Cosmos

by Witold Gombrowicz

  This discouraged me. Interestingly, when the eagle or the hawk shot above everything, I felt invigorated—probably because (I thought), being a bird, it related to the sparrow—but also because, and perhaps particularly because, it hung there, uniting within itself the sparrow and the hanging, and allowing the idea of hanging to unite the hanged cat with the hanged sparrow, yes, yes, (I saw it more and more clearly), and it even gave the idea of hanging a preeminence, hanging above all else, regal . . . and if I’m able (I thought) to decipher the idea, discover its main thread, to understand or even have just a sense of where all this is striving, at least in this one aspect of the sparrow, of the stick and the cat, then it will be easier for me to deal with the mouths and everything else that revolves around them. Because (I was trying to read this charade) there is no doubt (and it was a painful puzzle) that I myself am the secret of the mouth-lip union, it happened within me, I and no one else had created this union—but (attention!), by hanging the cat I had connected myself (probably? to a certain degree?) with the other group, that of the sparrow and the stick, I belonged, then, to both groups—doesn’t it follow then, that the union of Lena and Katasia can happen only through me?—and wasn’t I really the one who, by hanging the cat, had established a bridge uniting everything . . . in what sense? Oh, that wasn’t clear, but in any case something had begun to form itself, an embryo of a totality was being born, and here a huge bird hangs above me—hanging. Well and good. But why the devil does the priest butt in, from outside, from a different barrel, unexpected, superfluous, idiotic? . . .

  Like the kettle, back there! And my annoyance now was no less than then . . . when it hurled me at the cat . . . (yes, perhaps I had hurled myself at the cat because of the kettle, unable to bear the drop that caused the cup to overflow . . . and maybe, by doing just about anything, one will force reality to emerge, just like throwing any old thing into the bushes when something indistinct is moving there) . . . yes, yes, was strangling the cat my infuriated response to the provocation of the nonsense of the kettle? . . . In any case, be careful, shaveling, because who can guarantee that I won’t throw something at you, that I won’t do something to you . . . something . . . He sat, not even suspecting my fury, we drove on, mountains and mountains, the horses’ trot, the heat . . . My eyes caught a little detail . . . he was moving his fingers . . .

  He unconsciously spread the thick fingers of both his hands, then intertwined them, the worm-like working of his fingers down below, between his knees, was persistent and unpleasant.

  Conversation.

  “Are you all in Kościeliska for the first time?”

  To which Lulu, in the tone of a bashful schoolgirl replied: “Yes, Father, this is our honeymoon trip, we got married last month.”

  Lukie immediately jumped in with a cute little expression on his face, no less bashfully delightful: “We are a couple of little newlyweds!”

  The priest cleared his throat, disconcerted. So Lulu said, like a schoolgirl squealing to the principal on her classmates: “They are too, Father,” she pointed to Lena and Ludwik, “they are too!”

  “They’ve recently been given permission to . . . !” Lukie exclaimed.

  Ludwik said:“Hmmmmm!”in a deep bass-baritone, then Lena’s little smile, the priest’s silence, oh, the Lulus, what a tone they contrived for the benefit of this high-priest! . . . who still fumbled nervously with his stubby fingers, he was pathetic, helpless, so like a peasant, and something told me that perhaps he had some little business on his conscience, what had he done with those stubby fingers? And . . . and . . . oh . . . oh . . . those fingers down below, moving . . . and my fingers . . . and Lena’s . . . on the tablecloth. The fork. The spoon.

  Lukie, leave me alone, he’s an ordained priest, what will he think! What’s the matter with you, Lulu, surely an ordained priest won’t have any bad thoughts! Lukie, wow, if you knew how your cheek is trembling! And suddenly . . .We turned off. We cut across a valley, and by a difficult and barely visible cart path we rode into the side of the mountains! We were in a canyon that was closing in, but beyond that, a lesser, incidental, ravine opened to one side, where we trotted among new peaks and mountainsides and were now totally cut off . . . and this too was incidental . . . new trees, grasses, rocks, the same yet totally different, new, and constantly being stamped as fortuitous by our turn off the main road. Yes, yes, I thought, he may have done something, he has something on his conscience.

