Ferdydurke (25 page)

Night was coming, and with it the decisive encounter. I couldn't foresee what would happen, there was no set program, all I knew was that I had to act in unison with each disfiguring, absurd, murky, grotesque, and disharmonious element that would emerge, with each destructive component—and I was steeped in a rancid, sickly terror, compared to which the powerful fear of being murdered is a mere trifle. After eleven o'clock the schoolgirl went to bed. Earlier in the day I had used a chisel to widen the angle of sight through the slit in the door, and now I could see that part of the room which, so far, had been inaccessible to my vision. She quickly undressed and turned off the light, but instead of going to sleep she tossed and turned on the hard mattress. She lit a lamp, picked up an English crime novel from her bedside table, and I could tell that she was forcing herself to read. The modern one looked attentively into space as if visually trying to decipher the danger, to guess its shape and see at last the configuration of horror, to realistically understand what was brewing against her. She didn't know that the danger had neither shape nor sense-senseless, shapeless, and lawless, a murky, jumbled-up, elemental force devoid of style was endangering her modern shape, and that was all.

I heard raised voices coming from Mr. and Mrs. Engineer's bedroom. I quickly ran to their door. The engineer, in his underwear, all a-giggle, cabaret-style, was again telling anecdotes aimed at having the distinct flavor of the intelligentsia.

"That's enough!" The Youngblood woman rubbed her hands. "Enough, enough! Stop it!"

"Wait, wait, Joannie—just a little more ... I'll soon stop!"

"I'm no Joannie. I am Joanna. Take off those underpants, or put on your pants."

"Panties!"

"Shut up!"

"Panties, shmanties, hee, hee, hee, panties!"

"Shut up, I tell you..."

"Panties, pants ..."

"Shut up!" she abruptly switched off the lamp.

"Switch it on, old girl!"

"I'm no old girl... I can't bear to look at you! Why did I ever fall in love with you? What's the matter with you? What's the matter with us? Get hold of yourself. We're surely marching together to the New Days ahead! We are the champions of Modern Times!"

"Sure, sure, you fat fish—hee, hee, hee—you're my dish. Fatty, creamy, yet so dreamy. But his heart has ceased to thump, 'cause she's turned into a frump .. ."
{9}

"What's this? Victor! What are you saying?"

"Vicky is so cheery! Vicky's having fun! Vicky frisks at a trot!"

"What are you saying, Victor? The death penalty!" she exclaimed, "the death penalty! Our Era! Culture and progress! Our aspirations! Our transports! Victor! oh, not so fatty, not so racy, not so diminutive either . . . What has entangled you? Zuta? Oh, this is so hard! Something's wrong! Something fateful is in the air! Treachery..."

"Treachy-reachy-rie," Mr. Youngblood said.

"Victor! Stop using diminutives! Stop it!"

"Treachy-letchy-rie, Vicky says ..."

"Victor!"

They broke into a free-for-all!

"The light," the Youngblood woman panted, "Victor! The light! Switch it on! Let go of me!"

"Wait!" he panted and giggled, "wait, let me smack you, let me give you a smack in the scruff of your neckie!"

"Never! Let go, or I'll bite you!"

"I'll smack you, smack you in the little scruff of your neckie, your scruffie, your little scruffie ..."

And he suddenly spat out all the bedroom love diminutives, beginning with sweetie-pie all the way to little pussy ... I retreated in fear. Even though I lacked none of my own disgusting jargon, I couldn't bear this. The hellish belittlement that had so powerfully affected my fate was now making their life miserable. This was the little engineer's devilish excess, oh, it's horrible when a petty engineer takes the bit between his teeth, what are these times we live in? I heard a smack. Did he hit her in her little scruffie or slap her in the face?

It was dark in the girl's room. Was she asleep? All was quiet in her room, and I imagined her sleeping with her arm over her head, halfway under the covers, all worn out. Suddenly she groaned. She groaned but not in her sleep. She moved abruptly, anxiously on her couch. I knew she was huddling up and that her wide-open eyes were fearfully searching in the darkness. Had the modern schoolgirl become so sensitized that my gaze could strike her in the darkness through the keyhole? Her groan was incredibly beautiful, torn out of the depths of night—as if the girl's ill-boding fate itself had groaned, calling for help in vain.

I heard her groan again, numbly, desperately. Had she sensed that at this very moment her father, depraved by me, was smacking her mother? Had she become aware of the odiousness that was besetting her on all sides? I thought I saw her in the semi-darkness, wringing her hands and gnawing on her forearm until it hurt. As if she wanted to grab with her teeth the beauty within. The depravity surrounding her and lurking from all corners excited her charms. What treasures, what charms she possessed! The first treasure—the girl. The second treasure—the schoolgirl. The third treasure—modern. And it was all locked up in her like a nut within a shell, but she couldn't reach her arsenal, even though she felt my heinous gaze, and knew that a spurned admirer would naturally want to befoul, ruin, destroy, and psychologically deface her girlish beauty.

And I was not at all surprised that the girl, sensing the threat that I secretly wished her to become ugly, went berserk. She jumped out of bed. She threw off her nightshirt. She pranced all over the room. She no longer cared that I was spying on her, indeed, she seemed to be challenging me to a fight. Her legs nimbly and lightly lifted her body, her hands fluttered in the air. She tucked her little head this way and that. She enfolded her head in her arms. She shook her curls. She lay on the floor, then rose again. She sobbed, she laughed, she sang softly. She jumped on the table, from the table onto the couch. She seemed scared to stop even for a moment as if chased by rats and mice, as if eager for the lightness of her movement to lift her above all horror. She no longer knew what to hold on to. She finally grabbed a belt and began whipping her back with all her might, anything to subject herself to youthful pain... Something caught me by the throat! Oh, how her beauty tormented her, drove her to do things, hurled and threw her about, rolled her around! I stood dead still by the keyhole, my mug absurd and loathsome, equally split between rapture and hate. The schoolgirl, hurled about by her beauty, turned into a hellion. All the while I adored her and hated her, I quivered with delight, my mug spasmodically expanding and contracting like stretched guttapercha, my God, so this is where love of beauty will drive us!

Midnight struck in the dining room. There was a quiet knocking on the window. Three times. I froze in fear. The whole thing was about to begin. Kopyrda, Kopyrda was here! The schoolgirl stopped jumping about. The knocking repeated, insistent, quiet. She went to the window and pulled back the blind slightly. She stared...

"Is that you? ..." a whisper came from the porch in the night's silence.

She pulled on the string of the blind. Moonlight poured into the room. I saw her standing in her nightshirt now, tense, watchful...

"What do you want?" she asked.

I admired her command of the situation, the magpie that she was! Because this was a surprise—she hadn't expected Kopyrda to arrive at her window. Another girl in her place, an old-fashioned one, would have gone on with trite questions and exclamations: "I beg your pardon! What's the meaning of this? What do you want at this hour?" But this modern one sensed instinctively that to show surprise would have ruined it . . . that it would be more beautiful without surprise... Oh, mistress of the situation! She leaned out the window unceremoniously, cordially, like a good sport.

"What do you want?" resting her chin on her arms, she repeated in the subdued tone of a young female.

Since he had addressed her informally, she replied in kind. And I admired the unbelievably abrupt transition in style—from jumping up and down into sociability! Who would have guessed that only a moment ago she had been jumping and throwing herself about? Modern though he was himself, Kopyrda was somewhat put off by the schoolgirl's remarkable matter-of-factness. Yet he immediately tuned in to her tone and, boyishly, nonchalantly, with his hands in his pockets, he said: Let me in.

"What for?"

He whistled and said rudely:

"Don't you know? Let me in!"

He seemed excited, and his voice trembled slightly, but he tried to hide his excitement. All the while I shuddered at the thought that he might spill the whole thing about the letter. Luckily, talking a lot or being terribly surprised wouldn't be in keeping with the modern way, they had to pretend that it all went without saying. Nonchalance, brutality, terseness, disdain—this was poetry, just as sighing, moaning, and mandolins would have been to lovers of yore. He knew that the only way to possess the girl would be with disdain, that without disdain—nothing doing. His face was in the vines that were creeping up the wall, and with a hint of sensuous, modern sentimen-talism in his voice he added longingly, emphatically, numbly:

"You wanted it!"

She made a move to close the window. But suddenly—as if this move actually provoked her to do the opposite—she stopped ... She tightened her lips. She stood still for a second, only her eyes moving from side to side, slowly. The expression that came over her face was ... an expression of supermodern cynicism ... And the schoolgirl, excited by the expression of cynicism, by eyes and lips in the moonlight, in the window, suddenly leaned out halfway, and with her palm—nothing humorous in her gesture—she lousled his hair.

"Come in!" she whispered.

Kopyrda showed no surprise. This was no time to show surprise at her or at himself. The slightest hesitancy would have ruined everything. He had to act as if the reality that they were creating between them were something ordinary, everyday. Oh, what a master! And so he acted accordingly. He clambered onto the windowsill and jumped to the floor of her room exactly as if he were in the habit of clambering every night to visit a newly met schoolgirl. Once in the room he laughed softly, just to be on the safe side. She, however, took him by the hair, pulled back his head and with her lips devoured his lips!

The devil, the devil of it! What if she's still a virgin?! What if the girl is still a virgin?! What if she's a virgin, and she's about to give herself without ceremony to the first man who knocks on her window. The devil of it, the devil! Something caught me by the throat. Because, if she were an ordinary tart and a slut, well, no harm done, but if she's a virgin, then—I must admit—this modern one was able to elicit incredibly wild beauty from within herself and from Kopyrda. To be able—so impudently and quietly, so brutally and effortlessly—to grab the boy by the hair—and to grab me by the throat... Ha! She knew I was peeping through the keyhole, and she stopped at nothing as long as she was victorious through her beauty. I was shaken. If only it were he who grabbed her by the hair—but it was she who grabbed him by the hair! Hey, you young ladies, marrying with pomp and after much ado, you trite ones, who allow a stolen kiss, look how this modern one goes after love and how she treats her own self! She threw Kopyrda onto the couch. I was shaken again. No holds barred! The seventeen-year-old obviously played her beauty as her trump card. I prayed that Pimko would arrive—if Pimko lets me down I'm lost, never, never will I be free of this modern one's wild charms. She was choking me, strangling me, yet all along it was I—I was the one, when all was said and done, who wanted to strangle her, to conquer her!

Her girlhood in full bloom, she and Kopyrda meanwhile went on hugging each other on the couch, and, with his help, she was about to reach the climax of her charms. Casually, slapdash, lustfully, and without love, without any respect for herself, just to grab me by the throat with her wild, schoolgirl poetry. The devil of it, the devil, she was winning, winning, winning!

At last there was a godsend knock on the window. They stopped hugging. At last! Pimko was coming to the rescue. This was to be the final reckoning. Will Pimko manage to spoil her beauty and her charms—or will he enhance it all? That's what I was thinking as I was preparing my mug behind the door to intervene. For the moment Pimko's knocking brought relief because they had to stop their orgy and frenzy, and Kopyrda whispered:

"Someone's knocking."

The schoolgirl jumped to her feet from the couch. They listened, wondering whether they could resume their frenzy. More knocking.

"Who is it?" she asked.

There was ardent puffing and huffing at the window:

"Zuta, dear!"

She pulled back the blind slightly, signaling to Kopyrda to step back. But before she could say anything Pimko frantically clambered into the room. He was afraid of being seen at the window.

"Zuta, dear!" he whispered passionately, carnally, "little Zuta! Oh, my schoolgirl! Oh, little one! Call me by my first name! You're my colleague! I'm your colleague!" My letter must have gone to his head. The double-barreled and trite prof's lips were painfully contorted with poetry. "Yes, by my first name, Zuta, dear! Will anyone see us? Where's Mama?" But the danger was intoxicating him even further. "Look at her ... such a little one, so young... yet so insolent... with no regard for age or status ... How could you ... how dare you .. . toward me? Do you find me exciting? Call me by my first name! Yes, yes! Tell me what you fancy in me."

Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, what a lustful pedagogue!

"What do you want? What's the matter with you, sir? . . ." she stammered. The other matter, with Kopyrda, was over, it came to naught.

"Someone's here!" exclaimed Pimko in the semi-darkness.

Silence was the only response. Kopyrda was mum. The modern one stood between the two of them in her nightshirt, senselessly, playing the little la-di-da.

Whereupon I screamed from behind the door:

"Thieves! Thieves!"

Pimko twirled around a couple of times as if pulled by a string, then ran for cover to the closet. Kopyrda tried to jump out the window, but he didn't make it and hid in the other closet. I ran into the room as I was, just in my shirt and underpants. I caught them! Red-handed! Behind me the Youngbloods, he—still smacking her, she—being smacked.