Butch claimed that in one cinema the projectionist would, for a small fee, put on a special treat for aficionados after the last showing and screen just the three all-important scenes, over and over again, freezing the film on the right frames – for example, just at the moment where Pola Raksa stands by the fireplace with one lifted leg exposed almost to the hip. (This, incidentally, gave rise to a long and completely pointless discussion about whether it was possible to freeze-frame with a film projector; Roz Goltz, who knew all about everything, insisted it wasn’t, because it would burn the frame, and a fight nearly broke out.)
In any case, it seemed that the rather singular interest generated by the film had one beneficial result: a national classic once dismissed with a shrug and a yawn now had young people reaching for it unprompted. What they did with it, however, could not exactly be called rereading, nor could the longing it satisfied be described as a thirst for literature. It was dipped into mainly for the mountain rape scene, in the hope that the written description might supply more detail than the brief shot in the film. And this, for the reader, was the beginning of the most remarkable experience of all, for it turned out that in the book, the scene to which the film devoted less than a minute was preceded by an introduction of epic proportions – three whole chapters – and could be read as an independent whole: the story of the brief passion that flamed between the two protagonists and of its tragic end.
It begins with the ‘lovers’, sick of the world, escaping into the mountains (the chapter entitled ‘There . . .’). Here they proceed to spend a sort of honeymoon, living in a hut on the edge of the woods in a state of almost permanent ecstasy (a chapter eloquently entitled ‘Hills and Valleys’). Finally, as a result of their reckless decision to spend the night in a cave high up the mountain (‘Window in the Rocks’), they are set upon by highland robbers. It is at this point that the rape scene occurs, followed by the despairing heroine’s suicidal leap from a precipice.
Among the pupils this episode became immensely popular. It was obsessively read and reread, whole chunks of it were quoted by heart and every detail was minutely discussed. No other text on the syllabus had ever kindled so much passionate debate or inspired such in-depth analysis. Special attention was, of course, devoted to anything that could conceivably have a connection with sex; but since the language was so flowery, so full of metaphor and so richly studded with bizarre turns of phrase, it was not always evident what did and what didn’t.
Take, for example, the following sentence: ‘Exhaustion tore the passion from their bodies.’ The intended significance of this became the subject of endless speculation and analysis: did it mean that the protagonists’ exhausting climb had weakened their sexual desire or, on the contrary, strengthened it? Some believed, with Roz Goltz, that the enigmatic verb could be interpreted only in its negative sense, implying a drop of sexual vigour, and that anything else was absurd. Others, mainly the romantics, insisted that the controversial verb ‘tore’ was to be taken in the sense of ‘intensified’ or, better still, ‘wrung’ or ‘squeezed’, as one squeezes the last of the toothpaste from a tube. In this case, it was the protagonists’ capacity for sexual arousal that was being wrung or squeezed out of them – a capacity they had exploited to excess, one might even say plundered. In support of this theory they adduced – from memory – the following two sentences:
Erupting onto these summits, they not only thrust away water and thirst, and shook the dust of the earth off their feet, but also separated in spirit from their flesh, their veins, their blood, their bodies. Then they acceded to the highest bliss, and it seemed the beginning of eternal happiness, the limit of that other world, a heavenly passion.
‘There you are,’ the romantics insisted, ‘it says that they separated in spirit from their bodies. That means they became pure body: pure, naked animal instinct, shameless and uncontrolled. Isn’t it obvious?’
Another scene that was interminably discussed was the one where the pair, intoxicated with happiness, decide to kill themselves by jumping off the precipice. The fascinating attraction of this passage lay not in the dramatic or lofty subject matter but in two or three sentences (underlined in almost everyone’s copy) of a universal and quite independent significance. The first of these is uttered when the hero, urging his beloved to make the desperate leap that will take them to the ‘land of happiness’, suddenly utters, in tones that brook no denial, the following surprising command: ‘Well, take off your clothes!’ It soon transpires that his intention is simply to suggest that they should use her dress to tie themselves together before the leap, so as not to be separated during their fall; but the first impression these words made on the reader was so strong that it ‘tore’ them irretrievably from the context in which they were embedded.
The next sentence was descriptive: ‘Slowly, as if in her sleep, she rose and with a calm smile began to tear at her bodice.’ Here, again, the final words were underlined, usually twice, and further stressed by an exclamation mark in the margin.
The dramatic suspense was happily broken in the third sentence: ‘But when, from within the folds of black silk, there flashed an arm that was whiter than a pure cloud, he pressed his lips against it.’ Here the crucial phrases were ‘from within the folds of black silk’ and ‘he pressed his lips against it’.
And then there was the final, tragic sequence: the attack, the rape and the leap from the precipice. This, too, was endlessly pored over. Oddly enough, here the attraction lay not in reading about the base pleasures of the robbers, clad in ‘red trousers and black shirts smeared with grease’, but in the passage which precedes this most dreadful event and describes the circumstances of the attack.
The text makes it quite clear that the attack comes at dawn, when the lovers are still lying asleep, ‘covered by a coat’. The hero, however, awakens only when he is already fettered and bound in four places – at the elbows, wrists, knees and ankles – and tied to the trunk of a spruce tree; in the cave a huge fire, lit by the robbers, is burning brightly. The question naturally arises why he did not discover this sooner: how could he possibly have slept through all that tying and binding and fire-lighting, not to mention the noise, to be woken at last only by what, in the text, was described as a ‘terrible feeling’?
Roz Goltz poked merciless fun at this passage. ‘What a load of rubbish!’ he would exclaim. ‘You’ve got to be out of your mind to write something like that. I’m woken by the slightest creak of a door, the buzzing of a fly, the tiniest ray of light – but he, oh, no, he manages to sleep through seven bandits running around, tying him up, undressing him, tying him to the trunk of a tree and leaping over the fire. It’s ridiculous! It just defies plain ordinary common sense!’
‘You may be good at physics,’ one of the romantics would counter, ‘but you don’t know anything about what it’s like to live with someone in a physical relationship. It was because all that sex had exhausted him. There he was, banging away at her day and night without a break – it’s no wonder he was like a corpse afterwards. Just like your Antek after a hard day’s work. It’s perfectly natural. Anyway, Zeromski was a sex maniac, so he knew what he was talking about.’
This lively interest in the mountain scene in Ashes was not kindled by a thirst for knowledge about the still mythical sphere of sex, still less by any appreciation of the qualities of the prose. It sprang, quite simply, from hopeless love for Madame la Directrice. All that debate and literary analysis was mere camouflage, an attempt to pretend to oneself that the issues discussed, while interesting and amusing, had absolutely nothing to do with oneself personally. But the truth was that the story embodied all the secret dreams and longings connected with the person of Madame. In the imagination of the readers, she was the beautiful Helena, and the reader himself the cause of her ecstasies. No one ever admitted this out loud, of course, but it was perfectly plain.
For my part, I’d finished with Ashes a long time before. The book had bored me to death as it had everyone el
se, and the mountain episode, with its insufferable pathos and purple prose, was more than I could stomach: after a few pages I simply skipped it and went on to where the main story line resumed. Now I was torn: seeing what was going on around me and feeling the tension building up around Madame, I was tempted to take a look and find out for myself what all the fuss was about, what exactly was supposed to be the connection between the book and our own lives. But pride prevented me. I didn’t want to be one of the sheep, didn’t want to stoop, even in my own eyes, to the level of my friends, panting with a mixture of sentimentality and lust. And, of course, there was the fear that it would come out – for it was generally acknowledged that whoever was reading Ashes must secretly be harbouring a burning passion for the icy Madame.
So I thrust away the temptation and refused even to look at the book. Except once, and that was largely by accident. But I paid for it dearly.
It was during a biology lesson. I was sitting on my own at a double desk in the back row, terribly bored. At some point I noticed that on the unoccupied half of the desk someone had left a book, wrapped carefully in brown paper. To while away the time I picked it up and looked inside. The title page was missing and most of the pages were uncut. I took a look at the text. Yes, this was it: Ashes, volume two – the one with the mountain episode. It didn’t take long to find it: it was the only part where the pages had been cut, and their bottom corners were sticky from much thumbing. I placed it on my lap, assumed an attitude of deep concentration, right hand on forehead (the left was needed for turning the pages), and began to read.
What I saw surpassed my wildest imaginings. I knew it was kitsch, full of rapturous moans and heaving sighs, but I hadn’t expected anything like this. It was mind-boggling. How could Zeromski have written this stuff? And, having written it, consented to its publication? Why had no one prevented him? It was also hard to believe that this was part of a book on the school syllabus – and that people actually liked it. Loved it! And then there was their reason for liking it: this – this! – is what they wanted to take as their model for their imaginary love affair with the headmistress!
On the other hand, perhaps it wasn’t so odd after all. For this prose, with its ridiculous style, its lofty idealism, its thick tangle of euphemism, symbolism and innuendo, and its improbable plot, contained something that the overly sensitive, excitable adolescent, struggling with hormones run amok, immediately picked up on. That something was perversion, and a fascination with perversion. It was clear that in these passages Zeromski was giving vent to some private obsession, some secret, deeply buried longing; the most exalted prose could not conceal this. It was a classic ‘sign of exhibitionist excess’, to use a phrase once coined by a certain philosopher.
Mostly, though, the thing was screamingly funny. Reading all those descriptions of ‘virginal fields like lovers, flowing with milk and honey’, all those stiff, artificial dialogues full of exclamations like, ‘How manly you are, how strong and how terrible!’ and poetic invocations of an ‘eternity long past’, it was a struggle not to laugh out loud.
Then I had an idea. Wouldn’t it be fun to take some of the most ridiculous phrases and put them together in a sort of romantic prose poem, which I would then present in literature class, poker-faced, as the work of some newly discovered poet, unanimously hailed by literary scholars as an unknown genius on a par with our greatest classics? The idea was immensely appealing, and exerted such a pull on my imagination that from then on I read with only this in view, concentrating on the expressions, metaphors and sentences I would use, how I would put them together, which of them would come first and which I would keep for last.
I was so absorbed in my fury of creativity that I didn’t even notice the Viper’s approach. She had crept up from behind and was now standing over me, looking over my shoulder. Like the hero of the novel waking up to find himself fettered and bound, I was unaware of the threat until her bony hand came down, like the claw of some huge crustacean, and whisked the book from my lap.
‘So, what’s this we’re reading in the biology lesson?’ she began, launching into one of her typical disciplinarian acts. ‘I’m sure it’s fascinating, but is it relevant?’ She glanced at the beginning of the book. ‘Title page missing . . . pages uncut . . . just this bit in the middle here . . . look at these pages, they’re filthy from use. Well, let’s take a look – maybe we’ll find it interesting, too?’ And she read out:
Here, on your breast, was a wolf – here, next to your beating heart! But you killed it. Oh, my lord and master! That terrible snout, those white fangs, they were here, next to your throat. Its curved claws slashed at your ribs, its eyes looked into yours. How manly you are, how strong and how terrible! How invincible! You are stronger than winter, stronger than the ice and the wind! Nothing can frighten you, nothing on earth, neither man nor animal. How terrible you are! How beautiful! I tremble at the thought . . . I am your slave . . . Oh, my love . . . There . . .
The class settled down to enjoy itself. It was clear that a lengthy break could be expected, further enlivened by the entertaining spectacle of a student being held up to mockery and ridicule. This kind of thing could always be counted on for amusement.
‘Well, no, I see that it isn’t quite relevant,’ pursued the Viper, ‘the wolf isn’t our subject today.’
Out of the corner of my eye I caught a few people in the act of discreetly slipping their copies of Ashes, volume two, into their satchels. The Viper, in the meantime, effecting a slight change of tone, launched into the main part of her pedagogical act.
‘So this is what our proud Shakespearean, the pride of our school, the winner of last year’s Golden Mask, is reading! Sentimental tripe for schoolgirls, bilge for the masses! Romantic rubbish!’
She was right, of course. But I had to defend myself. ‘This is Zeromski’s Ashes,’ I muttered in an undertone, as if wanting to save her further embarrassment. ‘It’s on the syllabus.’
The Viper was not in the least put off. ‘Zeromski’s Ashes,’ she pointed out, ‘is required reading for pupils in the year below you. I may teach biology, but for your information I am not entirely unacquainted with the literature syllabus. So you’re a little late with your reading. That’s point number one. And two, since you’re so industrious and conscientious that you’re catching up on your reading in the time reserved for biology, perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell us why the only cut pages are here in the middle and the rest hasn’t been touched. Here you are,’ she said, displaying the book, ‘just here, on these moans and sighs . . .’
The class burst out laughing. I was furious. ‘It’s not my copy,’ I blurted out, searching for a means of escape, but this only made things worse.
‘Not your copy?’ asked the Viper, surprised. ‘Whose is it, then?’
‘I don’t know,’ I snarled, ‘it was just there.’
‘I see. It was just there . . . so I suppose you just picked it up and began reading from the middle?’
‘That’s where it fell open.’
‘Indeed! It fell open.’ She wouldn’t give an inch. ‘Not only do you have the tastes of a besotted schoolgirl, you’re a hypocrite as well – trying to disown them. And I suppose next you’ll be telling me you just wanted to see what it is the others like so much about it?’
But it’s true, I wanted to say, that’s exactly right! But I couldn’t prove it, and no one would believe me. I had to find another line of defence. As if I had reached the end of my tether, I snapped, ‘What would you have preferred? Would you rather I’d cut the pages here in class? Why all these insinuations?’
This was a good move. Naturally, it infuriated the Viper even more. ‘Very well,’ she said drily. ‘Let’s leave it at that. But tell us, in that case, what we’ve covered in today’s lesson.’
‘The rabbit . . . the anatomy of the rabbit,’ I stammered out, noticing on the blackboard a huge poster with a picture of this mammal, its stomach open to reveal a colourful tangle of entrails.
‘Reproductive,’ someone prompted in a whisper, but I took this to be a joke at my expense, intended for the amusement of the class.
‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, defeated. ‘I wasn’t paying attention.’
‘That’s what I thought,’ acknowledged the Viper in tones of false regret. ‘So you won’t hold it against me if I give you an F.’ She entered it in the book with a flourish. ‘And now, it’s my pleasure to inform you that today we’ve been learning about the sex life of the rabbit. A subject right up your street – odd you didn’t notice. In any event, you will please learn it thoroughly and present it to us in the next lesson, so that no one can doubt your competence in the matter.’
This stung, and the prospect of the rabbit was a dark one. But the worst thing, of which the Viper was quite unaware when ridiculing me in class, was the implication that I was secretly reading the notorious episode, just like everyone else. And there could only be one reason for that: Madame had broken my heart, too.
TWO
In the Beginning was the Word
The effects of my unmasking were not slow to make themselves felt. I had barely sat down after my mauling at the hands of the Viper when I heard the first whispers and felt the first covert glances. I had no doubt the whispers were about me: my downfall was being rejoiced at, and a mean kind of consolation derived from the discovery that I, too, worshipped the Ice Queen, and shared in the general suffering. It was unendurable.
After school I made my way, as I always did at life’s difficult moments, to the nearby park (called, ironically, Zeromski Park), where I could think things through calmly and try to find some sort of solution. I sat down on a secluded bench and began to analyse the situation.
Madame Page 7