Boundary 9781501756849

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BOUNDARY

B OUNDARY By Zofia Nałkowska T R A N S L A T E D

B Y

U R S U L A

NIU PRESS / DeKalb

P H I L L I P S

Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb 60115 © 2016 by Northern Illinois University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16

1 2 3 4 5

978-0-87580-740-9 (paper) 978-1-60909-201-6 (e-book) Book and cover design by Shaun Allshouse Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available online at catalog.loc.gov.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

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Notes to Text 229 Appendix on Polish Names 237 Afterword 243 Notes to Afterword 268

THIS TRANSL ATION IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF IRENA WRÓBLEWSKA-KORSAK (1947–2013)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My thanks to Nałkowska’s heirs Joanna Wróblewska-Kujawska and the late Irena Wróblewska-Korsak for permitting this translation to be published. Special thanks are due to Helen Beer and Olive Duncan, who commented on earlier versions of the complete English text. As critics who do not read Polish, their suggestions for rendering Polish names and forms of address were especially useful. I likewise thank Dorota Hołowiak for her dedicated help in clarifying certain points in the original Polish and in compiling the pronunciation guide in the appendix. I am most grateful to Hanna Kirchner for our discussions of the novel and her reading of an earlier version of the afterword, and to the two anonymous reviewers. Many thanks also to Łukasz Ossowski, Librarian of the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences (Warsaw) and his staff, as well as to Marzena Kubacz and Agata Sobczak of the Muzeum im. Zofii i Wacława Nałkowskich “Dom nad Łąkami” (Wołomin). Ursula Phillips, March 2016

1 The short and splendid career of Zenon Ziembiewicz, which ended so grotesquely and tragically, could now be totally reassessed from the perspective of its bizarre finale. Everything now received an entirely new evaluation: his everywhere familiar, slightly stooping silhouette flashing through the streets of the town almost every day in his long open motorcar, his face with its aquiline profile and ascetically elongated jaw, attractive and even aristocratic to some, jesuitical and odious to others, his behavior in various specific situations, some of his well-remembered words. Nothing and no one seemed prepared for the catastrophe that struck Ziembiewicz and his family, like a potted geranium falling from an open window and hitting you on the head. It did not explain the situation but obscured it once and for all. The real reasons behind the disaster were not easily decipherable—especially when we take into account that Ziembiewicz had led a sober, well-regulated life, did not appear to seek casual affairs, and even had a reputation in the best social circles for being a thoroughly decent fellow—despite his modern views and unpleasant political affiliations.1 Death can strike in any place in life.2 And a person’s history contained between birth and death often seems like an absurdity. For who is able to remember in every passing moment—just to be on the safe side—that it could be their final gesture? Death often seizes a man in flagrante before he has managed to take precautions. The most logical life plan, the most meticulously worked out canon of values, suddenly crumbles when the last unknown manifests itself. In Zenon Ziembiewicz’s case, perhaps this was mere objectification. Because when he was alive, he must have looked different from his own point of view—positioned at the center of his life, sheltered by his own consciousness and somehow vindicated by it. He had his own principles, motives, and reasons for behaving as he did and not otherwise. Even his

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attitude to the perhaps good-looking, yet ultimately quite commonplace girl must have made some kind of sense in his own understanding. But now any subjective considerations, motives, eventualities, imponderabilia, had been swallowed up along with him. He was seen only from the outside, from the street that had already judged him by his deeds, by his public words, and knew only the bare facts. There were no counter-arguments. The case was as it appeared: an ordinary scandal, the exposure of a romance with his wife’s ward or protégée—a tasteless affair he was unable to deal with decently or reasonably, like a man. It was said of this girl, a certain Justyna Bogutówna, now awaiting trial in prison, that during her last visit to Ziembiewicz’s office she behaved hysterically and that her shriek was heard throughout the building. Following her arrest, she immediately calmed down and admitted her guilt, though she was unwilling to divulge her motivation. Still apparently in shock, she stated only that she had been “sent from the dead” and let herself be driven away to prison with no sign of protest. Not much could be gleaned from the local newspapers, influenced most likely by powerful lobbies. According to Niwa, Bogutówna’s deed was insane. At the same time reports appeared elsewhere suggesting she was merely simulating madness and would be taken to the hospital for observation. Attempts were even made to exploit the tragedy for party political ends. One popular rag, for reasons unknown, dubbed her “Charlotte Corday d’Armont.”3 Bogutówna was the natural child of a widow who had been in service as a cook in local manors and had no one of her own family, so it seems, in these parts. Following this woman’s death, the girl found herself in town working as a maid in the home of a gravely sick woman. At about this time Pani Ziembiewicz took an interest in her. Thanks to her protection, Bogutówna was taken on first as a sales assistant and then cashier in Toruciński’s drapery store on Świętojańska Street, where apparently they were entirely satisfied with her. A few months later, of her own volition, she took up a different post in Chązowicz’s cake shop on the corner of National Square and Emerytalna Street. But there she disliked it from the start and soon gave it up too. Pani Tawnicka, the silver-haired cashier of long standing in this institution, remembered Bogutówna. According to Tawnicka, she was an intelligent young woman, polite to customers, not at all flirtatious but rather lazy. At Toruciński’s, by contrast, she had the reputation of being hard-working. Returning to Ziembiewicz, he was not at all the overseer’s son from the Boleborza estate, despite Bogutówna’s tendentious assertions during her

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memorable interview with the then Panna Biecka, still less of simple peasant origin. One could say precisely the opposite. For his father, Walerian Ziembiewicz, boasted to the end of his days of his family’s noble crest, whose painted image, along with the coat-of-arms of his wife Joanna, née Niemierówna, stood in odd-looking frames on top of a glass cabinet in a corner of the Boleborza parlor. Walerian was able to explain in precise detail both heraldic proclamations as well as the meanings of all the stars, crosses, severed hands, visors, and crescents of which the devices were composed. The mystical aura surrounding his ancestral origins contained in these symbols was one of little Zenon’s first metaphysical experiences. Boleborza belonged to the complex of properties owned by the local landed family, the Tczewskis. It was a small, neglected manor farm lying on the periphery of these estates, with sandy soil alternating with marshland. After losing two properties in a row, his own and his wife’s, Walerian Ziembiewicz obtained the position of steward at Boleborza several years before the war.4 He managed the farm honestly, but every bit as incompetently and badly as he had his own. He did not like farming. Shut away for hours on end in his study, known as the office, he made his own cartridges for his double-barreled gun or repaired various household objects: glued, tightened, screwed together, and even planed on a small workbench. He was proud there was nothing he could not repair, from the yellowing long grand piano in the parlor, where time after time a key fell silent, to his wife’s wristwatch. He also had a very sensitive conscience and would confess his frequent sins of lechery not only to his acquaintance, the parish priest from Chązebna, but also to his tall lean wife, whom he would implore on bended knee with tears in his eyes to pardon his guilt. As proof of her forgiveness, he would receive the jammed lock of a sideboard drawer to repair, or the broken chain of a lorgnette. Fortified in this way, he would immediately send for a bottle of rye vodka from the cellar. Alas, even a small drop of alcohol put him in a state of heightened eroticism, and then everything depended on what direction a given moment and particular circumstances appointed to this elemental, life-giving force. Adultery would again lead him astray, its consequences giving rise to fresh short-lived tensions and lyrical scenes, which did much to enliven the musty, monotonous atmosphere of Boleborza, as stagnant as its carp pond. Things only looked so bad from the outside, of course. From the inside, subjectively, they were evaluated entirely differently. In his own estimation, Walerian Ziembiewicz was a man attached to the land, and on this land, be it his own or someone else’s, he intended to work to his last breath. He

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genuinely loved and deeply respected his companion in life, while he would not have begrudged his own blood for the sake of his only child. While they had means, everything was fine. Now, when they had nothing, it was fine too. They knew how to be content with little and quietly get on with their own lives. Ziembiewicz was hopeless at making money. Too bad. Unlike other men, he had no idea how to work in his own interests. He would still allude now, in Boleborza, to the “nobleman’s court,” which he had no intention of sponging off, or to “thresholds” he had no intention of crossing. Pani Żańcia had a high estimation of her husband’s independent character and no doubt found support in it to counteract her life’s disappointments. The emptiness of those noble symbols did not offend her in the least. Although no such courts or thresholds existed within the orbit of Boleborza, they would have been inaccessible anyway. The only person they had to reckon with was plenipotentiary Czechliński, a man indifferent to anything local, since he had cultivated his own affairs in the war and in politics, far removed not only from the fortunes of Boleborza but of the whole demesne. On the other hand, a glimpse of one of the Tczewski family at church in Chązebna or his own rare participation in one of the Count’s hunting expeditions, when it chanced to take place on the Boleborza marshes, was for Ziembiewicz the topic of tales and reflections for weeks to come. The cogs of war had revolved slowly around the Boleborza manor in almost decorative fashion, more like in a film than reality, as illusory as the gruesome panorama of Racławice.5 The requisitioning of horses and cows had been no problem for Ziembiewicz. Farmhands conscripted into the army were even easier to replace. Peasants in the village suffering from dysentery had died out without causing serious harm, since the infection never reached the manor. The occasional march past of small army units down the track beyond the garden, or the reverberation of guns from over the horizon, or a few graves in the field he drove to inspect at Gwarecki Grange, that was all. First Russian, then German, and eventually Polish officers sat around the white tablecloth beneath the hanging lamp, into the reservoir of which Ziembiewicz fixed a carbide burner that emitted a delicate garlic aroma and spluttered with small explosions. But the scenery of such banquets changed very little, even the uniforms were similar. The main thing was always to embrace your guests with open arms and unforced simplicity. So a turkey would be slaughtered and fine liquors “rolled out” from the cellar. On heartier occasions, when tongues were loosened, Ziembiewicz would speak in elated yet modest tones:

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“And so I, as a growing lad, dear God, would carve all manner of objects out of wood with a penknife. Like for instance those photograph frames over there, picture frames. Or I’d make a heart, and then carve an eagle in the heart. Or produce tiny models of Kościuszko on horseback. Hardly any of it now survives: one thing was given away as a keepsake, something else to someone else; objects vanished when we moved from estate to estate. And yet, one way or another, we always thought of Poland, dreamed of something, thirsted for something, on the quiet, secretly . . .” Yet the realization of those secret dreams had failed to bring Walerian Ziembiewicz the anticipated satisfaction. On the contrary. Certain things aroused in him a distinct feeling of despondency. “When I look at everything nowadays, see this and that, it pains me. Since boyhood you’ve been imagining what it’ll be like, and now it’s only the Jews who’ve got something out of it. You feel like arresting those people, feel like screaming: For God’s sake, pull yourselves together, stop doing what you’re doing! But what of it? Those who could do something don’t want to, or don’t know how. And the one who would have known . . .6 But what’s the point in talking . . . ?” It was possible, however, to observe the entire Boleborza phenomenon from a different perspective, namely through the eyes of Zenon, as the object of his first serious childhood tragedy. Zenon, an exemplary and conscientious pupil, would come home from the town for holidays or school vacations bearing excellent marks and reports. Each time he returned, he was different, increasingly alien, cut off from life at home, full of the importance of the knowledge he had acquired and the things he had already experienced, shaken to the quick by his youthful insights into the world. To be young: Oh, this was no laughing matter. Zenon’s youth was burdensome and bitter, at loggerheads with the world and with itself, grappling from the start with tenderness and suffering. Zenon would come back and watch his parents with ever more adult eyes. His heart grew cold, while bitter shame triggered a lump in his throat, like tears, in response to what he saw. Every schoolmaster, spoken of at home with such contempt as if he were a pedant (“The things they teach them nowadays!”) was a fount of wisdom compared to his next of kin—people who had once impressed him and whom, after all, he still somehow loved. His mother’s French phrases, repeated to the servants ever since he could remember, would have gained a below-average grade in the third year of gymnasium. Or her music! Her waltzes in the unlit parlor, which he had listened to long ago with such emotion, the faltering strains of the long yellow never-tuned

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“Zakrzewski” piano—the Dolores Waltz, Beautiful Venice—and her singing: “Lorsque tout est fini, quand se meurt vo-o-o-tre beau rêve . . .”7 Or what his father remembered of history, and the things he claimed about his own coat-of-arms from the eleventh century! His sole Latin quotation, which he had no idea was taken from Terence: “Homo sum . . . ,” always ended in a mistake.8 Or his attitude to the peasants! All he knew about them was that they stole. This was the only thing he could say about them. He understood nothing of the historical and social reasons for peasant illiteracy. But now he laughed at them for being given free schooling, because “when they start studying, it will be interesting to see who’ll do any work.” It was only during his final school holidays that Zenon made the incredible discovery that his father did nothing! Walerian would rise at first light and wander from early morning across the meadows and fields, keeping an eye on the work, always carrying his double-barreled shotgun and firing irrespective of the time of year at whatever crossed his path, even if it were only crows, or other people’s cats and dogs. If he was angry he would kick his pointer dog and shout at people in a wild hysterical voice. He would complain about modern times and stand more and more on ceremony, yet he beat young girls and little boys. When it came to doing the accounts, he would summon Zenon’s mother into the office. He would clean his gun in the candlelight observing how the radiance flowed into the barrels and whirled about, while she entered the figures in the logs and did the calculations. His only function was to keep an eye on people and make sure they did not pilfer from the masters, keep an eye on the property of those unknown, mysterious, distant Tczewskis. By then Zenon was already familiar with the town house owned by Pani Kolichowska on Staszic Street (formerly Zielona Street), a massive, ugly, three-story mansion with iron balconies, as well as with its garden located at the back, the site of springtime anguish.9 There fruit trees mingled with beds of iris, lilac, and jasmine, unlike at Boleborza, where the orchard was separate. The blossoming apple trees spread their boughs so low over the bright green, blunt-toothed leaves of the gooseberry bushes that he had to take care as he walked down the muddy alleyway toward the white-painted bench at the end, ducking his head again and again. Even so the white, faintly pinkish petals would spill from the jostled branches and settle on his hair and clothes. Beside him would walk the small, hostile, bad-tempered occupier of that house and garden, Elżbieta Biecka, nicknamed by the pupils at her school: Panna Elżbiebiecka.10 Incapable herself of performing the stupidest of tasks, she behaved as if she were cleverer than he. She was spiteful and

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rude. But whenever he felt like leaving, she told him to stay. And when he really did leave, she told him to come again tomorrow. Elżbieta, Elżunia, Ela. Zenon became acquainted with the bad seductive happiness that resides in suffering.

2 Pani Cecylia Kolichowska, Biecka by birth, widow of public notary Aleksander Kolichowski, was fifty years old, and everything in her life had already come to an end. She had been married twice. Her first husband, Konstanty Wąbrowski, with whom she had spent ten tough years in her youth, had been a socialist who committed suicide shortly before the war for reasons that remained obscure. She remembered a number of things from that period of her life but had little to say about them. On the other hand, her second marriage, to the notary fifteen years her senior, a rich man head over heels in love with her, provided ample material for fruitless reminiscences and acrimonious tales. He had left her nothing except the aforementioned mansion and garden on Zielona Street, as it was then still called, which generated almost no income and devoured a great deal of cash in taxes. Meanwhile, after his death, she discovered, in the fireproof safe that had adorned his desk throughout his working life, instead of money and shares, something of quite a different nature. She had married Konstanty out of true love, so perhaps she had only herself to blame. Shortly after their wedding he had grown a black beard and begun to disappear and reappear at inappropriate moments, assuring her there was nothing to worry about, while he regarded the house searches and arrests as unquestionable proof that everything was coming to a head. For years he tormented her by forcing her to read at least Menger, which she eventually did, but only out of loyalty to him. He also insisted for a time that she remember the differences between Godwin and Owen.11 He had messed up her life. Despite this she had respected his ideas, trembled for his fate, and loved him to the bitter end. From this period of her life Pani Cecylia retained a sentimental affection for a melody to which they had sung at the time: “Our standard streams o’er thro-o-nes,”12 as well as for the foolish operetta song: “The glow-worms are flying, ah, flying, flying,”13 which she recalled from rare happy evenings when they had had a little money and could afford to eat supper in a restaurant with music. This life ended abruptly when Konstanty Wąbrowski was forced to emigrate, leaving his wife and eight-year-old son

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without means of support, and later without even any news. She had learned of his suicide from the newspapers. Well yes, but it was all her own fault, she had wanted it, driven by emotion against her better judgment. Whereas the second time, when she had acted with deliberation, she had made an even worse mistake. The elegant older man, so lyrically in love, proved to be a morose, obsessive womanizer who imprisoned her in their own house, never allowing her to see other people, forbidding her to dress up, dance, or travel. He would make hysterical scenes like a jealous woman, threatening suicide, pretending to swallow glass or feigning convulsive sobs. Often he went out of an evening to play cards, but only to bars or houses where there was a telephone, so that he could call home and make sure his wife had not gone out. Pani Cecylia endured this nightmare for years relying on the two things she regarded as axiomatic: the knowledge that she was exclusively and “fatally” loved, and, whatever else might happen, that her old age was secure. In this respect the mysterious safe had prepared a double disillusionment. Both husbands in turn, Konstanty and Aleksander, had shaped her moral being. Every phenomenon in life was now double-edged, simultaneously good and bad, since she would grasp it from two different angles at one and the same time. The two opposing views would persist side by side, mutually reinforcing and complementing one another, and thereby creating an image of a world that was eminently relativistic. Pani Cecylia Kolichowska had aged badly. The wrinkles on her thin face were the direct result of her irritated demeanor. Even the creases at the sides of her mouth, usually caused by laughter, were so firmly dragged downward they looked like the personification of bitterness itself. Pani Cecylia truly believed that she had been abused by life, and was only now retaliating. Since the death of the wicked unfaithful notary, she had taken over the day-to-day running of the house. She continued to lead a solitary life, spread-eagled as it were on her cross between collecting the rent and paying the taxes. The enormous mansion, a menacing symbol of duty and defeat, depended on the services not only of herself but also of the caretaker, the caretaker’s wife, their children, the cook, the maid, and eventually little Elżbieta Biecka. Her world was divided into floors, into rooms at the front and rooms at the back, into the attic and the basements. Certain names were repeated every day: Chąśba, Wylam, Gołąbski, Posztraski, Goroński—mysterious sounds charged with the dynamics of anger and worry. Driven by necessity, Pani Kolichowska had won a triumphant battle against the local health authority and converted half the cellars into flats, laying floors, installing

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iron stoves, and whitewashing the walls directly onto the brick. The anarchic elements of urban destitution that had taken up residence there were a source of constant anguish. Two small studios, comprised of one room and a dark kitchen built into the attic and adjacent to the gable walls, were likewise a great disappointment. A couple named Gołąbski, professing to be civil servants, had moved into one of them. The wife had no situation at all, earning her keep by doing piece work for dress shops, and, even though she seemed no more than a little girl, had given birth to her first child soon after moving in. He, however, was a clerk in a small private haulage company, but began from the very start to fall behind with the rent and pay it only in fits and starts, citing his “complicated and impossible” personal situation. The impossibility of Gołąbski’s situation consisted in the fact he had no money. What he called his complication was his right lung, shot through at Radzymin,14 since it rendered him incapable of holding down any decent government position. The second gable flat had been occupied for a long time by the Posztraskis, and they too paid nothing, since here the situation really was impossible and in certain respects even exceptional. Pani Łucja Posztraska was a longstanding friend of Pani Kolichowska from former days, once a rich and good-looking woman, now completely ruined and saddled with an alcoholic husband. For Pani Kolichowska this friendship was both a financial and a social burden, but there was nothing she could do about it and so she bore her obligation as best she could, which only deepened her resentment. Pani Kolichowska’s own spacious private apartment, reduced however to half its size since her husband’s death (the other half, with built-on kitchen, was occupied by the Gierackis), was located on the low-level ground floor to the right of the gate, set back slightly from the street and shaded by two acacia trees. The whole interior was dark as a result of this abundant greenery, and cluttered with heavy oak and walnut furniture, full of plush upholstery, carpets, door curtains, settees, ottomans, and tablecloths. Especially cramped was the sitting room, into which the notary’s leather-bound former study had been incorporated in its entirety, along with its huge desk and bearskin lying on the carpet. Lamps converted from oil to electricity with stands and silk shades the size of umbrellas, black rounded pillars, embroidered and painted screens, jardinières holding gigantic philodendrons and rubber plants, pictures in heavy gilt frames acquired from the old Zachęta raffles: it all proliferated and grew dense, and was reflected in two huge mirrors stretching from floor to ceiling. On the grand piano covered by an embroidered silk cloth with tassels, on the desk, tables, side tables,

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and étagères, on the two small walnut consoles propping up the bases of both enormous mirrors, between elephants of varying dimensions (from an average-sized cat to a medium-sized beetle), among the vases, porcelain figures, candelabra, epergnes, and sweet bowls, beside a whole orchestra of fiddling terracotta cats (“caterwauling”)—everywhere there stood framed photographs of members of the three families, Bieckis, Wąbrowskis, and Kolichowskis, and people bound to them by marriage or friendship.15 Still more photographs lay in fat plush-covered albums beside albums of places visited on family travels, albums of postcards, and luxury editions of reproductions of Andriolli and Siemiradzki.16 Dusting the surfaces, beating the carpets, keeping in exemplary order this lumber room, this wonderfully preserved museum piece from the dying years of the nineteenth century, required considerable effort capable in itself of filling an entire existence. To Zenon Ziembiewicz, a pupil in the eighth year of gymnasium, lodging in the house of his gymnastics master, Pani Kolichowska’s sitting room was the most beautiful of its kind he had ever seen. Compared to the penury and shabby desolation of the parlor at Boleborza, this cramped, upholstered, wall-papered, draped interior was the ultimate in splendor, taste, and culture. Here, for the first time in his life, he saw silk cushions covered in gold or colored embroidery lying directly on the floor next to sofas, cushions on which you could sit and nestle your head against the knees of the woman you loved. For the first time he saw a porcelain owl with electric lights for eyes, and also a large, real pink shell with a light bulb fixed inside, which Elżbieta would switch on in the early twilight before it grew properly dark. The sitting-room air, choked by the plush of door curtains and tablecloths, damask of upholstery, silky wool of carpets, felt thick and heavy like Tokay wine, warm and softly undulating. Everything induced a dream-like state, making him feel strangely moved and certain that a different, hostile, yet unbearably longed-for world really did exist and that his youth was the pathway leading to it, full of hatred and anguish. In the presence of Elżbieta, Zenon was in no fit state to gaze at Żmurko’s two women slumbering in their golden frames with nostrils flaring, halfclosed eyelids, and naked breasts. Nearby on the same wall hung a portrait of the notary by Lentz, painted in yellow and black, made blacker still by the passage of not quite thirty years, and looking like a precious artifact of the Dutch school.17 Aleksander Kolichowski, depicted in gown and mortarboard, his face closely shaven, seemingly so noble that nothing could possibly lie in his fireproof safe except money and government bonds, likewise

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represented that hated, higher-order world destined for destruction and ruin, hostile yet at the same time seductive. But it was the portrait of the notary’s first wife, hanging beside him and greatly respected by Pani Cecylia, that most attracted Zenon’s attention. She was a blond lady in a very low-cut ball dress and large black hat with black feather. How odd she was, so slender in the waist. And did one really attend balls in those days in a hat? Elżbieta supposed it must have been in a box at some theatrical performance. She said the first Pani Kolichowska died young because she could not have children. First she went crazy, and then she died. “Can you really go crazy from that?” Zenon was horrified. “Evidently you can,” replied Elżbieta, offended that he could doubt it. Zenon did not dare to sit on any of the embroidered silk cushions lying on the carpet, still less nestle his head against Elżbieta’s knees. Despite this, Elżbieta deduced from his various gloomy and tragic looks that he was in love with her. He kept coming to see her even though he should have been sitting at home preparing for his written examinations. He came almost every day, and not always to help her with her algebra. It was hard to respect a man whose trousers were too tight and too short, even if he was top of the class. Elżbieta had to tease him. She liked him only when he was offended and fell silent, when he wanted to leave yet did not leave, as if he had no pride. Instead, his good moods, moments of idiotic self-satisfaction, aroused in her the worst kind of feelings. Likewise when he appeared on Sundays dressed differently, scrubbed clean, reinvigorated, his long bony face freshly shaved and his hair plastered down better than on other days, she felt nothing but disgust. Because then she had to admit that some things about him were actually attractive. That plastered down hair, very thick and straight, had a strange, unusual color—darkish, but with golden streaks—and when it was combed back so smoothly from forehead to the nape of the neck, it looked like a little cap. But Elżbieta was incapable of thinking well of him without feeling physical abhorrence. Sensual reactions, no doubt: that was how she explained it to herself. Elżbieta at that time was in love with someone else—with a genuine, serious, unrequited, and tragic love. The man, a cavalry captain, was called Awaczewicz. He had such an odd, un-Polish sounding name, and was himself odd, different from everyone else.18 Elżbieta saw him rarely and then only at the home of Panna Julia Wagner, her French tutor. It would happen that Panna Julia, instead of coming for their lesson, would send a confidential little note on squared paper saying she felt unwell and could Elżbieta please come to her. Elżbieta was sure she would find him there. He would be

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in town only when back from the front.19 If he was not there, then it meant he could perish at any moment; hence the tragic nature of her love. Captain Awaczewicz had graying hair, although he was not an old man, and such unusual eyes that this in itself sufficed for women to fall in love, eyes that were totally ash-gray, cold, squinting intently and supercilious. Panna Julia addressed him as cousin, and there was nothing strange in this since she herself, a Pole by birth, had been raised in France. Besides, she admitted the family connection was rather distant. The captain would smile, screw up his eyes, and remark that, in his opinion, it was very close. He was not only an officer but an artist. The only two pictures hanging in Panna Julia’s flat were painted by him. He showed them pencil sketches of the war: horses, corpses, Bolshevik prisoners of war or soldiers. Among them were drawings of hanged people, which made a terrible impression on Elżbieta. The captain explained that one could not pity them, because they were traitors. Elżbieta was entranced by him, while her admiration was mingled with a sadness that seemed to have no cause. Because she did not dream of her love being reciprocated; this was not what she desired at all. Her sole salvation lay precisely in the fact that he did not love her. She would sometimes imagine nevertheless how happy his wife must be. She never saw the woman but knew she existed and had two little daughters. But at this point dimensions impossible to imagine opened up. Her love, the love of a fifteen-year-old girl, assumed gigantic proportions. It was the only real thing in her life. Everything outside of it: school, her contemporaries, the house, her aunt, Zenon, the wars that had been raging unceasingly since her childhood,20 her parents living somewhere abroad, a long way away and separately: all this was but a flat, hazy, distant backdrop to her solitary drama. Alas, this gigantic and only real affair was to end swiftly and in great disillusionment.

3 The house was old and everything in it was old, facing back to a time that had vanished forever for everyone, when things “worked better.” It might have been fifty years ago or fifteen, simply before the war or merely previously: whenever, so long as it was not today, not today. As if the only proper time to be alive were the past.

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The house was old and almost always empty. Pani Cecylia led a solitary life and never invited guests. The various elderly ladies who showed up uninvited, infrequently, timidly, were greeted with little enthusiasm. The most regular guest, her friend Pani Posztraska, would steal into the house by way of the kitchen, like a thief almost, driven always by some urgent need. Over-solicitous, gay and talkative, endeavoring not to notice the mistress’s hostile demeanor and distracted eyes, she would attempt to redeem herself with some piece of information prepared especially for the purpose—news about one of the tenants, a precious denunciation or warning. Pani Cecylia was not easily impressed. She already knew these tactics. Few things genuinely interested her. Yet she would rise to the bait and ask without first sitting down: “Well, what is it, Łucja? Tell me.” And Pani Posztraska would cling to this tiny scrap of ground in order to expand upon it and make herself at home, take a seat, enjoy a friendly chat, and eventually settle her problem. She would start by relating how her neighbor in the attic, Gołąbski, had lost his position at the haulage company following an illness and was now applying for something at the bank, but all to no avail, so he would not be paying the rent, because how could he? Later on, by means of some natural, logical, roundabout way, the stove-pipe would emerge, totally scorched and burnt through and now collapsed for the second time. Their whole room was blackened by soot, while she and her husband looked like golliwogs. Pani Posztraska did everything she could to humor her friend with this tale so as to eventually secure the purchase of a new pipe. Pani Tawnicka, a woman who had known better days before becoming a cashier in Chązowicz’s cake shop and for whom talking about such life vicissitudes was a moral necessity, would likewise enter on the sly. And then there was the elder Pani Gieracka, Pani Cecylia’s closest neighbor, sickly and pathetic, wronged by her son, her daughter-in-law, her grandchildren and the whole of creation, but kept on a long leash by Pani Cecylia and received with cold formality. And yet occasions would arise several times a year when these busybodies plucked up courage and appeared in greater numbers. It might be a relapse in Pani Cecylia’s health, of which they immediately learned by some inexplicable means, or a public affair which suddenly reunited them, or a celebration or feast-day that reanimated the frail worn fibers of friendship and trust. Such an opportunity was presented particularly by the date, known and universally remembered, of Pani Cecylia’s name day, which fell on the twenty-second of November.21 Then it was incumbent upon her household to bake the always identical walnut gateau, prepare the white coffee to be served with different kinds of pastry, and fetch two bottles of currant wine from the larder.

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The watchword for this flocking of phantoms would be given by Pani Łucja Posztraska, always the first to come running into the kitchen in order, she said, to offer a little assistance. Soon afterward Pani Cecylia’s old friends, forgotten relatives, or mere contemporaries would descend en masse. They filled the sofas and armchairs in the cavernous, otherwise unoccupied sitting room with their bodies. Removing their black crocheted gloves, they would stir their coffee, leaving the silver teaspoons in the cups. Elżbieta would hand around the walnut gateau on dessert plates as each lady exclaimed in horror: “Oh, what a big slice!” Outside, the November rain drummed relentlessly on the windowpanes, but there in the sitting room it was warm and bright. The heavy red plush curtains were drawn over the windows. All the lamps glowed beneath their silk shades. The flimsy, feathery heads of brought flowers—small white chrysanthemums looking more like asters, or purple cyclamen—stood in vases. Pani Cecylia kept a strict eye that everything was in order, gloomily watching the assembled ladies. They were excessively fat or exaggeratedly thin, shriveled and swollen, silver-haired or balding, attired in dignified black dresses from various epochs trimmed with lace or jet beads, wan and strangely fragrant. Most were poor, but not all. Some wore molting skunk over their shoulders, or yellowing ermine, and in their stretched white earlobes they had old-fashioned diamond studs. But all of them were old. Large bellies rested on spindly legs like barrels poised on matchsticks, while other legs were thick and straight and spilled beneath rolls of black stocking into tightly-laced brogues. Faces sat heavily on plump double chins, fastened at the throat by garnet brooches, or swayed on elongated necks encircled by velvet chokers, while the play of muscles, veins, and sinews, “running up and down” visibly beneath the fine yellowish skin, lent to their misshapen faces and spoken words an air of affected grandiloquence, befitting their Sabbath. Pani Cecylia likewise wore a velvet choker, over which two bags of excess skin hung down at the front, and had no illusions as to her own appearance. But the thought that she too belonged to this “witches’ coven,” this “pageant of old harridans,” that she too was one of them, was unpleasant indeed. The bitter truth mushroomed into a restless fear, a state of frightened panic. To perfectly remember how they had once been and see them now so altered, to watch them grow older and older, some faster than others, and to be harnessed to the very same fate—what a mockery! For it transpired that between one visit and the next, some of them passed into another

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generation. More than one would depart at a dangerous age and return a year later as an old woman. They were dreadful, yet entirely innocent of how they were. Because those faces, distorted by wrinkles, embittered, falsely smiling, ironic or tragic, expressed no truth about their inner selves. Pani Gieracka, for instance, always hard done by as everyone knew, would smile impertinently, yet in reality she was shy and sad, and that smile served only to uplift her sagging cheeks, to rescue what little remained of her youth. Pani Tawnicka’s rigid deportment, meanwhile, the aristocratic pose in which she held her head, was intended to smooth out the creases in her neck, yet this too was reason enough for her to be unjustly accused of superiority incommensurate with her modest present-day situation. It was sufficient for Pani Warkoniowa, the lawyer’s wife, to “let her face go” a little, to simply stop talking for a moment, for deep lines of brooding and heartbreak to spread across its mask, although she naturally possessed a very cheerful disposition. Each one of them had once been young. Behind each one trailed her former youth, like a flowering branch pinned to the hem of her outmoded dress. They had been wiped from the surface of life, cast aside by the drift of its deeper currents—majestic, fast-flowing, and bad. Breathless and exhausted, they lay washed up on the bank, remembering dead husbands, slaughtered sons, and distant, indifferent families. War, revolution, the changed world, had abandoned them to their stupefaction. With their gaze fixed on the lonely drama of arthritis and menopause, they confronted the anarchy of present times with the relics of former anarchies, the shipwrecked flotsam of trusted beliefs and bankrupt convictions. They still had to live a little bit longer in order to die. Elżbieta put a final bunch of dark gold chrysanthemums into a vase and handed a plate with its too-large slice of walnut gateau to the last arrival. She participated in these ceremonies filled with a strange anxiety. She would imagine that she herself could be any one of these old women. But no: she was only herself. She was called Elżbieta Biecka and spoke of herself in the first person. There they all were, along with Aunt Cecylia, yet here she was alone, detached, condemned to herself until the bitter end. It was all just an accident, a terrifying mere coincidence. And the whole world was full of such terrors. You might have imagined they belonged to a separate, distinct human species that depended on old age as its only attribute. And yet it was enough to wait, and it would come. It was enough to live normally. They gathered there as if for a second All Souls, for their deathbed ceremony. Each could have recited to Elżbieta the dead woman’s ancient

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words: “What you are, I once was, what I am, you will be. Sigh to God and be mindful!”22 And Elżbieta realized that old age was only the continuation of youth. The busybodies drank their currant wine, though it did none of them any good. Well, so what? They could afford to let their hair down once a year, on such an occasion! Tiny red flushes would appear on their shriveled cheeks. Something was still going on inside those organisms, under that skin, in those bodies. Blood of some sort was still circulating, but the thought of it was a bit too revolting and indecent. Their conversation would grow animated, filling the warm bright air of the sitting room with the hum of voices. They spoke of recent funerals and how they had been “conducted” by the priest at the parish church or Our Lady’s. But they knew Pani Cecylia did not like it. They mentioned notary Kolichowski, “a man the like of whom it’s hard to find nowadays,” and observed how his portrait was a living likeness. And they would all turn in their chairs toward the darkened portrait hanging on the wall above the grand piano. Yet that too displeased the woman whose name day it was and who responded with silence. But they could still discuss the present times, the war, the Bolsheviks, the Jews. And their servants. Elżbieta walked among them, the only young one and the only one in love with Captain Awaczewicz. She did not deign to participate in their conversation. In the serious tone of someone who had quit the “nursery,” she replied politely to their questions, nothing more. She had to listen, however, to what they said. Pani Cecylia stated in no uncertain terms that in her opinion a servant was a human being like any other. She remembered this truth from the time of her first marriage. On this point all the ladies fundamentally agreed. “A human being like any other, naturally,” they repeated one after the other, but progressively more softly as if having second thoughts. Elżbieta knew they were lying. A servant was an entirely different creature, not at all the same as any other human being. It was enough to say: “Panna Marianna,” and you at once felt free to laugh at her expense. For Marianna, there was a separate staircase—narrow, dark, and steep—which came as no surprise to anyone, even though this was where baskets of meat and vegetables and buckets of coal from the cellar were hauled upstairs. It was likewise no surprise to anyone sitting at the laid dinner table that the servant-girl ate separately in the kitchen. It was quite natural that everything she ate should be stone cold after it had been left to cool in the dining room, and that she should receive whatever quantity and whatever particular bits were

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allotted by the big room. For instance, it was possible she had never tasted chicken breast in her entire life, but always got the hare’s front paw. However, Pani Gorońska, who occupied half the second floor of Pani Cecylia’s house and paid her rent, volunteered the following correction: “For sure, it’s true. But when the maid of today dresses up on Sundays in a silk frock, puts on patent-leather shoes and even a hat, it makes no sense at all.” A thin woman in molting skunk took up the point to express her irritation: “I’d straightaway tell a maid like that to look for another position, because I need a servant who gets on with things, not one that dresses better than I do and goes out walking with soldiers.” Every one of the ladies had to admit that she was right, and this time even Pani Cecylia’s silence implied agreement. Pani Warkoniowa recalled another occasion: “That’s all very well, but the stupidity of these servants beggars belief! When my husband died and no one yet knew, we heard the front doorbell go at five o’clock. The tearful servant, a kind-hearted soul, goes out into the hall and starts arguing with someone there, a woman client, and doesn’t want to admit her. ‘His worship can’t receive you,’ she says. ‘What do you mean, can’t receive me?’ says the other. ‘Be so kind as take him my card, and he will receive me.’ ‘No, he can’t receive you,’ the servant repeats. ‘But,’ the client insists, ‘he will definitely receive me when he finds out who it is.’ But the servant stated yet again, ‘No, his worship will not receive you.’ In the end I was so furious I went out to the hall myself in my mourning clothes: ‘My dear lady, the lawyer won’t receive you because he’s dead and lying on a catafalque in the parlor.’” The assembled ladies received this anecdote with a suppressed murmur. None was sure if she could really laugh. On the one hand, the servant’s stupidity was not in question but, on the other, a genuinely deceased person had come into play—Pan Warkoń the lawyer no less, a respected man whom they all remembered. But Pani Warkoniowa laughed herself and went on: “That servant of mine was a widow, over forty years old, a decent woman and religious. No one would have suspected her. But something began to displease me and so I said to her one day, ‘My Bogutowa, it seems to me you’re expecting.’ She thought for a moment and then replied, ‘So it seems to me too.’ I smiled and said: ‘Well, if it seems so to you too, then too bad, we shall have to part company.’ She wouldn’t confess for love nor money who the man was or anything else, but after I’d dismissed her, she really did have a baby. It’s horrifying to think a woman could be so stupid, though she was a hardworking servant and very devoted. But how she fell on her feet! While she was with me she learned to be a first-rate cook, so first-rate she was later taken into service along with the child by the young Countess Tczewska. And apparently

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she’s still the cook there at the palace in Chązebna. And her little Justyna, so I’m told, plays in the garden with the little countesses, as their equal.” All the ladies came to life. Precisely! Women23 like that always fell on their feet! Even Pani Cecylia descended to these speculations—she who had retained in her memory, like an open sore, the filthy secret of the notary’s fireproof safe. The entire gathering of unfinished, twisted and hungry lives rallied as a united front, suddenly defending itself with redoubled vigilance against the immense domain of disordered eroticism.24 Against the invincible and eternal enemy: “Women like that!” Not the next woman, a woman like each of them, their equal whom they could understand and with whom they could compete, but a collective notion, an inscrutable, unpredictable element lurking everywhere and undermining the apparent order of the world, shattering its very sense, a sense absolutely necessary in order to justify their own “wasted lives” and the vanished fiction of their youth. From their eager conversation it clearly emerged that money, motorcars, and foreign travel were the privileges of “women like that,” that they married counts, ministers, or generals and still managed to be beautiful at fifty. The women gathered at Pani Cecylia’s party, meanwhile, possessed only meager pensions, insecure concessions allowing them to run small shops or businesses, or nothing at all, except their yearnings for children who had gone their own way and memories of husbands who became strangers long before they died. Elżbieta often listened to such conversations. No one took any real notice of her presence. Confronted by the poison that oozed from such knowledge, she had her own store of scorn and contempt. She was protective of her love and entirely safe. She would never get married, never succumb to her “senses.” She would be cruel to men, assuming any should dare to fall in love with her. Had it not been for Captain Awaczewicz, what would have become of her? How could she have even borne her life: the hideous view from her window onto the backyard, the people there, the fate of the dog Fitek, her aunt, whom she could not accuse of being unkind or of not loving her? And the fact it was now the third month without a letter from her mother? All the torments of frustrated longing and pride found their outlet in that most sweet anguish, and nourished it with their own lifeblood.

4 Whenever springtime came around, the caretaker Ignacy would pry open the dining-room doors, which were sealed for the winter, and then it was

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possible to step down directly from the small terrace, laid out with its boxes of nasturtiums, into the blossoming garden. A high fence topped by three rows of barbed wire separated the garden from a narrow flagged courtyard where the neighbors’ children charged about noisily. The courtyard lay in eternal shadow cast by the three-story walls of the house, while the garden was drenched in sunlight. Only Pani Cecylia’s apartment opened onto the garden. None of the tenants had access. Pani Cecylia believed she “had a right to her own privacy.” A gate in the fence connected the garden to the yard and was kept permanently shut by means of a large rusty padlock whose key resided in the trusted hands of caretaker Ignacy. Despite these rigorous measures, it was impossible to safeguard the garden from frequent damage and theft. Flowers suitable for sale in the marketplace, or ripe fruit, were a temptation for the house’s own backyard urchins as well as those from neighboring streets. Mornings following such incidents were stormy and fraught. Pani Cecylia would shout at Ignacy, accusing him of sleeping all night instead of minding the garden for at least some of the time. Ignacy insisted gloomily that when he opened the gate to Pan Posztraski that very night at half past two, he had inspected the whole garden and found everything just as it should be. Ignacowa, his fretting wife, would be standing outside the kitchen saying Fitek had not barked all night, so it could only have been the Chąśba boys for whom there was no fence or wire. Chąśbina, the mother, would beat all three sons, yet swear they had slept peacefully the whole night through, and invite a thorough search of their flat because it was easy to accuse a poor boy, but if anything was found then she’d be the first, even if she was their mother, to summon the police. Pani Cecylia would examine the footprints in the garden and declare that if the dog were fed once more in the evening, then the cook could look for another job. Nothing, as usual, could be proved, and the matter would pass into oblivion. Except that for a whole week afterward, Pani Cecylia would clutch a hot water bottle to her liver and utter negative thoughts about life. The only windows in Pani Kolichowska’s apartment to open onto the garden were those of the sitting and dining rooms. The next window, belonging to Elżbieta’s room, lay beyond the line of the fence which, although high, was possible to jump over. As she sat at her desk doing her homework, Elżbieta always had the courtyard view before her, repellent yet at the same time absorbing. Above all she could watch the dog Fitek, an enormous Alsatian crossed with something else and covered in two types of coat: one consisting of long black hair, undulating and twisted into locks, and a shorter,

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cream-colored silky one that formed a soft lining, like in the type of fur coat they called “elkis.”25 Fitek was suspended, as it were, day and night on a chain attached to a long wire that stretched above the yard from the fence on the right-hand side, where the garden gate was, to a wooden building standing in the left-hand corner. Fitek lay all day either in his kennel adjacent to this shed, which was used to store firewood, tools, and miscellaneous old furniture, or at some point on the flagstones along the line of the wire, which was, in effect, his life-line. He lay curled up or outstretched on his belly, or, in hot weather, on his back. He would search for fleas in different parts of his fur, scratch himself, look around, sniff, listen intently, prick up his ears and let them droop again. Sometimes he would bark into the far distance, dully and indifferently, for reasons known only to him, or howl in a weary bass drawl. If his howling went on for too long, Pani Cecylia would yell to the servants in the kitchen: “Will one of you go outside and hit that dog till he stops, it’s simply unbearable.” Whenever he needed to relieve himself, he never lifted his rear leg with gay abandon like happy dogs, never sought carefully and swiftly the place designated for the purpose, but just crouched apathetically wherever he felt like it, like a puppy or bitch. If a stranger entered the yard, especially if it was a horse bringing in a cart and people, he would fly into a frenzy of excitement, barking frantically and trying to break free of the chain, hurling himself from one end of the wire to the other, hanging suspended, choking, wheezing, until he lost his voice in rage, hatred, and despair. Thus he would behave until the people had finished unloading their coal or firewood or potatoes, even if it went on for hours. Once the foe had disappeared, Fitek would gradually calm down, though pointless fury and snarling abuse would continue to brim over inside him for a long time after. Then again he would lie down, now here, now there, examine something between the flagstones, gnaw out the fleas from his belly or tail, shake his head with its flying ears, scratch himself first on one side, then on the other, or beneath the throat, or on his back or belly. On the face of it he had plenty to do, yet in reality the life he invariably led throughout days, weeks, months, and years was unimaginably monotonous and barren. Despite this, when Michalina the cook brought out his bowl of food once a day, he would wag his tail wholeheartedly, stand on his hind paws, leap for joy and do his utmost to lick her face, although Michalina resisted and exclaimed: “Down, you devil!” Then he would look like a happy dog that fate had treated kindly. When he had eaten his fill, he would drift into a deep sleep, and then, too, it was possible to imagine all was well. If an unfamiliar dog ventured in from the street, Fitek greeted it like an enemy. He would rush at it yelping, full of hatred, dreaming of nothing

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except tearing it to pieces on the spot. But Lulu, a household dog, a white, cheerful male Pomeranian belonging to the younger Pani Gieracka, had no fear of Fitek. Running into the yard, Lulu often approached Fitek’s kennel. Then Fitek would dissolve out of pure happiness and be the first to begin their game, drop onto his front paws, cower on the ground, wag his tail, and stick out his head for Lulu to bite. Lulu soon tired of this game and ran off a few paces, intrigued by something else. Fitek would launch himself in full pursuit, running and momentarily forgetting his fate—when suddenly, pulled up short by the chain, he found himself floundering on his two hind legs, choking and brandishing his front paws in the air. He never remembered where life’s prospects ended for him, and every time it came as a surprise. Sometimes the Pomeranian simply went his own way, ran out of the gate into the street without glancing back, or disappeared, summoned by the maid, into the shadow of the kitchen steps. On other occasions, in no particular hurry, he would remain longer within the confines of the courtyard, devoting his free time to its detailed inspection. Fitek would sit motionless and follow Lulu’s movements with watchful eyes, observing his every activity with concentration.26 Eventually, Lulu would lie down somewhere on the flagstones, but never close enough for Fitek to reach him. Apparently Lulu too failed to take in what was going on, never properly comprehended the whole system of Fitek’s enslavement. At the end of his taut chain, for hours on end, Fitek did everything in his power to draw close to the Pomeranian: crawled on his belly, stretched out or shrank, crept up on all fours, pining, despairing, sometimes barely two paces away, but always in vain. Lulu would bask peacefully, change his position, walk away or return, without understanding the meaning of those short yelping barks and imploring moans, or perhaps he simply did not want to take any notice. Fitek dwelt in the courtyard summer and winter, spring and autumn, was there at every time of day and night. The presence of people, however, depended on other things. Elżbieta knew the basement residents well, since they crossed the yard every day to the communal “teliot” (the inversion had been obligatory for years in the Biecki family even among servants)27 concealed somewhere to the left of the woodshed behind the huge black rubbish crate. It was a never-ending human tramp through rain and snow, just as it was on the sunniest of days. Furthermore, on certain afternoons, when the weather was warm and it was not raining, the underground population would emerge en masse into the courtyard. They would talk about the Bolsheviks and wonder what would happen if they arrived or “took over.” The

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women especially were dreadfully afraid of them. In most respects these underground folk were just like other people, and yet they were different in so many details that to Elżbieta they seemed to belong to an entirely separate race, like Negroes or Chinamen. Not because they were dirtier or wore clothes of indeterminate shape and color, but because they were smaller than the people living on the surface, moved and carried themselves differently, used different words, and had different voices, different-colored complexions, different feet and fingers, a different smell. Even old age looked different with them. All the old ladies, her aunt’s friends, at least had teeth. Here, anyone who was not young no longer had teeth. Besides, there were no really old people. Maybe they also died sooner. Instead there were plenty of children. Their boisterous games and quarrels caused a commotion in the yard that was indeed hard to bear. In the right-hand corner, where the chopped-down trunks of a few cherry-trees, which had frozen during the winter, lay in a pile, the small fragile Pani Gołąbska often sat with her one-year-old son, Stefanek—pale and sickly-looking like herself—because the air next to the garden, so she said, was best for the child. She might even have been pretty had she not already lost a tooth, a front one, even though she was only twenty and lived not in the basement but in one of the new flats in the attic. The eldest Chąśba boy, Marian, also sought refuge on those cherry trunks. Calm and self-assured, he would shoo away his younger brothers and sit reading some tatty, usually torn, little book. Summoned by his mother, he would put aside the book, hurriedly and untidily with the cover facing inward, and run down the cellar steps for a bucket to fetch water from the yard. He still looked like a child even though he was already sixteen. After completing some technical school he was working at the steel mill and preparing for his secondary-school certificate in the evenings. From the same tap in the yard, the caretaker Ignacy drew water to sprinkle the flowers. As he pushed ajar the garden gate with his bare foot, the two tin watering-cans splashing in his hands, a whole band of squealing children would congregate in that one place in order to catch a glimpse, if only for a split second, of the green world within. All these things seen through the window, along with the photograph standing on the desk of her mother as a young unmarried woman, seemed remote to Elżbieta and not entirely real, part of the blurred tapestry that formed the indifferent backdrop to her true existence. It was enough to cross the dining room and step out onto the terrace to find herself on the other side, to be able to think about her own concerns amid the blossoming, murmuring trees of the garden.

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One June day, however, that whole remote and misty world suddenly regained its reality. Summoned by the usual card from Panna Julia Wagner, Elżbieta went to her lesson immediately after lunch. The day was cold. White flowering jasmine branches hung over garden walls, wet from the rain. Walking down the empty street, Elżbieta wished fervently that this time he might not be there. But he was. Slowly she mounted the stairs postponing the moment—the moment of “happiness,” since she was in love with him after all. She stopped outside the door on the first floor. Her heart beat noiselessly, powerfully, not from emotion but in trepidation. Such was the nature of that love. She tugged as lightly as she could at the wooden pull attached to a wire, knowing that the little bell, even when barely touched, always rang out loud and clear before scuttling away into infinity. Although the bell had stopping ringing, the door remained closed and no footsteps could be heard on the other side. Elżbieta heaved a sigh of relief imagining no one was at home. But that was impossible. She glanced at her wristwatch. She was a few minutes early. Then she heard foot-steps, jangling foot-steps: his spurs. He opened the door himself, oddly laughing and flushed. Why did he greet her so joyfully? And was it really joy? He grabbed her with both hands and drew her into the tiny vestibule. There was barely room for the both of them. “Isn’t Panna Julia at home?” Elżbieta asked terrified. “Yes, yes. She’ll be out in a minute.” He relieved her of her crackling Burberry raincoat and hung it on a hanger beside his greatcoat. It grew hot. The doors to the main room remained shut. “Is it still raining?” he inquired, smoothing down the material of her coat which was a little damp. Elżbieta replied in a stifled voice: “No, it’s stopped. Only it’s a bit misty.” She could not understand why they did not go into the room, why Julia did not appear. Never before had she been alone with him or so close to him. She could not bear it, yet did not dare move. “Are you afraid of me?” he asked under his breath. “Why?” She closed her eyes and leaned back against the wall, imagining she was flying away somewhere. As if in a dream, she felt him embrace her and kiss her full on the mouth. Is he drunk?—she thought, petrified. She was always afraid of drunks and madmen. Once she had wrenched herself free and opened her eyes, Awaczewicz was already standing in the doorway to the main room. Julia’s voice could be heard from deep inside the flat: “Is Elżunia here?”

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They sat down in the first, almost empty room on either side of the dining table. Fingers trembling, Elżbieta removed her grammar and exercise books from the paper in which they had been wrapped. Slowly she raised her eyes to look at Panna Julia. Panna Julia remained silent for a while as if collecting her thoughts or repressing her laughter. She liked to laugh, was lively and cheerful, although her life was not easy. She had never married and sent half her earnings to her mother and sister. But this time she did not laugh and only stretched out her hand for the exercise book to inspect what was written there. Elżbieta looked down at the slightly worn face, black eyebrows, narrow aquiline nose and large mouth. Awaczewicz went into the next room but left the door open, as if he were not a guest but an intimate. He swayed back and forth in a rocking-chair reading some book or other. He heard every word of their “conversation,” which evidently did not bother him, whereas it greatly bothered Elżbieta, who was in no condition to look in his direction, failed to understand her own words, and had no idea what Julia wanted from her. She was thinking of what had happened a moment ago, what had happened for the first time in her life. At the time she had felt nothing but terror. Now she felt numb and faint from the very memory of it. “Si vous êtes libre et que vous vouliez faire un tour . . . faire un tour . . .” 28 Her hour of martyrdom eventually came to an end. Elżbieta got up from the table and quickly rewrapped her parcel of books in the same newspaper. Normally she stayed a while to chat, but today she wished to leave as quickly as possible. She heard the silver jangle of Awaczewicz rising from his chair. He was there beside her. As he entered, he glanced at the grilled wristwatch on his arm. “It’s time for me to be going too,” he said without taking his eye off the watch. “Panna Elżbieta, we’re going in the same direction. I’ll walk you as far as the corner of Zielona Street.” Panna Julia was caught unawares. Her slender black eyebrows assumed a tragic slant. “Why? Where?” “In a quarter of an hour I have to be with my unit,” Awaczewicz explained softly, melancholically. Panna Julia threw up her narrow arms. “I don’t understand a thing!” “Don’t make such a fuss, my dear, we have important business.” Then he added more resolutely, now clearly annoyed: “The business of war!” “No, no, I’ll go on my own,” Elżbieta said hurriedly and took leave of Julia. “So you don’t want to?” Awaczewicz asked without looking at Elżbieta.

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“No, no, on the contrary, but I’m in a terrible hurry.” “Fine, then we’ll go straight away.” Julia, red in the face as if about to burst into tears, had more to say: “Stay! It makes absolutely no sense.” Elżbieta was already in the hallway when Julia withdrew into the interior of the flat and shouted from there: “Come here a minute!” Awaczewicz replaced Elżbieta’s raincoat, which he had already removed from its hanger, and smiled a wry smile of tacit understanding: “Wait here, I’ll be right back . . . ,” he said and went after Julia. Elżbieta quickly put on her coat. She could hear Awaczewicz trying to persuade Julia of something. Suddenly the door slammed shut of its own accord with a loud crash, as if caught by a draught. From behind it came the sounds of a scuffle, Julia’s unintelligible words, her weeping, and Awaczewicz’s distinct, sharp cry: “I’ve had about as much as I can take of these scenes!” Elżbieta ran out onto the stairs and fled with a feeling of having taken part in a crime. Everything was now clear and understandable, including the fact that she had already guessed it from the beginning! The whole world was like this. The old ladies’ conversations in the sitting room and what her aunt had discovered in that safe after her uncle’s death: receipts, prescriptions, certain objects? Aunt Cecylia had not wanted to attend the funeral, and they had had to explain to her that it simply wouldn’t do for her not to attend. Why had her mother left her father, even though he was a good man? Her aunt would only say that the Bieckis were unlucky in marriage. Neither Cecylia nor her brother had been happy. It was all like this. She should have realized at once why they did not open the door. Agh! And that he should dare . . . ! Elżbieta was running so as not to scream, so as not to burst into noisy sobs in the street. Was she going to cry too? Just like the other one? At the corner of Długa and Zielona Streets she came to an abrupt halt, suddenly arrested by someone’s outstretched arms. Lifting her head she saw Zenon Ziembiewicz. “Where are you off to in such a hurry?” he inquired gaily, boldly. “Did something scare you?” She stopped at once, still red in the face and trembling all over. “No, nothing scared me. But it’s almost teatime.” He believed her, had no suspicions, and understood nothing. They walked on together for a bit as Zenon regaled her with the essay topics for his Polish written work. “The Idea of Independence . . .”—precisely of what, she did not catch. He seemed content, had managed to come up with something, and

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was explaining how. He had no clue about what was going on inside her. As if he could know! She felt no repugnance toward him and even preferred that their paths had crossed, that she did not have to sit alone at tea with her aunt, and could get away with saying almost nothing. But when they rose from the table, she said she had a headache, would not do any homework that evening, and instructed him to come the following day. He departed sullen and offended. Elżbieta was sure he would return. At last she was in her own room. Exhausted, she sat down at her desk and stared blankly out the window at the high fence. Its gray color had turned almost black from the damp. Rain was falling again. It was cold and desolate. Three soaked hens stood in a row on the cherry trunks. One of them, the black one, pecked at her breast and under her wing, and then moved the louse she had caught with her beak along a wet feather in order to swallow it. Gołąbska crossed the yard from the left side on her way to the “teliot” wrapped in a shawl, while the sodden doors groaned on their hinges. Since her Stefanek had entered the world, Gołąbska had been suffering with her kidneys, and now, according to Pani Posztraska, “had fallen pregnant” again, which was dangerous. There was no sign of Fitek, who was sheltering from the rain in his kennel. Right beside her on the desk stood the photograph of her mother as a young unmarried woman. She was slender in the waist, but not as slender as notary Kolichowski’s first wife in the sitting-room portrait. The high collar of her white bodice reached as far as her chin and looked as if it were made of something stiff. A thick plait hung over her right shoulder. Her hands held the arm of a chair. Her mother’s youth up until that moment had always been a mystery to Elżbieta, as if it had never been, as if it had not existed from the very beginning. Her mother’s life had begun for Elżbieta only when she was twenty-something years old. When that photograph was taken, there was still no Elżbieta and her father had not yet met her mother. Now it was all rapidly becoming real, the whole world was coming back into existence. There was no longer anywhere to flee to from its horrors, nothing to confront it with. That unknown girl in the photograph was the closest person in the whole wide world. It was impossible to think of her without suddenly wanting to see her immediately, at that very moment, without going in search of her, without planning some absurd escape, a journey abroad without ticket or passport. This ridiculous feeling was the source of deep shame, which Elżbieta found impossible to admit to herself. She addressed letters to Munich, Lausanne, Paris IX—and eventually to

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Nice (Alpes Maritimes). Fantastical places which she could not see by any stretch of the imagination. She heard the clink of the metal ring moving along the wire and the brief cackle of alarmed hens. Fitek had emerged from his kennel. He shook himself, stood for a moment staring straight ahead, then sat down in the rain on the wet flagstones and howled. He was quiet for a moment. Maybe he would stop. But no, he began again in a gruff, unfaltering voice. Elżbieta found her aunt in the kitchen. Pani Cecylia stood there listening to Pani Posztraska, who had dropped in for a minute from upstairs to hurriedly iron something in front of the fire. “Aunty, the dog’s howling again. Aunty, I’ll untie him for a bit, take him for a walk on the chain, he won’t break away.” Pani Cecylia shrugged her shoulders resentfully. “What are you thinking of? He’s a guard dog, not a dog you take for walks! He needs to be shouted at to get him to go back into his kennel, then he’ll stop. I’ve got enough problems without having to worry about a stupid dog! “But he can’t. He’s going crazy! When he’s constantly tied up, constantly tied up!” Michalina, who was standing at the table slicing kohlrabi, also chimed in: “You’ll only give him the wrong idea. If you let him go, he’ll howl all the more.” “I go out to school and return, or I go to my private lessons and forget about him for hours. Everyone forgets about him. But what’s he supposed to do, what’s he supposed to do, when he can’t stand it?” Despairing, Elżbieta felt a lump rise in her throat and pressure behind her eyes warning her that she was about to cry. Her aunt’s irritated voice was hateful. “I can’t take pity on a dog. I have to take pity on myself. I never go for a walk. No one ever thinks of me, that I’m tied up here like a dog. If I am absent for an hour, the whole house turns upside down. Everyone thinks only of themselves, while I alone have to think about everything. Once I relented and let you put him in the garden for the night. Then he spent the whole night trampling on everything and destroying it! He’s a wild beast, not a dog! He’s mad!” “Of course he’ll go crazy if he’s going to be tied up all his life!” “Calm down! He won’t go crazy, won’t go crazy,” said Pani Cecylia, mockingly dragging out her words. “Have no fear of that. It’ll all sooner drive me crazy! Everyone is so nice and refined, everyone has such a sensitive heart, and I’m the only one who’s heartless. But if it weren’t for me, then I’d like to know what would become of you all . . .”

