Ferdydurke (11 page)

"You may begin!"

And just as he said "you may begin," just at that moment when he said "begin," reality finally overstepped its bounds, all that was nonessential climaxed into a nightmare, and the outlandish event turned into a total dream—while I was stuck there in the middle like a fly caught in a web, unable to move. It seemed as if by way of long and hard exercise, the point at which one loses one's face had finally been reached. The empty phrase became a grimace, and the grimace-vacuous, sterile, idle, and futile—grabbed one and would not let go. It wouldn't have been at all strange to see Kneadus and Syphon take their faces in their hands and throw them at each other—no, nothing would have been strange any more. I mumbled: "Have pity on your faces, at least have pity on mine, a face is not an object, a face is a subject, a subject, a subject!" But Syphon had already presented and sallied his first face so violently that even my face curled on itself like a piece of gutta-percha.
{6}
Namely—he blinked like someone coming out of darkness into broad daylight, he then looked right and left in pious astonishment, rolled his eyeballs, shot them upward, ogled, opened his mouth, let out a soft cry as if he had spotted something on the ceiling, assumed an expression of rapture and so remained, entranced and inspired; he then placed his hand on his heart and sighed.

Kneadalski shrank, crouched, and hit him from below with a shattering, copycat counterface as follows: he too rolled his eyeballs, lifted them and ogled, he too opened his mouth in calflike rapture, and, his face thus prepared, he moved it in circles till a fly fell into his gaping mouth; he then ate it.

Syphon paid no attention to him, as if Kneadus' pantomime was not even taking place (because he had the advantage of acting for the sake of his principles, as such, and not for his own sake), but instead he burst into fervent, ardent sobs, and he sobbed and sobbed until he reached the peak of contrition, self-revelation, and emotion. Knea-dus also began sobbing, and he sobbed long and hard till a drop of snot appeared at the tip of his nose—which he shook off into a spittoon, thereby reaching another peak of grossness. But the impudent blasphemy against all sacred feelings unnerved Syphon—he couldn't stand it any longer and he unwittingly glanced at Kneadus, then, exasperated by what he saw and still sobbing, he looked daggers at the daredevil! How unwise! Because Kneadus was ready for him! As soon as he realized that he had managed to turn Syphon's gaze toward himself and away from lofty heights, he immediately bared his teeth and pulled a face so filthy that Syphon, cut to the quick, hissed. It seemed that now Kndeadus had the upper hand! Mizdral and Hopek breathed a quiet sigh! But too soon! They breathed too soon!

Because Syphon—realizing in the nick of time that he had needlessly been carried away by Kneadus' face, and that in his exasperation he was about to lose command of his own face—quickly retreated, regrouped his features, and once again shot his eyeballs upward, moreover, he moved one of his legs forward, slightly tousled his hair, letting a cowlick slip onto his forehead, and so he remained, complete unto himself, with his principles and with his ideals; he then lifted his hand and quite unexpectedly pointed his finger upward! The blow was staggering!

Kneadus immediately stuck out the same finger and spat on it, he picked his nose with it, he scratched himself with it, he debased Syphon as much as he could, as he knew how, he defended himself by attacking, he attacked by defending himself, but Syphon's finger remained pointing to heaven on high, undaunted. To no avail did Kneadus bite his finger, dig his teeth into it, scratch the sole of his foot with it, and everything else humanly possible to befoul it—alas, alas—Syphon's unrelenting, undaunted finger remained pointing upward, and would not cede. Kneadalski found himself in desperate straits because he had exhausted all possible grossness while Syphon's finger continued pointing upward, on and on. The seconds' and the umpire's blood curdled! With a final, spasmodic effort Kneadus bathed his finger in the spittoon and, red in the face, covered in sweat, repulsive, he shook it at Syphon in despair, but Syphon paid no heed, nor did he move his finger, and what's more, his face turned as luminous as a rainbow after a storm, and the wondrous Eaglet-
Sokot
, the pure, innocent, uninitiated Lad, beamed in all of the seven colors of the rainbow!

"Victory!" shouted Pyzo.

