B005GEZ23A EBOK (18 page)

“What will you tell her?”

“I’ll behave decently, and I’ll force her into decency. I’ll act with respect—I’ll treat her with respect and I’ll force her to respect me. I’ll deal with her in such a way that she won’t be able to refuse her affection and fidelity to me. I believe that respect, reverence, you know—create obligation. And I’ll treat that brat to his due. Now, recently, he made me lose my composure—it won’t happen again.”

“You want to act … with importance?”

“You took the words out of my mouth! Importance! I’ll call them to—what’s important!”

“Yes, but ‘importance’ derives from ‘import.’ A man of importance deals with what is most important. What then is most important? For you one thing can be the most important, for them—another. Everyone chooses according to his judgment—and his measure.”

“What do you mean? I’m the important one, they’re not. How can they be important when these are childish things—rubbish—nonsense. Idiotic things!”

“But what if—for them—childishness is more important?”

“What? Whatever is important to me has to be more important to them. What do they know? I know better! I’ll force them! You can’t deny that I’m surely more important than they are, it’s my argument that must be the decisive one.”

“Wait a minute. I thought you considered yourself more important because of your principles … but now it appears that your principles are more important because you yourself are more important. Personally. As a person. As an elder.”

“Club it or cudgel it!” he exclaimed, “it’s all the same thing! I’m very sorry. These confidences at such a late hour. I thank you very much.”

He left. I felt like laughing. Well, what a lark! He swallowed the hook—he was thrashing about like a fish!

What a trick our little couple had played on him!

Was he suffering? Suffering? Well, yes, he was suffering, but it was a pudgy kind of suffering—weary—balding. …

The charm was on the other side. So I was “on the other side” too. Everything that came from there was—delightful and … skilled in enticement … endearing … Body.

That bull, who was pretending to defend morality, was in reality bearing down on them with all his weight. Bearing down on them with his very self. He was inflicting on them that morality of his for no other reason than that it was his “own”—it carried more weight, was older, more developed … the morality of a grown man. Inflicting it by force!

What a bull! I couldn’t stand him. The only thing … wasn’t I just like him? I—a grown man … I was thinking about that when I again heard a knocking on my door. I was sure it was Vaclav returning—but it was Siemian! I began coughing in his face—I did not expect this!

“Forgive me for troubling you, but I heard voices, so I knew you weren’t asleep. May I ask you for a glass of water?”

He drank slowly, in small sips, not looking at me. Without a tie, his shirt open, his features wrinkled—his hair, though pomaded, was sticking up and he fingered it from time to time. He drained the glass but was not leaving. He stood fingering his hair.

“What an arabesque!” he mumbled. “Unbelievable!…” He went on standing as if I weren’t there. Purposely I said nothing. He said under his breath, not to me:

“I need help.”

“What can I do for you?”

“You know that I’m having a total nervous breakdown?” he asked indifferently, as if this did not apply to him.

“I must admit … I don’t understand.”

“Yet you must be au courant,” he laughed. “You know who I am. And that I have broken down.”

He was brushing out his hair and waiting for my response. He could have waited indefinitely, since he was deep in thought, or rather he was concentrating on a thought while not thinking. I decided to find out what he wanted—I replied that indeed I was au courant. …

“You’re a nice man. … I just couldn’t stand it in my room any longer … in isolation. …” he pointed to his room with his finger. “How shall I put it? I decided to turn to someone. I decided to turn to you. Perhaps because you’re a nice man, or perhaps because you’re next door. … I can no longer be alone. I can’t and that’s that! May I sit down?”

He sat down, while his movements were as if he had been ill—cautious, as if he didn’t have full control over his limbs and had to plan each move ahead. … “I’d like to ask you for some information,” he said. “Is there something being schemed against me?”

“Why?” I asked.

He decided to laugh, then he said: “Forgive me, I’d like to be frank … but first I need to make it clear in what role I’m appearing before you, dear sir. I’ll have to give you some account of my life. Please be kind enough to listen. You probably know a lot about me from hearsay. You’ve heard of me as a courageous, dangerous man, one might say. … Well, yes … But now, just recently, something came upon me … the evil eye, you know. A frailty. One week ago. I’m sitting by a lamp, you know, and suddenly a question comes to mind: why, thus far, hasn’t your foot slipped? And what if it slips tomorrow and you’re in trouble?”

“Surely you must have thought this many times.”

“Of course! Many times! But this time it wasn’t the end of it—because right away another thought came to mind, that I shouldn’t think this way because it may, should the occasion
arise, soften me, leave me wide open, devil only knows, lay me bare to danger. I figured I had better not think that way. But, as soon as I thought that, I couldn’t chase the thought away, it just caught me, and now I’m constantly, constantly thinking that my foot will slip, and so it goes in circles. Listen! It caught me!”

“Nerves.”

“It’s not nerves. You know what it is? It’s a transformation. A transformation of courage into fear. It can’t be helped.”

He lit a cigarette. He inhaled, blew out the match.

“Imagine, only three weeks ago I had a goal ahead of me, a task, I had a battle ahead, some object or other. … Now I have nothing. Everything fell away from me, my pants are down, if you’ll excuse the expression. Now my only thought is that nothing should happen to me. And I’m right. Whoever fears for himself is always right! The worst of it is that I’m right, not until now have I been right! And what do you all want from me? This is my fifth day here. I ask for horses—they won’t give them to me. You’re holding me like a prisoner. What do you all want to do with me? I’m writhing in that little room upstairs. … What is it you want?”

“Calm down. It’s all nerves.”

“You want to finish me off?”

“You’re exaggerating.”

“I’m not so stupid. I’ve let people down. … Unfortunately I blabbed about my fear, now they know. As long as I wasn’t afraid of them they feared me. Now that I’m scared, I’ve
become dangerous. I understand that. I can’t be trusted. But I’m turning to you, as a human being. I made the following decision: to get up, come to you, and speak directly. This is my last chance. I come to you directly because someone in my situation has no other choice. Please hear me, it’s a vicious circle. You’re all afraid of me because I’m afraid of you, I’m afraid of you because you’re afraid of me. I can’t extricate myself from this except with a jump, and that’s why, boom, I bang on your door at night, even though we don’t know each other. … You’re an intelligent man, a writer, so please understand me, offer me your hand, so that I can extricate myself from this.”

“What can I do?”

“Get them to let me leave. Let me break loose. That’s all I dream of. To break loose. Back out. I’d leave on foot—except that you’re likely to nab me in the fields somewhere and … Please persuade them to let me go, convince them that I won’t hurt anyone, that I’m fed up, that I can’t stand it any more. I want to be—at peace. At peace. Once we separate, there will be no difficulties. Please, sir, do it for me, I implore you, because, you know, I can’t … Help me escape. I’m turning to you because I can’t be all alone against everyone else, like an outlaw, lend me your hand, don’t leave me like this. We don’t know each other, but I’ve chosen you. I’ve come to you. Why do you all want to persecute me now that I’ve become totally harmless—completely so! It’s all done with.”

This was an unexpected hitch in the shape of this man who started shaking.… what was I to tell him? I was still full of
Vaclav, and here, in front of me, this man is spewing—enough, enough, enough!—and asking for mercy. In a flash I saw the total disaster of the problem: I couldn’t turn him away because now his death was intensified by the life trembling in front of me. He had come to me, he became close and hence enormous, his life and death were now mounting in front of me, sky high. At the same time his arrival returned me—by wresting me from Vaclav—to duty, to our action under Hipolit’s leadership, and he, Siemian, was becoming merely the object of our activity … and, as an object, he was thrown outside us, excluded from us, and I couldn’t acknowledge him, or communicate with him, or really talk with him, I had to keep my distance and, by not letting him close to me, I had to maneuver, play politics … and so my spirit stood on its hind legs like a horse before an insurmountable obstacle … because he was calling upon my humanity and getting close to me as a human being, while I wasn’t permitted to see him as a human being. What kind of answer should I give him? The most important thing was—not to let him get close to me, not to let him sink into me! “Sir,” I said, “there is a war on. The country is under occupation. Desertion under these conditions is a luxury we cannot afford. We have to watch one another. You know that.”

“This means … you don’t really want … to talk with me?”

He waited a moment, as if savoring the silence that was separating us more and more. “Sir,” he said, “haven’t you ever been caught with your pants down?”

Again I didn’t answer, increasing the distance. “Sir,” he said patiently, “Everything fell away from me—I have nothing. Let’s talk without further ado. Since I’m coming to you by night, as a stranger to a stranger, let’s talk and skip the rest, shall we?”

He fell silent and waited for me to say something. I said nothing.

