“A man,” she would say, narrowing her beautiful eyes, “a man ought to be bold!”
“Fine,” I would reply; “I can be bold.” She would have whims. She would order me to jump over ditches and carry heavyweights. “Go trample on that flower bed—but not now, rather when the groundsman is looking. Go break some branches off that bush, go throw that gentleman’s hat into the water!” I refrained from reasoning, mindful of the incident in the school playground; and besides, when I asked for a reason or a purpose, she would reply that she herself did not know, that she was an enigma, an elemental force. “I am a sphinx,” she liked to say, “a mystery ...”—when I failed she was concerned, and when I succeeded she rejoiced like a child and as a reward permitted me to kiss her on her little ear. But she would never respond to my “I desire you.”—“There’s something about you,” she would say embarrassedly—“I don’t know what it is—some kind of unpleasant taste.”—I was well aware what that meant.
All this, I confess, was strangely charming, strangely lovely—yes, lovely, that’s exactly it; but it was also strangely unconvincing. Yet I never lost heart. I read a lot, especially the poets, and acquired as best I could the language of mystery. I remember an assignment—The Pole and Other Nations. “Of course, it is unnecessary even to mention the superiority of the Poles over the Africans and Asians, who have repulsive skin,” I wrote.
“But the Pole is also unquestionably superior to the nations of Europe. The Germans are uncouth, violent, and flatfooted; the French are petty, undersized, and depraved; the Russians are hairy; the Italians have bel canto. What a relief it is to be Polish, and it is no wonder everyone envies us and wants to wipe us from the face of the earth. Only the Pole does not arouse our disgust.” I wrote thus, without conviction, but I felt that this was the language of mystery, and it was precisely the naïveté of my assertions that was sweet to me.
3
The political horizon darkened, and my beloved betrayed an odd agitation. Oh, those great, fantastical days of September! They smelled, as I once read in a book, of heather and mint; they were airy, bitter, fiery, and unreal. On the streets there were crowds, songs, and processions; there was consternation, madness, and ecstasy, captured in the rhythmic step of the endless battalions. Here—an old man who had taken part in the uprising, tears, and a blessing. Elsewhere—mobilization, the farewells of newlyweds. Elsewhere still—bunting, speeches, outbursts of zeal, the national anthem. Oaths, consecrations, tears, posters, outrage, noble-mindedness, and hatred. Never before, if the artists were to be believed, had the women been so handsome. My beloved ceased to pay any attention to me; her gaze deepened and darkened and became expressive, but she looked only at the men in uniform.—I wondered what I should do. The world of the enigma had suddenly intensified to an extraordinary degree, and I had to be doubly on my guard.
I cheered with everyone else and expressed my patriotism, and a few times I even took part in the summary lynching of spies. But I sensed that this was merely a palliative. In the eyes of my Jadwisia there was something that led me as quickly as possible to sign up, and I was assigned to an uhlan regiment. And right from the beginning I realized that I was on the right path, for at the army medical commission, standing naked with my papers in my hand, in the presence of six clerks and two physicians who instructed me to lift my leg and then studied my heel—I encountered the same scrutinizing, grave, as it were contemplative, and coldly evaluative gaze I had seen in Jadwisia, and I was only surprised that back then, in the park, when she accused me of various shortcomings, she had not taken a look at my heel.
And here I was—a soldier, an uhlan; and I sang along with the others: “Uhlans, uhlans, bright-colored boys, there’s many a maiden will make you her choice.” Indeed, though individually speaking none of us was a boy—yet when a host of us passed through a town singing that song, inclined over our horses’ necks, with our lances and the peaks of our caps, a most curiously wonderful expression appeared on the mouths of the women and I felt that this time hearts were beating for me too.... Why, I do not know, since I was still Count Stefan Czarniecki, whose mother’s maiden name was Goldwasser, only in high-topped boots and raspberry-red facings on my collar. My mother, appealing to me not to stand for anything, blessed me for battle with a holy relic in the presence of all the servants, among whom the chambermaid was the most affected.—“Cut, burn, kill!” cried my mother, inspired. “Let no one pass! You are an instrument of the wrath of Jehovah, that is, I mean, of the Lord God. You are an instrument of wrath, abhorrence, revulsion, hatred. Wipe out all the libertines who feel disgust even though they swore at the altar not to feel disgust!” My father, on the other hand, an ardent patriot, wept discreetly. “Son,” he said, “with blood you can wash away the stain of your origins. Before battle think always of me, and avoid the memory of your mother like the plague—it could be your downfall. Think of me and have no mercy! No mercy! Wipe out all those villains to the last man, so all other races perish, and there remains only my race!”—And my beloved gave me her lips for the first time; it was in the park, to the sounds of a café quartet, on an evening scented with heather and mint—just like that, without any introduction or any explanation she gave me her lips. It was profoundly beautiful! It made one want to cry! Today I understand that it was a matter of compensating in terms of corpses; that since we men had begun the slaughter, they, the women, had set about the job from their side; but at the time I was not yet a bankrupt, and that idea, though I was familiar with it, was for me empty philosophy and could not stem the tears flowing from my eyes.
O war, o war, what lady are you? Pardon me for returning once again to the mystery that troubles me so. A soldier at the front flounders in mud and in flesh; he is prey to fungus and filth, and in addition, when his belly is blown open by a shell, often his guts spill out ... How is it then? Why is a soldier a swallow and not a frog? Why is it that the soldier’s profession is beautiful and longed for on all sides? No, that’s the wrong word; it’s not beautiful but lovely, lovely to the highest degree. Precisely this—the fact that it is lovely—gave me strength in my struggle with the abominable traitor of the soldier’s soul—fear; and I was almost happy, as if I were already on the other side of that impassable wall. Each time I managed to shoot my rifle accurately, I felt that I was suspended on the inscrutable smiles of women and on the bars of an army song, and after many attempts I was even able to win the good graces of my horse—the pride of an uhlan—who up till then had only bitten and kicked me.
4
But then came an incident that propelled me into an abyss of moral depravation from which to this day I have been unable to extricate myself. Everything was going splendidly. War was raging across the entire world, and with it—the Mystery; people stuck bayonets in each other’s bellies, hated one another, were disgusted by one another, despised one another, loved and adored one another; where previously a peasant had quietly threshed his corn, now there lay a heap of rubble. And I did what others did! I was in no doubt about how to act or what to choose; strict military discipline was for me a signpost toward the Mystery. I rushed into the attack, or lay in the trenches amid the asphyxiating gases.—Already hope, the mother of fools, was showing me joyful visions of the future, how I would return home from the army, liberated once and for all from my disastrous ratlike neutrality ... But alas, it happened otherwise ... In the distance the cannon rumbled ... On the ravaged field before us night was falling; tattered clouds raced across the sky; there was a cold, driving wind, and we, more lovely than ever, for the third day were stubbornly defending a hill on which there stood a broken tree. Our lieutenant had just ordered us to remain to the death.
Suddenly an artillery shell flew over, burst its sides, and exploded, blowing off both of Uhlan Kacperski’s legs and tearing open his stomach; and Kacperski was at first confused, not grasping what had happened; then a moment later he also exploded, but in laughter; he was also bursting his sides, but with laughter!—holding hi
s stomach, which was gushing blood like a fountain, he squealed and squealed in his comical, loud, hysterical, farcical high-pitched voice—for minutes on end! How infectious that laugh was! You have no idea what such an unexpected sound can be like on the field of battle. I barely managed to survive till the end of the war.—And when I returned home I realized, my ears still ringing with this laughter, that everything by which I had lived up till then had crumbled into dust; that my dreams of a happy new existence with Jadwisia had all been laid to waste; and that in the wilderness that had suddenly opened up there was nothing left for me but to become a communist. Why a communist? But first—what do I understand by “communist”? By this term I do not refer to any precise ideological meaning nor any particular program or ballast; quite the opposite, I employ it for what it contains that is alien, hostile, and incomprehensible, forcing the most serious individuals to shrug their shoulders or emit wild cries of revulsion and horror.
But if a program must be discussed, then please: I demand and require that everything—fathers and mothers, race and faith, virtue and fiancées—everything be nationalized and distributed with the aid of ration cards in equal and sufficient portions. I demand, and maintain such a demand in the face of the whole world, that my mother be cut into little pieces and that anyone who is not fervent in prayer be given a piece, and that the same be done with my father in relation to individuals devoid of race. I also insist that all half-smiles, all charms and graces be provided only on explicit request, while unjustified disgust should be punished by incarceration in a correctional facility. This is my program. And as for a method, it involves above all shrill laughter, and also narrowing of the eyes.—With a certain contrariness I rely on the principle that war destroyed all human feelings in me. And I maintain furthermore that I personally did not sign a peace treaty with anyone and that the state of war—for me—has not been suspended at all.—“Ha,”—you will exclaim—“it’s an unrealistic program and a foolish and unintelligible method.” Fine, but is your program truly more realistic, are your methods more intelligible? Besides, I do not insist either on the program or the method—and if I chose the term “communism” it was only because “communism” is a mystery as inscrutable for minds opposed to it as are for me all your poutings and half-smiles.
That is how it is, ladies and gentlemen; you smile and narrow your eyes; you cherish swallows and torment frogs; you find fault with a nose. There is constantly someone that you hate, someone you find disgusting; then again you tumble into an incomprehensible state of love and adoration—and everything on account of some Mystery. But what would happen if I were to acquire my own mystery and impose it on your world with all the patriotism, heroism, and devotion I was taught by love and by the army? What will happen if I in turn smile (with a rather different smile) and narrow my eyes with the bluntess of an old warrior? I may have acted most wittily with my beloved Jadwisia. “Is woman an enigma?” I asked. (After my return she had greeted me with boundless effusiveness; she took a look at my medal and we went straight to the park.) “Oh yes,” she replied. “Am I not enigmatic?” she said, lowering her eyelids. “An elemental woman and a sphinx.” “I am an enigma too!” I said. “I too have my own language of mystery and I demand that you speak it. Do you see that frog? I swear on my honor as a soldier that I’ll put it under your blouse if you don’t say immediately, with complete gravity and looking me in the eye, the following words: cham—bam—bue, mue—mue, bah—bih, bah—beh—no—zar.”
She wouldn’t do it for anything. She wriggled out of it as best she could with the excuse that it was stupid and pointless, that she could not; she went scarlet trying to turn everything into a joke, and in the end she began to cry. “I can’t, I can’t,” she repeated through her sobs. “I’m embarrassed; how it is possible ... such nonsensical words?” And so I took a great fat toad and did what I had said I would. It seemed as if she would go mad. She thrashed about on the ground like one possessed, and the squawk she emitted I can only compare to the comical shriek of a man hit by an artillery shell who has lost both legs and part of his stomach. It may be that this comparison, like the joke with the frog, is distasteful; but please remember that I, a colorless rat, a neutral rat, neither white not black, am also distasteful to the majority of people. And is it really the case that the same thing should be tasteful and lovely to everyone? What seemed to me most lovely, most mysterious, and most redolent of heather and mint in this entire adventure was the fact that in the end—unable to free herself of the toad squirming about beneath her blouse—she lost her mind.
Perhaps I am not in fact a communist; perhaps I am only a militant pacifist. I wander around the world, sailing across that abyss of inexplicable idiosyncrasies, and wherever I see some mysterious emotion, whether it is virtue or family, faith or fatherland, I always have to commit some villainy. This is my mystery, which for my part I impose upon the great enigma of being. I simply cannot calmly pass by a pair of happy lovers, or a mother and child, or a respectable old man—but at times I am seized by a longing for you, my dear Father and Mother, and for you, my sacred childhood!
A Premeditated Crime
In winter of last year I was obliged to visit Ignacy K., a landed gentleman, to conduct certain property-related business. I took a few days’ leave, left a junior judge in charge and telegrammed: “Tuesday, 6 pm, please send horses.” Yet when I arrived at the railroad station there were no horses. I checked and found out that my telegram had been properly delivered. The addressee himself had signed for it the previous day. Like it or not, I had to hire a primitive wagonette, load it up with my suitcase and my toiletry case—the latter containing a small bottle of eau de cologne, a vial of Vegetal, almond-scented soap, a nail file, and nail scissors—and spend four hours bumping across the fields by night, in the quiet, during a thaw. I was shivering in my city overcoat, my teeth chattering, as I stared at the driver’s back and thought—turning one’s back like that! Permanently, often in secluded places, to be turned the other way and exposed to the whims of those sitting behind!
We finally pulled up in front of a wood-built country manor—it was in darkness, the only light coming from a window on the second floor. I knocked at the door—it was locked; I knocked harder —nothing, silence. I was set on by yard dogs and had to beat a retreat to the cart. There, in turn, my driver started to accost me.
“This isn’t exactly hospitable,” I thought.
At last the door opened and there appeared a tall, frail-looking man of about thirty with a blond mustache and a lamp in his hand.
“What is it?” he asked, as if he had been awoken from sleep, as he raised the lamp.
“Did you not receive my wire? I’m H.”
“H.? What H.?” He stared at me. “Leave with God’s blessing,” he suddenly said in a quiet voice, as if he had spotted some special sign—his eyes looked away, and his hand closed more tightly around the lamp. “With God’s blessing, with God’s blessing, sir! God guide your way!”—and he hurriedly stepped back into the house.
I said more sharply this time:
“Pardon me. Yesterday I sent a wire concerning my arrival. I am investigating magistrate H. I wish to talk with Mr. K.—and if I wasn’t able to get here sooner it’s because no horses were sent to the station for me.”
He set the lamp down.
“That’s right,” he said after a moment, pensively, my tone having made no impression on him whatsoever. “That’s right ... You cabled ... Please, do come in.”
What had happened? It turned out, as I was told in the entryway by the young man (who was the owner’s son), that quite simply ... they had completely forgotten about my arrival and about the cable that had been received the previous morning. Explaining myself and apologizing politely for the incursion, I took off my overcoat and hung it on a peg. He led me into a small sitting room where upon seeing us a young woman sprang up from the sofa with a soft “Oh.” “My sister.” “It’s a pleasure to meet you.” And it was indeed
a pleasure, for femininity, even without any incidental intentions, femininity, I say, is always welcome. But the hand she gave me was perspiring—who gives a man a perspiring hand?—and the femininity itself, despite a charming little face, seemed somehow, how shall I put it, perspirational and indifferent, devoid of reaction, unkempt, and disheveled.