Ferdydurke (37 page)

"So I climbed up the gamekeeper! On the gamekeeper I climbed! And you, you, you fancy fra... ternizing!"

"So I love the oldie, do I?!"

And they beat him, once and for all driving it into him and enforcing it. They enforced it while following all the rules, never hitting his legs nor his back, it was always his mug that they bashed, smashed, beat with their hands! They weren't fighting with him— they weren't fighting him—it was only his mug they hit! And this they were permitted to do. It was their age-old, officially sanctioned right. While old Francis went on shining his light and, when their hands grew weak, tactfully suggesting:

"Your honorable lordhips will teach him not to steal! Your honorable lordships will teach him a lesson!"

They finally stopped. They sat down. The farmhand was catching his breath, blood oozed from his ear, his head and his mug were beaten to a pulp. They offered each other cigarettes, the old butler jumped to with a match. They were through, it seemed. But Zyg-munt let out a circle of smoke.

"Give us the
starka,"
he exclaimed, "serve up the oldie!"
{14}

Have they gone mad? How was he supposed to serve up the oldie? The farmhand blinked with his bloodied eyes.

"But she's in the village, your lo'dship!"

I wiped my brow. They didn't mean the peasant, the shy old Josie, but the old, mature, delicious, and lordly rye vodka
oldie,
which was right there in the pantry, in a bottle! And when the valet finally understood and sprang to the cupboard, took out the bottle and the glasses and filled them, Zygmunt and his father clinked their shot glasses and each downed a shot of the noble, dry vodka. Then another! Then a third and a fourth!

"We'll teach him a lesson! We'll drill him all right!"

And it all began again, all over again... until I wondered whether my senses were misleading me. For nothing misleads us as much as our senses. Could this be real? Hidden behind the drapes, barefoot, I wasn't sure whether I was looking at the truth or the continuation of darkness—I was barefoot, can one see the truth, barefoot? Take off your shoes, hide behind drapes, and look! Look, while barefoot! What grotesque kitsch! Drinking up one glass after another of the mature, dry
oldie,
they began to train the farmhand to become a mature lackey. "Fetch me this, fetch me that!" they shouted. "Glasses!

Napkins! Bread and rolls! Appetizers! Ham! Set the table! Wait on us!" The farmhand scurried and ran around like a top. And they ate in front of him and relished their food, they drank and feasted—they forced down the food, they forced down the lordly spread. "Their lo'dships are drinkin'!" exclaimed Konstanty downing a glass of the
oldie.
"Their lo'dships are eatin'!" seconded Zygmunt. "Ah'm eatin' what's moin! Ah'm drinkin what's moin! It's moin what ah'm drinkin'! It's moin what ah'm eatin'! Moin, not yaus! Moin! Know who's the boss here!" they shouted, and, pushing their persons right under his nose they enforced themselves with all their characteristics, so that he wouldn't dare criticize, nor question, to the end of his days, nor marvel, nor scoff, nor sneer, so that he'd accept the whole thing in and of itself.
Ding an sich!
And they shouted: "What the lord sayeth, the servant obeyeth!" and they spat out commands, there was no end to the commands, and the farmhand went on and on, carrying them out! "Kiss my leg!" he kissed. "Make your bows! On your knees!" he fell to his knees, while Francis, as if with a trumpet, marked the beat:

"Your honorable lordships are drilling him! Your honorable lordships are teaching him!"

They drilled him! By the light of a small paraffin lamp, at the table stained with
oldie!
All above board, because they were training a peasant farmhand to be a lackey. I wanted to exclaim: "that's enough, enough," but I couldn't. I was ashamed to let on that I saw it all. I wasn't even sure it was as I saw it, or whether I was imagining it, how much of this kitsch was my own ugly creation unfolding before me, perhaps if I had my shoes on I wouldn't have seen it at all. And I was scared that the gaze of yet some other person might encompass me in this scene, and as part of the scene. I shrank under the blows that fell on the farmhand's mug, I choked with dread and despair, yet I wanted to laugh, and I laughed in spite of myself like someone whose foot is being tickled, oh, Zosia, if only Zosia were here, to kidnap Zosia, to run away with Zosia like an adult man! In the meantime they went on drilling, drilling the immature boy, in a mature and lordly fashion, with elegance, even with wit, with pizzazz, sitting by the table, sprawled over the chairs and sipping the dry
oldie.

Kneadus appeared at the door!

"Let'm go! Let'm go!"

It wasn't a scream. It was a throaty squeak. He went for my uncle! I suddenly saw that everything was in full view! Out there! There was a crowd outside the window. Farmhands, wenches, grooms, men and womenfolk, housekeepers, estate servants, house servants—everyone was looking in! The curtains hadn't been drawn. The uproar in the dead of night had called them here! They hadwatched with respect the way their lordships were drivin' Valek—how they were teachin', drillin', and trainin' him to be a lackey.

"Watch out, Kneadus!" I shouted. Too late. Konstanty found time to turn away from Kneadus in disdain and once again smack the valet in the snoot. Kneadus sprang forward and caught the farmhand in his arms, hugging him.

"He's moin! Ah won't let ya! Let'm go!" he squealed, "let'm go! Ah won't let ya!"

"You sniveling brat!" Konstanty shrieked, "I'll spank you! I'll spank your pupa! You'll get it in the pupa, you sniveling brat!" He and Zygmunt pounced on him. When they heard Kneadus' boyish squealing their lordships went berserk. To trivialize him through the pupa! To deprive fra... ternization of all meaning, to spank his pupa in front of Valek and in front of all the rabble outside the window!

"Ee-ho, ee-ho ee-ho!" squeaked Kneadus, cowering awkwardly. He then leapt behind the farmhand. And the latter, as if fraternizing with Kneadus had restored his daring and arrogance toward their lordships, abandoned all formality and smashed Konstanty in the snoot.

"What are ya buttin' in for?" he exclaimed rudely.

The mystic clasp broke! The servant's hand fell on the lordly countenance. Crash, bang, and stars in front of Konstanty's eyes. He was unprepared for this and went sprawling. Immaturity spilled everywhere. Crash of a broken window. Darkness. A well-aimed rock broke the lamp. Windows let go—the peasants had forced them open and slowly began crawling in, in the darkness the place became thick with peasant body parts. The air was stifling, as in an unventilated manager's office. Hands and feet—no, the rabble doesn't have feet-paws, a huge number of paws, all solid and heavy. The peasants, encouraged by the unique immaturity of the whole scene, lost all respect and manifested a desire to fra . . . ternize. I heard Zygmunt squeak, my uncle squeaked—I think the peasants somehow dragged them into their midst and began to take them in hand, rather slowly and clumsily, but I didn't see it because it was dark... I jumped out from behind the drapes. Auntie! Auntie! I suddenly remembered auntie. I run barefoot to the smoking room, grab auntie, who lay on the sofa playing possum, and I pull her heave-ho, push her into the heap, to mix her in with the heap.

"My child, what are you doing, child?" she pleaded and kicked, and offered me candy, but I, just like a child, pull and pull, pull her into the heap, push her into it, they've got her, they're holding on to her! My aunt is in the heap! She's in the heap! I dashed through the rooms. Not to flee—but just to run, to run, nothing but run full speed ahead, run, egging myself on and stomping my bare footsies! I dashed onto the porch! The moon sailed from behind the clouds, yet it was not the moon, it was the pupa. A pupa of tremendous size atop the trees. A child's pupa atop the world. And the pupa. Nothing but the pupa. Over there they are tumbling in a heap, and here it's the pupa. Little leaves on the bushes are trembling in a light breeze. And here it's the pupa.

Deadly despair caught me in its grip. I was totally infantilized. Run, but where? Back to the manor? There was nothing there—just slapping, smacking, and tumbling in a heap. Where do I turn, what do I do, where am I in this world? Where do I put myself? I was all alone, even worse than alone, because I had become like a child. I couldn't be alone for long, not connected to anything. I ran down the road jumping over dry sticks like a grasshopper. I was seeking a connection with something, a new if temporary order, so that I wouldn't stick out in space any longer. A shadow broke away from a tree. Zosia! She grabbed me!

"What happened down there?" she asked. "Have the peasants attacked my father?"

I grabbed her.

"Let's run away!" I said.

Together we ran through fields and meadows into an unknown expanse, and she was as if the kidnapped, and I as if the kidnapper. We ran down a path across the fields until we were out of breath. We spent the rest of the night in a tiny meadow by a pond's edge, buried in bulrushes, shivering with cold, our teeth chattering. Grasshoppers shrilled. At dawn another pupa, red, and a hundredfold more magnificent, made its appearance on the horizon and filled the world with its rays, causing all objects to cast elongated shadows.

We didn't know what to do. I could neither explain nor express in any way what had happened at the manor because I was ashamed, I couldn't find the right words. She probably guessed more or less what had happened, because she too was ashamed and couldn't express it either. She sat among the reeds by the water, coughing a little because of the damp air that was coming from the rushes. I counted my money—I had about fifty zlotys and some small change. Theoretically speaking, we could have walked on foot to one of the nearby estates and asked for help. Yet how were we to present the whole situation, put it into words for the people at the estate, I would have been too ashamed to speak, I would rather have spent the rest of my life in the bulrushes than to speak of it. Never! It was better to assume that I had kidnapped her, that we were running away from her parents' home, this would have been much more mature-easier to accept. Going on with this line of reasoning, I wouldn't have had to clarify or explain anything to Zosia, because a woman will always accept that she's being loved. Under this pretext we could slip away to the railroad station, take a train to Warsaw, and begin a new life in secrecy from everyone—and the kidnapping would have justified such secrecy.

So I pressed a kiss on both her cheeks, and I confessed my passion for her, I began to apologize that I had kidnapped her, and to explain that her family would never have consented to a union with me because my financial situation wasn't good enough, I told her I had fallen in love with her at first sight, and that I had sensed immediately that she felt the same for me.

"There was no other way than to kidnap you, Zosia," I said, "and for us to run away together."

She was a little surprised at first, but, after I had been proposing to her for a quarter of an hour, she began to make little faces, look coyly at me because I looked coyly at her, and twirl her fingers. She forgot all about the peasants and the anarchy at the estate, and she soon believed that I had kidnapped her. This flattered her enormously because, until now, she had only done needlework, studied, or sat and gawked, or spent time being bored, or taken walks, or looked out the window, or played the piano, or done charitable work at
United Front,
or taken exams in vegetable cultivation, or flirted and danced while music played, or gone to spas, or conversed and looked through windowpanes into the far yonder. Not until now did she entertain any hope that someone would turn up who would possess her. And now, there was someone like that, someone who had actually kidnapped her! So she mustered all her talents for love, and she fell in love with me—because I had fallen in love with her.

In the meantime the pupa rose and fired a billion glistening rays over a world that was only a substitute world, made of cardboard, touched up in green, lit from above with a burning glare. Avoiding human settlements, we slipped along out-of-the-way paths toward the railroad station, and it was a long way—about fifteen miles. She walked and I walked, I walked and she walked, and together we kept on walking under the rays of the merciless, brilliant, blazing, infantile, and infantilizing pupa. Grasshoppers hopped. Crickets buzzed in the grass. Birdies sat on trees or flew about. At the sight of any human being we would make a detour or hide in the bushes by the road. Zosia, however, assured me that she knew the way, because she had gone this way a thousand times before, either by carriage or cabriolet, or by buggy or on sleds. The heat was getting to us. Fortunately, we were able to refresh ourselves with milk, secretly sucking dry a cow that was standing by the roadside. And we walked again. All this time, because of my declaration of love, I had to keep talking love and to show consideration, for example, by helping her to negotiate planks tossed across streams, chasing away flies, inquiring whether she was tired—and many such considerations and favors. She in turn did likewise: she inquired, chased away flies, and showed consideration. I was terribly tired, oh, just to reach Warsaw, to be free of her, to begin living again. I wanted to use her merely as a pretext and a guise under which I could get away from that heap at the estate with some semblance of maturity, and to arrive in Warsaw where I could, after a while, set myself up. But in the meantime I had to show interest in her and generally carry on an intimate conversation with her like two people who delight in each other, and Zosia, as mentioned above, touched by my emotion, became more and more proactive herself. And the pupa, incredibly scorching and towering at the altitude of a billion cubic miles, ravaged the valleys of this world. She was a young lady from the country, raised by her mother and my aunt, Mrs. Hurlecka, née Lin, and by servants—thus far she had dabbled in self-education and studied at the College of Gardening and taken courses at the School of Business, or dabbled in making jams, or dabbled at skinning currants for preserves, or developed her heart and mind, or sat around a bit, also worked as office help, or played the piano just a tad, or walked around a little and said something, but most of all she waited and waited, she waited for the one who would come, fall in love with her, and kidnap her. She was a great expert at waiting, she was gentle, passive, timid, and that s why she suffered from bad teeth, for she was exceptionally well-suited to a dentist's waiting room, and her teeth knew it. And now, when the long-awaited man appeared on the scene and kidnapped her, when that festive day finally dawned, she began to work at it intensely, to show off and display, to bring to light all her trump cards and exhibit them, pulling little faces, smiling, jumping up and down, rolling her eyes, laughing with her teeth and with the joy of life, gesticulating or humming melodies under her breath to display her musical sophistication (because she played the piano a little and could render the Moonlight Sonata). Moreover, she brought forward and displayed body parts that were attractive, hiding those that were not. And I had to look and gaze and pretend that I was taken by it, and take it all in ... All the while the fiery and exalted pupa dominated the world from the boundless blue skies, glorying, shining, glistening, baking and burning, drying up the herbs and grasses. Since Zosia knew that one is happy when in love, she was happy—and she gazed with a bright, luminous gaze, and I too had to gaze. And she whispered: