“You could give me your old jacket.”
“What for?
“I need one. For business.”
“So what if you need it?”
“I need it!” Karol repeated insolently, laughing.
“Then buy one yourself,” Fryderyk replied.
“I don’t have any dough.”
“I don’t have any either.”
“Just give me your jacket!”
Madame Amelia picked up the pace—so did Fryderyk—and Karol did too.
“Just give me your jacket!”
“Just give him your jacket!”
This was Henia. She joined them. Her fiancé stayed a bit behind. She was walking with Karol, her voice, her movements were like his.
“Just give him your jacket!”
“Just give me your jacket!”
Fryderyk stood still, lifted his arms jokingly: “Leave me alone, children!” Amelia began walking away faster and faster, not looking back at them, she therefore looked like someone who is pursued. Really—why didn’t she turn her head even once? This mistake turned her into someone running from juvenile scamps (while her son remained in the background). The question was whom was she running from: from them or from him, Fryderyk? Or from him with them? It didn’t seem likely that she had sniffed anything of the little affairs happening among those juveniles, no, she didn’t have a nose for it, they were too much her inferiors—because Henia meant something to her only with Vaclav, as his future wife, while Henia with Karol, they were just children, young people. So if she were running away it was from Fryderyk, from the familiarity that Karol was allowing himself with him—incomprehensible to her—the familiarity that was suddenly created here, next to her, striking a blow at her … because this man, overtaken by the boy, was thereby destroying and losing the seriousness that he had created within himself and in relation to her. … And this familiarity had been reinforced by her son’s fiancée! Amelia’s flight was an admission that she had noticed it, had taken it in!
When she walked away, those two stopped pressing Fryderyk for his jacket. Because she had walked away? Or because their jocularity had run its course? I needn’t add that Fryderyk, though shaken by this youthful onslaught and looking like someone who had barely escaped a gang on the outskirts of town in the middle of the night, took the utmost precautions that some “wolf from the woods,” the wolf that he did not know, that he always feared, would not be called forth. Quickly joining Hipolit and Maria, he began to “talk away” these improprieties, he even called to Vaclav to engage him as well in this simple, relaxing conversation. And for the remainder of the evening he was quiet as a mouse, didn’t even look at them, at Henia with Karol, at Karol with Henia, his aim was to calm and defuse the situation. He was undoubtedly afraid of stirring up the depths to which Amelia allowed herself to go with regard to him. He was afraid of it, especially in a combination with that shallow, youthful frivolity, that recklessness, he sensed that the two dimensions could not coexist, so he was afraid of something blowing apart and irrupting into … what? What? Yes, yes, he was afraid of the exploding mixture, of the A (i.e., “Amelia”) multiplied by (H + K). So, swallowing his pride, tail between his legs, he went mum, shush! At supper (it took place in the family circle, because the refugees from Lvov were served their food upstairs) he even went as far as to raise a toast in honor of the betrothed, wishing them all the best with his whole heart. It would be hard to match this propriety. Unfortunately, here too the mechanism by means of which Fryderyk was prone to sink deeper, even as he tried to back out, made itself known—but in this case it happened in a particularly violent, even dramatic way. His sudden rising to his feet and the emergence of his person among us who were seated created unwelcome panic, and Madame Maria was unable to hold back a nervous “oh”—because it wasn’t obvious what he was going to say, what he would say. Yet his initial sentences turned out to be soothing, they were conventional, spiked with humor—while waving his napkin, he gave thanks for making his bachelorhood pleasant with such a moving betrothal, and, with a few rounded turns of phrase he described the betrothed as a nice couple … but as his speech progressed, behind his words something was mounting that he was not saying, oh, constantly the same story! … In the end, and to the horror of the speaker himself, it became clear that his speech merely served to turn our attention away from his real speech that was taking place in silence, beyond words, and expressing what words did not encompass. Cutting through the courteous platitudes, his actual being gained voice, nothing could erase the face, the eyes expressing some relentless fact—and, sensing that he was becoming frightful and thus dangerous to himself as well, he stood on his head to be nice, he conducted his conciliatory rhetoric in an arch-moral spirit, arch-Catholic, about “family as the unit of society” and about “venerable traditions.” At the same time, however, he was hitting Amelia and everyone else in the face with his face that was deprived of illusions and inescapably present. The power of his “speech” was stupendous indeed. The most shattering oration I ever happened to hear. And one could see that the power, so parenthetic, so incidental, carried the speaker away like a horse!
He finished with wishes for happiness. He said something like this:
“Ladies and gentlemen, they deserve happiness, so they will be happy.”
Which meant:
“I’m talking just to talk.”
Madame Amelia hurriedly said:
“We are very, very grateful!”
Clinking our glasses erased the horror, and Amelia, exceedingly gracious, concentrated on her duties as the lady of the house: More meat, anyone? Perhaps vodka? … Everyone started talking, just to hear his own voice, and in this chatter we all felt better. Cheesecake was served. Toward the end of supper Madame Amelia rose and went to the pantry, while we, warmed by the vodka, joked around, telling the young lady what and how one had eaten on similar occasions before the war, and what delicacies she was missing. Karol laughed good-naturedly and sincerely, handing in his empty glass. I noticed that Amelia, who had returned from the pantry, sat on her chair in a strange way—first she stood next to it, then, after a moment and as if on command, she sat down—I had no time to think about it as she fell to the floor from the chair. Everyone jumped to his feet. We saw a red stain on the floor. A woman’s scream sounded from the kitchen, then a shot rang outside the windows, and someone, probably Hipolit, threw a jacket over the lamp. Darkness and a shot again. Abrupt closing of doors, Amelia was carried to the couch, feverish activity in the darkness. The jacket on the lamp began to smolder, they trampled it, somehow things immediately quieted down, everyone was listening intently, while Vaclav pressed a shotgun into my hand and pushed me to the window in the adjoining room: “Be careful!” I saw a quiet night in the garden, moonlit, while a partially dried-up leaf, on a branch that looked into the window, twirled every now and then with its little silver belly. I was clutching the weapon and watching to see if anyone was emerging from there, from the spot where the dampness of the twisted tree trunks began. But only a sparrow moved in the thicket. Finally a door banged, someone spoke loudly, people were saying something again, and I realized that the panic had passed.
Madame Maria appeared next to me. “Do you know anything about medicine? Come. She’s dying. She was stabbed with a knife. … Do you know anything about medicine?”
Amelia was lying on the couch, her head on a pillow, the room was full of people—the refugee family, the servants. … I was struck by the immobility of these people, impotence wafted from them … the same impotence that was often apparent in Fryderyk. … They stood back from her and left her alone so she could deal with her dying. They were merely assisting. Her profile stood out immobile, like a rocky promontory, and near by were Vaclav, Fryderyk, Hipolit—standing … Will she take long to die? On the floor a bowl of cotton wool and blood. But Amelia’s body was not the only body lying in this room, there, on the floor, in a corner, lay another … and I didn’t know what that was, wher
e it had come from, I couldn’t tell who was lying there, and at the same time I felt there was something erotic … that something erotic had come straggling in here … Karol? Where was Karol? Leaning with his hand on a chair he was standing, like everyone else, while Henia was kneeling, her hands on an armchair. And everyone was leaning toward Amelia so I couldn’t get a closer look at the other body, supernumerary and unexpected. No one stirred. But everyone watched anxiously, with questioning looks. How will she die—because one would have expected from her a death more dignified than an ordinary death, and this is what her son, and the Hipolits, and Henia were expecting of her, and even Fryderyk, who wasn’t taking his eyes off her. This was paradoxical, because they were demanding action from a person who was unable to move, frozen in powerlessness, and yet she was the only one here called upon to act. She knew it. Suddenly Madame Hipolit ran out and returned with a crucifix, this was like a call to action addressed to the dying woman, and the burden of waiting fell from our hearts—now we knew that something would soon begin. Madame Maria, cross in hand, stood next to the couch.
Then something happened that was so outrageous that in spite of all its nicety it looked like a blow. … The dying woman, barely touching the cross with her gaze, turned her eyes sideways toward Fryderyk and she united with him with her gaze—this was unbelievable, no one would have thought of the possibility of her avoiding the cross that now, in Madame Maria’s hands, became superfluous—and this very avoidance added to Amelia’s gaze, now fixed on Fryderyk, so much weight. Poor Fryderyk froze, caught by the dying and therefore dangerous gaze, and, pale, he stood almost at attention—they were looking at each other. Madame Maria continued to hold the cross, but minutes passed and it remained idle—the doleful, unemployed crucifix. Could it be that for this saint, in her hour of death, Fryderyk had become more important than Christ? So was she really in love with him? Yet this was not love, this had to do with something even more personal, this woman saw in him her judge—she could not accept the fact that she would die without having brought him around to herself, without having proved that she was no less “ultimate” than he, equally fundamental, a phenomenon that was essential, no less important. That’s how much she relied upon his opinion. However, the fact that she was turning not to Christ for recognition and for validation of her existence but to him, to a mortal, albeit endowed with uncommon consciousness, was an astounding heresy on her part, a repudiation of the absolute for the sake of life, an admission that not God but man is to be man’s judge. Perhaps I didn’t understand it so clearly at the time, nonetheless, shivers went through me at this uniting of her gaze with a human being, while God, in Maria’s hands, remained unnoticed.
Her dying, which actually did not progress at all, became, under the pressure of our concentration and our waiting, more tense from moment to moment—we were the ones loading it with our tension. And I knew Fryderyk well enough to worry that, while facing human death, something so special, he would no longer be able to bear it and would commit some impropriety. … But he stood, as if at attention, as if in church, and the only thing one could reproach him for was that every so often his eyes would abandon Amelia against his will to reach into the back of the room where the other body lay, mysterious to me, that I actually could not see well from my spot, but Fryderyk’s progressively more frequent forays with his eyes made me finally decide to go and look … and I approached that corner. Oh, what terror, what agitation I felt when I saw (a boy) whose leanness was a duplication of (Karol’s) leanness, he lay there and was alive, and, what’s more, he was the embodiment of blond charm with dark, huge eyes, and his darkness and swarthiness were drowning in the wildness of his hands and bare legs curled on the floor!
A wild, predatory, blond youth, barefoot, from the village, yet breathing forth beauty—a gorgeous, grimy little god who was here on the floor acting out his surly seductions. This body? This body? What did this body mean here? Why was he lying here? And so … this was a reiteration of Karol but in a lower register … and suddenly youth was mounting in the room not only numerically (because two is one thing, three is another), but in its very quality as well, it became something different, wilder and lower. And straight away, as if in repercussion, Karol’s body came to life, more intense and powerful, while Henia, though pious and kneeling, came tumbling down with all her whiteness into the realm of sinful and secret understanding with these two. At the same time Amelia’s throes of death became tainted, somehow suspect—what was her connection with this young, rustic, good-looking fellow, why did this (boy) come straggling up to her in her dying hour? I realized that this death was happening in ambiguous circumstances, much more ambiguous than they seemed on the surface. …
Fryderyk, forgetting himself, put his hand in his pocket, then quickly took it out, then dropped his hands by his side.
Vaclav was kneeling.
Madame Maria was tirelessly holding the cross because there was nothing else she could do—setting it aside would have been out of the question.
Amelia’s finger quivered and lifted and began to beckon … it beckoned and beckoned … toward Fryderyk, who approached her slowly and cautiously. She also beckoned toward his head until he stooped over her, and then she said astonishingly loudly:
“Please don’t leave. You will see. I want you to see. Everything. To the end.”
Fryderyk bowed and stepped back.
Only then did she fix her eyes on the cross and, I imagine, prayed, if one were to judge by the quivering that from time to time appeared on her lips—and in the end it was as it should be, the cross, her prayer, our attention—and this lasted an exceedingly long time, and the passage of time was the only measure of the fervor of these unending prayers that could not tear themselves from the cross. And this immobile and almost dead yet vibrating concentration, mounting with time, was sanctifying her, in the meantime Vaclav, the Hipolits, Henia, the servants, attended her on bended knee. Fryderyk also knelt down. But in vain. Because in spite of everything, and even though she was so lost in the cross, her demand that he see it retained its power. Why did she need this? To convert him with her last dying effort? To show him how one dies the Catholic way? Whatever it was that she wanted it was Fryderyk, not Christ, who was her final court of appeal, even if she were praying to Christ, it was for Fryderyk, and it made no difference that he fell to his knees, it was he, not Christ, who became the highest judge and God, because the death throes were taking place for him. What a baffling situation—I wasn’t surprised that he hid his face in his hands. All the more since, as the minutes were passing, we knew that with each minute her life was ebbing away—yet she was prolonging her prayer just so that it would stretch like a violin string, to the very limit. And again her finger appeared and began to beckon, this time toward her son. Vaclav approached, his arm around Henia. The finger directed itself straight at them, and Amelia said with haste:
“Swear to me immediately, now … Love and fidelity. Quick.”
They lowered their heads to her hands, Henia began to cry. But the finger rose again and beckoned, now in the other direction—to the corner, where in the corner lay … There was a commotion. He was lifted—and I saw that he was wounded, in the thigh I think—they carried him to her. She moved her lips, and I thought that I would finally find out what this was, why he was here with her, this (young one), also bleeding, what was between them. … But suddenly she gasped, once, twice, and went pale. Madame Maria raised the cross. Madame Amelia fixed her eyes on Fryderyk and died.
Part II
VIII
Fryderyk rose from his knees and stepped into the center of the room: “Pay her your respects!” he exclaimed. “Pay homage!” He took the roses from a vase and threw them toward the couch, then he reached out his hand to Vaclav. “A soul worthy of the heavenly choir! While for us there is nothing left but to bow our heads!” These words would have been theatrical on any of our lips, not to mention his gestures, but he pierced us with them imperiously, like a king to
whom pathos is permitted—who lays down a different kind of naturalness, above the ordinary. A ruling king, master of ceremonies! Vaclav, swept away by the sovereignty of this pathos, rose from his knees and ardently clasped his hand. It seemed that Fryderyk aimed his intervention at erasing all the strange improprieties that had cast a shadow over the demise, to return it to its full splendor. He moved a few steps to the left, then to the right—this was a kind of agitation in our midst—and he approached the lying (boy). “Rise to your knees!” he commanded. “To your knees!” This command was, on the one hand, the natural extension of the previous command, but, on the other hand, it created an awkwardness, because it was directed at the wounded man who was unable to rise, and the awkwardness increased when Vaclav, Hipolit, and Karol, terrorized by Fryderyk’s authority, rushed to raise (the boy) to the commanded position. Yes, this was going too far! As Karol’s hands took him under the arms, Fryderyk, thrown off track, fell silent, and his lights went out.
I was bewildered, exhausted … so much was happening … but I had already taken his measure … and so I knew that he had once more taken up his game with us and with himself. … From the tension, created by the corpse, some action of his was evolving, leading to a goal rooted in his imagination. It had all been intentional, though the intention was perhaps not yet tangible even to himself, perhaps one should say that he knew only the preamble to the intention—but I would have been surprised if what he had in mind was homage to Amelia, no, this had to do with bringing to us the man who was lying, in all his drastic and humiliating sense, with “pulling him out,” enhancing him and “binding him” with Henia and Karol. What connection, however, could there be between them? This golden wildness surely fit in with our couple, if only because it was also a sixteen-year-old wildness, but beyond that I didn’t see any connection, and I think that Fryderyk did not see one either—he acted in the dark, prompted by a sense, as unclear as my own, that he, the lying man, is enhancing their power—turning them into demons. … And thus Fryderyk was paving the lying man’s way to them.
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