Pornografia

by Witold Gombrowicz

  We drove onto the highway, and the britzka began to shake across the potholes, the iron rims of its wheels making a grinding sound, then more and more people, we passed them as they emerged walking along a pathway, this one wearing a cap, another a hat, farther along we came across a wagon full of bundles, someone’s entire belongings—moving step by step—while farther on a woman standing in the middle of the road stopped us and came up to us, I saw a fairly refined face draped in the kind of scarf usually worn by countrywomen, her huge legs in men’s knee-high boots sticking out from under a short, black silk skirt, she was dressed in a low décolletage, ballroom or evening gown style, elegant, and in her hand she held something wrapped in a newspaper—she began waving it—wanted to say something, but then she buttoned her lip, and again she wanted to say something, but instead she waved her hand, jumped aside—then continued to stand in the middle of the road as we moved away. Karol laughed. We finally reached Ostrowiec with a loud clatter, bouncing on the cobblestones that made even our cheeks shake, we passed German sentries in front of a factory, the little town was the same as ever, ever the same, chimneys of the huge furnaces of the factory piling up, the wall, farther on a bridge on the Kamienna, railroad tracks, and the main street leading to the market square, and on the corner was Malinowski’s café. Just one thing, an absence that was palpable, namely, there were no Jews. There were, however, lots of people in the streets, hustle and bustle, quite animated in places, here an old woman throwing garbage from a hallway, there someone walking with a thick rope tucked under his arm, a small group in front of a food store, a little boy with a stone taking aim at a bird that had settled on top of a chimney. We bought a supply of kerosene and made a few other purchases, then we left this strange Ostrowiec, and when the soil of a simple dirt road received our britzka on its soft bosom again, we sighed with relief. But what was Fryderyk doing? How was he managing, left there to his own devices? Was he sleeping? Sitting? Walking? I certainly knew his meticulous attention to propriety, I knew that if he were sitting it would be with all precaution, yet I began to worry that I didn’t know how he was actually spending his time. He wasn’t there when, having arrived in Poworna, we sat down to a late lunch, then Madame Maria told me that he was hoeing. … What? He was hoeing a path in the garden. “I’m afraid … he’s probably bored here,” she added not without worry, as if he were a guest in prewar times, while Hipolit came to inform me as well:

  “Your companion, mind you, is in the garden. … He’s hoeing.”

  And something in his voice indicated that the man was beginning to be a burden to him—he was embarrassed, unhappy, and helpless. I went to Fryderyk. When he saw me, he put away the hoe, and with simple courtesy asked if our trip had been a success … then, his gaze cast sideways, he proposed the thought, carefully worded, that perhaps we should return to Warsaw, because, when all is said and done, we can’t be of much help here, and a prolonged neglect of our other little business may end unfavorably, yes, actually this trip here had not been thought through enough, perhaps we should pack our bags … He was paving his way to a decision, he was imperceptibly making it stronger and stronger, getting himself … me, the neighboring trees, used to it. What did I think? Because, on the other hand and in spite of everything, it is better to be in the country … and yet … we could leave tomorrow, couldn’t we? Suddenly his questioning sounded urgent, and I understood: he wanted to deduce from my response whether I had reached an understanding with Karol: he surmised that I must have probed Karol, now he wanted to know if there was a shadow of hope that Karol’s boyish arms would some day embrace Vaclav’s fiancée! And at the same time he was furtively letting me know that nothing he knew, nothing that he had looked into, entitled us to such illusions.

  It’s hard to describe the disgusting aspect of this scene. An older man’s countenance is held up by a secret willpower aimed at masking his disintegration, or at least at organizing it into a pleasing whole—but in his case there was disappointment, he renounced magic, hope, passion, and all his wrinkles spread around and preyed on him as if on a corpse. He was meekly and humbly vile in the surrender to his own repulsiveness—and he infected me with his swinishness to such an extent that my own vermin swarmed within me, crept out and crawled all over me. However, this was not yet the pinnacle of revulsion. The ultimate grotesque horror came from the fact that we were like a couple of lovers, let down in our feelings and rejected by the other two lovers, and our aroused state, our excitement, had nowhere to discharge itself, so now it roamed between us … now there was nothing left except ourselves … and, disgusted with each other, we were still together in our awakened sensuality. That was why we tried not to look at each other. The sun was burning us, the stink of Spanish flies emanated from the bushes.

  I finally understood, during this secret conference between us, what a blow the now doubtless indifference of the other two was to us. The young girl—as Vaclav’s fiancée. The young boy—totally unconcerned by this. And everything drowned in their young blindness. The ruin of our dreams!

  I replied to Fryderyk: who knows, perhaps our absence in Warsaw was not advisable. He latched on to this immediately. We were now under the sign of escape and, moving slowly along the alley, we were becoming used to this decision.

  But around the corner of the house, on the sidewalk leading to the office, we happened upon them. She with a bottle in her hand. He in front of her—they were talking. Their childishness, their utter childishness, was obvious, she—a schoolgirl, he—a schoolboy and a kid.

  Fryderyk asked them: “What are you up to?”

  She: “The cork slipped inside the bottle.”

  Karol, holding up the bottle to the light: “I’ll get it out with a piece of wire.”

  Fryderyk: “It’s not so easy.”

  She: “Perhaps I’d better look for another cork.”

  Karol: “Don’t worry … I’ll get it out.…”

  Fryderyk: “The neck is too narrow.”

  Karol: “As it went in, so it will come out.”

  She: “Or it’ll crumble and mess the juice up even more.”

  Fryderyk didn’t respond. Karol was rocking stupidly on his heels. She stood with the bottle. She said:

  “I’ll look for corks upstairs. There are none in the pantry.”

  Karol: “I’m telling you, I’ll get it out.”

  Fryderyk: “It’s not easy to get inside that neck.”

  She: “Seek and ye shall find!”

  Karol: “You know what? How about those little bottles in the cabinet …”

  She: “No. Those are medicine bottles.”

  Fryderyk: “Could be washed.”

  A bird flew by.

  Fryderyk: “What kind of bird was that?”

  Karol: “An oriole.”

  Fryderyk: “Are there a lot of them here?”

  She: “Look what a big earthworm.”

  Karol kept rocking, his legs spread apart, she raised her leg to scratch her calf—but his shoe, resting just on the heel, rose, made a half-turn, and squashed the earthworm … just at one end, just as much as the reach of his foot allowed, because he didn’t feel like lifting his heel from the ground, the rest of the worm’s thorax began to stiffen and squirm, which he watched with interest. This would not have been any more important than a fly’s throes of death on a flytrap or a moth’s within the glass of a lamp—if Fryderyk’s gaze, glassy, had not sucked itself onto that earthworm, extracting its suffering to the full. One could imagine that he would be indignant, but in truth there was nothing within him but penetration into torture, draining the chalice to the last drop. He hunted it, sucked it, caught it, took it in and—numb and mute, caught in the claws of pain—he was unable to move. Karol looked at him out of the corner of his eye but did not finish off the earthworm, he saw Fryderyk’s horror as sheer hysterics. …

  Henia’s shoe moved forward and she crushed the worm.

  But only from the opposite end, with great precision, saving the cent
ral part so that it could continue to squirm and twist.

  All of it—was insignificant … as far as the crushing of a worm can be trivial and insignificant.

  Karol: “Near Lvov there are more birds than here.”

  Henia: “I have to peel the potatoes.”

  Fryderyk: “I don’t envy you. … It’s a boring job.”

