Ferdydurke (31 page)

"Calm down! What do you want to do?"

"I don't know, I don't know. If I become friends with him ... if I succeed in fra . . . fra . . . fraternizing with him . . ." he admitted, embarrassed, "to frater... nize! Socia... lize! I must do it! Help me!"

The valet entered the room.

"At yer service," he said.

He stood in the door, waiting for orders, so Kneadus ordered him to pour some water into a washbowl. The valet poured the water and again stood still—so Kneadus ordered him to open a casement, and when the fellow did that and stood still Kneadus ordered him to hang a towel on a peg; when he did that, Kneadus ordered him to put his jacket on a hanger—but these orders tortured Kneadus terribly. He ordered, the farmhand carried everything out without a murmur—these orders, however, became more and more like a bad dream, oh, to order one's farmhand about instead of fraternizing with him—to order him about with lordly capriciousness, to go through a whole night of lordly fantasies in an ordering frenzy! Finally, not knowing what else to command, having run out of things to command, he ordered him to bring out the hot-water bottles and apples hidden in the closet, and he whispered to me, totally broken:

"You try. I can't."

I slowly took off my jacket, and I sat on the edge of my bed, dangling my legs—a position more conducive to gabbing with a farmhand. I asked him slowly, out of boredom:

"What's your name?"

"Valek," he replied, and it was obvious that this wasn't just an informal name, it agreed with him—as if he were unworthy of the formal 'Valenty' or of a last name. Kneadus shuddered.

"How long have you been in service here?"

"About a month, sire."

"And where were you employed before that?"

"In the stables, sire."

"Do you like it here?"

"Yes, sire."

"Bring us some warm water."

"Very good, sire."

When he left, Kneadus had tears in his eyes. He cried his heart out. Tears trickled down his haggard face. "Did you hear that? Did you hear that? Valek! He doesn't even have a last name! Oh, it all fits perfectly! Did you see his mug? A mug without any artifice, just an ordinary mug! Joey, if he won't fra . . . fraternize with me, I don't know what I'll do!" He was working himself into a rage, he reproached me for having ordered the valet to fetch hot water, and he could not forgive himself for having ordered Valek, while at a loss for other commands, to bring out the hot-water bottles we had hidden in the closet. "He probably never uses hot water, let alone water in bottles for his bed. He probably never washes himself. And yet he's not dirty. Joey, did you notice he doesn't wash, and yet he's not dirty—his dirt seems harmless, it's not disgusting! Hey-ho, look at our filth, our filth..."

In this guest room of an old country manor his passion was erupting with a mighty force. He wiped away his tears—the valet returned with the water. This time Kneadus followed my line of questioning;

"How old are you?" he asked looking straight ahead.

"Eeeh... how should I know, sire."

Kneadus was flabbergasted. The valet didn't know! He didn't know how old he was! A heavenly farmhand indeed, free of ridiculous appendages! Under the pretext of wanting to wash his hands he went closer to the farmhand and, controlling his trembling, he said:

"You're probably
my
age."

But this was not a question. It left the valet some leeway to respond. Fra ... ternization was supposed to begin. The valet replied:

"Very good, sir."

Whereupon Kneadus returned to the unavoidable questioning:

"Do you know how to read and write?"

"Ee ... why no! sire."

"You have a family?"

"I have a sister, sire."

"And what does your sister do?"

"She milks the cows, sire."

He stood there, while Kneadus focused on him—it seemed there was no other way except through questioning and giving orders, commands or questions. So he sat down again and commanded:

"Take off my shoes."

I sat down too. The room was long and narrow, not easy for the three of us to move about. The huge, grim house stood in the wet and murky wooded grounds. The wind seemed to have let up, but this was worse—a sharp wind would have felt better. Kneadus stuck out his leg, the farmhand knelt, and, his mug lowered, he bent over the leg while Kneadus' mug hovered feudally above him, pale and horrible, hardened in commands, no longer knowing what to ask. I asked out of the blue:

"Does the squire ever slap you in the mug?"

The valet suddenly brightened and called out cheerfully, like a true peasant:

"Oh, yes sir, in the mug! Jee, yeah, in the mug!"

As soon as he said that, I sprang up, I swung my arm and smacked him in the left cheek as hard as I could. In the quiet of the night the sound was like a pistol shot. The fellow clutched his mug but instantly dropped his hand and stood up.

"Wow, that was a good slap, sire!" he whispered all agog with admiration.

"Get out!" I shouted.

He went out.

"What on earth did you do that for?!" Kneadus said, wringing his hands. "I wanted to shake hands with him! Go hand in hand with him! Then our mugs, and everything else, would have been equal. Yet see what you've done with your hand, you hit him in the mug! And I stuck my leg into his hands! To unlace my shoe," he moaned, "my shoe! Why did you slap him?!"

I had no idea why. It happened as if a spring had been released, I shouted "get out" because I had hit him, but why did I hit him? There was a knock at the door—and cousin Zygmunt, candle in hand, in slippers and trousers, appeared on the threshold.

"Did someone fire a shot?" he asked. "I thought I heard a shot from a Browning?"

"I shot your Valek in the snoot."

"You shot him in the snoot?"

"He filched my cigarette."

I preferred him to hear it from me, in my version, than tomorrow morning from the servants. Zygmunt was slightly surprised, but, like a good host, he laughed and said:

"Great. That'll teach him! But—you hit him in the mug, just like that?" he asked in disbelief. I laughed, while Kneadus cast me a look which I'll never forget, a look of one betrayed, and he went to the bathroom, or so I thought. My cousin's gaze followed him. "Your friend seems to disapprove—eh?" he observed with slight irony, "he's indignant? Typical bourgeois!" "Bourgeois!" I said, what else could I say? "Bourgeois," he said, "a guy like Valek will respect you like his lord and master if you hit him in the snoot. You have to know the likes of them! They love it!"

"They love it!" I said. "They love it, love it, ha, ha, ha! They love it!" I couldn't believe that this was my cousin who, until now, had treated me with reserve, now his apathy was gone, his eyes were shining, he liked my slapping Valek's mug, and he now liked me; a pure bred young master surfaced from within an indolent and bored student, as if he had just breathed through his nostrils the aroma of forests and of common folk. He placed the candle on the windowsill and sat at the foot of the bed with a cigarette. "They love it," he said, "they love it! You may slap them, but you must tip them too—I don't go for slapping without tipping. In times past, my father and uncle Severyn used to hit the doorman at the Grand Hotel in the snoot." "And our uncle Eustachy," I said, "once hit his barber in the snoot." "No one hit the snoot as well as grandma Evelina, but that belongs to the past. Well, Toby Patz got drunk and smacked a train conductor in the snoot. Do you know Pavel Patz, he's very unaffected." I replied that I knew a few of the Patz men, all extremely natural and unpretentious, but thus far I hadn't met Toby. I said I knew that Harry Pitwicki once broke a window at the Club Cockatoo with a waiter's snoot. "I only bashed a ticket collector in the snoot on one occasion," Ziggie said. "Do you know the Pipowskis? The Mrs. is a fanatical snob, but she has extremely good taste. We may go partridge hunting tomorrow." (Where was Kneadus? Where did he go? Why isn't he back?) In the meantime my cousin showed no inclination to leave, the slap in Valek's face brought us closer, like a shot of vodka, and, while smoking his cigarette he chatted about face-bashing, about partridges, about Mrs. Pipowska, about unpretentiousness, about Tacyanki and Colombina, about Toby and Harry, how one had to be savvy about life, realistic, he talked about the agricultural school, and about the dough I'll earn when I'm done studying. I responded in a similar vein. So he's back with the same stuff again. So I'm back with the same. So he's back with snoot-bashing, that one has to know when, with whom, and for how much, so I'm back with it's better to box an ear than to punch someone in the jaw. But in all of this there was something unreal, and I tried a few times to interject into our talk that all this doesn't happen anymore, it's no longer acceptable, nowadays no one bashes anyone, that's gone, perhaps it never was, it's a legend, a squire's imagination. Yet I couldn't, oh, how sweet this chatting, the squirely imagination has grabbed us and won't let us go, we hold forth like one young master to another! "Sometimes it's a good thing—mug slapping!" "In the snoot—it's good for you! Nothing like hitting a guy in the snoot! Well, it's time for me to go," he finally said, "I've stayed too long already... We'll see each other from time to time in Warsaw. I'll introduce you to Toby Patz. Look—it's almost midnight. Your friend's been in the bathroom a long time... maybe he's sick. Goodnight."

He hugged me.

"Goodnight, Joey."

"Goodnight, Ziggie," I replied.

Why wasn't Kneadus back? I wiped sweat off my brow. Why this conversation with my cousin? I looked out the casement, it had stopped raining, I could see no farther than fifty paces, here and there in the thick of night I guessed at the shapes of trees—but their shapes seemed darker than darkness itself and even less defined. Behind this veil the wooded grounds, secret and who knows what else besides, woven through and through by tracts of desolate fields, dripped with moisture. Unable to make out what was before my eyes, looking, yet unable to see anything except shapes, darker than the night, I closed the window and retreated into the back of the room. There had been no need for it all. No need to hit the farmhand. No need for the chat. Here the snoot-hitting was like a shot of vodka, quite different from the democratic, dry face-slapping in the city. What the hell is a servant's snoot in an old country manor? It was terrible that, by slapping him in the face, I had brought the valet's mug to the surface and, to top it all off, I had lied about him to the young master. Where was Kneadus?

He returned at about one in the morning; he didn't come in right away but peeked through the half-open door to see if I was asleep-he slipped in as if returning from some nocturnal carousal and quickly turned down the lamp wick. He undressed hurriedly. When he leaned over the lamp I noticed that his mug had undergone a sordid transformation—it was puffed up, swollen on the left side, and it looked like a little apple, a little stewed apple, and everything about him came out like mush. What a hellish belittlement! It again appeared in my life, this time on my friend's face! He's turned into a horrible coxcomb—that's what popped into my head—a horrible coxcomb. What gigantic force had fixed him like this? He answered my question in a voice that was a bit too thin and squeaky:

"I was in the pantry. I frater... ternized with the farmhand. He hit me in the mug."

"The valet hit you in the mug?" I couldn't believe my ears.

"He did," he joyfully assured me, but with a joy that was artificial and still too feeble. "We're brothers. I was finally able to communicate with him." But he said this like a
Sonntagsjager,
like a city official bragging about drinking at a country wedding. He'd been manhandled with a crushing, devastating force—but his attitude toward that force was insincere. I pressed him with questions, and he grudgingly revealed, hiding his face in the shadow:

"I ordered him."

"What?!" my blood boiled, "what do you mean? You ordered him to hit you in the face?! He'll think you're crazy! Congratulations! Wait till my aunt and uncle hear about this!"

"It's your fault," he said grimly and tersely, "you shouldn't have hit him. You started it. You fancied yourself a lordship! I had to take it from him, because you gave it to him ... Without it there would be no equality, and I wouldn't be able to fra... ter..."

He turned off the light and spewed out in broken sentences the whole story of his desperate endeavors. He found the farmhand in the pantry cleaning his masters' shoes, and he sat next to him, whereupon the valet stood up.
Da capo,
again—he tried to make conversation, to put the fellow at ease, make him open up and be friends, but his words, even as they left his lips, deteriorated into a sickening and senseless pastorale. The farmhand did his best to answer him, but it was obvious that it was beginning to bore Valek, and he didn't understand what this crazy lordship wanted from him. Kneadus finally became entangled in cheap verbosity derived from the French Revolution and from the Bill of Rights, he went on to explain that all men are equal and, under this pretext, demanded that the valet shake hands with him—but the latter flatly refused. "My hand's not fit fer your lo'dship." Kneadus then had the preposterous idea that if he succeeded in forcing the farmhand to slap him in the mug, the ice would be broken. "Hit me in the snoot," he implored, unmindful of anything, "in the snoot!" and bending over, he bared his face to the valet's hand. The valet, however, went on refusing: "Ee," he said, "why should I hit your lo'dship?" Kneadus begged and begged, until finally he yelled: "Slap me, damn it, do as I tell you! What the devil is the matter with you?!" At that instant he saw stars, smash, bang—the farmhand had whacked him in the mug! "Once more," Kneadus yelled, "once more, damn it!" Crash, bang, stars again. He opened his eyes and saw the valet standing in front of him with his hands, ready to carry out his orders! But a slap in the face that is given in answer to a command is not a true slap in the face—no more than pouring water into the washbowl or taking off his shoes—and a blush of embarrassment covered the blush from the slapping. "More, more," the martyr whispered, so that the farmhand would at last fra . . . ternize with him by way of his face. And again—crash, bang, stars—oh, this mug-pounding in an empty pantry, among wet dishrags, over a tub of hot water!