Ferdydurke (26 page)

"Thieves?!" he shouted like a bourgeois, dime-a-dozen little engineer, barefoot, in his underpants, his sense of ownership riding high.

"Someone came in through the window!" I exclaimed. I turned on the light. The schoolgirl lay under her comforter, pretending to be asleep.

"What happened?" she asked half-asleep, her style perfect, deceitful.

"Yet another intrigue!" exclaimed the Youngblood woman, in her nightgown, casting a basilisk glance at me, her hair a mess, dark blotches on her cheeks.

"Intrigue?" I exclaimed, picking Kopyrda's suspenders up off the floor. "What intrigue?"

"Suspenders," the little engineer said numbly.

"They're mine!" the Youngblood girl exclaimed insolently. The girl's insolence had a soothing effect, but of course no one believed her!

I jerked open the closet door, and Kopyrda's lower body appeared to those assembled—a pair of lean legs in pressed flannel pants, wearing lightweight sport shoes. His upper body was wrapped in dresses hanging in the closet.

"Aah... Zuta!" the Youngblood woman was the first to speak.

The schoolgirl tucked her cute little head under the covers, only her legs and the mop of her hair showing. How skillfully she played it! Another girl in her place would have mumbled something under her breath, would have looked for excuses. But this one just stuck out her naked legs, moving her legs to and fro and playing on the situation—with her legs, with her movement and charm—as on a flute. Her parents looked at each other.

"Zuta," Mr. Youngblood said.

And they both began laughing. All the smacking, vulgarity, and vileness left them, and a strange beauty set in. The parents—amused, animated, thrilled, quite at ease, and laughing indulgently—looked at the girl's body while she went on fussing and timidly hiding her pretty little head. Kopyrda, realizing that he need not fear the strict principles of yore, came out of the closet and stood smiling, jacket in hand, a nice, fair-haired modern boy, caught in the act with the parents' girl. The Youngblood woman squinted at me maliciously. She was triumphant. I must have been jinxed. I wanted to dishonor the girl, yet the modern boy had not dishonored her at all! To make me feel totally superfluous, she asked:

"And what are you, young man, doing here? Our young man shouldn't be concerned with all this!"

Thus far I had deliberately refrained from opening the closet where Pimko was hiding. My intent was to let the situation stabilize until it reached the fullness of the young and modern style. I now opened the closet in silence. Pimko, crouching, had hidden himself between the dresses—only a pair of legs, a professorial pair of legs in crumpled trousers was visible, and those legs stood in the closet, incredible, crazy, tacked on ...

The effect knocked them out of their socks, bowled them over. The laughter died on the Youngbloods' lips. The whole situation shook as if struck from the side by a murderer's knife. Idiotic indeed.

"What is this?" whispered Mrs. Youngblood, her face paling.

From behind the dresses came a little cough and a conventional tittering with which Pimko prepared his entrance into the room. Since he knew that in a moment he would appear foolish, he was ushering in his tomfoolery with foolish laughter. The tittering from behind the girl's dresses was so cabaretlike that Mr. Youngblood chuckled once and got stuck... Pimko stepped out of the closet and bowed, feeling foolish outwardly, miserable inwardly ... I felt a vindictive, furious sadism inwardly, but outwardly—I burst out laughing. My revenge dissolved in laughter.

But the Youngbloods were dumbfounded. Two men, one in each closet! What's more, in one of them—an old man. If there were two young ones! Or, for that matter, two old ones. But no, one young and one old. An old man, and Pimko to boot. The situation had no axis-no diagonals—no commentary could be found to fit the situation. They automatically looked at the girl, but the schoolgirl played possum under the covers.

Suddenly Pimko, wanting to clarify the situation, cleared his throat, grinned pleadingly, and began to explain something about a letter . . . that Miss Zuta had written to him . . . that it was just about Norwid . . . but that Miss Zuta wanted it to be informal. . . informal... on first-name basis... with him... that's all he wanted too ... Well, I've never heard anything so obscene and at the same time so idiotic in my whole life, the little old man's secret and private ravings were impossible to understand in a situation so clearly illuminated by the ceiling lamp, but no one wanted to understand him anyway, so no one understood. Pimko saw that no one wanted to, but he'd gone too far already—the prof thrown off balance as a prof was utterly lost, I couldn't believe that it was the same absolute and seasoned double-barreled man who had once dealt me the pupa. As he was drowning in the sticky mess of his explanations, his ineffectiveness evoked pity, and I would have pounced on him, but I gave up. Pimko's dark and murky ravings pushed the engineer into officialdom—and this was stronger than the legitimate distrust the engineer would have felt for me in this situation. He exclaimed:

"What are you doing here, sir, at this hour, may I ask?"

This in turn dictated the tone to Pimko. For a brief moment he was back to form.

"Do not raise your voice, sir."

To which Mr. Youngblood replied:

"What? What? You dare correct me in my own house?"

But Mrs. Engineer looked out the window and squeaked. The bearded face, twig in mouth, appeared above the railing. I had totally forgotten about the beggar! I ordered him to stand with the twig today as well, but I forgot to give him the zloty. The bearded man steadfastly stood until nightfall, and when he saw us in the illuminated window he showed his "face for hire" and, decked in greenery, reminded me to pay him! The face slid between us as if on a platter.

"What does this man want?" exclaimed Mrs. Engineer. The sight of a ghost wouldn't have had a greater impact. Pimko and Mr. Youngblood fell silent.

The wretch, who for a moment became the center of attention, moved the twig as if it were his mustache, he didn't know what to say. So he said:

"A favor for the beggar."

"Give him something," Mrs. Engineer dropped her hands and spread her fingers wide. "Give him something," she screamed hysterically, "so he'll go away..."

The engineer fumbled for change in his pockets but didn't find any. Pimko, clutching at every possible activity, quickly took out his wallet, and, perhaps reckoning that, in the general confusion, Mr. Youngblood would accept the change from him, which of course would make further hostilities rather difficult—but Mr. Youngblood did not accept. Petty accounting tore in through the window and raged among people. As for me, I stood there with my mug, carefully watching the unfolding of events, ready to jump, but actually I watched it all as if through a magnifying glass. Oh, whatever happened to my revenge, and to my messing up their lives, and to the roar of wrenched reality, and to style bursting open, and to my frenzy atop all the wreckage? The farce slowly began to wear me out. I thought about irrelevant things, for example—where does Kopyrda buy his ties, is Mrs. Engineer fond of cats, how much does it cost them to live here?

All this time Kopyrda stood with his hands in his pockets. This modern boy didn't come up to me, his face showed no signs of recognizing me—he was already too annoyed by Pimko being coupled with the girl to say hello to a schoolmate dressed in nothing but underwear—neither coupling suited him in the least. When the Youngbloods and Pimko began looking for change, Kopyrda slowly turned toward the door—I opened my mouth to shout, but Pimko, noticing Kopyrda's maneuver, quickly put away his wallet and followed him. Suddenly, when the engineer saw them both absconding so swiftly, he bounded after them like a cat after a mouse.

"I beg your pardon!" he exclaimed, "you're not getting off scot-free!"

Kopyrda and Pimko stood still. Kopyrda, now infuriated by being coupled with Pimko, moved away from him; Pimko, however, under the momentum of Kopyrda's movement, automatically moved closer to him—and so they stood like two brothers—one younger . . . one older...

Mrs. Engineer, totally unnerved, grabbed the engineer by the arm.

"Don't make a scene! Don't make a scene!" Which of course provoked him to make a scene.

"Forgive me!" he roared, "but I am her father, aren't I! And I ask you—how and with what in mind did you two gentlemen find yourselves in my daughter's bedroom? What is the meaning of this? What is this?"

Suddenly he looked at me and fell silent, terror creeping over his cheeks, he realized this was grist for my mill, the mill of scandal, and—he would have stopped talking, he would have—but having started it... he repeated once more:

"What is the meaning of this?" softly, just to round things off, secretly pleading that the issue go no further ...

There was silence because no one could answer him. Everyone had his own understandable rationale, but the whole made no sense. In the silence the nonsense was stifling. And suddenly the girl's hollow, hopeless sobs came from under the covers. Oh, how masterful! She sobbed, sticking her naked calves from under the covers, her calves which, as she sobbed, slid out more and more from under the covers, and the crying of an underage girl united Pimko, Kopyrda, and her parents, and threaded them on a string of demonism. The whole matter, as if cut with a knife, ceased to be funny and nonsensical, it made sense again, a modern yet murky, black, dramatic, and tragic sense. Kopyrda, Pimko, and the Youngbloods felt better—while I, caught by the throat, felt worse.

"You have ...defiled her," the mother whispered. "Don't cry, don't cry, child ..."

"Congratulations, Professor!" the engineer exclaimed furiously. "You'll answer to me for this!"

Pimko, it seemed, breathed a sigh of relief. Even this felt better than not having been placed anywhere at all. So they've defiled her. The situation turned to the girl's advantage.

"Police!" I exclaimed, "we must call the police!"

This was a risky step, because police and an underage girl had for a long time formed a rounded, beautiful, and grim whole—and so the Youngbloods proudly raised their heads—though my goal was to scare Pimko. He paled, cleared his throat, and coughed.

"Police," the mother repeated, savoring the image of police standing over the girl's naked legs, "police, police ..."

"Please do believe me," the professor stammered, "please believe me, all of you . . . There's some mistake here, I'm being accused falsely..."

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "I'm a witness. I saw it through my window! The professor walked into the garden to relieve himself. Miss Zuta looked out the window, the professor said 'hello,' and then came the usual way through the door, which Miss Zuta opened for him!"

Pimko broke down in fear of the police. Despicably, like a coward, he clutched at this explanation, regardless of its sickening and shameful meaning.

"Yes, that's right, I had the urge, I stepped into the garden, I forgot that this is where you live—and Miss Zuta happened to look out the window, so I pretended, hee, hee, hee, I pretended that I came to visit... You understand ... in this drastic situation ... it's a
quid pro quo, a quid pro quo,
" he kept repeating.

It struck those assembled as vile and revolting. The girl pulled her legs under the covers. Kopyrda pretended not to hear, the Young-blood woman turned her back to Pimko, but, realizing that she had turned her back to him, she quickly turned to face him. Mr. Young-blood blinked—ha, they had again fallen into the throes of that deadly part, vulgarity returned full steam, I watched its return with interest, and how it was bowling them over; was it the same part in which I had recently been wallowing, yes, the same part perhaps— except that this time it was strictly between them. The Youngblood girl gave no sign of life under the covers. And Mr. Youngblood giggled—who knows what tickled him—maybe Pimko's
quid pro quo
brought back memories of a cabaret under that name that had existed in Warsaw—he then burst into that ultimate giggle of a petty engineer, that backside, ghastly, pantomime giggle—he exploded and—furious at Pimko for his own giggling—he jumped toward him, and, with a swift, arrogant, little engineer's slap, he whacked him in the mug. He whacked—he froze, panting, his arm still in the air. He turned serious. Rigid. I brought my jacket and my shoes from my room and began to dress slowly, not letting the scene out of my sight.

Having received the slap in the face, something gurgled in Pimko's throat, corked him up—yet I was convinced that deep down he was grateful for the slap, it somehow defined him.

"You shall pay for this," he said coldly, visibly relieved. He bowed toward the engineer, the engineer bowed toward him. Eagerly taking advantage of the bowing, Pimko turned to the door. Kopyrda quickly joined in the bowing and followed Pimko, in the hope of also slipping out . . . Mr. Youngblood sprang up. "What? There are consequences to be faced here, a duel, while this scoundrel Kopyrda wants to leave as if nothing had happened and to shirk all responsibility!" And so punch him in the snoot too! The engineer jumped toward him with his arm outstretched, but in a split second he realized that he couldn't very well slap a sniveling brat in the face, a schoolboy, a whippersnapper, his arm followed an awkward twist and, unable to counteract the momentum he grabbed Kopyrda, instead of hitting him he grabbed him by the chin. This illegal hold infuriated Kopyrda more than if he had been slapped in the face, and what's more, the false move—a foul after a long quarter-of-an-hour's nonsense—released his most primitive instincts. God knows what had hatched in his head—that the engineer caught him on purpose, "if you me, I you"—some such thought must have gripped him, therefore, according to a law that one might call "the law of the diagonal," he bent down and swept the engineer below the knee. Mr. Young-blood came down with a thud, whereupon Kopyrda bit his left flank, he hung on to him with his teeth and wouldn't let go—he then lifted his face, madly sweeping the room with his eyes from one end to the other and biting into Mr. Youngblood's flank.