  What? A sin. What kind of a sin? Hanging a cat. That’s a trivial matter, killing a cat, what sin is that . . . yet this man in a cassock, descended from the confessional, from the church, from prayer, crawls onto a road, crawls into our cart, and of course immediately there is sin crime conscience penance, tra, la, la, tra, la, la, such a ti-ri-ri . . . he crawls into the cart, and there is sin.

  Sin, so actually he is a colleague, a priest-colleague, he fumbles with his stubby fingers, while he has something on his conscience. Just as I have! Comradeship and brotherhood, he’s fumbling and fumbling with those stubby fingers of his, what about those fingers, maybe they too had strangled? Now there came an entirely new invasion of heaping, breakdown, a new, wonderfully green effervescence, peaceful, darkly larch-like, pine-like, sleepily azure, Lena in front of me, with her hands, and all that arrangement of hands—my hands, Lena’s hands, Ludwik’s hands—had received an infusion in the shape of the stubby-fingered priestly hands, to which I couldn’t devote sufficient attention because of the ride, the mountains, the incidental nature of things, God Almighty, merciful God, why can’t one focus one’s attention on anything, the world is a hundred million times too abundant, what will I do with my inattention, hey, you mountain husbandman, you’re dancing the mountain robbers’ dance, Lulu, let him be, Lukie, leave me alone, Lulu, oh dear, my leg’s asleep, we’re riding, riding, onward, well and good, one thing is clear, that bird hung too high, and it’s just fine that the priest-colleague is fumbling down below, we’re riding, riding, the movement is monotonous, an immense river flows on, flows by, the rambling, the trotting, the heat, scorching heat, we arrive.

  It’s two o’clock in the afternoon. Our surroundings are more spacious now, a dell of sorts, a meadow, pines and spruces, a lot of boulders sticking out of the meadow, a house. Wooden, with a porch. In the shade, behind the house, is the cart in which the Wojtyses had arrived with Fuks and yet another pair of newly-weds. They appeared in the doorway, a hubbub of voices, greetings, climbing down from the cart, it was a great ride, have you been here long, wait a minute, this bag here, we’re all set, Leon, take the bottles . . .

  Yet they were as if from another planet. So were we. Our stay here was the stay “somewhere else”—and the house here was plainly not the other house . . . the one that was back there.

  chapter 7

  Everything was happening at a distance. It was not the other house that had moved away from us, it was we who had moved away from it . . . and this new house, in nightmarish and forlorn deathlike silence, indifferent to our assailing noises, had no existence of its own, it existed only in the sense that it was not the other . . . I realized that as soon as I got off the cart.

  “It’s totally deserted here, not a living soul, the entire housie all to ourselves, make the most of life, mainly eating and eating, Hey brother falcons, give me vigor and brawn,* what did I tell you, this little landscape is just like such a falcon, you’ll see later, first a little bite to eat, yum, yum, yum, march, march, allons enfants de la patrie!”

  “Leon, teaspoons from the bag, Lena, napkins, please, welcome, make yourselves at home, everybody have a seat, wherever it’s comfortable, you, Reverend Father, here, please.” To which they replied: tout de suite! Yes Madame, Mrs. major-general! “Well, sit down! Two more chairs. What a banquet! Please, you, Mrs. Lulu, sit here . . . Give me those napkins!”

  They took their seats around the big table in the hall, several doors opened into the adjoining rooms, there was a staircase that led to the upper floors. The doors were o
pen, revealing rooms that were totally bare except for a few beds and chairs, lots of chairs. The table was laden with food, spirits were high—more wine anyone?—but the gaiety was of the kind that is created at parties when everyone is jolly just to avoid spoiling the mood for the others, while in fact, everyone is slightly absent, like at a railway station, like waiting for a train—and this absence was connecting with the destitution of this house found by chance, bare, without curtains, wardrobes, bed sheets, drawings, or shelves, with only windows, beds, and chairs. In this emptiness not only words but also persons reverberated loudly. Roly-Poly and Leon in particular were as if inflated in a vacuum and boomed with their persons, while their booming was accompanied by the hubbub of their guests eating heartily, pierced through by the Lulus’ giggles, and Fuks, already quite drunk, was acting like an ass, I knew he drank to drown Drozdowski and their mutual wretchedness, his alienation being similar to mine with my parents . . . he, the luckless, the dupe, the irritating civil servant, forced one to shut one’s eyes or to look away. Roly-Poly, the magnificent dispenser of salads and sausages, entertaining, entreating, inviting, please, ladies and gentlemen, try this, there’s plenty, we won’t starve, I guarantee you, and so on, and so on—busily making sure everything was tip-top, with style, well, well, an eccentric sort of expedition, fun and games, no one will be able to say they haven’t had enough to eat or drink. And also Leon’s doubling and tripling himself, the Amphitrion, the commander-in-chief, the initiator, hey, hey, all together now, before our time this forest stood,* and when the Saxon king reigns, loosen your belly’s reins,† allons, allons! Oh, how we threw ourselves about, our expletives, the feast’s hoopla, yet all of this was not fully present, it was as if undercut by a pale and crippled, rachitic halfheartedness that was weakening us . . . it even seemed to me that at times I saw myself and the others through binoculars, from a distance. Everything as if on the moon . . . So this excursion-escape has led to nothing, the more we tried to detach ourselves the stronger the “other” became . . . enough, let it be, in spite of everything that was happening I began to differentiate between this and that, I noticed a particular ecstasy that affected the Lulus at the sight of honey-couple No. 3, who had arrived with the Wojtyses.

