Cosmos (16 page)

“You are anxious,”I said, “no wonder .
.
.
After the business of these last few days.
With the cat .
.
.
trifles seemingly, yet also puzzles, it’s hard to shake them off, it’s as if they were infested with vermin .
.
.
”

“Kitty-cat, eh?
Such a trifling matter, who would bother with the catsqueal of a kittycorpse?
Look at that gadfly, brother mine, how it’s blaring, the rascal!
Only yesterday that kittycarcass was tickling my nervous system with a drilling tickle—but today?
Today, with my sky-high gazing at the mountains—oh, my daughters, hey, hey, hey, my only ones?!
Granted, I have in my nervous system a kind of celebrating tension, tumtupuli, narambuli, it’s festive, delightfully celebratory, festively delightful, hey-ho, it’s a festivity, a festivity!
A festivity!
Haven’t you, sir, my dear sir, my dearie little sir, noticed anything?”

“What?”

He pointed his finger at a little flower in his buttonhole.
“Please incline your gracious little nose toward me and take a whiff.”

Sniff him?
This alarmed me more than it probably should have .
.
.

“Why?”I asked.

“I’m delicately perfumed.”

“Did you perfume yourself for your guests?”

I sat on a tree stump, a little distance away.
His bald head
formed, with his pince-nez, a glassy-domelike whole.
I asked whether he knew the names of the mountains, he didn’t know, I asked him the name of the valley, he muttered back that he knew it once but had forgotten.

“What are these mountains to you?
Their names.
This is not a matter of names.”

I was about to ask “then what is it about?”but I held back.
Let him tell me himself.
Here in this remoteness “
up the summits and down to the fen, Maggie danced with the mountain men!”
*
And yes, when Fuks and I reached that wall, when we discovered the stick, there too it felt like being at the ends of the earth—the smells, very likely of urine, the heat, the wall—and now, here, why ask, it had to begin on its own .
.
.
because, no doubt, a new arrangement is closing in on me, and something will begin to unravel, to connect .
.
.
Better be quiet.
I sat as if I were not there.

“Ti, ri, ri.”

I was mum.
I sat.

“Ti, ri, ri.”

Again silence, the meadow, azure, the sun already lower, shadows spreading.

But this time with all his might, as forceful as a battle cry.
And suddenly it fell:

“Berg!”

Loud and clear .
.
.
so that I wouldn’t be able not to ask what it meant.

“What?”

“Berg!”

“What, berg?”

“Berg!”

“Ah yes, you were saying earlier that two Jews .
.
.
a Jewish joke.”

“Not a joke at all!
Berg!
Berging with a berg into a berg, mind you—bemberging with a berg.
.
.
Ti, ri, ri,”he added slyly.

He fluttered his hands and even his legs—as if dancing inside himself—triumphantly.
Almost inaudibly and from deep within he repeated mechanically, in a hollow tone: berg .
.
.
berg.
He fell silent.
He waited.

“All right.
I’m going for a walk .
.
.
”

“Sit down, sir, why walk in the sun.
It’s more pleasant in the shade.
It’s pleasant.
Such small pleasures—they are the best.
Tasty.
They taste well.”

“I’ve noticed you like your little pleasures.”

“How’s that?
What?
I beg your pardon?”

He bubbled with a kind of internal laughter: “On my word of honor, true as blue, you’re thinking about those little games of mine on the tablecloth, under the eyes of my better half?
Discretely, all correct, so that there would be no scandals?
The main thing is, she doesn’t know .
.
.
”

“What?”

“That it’s the berg.
This berging with my bemberg with all the bembergality of this bemberg of mine!”

“OK, fine .
.
.
You rest, I’m going for a walk .
.
.
”

“Where are you going in such a hurry?
Hold on for one tiny little minute, maybe I’ll tell you .
.
.
”

“What?”

“That which interests you.
What you are curious about .
.
.
”

“You’re a pig.
A scumbag.”

Silence.
Trees.
Shadow.
A small meadow.
Silence.
I said this quietly—what harm?
In the worst case he’ll feel offended and turn
me out.
So what, this will end, break off, I’ll move to another
pension
, or I’ll return to Warsaw to irritate my father and bring my mother to a state of despair with my unbearable person .
.
.
Eh, he won’t be offended .
.
.
“You’re a dirty pig,” I said, laying it on.
The little meadow.
Silence.
I was intent on just one thing: that he not go crazy on me.
Because my concern was that if he were a maniac,
mente captus
, in that case he would simply lose all importance, and he and all his possible deeds and all his confessions, and my story as well, would become something founded on the indiscriminate folly of a poor idiot and—trivial.
Yet by thrusting him into swinishness .
.
.
oh, there I could make use of him, there he could somehow connect himself with Venomie, with the priest, with that cat of mine, with Katasia .
.
.
there he could be useful to me as one more brick in this house of mine, laboriously built at the outer limits.

“Why are you jumping on me?”he asked casually.

“I’m not.”

The tranquility of nature.

Anyway, if I had insulted him, it was an insult out there, in the distance .
.
.
almost through a telescope.

“May I ask: by what right?”

“Because you, sir, are a voluptuary.”

“Enough!
Enough!
With your permission, I beg you, if you please, if it pleases the high court, I, Leon Wojtys, an exemplary father of a family, never convicted, working myself to the bone all my life, earning a living, day-in-day-out, except on Sundays, from home to the bankie, from the bankie home, now retired, but nonetheless exemplary, I rise at six fifteen, go to sleep at eleven thirty (unless there is a little game of bridge with my better half ’s permission), my dear sir, for thirty-seven years of conjugal life I
haven’t been, not even once .
.
.
hm, hm .
.
.
to my better half, with any other.
I haven’t been unfaithful.
Not even once.
Thirty-seven.
Not even once!
So there!
I am a good husband, tender, tolerant, polite, cheerful, the best father, tenderly loving, pleasant to people, eager, kind, helpful, tell me, if you please sir, what is it in my life that entitles you to say that I, on the side, something or other, taking chances, as if I’d been acting altogether illicitly, drunkenness, cabaret-life, orgy, debauchery, roguery, and whoring with various hussies, perhaps bacchanalia by Chinese lanterns with odalisques, but you can see for yourself, I sit quietly, I chat, and—”he triumphantly shouted into my face, “I’m
correct
and
tutti frutti!
”

Tutti frutti!
What a scoundrel!

“You, sir, are a masturbator.”

“What’s that?
I beg your pardon?
How am I to understand this?”

“Go to your own for whatever turns you on!”

“What do you mean?”

I moved my face close to his face and said:

“Berg!”

It worked.
First he rocked back and forth in surprise that this word was coming to him from without.
Surprised, even annoyed, he snapped back:

“What do you know?”

But then he immediately shook with inner laughter, he seemed to swell with laughter: “Ha, ha, ha, true, you’re right, berging with a berg doubly, triply, with a particular system of on-the-quiet-berg, discrete-berg at every hour of the day and night, and most eagerly at the family dinner table, bemberging a little under the eyes of my little wifie and my little daughter!
Berg!
Berg!
You, my good sir, have a sharp eye!
However, my dear sir .
.
.
”

He looked grave, pondered, then suddenly remembered something
thing, he reached into his pocket and held out to me on his palm: a packet of sugar, two or three hard candies—a tine broken from a fork—two indecent photos—a cigarette lighter.

Trifles!
.
.
.
Trifles like those clods of dirt, arrows, sticks, sparrows!
I was instantly certain that he was the one!

“What’s this?”

“This?
Candybergs and penalbergs in the citation of the Highest Tribunal.
Penalbergs of the District Penal Department and candy-bergs of the Delicatessen-Caresses Department.
Punishment and reward.”

“Who are you punishing and who are you rewarding?”

“Who?”

He sat stiffly, his arm extended and looked at his hand “for himself”—like the priest who was fumbling with his fingers “for himself,” like Venomie who loved “for herself ”.
.
.
and .
.
.
just as I had spoiled everything “for myself ”.
.
.My anxiety that he would turn out to be a madman vanished, I began to see that we were both working on something—and strenuously.
Yes, it was hard work, work at a distance, I wiped “for myself” my brow that was actually dry.

The heat, but not so very severe .
.
.

He wet his finger with saliva and smeared it laboriously across his hand, then watched his fingernail thoughtfully.

“You’re scraping a turnip just for yourself,”
*
I remarked.

He laughed with glee, loudly, as if in every direction, he almost danced in his seat: “Oh, yes, oh yes, on my word of honor, I’m scraping it just for myself!”

“So you hanged the sparrow?”

“What?
Hanged what?
The sparrow?
No.
Nonsense!”

“Who then?”

“How should I know?”

The conversation broke off, I didn’t know if I should rekindle it, here, in this stilled landscape.
I began to scrape the dried dirt off my pants.
We sat on a log like two councilmen, but it wasn’t clear what the council was about.
I said again: “Berg .
.
.”but more softly, more calmly, and my intuition did not mislead me, he looked at me with respect, brushed something off, mumbled:

“Berg, berg, I see you are quite a bembergman!”

He then asked me matter-of-factly:

“Do you bemberg?”

And he laughed: “My dear fellow!
Perchance you, my dearie, know why I have let you in on the bemberg?
What is my dear fellow pondering in that little head of his?
That little Leo Wojtys is such a simpleton as to let anybody in on the bergum-bergum?
You can’t be serious!
I let you in on it because .
.
.
?”

“Because of what?”

“You are curiosity incarnate!
But yes, I’ll tell you.”

He caught me lightly by the ear—he blew into my ear.

“I’ll tell you!
And why shouldn’t I tell you!
Because you are berg berg berging yourself into the berg with that daughter of mine, that Miss Wojtys Helena-Lena, sired by me, a Wojtys!
With a berg.
On the quiet.
Do you think I can’t see?
You scamp!”