Sand. Road. We’re going uphill.
The vulgarity of her last words—what was that for? “I won’t be screwing around.” She could have put it more subtly. But the undertone of her sentence was double-edged. … It contained a desire for purity, dignity—and at the same time it was unworthy of her, degrading in its actual wording … and exciting me anew … exciting me … because it again brought her closer to Karol. And once more, as with Karol earlier, a fleeting discouragement came upon me—that we can’t find out anything from them because everything they say, or think, or feel, is only a game of excitement, a constant teasing, a kindling of a narcissistic savoring of themselves—and that they are the first to fall prey to their own seductions. This young girl? This young girl who was nothing but a captivating force, an attraction, a greatly appealing element, unceasing, lithe, soft, absorbent coquetry—and she was like this as she sat next to me, in her little coat, with her little hands that were too small. ‘When I marry him I won’t screw around.” This sounded severe, taking herself in hand—for Vaclav, because of Vaclav—but it was also an intimate, and oh how seductive, admission of her own weakness. She was therefore exciting even in her virtue … and in the distance ahead of us was the carriage, mounting a hill, and on the coach box next to the coachman was Karol … Karol … Karol … On the coach box. On the hill. In the distance. I don’t know whether it was the fact that he appeared “in the distance”—or that he appeared “on the hill”—yet in this configuration, in this “rendering” of Karol, in this appearance of his, there was something infuriating me, and, furious, pointing my finger at him, I said:
“But you like to crush earthworms with him!”
“Why are you stuck on that earthworm? He stepped on it, so I stepped on it.”
“You both knew quite well the worm was suffering!”
“What do you mean?”
Again nothing was revealed. She sat next to me. For a moment the thought came to me to let go—to back out. … My situation, my bathing in their eroticism—oh, it was impossible! I should get busy with something else as soon as possible, something more appropriate—busy with more serious matters! Would it be so difficult to return to normal, to the truly familiar state in which other things seem interesting and important, while such antics with young people become worthy of nothing but disdain? But what if one gets excited, loves one’s excitement, excites oneself with it, and everything else is no longer alive! Once more pointing to Karol with my shaming finger, I emphatically declared, my intent being to press her to the wall, to wrest an admission from her:
“You’re not just for yourself. You’re for someone else. And in this case you’re for him. You belong to him!”
“Me? To him? What put that into your head?”
She laughed. This laughter of theirs, constant, unceasing—hers and his—obfuscating everything! What misery.
She was pushing him away … by laughing. … She was pushing him away with laughter. This laughter of hers was short, it soon ceased, it was merely a hint of laughter—but in this brief moment I saw his laughter through her laughter. The same laughing mouths with teeth inside them. This was “cute” … unfortunately, unfortunately, this was “cute.” They were both “cute.” That’s why she didn’t want it!
VII
Ruda. We spilled out of the two vehicles in front of the porch. Vaclav appeared and ran to greet his future wife at the threshold of his home—welcoming us with an engaging, composed courtesy. In the hall we kissed the hand of the elderly lady’s, petite and wizened, she gave off the aroma of herbs and medicaments—and she diligently and carefully pressed our fingers. The house was full of people, yesterday the hosts’ family had unexpectedly arrived from the vicinity of Lvov, they were put up on the second floor, there were beds in the living room, the servant girl ran around busily, children were playing on the floor among bundles and suitcases. This being so, we volunteered to go back to Poworna for the night—but Madame Amelia wouldn’t agree, and she pleaded “Don’t do this to me,” surely we would all fit in somehow. Other reasons also argued for a quick return home, Vaclav revealed to us, the men, that two people from the Underground Army had arrived asking to be put up for the night, and, from their brief intimations, it seemed that some action was being planned in this area. All this created a state of anxiety—but we sat in the armchairs in the somewhat darkened, many-windowed living room and began talking, while Madame Amelia graciously addressed Fryderyk and me, asking about our ups and downs and our adventures. Her head, old beyond her age and desiccated, was rising above her neck like a star, she was undoubtedly someone exceptional, and in general the atmosphere of this place turned out to be inordinately powerful, the paeans in her honor had not been exaggerated, no, we were dealing not with an upright, rural patron of merely provincial dimension but with someone whose presence imposed itself with a mighty power. It’s hard to describe the basis for it. A respect for the human being, similar to Vaclav’s, but perhaps even deeper. Politeness, derived from truly refined values. Gentleness, full of deep feeling, inspired, yet marked by immense simplicity. And a strange integrity. However, deep down it was extraordinarily clear-cut, here reigned a higher reason, absolute, cutting through any doubts, and for us, for me and probably for Fryderyk, this house, with such a well-defined morality, suddenly became a wonderful rest, an oasis. Because a metaphysical, that is, beyond-the-body, principle reigned here, in brief, there reigned here the Catholic God, liberated from the body and far too dignified to chase after Henia and Karol. It was as if the hand of a wise mother had given us a spanking and we were called to order, while everything returned to its proper dimension. Henia with Karol, Henia plus Karol, became what they were, ordinary youths—while Henia with Vaclav acquired a meaning, but only because of love and marriage. While we, the elders, regained the raison d’être of our seniority, we suddenly became set in it so firmly that it was impossible to conceive of any threat from the other thing, from down below. In a word, there was a repeat of that “sobering up” that Vaclav had brought for us to Poworna, but to a greater degree. The crushing pressure on our chest of the young knees was no more.
Fryderyk came to life. Released from their accursed knees, their crushing legs, he seemed to regain a belief in himself—he breathed with relief—all at once he was dazzling with his full brightness. The things he said were by no means brilliant, merely ordinary, and he said them only to keep the conversation going—yet every trifle, loaded with his personality, his experience, his consciousness, gained importance. The simplest word, “window” for example, or “bread,” or “thank you,” acquired a totally different flavor on those lips that knew so well “what they were saying.” He said, “One likes small pleasures,” and this too became important, even though its importance was discretely masked. His particular modus became highly palpable, his way of being as the fruit of his development and life experiences—this is what suddenly became most concretely present—and actually, if one has as much value as one attaches to oneself, then in this case we were dealing with a giant, with a colossus, because it was hard not to realize what an unparalleled phenomenon he sensed himself to be—unparalleled not on the scale of social values, but as a being, as an existence. And so Vaclav and his mother received this solitary greatness of his with open arms, as if giving him their respect was their greatest pleasure. Even Henia, surely the most important person in this house, was displaced to the background, and everything began to revolve around Fryderyk.
“Let us go,” Amelia said, “I’ll show you the view of the river from the terrace before lunch is served.”
She was so absorbed by him that she turned only to him, forgetting Henia, forgetting us. … We went out with them onto the terrace, from which, in lively slopes, the land slipped down into the smoothness of the watery ribbon, hardly visible and as if inanimate. This was not ugly. Yet Fryderyk inadvertently said:
“A barrel.”
He was thrown off balance … because, instead of admiring the lan
dscape he had noticed something as inferior as a barrel, something commonplace, abandoned under a tree, to one side. He didn’t know how he chanced upon it, and he didn’t know how to extricate himself from it. While Madame Amelia repeated:
“A barrel.”