“No matter what your opinion of me is,” he added with apathy. “I chose you—as my savior or my killer. Which do you prefer?”

I then handed him an obvious lie—as obvious to me as it was to him—and thus I finally threw him out of our circle: “I know nothing about any threats against you. You’re exaggerating. It’s nerves.”

This floored him. He said nothing—he didn’t move, he didn’t leave, he just remained … passive. It was as if I had deprived him of the ability to leave. And I thought this could go on for hours, he won’t move, why should he move—he’ll stay here … and keep weighing me down. I didn’t know what to do with him—and he couldn’t help me because I had rejected him, thrown him out, and without him I found myself with regard to him—alone … as if I were holding him in my hand. And between me and him there was nothing but indifference, cold unfriendliness, revulsion, he was a stranger to me, he was disgusting! A dog, a horse, a hen, even a bug were more pleasing to me than this man, in his years, worn out, his whole history written all over him—a grown man can’t
stand another grown man! There is nothing more repulsive to a grown man than another grown man—I’m talking, of course, about older men, their history written on their faces. He was not attractive to me, no! He was incapable of winning me over. He was unable to put himself into my graces. Unable to please me! His spiritual being was as repulsive to me as his carnal being, just like Vaclav’s, even more so—I was repulsive to him, just as he was repulsive to me, we would have locked horns like two old aurochs—and the fact that I, in my wasted state, was equally disgusting to him intensified my disgust for him even further. Vaclav—and now he—both hideous! And I with them! A grown man can be bearable to another grown man only in the form of self-denial, when he denies himself for the sake of something—honor, virtue, nation, struggle. … But a grown man merely as a grown man—what a monstrosity!

Yet he chose me. He presented himself to me—and now he was not giving in. He was here in front of me. I coughed, and this little cough made me aware that the situation was becoming more and more difficult. His death—even though revolting—was now only a step away from me, like something that could not be avoided.

I was dreaming of only one thing—that he would leave. I’ll think about it later, let him leave first. Why shouldn’t I say that I agree with him and will help him? It wasn’t binding, I could, after all, turn this promise into a ruse and a maneuver—if I were to decide to destroy him, that is, and reveal everything to
Hipolit—actually, this would be advisable, for the sake of the goals of our activity, our group, to secure his confidence and to manipulate him. If I decide to destroy him … then what’s the harm in lying to a man whom one is destroying?

“Listen, please. First of all—control your nerves. This is the most important thing. Come down to lunch tomorrow. Say that you had a nervous crisis and it’s now passing. That you are returning to form. Pretend you’re all right. For my part, I’ll also talk to Hipolit and try somehow to arrange your departure. Now go back to your room, someone could come here.…”

I had no idea what I was saying. Truth or lie? Help or treason? It will become clear later—but now let him go away! He rose and drew himself up. I didn’t notice any trace of hope, not a muscle twitched, he tried neither to thank me nor to please me, not even by his gaze … because he knew in advance that nothing would succeed, that there was nothing left for him except to be, to be as he is, to be his own awkward being, his unpleasant self—whose destruction, however, would be even more disgusting. He was merely blackmailing me with his existence. … Oh, how different this was from Karol!

Karol!

After Siemian’s departure I began writing a letter to Fryderyk. It was a report—I reported on both these nocturnal visits. And this was the document by which I was clearly presenting myself to our joint activity. I was presenting myself in writing. I began a dialogue.

Next day Siemian appeared at lunch.

I rose late and came down just as everyone was coming to the table—and then Siemian appeared, shaved, pomaded, and perfumed, a handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket. This was the arrival of a corpse—we had been, after all, in the process of putting him to death for two days running, without a break. The corpse, however, kissed Madame Maria’s hand with the grace of a cavalryman and, having greeted everyone, explained that “the indisposition that had overcome him was beginning to pass,” that he was feeling better—that he was fed up with stewing by himself upstairs while “the whole family was gathered here.” Hipolit himself moved a chair toward him, his place setting was quickly arranged, our attention to him returned as if it had never changed, he sat down—as overpowering and overbearing as he had been that first evening. Soup was served. He asked for vodka. This must have been no trifling effort—corpse talking, corpse eating, corpse drinking, an effort violently wrested from his all-powerful disinclination,
wrested merely by the power of fear. “My appetite isn’t the best yet, but I’ll try a little soup.” “A swig of vodka, if you please.”