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Pani Posztraska ironed her striped blouse hastily and in silence. Now she felt personally threatened. “Elunia, don’t upset your aunt,” she said meekly. “Fitek is used to it and prefers to be on his chain.” Elżbieta said nothing as she wrung her tightly clasped hands. How was she to say that she could no longer stand it in this house either, that she wanted to run away, wanted to kill herself—first Fitek, so he would not have to suffer any more, then herself? Everything was so stupid and impossible. And nobody cared. “Michalina will go and chase the dog back into his kennel. Then he’ll shut up at once. And you calm down and get back to your lessons! If you’ve got a headache, you’d better lie down. And when you’re in a bad mood, don’t come to me with your grudges. It’s been decided that the dog should be tied up, and so he’ll remain tied up. I’m the one who knows best what has to be done.” Elżbieta walked slowly out of the kitchen. She lay on the bed in her room without switching on the light, and wept. She no longer thought of Awaczewicz, or of her mother, or of Gołąbska, who might die giving birth to her second child. The fate of the dog alone grew to cosmic proportions and engulfed all her other troubles. Fitek’s howls, as he slept peacefully in his kennel soothed by Michalina, now filled her entire world.

5 Justyna Bogutówna, now under investigation and sitting, as we know, in the town jail in anticipation of her trial, entered Zenon Ziembiewicz’s biography in a simple and natural way. He saw her for the first time in the Boleborza garden when she was nineteen years old. She was sitting on a bench near the kitchen holding on her lap a sheet of white linen, which she was carefully embroidering. Her straight fair hair, cropped evenly like a boy’s, spilled from her bent head over her face. She bowed to him first without rising to her feet, greeting him with a childish smile and no hint of inferiority: “Good day.” He was astonished to learn from his mother, Pani Żańcia, that this rosy-cheeked girl, who was good at sewing and very helpful around the house and who “costs only as much as she eats,” was the daughter of the new cook, a fat sulky woman whom he had seen since morning shuffling around the kitchen and backyard on bare, dirty, and swollen feet.

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Justyna’s appearance at Boleborza was the result of successive changes in the life of old Karolina Bogutowa and her eventual downfall. When Pani Warkoniowa suddenly gave her notice, Bogutowa accepted it as entirely natural and bore no grudge against anyone. But later on, when she left the hospital with the child, she experienced difficult times, imagining she would never cope. When no one wanted to employ her, a position with the Tczewskis never even entered her head. An old acquaintance came to her assistance: Borbocki, the gardener on the Chązebna estate. The palace cook had become such an inveterate drunkard that the Tczewskis were looking for a new one. Borbocki told the housekeeper about Bogutowa. They took her on initially for a trial period, but they liked her, and so she stayed. The daughter of this same Borbocki, Jasia, later the sickly Pani Gołąbska, a tenant in Pani Kolichowska’s house, was then only eleven years old. Healthy and thriving, she looked upon the world through a screen of blossoming azaleas, magnolias, hydrangeas, and oleanders. But Bogutowa’s situation as cook at Chązebna was not exactly as Pani Warkoniowa, the lawyer’s wife, imagined it. Bogutowa received no higher wages at the palace than she would have elsewhere. Her work was highly responsible, but she never even glimpsed her employers’ faces. Yet her internal relationship with their lordships was very close, of the most essential kind, the most deeply intimate. With great concentration and care, assisted by acquired knowledge and inborn talent, she produced what they consumed in total trust. At her instigation they not only experienced the intoxicating subtleties of taste but were deeply permeated by her ecstatic, volatile inspiration, which they converted into their own biological matter. What else, if not this, might have created a bridge of understanding, of closeness, of familiarity, between them and her? The intuition, by means of which she knew how to please them, might have aroused some simple gratitude for having divined their wishes, or met their expectations. Nothing of the sort! She simply did not see them, nor they her. Both these opposing yet mutually dependent worlds ended abruptly on the threshold separating the kitchen from the palace, where the intransigent figures of the footman, the housekeeper, and the butler, Antoni, stood guard. Bogutowa would prepare dishes that were fragrant, crispy, piping hot, and arrange them artistically on silver platters in oval shapes with garnishes, dressing them in mayonnaise or sauce hollandaise—elongated fish, bulging birds, crackling roasts, pâtés, salads, pierogi, jellies and cream desserts— and then watch without resistance or suspense as Antoni snatched them away, pale as a specter, strong as a tiger, efficient and purposeful, like a priest

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celebrating mass, mindful that their lordships should not have to wait a needless second nor the dishes suffer any detriment to their warmth and freshness.29 Irritable and impatient toward Bogutowa, he would undergo an internal transformation in the doorway, solemnly stiffen and compose himself, bewitched by the superior nature of the cause he served. The door would close behind him with a silent gentle swing, and everything would vanish. And that was the end of Bogutowa’s duties, the final goal of her inner rush of elation, accompanied by the calm relief that descends upon us once we have performed a just and purposeful task to the best of our knowledge and ability. On her side of the door there was peace of mind and a sense of accomplishment, but there, on the other side, things were only just beginning: the delicate hot mist hovering over the soup tureen, the construction, color, and shape of a dish, then its fragrance and temperature, finally its consistency and taste. Whether it was the paradox of cold ice cream baked in hot pastry, the crispy skin on a turkey, or the cool aroma of venison slices interspersed with pineapple rings, it was all further fortified by the bouquet of fine wine selected with expert knowledge of protocol and hygiene. The whole business was concluded by a process of absorption, by the assimilation of these substances and qualities into the placid bloodstream of the thoroughbred organism, by their digestion in accordance with the laws governing the conversion of matter into fastidious attitudes to life and its affairs, into an idealistic worldview of universal purposefulness and harmony, into the metaphysical criteria underlying moral judgments. There they said of Bogutowa, who remained beyond the pale of these miracles wrought by organic chemistry, “She’s the best cook we’ve ever had.” She never knew of this, however. Antoni was discreet. Whatever he overheard could never cross the boundaries of the “rooms.” Knowledge of that other life penetrated nevertheless to the kitchen side. English guests at the palace, hunting expeditions in the company of two generals, a minister’s visit, or a family reunion: the superhuman ceremonial of such occasions, their stratospheric idealism, possessed the romantic charm of improbability and perfect uselessness. The Count rode to Gwarecki Grange (horses), to Boleborza (wood grouse or ducks), to Popłoszna (poker), or traveled to the capital (politics, his club). A horse was saddled for the Countess (obstacle course in the paddock), the grays were harnessed to the britzka (an outing with the children), the Countess was on the tennis court (a French duke). Trips to the mountains, trips to the seaside, trips

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abroad. Fiction personified. The very essence of superfluity. Fluff and froth. Life in the clouds. An ethereal haze beyond the grasp of reality. Nothing. Leaning out of the kitchen window and slightly to the left, Bogutowa could sometimes see the back of a departing Rolls Royce with a plush mascot dangling in the rear windscreen and someone’s profile, sometimes a horse’s tail and part of an English diplomat sitting in the saddle. Scarcely that and no more. And this was how, from Bogutowa’s point of view, the highest rung of human existence appeared, an existence she waited upon with her entire being hand and foot. As to Pani Warkoniowa’s information about little Justyna (“She plays in the garden with the little countesses as their equal”), it had some basis in truth. Justynka, as she roamed unsupervised in the vicinity of the kitchen or the greenhouses, had caught the eye of two-year-old Countess Róża. It was nothing but: “Uśtinka and Uśtinka . . .” More than four years separated Róża from her nearest sister. She had no suitable companions of the same age, so the matter was given serious thought. Eventually Justynka, freshly scrubbed and dressed, was assigned her place at Róża’s side and the children played together under the supervision of professional nannies. Their friendship of several years fizzled out during one of the Tczewski family’s longer trips abroad. All Justyna retained of it was a little babyish French, a certain system of social behavior, plus an exaggerated trust in fate. Meanwhile Karolina Bogutowa, having reached the age of fifty, was ailing. She grew very fat and heavy. At work she would sit down from time to time on a stool, something she had resisted doing all her life. After suffering nighttime gripes in her liver, she would hoist herself from her bed only to toil again over the hot stove. She slaved away at the palace for nearly another four years and was not surprised when they told her she was no longer fit for purpose and they could no longer keep her on. She and little Justyna then lived for a few months with the gardener Borbocki and his wife, whose house felt empty since they had married off their Jasia to a man in town and placed their son Franciszek in a technical school to train as a metalworker. With these honest people, Bogutowa and her daughter were happy. But at about this same time Bogutowa learned that her life savings, invested in a loan scheme everyone had recommended, had been lost. She therefore left Justyna with the Borbockis and went into service at Gwarecki Grange, the home of plenipotentiary Czechliński. Compared with the palace at Chązebna, the manor seemed like a simple cottage and the owners—though ostensibly rich—like ordinary folk who did things everyone understood. The mistress would wander around the house until

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lunchtime in her dressing gown and with hair uncombed, interfering in the kitchen in her disheveled state, though she had no clue about cooking. Bogutowa now performed under duress, and with great difficulty, things in which she had previously taken pride. But here too, after three years, she proved incompetent due to her illness. Pani Czechlińska recommended her to steward Ziembiewicz at Boleborza, where the manor was half the size and the workload light—cooking only for the steward and his wife. On her first day at Boleborza, Bogutowa realized at once how far she had fallen. Having heard the mistress, who was already quite gray, singing from early morning in the parlor: “. . . and the well of happiness could flow to us,”30 and seen the master repairing the mangle in his workshop, she sank into deep depression. Despite this, when summer arrived, she had to bring Justyna to Boleborza. The girl had nowhere to go, since gardener Borbocki had died suddenly of heart failure and his widow had moved to live with her daughter in town. The first encounter between Zenon Ziembiewicz and Justyna Bogutówna was of no immediate consequence. He knew, as long as the weather was fine, he could always find her in the same place doing the same thing. But since the time that he had understood, still as a young boy, the significance of the village girls hanging around the garden or stealing in the dark beneath the window of his father’s office, he had had no liking for “folklore.” Besides, at that time, following the “miracle on the Vistula”31 and his subsequent difficult years in Paris, when he came home to his parents for a few weeks, his mind was occupied by other matters. Later he distinctly recalled and was deeply convinced that he had explicitly avoided Justyna throughout this entire initial phase and had even kept well clear, without thinking much about it, of the part of the garden she had to cross in order to reach the kitchen. His mind was occupied above all by “Italian colonial policy,” which he had chosen as the topic of his doctoral thesis, as well as the problem of his relationship with his own parents, which was to determine his further destiny. Grown lean on his irregular diet, dressed in his threadbare ill-fitting suit, armed with knowledge of “social and international affairs” thanks to his degree from a Parisian academic institution, he now looked upon this provincial world with “European” eyes. Everything seemed exotic: the distant east, the Polish manor house, even the melodious sounds of the language. In light of these new categories, the whole life of Boleborza seemed to cleave to the soil, insignificant and totally incomprehensible. Its structure

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was peculiar, no longer supported by anything tangible, held up by some unseen force, lacking any justification other than the fact of its own endurance. There was no money for anything, yet hosts of servants drifted about the ugly neglected house, propping up that very endurance by their presence alone, while their wages remained unpaid for months. For example, there was a separate domestic, named Florek, whose sole duties were to clean the master’s shoes and set up the samovar at any time of day, because Walerian did not trust anyone else and could not bear, as a tea lover, to have it prepared in a teapot. A bathroom, running water, and sewers were unaffordable luxuries, yet the so-called “family silver” as well as bedsheets and tablecloths of finest-spun linen lay stacked in tens of dozens in dressers and sideboards. Previously, Zenon had been shocked by the immorality of life at Boleborza; now he was stunned by its absurdity. The historical necessity to survive— the virtue of all peoples who had experienced bondage—had now ossified into a bad habit, yet it went on functioning as an unconscious metaphysical imperative underpinning the dignity of existence. Everything was aimed at preserving a form of life from which all substance had drained away. The presence of Justyna Bogutówna could also be categorized as a similar kind of historical ossification. Her sole occupation was to embroider serviettes, tablecloths, and quilt covers. Everything had to be done “by hand,” including the lace panels which she inserted into the linen and which she also knew how to make. And even if her upkeep really did cost nothing, every hour of her day went into ensuring that something else would lie uselessly in a drawer under lock and key. The elegant linen appeared on the beds or dining table barely twice a year, on exceptional and ever rarer occasions, since on ordinary days, completely different sets were used. Zenon’s consideration of Justyna solely from this perspective, however, did not last for very long. Soon their relationship assumed a totally different character.

6 Rain had been falling for several days. The world soaked up the moisture. The leaves on the trees were washed clean and shone brightly. The sky hung low. Zenon sat upstairs skimming through his papers. Libia Italiana: such a beautiful name, conjuring up pure desert and a strip of steppeland along the Tripoli coast.32 Far away on the Red Sea lay Eritrea, as hot as hell. This, for the time being, was the binding reality: Massuana, where you traveled in order

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to die from the broiling heat;33 Asmara, with its highland climate, located at the gateway to the impregnable natural fortress of Abyssinia. Commercially, it had been an utter failure (the French), but there remained—in vindication of the fatal war with Menelik and the shameful bondage—that higher and eternal justification: “The torch of civilization.”34 Zenon rearranged and rewrote the penciled notes he had made in Paris. This stupid work of compilation was proving difficult. When he started it, it had seemed important and interesting, but here, in Boleborza, it was as though it had lost all plausibility. His anxiety was mounting. He had pressing reasons to return to Paris as soon as he could (Adèle!). The war had robbed him of more than two years as it was, leaving a disorientating hiatus in his life; his whole existence felt hopelessly behind schedule.35 He sensed that time was passing, that his affairs were not moving forward in the least, that his final year in Paris was still uncertain. The flimsy newspaper articles he had written from Paris on “Poland’s mining wealth” had evidently appealed to Czechliński, since Czechliński had immediately come out with his proposal. But Zenon’s visits to Gwarecki Grange, both of which ended in drunken sprees, had left him with nothing but feelings of disgust and repugnance. He saw clearly that were he ultimately to consent to such a path, because he had no alternative, then he would be at odds with himself and begin at the very outset from resignation. Oh! He caught himself uttering that platitude: “Not to be at odds with oneself ”—what did it mean? It always meant, even in its most exulted sense, gratifying one’s own desires, one’s “innate moral instincts.” And yet morality was the result of living in society. Outside of society, it did not exist. These were only words with which he deceived himself and especially other people. Zenon longed for one simple thing: to live honestly. His agenda was indeed minimal. He wanted to smoke a cigarette but had no matches. So he went downstairs to the dining room, opened the bottom door of the sideboard and plucked a new box from the paper packet lying on a low shelf inside. He sat down for a moment beneath the windowsill, his back to the setting sun, which had just emerged from beneath low-lying clouds wrapped in coils of red mist. The windowpanes had steamed over, it was obviously cooler outside. Zenon lit his cigarette. As he put the matches in his pocket, he came across the letter which he had not finished reading in the morning. It was from Karol Wąbrowski, and Zenon was sure it did not contain an answer to his most urgent question. As was usually the case. What a fellow!

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He drew out the folded paper and read. Even to the person closest to him, Karol wrote exactly as he spoke, which meant without paying attention to the reader. Conversation with Karol was no mutual exchange. It was always like listening to a monologue or lecture on the radio. His letters were like journal articles: “. . . the people, whom it has befallen to live out their one and only existence within the confines of the first half of the twentieth century, cannot be enamored of this fact. In the terrifying vortex of the modern world, any chosen place at any given time is subject to potential dislocation, everything is fluid, uncertain, and constantly fraught with various dangers.” Pani Kolichowska’s crippled son from her first marriage, who owed his forename to his father’s cult-like worship of Marx and Darwin, had spent the war years in a Swiss mountaintop sanatorium motionless on a Rollier bed.36 Stretched out on his bed, in a row of other beds, pierced and warmed through by the baking Alpine sun, he had been born to life for a second time, as if in another dimension. Individual facts and individual people failed to penetrate his consciousness. Reality for him consisted only of collectives and processes. Zenon read on: “The war came crashing down, like some impassable Dent du Midi, between two generations.37 Pre-war ideologies, compromised by their materialization, still flutter in the wind like filthy rags above their foul reality, incapable of explaining or justifying anything. Rescuing one’s own individual existence inscribed into the drift of these transformations, standing by its lost dignity, is like the tossing of an eggshell on the black waters of a great tide that washes over the land and must bear it away. The logic of this process is unacceptable to those who see nothing in it but chaos, just as the death sentence is unacceptable.” Zenon skipped a few lines and then read on: “It’s hard to acknowledge that one’s role is finished. But the world rolls ever on toward new decisions, and ultimately the whole of humanity will realize the correctness of this diagnosis . . .” Suddenly he broke off, having unexpectedly spotted at the bottom of the sheet of paper an answer to the question he had sent Karol in his last letter. He did not read the words, he simply saw them, absentmindedly repeating to himself: “It’s as I feared, as I feared . . .” These were Karol’s words: “Adèle is no longer alive. She died on 30th July in the Hôpital de la Charité.”38 Zenon searched the letter for a further mention, some detail—nothing. He had known for a long time that she would not live. But he could not have hung on any longer waiting for her death, he had had to leave. He had left her alone in the hope he would still manage to return in time. But he had not managed it. And now he would never see her again and not be able with a final word to put things right.

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She was older than he, sick from the very outset, and knew she was not loved. But she herself had loved to such a degree that her feeling had sufficed for the both of them, for two whole years of torture and bliss. Also, it had been that bad love, full of dramatic scenes that changed nothing, and passionate love-making that brought no recompense.39 She was too obviously dying to be able to deny herself what still remained of life, even torment. He had never promised her anything, not lied or even so much as pretended. He had been grateful to her and kind, and it was precisely his kindness for which she reproached him in bad moments. She would have preferred it if he had tortured and humiliated her, so long as he loved her— he knew this. He had put off his departure while it was still possible, even beyond what was possible. What he had endured during that last year had been excruciatingly hard. There was nothing he could blame himself for. Again he “had a clear conscience.” But she, who had given him the utmost of her ability to love, who had forgotten about death for his sake, who had not even allowed herself to weep when he left, she had remained there alone and died there alone. As he was leaving he had asked Karol, his closest friend, to look after her and keep him informed of everything. Yes, there was no one else he could have turned to. Yet he knew this man had no sense of reality. Karol’s interest in his own illness was purely theoretical. He cared only about such things as the use of surgery in the treatment of spondylitis or coxalgia, or about the more intriguing cases, the percentage of patients cured, metastases, the separate appliances used in Leysin and Berck sur Mer, various opinions about the sun’s effectiveness. So how had he, Zenon, imagined such a man keeping watch over Adèle? Her type of consumption was so very ordinary. Karol had not even told him whether she was conscious, nothing.40 He had only those words in front of him: “Adèle is no longer alive. She died on 30th July . . .” So his last letter had not reached her in time. Zenon sat blankly holding Karol’s letter in his hand. On the wall opposite, on the discolored little flowers of the wallpaper, he could see the dull red glow of the sun as it cast a horizontal shaft of light into the dark interior of the room. The air was full of the smell of hot cherry jam. The constant sound of the piano reached him from the parlor. Then Justyna suddenly entered the room. She appeared from the direction of the kitchen door, in the far corner, and slowly came toward him with a look of intense concentration. Before her she carried a large copper bowl brimming with a shiny, viscous, bloodred liquid. She held it in her arms, taut and rigid in their statuesque symmetry, her small face scowling from the effort.

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She stopped right beside him and placed the heavy bowl on the side table near where he was sitting. Reluctantly, he followed her movements with his eyes. At close quarters he saw her bare slender arms and her face bathed in the red light of the sunset. She leaned over the table immediately above him and opened the window. “It’s stopped raining,” she said solemnly. “Red sky and no clouds . . .” Zenon did not respond, but withdrew involuntarily from her excessive proximity. A wave of refreshing damp and cool entered through the window. “It’ll be fine tomorrow,” Justyna added staring indifferently into the wet garden. She turned and went out. “Woman . . .” went through his mind. “How many women there are in the world.” The words captured the sadness he felt surrounding Adèle. In relation to this, the presence of this alien girl was particularly annoying. She had appeared at precisely the wrong moment, invading the very heart of the other affair with her existence, as if she had walked into a ready-made, empty space.41 He had not managed to stand up and leave before she was in the room again. This time she brought in several identical glass jars on a tray, set down the tray on the table beside the bowl, and began to transfer the jam into the jars with a large spoon. “Something has to be done with these cherries today, before supper,” she said. “And Mother is ill again.” He asked what was wrong with her mother. She replied at great length and to the point without raising her eyelids, engrossed entirely in her work. She was very talkative and not in the least overawed by the thin unshaven student in his crumpled unbuttoned shirt-collar and no tie, of whom they said at the farm that he walked across the fields among the people, hung around the harvesting machine, and said unbelievable things. As far as she was concerned, he belonged to the world of Chązebna officials like, for example, Franek Borbocki, who had likewise gone off to town to study and now worked in a factory. “While Mother was well, we were fine. And if Mother hadn’t been ill, they would never have made us leave Chązebna.” He could stare at her as much as he pleased when she talked like this, without even trying very hard to understand her childish words. As dusk descended upon the world, so the sunset glow gradually faded from her solemn little face. “And who is Pan Borbocki?” he inquired at a particular moment, having heard the name a few times.

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She was so taken aback that he did not know that she threw him a surprised glance. “He was the palace gardener,” she said sternly and rested her dripping spoon for a moment on the edge of a full jar. “He died suddenly in the spring when he was in the greenhouse cutting sweet peas for the rooms. Because it was very hot in the greenhouse and he had a weak heart.” She described how Pani Borbocka had wept dreadfully and how beautiful the funeral had been. The whole of Chązebna had congregated at the church, and Jasia had come from town—their daughter, whose marriage Pan Borbocki had been so upset about that it had actually made him ill, as well as Franek Borbocki, who had had compassionate leave from the factory and taken their mother back to town with him from Chązebna. Then she began the story of Jasia Gołąbska, whose second child had already died. Her husband had been good to her at first but then had lost his job, fallen in with bad company, and started drinking. Apparently he had even been in prison, but they had let him out and now the whole family was kept solely by Franek. She talked all the time about other people as though she had no biography of her own. From out of her words, an entire world of unfamiliar people arose before Zenon’s eyes—a kind of parallel reality, sufficient unto itself, reassuring him that life and death were the same everywhere. The next day, the weather was indeed fine. The August heat waves had begun. In the mornings, once the shutters were thrown open, flies would be crawling over faces and arms. It was stiflingly hot and sultry. Flies, mosquitoes, and fleas had to be contended with, yet they were preferable to the cockroaches in the cheap hotels on Boulevard Saint Michel. In the evening, countless different species of moth and midge flew in through the window, winged ants, and various strange creatures resembling pieces of straw, tiny feathers or rags, with which the night air teemed. The lamps with their frosted-glass globes stank of kerosene, their reservoirs plastered with the corpses of hundreds of insects. Singed mosquitoes as large as spiders ran around in circles on pieces of paper on their thin legs. Huge moths writhed about for a long time fluttering their wings, before they too managed to die. In the years he had been absent, the trees in the garden had grown taller. Their uppermost branches pierced the sky. The distant horizon was delineated by the dark streak of the Gwarecki woods. Smoky red sunsets over a clump of birch beyond the orchard and meadows imbued the world with the wondrous strangeness of being. Herds of cows grazing in the hollows and pockets of fields glowed for a long time in the low rays of the sun, and then, as they returned home through the village along the well-trodden sandy tract, the cloud of dust above them shone pink.

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In Paris life had seemed different, as if it ran on different tracks. Here, deliberations in Geneva, pacifism, the Pan-Europa Movement appeared like menacing signs of modernity. It was harvest-time. Sheaves stood stacked on the rye stubble as in Monet’s painting.42 Evenings smelled of harvested grain. The chirping of crickets could be heard until late. Huge trees at the edge of the white field rose like motionless black mountains of leaves. The moon overhead lit up a few of the nearest cloudlets and seemed to reposition them on different planes of the firmament. A golden oriole would still be calling from an ancient alder grove above the meadow. Skylarks would warble longest, as if singing themselves to sleep. And then there was silence—a silence barely credible after the terrifying clamor of the world’s capital city. And now, amid all this, Justyna was constantly turning up, although he was almost certain he never sought her out. She was in the garden, in the house and in the farmyard. Whenever he returned from the fields in the evening, he would encounter her on his way at some distance from the manor. She would come running up simply to tell him something. Her life was cobbled together from events in other people’s lives. She observed no hierarchies in her epic approach to reality. Everything was equally important and absorbing. When she talked, things arranged themselves as though on a level, separated only by their outlines, without perspective. She had a finger in every pie and—because of that earnest relationship of hers to the world— achieved an odd thing: the geometrical shapes of facts slotted so easily into one another that between them there were no empty spaces. Her whole life was full and happy because of them. In the grindingly hot afternoon, redolent of straw, she would walk beside him, herself warm, soft, and overflowing like her voice. She would walk beside him, ripping up tufts of grass along the path or tearing leaves from the bushes, talking without looking in his direction. Ecstatically, she would relate how Jadwisia, Jasia Gołąbska’s third surviving child, a sweet chubby little girl, already understood every word, and how clever she was, or describe laughing how the foals had escaped from the paddock and charged around the farmyard like madmen, or tell him with great earnestness what was for supper. Eating was an important ritual in the life of Boleborza. “Why in God’s name shouldn’t we taste the Count’s cuisine? Are we any worse than he? Are our stomachs any different? What?” Pan Walerian exclaimed. And so every day Bogutowa, provided she was well, prepared meals for steward Ziembiewicz worthy of a superior table. Zenon saw how his father was “getting on,” even though he was not yet so very old. He was no longer able to drink,

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had given up smoking and grown compliant and irresolute.43 Chronic bronchitis grated and whistled in his breath. Obesity and emphysema rendered impossible his former shooting rambles. His only passion now was gluttony, which did him no good either. He ate as if he had been perpetually starved and longed at last to be totally sated. He would grab hold of the table, his plate, his fork, driven by haste and impatience. His hands would tremble and his fat lips grow moist. Nowadays he always rode out into the fields in the small britzka from which the driver’s seat had been removed, driving the single horse himself. He would return before evening exhausted by the heat, red in the face, his skin glistening from sweat. Harassed, he would alight before the front porch, causing the groaning vehicle to tip under his great bulk, and loosely fasten the reins to the iron rail. Then, with his massive hand in its chamois leather glove, shiny from wear, he would administer a dull slap to the horse’s ovalshaped rump. The sturdy chestnut understood the cue, made its own way around the edge of the lawn, and veered off in the direction of the farm between the two poplars of unequal height and through the open gate, avoiding catching the ends of the axle shafts on obstacles along the drive. It would stand there in front of the stable, shake off the flies with strange twitching movements of its skin on back and belly, and wait patiently for the necessary to be done. Meanwhile Pan Walerian’s asthmatic voice could already be heard in the hallway inquiring whether supper was ready. This was the moment when Pani Żańcia came into her own. Taller than her husband, thin, shoulders slightly stooping, she would make her way from the piano directly into the dining room, in order to consecrate the rites of the food with her placid, inextinguishable feminine grace. Apart from playing her music and arranging the flowers, she took no part in any housework, yet possessed a talent for quietly and effectively managing the servants. She admired this trait in herself and knew how to make sure Pan Walerian valued it too. If the truth be known, she admired everything in her own person, experiencing this self-satisfaction as her love of God and other people. Convinced everyone loved and respected her too, she believed fate had treated her kindly. She had lived her life as it should be lived, to her own satisfaction and to the satisfaction of others. She also knew how to handle her husband. It afforded her genuine pleasure to indulge his weaknesses and gratify his whims. “We’re just waiting for you, Waluś,” she would say from the doorway. She wanted him to wash his hands before eating, something he had grown accustomed to comply with a long time ago, although he often had

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to be reminded. Zenon would come downstairs, summoned by the younger servant, Wikcia. He looked not at all like the young master returned to the parental roost from the capital city of pleasure and elegance. His “sports” suit was distinguished by its proletarian exoticism. He rarely shaved his sullen face, while his hair, whose dark golden color had once appealed “sensually” to Elżbieta Biecka, could likewise have done with a trim. Pani Żańcia was not offended by her son’s eccentricities: “Zenio has always had his fanciful notions,” was how she put it. Having entrusted to Providence her son’s future and husband’s health as well as her own affairs, she was at peace—since, as she said, “No hair can fall from your head without the will of God.” She was convinced that God was guiding her every step and remembered her in every moment. In vain did Zenon try to explain that this was the most appalling megalomania. “Don’t talk nonsense, Zenio,” she said good-naturedly, “don’t talk nonsense. I’ve experienced it myself at various moments in life. It’s as though someone simply took me by the hand and showed me the way.” Her very white face with the gray hair combed down smoothly on either side was the very picture of pleasant composure. She would sit in her usual place opposite Pan Walerian, who hurriedly helped himself to a triple portion of every dish—an act of sheer recklessness given his high blood pressure. Pani Żańcia ate slowly and very little. But she never allowed herself to say: “My dear, be careful it doesn’t damage your health,” just as in the past she never prevented from him drinking as much as he liked. She was not like other women, who poisoned their surroundings all the time with their over-solicitous kindness. And she was well aware of the value of this aspect of her character. After supper Florek would bring in the samovar (silver, of course) and stand it on the little side table beside Pani Żańcia’s left elbow. At Boleborza they drank English tea, very strong, with a few spoonfuls of thick untreated cream straight from the cow. For almost thirty years Pani Żańcia had brewed and poured the tea herself. Rising from the table, Pan Walerian would kiss his wife’s hand and then she would kiss his, a ritual which since childhood had caused Zenon untold distress. If Pan Walerian was not yet in the mood for bed, he would ask his wife for a little music, or the two of them would play a round of bezique.44 Later they would retire to their shared bedroom, just as they had done throughout their married life. Observing now their old love at close quarters, Zenon had the unpleasant sensation that whenever he made use of the personal pronoun “I” he

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was indicating, by so doing, particular character traits of these two people mixed together in varying proportions. His mother was easier to overcome, although there were disturbing elements in her too. His father was more formidable. Pan Walerian’s history was inscribed on his face as on a hospital patient’s chart. For Zenon, reading it was a humiliation that left no room for illusion or smoothing over. He lived with the shameful thought that this was his “begetter,” to whom he owed his very existence—the grotesque thought that his own sole and irreversible life had its origin in the sex drive of this man. And there was nothing he could do to make himself feel indifferent, because that whole unbearable tangle of thoughts and emotions had lodged precisely in the spot intended for attitudes of respect, affection, and solidarity. It was a painful thing to know that this man was his father and that everything that emanated from him had to be eradicated from his own self at any cost. And yet, at the same time, it was painful to see that his father was already old and his hands were trembling.45 In trying to resist his absurd weakness for Justyna, Zenon had to wrestle with more than her attractiveness and youth. Everything seemed to promote the affair and support it in every respect: the spell of summer, the tug of nature slackening his grip on his will, the conducive atmosphere of the household. It was enough to slip into the regular flow of Boleborza tradition, hallowed since time immemorial, enough to give his consent. Zenon recalled from earlier days his mother’s tolerance, incomprehensible to him in light of her principles. She had kept a variety of girls at the manor who were clearly his father’s lovers. Often, as if to spite herself, she had even nursed their various talents. Perhaps she did not want to be accused of something so unworthy as jealousy. Or maybe she discovered the sweet throb of some repressed instinct known only to her. Justyna was simply her latest darling, her “right hand.” She talked to Zenon about her as if not deigning to notice what was afoot. Zenon’s face would cloud over and he would fail to respond. He no longer wished to inquire into such an obscure and unsettling thing. Without exactly consenting to it, however, he took advantage of the benefits. Finding himself constantly in the girl’s company, he could not avoid seeing at any time of day—in the full sunlight that revealed everything, or in the beguiling, deforming obscurity of evening that took away all color—how she had been purely, painstakingly and precisely crafted by nature. He could not fail to sense it with his whole being. Pani Żańcia would remark how Justyna’s looks belied her common extraction. “Where did the girl acquire so much class?” she would ask. It was all one and the same to Zenon. He did

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not even consider whether she was pretty. But he would not have wanted to change anything in her. Nor did he need to forgive her anything. In movement or at rest, in every gesture within the compass of the goal she had set herself or her life’s expectations, she was physically perfect. When she stood nearby, he wanted to gather her up in his arms, simply wanted to have her. Then she would say: “You’re not like other men, who won’t let a girl walk by in peace.” And then she would tell him about Franek Borbocki, who had been pestering her and imagining God knows what. Because she was not that stupid. In this too she was mistaken. “Ah, Justyna, Justyna,” Zenon would sigh. His “will power” had quite a contrary effect to what he had intended. It failed to dispel her illusions, putting vigilance to sleep instead. “You must be bored in the country. Will you be leaving Boleborza soon?” “Yes. I’m going abroad for another year. I still have to complete my studies.” “But then you’ll be coming back here, yes?” He did not promise her anything either. However, he did tell her that he would be coming back. They were standing in the garden in the warm twilight, behind a row of cobaea bushes with their green odorless blooms.46 She behaved as though he loved her. Why was she so trusting and devoid of any instinct warning of possible danger? She clung to him. It was as if she walked straight into his arms. Before he left Boleborza she had become his lover.

7 During yet another decisive interview with his father, Zenon frankly admitted that he was in need of money. It was a question of his final year, of a modest monthly sum. He would earn the rest for himself. He referred to the fact, already known to his father from another source, that he had been earning money since the fifth year of secondary school, and added that if it had not been for the war, his scholarship would have seen him out. Pan Walerian reacted totally differently from how Zenon was expecting. At this crossroads, too, the profound change wrought by the passing years made itself felt. Walerian did not fly into a rage or pose crushing rhetorical questions (such as: Could Zenon please indicate in what safe in what bank the dollars he’d deposited lay hidden? Or: Could Zenon please explain what was supposed to become of him in his old age when his strength, already depleted by hard work, deserted him?). He neither shouted nor threatened, but merely took fright like a helpless child. And in his fright, he flapped his

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fat hands beside his huge red face and kept repeating: “I know nothing, nothing, go and ask your mother, I know nothing. Your mother has all the bills.” His final year was important to Zenon, and so he followed his father’s instruction. “My child, I understand perfectly,” was Pani Żańcia’s response. “Who can you turn to, if not to your own parents? I don’t imagine I need tell you what a pleasure it would be for me if we were able to help you. But you know yourself: We’ve lost everything. You can see for yourself how we live. We make do without luxuries and yet, wherever you turn, there are debts. And these days it’s hard to expect that anything will change for the better.”47 She held forth a little on this topic, classifying the present times as the worst there had ever been, but concluded on a more cheerful note: “Stay here with us, Zenio, for as long as you can. We’ll always share a crust of bread with you. You are our only child and no one in the world can be closer than your parents. One day you will realize the truth of this, though it no doubt seems otherwise to you now.” This is what she said, and she was utterly genuine. She was well-meaning and light-hearted, lovable and attractive, alongside all those other things he found so hard to forgive. And she was probably even right. But the thought occurred to Zenon that the moment when he realized it to be true would be the most dreadful, the worst of his life. “Well, it can’t be helped, Mother,” he said. “I’ll have to find a way of supporting myself this time too.” “I am not trying to impose anything on you, my child, God forbid. You yourself know best what you have to do. But maybe this trip abroad is not so vital.” Zenon replied that it was vital: that if he did not go back, then the years he had previously spent in Paris, which had been so tough, would be utterly wasted. “As you wish,” Pani Żańcia agreed at once. “But I must tell you that this Czechliński is a wealthy and well-connected man, and everything here depends on him. One word from him in the Count’s ear is enough. As I say: It’s not for me to give you advice, because you have a mind of your own, but I simply see he has detected your worth. Who knows, maybe he’ll find you a job.” Indeed, the only person left to Zenon was the wealthy and well-connected Czechliński. Following his departure from Boleborza, Zenon stayed for a while in town. Suddenly autumn arrived, the rain set in, it grew cold and unpleasant. Here, in his hotel, he had arranged a decisive meeting with

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Czechliński. Funds for a solid “non-party” daily regional newspaper had been secured, and Zenon had committed himself to sending a series of fulllength articles (not just correspondence pieces) from abroad on the fundamental political profiles of individual states in the post-war years.48 He handed Czechliński the initial article, a kind of introduction to the whole cycle, in the restaurant of the Hotel Polski. Thus, once again he shared a drink with this man, so far removed from himself and so unpleasant, and more to the point—obviously at Czechliński’s expense. Through the glass windowpane, seemingly in motion from the streaming water, he could see a slice of empty Emerytalna Street, with its sunken paved gutters and lone clipped acacia tree shuddering in the wind and dripping wet, covered in twisted, blackened pods between its leaves. On the corner opposite stood the town’s largest cake shop, dismal and dingy. Cakes were displayed upon tiered crystal stands in the windows of the raised ground floor. On the inside of the glass-fronted door, to which the same four wooden steps led up just as before, hung a large yellow and red poster advertising a traveling theater. Above the entrance, on an elongated signboard made of black sheet metal, letters were etched in italics as on a gravestone: Marian Chązowicz. The door of the cake shop flew open, the wind caught the theater advertisement, and an elderly man in a very bright rubber raincoat walked down the flight of steps and onto the wet broken flagstones of the pavement, wobbling elegantly. He had an irritated expression on his face, screwed-up eyes, and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. Zenon had used to see him years ago as an army officer and remembered that he was called Awaczewicz. Now, dressed in civilian clothes, he looked like an old man. Water hammered in the gutter, washing away traces of lime from the stones and bearing away old rags, bits of paper, and twigs bobbing on its surface. The sight of the prematurely aging Awaczewicz and the debris scurrying past on the water in the gutter combined to form a single Heraclitean image of transience.49 And suddenly, in comparison to all this, “selling his soul” to Czechliński seemed a thing of little consequence. Czechliński took the manuscript, glanced at the beginning and end, touched with his fingernail the places where underlined phrases were to form subheadings breaking up the printed text, uttered the one word: “Yes,” and simply tucked the thing away in his pocket. The beginning and end meanwhile contained nothing of substance. The sense of the article lay in between and had completely escaped the notice of Czechliński. A thing of little consequence. The influence of the man could already be felt. Czechliński, by his very nature, created around himself a particular state

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of affairs in which only he could be as he really was and not otherwise, and in which only he could live exactly as he pleased, according to the standards necessary and appropriate to him alone. Such people exist who somehow arrange the world to suit themselves and are successful in everything they do, although you might think they functioned amid their own fictions. Within the limited circle of reality carved out by the range and compass of Czechliński’s vision, life appeared as something that you did not take seriously, that imposed no responsibility and put you under no obligation. This man sitting opposite, rather short, thickset, muscularly built, with soft and flabby face, quick to laugh, and with the wide jaws of a gourmet, never said anything serious, as if the whole world were not worth a damn, as if, to be quite honest, everything was totally worthless. He was continually making fun of something, posing as something, as if incapable of thinking other than in quotation marks—along set lines, which were constantly refracted through what he construed to be other people’s opinions, agendas, and especially machinations. No one had any idea what he thought himself, what he really cared about, or on whose side he would declare himself. The principles that informed his malicious views seemed to lie in some distant inaccessible realm, which was far superior and incomparably more refined than any convictions. According to his grotesque and at the same time suggestive account, worlds of varying degrees of stupidity vied with one another. Each was deluded, each labored under a misconception, each allowed itself to be duped—individuals, political parties, sovereign states. From this he derived his inexhaustible sense of amusement, his ill-natured yet not at all foolish laugh, full of triumphant immorality, and the notion that given this state of affairs, anything was permissible. In the midst of this ceaseless trickery, of helpless flailing around in a paradoxical void of evil and idiocy, Czechliński alone seemed to keep an overall grip on the strings of the game, yet this knowledge of his never manifested itself in anything other than jibes. But it all led nowhere, could not even be summarized in a few words, and after every conversation with this foremost causeur in the Starosty, Zenon simply had no idea what it was all about.50 All he could make out was that certain people were “ours,” without them being in any way defined, however, while the rest had to be “compromised”—in the name of what was likewise obscure. Precisely now, at this very moment, the possibility of embarking on new ventures that no one had thought of before, was opening up. What ventures, namely? The founding of a newspaper. Well then, it would come to “them” as a surprise, depriving them of the very thing they imagined they were preparing for themselves.

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Czechliński’s laugh, triumphant airs, conspiratorial allusions—they all created a kind of dirty, cozy fug of trustiness and drew Zenon into closeknit solidarity, bewitched him. Both men ate well and drank rather a lot, and Zenon felt more and more vulnerable. His astonishment that someone could think in such insubstantial terms dissolved into mild admiration. He was ready to suppose that precisely this was proof of a true sense of reality— reality, as it now was, today. And eventually he too, without knowing why, felt himself to be his “own” man, and put off any closer elucidation of these matters to a later date. Meanwhile he was preoccupied with something else. Alcohol had a softening and sentimentalizing effect on him. He did not have so strong a head as Czechliński. He stared out of the window again to where, at the end of the street, beyond Chązowicz’s cake shop on the corner, the part he could see of National Square was traversed by the long structure of an old covered market located in the center. A low colonnade, darkened by dust and rain, concealed a row of little shops where solitary Jews sold thread, scrap iron, and lace. From this truncated perspective Zenon could see that the pillars, which he remembered as swollen in the middle, had sunk into the ground and become twisted, while the long roof above was covered in bumps and recesses. The immense trapezoid of the old marketplace with its bowed colonnade and yellow baroque church façade in the distance, laid in tiny cobblestones that glistened in the rain like beached jellyfish, recalled in its naïve plaintiveness and neglect some unwanted fragment of his childhood. Every day Zenon had passed it on the way to his gymnasium on Świętojańska Street. The school edifice had been totally rebuilt and housed now within its halls, restored to their former architectural splendor, the administrative offices of the District Council and Starosty. Today people walked down the old school corridor in order to procure or extend their foreign passport. His sentimental mood was further heightened by the fact that a young woman came walking across the marketplace from out of the distance. In the past she would have seemed to him like a princess who had strayed from across the seas, but today she was merely a provincial young lady, dressed with pretensions to simplicity. She stopped still in the middle of the square, raised her head toward the sky and, having convinced herself that it had stopped raining, closed her umbrella. Zenon imagined that only schoolboys could fall in love and everything that happened subsequently was a scant approximation of those former ecstasies that had torn one’s heart apart—a feeble reflection of what it was possible to experience then, and what one never really got over. He was thinking in fact about Elżbieta Biecka.

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The woman vanished beneath the colonnade and through the open door of a shop, as if into a black abyss. Small, dark, unimportant people began to cross the square and street in various directions, going about their own unique business here on this scrap of earth. After a while, quite close by, in the place where a few droshky cabs always used to stand harnessed to the shabbiest horses found anywhere in the world, and where now two taxis waited, she reappeared. She was walking toward him, and Zenon suddenly realized why the sight of her had reminded him of Elżbieta. Because it was none other than she. He had not seen her for years. Recognizing her now was an unexpected discovery. That she might be in town had been far from his thoughts. At the beginning of summer, when he was here on his way to Boleborza, he had heard she had gone abroad. He had completely forgotten about her. For a brief moment, measured by the passing of her quick footsteps, he observed what she was like. She was totally altered, grown-up, and slender. She had become someone else. Yet as she walked by, she still carried within her all she had once been to him. He did not leap up from his table or run out after her. He even smiled indulgently at his being so unexpectedly moved. But he knew he had to see her before his departure. He had to totally reexamine this old affair in order to satisfy himself that it had passed without trace, to discredit in his own eyes that trivial, provincial, platonic romance. The next day Zenon received the agreed advance from Czechliński, which enabled him to leave the country. He estimated the sum in francs, weighed up his expenses in detail and was satisfied. In the afternoon he made his way to Staszic Street, to Pani Kolichowska’s house. On the way he thought, now with anxiety, now with relief (as Elżbieta had once done on her way to Panna Wagner’s), that maybe he would not find Elżbieta at home, maybe yesterday he had only imagined it. How well he knew that anxiety and that cowardly hope! Traces of some sort, impressed on his brain by the ridiculous agonies of childhood, lingered on. He was still unable to dismiss it all with a single, twisted smile of contempt. He imagined Elżbieta to be a young woman sure of herself, stand-offish and overbearing, the perfect embodiment of petty bourgeois ways of seeing, perceiving, and judging the world. He now placed her, in structural terms, at some ideal point on a scale diametrically opposed to Justyna, in a manner that worked to Elżbieta’s disadvantage. At this time his entire sympathy was on the side of the former, from whom he had torn himself away scarcely a week before, entangled in a knot of highly contradictory feelings. From the outside, it could well have looked

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as if he had simply forsaken her. In reality it was rather different. Zenon no longer thought at all that he had succumbed to weakness in attaching himself to that fair-skinned, warm, and gentle woman. It was the very same weakness as walking through grass or bathing in the river, or breathing the air. That perfect physical intermingling with another human being, the emotions of a love totally sufficient unto itself, the sharp deep shocks of ecstasy, had persuaded him of their own supreme logic. He felt no need to legitimize his behavior through considerations of intellectual compatibility, by adding any mental superstructure. Harmony with nature, the simple bliss of succumbing to its laws, was enough. This was how it no doubt was, and it spoke in Justyna’s favor. But this thing, like everything else, could not be cut off or separated from the rest of life. Justyna had indeed agreed to their parting, been accustomed right from the start to the idea that he would go away. But her trustfulness, her tender childish affection, so endearing when she caressed him, had spread beyond her and tried to penetrate other departments of his life, swamping him completely. “But you’ll come back,” she kept repeating as he said goodbye. And Zenon had not had the strength to say that he would not come back. Away from Boleborza, however, the whole question of Justyna was unthinkable and had to remain within its natural boundaries, locked within the confines of that hot Boleborza summer. And here too Zenon remained in harmony with nature, with its law of transience. The entrance to Pani Kolichowska’s apartment lay to the right of the gate, under the middle of which flowed a waste pipe covered in a long wooden floorboard. On pressing the bell, the external door opened with an electric purr. At the top of a few steep steps was another door, also now open and leading into the dimly lit hall. Everything was familiar to Zenon, even the smell. Just as before, Ewcia the maid admitted him into the sitting room, full of shadows even though it was a sunny day. The closely packed furniture, the photographs, the lamps beneath their umbrella-like shades, the portraits of the notary and his first wife above the grand piano—everything was in its place. The extreme ugliness of this interior, which had once made his head spin from a sense of beauty and luxury, suddenly made him feel totally self-sufficient. It was as if he had conquered an awkward delusion within himself and as if, by acknowledging that fact, had at last shaken off his childhood. Remaining standing, he looked around and waited. Perfect. She could now enter. Whatever she turned out to be like in her transformation, she was a woman who no longer had the power to inflict suffering. Through the window, however, covered in its tulle blind and made narrow by the heavy

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portière, he could see, as if through a mist, the richly colored autumnal garden bathed in sunlight, and the blue sky above the trees.51 Elżbieta Biecka entered the room without knowing she was about to confront her fate. In the time that had elapsed, she had become a woman—so much so that it was strange he had recognized her the day before in the street. He avoided mentioning this. He recalled her thick schoolgirl’s plaits. Now she had a small head, tightly framed by short dark hair. Her clothes were likewise tight-fitting and dark-colored. She strode in briskly, talking loudly already in the doorway: how surprised she was, how pleased to see him. Even how grateful she was that he had not forgotten. All this was untrue, serving only as a means of locating them in time, helping her to get her bearings in the present situation. Like the news too that Pani Kolichowska was feeling unwell and would not be able to see him. What a difference from their childhood, when Elżbieta would conceal her genuine joy behind an angry face and impertinent words! Conventional joy now served to conceal the emptiness within. She made a bad impression on him. As did her gesture inviting him to sit down and the way in which she sat down herself, adjusting something on her dress and arranging her feet in a particular way. She was nervous, unsure of herself. The former spell of her sullen power had vanished without trace. It was an unexpected thing, something he had not reckoned with at all: he sensed his superiority over her. She questioned him about the intervening years and his future plans in a serious and friendly tone, watching him the whole while without averting her dark, lusterless eyes. “And you?” he asked. “Why don’t you say something about yourself?” She disassociated herself immediately from his question, and replied glibly that she liked being there, liked the town, the house. She was cut out to live in the provinces. “It seems it cannot be otherwise now. I’m so caught up with everything here, as if it all dwelt inside me. This house, the street, the courtyard—I’m simply made up of such things.” “You went abroad this spring?” he inquired. She was momentarily startled. “Yes, to Switzerland to see my mother,” she replied as if under protest. She managed to control her feelings however and smiled. “I met my mother, but somehow nothing came of it.” Again she made a pretty gesture with her delicate hands and slender fingers. And again it seemed to him artificial, her fingers too bony and nails too bulging.

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Now he allowed himself to be sullen and contemptuous. It had become clear to him how a person’s peculiar quality—the special characteristic that made him or her separate—was impenetrable to another person. Formerly, Elżbieta had shut herself off from him through her mockery and animosity, as if she were slamming a door. Now well-mannered, cheerful, and easy-going, she no longer existed beyond the open door. There was nothing there beneath the surface of her face, dress, words, gestures, and smile. He felt not so much dislike as anger. Her whole being was contained in that nervous flutter of polite words. “Why do you laugh all the time?” he inquired. “It’s as if you don’t want to take me seriously, just like before?” “No, no. Why?” she replied mechanically. “Anyway, I’m not offended,” he said. “It means you don’t take yourself seriously either. Forgive me for saying so. But you have to admit, it’s quite incredible that this is all you have to say to me after so many years.” He could see she was disgruntled. “You’re thinking again I’m badly brought up. Am I right? It doesn’t matter. Either something remains of our childish quarrels and reconciliations, or I shall have to assume I’ve come unnecessarily.” She tried to smile. “I see you want to quarrel, like before,” she began. But he interrupted her. “One thing still seems crucial to me. I keep thinking about it, I must be honest. I was so in love with you when I was at school.” “Oh, they’re meaningless now—the things we did when we were children.” “But you were aware of it. True?” “Well, yes. Only now we’re grown up.” He looked intently at her and then let her be. “Did you know that in Paris I became friends with Karol Wąbrowski?” Only now did she become serious. With obvious distress and in a muffled voice, as if taking care not to be overheard, she began to question him about her cousin. “Will you see him again, when you go back there?” “Well, yes, of course.” He knew he would see Karol and discover then everything about Adèle. He felt that unbearable time with his whole being, like it was a smell, color, or melody, without words. The filthy gloom of the cheap hotel room, the footsteps on the stairs, the patch of light switching on and off in the glass pane above the door, the anxiety and the sadness. Anxiety. They had ascribed it to external circumstances, to the small marginal things. But it had been on the inside, at the very heart of the matter.

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“When you next speak to Karol, could you use your influence? He ought to come home. After all, she’s his mother.” She said it again in a stern voice: “After all, she’s his mother.” “Does it make a person any different just because they’re our mother or father?” She did not immediately understand. “How do you mean, different? Ah, it’s not about that. Of course it makes a difference. But . . . So he was completely open with you?” “I don’t know. He never talked to me about his family.” “You see . . .” “He never talked about himself either. That’s his nature . . .” “But you have to explain that he can’t carry on like this. She is ill. There are days when she doesn’t get up at all.” Her voice grew impatient and at the same time pleading. “If you saw her, you would see for yourself how much she’s changed.” Zenon promised to tell Karol. Elżbieta rose to her feet and walked over to the corner of the sitting room overlooking the street, occupied by a small sofa. On the coffee table beside it stood a radio set that had not been there previously. The wires of the headphones were tangled in knots. On the floor, as before, lay a large round cushion. Zenon approached her hesitantly. “Tell me what you do. What have you been doing all this time?” “I have done nothing,” she replied and laughed uncomfortably. “First, I had a job here in the Starosty offices. But I wasn’t able to hold onto it once Aunty fell ill. I wanted some kind of independence—I wanted it too, like you. Independence from all those ‘older’ people who are to blame for the world being as bad as it is, because they approve of it, and then burden our childhood with their approval. We try to break away from them as thoroughly as we can. And yet later it transpires that the same thing is in us. Since we are not so very different, we cannot disown them entirely.” “It’s not easy, but not impossible,” said Zenon. She shook her head as if she had more experience. “Do you know what’s here right underneath us?” she asked suddenly. “What, under the floorboards?” “Yes. You surely cannot even guess. If we were to let down a perpendicular line, precisely in this corner, we would come across a bizarre thing. Here, at the end of the basement is someone’s dwelling. It is separated from the rest of the cellars by a partition wall made of planks and shaped like a right-angled triangle, whose surface occupies exactly the same space as this

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sofa and table, lamp and cushion on the floor. Four adults and one child live there at the moment. Before, it was different. But in the course of the past few years three children have died under this floor, and in the spring the old mother arrived from the country, suffering it seems from cancer, and occupied the bed which stands right here, against the wall. A few days ago I also registered a certain Franciszek Borbocki, who had been dismissed from Hettner’s factory, so he too had moved in with his sister and was here for a month unregistered.52 And now you tell me: what should we call this phenomenon, if I can sit here on top of them on my sofa and listen to Stravinsky on the radio, or switch on the lamp and read, for instance, Pascal?”53 She was silent for a moment, then added in disgust: “Sometimes they seem to me like rats.” Zenon did not feel in any way to blame for this state of affairs. At the same time he was struck more by something else that she had said. He listened without uttering a word. “So what should we call it?” she asked again. “Because you could call it philanthropy. These Gołąbskis were evicted from a flat on the fourth floor. In reality they’ve never paid anything. But because she was still poorly after her confinement and they had nowhere to go, my aunt allowed them to remain in this corner until they found something else. Floor space, a small stove, the wall made of planks—it even cost her . . . And now it’s the sixth year that they’ve been doing time there. They themselves say doing time, not living, because there’s no room to move. And at night, they all climb into bed with the old mother.” “Ah, yes, of course!” she interrupted herself. “You asked me what I do. Indeed, I do do something. For two years now I’ve been standing in for my aunt and registering the tenants. It means that all the house’s most intimate affairs pass through my hands. Someone wants to get married, so I fill out the certificate stating they live here. Someone spends the night here unregistered, so I have to follow it up. Births, deaths, everything. I know where and within how many square feet, how many people live cooped up here. I certify everything, rubber-stamp it at the bottom, justify it, make it legal. A house like this is an extraordinary thing. Is it not remarkable that people have decided to live on top of one another in layers? Someone’s floor is someone else’s ceiling. Did you know that half the cellars have been converted into flats and that here, beneath our feet, more people live than on all the other floors put together? “They’re called Gołąbski?” Zenon inquired with deliberation. “Those people underneath? Yes, Gołąbski,” Elżbieta repeated, scrutinizing him carefully. “Why do you ask?”

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Zenon did not reply. “It’s all one and the same,” she continued. “This whole house is full of such things. And I know it all backwards. I sign everything, stamp it all at the bottom with the street name, Staszic Street, number seventeen, and the land registry number as well. It’s the established practice. There’s no means of breaking away from it, wriggling out of it, disowning it. Any suggestion of individual independence is an illusion. By the very fact that I live, I am constantly approving of it, taking part in it, putting my hand to it. With my every breath I go on accepting it.” Elżbieta was standing as she spoke, as she always used to do. Zenon understood it was time to leave, that this was her way of saying goodbye. And just as before, when they used to read together books from old Wąbrowski’s library or solved geometry problems, Zenon asked if he could come the next day. “Fine, come tomorrow,” said Elżbieta. “Only come a bit earlier, all right?” Zenon left the dark sitting room and stepped out into the still bright street. The weather was chilly, autumnal. Tiny violet-gray clouds were dotted across the sky. Lingering reflections of the early sunset were fading. On Emerytalna Street, in the same place as yesterday, coming down the steps of the cake shop, he caught sight of Awaczewicz. He paused and watched him for a moment. Awaczewicz did indeed turn into Staszic Street and Zenon was certain, without knowing precisely why, that the old provincial lion was on his way to Elżbieta’s.

8 Pani Cecylia Kolichowska expressed her thoughts as follows: “I expected everything, but that I should grow old, never.” It was after one of her scenes with Elżbieta, the young girl to whom she had grown genuinely attached as if she were her own child. Sometimes she believed Elżbieta was a heartless creature totally devoid of feeling, a stranger, a true enemy in the household. She lived solely her own life and saw no one beyond herself, not understanding that someone close to her might be in torment, or that there were greater tragedies in life than not being able to attend a foreign university. It was enough to simply open your mouth for her to express a contrary view. She took the side of every other person against her aunt, and was constantly waging war over something. Everyone was closer to her than she was, her father’s only sister, the woman who had more or less

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brought her up without any obligation so to do. After all, Elżbieta was not an orphan, because her mother was still alive and rolling in money. And after becoming the wife of a high-ranking dignitary, whose lover she had been for many years prior to that, she could have remembered she had a daughter. Elżbieta defended that thieving cheat Gołąbski, never allowed a finger to be raised against the Chąśbas, who admittedly had no money to pay the rent although they managed to host loud drinking parties every week, stood up for Ignacy, that incompetent old sluggard thanks to whom the garden was going to rack and ruin, and would never permit any serving-girl to be told off. What was it all about? A sense of justice, equality, social awareness? Pani Cecylia had long been familiar with such sentiments. Justice, fine. But let her take her grievances some other place where there was real exploitation and injury, and not keep bringing them to her, whom everyone exploited in fact, and to whom the house and its inmates brought nothing but trouble. “I am not trying to pretend that the world is well organized,” she would say to Elżbieta, “or that everybody has what they need. But just because it’s badly organized, I don’t see why I should be the one to suffer.” Such scenes with Elżbieta were followed by hours and days of sulky, hopeless silences, of mortal resentment which neither could forget. Honor prevented either from uttering the first word. Obstinacy made such states drag on interminably. The murky air of the house was saturated with the black emanations of an intolerable, hysterical, bad kind of femininity. From time to time Pani Cecylia would wonder whether what was so hostile in Elżbieta was simply her youth. Then she would say: “There’s just one thing I ask of you, my Elżbieta, and that is that you allow me to be old in peace. When I die, you can order things according to your own taste, do exactly as you please. In the meantime, I am alive and at home in my own house.” To Pani Cecylia, old age was the strangest thing that could have befallen her. Youth had been her most enduring habit. Its careless everyday happiness had seemed irrevocable, one’s natural state, the only proper time of life. Old age had existed too, before, but somewhere far removed, belonging to other people, alien, condemned to sudden passing and death. Now it was impossible to accept. Throughout her life she had been anticipating some change, expecting from day to day that everything would be explained and justified, would acquire sense, that something would reveal itself at last. Her whole life had been a constant intention, an aspiration, an impatient angry expectancy. All those unresolved, unfinished things had to lead to some conclusion, produce something definite. Yet old age was a process whereby such illusions fell apart.

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It had seemed impossible that this would be all. And yet, it was all. Because of her constant ill health over many years—catarrh on the lungs, enlargement of the liver, heart palpitations—Pani Cecylia had always promised herself that one day, once her business interests had finally been sorted out, she would “take herself in hand,” undergo a proper course of treatment, travel to some spa or sanatorium abroad. Then a new, normal life would begin. Counting on this as an undisputed certainty, she had postponed all her important personal affairs until such a time. Meanwhile nothing of the sort had come about. On the contrary, entirely new illnesses had begun— insomnia, attacks of breathlessness, excruciating pain in all her joints. Lumps and contortions had developed on her narrow, previously normal toes, her legs were paralyzed almost to the knees, and each nail had its own shooting or throbbing pain. Pani Cecylia began to walk first with one stick, then two, unable to comprehend that such a thing could happen to her. There were days when she was in no condition to even get up. She would lie in bed reflecting upon it all, unable to be sufficiently amazed. With the greatest of effort, with immense difficulty, she made the painstaking discovery that nothing more in fact awaited her, nothing more would happen. The only thing that lay before her, a weighty and troubling thing which she still had to accomplish, was to die. In bad moments, a particularly stubborn thought, which she had been better able to combat when stronger, would return: the thought of her son. Many years had gone by since the last time she saw him, when she had taken the seriously ill teenager to a sanatorium abroad. She had imagined then that she would lose him. For many years she had feared for his life. But he did not die. He simply did not wish to see her any more. His heart had undergone a change—the heart of a child who had once adored her so much. He could not forgive her for that second marriage. In paroxysms of pathological childish jealousy, he had cursed and abused her. She had not been able in those days to “shut off the path to life,” as she used to put it. Yet how many times had she weighed up later, in memory, the child’s prophetic words: “He’s a bad man. You’ll see for yourself that he’s bad.” She had sacrificed the child’s feelings in order to live her own life, of which there had been only one and which could never be repeated. Life—so easily ruined, and yet so hard to put right. Right beside her, Elżbieta’s youth was rampant. Pani Kolichowska liked it when Elżbieta entered the room, liked her voice, her words, her movements. She felt moved when Elżbieta bent over her inquiring after her health, when she heated the water for her hot water bottle, dissolved the Vichy tablets in a

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glass, bustled around her, sullen, silent and skillful.54 Up to ten times a day, Pani Cecylia caught herself in the act of succumbing to this weakness. She could not bear it when Elżbieta was not at home. In shame and anger she waited impatiently for her to return. Not for anything in the world would she have given vent to such feelings, which were so unworthy of her. Instead she hid her emotion beneath complaints about her miserable fate, her illness, sufferings, discomforts, the servants. Ewcia was unfriendly and good for nothing, Michalina sluggish and lazy. “You can’t ring for anyone in this house, or ask for anything.” And of course, “You could die ten times over before anyone finally appears.” Elżbieta’s departure the previous spring had been an experience surpassing Pani Cecylia’s endurance. She would die of fear at the thought that the meeting with her mother abroad might change something in their relationship. There was never any peace! Nothing on earth was ever finished, and another person could always become the source of unspeakable torment. The elderly face of her friend Łucja Posztraska leaning over the bed filled her with disgust. Pani Łucja stood in for her niece, spending nights in the apartment whenever Pani Cecylia felt worse. Yet Pani Cecylia would be angry with her for not being Elżbieta. Just as years ago, Pani Posztraska would enter unannounced through the kitchen door asking if she could borrow a little coal or a few zlotys “till tomorrow.” Sometimes she asked if she could sit for a while in the garden, because she had so much darning to do and upstairs in the flat it was too stuffy. Or again: “It won’t make any difference to you, will it, Cesia, if I iron a few bits and pieces? Because today I didn’t light the range and Maurycy has put on his last clean shirt.” Pani Cecylia would consent to her request. And then Pani Łucja would appear with her bundle of laundry, always spotlessly attired in faded satinette and cretonne, in which both Pani Cecylia and her servants recognized the old dresses Cecylia had passed on long before. What could they say? The woman was simply destitute. She lived in arduous daily toil, in constant worry and dependency. She ought perhaps to have been unhappy, ought to have complained a little. Nothing of the sort. When she came in, she was always cheerful, full of news or memories. Took nothing the wrong way, maybe even took nothing seriously. The whole world was an amusing place where things were always happening, and so it was possible to learn of them and retell them later in an entertaining manner. Thus it was an undisputed fact that the Gierackis were getting divorced. Since old Pani Gieracka’s death, they no longer spoke of Pani Gieracka—the one who

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owned the Pomerian dog Lulu—as “young” Pani Gieracka. Now it was her turn to be old. And her husband wanted a divorce so he could marry flimsy little Panna Ciwidzka. A man with a position, a man with a monthly salary into the thousands! It was hardly surprising that he had turned the young girl’s head, and that she had had enough of banging on a typewriter in an office. And so the old friends would return to their familiar topic: Men! Ah, yet again they could talk their fill! A pretty face was enough to make a man leave the wife with whom he had spent twenty years, and abandon his growing offspring. Men! A lower breed of humanity, an animal species you had to subdue, subjugate, break in, know how to keep a hold of. You sacrificed your whole life to it, the whole intelligence of your feelings, the entire ingenuity of your instincts, creating a new psychological discipline, full of injunctions, norms, rules—all to no avail. For instance, does anyone ever say of a man that he “knows how to handle his wife”? No. Because a woman is someone with whom you can reach an understanding, on whom you can rely, whom you can trust. But people customarily say: “She knows how to handle her husband.” Or, “She doesn’t know how to handle her husband.” It was clear that old Pani Ziembiewicz knew how, and Łucja Posztraska did not. But what did it actually mean? It meant that certain beings existed with whom there could be no normal person-to-person human relations, beings who were hostile, unpredictable, full of wild instincts, inscrutable and mendacious. It was essential to discover at all costs what made them tick, to arm yourself against them, since life with them constantly threatened you with danger and ruination. Nothing was not in doubt, nothing was certain—and therefore anything was possible. Yes. But not all men. Pani Posztraska concurred with her friend’s judgment when the topic was the entire species, when they discussed other women’s men. But she thought differently of her own husband. And she was always ready to talk about him and paid no heed to Pani Cecylia’s distinct hostility. To her it was not important that Maurycy had forfeited every job he had ever had, one after another, because of his drunkenness and devil-may-care attitude, undersigned bills of exchange for foreign women, been involved in corrupt practices and had a court case against him, which he had succeeded in wriggling out of. Important was the fact that he was of firm character and that whenever he said something, then it had to be exactly as he said. God forbid one should ever oppose him. It was not important that he sat from early morning in Chązowicz’s cake shop and gambled away on a game of lotto the groszes she had managed to extort from Pani Cecylia, that he went back there immediately after lunch, with which he was never satisfied

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however hard she tried, since he knew a thing or two about food and wasn’t easy to please, that in the evening he always found a way to get drunk somewhere with someone, run up debts or yet again wheedle something out of someone else.55 But it was important that he was, in every sense of the word, a grand seigneur, that people were fond of him, that everybody fell for him.56 Admittedly, when he was in a bad mood, you dare not go anywhere near him. And he had such a sharp tongue. God forbid anyone should offend him, because he could make such short work of people that everyone afterward wanted to drop them. But when he chose to be nice, there was no one kinder: approachable, popular, a democrat to the marrow—not like they are nowadays, hobnobbing with everyone out of self-interest, but genuine, sincere, from the heart. “Of course, I am not talking about you because you’re an exception. But show me a person today, my dear Cesia, who’s been such a good friend as Maurycy! Because I don’t see one, to tell you the truth. For himself and his own people he cares nothing, it’s true, you know what he’s like. But he’ll do anything for another person, procure any object, give away his last grosz to help a man in need, assist anyone, advise anyone, rescue anyone.” Pani Cecylia sat on her chair in the kitchen clutching both sticks in one hand. She would shake with anger at Łucja’s stupidity. So what now? Was she supposed to share her admiration for that Posztraski, who for as long as he had lived in her house had never earned an honest wage, never come home other than drunk, always banging on the gate in the middle of the night, making a dreadful row and never giving the caretaker, who opened up for him, even the stingiest of tips? The whole house made fun of him, his wife alone saw nothing. She indulged him, worked for him, wore down the last remnants of her strength for his sake, letting herself be fleeced by the old layabout. Pani Cecylia felt her impatience mounting. “Fine, fine. But admit yourself what it’s led to. When he had money, he always lived above his means. But now, when he’s got nothing, what on earth has he got to give others? Yet you were more sensible. You should have thought about the future.” Pani Posztraska went on ironing as usual, not on the ironing-board—she did not dare demand that—but on the edge of the kitchen table. Here she had spread a torn-off piece of old brown plaid with a small check pattern and on top of that a scrap of burnt yellowing fabric which she called her mangling cloth. Every so often she would shake out the black slug from inside the iron and onto the range with a crash, and insert a fresh red-hot

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one into its place with the poker. One after another she laid aside the neatly folded, pressed shirts on a spread-out sheet of newspaper. “Have pity, Cesia, what are you saying?” Łucja meekly defended herself. “You don’t really know him. Would he ever have allowed me to interfere in anything?” “You see, that’s the worst aspect,” Pani Cecylia interrupted harshly. “You always let him get away with it, and now you can see the results for yourself. And you’re still doing the same today. And what do we see? The man will never apply himself to anything—day in, day out at Chązowicz’s, nights on end in the Hotel Polski. You yourself drive him to it with your own behavior.” Red patches stood out on Pani Posztraska’s cheeks, from the hot slug of the iron, and from her exertion and emotion—the dark, disagreeable, meaty flushes of elderly women. Without taking her eye off her labors, she smiled guiltily, scandalized. “Do I drive him to it, my dear Cesia? In what way do I drive him to it? I just don’t want to make his life hell, because I know how much he suffers because of it, how guilty he feels when he allows himself to get carried away and comes home late, and sometimes even wakes me up. It’s hardly surprising when a man has no outlet for his energies. He is well aware that his strengths and abilities are being frittered away as a result of it all. But ask yourself: Shouldn’t a man of his age have some sort of pension? After all there are those who have a pension and a situation at the same time, but what’s he got? It’s just that he’s such an independent character, never sucked up to anyone. He’d sooner let himself be hacked to pieces than say what he didn’t think.” She spoke rapidly, in a conciliatory tone, trying to stave off for as long as possible an outburst of Pani Cecylia’s mounting hostility, in order to press as many shirts as she could with someone else’s iron and someone else’s coal. “Maurycy, you see, is a man who cannot be bought,” she explained, always seeking the highest motives for her blindness. “Do you imagine, my dear, those who’ve risen to distinguished positions today, reached the heights, are really people cleverer than he? Not at all, I can assure you. They’re only people who knew who to keep in with, and who to kowtow to at the right moment. Maurycy was unable to do it. And in our country, such people always go to waste.” Pani Cecylia was restlessly transferring her sticks from one hand to the other, as if intending to get up. Both sticks had once belonged to notary Kolichowski. The handle of one, made of ivory, was in the shape of a horse’s head, while the other was an almost naked ballerina made of silver. Cecylia eventually lost patience.

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“My dear,” she said dryly. “Finish one more shirt and that will be enough for today because, as you can see, Michalina needs the table. And if you want, Ignacy will bring you up a bucket of coal from the cellar.” She wished to be alone at last and watched without sympathy as Pani Łucja hurriedly wound up her work, packed her earthly goods in the “mangling cloth” and disappeared through the door full of expressions of heartfelt gratitude. But following her departure, Pani Cecylia felt no relief whatsoever. Leaning on both sticks and churlishly rejecting the help of the fat Michalina, she made her way to the dining room. Now she was alone among her dismal, ugly, dark oak furniture. Even though she stared straight at them, she did not see the crudely carved pears, apples, and slain partridges that adorned it, since they had seemed the only possible backdrop to her life for so long. There was no such thing in the world as solitude, she thought to herself. Łucja had gone, yet her alien words and alien feelings continued to fill Cecylia’s heart with anxiety. Solitude was an illusion. Your thoughts always revolved around other people, binding you to their lives, though you try in vain to thrust them aside. Łucja’s whole attitude to her husband remained obscure, irritated her and gave her no peace. There was no doubt that old Posztraski was a goodfor-nothing, that Łucja was his victim, and that her life was absurd and impossible. But she was unaware of it. Her metabolism was faster than Pani Cecylia’s, her liver sounder, and her fate, despite everything, happier. All of a sudden Pani Cecylia thought bitterly of Elżbieta, who was far away and always took Łucja’s side against her. Again she was unable to be alone. Elżbieta’s life immediately thronged around her on all sides, accompanied by a host of human faces and human affairs, and the eternal impossibility of concord—the Gierackis, the Chąśbas, the Gołąbskis, the whole resounding pulsating house, for which Elżbieta was her mouthpiece. It was impossible to demand anything. Nothing could be achieved since the time that girl had taken over the reins. Just making sure things remained at least as they were before cost Pani Cecylia a mortal struggle. And then there was that Awaczewicz. True, he did not live in the house, but he behaved like a member of the household ever since he had started visiting regularly, sitting for hours on end, taking Elżbieta on excursions out of town, or to the latest films or the theater, staying for supper. Pani Cecylia could not stand the man. He was just one more thorn in her side. One summer morning Elżbieta finally returned from abroad, and Pani Kolichowska had to keep a tight grip on herself so as not to betray her joy.

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She realized at once that on this occasion too Ełżbieta had failed to reach an agreement with her mother. Everything therefore would go on as before. Elżbieta, however, would not admit defeat. She responded to Pani Cecylia’s inquiries as if she scented condemnation in every word. Yet she was free to say what she wished. Ultimately there was no doubt that the beautiful Romana Biecka née Giezłowska, now Pani Niewieska, was staying in Vevey without her husband and once again some man was there.57 And so, despite her precisely five and forty years, she continued to lead the life of a woman “from another shore.” Following Elżbieta’s return, Awaczewicz immediately reappeared, of course. The idea that Elżbieta might marry him one day was simply unbearable. He had not lived with his wife for many years but had not yet got a divorce, though he had allegedly been trying for two years. Admittedly, Elżbieta had always said she would never get married, but such resolutions could never be taken seriously. Awaczewicz had been spoiled by women. He tended to his fading good looks just like notary Kolichowski had once done, manicured his nails and wore silk stockings. Employed in some insignificant post, he still had the air of a successful man. Dressed to the nines, he went hunting, frequented cafés and theaters, bought and sold motorcars, forever transacting some sort of business. Offended or disillusioned by something, he had left the army, to his own and others’ satisfaction. Pani Cecylia was afraid the man’s persistent attentions might finally achieve their goal, especially as Elżbieta did not like company, and saw very little of the local men. But finding out anything, or even discussing it with her, was out of the question. When young Ziembiewicz visited for the second time, Pani Kolichowska appeared at teatime with her two sticks and inspected him thoroughly from top to toe. She remembered him as a solemn schoolboy who worked hard and did not occupy his mind with stupid things. She believed he had taken after his mother, not his father, and that he would make something of his life. But a trace of subconscious dislike lingered from those days: because he was not Karol, because he was right there, and Karol was a long way away. She did not trust him either. She immediately counted the exact number of days until his departure for Paris. Only within the framework of danger thus thwarted could she consent to his presence without bitterness. But throughout that brief interlude, Zenon came almost every day. He himself was not entirely clear what this meant. However, the long hours spent as before with Elżbieta had now become a compulsion. He felt he ought to tell her about Adèle—in a way that was not entirely truthful,

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but nevertheless sincere. From among those previous complex emotions, he selected and separated out mainly friendship and a deeply human, somewhat grandiose fellow feeling. Wishing above all to be fair, he idealized Adèle. He even praised her beauty, which he had not noticed at the time, and her intelligence, which he had simply not taken seriously. Elżbieta listened with enmity, full of inner perversity. But she hid her enmity even from herself, not wishing to betray it. She took Adèle’s side against him, and in their sometimes heated quarrels Zenon caught the stale whiff of former rows and accusations. At the same time he experienced a sensation verging on happiness, though he had no wish to delve into its obscure nature. At last Elżbieta asked outright, “All right, but she had a point: That other woman existed, didn’t she?” He had to admit it, yes, although this ruined the cosmic and, as it were, supernatural nature of his former torments. He saw the sullen anger written on her face. Suddenly his heart began to beat slowly. He was dazzled, totally in the thrall of his emotion. “So therefore . . .” she said in an altered voice. Breaking off and taking a deep breath, she concluded, “Now I understand.” As if desiring to obtain forgiveness yet again, he put forward his feeble arguments. “Well, what of it? It doesn’t matter. I was free. She knew . . .” “Everything matters,” she interrupted vindictively. She had no wish to talk now about herself. It might have seemed that she had nothing to hide. She confided but one thing as a secret: “A long time ago, before falling asleep, I always used to imagine a small, not very bright dining room. Not like the one here, in fact not like any I’ve ever seen. Small and poor even, with a single lamp hanging low over the table. And around this table would sit my mother, my father and myself, the three of us together. It was not a memory, because I was very small when I came to live here with my aunt. It was only imagined. That’s how I imagined happiness.” Zenon could have said a thing or two about this happiness. “And it ended only when my father died,” she concluded. “Something that might have been yet never was.” “But,” she added at once, “it’s only my revolting childish egoism. Because we never consider how much of what seems to us to be our natural right, may cost others. We’ve no idea what pressures might be involved, what horrors. In all those things we take for granted. It’s dreadful to think how

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much of other people’s sufferings and humiliations go into the making of a so-called ‘happy childhood.’” Zenon wondered when childhood had been happy for him. He remembered the evenings before he fell asleep in his dark room at Witkowo, a long time before they moved to Boleborza. He already knew there were no such things as ghosts or devils and that nothing would happen to him. “All right, but supposing a devil did come,” he would think and faint from terror at the thought. “Of course, it’s impossible, but what if one did . . .” During these anguished childhood nights of which no one else was aware, he had one solace: that his father was there. He could shout to his father for help. Father wasn’t afraid. He would know what to do, give the gruesome thing short shrift, that’s what he was for. He certainly wouldn’t be afraid. Because if he were afraid too, how would it be possible to bear the night and the darkness? There had to be one person who was not afraid, who could protect him from the dark in which everything was terrifying and incomprehensible, from the whole world of night. Wasn’t that why God was called the Father? The problem of Boleborza occupied in Zenon’s life precisely the same pivotal, though diametrically opposite, place as the Staszic Street house in Elżbieta’s. Since she did not mention it herself, he questioned her sternly about the significance of Awaczewicz. Watching her blush, he felt a tug at his heart. “You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to. I’ve no right after all to demand it.” “There’s nothing to hide,” she declared on reflection. “It might have been friendship, but it’s not, because there’s no mental understanding between us. It’s just a habit going back years.” “Is he in love with you?” “No,” she replied immediately. And after a while repeated: “No.” “And yet he comes here often, talks to you when I’m not here. He sits and talks. Yes?” “Well, yes, he does! But he tells me how he’s in love with other women. Or, more to the point, how he drives them away.” “How nice,” said Zenon. “How very nice.” He fell silent, offended, and wondered what he should do next. She had slipped through his fingers in a sickening, inexplicable manner. He had wanted to ask her about this from the very beginning. Now he suddenly realized that he had underestimated the affair. In his groundless overconfidence, he had miscalculated. He was sure she was not being frank and could not bear the realization that she had already disappointed him. Now

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he imagined she was “just like other women,” although he had no clear idea what this meant. “You’re not telling me the truth.” “There’s nothing going on now,” she repeated reluctantly. “He was my one-time, my first unhappy love. Oh, very unhappy! Back in those days.” “What days?” “When I was still at secondary school.” “When I used to come here?” “Yes. But I was soon disillusioned.” “Those days,” he repeated and got to his feet. He could not remain with her a moment longer. He was gripped by a feeling of deep repugnance and humiliation such as he had never known before. It seemed more than he could bear. “Thank you for everything, for everything,” he said. “But clearly, I was mistaken . . .” Elżbieta stood up too, confused. “Whatever do you mean?” she asked and burst into a clumsy laugh. “Is this supposed to be jealousy?” “Yes, unfortunately, it is jealousy. Because so far, I have never been in love with anyone but you.” She stretched out her arms to stop him, and that gesture suddenly released all his feelings. He kissed her on the forehead, on her hair and eyes, with the deepest frantic tenderness. “My darling, my love,” he kept saying and could not believe she was so slender and pliable, that she was real and kind. That same evening he told her about Justyna. Told her precisely how the affair now appeared in his eyes. If it had not been for the boredom and depression which always swept over him in his parents’ home, he would never have succumbed to that summertime temptation. Also, it was part of the Boleborza complex, which he was always struggling to overcome in himself and from which today, he had broken free once and for all. “Is it over?” she asked. “Yes, it was over before I came here, before even . . .” He sat on the floor at her feet as he had once longed to do, pressed his face against her knees and decided on behalf of them both that they would always tell each other the truth. The affair with Justyna he considered erased from his life just as irrevocably and definitively as the affair with Adèle. In reality, however, both the one and the other went on existing, except that they were now classified differently. A new feeling was being constructed out of the same material, nourished by conquered suffering and conquered joy.

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Their separation lasting many months was hard. They told one another, however, it meant nothing, that it could not alter anything between them. And in the anguish each read in the other’s eyes, they found the deepest consolation. They took no decisions, made no commitment. Yet their unwavering mutual certainty took deeper root as a result. A year later Zenon and Elżbieta were married. But before this, the memorable conversation between Elżbieta and Justyna had taken place, which no doubt played a crucial role in the unfolding of the tragic events.

9 That spring Bogutowa fell so seriously ill that the doctor from Chązebna could advise her no longer and she had to travel to town for an operation. Pani Ziembiewicz herself came to the little room behind the kitchen to say goodbye, giving Bogutowa six months’ worth of wages and promising to send the rest to town as soon as Justyna let her have the address where they were staying. “Not a grosz will go missing with me,” she said. “You can rest assured. And you’ll have the britzka to take you to the station to make the journey comfortable.” Bogutowa thanked the mistress for everything and kissed her hand. Justyna had packed all their possessions into one large wicker trunk. She pressed down on the creaking lid, passed the thick iron rod through the rings, and shut the padlock. For the journey, she took bread and cheese and a bottle of tea in a smaller basket. She rolled up a pillow and shawl separately and tied them together tightly with a piece of string. Immediately after lunch the britzka drew up outside the kitchen, driven by the groom and harnessed to two bay horses, the larger scraggy one on the right and the smaller fatter one on the left. Józef the groom lifted the trunk onto the box and helped Bogutowa into the seat. A few girls appeared in front of the kitchen all wishing Bogutowa a safe journey and speedy recovery. Józef placed his foot on the top of the wheel and leaped onto the britzka, took his seat beside the trunk, and struck the fatter horse, which was sluggish, with his whip. They drove swiftly past the farm buildings and down the lane beyond the garden, but farther on the road grew sandy, and the horses slowed to a walking pace and began to sweat. Intense sun blazed down on the fields.

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Meager stalks of rye stood motionless, interspersed with blue cornflowers. The wheels dug into the sand as thick clouds of dust blew up from under the carriage. Justyna was reminded of something and turned around to gaze at Boleborza. But she could see nothing, neither the manor nor the farmyard, only trees. And only then was she sorry to leave. The drive seemed long and arduous even though it was less than a mile to the railway station. Bogutowa had been given pain relief pills for the journey, but she was soaked in sweat, now cold, now hot. She wore a black overcoat that was much too tight and a black lace headscarf, but they were completely white from the dust before they arrived. At the station they had to sit and wait a few hours because the train left only at night. Once in the carriage, Justyna undid her mother’s shoes, unpacked the pillow and spread the shawl on the bench. Bogutowa lay down and made herself comfortable. She swallowed one more pill and a slurp of sweet cold tea that tasted of soggy cork. She felt snug and imagined, as the carriage moved off, that she would fall asleep immediately. But she slept only for a moment, as different things took turns to appear now as dream, now as reality. Justyna closed the window to stop the wind blowing in and sat down in the corner at her mother’s feet. It was almost dark. Strangers sat opposite and dozed. Great clanking noises resounded beneath the floor like claps of thunder or booming cannon as the train rattled on, moaned and tore through the night like a living creature. They could tell when it slowed down, drew into a station, whistled in the dark or went over a set of points. The whole bench would shift toward Bogutowa’s feet and the pillow press down on her head like someone’s hand. Then immediately afterward, something would drag her up again, as if the seated Justyna had pushed her feet back into their former position. Everything would calm down for a while, fall silent, then voices would ring out, and new people enter slamming the doors. They wanted them to give up their seats. Then Justyna would explain that a very sick woman was lying there, traveling to the hospital for an operation. Bogutowa listened and understood every word, yet it still felt odd to her that they were talking about her, that she was the sick woman and not someone else. The people would walk farther down the carriage lugging their bundles as the train began again to move and jerk, rumble, and clatter. There were moments when it seemed perhaps the end had come, and she fretted about Justyna: what would she do in the world, how would she cope on her own? This was what she thought, yet she was at peace and happy lying amid the clanking and quaking as if it were her own quiet, warm dwelling

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place. She could sense the constant pain in her belly, but it felt unreal, outside of her, as if someone else were lying there in her place, experiencing it as if it was he who was hurting, and not she. She would have preferred that ride not to have ended so quickly, preferred not to have had to get up or ever walk again, but to go on and on like this, riding and dozing. As day dawned, it grew more unpleasant. Justyna said they would soon be arriving. She helped her mother on with her shoes, stuffed the pillow into the shawl and tied it up. Everyone began shuffling about as the train came to a standstill. Justyna took the bundle and small basket in one hand and with the other led her mother to the waiting room. Then she went alone to retrieve the wicker trunk from the baggage car. Bogutowa struggled to sit upright on the bench, not knowing whether she was permitted to lie down there. Her head spun and whenever she looked around—at the wall, at people standing at the buffet—everything turned upside down and yet remained on the spot. She shut her eyes so as not to watch. She heard Justyna say that their things were already in the droshky and it was time to go. Bogutowa thought she would never stand up, that it was impossible, and yet she got up, and she walked, but supported now on one side by Justyna and a porter on the other. And in that way they got her into the cab. “How weak you are from the journey,” Justyna said in astonishment. Bogutowa rode through the town, where she had spent so much of her life in service, without recognizing a single house or street. There were moments when she felt so dreadful, as if none of it were true, as if everything were a dream. As they rang the hospital bell, they almost gave up waiting for a response. The man who opened the door said there was no room. Only when Justyna produced the Chązebna doctor’s note from her handbag did he believe them and instruct them to wait, because at that time of day everyone was still asleep. But he would not let them bring in their belongings. “Will you be all right waiting on your own?” Justyna glanced uneasily at her mother. Bogutowa said nothing, only bowed her head. And Justyna had to leave her so as to take their things to Jasia Gołąbska’s, because they could not leave them standing in the street. Once again Bogutowa was left alone on a bench in a waiting room. She remembered how exactly twenty years before she had walked out of this very hospital after Justynka was born. But that too immediately ceased to be real. She smelt the terrible nauseating odor of the hospital. At her feet she saw the square flagstones of the floor, and thought that nothing could

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now be worse than sitting there waiting, that it would be better to die. Suddenly the stone squares swelled to enormous dimensions, moved about, rose upward. Bogutowa felt nauseous, truly dreadful. She sensed she was about to be sick on the floor, and then lost consciousness. When Justyna returned the same man refused to let her, as an outsider, into the hospital building. But she wept and begged so much that he relented and even told her where to go. Justyna went to look for her mother in the inpatient department, where she learned that the patient from the country, who had been admitted overnight, was already in the operating theater. A man in a white apron, like a cook, conducted her to a corridor and told her to wait. A fat sister wearing a habit and enormous white headdress passed by and inquired what she was doing there. “Why did you bring her so late?” she asked severely. Justyna had no idea what to reply so as not to annoy her. She asked only if Mother was very poorly. The nun shrugged her shoulders without looking at her. “In the country they always wait to the last minute and admit them when it’s too late. We had to rouse the doctor in the middle of the night.” Justyna felt such terror in her heart that she did not dare inquire further. She stood in the corridor staring at the theater doors and wondering what they were doing to her mother on the other side. She took a step closer and listened in case Mother cried out as they cut her open. But she could hear nothing, no voice, no movement, as if no living person were within. She imagined that she would never see her mother again, that those people were torturing her to death. Again in her heart she felt a terrible cold fear. Gradually, she began to wonder what would become of her if she found herself all alone in the world. What would she do if her mother really were to die? She felt the tears trickle down her face as she continued to think what she would do. First of all, she would fly to Jasia Gołąbska and tell her everything. My God, what that Jasia looked like now, like an old woman, living in such terrible poverty! Her husband had left her and gone no one knew where. There was nowhere to leave the wicker trunk and bundle. They hadn’t the tiniest scrap of free floor space, the way they were living there. She worried about having left her things outside in the hallway, totally exposed—someone could walk in and steal everything. Where Franek had got to, she had no idea, yet she had heard they were living together. She was intrigued what Franek would say when he learned she was in town, whether he would be pleased . . .

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“Holy Mother of God, what am I thinking of, stupid girl,” she interrupted her own thoughts, petrified. And then the reality of the present moment rushed in on her from all sides. Again she listened, and again beyond the doors there was nothing but deathly silence. From time to time someone came down the corridor glancing at her as they passed. Now she was afraid to ask questions and merely repeated in her mind: “Oh God, Oh God.” She thought the end of the world had come for them both, that nothing now could rescue them. Another man in a white coat came by and told her it was forbidden to stand there and she should go to the waiting room. She pretended to be going, but when he had gone she returned to the doors. She was so distracted, it was as if she had fallen asleep standing on her feet. And when the doors finally did open, she sprang back wildly, not understanding what had happened. Several people emerged from the operating theater, angry and talking hurriedly. The oldest of them, a doctor with a balding head, seemed to be driving the others away. Alongside him walked the nun: “Right up until that point her pulse was fine,” she was saying rapidly. “Weak but fine.” She was trying to placate the doctor for some reason, still hoping to salvage something. “It was obvious immediately it was a hopeless case,” someone else said in a similar tone. “They admit them at the very last moment . . .” “This is the woman’s daughter.” “O Jesus, Jesus, Mother’s dead!” Justyna screamed. The doctor turned around, glanced at her briefly and went on his way. The sister remained with Justyna. She put her hands on her shoulders to hold her still. “Hush, hush, my child, you can’t scream like that,” she kept repeating, trying to draw Justyna farther away. She asked where she lived and whether she had family there. “I have never had anyone,” Justyna wailed. “Only this one mother. We were alone in the world.” She tore herself from the nun’s hands and rushed into the strange gruesome theater. “Maybe she’s still alive, just a little bit alive,” she thought. She choked on the stifling stench of ether and chloroform. The body lay on an iron table beneath a white linen sheet. Everything was spattered with blood, while some odd bits and pieces lay in a pail also covered in blood. Terrified, she drew back the cloth from the head and kissed her mother’s face. It was still warm and limp, but different from if she were sleeping. She fumbled to

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find the rough white hand under the cloth. The hand was likewise warm and limp, heavy and inert, each finger hanging loose separately. Someone was silently clearing up. Two attendants entered through the doors with something wooden, like a long wheelbarrow on sticks. They laid it on the floor and approached her mother. Swiftly, without uttering a word, they grabbed hold of her—one under the back, the other by the legs—and placed her in the wooden box. Justyna pulled the sheet up a little over the face. Then she followed the men along the corridor, down the stairs, across the little garden with its forecourt and benches to the door of the mortuary, where once again she was refused entry. But she saw there were more dead people inside. They lay in a row high up on wooden planks. All she could see were the bare soles of their feet and short crooked toes. She remained outside the door until the attendants came out bearing the empty stretcher. Then she moved away a little and sat down on a bench near the forecourt. She wanted to cry, but the tears would not flow, sticking instead in her throat, hard and dry. It was early morning, a fine sunny day. A light cool breeze was blowing. The whole world looked peaceful as if nothing in particular had come to pass. Justyna closed her eyes. Her eyelids were smarting and she had a terrible headache. Only yesterday at this same time of day, she thought to herself, they were still in Boleborza and Mother was still alive. She recalled how she had sat beside her in the britzka, how peacefully she had dozed in the railway carriage. It seemed she was still riding in the train, sitting at her mother’s feet on the carriage bench, waking up and falling asleep again. Faces of unknown people flashed before her eyes, grew hideous and then vanished. Then someone inside herself said: “Quickly, quickly, quickly!” and also vanished. When she awoke she saw the same nun in the white headdress sitting beside her on the bench, and was very surprised. The garden was full of sunlight. People in identical pale blue smocks were walking along the path under the green, not very tall trees. Some stopped and talked to one another. “You fell asleep, my child,” said the sister and smiled. She was not yet old and seemed a kind woman. She asked Justyna whether she had a little money. “The funeral must be done quickly, because it’s swelteringly hot and the body will start to decompose. If you go now and fetch a coffin, the body will be brought to the chapel by nightfall.” Justyna felt cold inside and began to cry. Only now did she understand that it was all true. Weeping, she turned her head toward the mortuary, a smallish wooden building with no windows.

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“You are still so young,” said the nun. “The Lord will comfort you.” Justyna shook her head. She knew that nothing would ever comfort her, that her mother would never come back, and that from then on she would always be alone. She rose from the bench and went where the nun directed, to a carpenter who had a shop selling ready-made coffins not far from the hospital. From there she had to go and book a hearse to be at the hospital chapel early next morning. Later she returned to Staszic Street to Jasia Gołąbska, telling her now of her real, not imagined misfortune and begging her to go with her to the cemetery to choose a plot for the grave. Gołąbska made old Borbocka comfortable in the bed, then carried her little daughter out into the yard and told her to be a good girl and play nicely. Only then did Justyna notice that the little girl saw almost nothing. “What’s happened to her eyes?” she asked. “It’s the dark,” Jasia replied. “Well, and her nerves, and bad nourishment, it all affects the eyes.” It was almost three versts from Staszic Street to the cemetery.58 They walked on and on. Justyna thought she would never make it. Jasia was weak, too, and almost fainting from the heat. She said a sudden death, like Bogutowa’s, was the best you could hope for—at least you didn’t torment yourself or another person. Her own mother was struggling for the second year running. She groaned in the night, kept shifting about so you couldn’t sleep or do anything else. She did nothing for herself. Jasia had to clean her up, wash her sheets and clothes, attend to her all the time. So much so that life wasn’t worth living sometimes. “When the Lord takes an elderly person, they have a right to die. But when a child dies, the grief is worse.” At the cemetery they chose a cheap plot, bare and deserted, far from the gates and the church. Justyna thought her mother would feel uncomfortable here and began to cry again. “It’s all the same to the dead where they lie. Here, there, it makes no difference in a hole in the ground,” Jasia tried to comfort her. Then they crossed to the other side of the cemetery, and Jasia located the small graves of her children. She was not absolutely sure, but it was where she thought they were. Almost all the graves were identical, hardly any had a cross. Shriveled yellow grass grew in the sand. “This one, my second boy, was always sickly” she was saying, “ever since he was very small. Everyone who saw him said the same—a child destined for extinction. But Stefanek was thriving. Constantly falling ill but always

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getting over it, he had such a strong constitution. He was already in his eighth year when he caught that fever, as if out of the blue. One day he had a temperature of a hundred and four, the next day the same. Completely listless, he didn’t understand anything anyone said to him. The welfare doctor came and said he had pneumonia and should be taken to the hospital immediately.59 But the doctor at the hospital asked me: ‘Is he your child?’ When I replied yes, he was mine, all he said was, ‘Take him home and let him die in peace.’ It seems they didn’t realize it was meningitis. So I took him back and brought him home. He couldn’t speak. He had dark rings around his eyes and stared in front of him without seeing. All night long he howled so much, like a dog, that the other residents sent word telling us to be quiet. He died in the most terrible agony.” Both women knelt for moment on the warm sand and said a prayer, but soon got up because Justyna was in a hurry. She wanted to see her mother laid in the coffin. Gołąbska rummaged around a little in the grass on top of the grave and threw a few dry twigs onto the path, staring again at the spot. “I’m lucky my children die,” she said suddenly lost in thought. “The good Lord knows what He’s doing. How would I cope with four of them today?” “You don’t mean what you are saying, Jasia,” Justyna rebuked her and kissed her on her sunken cheek wet with tears. They returned to the town. Justyna wanted to think about her mother, to properly remind herself that her mother no longer existed, and that she was now alone in the world. But something constantly prevented her. A scraggy horse was dragging a cart of bricks along the street and could not manage the hill. She had to look back to see if it had made it. Immediately afterward, a large motorcar swept past as if in a hurry with a lady and gentleman inside, and she wondered if it were the Chązebna car. At the bottom of the hill, nearer to National Square, the larger town houses and shops began, and the streets became crowded with people. And on top of all this, Jasia talked the whole way home about her own problems. “Since my beloved husband ran away, what I’m supposed to do, I have no idea. I’ve been everywhere, like everyone else, but what for? Nothing. What goes on in the mornings at the council offices is frightening. ‘Do you imagine you are the only one?’ they say. ‘Just take a look at how many are waiting.’ What do they care about people, sitting there at their desks and drawing their salaries? Not long ago two people standing near me in the queue fainted from hunger, they had been waiting so long. But what do they care? The ambulance arrived and that was that. There’ll be fewer of us. And it’s true—there’s not enough of lots of things in the world, but there’s always enough people.”

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She laughed out loud, it was not clear why, and added: “I don’t even go there nowadays. It’s not worth tormenting myself unnecessarily. Anybody who takes one glance at me will never take me on. They all say: Consumption—and that’s the end of it.” They entered the house and Justyna unpacked her mother’s best dress, the black one with velvet on the front and sleeves. Jasia accompanied her back to the hospital and the two of them washed Bogutowa’s body together and dressed her for the coffin. The body was already stiff and the arms did not want to bend. Justyna went to find the nun to borrow some scissors, so she could cut a slit in the bodice at the back. They managed to finish their work at the very moment the coffin was delivered from the carpenter’s. People conveyed the body from the mortuary to the hospital chapel careless of whether the head or feet were higher or lower. And Justyna thought it was no longer her mother, no longer she, but a thing that could be nailed down with a lid and carried off like an object. Justyna had spent the whole day on her feet thinking more about everything that had to be done than about her mother. She was doing it for her, yet it did her no good. Once she had paid for it all, she realized the funeral would have to be without a priest, because she could not afford one. And that also made her sad, although for her mother this too was all one and the same. Since the day before she had not thought about eating. She felt cold inside and everything was quaking within her as if she were ill. She was besieged by different thoughts, mainly about her belongings—that someone might steal them from the basement, and also that she would not be able to stay with Jasia for more than two nights at the most, because Jasia had no space, and nothing else besides. She was amazed these people had come to this, to such poverty. They didn’t even have enough to eat. “Everything was all right while Franek was still working,” Jasia told her, “because he is a good brother and good son. But without work, he too is going to the dogs, I can see it already. And the police are already starting to make inquiries about him as well.” Justyna had only a few zlotys left from her money, and with these she and Jasia purchased eight ounces of meat, some bacon fat, and potatoes. Gołąbska had previously received two daily dinners from the social committee, but now they handed out only one. With this one dinner all three of them—Jasia, her mother and the little girl—had to satisfy their hunger for a whole day. And it was also the final month, because they had been warned that from the first of the next, dinners would no longer be distributed.

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Gołąbska’s flat was located at the far end of the basement. In order to reach it, you had to walk along a very low dark corridor beneath the entire width of the house. Squatting down and inclining her head to one side, Justyna followed Jasia till she was bathed in sweat from fear in the darkness. When she had come for the first time in the morning, she had been amazed it was possible to live there. The tiny room smelled of kerosene and smoke. A small lamp burned on the wall for most of the day. It was barely possible to squeeze past the bed. Only by the door was there a modicum of space, where a small stove stood, a pail of water and a second pail for slops, and beside them a little chair for the child, who could not yet walk. Clothing hung on the wall above the pails wrapped in a sheet to protect it from the dust and soot which flew out of a pipe when the stove was fuming. In the other corner was a small window with iron bars set high in the wall. A staircase of wooden planks covered in clean newspaper led up to this window. Lower down stood saucepans, glasses, and plates, while on the highest plank under the window were two flowerpots containing “brides” in bloom—plants that did not like too much light.60 Justyna sat down on the edge of the high bed next to the sick Pani Borbocka and watched how Jasia bustled about in the confined space, until she almost fainted from the smell of bacon which began to sizzle on the stove. She was that hungry. Gołąbska first served her mother lying in the bed, then fed the child, and then placed two plates for herself and Justyna on the little chair, laughing at how long it had been since they had all eaten their fill. “Have some more, Justynka, have some more, because you’re hungry,” Jasia urged politely. But she cut a large slice off the last remnant of meat and gave it to the child. Then she placed a bowl on the chair and washed up the utensils, handing Justyna a tea towel. “I count myself lucky,” she said in her rough voice, “that the scum’s really gone at last. At least I’ve got my peace and quiet, and no one shouts at me in my own home when he’s drunk. We women are so stupid. What do we get married for? What good is a husband? Only so babies can die one after the other. You waste away, lose your health. Do we need all that?” Pani Borbocka, once she had eaten, began immediately to doze. She uttered no word, just groaned from time to time, opening her eyes and staring now at Justyna, now at her daughter. Perhaps she no longer understood much as result of that interminable illness. “But who would have thought he was such a scoundrel, completely unfit to be a husband, when he looked as though he was? In the beginning he

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pretended to be kind. Even when he lost his job, he was still always trying, keeping calm, not drinking, and managing to earn something doing odd jobs. Only when he fell in with that gang did he show his true colors. If I hadn’t been so stupid, perhaps we would still be sitting in Chązebna to this day. Maybe Father would not have died.” Still talking, she poured a drop of water from a small bottle onto a rag, knelt in front of the little girl and washed her eyes with the rag. The child kept tearing away and crying. “See what a naughty girl you are. If you didn’t cry, your eyes would stop hurting at once.” She picked up the child from the chair, undressed her, sat her on the pail and then took her to the bed. “Mother, move over a bit,” she said. She slapped the sides of the pillow, drew back the quilt and laid the child beside the sick woman. “Make the sign of the cross, there’s a good girl. And sleep, sleep, don’t grumble.” She turned down the lamp so that only a small flame still burned, and began to undress. “What difference does it make to her if she sleeps like a good girl, or crosses herself?” Justyna thought. “One glance is enough to see she will die like the others. She is already blind to the world.” “A scoundrel, there’s no other word for it,” Jasia was now saying, “off the rails, a bad lot in a band of crooks. What they don’t think up, the fraudsters! They took orders for photographic portraits, and subscriptions at seven zlotys a book. It was all a swindle. And how much money they made, dear God! He went drinking with them and became a secret swindler too. Spends his whole life taking money from somewhere, always wheedling it out of someone, yet he never comes home like he should, drinking instead in some tavern.” Justyna could not see Jasia’s face. She had a cavity under her nose and sockets for eyes, as in the skull of a corpse. “When he’s got nowhere else left to steal from, he sinks so low, he takes money for funerals and buries people alive. He’ll say his wife has died, that he can’t afford a coffin, and someone will always give him something. He’s got no qualms about collecting for funerals of the living! He’s already buried Mother twice over. Then some woman whom he’s tricked comes here to me and sees Mother lying in bed alive, and asks what’s going on. What sort of family do I come from that I’m going to tell fibs? So I tell her: He’s a crook, I’m sorry, there’s nothing more to be said, a criminal. He should be handed over to the police. Let him rot in jail.”

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She was silent for a moment, and then said: “But he’s not in jail. I used to go there to find out. Not in jail, nor at the police station, nor anywhere. Obviously gone to a different neighborhood where people don’t know him. Fled.” Gołąbska rose and turned up the lamp again till it was quite bright in the room. She mounted the step, closed the window so the child would not catch cold during the night, and then made a space for Justyna at the foot of the bed. Justyna took out the pillow and shawl from her bundle, made a bed for herself and somehow found room. Then Gołąbska extinguished the lamp entirely, took another gulp of water in the dark and got into the side of the bed. Before falling asleep Justyna once again saw small imaginary faces and funny human figures in front of her eyes. They made faces at her and then vanished. In her sleep she could feel old Borbocka’s legs, hear her moaning. When she awoke in the night, it was hot and stuffy. All her bones were aching but she was afraid to straighten her limbs. Suddenly she recalled what Jasia had said: that old people had a right to die. Why did she say that? She could hardly have been bothered by the tiny amount of food her mother ate, or concerned about caring for her. But maybe she wanted to have the bed to herself so she could stretch out on it just once and sleep her fill. Fear swept over Justyna and she sensed the presence of an unknown person in the room. She fell asleep again and woke only when it was growing light. Then she saw a man lying on the ground beside the bed. Not on a straw mattress or a sheet, but directly on the floor. She guessed it was Franek, who did not return home every night. Clearly she had usurped his place in the bed. She felt uneasy he was lying on the floor because of her, and ashamed. Only in the morning did she fall properly asleep and dream that her mother was still alive, that they were both at Boleborza together with Zenon and that Zenon was kissing her. Early next morning Bogutowa’s funeral took place. Jasia Gołąbska and Franek Borbocki walked behind the coffin alongside Justyna, and behind them came Balinowska and Chąśbina. Ignacowa, caretaker Ignacy’s wife, accompanied them part of the way but had to turn back because she had work to do in the house. The whole way Justyna thought what kind of life her mother had had. My God, forever sweating over a hot stove, standing by the range. She had never even known what it was like to go anywhere else. Only during those few months at Chązebna with the Borbockis had she lived like a human being, got dressed in the mornings, gone wherever she pleased, sat in the

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garden. Even so it was a life spent always in the kitchen, by the flames, constantly cooking. At the cemetery, Justyna regretted again that there was not even a priest. Her mother had worked her entire life, yet only four people stood there to see her lowered into the grave. And all those others for whom she had cooked: did they even spare her a thought? No one did. She could have died earlier on, and they would have just hired another cook. It is better you never know what your funeral will be like.

10 The journey this time dragged on forever. Zenon was eager to get back to his own country. He was returning as a qualified man, full of impatience, no longer putting anything off till the morrow. Life in his native parts, when judged according to European standards, certainly had many embarrassing aspects. However, Zenon had chosen, entirely consciously, from among the other options open to him, this out-of-the-way spot as the place of his future existence and death. As he alighted from the railway carriage, he caught sight of the familiar group of acacia trees in the square opposite the station and a hazy, still-pink sun rising above their lacy branches. The town was small and sleepy. Within a few minutes he was in his hotel. The windows of his room looked down onto National Square, where small peasant carts loaded with vegetables and dairy produce were already beginning to assemble. The unharnessed horses, each with a large knot in its tail, stood alongside the shafts with their heads facing the carts, munching hay. Three hours of sound sleep restored Zenon’s vigor and freshness. He had the delicious sensation that he was crossing a new threshold in life. He had finally shaken off his foolish, disorganized youth. It was a beautiful sunny morning. The church towers soared high into the whitish azure. Market day with its vivid hubbub was now in full swing across the entire square. The rustic aroma of green vegetables, horses, and hay reached as far as his room. Zenon went downstairs and telephoned Elżbieta. When he heard her low muffled voice, a hot stream of emotion pierced his heart. He promised to come for lunch. “Has anything changed?” he asked. “No, nothing has changed.” He crossed the street to Chąsowicz’s cake shop to drink coffee. The coffee was good and had a thick skin such as he had not savored for months. The

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taste of the bread and fresh butter also seemed excellent. The newspapers hanging in a row on their wooden rods were Polish. He chose a local one, titled Niwa, and read his own article from beginning to end. He read it as if it were entirely foreign. The printed sentences had acquired an objective gravitas, hardened and frozen on the page, lost any connection with his living thought, which had been so full of uncertainty and disquiet. Had he been insincere when he wrote it? Had he bent his views to suit what was expected of him here? Now he believed he had not. He simply had not expressed his thoughts fully to the end, always having to interrupt them at some point so that they could be written down. He had to confine them within a limited theme, as if within bounds, so they did not penetrate the sphere where reservations and doubts began, where everything became relative and could be envisaged quite otherwise. He was well aware of the moment when distinctions and contradictions encroached, overlapped and intersected, infinitely present at one and the same time. He nodded to the tall thin waiter, who had not taken his eyes off him, paid his bill, bowed to Pani Tawnicka, the distinguished-looking silver-haired cashier, and left the cake shop. The first familiar person he saw on the street was Justyna Bogutówna. She was coming toward him from the direction of the marketplace carrying a basket of provisions on her bended arm. Bright heads of lettuce encircled a pat of butter wrapped in a dark-green horseradish leaf. She stood still in her tracks blocking his way. “Oh, good gracious! Zenon!” She yelled like a peasant, staring at him wide-eyed. “Where did you spring from?” he inquired, not exactly overjoyed. He was so taken aback by the encounter he had no idea what to do. “My mother died,” said Justyna and suddenly burst into tears. “Mother’s no longer alive.” “What are you saying?” Sympathizing rather distractedly, he hesitantly stroked her arm. “How long ago? I had no idea. So you’re no longer at Boleborza?” They walked uphill along Emerytalna Street, side by side, while Justyna hurriedly told him how it happened. As she was still carrying the basket and did not stop crying, a few people glanced around to stare at the extraordinary pair. “Wait a minute, my dear,” Zenon interrupted and halted, feeling uneasy. “We can’t talk here.” She stood and waited helplessly for what he might say.

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“Hang on,” he weighed up the situation. “Listen, let’s go to my room for a moment, then you can tell me everything. Here, opposite, in the Hotel Polski.” “But I can’t,” she replied in distress. “I’ve got to rush home, it’s already late.” “What do you mean? Where?” “I have to cook lunch. I’ve got a position now, in service. Sister Józefa at the hospital found me a place with a sick lady.” She was supposed to be in a hurry, but she continued to stand there, telling him now about Sister Józefa’s kindness. “If it weren’t for her, I don’t know what would have become of me.” Zenon grew impatient. “It makes no difference if you tell me here or in the hotel. People are walking past.” “All right then, but only for a moment.” “Of course, you can go as soon as you please.” Embarrassed, he took her upstairs. It looked as if he were taking a “girl” to his room in broad daylight. In the hotel room, Justyna laid her basket on the floor by the door, glanced at herself timidly in the mirrored door of the wardrobe, and since the chair stood some distance away, sat down on the edge of the bed. “You see, we can talk freely now, no one will get in our way . . . ,” said Zenon. “If she had died in some corner of her own and I had been able to sit by her normally,” Justyna was saying, “then it would not have been so sad. But in that hospital they’d already removed her before I got there. And before I got there, she was already dead. Then they moved her again. And she lay there all alone among the corpses with no one of her own.” She took a handkerchief from her handbag, stopped her eyes with it and wailed noisily like a small child. “Quieter, my dear, be a bit quieter,” Zenon begged, concerned about his neighbors. He sat down next to her on the bed, stroked her back and comforted her. “Come now, don’t cry, don’t cry,” he said in all sincerity. “Don’t cry, it can’t be helped, you can’t go on like this . . .” Words did not help. So he put his arms around her and clasped her to him. He removed the ugly maid’s cap from her head and kissed her hair, and then her forehead and wet face. Then she calmed down and began again to relate how they had left Boleborza, how kind Pani Ziembiewicz had been, how sorry she had felt for Mother and how she had come to see her off in person. She had given them money, but it had all gone on the funeral and Justyna had been left with nothing. She had meant to write and ask for the rest, but first she had

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been at Jasia’s and then in service, day and night at the sick lady’s side, she just couldn’t find the wherewithal to write. She had neither time nor paper. Zenon moved away a little and asked in deep annoyance, “So at Boleborza they didn’t pay you everything?” Justyna shook her head solemnly. “No, a second installment of the same amount is still outstanding. But Pani Ziembiewicz said she would send it immediately, we just had to write from town with the address where to send it.” “Wait,” he said calculating swiftly. “Tomorrow, no, better the day after tomorrow, if you come at the same time, I shall be able to give you the money. Will you be in town?” Justyna said she could come on Monday on her way back from the market. The market was always held on Thursdays and Mondays. And on those days she bought something anyway in the little shop nearby. “So remember to come to me here on Monday at the same time and I will fix it. It makes no sense for you to wait and be in difficulty when the money is due to you. I can only give you a little today.” “It’s not urgent,” she said, “because I have somewhere to sleep now and food to eat. It was very hard at the beginning, but now it’s not.” She smiled and gazed at him in gratitude. Instead of being ugly from crying, her young face had grown fuller and pinker. Her dry, straight fair hair spilled over her forehead and temples like before. “I knew you’d come back,” she said with quiet joy. “I thought of you all the time. I even dreamed about you the day Mother died. I knew you would come back, and then I wouldn’t be so alone in the world.” She drew close again and snuggled up to him. “Well, say something to me, Zenon, say something. Weren’t you a just tiny bit sorry when you left Boleborza? Go on, tell me. Weren’t you sorry?” “I was sorry to leave, naturally,” he replied. “But you see, Justyna, a lot of things have changed since then, today already . . .” He wanted to go on, but couldn’t. In an old familiar gesture, Justyna embraced him firmly around the waist with both arms and pressed her small head against his chest with all her might. “My darling,” she said. “My darling, now you are here, everything will be all right.” She was full of yearning, much distressed and very loving. Once again she was attractive, affectionate and youthful. He could not spurn her, and no longer had any wish to. He felt that all the changes which had taken place within him had done so without reference to her, not impacted in any way on his relationship with her. She had her own place in this tangle, confined

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within strict bounds, yet preserved in its entirety. Her nestling against him, keen and ardent, and her childish tenderness wrenched at old emotions buried deep inside him.61 He saw the sudden pallor of her small face, the closed eyelids beneath the knitted brow, the lips tightly closed over clenched teeth. It was enough to pull her farther onto that big flat hotel bed, crushed and crumpled by other casual, transitory loves. She went away content, laughing and terrified by turns. “Jesus, what am I going to say about where I’ve been?” she repeated as she put the ugly cap back on her fair hair. “What shall I say to her? They’ll be wondering why I’ve been out so long.” Zenon did not forget to give her a little money, although she said again it was no longer necessary, she had everything she needed. She picked up her basket from the floor but turned around again in the doorway to say goodbye. “So I should come back on Monday then, yes?” she asked shyly. “Yes, of course,” he replied. At last she departed to her pathetic, insignificant, anonymous little life, and Zenon was left alone. “Damn it!” he thought out loud. “How could I be so stupid? Am I crazy or what?” He paced around the room smoothing down his hair and clothes before going out, searching for the gloves which lay crumpled on the bed. Was he to pretend that he was surprised by what had happened? No, only he had to admit that he was surprised at himself. He saw his face in the mirror—the red, vulgar, unfriendly face of a stranger, with whom there was no understanding. The strength of the emotion he experienced was indeed unexpected and to some extent even a revelation. It was more powerful than it had been at Boleborza, more powerful than it had ever been. “What’s happened to me?” he wondered. “On what does such a thing depend? No one has any idea what exactly governs this dormant, burning, obscure thing in man, whose perverse laws are unknown either to the will or consciousness. Was it simply the long ride in the railway carriage, two nights of being tossed about without sleep, the early morning start? Or perhaps the ‘firm determination to reform my life,’ the long months of austerity and hard work spent in Paris? The ‘reward for abstinence,’ so to speak?” He recalled Elżbieta’s low voice on the telephone and the emotion he had felt then. So was it just a mechanical shift of stored-up longing, of pent-up desire for another woman? Pure chance had placed Justyna in his way. “Agh, how sordid, how sordid,” he muttered.

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His Parisian faithfulness to Elżbieta, however, had been far from exaggerated. There were women everywhere. And erotic hunger rankled beneath life’s surface, imbued it with flame and color, put red flesh under the skin. It might be suppressed, shunted onto other tracks, endowed with various names and qualifications. Yet, though held in check by criminal codes and moral norms, it still pulsed deep inside to the drumbeat of angry revolt, ringing with its persistent readiness to break loose. In his letters to Elżbieta, Zenon had told her of his work and resolutions. He railed against the “culture of the West,” which was finished and petrified in every detail. The final scraps of the old postulates of liberty, equality, and fraternity had fallen away. The melancholy of decay and decomposition hung over everything. Fearing sudden extinction, that entire world seemed to dream only of being left to gradually perish, die a natural death, its agony uninterrupted. He would write that he was homesick for his own country, where everything was still possible, where everything was beginning again from the start. The great gulf between yesterday and today had produced voids in the air, centers of low pressure ready to absorb new substance. Bare, empty spaces worn down by bondage and war awaited action and decisions. These were regions where a new system of life could arise without the inevitability of disintegration. In the late evenings he would write in this vein and then immediately step out of his backstreet hotel to cast his letter into the postbox located at the foot of a lamp post. But later, he would ride through the hot underworld reeking of soapsuds to Montparnasse. On the café terraces, beneath the colored awnings with their printed overhangs, in the sharp damp nighttime chill, people would be sitting around iron stoves dressed in summer overcoats, as if unable to resist the time-honored compulsion to be uncomfortable, and drinking café au lait or beer.62 “So this is Paris’s night life,” Zenon, who likewise could afford no other, would muse spitefully. He would cross the terrace and enter the interior of the café, and there in the smoke-ridden room furnished in art nouveau mahogany and mirrors, among the listless, frozen, hungry girls, he would find some adventure. That was how it was. It sufficed that his attitude to such “lapses” should be the right one. They happened below the level of reality, as it were, and never reached a point where what remained unspoken became a lie. They remained part of life’s underworld, deemed never to have been. But the Justyna of today could not be categorized in the same way. Right here, in this very town, straightaway on the day of his arrival, as if on the very threshold of his life’s new course, it was a more serious matter: an affair that had gone on for some time beforehand and survived in spite of everything.

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And now it had simply returned to its previous Boleborza track, and wished to go on existing. Cursing himself, Zenon eventually left his hotel room for the second time. In the hall below he hung his room key on hook number six, reciprocated the bow of the receptionist who knew, and went out onto the street turning left in the direction of National Square. The villagers had already harnessed their horses to the empty carts and departed from the marketplace leaving rubbish, manure, and straw on the pavements. The twisted pillars of the covered market, the yellow baroque façade of the church, everything stood in the dry, blinding light of approaching noon. Zenon crossed the square on the shady side, passed a row of shop windows displaying lamps, scrap iron, flour, and kasha, or writing materials, and entered Świętojańska Street.63 In the magnificent edifice, once the dilapidated boys’ gymnasium, Czechliński now resided in his capacity as starosta, a position he had occupied for two months.64 The edifice was impressive indeed. The immense vistas of the corridors glittered with stucco ornaments, huge windowpanes and white lacquered woodwork, while the expectant peasants wandering up and down them appeared incongruous and out of place. Zenon was received in an office that was more like a large reception room, furnished in the modern style in beautifully polished birch. Czechliński greeted him magnanimously from behind the vast desk and related in brief terms what sort of annoyance his promotion had caused, and to whom: who had simply not wanted to believe in it, who was offended, and who had concealed their deep humiliation by putting on a good face. As usual, the deal had been done because someone had wanted to thwart someone else’s designs, and while banking on something different and believing he was acting only in his own interests, he had in fact been smoothing the way for Czechliński. Two words in the right place at the right time, and the deal had been pulled off successfully. The concrete matter Czechliński wished to discuss with Zenon was the proposal that he should take over editorship of Niwa. In the same breath, Zenon learned who would be surprised by this appointment, who would be disappointed, and who would do everything they could to thwart it. Of course, Zenon accepted the proposal with joy and even tried to set certain terms and conditions. But Czechliński quickly prevented this, assuring Zenon that he could rely on him with complete trust. As to the details, they still had plenty of time to discuss them. This new promotion steered Zenon’s thoughts in a different direction, seeming to throw him even into a different reality. This was his life with Elżbieta, a kind of small private domain purchased through hard work and responsibility. He longed to wrest her from the

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conditions in which she suffered, from the dismal house and her crotchety old aunt, and do everything he could to make her happy. Endow her with something, give her pleasure, simply buy her something. There was a florist’s not far from the marketplace. In the small window display, miserable-looking roses wilted in glass jars. When it occurred to him, however, that he would have to carry the flowers through the streets of the town wrapped in paper and appear on her doorstep with a package that left no room for doubt, he forsook his intention and walked on without stopping. He thought about Elżbieta. But he could not picture her, could not feel that tug of emotion which is something more than sight. He remembered how he had suffered when he said goodbye. Walking away from her for the last time down this same street, he had dragged his suffering behind him like a palpable object, a lump of some heavy substance that could not be lifted off the ground. Now, after so many months away, when he was accompanied by the knowledge that he would see her in just a minute, his joy had lost its power. It was shamefaced, full of vague misgivings. He was told she was in the garden. So he went to look for her there in the shimmering heat, among the garden scents and greenery. He saw her at the far end of the alley of gooseberry bushes. She too saw him at once, but did not cry out at the sight of him or come running, but walked slowly and rather awkwardly toward him, smiling and making a conventional gesture of greeting in the air with her hand. Thus they saw each other momentarily from a distance, walking toward one another in the bright, objective light of day, as if time had slowed down for a moment so as to accommodate the totality of his disappointment. Zenon walked more and more slowly, stopping eventually on the path, waiting. She seemed too tangible, made entirely of flesh, locked within her own dimensions, closely circumscribed by the bright air. Totally different from the woman he had been thinking about. He felt with bitterness that she was cold and frigid, that there was nothing inside her. And that it was her fault. “Aren’t you pleased to see me?” he asked as she drew near. She was surprised, but answered with a laugh: “Of course I am.” He took both her hands in his, squeezed them angrily and then held them still for a moment so as to control his feelings, so as not to turn around on the spot and walk away. He leaned forward and began to kiss the too-slender

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fingers and too-bulging nails, in order not to say anything yet, not to look her immediately in the eye. But this very gesture of humility, the very nuzzling of his face against those warm, living, human hands aroused in him tenderness and contrition. “It’s you,” he said, “Elżunia.” And with both hands he lightly touched her shoulders, which were wintry, and her neck, which was burning hot. Happily he realized she was a living being, corporeal and real. “It’s me,” she replied at once and gazed at him joyfully. He had thought of her as having dark, lusterless eyes. Now in the sunshine, he saw they were light-colored. They alternated between pellucid brown and green, and were filled with the daylight. “Listen, Zenon, Zenon.” “What is it? Tell me.” “We can no longer be apart. Do you remember how long it is since we last saw each other?” He remembered exactly. He had often counted the days and months. Slowly, they walked toward the house beneath the low hanging branches of apple and cherry. Nearby voices could be heard on the other side of the fence. The small terrace was bordered by a strip of orange nasturtium. When they came out of the sun and entered the shade of the house, she said. “When you left last time, it was cold and wet, it was raining. And it was night, after midnight. You walked away quickly. The street was completely deserted. You glanced back only when you reached the bend. You looked in this direction but didn’t see me standing at the window.” “No, I didn’t,” he repeated. “The window was dark. Why? Had you switched off the light? Didn’t you want me to see you?” “I don’t know. I didn’t want you to.” “You see, that’s just like you. It was your fault. You’re not very nice to me.” Pani Kolichowska’s large empty chair stood on the terrace along with her footstool and plaid rug. Elżbieta bent down to pick up the horn-rimmed spectacles lying forgotten on the ground. “It’s not sadness, but terror,” she said in her low voice. “Fear of suffering, as of something abnormal. The first time I was aware of it was before you left, when you withdrew your hand a little because you wanted to see what time it was. It was then that I felt that fear. I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to cope with it, that there was no ordinary human way of bearing it. Because it meant you were about to get up and go . . .” “Come,” he said roughly, and took from her hands the spectacles whose arms she was folding and unfolding in the air as she spoke, like an insect’s antennae.

