something that had no flesh, it was the relation of the speed with which closer objects came and went, to the slower coming and going of objects farther away, and also in comparison to the quite distant ones that almost stood still—that’s what was preoccupying me. I thought that during a ride objects appear, only to disappear, objects are unimportant, the landscape is unimportant, the only thing that is left is appearance and disappearance. A tree. A field. Another tree. It passes.

  I wasn’t present. Isn’t it true (I thought), that one is almost never present, or rather never fully present, and that’s because we have only a halfhearted, chaotic and slipshod, disgraceful and vile relationship with our surroundings; and, what’s more, people who take part in social games, on an excursion for example (I figured), are not even ten percent present. And, in our case especially, the pressing wave of objects and objects, of views and views, the vastness after such a recent confinement, only yesterday in fact, when we were within the ambit of tight clods of dirt, motes, dryness, cracks, etc., etc., pustulations and glasses, bottles, yarns, corks, etc., etc. and patterns arising out of them, etc. etc., this wave was simply dissolving everything, a huge river, an inundation, a deluge, immeasurable waters. I was vanishing, next to me Lena was vanishing. Jolting. Trotting. Scanty, sleepy little conversations with the new couple. Nothing really, except that I’m moving away with Lena from the house where Katasia stayed behind, and moment by moment we are farther away, and in a moment we’ll be even farther away, while there, the house is there, the wicket-gate, the puny whitewashed trees tied to stakes, and the house is there, while we are moving farther and farther away.

  Yet in time our cart became animated, the new couple, he, Lukie, she, Lulu, began to come to life and soon, after the initial “oh no, Lukie, did I forget the thermos,” and “Lulu, move that backpack, it’s hurting me,” they totally abandoned themselves to luluing!

  Lulu, younger than Lena, plump and pink, with cute little dimples, little peek-a-boo fingers, with her pocketbook, handkerchief, umbrella, rouge, cigarette lighter, twirled in the midst of it all and prattled hee-hee-hee, so this is the road to Kościeliska, it’s jolting us, I like it, it’s been a while since I’ve had such a jolting, how long has it been, Lukie, since you’ve had such a jolting, what a small porch, look Lena, I’d have a little living room there, Lukie would have his study by the big window, I’d get rid of those figurines in the garden, I hate those little dwarfs, do you like those dwarfs, Lena? You didn’t forget the film, did you, Lukie? And the binoculars? Lukie ow-ow, how that board is cutting into my bum, oh, oh, what are you doing, what’s this mountain? And Lukie was just like Lulu, though stocky and with thick calves . . . yet c
hubby-cheeked, all of a dither, rounded at the hips, with upturned nose, patterned socks, little Tyrolean hat, a camera, little blue eyes, a vanity case, plump little hands, wearing knickers. Intoxicated at being a pair of Lulus—he, Lukie, she, Lulu—they abandoned themselves to luluing, played up to one another, so when Lulu saw a pretty villa and remarked that her mother is accustomed to creature comforts, Lukie too let it drop that his mother takes the waters abroad every year and added that his mother has a collection of Chinese lampshades, upon which Lulu said that her mother has seven ivory elephants. One couldn’t resist smirking a little at this twaddle, yet my smirk gave them new gusto, so they twaddled on, and their twaddle linked up with the insignificance that was moving monotonously through the horses’ trot, a distancing movement, splitting the land into concentric circles, radiating faster or slower. Ludwik pulled out his watch.

  “Half-past nine.”

  The sun. Heat. Nonetheless the air was fresh.

  “Let’s have a bite of something.”

