Cosmos (8 page)

Pure guileless mouth, good-hearted country mouth!

On a much younger, rounder face!
Katasia, all decked out, with a festive décolletage, on a bench under a palm tree behind which one could see the bow of a boat, a stout foreman with a mustache in a stiff collar holding Katasia by her little hand .
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Katasia smiling pleasantly .
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When, waking at night, we could swear that the window is on the right, the door behind our head, one single orienting sign, such as the light from the window or the murmur of the clock, is enough for everything to fall into place in our heads, all at once and in a definitive way, just so.
What now?
Reality intruded with lightning speed—everything returned to normal, as if called to order.
Katasia: a respectable housekeeper who had injured her lip in a car accident; we: a couple of lunatics .
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Dejected, I looked at Fuks.
In spite of this he kept on searching, the flashlight ferreted again, bills on the table, stockings, holy pictures, Christ and the Mother of God with a bouquet—but what of this search?
He was merely making the best of it.

“Get ready,” I whispered.
“Let’s go.”

All possibility of swinish lust vanished from the illuminated objects, and instead, the illuminating itself became swinish—the groping, the sniffing around, took on a suicidal character—the two of us in this little room were like two lascivious apes.
He reciprocated my gaze with a haggard smile and continued to wander over the room with the flashlight, it was obvious that his head was totally empty, nothing there, nothing, nothing, like someone who realizes that he has lost everything he was carrying, and yet continues on his way .
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and his failure with Drozdowski chummed up with this failure, it all flowed together into one big flop .
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with an obscene, whorehouse smile he peeped into Katasia’s ribbons, cotton-wool, dirty stockings, shelves, her little curtains, from the shadow where I stood I saw how he did it .
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just for revenge and for the hell of it, with his own lasciviousness retaliating for the fact that she had ceased to be lascivious.
Pawing around, the spot of light dancing round a comb, the heel of a shoe .
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But all for nothing!
In vain!
All this made no sense any
more, it slowly fell apart like a parcel after the string is cut, objects grew indifferent, our sensuality was dying.
And the threatening moment approached when one wouldn’t know what to do.

Then I noticed something.

This something could have been nothing, but it also might not be nothing.
Most likely not important .
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but in any case .
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As a matter of fact, he shone the light on a needle that was peculiar because it was driven into the tabletop.

This would not have been worthy of attention were it not that I had already noticed something even stranger, namely the nib of a pen driven into a lemon rind.
So, after he fingered the needle that had been driven in, I took his hand and led the flashlight to the nib—the sole purpose being to restore to our presence here the semblance of an investigation.

But then the flashlight began to move briskly and after a moment found something—namely a nail file on top of the chest of drawers.
The nail file was driven into a little cardboard box.
I had not noticed the nail file before, the flashlight showed it to me as if asking, “what do you think?”

The nail file—the nib—the needle .
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the flashlight was now like a dog that had caught a scent, it jumped from object to object, and we discovered two more “driven-ins”: two safety pins driven into a cardboard.
Not much.
Not much, and yet, wretched as we were, this gave new direction to our action, the flashlight worked jumping, examining .
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and here was something else .
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a nail driven into the wall, strange in its location, about an inch above the floor.
Yet the strangeness of the nail wasn’t enough in itself, it was our illuminating the nail that was, to some extent, an abuse on our part .
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There was nothing else .
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nothing .
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we still searched, but our search was coming to an end, in the sultry
cavern of the room decay was setting in .
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finally the flashlight stopped .
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what next?

He opened the door, we began to retreat.
Before the actual departure he briefly shone the light straight into Katasia’s mouth.
Leaning against the recess of the window I felt a hammer under my hand and I whispered “a hammer,” perhaps because the hammer was connected to the nail driven into the wall.
No matter.
Let’s go.
We closed the door, returned the key to its place, “the wind is really blowing way up there”—he whispered beneath the dome of speeding clouds, he, the ne’er-do-well, the rebuffed one, the irritating one, what’s he to me, it’s my own fault, never mind, the house stood immobile before us, beyond the road tall spruces stood like posts, small trees stood in the little garden, it reminded me of a dance when the music suddenly stops and all the couples stand dumbstruck, it was all so stupid.

Now what?
Go back and go to sleep?
Some kind of depletion was encircling me, a weakening of everything.
I didn’t feel a thing.

He turned to me to say something, when suddenly a pounding—forceful and resonant, shattered the calm!

I went numb—it came from behind the house, from the direction of the road, the furious blows came from there, someone was pounding!
Like with a hammer!
Furious blows with a hammer, heavy, iron blows, pounding blow after blow, bang, bang, fiercely, someone pounding with all their might!
The din of iron in the noiseless night was astounding, almost out of this world .
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.Was it against us?
We took cover by the wall as if those blows, incompatible with everything that surrounded us, must have been aimed at us.

The pounding did not cease.
I looked around the corner and caught Fuks by the sleeve.
There was Mrs.
Roly-Poly.

Mrs.
Roly-Poly!
In a robe with wide sleeves, and within those wide-swept sleeves, she was panting and pounding, lifting a hammer, or an axe, pounding into the trunk of a tree, stark raving mad.
Driving in?
What was she driving in?
Why this driving-in, desperate and furious .
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that .
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that we had left in Katasia’s little room .
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and now it was mightily raging here, and the roar of iron reigned!

The small hammer that I touched with my elbow as we were leaving the little room transformed itself into this hammer, into the pins, the needles, the pen nibs, and into the driven-in nails, reaching their utmost in this sudden unleashing.
As soon as I thought of the connection, I pushed away the absurd thought, off with it, but at the same moment another driving-in, something like a crash .
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resounded from inside the house .
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From somewhere above, from the second floor, but faster and more frequent, accompanying the other blows, corroborating the driving-in and bursting my brain, panic writhed in the night, a frenzy, it was like an earthquake!
Was it coming from Lena’s room?
I broke away from Fuks and rushed into the house, I hurried upstairs .
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was it Lena?

But, as I ran up the stairs, suddenly everything became dumbstruck—and I, already on the second floor, stood still, panting, because the din that drove me on had ceased.
Silence.
I even had a totally calm thought, why not calm down and simply go back to our room.
But Lena’s door, the third one in the hallway, was in front of me, while within me the banging, the driving-in were still happening, the din, the hammer, the small hammer, the needles, nails, the driving-in, the driving-in, oh, to bang through to Lena, to keep banging through to her .
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therefore, throwing myself at her door I began to strike it, to pound it with my fists!
With all my might!

Silence.

It flashed through my head that if they open the door, I’ll exclaim “thieves!”
to somehow justify myself.
Yet nothing—everything had become quiet, I could hear nothing, nothing, nothing, I retreated silently and quickly, I went downstairs.
But downstairs all was quiet too.
Emptiness.
Not a living soul.
No Fuks, no Roly-Poly.
The lack of response from Lena’s room was easily explained, they weren’t there, they hadn’t yet returned from their visit, the ruckus hadn’t come from there—but where has Fuks gone?
Where was Roly-Poly?
I went round the house, close to the wall so that no one could see me from the windows—the frenzy had dissipated without a trace, only the trees remained, only the paths, the gravel beneath the racing moon, nothing more.
Where was Fuks?
I felt like crying, I was close to sitting down and crying.

Suddenly I see, on the second floor, light shining from a window—in Lena and Ludwik’s room.

I see, so they are there, they heard my banging!
Why didn’t they open the door?
What am I to do?
Again I had nothing to do, nothing, I was unemployed.
What then?
What?
Go to our room, undress, go to sleep?
Or lie in ambush somewhere?
What?
What?
Cry?
Their window on the second floor was not shaded, light shone from it .
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and .
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and .
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just across from it, behind the fence, stood a dense, wide-spreading spruce, if I climbed it, I could look in .
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A wild idea, but its wildness was in keeping with the wildness that had just come to an end .
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what else was there for me to do?

The uproar, the confusion that had just taken place made such an idea possible, it was facing me, just like this tree, nothing else was facing me.
I went onto the road, forced my way to the trunk of the spruce and began laboriously climbing that coarse and
prickly monster.
Oh, to bang my way through to Lena!
To reach Lena .
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the residue of that other banging rattled within me, and again I strove toward it .
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all the rest, Katasia’s room, her photo, the pins, Roly-Poly’s banging, everything receded before my main and only purpose of banging through to Lena.
I climbed carefully, from branch to branch, higher and higher.

It was not easy, it took a long time, my curiosity was becoming feverish: to see her, to see her—to see her with him—what will I see?.
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After that thumping, pounding—what will I see?
My recent trembling in front of her door trembled on within me, furiously.
What will I see?
I had already swept my eyes over the ceiling, the upper part of the wall, and the lamp.

Finally I saw.

I was dumbstruck.

He was showing her a kettle.

A kettle.

She sat on a small chair, by the table, with a bath towel thrown over her back like a shawl.
He stood in his vest, held the kettle in his hand and was showing it to her.
She was looking at the kettle.
Saying something.
He was talking.

The kettle.

I had been ready for anything.
But not for the kettle.
One must understand what is the drop that makes the cup overflow.
What is it that’s “too much.”
There is something like an excess of reality, its swelling beyond endurance.
After so many objects that I couldn’t even enumerate, after the needles, frogs, sparrow, stick, whiffletree, pen nib, leather, cardboard, et cetera, chimney, cork, scratch, drainpipe, hand, pellets, etc.
etc., clods of dirt, wire mesh, wire, bed, pebbles, toothpick, chicken, warts, bays, islands, needle, and so on and so on and on, to the point of tedium, to excess, and now
this kettle popping up like a Jack-in-the-box, without rhyme or reason, on its own,
gratis
, a luxury of disorder, a splendor of chaos.
Enough is enough.
My throat tightened.
I won’t be able to swallow all this.
I won’t be able to handle it.
Enough.
Turn back.
Go home.