In the most profound and, it seemed, solidified silence the old man gazed at the monarch, who was giggling, winking, and poking him in the side ... and the old man’s silence swelled with the silence of the portraits and the silence of the walls. The king’s giggling died away ... All of a sudden the iron-willed old man bowed before the king, and after him the heads of the ministers were lowered and the knees of the undersecretaries of state all bent. The power of the council’s bow, rendered unexpectedly in that secluded hall, was terrible. The bow struck the king right in the chest, stiffened his arms and legs, brought back his royalty—to the extent that poor Slothbert gave an awful moan amid the walls and once again tried to giggle, but the giggle faded on his lips. In the quiet of the unyielding silence the king began to be afraid ... and for the longest time he was afraid ... until finally he began to retreat from the council and from himself, and his back, clad in the general’s uniform, disappeared in the gloom of the corridor.
And then a monstrous and corrupt cry—“I’ll pay you all back! I will, I’ll pay you back!”—reached the ears of the council.
Immediately following the king’s departure the chancellor opened the discussion again, and again silence became the lot of the council. The chancellor steadfastly presided over the silence. The ministers rose and sat down again. Hours passed. How could the king, enraged by the refusal of a bribe, be prevented from committing some scandal at the banquet; how could the king be protected from Slothbert; and finally, what kind of an impression would this wretched, shameful, and embarrassing king make on the foreign archduchess and daughter of emperors, even if by some miracle a scandal were to be avoided—these were questions which the council could not acknowledge, which it rejected, which it regorged in silent convulsions amid the walls. The ministers rose and sat down again. But when, at four in the morning, the council submitted its resignation en masse, the helmsman of the ship of state refused to acknowledge it, and instead uttered these significant words:
“Gentlemen, the king must be forced upon the king; the king must be imprisoned within the king; we must lock up the king in the king ...”
For it seemed that only by terrorizing the king with the hugely magnified pressure of splendor, history, brilliance, and ceremony, might the Crown be saved from disrepute. In such a spirit the chancellor issued orders, and because of this the banquet that took place the following day in the hall of mirrors glittered with every splendor, from splendor passed into splendor, from brilliance into brilliance, from glory into glory, resounding like bells in the loftiest and, it seemed, unearthly circles and regions of brilliance.
The Archduchess Renata, escorted into the hall by the great master of ceremonies and marshal of the court, blinked her eyes, blinded by the noble and immemorial luster of that archbanquet. With a discreet power, historically ancient names passed into the hieratic nimbus of the clergy, who in turn passed as if intoxicated into the white of honorable, wilting décolletages, which merged swooningly into the epaulettes of the generals and the sashes of the ambassadors—and the mirrors repeated the splendor into infinity. The murmur of conversation merged into the scent of perfume. When King Slothbert entered the hall and blinked, dazzled by the brilliance, a resounding cry of welcome immediately seized him as in a pair of pincers, and the bows of those gathered made it impossible to escape the cry of welcome ... and the lane of people that formed forced him to move toward the archduchess ... who, tearing the lace of her robe into shreds, could not believe her eyes. Could this be the king and her future consort, this vulgar little merchant with the mug of a shop assistant and the devious gaze of a small-time fruit seller and hole-and-corner extortionist? Yet—how strange—was this little merchant the magnificent king who was approaching between a double row of bows? When the king took her hand she shuddered with disgust, but at the same moment the thunder of cannon and the pealing of bells drew a sigh of admiration from her bosom. The chancellor gave a sigh of relief which was multiplied and duplicated by a sigh from the council.
Resting his royal, sacred, and metaphysical hand on the pommel of his sword, the king gave his other hand, omnipotent and consecrating, to the archduchess Renata and led her to the banqueting table. After him the guests led their ladies with a scraping of feet and a glittering of epaulettes and aiguillettes.
But what was that? What was that sound, quiet, diminutive, small, barely audible yet telltale, which reached the ears of the chancellor and the ears of the council? Were those ears mistaken, or had they indeed heard a sound as if someone from the side ... as if someone on the side ... was jingling ... jingling coins ... was clinking copper money in his pocket? What could it be? The stern, cold gaze of the historic old man passed over those present and finally came to rest on the figure of one of the ambassadors. Not one muscle twitched on the ambassador’s face; this representative of a hostile country was, with a barely perceptible expression of irony on his narrow lips, leading to the table the Duchess Byzantia, daughter of Marquis Frybert ... but once again there came the telltale, quiet yet perilous sound ... and a presentiment of treachery, villainous, base treachery, a presentiment of a lurking, hole-and-corner conspiracy burst into the dramatic and historic soul of the great minister. Could there be a conspiracy? Could there be treachery?
A new fanfare on the trumpets proclaimed the commencement of the feast. At this irresistible command Slothbert placed his vulgar buttocks on the very edge of the royal stool; the moment he sat, the whole company sat too. They sat down, sat down, sat down, ministers, generals, clergy, and court. The king moved his hand toward his fork, took hold of it, and brought a piece of roast to his mouth; and at the same moment the government, the court, the generals, and the clergy brought little pieces of meat to their mouths, and the mirrors repeated this action to infinity. Afraid, Slothbert stopped eating—but then the whole assembly stopped eating, and the act of not-eating became even more powerful than the act of eating. Then, in order to put an end to the not-eating as quickly as possible, Slothbert picked up his goblet and raised it to his lips—and at once everyone picked up their goblets in a resounding, thousand-strong toast that erupted and hung in the air ... until Slothbert all the more hurriedly put down the goblet. But then they all put down their goblets. So the king once again glued his lips to the goblet. Again a toast erupted. Slothbert put down his goblet, but seeing that everyone put their goblets down, he picked up his goblet once more—and once more the company, picking up their goblets, raised the king’s mouthful to the heights in a thunder of trumpets, in the brilliance of chandeliers, in the repetitions of the immemorial mirrors. The king, terrified, took another mouthful.
The telltale sound—a quiet, barely audible chink, the characteristic sound of loose change in the pocket—once again reached the ears of the chancellor and the council. For a second time the noble old man fixed his intent and lifeless gaze on the conventional face of the enemy ambassador ... and yet again, more clearly, the telltale sound was heard. By now it was evident that someone who wished to bring the king and the banquet into disrepute was in this clandestine way trying to tempt the monarch’s unhealthy cupidity. The telltale jingling rang out once more, this time so clearly that Slothbert heard it—and the serpent of covetousness crawled onto his vulgar junkyard owner’s mug.
The disgrace! The disgrace! The horror! So fanatical in its baseness was the king’s soul, so trivially narrow, that he did not covet larger sums but precisely petty ones; small sums were capable of leading him to the very depths of hell. Oh, the most fundamental monstrousness of this matter was the fact that even bribes did not attract the king so much as tips—tips for him were like sausage to a dog! The entire hall had frozen in mute anticipation. Hearing the familiar, oh-so-sweet sound, King Slothbert put down his goblet and, forgetting everything else, in his boundless foolishness ... licked his lips unobtrusively .... Unobtrusively! That was what he imagined. The king’s lip-licking burst like a bomb in front of the entire banquet, which went red-faced with shame.
Ar
chduchess Renata Adelaide let out a muffled cry of disgust! The eyes of the government, the court, the generals, and the clergy turned to the person of the old man who for many years had guided the helm of the state in his toil-worn hands. What was to be done? What course of action was to be taken?
And then it was seen that from the pallid lips of the historic old man, heroically, a thin old man’s tongue issued forth. The chancellor was licking his lips! The chancellor of the state had licked his lips!
For a moment the council continued to wrestle with its astonishment; but eventually the tongues of the ministers issued forth, and after them the tongues of the bishops ... the tongues of the countesses and marchionesses ... and all licked their lips, from one end of the table to the other, in the mysterious luster of crystal, and the mirrors repeated this act to infinity, plunging it in mirrored perspectives.
