Cosmos (13 page)

“Sandwiches, where is the thermos, give me that piece of paper, Lukie, leave me alone, where are the mugs mother gave us, be careful!
You’re stupid, Lukie!”
“You’re stupid, Lulu!
Ha, ha, ha!”

The other was no longer an issue; and yet, by not being an issue, it was an issue.
Lena’s little face was slight, barely perceptible, but Ludwik’s face was also as if he were not alive, it was annihilated by
space that stretched as far as the barrier of the mountain chain which, in turn, stretched on, ending at the limits remoteness in a mountain of unknown name.
I generally didn’t know most of their names, at least half the things we saw were unnamed, mountains, trees, weeds, vegetables, tools, settlements.

We were in the highlands.

What about Katasia?
In the kitchen?
With her lips .
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and I glimpsed Lena’s little mouth, what’s happening with it, so far away from the other connotation, how is it doing separated from .
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nothing, this was a mouth traveling in a cart on an excursion, I ate a piece of turkey, the provisions Roly-Poly had prepared were tasty.

Slowly new life began to evolve on the cart, as if on a distant planet, and so Lena, and even Ludwik, let themselves be drawn by the Lulus into luluing, and Lena exclaimed, “what are you doing, Ludwik?!”
while he in turn said, “calm down, honey!”
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I watched on the quiet, unbelievable, so they too could be like that?
So that’s how they were?
A strange ride, unexpected, we began our descent from the highlands, the distances became shorter, the swelling of the land crept down on either side, Lena was threatening him with her finger, he was blinking his eyes .
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a frivolous, superficial gaiety, in any case they were capable of it .
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interesting .
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moving away ultimately had its privileges, and in the end I too managed to come up with a couple of wisecracks, damn it, we were on an excursion after all!

The mountains that had been drawing nearer for a long time suddenly lunged from all sides, we went into a valley, here at least blessed shade spread over the slopes that were blooming on high with sun-drenched greenery—and silence, God knows from where, from everywhere, and coolness flowing like a stream, so pleasant!
A curve, rock faces and mountain peaks are rising, sudden chasms, exhausting screes, mellow-green domes, pinnacles, or peaks, jagged ridges and vertical surfaces falling down precipitously, bushes clinging to them, farther, boulders on high, meadows sliding in a silence that emerged inscrutable, universal, sweeping, immobile, expanding, and so overwhelming that the rattling of our cart and its insignificant rolling seemed as if something apart.
The panoramas persisted for a while, then something new emerged, pressing on, it was so naked, or entangled, or glittering, at times heroic, there were precipices, indurations, crevices, variations of hanging rocks, then, pastoral scenes, for example, in ascending, descending rhythms composed of bushes, trees, wounds, lesions, and subsidences, floated in, sweet at times, at times lacey.
Various things—various things—strange distances, bewildering twists and turns, a tight, imprisoned space, charging or receding, twisting and turning, striking up or down.
Movement, immense, immobile.

“Oh Lulu, dear me!”

“Lukie, I’m scared .
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I’m afraid to sleep by myself!”

Agglomeration, whirl and welter .
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too much, too much, too much, crowding, movement, heaping, crashing, pushing, a general hurly-burly, huge mastodons filling space that, in the blinking of an eye, would break up into thousands of details, combinations, masses of rock, brawls, in a clumsy chaos, and suddenly all those details would again collect into an overpowering shape!
Just like the other time, in the bushes, that time in front of the wall, in relation to the ceiling, like in front of the pile of rubble with the whiffletree, like in Katasia’s little room, like in relation to the walls, cupboards, shelves, curtains, where forms also took shape—but while those were trifles, this was a roaring storm of matter.
And I had become such a reader of still life that, in spite of myself, I
examined, I searched and studied, as if indeed there were something here to decipher, and I reached for the ever-new combinations that our tiny cart rolled out before us, rattling, from the mountain womb.
Yet nothing, nothing.
A soaring bird appeared—high in the sky, immobile—vulture, hawk, eagle?
No, it was not a sparrow, and by the very reason of not being a sparrow it was after all a non-sparrow, and being a non-sparrow, it was, in a small way, a sparrow .
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O God!
How the sight of this solitary bird regaled me, soaring above everything, supreme!
The highest point, the reigning point.
Really?
I had actually been tired by the disorder there, in the house, by that jumble, by the chaos of mouths, of the hangings, the cat, the kettle, Ludwik, the stick, the drain, Leon, the pounding, the banging into, the hand, the hammering, the needle, Lena, the whiffletree, Fuks’s gaze, and so on, and so on, etc., etc., etc., as in a fog, in a horn of plenty, chaos .
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.While here a bird reigned in azure—hosanna!—how on earth had this tiny, distant point taken control, like a cannon shot, while chaos and confusion lay at its feet?
I looked at Lena.
She was staring at the bird.

Which bypassed us in a semicircle, leaving us again with the raging uproar of the mountains, beyond which were other mountains, each consisting of varied areas abounding in pebbles—how many pebbles?—and so, that which had been “behind,” now rode across the front line of the advancing army, in a strange silence, explained in some measure by the immobility of universal movement, Lukie, wow, look at that rock!
Lulu, do you see it, it’s a real nose!
Look, Lukie, there’s a granddad with a pipe!
Look to the left, do you see it, he’s kicking with his high-top boots!
Kicking who, kicking where, there’s a chimney!
Another turn crowding in, a balcony drifting in, then a triangle—and a tree that suddenly
captivates you, clinging somewhere—one of many—also captivating, but then it dissolved and disappeared.
A priest.

In a cassock.
He was sitting by the road, on a rock.
A priest in a cassock, sitting on a rock, in the mountains?
I was reminded of the kettle, because the priest was like the kettle, back there.
The cassock was also extra.

We stopped.

“Can we give you a ride, Father?”

Chubby-cheeked and young, with a duck-like nose, his face round like a peasant’s jutted out of his priestly collar—he lowered his gaze.
“May God repay you,” he said.
Still he didn’t stir.
His hair was sticky with sweat.
When Ludwik asked him if we could give him a ride somewhere, he didn’t seem to hear, he got in the cart mumbling his thanks.
Trot, rattle, riding onward.

“I was hiking in the mountains .
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I went off the road a bit.”

“You must be tired, Father.”

“Oh, yes .
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I live in Zakopane.”

The hem of his cassock was soiled, his shoes weary, his eyes strangely red—had he also spent the night in the mountains?
He explained slowly: he had gone on a trip, lost his way .
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but why on a trip in a cassock?
Why lost in a terrain cut through by a valley?
When did he start on his trip?
Not questioning him too much, we gave him this and that out of our provisions, he ate sheepishly, then sat helpless, the cart jolted him, the sun was scorching, there was no more shade, we were thirsty but didn’t feel like pulling out the bottles, just riding and riding.
The shadows of protruding boulders and rocks bore down perpendicularly to the very bottom on either side, and we heard the rush of a cascade.
We rode on.
Up to this point I had never been interested in the fact, curious as it
may be, that for ages a certain percentage of people have been isolated by the cassock and assigned to God’s service—that branch of experts on God, heavenly functionaries, spiritual civil servants.
Here however, in the mountains, was this guy in black, mixing in with our travel, who did not fit into the mountain chaos because he was something extra .
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exploding, overflowing .
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almost like the kettle?

This discouraged me.
Interestingly, when the eagle or the hawk shot above everything, I felt invigorated—probably because (I thought), being a bird, it related to the sparrow—but also because, and perhaps particularly because, it hung there, uniting within itself the sparrow and the hanging, and allowing the idea of hanging to unite the hanged cat with the hanged sparrow, yes, yes, (I saw it more and more clearly), and it even gave the idea of hanging a preeminence, hanging above all else, regal .
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and if I’m able (I thought) to decipher the idea, discover its main thread, to understand or even have just a sense of where all this is striving, at least in this one aspect of the sparrow, of the stick and the cat, then it will be easier for me to deal with the mouths and everything else that revolves around them.
Because (I was trying to read this charade) there is no doubt (and it was a painful puzzle) that I myself am the secret of the mouth-lip union, it happened within me, I and no one else had created this union—but (attention!), by hanging the cat I had connected myself (probably?
to a certain degree?) with the other group, that of the sparrow and the stick, I belonged, then, to both groups—doesn’t it follow then, that the union of Lena and Katasia can happen only through me?—and wasn’t I really the one who, by hanging the cat, had established a bridge uniting everything .
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in what sense?
Oh, that wasn’t clear,
but in any case something had begun to form itself, an embryo of a totality was being born, and here a huge bird hangs above me—hanging.
Well and good.
But why the devil does the priest butt in, from outside, from a different barrel, unexpected, superfluous, idiotic?
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Like the kettle, back there!
And my annoyance now was no less than then .
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when it hurled me at the cat .
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(yes, perhaps I had hurled myself at the cat because of the kettle, unable to bear the drop that caused the cup to overflow .
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and maybe, by doing just about anything, one will force reality to emerge, just like throwing any old thing into the bushes when something indistinct is moving there) .
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yes, yes, was strangling the cat my infuriated response to the provocation of the nonsense of the kettle?
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In any case, be careful, shaveling, because who can guarantee that I won’t throw something at you, that I won’t do something to you .
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something .
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He sat, not even suspecting my fury, we drove on, mountains and mountains, the horses’ trot, the heat .
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My eyes caught a little detail .
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he was moving his fingers .
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He unconsciously spread the thick fingers of both his hands, then intertwined them, the worm-like working of his fingers down below, between his knees, was persistent and unpleasant.

Conversation.

“Are you all in Kościeliska for the first time?”

To which Lulu, in the tone of a bashful schoolgirl replied: “Yes, Father, this is our honeymoon trip, we got married last month.”

Lukie immediately jumped in with a cute little expression on his face, no less bashfully delightful: “We are a couple of little newlyweds!”

The priest cleared his throat, disconcerted.
So Lulu said, like a
schoolgirl squealing to the principal on her classmates: “They are too, Father,” she pointed to Lena and Ludwik, “they are too!”

“They’ve recently been given permission to .
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!”
Lukie exclaimed.

Ludwik said:“Hmmmmm!”in a deep bass-baritone, then Lena’s little smile, the priest’s silence, oh, the Lulus, what a tone they contrived for the benefit of this high-priest!
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who still fumbled nervously with his stubby fingers, he was pathetic, helpless, so like a peasant, and something told me that perhaps he had some little business on his conscience, what had he done with those stubby fingers?
And .
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and .
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oh .
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oh .
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those fingers down below, moving .
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and my fingers .
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and Lena’s .
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on the tablecloth.
The fork.
The spoon.