I do not think I need to add how shocking it was, this quiet temptation, this concealed, unhealthy flirtation with all that was of the thinking reed within me. I referred vaguely to the “secret” of the aristocracy, the secret of taste, the mystery that none could possess who was not one of the chosen, even if, as Schopenhauer says, he should know three hundred rules of savoir-vivre by heart. And even if for a moment I had been dazzled by the hope that once I learned this secret I would be admitted to their circle and I would drop my r’s and say “fantastic” and “crazy” just like them, still, other concerns aside, the fear and anxiety of—why should I not say it openly—of being slapped in the face utterly paralyzed my burning desire for knowledge. With the aristocracy one can never be certain, with the aristocracy one needs to be more careful than with a tame leopard. A certain member of the bourgeoisie, asked once by Duchess X what his mother’s maiden name was and emboldened by the apparent ease of manner prevailing in that salon and the forbearance with which his previous two jokes had been received, decided that he could permit himself anything at all and replied: “By your leave, Piędzik!”—and for that “by your leave” (which turned out to be vulgar) he was immediately ejected.
“Philip,” I thought cautiously—“After all, Philip swore an oath! . . . I mean, the cook is a cook! The cook is a cook, the cauliflower a cauliflower, the countess a countess, and on this last score may no one forget it! Yes, the countess is a countess, the baron a baron, and the gusts of the gale and the wretched weather outside the windows are a gale and foul weather, and the child’s little hands in the darkness and the back, bruised by a father’s belt, beneath the driving waves of the downpour are a child’s little hands and a bruised back, and nothing more . . . and the countess is beyond a doubt a countess. The countess is a countess, and let’s just hope she doesn’t give someone a telling-off !”
Observing that I had remained in a state of complete, almost paralytic passivity, they began, as if unobtrusively, to circle me ever closer, accosting me ever more openly and revealing ever more clearly a desire to taunt me. “Would you look at that terrified expression!” the countess cried all of a sudden, and they started to ridicule me, saying that I must be “feahfully shocked” and “terrahstruck,” since in my spheres surely no one “blathahed” in this way or tried to prove that here there prevailed manners incomparably better and less wild than theirs, the aristocacy’s. Pretending to be afraid of my strictness, they set about jokingly upbraiding and reprimanding one another, as if they cared above all what I thought of them.
“Don’t talk nonsense! You’re awful!” exclaimed the countess (though the baron was not awful at all; there was nothing awful about him except that little ear, which he kept touching, not without satisfaction, with the tips of his slim, bony fingers).
“Will you behave properly!” shouted the baron (the countess and the marchioness were behaving entirely properly).
“Don’t blather—don’t sprawl on the sofa—don’t shake your leg and don’t put your feet on the table!” (Heaven forfend! The countess had no intention of doing these things.) “You’re hurting the feelings of this poor fellow! Countess, your nose really is too well-bred! Have mercy, ma’am!” (On whom, I ask, was the countess to have mercy on account of her nose?) The marchioness remained silent, shedding tears of amusement. But the fact that like an ostrich I stuck my head in the sand only served to excite them the more—they looked as if they had thrown the remains of their caution to the winds—as if they wanted at all costs to ensure that I understood—and, unable to contain themselves, they made ever more transparent allusions. Allusions? To what? Ah, naturally to the same thing over and again, and ever more openly, ever closer and closer they orbited, ever more brazenly . . .
“Might I smoke?” asked the baron affectedly, taking out a gold cigarette case. (Might I smoke?! It was quite as if he was unaware that outside, the damp and rain and awful freezing wind could at any moment make one stiff with cold. Might I smoke?!)
“Listen how the rain’s lashing mercilessly,” lisped the marchioness naively. (Lashing? Certainly it was lashing! It must have been lashing down perfectly out there.)—“Oh, listen to the tap-tap of individual raindrops, listen to that tap-tap-tap, listen, listen there if you please to those raindrops!”
“Oh, what awful weather, what a terrible wind,” cried the countess. “Oh, oh—ha ha ha—what a terrible storm! It’s unpleasant even to look at! The very sight of it makes me want to laugh and gives me goose flesh!”
