Cosmos

by Witold Gombrowicz

  They could . . . And what about the mountain men? Where are the mountain men who brought us here? I smiled in the moonlight at the docile thought of the mind’s helplessness in the face of overwhelming, confounding, entangling reality . . . No combination is impossible . . . Any combination is possible . . .

  Yes, but the threads of connections were fragile . . . fragile . . . and here was this hanging person, a brutal corpse! And its hanging brutality, pam, pam, pam, pam, was skillfully uniting with pam, pam, pam, pam, sparrow—stick—cat, it was like a, b, c, d, like one, two, three, four! What skill! What zeal for logic, and yet a subterranean one! Clear evidence, hitting one in the eye, yet subterranean.

  But this subterranean logic, hitting one in the eye, pam, pam, pam, pam, would dissolve and evanesce, as if in a fog (I thought), if one were to submit it to the discipline of ordinary logic. I had discussed it with Fuks so many times! Can one speak about a logical connection between a sparrow and a stick, united by the barely visible arrow on the ceiling in our room—so indistinct that we had discovered it by pure chance—so indistinct that we actually had to complete it, to finish drawing it in our imagination? Discovering the arrow, reaching the stick—it was like finding a needle in a haystack! Who could have—Ludwik or anyone else—constructed a net of such evanescent signs?

  And what was the connection of the sparrow and the stick with the cat, since I myself had hanged the cat? Pam pam, pam, sparrow, stick, cat, three hangings? True, three, but the third had originated from me, the third rhyme I had set up myself.

  Chimera. A delusion. Yes!—yet the hanging man hung pam, pam, pam, pam, a, b, c, d, one, two, three, four! I wanted to come closer and possibly touch him, but I stepped back a bit. Even this slight movement frightened me, as if moving in the presence of a corpse were something ill-advised and undesirable. The ghastliness of my situation—because it was indeed ghastly—lay in the fact that I was here in relation to him exactly in the same way as back there, in relation to the sparrow. Bushes and bushes. A hanging man and a hanging bird. I looked around . . . What a scene! Mountains thrusting themselves lifelessly into the smooth sheet of the sky, arrayed for the greater part with centaurs, swans, ships, lions with luminous manes, and down below a Scheherezade of meadows and bouquets enmeshed in trembling whiteness, oh, a dead globe, shining with a borrowed light—and this secondary, weakened radiance, nocturnal, was both defiling and poisonous, like a sickness. And the constellations of stars were unreal, invented, imposed, an obsession of the luminous skies!

  But it was not the moon that was the central corpse, it was Ludwik—a corpse on a tree, like a cat carcass on a wall! Pam, pam, pam, pam, pam . . . (magnified by the distant pulsation of that other night, when the driving-in of needles turned into the pounding with the hammer). I moved as if to leave—but not so fast!—the time for it has not yet come . . .

  What am I to do? The wisest thing . . . pretend that one hasn’t seen anything, leave the matter to run its own course . . . why should I meddle? That’s what I was pondering when the mouths came to mind. The mouths came to mind rather indistinctly, Lena’s lip smacking mouth, the vomiting mouths, Katasia, Lena, all the mouths, not much, just a bit. Yet they assailed me. I moved my mouth.

  I moved my mouth as if repelling them. But I thought with annoyance of something vague, something like “don’t move your mouth . . . not here . . .”Really, why should I move my mouth next to this corpse, moving it next to the corpse is not an ordinary moving. Scared, I thought I would leave.

  When I thought of leaving, something I’d been afraid of for the past minute happened: I thought of looking the corpse in the mouth. Maybe it was not this particular thought that frightened me, though I guessed that it could be something of this sort . . . it was that my wish to tear myself away from the corpse was bound to evoke a wish to accost the corpse.

  It frightened me, but then it assailed me even more strongly . . . of course . . .

  However, it would not be so easy—to move away the branches, to turn his face toward the moon, to look. It was even questionable whether I could look unless I climbed the tree. Complicated. And it would be better not to touch anything.

  I touched, I turned his head, I looked.