Kneadus looked terrible. He retreated all the way to the wall and wheezed, let out a throaty rattle, foamed at the mouth, grabbed his finger and pulled on it, he wanted to tear it out, to tear it out by its root and throw it away, to destroy thereby any bond with Syphon and regain his independence! But he couldn't, no matter how hard he pulled, regardless of the pain! Inability reared its head again! While Syphon always could, always at the ready and as calm as the blue Skies, his finger uplifted not for Kneadus, as such, nor for himself, as such, but for his principles, as such! Oh, what horror! Here in one direction was Kneadus—contorted, baring his teeth, and there was Syphon doing it in the opposite direction! And there was I between them, the umpire, imprisoned perhaps forever, a prisoner of someone else's grimace, someone else's countenance. And my own face, like a mirror image of their faces, also turned freakish, while fear, disgust, and terror carved on it an indelible mark. A clown between two clowns, how could I attempt anything that would not be a grimace? My toe tragically seconding their fingers, I was grimacing, grimacing, and I knew that I was losing myself in that grimace. I thought I would never escape Pimko. Never be myself again. Oh, what horror! And what horrible silence! Because at times the silence was absolute, no weapons clanging, only face-pulling, and movements without a sound.

Suddenly Kneadus shrieked:

"Hold him! Grab him! Kill him! Hit him!"

What's this? Something new again? What now? Hasn't there been enough already? Kneadus lowered his finger, pounced on Syphon, and hit him in the mug—Mizdral and Hopek pounced on Pyzo and Guzek, and hit them in the mugs too! A tumult ensued. The mass of bodies lay entangled on the floor while I stood over them immobile, like some superumpire. In less than a minute Pyzo and Guzek were on the floor like two logs, tied up in suspenders, while Kneadus sat akimbo Syphon's chest, gloating horribly.

"What now, you little worm, you innocent Lad, you thought you had the better of me? Up goes your little finger, and you're pleased as Punch, eh? So you thought, you mama's boy (and he followed this with the most opprobrious expressions), that Kneadus wouldn't be able to handle this? That he'd let you twist him round your little finger? I have news for you: if nothing else works, that little finger will be pulled down by force!"

"Let go ..." Syphon rattled with a throaty voice.

"Let go!? I'll let go in a minute! But I'm not sure I'll let you go just as you are. Let's talk first! Let's have your little ear! Fortunately, one can still get inside you ... by force . . . through the ears .. . I'll get inside you all right! Give me your little ear, I tell you! Just wait, you little innocent, I'll tell you something ..."

He bent over him and whispered—Syphon turned green, squealed like a stuck pig, and plopped like a fish out of water. Kneadus pressed down on him! And, in hot pursuit of Syphon's ears, Kneadus chased them with his mouth, first one ear then the other, while Syphon rolled his head from side to side to protect his ears, but, realizing that escape was impossible he started to roar, and he roared to deafen the murderous words that were tearing at his innocence, he roared horribly, grimly, he then stiffened, utterly beside himself in that desperate, primeval roar, and I could not believe my ears that ideals could roar like a wild ox in the wilderness. Then his torturer roared too:

"A gag! A gag! Gag him! You there, you goat-head! What are you gawking at? A gag! Use your handkerchief!"

He was screaming at me. I was the one to gag him with my handkerchief! Because Mizdral and Hopek, sitting akimbo their respective seconds, couldn't move. But I didn't want to! I couldn't! I stood motionless, and to move, to speak, to think of expressing anything whatsoever filled me with disgust. Oh, what an umpire! Oh where was my thirty-year-old, my thirty-year-old, where was my thirty-year-old? Nowhere! And all of a sudden Pimko appears at the door of the classroom, and he stands there—in his yellow buckskin shoes, in his brown coat, cane in hand—he is there, standing . . . standing. And he stands there as absolutely as if he were seated.

4 Preface to "The Child Runs Deep in Filidor"

Before I continue these true reminiscences I wish to include, as the next chapter and by way of digression, a story entitled "The Child Runs Deep in Filidor." You saw how maliciously the doctrinaire Pimko had dealt me the pupa, you saw the idealistic nooks and crannies of our intelligentsia youth, their inability to embrace life, the hopelessness of their disparate aims, their dismal affectation, the boredom that plunged them into gloom, their ridiculous fantasy life, their anguish over their anachronisms, the folly of their pupas, faces, and other body parts. You have heard words, words, vulgar words waging war on high-flown words, and you have heard other equally vacuous words uttered in class by their teachers—you were the silent witnesses to the way that a mishmash of inane words came to a bad end in the form of a freakish grimace. It is in the prime of youth that man sinks into empty phrases and grimaces. It's in this smithy that our maturity is forged. In a moment you'll see yet another reality, another duel—a fight unto death between Professors G. L. Filidor from Leyden and Momsen from Colombo (with the genteel title of "anti-Filidor"). And words, as well as various body parts, will play their part in that reality, but one should not look for an exact connection between the two parts of the said whole; and whoever thinks that by including this story, "The Child Runs Deep in Filidor," my sole aim was not merely filling space on paper and reducing slightly the enormous number of white pages before me, is sorely mistaken.

But if notable scholars and connoisseurs, all those Pimkos adept at fabricating the pupa out of texts by pointing to the faulty construction of a work of art, reproach me that—in their opinion—a desire to fill space is a purely private matter and insufficient reason for writing, and that one shouldn't stick everything one has ever written into a work of art, I will reply that in my humble opinion individual body parts form an adequately aesthetic-artistic linkage with words. And I will prove that my construction is in no way inferior, as far as precision and logic are concerned, to even the most precise and logical constructions. Look—that basic body part, the tame and kindly pupa is the basis, therefore, it is from the pupa that all action begins. It is from the pupa, as from the trunk of a tree, that the branching of individual parts, namely the toe, hands, eyes, teeth, ears, begins, and, at the same time, all those parts imperceptibly pass from one part to another in delicate and skillful transformations. And the human face, otherwise known as the mug, is the crown, the foliage of a tree whose individual parts grow out of the trunk of the pupa; the mug closes the cycle that began with the pupa. And having arrived at the mug, what is there left for me to do but to retrace my steps, through the individual parts, back to the pupa?—and this is the purpose of the short story "Filidor." "Filidor" is a construction in reverse, a passage or, strictly speaking, a coda, it's a trill, or rather a twist, a twisting of the gut, without which I would never have reached the calf of my , left leg. Isn't this an ironclad skeleton for a construction? Isn't this enough to satisfy the most exacting requirements? And what if you penetrate deeper, into the linkages between the individual parts, into the pathways from the finger to the teeth, into the mystical meaning of some of your favorite parts, and further, into the significance of individual joints, of the sum of the parts, as well as into all the parts of parts? I assure you, such a construction is invaluable as far as filling space is concerned, one could fill three hundred volumes with critical research on the subject, thus filling even more space, reaching thereby an even higher place, and seating oneself even more squarely and comfortably in that place. Do you like blowing soap bubbles by the lakeside at sunset when carp splash about and a fisherman sits in silence, looking at himself in the mirrorlike sheet of water?

And I recommend repetition as the method for enhancing the vigor of your work, because by systematically repeating certain words, phrases, situations, and parts I intensify them, thereby heightening the impression of uniformity of style to the point of near-mania. It's by means of repetition, repetition that mythology is most readily created! Take note, however, that this construction from particles is not a mere construction, it is actually an entire philosophy which I'll present here in the frivolous and frothy form of a carefree magazine article. But what do you think, tell me—in your opinion, doesn't the reader assimilate parts only, and only partly at that? He reads a part, or a piece of it, then stops, only to resume reading another piece later, and, as so often happens, he starts from the middle or from the end, then backtracks to the beginning. Quite often he'll read a couple of segments then toss the book aside, not because he has lost interest in it, but because something else came to his mind. And even if he were to read the whole—do you think that he can visualize it in its entirety and appreciate the relationship and harmony of its individual parts unless he hears it from an expert? Is it for this that an author toils for years, cuts his material and bends it into shape, tears it apart and patches it up again, sweats and agonizes over it—so that an expert may tell the reader that its construction is good? But let's go on, on, and into the realm of the reader's everyday personal experience! Might not just a phone call, or a fly, interrupt his reading precisely at the point where all the individual parts unite in a dramatic resolution? Or what if, at that very moment, his brother (for instance) comes into the room and says something. The author's noble-minded pains go for naught
vis à vis
the brother, the fly, or the phone call—fie! nasty little flies, why do you bite human beings who have lost their tails long ago and have nothing to swat with? What's more, let us consider whether your work, this unique, outstanding, and elaborate work is merely a particle of some thirty thousand other works, equally unique, which make their appearance year in, year out and on the principle of "each year be sure to add, whether bad or good, a new
oeuvre
to your brood"? Oh, horrid parts! Is this why we construct a whole, so that a particle of a part of the reader will absorb a particle of a part of the work, and only partly af that?