Then the king, furious, seeing that he could not permit himself anything, since they copied everything he did, pushed back abruptly from the table and stood up. But the chancellor too stood up. And after him everyone stood.
For the chancellor no longer hesitated; he had already made a decision whose extraordinary boldness put convention to rout! Realizing that nothing could now conceal from Renata the king’s true nature, the chancellor had determined to throw the banquet openly into the struggle for the dignity of the Crown. Yes, there was no other path—the banquet must, with utter relentlessness, repeat not only those actions of the king that lent themselves to repetition, but precisely and above all those that did not lend themselves to repetition—since it was possible only in that way to transform those deeds into archdeeds—and this violence on the person of the king had become necessary and unavoidable. For this reason, when a furious Slothbert pounded his fist on the table, breaking two plates, without a second thought the chancellor smashed two plates and everyone smashed two plates apiece, as if in honor of God; and the trumpets sounded! The banquet was prevailing over the king! Fettered, the king sat down and remained sheepishly in his seat, while the banquet waited for him to make the slightest move. Something extraordinary—something fantastical—was being born and was dying in the vapors of the abandoned feast.
The king jumped up from his place at the head of the table! The banquet jumped up too! The king took a few steps. The banqueters too. The king began to wander aimlessly around the hall. The banqueters also wandered. And the wandering, in its monotonous and infinite wandering, attained such dizzy heights of archwandering that Slothbert, overcome by a sudden dizziness, gave a roar—and with bloodshot eyes he flung himself on the archduchess—and, not knowing what to do, he set about gradually strangling her before the eyes of the entire court!
Without a moment’s hesitation the helmsman of the ship of state flung himself on the nearest lady and began strangling her—and the remaining guests followed his lead—while archstrangulation, repeated by the multitude of mirrors, gaped from every infinity and grew, and grew, and grew—till it finally suppressed the gasping of the ladies. It was at this point that the banquet broke the last ties linking it to the ordinary world; now its mind was made up!
The archduchess fell to the floor—dead. The strangled ladies fell. And immobility, a hideous immobility, intensified by the mirrors, speechless, began to grow and grow ...
And it grew. It grew unceasingly. And it intensified, it intensified in the oceans of quiet, in the boundlessness of silence, and it reigned, it, archimmobility itself, which had descended, had taken over and was ruling ... and its rule was indivisible ...
Then the king fled.
Waving his arms, with a gesture of the utmost panic Slothbert seized himself by the backside and without a second thought started to run away ... He ran toward the door, to get as far away as possible from that Archkingdom. The gathering saw that the king was getting away from them—another minute and he would get away! And they watched, stupefied, for the king could not be stopped ... who would dare to stop the king by force?
“After him,” roared the old man. “After him!”
The cold breath of night blew on the cheeks of the dignitaries as they rushed out onto the square in front of the castle. The king ran away down the middle of the street, and ten or twenty paces behind him rushed the chancellor, the banquet, and the ball. And here the archgenius of that archstatesman once again reveals itself in all its archmight—for THE IGNOMINIOUS FLIGHT OF THE KING BECOMES SOME KIND OF ATTACK, and it is no longer clear whether THE KING IS FLEEING or whether, on the contrary, THE KING IS RUSHING FORWARD AT THE HEAD OF THE BANQUET! Oh, those rushing sashes and medals of the ambassadors, fluttering in the furious rush; the purple of the bishops; the ministerial dress coats and tail coats; oh, the canter, the archcanter of so many potentates! The common people had never seen such a thing before. Magnates, owners of vast tracts of land, descendants of the most splendid families, galloping alongside officers of the general staff, whose gallop was accompanied by the gallop of all-powerful ministers, with the rush of marshals, chamberlains, with the canter of most noble, rushing ladies of the court! Oh, the rush, the archrush of marshals and chamberlains, the rush of ministers, the canter of ambassadors in the darkness of night, by the light of lanterns, beneath the firmament of the heavens! Cannon sounded in the castle. And the king charged!
“Forward!” he cried. “Forward!”
And archcharging at the head of his archsquadron, the archking passed on into the dark of night!
Afterword
It was with the first seven stories of the present volume that a young and previously unknown writer called Witold Gombrowicz burst upon the Polish literary scene in 1933. Though many of the critics of the time were baffled by these bizarre works, others immediately appreciated the subtle humor, the brilliant literary and linguistic inventiveness, and the psychological complexity of the stories; virtually overnight, Gombrowicz’s reputation was established and his genius recognized, by some at least. Thanks in part to these beginnings, Gombrowicz remains one of the most important (and enjoyable) European writers of the twentieth century.
In fact, the story of the writing and publication of these pieces is a curious one in itself. The first seven stories of Bacacay were written between 1926 and 1932 and first appeared in 1933 under the title Recollections of Adolescence (Pamiętnik z okresu dojrzewania). Recollections brought Gombrowicz considerable renown, though few critics were capable of appreciating just how innovative his writing was. It was the publication of Ferdydurke in 1937 that cemented Gombrowicz’s reputation as a master of prose.
The outstanding quality of these early stories may partly be explained by the fact that, though these were Gombrowicz’s first published writings, they were not the first things he had written. On a number of previous occasions he had tried his hand at novels, but he had been deeply dissatisfied with the results and had burned the manuscripts. In his Polish Memories (Wspomnienia polskie), written and published in the early 1960s from exile in Argentina, Gombrowicz recalled that after these failures he had decided to attempt some shorter pieces, and ended up being quite pleased with the results:This time ... these were not compositions abortive right from their botched conception; I engaged in level-headed work aimed at a concrete result. I set about writing brief pieces—short stories—with the idea that if one didn’t work out I would burn it and start something new.
But all of them came out well, in my view at least. During those university years, when on the surface I had distanced myself entirely from literature, a style was forming within me, and now from the first moment I discovered in myself a sureness of hand that I could never have anticipated.
[...] One thing I do remember—that from the beginning the nonsensical and the absurd were very much to my liking, and I was never more satisfied than when my pen gave birth to some scene that was truly crazy, removed from the (healthy) expectations of mediocre logic, and yet firmly rooted in its own separate logic.
It is also interesting to hear Gombrowicz’s description of the method he developed
as he wrote these stories: A writer can, if he wishes, describe reality as he sees it or as he imagines it to be; this produces realistic works such as the books of Sienkiewicz. But he can also apply a different method in which reality is reduced to its component parts, after which these parts are used like bricks to construct a new edifice, a new world or microcosm ... which ought to be different from the regular world, and yet correspond with it in some way ... different but, as the physicists say, dequate ...
Thus, for example, in my story “Dinner at Countess Pavahoke’s”
I invented a group of aristocrats sharing a series of exclusively vegetarian dinners in order to cultivate various kinds of sublimity and mental refinement; yet the swine of a cook serves them soup made from a little boy ... and they consume it with relish. Nonsense, is it not? But it’s nonsense composed of elements taken from life; it’s a caricature of reality ... how delightful it was to see this nonsense blossom beneath my pen, grow with its own inexorable logic, and lead to unforeseen resolutions.
Perhaps because of the critics’ misinterpretation of the title Recollections of Adolescence—many of them, especially those hostile to Gombrowicz, took it to mean that the author was declaring himself not yet mature—when it came time to reissue the stories in postwar Poland in 1957 Gombrowicz decided to rename the collection Bakakaj, a Polonized form of Bacacay, the name of a side street in Buenos Aires on which the writer lived. This title, while striking, tells us nothing about the contents of the book; Gombrowicz explained in a letter to his Italian publisher that he named his book thus “for the same reason that a person names his dogs—to distinguish them from others.”