  His lips seemed blackened, his upper lip was greatly pulled up, his teeth were visible: a hole, a cavern. Of course I have been already, and for quite a while, peering into the thought, into the hypothesis that perhaps I’ll have to hang . . . either myself, or her. Hanging was peering into me from many sides, and there were other combinations connected with it . . . often clumsy . . . After all, I had already hanged a cat. But a cat is just a cat. While here, and for the first time, I was looking human death in the mouth. Into a human mouth-cavern—hanged. Hm.

  To leave. Leave it.

  To leave. Leave it here, just as it is. It’s none of my business, what have I got to do with this: I’m not in the least obliged to know how it happened, one takes a little sand into one’s hand and one is already helplessly buried under a heap that is unlimited, immeasurable, innumerable, impossible to encompass . . . who am I to discover all the connections, perhaps he hanged himself because, e.g., Lena sometimes sleeps with Leon . . . What can one know, one can’t know anything, nothing is known . . . I’ll leave and leave it. Yet I didn’t move, and I even thought something like “what a pity that I looked into his mouth, now I won’t be able to leave.”

  This thought surprised me on this bright night . . . yet it was quite warranted: if I were to behave in an ordinary manner in relation to the corpse I could have left; but after what I have done with my mouth and with his mouth . . . I couldn’t just leave. That is, I could have left, but I could no longer say that I was not mixed up in this . . . personally . . .

  I pondered and thought very deeply, tirelessly, yet without a single thought, and I was now beginning to be scared, truly scared, I was with the corpse, the corpse and I, I and the corpse, I could not disentangle myself, really, after looking into his mouth . . .

  I reached out my hand. I stuck my finger into his mouth.

  It was not so easy, his jaws had already stiffened somewhat—but they moved apart—I stuck in my finger, I came upon a tongue, unfamiliar and strange, and a palate that was cool and seemed low like the ceiling of a room that is too low, I pulled out my finger . . .

  I wiped my finger on my handkerchief.

  I looked around. Has anyone seen me? No. I returned the hanged man to his former position, covered him with branches as best I could, I wiped away my footprints in the grass, fast, faster, fear, nerves, run away, I worked my way through the copse and, seeing that there was nothing but the stubborn trembling of the moon, I began to walk away, faster, faster, faster! But I did not run. I walked toward the house. I slowed down. What will I tell them? How will I tell them? Now this became the difficult part. I had not hanged him. I did not hang him, but after my finger in his mouth the hanged man was also mine . . .

  And besides, there was the deep satisfaction that finally “mouths” had become connected with “hanging.” I had connected them! At last. As if I had performed my duty.

  And now one will have to hang Lena.

  Surprise now followed me at every step, I was truly surprised, because the idea of hanging was for me, thus far, theoretical, optional and, even after my finger in the mouth, the idea of hanging still did not actually change its character, it remained an eccentricity . . . or even a platitude . . . And yet the power with which the huge hanging man had driven into me, and with which I had driven into the hanging man, shattered everything. The sparrow was hanging. The stick was hanging. The cat was hanging (before they buried it). Ludwik was hanging. To hang. I was the hanging. I even stopped walking in order to give some thought to the fact that everyone, after all, wants to be himself, so I too want to be myself, for example who would love syphilis, of course no one loves syphilis, but after all, a syphilitic man also wants to be himself, namely a syphilitic, it is easy to say “I want to be well again,” and yet it sou
nds strange, as if to say “I don’t want to be who I am.”

  Sparrow.

  Stick.

  Cat.

  Ludwik.

  And now one will have to hang Lena.

  Lena’s mouth.

  (The priest’s and Venomie’s mouths, vomiting.)

  Ludwik’s mouth.

  And now one will have to hang Lena.

  A strange matter. On the one hand everything has been trivial, evanescent, even unreal, here, far away, beyond hills and dales, by the light of the moon. On the other hand the strain of the hanging and the strain of the mouths was . . . Too bad. One must.

  I walked with my hands in my pockets.

  I was on a knoll descending toward the house. Voices, singing . . . I saw the flickering of flashlights on the opposite hill about a mile away—there they were. They walked under Leon’s command, pumping up their spirits with songs and jokes. There was Lena.

