Authors: Witold Gombrowicz
Hipolit, Fryderyk, and Vaclav were in the study—and they called me.
Suspecting that their session related to the scene on the island, I approached them warily … but something warned me that this was something from a different barrel. Hipolit was sitting behind his desk, glum, and he was staring at me.
Vaclav was pacing the room. Fryderyk was half-lying on an armchair. Silence. Vaclav said:
“We have to tell Mr. Witold.”
“They want Siemian liquidated,” Hipolit said somewhat cursorily.
I still didn’t understand. An explanation soon ensued that placed me in a new situation—and, once more, a theatrical pattern of patriotic conspiracy wafted in—perhaps even Hipolit was not free of it, since he began to speak harshly, almost sneeringly. And sternly. I learned that during the night Siemian “saw certain persons who had arrived from Warsaw” for the purpose of settling details of an action that he was to carry out in this area. But in the course of that conversation something happened “a nasty business, you know,” Hipolit added, because Siemian apparently said that he will no longer conduct either this or any other action, that he is withdrawing from the resistance once and for all, and that he is “going home.” Nasty business indeed! There was an uproar, they began pressuring him, until finally, nervously, he spat out that he had done what he could and could do no more—that “his courage had come to an end”—that “his courage had changed into fear”—he said “leave me in peace, something’s gone bad, fear has taken root within me, I myself don’t know how”—that he was no longer fit for anything, that it would be sheer recklessness to entrust him with anything under these conditions, that he was dutifully forewarning them about it and asking for his release. This was all too much. In the fierce
exchange of nervous opinions a suspicion began to arise, at first unclear, then more and more sharply defined, that Siemian had gone mad, or, at the very least, had completely lost his nerve—and then a wave of panic hit, that a certain other secret that had been placed with him was not safe, one could no longer be sure he wouldn’t spill the beans … and, because of certain incidental circumstances, all this took the form of a catastrophe, of defeat, of the end of the world almost, and thus with this escalation, pressure, tension, there emerged a frightened and frightening decision to kill him, to liquidate him immediately. Hipolit recounted that they had wanted to follow Siemian right away into his room and shoot him—but that he, Hipolit, begged for a delay until the following night, explaining that one had to work out the matter logistically, bearing in mind our, the household’s, safety. They agreed to a delay of no longer than twenty-four hours. They were afraid that Siemian would sense that he was in danger and would escape. Poworna was actually well suited for their design, since Siemian had arrived here in great secrecy and no one would look for him here. It was settled that they would return tonight to “do the job.”
Why did the reality of our fight with the enemy and the invader have to appear in such vivid attire—and to such a highly infiiriatingly humiliating degree!—as in bad theater—even though there was blood in this, there was death, and it was most real? “What is he doing now?” I asked in order to better grasp—to get used to the new situation. Hipolit offered me this response:
“Upstairs. In his room. He locked himself in. He asked for horses, he insists on leaving. Surely I can’t provide him with horses.”
And he murmured to himself:
“Surely I can’t provide him with horses.”
There was no doubt that he couldn’t. On the other hand, one doesn’t do the job just like that—finishing off a man without a court hearing, no formalities, no papers? But this was none of our business. We spoke like people besieged by disaster. However, when I asked what they were planning to do, I was met with an almost crude response. “What do you want? It’s no use talking! It must be done!” Hipolit’s tone of voice revealed a lightning-fast change in our relation. I ceased to be a guest, I was in service, stuck with them in harshness, in cruelty that was turning as much against us as against Siemian. But how had he wronged us? All of a sudden, rushing headlong, we had to butcher him, endangering our own necks.
“In the meantime there’s no need for us to do anything. They are supposed to return at twelve-thirty. I sent our watchman away to Ostrowiec, supposedly for some urgent shopping, the dogs won’t be off the leash. I’ll just take the men to him, upstairs, they can do what they want. The only condition I stipulated was that they don’t make noise or the entire household will be wakened. As to the body, it will be removed … I’ve already figured it out, to the shed. And tomorrow one of us will supposedly take Siemian to the railroad
station, and that’s that. It will all be on the quiet, smooth as can be, and not a living soul will know a thing.”
Fryderyk asked: “In that old shed, behind the carriage house?”
He asked objectively, like a conspirator, like someone about to execute a plan—and, in spite of everything, I felt relieved seeing him so mobilized—like a drunkard who has been recruited to a cause. No more drinking for him, right? And all of a sudden this whole affair seemed to me like something healthy and much more decent than our activities thus far. But this relief did not last for long.
Right after supper (eaten in Siemian’s absence, for the past few days he had been “indisposed”—food was sent to him upstairs) I went to the gate, just in case, and there, under the brick, was a white piece of paper.
There is a complication. It’s thwarting our plans.
We must wait it out. Mum’s the word.
We must see what’s what. How events will unfold. If there is a hullabaloo and we have to flee, to Warsaw for instance, the others somewhere else, well, too bad—then everything will fall apart.
One must be familiar with the old wh … You know who I mean? She, i.e. Nature. If She pressures from the side with something so unexpected, one mustn’t protest or resist, one must obediently, meekly adjust,
Taire bonne mine” …
but don’t let up inwardly, or lose sight of our goal, and in such a manner that She’ll realize we have yet another goal, a goal
of
our own.
To begin with She is sometimes v. determined in her interventions, decisive, etc., but then She seems to lose interest, lets up, and then one can covertly return to
one’s own
work and even count on her leniency. … Attention! Adjust your behavior in keeping with mine. So there is no discrepancy. I will write. You must burn this letter,
without fail.
This letter … This letter which, even more than the previous one, was the letter of a madman—yet I understood this madness perfectly. It was so intelligible to me! The
tactic
that he was pursuing in his relations with nature—indeed, it wasn’t foreign to me! And he was clearly not letting his goal out of his sight, he had written in order not to give in, to underscore that he continues to be true to his undertaking, the letter, feigning submissiveness, was at the same time a call to resistance and stubbornness. And who knows whether it was written to me or to Her—so that she
would know
that we did not intend to back off—he was talking to Her through me. I was wondering whether Fryderyk’s every word, as well as his every deed, only pretended to address the one to whom it was directed, while in reality there was indefatigably a dialogue with the Powers … a cunning dialogue, where lying was at the service of truth, truth—at the service of lying. Oh, how he feigned in this letter that he was writing in secrecy from Her—while in truth he was writing so that She would find out! And he was counting that his cunning would disarm Her—perhaps amuse Her. … We spent the rest of the evening waiting.
Furtively we checked our watches. The lamp barely lit the room. Henia, as she did every evening, huddled by Vaclav, he, as usual, had his arm around her, while I discovered that “the island” had not changed his feelings in the least. Inscrutable, he sat next to her, while I racked my brains to see to what extent he was filled with Siemian, and to what extent Karol’s noise and moving about were reaching him as Karol was turning things upside down in chests and tidying them up again. Madame Maria was sewing (like “the children,” she had not been let into the secret). Fryderyk, his legs outstretched, his hands on the arms of an armchair. Hipolit on a chair, gazing into space. Our excitement was swathed in fatigue.
Kept apart by the business of Siemian, that secret task of ours, we men formed a separate group. Henia happened to ask Karol: “What on earth are you doing with that stuff, Karol?” “Don’t bother me!” he replied. Their voices resounded
in bianco
—God knows what they meant and what their inexplicable activity was—while we didn’t budge.
They went to bed around eleven o’clock, as did Madame Maria, while we men began to bustle about. Hipolit brought out shovels, a sack, ropes, Fryderyk put weapons in order just in case, while Vaclav and I carried out an inspection outside. Lights in the windows of the house were turned off, except the one on the second floor—Siemian’s—that was shining through the curtain with a pale mist of light and dread, dread and light. How could it be that his courage had so suddenly changed into fear? What happened to this man that hurled
him headlong into a breakdown? Changing from a leader into a coward? Well! Well! What an adventure! Out of the blue the house seemed to be filled with two separate possibilities of madness, Siemian’s on the second floor, Fryderyk’s on the first (carrying out his game with nature) … in some manner they were both pushed against the wall, at their wit’s end. On my return to the house I almost burst out laughing at the sight of Hipolit, who was looking at two kitchen knives and trying their blades. O God! That venerable fatso, transformed into a murderer and preparing himself for butchering, was like someone in a farce—and suddenly our bungling uprightness, so inept and stuck into murder, turned all this into a performance by a troupe of amateurs, more amusing than menacing. It was actually being done
just in case,
it did not have a decisive character. Yet at the same time the knife’s glint struck like something irrevocable: the die had already been cast, the knife has made its appearance!
Józek! … and Fryderyk’s eyes, stuck on the knife, left no doubt what he was thinking. Józek … the knife … Identical to the other knife, Madame Amelia’s, almost the same, and here it was with us—oh, this knife was connected to the other crime, called it to mind, it was, as it were, a repetition of it a priori—right here, right now, suspended in air—a strange analogy, to say the least, a significant repetition. The knife. Vaclav was also watching it intently—and so these two minds, Fryderyk and Vaclav, had caught up with the knife and were already working on it. They were actually on duty, in
action—they locked it within themselves—as we devoted ourselves to preparations and waiting.
The job, we had to carry it out—but oh how tired we were already, disgusted with history’s melodrama, longing for regeneration! After midnight Hipolit proceeded on the quiet to a meeting with the men from the Underground Army. Vaclav went upstairs to keep an eye on Siemian’s door—I was left downstairs with Fryderyk, and never before had being alone with him weighed on me so heavily. I knew he had something to say—but talking was forbidden to us—so he remained quiet—and, although there was no one around and no one to eavesdrop, we behaved like strangers, and this caution actually called up from nothingness a third presence of an unknown quality, something intangible yet unrelenting. And his face—so familiar to me, the face of an associate—seemed to be walled off from me. … Next to each other we were next to each other, we just were and were, until we heard Hipolit’s lumbering walk and heavy breathing return. He was alone. What happened? A complication! Something went wrong. Something got mixed up. Panic. Those who were supposed to show up didn’t arrive. Someone else came and already left. “And as far as Siemian is concerned,” Hipolit said, “well …
“Can’t be helped, we’ll have to take care of it ourselves. The others can’t, they had to scram. Those are the orders.”
What?! Yet from Hipolit’s words a coercion, an order, pressed upon us, we are not to let him go under any pretence,
especially now, when the fate of many people depends on it, we can’t take risks, there are the orders, no, not in writing, there was no time, there just is no time, no use talking, it has to be done! These were the instructions to us! This is what the orders were like, brutal, panicky, created in a realm of tension unknown to us. To cast doubt on it? This would throw the responsibility for all the consequences onto us, and these could be catastrophic, surely they would not have resorted to such drastic measures without cause. And resistance on our part would look like searching for excuses—just when we were demanding total readiness from ourselves. Thus no one could allow anyone any semblance of weakness, and if Hipolit had led us to Siemian right then, we would have done the job from sheer momentum. But the unexpected complication gave us a pretext to postpone the action until the following night, roles had to be assigned, preparations made, safety assured … and it became clear that if things could be postponed, they should be postponed … so I was assigned to keep an eye on Siemian’s door until daybreak, then Vaclav was to relieve me. We bade each other good night because, after all, we were well-mannered people. Hipolit withdrew to his bedroom, taking the lamp with him, we lingered a while by the stairs leading to the next floor, but then a figure slipped by through the dark suite of rooms. Vaclav had a flashlight, he shot out a bright ray of light. Karol. In his nightshirt.
“Where were you? What are you doing here at night?” Vaclav exclaimed softly, unable to control his nerves.
“I was in the bathroom.”
This could be the truth. Indeed. Vaclav wouldn’t have unexpectedly emitted such an intense groan but for the fact that he had exposed Karol with the light of his own flashlight. But having done so, he groaned loudly, almost indecently. He surprised us with this groan. Karol’s coarse and challenging tone surprised us no less.