The bitterness, the longing, the beauty of his lean form now facing us—where did this come from if not from the fact that he was not yet a man? Because we had brought Henia to him, like a woman—to a man, while he was not one yet … he was not a full-grown male. He was not the lord. He was not the sovereign. He could not possess. Nothing could be his, he had no right to anything, he was the one to serve and yield—his leanness and litheness suddenly grew large in this barnyard, right next to the boards, the rods, while she responded to him in kind: with leanness and litheness. They suddenly united, but not as man and woman, but as something else, in their joint offering paid to an unknown Moloch, unable to possess one another, merely able to offer themselves—and their sexual matching suffered a dislocation in favor of some other matching, in favor of something more horrible but perhaps more beautiful. I repeat, all this happened in a matter of seconds. But actually nothing happened: we just stood. Fryderyk said, pointing to Karol’s pants, a bit too long and covered with dirt:
“You need to have your pant legs rolled up.”
“You’re right,” he said. He bent down.
Fryderyk said: “Wait. Wait a minute.”
It was obvious that what he was about to say didn’t come easily. He somehow placed himself sideways to them, looked straight ahead, and in a hoarse voice, yet very clearly, he said:
“No, wait. Let her roll them up.”
He repeated: “Let her roll them up.”
This was shameless—it was a forced entry into them—it was an admission that he was expecting some excitement from them, do it, you’ll entertain me with this, and this is what I desire. … It was bringing them into the range of our lust, our dreams about them. Their silence swirled for one second. And for one second I waited for the result of Fryderyk’s insolence, in this sideways stance of his. What happened next was smooth, obedient, and easy, so “easy” that it almost made my head spin, like an abyss noiselessly opening up in a level road.
She said nothing. She bent down, rolled up his pants, he didn’t budge, the silence of their bodies was absolute.
Meanwhile the barnyard’s bare expanse hit us with the whiffletrees jutting from the hay wagons, with a cracked trough, with the barn recently patched up that stood visible like a splotch in a circle of brown dirt and lumber.
Soon after that Fryderyk said: “Let’s go!” We turned toward the house—he, Henia, and I. This happened brazenly and openly. In consequence of our turning back, our arrival by the carriage house achieved its sole objective—we had gone there so that she would roll up his pants, and we were now returning—Fryderyk, I, and she. The house with its windows, with two rows of windows, one below, one above, came into view—and its porch as well. We walked without saying anything.
We heard someone running across the lawn behind us, and Karol caught up and joined us. … He was still in motion, but he soon fell into step with us—he now walked calmly next to us, with us. His fevered breaking in upon us, on the run, was full of enthusiasm—aha, he liked our games, he was joining in—and his instantaneous transition from running into the silence of our return home meant that he understood the need for discretion. All around us a weakening of existence found its expression in the approaching night. We moved on in the dusk—Fryderyk, I, Henia, Karol—like some strange erotic combination, an eerie yet sensual quartet.
V
How did it happen? I wondered as I lay on a blanket, on the grass, the moist cold of the ground close to my face. How could it be? So she rolled up his pants? She did this because she was up for it, of course, nothing extraordinary, a simple favor … yet she knew what she was doing. She knew that this was meant for Fryderyk—for his pleasure—so she was acquiescing in his taking delight in her … in her, but not just in her … in him, in Karol. … Oh, indeed! She was aware then that the two of them can excite, seduce … at least as far as Fryderyk was concerned … and Karol knew it too, he had indeed taken part in this little game. … But in that case they were not as naive as it might seem! They were aware of their appeal! And they were aware of it in spite of their otherwise silly youth, because it’s exactly youth that is better aware of it than maturity, they were experts in the elemental force which they inhabited, they possessed skill in the arena of their precocious bodies, of their precocious blood. But in that case why, in their relationship to each other, did they behave like children? Why so innocently? Since they were not innocent in relation to a third person? Since, in relation to a third person, they were so very sophisticated! But what worried me most was that the third person was none other than Fryderyk, he, so circumspect, so self-controlled! And here, all of a sudden was this march across the park, like a challenge, like the initiation of a campaign—his march with the girl to the boy! What was it? What could it be? And hadn’t I provoked it all—by spying on him I had brought into the open his secret passion, he had been spotted in his secrecy—and now the beast of his secret longing, released from its cage, in union with my beast, was on the prowl! This is how things stood at the present moment, namely, the four of us were de facto partners, in silence, in this undeclared business, where any clarification would have been impossible to stomach—where shame was choking us.
Knees, hers-his, four knees, in pants, in a dress, (young) … In the afternoon, the previously announced Vaclav made his appearance. A handsome man! Without a doubt—a tall and elegant gentleman! Endowed with a fairly prominent yet delicate nose with lively nostrils, an olive gaze and a deep voice—a trimmed little mustache coddled itself below that sensitive nose, above his full and crimson lip. A type of masculine comeliness that pleases women … who admire the grandeur of form as well as the overly delicate details, the innervation, for instance, of the long-fingered hands with their fingernails cleared of cuticle. Who could cast doubt on his foot, highbred, high-arched, in a yellow, tight-fitting shoe, and his ears too, shapely and smallish? And those little inlets of baldness above his brow that made him look more intellectual, weren’t they interesting, even delightful? And what about the whiteness of his complexion, wasn’t this a troubadour’s whiteness? Truly, a striking gentleman! A winning patron! A refined lawyer! I hated him with my physical being from the very first moment with a hate mixed with disgust, a hate caught unawares by its own vehemence and conscious of its injustice—because he was, after all, full of charm and comme il faut. It was indeed not right and fair to find fault with such trivial imperfections as, let’s say, a slight plumpness and roundness making their appearance on his cheeks and hands, playing in the vicinity of his belly—this too, after all, was refined. But perhaps it was the excessive and slightly lascivious refinement of his organs, his mouth overly adapted for tasting, his nose overly refined for smelling, his fingers skilled at touching—yet these were the very things that made him a lover! It is conceivable that I was put off by his incapacity for nakedness—because that body of his needed a collar, cufflinks, a handkerchief, even a hat, it was a body in shoes, absolutely demanding these supplements of toiletry and tailoring. … But who knows, perhaps what annoyed me most was that he converted some of his faults, such as the onset of baldness, or his softness, into attributes of elegance and style. The carnality of an ordinary boor has the huge advantage that the boor pays no attention to it, and as a result, it doesn’t annoy you, even if it’s in conflict with the esthetic—but when a man takes care of himself, brings out, accentuates his carnality, picks at it, messes with it, then his every defect becomes deadly. However, where did I come by such sensitivity to the body? Whence came this passion for snooping, timid and unfriendly, as if from a hole in the corner?
In spite of it all, I must admit the newcomer behaved intelligently, even with class. He didn’t puff himself up, said little and not too loudly. He was extremely affable. And his affability and his modesty were the result of excellent manners, but they were also bred into his unsuperficial nature, which was reflecting itself in his gaze and seemed to pronounce: I respect you, you respect me. No, he wasn’t at all enchanted wit
h himself. He was aware of his shortcomings, and he would surely have preferred to be different from the way he was—but he was himself in a reasonably cultured and wise manner, with dignity, and it seemed that, though he appeared to be soft and gentle, he was in fact uncompromising and even relentless. And all this bodily culture of his did not in the least originate from weakness but was the expression of some principle, possibly moral, he considered it his duty toward others, but it was also an expression of breeding, of style, something unyielding, well-defined. He had apparently decided to defend his values, such as refinement, gentleness, tenderness, and the more intensely history turned against them, the more intensely he defended them. His arrival produced changes, particularly in our little world. Hipolit seemed to get back on track, he gave up whispering to himself and pondering bitterly, it was as if he had been given permission to bring out of his closets his long-unused suits, and he paraded in them with pleasure—a stentorian, cheerfully hospitable country squire, with no reservations. “So how goes it? What’s up? Vodka warms, vodka chills, vodka never bring you ills!” While the hostess too danced her ethereal lamentations and, waving her little fingers in all directions, she spread the shawl of her hospitality.
Fryderyk responded to Vaclav’s respect with his own most profound respect, he let him pass through the door first, and only upon a slight hand motion from the other did he walk in first, as if submitting to his will—these were Versailles manners. There ensued a competition in courtesy, what was interesting, however, was that each of them extended his courtesy first and foremost to himself, not to the other. From Fryderyk’s first words Vaclav realized he was dealing with someone exceptional, but he was too well-mannered to underscore it—however, the dignity that he ascribed to Fryderyk acted as a stimulant to the sense of his own dignity, he desired to be à la hauteur, and he treated himself with kid gloves. Fryderyk, taking on this aristocratic spirit with an unusual eagerness, also began to assume a haughty bearing—from time to time he partook in the conversation, but in the manner of someone whose silence would have been an undeserved catastrophe to everyone around him. And thus, all at once, his fear of incorrectness became his superiority and pride! As far as Henia (who was the real object of the visit) and Karol were concerned, they both suddenly dropped all hauteur. She sat on a chair under a window and became a docile young miss, while he looked like a brother assisting in his sister’s courtship, furtively checking his hands to make sure they weren’t dirty.
What a tea! Cakes and preserves found their way to the table! Then we went into the garden, where sun-filled peace reigned. The young couple walked ahead, Vaclav with Henia. We, the elders, behind, so as not to cramp their style … Hipolit and Madame Maria, both somewhat moved, slightly playful, I walked next to them with Fryderyk, who was telling us about Venice.
Vaclav was asking Henia about something, explaining something to her, while she, turning her little head toward him, attentive and friendly, was waving a blade of grass.
Karol was walking to one side on the grass, like a brother bored with his sister’s being courted, he had nothing to do.
“A stroll like those before the war, …” I said to Madame Maria, and she fluttered her little hand. We were approaching the pond.
Yet Karol’s dawdling about was slowly gaining force, intensifying, one could see that he didn’t know what to do, his movements suggested that he was restraining his impatience, attenuated by boredom—and at the same time everything that Henia was saying to Vaclav began to be for Karol, even though her words were not reaching us—her whole way of being again imperceptibly united with (the boy), and it was actually happening behind her back, behind her, because she was not turning around, she didn’t even know that Karol was accompanying us. And this, the almost fiancée-like conversation with Vaclav, suffered a sudden depreciation under the influence of (the boy) who was dragging behind her, while she herself began to twinkle with a perfidious meaning. The enamored attorney bent a hawthorn branch for her to break off, and at this moment she was most grateful, perhaps even moved—yet her reaction did not end with Vaclav but went on to Karol, where it became vacuously young, sixteen-year-old, stupidly frivolous, gadding about … and so there was a dragging down of feeling, diminishing its importance, converting it into an inferior, lowly kind, gaining reality at some lower level where she was the sixteen-year-old with a seventeen-year-old, in their joint deficiency, in their youth. We circled a copse of hazel trees by the pond, a hag came into view.
The hag was busy washing laundry in the pond, and when she saw us she stood up facing us and fixed her ogling eyes on us—a hag well into her years, a dumpy and bosomy slattern, rather disgusting, greasily rancid and filthy-oldish, with tiny eyes. She watched us, a wooden paddle in her hand.
Karol broke away from us, went to the hag as if he had something to say to her. And suddenly he pulled up her skirt. The whiteness of her underbelly lit up, as well as the black patch of hair! She screamed. The teenager added to this an indecent gesture and jumped back—then came back to us across the grass as if nothing had happened, while the infuriated hag fired abuse after him.
We said nothing to this. It was too unexpected, too jarring—a swinishness, brutally driven into us, legs astraddle … and now Karol was again walking with us, dawdling about, calm as could be. The couple Vaclav-Henia, deep in conversation, disappeared around a corner—perhaps they hadn’t even noticed—while we followed them, Hipolit, Madame Maria somewhat startled, and Fryderyk … What’s this? What’s this? What happened? My bewilderment wasn’t due to his having done this prank—the reason was that the prank, even though so jarring, became all at once of a different tonality, in another dimension, the most natural thing in the world. … And now Karol walked with us—full of charm even—with the strange charm of a teenager who pounced on old hags, with a charm that grew in my eyes, and the nature of which I did not understand. How could the swinishness with the hag bestow on him the splendor of such charm? Magic radiated from him that was inconceivable, while Fryderyk placed his hand on my shoulder and mumbled, almost inaudibly:
“Well, well!”
But right away he unwittingly rounded the word off into a sentence, which he enunciated aloud and without artificiality:
“Well, well, well, what’s up, dear Mr. Witold?”
I replied:
“Nothing, nothing, Mr. Frydedryk.”
Madame Maria turned to us.
“I’ll show you a fine example of an American arborvitae. I planted it myself.”
The point was not to disturb Henia and Vaclav. We were looking at the arborvitae when the groom appeared, running from the barnyard, signaling us. Hipolit went briskly ahead: “What’s the matter?” “The Germans have arrived from Opatów”—indeed we could see some people in front of the barn—and, suddenly apoplectic, he ran on, his wife behind him. Fryderyk followed them, perhaps thinking that he could be of use, since he knew German well. As far as I was concerned I preferred, while it was still possible, not to be anywhere close to this, I was seized with weariness at the thought of the Germans, who were unavoidable, oppressive. What a curse … I returned to the house.
The house deserted, rooms empty from end to end, the furniture made itself known all the more in this emptiness, I waited … for the result of the Germans’ visit soundlessly taking place in front of the barn … but my waiting slowly became a waiting for Henia and Vaclav, who had disappeared around the corner … and finally Fryderyk exploded within me in this empty house. Where was Fryderyk? What was he doing? He was with the Germans. Was he really with the Germans? Should I look for him somewhere else, by the pond, where we had left that girl of ours … that’s where he was! Surely that’s where he was! He had gone back there to snoop. But in that case, what did he see? Envy of everything he could see seized me. The emptiness of the house was pushing me, so I ran out, I ran supposedly to the barn where the Germans were, but I ran along the thicket behind the pond, along a trench into which frogs were jumping, making a f
at, disgusting plop, and, having circled the pond, I saw them—Vaclav and Henia—on a little bench, at the far end of the garden, across from the meadows. It was getting dark, it was almost dark. And damp. Where was Fryderyk? He had to be here—and I was not mistaken—there, among the willows, in a recess, not clearly visible, he stood on guard under the bushes and watched. I didn’t hesitate for a moment. I quietly worked my way to him and stood next to him, he didn’t stir, I stood stock-still—while my showing up as an onlooker was a declaration that he had me for a comrade! On the bench their silhouettes loomed, and they were surely whispering something—but we couldn’t hear them.
This was a betrayal—her base betrayal—she was snuggling up to the attorney, while (the boy), to whom she should be faithful, had been cast outside her ambit … and this tortured me as if the final possibility of beauty in this world of mine had been broken down by an invading decay, a demise, a torture, an atrocity. What baseness! Was he hugging her? Or holding her hands? What a disgusting and hateful place for her hands: in his palms! I suddenly felt, as it happens in a daydream, that I was close to a revelation and, as I turned around, I noticed something … something astounding.