“Ha ha ha,” echoed the baron, “look how splendidly it all streams down! Look at the different arabesques the water forms! Look how that little bit of mud spreads so wonderfully, how greasily it sticks, how it’s smeared, just like Cumberland sauce; and how that rain keeps thrashing and thrashing—it thrashes so wonderfully, and that little wind keeps stinging and stinging—how it browns, how it pinches, how it crumbles so wonderfully! It quite makes one’s mouth water, I swear!”
“By my wohd, it’s extraohdinarily tasty, extraohdinarily tasty!”
“Extremely stylish!”
“Just like côtelette de volaille!”
“Or fricassée à la Heine rathah!”
“Or lobstah in ragout!”
And in the wake of these bons mots, tossed out with the ease of manner of which only the old aristocratic families are capable, there followed movements and gestures that . . . whose meaning I would have preferred not to understand, curled up as I was in my armchair, completely motionless. It was not only that the ear, the little nose, the neck, and the slender foot were entering a fanatical state of frenzy—in addition the banker had drawn cigarette smoke deep into his lungs and was blowing small blue rings in the air. If only it were just one or two of them, dear Lord! But he kept blowing and blowing, one ring after another, forming his mouth into a little snout—and the countess and the marchioness were applauding! And every ring rose upward and dissipated slowly, in harmonious coils! The long, white, serpentine hand of the countess rested in the meantime on the patterned satin of the armchair—her nervous fetlock wiggled beneath the table, evil as a viper, black and venomous. I began to feel distinctly out of sorts. As if all this were not enough—I swear I am not exaggerating!—the baron went so far in his effrontery as to raise his upper lip, take a toothpick out of his pocket and begin to pick his teeth, yes, his teeth—rich, rotten, and densely interspersed with gold!
Dumbfounded, utterly ignorant of what to do or where to run, I turned imploringly to the marchioness, who up till this point had shown me the most kindness, and who at the dinner table had so movingly admired Pity and the children suffering from rickets—and I began to say something about pity—virtually begging for pity. “Milady,” I said, “you who bestowed such devotion on the poor children! Milady!—For the love of God!” Do you know how she answered? She gazed at me in surprise with her pale pupils—she wiped away the tears produced by an excess of jollity, and then, as if recalling, she said:
“Oh, you’re speaking of my little rickety ones? . . . Oh yes, it’s true, when you see them moving around awkwardly on those crooked little legs of theirs, stumping about and falling over, it makes a person feel hale again! Old but hale! Long ago I used to go horse riding, in a black riding dress and gleaming boots, on English thoroughbreds, while now—hélas, les beaux temps sont passés—now that I no longer can, old as I am, I ride oh so merrily on those crooked little rickety children of mine!” And suddenly her hand reached down and I jumped back, for I swear she intended to show me her old but straight, healthy, still hale leg!
“For the love of Christ!” I exclaimed, barely clinging to life. “What about Love, Pity, Beauty, the prisoners, the cripples, the haggard retired schoolmistresses . . .”
“Oh, but we remember them, we do!” said the countess with a laugh that sent shivers down my spine. “Those poor dear schoolmistresses.”
“We do!” the old marchioness reassured me.
“We do!” Baron de Apfelbaum concurred. “We do!
”—I went quite numb with fright. “Those deaah, good prisonahs!”
They were not looking at me—they were looking in the direction of the ceiling, tipping their heads back as if this alone could check the violent contractions of their cheek muscles. Ha! I was no longer in any doubt; I had finally understood where I was, and I was overcome by an uncontrollable tremor in my lower jaw. And the rain was still lashing against the windows like little whips.
“But God, God exists!” I finally stammered, with the last of my strength, desperately seeking something to hold onto; “God exists,” I added more quietly, for the Lord’s name had rung out so inappropriately that everyone fell silent, and their faces showed all the ominous signs of a faux pas having been committed—and I merely waited to be shown the door!
“Ah yes,” replied Baron de Apfelbaum after a moment, pulverizing me with his unparalleled tact.—“Cod?—cod exists—it swims in the sea!”
Who could have come up with a retort ? Who would not have been, as the expression goes, gobstruck? I fell silent—and the marchioness sat at the piano and the baron and the countess began to dance a caper—and every movement of theirs oozed such taste, style, elegance, that—ha!—I wanted to flee, but how could I possibly withdraw without taking my leave? And how could I take my leave while they were dancing? So I watched from the corner and truly—I had never ever imagined such infinite shamelessness, such brazenness! I cannot do violence to my own nature in describing what went on—no, no one can demand that of me. Suffice it to say that when the countess moved her slim leg forward, the baron pulled his back, many, many times—and this with an air that was unutterably urbane, wearing expressions that suggested the dance was just the most ordinary Milongo tango—while at the piano the marchioness was producing runs, arpeggios, and trills! But I already knew what it was—it had been forced violently on my soul—it was a dance of cannibals! A dance of cannibals!—with taste, style, and elegance—and I searched only for an idol, an African monster with a square skull, turned-out lips, round cheekbones, a flattened nose, raised eyebrows, overseeing the debauch from somewhere up above. And, looking toward the window, behind the pane I saw precisely something of this kind—a round child’s face with a flattened nose, raised brows, protruding ears, emaciated and feverish, and staring so, with all the cosmic idiocy of an African idol, with such otherworldly rapture—that for the next hour (or two), like a hypnotized man I could not tear my eyes from the buttons of my vest.
And when finally at dawn I stole away, down the slippery steps of the porch, in the graying drizzle, I noticed a body lying in a bed of withered irises beneath the window. It was, of course, a corpse, the corpse of an eight-year-old boy with flaxen hair and a snub nose, barefoot, so emaciated that one could say he was thoroughly consumed—there was barely a scrap of meat left here and there under his filthy skin. Ha—so the unfortunate Bolek Cauliflower had strayed as far as this place, drawn by the bright windows visible from far off in the sodden fields. And when I ran out through the gate, from somewhere or other appeared Philip the cook, white, in a little round cap, with his ruddy beard and cross-eyed gaze, skinny and refined, with the refinement of a master of the culinary arts who first cuts the throats of chickens so as later to serve them at table in a sauce—and fawning, bowing, wagging his tail, he said obsequiously: “I hope, milord, that the meatless dinner was to your taste!”
Virginity
There’s nothing more artificial than descriptions of young girls and the fanciful comparisons that go along with them. Lips like cherries, breasts like little roses; oh, if only it were enough to buy some fruit and flowers at the store! And if lips really did have the taste of ripe cherries, who on earth would have the courage to be in love? Who on earth would be tempted by a caramel—that is, a sweet kiss?—But hush, enough, it’s a secret, taboo, let’s not say too much about lips.—Alice’s elbow, seen through the prism of the emotions, was at times a smooth white virginal point, passing into the warmer tones of the arm; at others, when her arm dangled passively, it was a sweet round dimple, a quiet little nook, a side altar of her body. Aside from this Alice resembled any other daughter of a retired major brought up by a loving mother in a suburban cottage. Like others, she occasionally stroked her elbow, lost in thought, and like others she learned early on to poke about in the sand with her slender foot.
But never mind that . . .
The life of an adolescent girl can be compared neither with the life of an engineer or lawyer, nor with the life of a housewife and mother. Take, for instance, the longing and murmuring of the blood, perpetual as the ticking of a watch. Somewhere the idea was already once expressed that there is nothing stranger than being alluring. It’s not easy to look after a being whose reason for existing is to entice; yet Alice was well-protected by her canary Fifi, by her mother, the major’s wife, and by her Doberman pinscher Bibi, whom she led on a leash during their afternoon walk. These domestic animals had a curious understanding when it came to Alice’s protection. “Bibi,” sang the canary, “Bibi, you sweet dog, guard our young lady well. Bow and scrape to her! Bow and scrape! And drive away bad thoughts. Keep an eye on the parasol—it’s so lazy; make sure it shields our beloved young lady from the sun!”
One mild August evening, at sunset, Alice was taking a walk along the garden path, amusing herself by poking little round holes in the gravel with the tip of her parasol. It was a small but agreeable garden surrounded by a wall that was covered with climbing roses; a hobo lying in the sun on top of the wall broke off a piece of brick and threw it at Alice. Struck on the shoulder, she staggered and almost fell—and she was just about to cry out when she noticed that her tormentor showed neither anger nor satisfaction, but simply dealt her another blow to the back with another small piece of brick. The brute’s face expressed nothing but the idleness of an afternoon siesta, indifference, and cynicism; accordingly, Alice smiled faintly at him, her lips trembling with pain, upon which the hobo slid down from the wall and disappeared; while she returned home, repeating to herself:
“I smiled . . .”
“Alice! Alice!” called Mrs. S., her mother. “Suppertime, Alice!”
“Coming, mama,” replied Alice.
“Why are you slurping like that, child? Whoever saw anyone drink tea that way?”
“It’s because it’s really hot, Mama,” answered Alice.
“Alice, don’t eat that slice of bread after it fell on the floor.”
“It’s so as not to waste it, Mama.”
“Look at Bibi, sitting up and begging for his bread and butter. You should be ashamed to be so selfish, child—there now, why did you step on the poor creature’s foot? What’s gotten into you today? What’s happened to you?”
“Oh, I’m so distracted,” said Alice dreamily. “Mama, why is it that men wear trousers?—I mean, we have legs too, don’t we? And Mama, why is it that men have short hair? Do men have their hair cut because . . . because . . . they have to, or because they want to?”
“They wouldn’t look good with long hair, Alice.”
“But Mama, why do they want to look good?”
As she spoke she furtively slipped into her sleeve the silver spoon with which she had been drinking her tea. “Why?” said Mrs. S. “And why do you curl your locks? So the world can be more beautiful and so Mr. Sun won’t begrudge people his rays.”—But Alice had already risen and walked out into the garden. She took the spoon from her sleeve and for some time looked at it undecidedly.
“I stole it,” she whispered in astonishment. “I stole it! But what shall I do with it now?” And in the end she buried it beneath a tree. Oh, if Alice had not been hit by a rock she would never have stolen the spoon. Women may not like extreme measures in their outer life, but inwardly they are capable of draining the most out of every situation if they wish.
In the meantime Major S., a sturdy, corpulent man, appeared at the door of the house, calling: “Alice! Your fiancé has returned from his voyage to China and is coming tomorrow!”
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Alice had become engaged four years ago, when she was still in her seventeenth spring.—“Miss Alice,” mumbled the young man, “will you permit this slim hand—to be mine?” “What do you mean?” she asked. “I’m asking for your hand, Miss Alice,” stuttered the young paramour. “Surely sir, you don’t expect me to cut off my hand,” said the naïve girl, nevertheless flushing scarlet. “Then you do not wish to be my betrothed?” “Oh yes,” she replied, “but on condition that you give me your word you’ll never importune me for any of my extremities; that’s ridiculous!” “Wonderful!” he exclaimed. “You have no idea how enchanting you are. Intoxicating!” And he spent the entire evening roaming the streets and repeating: “She understood it literally; she thought that I . . . desired to take her hand the way a person takes a piece of cake. It makes one want to drop to one’s knees!”
He was beyond question a very handsome young man; he had a pale complexion and contrasting red lips, while his spirit was in no way inferior to his physical beauty. How rich and varied is the human spirit! Some construct their morality upon rectitude, others on kindheartedness; whereas for Paul the alpha and omega, the foundation and the acme was maidenhood. It was this that formed the cornerstone of his soul and about which all his higher instincts were entwined. Chateaubriand too regarded maidenhood as something perfect and yearned for it, saying: We see then that virginity, which rises from the lowest member of the chain of beings, stretches upward to humankind, and from humankind to the angels, and from the angels to God, where it is lost. God himself is a great recluse in the universe, the eternal youth of worlds.
If Paul had fallen in love with Alice it was because her elbow, her slim hands and her slender feet were more virginal than one normally finds, perhaps owing to her nature, perhaps as a consequence of her parents’ mindful care; and because she seemed to him maidenhood incarnate.
“A virgin,” he would think. “She—she understands nothing. The stork. No, it’s too beautiful even to think about—except perhaps on one’s knees.”