  And yet the truth is that I’m going away with Lena—this is important, strange, significant, how could I not have grasped its significance until now, considering that everything was left behind there, in the house, or in front of the house, so much, so much, beginning with the bed, then the tree, and even the final touching of the spoon . . . and now here we are homeless . . . somewhere else . . . while the house is moving away with its constellations and configurations, with the whole affair, it is already “back there,” it’s “back there,” and the sparrow is “back there,” in the bushes, the blotches of sunlight on the black earth are also “back there” . . . oh how lofty, except that my thought about this loftiness is also constantly receding and, by receding, growing weaker . . . under the influx of landscapes. (Yet at the same time, and with total presence of mind, as if out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a fact worthy of attention: the sparrow was receding, but its existence did not weaken, it merely became that which was receding, that’s all.)

  “Sandwiches, where is the thermos, give me that piece of paper, Lukie, leave me alone, where are the mugs mother gave us, be careful! You’re stupid, Lukie!” “You’re stupid, Lulu! Ha, ha, ha!”

  The other was no longer an issue; and yet, by not being an issue, it was an issue. Lena’s little face was slight, barely perceptible, but Ludwik’s face was also as if he were not alive, it was annihilated by space that stretched as far as the barrier of the mountain chain which, in turn, stretched on, ending at the limits remoteness in a mountain of unknown name. I generally didn’t know most of their names, at least half the things we saw were unnamed, mountains, trees, weeds, vegetables, tools, settlements.

  We were in the highlands.

  What about Katasia? In the kitchen? With her lips . . . and I glimpsed Lena’s little mouth, what’s happening with it, so far away from the other connotation, how is it doing separated from . . . nothing, this was a mouth traveling in a cart on an excursion, I ate a piece of turkey, the provisions Roly-Poly had prepared were tasty.

  Slowly new life began to evolve on the cart, as if on a distant planet, and so Lena, and even Ludwik, let themselves be drawn by the Lulus into luluing, and Lena exclaimed, “what are you doing, Ludwik?!” while he in turn said, “calm down, honey!” . . . I watched on the quiet, unbelievable, so they too could be like that? So that’s how they were? A strange ride, unexpected, we began our descent from the highlands, the distances became shorter, the swelling of the land crept down on either side, Lena was threatening him with her finger, he was blinking his eyes . . . a frivolous, superficial gaiety, in any case they were capable of it . . . interesting . . . moving away ultimately had its privileges, and in the end I too managed to come up with a couple of wisecracks, damn it, we were on an excursion after all!

  The mountains that had been drawing nearer for a long time suddenly lunged from all sides, we went into a valley, here at least blessed shade spread over the slopes that were blooming on high with sun-drenched greenery—and silence, God knows from where, from everywhere, and coolness flowing like a stream, so pleasant! A curve, rock faces and mountain peaks are rising, sudden chasms, exhausting screes, mellow-green domes, pinnacles, or peaks, jagged ridges and vertical surfaces falling down precipitously, bushes clinging to them, farther, boulders on high, meadows sliding in a silence that emerged inscrutable, universal, sweeping, immobile, expanding, and so overwhelming that the rattling of our cart and its insignificant rolling seemed as if something apart. The panoramas persisted for a while, then something new emerged, pressing on, it was so naked, or entangled, or glittering, at times heroic, there were precipices, indurations, crevices, variations of hanging rocks, then, pastoral scenes, for example, in ascending, descending rhythms composed of bushes, trees, wounds, lesions, and subsidences, floated in, sweet at times, at times lacey. Various things—various things—strange distances, bewildering twists and turns, a tight, imprisoned space, charging or receding, twisting and turning, striking up or down. Movement, immense, immobile.

  “Oh Lulu, dear me!”

  “Lukie, I’m scared . . . I’m afraid to sleep by myself!”

  Agglomeration, whirl and welter . . . too much, too much, too much, crowding, movement, heaping, crashing, pushing, a general hurly-burly, huge mastodons filling space that, in the blinking of an eye, would break up into thousands of details, combinations, masses of rock, brawls, in a clumsy chaos, and suddenly all those details would again collect into an overpowering shape! Just like the other time, in the bushes, that time in front of the wall, in relation to the ceiling, like in front of the pile of rubble with the whiffletree, like in Katasia’s little room, like in relation to the walls, cupboards, shelves, curtains, where forms also took shape—but while those were trifles, this was a roaring storm of matter. And I had become such a reader of still life that, in spite of myself, I examined, I searched and studied, as if indeed there were something here to decipher, and I reached for the ever-new combinations that our tiny cart rolled out before us, rattling, from the mountain womb. Yet nothing, nothing. A soaring bird appeared—high in the sky, immobile—vulture, hawk, eagle? No, it was not a sparrow, and by the very reason of not being a sparrow it was after all a non-sparrow, and being a non-sparrow, it was, in a small way, a sparrow . . .

  O God! How the sight of this solitary bird regaled me, soaring above everything, supreme! The highest point, the reigning point. Really? I had actually been tired by the disorder there, in the house, by that jumble, by the chaos of mouths, of the hangings, the cat, the kettle, Ludwik, the stick, the drain, Leon, the pounding, the banging into, the hand, the hammering, the needle, Lena, the whiffletree, Fuks’s gaze, and so on, and so on, etc., etc., etc., as in a fog, in a horn of plenty, chaos . . .While here a bird reigned in azure—hosanna!—how on earth had this tiny, distant point taken control, like a cannon shot, while chaos and confusion lay at its feet? I looked at Lena. She was staring at the bird.

  Which bypassed us in a semicircle, leaving us again with the raging uproar of the mountains, beyond which were other mountains, each consisting of varied areas abounding in pebbles—how many pebbles?—and so, that which had been “behind,” now rode across the front line of the advancing army, in a strange silence, explained in some measure by the immobility of universal movement, Lukie, wow, look at that rock! Lulu, do you see it, it’s a real nose! Look, Lukie, there’s a granddad with a pipe! Look to the left, do you see it, he’s kicking with his high-top boots! Kicking who, kicking where, there’s a chimney! Another turn crowding in, a balcony drifting in, then a triangle—and a tree that suddenly captivates you, clinging somewhere—one of many—also captivating, but then it dissolved and disappeared. A priest.

  In a cassock. He was sitting by the road, on a rock. A priest in a cassock, sitting on a rock, in the mountains? I was reminded of the kettle, because the priest was like the kettle, back there. The cassock was also extra.

  We stopped.

  “Can we give you a ride, Father?”

 
Chubby-cheeked and young, with a duck-like nose, his face round like a peasant’s jutted out of his priestly collar—he lowered his gaze. “May God repay you,” he said. Still he didn’t stir. His hair was sticky with sweat. When Ludwik asked him if we could give him a ride somewhere, he didn’t seem to hear, he got in the cart mumbling his thanks. Trot, rattle, riding onward.

  “I was hiking in the mountains . . . I went off the road a bit.”

  “You must be tired, Father.”

  “Oh, yes . . . I live in Zakopane.”

  The hem of his cassock was soiled, his shoes weary, his eyes strangely red—had he also spent the night in the mountains? He explained slowly: he had gone on a trip, lost his way . . . but why on a trip in a cassock? Why lost in a terrain cut through by a valley? When did he start on his trip? Not questioning him too much, we gave him this and that out of our provisions, he ate sheepishly, then sat helpless, the cart jolted him, the sun was scorching, there was no more shade, we were thirsty but didn’t feel like pulling out the bottles, just riding and riding. The shadows of protruding boulders and rocks bore down perpendicularly to the very bottom on either side, and we heard the rush of a cascade. We rode on. Up to this point I had never been interested in the fact, curious as it may be, that for ages a certain percentage of people have been isolated by the cassock and assigned to God’s service—that branch of experts on God, heavenly functionaries, spiritual civil servants. Here however, in the mountains, was this guy in black, mixing in with our travel, who did not fit into the mountain chaos because he was something extra . . . exploding, overflowing . . . almost like the kettle?