  They called the freshly-baked hubby Tolo, or our cavalry captain, or our captain-dearie. Truly, he was every inch a cavalryman, tall, broad-shouldered, with a rosy, seemingly artless complexion, a little blond mustache, a doll of a cavalryman! Leon sang to him, “there stands Uhlan at his outpost,” but he stopped here, and he was right, since the song continues “while a heavenly maiden brings him her rose bouquet”‡—yet his freshly-baked wifie, Venie or Venomie, was of that species of resigned women who don’t aspire to be attractive because they know it’s simply not for them. God knows why. She wasn’t ugly, though her body was a bit boring, I don’t know, monotonous, yet in spite of it she had everything more or less “in the right place” as Fuks, nudging me with his elbow, whispered in my ear, and yet the very thought of caressing the back of her little neck gave you the creeps, that’s how much she wasn’t meant for it. Bodily egoism? Physical egocentricity? One sensed that her hands, legs, nose, and ears were only for herself, these were her organs, nothing more, she totally lacked that generosity which knows how to whisper to a woman that her little hand is an alluring and exciting gift. Moral severity? . . .No, no, rather a strange bodily solitude . . . which made Lulu, convulsing with a stifled giggle, whisper to Lukie “she smells OK to herself,” yes, that was the basis of her disgusting quality, she was slightly disgusting, like those body odors that are only bearable to the one who emits them. But neither Lukie nor Lulu would have had such a shocking fit, such a convulsive heeheehee, if the hubby-cavalryman were not such a lusty fellow, made for kisses that took their seat right under his little blond mustache, on his red lips—and everyone wondered what could have induced him to wed this particular woman—and the question acquired maliciousness when it became known (Lulu informed me of this in a whisper) that Venomie was the daughter of a rich industrialist. Heeheehee! The scandal, however, did not end here, on the contrary, this is where it began in full swing, because the Toleks had, worse luck (this too was obvious at first sight), no illusions about the effect they were having, and they countered human maliciousness with nothing but the purity of their intentions and the legitimacy of their rights. “Don’t I have the right?” she seemed to be saying. “I have the right! I know he’s the beautiful one, not I . . . so am I forbidden to love? No! You can’t forbid me! Everyone has the right! So I love! I love, and my love is pure and beautiful, look, I have the right not to be ashamed of it—and I’m not ashamed!” On the sidelines, not taking part in the fun and games, she nursed this feeling of hers like a treasure, calm, sedate, with eyes only for her husband, or for soaking up the green beauty of the flourishing meadows through the window, and her bosom heaved from time to time with a sigh that was almost a prayer. And, because she had the right to, her lips softly formed something like “Tolek,” those lips that were her organ, hers alone. Heeheehee!

  “Lulu, oh, oh, I’ll burst!” Then Leon, with a turkey drumstick on a fork and his head bespectacled, went on shouting that he won’t turkey with a turkey, trot, trot, and the priest sat in the corner. Fuks was looking for something, Roly-Poly brought cherries “something fruity to refresh your taste buds, if you please,” yet their noise did not drown the otherwise total silence, solitary, godforsaken. I was drinking red wine.

  Tolek, our captain-dearie, was also drinking. His head high. Actually, he did everything with his head high, letting it be known that no one has the right to doubt his love, to hell with it, as if he didn’t have the right to fall in love with this particular woman and no other, as if this love was not as good as any other! . . . and he surrounded his Venomie with tenderness: “honey, how goes it, aren’t you tired? . . . ” and he tried to rise to the heights of her ecstasy, responding to love with love. Yet there was something of the martyr in this and . . . “Lukie, hold me tight, or I’ll burst!”With the faces of innocents the Lulus lay in wait like a pair of tigers on the scent of blood for the Toleks’ every tenderness, and since the poor little priest had, on the horse-cart, provided them with considerable delight, then how much more this little pair, or any young married couple just like them, were made as if to order so that the Lulus could lulu to their hearts’ content!

  Roly-Poly with her little torte, please try it, it melts in your mouth, please—but the cat, the cat, oh, oh, the cat, first hanged, then buried under the tree, ah, ah, it was all aimed at the cat, this party was to blur the cat, that’s why they were so sociable, she and Leon! But the cat was stuck in the midst of this. I finally realized: the idea of this trip was awful, they couldn’t have thought of anything worse, the remoteness didn’t erase anything, on the contrary, it somehow solidified and confirmed it, it even seemed that for years we had lived back there with the sparrow and the cat, then arrived here years later, oh, oh, I was eating the little torte. We should have, as a matter of fact, mounted the cart and gone back, this was exactly what we should have done . . . But if we remain here in relation to the other . . .

  I was eating the little torte. I talked with Ludwik and Tolek. I was distracted, how tiresome this abundance, constantly pouring out new people, events, objects, if only the whole stream would stop for once, Lena at the table, probably weary too, her mouth and eyes smiling gently at Lulu (they were both freshly married), the Lena that was here was a faithful reflection of the other Lena, the Lena who was “relating” to Lena (this “relating” was swelling, like before, the other time, like the pounding), there was Fuks, drowning Drozdowski in alcohol, yellowish-red with his swollen ogle eyes, Ludwik, next to Lena, pleasantly sociable and calm, the priest in the corner . . . Lena’s hand on the table, next to the fork, the same hand as then, there, and I could have placed my hand on the table . . . but I didn’t want to. And yet, in spite of it all, new threads were beginning to form, independent of that other, a new,
local dynamic was growing . . . though somehow sick and weakened . . . The functioning of the three young married couples—freshly married—increased the priest’s weight and meaning, while the cassock increased the couples’ married character, and this created an especially strong matrimonial emphasis, one had the impression that the whole banquet was a wedding reception, yes, wedding reigned supreme. And the priest. There was the priest, fumbling with his fingers to be sure (he held his hands under the table, pulling them out only to eat) but still a priest who, as a priest, had to become the natural support for the Toleks against the Lulus’ devilment; and one must add that the cassock also had an effect on Mrs. Roly-Poly, who was showing (since the cat) a definite inclination toward matters of decency—Roly-Poly eyed the Lulus less and less favorably, more and more emphatically clearing her throat as Leon’s guffaws rose and were supported by Fuks’s tipsy guffaws and by the rest of our clowning in the void, in a vacuum, at the outer limits of remoteness, in the deadly silence of the mountains’ bosom, where something began again to connect, unite, create, but one still didn’t know what to latch onto—and so I latched onto this or that, I followed a line that was suggesting itself to me, leaving aside all the rest, huge and voracious—while there, in the house we had left behind, the other continued to exist, motionless.

  And suddenly a scene developed that connected me with the cat . . . through the priest . . .

  Like the first lightning from a night’s dark clouds, it exposed us all in total clarity, in relation to that other. The scene that arose was preceded by some remarks from Roly-Poly such as (to Tolek, very politely) “Mr. Tolek, please brush the sugar off Venomie’s blouse” (and to Leon, so that everyone would hear) “See, Leon, the road wasn’t that bad, we could easily have come by car, I told you that you should have asked Tadek for the car, I’m sure he wouldn’t have refused, he suggested it so many times, he said that it was at our disposal . . . ” (to Lulu, tartly) “Heavens, laughs and giggles, but Lulu-dearie isn’t eating her little torte, is she.” In the meantime Fuks was clearing the plates—unsure whether he wasn’t getting on our nerves (like on Drozdowski’s), he tried at least to buy into our graces by gathering our plates—but suddenly he rose, pulled his wry, tipsy, fish-like face into a yawn and said: