Cosmos (3 page)

I stood a while longer in the hallway, between the sparrow and
the mouth.
I returned to my room, lay down, and fell asleep faster than one would have expected.

The next day we took out our books and papers and went to work—I didn’t ask him what he had done during the night—I felt reluctant to recall my own adventures in the hallway, I was like someone who had succumbed to fanciful extravagances and now feels awkward, yes, I felt awkward, but Fuks looked sheepish too and mutely turned to his calculations, which were laborious, on numerous scraps of paper, he even used logarithms, his goal being to develop a method at roulette, a method that would be, without the slightest doubt—and he knew it—humbug, tommyrot, but on which he focused all his energies because he had nothing better to do, nothing to keep him busy, his situation was hopeless, his vacation would be over in two weeks, he would then return to his office and to Drozdowski who would make superhuman efforts not to look at him, but there was no way around it because, even if he were to carry out his duties diligently, this too would be unbearable to Drozdowski .
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Exuding yawns, his eyes turned into tiny slits, he even stopped complaining, he was the way he was, who cares, all he could do now was to taunt me about my aggravation with my family, that’s it, see, everyone’s got his troubles, they’re bugging you too, shit, I tell you, it’s horrible, it’s all a sham!

In the afternoon we went by bus to Krupówki, did some shopping.
Suppertime came, I had been waiting for it impatiently because I wanted to see Lena and Katasia, Katasia with Lena, after last night.
In the meantime, I restrained myself from thinking about them, first, let me see them again, then think.

But what an unexpected upset of the apple cart!

She was a married woman!
Her husband showed up after we had started eating, and now he was bringing his longish nose to
his plate, while I watched this erotic mate of hers with a distasteful curiosity.
What confusion—not that I was jealous, it’s just that now she seemed different, totally changed by this man who was so alien to me, yet privy to the most secret closings of her little mouth—it was obvious that they were only married recently, he covered her hand with his hand and looked into her eyes.
What was he like?
Quite a big man, well built, on the heavy side, intelligent enough, an architect working on the construction of a hotel.
He spoke little, reached for a radish now and then—but what was he like?
What was he like?
And how were they with each other when alone, how was he with her, she with him, the two of them together?
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ugh, to bump into a man at the side of a woman who turns us on, that’s no fun .
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worse still, such a man, a total stranger, suddenly becomes the object of our—compulsory—curiosity, and we have to keep guessing his personal likes and dislikes .
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even though it disgusts us .
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we have to experience him through the woman.
I don’t know which I would prefer: alluring as she is, that she should now turn out to be repulsive because of him, or that she also become enticing because of the man she has chosen—awful possibilities either way!

Were they in love?
Passionate love?
Sensible?
Romantic?
Easy?
Difficult?
Not in love at all?
Here, at the table, in the presence of her family, it was just the casual tenderness of a young couple that one could not, after all, watch at will, but only by stealing glances, by applying a whole system of maneuvers “on the border,” that would not transgress the demarcation line .
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I couldn’t very well stare him in the face, my inquiry, ardent yet somewhat disgusting, had to be limited to his hand as it lay on the table in front of me, near her palm, I looked at this hand, big, clean, fingers not unpleasant, nails clipped .
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I continued watching it, and I became
more and more infuriated that I had to penetrate the erotic possibilities of this hand (as if I were her, Lena).
I found out nothing.
Actually, the hand looked decent enough, but what of it, everything depends on the touch (I thought), on how he touches her, and I could perfectly well imagine their touching each other to be decent, or indecent, or dissolute, wild, mad, or simply conjugal—and nothing, nothing is known, nothing, because why couldn’t shapely hands touch each other grotesquely, even astraddle, what assurance was there?
Yet it was hard to imagine that a hand, so healthy and decent, would indulge in such excesses.
Really, but suppose that it “nevertheless” did, then this “nevertheless” would become yet one more depravity.
And if I could not have any certainty about their hands, what about their persons, in the background, where I hardly dared to look?
And I knew that a single, clandestine, barely visible hooking of his finger round her finger would be enough for their persons to become infinitely licentious, even though he, Ludwik, was just at that moment saying that he had brought the photos, and that they had come out very well, he’ll show them after supper .
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“What a comical phenomenon,” Fuks was finishing his account of finding the sparrow in the bushes on our way here.
“A hanged sparrow!
Who would ever think of hanging a sparrow?
It’s like flavoring borscht with two mushrooms instead of just one—it’s too much!”

“Two mushrooms, two mushrooms indeed!”
Mr.
Leon politely assented, happy to agree.
“Two mushrooms, now you figuree that, if you please, fiddle-de-dee, but what sadism!”

“Hooligans,” opined Mrs.
Roly-Poly curtly and picked a thread off his cuff, while he instantly and happily agreed: “Hooligans.”To which Roly-Poly replied:

“You always have to contradict!”

“But Marysweetie, I say yes, hooligans!”

“But I say, hooligans!”
she exclaimed, as if he had said something different.

“That’s right, hooligans, I say, hooligans .
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.
”

“You don’t know what you’re saying!”

She straightened the border of the handkerchief sticking out of his breast pocket.

Katasia emerged from the pantry to clear the plates, and her twirled-up, slippery, darting lip appeared near the mouth that was across the table from me—I had been anxiously awaiting this moment while at the same time restraining myself, turning away from it so as not to influence anything, or interfere .
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so that the experiment would come off objectively.
Mouth immediately began to “relate to” mouth .
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and I saw that just then her husband was saying something to her, and Leon was butting in, and Katasia was busy walking around, and all the while mouth was relating to mouth, like a star to a star, and this mouth constellation corroborated my nocturnal escapades which I’d rather be done with .
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yet mouth with mouth, that slithering away disgusting twirled-up lip slipping away with that soft and pure mouth closing-and-parting .
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as if they really had something in common!
I lapsed into something like a trembling incredulity over two mouths having nothing in common yet having something in common, this fact overwhelmed me and actually plunged me even deeper into unbelievable distraction—and it was all suffused with the night, as if steeped in yesterday, murky.

Ludwik wiped his mouth with a napkin, and, setting it aside in an orderly fashion (he seemed to be very neat and clean, but his cleanliness could actually be filthy .
.
.
), and he said, in his
bass-baritone voice, that about a week ago he too had noticed a hanged chicken on a spruce by the roadside—but he had not given it much thought, anyway after a couple of days the chicken was gone.

“Oh, wonder of wonders,” Fuks marveled, “hanged sparrows, hanging chickens, maybe it’s an omen that the world is coming to an end?
How high up was the chicken hanging?
How far from the road?”

He was asking these questions because Drozdowski couldn’t stand him, because he hated Drozdowski, because he didn’t know what else to do .
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He ate a radish.

“Hooligans,” repeated Mrs.
Roly-Poly.
She adjusted the bread in the basket with the gesture of a good hostess and provider of meals.
She then blew off some bread crumbs.
“Hooligans!
There are lots of kids around, they do whatever they please!”

“That’s right!”
Leon agreed.

“The crux of the matter is,” Fuks wanly remarked, “both the sparrow and the chicken were hanged at the reach of an adult’s hand.”

“Well?
If not hooligans then who?
So you think, siree, that it’s some weirdo?
I haven’t heard of any weirdos in this vicinity.”

He hummed ti-ri-ri and with great attention turned to making bread pellets—he lined them up in a row on the tablecloth, watched them.

Katasia pushed the wire-mesh ashtray toward Lena.
Lena flicked the ash from her cigarette, while within me her leg responded on the wire netting of the bed, what distraction, mouth above mouth, bird and wire, chicken and sparrow, she and her husband, chimney behind drainpipe, lips behind lips, mouth and mouth, little trees and footpaths, trees and the road, too much, too much, without
rhyme or reason, wave after wave, immensity in distraction, dissipation.
Distraction.
Tiresome confusion, there in the corner was a bottle standing on a shelf and one could see a piece of something, maybe of a cork, stuck to the neck .
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I glued myself to the cork, and thus I rested with it until we went to bed, then, dreaming, sleeping, for the next few days nothing, nothing at all, a mire of activities, words, eating, going up and going down the stairs, though I did find out this and that,
primo
, that Lena taught foreign languages, she had married Ludwik merely two months ago, they went to Hel Peninsula, now they’ll live here until he finishes their little house—all this Katasia told me, kindly, happy to oblige, dustcloth in hand, from one piece of furniture to another,
secundo
(this from Roly-Poly) “it needs to be cut again, then sewn up, the surgeon told me, an old friend of Lena’s, I’ve told Katasia so many times that I’ll cover the costs because, you know, she’s my niece even though she’s a simple peasant from the country, near Grojec, but I’m not one to disown poor relatives, and besides, it’s not aesthetic-looking, it offends one’s sense of the aesthetic, really, it’s just gross, how many times have I told her over the years, because it’s already been five years you know, since the accident, the bus ran into a tree, lucky nothing worse happened, how many times have I told her Kata, don’t be lazy, don’t be afraid, go to the surgeon, have it done, look at yourself, fix your face, but no, well, she’s lazy, scared, days pass, once in a while she’ll say I’ll go, auntie, I’ll go right away, but she doesn’t, and now we’re used to it, until someone reminds us, then it stares us in the face again, and even though I’m sensitive to the aesthetic, imagine the drudgery, cleaning, laundry, do this and that for Leon, then Lena wants something, then do something for Ludwik, from morning ’til night, one thing after another, while the operation
waits, there’s no time for it, when Ludwik and Lena move to their little house, maybe then, but in the meantime, it’s a good thing that at least Lena has found an honest man, well, let him go and make her unhappy, I swear I’d kill him, I’d grab a knife and kill him, but thank God so far it’s not bad, it’s just that they won’t do anything for themselves, neither he, nor she, just like Leon, she’s taken after her father, I have to take care of everything, remember everything, hot water this, coffee that, do the laundry, socks, mend, iron, buttons, handkerchiefs, sandwiches, paper, polish this, glue that, they won’t do a thing, steaks, salads, from morning ’til late into the night, and, on top of it, lodgers, you know yourself how it is, I’m not saying anything, it’s true they pay, they rent rooms, but I still have to remember things for this one and for that one, have it all on time, one thing after another .
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”

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a multitude of other events filling, absorbing me, and every evening, as unavoidable as the moon, supper, sitting across the table from Lena, Katasia’s mouth circling around.
Leon manufacturing his bread pellets and lining them up in a row, with great care—watching them intently—then after a moment’s deliberation impaling a pellet on a toothpick.
Sometimes, after reflecting for a while, he would pick up a little salt on the tip of his knife and sprinkle it on the pellet, watching it dubiously through his pince-nez.

“Ti-ri-ri!

“Grażyna
*
mine!”
he said, turning to Lena,“why don’t you toss your Daddydaddy some radishy foodie food?
Toss it!”