  From here, from the hill, the landscape lay before me and trembled, as if chloroformed. Suddenly locating Lena right there was just like walking onto a field with a shotgun and spotting a hare in the distance. So I laughed. I began to walk toward them across the field. The sparrow is hanging, while I am walking. The stick is hanging, while I am walking. I hanged the cat, and I am walking. Ludwik is hanging, and I am walking.

  I joined them as they began their descent on a barely visible path into a thicket. There were many bushes here and sharp gravel. They proceeded carefully, Leon at the head with a flashlight. They hollered and bantered, “Lead us on, chief!” “Down, instead of up?” “The views are down below?” “I’m sitting down! I’m not going any farther.”

  “Be ye calm and patient, ta dum, ta dah, how about it, itty-bitty farther, hey-ho! Soon, soo . . . oon, this way, follow me,my troops, if you please, leave it to me! Salutations!”

  I walked behind them, they didn’t notice me. She walked a little to one side, it would not have been difficult to approach her. I could approach her, of course, in the role of a strangler, a hangman. It would not have been difficult to pull her aside (because we were already in love, she was in love with me too, who could have any doubts, since I wanted to kill her she must have been in love with me), and then one could both kill and hang her. I began to understand what it is to be a murderer. One murders when murdering becomes easy, when one has nothing better to do. When other possibilities are simply being exhausted. The sparrow is hanging, the stick is hanging, Ludwik is hanging, I’m hanging her just as I hanged the cat. I could, of course, not hang her, but . . . why cause such a disappointment? Why upset the apple cart? After so much trouble, so many combinations, hanging emerged in full, and I connected it to mouths—would I flinch now, would I forgo the hanging?

  Out of the question. I walked behind them. They amused themselves with the flashlights. We sometimes see this in the movies, in a comedy, a hunter moving slowly with his weapon ready to fire, and on his heels treads a terrible beast, a huge bear, a gigantic gorilla. It was the priest. He walked right behind me, a little to one side, he seemed to trail at the very end, not knowing why or what for, perhaps he was afraid to stay by himself in the house—at first I didn’t notice him, he came straggling up to me—with those peasant fingers of his, fumbling. With his cassock. Heaven and hell. Sin. The Holy Catholic Church, Our Mother. The chill of the confessional. Sin. In saecula saeculorum. Church. The chill of the confessional. Church and Pope. Sin. Damnation. Cassock. Heaven and hell. Ite missa est. Sin. Virtue. Sin. The chill of the confessional. Sequentia sancti . . . Church. Hell. Cassock. Sin . . . The chill of the confessional.

  I pushed him hard and he reeled.

  The moment I pushed him I became scared—what am I doing?! A quirk, a prank! He’ll raise Cain!

  But no. My hand encountered such a miserable passivity that I calmed down right away. He stopped but did not look at me.We stood. I saw his face clearly. And his mouth. I raised my hand, I wanted to stick my finger into his mouth. But his teeth were clenched. I raised his chin with my left hand, opened his mouth, stuck my finger in.

  I pulled out my finger and was wiping it on my handkerchief.

  Now I had to walk faster to catch up with the procession. Sticking my finger into the priest’s mouth did me good, although it’s one thing (I thought) to stick a finger into a corpse and another to do it to someone living, it was like introducing my phantoms into the real world. I felt invigorated. I realized that with all this happening I had forgotten for the moment about the sparrow, etc., but now I was again thinking that about fifteen miles back, the sparrow was there—and the stick was there—and the cat. And also Katasia.

  “Honorable strollers, ladies and gentlemen if you please, here we’ll restum on this spotum! At ease! Easy breathie for a moment.”

  He stood under a huge boulder that protruded over a ravine, densely overgrown. In front of the boulder was a small clearing, this place must have been frequented, I thought that I noticed wheel tracks . . . Some dry twigs, grass. “Lukie, I don’t want to be here, what a place he’s found!” “Colonel, sir, there is nothing to sit on,” “Mr. President, sir, on the bare ground?”

  “Alright, alright,” Leon’s voice was plaintive, “it’s just that Daddy lost his cufflink. The cufflink, damnit . . . The cufflink. Would someone with a flashlight please come here.”

  Sparrow.

  Stick.

  Cat.

  Ludwik.

  Priest.

  Leon, bent over, was looking for the cufflink, Lukie was shining his flashlight, I remembered Katasia’s little room, Fuks and I shining our flashlights. Oh, so long ago. The little room was back there. With Katasia. He kept looking for the cufflink, finally he took the flashlight from Lukie, but after a while I noticed that the light, instead of keeping to the ground, was surreptitiously sweeping over the boulder and other rocks, just like Fuks and I swept the walls of the little room with our light. Was he looking for a cufflink? Maybe not a cufflink at all, was this perhaps the place to which he’s been leading us, the place of twenty-three years ago?* . . . But he was not sure. He could not quite recognize it. Since that time new trees had grown, the ground had subsided, the boulder could have shifted, he was more and more feverishly searching with that flashlight of his, just like we had, at the time, and, seeing him thus, unsure, lost, almost drowning and water rising to his mouth, I had to think back on how we, Fuks and I, had been lost on ceilings, walls, flower beds. Those were old times! Everyone waited. No one said anything, out of curiosity probably, to finally find out what’s squeaking in the grass. I saw Lena. She was delicate, lacy with her mouth stick sparrow cat, Katasia, Ludwik, and priest.

  He couldn’t figure it out. He was lost. He was now examining the lowest part of the boulder. All was quiet. He straightened up.

  “It’s here.”

  Lulu chirped, “What is it that’s here, Mr. Leon, what is it?”

  Obligingly.

  He stood modestly, calmly. “What a coincidence . . . Chance, if you please, one of a kind! I’m looking for my cufflink, and I see that this rock . . . I’ve been here before . . . Indeed, it was here that I, twenty-three years ago . . . Here!”

  Suddenly, as if on order, he was lost in thought, and this dragged on. The flashlight went out. It dragged on and dragged on. No one interrupted him, not until a few minutes later when Lulu said softly, tenderly, “What happened to you, Mr. Leon?” He replied, “Nothing.”

  I noticed that Roly-Poly wasn’t here. Had she stayed behind at the house? What if she had hanged Ludwik? Nonsense. He hanged himself. Why? As yet, no one knows about it. What will happen when they find out?

  Sparrow.

  Stick.

  Cat.

  Ludwik.

  It was difficult, arduous to realize that what is happening here, now, is in relation to that there, then, fifteen miles back. And I was mad that Leon was playing first fiddle, while everyone else (not excluding myself) became his . . . spectators . . . we were here to see . . .

  He muttered indi
stinctly.

  “Here. With a woman . . . ”

  Again a few silent minutes, quiet, the long minutes dripped with swinishness and became a confession, and since no one spoke it meant that we are here for the sole reason of his doing his business in our presence . . . with his own . . . self-gratifying . . . gratify yourself . . .We waited for him to be done. Time went by.

  He unexpectedly shone the flashlight on his face. His spectacles, his bald head, mouth, everything. Eyes closed. A voluptuary. A martyr. He said:

  “There are no other views.”

  He switched off the flashlight. The darkness caught me by surprise, it was darker than one would have expected, probably because clouds were already overhead. He was almost invisible by the boulder. What was he doing? He must have been doing his own disgusting stuff, exciting himself, recollecting his long-gone, one and only wench, he tried hard, worked at it, celebrated his swinishness. But . . . but what if he wasn’t sure that it was here? And he was celebrating at random? I was surprised that no one is leaving, surely they have realized by now why he had brought them here, to assist him, to watch, to excite him with their watching. It would be so easy to walk away. But no one walked away. Lena, for instance, could have walked away, but she didn’t walk away. She did not move. He began to breathe hard. He panted rhythmically. No one could see what he was up to, or how. But they did not walk away. He groaned. His groan was sensuous, but, actually, laborious, it was to voluptualize himself. He groaned and yelped. His yelp, muffled and throaty, was to help him whore himself, oh how he labored and how he strained, oh how he pigged himself, and oh how he celebrated and solemnized . . .He labored. He strained. He breathed hard. He yelped. He’s straining. He’s laboring. We waited. Then he said: