The Dark Domain (11 page)

A horrible man.

He was agile, elastic as a ball, slender-figured, of medium build; he walked with a light, elusive step and could slip into a room without being noticed.

I couldn’t stand him from the first time I saw him, and felt an indescribable disgust whenever I looked at him, particularly as his physical features suited his character.

This person was extremely different from me in his disposition, tastes and behaviour. That is why I felt such a strong antipathy towards him. He was my living antithesis, with whom there could be no reconciliation. Maybe precisely because of this he latched himself onto me with a rabid passion, as if sensing my natural aversion toward him.

He probably experienced particular delight in seeing how unsuccessfully I tried to extricate myself from the nets he was always ensnaring me with. He was my inseparable companion in cafés, on walks, at the club; he knew how to worm his way into the circles of my nearest acquaintances; what’s more, he could conquer the favour of women to whom I was closely connected. He knew of my smallest plans, my slightest movements.

More than once, so as to be free of looking at his loathsome physiognomy for even just a single day, I would escape unseen by carriage or automobile to the outskirts of town, or else, with no prior word betraying my intention, I would set out for another locality. How can I describe my amazement when, after a while, Brzechwa would suddenly spring up, as if from under the ground, saying with a sneering sweet smile how happy he was at our unexpected, pleasant meeting!

It finally reached the point where his presence inspired a superstitious fear in me and I considered him my evil spirit or demon. His annoying cat-like movements, the cunning narrowing of his eyes, and, most of all, his strabismus, with the cold glossiness of the scleras, curdled my blood with inconceivable dread, while simultaneously stirring up boundless rage.

And he knew perfectly well the easiest way to infuriate me. He was always able to agitate my most sensitive nerves. As soon as he had discovered my tastes and what I held important, he took every opportunity to deride them so savagely that it seemed he wanted to exclude any opposition.

One point of contention fundamentally separating us was the question of individualism, which I always defended with ardent passion. I have a feeling that around this very axis revolved our entire antagonism.

I was a staunch admirer of everything personal, original, unique, self-contained. Brzechwa, to the contrary, scoffed at every kind of individualism, considering it a chimera of presumptuous fools. Hence, he didn’t believe in any inventiveness or ingeniousness, reducing them to the influences of environment, race, the ‘spirit of the times,’ and so on.

‘I even believe,’ he would drawl more than once, criss-crossing his eyes in my direction, ‘that each one of us contain several individuals who fight for that worthless scrap, the so-called “soul.”’

This obvious banter was meant to elicit a passionate reaction on my part. Realizing this, I would pretend that I hadn’t heard anything and ignore him. Then he would be on the lookout for another opportunity to pronounce his ‘collective position,’ as he termed it.

Whenever I displayed admiration and rapture for some new work of art or scientific invention, Brzechwa, with cynical calm, would attempt to prove the groundlessness of my adoration, or else he would silently sit opposite me and transfix me with his frightful strabismus, a smile of malicious sarcasm never leaving his open lips.

He didn’t feel any aesthetic thrills at all: beauty didn’t act upon him in any sense of the word. Instead, he was a sports enthusiast. There wasn’t an automobile race, a cycling competition or soccer match in which he didn’t shine. He fenced like a master, was a great shot, and had the reputation of being a first-class swimmer. Education and scholars he ignored, holding to the maxim
nihil novi sub sole.
Despite this, one couldn’t deny his great intelligence, which showed itself in witty and vitriolic sayings. Of a hot-headed nature, he was unable to endure opposition, and had continual rows and countless affairs of honour, from which he always emerged successful.

A strange thing, however: he was never offended by anything I said, however uncivil or insulting my words. I alone had the privilege of insulting him. Apparently he saw this as my due for his never-ending sneering and pestering. Perhaps there was another reason – but what, I don’t know.

Sometimes I would intentionally exaggerate to goad him into a serious quarrel that would end our relationship. A fruitless activity. Sensing what was happening, he would dismiss my moral condemnation with his very sweet smile and turn everything into a joke … .