She seconded him softly yet quite perceptively, sort of acquiescing and agreeing with him in some eager and instant accord—as if she were no stranger to such accidental initiations into accidental matters, forming an unexpected attachment to any object that, on the strength of this attachment, becomes the most important thing. … Oh, those two had a lot in common! In addition to ourselves, the refugee family sat to lunch with their children—so many people at the table, this crowd, and children running around, and the improvised eating arrangement, it wasn’t good for our mood … the lunch was tiresome. And they kept mulling over “the situation,” in general, in connection with the German retreat, as much as the local one, while I was getting lost in their discourse in their native country lingo, different from the Warsaw one. I only understood the half of it, but I didn’t ask any questions, I didn’t want to ask about anything, I knew it was not worth bothering about, and besides, it wouldn’t be advisable to do so, why bother, I would know soon enough, in the midst of this palaver I went on drinking, and I knew well enough that, while she was tirelessly running everything from the heights of her wizened little head, Madame Amelia was constantly addressing herself to Fryderyk with a singular alertness, with an exceptional concentration, indeed, with tension—she seemed to be in love with him. … Love? It was the magic, rather, of his seemingly inexhaustible awareness, the same that I too had experienced so many times. He was so deeply, so irrevocably aware! And Amelia, undoubtedly sharpened by repeated meditation and repeated effort, immediately sniffed who she was dealing with. Someone intensely focused, someone who would not allow anything to pull him away from the ultimate—no matter what kind of person she happened to be—someone serious to the farthest limits, in relation to whom all the others were merely children. Having discovered Fryderyk, she passionately wished to know how this guest would behave toward her—whether he would accept her or whether he would reject her, together with the truth that she had fostered within herself.
She guessed that he was a nonbeliever—one sensed this from her particular circumspection, from the distance she kept. She knew that this precipice existed between them, yet in spite of it, it was from him that she expected recognition and affirmation. The others, the people whom she had encountered thus far, were believers, but their beliefs were not deep enough—while this man, a nonbeliever, was boundlessly deep, and he therefore could not disregard her depth, he was “ultimate,” so he had to grasp her ultimate limits as well—he “knew,” after all, he “understood,” he “felt.” Amelia was bent on measuring her own ultimate limits against his ultimate limits, I think that she was like a provincial artist who wants to show his work to a connoisseur for the first time—but this work was herself, it was her life, for which she demanded recognition. But, as I said before, she was unable to express it, she probably would not have been able to do so even if atheism were not the obstacle. Nevertheless the presence of someone else’s depth roused all of her inner depths, and she tried to convey to him, at least with her intensity and readiness, how anxious she was to have him on her side and what she expected from him.
As to Fryderyk, he behaved, as usual, beyond reproach and with the greatest tact. His baseness, however, just as when he was hoeing and admitting defeat, began to slowly show its presence under her influence. It was the baseness of impotence. The whole thing was reminiscent of copulation, a spiritual one of course. Amelia demanded that he acknowledge her faith, if not her God, yet this man was incapable of such an act, condemned as he was to the eternal terror of what is, in its coldness, warmed by nothing—he was as he was—he just watched Amelia, acknowledging that she was as she was. It was precisely this that, in the rays of her warmth, became corpselike, helpless. And his atheism grew under the influence of her theism, they soon became entangled in this disastrous contradiction. And his corporeality also grew under the influence of her spirituality, and his hand, for instance, became very, very, very much a hand (which, I don’t know why, reminded me of that earthworm). I also caught the gaze with which he was disrobing Amelia, like a Don Juan disrobing a little girl, a gaze that clearly wondered how she would look naked—not because of some erotic impulse, of course, but just to know better whom one was conversing with. She curled up under his gaze and suddenly became silent—she understood that for him she was merely what she was for him, nothing more.
This took place on the terrace, after lunch. She rose from an armchair and turned to him:
“Please give me your arm. We’ll walk a bit.”
She leaned on his arm. Perhaps in this way, by touching physically, she wanted to encourage familiarity and to overcome his corporeality! The two of them walked, close, side by side, like a couple of lovers, the six of us following behind, like a procession—this really looked like a romance, wasn’t it the same way that we had recently accompanied Henia and Vaclav?
A romance, yet a tragic one. I think that Amelia felt an unpleasant tremor when she caught his disrobing gaze—because no one had ever approached her like this, because it was nothing but respect and love that she had experienced from those surrounding her since her earliest years. So what did he know and what kind of knowledge was this—to treat her like this? She was absolutely sure that the solidity of her spiritual effort which had earned her people’s goodwill could not be subject to doubt, hence she was actually not afraid for herself, she was afraid for the world—because here her view of the world was countered by another view, no less serious, also dictated by something like a retreat to ultimate positions.…
These two serious presences trod beside one another, arm in arm, over the vast meadow, while the sun was sinking and assuming larger proportions, reddening, and long shadows were springing up from us. Henia walked with Vaclav. Hipolit with Maria. I on the side. And Karol. The couple ahead of us, deep in their dialogue. But the dialogue did not express anything. They talked about … Venice.
At one moment she stopped.
“Please look around. How beautiful it is!”
He replied:
“Yes, no doubt about it. Very beautiful.”
It was said to second her.
She trembled with sudden impatience. His response had no substance—it was merely to avoid a proper response—even though carefully delivered and with feeling—but with the feeling of an actor. While she was demanding a genuine admiration of the evening, this being God’s creation, and she wanted him to adore the Creator at least in his work. Her purity was intrinsic to this desire.
“But please really look, be truthful. Isn’t this very beautiful?”
This time, called to order, he tried to focus, it was obvious he made an effort and actually spoke as sincerely as he could, and even with some emotion.
“Yes indeed, beautiful to be sure, yes, wonderful!”
She couldn’t fault this. It was apparent that he was making an effort to satisfy her. Except for his disastrous characteristic: that in saying something it seemed that he was saying it in order not to say something else. … But what? Amelia decided to show her cards and, not moving from where she stood, she stated:
“You are an atheist.”
Before he expressed his opinion on such a delicate matter he cast his gaze right and left, as if checking up on the world. He said … because he had to, because he had nothing else to say, because his response had already been determined by her question:
“I am an atheist.”
But again he said this in order not to say something else! One could sense it! She fell silent, as if her chance for polemics had been cut short. If he were truly a nonbeliever, she could have fought with him, then she would have demonstrated the most profound “extremity” of her own reasoning, ha, she would have been fighting with her equal. But for him, words served on
ly to conceal … something else. But what? What? If he was neither a believer nor a nonbeliever, what was he? A swath of something undefined was opening up, of a strange “otherness” where she was lost, bewildered, knocked out of the game.
She turned back to the house, and we all followed her, casting kilometer-long shadows that, spreading over the meadow, were reaching distant places, unfamiliar to us, somewhere at the far end of a stubble field. A wonderful evening. She was—I’d swear—truly frightened. She walked, no longer paying attention to Fryderyk, who was nonetheless accompanying her genially—like a little dog. Knocked out of the game … she was like someone whose weapon had been knocked from her hand. No one was attacking her faith—she didn’t need to defend it—God was becoming superfluous in the face of an atheism that was only a screen—and she felt alone, without God, thrown on her own resources in relation to this other existence, based on an unknown principle that was escaping her. And the fact … that it was escaping her—was discrediting her. It showed that a Catholic spirit might encounter, on a perfectly even road, something unknown to him, something he had not foreseen, something beyond his control. She was suddenly seized by someone in a manner unfamiliar to her—and she became something incomprehensible to herself through Fryderyk!
That evening, on this meadow, our walk elongated itself, like a snake. Somewhat behind us, diagonally across and to the left, walked Henia with Vaclav, both very courteous, civilized, settled in their own families, he—his mother’s son, she—her parents’ daughter, and the attorney’s body didn’t feel ill at ease with a sixteen-year-old, having the sum of two mothers and a father by his side. While Karol walked by himself, to one side, his hands in his pockets, he was bored, or perhaps he wasn’t even bored, he was merely putting his feet on the grass, left, then right, then left, then right, then left, then right, then left, in this spacious green-as-a-meadow loafing of his, while the sinking, setting sun was warming us and a breeze was cooling us—and so he was setting his feet down, setting them here and there, sometimes he slowed down, sometimes he went faster, until he finally caught up with Fryderyk (who walked with Madame Amelia). For a while they walked side by side. Karol said: