Cosmos

by Witold Gombrowicz

  Leon commented as an aside: “She’s asking what I’m thinking.”

  Honey.

  The tip of his tongue appeared in the groove of his thin lips, his tongue was pink, it remained between his lips, the tongue of an older man in pince-nez, the tongue, spit into the mouth, in the lightning-fast chaos and whirl Lena’s mouth together with Katasia’s mouth came to the surface, it was a moment, I saw them on the very surface, the way one sees pieces of paper in the seething cauldron of a waterfall . . . it passed.

  I caught a leg of the table with my hand so that the rapidity of it all wouldn’t carry me off. A belated gesture. Rhetorical actually. Humbug.

  The priest.

  Roly-Poly nothing. Leon. Lulu said a little tearfully, My dear Mr. Leon, what about this excursion? What for? At night, in the dark? What kind of landscape are we supposed to see?

  “You can’t see much in the dark,” Fuks interjected impatiently, rather impolitely.

  “My wife,” Leon said (he’s going to say it, while the bird and the stick are there!), “my wife,” he added (Jesus, Mary!), “my wife” (I caught myself by the hand!) . . .

  “Oh please, don’t be so nervosum!” he exclaimed jovially.

  “There is no reason for this nervipissum! Every little thing is en ordre, bitte, here we are, sitting as God decreed, everyone on his little bum, we’re biting into God’s gifts, as well as gurgle gurgle gurgle, with schnapps and wine-ho, and within the hour we’ll march-ho, under my command, to the one and only delight where the miracle of the pan-o-ram-a opens up, as I said, because of the prancing moonlit miracle, hop tra-la-la among hills, little mountains, mountains, open spaces, valleys, hey-ho, oh, hey-ho . . . as it appeared to me, my dears, twenty and seven years ago, less one month and four days when I accidentally at that exact hour of the night strayed into the one and only place and saw . . .

  “To suck,” he added and turned pale. Short of breath.

  “Clouds are coming,” Lukie said harshly, unpleasantly—“we won’t be able to see anything, there are clouds, the night will be dark, we won’t see anything.”

  “Clouds,” Leon mumbled, “clouds . . . That’s good. At that time too . . . a bit cloudy. I remember. I noticed it as I was returning. I remember!”he exclaimed impatiently, as if he were in a hurry and was immediately lost in thought . . .

  As for me, I also thought . . . unceasingly and with all my might. Roly-Poly (who had since gone to the kitchen) again stood in the door.

  “Careful, your sleeve!”

  I jumped sideways at these words of his, frightened—the sleeve, the sleeve!—but he was saying this to Fuks whose sleeve was brushing against a dish of mayonnaise. Nothing much. Peace. Why isn’t Ludwik here, what’s become of him, why is she without Ludwik?

  The sparrow.

  The stick.

  The cat.

  “My wife doesn’t trust me.”

  He looked in turn at three fingers of his right hand, beginning with the index finger.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, my wife would like to know what I’m thinking.”

  He moved his three fingers in the air, while I instantly intertwined the fingers of both my hands.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, perhaps it pains me to some degree, hm, that my wife, after thirty-seven years of unblemished conjugal life, is anxiously asking for my thoughts.”

  The priest said, “may I please have some cheese,” everyone looked at him, he repeated, “may I please have some cheese,” Lukie passed him the cheese, but instead of cutting himself a piece, the priest added, “perhaps we can move the table a bit, it’s cramped here.”

  “We could move the table,” Leon said. “What was I saying, about what? Ah yes, I was saying that I did not deserve, after years of conjugal life that was impeccable

  irreproachable

  exemplary

  dutiful

  loyal . . .

  Because it’s been so many years! Years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes, seconds . . . Do you know, gentlemen that, pen in hand, I’ve calculated how many seconds of conjugal life I have had, including leap years, and it came to one hundred and fourteen million, nine hundred and twelve thousand, nine hundred and eighty four, no more no less, until half past seven in the evening of this very day. And now, at eight, a few thousand more have accrued.”

  He rose and sang:

  If you haven’t got what you love

  Why then you love what you’ve got!

  He sat down. Lost himself in thought.

  “If you want to move the table . . . What was I saying? About what? Ah, yes. So many seconds under my wife and daughter’s watchful gaze, and yet, alas, who would have thought

  who would have thought

  who would have thought

  who would have thought

  my wife seems not to trust my thoughts!”

  He again became lost in thought, broke off. His musings were ill-timed, there was a feeling of violent chaos in general, disorder, or something like that, perhaps not just in this speech of his, perhaps it was in everything, in the totality of everything . . . again . . . again . . . while he, on the other hand, was celebrating. The sparrow. The stick. The cat. This is not the point. So this is the point. This is not the point. So this is the point. He was celebrating as if it were a litany, a religious service, “look with what attention I devote myself to inattention . . .

  “My wife does not trust my thoughts, here, here, do I deserve this? Probably not, let us admit, yet it’s true (move the table away, it’s cramping me too, the seat’s hard but that can’t be helped), yet it’s true, one must admit, in such cases one really doesn’t know, because who can really know what thoughts are in someone else’s head . . . Take this example. For example I, an exemplary husband and father, take into my hand, let’s say, this small piece of an eggshell . . .”

  He took a piece of shell between his fingers.

  “And I hold it in my fingers like this . . . and I turn it like this . . . slowly . . . in front of your eyes . . . It’s something innocent

  harmless

  not in anyone’s way.

  In a word, a trifling passe-temps. Well yes, but the question arises: how am I turning it? . . . Because in the long run, mark you, I could be turning it innocently, virtuously . . . but, if I please, I could also . . . what? . . . If I wanted to, I could turn it slightly more . . .hm . . .What? A little. I’m saying this, of course, as an example, to show that the most respectable husband possibly could, under the eye of his better half, turn this piece of shell in a manner that is . . . ”

  He blushed. Unbelievable: he turned red! Unheard of! He knew it, he even half-shut his eyes, but he didn’t hide it, indeed, he was solemnly exposing his embarrassment in full view. Like the monstrance.

  He waited until the blush faded. All the while turning the piece of shell. Finally he opened his eyes and breathed a sigh of relief. He said:

  “So, whatever.”

  Everyone relaxed . . . though actually, the congestion in our corner, with the lamps, was still quite jumpy . . . yet at the same time heavy, it seemed . . . They watched him, they surely thought he was a bit crazy . . . And yet no one said anything.

  Outside, somewhere behind the house something clattered, as if something were falling . . . what? It was an extra sound, supernumerary, it absorbed me, I thought about it for a long time, deeply—but I didn’t know what to think, how to think.

  “Berg.”

  He said it calmly and politely, carefully.

  I said no less politely and clearly.

  “Berg.”

  He looked at me briefly, lowered his eyelids. We both sat quietly, listening to the word “berg”. . . as if it were a subterranean reptile, one of those that never make their way into the light . . . and now it was here, in front of everyone. They watched it, I suppose . . . I suddenly imagined that everything was moving forward, like a deluge, an avalanche, a march under banners, that a definitive blow had fallen, a push that gave direction! Slap-bang!
March! Onward! Let’s move on! If he were the only one who said “berg,” well, it wouldn’t have been a big deal. But I too said “berg.”And my berg uniting with his berg (confidential, private) removed his berg from the realm of confidentiality. This was no longer the private little world of an eccentric. This was truly something . . . this was something that really existed! Right in front of us, here. And it suddenly shot up with full strength, pushed into, made one surrender to it . . .

  For a moment I saw the sparrow, the stick, the cat, together with the mouth . . . like trash in the seething cauldron of a waterfall—then vanishing. I expected everything to move forward in the mode of the berg. I was an officer of the Commander-in-Chief. A boy serving at mass. A humble and well-disciplined acolyte and performer. Onward! Let’s move on! March!

  But then Lulu exclaimed: “Bravo, Mr. Leon!”

  She had left me out. Yet I was sure that she exclaimed it simply out of fear, unable to endure cooperating with him. Suddenly everything fell apart, then flagged, there was tittering, everyone began talking, and Leon laughed uproariously hohohooho, where is the mommy flaskie, take a leakie, bib the cognac, pootoomu bataclee! How unpleasant and discouraging it is that, after such a lofty moment, when the course of events prepares to leap, disintegration and laxity ensue, the humming of the swarm returns, of the swarm, give me some vodka too, you’re not drinking, Madame, a drop of cognac, the priest, Venomie, Tolek, Lukie, Lulu, Fuks, and Lena with her beautifully sculptured mouth, fresh, a bunch of sightseers. Everything slumped. Nothing. Everything became like the dirty wall again. Chaos.

  Sparrow.

  Stick.

  Cat.

  I reminded myself of them because I was in the process of forgetting them. They returned to me because they were departing. Disappearing. Yes indeed, I had to search within for the sparrow and the stick and the cat, already disappearing, to search for them and sustain them within me! And I had to force myself to look there again with my thought, into the thicket, beyond the road, by the wall.

  The priest began to clamber up from the bench, mumbling excuses, he moved along the table, his cassock crawled onto the room. He opened the door. He went out on the porch.

  I, without the berg, felt awkward. I didn’t know, what . . . I thought: I’ll go out too. To breathe fresh air.

  I rose. I took a few steps toward the door.

  I went out.

  On the porch—refreshing air. The moon. Clouds gathering, brilliant, luminously-craggy, and below a much darker surge of mountains, turned into stone while gushing forth. And all around a fairy-like spectacle, meadows, carpets, lawns swarming with clusters of trees, processions, garden parties, as if this were a park where pageants, parades, games were taking place, everything drowned at the very bottom of the moon’s glow.

  Near the stairs, resting on the handrail, stood the priest.

  He stood and he was doing something strange with his mouth.

  *Russian for “nothing.”

  *From a Polish folk song.

  *From a Polish saying.

  *Gombrowicz derived the word from the French manger and added, as in many other words, the Latin um.

  chapter 9

  It will be difficult to continue this story of mine. I don’t even know if it is a story. It is difficult to call this a story, this constant . . . clustering and falling apart . . . of elements . . .

  When I walked out on the porch and saw the priest doing something strange with his mouth I was stunned! What? What? I was even more stunned than if the earth’s crust had cracked and larvae came crawling from underground to the surface. It’s no joke! I alone knew the secret of the mouth. No one besides me had been introduced to the secret affair of Lena’s mouth. He had no right to know it! It was mine! By what right was he sticking his mouth into my secret?!

  It soon became clear that he was vomiting. He was vomiting. His vomiting, unsightly, wretched, was justified.

  He had drunk too much.

  Well! It’s nothing!

  He saw me and smiled, mortified. I wanted to tell him to go lie down and get some sleep, then someone else stepped onto the porch.

  Venomie. She walked past me, walked a few steps away and out onto the meadow, stopped, lifted her hand to her mouth and, by the light of the moon, I saw her vomiting mouth, she was vomiting.

  She was vomiting. Her mouth, as I saw it, had reason to vomit—which is why I looked—since the priest was vomiting, why shouldn’t she be vomiting? Yes? Indeed. Good. But. But, but, but, if the priest was vomiting, she should not have been vomiting! This mouth of hers intensified the priest’s mouth . . . as the hanging of the stick had intensified the hanging of the sparrow———just as the hanging of the cat had intensified the hanging of the stick—as the banging-into had led to the pounding—just as I had intensified the berg with my berg.

  Why had their vomiting mouths assailed me? What did these mouths know about the mouth that I was hiding within me? Where did the reptile mouth, slithering, come from? Perhaps it would be best—to leave. I left. Not into the house, I went across the meadow, enough was enough, the night was poisoned by the moon drifting across it, dead, the tops of trees were in their glory, and there were innumerable groups, processions, gatherings, murmurings, deliberations, parties—a night truly inducing one to dream. Never to return, never to return, I would most willingly never return, perhaps take the cart, give the horses the whip, leave forever . . .Well, no . . . A splendid night. In spite of it all, I’m having fun. A magnificent night. Yet it was impossible to prolong it, I really am sick. A magnificent night. I’m sick, sick, but not all that sick. The house disappeared behind the hill, I walked on the soft grass alongside the stream, but what about this tree, what kind of a tree is this, what about this tree . . .

  I stopped. A stand of trees, and within it one tree was different from the others, that is, actually, it was like the others, but there must have been a reason why it attracted my attention. This tree was barely visible within the copse, screened by the others, yet it attracted my attention, what, what was it, a thickness, or a weight, a ballast, I was passing it with the feeling of passing a tree that is “too heavy,” terribly “heavy” . . . I stopped, turned back.

  I walked into the copse, now quite sure that something is there. The copse began with a few scattered birches, and right after that there was a concentration of pines, thicker, darker. The sensation of walking toward an oppressive “heaviness” did not leave me.

  I looked around.

  A shoe.

  A leg was hanging down from a pine tree. I thought “a leg,” but I wasn’t sure . . . Another leg. There was a man . . . hanged . . . I looked, a man . . . legs, shoes, higher up I could make out a head, askew, the rest merged into the tree, into the dark branches . . .

  I looked around, nothing, silence, calm, I looked again.A hanging man. The yellow shoe was familiar to me, it reminded me of Ludwik’s shoes. I pushed the branches away, I saw Ludwik’s jacket, and his face. Ludwik.

  Ludwik.

  Ludwik, hanging on a belt. His own, pulled from his pants.

  Ludwik? Ludwik. He was hanging. I took my time getting used to it . . . He was hanging. I went on getting used to it—he was hanging. Since he was hanging, it must have happened somehow, and I slowly began to search my mind, try to figure it out, he’s hanged, who had hanged him, did he hang himself, when I saw him just before supper, he was asking me for a razor blade, he was calm, he was his usual self on our walk . . . and yet he was hanging . . . and it happened in the span of just over an hour . . . he was hanging . . . and somehow it must have happened, there must have been reasons, but I couldn’t think of them, nothing, nothing, and yet a vortex must have formed in a river flowing by it all, about which I knew nothing, an obstruction must have arisen, some associations, interconnections must have formed . . . Ludwik! Why Ludwik? Leon more likely, the priest, Venomie maybe, even Lena—but Ludwik! And yet this FACT was hanging, a hanging fact, a Ludwik-like fact was hanging, hitting one on th
e head, a fact that was big, heavy, hanging down, something like a bull roaming about on the loose, an enormous fact on a pine tree, and with shoes . . .

  Some time ago a dentist was going to extract my tooth, but he couldn’t get hold of it with his pliers, I don’t know why they kept slipping off . . . it was the same with this heavily hanging fact, I couldn’t get hold of it, it kept slipping away, I was helpless, I had no access to it, sure, it happened somehow, since it happened . . . I carefully looked around in all directions. I calmed down. Probably because I finally understood . . .

  Ludwik.

  Sparrow.

  Indeed, I was looking at this hanging man just as I had looked in those bushes at the sparrow.

  And pam, pam, pam, pam! One, two, three, four! The hanged sparrow, the hanging stick, the strangled-hanged cat, Ludwik hanged. How neatly it fit together! What consistency! A stupid corpse was becoming a logical corpse—though the logic was both heavy-handed . . . and too much my own . . . personal . . . so . . . separate . . . private.

  I had nothing left but to think. I thought. In spite of everything I strained to turn it into a readable story and—I thought—what if he were the one who had hanged the sparrow? He drew the arrows, hanged the stick, indulged in these pranks . . . some kind of mania, the mania of hanging that led him here, to hang himself . . . what a maniac! I remembered Leon telling me when we sat on the tree stump, in all honesty: that he, Leon, had nothing to do with it. So was it Ludwik? Mania, obsession, lunacy . . .

  But there was another possibility, also along the lines of normal logic—that he was the victim of blackmail, revenge perhaps, someone persecuting him, someone surrounding him with those signs, suggesting the idea of hanging . . . but who then? Someone at home? Roly-Poly? Leon? Lena? Katasia?

  Yet another possibility, also “normal”: perhaps he didn’t hang himself? Perhaps someone murdered him? Perhaps he was strangled, then hanged? Someone who was amusing himself by hanging odds and ends, a maniac, a lunatic, was finally seized by the desire to hang something heavier than a small stick . . .Who? Leon? Katasia? But Katasia had stayed back there . . . So what? She could have come here unbeknownst to anyone, for a thousand reasons, by a thousand means, why not, it could have happened, there were unlimited possibilities of associations and combinations . . . And Fuks? Couldn’t Fuks have caught the contagion of hanging, made it his own . . . and . . . and . . . He could have. Yet he was with us the whole time. So what? If it turned out that it was he—an interval in time could be found, anything can be found in a bottomless cauldron of evolving events! And the priest? Millions and millions of threads could connect his fingers with this hanging man . . .