  As we were returning home we talked for a while, then Fryderyk disappeared somewhere, and I didn’t know where he was—but I knew what he was into. He was thinking about what had just happened, about the thoughtless legs that had joined in the cruelty they committed jointly to the twitching body. Cruelty? Was it cruelty? More like something trivial, the trivial killing of a worm, just so, nonchalantly, because it had crawled under a shoe—oh, we kill so many worms! No, not cruelty, thoughtlessness rather, which, with children’s eyes, watches the droll throes of death without feeling pain. It was a trifle. But for Fryderyk? To a discerning consciousness? To a sensibility that is cable of empathy? Wasn’t this, for him, a bloodcurdling deed in its enormity—surely pain, suffering are as terrible in a worm’s body as in the body of a giant, pain is “one” just as space is one, indivisible, wherever it appears, it is the same total horror. Thus for him this deed must have been, one could say, terrible, they had called forth torture, created pain, with the soles of their shoes they had changed the earth’s peaceful existence into an existence that was hellish—one cannot imagine a more powerful crime, a greater sin. Sin … Sin … Yes, this was a sin—but, if a sin, it was a sin committed jointly—and their legs had united on the worm’s twitching body. …

  I knew what he was thinking, the crazy man! Crazy! He was thinking about them—he was thinking that they had crushed the worm “for him.” “Don’t be fooled. Don’t believe that we don’t have anything in common. … Surely you saw it, didn’t you: one of us crushed … and the other one crushed … the worm. We did it for you. To unite ourselves—in front of you and for you—in sin.”

  This must have been Fryderyk’s thought at this moment. Yet it’s possible that I was suggesting my own idea to him. But who knows—perhaps at this moment he was, in the same way, suggesting to me his idea … and he was thinking about me in a way that was no different from the way I was thinking about him … so it’s possible that each one of us was breeding his own idea by placing it in the other. This amused me, I laughed—and I thought that perhaps he too had laughed.…

  “We did it for you to unite in sin in front of you.” …

  If they really wanted to convey to us this hidden meaning with their nimbly crushing legs … if that’s what it was supposed to be … surely, no need to repeat it twice! A wise brain needs no twain! I again smiled at the thought that perhaps Fryderyk was smiling at this moment and thinking that I’m thinking the following about him: that any laborious decisions to depart have vanished from his head, that he is again like a hound on the trail, full of suddenly awakened hope, his blood roused.

  Giddy hopes—perspectives—were indeed opening up that had been contained within the little word “sin.” If this little boy and this little girl suddenly craved sin … with each other … but also with us … Oh, I could almost see Fryderyk sitting somewhere and thinking, his head resting on his hand—that sin pervades us at the deepest level of intimacy, bonding us no less than a hot caress, that sin is our common secret, private, clandestine, embarrassing, leading us as far into another person’s existence as physical love leads into the body. If this were the case … then it would surely follow that he, Fryderyk (“that he, Witold”—thought Fryderyk) … well, that we both … are not too old for them—in other words, their youth is not inaccessible to us. What is the purpose of a sin committed jointly? It’s as if sin is created to illegally marry a boy’s florescence with a girl to someone … not so enticing … to someone older and more serious. I smiled again. They were, in their virtue, closed off from us, hermetic. But in sin, they could roll about with us. … That’s what Fryderyk was thinking! And I almost saw him, a finger to his lips, looking for a sin that would let him chum up with them, looking for such a sin—or rather, perhaps he’s thinking, perhaps he is suspecting that I am the one looking for such a sin. What a system of mirrors—I was a mirror for him, he for me—and so, spinning daydreams on each other’s account, we were arriving at designs that neither of us would dare to consider as his own.

  Next morning we were supposed to travel to Ruda. The expedition was the subject of detailed deliberations—which horses, what route, which vehicles. It so happened that I went with Henia in the britzka. Since Fryderyk didn’t want to decide, we cast a coin and fate designated me as her companion. The morning was immense, its bearings lost, the road distant over the rising and falling of the undulating terrain with roads cut deep into it, their walls yellowish and sparsely adorned with a bush, a tree, a cow, while in front of us the carriage with Karol on the coach box appeared and disappeared. She—in her holiday best, her coat white from the dust and thrown over her shoulders—a fiancee traveling to her fiance. And so, infuriated, after a few introductory sentences, I said: “My congratulations! You’ll get married and start a family. You’ll have children!” She replied:

  “I’ll have children.”

  She replied, but the way she said it! Obediently—fervently—like a schoolgirl. As if someone had taught her the lesson. As if, in relation to her own children, she herself had become an obedient child. We rode on. Horse tails in front of us and horse rumps too. Yes! She wanted to many the attorney! She wanted to have children with him! And she was saying this while there, in front of us, was the outline of her underage lover’s silhouette!

  We passed a heap of rubble discarded on the side of the road, and soon thereafter two acacia trees.

  “Do you like Karol?”

  “Sure … after all, we’ve known each other…”

  “I know. Since childhood. But I’m asking whether you feel anything for him?”

  “Me? I like him a lot.”

  “‘Like’? That’s all. So why did you crush the worm with him?”

  “What worm?”

  “And what about the pants legs? The pants you rolled up for him by the barn?”

  “Pants? Oh, yes, they were too long after all. So what of it?”

  The glaringly smooth wall of a lie told in good faith, a lie that she did not feel to be a lie. But how could I demand truth from her? This creature, sitting next to me, small, frail, ill-defined, who was not yet a woman but merely a prelude to a woman, this transience that existed solely to cease being what it is now, that was killing itself.

  “Karol is in love with you!”

  “Him? He’s not in love with me, or with anybody else. … All he wants is, well … to go to bed with somebody …” and here she said something that pleased her, she expressed it as follows: “After all, he’s just a kid, and besides, you know … well, better not talk about that!” This was of course an allusion to Karol’s uncertain past, but in spite of everything, I thought I was also catching a friendly tone toward him—as if there was the shadow of a “limited” friendliness hiding here, somewhat collegial, she did not say it with disgust, no, but rather said it as if it pleased her to some degree … and even intimately in some way. … It seemed that as Vaclav’s fiancée she was judging Karol severely, but also, at the same time, she was associating herself with his tumultuous fate, common to all born under the sign of war. I latched onto this right away, and I too struck the chord of intimacy, I said, nonchalantly and like a colleague, that after all, she must have slept with more than one man, surely she’s no saint, so she could go to bed with him too, and why not? She accepted it easily, more easily than I expected and even with a certain eagerness, with a strange obedience. She promptly agreed with me that “she could of course” and especially since it had already happened with someone from the Underground Army who stayed overnight at the house, last year. “Don’t tell my parents, of course.” But why was this young girl introducing me so easily into her little af
fairs? And right after her betrothal to Vaclav? I asked whether her parents suspected anything (with regard to the one from the UA), to which she replied: “They suspect it, since they caught us at it. But actually they don’t suspect it. …”

  “Actually”—a brilliant word. With its help one can say anything. A brilliantly obfuscating word. We were now descending down the road toward Brzustowa, among linden trees—shadow is bathed in sunlight, the horses slow down, the harness moves forward on their necks, the sand creaks under the wheels.

  “Good! Well, then! Why not? If with that one from the UA, why not with this one?”

  “No.”

  The ease with which women say “no.” This talent for refusal. This “no,” always at the ready—and when they find it within them, they’re merciless. Yet … could she be in love with Vaclav? Is this where the restraint came from? I said something to this effect: it would be a blow for Vaclav if he found out about her “past”—he who worships her and is so religious, so principled. I expressed the hope that she would not tell him, yes, better to spare him this … spare the one who believes in their total spiritual understanding … She interrupted me, offended. “And what do you think? That I have no morality?”

  “He has a Catholic morality.”

  “Me too. It’s the truth, I am a Catholic.”

  “What do you mean? Do you take the sacraments?”

  “Of course!”

  “Do you believe in God? Literally, as a true Catholic?”

  “If I didn’t believe, I wouldn’t be going to confession and Holy Communion. And don’t think anything to the contrary! My future husband’s principles suit me just fine. And his mother is almost a mother to me. You’ll see, what a woman! It’s an honor for me to become part of such a family.” And after a moment’s silence she added, hitting the horses with the reins: “At least when I marry him I won’t be screwing around.”