Finally I got rid of him. An event occurred that seemed, once and for all, to liberate me from his clutches. He died a sudden, violent death, and I was the indirect cause.

One day, at the end of my tether, I struck him in the face. Brzechwa instantly bridled. He turned white as a sheet, and then I caught sight of a steely flash in his eyes that I had never seen before. He quickly hid his anger, however, and laid a shaking hand on my shoulder.

‘You got unnecessarily carried away,’ he said with a tremulous voice. ‘It’s to no avail. Neither you nor I are capable of offending the other. You see, my dear sir, it is exactly as if someone wanted to slap his own face. Both of us are really one.’

‘Bastard!’ I muttered through my teeth.

‘As you please. This will not change a thing.’

And his eyes began to criss-cross like crazy.

The row had, nevertheless, a serious, tragic consequence for him. Since everything had occurred in the presence of several witnesses, people found out about the incident and from then on no one granted him the freedom to do as he pleased. Brzechwa flew into rages, arranged scandalous ‘practical jokes,’ and eventually forced one of his greatest enemies to an encounter with revolvers. Even though my argument with him had set up the basis for such an event, Brzechwa asked me to be his second. I refused, and though I didn’t care for Brzechwa’s opponent, I offered my services to him. I did this intentionally, pleased that, at least obliquely, I could do away with my persecutor. My offer was accepted, and the duel, under very strict conditions, took place in a grove on the outskirts of the city. Brzechwa fell, shot in the forehead.

I remember his last glance: it was directed at me, a piercing look that paralyzed the will. Immediately afterwards he ceased breathing. I left, not daring to look any longer at that demonic, twisted face. But that face will never disappear from my memory; it is deeply etched there in indelible lines, and that terrible strabismus will eternally gash my soul with its cross-eyed stare.

Brzechwa’s death, particularly the last painful moments of his life, upset me so strongly that shortly afterwards I came down with a severe brain fever. The illness dragged on for months, and when – thanks to the untiring help of doctors and amid constant anxiety about a relapse – I finally got well, I was unrecognizable. My character was completely altered; it seemed alien, and even antagonistic, to the person I had been before. My former tastes, my noble fervour for everything beautiful and profound, my refined faculty for perceiving a flicker of originality were now gone. There only remained – an enigmatic detail – the memory that I had once possessed these virtues.

I became a practical person, ‘healthy,’ normal to the point of nausea, an enemy of any type of eccentricity – and the most painful thing for me – I started to sneer at my former ideals. My every word and gesture was clothed in sarcasm or malicious laughter; everything I did seemed false.

Aware of these new changes within me, I attempted to somehow resist. So began a fierce struggle between two different selves, of whose coexistence I was deeply convinced. But the new self always prevailed, and despite my inner loathing I always listened to his promptings.

It was like the difference between theory and practice. In my principles I remained the same as always and with indignation watched the actions of the other me, who had like a thief slipped into my innermost core and was getting rid of what had been my essence, replacing it with his vileness.

And I wouldn’t describe my condition as the commonly-known ‘split personality,’ for what had occurred was a completely different matter that could not be psychologically explained by the first half of my life. I felt that one couldn’t speak of a splitting of oneself, rather of a doubling up. It was as if some diabolic intruder had moved in. I carried him within, continually wounding myself with this horrid coexistence, powerless, despairing over the awareness of a change I couldn’t dismiss. Each one of my deeds aroused an inner opposition and represented itself as a will imposed on me from outside; each word was a lie unsupported by conviction, devoid of the strength of feelings. Worse still, the intruder encroached into the domain of my thoughts and beliefs, trying to reshape me completely in his own image.

Whenever I wanted to behave in a manner consistent with my former attitude toward the world, some strong force from within me would compel me to the new, unbearable path, and I would hear a snigger inside me and see in my mind’s eye a devilish strabismus … .

I detested myself both physically and morally. I couldn’t stand my own being because it seemed disgusting, grotesque.

So as to reduce the antics of the new ‘I’ to a tolerable minimum, I shut myself up at home for days on end and avoided people, in whose eyes I saw both amazement and aversion.

Here in my quiet abode, in a secluded quarter of the city, I passed long hours of torment, struggling with my hidden enemy. Here within four silent walls I spent long moments thinking about my internal agony.

In due course in my struggle with the intruder, I achieved a certain skill in excluding him, at least for a brief time, from the process of my thinking. Total isolation, freedom from the hustle and bustle allowed me, even if only for a couple of minutes, to focus my attention on my real, former self and liberate it from the brutal iron hand of the usurper.

These were truly great efforts. I had the impression of a person who, with titanic strength, separates two heavy half-globes and succeeds in keeping them apart for a few moments.

Then, taking advantage of such occasions, I threw myself into my writing and filled up page after page with the thoughts that had been seething inside me but which couldn’t find an outlet, for they had been suppressed by my other self. With bated breath, I wrote like a madman, driving my hand across the paper to express what I thought and felt, to state before the world that I am not the person I will appear to be in an hour or a few minutes’ time.

But this frantic effort never lasted long. All that was needed was a shout from the street, the entrance of a servant into the room, or the sight of a passerby’s face, and my tense nerves would split like cords, my taut muscles would snap with a dull crack, and the obstinate half-globes would press together to form a hermetically sealed, uniform sphere. A horrible, cynical laugh would issue from my lips, and sobbing with anguish, I would thoroughly destroy whatever I had written.

And once again I’d return to the outside world, disgracefully changed to a base, sneering individual without any values and beliefs. And once again long exertions of thought would be necessary, withdrawal from the world and absolute solitude, so that I could, even if only for a couple of minutes, isolate myself from the incursions of that hateful being and exclude him from my soul.

Yet in repeating these experiences I achieved increasingly encouraging results. For longer periods I was able to hold myself apart from the alien intruder and to cleanse myself of his filth.

Afterwards, of course, everything reverted to the previous state, but the memory of these short liberations stimulated further attempts. Eventually I became myself for a couple of hours, and I took advantage of this in the best possible manner, hurrying before my enemy would return.

But constant observation and guarding of oneself at every step, a necessity for this mental electrolysis of the doubled ‘I,’ wearied me extremely, making me nervous and leaving me with violent headaches.

Nevertheless, having acquired a dim hope of reclaiming my true being, I didn’t spare myself and already dreamt of the moment I could freely appear as my own person in company … .

One day, after a longer stay in the world, I shut myself in for a specific aim and undertook the arduous work of separation. As a result of practice this task was easier, and I soon inhabited my own being again. I turned my attention to my immediate physical surroundings so that, under this new condition, I could get accustomed to maintaining a measure of control over my individuality, eventually doing so in the face of the hundredfold stronger distractions of the world.

As I was slowly moving away from self-concentration and absentmindedly glancing about the room, I thought I heard some noise beyond the left wall. Curious, I began to listen, but this directed me too strongly to the outside, bringing about the fatal merging of barely separated elements, and again I stopped being myself.

Brokenhearted, I cursed the suspicious noise, which, anyway, might only have been an illusion of wandering thoughts caused by nervous tension. Thus my first attempt at reclaiming myself while being attentive to my surroundings proved abortive. Nevertheless, I didn’t lose hope, and a couple of days later I conducted a test … .

As long as I was preoccupied with myself, I didn’t hear anything suspicious beyond the wall – but as soon as I started to pay more attention to my surroundings, I heard that same mysterious noise coming from the left side. Even though I knew perfectly well that as a consequence I would lose myself and return to that loathsome double existence, I immediately thrust my head out of the window and glanced to the left with the hope of discovering the cause of this noise.

The house I lived in had one storey and consisted of three sections. I occupied the end wing, so that beyond me on the left side were no more rooms, and the outer wall faced a small, enclosed garden. As usual at that time no one was in it; generally, no one came up on my side, respecting my privacy and discreetly avoiding the line of my windows.