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She followed him into Pani Kolichowska’s gloomy sitting room. There was no one there except themselves. From further inside the apartment they could hear the distant rattle of plates being stacked. “We’ll never be apart again,” he said. In his muffled voice, Elżbieta heard not so much a promise as a decision. She sat next to him in the corner as he wished, on the small sofa. “But it’s a great happiness to suffer so much because of another person, Zenon.” “Come,” he repeated. Her mouth was unresponsive when he kissed her, and her body, which he now embraced, unaccustomed to pleasure. “Why so defensive?” he asked. Kneeling on the floor, he stroked her legs underneath her dress and nestled his face against her knees. “Why don’t you want to?” He felt no resentment toward her. Only weariness and immense sympathy. For her and for himself. They had both entered into a business which was burdensome and difficult, uncertain and obscure, and in which they both now had to be. He recalled that Justyna, on the day her mother died, had slept at Jasia Gołąbska’s directly beneath this floor. And that she had dreamed of him that night.

11 On the following Monday Justyna came again to the hotel to collect the remainder of the Boleborza money. Zenon had remembered she was coming and contrived in advance how he was going put a definitive end to the affair. He had resolved to tell her that they were seeing each other for the last time and explain why, entirely openly. Things, meanwhile, turned out differently. Above all, he had not expected her so early. She came first thing in the morning before he had even managed to get dressed. This in itself made it harder for him to adopt a sufficiently resolute stance. Secondly, despite his efforts, he had not succeeded in having the whole of the outstanding sum ready for that day. As on the first occasion, Justyna left her basket on the floor by the door. Then she sat down on the chair by the bed where he lay and recounted a few insignificant things about the sick woman in whose house she was in service, about little Jadwisia Gołąbska who was totally blind, about Jasia and old Pani Borbocka.

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“Since Mother’s death, wherever I go, someone is always ill,” she said morosely. Zenon weighed up his position in silence, without taking his eyes off her. She had a comic upper lip dragged upward in the middle by her short nose, as if it were not long enough. Her teeth, uneven but white, were bared almost every time she spoke, without her having to smile. And they were moist. She soon brightened up however. “But do you know what I would like most? To be a sales girl in some shop. I would simply do what I had to do, and then nothing else would matter. I would go home in the evenings and no one would have a right to tell me off.” He gathered that she was unhappy in her work in service, and sensed future problems stemming from that direction. “What kind of shop, for example?” he asked as if he were intending to help her. But the thought of Justyna’s free evenings was hardly alluring. Justyna was not as clean or physically attractive as she had been in the country. Her very white shiny skin, coated as if with a porcelain glaze, now appeared anemic. The filthy work of service in town had totally changed her. The roughness of her hands, her sweaty clothes, the vague whiff of fried fat hovering in the air: it all clung to her and became part of her whole being. She sat before him one and the same, yet Zenon saw her more and more differently. For a time she seemed merely like someone else’s servant, whose unceremonious presence in his room was unaccounted for and inconvenient. A moment later she was an obtrusive lover with whom he had to break at any cost. And finally she became Justyna, the dear kind girl from Boleborza, whose fate had indeed mattered to him up until now. Meanwhile he too, in keeping with her changing qualities, became someone else in turn. One small part of himself now remembered how she had once said to him: “For your sake, Zenon, I would endure I don’t know what tortures, I’m not afraid of anything, I don’t care about anything.” At the same time, something else within him made him notice that her neck was just as straight and smooth as it had been before, and her small breasts, whose soft swelling began directly below the collarbone, were just as firm and widely set apart as they had always been, and did not easily lend themselves to being caressed together. And that her whole self, impressionable and vulnerable, in her shoddy red sweater and ash-gray skirt, was full of every kind of sweetness. Zenon was the first to stretch out his arms and say: “Come to me.” This time, when he took her, he no longer had anything within himself to overcome. As for Justyna, her habitual childish fondness turned suddenly and frantically into blind, unconscious exultation. She closed her eyes and clenched

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her bared teeth. Below the eyebrows, knitted and distorted in martyr-like fashion, her small face froze in pain and ecstasy. With bated breath, horrorstruck and paralyzed by fear, she flew into that other world as though into darkness. Concentrating in rapt attention on her pleasure, she knew how to experience it to its ultimate, almost imperceptible throe. Once its time had passed, however, she had no desire at all to understand the thing or explain it. Neither of them ever had anything to say about it to the other. Their brief, raw, and silent love-making took place without entreaty or thanksgiving. Having scarcely recovered, Zenon found himself returning to the notion that this self-sufficient pathos of accelerated, condensed existence required neither justification nor motivation. At the same time he wanted Justyna to leave as soon as possible. Fear that the water in the bathroom might have gone cold became his greatest concern of the moment. “For God’s sake, child, quick, quick, someone might come in, and then what would happen?” he urged, in a loud impatient whisper to Justyna, who was already gathering her things. Following her departure, he dressed in lightning speed and, full of disagreeable and humiliating thoughts, rushed to his editorial office. His work there looked quite different from how he had once imagined it. A dirty little room on the ground floor with gray wallpaper peeling off the walls, a window smeared by crawling flies, the summertime stench of strangers’ kitchens and dustbins—this was the framework of his editorial activities. During editor’s visiting hours, a host of people would appear in succession, all with their own proposals, injuries, and talents. That day Zenon was privileged to see at close quarters the formerly distant person of the Countess Wojciech Tczewska of Chązebna. She did not come alone. She was accompanied by an individual in a cassock, a bulky heavy-boned man with dark brown hair, a large nose, and bottomless black eyes concealed deep within his skull. For two years, Father Czerlon had been the priest at Chązebna in place of the old priest to whom Walerian Ziembiewicz had confessed his sins of impurity. Now he sat on the opposite side of the table, gloomy and silent. Countess Tczewska explained their business herself, without his assistance. She spoke slowly and with deep deliberation, in tones vibrating with her noble ancestry. And in those places where any other person might have had occasion to smile, she sighed. Zenon knew this woman had given birth to nine children in her time, among them Róża, who had once played with little Justyna Bogutówna among the flowerbeds in the Chązebna garden. Her tall lean figure suddenly broadened and spread excessively below the waist, like the abdomens of

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certain insects. But her face seemed unaware of this, dwelling in some lofty sphere of sweet pensive sanctity. The face was immobile, entirely constrained by the taut, close-fitting skin that stretched upward from the nose, across the bony forehead and scarcely perceptible eyebrows, toward the temples. Every movement was an effort. From beneath the narrow eyelids, the bulging eyes stared out at Zenon, gray and lusterless, like the two enormous pearls that did not hang from her ears but lay embedded in them, as if they had taken root there. At the sides of the face not a hair was out of place; everything was smooth, clean, and just so. Only the mouth—pale and too full-lipped, closing with difficulty over the glistening teeth, and oozing sweetness—only the mouth testified otherwise. She interrupted herself in order to heave a sigh, and only after she had released an entire breath did she return to her theme. It concerned a series of lectures under the general heading “On the Essence of Religious Experience,” which Father Czerlon had agreed to deliver in the town at the recently opened premises of the Ladies’ Circle. The program ought absolutely to be publicized in advance and obviously keenly supported. The priest clung to her every word with eager attention endorsing their substance with his whole being. When the appropriate moment arrived, he reached with his hand across his broad chest and into the front opening of his cassock, edged with its little buttons and loops, and in a gesture already familiar to Zenon’s editorial eye, drew out a typescript and placed it silently on the table. Zenon instinctively intercepted his questioning stare, which was full of compliance and humility, and to which the Countess responded with a sigh. Having obtained the agreement of the editor, Countess Tczewska slowly rose to her feet, lifting her heavy abdomen after her. Father Czerlon stood up quickly at the same time, at once a whole head taller than she. It was enough to look at the man to be in no doubt that his business with himself was troubled and none too happy. He could be cruel toward himself, and yet was completely helpless. People knew that he hailed from those parts. He was the son of a wood merchant, a simple man who had made a fortune and then lost money during the war. He was ordained after his father’s death, of which he learned while living abroad. The Countess brought him and drove him away in her limousine, like a precious trophy that could not be entrusted to just anyone. As she took her leave of Zenon, she was unable to force a smile even then, but merely sighed deeply. Whereas Father Czerlon smiled instead, lowering the lids over his extraordinarily burning eyes, as if he were ashamed of something. As if one human being’s naked suffering were an improper and

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scandalous thing. The Countess’s departure was like that of a bear tamer, leading away the dangerous beast on its chain of patient docility.

12 A complement, so to speak, to the visit of this remarkable pair was the appearance two days later of the Countess’s husband. Count Wojciech Tczewski brought with him, of course, the problems of agricultural reform, of the breaking up of landed estates and parceling out of land, of loans and debts. In addition, however, the Count took a keen interest in the scourge of poaching, on which he was even intending to write an article, as well as in the theater, and regional theater in particular. He saw the main threat to the latter in cinematography, or rather in what cinema had become nowadays, namely internationalized, “Bolshevized” film. “It’s hardly surprising” he said, although it was clear he could not resist his own sense of surprise, “it’s hardly surprising, when I often prefer to drop into the town cinema myself rather than spend the whole evening bored at the theater.” This, then, was clearly not the main issue. The clash of interests quickly focused on the person of Panna Lucia Wisłowska. Still only a child and yet what talent! A genuine gift of God, ideal, heavenly inspiration . . . Once again a portefeuille emerged from a breast pocket and out of it came a carefully folded extract, torn along the creases, from Niwa. Who was it who wrote the theatrical reviews undersigned by a lowercase “x”? Here, on the one hand, was lack of support from the press and, on the other, favoritism shown toward jealous older actresses, which meant only supporting roles and no chance to shine. Meanwhile a foreign cinematographic company, obviously Jewish, was tempting her with propositions. Panna Wisłowska was hesitating. At her age such precarious offers gave the illusion of a career. Hence the potential loss to the theater, to the ancestral art of our fathers, and—to put it in more human terms—simply the undoing of that child. The clean-shaven jaws of the elderly gentleman moved feebly up and down as if loosened at the hinges. His wobbling hands refolded the dirty scrap of paper while a red flush of secret, shameful emotions spread over his noble countenance from somewhere deep inside his body. This, then, was how the whole Chązebna situation appeared more or less at close quarters. Here too the underlying truth was plain enough. Here too a naked, pitiful, standard pattern of behavior,65 nourished simply by the

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sufferings of the heart and imbued with every sublime value, sprouted the wings of loftier interpretation. It was summer again, stiflingly hot, oppressive, trapped between the baking roofs and cobbles of the town. Far away, across the many of thousands of hectares owned by the Chązebna estate,66 under a scorching sun, oxen and horses, tractors and people were on the move—swarms of bare black heels making their way in every direction along its paths, fields, and boundary strips. Reaping machines clattered in the corn. Beside the barn at Boleborza, in the watery shade of two ancient birches in the farmyard, the vibration of the traction engine, remembered from childhood, shook the sultry air. The whole vast expanse of land spread with forests, fields, and meadows was united as one by the daily toil of this swarming, teeming, rustling human multitude, feeding with its own very existence the business of those few individuals elevated above its surface. Thousands of interconnected strings drew the condensed energy of their work toward that one point. In this culminating knot, the directions taken by every effort and force intersected so as to achieve their justification as well as their highest sense. Those few individuals were the masters of Chązebna, Popłoszna, Gwarecki Grange, Piesznia, Boleborza, the Bramiński woods, of sawmills, flour mills, and distilleries: the Tczewskis of Zenon’s childhood, the people on whose behalf his father had overseen others to ensure they worked, beaten little boys and girls so they did not steal, haggled with hired laborers over their wages—the people whose indulgent bounty his father had to thank for his “peaceful daily bread in old age.” Czechliński insisted that for the time being Zenon should “not touch” Tczewski, and so Zenon did not include a letter to the editor, whose author—very naïvely to be sure—had criticized the economies introduced to the Chązebna properties by the new plenipotentiary. Instead he printed a detailed report discussing the ceremonial consecration of the Economic Agency of the Ladies’ Circle, which the Countess Tczewska had founded in the town, as well as the article by Wojciech Tczewski on poaching. Zenon was especially disgusted when he ran his eyes mechanically over the roundup of local news in what was supposed to be his own newspaper, and read about the dramas of small-town existence—robberies, fights, and suicides—portrayed in a waggish and facetious manner. The titles of these stories and their unexpected endings were the work of Marian Chąśba, a thin slight youth who wrote poisonous verses and who had been a protégé of Elżbieta already under Czechliński’s editorship. Hungry, embittered, ironic, and always hatching something on the sly, Chąśba produced these jokes in

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return for groszes, as if he himself were destined one day to leap from a window in jest, or hang himself in the privy. Zenon found himself doing not what he wished or having to do it differently. Matters he imagined he had resolved long ago thrust themselves upon his consciousness with renewed energy, demanding to be thought through again from the beginning, forcing him to think along more conventional lines. The daily pressure of other people’s worlds produced in him a state of constant anxiety. Everything seemed provisional, anticipating the real life still to come. He reckoned on a few more months, the time needed to pay off his Paris debt to Czechliński, which was now being deducted from his monthly salary, furnish a small apartment, marry Elżbieta, and live like a human being. Meanwhile everything seemed to be taking place on the surface and as if in quotation marks. A particular anxiety resided in the fact that the quotation marks were gradually beginning to fall away from the conventional words contained within them, as these words were repeated again and again on a daily basis, thus becoming an essential abbreviation for a life lived in haste. Only the afternoons were good. The furniture in the cluttered, murky sitting room would lose its contours, while Elżbieta herself seemed to blend into her surroundings behind a curtain of hanging dust that vibrated in the ricocheting sunbeams—entirely rooted, despite her wishes, in the house at which she never ceased to be amazed. Not only because people lived in it in layers, on top of one another, but because of the hidden arteries that ran inside its walls underneath the wallpaper and plaster, distributing water and draining away waste, or the electric current shooting along its wire nerves to radio sets and microphones, chattering, singing, and buzzing. And since the previous winter, the pipes of the new central heating system, a long cherished ambition of Pani Kolichowska, had also begun to splutter and whisper beneath its skin. Elżbieta did not forget to add that it had been impossible to install the pipes so they reached the two studios in the attic. And that the underground flats did not even have running water. In the evening, the spiders concealed in the nooks and crannies of the room would come to life: clumsy, hairy-legged, and harassed by the daily destruction of their webs, which Ewcia inconsiderately swept away with her feather duster. The windows opening onto the garden constantly encouraged this invasion. The spiders would emerge from the darkness—huge, black, shaggy, and bedraggled—and come to a standstill on the walls or ceiling completely unaware of how revolting and terrifying they were. Others,

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smaller and more ethereal, would suddenly drop from the ceiling and hang in mid-air anywhere they chose, as if entranced by the perfection of the perpendicular line they themselves had drawn. Then the strangest of creatures would begin its wandering across the table, over the books and old-fashioned albums—a spider no bigger than a ladybird on legs too high for it, like many-storey scaffolding, but soft and flimsy like hair. As it walked, it would bob up and down in dance-like motions, setting down each leg nonchalantly yet ceremonially with a kind of exalted elegance. Clearly it was refined and sensitive, cautious and fastidious, and could make itself higher or lower according to its own desire. In this way it would come close to Elżbieta as she leaned on the table and, having accidently touched her bare arm with the extremity of one of its legs, would withdraw at once with exaggerated delicacy, as if deeply offended, in order to scurry away at a different angle, undulating over the uneven surfaces and vanishing into the draped folds of the tablecloth. Elżbieta maintained that the spiders in the sitting room were harmless. She would nevertheless take the precaution of throwing them out of the window. Elżbieta went shopping in the town. Despite the sweltering heat, the interiors of the shops in the covered market, which remained unheated throughout the winter, retained the coolness and odor of a cellar. Zenon liked to watch her purchasing trifles with an unserious, feminine purpose. An old Jewish woman, unhurried and indifferent, shriveled by the frosts of many winters, would shuffle around a pile of shallow cardboard boxes on the counter-top. Eventually she would open one and present her wares, deftly slipping the lid she had just removed underneath the box. There were brightly colored ribbons, pink elastics edged with puckered frills, narrower and wider bands of lace. In one of the boxes, the rows of embroidery silks wound on little paper reels looked like multicolored cigarettes. During the whole time that Elżbieta was choosing, the shopkeeper did not glance in her direction and did not attempt to advise her, evidently not wishing to influence her decision or exert any moral pressure, but only scratched her forehead with her crooked index finger slowly beneath her loosely fitting wig, while the strange construction of flattened bows of ribbon, strips of black lace, and violet-colored beads shifted simultaneously on her head. She raised her eyes only when Elżbieta asked the price, and then measured the required lengths with the somnolent movements of a mechanical ritual, as if she had lost faith long ago in the meaning of the rite she was performing. Elżbieta paid, but if it transpired that the shopkeeper had no change, then Zenon had to take out his money and exchange the notes for small change or

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lend her the cash. To them, all this was important and afforded them untold pleasure. Their love, drawn into different aspects of life, became ordinary and matter-of-fact. They would take the nearest route out of town. As they walked side by side, each had the profile of the other alongside as their undisputed everyday property to which they were entitled, as a certainty. Whenever they turned their heads toward the other, the eloquent meeting of eyes suggested everything was as it should be, that nothing had changed. The street, shut off by the lowered barrier of the level crossing, traversed the railway tracks at a point where they were very wide. The rails of branch lines, brought together here and there by switches, converged and separated again, concentrating along their flanks the various accessories required to fulfill their purpose: soot-covered warehouses, sheds built of blackened brick, dirty glass roofs, wooden or iron posts thrusting into the air the shapes, lights, and colors of their various symbols, pumps, heaps of coal dust, stacks of long planks, cables in the sky and on the ground. In a siding to the right, nearer the station, a long line of goods wagons and empty platforms stood in anticipation of some decision. Men with blackened faces would emerge from seedy little huts erected at the bifurcations, in order to stand for a moment, flag in hand, at the designated spot and, having fulfilled their role in the overall scenario, return again to their solitary existence. An engine pulling a single truck passed slowly in front of the closed barrier and then, after a short interval, came back on the next track pushing the same truck in front of it. Its heavy breath enveloped the sky in sudden darkness but was quickly dispersed over the rooftops, walls, and earth, and disappeared. A man leaned out of the engine at an angle. Holding on to the high handrail with one hand, he signaled with the other to some invisible person far ahead in the distance. The barrier went up and Zenon and Elżbieta stepped onto the low wooden gangway of the crossing. The lines of metal track crossed here in grooves. The wooden boards alongside them were stained with black drops of tar. Farther on, between the sleepers, tiny gray weeds forced their pitifully malformed stalks upward out of the gravel. Beyond a large green patch of exhausted grass stood a long high fence painted yellow and topped by a row of jagged teeth carved out of the wood. From behind the teeth, three sparse old acacia trees climbed into the sky, still managing to flower amid the smoke and soot. The sun beat down. In the scorching heat, the distant azure turned totally white, while the whole early afternoon, suspended above that segment of railway track, seemed indifferent beyond belief, like an empty bubble.

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“Why is it so sad here?” Elżbieta asked. They found themselves on the terrain of a new suburb amid parceled-out plots of waste and fallow land. Wooden sheds, fences, and railings rose straight out of the grass. Shabby little houses stood in small gardens where nothing yet wanted to grow. A narrow alleyway between the properties came out directly onto marshland, bordered somewhere in the distance by low pine woods, and led by means of a footbridge consisting of a few wooden planks over the dark waters of a sewer. They had hardly stepped onto the bridge when they heard the loud splash of three frightened frogs dropping heavily into the water one after the other, like stones. Since childhood they had been familiar with these parts, with this shabby, one-and-only walk out of town to the woods. They remembered a time when there were no houses at all, just sprawling barren pastureland and only the brickworks perched on the horizon. Now, at the edge of the settlement, a house was being constructed that would be finished by the autumn. They would stop and examine the building, planning to rent a small flat there far away from Staszic Street. In the meantime, however, they returned to Staszic Street. Late in the evenings they would sit together on the terrace, or on the white bench at the foot of the garden under the lilacs. Gentle soughs of summer air circled above them. Beyond the branches, the great sky was now black and distant, full of shining white stars impossible to imagine as other suns and other worlds. Thus the whole affair took shape precisely in accordance with the familiar pattern: the girl from the village and the young lady from the bourgeois town house—fiancée and lover, ideal love and desire. And yet it only looked that way from the outside, as if it were the result of a fatal irony, pure coincidence. Zenon resisted this assertion, feeling certain the real truth lay elsewhere. First and foremost, nothing would have happened if Justyna’s mother had not died and if at Boleborza they had paid old Bogutowa her whole salary. Indeed, the first thing he would have said was that he had got engaged and they could no longer see each other. But how could he have pushed her aside when she was crying, when she was “all alone in the world” and greeted him as her only friend? Their subsequent meetings were merely a consequence of the first. Everything was completely different from how you might imagine it in other cases. Yet his ideal love for Elżbieta was also not as straightforward as it seemed. It was not simply a question of the dualistic, alternating pattern of body

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and soul. It was true he had taken into account her resistance, as if this ultimate question were not the most important—there was still time for that in their happiness. He had agreed to postpone it to a later date, not to make it dependent on closed doors, on the possibility that Pani Kolichowska or Ewcia could enter at any moment. He imagined this to be evidence of ordinary tact on his part, or maybe amour propre, which prevented him from begging for what ought to be freely given. However, the kind of intoxication engendered by this state of affairs was entirely and distinctly erotic. Certain words uttered by Elżbieta had a physical effect on him, like her caresses, sending shivers across his temples and eyelids. From their silent intimacy, from the long kiss planted with dry lips on a tiny part of hand or foot, from the idolatrous cleaving of his forehead toward her knees, an emotion arose full of voluptuous sweetness, of contemplative bliss, a kind of rapture of a “higher order.” Such non-localized, long-drawn-out ecstasy totally satisfied him for the present. So perhaps he was not driven by delicacy of feeling or amorous ambition. Maybe he was not tactful at all, but just did not desire her enough. His love for Elżbieta had not yet entered those dark regions of instinct where Justyna had dominated thus far. Why then did he resist acknowledging the standard pattern when the thing was ultimately the same as with every other man caught in a similar position? Was it because each commonplace affair seemed unique from the inside and the pattern of feelings fresh every time? Or because looking at oneself through the eyes of other people, scrutinizing oneself through their judgment, contains a disturbing element which we cannot bear to contemplate. Zenon knew this anxiety already in childhood. He was astonished that he alone was himself in the midst of the world, while a kind of threat, a loneliness that was impossible to bear, lurked in the discovery. He would try to find himself among people who had followed a different path, establish himself objectively, disengage himself from the world, define himself as he would any other person. With great effort he eventually achieved this way of seeing himself. He would imagine that he was Zenon Ziembiewicz, the son of the overseer from Boleborza, a farm belonging to the Chązebna estate. That after passing to the fourth year with excellent grades, he came home to spend the holidays with his parents, and that in precisely this capacity he stood on certain afternoons by the railing separating the farmyard from the front drive and its lawn—in his capacity, that is, as the son of Walerian Ziembiewicz, as seen by people leading horses to the stables or herding cattle from the pasture. He tried to find himself in this way, and it was here he

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floundered the most. His internal sense of himself fell away horror-struck at the sight, as something totally different from what he now saw, and there were no words in the world to describe it. There were no words to express the anguish flowing from that feeling of separateness. From that time onward Zenon had never been free from the anxiety aroused by such confrontations. And his entry into any stock pattern of behavior he perceived as fresh confirmation of his belonging to a reality we can only recognize, because it is a total contradiction of ourselves. Whatever the affair with Justyna was, however, it had to be terminated. At the beginning of the month Zenon finally had in his hand the sum of money that had provided the formal basis for her visits. So on that occasion he could have entered into some sober explanations. But contrary to his expectations, Justyna was the first to enter into explanations. She announced, namely, that she was pregnant. This time market day coincided with bad weather. Outside it was chilly and windy and had been raining since early morning. Justyna arrived drenched. He opened the door before she knocked, since he had heard her wiping the soles of her shoes on the mat so as not to bring mud into the room. Once he had admitted her, she unwound herself from her wet shawl and looked around for somewhere to hang it. Following his advice she contented herself with the hook screwed onto the back of the door. She did not come out with it immediately. Instead she prepared her effect for a while in a naïve, alarming manner. At the same time, however, she was more dignified than usual, a little solemn. “Well, tell me, what’s the matter?” he asked. Startled, she said with a laugh that she was only pretending, it was nothing. The dark overcast day entering from under the rolled-up blind, the drumming of the rain on the windowpane and Justyna’s coy behavior amounted to a totality he could not bear. “That’s enough of this nonsense,” he said roughly. Then, immediately harnessing his impatience, he inquired in a gentler tone: “Well, tell me what you wanted to say.” She stood in the middle of the room, awkward and undecided. Lowering her head, she spoke the words in a muffled voice: “Because it’s not how it should be with me.” Only now did alarm sweep over him: “What do you mean, Justyna?” he asked, still far from sure. “How come it’s not how it should be?” “I wondered if it could still be this or that. But now it can’t be anything else, only this.”

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Gradually it dawned on him. But he did not approach her, did not move from the spot. He was collecting his thoughts, trying to understand why he had not taken this possibility into account before, why it had not entered his head that this could happen. She saw his locked, immobile face. “There’s nothing to be afraid of, Zenon,” she said quickly. In a single leap she was at his side, clasping him firmly around the waist and talking at close quarters. “I am not a bit, not a bit worried, remember! Don’t imagine I’m stupid like other girls. What do I care about people and what they say, when I’ve got you?” He did not want to push her aside, and attempted only to loosen the pressure of her arms. But they would not allow themselves to be unclasped. “Wait, wait, let me think,” he muttered stroking her shoulder blade in a helpless gesture. He felt horribly uncomfortable and breathless from the smell of her soaked clothes and her fatigue. “Think what you’re saying,” he urged. But she kept repeating in exultation: “Don’t be afraid. I’m even pleased, really I am. I’ve always loved children, more than I can say. Don’t be afraid, I’ll manage with the child on my own. I can always earn a living. Mother brought me up alone, and she never had anyone. But I’ve got you, Zenon, so I know I won’t come to grief.” Eventually he succeeded in freeing himself from her grasp and making her sit normally on a chair. “Calm down, my dear, we should wait a bit. Maybe it just seems this way to you. Maybe it’s not really true.” Zenon’s voice was warm and sincere. “Why say all this? Why get so worked up, when nothing is yet certain?” Now she did not interrupt. She listened, strove to properly understand, did not even look at him as he spoke. Listening intently, she pinched her lips so tightly they stuck out prominently in front like a bird’s beak, and looked sad. Only when he had finished did she raise her head, and slowly, solemnly contradict him. “No, it definitely doesn’t just seem this way to me.” “So, even if—” Zenon was now resigned. “Even if . . . I don’t want to advise you, but you yourself must understand . . .” The thoughtless, confused words came out of their own accord, no longer subject to his control. The most sickening thing in this abominable state of affairs was his animosity toward Justyna mixed with concern for her, a shamefaced kind of pity mixed

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with unbridled irritation. How dreadfully stupid she was, my God! Why on earth did he ever meet her? Why did he get so carried away last summer at Boleborza? After all, he had never sought her out. In fact he had tried specifically to avoid her, guided by some wise instinct, and had steered well clear of the bench where she sat embroidering (and costing “only as much as she eats”). He had not sought her out—neither at Boleborza, nor here in town. He thought these thoughts knowing full well that they were hideous, if only to convince himself that he was not to blame, that it was she herself . . . What he said was not clear-cut. He remembered one thing, which served in this case as the minimum—so to speak—he demanded of himself: that the decision about whether the child was to live, or not, was entirely up to her. At the same time, however, he was in absolutely no doubt that to share a child, this very child, with this girl to whom he already felt indifferent, would be monstrous. He kept himself in check and chose his words carefully. It seems he said nothing that should not have been said. She listened calmly as if she did not yet believe in the fate that awaited her. “All right, Zenon, you’ve said enough. You seem to be so angry with me . . .” “No, no, what are you saying? I’m not angry. But we’re not children, after all. A bit of common sense is required.” They were silent for a moment. He could hear a slight grating noise in her throat, as she forced herself to swallow her saliva. Zenon opened the window. It had stopped raining, and was cold and overcast. Fresh bracing air rushed into the stuffy room just as it had into the Boleborza dining room on the evening when he had spoken to Justyna for the first time. The rattle of carts leaving the marketplace was deafening. “Oh! What am I doing sitting here?” exclaimed Justyna horrified. She turned around and took the wet shawl from the back of the door. “And what’s this money for?” she asked. “What, don’t you remember? It’s the exact sum still owing, which you and your Mother didn’t take from Boleborza.” She waved her hand with an air of distaste, as if it were not important. But she took the money. “And if there’s anything you need, remember—” She screwed up her eyes staring at a single point. She hesitated for a moment, disconcerted. “Don’t worry your head about what I told you. I’m on my own now.” “Put it in your bag or you’ll lose it,” Zenon reminded her.

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Her handbag lay in the basket by the door. She bent over to extract it. She put the money inside, then wrapped herself tightly in the brown check shawl and said, with the basket already in her hand: “Maybe things will still work out differently?”

13 Elżbieta would enter Pani Kolichowska’s bedroom with a basin full of water and a shaggy pile towel slung over her arm. A cracked cake of soap and a sponge, resembling a soft porous brick, would already be waiting on a chair beside the bed. Ewcia would follow carrying an empty bucket and an extra jug of water. The arrival of her niece brought Pani Kolichowska no joy. But her face distinctly clouded over at the sight of Ewcia. She disliked the girl who had grown old as a servant in her house. And she wanted no one to wait on her except Elżbieta. The rain, driven at an angle by the wind, ran down the windowpanes, and cold penetrated the room. Pani Kolichowska always felt worse in such weather and never left her bed. Elżbieta would wash her aunt bit by bit like a large inanimate object. Pani Cecylia allowed herself to be manipulated, turned onto her side, uncovered and covered up—reluctant, sulky, and passive. She tolerated everything with eyes half-closed, watching out only for when the pain made itself felt inside her. “Careful, careful!” she would worry in anticipation. “Never fear, I haven’t forgotten,” Elżbieta would say hurriedly and gently bathe the aching knee. When they reached her hands, Pani Cecylia would gaze with downcast eyes at her doubly disfigured fingers soaking in the water. The sponge stroked them warmly and pleasantly but the towel seemed rough immediately afterward. Everything was constantly ready to hurt afresh. Suddenly, the fate that had now proved to be her fate, too, struck Pani Cecylia as something quite unexpected. “What is this?” she said. “A person simply lies, cannot move, cannot stand up. Or pick up a glass from the bedside table without help. Like a lump of dead wood.” “Wait a few days,” Elżbieta would interrupt. “In a few days’ time, as soon as it stops raining, you’ll feel better at once.” There was no point in replying. Pani Cecylia stared silently into the empty air. Only after a while did she mutter:

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“And that it should happen to me . . .” Elżbieta would then brush and comb Pani Cecylia’s hair. It was not yet entirely gray but fell out so violently that only a long thin pigtail remained of the once luxurious plait. Between the oily strands raked by the comb, the bald skin shone through. “Sometimes I wonder how you’re not disgusted having to do everything for me.” What Elżbieta felt was not disgust. Maybe it was something worse. Amazed, she wondered what exactly she was doing with this old woman’s body, what this process she served was meant to express? The limp yellowy skin still held the soft human flesh intact within its former framework. But an insignificant movement was enough for it to spill from one side to the other beneath the skin’s surface, as if it had come away from the bone, as if it were fluid. Calluses and arthritic lumps were not as repulsive as this commonplace image of metamorphosis, prompted by old age and totally in keeping with the order of things. “But who did everything for me every time I was ill, ever since I was a little girl, if not you?” As she spoke these words, Elżbieta’s voice trembled and shook from emotion. Such tenderness did not belong, however, to the present moment or relate to the sick woman. It arose out of other resources. Elżbieta was thinking namely of her mother, who had never nursed her when she had been ill. Oh, that beauty had not been damaged by the years! Last spring Elżbieta had gazed upon it to her heart’s content. She could still smell the scent of the air, pungent from the sun-baked southern foliage. She was standing behind her mother on the large balcony of a lakeside villa. Above the balcony hung an awning. And the air beneath the awning was filled with luminous shade, fragrant with something bitter, like orange rind. It was midday. Below in the garden, the large fleshy flowers of a magnolia-tree were in bloom on the leafless branches, and farther down, beside the water, were white and red camellias. Her mother was nervous and irritated. First she had been in a hurry, and now she was waiting impatiently. It was best to keep quiet. Elżbieta examined her dress with curiosity. It was made of soft, downy white wool and fastened diagonally across the chest with three buttons, with three round knobs of pink coral. There were no pearls around her neck, only a string of the same, slightly smaller pink coral beads. Her cross pouting lips were painted bright carmine red. And she also had something else in pale red, a kind of enamel bowknot attached to each of her white downy slip-on

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shoes. She was all clean, fresh, luxurious, sleek, without a single blemish. The most beautiful thing you could imagine. Entirely useless. Purely decorative. How could one be so immaculate and yet be alive!? She was not a mother, merely another woman. Her beauty, her whole quality, was nothing but a tribulation. Her mother made no effort to hide her feelings. She clutched the balustrade of the balcony with both hands, and those hands too were beautiful and had coral-colored fingernails. Knitting her brow, she stared in front of her without uttering a word. But not at the lake. Nor at the mountains rising on the far bank—ethereal, as if blown, like glass, out of blue dust—nor at the white sails approaching over the translucent, patinated surface of the water. To her, none of this was worth looking at. She was watching instead the little latticework gate in the wall, because it was through there that one of her men-friends would again arrive. She did not smile when he entered. Beautiful when sullen and angry, she smiled extremely rarely. Thus her smile meant much more than the smiles of other women. It was not only gracious and childishly artless but even full of goodness. Why did Elżbieta think her mother was not a good woman? From the totality of that moment she remembered most powerfully—as though not with conscious memory but with the very skin of her body—the gravel crunching under the gentleman’s heavy soles, his firm grating footsteps. She could no longer recall whether it was the thin bronzed one, for whom telegrams constantly arrived from his bank in Algiers, or the Romanian, in whose garden near Galați on the Black Sea bitter almonds grew.67 She was thinking that her mother was not a good woman. But what was truly tangible and real in goodness? What was it exactly? After all, it was not a series of good deeds, which had such complex and different motivations. And it was not thoughts of caring concern for the lives of others—thoughts that were remote, remembered, and expressible in words. Wasn’t the most real thing, the only genuine thing, what we feel with our own being, like the movement of our outstretched arms, like the warm tremor in our eyelids when we stare hard at something, like a smile experienced from within—its taste in our mouth, its deep moist substance? Elżbieta could not even recall her mother’s smile, but she knew it was not an expression of goodness, but goodness itself. Why on earth did she still need proof? Pani Cecylia was not easily reconciled. Her eyes were squinting in anxiety and impatience. Her thin lips clung tightly, painfully to her false teeth. Here too the contortions of anger were anger itself, and the expressions of suffering, suffering itself.

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“And you know after all,” Elżbieta concluded coldly, “that I like being beside the sick.” Dismantling the things on the bedside table, shaking the cloth out of the window and arranging everything afresh, changing the water in the vase of flowers, carrying out the bathroom accessories, restoring to the cheerless room its more permanent, sound internal order—this was nevertheless a kind of solace. When the sick woman was finally lying in her clean nightgown in the freshly made bed, Elżbieta let herself be deceived for a moment, imagining that from now on things would be different, that something would take a turn for the better. And she expected that her aunt might smile, that she would be comfortable now, feel better, experience relief. But for Pani Cecylia, this altered nothing. A moment later, motionless and at peace, she was at last able to surrender again to her suffering. When Ewcia brought in coffee and rusks on a little tray, Pani Kolichowska shifted with a moan, eyeing the food with disgust. Elżbieta once again slipped into her role. But having done what was necessary, she was ready to leave. Pani Cecylia detained her with a question: “Why isn’t Ziembiewicz coming?” “He has only just got back, he’s been away somewhere. He telephoned yesterday.” “So is he coming today?” Her aunt’s questions were embarrassing. Zenon had not come for five days. He had explained the reasons and she had no cause to doubt them. Yet the extent of the desolation created by his absence was ominous. At the thought that he might not come that day either, Elżbieta felt a sudden sharp stab of pain below the ribs, pain that was pure terror. She had been putting off the things she had not done, as well as the words left unsaid, until this one meeting. Narrowing her eyes, she resolved from now on to be different. To be “good.” Since early morning she had been reflecting on their previous meeting and on one of their kisses in particular. Her knowledge of such things was more bodily now than that previous reality.68 She thought with her whole body, from top to toe. She would fly into its dark recesses like a shiver. Everything writhed around inside her, twisted and turned and glowed from the circulation of her blood. “Why didn’t I consent then? How could I have refused,” she regretted. She was gradually restored to her senses on hearing Pani Kolichowska’s voice full of complaint:

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“You’ve been with me so many years and yet you’re just as much a stranger as ever, always a stranger.” “What are you saying?” Elżbieta was not surprised, but wanted to understand. “You’ve always got your secrets, constantly hiding everything. And yet I ought to know.” “Know what?” “Because if you’re intending to marry that Ziembiewicz . . . yes?” Pani Kolichowska lay still without moving and as if without breathing. Her startled eyes were not looking at Elżbieta. “Oh, Aunty, you know how it is!” Elżbieta swiftly harnessed her exasperation. Her aunt’s question must have been prepared long ago, brushed aside, put off until later. It must have cost her a lot to ask it. In Elżbieta’s feeling of sympathy, there also lurked one of shame: that she mattered so much to someone else. “Yes, we are planning to get married,” she said with a careless air, as if speaking of something of no consequence. Her heart beat slowly and powerfully a few times as a result of this confession. Put in such terms, the affair once again assumed immense, burdensome, and far-reaching proportions. And she immediately added, as if courage had failed her: “In any case, we’re not in any hurry.” Zenon was supposed to be coming straight after lunch. But before the time arrived, Elżbieta’s designs and resolutions had altered significantly. First of all, her aunt’s question had ruined the intimate, tantalizing tenderness of anticipation. In addition, just before lunch, there suddenly arose, not for the first time, a matter that diverted her thoughts onto a different track. It concerned the old caretaker Ignacy. Pani Kolichowska had wanted to sack him before, but Elżbieta had so far managed to persuade her aunt to delay it. Of late, Ignacy had been genuinely suffering from heart problems or sclerosis and done very little in the house. His wife was standing in for him with the help of the younger Chąśba, Edward. But this Edward, according to Michalina, was “good for nothing,” always disappearing somewhere, which meant they had to search for him whenever he was needed. Pani Cecylia was insisting that Elżbieta should place Ignacy in a hospital, order his wife to move out, and find responsible people to replace them, with whom there would finally be peace. The subject was enormous, and raising it was disagreeable. For a start, Ignacy’s illness was still not serious enough to warrant hospitalization and

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Elżbieta could not guarantee his stay there anyway. Moreover, the most important works had in fact been carried out.69 But here another intricate tangle of problems arose, associated with the complex person of Marian Chąśba, to whom Elżbieta had promised she would not allow his younger brother, who had such a difficult character, “to perish.” Earlier on, in the days when Pani Cecylia had “made everyone quake” and spread terror among the lady friends, tenants, and servants dependent upon her, it was hardly surprising that Elżbieta too had caved in. Yet now, confronted by the woman confined powerless to bed, she was weaker even than before. All she managed to achieve on behalf of Ignacy was to postpone the matter until the autumn. Nothing therefore had changed. She was unable to oppose that stubborn, immovable will. And yet it was about something more important than her relationship with her aunt, more important than stilling her so-called conscience. It was about the fate of two elderly people threatened by hunger. Following this conversation, the manner in which she awaited Zenon also changed. The focus of her longing had changed. Ah, the very fact that it was possible to communicate with him, that the same words meant exactly the same to him as they did to her! His closeness in this respect was the one thing that could rescue her. And she knew she meant the same to him. She meant the same to him. Zenon discharged his editorial duties with impatience. At the appointed hour, a host of people would appear one after the other with their proposals, grievances, and talents. Just as in the past, hordes of separate human existences would intersect right here, in diminished form, in simplified caricature-like abbreviation. Zenon was amazed to discover that in such a small provincial neck of the woods, there were matters that could be settled provisionally, or disasters that could be averted with a wave of the hand. But each problem required separate measures exclusive to it. And at every turn it was necessary for him to become someone else, in order not to lose sight of that sense of being in touch with reality, which, like some inscrutable magic, had once impressed him so much in Czechliński. Within the course of an hour Zenon would have moved up and down an entire scale of contradictory points of view several times. He himself was astonished at the proficiency with which he now did this. For the time being it did not look like defeat. In whatever place he found himself, there would always be something worse lying close by, which it was still possible to oppose in all good faith. However, the ultimate boundary of such attempts at opposition—the boundary of moral resistance—was moving imperceptibly farther and farther away.70

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After Count Tczewski’s article on the plague of poaching, Zenon inserted one of the many memoirs perpetually offered him by Pan Maurycy Posztraski. The presence of this elderly gentleman, who resided in Pani Kolichowska’s house in his capacity as the ruined husband of her friend Łucja, and who was an almost daily guest at the editorial office, Zenon owed to Elżbieta, as he also did the presence of Marian Chąśba. Zenon resorted to many methods for getting rid of him, or making his own person off-putting, but with negligible effect. Posztraski had conceived a great trust in Zenon as well as a kind of personal sympathy for him. And he also had plenty of free time. He would appear precisely at midday, very clean, gray-haired, smiling his toothless smile, and by this time of day already pleasantly stimulated by his morning dose of alcohol. He would hold high his small head, incapable of absorbing or understanding anything, upon wide, bony, emaciated shoulders. Apart from hunting memoirs, Posztraski also wrote poetry about heraldic pectoral plates, banners blowing in the wind, and eternal endurance in the trenches, sword in hand. When Zenon rejected these, Pan Posztraski brought others. From his pockets he would produce various dog-eared clippings, small printed brochures, or vicious replies from editorial offices in the capital. This dossier of his life proved, however, that he had once managed to place a few verses in advertising journals or scrappy provincial rags, as well as two longer occasional poems in a jubilee edition celebrating twenty years of the fire brigade, and in a souvenir album commemorating an alumni reunion of an academic institution that no longer existed. Two formal courtesy letters, received over the course of a quarter century and signed by household names, had filled him with sufficient courage to last a lifetime. But others had never replied at all. The capital’s indifference aroused in him not so much bitterness as boundless stupefaction. It seemed inconceivable to him that while some editors had been able to recognize his talents, he had not met with understanding among those great, enlightened, distant others. And who, if not they, were called precisely so to do? The world seemed to him upside down. “It’s hard to believe,” he would say, “it’s inconceivable.” His nature was unacquainted with the agonies and distress of self-doubt. He easily cheered up once he realized that he was not the sole isolated figure in today’s materialistic world. Love of the Fatherland, faith, honor—all that had taken a back seat. When everything was dominated by money, business interests, coteries, and cliques, life was tough for men of ideas. “Ultimately, it’s not surprising when it’s they who sit there,” Pan Posztraski would say, smiling conspiratorially at Zenon, who was instantly reminded of his father: “The Jews. There the Jews keep a tight grip on everything.” Harnessing in

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this way his own defeats to the vast mechanism of world politics, he felt a consolation that entirely satisfied his need. In his editorial office Zenon also made the acquaintance of another Countess Tczewska, wife of Olgierd Tczewski of Piesznia, sister-in-law of Countess Wojciech Tczewska of Chązebna. Since his childhood Zenon had seen her driving through the narrow, high-cambered streets of the town— distant, unattainable, as though not entirely human. The schoolboys would cluster on the curbs of the high pavements to watch the huge panting motorcar drive past, smothered in dust from the highway, lurching heavily to one side above the precipitous gutter. The boys would tell each other she was meeting her lovers, and certainly knew who they were. They worshipped her in vain and reviled her behind her back. Reduced to its proper proportions, this phenomenon could now be contemplated according to normal human standards. Having her before him at close quarters, Zenon was able to see how little remained of a human being when stripped of everything other people had said about her. Seated on the other side of the table, the leading “demon of the district” was merely a small woman who desired to win over any unfamiliar, unknown person and make herself liked at any price. She moved and laughed like a little girl. Her fair hair had turned ashen from grayness. Her eyes were trusting, sweet and disarming. She talked constantly about herself, although it was ostensibly about choice vegetable seeds, the eggs laid by green-legged chickens, the welfare of orphans and mothers, Sunday courses in choral singing—everything that was on display at Piesznia. You drove through the village as if through a garden, because a farmer’s wife, who grew the loveliest of flowers in front of her cottage, won first prize every year in a competition. The Countess invited him to visit. “You absolutely must come to Piesznia. And you’ll see for yourself the results of our work.” In the biography of Countess Olgierd Tczewska, the era of elegant gentlemen, trusty cousins, and salon lions was long past. At one time she had caught such men and kept several at her side simultaneously, like big fish in a net, ensnaring them in a whole system of constantly festering, carefully nourished, and studiously cultivated jealousy. Confronted by their unfettered emotions, she was simply helpless and sincere, prizing the truth above all else. She spared them nothing. Each was accurately informed about the others. Love had no relish for her unless it was accompanied by perpetual fear, by the danger of being found out, by rows, scandals, and duels. She was childishly surprised that someone as tranquil as herself was capable of unleashing

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so much turmoil roundabout her. In these short-lived bursts of fire, she lived safe and secure, like a salamander. All scandals ended in honorable fashion, while she would emerge from them spotless and unscathed. Both sons had long outstripped her in height and now looked like athletes standing beside her with their narrow skulls resting on thick necks. More often than them, however, she would bring along their penniless friend—a sickly youth with pale eyebrows, as frail and pliable as a blade of grass, consumed by closed consumption and a hunger for any casual pleasure. In his company, she could forget her artful methods of seduction. The rose-scented Parisian fragrance of her breath, the scrunch of skins and impregnated silk, the shine and jangle of her jewels, sufficed. She was straightforward and happy, and could at last begin to be good. The means by which she displayed her goodness were those famous social gatherings at Piesznia. Marveling at them, Zenon had spent the whole of the past three days in a most agreeable frame of mind at the home of the Countess Tczewska.

14 Zenon came to the house in Staszic Street only in the evening, immediately before supper. He was sullen and irritable. He cross-examined Elżbieta about what she had being doing since they saw one another last. From his manner one might have thought their brief separation had been her fault. Reluctantly, he told her about his meetings with Czechliński and the fact that he was always obliged to drink with him. “So you went there with him?” she asked. “Yes. He’s got his own business there with the younger Tczewski.” This alien world came between them and then departed. Zenon’s angry tone and rough words only meant that he was protecting himself from being moved, because after those turbulent uncomfortable days, he had found her again, in the same place, unchanged. As she saw it, he became himself again. He felt relieved. He drew close to Elżbieta and embraced her. She kissed him and then withdrew, distracted. She had so much to tell him. Before he arrived she had been thinking that the most important things in life were always going on outside of her, alongside her, that she was always fenced off from them. Only he, Zenon, had made the most important thing happen right there and then, sweeping her up, drawing her into life’s interior. She had been intending to tell him this, but supper was served.

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At table Zenon described what he had seen at Piesznia, and the people there. Then he told them about his editorial work and certain distasteful petty problems. Pani Kolichowska meanwhile could hear everything he said. “And who exactly is this Chąśba?” he asked, grimacing slightly. Elżbieta explained rather perfunctorily who Chąśba was. She was only repeating what Zenon knew anyway. “Why do you ask?” He did not reply. They went outside onto the terrace, then into the garden. It was sultry. Leaves hung motionless in the darkening air. He sat down on the bench at the end of the alleyway and pulled her toward him by the hand. “Come to me.” She sat on his knees for a moment, embarrassed by it, awkward. As soon as she could, she slipped off his knees and sat on the bench beside him. The bench was made of slats with gaps between, sagging, but comfortable like a couch. Snuggling up to his shoulder as she sat there, only then did she feel happy and safe. They said nothing. From the other side of the fence came shouted exhortations, children’s cries, voices of the small provincial town. They could hear life gradually quieting down as it put itself to bed. He stroked her hand, and Elżbieta sensed again that what was happening to her was the most important thing in life, that the center of life was right there, where they were. Yet any tiny distraction was enough to mar it—other people’s lives flowing over them from all sides, a movement, another human being, a word. Even an unwanted thought. This time it was footsteps coming from the terrace. Elżbieta tried to break away. Zenon clung on to her hand. “Don’t be afraid. Don’t be so nervy. Even if they see, so what?” Ewcia emerged from the dark tunnel of the alleyway to summon Elżbieta to Pani Kolichowska. Elżbieta rose to her feet and walked away, trying in vain to recapture the scattering shreds of that unutterable happiness. As she had foreseen, it was nothing important. Pani Kolichowska told her she ought not to sit for such a long time in the evening in the garden. “It’s damp. You could catch cold.” “It’s warm,” Elżbieta replied, keeping her voice down. It was clear Pani Cecylia was not talking about what really troubled her. She did not mention Zenon as if she were unaware he had not yet gone. Her dislike of him and their affair was apparent and refused to be ignored.

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Pani Cecylia also pointed out that the girl who was living with the Gołąbskis had not yet been registered. “It doesn’t cross your mind, but it’s I who’ll have to pay the penalty.” When she returned to Zenon she found him standing by the terrace in the dark. They sat down there. Gradually Elżbieta shook off the importunate words and sound of her aunt’s voice. The return to happiness was difficult and required effort. They sat now in two wicker chairs, next to one another, though not as close as before in the garden. It grew darker. The light in Pani Kolichowska’s bedroom had evidently gone out. Again Elżbieta felt reassured. While he remained silent, she extended her hand toward him thinking it was thanks to him that she was now on the inside of life. She gently tightened the grip of her fingers around his long hand. Then he shifted as if troubled by something and suddenly blurted out that the affair with Justyna was not yet over. “Not yet over,” Elżbieta reiterated slowly. “Not yet over. What’s that supposed to mean?” “I’m tortured by it myself. You have no idea. I can’t stand it any longer.” “But what do you mean?” she asked again quietly. “What?” She shrunk into herself as if feeling cold. She tried to remove her hand from his, but he would not let her. “She came to me at the hotel,” he said hurriedly. “It was after her mother’s death. I couldn’t simply throw her out when she was crying.” “Wait,” she interrupted with deliberation. “When was that?” Zenon hesitated. “Just after I arrived.” “The same day?” “First thing in the morning.” “In the morning? Before you saw me?” “Yes.” “Before you telephoned me to say you’d arrived.” “No. I telephoned before I left the hotel.” “Hang on. Wait a minute. So it was after our telephone conversation?” He struggled to reply. “After our conversation.” “When I’d told you nothing had changed . . .” They spoke in hushed tones. In the darkness they heard only their own words. The only light filtered through from the open door of the dining room. Illuminated in this way, their faces appeared gray and indistinct. Elżbieta sat calmly. When Zenon lit a cigarette she managed to withdraw her hand without him noticing. It was a relief to her that she could now clasp her hands firmly together in the dark, and silently wring them.

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She resumed in a whisper: “You said: Before you left the hotel. So that means you left after our conversation and returned again later. And it was then she came. How did she know you were there? Did you write to her?” “No, I didn’t write to her. There’d been nothing between us for a year.” Elżbieta was trying to work it out in her own mind. “You told me you’d broken it off.” “Naturally. It was broken off before I left for Paris. She was prepared for that right from the start—that it would be broken off. She was totally reconciled to it.” “You didn’t write to her. So how did she know?” Again he hesitated. “I bumped into her outside the hotel, quite by accident.” He spoke so unsteadily that what he said sounded unlikely. But Elżbieta believed him. “So you took her to your room?” “No, I didn’t take her to my room. It may look like that, but—it didn’t even enter my head it would end like that. Only . . .” “Only what?” “Only she was crying so loudly, and it was in the street . . .” “Why was she crying?” “Because her mother had died.” “Ah, true.” “She was crying in the street. And I also felt sorry for her.” “You felt sorry for her,” Elżbieta repeated. Again he was silent. He waited expectantly in the dark, tormented. Elżbieta also said nothing. She sat motionless, lost in thought. Zenon spoke accusingly. “You see. You’re so alien. Full of hostility.” He sat down at her feet on the top stair of the terrace steps and spoke bitterly. “There’s no real intimacy between us. Something like this is enough to make you feel distant and hostile. I’m on my own.” “You’re not on your own.” He embraced her legs, rested his chin on her knees. “Don’t be angry. I had to tell you.” “I know. It’s better that you have told me.” She touched his hair, upon which the light from a window now fell. But her hand was stiff and slipped down onto his shoulder.

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“And then it happened? Yes?” she asked suddenly in a trembling voice. When he said nothing, she added: “Why? Why? Surely not because her mother died?” “Elżbieta!” He clasped her tighter. He did not want to admit that she had intuited something in him, the most deeply concealed, most murky thing within him. Wasn’t it precisely this that had attracted him to Adèle—that before his very eyes, in his very arms, even as she made love, she was dying? “Elżbieta, don’t talk like that. If only you knew! I didn’t mean it to happen. I missed you so much!” Her legs grew stiff and she tried to stand up. When he held her down, however, she did not push him off. She regained her composure, calmed down. The news gradually burgeoned inside her, and somehow lodged in various recesses of her feeling for him. He could not accept such acquiescence. More important things were at stake. “That’s not all, Elżbieta.” He had to speak. He felt a certain relief in it, an easy fluency, a bitter pleasure. He confessed his betrayal to Elżbieta as if it were already foreseen, known in advance. He remembered his father confessing his guilt in a similar way to his mother. Yet then it had seemed absurd. He broke off and heard Elżbieta whisper above his head: “I’m listening.” “After that she came again.” “Throughout this whole time?” “Yes.” “When did she come?” “I don’t remember.” He corrected himself at once: “On Mondays and Thursdays. In the morning.” He warmed Elżbieta’s hands in his palms, because they were cold. “She’s here in town?” “Yes, in service. On Mondays and Thursdays she comes to the market.” It seemed to him she laughed aloud in the darkness. But that was impossible. “Listen, Elżbieta, you shouldn’t look at it just the way it seems. Tell me what you want, and it will be exactly as you wish. But you have to understand, you especially have to understand, that this is not how it always is, not the usual banal thing when she is there and you are here. That’s how it often

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is, I know, but it only looks like that on the surface . . . But what’s underneath is different.” He was unable to explain on what this difference depended. Apparently, according to him, every commonplace affair, when viewed from the inside, was unique. But even as he spoke, he realized that the inward approach to such matters was merely an optical illusion, and said nothing decisive about anything. The stark crude fact remained: a commonplace pattern leaving no room for doubt. Justyna was in effect an honest girl whom he had seduced, taking advantage of her being in love with him. Elżbieta was his fiancée, whom he had betrayed. Ultimately, these were the facts of the matter. Such was the real state of affairs. Elżbieta in the meantime said nothing at all, while Zenon was thinking: Maybe it’s not a question of superficial appearances and things being different underneath. Maybe everything is exactly as it appears. And what we seem to be to other people is more important than what we are in our own eyes. “Elżbieta,” he said, because she continued to say nothing. “That’s still not all. There’s something worse. Now she’s pregnant. It’s just . . .” This time Elżbieta managed to tear herself away from his restraining arms. He intercepted her in the doorway and immobilized her in his embrace. His arms locked tight behind her back, snapping together like a bulldog’s jaws. In this iron grip, it was hard to catch her breath. “You’re not going,” he said. “You will stay.” What he wished for was the Boleborza pattern. She had to forgive him. That pattern now repeated itself faithfully down to the minutest details. Elżbieta stayed. She no longer struggled, but calmed down. “One can’t scream, can’t do anything,” she thought. It was the same the world over. Since childhood she had been tortured by her mother having lovers. Later she had listened to the dreadful talk of the old women about life, and the conversations between her aunt and Pani Łucja on the topic of men. She had guessed long ago what the objects were in Uncle Kolichowski’s safe, discovered by his wife after his death. And she knew the nature of the moment she had interrupted when she arrived early once for her lesson at Panna Wagner’s, and the red-faced, tipsy-looking, wonderful Captain Awaczewicz had opened the door to her. It was the same the world over—life went on somewhere on the sidelines, behind the scenes. Her childish disgust at such matters had always thrown her off the beaten track of existence. Now they had come close as never before. She was stunned. Her eyes were put out. Her whole body was drenched in the tormenting fire. “Obviously

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it was my fault, obviously there’s something wrong with me, if this could happen,” she thought. Again she stroked his hair with her hand—the smoothly combed shining hair, golden brown even in the shadows. But there was horror in that touch and harrowing emotion. “I knew you’d forgive me,” he murmured with his mouth in the palms of her hands, “that you’d help me in this.” Her hands were still stiff. “Am I disgusting to you now, Elżbieta?” “No,” she stammered. And she felt his mouth crush her own. She writhed as if in physical pain and tried again to tear herself free. And again he held her firm. But he did say: “If you don’t want to, if you can’t, just say so, and I’ll go away.” She shook her head. “No, no,” she said softly, so as not to inflame with her voice the repressed sobs from which she was quaking. He could barely see the face—small, indistinct and burning hot—he was kissing in the gloom. She let herself be led through the dining room and into the dark sitting room. For the first time his caressing hands, imploring, disarming, as they made their way upward along the whole length of her legs, met with no resistance. The tension broke within her, she relaxed and opened to his pressure, totally cleaving to him. It happened in Pani Kolichowska’s sitting room, with the door wide open, on the edge of the small sofa directly above the Gołąbskis’ flat. “Now you know that I am yours,” he whispered. “You love me, say that you love me.” “I love you,” she replied. She returned his kiss full of stillness and peace. “Wait a minute,” she whispered. She gently pushed him away but still held him in her arms. “It’s not a matter just between us.” He did not wish her to speak. Despite this, she inquired after a little while: “Where does she live?” “I don’t know.” “What’s her name?” “Justyna Bogutówna.”

15 That same evening when Zenon was talking to Elżbieta, Justyna had no longer been in service for several days. Earlier on too, whenever she had broken

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a plate or done something of which her mistress did not approve, the woman had often threatened her with the sack. But later she forgot about it. This time, however, it was different because Justyna herself wanted to leave. She rose early as usual, while everyone else was still asleep. At this hour the house was dark and cold, and looked different from how it did during the day. She lit the fire in the kitchen range and in the bathroom, put on the milk, brushed the shoes and clothes belonging to the master and the two boys. Then she looked in on the mistress, but she had not yet woken up. Justyna was a little afraid of the gentleman of the house, though he was not a bad man. On the rare occasions when he said anything at all, he was always serious and never looked her in the eye. Justyna knew from the mistress that he had a lover and spent whole evenings at her place instead of staying at home or going out somewhere with the boys. It was hardly surprising when he had such a sick wife. He did not nag or bully her. He brought home money, paid for her medicines. Having no answer to her complaints and reproaches, he would slip secretly out of the house unnoticed. He drank his breakfast milk without saying a word. Only the boys, who ate standing up, would chatter away, but likewise in subdued voices so as not to wake their mother, who never slept at night. Each was thinking of how to get out of the house as quickly as possible. Only the sick woman remained there always—and with her, Justyna. The kitchen had no window. Justyna aired it by opening the door onto the stairs. Dark air emanated from it, rank with food smells. The mistress awoke in a sad but not unkind mood. She immediately inquired about her husband and sons. She was surprised they had left so early. She was given something to eat. “Why not in the blue cup?” she asked anxiously. Justyna felt her heart quicken and admitted that she had broken it the day before when doing the washing-up. Then the mistress replied in her customary fashion: “You’re always so careless. Nothing matters to you. You don’t care about anything. Times are hard, and yet you—” She always said it with such sadness in her voice, as if it were the sole cause of her unhappy lot. Whereas Justyna was afraid to tell her if the tea had run out, or there was no coal. She tried to economize, but the master demanded his bath and desired strong tea. Even the boys fretted that the tea was too weak. Nearly all instructions were issued by the mistress. Justyna brought everything to her bed—sugar, bread rolls, everything. She never got up but knew

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very well where everything was, remembered every single thing. Everyone in the household had their own special drink: for the master, always cream with its skin, served in a mug; for the younger boy, milk strained through a sieve; for the older boy, hot chocolate. For one, sour milk with cream, for the other, skimmed milk. The mistress herself ate very little, both because she was economizing and because she was on a diet, but she kept saying how men needed to eat well—the master because he worked, the boys because they were growing lads. Justyna received the same portions as her mistress. Justyna was unhappy in her work, always a bit too hungry, always to blame for something. No matter how hard she worked, the mistress was forever scolding her, forever dissatisfied. The woman did not so much get angry as lament. Justyna could sense that it wasn’t the thing itself that upset her so much, but her illness, or her husband being with his lover, or the life she was losing. Now that she had broken the blue cup and her mistress had begun to get angry, Justyna knew she could not stay. She also had something else on her mind now, so she replied: Fine, in that case she would leave. Maybe she made up her mind too quickly, maybe acted unwisely. She wasn’t greatly concerned about the dismal apartment, the reproaches and heavy work load. But it was difficult there to think about her own situation, think about Zenon, who had become a stranger and did not want either her or the child. She was overwhelmed by fear at the thought of what might happen to her. She could not believe she had landed in the same boat as so many others—after all, she had always imagined she wasn’t so stupid. Except with her it had been different, because Zenon was not like other men, had not forced himself on her, had shown her respect, been the only person in the world to her. It had been different, yet it had ended in exactly the same way as always. But despite everything that was gathering, terrible and hard to bear, something pleasant quivered deep below the surface. Justyna walked about, washed dishes, swept and tidied up, continually glancing—smitten suddenly by hunger—at food not intended for her, constantly worrying, yet conscious within herself of a peaceful joy, which she could not explain, bursting with warmth from heart to head. It wasn’t any mental idea but feeling itself, for which she had no words or clear understanding. It was happening deep inside her and seemed stronger than anything else, bringing peace, and as if saying to her: Let be what wishes to be, let be what has to be. She remembered herself as a little girl, still at Chązebna, repeating after her mother at the May devotions: “Let it be done unto me according to Thy word.”71 In

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those days she had not understood what those words meant, but she now sensed that it was exactly what she was feeling. A few days after this conversation with her employer, Justyna packed the wicker trunk she had inherited from her mother and moved to Jasia Gołąbska’s basement room. One morning she was summoned upstairs to the landlady to be officially registered as living at that address. Apart from Justyna Bogutówna, of whom Pani Kolichowska had already apprised her, Elżbieta had to register that day a certain Władysława Niska.72 Early that same morning a dreadful row had flared up in the back yard. Elżbieta peered through the window but could see nothing. So she went down the corridor to the kitchen. “What’s going on out there?” Michalina was already well informed. “It’s Władziowa come back to the Wylams,” she said. This was sufficient explanation in itself. Elżbieta, however, was concerned. “On her own?” she asked anxiously. Without watching what she was doing, Michalina swept the cat off the table and onto the floor as if it were a soft object. “Get lost!” she said. “No, not on her own. With the child. Naturally they don’t want her back, hence the racket.” “Get lost!” she repeated to the cat, which was now prowling around at her feet with its tail stiff and quivering, striking the table leg first with one hip, then the other, and without taking its inquiring gaze off her face. “Haven’t you had enough?” Elżbieta was worried. “What a fuss the woman kicked up to get the child placed in a home. And now she’s taken him back again.” “She’s the devil incarnate! Obviously lost another position, if she’s back here. No employer wants someone else’s kids crawling around their kitchen.” Władziowa had arrived at the house when it was still quite early, bringing with her a pillow wrapped in a bedspread, a small chest, and the boy Zbysiunio. It had been misty, but the sun was already piercing the white clouds, heralding a beautiful hot summer’s day. Balinowska was the first to spot her as she came outside to sweep the area around her cubbyhole. Władziowa was seated on the large step at the foot of the kitchen stairs. “Oh my goodness, so you’ve taken him out of care again?” exclaimed Balinowska. “And yet you said the child was happy there?” “I’ve taken him out and that’s that. How do I know what muck they feed him? Is he likely to tell me, a little kid? Or if his health’s up to learning? They make them charge around the garden after a ball, cold or not cold. He

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plays with such common boys who teach him swearwords. Or one of them thumps him or pushes him over. So I went and fetched him and took him away.” The door to Pani Kolichowska’s kitchen on the ground floor stood wide open. At an angle through the door, a white lacy decorative papercutting could be seen hanging on the wall, as well as a large shelf housing copper pans of various sizes. Michalina the cook glanced out onto the steps. She held the large sprawling cat against her belly so carelessly around its girth it could have been a floorcloth. She saw what was afoot and voiced her opinion: “People must be daft handing him back to a madwoman like you!” Władziowa gave out a shrill menacing laugh. “Oooo, just let them not hand him back! Just let them not hand him back!” “Sure!” Michalina admitted. Despite this, she inquired sarcastically: “And what might Władziowa be waiting for with her bundles?” “Wylamowa’s gone into town and locked her room. So I’m sat here waiting. If I’m in someone’s way, they don’t have to look. I’m not asking anyone to keep an eye on me.” She turned her back on Michalina and shouted toward the yard: “Come here, Zbysiunio, come and sit nicely with your Mummy. Sit down and stay down!” Zbysio stood nearby, calm and impartial. He looked like a five-year-old, although he was seven. He was very white and frail, had clean clothes and long, luxurious fair eyelashes over narrowly squinting eyes. He approached politely and sat down on the step where his mother instructed. “Now, you see, you’ll be with your Mummy, and you’ll be all right. No one will make you learn or chase you into the garden. No one will interfere with you.” Michalina had vanished from the steps with her cat. Władziowa went on talking in the yard to Balinowska as she wielded her broom. “He had such lovely curly hair till they made him chop it off. Dear God, what the boy looks like now!” She removed his cap, made sure he was not sweating and replaced it on his head. Then she pawed his arm inside his sleeve. Unable to restrain herself, she suddenly began kissing the arm. “Mummy’s sweet darling boy,” she kept repeating, “my little son.” Kissed all over his face and hands, Zbysio accepted it passively. But Balinowska was outraged.

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“What are you thinking of, Pani Władziowa?” she cried stopping what she was doing. “It’s a sin to turn a young pup’s head like that!” “But he’s mine, isn’t he?” Władziowa tittered. “I’m free to do it, aren’t I? Go on, tell her, Zbysiunio.” Zbysio said nothing, only smiled good-naturedly. Władziowa was an odd sort of person. At first glance she looked more like a cockerel than a woman. She was short, like a child, but fit and strong as if built of iron. She had bulging eyes, a nose protruding like a beak, and hair coiled into a tiny bun on the very top of her head. She was cheery, loud and talkative. The veins on her immeasurably long neck stood out visibly, constantly flying up and down and dancing in step with her hurried words. Her steeply sloping shoulders, reminiscent of old miniature paintings, encased the tight narrow ribcage inside which lungs, heart, and ribs all fitted—as in everyone else’s body—but which taken together were no bigger than an average-sized fist. Furthermore her waist was located so low down that it seemed there was no room under her skirt for belly and hips. Her short crooked legs looked as if they reached right up to her waistband. This Władziowa, although it appeared she had taken her husband’s name, was in fact a spinster who had had her Zbysio with a young stonemason’s mate, whom she scarcely remembered and had never much cared for. Since then she had had to constantly change her work in service, always looking for a new position because no one wanted to keep her while she was responsible for the child. She hired herself out by means of a clever ruse, admitting it was true she had a child, but claiming that he had been “placed” in a home. Then a bit later she would suddenly bring Zbysio to live with her, ostensibly only for the time being, just for a day or two. She calculated that her employers would so like the child, be as much enchanted by him as she was, and thus allow him to remain with her in service. However, this had never come about. Such simple human happiness had proved beyond her reach. When she was told to gather her belongings and go with the child wherever she pleased, she would protest violently. She seemed more stunned than offended. Her voice would resound in stairwells, attics, and courtyards. She would scream that they were people without a conscience, hangmen! “Why is it, how can it be,” she yelled, “that an ordinary mother can’t have her own child by her side?” Sometimes her employers were kinder people who went to great lengths and managed with great difficulty—by exploiting their high-placed connections—to eventually place the boy in an institution. But Władziowa could never hold out for long. After a month or two she would suddenly turn up

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at the institution and demand recognition in her loud voice for her violated maternal rights. Whenever she met with resistance, even when it involved a few minor formalities preventing the immediate handing over of the child, Władziowa would make dreadful scenes. She threatened to break windows, burn the house down, even go to the police and report those who stole other people’s children from their mothers. Zbysio, meanwhile, would listen calmly, accustomed to the vicissitudes of fate and the impulsive temperament of his mother. He accepted everything with forbearance and discreet sevenyear-old irony. He was well acquainted with life. From the spotless children’s homes, where he was washed, bathed, and fed, he would pass without protest into airless kitchens, whence he and his mother were immediately evicted, or into the hospital, where he was cajoled, or back again to Wylamowa’s basement—into a world of filth, darkness, foul language, and poverty. He knew it all and was surprised by nothing. Following an operation wherein a surgical hole had been drilled in his skull behind one ear, he had an abscess that opened up from time to time. He would walk around with a bandaged head while the petrified Władziowa would abandon the dinner cooking on the hot plate and take him to the hospital to have the dressings changed. Zbysio had no fear of doctors or pain, and consented to everything, smiling affably and squinting with his magnificent fair lashes over his narrow eyes. He was pale and had delicate features and a modest, adorable smile. He greeted and said goodbye to people like a grown-up. The doctors and sisters remembered him and liked him. As he walked down the corridor, the patients would call out to him from their beds to come and say hello, or tell them a story. He was popular and denied no one his presence. When summoned, he came cheerfully, confidently, with a waggish air. One of the doctors taught him, without further elucidation, to say “passionately” when asked the question: “Do you fancy women?” Zbysio was convinced that wherever he repeated this, he would make the best of impressions. He was a good psychologist. He pretended to be much more naïve than he actually was, and told jokes of his own invention which prompted laughter, recognition, and approval. Władziowa had met his father though the window. The courtyard of the apartment building was being renovated. One morning, outside the kitchen window, Władziowa saw first the dangling legs and then the whole man. He was sitting in mid-air on a horizontally suspended ladder, holding a wet brush on a stick and spattering lime all over the place. He laughed at her and

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talked nonsense as she busied herself over the hot plate and hurled abuse at him, complaining he had splashed the windowpanes. She wished he would fall off and break every bone in his body. In the evening he came upstairs but she, so she claimed, “hounded” him out of the kitchen. The next day they were painting lower down so he was hanging outside a different kitchen, but in the evening he came to her again. Later, it couldn’t even be said that he “dumped” her, and Władziowa never thought this. He came to her every night while they were still renovating the building. And when they left to renovate some other building, he stopped coming. He wasn’t called Władzio at all, but Wicuś. But her name was Władzia, and because she became a mother she changed it to Władziowa (Władzio’s wife), which was more seemly. No one was fooled, however, because in her passport it stated she was unmarried. “I was never so happy in all my life as when I carried that babe in my belly,” she would say. “I always looked small and thin, so no one ever realized. Right up till the last moment I was calmly going about my duties. And then, when my contractions started, I politely said: Bye-bye. My things were secretly packed, and I was gone. I took what I needed and went to the hospital. He was so tiny when he was born, like a kitten, I hardly felt a thing.” A rumpus erupted in the backyard of the Staszic Street house as soon as Wylamowa appeared in the gateway and saw Władziowa waiting in front of the basement door with Zbysio and their bundles. Wylamowa was a tall, thin, black-haired woman. She put her basket down on the ground and began waving her arms. “What?!” she screamed in heartfelt despair. “The madwoman’s thrown herself on me again with her kid! Clear off! At once! I’m not letting you in. I won’t be so daft a second time!” Władziowa remained seated on the step and kept her cool. “What are you saying, Jesus Beloved? Is that the way to welcome a fellow human being? Zbysio, stand up, say hello to your godmother, be courteous, there’s a good boy. Kiss her hand, go on, kiss it! Have you forgotten already how to greet someone?” “I don’t need niceties. I’ve told you: I’m not letting you across the threshold, and that’s final. She still hasn’t paid me the rent for last time, and I’m supposed to take her in again?!” “I’m not denying it, but I won’t run off again. I’ll pay you everything. I’m not one to shirk a debt. People know me, what I’m like.” Wylamowa continued to speak to third parties gradually gathering in the yard.

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“I don’t need her money or anything! Just get the devil-woman out of my sight!” Balinowska, Ignacowa the caretaker’s wife, Chąśbina, as well as other women from the basement and courtyard, stood around gawping. Fortified by this audience, confident, as it were, of the psychological acoustics, Władziowa gathered momentum and adopted an extreme tone. She threatened that if Wylamowa did not take her in this final time, then she would smash every window in the house and set it on fire. Let them drag her through the courts, if they wanted, let them come in search of her! “What swine people are in this world” she cried, more shocked and amazed than offended, “when they can’t give a poor woman and her child a bed! Am I supposed to wipe the lad off the face of the earth, or what?!” The women had different opinions. Chąśbina and Ignacowa defended Wylamowa; Balinowska took Władziowa’s side. “Does it cost anything to give a poor boy a bed for the night?” “But in her book, spending the night’s only the start!” cried Wylamowa in despair. “Just let her get a foot through the door and you won’t get rid of her for months. There’s no hiding from her, nothing. She’s crawls into your bed, grabs your food!” However, by the time Michalina, attracted by the huge commotion, reemerged from Pani Kolichowska’s kitchen onto the steps, Wylamowa, still muttering angrily to herself but resigned, was already unlocking the door from the basement corridor into her tiny chamber. Following immediately behind her, Władziowa shoved in Zbysio and the pillow. When Władziowa returned to the steps to pick up the chest, Michalina, leaning on the balustrade, was talking to Elżbieta, who stood in the kitchen. “Kids should be removed from a woman like that by law, and not given back to go to rack and ruin.” Władziowa, happy she had gained access to Wylamowa’s home, approached Elżbieta in order to pay her respects. Her cordiality reflected the condescending politeness of an independent person, who was quite sure of herself. No longer minded to quarrel, she did not even glance at Michalina. Ignoring the fact that it was precisely Elżbieta who had recently placed Zbysiunio in the municipal children’s home, she said in confidential tones: “I’m not interested in finding another man, but I am telling you hand on heart, that if they ever refuse to give me back my child, then I shall try at once for another.” Shortly afterward Ignacowa brought the registration forms. Elżbieta sat down at the desk in her own room and ordered Władziowa to be

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summoned. She asked in the usual way for the names of her mother and father and, as she entered them in the appropriate boxes, inquired carelessly of Ignacowa, “Do you know if that Bogutówna is here yet from downstairs?” Completing Zbysiunio’s form immediately after Władziowa’s, Elżbieta could not stop herself from uttering the needless words: “And yet it’s a shame you’ve taken him back. Don’t you feel sorry for the boy living here in a cellar?” Władziowa was unabashed. “What can I do? You’re not going to let him sleep in the sitting room, are you?” A moment later she added in all seriousness: “For me, life without a child is no life at all.” Ignacowa went out and returned. She was not yet an old woman but was hugely neglected. Her mouth lacked the strength to close properly and her eyelashes to raise themselves, while her drooping arms hung heavy from exhaustion. “She said she would come. It’s not the first time she’s slept at the Gołąbskis.” “She’s lived here before?” Elżbieta inquired, turning back the page of the flat registration book. “How could she possibly live with them? No, she’s stayed no longer than overnight. Always for two days, a day—it wasn’t worth registering her.” “And now, has she been staying long?” “It’s the sixth day. She had a position in domestic service, so she didn’t come then. But now she’s again without work.” Once Władziowa had gone, Ignacowa added with a sigh: “That Marian, their eldest, is still not registered as having left the Chąśbas, ever since he stopped spending the nights here! Let’s hope we won’t get into trouble because of it.” “All right, all right,” said Elżbieta. Then, admitted by Michalina, Bogutówna entered the room. Elżbieta rose slightly from her chair, but at once sat down again. “Please have a seat,” she said pointing to the edge of the ottoman. Justyna sat down, and Ignacowa left immediately, as if by prior arrangement. Elżbieta completed the registration form. She did not look up when they reached the embarrassing place and Justyna stated that her father’s name was unknown. Elżbieta added her signature, pressed down the stamp, screwed the top back onto her fountain pen, and raised her eyes. Justyna sat opposite the window, wholly visible in the clear light of day, concrete and material, unconcernedly allowing herself to be seen. Her calm

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disarmed Elżbieta. She had prepared for a violent scene, for tears and accusations, for insults. Mean-spiritedness made her drag out this moment. She asked Justyna where she was from, how long ago she had arrived in the town. Her clenched teeth made her words seem all the harsher. She was pale, but stared at the other woman, thinking that this was her, that she had been close to him, been his, been made happy because of him, that she had lain beside him naked and been the cause of his ecstasy. She thought too—with some resentment toward him—how awful her dress was, made of flowery artificial silk, and also with distaste, laced nevertheless with pleasure, how Justyna was not slim. And she also thought, irrespective of what might have been inferred from Zenon’s words, that Justyna was a plain, vulgar woman. Torn between feeling disgusted and feeling moved, pulsating all over at the thought of this alien love, Elżbieta was no longer in a state to bring herself to say the words she had prepared in advance. Instead she asked, taking even herself by surprise: “Can you be frank with me?” It was only now that Justyna raised her eyes to look at her. They were entirely circular, like a chicken’s, energetic and astonished at the same time. “Why, yes, but why?” She replied hesitantly. Elżbieta adjusted herself on her chair as if trying to draw closer to Justyna. “Please trust me a little,” she said hastily and in fear. “Perhaps I can help you. But tell me: Are you really fond of Pan Ziembiewicz?” To Elżbieta, the effect of these words on Justyna seemed rather too strong. “So you know?” Justyna asked aghast. “Maybe he’s blabbing about it to everyone?” “I know,” Elżbieta confessed after a while. Only now did it occur to her that what she had learned from Zenon, apart from anything else, was also an indiscretion. “I know,” she repeated. “And it’s better this way, better this way. Only please tell me the truth: Do you love him?” Justyna sat sullen and ill at ease. “Why do you ask? What can you do to help me? You don’t know me or anything.” Elżbieta rose to her feet and then sat down right beside Justyna and said quietly: “Oh, God, it is indeed true that I can help you. So it’s very important to me to know whether you really love him, or maybe it was only . . . ?” Justyna considered for a long time how she should reply. She did not understand what they wanted of her. Her silence grew unbearable. Elżbieta realized that she was about to hear her own death sentence. Ah, so perhaps she wasn’t quite so determined to make this sacrifice after all? Was she still living in hope?

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“Please give me an answer.” Suddenly Justyna burst into tears. “How do I know? Oh! Cursed am I for not using my head! What did he want from me? Why did he touch me? Did I ever do anything to harm him? I wasn’t interested in men, I was happy without them.” She wiped her eyes and nose with a small dirty handkerchief which she clutched in her tightly clenched hand. “I’m too common for him now, now he’s made himself a gentleman! But how come I’m suddenly worse? Everyone knows those gentlefolk in Boleborza aren’t nobles. His father’s an ordinary farm overseer, like any other. And now he’ll pretend to be a lord!” Elżbieta could not believe her ears. The initial physical impression had passed and there remained only disenchantment and shame, indifference toward this dirty, alien affair. “It’s good that I’ve seen her,” she thought. “Now I guess I’m cured.” She was ashamed at her superiority, and knew she could have been more gentle and kind. She leaned over Justyna from close by, in a sisterly gesture in which there was no sisterly kindness—only inner coldness and a heart pounding from the strain. “If you do love him, however . . .” she began. “I love him? Love a rabid dog! Did I need all this? What’s he done to me, what’s he done to me? And what will become of me now . . . ?” Justyna was still crying, yet uttering these words seemed to calm her down. Her brimming young womanliness gave her an advantage over Elżbieta’s embittered anxiety. She had exhausted her role as the seduced woman and was once again the quiet docile girl. “What did he promise you?” Elżbieta asked further. “He must have promised you something.” “Sure, he promised,” Justyna sighed in a singsong voice. “He said that not then, but when he’d finished his studies he’d come back. That later on, later on . . . But now he’s obviously got something else on his mind.” Elżbieta wanted to mention the child, assure Justyna it would come to no harm. But some obscure thought, some doubt had begun to lurk at the bottom of her shamefaced disillusionment. She was on the point of asking Justyna if she knew Zenon was engaged. But realized she ought to refrain from this question. “You can rely on me, please remember that.” Justyna stood up unexpectedly, like one conditioned to interrupt an inappropriate conversation.

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“Thank you. But I don’t need anything, ma’am. No one can help me, if I can’t help myself.” Elżbieta thought she saw her smile. The large eyes, bluer now from crying, the dumb-looking mouth with its upper lip pulled childishly upward— it all grew more insulting with every minute. Justyna seemed pretty beneath her tears, her cheeks all rosy and flushed. It was impossible not to see it and impossible to forget. Impossible to endure it any longer: her arms, bare up to the armpits, her thick round neck, her legs, with feet shod only in white linen slippers. Suddenly, wishing only for the best, with a heart full of apprehension, Elżbieta said: “Please don’t think he’s bound by anything. He is free. I won’t marry him.” As she uttered these words, she felt a growing sense of horror. She was amazed by the void into which her sacrifice had tumbled. But she somehow found herself above it, far away, as if no longer present. “The child must live,” she concluded in a whisper. Only now did the blueness of Justyna’s eyes grow truly terrible, as if contrary to nature. And her short scream too seemed beyond belief. Especially as she said immediately afterward, in a totally normal voice: “I don’t need anything, ma’am. I don’t need anything.”

16 Elżbieta had a key to the garden gate as well as to the main gate. Before dawn she would let Zenon out herself onto the street, deserted at that time of day, odd and drained of its habitual greenness, closed to all gates and shutters. The nights were brief, warm, and dry and elapsed in the garden in hot heavy bliss. The days passed in haste and expectation. Zenon was eating a gloomy luncheon at the Hotel Polski. Czechliński entered unexpectedly, still covered in dust from the road. He had come straight from Piesznia with the younger of the two Tczewski brothers. “Well? Shall we get down to business?” he bellowed merrily as he made himself comfortable at Ziembiewicz’s table. It transpired that the young Count’s mind was already made up, full of the highest hopes and desires. When Zenon returned to his room upstairs, warm and drowsy after a few glasses of Chambertin, Justyna was waiting for him. They greeted one another like strangers. Zenon had not seen her since the day she had come

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with her news, after which she had vanished from his sight. He did not even know she had lost her position in service. “What’s new?” he asked. His face was expressionless from a mixture of sympathy, concern, and obvious boredom. But he listened attentively. “Perhaps you need something?” he began. “How are you feeling? Is everything all right? As soon as you make up your mind, remember I’m always here, at any moment. That I’m ready to . . .” “Not now, maybe later,” she said lost in deep thought, and added that what she most wanted was a job in a particular shop. “But maybe later, too.” He did not ask for her address, did not invite her to sit down. She was tactful and spoke quietly, slowly, smiling hardly at all. “How are you feeling?” he asked again. “Nothing of that sort.” A brief silence ensued. Zenon was thinking he would not be able to tolerate her presence for another moment. She saw he was dissatisfied. “I wouldn’t have come, I’d have left you alone, if it wasn’t for one thing,” Justyna began tentatively. “And what’s that?” he asked eagerly, prepared for any disclosures. “If it wasn’t for what your fiancée told me . . .” “What fiancée?” He discovered that she had seen Panna Biecka only moments before and had come directly from her. “Why on earth did you go to her? How dare you?” He yelled at her, red in the face from anger. Justyna replied quietly, not frightened at all by his yelling. “Don’t be angry, Zenon. It was she who summoned me.” Eventually he understood how the meeting had come about and tried to stifle his anger at Justyna for presuming to live there. But how was she to know? Justyna sat down uninvited on the edge of the bed in her customary familiar manner. She took a deep breath. “So you didn’t tell me,” she said. “Fine. But she knew everything anyway.” She stopped speaking. “What did she tell you? What did she want from you?” Zenon insisted. Justyna made a dismissive gesture with her hand. “Nothing much. She said the same as you, that she wanted to help me. But that’s not why I’m here . . . What I wanted was . . . So she’s your fiancée.”

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He drew close to her and spoke gently. “Listen, Justynka, just try to recall, remember everything properly, from the very beginning. You know how it was, you can’t say . . .” Again she made that dismissive gesture with her hand. “I know, I know, it’s not about that. Whether you marry her or not— too bad, it’s not my business. She said she wouldn’t, but why should I care . . .” He was seething with anger, torn apart by anxiety. He felt he had to run to Staszic Street immediately, had to go downstairs to the telephone. What a turn of events! He was fuming at Elżbieta for doing it without telling him. But it was not she with whom he was most furious, but Justyna. He had to get rid of her at once, but he did not know how. He walked anxiously over to the window and looked down on the empty square. “Someone’s coming to see me,” he said coldly. “I’m going, Zenon, I’m going. Only tell me one thing.” “All right, but quickly.” “Just tell me: Was it you who told her to say to me what she said about the child? Not to do anything to it, that it should live?” Turning his back on her, he was silent for a while. “I don’t know. I didn’t say anything.” He came close and took her by the shoulders. “Listen, you shall do whatever you wish. Here no one can force you . . . If you want me to, I’ll find out. I’ll do anything you wish. Only right now . . .” As he stroked her shoulders, he maneuvered her at the same time toward the door. Before she left, he assured her that whatever sum was needed, always, at any time, she only had to say the word . . . He waited until she had gone downstairs and her footsteps had faded. Then he ran down to the telephone. “The young lady is not at home,” Ewcia replied. “Has she been out long?” He learned to his surprise that she had not gone out, but gone away—to Warsaw, to see her mother. In the initial moment he wanted to rush to Staszic Street, but restrained himself and went back upstairs. He lowered the blind and lay on the bedspread unable to believe what was happening. He still could not fully comprehend that Elżbieta was no longer there. However, he could not go to the house. Should he phone again? No, he could do nothing but wait.

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He thought fleetingly of what Czechliński had wanted. Yes, it was extraordinary. An unbelievable career. He had not had time to think about it properly then, nothing had seemed quite real in light of Czechliński’s facetious words, in whose interpretation the world was a worthless place, of no more value than an intriguing pack of lies. Yet he had spoken in specific and concrete terms. And what about young Tczewski’s insistence? All he had to do was agree. It hinged on something as trivial as his agreement. He leaped up from the bed. What was this? He was thinking it through as if he were talking to Elżbieta! After all, the decision depended on her. If he gave his consent, then it was for her sake alone. It was meant to be the beginning of their life together, but now she was no longer there—now, at the decisive moment. Now she had made herself a stranger, now she was hostile and vindictive. The woman closest to him. What he felt was pure, unadulterated suffering. He was suffering, trying to restrain himself from crying out. He should not have let Justyna go before extracting everything from her. He kept repeating the words she had not managed to complete: “She said she wouldn’t, but why should I care . . .” Then he remembered them better as: “Whether you marry her or not—too bad, she said she wouldn’t, but . . .” Once again he was gripped by fury at the thought that Elżbieta could have done such a thing. Without consulting him, without a word—this was revenge. It was quite clear she simply wanted revenge. To avenge herself while maintaining an outward semblance of high-mindedness, of magnanimity. This was how he thought, yet deep down he was still trying to delude himself that perhaps Justyna had misunderstood something. He could not believe in the simple substance of her words. Elżbieta had not held out, not lasted in her beautiful role. She had wanted to be a grande amoureuse—and she had been one, there was no denying she had been one. Only these past few days had revealed her to him as a woman. But she had not held out, and sunk to the level of common jealousy. She hadn’t trusted him, had wanted to see for herself. And now she had seen for herself: that Justyna wasn’t even aware of her existence! He lay again with his hands over his eyes. The memory of Czechliński’s words had dissipated along with the intoxication he had felt from drinking the wine. There was no one to whom he could repeat those words. There was no Elżbieta. He sat up on the bed and thought in his accustomed manner: “It’s not my fault. Everyone does it, everyone does the same, everyone . . .” He saw to his own surprise that he was now resorting to an old familiar pattern in order to shield himself from responsibility.

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As he sprang to his feet for the sake of doing something, busying himself with anything whatsoever, even if it meant going to Aunt Kolichowska and finding out the truth from her, there was a knock at the door. He went and opened it, holding the catch so as not to let anyone in. “What do you want?” Outside the door stood Edward Chąśba, the unpleasant boy he used to see at the Staszic Street house. He had a confiding, knowing expression on his face. With a grandiose gesture of the hand, he handed Zenon a letter from Elżbieta. There was no doubt he understood the gravity of his mission. Zenon took the letter in silence, closed the door and even turned the key in the lock. The envelope was difficult to tear open. Elżbieta had written: “. . . however, you were not entirely honest with me . . . She has a right to you and I shan’t take it from her.” Obviously, she was going to see her mother who was already in Warsaw. She would remain there for some time. She thought it better they stopped seeing each other.

17 Elżbieta was in good spirits. She had managed to pack her things, send a letter to Zenon, and not be late for her train. So, despite everything, she had sufficient strength. The train journey, the night, the clanking, the unfamiliar people, the gentle tossing about on the padded bunk, her elbow numb beneath her head, the sudden drift into fleeting slumber—all this was good. Once, on coming round, she found herself in some painful place in her mind. But her thoughts concerned neither Zenon nor Justyna. They had returned yet again to that dining room that had never existed. The three of them were seated at the nonexistent table under a lamp, which had been let down very low. For some reason, it was a kerosene lamp. No doubt because a kerosene lamp gave the scene a more modest cottagey feel, more secure and snug. The people around the table were her father, her mother, and herself. People who had never sat together like that, and never could. Elżbieta’s parents had separated less than year after her birth. The dining-room scene was therefore impossible, and yet it had something about it which made it more persistent than reality. The fixed, deeply ingrained childish dream would erupt out of memory, recur at different

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times of life, make itself felt beneath the fingertips when conscious thought had erased it long before. Her father no longer existed, but her mother remained. Her mother had written to say she would be in Poland and wished to meet. Did this mean something was about to change now that it no longer mattered to Elżbieta, now that it had lost its former price tag? She had once told Zenon about that dining room and the three of them sitting under the lamp, told him probably quite unnecessarily. Now she was traveling toward the first candid interview with her mother she had ever had—no longer the shy little girl trying to conceal her futile love, but a woman for whom her mother’s life had lost its bad mysterious charm. Already closer, certainly better able to understand. Other things belonged more to the realm of sleep. But they too seemed real, so hard was it for her to collect her thoughts, to fully awaken whenever the train stopped at a station and the momentarily stationary interior of the carriage was filled to the ceiling with the pulse throbbing in her head—only to immediately lurch once more, after a few violent jerks, into its ever hastening rumble, into rocking, clattering unawareness. Toward daybreak Elżbieta caught herself thinking of the younger Chąśba brother. Something prompted her to contemplate him in detail and with insight. He was a smallish lad with a short fleshy nose positioned high on his face, flabby lips and tiny glassy blue eyes. From his tough childhood he had inherited an unexpectedly capricious disposition. In his voice, mannerisms and facial expressions he retained a tone of pampered indulgence, an inappropriate air of over-familiarity. He dressed too well for his station in life, sleek, as it were, though dirty. He did not complain about his life, rather that his work as the caretaker’s assistant did not suit him. He would say, for example, that he had bruised his fingers when digging, that he could not get out of bed at night to open the gate, that he always splashed his shoes when watering the plants. He even claimed that running up and down stairs from one floor to another, or to and from meals, wore out his socks too quickly, and bemoaned the fact he simply couldn’t buy enough to keep up with demand. He always called his mother “Mummy” and said she never had time for darning. He tried to give the impression that he was sensitive and had, as he put it, a “delicate conscience.” Maybe he was worth something deep down, maybe those unfortunate airs were only an affectation, and life had indeed worked out badly for him. But his complaints failed to move anyone. Nor did anyone care about his fate. Beneath these reflections, Elżbieta constantly saw Edward Chąśba handing her

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letter to Zenon. And remembered again she wasn’t supposed to be thinking about that. She leaned out of the carriage window and over the platform. The weather was foul. A light rain was falling. A decrepit old porter took both her suitcases and even demanded her vanity case, which she preferred to carry herself. The small taxi, filthy inside, crept along close to the curb. Under a sky shrouded in gray damp, the old familiar city had a foreign look. Early-hours people scurried along the wet street—those who were never there during the daytime, who appeared first thing in the morning and then vanished until the following day. Dirty brick walls, blinds pulled down behind windowpanes, lusterless signboards, iron shutters still closed, and among it all timid life, dragged by force out of sleep. The city was full of her mother, who was still sleeping and whom she would not see before midday at the earliest. See with the fresh eyes of a new person no longer giving in to childish weaknesses. This time Elżbieta had no illusions about her mother. She no longer dreamed, as she had in the past, of impressing, charming, and conquering, of trying to make her love her. She was supposed not to be thinking about breaking off her engagement to Zenon. Breaking it off, breaking it off—what an expression! Repeated several times, it became incomprehensible and even completely unfamiliar. Slowly and in astonishment, she enunciated it one more time: Breaking it off. Then it seemed to denote geometric designs on linoleum upholstery, two wall seats pulled down and upturned to make a bed, some ingenious iron rods holding it all together. But its real sense was plain and unequivocal, only concealed deeper within. It sat somewhere inside her body, rather more on the left side than the right, and made its presence thoroughly known whenever she breathed in. However, when she held her breath, she also felt it. She arrived as usual at the home of a female cousin of Uncle Kolichowski, a small, fat, pitiful elderly lady who lived alone. Breakfast was waiting on the side table with its white tablecloth by the wall. The ottoman was made up. Everything had been prepared for Elżbieta’s arrival, despite the message coming late the previous evening. Pani Świętowska herself was waiting for her, already fully and scrupulously dressed by that time of day. She greeted Elżbieta with mournful enthusiasm. She asked after Pani Kolichowska, shaking her head sympathetically as if it were a lost cause. Nor did she listen to the answer, which would have changed nothing anyway in her attitude. At the news that Elżbieta’s mother was in town, she expressed her commiserations. During a hurried breakfast she regaled Elżbieta with some of her own troubles at the office, lifting her shoulders high yet slowly after each tale

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of woe, and raising her eyebrows very high indeed as a sign that not only was she totally helpless when faced by it all, but also could not get over her surprise—or in any way understand—that such things were possible. After also informing Elżbieta of her difficulties with the caretaker, her brother-inlaw with whom she had broken off relations, and her sister who had such an unpleasant nature, she suddenly announced more cheerily: “Well, I must be off. You’ve got four hours of undisturbed sleep, because the cleaner doesn’t come till eleven. She’s got her own key, so no need to let her in.” Elżbieta was left alone in the alien little flat, run so efficiently and purposefully by such an embittered and disillusioned creature. Only when she found herself beneath the quilt, washed and undressed, did Justyna step out—immediately, as if waiting for this moment—before her closed eyes. The vibration and clanking of the railway carriage, stowed away in her mind during the journey, now roared in her ears, whirling around inside her head and rhythmically scanning her thoughts. What had he said about this Justyna? Was he so blind? Or was it possible to be so deluded? Instead of the fictitious Justyna, Zenon’s Justyna, had she not seen a coarse, mendacious, and stupid common girl? And it was precisely to this girl that she had made a gift of what was called happiness: the keys to the garden and front gates, the frenzied history of their final nights, the chilly premature dawns. Nothing remained except the monotonous question: How could he? How could he? With the clangor of these words in her head, their rhythm scanned by the dying echo of the carriage wheels, Elżbieta fell into a deep slumber. At twelve noon she took herself to her mother’s residence. This time it was the best hotel in town, and no ordinary hotel room but a so-called apartment. It had a small sitting room, a bedroom separated from it by a door concealed behind a heavy curtain, and beyond that a private bathroom. On the dressing table stood a set of glass bottles with silver rims, which had been removed from her mother’s vanity case—all the accessories needed by a woman conscious of her own beauty, each possessing its own fragrance and specialist knowledge adapted for her personal use. In the sitting room, on a mahogany table without cloth, stood a large crystal vase of pink roses. Coming here, Elżbieta had taken great pains over her clothes. However, this time too she wasn’t sure whether everything was in order. “You’ve grown again,” Pani Niewieska said to her daughter. “Show me.” And she spun her around holding on to both hands, first to the left and then the right.

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She stared in such a way as to immediately intimidate Elżbieta. “Sit down and tell me everything. What about Cecylia, how is she? And you? What have you been doing all year?” She asked questions, yet the inattentive eyes looked her daughter up and down absentmindedly. Elżbieta stood there blankly, smiling hesitantly. Now, just as before, she sensed the barrier between them, not just the personal barrier but the one that stemmed from their separate social spheres. She could not have named that difference, not wishing to acknowledge it. When they had both sat down, rather formally, at the table with the roses, her mother complained about her health, thereby ruling out any possibility of inappropriate questions or resentments. In a similar vein she discussed the financial problems of her husband, the minister. She mentioned something about the times generally, when incomes were diminishing and requirements increasing, and also about his connections, which were deteriorating, and some sort of changes that were, or might be, imminent. Her mother’s words were not important. Elżbieta could not take her eyes off her. She contemplated her attractiveness, tried to break it down into its elements: the small head with its delicate features, the hair brushed evenly into distinct waves, lighter in color than a year ago, and as though made of tortoise-shell rather than individual strands. The black slubbed-silk dress without ornament but covered in strange stitching and hems—no doubt a model, for whose deep matte finish, strangeness, and exclusivity one paid thousands of francs. It was complemented by a single string of pearls around the neck—always the same one, fastened at the back with an emerald clasp. And her perfume. They were not alone for long. In the corridor outside, fitted with thick stair-carpet and separated from them by double doors, no approaching footsteps could be heard. Voices met the ear only on the threshold. “Come in!” called her mother. The rather short lady who entered was none other than Countess Tczewska of Piesznia. “You see, this is my daughter,” said Pani Niewieska in a tone that made it sound incredible. Following the brief formal introductions, both ladies conversed animatedly without paying any attention to Elżbieta’s silence. She was able to collect her thoughts and calmly imagine Zenon at the Piesznia estate as the guest of this petite, gray-haired stranger. After a while a young man also entered the room, similarly unannounced, and greeted both ladies with equal familiarity. The fact that Elżbieta was Pani Niewieska’s daughter was not made too obvious this time.

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“Did you stay up much longer last night?” asked her mother. The young man replied they had. It had been boring, however, and everyone had wanted to go to bed, but they had returned when the streets were already light. Elżbieta rose to take her leave. She arranged to meet her mother in the evening. They sat together at the theater, just the two of them. The play was uninteresting, though her mother readily laughed at the jokes. While the action was in progress, Elżbieta observed a couple sitting two rows nearer the stage. It was dark, but their heads and shoulders were clearly visible in the lamplight, like shadows cast against a screen. When the man raised his arm to touch his hair, the woman fleetingly rubbed her cheek against the back of his hand. They did not stay to the end and went to have supper together. Few people sat in the large, brightly lit dining room. Pani Niewieska criticized the cuisine but ate with relish and urged Elżbieta to do the same. “Well, tell me what you’re up to?” Pani Niewieska asked, and then continued in the same tone: “You didn’t tell me you were engaged. I’ve only just found out from Tczewska. So it’s true? She knows him, this gentleman. She says she likes him, that she’s heard good things about him.” Elżbieta hesitated. “I was engaged. But now it’s broken off.” “Really?” Pani Niewieska was surprised. “Yes, it’s easy to get engaged and unengaged when you’re young. Later on you don’t treat such things quite so lightly.” “Is that what you think?” “I won’t inquire into what happened between you, because it’s your business. I know how to be discreet. But I can assure you, because I know, that breaking things off is the easy bit. For that you don’t need a lot of sense.” She was lost in thought for a moment, smoking a cigarette with her coffee. “But to stick with it, to know how to control it within yourself—that’s more difficult.” She smiled. “It’s not easy to manage a man, it’s true. Especially when he’s very much in love.” In a gesture unknown hitherto to Elżbieta, her mother laid her hand upon hers. “Think about it. Reflect again whether you might not regret it later. Because it’ll be just the same with any other man.” Elżbieta did not attempt to explain anything, or defend herself against the strange emotion now affecting her. Like the woman in the auditorium,

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she fleetingly rubbed her cheek against her mother’s hand. But she knew the moment represented no bonding between mother and child. It was no victory for her childhood longing over many years, no fanciful revenge for the unloved little girl, unwanted by her parents.

18 Elżbieta’s second month in Warsaw had already gone by. So life without Zenon was possible. The beautiful end of summer graced the city with bright blue, sunny prospects. Well-known places seemed different, new and unfamiliar, full of melancholy enchantment. Dahlias and cannas of every color were in bloom in the parks, while the tall-trunked, pale-barked trees reared up out of the smooth green surface of the lawns and spread their topmost branches into the very depths of the sky. So she could laugh and converse without him, go for drives and walks with her mother and her mother’s friends, visit the shops, even put on the new dresses purchased by her mother. Life without Zenon was possible. But with every passing day his absence made itself more keenly felt. Returning home in the evenings, Elżbieta experienced disappointment every time. She was not expecting a letter, nor did she seriously imagine for a moment that one would come. But as she quietly got ready for bed on her couch, tiptoeing around in the dark so as not to wake Pani Świętowska, she felt a tight wrenching of the heart so painful, it was as if she had been convinced all day that she would receive one. Evidently, then, she was waiting for a letter without being aware of it. It was hard to admit that Zenon had accepted her decision without protest, totally acquiesced in what she had written, made no effort to put things right or even explain. He had not tried to justify himself, not sought forgiveness or reconciliation. He was silent, silent. Her aunt had written in a letter: “There’s no sign of Ziembiewicz, I can’t think why. He came once but Łucja sent him packing because I was ill at the time. Maybe he was offended.” No, he was not offended. He had simply recognized that Elżbieta had behaved correctly, understood the inevitability of their separation. Satisfied she had won a victory, Elżbieta was no longer so sure, however, of her correctness. Viewed from a distance the affair’s vivid colors had somewhat paled, the injury done to Justyna was not so pathetic, nor her fate so desperate. One thing remained undisputed: the problem of the child.

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Zenon wanted to have it. Of course, there was no question of his marrying Justyna—neither he nor Elżbieta had seriously entertained that idea. And in relinquishing Zenon in this sense, Elżbieta had perhaps gone too far. Well, be that as it may, her sacrifice had been accepted, and there was no more to be said. Aunt Cecylia also wrote: “If you’re getting on well with your mother, then stay. But remember Łucja and I are constantly expecting you back.” At these words Elżbieta’s eyes grew moist. But it wasn’t this she wanted to cry over. Her mother was waiting in Warsaw for the arrival of her husband. This whole period of anticipation was filled with pleasant and amusing things. The young man whom Elżbieta had met on her first day, Pan Sobosławski, Janek, was undoubtedly the closest of her mother’s young acquaintances. But this did not mean that others were excluded. Elżbieta now looked upon it with experienced eyes. She was astonished how no one in that social world seemed to have any prejudices, no one ever suffered, no one was consumed by jealousy. People greeted one another joyfully and parted without regret, resentment, or suspicion. It was not a matter of age, since Sobosławski was no older than Zenon, and her mother still possessed all the attributes of a flighty young woman—capriciousness, thoughtlessness, unreason. Maybe it was their culture, that good upbringing which they discussed so frequently. Or maybe it was indifference. She remembered how Zenon could never tolerate another person in the house. When he came to see her, not only men, but every female visitor too was an enemy. Whenever her mother went to the theater with Pan Janek, to the cinema or to supper, she was always happy to take Elżbieta. They talked only about what they were watching or about people whom Elżbieta did not know, mainly indifferent, concrete things. They were quite unconstrained in her presence. Words were not important, but only the perpetual beauty of that one woman, which managed to go on existing in any place, and at any time of the day or year. Elżbieta was amazed how something so extravagantly useless could serve the common goals of ordinary existence, since her mother’s eyes were for seeing, just like other people’s eyes, and her teeth for biting. Her skin encased her flesh in tissue of the highest possible price, blue around the eyes, pink on the hands, milk-white on the neck. And yet it served, like other people’s, only to protect her body, and breathed, like other skins, at times of day and night invisible to the naked eye. Her mother’s entire life went by accompanied by this beauty. What for others was reserved for special occasions was for her an everyday affair. Pan Sobosławski had heavy eyelids, slow to lift, and soft thick lips, which he often touched with his tongue as he spoke. He was serious and polite and

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despite his apparent indolence, willing to offer his services at short notice and spare no pains. He danced well and for a long time, always wishing to go on and on, though his face and dreamy eyes betrayed no sign of enthusiasm. At Pani Niewieska’s behest he would immediately appear, sort out any business, go anywhere she desired. He hardly spoke a word and was said to be a good civil servant. Two other young men outdid him in eloquence, and likewise took great pains to make Pani Niewieska’s life as pleasant as possible. Spending time in their company, Elżbieta always had the impression they found her boring, and were merely waiting to move on to some other place where they expected the real fun to begin. In the meantime this was the best they could hope for—talking about obvious things, dancing, motorcar drives to some out-of-town café, visits to the cinema, and restaurant suppers. Afterward they would take Elżbieta home in the car and then drive off with Pani Niewieska. Elżbieta was sure they said goodbye to her too, quite normally, at the entrance to the hotel. When only Sobosławski was present, however, she was not so sure. And she would look for certainty in the friendly mutual tolerance that existed between those young men, in the calm way in which they took turns and replaced one another at the side of that beautiful, indifferent woman. Elżbieta’s earlier hope of a serious conversation with her mother, during which everything might at last be finally stated, her dream of some kind of ultimate reconciliation, came to nothing—reduced to shared motorcar rides, dancing parties, and soirées. Her mother would say: “You know, you’re smiling now exactly like your father.” Or: “It’s quite remarkable: That’s exactly his tone of voice.” And it was quite clear to Elżbieta that she held it against her. Returning to Pani Świętowska’s flat, Elżbieta passed into a different world. Here, there was nothing except her hostess’s office and her memories. On the brief occasions when they were alone together, Pani Świętowska would invariably relate some story with great animation, or try to convince Elżbieta of something. In contrast to her mother and her mother’s friends, who always said of someone that he had merely arrived or departed, had been where they were yesterday, or had not, Pani Świętowska distinctly evaluated people and their affairs. She appeared incapable of dialogue. Her own words completely filled the air in the room, thereby totally satisfying her need for intercourse with another human being. Her stories emerged one out of the other, spilling from her in easy succession like beads dropping off a broken string, and not necessarily in chronological order. Often, they

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followed on from one another as illustrations of a particular assumption. It was enough for her to begin: “Sometimes it’s hard to believe what these people are actually like,” to then recount literally everything: bad things, or good things, or merely odd things about various people in turn. And the fact that she never talked about herself in the same tone of voice seemed purely a matter of chance. For instance, she would exclaim: What a man that Oleś was! And Elżbieta realized she was talking about her uncle, notary Aleksander Kolichowski, the memory of whom had grown encrusted in her own imagination with what she had understood of the long conversations between her aunt and Pani Łucja. “I know you’ve heard all kind of things about him from Cecylia,” Pani Świętowska would say excitedly. “He had his faults, but she was swayed too much by her nerves. Who takes such things in a man to heart? Every other man has a flirtatious nature. But despite everything, that man was kindness itself, delicacy itself. A heart of gold. There are people who don’t like to remember other people’s good deeds, but I’m not one of them. I shall never forget Oleś, the kindness he showed us following our mother’s death, or afterward when Ludwisia was so ill for such a long time. There was no occasion when he didn’t call on us, if only for an hour, when he came to Warsaw on business. I’ve no idea what I’d be doing now in life if it hadn’t been for him. For my job and the few groszes I have in the bank, I’ve no one to thank but him. And I always went to stay with them every holiday, every vacation, like they were my own family.” In the light of Pani Świętowska’s stories, the notary of the portrait, the notary of the household tradition in Staszic Street acquired fresh colors. So here was a place where the posthumous existence of Uncle Kolichowski endured as a thing of value, and where his memory was revered with fervent gratitude. Pani Świętowska also gladly told her what she thought of her aunt—that Cecylia had been a sprightly young woman, a bright spark with a weakness for parties, dancing, and outings, which Elżbieta found even harder to believe—and also of her mother, in whom Pani Świętowska appeared to take a particular interest, but only as she had been in the past. The present-day Pani Niewieska did not interest her in the least. Elżbieta came home after whole days spent in her mother’s company and might have had many details to relate, even omitting the things that inspired doubt or surprise. But Pani Świętowska did not inquire about anything. It was obvious she was interested only in things she already knew perfectly well, whereas things she knew nothing about never aroused her curiosity.

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As she lay on her couch and darkness descended on the room, Elżbieta was transported back in thought to what had recently taken place in Staszic Street. It had been painful to discover every day new details of his betrayal, to see that girl Justyna and, having seen what she was like, to hear from her, to deduce from her words, how it had really been. That was painful. But even then he could have come at any time, even then he was still in the same town as she, even then he still loved her despite everything. He could have come! Could have come! . . . And she saw in her mind’s eye how he came, stood tall in the hall doorway cocking his head to one side with a smile and stretching out his arms, into whose iron grip she fell full of longing, as if into a trap. And in imagining all this, which hurt like an open wound, there lurked an inexpressible, inexhaustible intoxication. Maybe she should have stood by him then, when she learned about everything. How he must have been torturing himself precisely because of those unsaid things, because of the things that condemned him most in her eyes, keeping them secret from her as well as from the other one, deceiving both! Maybe she should have stood by him and worked out together with him a way to resolve the predicament, perhaps tried to help him in what was now their shared problem. She was gripped by sudden fear at what she had done, dreadful regret for what she had lost through her own fault, as well as certainty that there was no way back, that it was too late to change anything or put it right. She was determined never to go back there and to adjust instead to her mother’s lifestyle, leave the country with her and remain somewhere abroad. She was determined never to see him again. And yet things were to turn out otherwise. One morning she left the house early, intending to go to the hotel to fetch her mother and then travel with her to the station, since this was the day Pan Niewieski was arriving back from abroad. As she came through the gate, she espied on the opposite side of the street, looking hesitant and undecided, Zenon Ziembiewicz. She saw him and yet somehow did not recognize him. Was it because she had been so sure he could not be there? Or because in his unfamiliar clothes he appeared to be someone else, transformed by his faraway life, remote and almost foreign? A moment elapsed before she gave him her hand. “So you’ve come?” she asked in a hoarse, searing voice. But he cried out joyfully and as if triumphantly: “Elżbieta!” He took her arm and led her down the street away from the house. She walked quickly, terror-struck by happiness. “I’ll tell you everything.”

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They walked hurriedly, leaving behind people and streets. They said nothing, nestling close to one another. “Wait a moment,” she said suddenly standing still. “I have to call my mother, so she doesn’t wait for me.” “What did you do, what did you do, Elżbieta?” he said without anger or sorrow, gazing at her entranced. In the dark interior room of the little cake shop where they found a telephone, they sat and talked, elbows resting on the cold marble tabletop, their faces close together. “Listen, Elżbieta, we are free now, we can go ahead now. The other thing’s all over, completely settled, do you understand?” She still did not ask him, even at this point, how he had settled it. They let go of each other’s hands only when the waitress brought their coffee and croissants. “No, tell me, you must have known I wouldn’t let you go,” he went on. “But I had to wait till I was totally sure that nothing would ever come between us again.” “I’ve been constantly waiting, Zenon, for you to write or call. Every day I thought a letter would come from you.” “Ah, God!” Zenon was gratified. “You see, and every day too I intended to write. But what was I supposed to say? Make promises when I still knew nothing myself . . . ? I’ve got so much to tell you! And what have you been up to here? Let me look at you! You look wonderful, so sleek! Wait, you’ll be amazed when I tell you everything. They’re offering me such things there, you’ll see. Czechliński . . . But listen, let’s go somewhere else! Let’s go, let’s go.” He tapped on a glass in order to pay. They emerged into the bright early morning as though from a cellar, and were engulfed by blinding light. They stopped a taxi and asked to be taken to the park. They kissed as they sped along, breathless in their eagerness. “I’ve been coming here with my mother,” she said leading him down the familiar alleyways. “But I was thinking of you.” The same pale-barked trees stretched their bare slender trunks upward, beyond the green canopy of crowns and into the sky. The same borders, expanses, and banks of flowers spilled onto the paths. Down below, deeper into the park, the funny peahens without tails wandered over the lawns.73 At that time of day there were still no people. “Let’s go at once, today or tomorrow, Elżbieta,” said Zenon, clasping her around the shoulders. “Let’s get married, let’s get married.” However they did not go that day, or the next.

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In the afternoon the heat was unbearable. Walking slowly uphill, they left the park, waited for a tram, and crossed the drowsy city, white from the sun’s glare and the dust. “Let’s go to my place,” he said. “You can rest there.” He was staying in a dismal little hotel on a side street. Lying in his embrace in the obscurity of the unfamiliar room with its dirty plush curtains drawn over the window, in an alien bed, Elżbieta thought she must have been crazy leaving then, writing that letter. His arms, clasped tightly around her, were the only safe place on earth. Did she really imagine she could live without him? “I was crazy,” she uttered under her breath, though he did not understand what she meant. He wanted her to repeat again, to keep repeating, that she loved him. At dusk, hunger drove them out onto the street. In the dark confined space of a public telephone booth, Elżbieta again called her mother while Zenon stood right beside her gripping her around the waist. She covered the receiver with her hand and whispered that her mother wished to meet him. “Maybe you’ll come with me?” she asked shyly. She was surprised when he responded warmly, “Of course, why not?” “Because, you see, it’s a completely different world. You’ve no idea! Everything will annoy you.” “What do you mean, why should it? After all, we’ll be together.” Her mother’s hotel was not far away. They went on foot through ever wider, more beautiful streets, past an immense square. They saw each other against a new backdrop and imbibed from it a strange, unfamiliar emotion. And they began to fantasize about journeys to distant places, just the two of them, or about things awaiting them in the inconceivable, charmed precincts of the future. In the little sitting room, in addition to Elżbieta’s stepfather, who had now arrived, Pan Sobosławski was seated in his usual place. As she greeted her mother and both gentlemen and presented Zenon to them, she again had misgivings about the juxtaposition of these two contrasting worlds. She sensed that if some conflict were to arise, then the fault—in the eyes of both parties—would be exclusively hers. Following such misgivings, however, she realized that in her heart of hearts she longed for Zenon to enchant them. For Elżbieta there was an invitation to a reception, due to take place that evening in honor of some sporting convention. Her mother asked Zenon if he would like to come with them. To Elżbieta’s surprise, Zenon accepted

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without hesitation, thanking her mother for the invitation with his characteristic stiff bow. Pan Sobosławski gently lifted the receiver from a side table, uttered a few words in his sleepy voice to someone in some office, and the matter was arranged. Elżbieta felt a dull anxiety: did Zenon know he had to go in a dress coat? And had he brought one with him, coming only for a few days? At the same time she was ashamed that such a thing should bother her. Another theater visit was envisaged for the following evening and there would be a free place in their box, because Pan Niewieski would be otherwise occupied. Zenon agreed to the theater too. That evening they all met downstairs and went to the hotel restaurant to eat before the reception. Pan Niewieski was the one who invited everyone to the table, indicated where they should sit, read out the menu and shared his expert advice. He paid particular attention to his wife’s “delicate constitution,” while she took his jocular tone seriously but graciously. His marriage—at which he had arrived by means of two divorces and multiple obstructions erected by his first wife—had sealed the great passion of his life, of many years standing. He himself was a still handsome, elderly gentleman—big and corpulent with a dark, harshly delineated head set on a short neck in such a way that appeared even for him a little uncomfortable. His movements were heavy but full of freedom and charm. He had wide shoulders, enormous stature, and engaging manners. His good breeding was carefully studied, watchful, eager, inspiring confidence, jocular and protective. He had a long past, stretching back to before the war, the heroic moments of which were still remembered here and there. The forbidding expression of his black eyebrows, running down at a steep angle toward his nose, had softened over the years along with the progress of his career. In the new state of affairs, he had proved to be an outstanding minister of finance and a cautious politician. He had put on weight, he spoke smoothly, smoked cigars, and ate as if he had never hidden in other people’s flats from the police—starved, ragged, and persecuted—or relied for his budget on small loans from tried and tested friends as his first port of call. Having achieved what he had achieved, he could not afford to rest. He was careful to ensure he was well-liked. Alert to other people’s words, curious about other people’s business, always attentive to the level of the person with whom he was dealing, he knew immediately when to adjust his words, jokes, or deeds. At the round table in the large white dining room, on gilded white Louis chairs there sat, in addition to the family, first of all Pan Sobosławski, and then,

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almost unexpectedly, both Count and Countess Tczewski, who were also going to the reception and had likewise come to refresh themselves beforehand. Elżbieta observed how the always morose and vehement Zenon grew pleasant, pliant, and casual, and how he had words and smiles readily at his disposal. He sat between her mother and Pani Tczewska. They at once had plenty to say about Piesznia, about Czechliński and the affairs associated with him. Sobosławski, who sat on the other side of the Countess, also turned out to be an acquaintance of Zenon from Paris, having attended lectures given by the same professors at the School of Social and Political Sciences.74 Elżbieta was glad to see Zenon seemingly at home among such people and that they liked him. Pan Niewieski interrogated him across the table on various topics, as if trying to subtly and carefully ascertain whether he were clever or stupid. When Tczewski, who was constantly screwing up his eyes as if he were hard of hearing or trying to overcome his absentmindedness and every other minute assumed a serious face at someone else’s—or even his own—words, informed the minister that Czechliński had definitely settled Ziembiewicz’s business, Niewieski turned his attention almost exclusively to Zenon. He offered him wine and urged him to smoke a cigar imported from some distant land. And Elżbieta suddenly began to regret that she herself had organized this meeting, where she was once again losing the barely regained Zenon, losing him for the sake of matters which no longer seemed worth her sacrifice. A new, unknown thing had come between them. He was closer to all these people than she was. The impression was fleeting and melted away during the course of the evening, when in the suite of magnificent spacious rooms of the old castle, separated in the alien dressed-up crowds, they lost and sought one another again, the closest and most missed. Somewhere in the throng, by a wall, they discovered two empty armchairs that remembered royal times.75 There they sat secluded, as though in the midst of a forest. “When I look at all this here,” said Elżbieta, “I can’t imagine how you’ll manage. How with your temperament and your independent nature, you’ll be able to accept everything, which will no doubt be necessary back there . . . ?” “Well, what of it?” Zenon was a little taken aback by her words, “I never sought it myself. I shall give it a try. And if it turns out it’s not for me . . .” He broke off, sensing this was not what her question was about, not what was important. He thought for a moment, then leaned toward her and simply said amid the vast reverberating hubbub of the room:

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“You see, I have never had any connection with them before. For me, it is not a private tragedy like it is for them, no scattering of illusions or disenchantment . . .”76 And then he added: “I believe that only now will I have greater opportunity to use my initiative, that I’ll be a lot freer in fact than I’ve been to date. And anyway, if things are difficult, I shan’t be alone, I shall have you. You will be there to help me.” The following evening, as they sat in the theater watching what was happening on stage, Zenon took her hand in the darkness. Then she felt his other hand and a ring being pushed gently onto her finger. She made no move at all, whispered not a word.

19 Contrary to what was said later, Justyna had already begun work as a saleswoman in Toruciński’s drapery store on Świętojańska Street before Zenon and Elżbieta’s wedding. It was true, however, that she owed her position to Elżbieta. Pan Julian Toruciński, a respectable tradesman, president of the local Association of Christian Merchants, placed advertisements from time to time in Niwa, having been induced to do so some time before by Marian Chąśba. He would announce the arrival of fresh consignments of goods, special woolen fabrics for ladies’ suits or the latest silk fashions from Paris. Although Zenon had had opportunities to do so, and although she had implored him again in earnest, he had put off talking to Toruciński about Justyna. Elżbieta bought everything she needed in Toruciński’s shop and was now ordering linen and furniture coverings. So it was to her that Zenon turned with this delicate matter. As he raised the subject, he became serious and his face looked severe, just as before when he was still feeling resentful toward Elżbieta for not knowing how to love him enough. “You walked into it yourself,” he said, “when you summoned her to you. Now, you see, you have to help me. You have to help me bear it . . .” It was early afternoon, the quiet lunchtime hour when the streets were deserted. Drenched in sunlight, the uncannily still autumn day was dazzlingly bright from the transparency of air and sky. The leaves on the small rounded acacia trees on Emerytalna Street were verdigris-colored. Elżbieta gradually understood what it was about. Since coming home from Warsaw

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she had grown used to thinking that the problem of Justyna was resolved. She even vaguely imagined Justyna had gone away somewhere, was no longer in town, or no longer existed at all. But now Justyna was suddenly back and merely biding her time. And it was necessary to resume the affair at the point where it had been left off, resume it and, together with him, as it he put it, “bear” it . . . “I’m ready to help,” she replied eagerly, and then paled in terror. Because everything she felt in relation to the affair was a form of suffering. “I’m ready,” she repeated, because Zenon was still considering how he was going to say it. But say it he must, because in so doing, he would give the utmost expression to his trust in her feeling and her solidarity. “You know, she’s been dreaming of such a position for a long time, and now one of the saleswomen is leaving. It’s only natural I should help her.77 But she doesn’t want to understand that I can’t intervene in person, and can’t ask anyone else to fix it for me. I don’t want the thing to look worse than it is. Especially now. Now I have to be careful . . .” “You don’t have to explain, I understand,” she interrupted. “I’ll willingly go there and simply say . . .” Zenon was relieved she had agreed so easily. “I really don’t know how to put it, how to thank you enough . . . You are so good . . .” He kissed her hand, but she tore it away hastily, shocked by her own panic. She had been doing her best not to betray herself, to somehow withstand the whole affair. “Just say she lived here in your house with those Gołąbskis, that’s how you know her. That’ll be enough.” She nodded without speaking. “You can say that she’s honest, with absolute certainty.” After a while he added: “Honest and not on the make.” She did not look at him, waiting for him to finally finish. Indeed, everything she felt in relation to the affair was a form of suffering—both the deepseated resentment she felt toward Zenon and her anger at Justyna, both the sympathy she felt for her and for him, and her own ordinary, bodily jealousy. It was not she, however, who broke off the conversation. On the contrary, she asked: “And can she do the work? Has she done anything like it before?” Zenon had not thought of this. “I don’t think so. She only knows embroidery and how to make lace, I saw it at Boleborza. But she told me she’s always wanted to work in a shop. After all, it can’t be difficult . . .”

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“I’ll go and tell them,” said Elżbieta. “I’ll go now. I can still make it before lunch.” “Let’s go together. You go in, and I’ll wait for you outside the post office.” The glass doors of the store stood wide open onto the street and, as everywhere else in the town, it was necessary to go up a flight of steps in order to enter. It was shady and cool in the cavernous space of the interior. The air was dense with the smell of heavy woolen fabrics, thick printed cretonnes, and cold shimmering linens stored in dark-blue cardboard boxes, the reek of dyes and fabric-finishing. At the sight of Elżbieta, Pan Toruciński emerged from deep within the premises and assured her that all her orders would be supplied on time, she need not worry. Elżbieta discussed her own purchases first, and then mentioned Justyna. “She’s known to me personally, but I’ve also heard a lot about her. She’s honest and hard-working. And not on the make.” The shopkeeper inspected Elżbieta’s new suit. An indulgent smile spread over his solemn face. “You’ve bought yourself something new in Warsaw, am I right?” “But it’s an off-the-peg thing from abroad,” she explained, embarrassed she had acquired something not in his shop. “Customers are told they’re getting English material, am I right? And you, dear lady, believed it. But that’s a Bielski product.78 And Bielski textiles are no substitute for the English original.” That’s what he said: “No substitute for.” He unrolled a length of corduroy onto the empty wooden counter in front of Elżbieta, fashioned it into a pleated triangle and held it up high in his left hand. Thus he indicated in a manner leaving no room for doubt that she could profitably purchase a few yards for herself, instead of buying elsewhere. And that it would not only be better quality, but cheaper. “I’d like to say again,” Elżbieta returned to the previous subject, “that she has all the right qualifications for a sales assistant. She’s young, healthy, clever . . . polite and good-looking.” As she spoke these words, she believed she was doing the right thing, that this was precisely what she had to do, because it was so hard. She came out of the shop smiling and soon caught up with Zenon, for whom every minute of waiting had been torture. Observing his anxiety, she said quickly: “It’s all fine, Zenon, he promised for sure. She’s to go there tomorrow to discuss it with him.” He took her by the arm, and the gesture at once bound their footsteps in a single rhythm, a precise clicking into place of arms as far down as the

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interlocked hands, a perfect cleaving together of elbows and hips. In this close-knit, efficient, well-organized movement of both, the balance of forces appeared ideal, as in the movements of a single four-legged creature. And their joy too was shared. Zenon was relieved that the problem of Justyna was becoming ordinary, mingling with everyday life and letting itself be absorbed by it. Her weight, hanging over both of them, no longer divided them. Elżbieta, on the other hand, was persuaded once again that everything was finished, successfully and conclusively. Zenon could have no such illusions. Justyna, after moving from the Gołąbskis’ basement and then a short illness, had taken lodgings in a different, rather remote part of town, the Chązebna Suburb, in a small wooden house with a couple whose name was Niestrzęp, strangers who knew nothing about her. Zenon gave her money for her upkeep, yet despite this she kept finding fresh excuses to turn to him for help or advice. She would come in person or send letters written in the intimate tone of a close relative, always addressing him by the familiar form of “you” and informing him of a new complication with her health or some minor domestic problem. Something in her mood had distinctly altered, and she had begun to sulk and make demands. On one occasion, before his trip to Warsaw, alarmed by one such letter, he went to see her in person, but it transpired she was feeling no worse than usual. She was merely “upset” and did not know herself what was really the matter. And then she told him almost in tears that she did not want to be a burden to him anymore and absolutely had to get that placement at Toruciński’s, because otherwise she had no idea what would become of her. Zenon could not be sure that even if she were to get the job, she would not start making further demands. As they drew near to the house, Zenon suddenly squeezed Elżbieta’s hand and looked into her eyes with immense gratitude. “Always be so good and wise, Elżunia,” he begged. She was not good. For she was already realizing that it was not the end. Zenon would have to tell Justyna about the conversation with Toruciński, forewarn her to be at the shop before twelve. She wondered why he could not let her know by some other means. Was it essential for him to see her? She said nothing, not wishing to display her lack of trust. “All right,” she replied. In the fine autumn weather Pani Kolichowska’s health had improved. She would make her way to the table with both walking sticks and defend herself angrily whenever Zenon attempted to assist her. But she regarded him

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less malevolently now. Elżbieta’s return, when her aunt had imagined that this time she really would disappear somewhere after her mother, had done much to enhance Zenon’s standing in her eyes. Thanks to their approaching wedding, Elżbieta would be staying in the town forever. The relief Pani Cecylia now felt, in her anxiety, made the thought of Elżbieta living separately after her marriage easier to bear. A town house had already been renovated for Zenon’s use, situated within the public park, almost outside the town limits. Following major improvements to its interior, this home, once a magnate’s abode,79 later accommodating the municipal gardens administration and the offices of petty gardeners, was one of the town’s most beautiful residences. The view, although enclosed on all sides, was charming: low flowerbeds set in the grass, sloping patches of meadow with clumps of trees, a bright strip of water, a private garden separated from the public areas by a high hedge, with summer house, detached cottage for servants, garage, its own chicken coops and greenhouses. Beyond the farthest tall trees, the chimneys of the brickworks and Hettner’s huge steel mill could be seen, and beyond them the distant pinnacles of suburban tenements. This whimsical crenelated horizon, shrouded in mist, decked in cloud or blue sky, seemed little more than a half-real stage-set hidden deep in the wings. Elżbieta remembered how as a child, running down the avenues of the park with her friends on those rare days when Pani Cecylia granted her freedom, she would peer through the hedge, curious to know what happy person might live in that white house, before which burgeoned the as yet unfamiliar magnolia trees. And now the prospect of living in it herself seemed unbelievable and too beautiful to be true. Pani Kolichowska offered Elżbieta a few pieces of furniture from her wellstocked lumber room. Removed from the ugliness besieging them, restored and freshly upholstered, they became unexpectedly attractive. Of the pictures also offered, Elżbieta took only the portrait of notary Kolichowski’s first wife and hung it in her own room. Before this she had received expensive gifts from her mother, arming her for a new path in life, namely a string of modest-sized pearls and a beautiful, light-ash-colored fur coat, one of eight fur coats in Pani Niewieska’s sumptuous wardrobe. Furthermore, Pani Niewieska had invited her daughter and son-in-law to spend a month at the villa she had rented for the season in the South. Just before their wedding, Zenon took Elżbieta to Boleborza to meet his parents. In the past he would never have suspected himself of such sentimentality. But the thing about to happen in his life was of such enormous consequence that it required everyone’s consent and approval. He had no

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idea how to express this need except in the customary way, through the standard ritual that sanctions and reassures. When they alighted from the railway carriage, he recognized at once the gray Boleborza horses standing outside the station enclosure and the cabriolet sagging on its springs. The navy-blue cloth of the upholstery looked brand new, and he guessed it had been scrupulously cleaned in honor of the day. He would have preferred the man seated on the box to have been different, someone younger than the old coachman, whom he did not like. Along the way Zenon pointed out the familiar places to Elżbieta. As they passed the great golden-hued pine trees and peat bogs covered in low birch, he said: “Look, look! This is where the lands belonging to Gwarecki Grange begin. Soon we’ll come to the place with the cross, where the Russian soldiers’ graves lie in a field.” He wanted her to see everything through his own eyes. But although she looked about her attentively, he understood it was impossible. He wanted her to like the water-logged meadows and alder groves lining the ditches and dikes, now shedding their leaves. He wanted to amaze her. Sitting beside him, leaning slightly forward, her profile was drawn across the flat, sad, monotonous landscape basking in the autumn sun. He had her there, in the place of his childhood. “Look,” he said again when the horses slowed to a walk and heavy dust began to rise up from under the wheels. “This sand stretches all the way to Boleborza.” At last they reached the manor, and the sandy road once more became firm and springy. Beyond the wattle fence surrounding the orchard, red winter apples glinted on the trees among dark leaves. Zenon sensed a glowing unease in his heart. “You’ll see my mother,” he said. “I’m curious to know what you’ll make of her.” And he secretly fancied them taking a liking to one another. Already on the threshold, his mother welcomed Elżbieta in words of which he had dreamed: “God never gave me a daughter, but today He’s made up for it by sending me you, my dear child.” After luncheon she spoke to him of Elżbieta’s attractions with such approbation that he kissed her hands and thanked her, he was so moved. Only later did he remember that she had once praised Justyna in a similar way. Love evidently appealed to her, and love in any form aroused her favorable response.

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Pani Żańcia was well preserved. Her gray hair, smoothly combed and parted in the middle, and eyebrows arching high into her forehead, imparted the stateliness of a painted portrait. Elżbieta was captivated by her. “This is how a mother should be,” she said. “Your mother is as a mother should be.” His father, on the other hand, looked poorly. The folds in his skin dug deep into his face, emphasizing the heavy cheeks and shaved chin, while the bags under his eyes dragged down the lower lids, giving him the appearance of an old bloodhound. His gaze was ponderous and red. “My father has aged,” Zenon explained to Elżbieta, as if feeling responsible for it. He forgot that she could not have had any great illusions, from what he had already told her. Pan Walerian also took a liking to his future daughter-in-law. He too said something along the lines of always trusting in his son’s good taste, since he took after him, but Elżbieta exceeded his expectations. And Elżbieta laughed and pulled his leg, as befitted her role. “He must be unwell,” she said anxiously to Zenon. “He shouldn’t still be working.” And she suggested, as though prompted by the standard pattern, bringing the old people to live with them, and that Pan Walerian would find amusement enough in the garden surrounding their new home to replace his work on the farm. When they were about to leave, Pani Żańcia gave Elżbieta a signet ring engraved with the Ziembiewicz crest and promised to send her dozens of linen sheets, tablecloths, and buttoned quilt covers, all beautifully embroidered. “I don’t have a daughter, so who else shall I leave them to?” she explained. Together they examined and selected those feminine treasures, the solidity of which terrified Elżbieta, accustomed to less durable fine-spun batistes. She was amazed at how their own very personal affair, their love and their wedding, had suddenly attracted material goods from various quarters, and brought joy to people who until then had been strangers. Zenon did not intervene more closely in the matter. Among the linens the women were examining, he recognized from afar the ones that two years before Justyna had embroidered sitting on the garden bench. He could have been mistaken, and was even sure he was mistaken. But in those days Pani Żańcia had talked so much about them that both the “elaborate” design and the dainty open-work hemming seemed to him the very same. Having accepted with joyful hearts the gifts flowing from all sides, Zenon and Elżbieta decided to take advantage after their wedding of Pani Niewieska’s invitation. The formalities associated with Zenon’s assuming his official

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position as mayor, to which he had been appointed by virtue of decisions taken in high places, were due to happen only at the beginning of December.80 He therefore had enough time at his disposal to undertake that journey. On the way, Zenon and Elżbieta spent a few days in Vienna. Zenon wanted to familiarize himself there with the urban architectural projects.81 From early morning they scoured the magnificent workers’ districts, luxurious modern town houses, great ducal palaces converted into schools, brightly colored kindergartens catering to a thousand children. “So it is possible,” they said to each other in astonishment. “So such things are possible.” Because the world all around had not been transformed at all and remained unchanged, just as before. Children’s happiness, their health and possibility of real existence, joy at their coming into the world—all this could be read about and understood from the huge notice-boards hanging in the chambers of the city hall. Both of them were thinking now about one and the same thing, but neither dared utter it. The ordeal with Justyna was still fresh in their minds. Only one night, when they were still in Warsaw, Zenon asked in a whisper: “Is it what you want?” And Elżbieta replied: “Yes.” Later, beside the sea, the happiest month of their lives was to elapse. Elżbieta would wake early while Zenon was still asleep. Lying on her belly struggling against her morning sickness, with her chin resting on a pillow, she would stare through the metal bars of the bed at the sea. Lower down it was obscured by the latticework of the fence, but above it was open, dark in the blinding light of the morning sun. She could see it behind the trunks of two old palms, between their enormous stiff pinnate leaves. Both trunks consisted of the dried-up scars of former, broken-off fronds. Their scaly rhomboidal pattern resembled the outspread loops of a net. Against the narrow strip of sea, motorcycles and cars sped along the promenade to right and left, firing warning shots with their horns as they flashed by. A few horse-drawn cabs, upholstered in white cloth, passed more slowly in the shade of their linen parasols. Only horses here wore hats, people went bare-headed. Bathers clad in sapphire-blue and orange robes glided along the edge of the esplanade close to the shore, wholly framed by the sea. And when they reached a particular spot, they would disappear one by one behind the balustrade, down the steps onto the invisible beach. Elżbieta turned her head away from the sea and faced the room. Near the bed stood a heavy, circular mahogany table supported by the single monstrous paw of a fantastical beast, split into three at the bottom and ending in bronze claws on a solid triangular base. The guest room was the palace’s

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former parlor. A huge square mirror mounted on the wall above the black marble mantelpiece reflected the sea. The pediments depicted quail in cornfields. Sculpted heads of unknown persons stood in niches in the dark pink wall. She covered her eyes with her hands. She was bored. Again she thought about food, about sour milk and new potatoes, which no one here knew. When she gave up on this, a sliced radish suddenly appeared in her mind’s eye, arranged on a piece of bread and butter and sprinkled with large salt crystals. The salt dissolved in the juice of the radish slices and in the droplets of water, still visible from rinsing, on the butter. But her hunger for this too went unsatisfied. So she would wait patiently for Julie to bring coffee and croissants. And then Zenon would wake. She imagined that the world might no longer exist, and yet it was still a joy to possess consciousness, to live in a void and contemplate its unfathomable nature. But the world did exist. Not the sky or sea, nor the foreign horses in their sunhats beneath the palms. That was almost unreal. Reality was something different, far away from there, guaranteed by the presence closest to her. By the fact that he was there beside her, sleeping here. Another human being not separated from her by distance or barriers, and endowed like her with a body. A human being it was possible to touch. Everything inside her trembled at this knowledge, at this stupendous, sudden discovery. She had to share it with him. “Zenon,” she whispered as softly as she could, moving only her lips. She said nothing. She rested her face on his naked shoulder. And then he too awoke. She thought of the child concealed within her. She could not wake Zenon simply because she felt so happy. But she burned with the desire to tell him again. When Julie had brought the coffee and gone away, his first words were: “Do you remember, Elżbieta, that these two here are you and I?” Yes, she tried to remember. But he was not satisfied with this. Soon afterward, tall and almost entirely naked, he laid both hands on her shoulders as they prepared to go down to the sea: “It’s terrifying to think how vast the world is! Even the earth’s too big!” “Why?” “Because we might never have met. Imagine! Imagine!” Pani Niewieska joined them a few days after their arrival. Excusing herself with convoluted and obscure explanations, she inquired whether they lacked anything, and if Julie was carrying out her duties. When they went for walks with her along the esplanade, she appeared content with her new role. She walked beside her daughter, outshining her in looks and fashionable attire, while Elżbieta bore her mother’s beauty without remorse.

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The railway track to Monaco, highway, and tramline intersected time and again, diving into tunnels underneath one another, becoming entangled and disentangled.82 The steep stony coastline had absorbed much human toil before it was transformed from a sheer, naked cliff face towering above the sea into a slope of gardens and palaces, covered in avenues of feathery palms and dense thickets of fig and mimosa. The tough indigenous evergreen foliage hung over walls and the balustrades of stairways hewn out of rock. A single enormous, golden agave flower would rise out of the prickly vortex of its leaves and hold up its spiked head against the dark blue of the sea, like birch against a spring sky. Shortly before leaving, they went on an excursion to the town lying farther east. Clinging to the rocky ledge, twisting and turning, the road plunged into steep narrow streets between houses and villas whose shutters, like eyelids, remained closed in the sun. They alighted at one of the stops and walked uphill along an avenue of round pink-flowering oleander bushes, seemingly unreal, like little trees depicted on wallpaper. They wanted to see the local aquarium.83 Cold enveloped them in the narrow corridor between glass walls. Wondrous deep sea creatures emerged out of the dark green gloom and came toward them. Swaying on long bowed legs, they spun out their sad, pointless, suspect existences among the artificial rocks and flimsy seaweed. A small crab, its body covered in something that looked like a lady’s hat, strayed across in front of the glass on six slender pink legs, its face turned toward the people, back and forth and, as it were, crosswise to itself. Other larger crabs, dwelling in harmony with it, simply moved under the water along their own axes slowly raising their legs, likewise slender and creamy pink. When they met, they seemed unaware of each other, neither stopping nor moving out of the way, but stepping over one another as if over minor encumbrances. Moray eels lurked in rocky dens— elongated like the agave leaves, and puckered like the caption ribbons on old woodcuts. Enmeshed together yet knowing nothing of each other, they stuck their heads up motionless, like a futile prayer paralyzed from shock. Zenon and Elżbieta ventured further into the watery underworld, holding hands and saying little. Beyond the glass walls, the breathing of certain fish seemed distinctly to resemble torture, and their silence—the loss of all hope. One little fish wore a luxurious brocade costume on its stunted body, yet its big hideous face was sad and embittered. Some colored thing, some kind of ruby-like spangle, some luminous speck was constantly rotating around its eyes. With those eyes it stared out in mortal reproach from behind the glass pane, which for it was the wall of life.

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“Who is the God of those creatures?” Elżbieta reflected as they stepped outside. “And on what, if anything, can they rely?” Zenon said nothing, so she went on: “It can’t be so important whether one walks sideways or straight ahead. The fact that one walks at all is more important. The most important thing is being alike. The same thing is going on with them as it is with us, the very same thing, including having children.” He seemed doubtful about this.84 “They lay eggs, of which they know nothing later. Maybe they don’t even know what it is.” “But for each and every one there exists that other one, which in a sense is their lover. They seek one another, mean something to one another, if only for a while. And what they seek with is a kind of yearning. And what they find is an attempt at happiness.” Zenon laughed out loud. “But when you’re your own lover, like a worm or polyp for instance, when you reproduce asexually, then nothing comes of this being alike.” “So you think it all arose only in humans?” Elżbieta was indignant. “That it all started from humans? What terrible loneliness that would be. I feel absolutely certain that we’re exactly the same in essence. Our consciousness is greater, but it’s not essentially different from the sighing of those fish, or the moray’s prayer.” They sat in the heat under brightly colored sunshades and ate ice-cream. Small pigeons scuttled about between the chairs, peevish and impatient, waiting for someone to feed them. Zenon threw biscuit crumbs onto the gravel, but they did not want all of it. Elżbieta thought about going home.

20 One morning when the sky was still black, light entered through people’s windows from below. It was a sign that snow had fallen—early that autumn. Beneath its weight the last belated leaves drifted down from the trees. A long hard winter had set in. Justyna would awake and get up before dawn. Her room was located on the ground floor, its little window set not far above the earth. She washed, frozen and shivering, in the icy room and brewed tea on a small hotplate that quickly heated up and quickly went cold. When she came home in the evening everything would be frozen numb. White steam from her breath spiraled in the air.

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It took her three quarters of an hour to walk to Świętojańska Street. She had made a mistake renting a room so far away, but now she had got used to it and did not feel like moving. In the Chązebna Suburb snow lay piled high until people trod it underfoot. Better pavements, cleared of snow and sprinkled with sand, began only on the far side of the bridge. Justyna’s feet were soaked through and frozen in her light slip-on shoes. Later she bought a pair of fashionable galoshes which reached above the ankle, edged around the top in black rabbit-skin—then she felt warmer on her journey. She would arrive at the shop a little too early, afraid of being late in case Pan Toruciński was angry. He was easily irritated. She always waited some time before he came with the keys from the direction of Kościelny Square, where the Torucińskis had their apartment. She helped him remove the shutter bars from the doors and shop window and fasten them onto the hooks. As soon as she entered, she would get on with the cleaning, spraying water liberally onto the floor and sweeping the bare unvarnished boards in such a way that dust never flew up and landed on the merchandise. The old floor was full of splinters, to which tufts of rubbish clung. On Saturdays, after the shop had shut, she always gave it a good scrub. She scattered fresh sawdust on the swept floor, dusted the surfaces and removed the canvas sheets from the better quality fabrics. She lit the stoves, but not overmuch, just enough to prevent the damp creeping into the shop or stockroom. In the shop it was cold and dark. In the stockroom an electric lamp burned all day long on the ceiling. Customers would arrive later, but everything had to be ready in advance. Only on market days did peasants and village women appear first thing in the morning wanting to purchase something. They would buy up quantities of floral artificial silk or striped cotton velvet, cheap items of little intrinsic worth. Many haggled, even though a notice hung directly above the doorway stating that prices were fixed. Justyna sometimes dropped the price, if Pan Toruciński agreed. Toruciński’s eldest son, Ludwik, would stand behind a counter in the men’s department where materials for men’s clothing lay on the shelves, along with thick woolen stuff for overcoats and suits. He was short, thin, and awkward, and was no less afraid of his father than Justyna was. Apart from Ludwik there was one other male assistant, Pan Michał, a man no longer young, and another salesgirl, Mańcia, specializing in wools and worsted.85 Pani Torucińska, a placid corpulent woman much younger than her husband, was the last to arrive. She would sit at the cash desk in her sealskin coat and warm snow boots. Her eyes were half-closed like a cat’s, but she

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heard every word that was spoken. And she disliked young Ludwik, who was her stepson. Justyna went for lunch, as did Panna Mańcia from the wool department, to a woman whose flat backed onto the same courtyard as the shop. But each went separately so that one of them was always on duty. Justyna enjoyed her work. It was agreeable to stand behind the counter and show a customer the fabrics. Sparing no pains, she would unwind a yard, or yard and a half, of each sample—or more if Pan Toruciński considered it necessary—and, as she unwound it, throw it deftly into the air and always catch it in time as it fell back down, landing with the right side up. “It’ll never wear out,” she would say with conviction, assuring the customers that this season people would be wearing nothing else. If a female client liked the manufacture and the quality but could not decide on the color, Justyna would assure her that only green or only navy blue was now in fashion. Or she would say it was very becoming, or matched the woman’s hair or complexion. “Is it for a dress?” she would ask. “A morning dress? An afternoon dress?”—and whatever answer she received, it brought her obvious pleasure. “Ah, an afternoon dress! Then obviously wool! Because silk’s no longer worn in the afternoon. Or I can show you something totally new, we got it only the other week: a wool and silk mixture . . . I’ll fetch it right away . . .” She would say dark fabrics were slimming, or bright colors made you look younger. And she knew Pani Torucińska heard every word. “You’ll wear this dress for a few years,” she would announce cheerfully, once she was already cutting the required length with the scissors, folding it lengthways and then crossways, taking care to make the package neat. “You’ll tire of it before it wears out . . .” Every customer who purchased something made her happy. And every customer was made to feel she was interested only in their business. She picked it all up in a very short time. Quickly and deftly, she marked out the length of material with the aid of a yardstick, kept the place with her finger, calculated a little extra, and then cut it, taking care to do so evenly. She loved fine materials like silk, through which the scissors ran swiftly, cutting the fabric along the warp with a pleasant scrunch. She also liked white goods, which could be easily torn, once scored at the edge, with a single wrench of the hands. And only the thicker selvage edge at the end needed to be cut through. Justyna had wanted to work in a shop for a long time. As a small child still at Chązebna, she had played shops with Countess Róża Tczewska. But their shop had been a grocery store. Sand became flour, darker soil—kasha.

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While the white stuff inside sunflower heads was sprinkled with sand, cut into slices with a penknife, and sold as bacon fat. Justyna was always the shopkeeper and Róża the one having to buy. In Toruciński’s shop, Justyna met different people from the town and conversed with them while they made their purchases, as though they were her friends. But they were never her real friends. One evening, as she left the shop, Justyna saw Franek Borbocki waiting for her on the curb. The street was dimly lit. But she recognized him at once, as soon as he approached. She was afraid. “What do you want?” she asked, terrified. He had grown into a large, rawboned man. His face was dark and thin, and his eyes glared morosely out of their sockets. Encountering him so unexpectedly in the dark could be a frightening experience. “Why have you come?” she asked suspiciously. “Has something happened at home?” She suddenly remembered Jasia. Since old Pani Borbocka had died in the autumn, Justyna had not visited Jasia once. First, because she had such a long way to walk back at night to her suburb on the other side of the river, and always hurried home quickly from the shop. But in addition, returning to the house on Staszic Street was disagreeable. Franek said his sister’s little girl had died that same day before noon, and that his sister was very weak and begged her to come. “Died!” Justyna exclaimed wringing her hands. “She was always such a wretched little mite. And those poor little eyes . . .” She took out her handkerchief and wiped her eyes as they walked along. Nowadays she wept easily at the slightest provocation. Often in the evening when she returned from the shop, she would sit on her bed and cry for no reason. The handkerchief was soon soaked and her face began to smart in the frosty air. Franek walked beside her, hunching his great shoulders. She asked if Jadwisia had been ill for long, if she had been conscious, and what were her last words. Franek replied reluctantly as if offended at something, without looking at her at all. She learned that Jadwisia’s ear had been oozing since the autumn, but had ceased just recently. For a few days she had been flushed and feverish, pointing constantly at her head to show it was aching. When he got home that day, she was already dead. “Evidently her brain was affected,” said Justyna. She thought of the little girl, how she had always sat quietly on the stool between the slop pail and the stove. And of how her eyes always hurt whenever her mother wiped them with a rag.

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They passed along Emerytalna Street and turned into Staszic Street. Beyond the streetlamp on the corner, it grew dark, since shops that cast light onto the pavements in the evenings were already shut. As they walked down the street, Justyna sensed Franek was watching her askance. “That brother-in-law of yours, Gołąbski, is such a bad man,” she began. “It’s all because of him, because of his drinking and thievery that the children’s lives have been wasted, and Jasia’s too.” “Because of him and not because of him,” Franek replied begrudgingly, staring again at the pavement beneath his feet. “Then because of who, if not him? Did he ever care about those children? He went his own way and that’s that.” “He’d come back if he could,” Franek muttered. “But he won’t come back. Better not to complain about him.” “So you know where he is?” she asked stopping still. But Borbocki walked on and did not respond. She could feel that the man walking beside her was hostile both toward what she said and toward her. They hurried along side by side over the dirty compacted snow, like strangers. After all, at one time she had had to push him off, when he had been crazy about her. She recalled it without resentment, just the bare fact. He began to talk about his brother-in-law, saying that he had looked for work for a long time, applied to various places, but was everywhere rejected by the medical board because he had a shot-through lung and was unfit for work. “He tried different things before ending up like that. But it wasn’t his fault, he just got caught up in it somehow.” It was not far to where Jasia lived. They entered by the backyard gate. In the hallway Franek struck a match and Justyna began to follow him down the steps into the basement. Down below in the corridor, both of them had to bend right over. Coming in from the frost, they felt warm underground, but the air was heavy and fusty. When the match went out, Franek led on in the darkness saying nothing. Justyna walked slowly behind him, moving her hand along the brick wall, then across the heavily padlocked, nailedtogether boards of the cellar doors. Groping in the dark, he opened the final door. “Make some light,” he said. “Are you on your own?” From inside she heard Jasia’s altered voice: “Is Justyna there?” “I’ve come, I’ve come,” Justyna said.

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Franek felt for the lamp with his fingers and lit it. Only in the light did Jasia dissolve into tears. “Oh what an unhappy orphan I am, now my last baby will be laid in earth! Why do I go on living, when I’m so despicable, why . . . ? Everything kept repeating itself. Someone was always dying, and one or the other of them always weeping. This time it was Justyna’s turn to comfort Jasia. “Don’t cry, Jasia, don’t cry. It’s better for her this way, better the poor mite’s no longer in agony.” Jadwisia’s tiny corpse lay sideways across the middle of the bed. The child was clothed in a beautifully pressed white dress, in which Justyna had never seen her before. At the foot of the bed, the bedclothes were pushed back a little and crumpled where Jasia had been sitting, keeping vigil over the dead child in the dark. Without ceasing to cry, she tidied the bed so it would look decent to Justyna. “Jasia, don’t cry . . . Jasia,” Justyna repeated, embracing her wasted body, thin as a waif ’s. “After all, she always had those few years of hers in the world, always lived a little . . .” “A fat lot she saw of the world from this dark dungeon.” When Franek departed and went back to town, they sat down beside the deceased child and Jasia told Justyna about her illness and death, constantly bemoaning what a short time she had been destined to live. Justyna listened in silence, and then suddenly remarked, as if she bore some grudge: “What is there to regret? God wills some never to see the world at all, not even for a single day.” Jadwisia’s funeral took place on the third day early in the morning. There had been a thaw. Roofs were dripping. Water gushed down the sloping streets in wide streams. A fine winter rain began to fall as soon as they emerged from the gate of the Staszic Street house and did not stop until they reached the cemetery. Franek Borbocki carried the little coffin under his arm on a strap that passed over his shoulder. Justyna followed behind with Jasia, and behind them came Chąśbina and Ignacowa, the caretaker’s wife, both of whom turned back when they reached Piaskowa Street, and Balinowska, who accompanied them all the way. Justyna said a prayer by her mother’s grave. But she did not stay long at the cemetery, since the time she had arranged to take off work in the shop swiftly elapsed. Less than four months after the death of her child, Jasia herself finally died of the consumption plaguing her for so many years. Only when she was left alone in her enormous bed did she fall sick once and for all, as

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if free now to do anything she pleased. Yet she still dreamed sometimes that her dead mother lay beside her moaning, as though not even death could relieve her of that illness. She also dreamed of Jadwisia, that she was still alive, and of her husband, that he was coming back, apologizing and promising never to drink again. He came to her kind and loving, lying beside her in the bed, as if there were no world outside of that bed. But when he began to kiss her, she took fright, in case there should be another child. And she would wake up covered in sweat, relieved it was only a dream. She felt pain in her chest, in her kidneys, but most of all in her throat. She did not so much cough as spit profusely. For nights on end she lay drenched in sweat, cold and then hot again. She would wipe herself down with her wet nightdress and then put on another, which had dried out a little in the meantime on the rail of the bed. She was finally alone in that bed. It was comfortable. It had become like too large a coffin in too large a grave, just for her. She thought it would be good if she could repack the mattress with fresh straw, take the quilt out into the yard and air it, and then it might be easier to breathe in that fug . . . At first she would still get up. She would light the flame under the hotplate, heat up water to make tea and then drink it lying down. She carried out the pail only when she cooled down from her sweats and could feel dry warmth spreading over her, because she was afraid of catching cold. Franek came infrequently and then stopped coming altogether, vanished without trace like her husband. As she grew worse, only Chąśbina or Ignacowa dropped by occasionally to attend to her, bring her a few spoonfuls of soup, since she was incapable of swallowing solids, or leave a mug of water for the night on the chair by her bed. Justyna, because of everything else, somehow forgot about her. If she came at all, then it was always as night fell. She said she now worked a longer day, because after the shop shut she had to tot up the till. Once or twice on a Sunday she stayed a bit longer, but she was of little assistance and became like a stranger. Gołąbska died during the day, at precisely midday, at the very beginning of summer. And at that time of day, no one was around. Only in the evening did Justyna arrive, find her already cold, and inform Edward Chąśba of what had happened. Justyna continued to work in Toruciński’s shop until the autumn. From the time Pani Torucińska left in the spring for the country, Justyna began to replace her at the cash desk. Then she became the cashier. She learned how

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to count the money and enter items in the book. She always remained in the shop for an hour or two after closing time with Pan Toruciński, whose anger she no longer feared. He was well pleased with her and increased her wages from forty to sixty zlotys a month. After Jasia Gołąbska’s death, Justyna never left home, and even stopped going to the cemetery on Sundays. She felt worse during the summer than in winter. She associated with no one, continuing to live with those same people in the Chązebna Suburb. Their family name was Niestrzęp. Both were elderly, quiet, and not at all quarrelsome. They had no children. He worked on the railway, while she busied herself with a small kitchen garden and kept a host of chickens, whose eggs produced a tolerable income. Not long before, they had bought the house from their savings, and little by little were still paying off the mortgage. Justyna never saw anyone at their house apart from one man, whom they addressed with the familiar form of “you,” and of whom they both appeared to be very fond. They seemed to have known him a long time, but never clearly explained the connection. He did not come very often. When he did, he was served lunch or supper. He was not yet old but was almost gray, fat, taciturn, and slow to react. He seldom laughed, and always disagreeably. His name was Andrzej Podebrak. Above old Niestrzępowa’s bed hung a blown-up photograph of her niece, no longer living, whose guardian she had been. Justyna liked the look of her because on that photograph she had a smiling face. A second photograph, a smaller one, stood in a frame on the chest of drawers. Here the niece was already married. It was hard to recognize her as the same woman. She seemed so altered, as if after an illness. Pani Niestrzępowa explained sorrowfully that her niece had died a premature death, departed this world in the prime of life. Once she even said: A tragic death. Justyna thought for a moment that she was going to tell her how it happened. But Pani Niestrzępowa fell silent at that point and Justyna did not dare ask. On the other hand, both Niestrzęps often told stories about their niece, about what she was like as a child: how she played, how clever she was, and how well she had done at school. One day toward the end of September, Justyna did not go to work and failed to tell them why. In the evening Panna Mańcia from worsteds and wools came flying to her home to inquire if she were ill. Justyna lay on top of the fully made bed, covered in a shawl. She felt cold. “No, I am not ill,” she said reluctantly.

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“So why didn’t you come? The boss had to spend the whole day sitting at the cash desk. He was annoyed.” “Because I’m tired,” Justyna said. And burst into tears for no reason.

21 In the late autumn of that year Karol Wąbrowski at last returned from abroad. He caught sight at once of his Paris friend, Zenon Ziembiewicz, waiting on the platform. Zenon stood near the station entrance in his stylish overcoat, bowler hat propped back on his head and dazzlingly white woolen muffler wrapped around his neck.86 He looked like a typical high-ranking official photographed for the weekly newsreel. Zenon bounced up to Karol delighted to see him, revealing all his teeth as he laughed. “Well, how are you?” he repeated several times. Entering into his former role in relation to his physically weaker companion, he immediately took charge of Karol’s suitcase as well as the station porter, expressed concern that his friend might be exhausted from his journey, wanted to know if he had had a comfortable ride. Karol meanwhile, just as before, accepted it all quite naturally. On the topic of Pani Kolichowska’s health, Zenon was perfunctory and reassuring: “Fine, fine—I mean the same as ever.” And then added: “But thank goodness you’ve finally made it.” As to himself and Elżbieta, he had little to say. “Well, we have a son.” Besides, Karol already knew this from a letter. “You look like a happy man,” Karol said in all seriousness, as Zenon led him by the hand through a narrow passageway and past the ticket collector. “Or like a man confused by something . . .” “Simply like a man who hasn’t got much time,” Zenon replied laughing. He was indeed in a hurry. He drove Karol to Staszic Street in his long open motorcar, himself rang the bell for the younger Chąśba to take the suitcase, waited at the gate until Ewcia opened the door, and only then drove off promising to come back for lunch with Elżbieta. That day Pani Cecylia rose and dressed with great scrupulousness in order to receive her son. Łucja Posztraska and Ewcia had been flitting around her since early morning, intimidated yet devoted. The day promised to be fine. The low sun emerged into a pale sky. A first thin shaft of light pierced the net curtains and reached horizontally across to the other side of the sitting room, brushing against the furniture on the way. Stiff and severe, Pani Cecylia sat in her armchair, prepared for anything.

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As the motorcar drew to a halt outside the gate, Pani Łucja and Ewcia fell silent and vanished like ghosts. A short, unfamiliar man approached slowly from the doorway on his rigid legs. As he kissed her hand, Pani Cecylia clasped his head to her breast with the other. The head was bald. “My child,” she said as she did so, as if in defiance of the blindingly obvious. “My child . . .” His orthopedic corset made it difficult for Karol to bend over, and so the ritual of greeting proved awkward. Pani Cecylia did not reveal her feelings, gave nothing away. “You’re in Elżbieta’s room, which has been made ready for you,” she said. “There’s hot water next door in the bathroom. If you prefer to have breakfast in your room or perhaps come to the dining room, I’ll wait.” “Thank you, Mother, thank you, with pleasure . . .” He spoke softly, carefully and very correctly, hesitating slightly as he chose his words. “Afterward you can lie down until luncheon. At lunch you’ll see Elżbieta. I’m curious to know if you’ll recognize her, because she doesn’t remember you at all. It’s almost a year since she was living here. I live on my own now and somehow get by . . .” Pani Cecylia took up her walking sticks and escorted him to the passageway door. Unlike others, he did not attempt to assist her, occupied only with himself. He acquiesced in everything—slow, rigid, deliberate. Every movement was preceded by a separate decision and accompanied by the muffled rattle of his apparatus. “Later you’ll see how they’ve settled in over there. They’re living in the park out of town. His mother is with them now,” she forced herself to add, “since old Ziembiewicz died . . .” The old-fashioned room, crammed with bentwood furniture from notary Kolichowski’s former waiting room, with its outlook onto the fence and shady orchard branches draped over it, made an agreeable impression. This was almost all he said at breakfast. His behavior was so reticent, or indifferent, as if nothing particular had taken place. As if his arrival had done nothing to set in motion a whole host of long-forgotten things, or rock the entire biography of that old woman. “You are quite unlike your father,” she said unexpectedly and provocatively. He raised his eyes to look at her and immediately lowered them. The matter felt odd and hard to bear. He was not only unlike his father, he was also older. When she last saw Konstanty Wąbrowski, he had had bright sparkling eyes and thick, wavy dark hair.

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“You are like your grandfather Biecki,” she began and then interrupted herself. “Though I don’t remember him very well . . .” At the same time she was thinking of her first husband. He had stopped writing, had another woman there in Paris. Later it transpired that the woman had come from this very town and gone after him. So they had known each other before, here. Right up to the last moment, Pani Cecylia had imagined that she had no rival except the Party and was making sacrifices, as it were, for the sake of an idea. From the stalwart comrade in life, who knew how to renounce happiness, she had been transformed into a deceived wife. He had left the country suddenly, left at night, fleeing from the death sentence hanging over him, but now that departure, their farewells, the breakup of their family, all looked very different. And she herself had become a different person in her own eyes, as though someone had picked her up with their two fingers and set her down on a different square of the chessboard. “Your father died in Paris,” she said in anticipation. Karol said nothing. He ought to have known something, must surely have looked for traces there of his father. Not only had he died after all. Not only had she learned that no word, no miraculous twist of events would ever bring anything more. Because, ultimately, while he was still alive, she could always have bumped into him somewhere, or even received an unexpected letter years afterward . . . Evidently, she had been counting on that in some way without even knowing it, without even admitting it to herself . . . Yes. But not only had he died. His death had also been suicide. “And so you’ve no idea what became of her either?” she asked. She held her breath for a moment. Eventually, she raised her eyes to look at him. He sat there composed, mulling over what to say. “She’s still there. She has a daughter . . . ,” he replied hesitantly. Pani Cecylia stirred. “A daughter?” she repeated, not fully comprehending. Her suffering was short-lived and intense, like a sharp bee sting. It lacked substance. After all, it concerned things that had not existed for a long time. “She’s my sister . . .” Pani Cecylia did not wish to know more, and he did not say it. She rearranged something on the table, attempted to stand up. Ewcia handed her both sticks. After breakfast Karol slept. Without being woken by anyone, he appeared punctually for lunch. He found Elżbieta already in the dining room. They were waiting only for Zenon.

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Elżbieta welcomed her unfamiliar cousin coldly. Over many years she had grown used to imagining that his indifference was the cause of all Pani Cecylia’s heartaches. Looking at him now, she forgot this entirely. He was so odd. “Use the familiar form,” said Pani Cecylia. It was an effort for both. Pani Cecylia’s tone was so fierce, however, that they had to do as she wished. “What’s your son’s name?” Karol asked in his quiet way. Waiting for her reply, he gazed attentively up at her from below with his small, deep-set eyes. “His name’s Walerian, after his grandfather,” she replied eagerly. Her slender cheeks grew pink. “This week he’s into his fourth month,” she went on, now unprompted. “When you visit us, you must see him. A small child is something very queer indeed. A tiny kitten or puppy doesn’t play at once either, from the beginning. But compared to animals, a small human being seems a lot less happy. Walerian doesn’t cry any more than other babies, and yet he cries at the slightest thing. When he wants to sleep, when he wants to eat, when it’s time for his bath . . . As if reality itself caused him pain . . . Though I once saw a fish . . . ,” she gasped, suffering. Zenon arrived as she was speaking. “Elżbieta’s going on about the child, of course.” It sounded like a goodnatured rebuke. Pani Cecylia immediately leapt to her defense. “Karol himself asked,” she said. But Zenon was only seeking an excuse to add something of his own. Namely how surprised he was, because he had never liked children, they didn’t interest him in the least. And yet he could sit for hours beside that little rascal, if he wasn’t so busy. And Elżbieta beamed again happily. After lunch Elżbieta found herself beside Karol. By now she had got used to him, so she felt she could say it: “You made your mother wait such a long time, Karol. You’ve no idea how she has missed you.” Karol was taken aback by her accusation, as though something of the kind could never enter his head. “I was ill for so many years,” he replied after a while. “Then later, when at last I started work, I was afraid of any change. I could never imagine anything except the little street where I lived and my route to the library . . .” Unexpectedly, he smiled. “Look at me. Do I look like someone, who can easily embark on a journey?”

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His smile was forced and asymmetrical, surprisingly sweet and vulnerable. A few lower teeth on one side protruded over the upper ones, and it was precisely this that prevented him from smiling normally. At that moment Pani Cecylia was watching her son from a distance and experienced a strange sensation. His diminutive, angular face with its deeply sunken eyes suddenly unlocked before her. “He’s a nice man,” she thought and felt comforted. “And yet you did embark on it, you see . . . ,” said Elżbieta. When the Ziembiewiczes had gone, Pani Cecylia, exhausted by the surfeit of impressions, made the servants undress her and retired to bed. She needed to collect her thoughts, had to have a rest, because Elżbieta’s departure, as she rushed home to feed little Walerian on time, had once again wounded her heart, just as it had always done previously. Her pulse was weak and uneven. Pani Łucja Posztraska counted the drops as they fell one by one into the glass. “Wait a while,” said Łucja. “Once he’s been here for a bit, he’ll get used to things and start to feel at home. Then you’ll stop taking everything to heart. I see he’s brought lots of books with him. He will sit here and write.” Pani Cecylia silenced her with a wave of the hand. She did not know herself what was bothering her just then, whether it was Karol or Elżbieta. Her unhappy child could no longer replace Elżbieta, just as Elżbieta had never really replaced him. A few days later, in beautiful autumn weather, Pani Cecylia and her son made their way to the Ziembiewiczes’ residence. The first thing on arrival, of course, was to see the child, who was then being pushed around the garden in his voluminous perambulator by fat jolly Marynka, one of the servants brought by Pani Żańcia from Boleborza. But Marynka was nowhere nearby, so Pani Cecylia sat down with her plaid rug in a wicker armchair in front of the house, and Zenon and his mother kept her company. In the middle of the lawn, a semicircular patch of late chrysanthemums, scrappy and disheveled as if already frozen, shone with a golden glow. The mild sun concealed more distant prospects behind a luminous veil of mist. Elżbieta followed the wide-flung trajectory of the path in the direction of the park, impatiently restraining her steps so as not to outstrip Karol, who walked beside her. “Every day he’s out in the fresh air, even in bad weather,” she said as they walked along, “it toughens him up . . .” Marynka at last responded to her call from the very bottom of the garden. Here, in the iron netting, was a little gate leading into the park, usually kept locked. The child’s pram was pressed up against the gate, while Marynka conversed through the netting with a

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young girl. As Elżbieta and Karol approached, the girl walked hurriedly away. She stopped, however, on a bend in the path. Anxiously, Elżbieta glanced beneath the hood of the pram. The child was asleep. “Who were you talking to?” she asked suspiciously. “I don’t know who she was,” said Marynka. “She wanted a peep at Waluś, so I pushed him up close. But ever so quietly, he didn’t wake at all.” She was brusque, sure of herself, unabashed. As she spoke, she surveyed Karol in amusement. “Don’t ever take him so far again! There’s plenty of space nearer the house.” Elżbieta spoke hastily and disagreeably. On the far side of the hedge she glimpsed several schoolgirls. They walked past, peering into the garden just as she had once done. “There’s no need to speak to strangers,” she continued impatiently, recognizing in her own voice the same tone Aunt Cecylia adopted toward the servants. “After lunch you can go for a walk with whoever you please. But there’s no need for strangers to inspect or touch the baby.” Marynka defended herself vigorously. “You needn’t worry on that score. As if I’d let anyone touch him! She was standing there for some time, just standing there. All she asked was if it was the Ziembiewiczes’ child. And then she went away . . .” As they returned to the house, Elżbieta pushed the pram herself. At one point she looked back anxiously and saw the girl again. She was still standing on the bend in the path staring in their direction. When Elżbieta turned around for a second time, she had gone. She thought it was a hallucination. There was nothing odd about someone asking whose child it was. After all, people in the town knew who lived there. “Did you really not know her, Marynka?” “First time I’ve seen her,” Marynka replied indignantly. Elżbieta was sure she was not telling the truth. “Don’t be surprised, don’t hold it against me,” she turned to Karol, suddenly remembering his presence. She struggled to control herself, but her smile was malicious and artificial. Only at the sight of Zenon when they reached the house did she feel safe. Pani Kolichowska was unable to visit more often and was seeing little Waluś only for the third time. She observed him in silence, at once moved and resistant, totally disorientated in her conflicted motherhood. Pani Żańcia, on the other hand, leaned right over the pram uttering various womanly words, full of tenderness and sweet nonsense. When, as a result,

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the child woke up and began to cry, Marynka vanished with him into his room, which was upstairs. Many things in the Ziembiewiczes’ new house offended Pani Kolichowska. It was too bright, terrifyingly spacious, and much too clean. Again she told herself she would not have wanted to live there for anything, even if they had insisted on having her. She frowned at the very thought. “I don’t like cactuses,” she told Pani Żańcia when they were already seated at the dining table. But Pani Żańcia liked cactuses. You could never tell when they might sprout a new leaf and what it would look like, or when it would enter their heads to burst into bloom. You could always expect a surprise. “I like them,” said Karol. “They’re the born cripples among plants.” Pani Kolichowska restlessly adjusted her position in her chair. Karol raised his eyes toward her and stopped speaking. “Now you are happy,” Pani Żańcia said at this point. “At last you’ve got your only son at your side . . .” The heavy loss she had sustained and the changes that had taken place in her life had left no trace on the sunny disposition of Pani Żańcia. In addition to Marynka, she had brought with her from Boleborza the cook Józiowa, an energetic and hard-working woman. Florek, whose former task had been to attend to the samovar, was now employed as a servant by Zenon and Elżbieta. Surrounded by her own people, Pani Żańcia felt at home in her son’s house. At table she talked about her husband. On account of Florek and Marynka. The servants simply idolized him. He had been tender-hearted man who had never harmed anyone in his life. “You’d never believe the number of people who passed through the parlor at Boleborza before the body was carried out. And the flowers they sent from Chązebna, from the palace! Countess Tczewska and her daughters were at the church. Not only the neighbors attended the funeral, but wealthy landowners from further afield. Even the Woleńskis came from Kawno, because they still remembered us from the old days when we had Witków.” Zenon was always exasperated when his mother talked about his father. Her memories made a different man of him. “You only have to die to become completely defenseless,” he thought. Despite this he questioned her about his father and sought in vain for some answer in her words that he might regard as conclusive. Now that it was too late, he often regretted he had not been able to talk to him frankly and had not confessed to him his childish resentments. He had judged him early on, and it had stayed that way. Doubtless his initial,

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boyish disgust at his father’s sex life, at the brazen hussies loitering beneath the windows in the late evening, was the source of these judgments. But if he had only asked him . . . Anything his father might have said in reply would not have been the whole truth, nor the whole truth about him. But the love between those two people over so many years, their entire mutual relationship, was for Zenon a value that remained unexplained, far removed from what his mother said about it now . . . “And Father Czerlon’s address at the cemetery!” Pani Żańcia continued her reminiscences. “That man alone understood him—how he suffered his whole life in silence, thought about the fatherland, loved people . . .” “Father Czerlon?” Karol inquired unexpectedly. “So he became a priest after all . . .” “So you know him?” Pani Żańcia was intrigued. “Perhaps you met him abroad?” “I’m not sure if it’s the same man . . .” “The same, the very same!” Zenon cried, suddenly animated. “Adolf Czerlon. Oh, what a character! I’m surprised we’ve not heard more of him. He seems very promising to me . . .” He told them about Father Czerlon’s visit to the editorial office and about Pani Tczewska, who had accompanied him. “He looks like a criminal, or a martyr. He gave some lectures here, but no one attended them except our churchy ladies. Was he really at the Sorbonne?” “I saw him sometimes in the library,” replied Karol. “He used to come to meetings and take part in discussions.” Pani Ziembiewicz said he was an educated man, that Father Czerlon. She had heard many good things said of him. He had been to Boleborza a few times to see Pan Walerian. Except that on fast days he had been a problem, because he never touched fish. As soon as he saw fish lying on a dish he averted his eyes. She always went to Chązebna to hear his sermons. “His sermons were wonderful!” she exclaimed rapturously. “There wasn’t a soul in church who wasn’t moved. Men wept, not just women.” She reflected for a moment and then added in her dreamy voice: “But he would speak the most eloquently about suffering. Saying that the only way to God is through suffering. Suffering and humility. Man’s entire greatness lies in his humility before God. And his entire happiness . . .” “And they said nothing bad about him at Chązebna?” Zenon inquired. “Those matters don’t concern me,” Pani Żańcia replied without anger. “A priest is not a saint, but a priest, a man like other men. And like any man, he has his moments of human weakness.”

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Regarding such weakness, however, she had a few things to say. “The girl they talk about most, that Weronka from Gwarecki Grange, is now married and leading a decent life. All those rumors about the organist’s niece were mightily exaggerated. One thing is true, though, and that is his great friendship with the Countess. But only a wicked person could see anything improper in it. She helps him in his work, imports books for him. They write together, arrange reading sessions and dramatic performances for the village youngsters. I, for one, believe her to be a God-fearing woman.” Zenon leaned toward Karol and whispered something in his ear, to which Karol listened without enthusiasm. Amid Zenon’s laughter, the following words could be heard: “. . . out of the goodness of her heart, because not to oblige is not in her benign nature.” Pani Żańcia, inured to indecent masculine jokes by her deceased husband, ignored it. After a moment’s reflection, she added: “It’s true the Count is a lot older than she is and has a fickle nature, too, like every man. But that doesn’t mean a woman like her should straightaway be suspected of impropriety.” Pani Kolichowska, who disliked priests and regarded them as parasites, made her views clear without beating about the bush. But here too, Pani Żańcia was not at all offended. “Everyone has their own opinion on such matters,” she said blandly. “But I shall stick to mine.” Throughout the time that they were eating lunch, Elżbieta was feeling uneasy. She had decided, however, not to say anything to Zenon about her suspicions. The girl standing on the path in the park and staring from there at their child was definitely not Justyna. She looked different, was dressed in town clothes, in a skimpy navy-blue suit and fashionable hat. She seemed shorter and thinner than the Justyna she remembered from their earlier conversation. But her uneasiness persisted. The following day, after lengthy interrogation, Marynka admitted she knew the girl who had been looking at the child. “She’s the daughter of the old cook Bogutowa from Boleborza. She sometimes hangs around, but asked me not to say anything.” Elżbieta wanted to dismiss Marynka immediately, but relented when Pani Żańcia took Marynka’s side. Elżbieta and Zenon had not discussed Justyna for a long time. And she was afraid to disturb the silence that had spread over the affair. Zenon was the first to raise it again. It was a few weeks after the encounter at the garden gate.

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He began in an offhand way, as if it were about something unimportant. “You have to help me again, Elżbieta.” They were sitting upstairs in their bedroom. The wide curtainless window looked out onto the dark October night. Indoors it was bright, warm, and safe. “What’s happened?” she asked slowly. “Something has to be done with Justyna. She’s without a job again.” “Toruciński fired her? Why?” Zenon became slightly impatient. “No, she left of her own accord. I don’t know. There was something she didn’t like. Besides, it’s all the same. But I’ve received several letters from her.” “If she wants money . . . ,” Elżbieta began eagerly. “No, it’s not money she wants,” he interrupted rather roughly. “She wants a job in Chązowicz’s cake shop. You know the cashier there, Tawnicka.” “Ah yes, all right, all right.” She moved to the low sofa to pick up the telephone. “But she hasn’t been gossiping about those things, has she? Not confiding in anyone?” she asked holding the receiver in her hand. “No,” said Zenon. “Definitely not. No one knows a thing. She herself depends on it more than anyone.” Elżbieta suddenly replaced the receiver and rose to her feet. “No, no, it’s no good. We have to find her a different job. Maybe somewhere else? At Chązowicz’s she’ll again be in the public eye.” Zenon laughed an odd laugh. He waved his hand. “Don’t imagine I don’t know. I’ve tried to explain it to her, but it’s, it’s . . . You have to believe me, if only it were possible to . . .” Elżbieta did not inquire any further. They sat for a while in silence. “The situation is such that this is precisely what we have to do. There is no way she can be dissuaded.” It was evident he was not telling her everything.87 “Did you know she was coming here? Talking to Marynka? That she wanted to see the baby?” Elżbieta asked under her breath. Zenon nodded impatiently without saying more. “One thing is certain, she won’t say anything. Do you understand? So it’s better just to do as she wishes.” Then he concluded unexpectedly: “After all, she doesn’t want anything else!” Elżbieta telephoned Pani Tawnicka, and a week later Justyna had a new job.

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22 That year there were hardly any old women at Pani Cecylia’s name day party. Pani Gieracka had died some time ago and, following her, two more old ladies had also passed away. Another was sick and sent a letter with kind wishes and a bunch of white chrysanthemums, small ones the size of asters. Instead of Pani Gorońska, a second-floor tenant who had not left her flat for years, her daughter unexpectedly appeared—also no longer young, grayhaired, and a stranger to almost everyone. It transpired she had a request to make to the mayor. She failed to catch him, however. Zenon had dropped by earlier for a fleeting visit. He was jovial, popular, and made the best impression on everyone. Pressed for time, he drew Karol aside for a brief chat, excused himself several times to Pani Cecylia, and departed, leaving his wife and mother behind. The elder Pani Ziembiewicz was taking part in the celebration for the first time. Her small crêpe hat with its mourning veil flowing over her shoulders framed her smooth gray temples like a nun’s. Her once elegant, old-fashioned visiting dress was highly suited to the occasion. The shabby fur stole, held carelessly around her elbows, was of sable. Ewcia distributed the coffee made with cream. Elżbieta, as before, handed the ladies slices of walnut gateau on dainty plates. They gazed wide-eyed at this dignitary’s wife, remarked how they remembered her as “only so big,” thanked, begged, and apologized—touched that she was troubling to serve them herself. And she too looked upon them in a different way. Now, after all these years, they no longer filled her with apprehension, had ceased to be threatening. They had grown smaller, lost their sight or hearing, or memory, or the strength in their legs. Their lumpy fingers, which they passed cautiously and delicately through the handles of their coffee cups, ended in white nails. Although they had not wished for it, and did not wish for it, they were still rushing inexorably forward, fearful and resistant, constantly dragged along the relentless course of time. They were in retreat, and as they retreated, they looked about unsure of themselves, seeing if there was anything they could still cling on to. They lingered on, trying for as long as possible to wriggle out of their fate—and yet still hurrying onward just as fast and earnestly as young people, impatient, passionate, eager to keep up at any cost. The once spritely Pani Tawnicka, browbeaten by the years, no longer stretched her neck as before in order to look younger. Pani Warkoniowa seated beside her was now a stout, gray-haired old woman.

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Elżbieta went up to these ladies to thank Chązowicz’s cashier once again for appointing Justyna. “One word from you sufficed,” replied Pani Tawnicka, embarrassed. “Bogutówna, Bogutówna?” repeated Pani Warkoniowa suddenly coming to life. Her teeth were tiny, white and even, artificial like a doll’s. “Excuse me, but isn’t she the daughter of a cook who used to live here in town? . . . Isn’t her name Justyna?” Pani Żańcia leaned toward them out of her chair and said it was the very same. “Her mother later served as my cook at Boleborza. She was such a lovely girl in those days, bustling around after her mother in the kitchen, in the garden . . .” Pani Żańcia took pleasure in telling them how old Bogutowa could hardly stand up but had never abandoned the kitchen till the final moment. “She worked for us for four years. We kept the poor soul on for as long as we could, she was already so infirm. Until the doctor sent her forthwith to town for an operation, and then she died in the hospital under the knife! And yet if it hadn’t been for the doctors, the poor thing would have gone on ailing for another few years beside a hot stove . . .” Elżbieta got up and walked away from where they were sitting. She stood by the window with her temple pressed against the glass pane and looked down onto the empty street. From deep inside the sitting room, the frail cheery voice of Pani Warkoniowa drifted toward her. Elżbieta recognized one of the many anecdotes retold by this woman, who liked to amuse the company. She listened, however, as if for the first time. “I say to her: ‘My Bogutowa, it seems to me you’re expecting.’ And she replies: ‘So it seems to me too.’ ‘Well, if it seems so to you too, then too bad, we shall have to part company.’” “Whose daughter might she be, that Justyna?” Pani Żańcia inquired. “Because she doesn’t look like a peasant . . .” Elżbieta continued to stand by the window. “What’s happening to me?” she thought. “Why should I care? Didn’t I do everything I could? Didn’t I go away from him then, leave him? I left him to her, I broke it off . . .” The women went on talking and laughing. She could hear Pani Warkoniowa’s thin little laugh. “You don’t have to look very far.” “Oh, how could you say such a thing?” This was the shocked voice of Łucja Posztraska. “I am not saying for sure, because I didn’t see anything,” the former gaily defended what she had said.

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“And what the eye doesn’t see, the heart doesn’t grieve over,” replied Pani Żańcia. Elżbieta let drop the heavy curtain and turned toward the room. She saw that Karol was standing beside her. “I was looking to see if the car had arrived,” she said, confused. Suddenly she felt an immense tiredness sweep over her and sat down on the small sofa not far from the window. It was the same sofa below which lay the dark basement once inhabited by the now defunct Gołąbski family. “And yet I consented at once when I saw him that morning,” she thought. “I believed that affair was settled. He told me it was settled. But how? Her child is certainly not in this world . . . Whereas she is constantly with us, she is everywhere . . .” Karol had not moved from his place. He stood at a distance, watching her as if he intended to say something. She wanted to invite him to sit down but checked herself, judging that he knew best where he felt most comfortable. She recalled Zenon had once described him as the “man held together by screws.” At length she heard his quiet voice. “Did you say something?” she asked. He repeated what he had said, almost in a whisper: “I think growing old must be worse than being a cripple.” She guessed this idea was necessary for him, as a consolation. Her anxiety increased. “Why don’t you sit down?” she suddenly said with impatience. “Come over here.” Karol drew near and sat down. She heard the familiar muffled scrunch that accompanied his movements. Now he gazed up at her from below, shyly and gently. Lost in thought, he did not take his eyes off her. Suddenly, he perceived that this embarrassed her, and with a movement involving his whole body, glanced around the sitting room. “I’ve never seen so many of them together,” he said. “So many old women simultaneously . . . It seems to me contrary to nature.” And after a while he added: “I still remember my mother when she was young . . .” She had to frown in order to grasp what he was saying, in order to rise above the other affair. Almost angrily, she said: “So you think we are more normal because we are young? Then why do we torment one another so much . . . ?” She imagined the torture she felt was the torture of youth. What madness—to consent to love! First of all, it had been someone else’s love, which she had been unable to bear. The whole world had aroused her disgust

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because it was permeated, poisoned by that affair . . . And yet later, she herself had consented to love within her own being, to a love that terrified and tormented her, and that intensified the more it was infused with suffering. Karol was astonished to see her interlocking and clenching her fingers. He was not sure whether to believe in it. “You and Zenon think badly of me,” he said hesitatingly. “How do you mean?” she asked. “Why do you say that?” “Because I really can bear the fact that other people are happy. I am used to it.” She did not understand. No, she was not thinking about that at all. He was overestimating her, and no doubt Zenon as well. Perhaps no one had ever taken pains not to offend him. Meanwhile he went on: “My tuberculosis and the whole orthopedic aspect . . . Do you understand? To everyone who encounters me, this seems the most important thing. And yet other things are more important. What does it matter that one man is like me, when others are ordinary? It’s just an insignificant aberration in the normal course of things. And it doesn’t become any more important because it’s about me. Let’s suppose it’s about someone else.” “No, I don’t think badly of you, I was just being honest.” He did not let himself be interrupted. “And even if is about me,” he continued, touching with two fingers something that was jutting out of his collar, stiff and shiny and clasping his chin from both sides, like pincers. “Even if it is about me, then it only seems so from the outside. You see, nowadays, if I want to, I am able to go and fetch a book lying in the other room. I can walk downstairs, get into bed and get up again . . . For many years I couldn’t do these things. And to think, I owe it to people who didn’t care a hoot about me . . .” Since she remained silent, he went on: “Doubtless you think I am talking needlessly now and being tactless. And yet it stands between me and another person as a troublesome and indecent thing if I don’t say anything about it, if I remain silent. And precisely here, precisely with you . . .” His gestures were imperceptible. He moved his hands, lowered his eyelids. “I would appreciate it, if you could tell my mother. Tell her it’s nothing. That I’m not distressed by it.” “All right, I’ll tell her. Rest assured . . .” She began to tremble, having heard the presence of the motorcar outside the window. “Oh, it’s time for me to leave.” She rose and went over to Pani Ziembiewicz.

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“The car’s waiting, Mother. Let’s go.” Pani Żańcia rose to her feet and said goodbye to the woman whose name day it was. Her politeness and gentle patience had disarmed Pani Cecylia, foiled her hostility. “Thank you for coming,” she said to Pani Żańcia and to Elżbieta. But her embittered face could not liberate a smile. On the way home Pani Żańcia cross-examined Elżbieta about the individual women. She had been stimulated by the gathering. Everything was interesting. Everything aroused her goodwill. It transpired she liked Pani Łucja Posztraska best. This was odd, because no one ever paid Łucja any attention. Elżbieta responded under duress, constantly afraid the questioning would turn to Justyna. That girl’s existence—hazy, distant, insignificant—was insurmountable. There was a kind of obstinacy in her, a mysterious tenacity, an insistence on an affair that had fallen by the wayside long ago. Justyna did not thrust herself before their eyes. Her appearance in the park that day had not been repeated. Not only Chązowicz’s cake shop, like Toruciński’s shop before on Świętojańska Street—along which they were now driving—but all the places round about, Emerytalna Street, National Square, were permeated with this feeling of anxiety. They drove through the hushed town. They passed an open space with ancient trees, the former terrain of private gardens recently turned into municipal plantations, and then several factories. Farther on they passed fences surrounding building sites of unknown purpose, mainly timber yards, and then some sort of dark low buildings close to the railway tracks. Pani Żańcia did not inquire about Justyna. Did she know she ought not to mention her? How did she know? Surely not from Zenon? Perhaps she had simply forgotten. She glanced around with her usual animation, curious to know what was here and what was there. Although there was not much she could see in the distant light of occasional lamp posts. “So is this where Hettner’s steel mill is—which they’re about to close down?” she suddenly asked. But they had passed it long ago. The car had stopped and the chauffeur was signaling insistently to the caretaker to open the park gate. Zenon was not yet home. Elżbieta learned immediately that Marian Chąśba was waiting to see her. As usual he had entered by way of the kitchen. When he was working as a journalist, he had looked like an intellectual. His behavior had been suited to collar and tie, soft hat, and gloves. Now, instead of a tie, he had a scarf wrapped around his neck and held in his hand a crumpled cap. The days were long gone when he came innocently to converse about the books he used to borrow from her and return clean and undamaged. She

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was no longer the impecunious niece of the “landlady,” a modest young lady grieving over inequality between the social classes. In humiliating anxiety she listened to what he had to say: “Coming to see you nowadays is like visiting a princess. First one lackey, then another . . . Without a calling-card, there’s no way.” His smile was ironic but devoid of malice, tinged rather with pity. “What’s it about? Speak up. What’s going on?” She drew him aside into a small room located beyond the dining room. “You know, I believe, as well as I do what’s going on. Is there anything you can do? And there’s also the matter of Borbocki.” “I know, I know,” Elżbieta replied hurriedly. Emanations from the world under the floorboards were dogging her every step that day. “Borbocki . . . But, you see, his conduct in the prison is very bad. He abuses the guards. And during the investigation . . .” “Precisely, during the investigation,” Chąśba interrupted, looking her straight in the eye. “Surely you understand. He’s been ill all this time.” “Well, yes, but if even it were possible to do something, he’d still ruin it himself. After all, the others have already been released.” His manner seemed odd to her. She could not understand what had caused the change. She thought maybe it was the fault of the lighting, and switched on a second lamp on the table. “Why don’t you sit down?” He sat down on the other side of the table. His gaze, directed heavily at her, was full of concentration and deliberation. Slowly she realized that his eyes had grown in size. They seemed to penetrate deep beneath his brows, while they also stretched halfway down his cheeks. But there were no cheeks— only protruding bones, underscored by shadows that were completely black. His temples were sunken, and his lips so parched he was unable to stretch them over his teeth. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked. Seeing him thus, she could not help remembering, could not to shake off the things recalled from childhood. “Never you fear!” Chąśbina would say while still in the yard. “Never you fear! You won’t forget in a hurry!” In those days Chąśbina was a strident young woman who punished her sons herself if they committed an offense. She was well built and high-spirited, but ill-natured. Her husband would enjoy a drink and then start a brawl in his drunken stupor. Not at home, however. He was afraid of his wife, even when drunk. They had three sons; the youngest later died. Whenever she said, “Never you fear,” people knew she was about to begin beating one of

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her sons. It happened invariably when something had been filched from the garden, but also on other occasions. Everyone in the yard knew what was meant by the shrieks and cries coming from just above ground level. Michalina would say: “Oh, Chąśbina’s beating her boys again. She won’t let them get away now.” Edward and Józio, the one who later died, would scream. Józio screamed even before he felt the pain, as soon as his mother uttered her initial words. People said he was a coward. Marian, the eldest, never screamed at all. In summer the sharp bad-tempered voice would reach across the yard and into the garden—the brisk maternal voice: “Unbutton yourself, and fetch me the strap off the wall. Fetch it yourself! Lie down! So take this! And take this! It’s for your own good! Next time you won’t be so tempted, next time you won’t forget so quickly. Well, kiss your mother’s hand! Say sorry to your mother. You don’t want to? Then take it again!” The voice would break off, implacable and breathless, full of anguish. In the ensuing silence only the blows were audible—strange smacking sounds like no other. If there was no voice, no plea for mercy, no howling, then people knew it was Maniek. Occasionally in the silence they could still hear: “So take that! And take that!” But by then there would be a sense of feebleness and terror in her voice, because he did not scream. Walking past, Elżbieta would sometimes peer through the cellar windows of the basement. In the daytime it was so gloomy down below that nothing could be seen. In the evenings, by contrast, a lamp would burn within and illuminate the tiny flat in its entirety, like a candle in a street light. Those were Elżbieta’s earliest memories of Marian Chąśba. Considerably later, she would observe him in the backyard sitting with a book in the spot where the frozen cherry trunks lay piled on top of one another. A polite, well-behaved boy devouring knowledge, an exemplary boy straight out of a children’s moral tale. He would return home from the factory, receive something to eat from his mother and prepare on his own for his secondary-school certificate. He eventually passed it when he was twenty years old. At that time he came to see Elżbieta often, borrowed books from Uncle Wąbrowski’s library and asked her questions about things to which she knew no answers. Instead of saying “et cetera,” he would enunciate the letters separately: “e t c.” Another of his phrases was “tough luck.” That was shortly before his dismissal from Hettner’s factory where he worked for five years. “The chief thing is their lack of respect for people, lack of respect for people,” he kept repeating. He was referring to things well known in the town: the fines, the daily body searches, the young female workers disappearing after knocking-off time in

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secret nooks of the factory. Later, Franek Borbocki appeared in his stories. “He’s an honest reliable fellow,” he would say of Franek. “A good sort.” When Marian was dismissed from the factory, he did not tell Elżbieta what it was about. She guessed the reason, however, from his words on other matters, his choice of reading material, the terminology he began to use. Books from 1905 no longer interested him.88 He would speak disparagingly of those one-time leaders, now members of parliament, senators, and state dignitaries: “It wasn’t the workers’ cause they cared about.” In talking thus, he had in mind her stepfather, Niewieski. Now he understood the real motives behind those former activities, from which the present times had sprung. He had no illusions. Later, at Niwa, first under Czechliński’s editorship and then under Zenon’s, he had produced a column of “incidents” in a style that conformed to the wishes of Czechliński but considerably exceeded the requirements of Zenon. When Zenon discovered beneath the caption “Criminal Negligence” an account of a working-class child who had been left unsupervised and spilled a teapot full of boiling water over himself, and then the tale of an eighteen-year-old girl caught by the police in the act of drowning a child, titled “The Alluring Roots of Evil” and concluding with the laconically pointed information: “She’s doing time,” he decided to part company with their author immediately. “What the devil’s got into you?” he shouted. “What vulgar obscenities!” By then Zenon was already succumbing to sudden bouts of irritation. They arose from a strange feeling of anxiety that something bad was brewing, that his entire work was somehow being smeared in such abominations. “Why didn’t you let me read it through?” He felt so much loathing toward this protégé of Elżbieta, toward his physical destitution and his underhand, false, perfidious contrariness that he felt like hitting him—for his silence, for that slothful defiance. He told Elżbieta about it later. Yes, he really had wanted to hit him. Meanwhile the sneering faces of the peasants beaten by his father Walerian at Boleborza flashed before his mind’s eye, faces that admitted to neither pain nor humiliation. Elżbieta could never understand why Chąśba wrote in that way. He replied evasively when she asked him. He claimed it was exactly what they required of him, nothing more. Or even that such humanitarian delicacy of feeling was alien to him. “It’s precisely how it has to be,” he said. “Besides, they wouldn’t let me write about the strike at Hettner’s factory.” Such things swept through her memory as Chąśba went on talking—still on the topic of Borbocki. He gave her a kind of potted biography: He had been out of work for a long time, his brother-in-law had gone to the dogs,

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then there was his mother’s death, the slow death of his sister, her little girl . . . And on top of all this he’d also had that girl . . . “And she also died?” “No, she did not die. She’s the same who was living with them for a while. You must know who I mean: Bogutówna.” “She’s engaged to him?” “No. Only they’ve known each other since childhood, since when they were still in the country. He came here to town, applied for work at the factory, and got it. But it’s finished with her . . .” “But she is working,” Elżbieta forced herself to say. “So I’ve heard. You’re also taking care of her, aren’t you?” “He must know,” Elżbieta thought hastily. “He must know.” She recalled how the girl had walked away from the garden gate at the sight of her and stood still at the point where the path veered to the right and led across to the pond. She had stood there a moment longer, watching. “It’s a shame about that man. He will vanish.” Chąśba’s face expressed concentration and deliberation, not anger. She thought of the prison governor, of his bulging chest and guffawing laugh, and of the public prosecutor: a sophisticated man, supporter of Pan-Europeanism, anguishing over the dissensions dividing the planet’s nations. And she thought too of the chief of police, who claimed people were beaten in custody in every country, in America, England, France, even in Greece. The chief of police was still a young man. He had a small coneshaped head on top of a massive, fatty body. He had a wife and two children. Elżbieta was already acquainted with these gentlemen. She could not promise very much, however—less now than before, in fact, since many things now depended on Zenon. “I’ll try,” she said, “I’ll try.” She saw herself through Marian’s eyes. They were hostile and mistrustful. Their relationship had changed, since there was no longer anyone there under the floorboards.89 Chąśba had left before Zenon returned. Elżbieta ran into the hall. Parted for only a few hours, they still greeted one another like lovers. She lived surrounded by the anxiety that emanated from him, and by which he was ensnared. But only in his presence could she forget that anxiety. “Were you waiting? Did you miss me?” He needed reassurance and demanded an answer in words. “Do you love me?” She said what he wanted to hear. From those words, repeated again, a hot glow shot through their bodies. Elżbieta gasped for breath as she broke free from his embrace.

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“Mother’s already gone down to the dining room. Will you come straightaway?” Evening, tranquility, the house, the lamp burning low over the table, family. Safety and happiness. For a moment everything else seemed hazy and illusory, unreal. At supper Zenon spoke hurriedly and with animation. He reminded Elżbieta that on Saturday they were going to Chązebna. He asked whether the short fur hunt coat had arrived. She replied that it had, and ran upstairs to put it on and show him. It was a shiny brown color. He inspected her from close up and from farther away. “You look marvelous in it,” he said. “And are you really going to hunt?” Zenon laughed. “What can I do? I am.” “Every Ziembiewicz is a born huntsman,” remarked Pani Żańcia.

23 Pani Żańcia, though the last to go to bed, was always up at five, when it was still dark. She would recite her prayers, go to the bathroom, put on her warm clothes and thick felt slipper-boots from Boleborza, and step out into the garden. The garden at that time was deserted, empty like a forest, blanketed in snow, filled with silence. Heavy wads of snow lay on the spruce trees, and clung in shreds and pellets to the twigs of leafless bushes, as if trapped between their fingers. The sky ascended in banks of white and black cloud. Only the crows would circle overhead, above the towering treetops of the park, cawing, and then descend onto the trees, clinging to the slender branches and weighing them down with their black bodies. Imperceptible specks of dust, shaken from the trees, would spin for a long time in the still air before drifting noiselessly to earth. Pani Żańcia loved the morning solitude that allowed her to think everything calmly through. First thing, she drank herbal tea—the longer her walk afterward, the more effective it proved. She would walk along the crisscrossing paths, retracing her steps and thinking of her long life full of memories; not without cares, and yet such a happy one on the whole. The loss of one and then another property, the sometimes thoughtless disposition of her husband, Zenon’s difficult character, his obstinacy and lack of respect for his parents—it had not been easy coping with those things. And yet her late

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husband, who had loved her so much and with whom she had kept faith all her life, had been better than most men, been reasonable and fair. When he had behaved badly, he had known how to admit his error, how to repent and demonstrate his remorse in a heartfelt way, and put right the wrong done not only to her. For many long years they had been happy together. And before he died, he had lived to see Zenon take a good woman to wife, win universal respect, gain an important position and social standing. In the course of her new domestic life, amid the children’s comings and goings, visits of unfamiliar people, lengthy daily rituals surrounding little Walerian, she had no time to catch breath. She had to know, after all, where they were going, what party or reception it was, what sort of time they had had, and who had been invited. She fed on their lives and their success. But in order to get the measure of everything, she had to be alone in those early morning hours, had to concentrate, remember everything, grasp everything perfectly in her own mind. Only then did she feel it all as joy enveloping body and soul and drawing her closer to God, as her own boundless gratitude to the Creator. It was a remarkable thing how thinking about her husband, who had died only recently, never caused Pani Żańcia any great sorrow, though she spent many a long hour reliving the memory. She was not inclined to tears, more rather to joy. She thought of his lifetime as if it had not ended in death, as if it were still continuing and would always go on continuing because of the very fact that it once was. True, she believed she would meet her husband again in a future life. But she did not imagine it clearly, was not waiting for it impatiently. She found material enough to reflect upon in the life that had been. The past remained a never-exhausted source of emotion, a brimming stream that never dried up. She would reconfigure different days and eras in her memory, moments of reconciliation and forgiveness, full of sweetness. And she would imagine that this was just how it ought to be. Were she to live a second time, she would not have wanted to disturb anything in that life, or alter it. For she had done everything that she ought to have done, kept all her promises and fulfilled all her duties to the very end. Maybe this was why she was so serene in her mourning.90 “Who knows,” she would say to herself, “whether the despair of those who lose loved ones does not stem from the fact that they neglected something, did not manage to say something important, and are now inconsolable?” Possibly she was transgressing in making such an assumption, but she had nothing to blame herself for. She remembered the gratitude on Walerian’s part—his last words had been words of thanks. And although she suspected

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herself of conceit, she trusted in God, that He would forgive her. She imagined that He liked her.91 And imagined too that she was carrying out His will and obeying His commandments by so loving life, other people, and the world. She would return by way of the garden, walk around the house, and enter through the porch and corridor leading into the kitchen. Józiowa would be about to leave for market, taking Florian with her. “We’ll do fish today, your ladyship,” Józiowa would say, “fish in a béchamel sauce, baked with potatoes. Borscht without meat, pierogi stuffed with mushrooms. Chocolate cream pudding for dessert. As for vegetables, maybe the greengrocer will have endives.”92 Pani Żańcia requested only that the borscht should not be too sweet, and the pierogi crispy as Józiowa used to make them. But Józiowa would say: “His lordship liked pepper added to his pierogi. They were always more tasty. But the young people don’t like anything too spicy.” From daybreak onward Pani Żańcia’s singing would reverberate through the house. The lounge with its grand piano was situated in a different part of the building from the master bedroom. It was a place where at that time of day she disturbed no one. The butler Eustachy would already be at work in the rooms. Pani Żańcia would follow him around singing “When morning lights arise,”93 and making sure he left no trace of dust behind him. Sometimes she would sit at the piano and revive the old waltzes. Lorsque tout est fini, quand se meurt Vo-o-tre beau rêve, Pourquoi pleurer les jours enfuis, Regretter les songes partis? . . .94

She breakfasted alone, since Eustachy took the young people’s breakfast upstairs. Florian waited on her at table. Either Józiowa or Marynka stood by her chair. The entire Boleborza world remained intact as if it had never died. Pan Walerian’s memory lived on in their conversations, recollections and undying love. The motorcar would be waiting. Zenon would come running downstairs. He found his mother somewhere in the house and kissed her hands. He was always surprised she was already up, but she would reply as if taunting him: “What do you mean, already up? I’ve been around the whole establishment! Woken the crows in the park, fed the sparrows in the garden, learned what’s for lunch, and supervised the ironing for the heir to the throne. But my singing didn’t wake you up?”

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Zenon reassured her yet again that her voice did not reach the bedroom from the lounge, and left for the office. She and Elżbieta met in the presence of the child upstairs. Pani Żańcia spoke of her daughter-in-law as a sensible, unfussy mother, who was bringing up the baby well. They watched him have his bath and eat his food, observed his good and bad moods. He would often cry. Occasionally he laughed too. When he was naked, his fat little legs would flail about in the air in such an awkward, charming way, the women would kiss his tiny hands and the soles of his feet. Pani Żańcia, naturally, gave her daughter-in-law advice and instruction, always however in the form of praise: “You’re doing the right thing toughening up the little fellow right from the start. You’re doing the right thing not sleeping longer in the mornings. You’re doing the right thing in taking care of yourself.” From the baby’s room she would follow Elżbieta for a minute into the bedroom, extolling her further: “It’s good you have the flowers moved overnight into the corridor, because they’re so bad for you at night.” She would examine Elżbieta’s négligés, nightdresses, and the jars on her dressing table. “It’s right to take care of yourself,” she would repeat. “A woman should never neglect herself. What pretty pajamas you’ve got, no doubt also from Warsaw!” Accustomed to the constant disapproval of Pani Cecylia, Elżbieta basked in this atmosphere of praise. She never suspected flattery. Pani Żańcia was genuinely entranced by Elżbieta, not jealous of her son like other mothers. She would wander around the untidy bedroom gazing at the unmade bed. She sniffed the scent of their love, would have liked to have known more, to have listened to their confidences, and she tried to inquire. She would tell Elżbieta what Zenon’s father was like, how long he had preserved his youth. When she saw however that Elżbieta looked despondent and fell silent, she gave up at once and confined herself to what was visible, to the things they did not try to conceal in their relationship. She respected this alien happiness, recognized its superiority over her own, which had passed, because it was time for theirs. She observed with joy how Zenon grew constantly more like his father. He went hunting frequently now, sometimes twice a week. Nor did he refuse a drink. His life was immersed in the whole pomp and ceremony of masculine rituals. He found satisfaction in the understated, discreet, and at the same time expensive luxury of the chase. His study was hung with shooting paraphernalia: this and that kind of double-barreled gun, a hunting bag for cartridges, a leather strap with nooses for suspending the

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dead game by the neck. He possessed fur and felt shoes, rubber boots that reached to the groin, jackets made of leather, chamois, fur, different caps for every occasion. He had a leather waistcoat with silk sleeves, so that his arm could maneuver smoothly in the upper sleeve of his jacket as he pulled the trigger. Thus he organized, settled, and cultivated himself in the reality in which it had now befallen him to live and in which, however, he found no peace. After the hunting party at Chązebna there would be hunting on Olgierd Tczewski’s estate at Piesznia, then at Popłoszna and then again on the terrain of the Bramiński woods, which were administered by Czechliński. Zenon went in order to tear himself away from worry, from his excessive and exasperating work, in order to postpone for a day, or a few hours, the receipt of bad tidings or the taking of some decision. Sometimes he would suggest a decision to others without them realizing it, and they would then put it before him later as a fully fledged one, as if it came from them. In this way the dull anxiety of responsibility was spread and dispersed. Nowadays he rarely saw Karol Wąbrowski, as if he no longer remembered their intimate Parisian friendship. During their initial conversations, Karol would still relate something or other about Adèle. Zenon listened without curiosity, although he himself asked questions. For his part he confided to Karol his troublesome predicament with Justyna. “Such is my luck,” he said sourly. “I don’t know whether I unleash these things through my very involvement, in such a way that they take a dramatic turn and become more important than they should be. Or whether their nature is such that they simply suck me in. But ultimately it always seems as if I am to blame for something, as if I had wronged someone.” The visit to the house on Staszic Street paid by Father Czerlon, who called sometimes on Pani Żańcia and had learned from her that Karol Wąbrowski was in town, caused a sensation. Priests did not usually frequent the home of Pani Cecylia. As they crossed the dining room, the disconcerted Karol had to introduce Czerlon to his mother. She welcomed him icily, which he, however, entirely failed to notice. “So you’ve ended up like this after all,” said Karol, once they found themselves in his room. “Have a seat,” he begged, and pushed toward him one of the chairs standing by the table. He clasped his hands together and, still standing up, stared for a moment at Czerlon, joyfully overawed. The unmanly garb, in which he saw him that day for the first time, did not diminish his admiration. To Karol the physical magnificence of this man had always been a source of fascination and dread.

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He would imagine what life might be like if you had such jaws and such shoulders and such involuntary power in the grip of your hand. “Yes,” Czerlon replied. “Are you surprised?” “Perhaps it was to be expected, but I never thought . . .” “Now I am at peace, you see.” He was not, however, at peace. His huge form strove in vain to accommodate itself in the bentwood armchair inherited from notary Kolichowski’s former waiting room. He adjusted himself, hunched his back, and straightened again. Eventually, he threw himself in a single movement onto Karol’s bed and made himself comfortable, resting his wide shoulders against the wall. “Have you got a cigarette?” he asked. “No, I don’t smoke,” Karol replied and somehow felt guilty. He reached with his arm for the bell, but had second thoughts and went himself to the kitchen. He bumped into Ewcia in the dining room and asked her to bring a box of cigarettes. “The best sort,” he added without being precise. Under his mother’s sharp eye, he always felt inhibited talking to the servants, since he could not bring himself to address them by their forenames, as was the custom here at home. “Wait a moment.” He stopped her as she was preparing to leave, and jotted down on a piece of paper the name of a French wine, which he recalled from those days. “Is there a good black coffee in the house?” Exhausted from taking such an important initiative, he returned to his room, silent and shy. He sat down bolt upright on the edge of a chair close to the bed, clasped his hands together as if saying his prayers, and fixed his mournful gaze on Czerlon. He awaited his words with no idea of what strange things he might say. “And so? And so?” he asked. “Why?” “Everything has ultimately worked out for the best,” said Czerlon. “With what you gave me, remember, on our last evening, I bought a ticket, got out at the station in Grenoble without a sou on me and went in search of a place to live. The woman in whose house I spent the night helped me find a job on the trams. She was old, old,” he interrupted himself in reassuring tones, even though Karol had not expressed any suspicions. “But she had a daughter . . . I worked there as a conductor for several months, and then went north. There it was grueling . . .” “As a conductor?” Karol repeated not without surprise. “But it was good employment. Later it got worse, up there in the north.” “In Liège?”

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“All the money I had, I left to her, to that girl. Again I arrived in a place without a sou to my name. I wanted to find whatever there was to find. I walked to the suburbs. It was terrible there: desolate waste lands, fallow fields, filthy tracts of sand with no trees, and by the roadside little red brick houses. People’s faces were black from dust and soot, the air was dark . . . I was engulfed by such a feeling of grief, as if the place were forsaken by God, condemned. Sometimes I thought of running away. But where to? You know what my situation was like once I’d renounced money. I had no work for a long time. I had a tiny room in some woman’s flat. She couldn’t do anything for me. All she had was her flat, and she shared it with me. I kept returning with absolutely nothing to that bright merry street, where there were cabarets, cafés, the human throng, colored lights, and I was astounded that it was possible: that street by the power plant, so close to the center of town. I couldn’t understand how such things could exist side by side at the same time, how some cataclysm didn’t arise from out of it, and how things didn’t merge and unite in some monstrous way. Eventually I found something. At first I pushed carts in the power plant yard, shoveled the coal. Ah, how I needed work of that kind! I still had so much energy, I needed to feel exhausted—and yet that heavy work seemed easy to me, it wasn’t difficult. I didn’t feel tired. I was so excited I couldn’t get to sleep at night. I could feel my heart beating. I was terrified.” Czerlon was again preoccupied with finding a more comfortable position on the bed, the entire width of which was taken up by his person. He threw his huge hand onto the walnut rail, digging his fingers into its sculptured molding. Behind his back he placed a pillow which he had removed from the headboard. On its jutting-out corner he rested his other arm, bent at the elbow. Outstretched in this way, his enormous black form seemed, to Karol’s eyes, in itself to inspire dread. Why did he always think of Czerlon in this way? Of him, who was so magnificent, imposing and strong? And large?—to Karol that was important. Of a man whose voice was so low, caressing and sonorous, that it sounded by turns like a bell or a cello? A voice that was pure music. Karol imagined that every woman must be his lover. He did not believe that any woman could resist him, and not dream of only one thing when she stood beside him. And it was precisely because of this, so Karol thought, that his life was so difficult and so extraordinary, so wrenched about and overloaded with responsibility. In those far-off days, when they were both still in Paris, Karol had sometimes succumbed to Czerlon’s reckless persuasion. A few times the two of

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them had attended what was called a bal nègre.95 In the large dim hall with paper peeling off the walls, Karol would sit at a table by the wall with a glass in his hand and sip the fiery, bad quality liquor. Over the top of his glass he would watch Czerlon, pale and handsome, dancing with a little Negro woman dressed in ball gown and hat, whom he held in his embrace. The woman looked like a negative photographic image—she had a white dress, but her shoulders and breasts were black. And her half-closed eyes, of which only the whites flashed in the semi-darkness, also seemed totally white. The movements of both as they danced, like everyone else’s in that assembly, were outrageous and coarse. Alongside them, white women, old and repulsive in dirty silks and worn-down, lopsided ankle boots, sagged in the arms of Negro men. Yes, it was not a happy place. It was sad and hideous. And it occurred to Karol already then that it was not diversion Czerlon sought there or even debauchery, but humiliation. “So tell me: Did it come to you there? There among those people, doing that work? Was it then you decided?” Czerlon sat staring in front of him. Reclining against the wall in that way was the most comfortable position for his head. “I lived like them in filth and penury, but strove in vain to be one of them, since everything stands between one man and another, not only his poverty and mediocrity, not only sin and wickedness. They knew at once I was a stranger who needed them, who was waiting for an answer or absolution.96 They hated me, threatened to kill me . . . Because, you see, there was this girl . . .” He broke off, looked around. “Are the cigarettes coming?” he asked. At precisely that moment Ewcia entered carrying a large tray with the black coffee and wine. Karol hastened to give Czerlon a light. Czerlon inhaled deeply. He picked up the bottle and looked at the label with a smile. “I’ve not had this one for a long time,” he said with approval. And Karol’s face brightened at his words. “Listen,” said Czerlon. As he drank, he held his glass at arm’s length time and again, so as to capture under the light ruby glints in the wine’s dark crimson. “Listen, there was a lot that was my own fault, it’s true. I blundered around in contradictions, floundered in apostasy and sin. But in sin, in torment and anxiety, I was seeking the human being. And then I understood that a human being cannot find the human, that there is no way to the human, except through God. There, at the bottom of that pit, I understood that only in God is there union.” Karol listened attentively, trying to understand, to translate it into his own language.

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“Tell me anyway why they wanted to kill you.” Without moving his body, Czerlon rolled his black, uncannily shining eyes toward him and stared. “They only threatened,” he replied slowly. “Besides, it’s not about that. You see, in the same hallway as I, there lived a stoker from the power plant, a desiccated old peasant, with his sick wife and children. They had this girl with them, allegedly their niece, who acted as their servant, slept in a cubbyhole behind the cooker, walked about in rags, had dirty legs in wooden sabots, and did not shy away from any work. And do you know, when she made love, it was as if she grew sublime and unattainable because of it, became majestic and cruel. There was something in that pauper that forced you to worship her. Her love made her beautiful, with the kind of beauty that intimidates and saddens. She was the lover of them all in turn, starting with the old man, it seems, but none of them saw her as I did. You do understand? And, naturally, this was what they couldn’t stand. It reached a point where I had to move out—away from them, and away from her . . . One of them kept following me around . . .” Now it was comprehensible even to Karol, it was human. He interrupted timidly: “Adolf, you were not seeking the human being there . . . You were only trying to overcome yourself. I’ve always seen that in you. You wanted to smash that great power within you, which you’ve never been able to manage, because you have no control over it.” With a careless wave of the hand, Czerlon brushed aside Karol’s words in the air in front of him. “It’s not our deeds that say who we are. You can’t judge a man by his deeds. What’s important is the anxiety that accompanies our deeds. And the suffering. And the fear . . .” The small room had grown gray from the smoke. Czerlon drank the wine, holding up each glassful to the light before drinking it as if trying to probe the deepest essence of its redness. “Whatever I thought and however I lived, always at the bottom I found that same thing: fear . . . Fear of the immensity of the world. And fear of punishment . . . Until I understood that there is no escape from fear—except in surrender, except in the most profound humility.” Once again Karol interrupted timidly: “One might think, listening to you, that religion was nothing but organized terror.”97 Czerlon did not hear his words.

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“You’re not afraid of punishment?” he asked. Karol said he was not. And immediately felt guilty that he might have upset him. But despite this, he went on: “It can’t be denied that size is man’s weakness. Human beings are crushed by the mass of the world, ‘mass creates an impression.’ We prefer everything that is limited, confined, clear and warm, protected from the disturbing melancholy of interstellar distances and interplanetary relations. We want to forget that colossal mass of darkness, frost, and silence, in which fireballs of unheard-of dimensions are tossed about in vain, wasting terrifying numbers of Earth years on emitting their own rays back to themselves—especially as the purpose of these activities is obscure, and their utility in doubt . . . We desire to reconcile and appease them, prostrate ourselves before their notion of ‘harmony’ which surpasses our understanding. Yet we are beset on all sides, since matter rages in motion all around us, above us, below us, inside us. We are surrounded and penetrated through and through by the gale of molecular fluctuation, which negates any hitherto sense of the world . . .” Karol noticed that Czerlon had not taken his eyes off him, and stopped. “You’re in the very same place you were before,” Czerlon said coldly. Despondency and disappointment were evident in his voice, although his raised head and excited stare were more expressive of contempt. “Don’t think I don’t value the peace you say you’ve experienced,” Karol continued. “But how can I believe in that peace if its basis is terror . . . ? Besides, remember how you were always afraid of yourself, only of yourself. So it’s hard for me to believe you’re at peace today either . . .” “You’re in the very same place you were before,” Czerlon repeated. “It’s clearly enough for you. You’re not even capable of those simplest emotions experienced by an ordinary peasant when confronted by the mystery of death, by the unknown.” “Where is that unknown, tell me?” “If you don’t feel it, then there’s nothing to talk about. It begins close at hand, everywhere where there’s no answer to the question.” “There is no unknown outside human questioning. It’s not anywhere, only within humans themselves.” “Those are empty words, and you yourself know it . . .” Karol did not reply, steeped in sorrow. He was totally helpless in relation to this man, whose spell over him was just as powerful as it had been long ago. Why was he so dear to him despite everything? Was it because, even though he towered above him, he didn’t let Karol feel his superiority? His

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nature concealed some crucial flaw, somehow contradicted itself, wanted to destroy itself, be “reduced to dust.” Czerlon, capable in Karol’s eyes of anything, wished for neither greatness nor power. Magnificent, holding everyone in his thrall, he dreamed only of diminishing himself, as others might dream of happiness. Listening intently to his own terror, he served it with his whole being, immersed himself in it, and sank to its very bottom where a sweetness unknown to others lay outspread. How was he to tell him this, how persuade him to want to be strong, to accept himself and admire himself as he, Karol, admired him? Words were of no assistance here, they merely skimmed the surface, were empty, as he said. And yet they seemed to be the exact text of his thoughts. What he wanted was to share precisely with this man, with this Czerlon, the mellow happiness of his certainty that things were as they were and not otherwise. The fact was, there was no unknown outside of ourselves. Words were indeed inadequate, but it was necessary to delve beneath them, grasp them somewhere deep down, in the place where thought still retained the essence of the feelings that had once given rise to it, and where it still pulsated with their bodily nature. And it was also the fact that human beings were like the world, fashioned out of the same existential stuff. And there was no such thing as necessity, nor any reason why man in his evaluation of the world should grope around forever. In its sense of its own imperfection, human thought had dug a chasm between subject and object, between the thinking subject and the mystery. It had demarcated an impassable boundary in cognition, forgetting that all man’s cognitive powers had grown out of those very same qualities that made up the object of cognition. “You remember,” Karol implored, “you remember how we read Locke together, that ‘pleasant and useful’ book of his on human reason? He says that God gave man as much understanding as was necessary to him. You remember . . . And yet with every passing century, with every passing hour, he needs more and more of that understanding. Believe me, the boundaries of human understanding are movable, the essence of the world is knowable, man . . .”98 He wanted to say that human consciousness was the highest instance, something incomparably more than any potential answer to the question arising from it, and to which it had given birth. And that human consciousness, spread over the world, intoxicated by itself, sought in vain to impose its own sense onto what was simply taking place, onto what simply was. But the enormous Czerlon did not appear to be a grateful listener. Keeling

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over onto one side, supported by the rail of the bed now hidden beneath his armpit, gloomily pensive, he consumed the remainder of the wine staring above Karol’s head at a vacant spot on the wall. He was heavy, insufficiently comfortable within the confines of his own body, his own strength seeming rather to be an impediment to him. “Listen,” he murmured in his rich bass voice of the preacher, setting off a vibrant metallic resonance in the smoke-infested atmosphere. “I am close to it. I see it all the time. After all, people die in front of my eyes. Pain is zealous and multifarious. Its possibilities, tricks, and methods are infinite, its monstrosity boundless. What else can man do, the human worm, except humble himself before the incomprehensible justice of this fate? Surrender to the will of the most high, whose inscrutable provisions he cannot know? Or smile in ecstasy like the early Christians above the flames of the stake, gazing into the heavens in rapture and gratitude that God had recognized them as worthy of martyrdom?” There was no pathos in his voice. It was as though he were merely dreaming. He sank deeper into his seat, relaxed inside himself, became powerless and slack. “It took a long time before I understood that,” he said slowly. “When I was still living in my parents’ house, a certain thing happened. I was a child, a stupid boy, when I saw a fish lying on the slab in the kitchen. It had a dumb-looking snout, a mouth shaped like a horseshoe, and a golden, indifferent eye. Its entire skin—studded with little holes where the scales had been scraped out—was aquiver with silvery shuddering. Imagine it: the cook brings it in a basket together with—let’s say cabbage, bags of kasha, potatoes—almost dead, already motionless. To what extent it had already died is immaterial. It had not managed to do so to the end when its hour struck, when it was time for the cook to lay it on the slab and ‘dress it,’ as they say. This immediately brings it back to life. It begins to lash about as if it hadn’t been dying at all before, as if it had merely been dozing. It has to be held down, stripped of its scales by force. Eventually it calms down, allows the rest of its innards to be removed without twitching, somehow tolerates it. Then all that needs to be done is to salt it and leave it lying there a bit longer before frying. But I tell you, that was beyond its endurance. It began to stretch, twitch, flicker, live again for whole minutes at a time, it couldn’t stop . . .” Karol stared at Czerlon in amazement. His face was pale. “Why are you telling me this?” Karol asked. “Oh, not in order to convince myself you’re a sensitive man, my dear fellow. That’s beside the point. The important thing is what the fish feels: most

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likely pain and horror, though it may also be ecstasy. But let us assume that it’s pain. And it’s important that it occurs within the confines of the world, and that there is no proper system in place for measuring torture. And so, if it is not simply a matter of words, if it tugs at the crucial thing hidden in our subconscious, then the absurdity of the world falls away of its own accord, becomes unacceptable. Suffering has to make sense, unless one is insane . . .” “You don’t eat fish,” Karol declared unexpectedly. “No. So what?” “Nothing. I heard that you . . .” “You’re right, that childhood memory made a deep impression . . .” They were silent for a while as if gradually moving farther and farther apart. Suddenly Czerlon turned to face Karol directly, leaning toward him slightly. “Listen,” he said in a hushed voice, gently and somewhat confidentially. “Even if we suppose there is some truth in what you think, then isn’t it man’s greatness that he bows down, prostrates himself in the dust before that which had its origin in his own self . . . ?” Ewcia knocked on the door and entered. “Countess Tczewska’s chauffeur has arrived. He says the car’s waiting.” Czerlon stood up at once. He smoothed down his crumpled clothing, brushed the ash off his chest and knees, shook himself like a dog emerging out of water onto the bank. As Karol accompanied him into the hall, he recalled what had been said about Czerlon over lunch at the Ziembiewiczes, and the words Zenon had whispered in his ear: “She does it out of the goodness of her heart, because not to oblige is not in her benign nature.”

24 Less than a month after the hunting expedition to the Bramiński woods, a large reception was held at the Ziembiewiczes’ house that brought together the best social circles in the town and surrounding countryside, and acquainted local society more closely with the new municipal authorities. Not only in the friendly Niwa, but also in two other local newspapers less favorably disposed of late toward Ziembiewicz, detailed reports of this memorable party appeared, in which the “charming hospitality” of Elżbieta and her glamour and toilette were unanimously extolled in more or less identical terms. The old butler, dressed in livery, opened the door into the huge vestibule with its long oak bench and host of coat pegs designed to cater to scores

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of visitors. Light streamed off the ceiling and walls. Representatives of the clergy and military, judiciary, police, and local government, in their cassocks, dress coats, or uniforms, accompanied by their ladies, then entered through wide-open double doors, on parquet floors warmed by soft carpets, first one drawing room, then a second drawing room, then the library with its fire blazing in the hearth, and finally the dining room where the buffet was laid out on an extended table. Flowers from the local orangery had been placed at strategic intervals throughout the interior. Pink azaleas of gigantic proportions were in bloom everywhere—on mahogany tables, consoles, the floor. Elżbieta could be seen silhouetted against the enfilade of rooms. Tightly swaddled in her close-fitting dark dress, she stood on the threshold of the second drawing room and informed each guest in different words how pleased she was they had come. Three months later, when the notorious tragic events came to pass, the whole town reconstructed in memory various details of that evening. People recalled words uttered by the mayor and his wife, their behavior, their appearance. They recalled, among other things, that on that same day news had spread through the town of the closure of Hettner’s steel mill and of fresh arrests among the workers. Especially those who linked later events to disturbances among the laid-off employees maintained that everything had begun that evening. They said the mayor’s anxiety was clearly visible, and signs of the impending disaster could be seen in the uneasy look with which he pursued his young, unsuspecting wife. Ziembiewicz did indeed feel anxious. Despite his mounting popularity, his work had not been free of worry. From the very beginning Zenon had shown much initiative in his new position. The outward appearance of the town had improved day by day. Already by early spring, having secured the promise of a loan in the capital city, he set about building workers’ cottages in the Chązebna Suburb. During this time he also overhauled the dilapidated edifice of the former brickworks, where homeless people had been squatting in filthy barrack-like dens. Effective regulation of the river embankment, meanwhile, which divided the suburb from the town, had long been a problem in want of a solution. Here some of the town councilors had had their reservations, or rather private interests. A large wooden shed had been occupied there for years by a dance hall of ill repute, noisy and full of drunks. By putting pressure on the town council, Ziembiewicz had succeeded in canceling the contract—the town fought a court case over it with the leaseholder of the building—and in creating a park on that beautiful

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spot by the riverbank, thus taking advantage of old trees that had survived here and there, and in the park a milk bar for children, tennis courts, as well as courts for playing basketball and volleyball. The income from these sites, rented out to local sports associations, promised to be greater than from the former lease. The town center had gained an island of green and the worker’s jobs during the summer months. At that time the papers were full of details of Ziembiewicz’s activities and praise for the new municipal administration. In recent months, however, the mood had changed. Above all, the case with the former leaseholder had taken a turn for the worse in the court of first instance, threatening the town with a significant financial burden because of compensation awarded to the plaintiff. And also, before the onset of autumn, construction work on the workers’ cottages was suddenly interrupted when the funds, on which Ziembiewicz had been relying from the capital, were withdrawn in connection with the government’s austerity policy. The exterior walls, raised already almost as high as the roofs, stood unprotected against the sleet and frost, like a ruin. Having unexpectedly lost their jobs, the disappointed workers were demanding their unpaid wages. An unpleasant time had set in for Zenon. There were moments when every thought had its resonance in a contraction of the heart, an acute headache, nausea-provoking panic. Such physically painful thoughts usually afflicted him first thing in the morning. Now, he would wake up earlier than Elżbieta and lie motionless in the gloom of the winter morning, postponing his return to waking existence. A small round glimmer of consciousness would shift from place to place in the darkness like the beam of a pocket torch. Thoughts of Elżbieta no longer brought him respite. She lay in the other bed—small and insignificant, scarcely visible, like a short dark wisp of hair on the pillow. As she slept she seemed serene and trusting, immersed in safety. He saw, however, that anxiety had taken root in her too. Once when they were returning from a visit to the Czechlińskis, she had had some grievance against him, one that was not exactly clear. “You’re different with me from how you are with other people,” she said. “What are you talking about?” he asked reluctantly. She had smiled as she said: “It’s nothing important. It seemed to me you were annoyed.” Elżbieta had first noticed it during lunch at Aunt Kolichowska’s, on the day Karol arrived, when Zenon had said, for reasons best known to himself: “Elżbieta’s going on about the child, of course.” Later on, when he said it again, he also added: “Like any other mother.” In a similar tone, supposedly jocular but at the same time patronizing, he would accuse her of taking

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too long to get dressed, of doing it at the last moment, of always being in a hurry and always late—like all women. These reproaches were often unjustified and not based on any real facts. It was as though they resulted from a need to say something, from the desire to fill awkward moments, empty and disturbing spaces. It almost never happened when they were alone, always instead in the presence of other people. It sufficed for Pani Żańcia or one of the servants to enter the room. Taciturn and self-absorbed when alone with Elżbieta, among other people Zenon would change beyond all recognition before her very eyes. He would become far too jovial and expansive, put on airs, and be unable to remain calm for a split second. As if suddenly remembering something, he would abruptly do up or undo a button on his jacket, throw up his arms, push his hat back and forth on his head. There was something more than anxiety in this, a kind of insecurity in relation to the world, something at variance with himself, something not good, which he was trying unsuccessfully to deny. Elżbieta would close her eyes so as not to see. Without seeing his gestures, however, she could still hear his distracted words, his forced jokes. And she felt annoyed with herself for feeling so impatient. Because it was obvious that he was tortured and that, although he wanted to give the impression he didn’t care what people thought, he in fact wanted them to think differently about him from how they actually thought, wanted to make them feel obliged toward him or win them over. There was one thing Zenon appeared to really dislike in his wife. He was angered by her taking to heart the facts of ordinary everyday injustice, banal adversities, and trivial wrongs that were impossible to remedy. Countless beggars at the kitchen door, abandoned women with their hopeless problems, salesmen of goods that nobody needed—these were inevitable and self-evident phenomena. Her naïve reactions he considered typically “bourgeois.” On other occasions, it was the opposite. He would make fun of her, saying she was the friend of revolutionaries, and reproach her with Chąśba and his dubious friends. On the day the reception took place in their house, Zenon had been at Justyna’s during the afternoon. He went to see her unexpectedly because of the series of strange, insistent letters he had received from her. She did not move from her position when he entered. She sat on the edge of the bed, dressed in clean clothes with her hair smoothly combed, as if she had been waiting for him to come at precisely that moment. She extended her hand in greeting, indifferently, without surprise or a smile, with the gesture of a grande dame sitting on a chaise longue in her boudoir.

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“No, I don’t need money,” she said as usual when he asked her. “What you’ve sent already will last me beyond the first of the month.” He sat down on a chair and rested his elbow on the edge of the table. “What’s happening to you?” he asked. “What did you want from me? Did things go wrong at the cake shop? Did they work you too hard?” Her blue eyes, into which he had not peered for a long time, seemed transparent from being lost in thought. “You wanted something, tell me. The way you write I can’t understand you.” She closed her eyes, unwilling to answer. “Things did not go wrong. Only I didn’t like it there from the start.” He laid aside his hat, which until then he had been holding in his hand. He took off his overcoat and hung it over the arm of the chair. “What do you mean, you didn’t like it?” She shrugged her shoulders, avoided looking him in the eye. Only after a while did she say: “Constantly wrapping up those cakes . . . Anyone can come in, anyone stare at your hands. One wants this one, someone else wants that one. I don’t know myself.” She appeared to be deeply distressed. “Perhaps this place isn’t right for you?” he glanced around the room. “Is it too cold? Does anyone here cook for you?” She said she felt fine there. If it weren’t for one thing . . . “It’s a bit far out of town, admittedly.” “Far or near, it makes no difference. It’s all the same to me. I’m not going back to that Chązowicz.” “Perhaps someone there’s been asking too many questions? That cashier woman, Pani Tawnicka, no?” “What’s she going to ask me about? No one’s said anything to me. And I don’t care about anyone.” “And these people here, this Pan and Pani Niestrzęp?” he asked in a softer voice. She made an airy, dismissive gesture with her hand, indicating that it was not important. But at almost the same time she stood up as if suddenly remembering something. She came over to him, sat down beside him and began to speak in conspiratorial tones. “I’d be all right here, if it weren’t for that man who comes to see them.” She lowered her voice. “A criminal comes to see them, the Niestrzęps, you know? A criminal who killed his wife. They’ve told me nothing whatsoever about it, they’re ashamed they still let him in . . .” She shuddered as if shivering from cold.

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“He’s a young man, but totally gray. His face is all puffy and he’s got bags under his eyes . . . They didn’t tell me anything until I heard it myself. I went into their kitchen to boil some water because I couldn’t light the stove in here. I was standing by the cooker and he was saying how he’d been struck down by some illness when he was in prison, how he’s sick in his kidneys and how any trifling thing makes him feel poorly. What kind of people are they? He killed their niece, and yet they still accept him, feed him, talk to him about that niece . . . ?” She swallowed a few sobs, or rather sniveled, wiping away her tears with a clean handkerchief. And having already forgotten that man, she returned to the earlier subject. “I am not going any more to that Chązowicz, so don’t try to persuade me. I don’t know how long I was there, three weeks? But a day didn’t pass without me crying. During the day I’d cry there. Then I came back here and cried again in the night at home. But I don’t care about anything, I don’t need anything, it’s just that . . .” Zenon understood that something had to be done, that she needed to be taken away somewhere, that a doctor should be fetched immediately. Again he glanced around the room. He thought it would be good to come to an understanding with the landlady, but quickly dropped the idea. “Tell me, who comes to see you here?” “And who’s supposed to come? No one.” “But I’m thinking of some female acquaintance or friend, your colleague from Toruciński’s?” “She came only once. I don’t need anyone. I’ve got no one.” She spoke softly, slowly, with distinct obstinacy. “But you can’t go on like this,” he tried to argue. “You can’t live entirely on your own. Don’t you miss other people?” “I don’t miss anyone or anything.” He had to go. On the way there he had taken every precaution and instructed the chauffeur to wait on Mostowa Street on the other side of the river. It was hard to leave her in that condition. He had no one to turn to. Karol Wąsowicz, a dried-up fellow preoccupied exclusively with himself, was out of the question. The only person who persistently occurred to him was again Elżbieta. The night after the reception they at last found themselves alone. Once they had briefly discussed the guests who had come and gone, Elżbieta said: “Something’s upsetting you, Zenon.”

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He was walking around the room and now seemed totally calm. He no longer made unnecessary gestures or pretended to be what he was not. His natural state was one of despondency. “Don’t I have enough reasons to be upset?” he responded begrudgingly. She could have thought it had to do with the court case with the former leaseholder of the site by the river, which she already knew about, or the unfinished workers’ houses going to rack and ruin in the snow and frost. However, it was not these things she had in mind. When he sat down beside her, she laid her head on his shoulder. “Isn’t there anything you want to tell me?” she asked. He took her head in his hands and held it away from him. He looked long and hard into her eyes, but said nothing. “Is it Justyna?” Elżbieta began. “You know she’s no longer at the cake shop?” He confirmed it with a nod of the head. And then he said suddenly, straight out, that he had been to see her that afternoon. He paused for a moment thinking she might want to say something. She chose not to, however. “I’d noticed something of the sort a long time ago. Strange, I didn’t think of it at once . . .” “What?” “There’s no doubt about it, she’s not normal. She lives there with those strange people, has no close friends or relatives. That’s the situation pure and simple . . . Because I can’t possibly get involved with those Niestrzęp people and explain to them . . .” “She’s ill? Is it connected with the earlier business?” He was taken aback hearing these words. “No, no,” he denied it flatly. “It’s some sort of nervous condition—weeping, apathy, depression. And her strangeness too, her strangeness . . . There was already something odd about her when I saw her in the autumn. Her departure from Toruciński’s was inexplicable to me at the time. She was so subdued, so dignified in her manners, as though she’d interrupted some reverie of her own only out of politeness. I saw it, but imagined it was some kind of affectation.” He grew pensive. “Her smile is a concession,” he said weighing up his thoughts, fishing for words. “She smiles only when she can’t do otherwise . . .” “What are you saying?” Elżbieta suddenly interrupted and retreated to a corner of the sofa. She did not wait for his answer. She just wanted him to shut up. Only now did it become clear to her that Justyna was not just something which threatened from the outside, which could be removed,

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which they could somehow walk away from . . . She realized that Justyna was proliferating within their life together, that the affair had begun again along with their love and was embedded in it like a splinter. And that nothing would change things now. Zenon was again walking around the room without saying a word. She followed him with her eyes. His shoulders were drooping, his head hung low. A man weighed down by care, she thought. “What are you saying?” She repeated the same words in a different tone of voice. “Perhaps you’re making a mistake, maybe it’s only temporary.” Yes, Justyna’s health—her fate, even her frame of mind, her mood—was now their concern, their own private, intimate business. “At any rate a doctor needs to be sent to her. But who?” Zenon stood still, thought for a minute and shrugged his shoulders. “Well, there’s but one specialist here: Lefeld.” This time she found it less easy to make a decision. “Should I telephone or go in person?” she thought out loud. “She might guess it’s coming from me, and won’t want to talk to him. Perhaps it’s better to go . . .” She stared at him in the hope he might release her from it. “Perhaps better to go . . . I’ll go to him, somehow make him feel obliged— how should I know . . . ?” Zenon suddenly lost his temper and said from somewhere deep inside the room: “Just do as you think fit.” And in his anger he said for the first time something that was often to return to their conversations later—namely, that other men had many more romances than he’d had, that other men got off scot free with dozens of similar affairs, whereas he was dogged by this single one, which dragged on endlessly. How had he got so embroiled in such a stupid affair? Why did he have to lead such a poisoned existence? All because of one girl whom he had encountered purely by chance, whom he had tried to avoid in fact from the very beginning? It was his weakness that he had succumbed to it and didn’t know how to shake it off. “It’s not weakness, Zenon,” Elżbieta forced herself to say. “Maybe it’s because you’re better . . .” “What do you mean, better?” He suddenly exploded. “Better than whom? After all, I’m here, I’m with you, we’re together, do you understand? But she’s there, alone.” Doctor Lefeld, who examined Justyna, put the Ziembiewiczes’ minds at rest. He found no symptoms that suggested psychotic disorder.

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Elżbieta was meant to be conducting the interview with the doctor on her own. She received him, like Chąśba, in the little room beyond the dining room. She knew Zenon was hovering in a distant corner of the house. He therefore took her by surprise when he appeared in the study without waiting for the conversation to end, and hastily exchanged greetings with the doctor. “And what symptoms could be dangerous?” he asked. Doctor Lefeld, a man with a weary face and unfashionable drooping black moustache, explained everything for a second time and in greater detail. Every word seemed to cost him enormous effort. As he spoke, he thrust his head forward time after time, as if trying to prevent his collar from touching the back of his neck. “Disturbances may appear in mood and personality, disruptions to the moral sense, diminished emotional attachment to close friends and relatives,” he enumerated the symptoms. “Dementia praecox—now known as schizophrenia—almost always occurs from an early age, it’s often inherited. Psychotic predispositions exist in uncommunicative and secretive individuals. Causes can be exhaustion, physical debility, overwork, so-called surmenage émotionnel . . .” Doctor Lefeld had completed his medical training in Paris and, despite working for many years in his home country, still preferred to use the French terms. “Of course, these causes occasionelles only reduce resistance to the causes déterminantes, the nature of which, as you are no doubt aware, is not yet known.”99 Doctor Lefeld did not look at his listeners as he spoke, indifferent as to whether his words were sufficiently clear. “But I repeat, I do not observe these symptoms. Let her take what I’ve prescribed. Make sure she feeds herself properly. A little company, perhaps, but without forcing it on her. Some people close to her, whom she might trust.” As he took his leave, he added: “In any case, I will see her again. And if anything should change in the meantime, please let me know.” Zenon and Elżbieta both understood that they were not in a position to create these conditions for Justyna. Her only close friends, the Gołąbski family from the house in Staszic Street, had all died. Franciszek Borbocki, who had once loved her, was in prison.100 And their own house, where Józiowa and Marynka remembered her from Boleborza and where Pani Żaneta, who had once liked her so much, now resided—this house was clearly out of bounds to Justyna.

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25 As spring approached, Pani Cecylia Kolichowska returned to bed, this time for good. Elżbieta came to visit every day. In her own time, and in accordance with his request, she endeavored to explain to her aunt that the traces left on Karol’s body by his illness did not prevent him from working or living. Pani Cecylia listened to everything Elżbieta said with a glum face and did not reply. After all, she had got used to the fact that Karol was her son. Karol spent long hours sitting in his room. What exactly he was doing was unclear. He was writing some sort of pamphlets in French with titles that seemed to his mother pretentious and unintelligible. He showed her a few of these works—slim volumes bound in a green material, published by some research institute or other, and read by goodness knows who. He never came to his mother’s room of his own accord. Whenever she summoned him, however, he appeared immediately, touched and grateful. He would sit for a long time without feeling coerced. To her, it seemed strange that he was not bored in her company. Pani Cecylia learned from these conversations various things about the young woman who was her husband’s daughter from his second marriage. Once a dancer, she had fallen ill, lost her job, and been through hard times. Later she had married an immigrant from the South, a man who used to slip away several times a year to his own country and then return to her. Karol had known the man and declared in amazement how alike such people were in every country—those who chose such a fate, who walked into it. From one such trip to his homeland, the husband had never returned. His wife learned later that he was in prison, suspected of taking part in a failed assassination. “And what’s she doing now?” “She wasn’t in Paris when I left. Now it’s her mother’s turn to wait for her to come back from there. It’s a beautiful country, but the living is tough.” On another occasion, Pani Cecylia asked if he knew why his father had taken his life. The explanation he gave made no sense. “That can’t be the real reason. There must have been something else.” “There wasn’t anything else. The schism, when he couldn’t follow where his friends had gone. It was sufficient. Evidently he didn’t have the strength to remain on his own.” “But she was with him. No?” “Yes, of course, but she couldn’t help him there. She too was one of the others.” “She told you that?”

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“Yes.” Pani Cecylia was silent for a moment, full of disbelief. Then she asked: “Do you still remember your father?” “I remember him, but only vaguely. He always appeared as if from outside, from far away, from outside the house, from out of the darkness. It’s odd, but I don’t remember him ever cuddling me. Instead I remember you well.” “That’s hardly surprising. After he left we were together for another five years.” “No, no, I’m not talking about the time when Pan Kolichowski was around. I’m talking about the time when my father was still with us.” He described how she used to walk around the small flat, where all the windows looked out on the same side and the rooms lay in a row one after another. First there was the hall. Then a little kitchen without windows led off the hall to one side. “That was the flat on Mostowa Street,” said Pani Cecylia and smiled imperceptibly. “You weren’t yet five years old.” In this kitchen there had sometimes been a servant, but more often not. His mother would disappear into it, shutting the door behind her, and then reemerge with a plate or glass in her hand. She would summon him to sit down and eat. It would be semolina pudding with milk or cocoa. He liked neither the one nor the other, but he liked his mother and so he ate it. She wore white blouses and pink dressing-gowns. She had a thick plait of dark hair, which in the mornings would hang down her back like a young girl’s. Later she would do her hair standing up, and for this purpose she had a big comb with long even teeth and no fine end. Usually she combed her hair in the second room, known as the parlor, which you entered through the dining room, and where his mother also slept on a roundish sofa behind the table and armchairs. The only bed was located in the final room, which was his father’s study and which Karol was not allowed to enter. She would comb her hair in front of the parlor mirror, which had a gilded frame and was fixed above a console table with curved gilded legs. Karol would watch as the black hair flowed from her head, down the length of her arm, and then spilled immediately onto her back. “You are beautiful, Mama,” he would say. And she would laugh and reply, as she plaited her hair: “No one ever says that to me, only you.” “I used to think even then that Father was unkind to you.” Pani Cecylia reflected for a moment. “He had to live that way, he had the right.101 It wasn’t against me, it was his nature. But it is possible to torment another person just because you’re the way you are and not otherwise.”

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She reflected a moment longer then added in order to be fair: “He was never angry, never held any grudges against me. But I couldn’t bear the fact that he lived like that.” Karol listened as if they were discussing a stranger. Pani Kolichowska’s two walking sticks stood beside her bed, propped against the bedside table, suggesting she might be restored to health at any moment, get out of bed and walk with them around the house. However, the weeks went by and there was no improvement in her condition. Elżbieta hired a nurse, recommended by Doctor Lefeld, who spent the morning hours with Pani Kolichowska and often came too at night when Pani Posztraska could not cope, despite the ministrations of Ewcia and Michalina. Once, when he was sitting beside his mother, Karol picked up one of the sticks and examined it carefully as though seeing it for the first time. “You’ve no idea how much I hated this silver ballerina. I once dreamed she came to life, walked around our flat shrieking and wanting to do something bad to you.” “So he already had that stick then? I can’t remember anything these days.” “He always had it with him when he visited us in that other flat on Emerytalna Street. He would leave it in the hall behind the coat stand and go in to see you. But I would stare at it and want to touch it, but it filled me with disgust. But once I did touch it.” “You disliked him a lot,” said Pani Cecylia in anticipation. When Karol did not reply, she went on: “You were a child, naturally you couldn’t understand everything. But now I think you know I had the right. Even then, when your father was still alive.” “It wasn’t about my father.” “So why did you torment me so? And torment yourself?” Karol did not answer for a while. He remembered how she had been blinded by that man. In his monocle, gaiters, odious cream-colored gloves . . . Karol had been ashamed before his schoolmates at the gymnasium. They knew Kolichowski visited his mother. They would ask in the morning if he had been again. They said bad things about him, hated him. Apparently he bought the house on Staszic Street at auction for a song, through an intermediary. “I heard he used to visit the governor general’s house.”102 Pani Kolichowska grew excited. “My dear, that governor general was an exceptional man. Even the Tczewskis used to receive him.” “Why do you say even?” Karol replied gently. “Wasn’t it the done thing?”

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Pani Kolichowska defended her second husband with sudden solidarity, as though she herself had nothing to accuse him of. She maintained that Karol could not have understood those relationships and made such judgments, since he had left the country as an immature boy. Besides, Karol did not insist on his views, and listened to his mother’s angry words with a patience that seemed, in her eyes, more like contempt. “Your father was a different sort of man,” she said heatedly, her eyes blazing. “I know well enough, you’ve no need to tell me what he was like. I lived with him in the way one should, hindered him in nothing. I’ve nothing to reproach myself for. When he left us, I sewed undergarments for shops, cooked, scrubbed floors, took in washing.” She sat upright in bed. Karol rose carefully to his feet and adjusted the pillows behind her back. “Life is short and brutish. And in addition, you only get to live once. Can you demand of a person that they let their one and only life be ruined?” Karol spoke with quiet persuasion: “There is only one life, yet you don’t really feel it. You forget about it.” “You took your father’s side. Well, what of it, it’s understandable.” “No, Mother, it wasn’t that,” he interrupted and smiled beseechingly. “You explain it to yourself so childishly. It was my own problem. It wasn’t about my father but about you.” “You really had no reason to hate him.” And yet it had taken her a long time too to realize that her second husband’s faults were the faults of a living human being. He had loved her and tormented her, which amounted to one and the same. The postal receipts locked in the iron safe, receipts with that woman’s name on—the discovery had been more than she could take for a long time. The receipts and everything else. But the sharp blade of rancor had grown blunted over time, and only loneliness remained. No one had cared what happened to her, whether she was doing one thing or something else, or whether she existed at all. His death had severed her connection with life. Their conversation had excited her. Her dry face was flushed, had grown fuller from the blood rushing into it, as if she were on fire from inside. Karol stared at her rigid dark profile against the white background of the pillow. The shadows around her eyes stretched as far as the temples. He recalled how beautiful she had been. Was it possible to say that nothing remained from those days? Perhaps the worst thing was that something did remain. “But I loved you,” he confessed.

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She turned her eyes toward him and smiled. He wasn’t sure if he were imagining it. The parting of her lips, which were parched, over her white teeth, which were false, might have been the mere ghost of a smile. But the meaning of her look was the same as it had been then. To him it appeared ravishing and young. “I loved you, I was jealous because of you.” She understood it in the way she could. “You were a good child,” she said. “I know. Maybe if it hadn’t been for all that, maybe we really . . .” She was unable to find words to express her emotion. She rested her head back on the pillow, closed her eyelids, and her face sank into shadow. When he could no longer see her, he added: “It was my triumph that you were my mother. I worshipped you. To be with you, to gaze at you—what happiness it was. You were so beautiful.” One evening Karol telephoned Elżbieta to say his mother was feeling worse and wanted to see her. “I’ll drive over at once,” she said. Making her usual brief visits, Elżbieta had not realized how the illness had developed. The old family doctor always described Pani Cecylia’s state of health in the same words. He kept repeating that what she needed was peace and quiet, a strict diet, and things could still go on for a long time just as they were. Elżbieta had been to see her aunt that very morning and noticed nothing in particular. After her departure, Pani Cecylia had felt anxious and taken her drops. In the afternoon she fell asleep with Karol sitting close by the bedside. She had slept for a long time. Suddenly she awoke with a face transformed by dread, full of despair. Karol rang for the nurse, held his mother’s hand. She calmed down when she saw the others’ alarm. After taking her medicine, she felt better. She lay still. “You remember Uncle Roman, Elżbieta’s father?” she suddenly asked. “He died when he was ten years younger than I am now. Aunty Winia died before you were born. She was only twenty-two. What can anyone wish for anyway? We have no right to anything. I am nineteen years older than my own mother when she died.” She was doing her calculations. She remembered all the dates. It was the only thing in her life she was able to put in order. “Isn’t Elżbieta here?” she asked. Instead of Elżbieta, the doctor arrived. He gave her an injection and said nothing could happen overnight.

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She lay with her eyes closed. When she raised her eyelids, her eyes fixed on Karol. “You’re here,” she said. She closed her eyes again and spoke without looking at him, slowly, as if deeply despondent. “I have some difficult things to go through now with myself. No one can help me here, no one can follow me. Better to leave me alone, my child.” By the time Elżbieta arrived, Pani Cecylia was already unconscious. Neither she nor Karol left her bedside, nor took their eyes off her face. Late in the evening Zenon came with another doctor. This doctor did not leave until after she had died. Pani Żańcia, well acquainted with death and its rituals, appeared early in the morning. Throughout the time that the open coffin stood in the sitting room, she was the one who exchanged the customary platitudes with the people who came to pay their respects. “It happened so suddenly, no one was expecting it, although she’d been ill for some time. We were all quite calm, the doctors foresaw nothing untoward. She was feeling perfectly well when suddenly she lost consciousness.” These words were meant to explain why the holy sacraments were not mentioned in the death notice. Pani Żańcia reproached herself for having been so close and not taken care of the matter. Father Czerlon, summoned by her when it was too late, hung around like a member of the household testifying to the truth of her words by his very presence. The catafalque stood like a sarcophagus amid the ornamental greenery. A crowd of strangers filed past. Death proliferated, became socialized, grew foreign and alien. Karol sat in his room, afraid of the sight of people. In the evening Elżbieta knocked at his door. “Don’t get up, don’t get up,” she said when she saw he did not want to move from the flat couch where he habitually spent his motionless hours. For a few days he had been feeling a slight pain at the back of his neck and in his right hand, but believed it was nerves. “Don’t inconvenience yourself. Can I sit here for a bit?” “Come in,” he said. She sat down on the bentwood chair at the desk where a long time ago she had used to do her homework. Outside in the dark beyond the window, concealed by the roller blind, lay the familiar courtyard, the whole world of her childhood, nothing of which had ever become clear or intelligible. Through that window she had watched people crossing the yard. At the far corner, on the cherry trunks, the young Marian Chąśba had once sat. Summoned by his mother, he would close the little book he was reading and run to carry

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water to the basement. The now deceased Gołąbska would sit there with the blind Jadwisia and give her the cat to play with. Through that window too she had seen the dog Fitek, the boundary of whose life had been demarcated by a chain moving back and forth along a wire. “The worst thing,” Elżbieta said, “is that ever since I was a little child, from the very beginning, I fought against my feelings for her. I was ashamed of my affection, even though she alone was kind to me. Sometimes, at night, I’d imagine how things would be if I suddenly began to be different. If I were to tell her I loved her, if I were to admit at least once in my life that she was right. But in order to do it, I would have had to have made concessions, taken her side when she was being unfair. Now I know she couldn’t have been otherwise, that it was too hard for her.” She glanced around the room. “There, on that bed, I would weep out of tenderness, dreaming of how happy it would make her. And yet I never did it.” But Karol, who had done it, was at peace.

26 That night had been a bad one for Justyna, full of dreams and sudden awakenings, damp and sticky from sweat. “What’s the matter with me?” she thought and sank back into sleep. She had to get inside somewhere, reach some sort of people, some kind of dwelling place. Down an unpleasant black corridor, with her head bowed and a feeling of suffocation in her throat. It was a passageway like the one leading to Jasia’s basement, the very same yet worse and more terrifying than it actually was. She was walking along this corridor, on and on, until she stumbled upon a wooden door made only of bare planks. She groped with her fingers over the surface for a lock with an iron latch, and a key jutting out of the lock. She turned the key, because it had been locked from the outside and opened the door. No one was inside, no one responded. She entered the dark interior and felt with her hand for the bed. There were no covers, only boards. On the bare boards, directly on the wood itself, lay Karolina Bogutowa just as she had after she had died, fully clothed, swollen, in her black dress, holding a little crucifix in her hands. It was as if she had being lying there for a long time, as if they had forgotten to bury her. And that too was worse than the truth that her mother had died. She woke up and again imagined something was the matter with her. The next dream was beautiful. She was sailing across the sea. But what a strange

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craft it was—no people, no deck or chimney. There was no sky above it. Only through what seemed like huge gates was the sea visible and its boom and swell tangible. But the gates were made entirely of rock and the whole ship was of stone. And thus it rumbled over the sea without a single human on board, only her. Only at daybreak did she dream about the child. Tiny, completely naked, healthy and robust. It was alive, but as though hewn out of white stone, not flesh. Pretty and sunny. Then it became soft, flopped in her arms. Its little head hung on its neck and rolled onto her shoulder. It grew sad like little Jadwisia. And then, when it died, it actually was Jadwisia. She awoke from her dream weeping. In the room it was still dark and cold. She remained in bed and, as she lay there, continued to weep silently, for a long time. It may have seemed that she dreamed of Jadwisia, but it was not for her that she wept. Jadwisia had lived in the world and seen the sky and earth before she went blind, played with the cat, exchanged hugs with her mother. But that child of hers, which was to be and was no more, was poorer by far. She had gone to the midwife of her own accord, allowed the thing to be done to her that women do, and so she was the one who had squandered its life. Most of all she remembered—and it kept coming back to her—how when she was lying on the bed at night after those pains, keeping quiet so as not to wake anyone, she was suddenly in motion. And then it had slipped out of her, like a little mouse. The whole world hadn’t wanted it, its own natural father hadn’t wanted it—only inside her had it had a safe hiding place. She alone in the whole wide world could have helped it wrest itself into life. Only in her did it have refuge and shelter. And she too, its own mother, had risen against it. So where was that tiny infant to turn for rescue when she herself, she too, had done this to it? She lay in bed until midday and thought round and round in circles about the same thing. On the far side of the yard, the sun was shining on the pales of the fence. Outside the window a single small tree was writhing in the wind and scraping its branches against the pales. The snow was melting. The March sky was a clear blue from the wind, and dotted with dark azure cloudlets. Yet Justyna had no desire to get up, or eat, or go out. She felt happy only when lying down like that, weeping and thinking of the one thing. She had no idea whether it would have been a boy or a girl, could not imagine how it might have grown up. She thought only of the small, blind, almost nonexistent little nobody, still ignorant of the created world around it, which had hidden inside her and only inside her found protection.

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In the afternoon someone knocked at the door. She rose from her bed, wrapped herself in a shawl and turned the key in the protruding iron lock, just like the one she had dreamed about. “Again you’re lying in bed all day,” said Niestrzępowa as she entered. “Aren’t you ashamed of yourself? Who’s going to light the stove for you? Who are you waiting for? You ought to cook something, tidy up.” Justyna got up in silence, washed in water in the wash basin, rummaged around with a piece of wood in the ashes in the grate. While Niestrzępowa stood over her, she lit a fire in the stove, picked up first one and then another object in her hand, poured water from a bottle into a pan, looked into a drawer and then into various bags to see if she still had some kasha. “You can’t go on like this. You’ll die of starvation!” Niestrzępowa went out, brought Justyna a little of her home-made soup and urged her to take her coat, go to the shops and buy at least a piece of sausage from the butcher. Justyna made her bed and swept the floor. Then she sat and watched the flames as they burned and flickered, running along each log until it eventually caught fire. She would get up, add fresh logs, close the stove door, and then sit down on the edge of the bed. Again she recalled how she went to that midwife on Mostowa Street, a few doors from the end of Świętojańska Street, near the train station. She lived in a red brick house. There was a kitchenette and one reception room. First was the kitchen, where the woman slept with her husband and three boys, while the main room was for patients. But when Justyna was lying there, there were no other patients. The woman’s mother cooked for them and swept the room. She told Justyna that the last patient before her had been a wealthy young lady, unmarried, not even sixteen years old. In the greatest of secrecy her uncle, who had a wife and children, had driven her there from the country, where she had been living with them. As soon as Justyna arrived, the midwife ordered her to get onto the large table and lie down at the very edge while she brought in from the kitchen some sort of wires and tongs on a shallow dish and waited a moment for them to cool down. They were very poor people but took great care that everything was clean. In the evening the woman’s husband came home, a railwayman who drank heavily, and then there was a row in the kitchen. The kitchen door opened in the dark and the old woman crept in silently on tiptoe. Evidently she was hiding from her son-in-law; perhaps she stood in his way and it was on her account that he bullied his wife. These were the worst days of Justyna’s life since her mother’s death.

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After what the woman had done to her on the table, Justyna lay during the night unaware of what was happening to her, until she was seized by sharp pains. She screamed, but the woman immediately came in and told her to stop or she would be the ruin of them both. She stopped screaming and lay quietly for a few hours until everything ceased. And then, toward dawn, when she was all in motion, she felt—without any pain, without anything like that—the tiny thing come out of her. She lay there for another two weeks but what was wrong with her, she could scarcely remember. A doctor came. She had a high fever. They did various things to her. When she left there she was still not entirely cured, but she gradually recovered and by the autumn was able to work at Toruciński’s. But the thought of that child was to remain with her forever. As she sat on the bed and recalled her own problems, Zenon knocked on the door. He came every few days now, had grown kind toward her and remembered about her. But his visits brought no comfort. She cared little whether he came or not. It was as if he were a different person, quite unlike his former self, a stranger. He always came when it was already dark outside on the street, taking care not to bump into anyone in the yard or hallway. She recognized Zenon’s knock at once. She called to him to come in, gave him her hand without standing up. “Well, how are you, my dear? Is it long since the doctor was here?” “I don’t remember,” she replied. “But his visits are pointless. He can’t do anything to help me. Why does he keep questioning me about everything?” “Are you taking the medicines he left you?” “Yes, I’m taking them. But don’t let him think I’m going anywhere with him. I’m not budging from here. I’m sitting here quite calmly, not interfering with anyone, not being a nuisance to anyone, so why’s he so bothered about me?” “You shall do as you please. Nobody’s forcing you. Does that Niestrzępowa woman come to you?” “Yes, she comes, she comes. And that’s also pointless. When I feel like eating, I eat, and when I don’t, I don’t. I don’t like being forced.” “What have you had to eat today?” She was silent for a moment and then burst into laughter. “What do you care, Zenon? How can it possibly matter to you what I eat?” “You write such odd things. You shouldn’t write. When I come here, you can always tell me everything. Writing is unnecessary.” She shrugged her shoulders. “All right, I won’t write. But when you come, I can never remember what I wanted to say. I work out in my mind what I’ll say, but then I always forget.”

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“You wrote that you had been dreaming again.” “And I dreamed again today, and yesterday. I am always dreaming.” “Listen, you are such a good girl, you ought to be sensible, you ought to listen to what he says, this doctor, go where he suggests, have a good rest. They’ll give you plenty to eat, and you won’t have to think about anything. And then you’ll return right as rain.” She smiled. “No, I am not a good girl, far from it. What are you saying . . . ? If you only knew how I sometimes think, you’d be afraid of what I’m like . . . I’m worse than—I don’t know—a rabid dog. Such evil dwells in me, and it’s suffocating me.” After he had gone, she sat again on her own. At about eight o’clock Niestrzępowa came. “Well, Panna Justyna, what are we doing about supper?” “I don’t want anything to eat.” “Come and join us.” “I’ll come, I’ll come.” “That’s what you always say, but then you don’t come. Come right away and be done with it.” She drew near in order to take her hand. Justyna recoiled from her touch. “There’s no need. I’ll come on my own.” She followed Niestrzępowa into their living room. At the table, next to Niestrzęp, sat the man she did not like. They were playing cards at one corner of the table. The cards were tattered and dirty. Niestrzępowa cleared away the tablecloth and laid the free part of the table. She served omelet with bread and butter. “Panna Justyna, please sit down and eat.” After supper, Justyna stayed with them for a while. Podebrak was telling them that his situation was critical. Others were worried that the factory was closing, or were hoping it would be running again by the spring. But as far as he was concerned, whether the factory were running or standing idle, the outlook was equally bad. He took various scraps of paper and printed slips out of his wallet. He and Niestrzęp were going halves on a national lottery ticket. He told them who had won the biggest prize in the previous draw. They spread out a plan of the draw on the table and Niestrzęp moved his fingers over the letters as he read. “Why rack your brains?” said Niestrzępowa. “It’s always the same, someone will win—but you two winning will never happen.” She sat down with them and examined the things that Podebrak was again taking out of his wallet.

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“They gave you back the photograph you were talking about?” “Yes, they gave it back.” “Show me.” He took out a bundle of letters. Among the letters was a photograph of his wife. Niestrzępowa handed it to Justyna. “You’ve not yet seen this one.” Justyna looked with indifference at the face familiar from other photographs. Everything inside her was trembling, but she gave no outward sign. “Listen, leave us this photograph.” “I’ve handed them all over, but I’m not giving you this one,” Podebrak insisted. Niestrzępowa explained to Justyna that this Podebrak had returned home one day and found his wife with another man. But it was untrue, what he imagined, because that other man had come in search of him and was waiting for him. Only later did it all come out. But everything rushed to his head immediately, as soon as he discovered them. First he shot the man, and then her, but missed when it came to himself. The following day the doctor again visited Justyna and questioned her several times about one and the same thing. He told her he would send a woman to live with her. Justyna said she did not want it. The following day she did not feel like getting up at all. Just before evening fell, Zenon came. He saw she was lying down. He took off his overcoat and at once sat down on the bed beside her. He was very cordial. “I’ve been thinking about you all the time, you know,” he said. “I won’t have you left in this state. The doctor says you’ll be well again for sure, only you must go away. You sit here torturing yourself . . .” She turned her eyes to the wall. Her voice was soft and mild. “Don’t try to persuade me, Zenon, don’t try to persuade me. You haven’t a clue what’s going on inside me. You’d do better to leave me alone. You wouldn’t stay a moment longer if you knew what I have in mind.” “So tell me then, let me know.” “What’s the point in telling you, when I won’t do it. Such silly things can enter my head.” “What silly things? Tell me.” “Well they could enter anyone’s head. I often think about doing something nasty to you, or to her.” She smiled ambiguously and made her characteristic airy, dismissive wave of the hand. “But why do you ask me? It’s all untrue.”

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He stared at her and saw that smile of hers. He could see she was living in a dream. He returned across the dark suburb. Always, when returning from Justyna’s, he had to walk past the walls of a deserted building site, visible even on the blackest night. It stood on an immense empty square to one side of the street, seeming like the essence of darkness itself. Patches of less intense dark indicated windows or sky. And he could not help thinking of that journey made long ago with Elżbieta when they had stopped in Vienna and visited happy districts of newly built apartment blocks framed by leafy parks—islands of the future full of joy and enchantment, surrounded by the perilous present.103 Hadn’t it been all the more real, because at home it was impossible to achieve? There was a chance the site and walls would be sold to a regular contractor as tenement houses for rent. Ziembiewicz was still holding out against it. He thought of Justyna. For the first time she had threatened him, and in a most subtle way. Was it not a warning? Recently, he had learned from Niestrzępowa that Justyna had grown excited. Her mood had undergone a change. Now she would go out on her own into town and not return for two or three hours. She would bring back various purchases: light slip-on shoes, stockings, a hat. Niestrzępowa suspected she had some sort of acquaintances but was keeping them secret. Whenever he came, however, he always found her there. She seemed to remember the time when he was likely to call. Once he asked, risking everything: “Maybe you still love me, Justyna?” Let her say it, he thought, let it happen. Slowly, she shook her head, looking at him intently with her mouth closed, as if performing on stage. And only after a while did she answer with deliberation: “No. I stopped loving you ages ago. And what existed before now seems to me untrue.” “She’s suffering a lot,” he thought, “but it’s an animal, bodily kind of suffering. She has no self-awareness. She feels different things in turn, which are not connected in any way, like her whims, worries, pouts. Yet I am struck where it hurts most, at the very center of my life.” He thought of Elżbieta. She never said anything to him, but she knew all about it. Knew he was constantly going back there more and more often, and that he had been drawn into it afresh. When she asked if it had to be that way, he replied, “It’s incomparably worse than if she’d killed herself . . .”

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That evening a wind blew up from below, off the frozen river. It raged relentlessly, escalating suddenly at the intersections of streets, striking from several angles at once, catching up with itself and spiraling upward. Snow that had melted during the day now congealed, coating the paving stones with a slippery glaze. Ziembiewicz trod cautiously, holding his hat on with his crook-handled cane. The flaps of his fur coat flew open at the knees. He strode onward with lowered head. This time he had left earlier. He still had to call at the office, where they were waiting for him. The dark motorcar stood leaning to one side over the gutter, not far away on the other side of the river. They drove swiftly down Mostowa Street toward the town. They reached the corner of Świętojańska Street. As they were about to turn onto Emerytalna, a policeman signaled to the chauffeur. Ziembiewicz opened the car door. The policeman saluted and explained that National Square and access to the town hall were blocked by the crowd. It wasn’t possible to get through. “What about via Krótka Street?” It proved to be possible. The chauffeur switched off the headlights. The same thing happened at the corner of Sądowa Street, and the car made another detour. Zenon ordered it to stop by the church wall, and from there made his way on foot along an alleyway and into a side square leading to the corner entrance of the building. The glass door leading into the interior was shut. Darkness reigned inside. In the moment he approached, a group of people emerged from Emerytalna Street walking quickly toward the town hall. A lamp on the opposite corner, fixed to the wall of an apartment building not very high above the street, cast its full light onto this host advancing in silence. Apart from that one street lamp, it was dark all around. Zenon hurried up the steps. The door was locked. He rang the bell and stood for a moment peering through the dark glass pane. He rang a second time. He was in a hurry. The crowd was coming closer. And then, with the accuracy of a vision, he saw a peculiar image reflected in that dark pane. He saw the collar of his fur coat, his bowler hat, the whole outline of his body, and the countenance effaced by the darkness. Immediately behind his shoulder loomed the faces of the advancing people, marching in several lines, unfamiliar faces, almost identical, clear and vivid in the light of the street lamp. He thought of them as a “fluid mass” or “sea of heads,” even though there were not that many of them. The actual crowd was on the other side, in National Square. Here there was only a small group. The clear image of the advancing people was sliced in half by the black silhouette of a man in a fur coat and bowler hat. In the reflection, it seemed he stood at their head. In reality, he was running away from them.

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Suddenly that artificial image was muddied and erased. Beyond the glass pane there appeared the very real face of a policeman. The caretaker, standing beside the policeman, hurriedly opened the door. Zenon went upstairs escorted by the caretaker. “Starosta Czechliński is already upstairs,” he said, his hands trembling. He stared with startled eyes into Ziembiewicz’s face.

27 After that evening and the shots fired in the square outside the town hall, days of unsettled calm ensued. Mass meetings of workers were still taking place on the outskirts of town, though they were dispersed easily and noiselessly. No day passed without someone being arrested. Among those arrested at the last rally was Marian Chąśba. Echoes of the incident outside the town hall could still be heard now and again in the local press. The names of the slaughtered workers were finally established. The funerals took place at dawn on one of those unsettled days and were passed over in total silence. According to Niwa, the first shot had come from the crowd. The next day a correction appeared stating it was not fired by a certain Wajs, a worker laid off by Hettner, as had been initially stated, but by a man with a criminal conviction known to the police, named Podebrak. A week after the events, one of the more seriously wounded participants in the demonstration, Borbocki Franciszek, not long released from prison, died in the hospital. Two wounded onlookers from among the passers-by were slowly recovering. Ziembiewicz now spent entire days working in his office or traveling away from home, pursued by his own anxiety. People in the town were beginning to say that the order to fire on the crowd had come from him. Indeed, the first shots that evening were fired moments after his arrival. In reality, however, the matter had been decided already earlier, arranged before he got there. Also, on one of those unsettled days, Ziembiewicz had a violent row with Czechliński. As he came out of his office, the caretaker overheard the words: “By what right? How come? Now you want to lay the blame at my door!” On his last day, when he was sitting in his office, Doctor Lefeld was put through on the telephone. The doctor informed him that during the night Niestrzępowa had called him out to Justyna from a suburban pharmacy. The alarm turned out to be exaggerated. A stomach pump had sufficed.

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“So there’s no danger?” Zenon asked in a hoarse voice. It was as if he had foreseen nothing but this all along, dreaded this one thing. “No, no,” Lefeld reassured him. “She’s in good shape. Besides I’m sending a nurse there today.” “What was it?” Zenon inquired. “Iodine. An insignificant dose.” Zenon drove straight to Justyna’s. She was lying on her bed again. She said nothing was hurting. She hated that doctor. He had come with another one, and they had forced a tube down her throat and done horrible things to her. “Why can’t they leave me in peace? Why do they bother me?” The wooden floorboards were damp as if recently washed. There was a smell of medication. Zenon looked around the room. “Didn’t that woman come?” he asked. “Yes, she came. But I don’t want her here keeping an eye on me.” Zenon rebuked her. He was rough and blunt. And her response was sullen and angry. It was a remarkable thing, but she seemed to him more normal now than in previous days. A small yellow smudge was visible at the right-hand corner of her mouth. “Listen, you must see I’m doing all I can to make you well. Tell me at last what it is you really want. Your behavior is impossible. I never get a moment’s peace.” “Stop fussing over me then. Leave me alone. Why can’t I do as I please?” “But why torture me so? What are you seeking revenge for? Tell me what it’s about.” She stared at the ceiling, covered her eyes with her hands, and moved her fingertips across her forehead. She did not reply. From his conversations with Lefeld, before whom he no longer concealed anything, Zenon understood the underlying cause of her illness. “You did what you wanted. You yourself decided. No one tried to persuade you. After all, you could have had the child, and you knew I wouldn’t have left you without help.” “How do you mean, I knew? Don’t tell me that. And the money you gave me then?” His face clouded over. Slowly he stood up and came over to her with his head lowered. “Why are you talking like this? I was counting on the fact you wanted the child. I told you repeatedly . . .” She sat up on the bed. She was wearing a thick white calico nightdress without sleeves. Her arms were slender, as in her summer frocks at Boleborza.

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“You see, you knew I wanted it, wanted it to live, just to live.” She burst into tears, wiping them away not with her hands but with the whole length of her lower arms below the bent elbows. “You gave me the money so I could ruin myself.” “But what was I supposed to do, Justyna? Was I supposed not to give it to you? What would you have said then, if I hadn’t given it to you?” Her tears dried up. Her eyes grew dark and brilliant. Still sitting up, she crossed her hands over her shoulders and rested her elbows on her knees, which were drawn up under the quilt. Curled up in this position, she rocked to and fro to the rhythm of her words. “Of course you needn’t have given it to me. So now it would be alive. You knew yourself the right time had passed. The midwife only charged me so much because it was so late. She agreed to do it only for that amount of money. If you’d wanted, you needn’t have given me the money. Everything happened only because of that money. My illness and my craziness. You were getting married and so you gave me what you thought I wanted in order to get me out of the way.” She burst into tears again. Crying, she struck her face impatiently with her small clenched fists. “And why did she summon me then, why did she tell me all that? Was it her business to stand between me and you, tell me everything about you? Couldn’t you have told me yourself you were getting married? She had a town house. She was rich. Only then did I understand how you’d deceived me. Become a different man, a complete stranger.” She stared at him for a long time. Her eyes misted over. She softened. “Aren’t you afraid of me, Zenon?” she asked quietly. “Do you not fear me, my dear? I’m amazed, amazed . . .” “Why are you amazed?” “Because you keep coming back here! That you have the audacity . . .” She grew pensive and spoke in a singsong voice, interrupting herself with deep sighs. “There’s not a single night when I don’t dream about it. I wake up again and again. And when I fall asleep again, these different people appear, gesturing at me, pulling faces, threatening me, haunting me . . . I hear their voices. So it’s come to this: I hear people’s voices when no people are there. Voices of the dead. But I don’t recognize whose they are. Only yesterday evening I heard someone saying: ‘Take him and kill him, take him and kill him.’” He stood at the opposite end of the bed and gripped with both hands its cold metal rail. He watched and listened, unable to take his eyes off her.

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“Don’t you believe, Zenon, that I am good. If only I didn’t remember what you were once like, didn’t keep saying to myself over and over again, what a terrible waste it would be . . . But ever since the thought occurred to me and keeps coming back . . . ! Ever since I realized that there was no way to end my misery, except for you not to exist . . .” He left her in this mood, dreamy and sighing. From the Chązebna Suburb he drove to the other end of town to Doctor Lefeld. He immediately demanded to see the nurse, eventually found her for himself, listened to her excuse that she had only gone home to fetch her things, made her promise to treat the patient gently, and sent her back to Justyna’s with her bundles. When he returned home, it was already dusk. That day Elżbieta had again found in her post an envelope on which the address had been typed, and inside thin little pieces of tissue paper held together with a paperclip. The linotype print was blurred and in many places illegible. She was alone in the house. She paused in the spot where she had ripped open the envelope, in the dining room by the window, and read standing up. What she read seemed to her fabricated, too bizarre to be true. It was happening in secret and in the dark, done in such a way that no one could come to the rescue. Motivated by urgent need, it had been built into the totality of life, made orderly. Without this, the culprits could not be exposed. Without this, no one would confess to anything. She read it through and then returned to the place where it was written that shoes had to be put on immediately afterward, because otherwise the feet swelled so much that no shoes could be put on at all. Then she read: “I don’t care about my future.” This man was twenty-one years old and his future was numbered in days. He was the first to be executed. He was escorted from the prison to the courtroom, where he said he didn’t care about his future, and then escorted back to the prison. And then he was led out to be executed. People were with him all the time. It happened in the presence of other people. He was not alone. The actual darkness in which it went on was besides immaterial. An electric light bulb fastened to the sooty brick wall might be burning. A lamp might also shed light from above into the chamber below, where the walls were coated in dark brown oil paint up to the appropriate height, so that stains would not be visible. The darkness depended rather on the fact that no one could come and help. And that there were people there capable of doing such things. And this murkiness too was like something from under the floorboards—like the basements, barracks, hospitals, night shelters, refuges, and

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corrective institutions, where people were incarcerated as a punishment for being vagrants or beggars. As a punishment for being out of work or being hungry. Because their very lives were to blame. She was still standing in the same spot when Zenon came back. He was pale. In recent days the shape of his nose had grown sharper. Two deep folds had appeared either side of his mouth. “What are you doing?” he asked. “These bits of paper again,” she said without showing them to him. But he picked up the fragile slips from the table himself, examined the indistinct print, scowled, shrugged his shoulders, and eventually flung them aside. He was angry that she took them so seriously. “You, of course, take it all to heart . . .” He paced around the room and said things that suited the situation. His consciousness rallied to his defense with lightning speed. The point was, it could not be true. The point was not to believe it, not to accept it. Any old words sufficed. She did not interrupt but let him speak to the end, let him sort it out for himself. She could see that he was trying to convince himself, that his mind was ticking over like clockwork. Besides he did not read what was written there, he already knew in advance what it might be. He watched with animosity as she smoothed out the crumpled pieces of paper and arranged them again on the table. Her face was serious and obstinate. She no doubt believed that someone had written them in secret, printed them off in a rush, and that someone, in so doing, had risked his life. “You’re still that sentimental young lady from Staszic Street,” he said. “What do you imagine? What kind of world do you live in? Listen to what I have to tell you. Just now everything’s come to light. Do you know what happened to that Gołąbski, who vanished in his time from your basement in rather mysterious circumstances? Maybe you remember there was a murder in the Chązebna Suburb, on that empty plot behind the steel mill, before my return from Paris. The corpse couldn’t be identified then, it was totally mangled. Only recently has it emerged from witness statements that it was they who dealt with him on the quiet. He was a scoundrel anyway. But maybe he too had ideas, especially at the beginning . . .” “Then he’s the last,” she said. “What you do mean, the last?” “The last of those people from under the floorboards. Because you must know that the one who was unconscious, the one who died yesterday in the hospital, was Borbocki.”

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Now he flew into a rage, and spoke violently in an altered voice. “I read what the papers say, of course I read everything! Others also read it. But now everyone wipes their hands of responsibility. How do I know who fired the first shot? No one will ever know. It always looks the same: the crowd is never guilty because those people want work, and we are not guilty because we have no work to give them. And who is guilty, I have no idea, and I don’t feel inclined to discuss it right now with you.” “Zenon,” she said. “I know you’re suffering. But you ought not to say such things . . .” “So what am I meant to do?” he interrupted. “Am I supposed to let myself be clubbed to death, because they are men of ideas? The state is also an idea. Ultimately it’s the way people choose to live together. It’s created by people, for people. Here they scream about violence, about dictatorship and prisons. Funny, isn’t it, that it’s precisely they who say it? And what do they do as soon as they get into power? They create an army, set up a police force and prisons. They do exactly the same things under different names. And above all, they create the state.” “Zenon, Zenon,” she interrupted fearfully. “You don’t see it. You’ve forgotten. But all those things you never wanted are now on the same side as you.” Entirely calmly now, he explained: “If you want, the world is a sordid place. Fine. The world is a place of crime. Yes. You have it everywhere—here, there, everywhere on earth. What of it? On both sides, on this side and that, there are always people, ordinary people, who want the same things: power and blood.” “Agh, it’s not about that.” “Maybe you wish to tell me again about the love by which we should be governed, about the ‘other person’—yes?” Now he was fed up and overbearing, affected and insincere. Still standing, he flicked through an issue of a newspaper, casting a cursory glance here and there with an ironic grimace. “No, it’s about something having to exist. Some kind of boundary over which you should not step, beyond which you cease to be yourself.” “Boundary,” he muttered and shrugged his shoulders, “Boundary.” Then he burst out laughing. “You didn’t exactly make a good job of it yourself, did you, when you attempted to be guided by considerations of doing good to the ‘other person’?” “What are you trying to tell me?” she inquired. He glanced at his watch, he was in a hurry. “One can only be what one is, my dear. One can’t do any more.”

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Before he left, he added: “Burn that stuff. Don’t leave it lying around the house.” And with a brush of his fingers, he shoved the crumpled bits of typescript across the table. He took an overcoat and cap and left the house. However he did not drive back into town. He dismissed the chauffeur and went for a walk around the empty park. The wind was tossing and turning in the darkness. It felt warm. The damp bare branches creaked low above his head. Zenon sat down on a bench and, without being much aware of it, remained there for several hours staring from afar at the windows of his house. The lights were on upstairs in the baby’s room and in his mother’s downstairs. The windows of the master bedroom were dark. He waited another hour and saw the light go on in the dining room. He realized he was shivering and rose from the bench. He walked around the park once more. It was already late when he returned to the house. Downstairs he found Pani Żańcia. She was sitting in the room they called the library, in an armchair by the mantelpiece. The fire had gone out, the damper was closed. A dry, dark warmth emanated from the well of smoke-invested bricks. She was often to be found here in the evenings. The place reminded her of the parlor at Boleborza. “Aren’t you in bed yet, Mother? You’re up in the morning at God’s knows what hour, and don’t lie down of an evening. Whenever do you sleep?” She replied with a smile: “I’ve slept enough for one lifetime. Old people don’t need much sleep.” He stopped for a moment by her chair, and then sat down on a little stool close beside her, elbows resting on his knees. She took a long look at him. “You seem unwell. Are you tired?” she asked “Yes. If you only knew how many problems I have.” “I know, my child, I know. You’re no ordinary man, so it can’t be helped. You’re a prominent personage. It’s hardly surprising you’ve got enemies.” He sat in silence, hunched up. He was remembering how she had once said to him at Boleborza: “One day you’ll realize that no one in the world can be closer to you than your parents.” And also how he had thought at the time that the moment when he realized it would be the worst of his life. “I know you’ve got enemies, but wait a while and they’ll come back to you, come running back. And just think what you’ve done already in your position. First those houses . . . Was it your fault they withdrew the money? And aid for the unemployed. You yourself set up the council fund. So there’s not enough to go around? Certainly there’s not! But where are you supposed to find it? Who can make such demands on you?”

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She stretched out her hand, stroked his hair and tried to draw his head toward her. But he ducked away from her and merely kissed her hand. “You’re not even aware that no one who comes begging at your door is turned away empty-handed. When neither you nor Elżbieta are at home, I am always here. How many leftovers from lunch, how many scraps of bread, are dished out every day—you wouldn’t believe it! Józiowa is such a kind woman. She won’t allow any poor soul back out into the cold without a glass of hot tea.” “If, for example, I were to die,” he said, “you’d still be saying the same things about me afterward, wouldn’t you, Mother?” “Don’t talk nonsense,” she said, as she always used to. “Don’t talk nonsense, Zeniu. “Whatever’s got into you?” “But you see, Mother. None of it would be true.” He stood up, wished her goodnight, and added: “You see, none of it is in fact true. We are only what other people think we are—not what we ourselves think we are. We are like the place in which we find ourselves.” He went upstairs. Elżbieta was not asleep either. When she heard him coming, she returned from the baby’s room to the bedroom. She was fully dressed, still wearing the same skirt and pale blue blouse she had had on during the day, crushed now and creased. With her hand she swept back the hair falling over her eyes. It was obvious she must have fallen asleep in her clothes. His heart went out to her, just as it had a moment ago to his mother. Above all, however, he was worried about that crazy girl in the suburbs. He was ready to weep as he imagined her there trying to defend herself against her idée fixe, and seeking deliverance in that “insignificant dose” of iodine.104 He saw her sleeping there now with that strange woman sent to “keep an eye” on her, and again felt moved to tears. “Nerves, nerves,” he muttered. Elżbieta watched him expectantly, sad and unsure of herself. “Perhaps you should lie down?” she asked. “Have you eaten?” He was highly agitated and could not suppress it. He told her Justyna had tried to commit suicide. “But she’s alive,” he said. They were silent for a moment. Elżbieta waited to see what more he required of her. But this time he required nothing. “If you hadn’t summoned her then, none of what’s happening to her today would have happened.” Elżbieta was perplexed and even began to smooth down her clothes and tidy her hair.

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“Well, how was I to know? How could I foresee . . .” Then she said in sudden reproach: “But she didn’t even know of my existence!” “Exactly, you didn’t think of that . . .” He walked around the room, stopping for a moment by the window to stare into the unlit park as if looking for someone. Seeing nothing in the gloom, he went on walking. “It was madness to summon her then like that,” he said in an unexpectedly raised voice, almost shrieking. “I’ve never properly understood why you did it. What were you aiming at? What did you hope to achieve?” “How come, Zenon, you are asking me that, you . . . ?” “But you never told me you were intending to do it.” She replied in gentler tones as if calling him to order: “I was prepared to give you up for her sake. I told her you were free.” “You see, you see!” “I don’t understand. I had to see who I was giving way to.” And then she added more gently still, “I could not do otherwise . . .” He stopped in front of her. “You did everything in order to be at rights with yourself. But you see, it’s not about that. Suffering is no justification whatsoever.” “Zenon, I did what I thought I ought to do, what was most difficult.” “That’s how it always seems—that what is difficult is precisely what is good. But in the meantime, until now, we have done nothing for her. Until now, in fact, in all this, we have thought only of ourselves.” “Not I. Not I,” Elżbieta defended herself, breaking for the first time her solidarity with him. “You too. Wait: we denied ourselves nothing, we kept everything. But what exists between you and me grew and blossomed upon her ruin. That’s how it was and how it still is today.” She seemed to comprehend at last. She stood up as if about to depart. She glanced at him and hesitated. She was no longer seeking answers or even rescue. There was nothing to argue about. It was not important who was to blame for what was.

Epilogue For the time being no one could understand how the unknown girl was able, during that time of heightened vigilance, to force her way into Ziembiewicz’s

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office straight from the street and, in a place full of caretakers, officials and typists, carry out her deed. Ziembiewicz’s secretary, who had only recently been appointed, described in tears how the girl had accosted her in the corridor and requested in a broken voice a private audience with the mayor. She was shy and quiet, trembling from fear or cold, and wearing a thin headscarf. To the secretary, she had seemed like a poor woman come to plead for something. Once informed, Ziembiewicz had merely asked what the petitioner looked like, had showed no surprise, as if he were expecting it, and had ordered her to be shown into his office through the small door directly from the corridor. A few minutes later a loud shriek was heard coming from the office. When the door was opened, Ziembiewicz was lying on the floor behind his desk with his face to the carpet, unconscious. In the confusion of hurried attempts to save him, no one had paid any attention to the perpetrator. The caretaker grabbed hold of her as she made for the window, apparently intending to jump out. Council officials filled the room. They telephoned the doctors and his wife. By the time his wife arrived, the entrance to the building was already besieged by police. Ziembiewicz lay on a sofa. The doctor was completing the dressing. Bogutówna had been locked in a side room and was waiting calmly under guard for whatever fate might bring. Transported to the hospital in the care of his wife and a surgeon, Ziembiewicz remained unconscious. He moaned, breathing hoarsely. His face and eyes were covered in bandages. He must have opened his mouth at the moment of attack, since a large quantity of the acid had entered the oral cavity and damaged his throat. His breathing seemed like gasping for air. Elżbieta learned only later that not just the eyelids but the eyeballs too had been damaged. The incident sparked a huge sensation in the town. Few people had known of the existence of Justyna Bogutówna. And almost no one knew of her role in the lives of the Ziembiewiczes. The investigation turned toward her accomplices, whom Bogutówna was not able to identify. Niestrzępowa, the woman in whose house Bogutówna had lodged, kept insisting the girl was mad and that this explained everything. Niestrzępowa’s statements were so convoluted and confused that she was detained by the police while they sought further leads. Only later did attention focus on her husband, but although he too mentioned nothing of Ziembiewicz’s visits to Bogutówna, his statements revealed further details. It came to light, namely, not only that the man arrested outside the town hall on the night of the demonstration and awaiting trial in prison, a certain Andrzej Podebrak, was a frequent guest of

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the Niestrzęps, but also that Franciszek Borbocki, who had died recently in the hospital, had gone to the Niestrzęps immediately after his release from prison to inquire after Bogutówna. Bogutówna, however, when questioned about this, denied seeing him at that time. The nurse, Zofia Rumińska, summoned by the investigation at a later stage, explained that on the crucial day, taking advantage of her patient sleeping peacefully, she had gone out for a moment to buy something to eat and on her return had found Bogutówna no longer at home. Her statements, from which it transpired that she had been engaged to care for the patient by Ziembiewicz himself, threw new light on the affair. Ziembiewicz’s wife meanwhile made no statement. Following the explanations supplied by Doctor Lefeld, the newspapers fell silent. The whole business was baffling. To Ziembiewicz’s friends and relatives it was simply embarrassing, arousing by turns disgust and sympathy. It became known at some point that Ziembiewicz would not regain his sight. On his own request, he was transferred from the hospital to his private residence, where he was to remain in the care of his immediate family. Less than a week after his return home, news of his suicide spread across the town. He had shot himself in the mouth with a revolver. Following the death of Zenon Ziembiewicz, his widow went to live with her own family abroad, leaving her son in the care of his grandmother. Pani Ziembiewicz, availing herself of Karol Wąbrowski’s invitation, took up residence with her grandson in Pani Kolichowska’s former apartment on Staszic Street and dedicated herself to the upbringing of little Walerian.

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1. The 1935 edition (6) has “a thoroughly decent and obliging fellow.” The 1971 edition (3, n. 1) states that this implies that Zenon was a supporter of the Non-Party Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem, or BBWR), set up in 1928 to support Józef Piłsudski’s regime in parliament. While Zenon’s allegiance to this grouping is indeed suggested later in the novel as his career takes off, the reference here may also be to his youthful socialist sympathies. 2. This kind of aphoristic statement is characteristic of Nałkowska’s style. The same sentence appears in her diary entry for March 3, 1910, where she records the death of Jadwiga Dawidowa. See Zofia Nałkowska, Dzienniki II: 1909–1917, ed. Hanna Kirchner (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1976), 118. It similarly appears in her 1920 novel Hrabia Emil (Count Emil) (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1977), 132. 3. I have left the name of the newspaper in the original. Niwa would translate as something like The Open Field. It is a literary, slightly archaic word meaning “field” or “arena” in both literal and figurative senses. Charlotte Corday d’Armont (1768–1793) was the murderer of French revolutionary leader Jean-Paul Marat (1743–1793). 4. The reference here is to the First World War. 5. Reference to the famous painting of the Battle of Racławice (April 4, 1794), known as “Panorama Racławicka” (the Racławice Panorama), the work of a group of well-known Polish artists led by Jan Styka (1858–1925) and Wojciech Kossak (1856–1942) completed in 1894 to mark the centenary of this victory of Tadeusz Kościuszko over the Russian army during the 1794 Insurrection, when Kościuszko was supported by a peasant army fighting with scythes. 6. It is not clear whom Walerian is referring to here, possibly Piłsudski at a time when he was out of power. 7. Antoni Zakrzewski, classic nineteenth-century manufacturer of pianos and organs, Miodowa Street, Warsaw. His firm was active 1837–1859, and several of his pianos were painted white, so it is possible that by the 1920s the finish had turned yellow. The “Dolores Valse” was composed by Émile Waldteufel (1837–1915) in 1899. Nałkowska’s original has only “Venice”; this is most likely “The Beautiful Venice Waltz” (1862) by Edward Mack (1826–1882). The line “When all is finished, when your beautiful dream dies” is from the song “Quand l’amour meurt” (1904), words by Georges Millandy (1870–1964), set to a slow waltz by Octave Crémieux (1872–1964). The song features in the 1930 film

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Morocco, directed by Josef von Sternberg, where it is sung by Marlene Dietrich, who plays a nightclub singer, Amy Jolly. It would seem that Nałkowska refers to Dietrich’s version; Dietrich indeed hovers, as the text does here, on “vo-o-o-tre.” 8. Reference to a maxim of Terence, dramatist of the Roman Republic, from his play Heauton Timorumenos (169 BCE): “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto” (“I am a human being, nothing human is foreign to me”). 9. Stanisław Staszic (1755–1826) was a prominent Enlightenment scientist, political journalist, high-ranking state official, and campaigner for restored Polish sovereignty after 1795. After the restoration of a Polish state in 1918, many street names were changed to honor patriotic figures from Polish history and culture (as they were again after 1989). Before this the street was named the neutral Zielona (i.e., Green Street). 10. A nickname formed by running forename and surname together, but including part of the repeated element only once. To suggest an English equivalent, the name Elizabeth Bethnal would come out like Miss Elizabebethnal. The forms that appear a few lines later, Elżunia, Ela, are diminutive or affectionate, intimate variants of Elżbieta (Elizabeth), see appendix. 11. Karl Menger (1840–1921), William Godwin (1756–1836), Robert Owen (1771– 1858), radical political and economic thinkers. 12. Line from the revolutionary socialist song Czerwony sztandar, words by Bolesław Czerwieński (1851–1888), first published in Lwów in the journal Praca 1882, nos. 11–12. The music, by Jan Kozakiewicz, was based on the tune of Le drapeau rouge of the Paris communards (1871). 13. Song “The Glow-Worm” (“Das Glühwürmschen”) from the operetta Lysistrata (1902) by Paul Lincke (1886–1946), words by librettist Heinz Bolten-Backers (1871–1938). 14. Battle of Radzymin, August 1920, which took place during the Polish-Bolshevik War (1919–1921). 15. French jardinière: Decorative indoor flower or plant stand usually made of porcelain. Zachęta Art Association (Towarzystwo Zachęty Sztuk Pięknych), Warsaw 1859– 1939, now the Zachęta Art Gallery (for contemporary art). French étagère: small free-standing shelving unit for books or bric-à-brac. An epergne: a large bowl or stand used as a table center-piece made of silver or glass, usually for displaying fruit or flowers. 16. Michał Elwiro Andriolli (1836–1893), Polish-Lithuanian painter and architect of Italian descent, illustrator of Adam Mickiewicz’s Pan Tadeusz and other well-known Polish literary works. Henryk Siemiradzki (1843–1902), renowned inter alia for his monumental paintings and famous theater curtains in the Juliusz Słowacki Theater in Kraków and the L’viv (Lwów) Opera. 17. Franciszek Żmurko (1859–1910) and Stanisław Lentz (1863–1920) were well-known portrait painters. Dutch School refers to the seventeenth-century painters Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and others. In 1915 Lentz spent time in Holland studying Dutch art. 18. The name suggests Lipka (or Lithuanian) Tatar origin. 19. The Polish-Bolshevik War (1919–1921), see afterword. 20. Elżbieta is fifteen; the Polish-Bolshevik War lasted from February 1919 to March 1921, so she must have been born between 1904 and 1906; various additional wars are therefore referred to including the 1905 revolutionary events, World War I, the February and Bolshevik Revolutions, the border conflicts between the newly restored states of Poland and Lithuania, as well as the Russian Civil War and events in Ukraine. 21. Saint Cecilia’s Day.

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22. Adaptation of the Latin epitaph: Quod tu es, ego fui, quod ego sum, tu eris (“You are who I was, I am who you will be”). The phrase is feminized in the Polish text through use of the feminine form of the past tense: byłam. It is not clear to whom the words are attributed. However, they were observed by Nałkowska on a gravestone in the Kobyłka cemetery, near her childhood home of Górki in September 1914, and recorded in her diary, thus demonstrating her characteristic technique of using the diary as a future source of material, see Zofia Nałkowska, Dzienniki II: 1909–1917, ed. Hanna Kirchner (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1976), 353. 23. I have translated here according to the 1935 edition (35), as I believe an editorial error crept into the 1971 edition (29). In 1935 there is no reference to “children,” which was inserted into the 1971 edition, thus altering the sense; given the context, it seems this was not Nałkowska’s intention, although, strictly speaking, both versions are possible. In 1935, the sense was: Women like that . . . (takim się zawsze szczęści), referring to what had been said in the previous paragraph (“she [Bogutowa] fell on her feet”) and not: takim dzieciom się zawsze szczęści, because the former version fits with the development of the rest of this paragraph where the discussion continues about women and not children (italics in footnote are mine). 24. Here the emphases are Nałkowska’s. The sense is of “uncontrolled” eroticism. The idea of “ordered” or “disordered” sexual activity and its societal as well as private consequences were key concerns of Nałkowska, as was the so-called “double standard” that permitted men’s free indulgence in sexual activity (thus allowing upper- or middleclass men to exploit and ruin lower-class women, at the same time betraying their wives), whereas women acting similarly would be shamed and ostracized by such behavior. The impoverished bourgeois women who attend Cecylia’s party are morally outraged, not to mention made jealous, by both lower-class (Bogutowa) and upper-class women, who do not adhere to the conventional pattern. Elżbieta’s mother meanwhile, as we shall see, exemplifies the rich kept-woman model. On the class aspects of “disordered eroticism,” see the recent article by Agata Zawiszewska, “Służąca jako nagie życie” (“The Female Servant as Naked Life”) in Granice Nałkowskiej: Praca zbiorowa (Nałkowska’s Boundary Lines: A Collection of Essays), 2nd rev. ed., ed. Agata Zawiszewska (Szczecin: Uniwersytet Szczeciński, 2015), 70–104. See also Nałkowska’s 1932 essay “Organizacja erotyzmu” (“The Organization of Eroticism”) reprinted in Zofia Nałkowska, Widzenie bliskie i dalekie (Near and Far Vision), ed. Wilhelm Mach et al. (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1957), 455–457. 25. “Elki was a furrier’s name for a fur coat made from polecat or Canadian weasel” (1971 edition, 32, footnote); it has nothing to do with elks. 26. There is a slight difference here between the editions: 1971 edition (34) omits the phrase “with the concentration of prayer” (1935, 41). 27. Here the Polish has “tezolk,” an inversion of “klozet,” meaning toilet or privy. 28. “If you are free and would like to go for ride . . . go for a ride . . .” 29. A traditional Polish dish, pierogi are stuffed dumplings made from folded unleavened dough, similar to Italian ravioli. 30. A line from a Polish song, not identified, and also not identified in the 1971 edition (48). 31. Reference to the battle for Warsaw in August 1920, when the Bolsheviks withdrew from the east bank of the Vistula and the integrity of the Polish independent state was saved, regarded by many as a “miracle” sent from above. 32. Italian Libya was a colony established on the coast of North Africa in 1911 during the Italian–Turkish War 1911–1912; it lasted until 1943.

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33. Massuana [sic]: Both 1935 and 1971 editions have this spelling. Massawa (Italian: Massaua) is Eritrea’s main port on the Red Sea. Asmara is the capital of Eritrea. 34. Menelik II (born 1844) was emperor of Ethiopia (Abyssinia) 1889–1913. He famously defeated an Italian army at Adwa (March 1, 1896). Both 1935 and 1971 editions curiously have a lower case “m”: menelik. 35. The reference here is to Zenon’s participation in the Polish–Bolshevik War (see afterword). 36. Karol is the Polish equivalent of German Karl and English Charles. The mention here of Dr. Auguste Rollier, and a little later of the Dents du Midi (although Karol refers to only one “Dent”), implies the sanatoria village of Leysin, above Lake Geneva, where Nałkowska spent several months in 1925 and which was the inspiration for her 1927 novel Choucas. Heliotherapy, described here, was used to treat bone tuberculosis. Karol appears to conceive of the mountain as an in-between place dividing two different generations. 37. Karol’s “war” references are probably to World War I. 38. The Charity Hospital (Paris), founded in the seventeenth century, closed in 1936. 39. Nałkowska understood “bad love” as a kind of fatal sexual attraction on the part of women to cruel men who were destined to abuse and betray them (see, for example, her 1928 novel Niedobra miłość). 40. The sentences are slightly different here in the 1935 edition (67): “He did not even tell him whether he was present at her death. How it had been, whether she had been conscious, nothing.” 41. The 1971 edition (58) omits the final sentence of this paragraph from 1935 (69): “What a strange, absurd impression.” 42. Claude Monet (1840–1926). The reference is most likely to his series of paintings titled Haystacks or Grainstacks. In a diary entry written in Paris when she was working on the novel, Nałkowska mentions a Monet painting that especially impressed her: “Today, after that Sisley orchard on the hill in spring, after Monet (a whole exhibition of water lilies, but above all that one whitish evening after harvest, a field with stacked sheaves) [. . .] I am going out into the spring rain and wind.” Zofia Nałkowska, Dziennik IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), ed. Hanna Kirchner (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1988), 369–370. 43. There is a small difference between the editions. The 1935 edition (73) has: “He was no longer able to drink, had become quieter, given up smoking, and grown compliant and irresolute,” while the 1971 edition (62) omits “had become quieter.” 44. Bézique is a French card game for two players. 45. The 1935 edition (76) also includes in this sentence a reference to Walerian’s deafness: “[. . .] he was already old, was hard of hearing and that his hands trembled.” Compare the 1971 edition (65), which omits it. 46. Cobaea: the new flowers are green, but turn to purple after a few days. 47. This is one of many indirect references to the Great Depression and world economic crisis of 1929. 48. Another reference to the Non-Party Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (BBWR), mentioned in the opening chapter, which supported Piłsudski’s Sanacja regime (a term used to imply the restoration of “health” to the country’s political system), thus indicating Czechliński’s political affiliations. 49. Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher (535–475 BCE) who believed the whole of existence was in a permanent state of flux. 50. French causeur: an accomplished talker or self-appointed wit. A “starosty” (Polish starostwo) is a traditional Polish administrative division. The starosta was the head of a starosty. Historically, this had implied a position with personal land attached,

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appointed by the king. In interwar Poland, the starosta was a local government appointee and chief administrator at the district (powiat) level, subordinate to the palatine or voivode (wojewoda). 51. French portiėre: heavy curtain hung over doors or large windows to prevent draughts. 52. All residents living at a particular address had to be registered with the authorities and re-registered if they changed address. Landlords renting out accommodation were required to register their tenants. 53. Igor Stravinsky (1882–1971), Russian-born composer. Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), French writer, mathematician and philosopher. Elżbieta’s familiarity with such figures suggests intellectual sophistication, a luxury indicating her privileged social position vis-àvis the working-class paupers living in the basement. 54. Vichy tablets or pastilles, first manufactured in 1825, considered beneficial due to the natural salts extracted from the spa water at Vichy in central France. 55. Currency: there were one hundred groszes (singular grosz) in one zloty. 56. French grand seigneur: a commanding and splendid gentleman (literally: a great lord). 57. Vevey, spa town on Lake Geneva. Henryk Sienkiewicz died there in 1916. 58. A verst was a former Russian measurement of distance, equivalent to approximately 1.067 kilometers or 0.6629 miles. 59. Social Welfare (Opieka Społeczna): interwar state welfare organization, which provided assistance to sick and unemployed workers. 60. “Brides” (Polish: panna młoda): a type of begonia. See Słownik języka polskiego, compiled by Adam Kryński and Władysław Niedźwiedzki (Warsaw, 1908), vol. 4, p. 37, paragraph 5(b). The 1935 edition (133) describes the blooms as “red,” which is omitted from the 1971 edition (113). 61. The 1971 edition (121) omits part of the sentence from 1935 (144): “Her nestling against him, keen and ardent, her childish tenderness, wrenched at old emotions buried deep inside him, laying bare the whole involuntarily remembered spell of that bygone Boleborza summer.” 62. Montparnasse: a district of Paris frequented by artists. 63. Kasha (Polish: kasza) is a kind of porridge made from cooked buckwheat or other grain. The mention here appears to be to the uncooked grain. It was a staple food, as common as bread. 64. Starosta: see chapter 7, note 50. 65. Standard patterns of conventional, unquestioned and socially accepted behavior (Polish: schematy) are crucial to Nałkowska’s intentions in the novel. See her own review: “Komentarz do ‘Granicy’ (Autorecenzja),” in Zofia Nałkowska, Pisma wybrane, ed. Wilhelm Mach (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1954), 606–608, originally published in Oblicze dnia, 1936, no. 454. See also afterword. 66. The Polish word used here is dziesięcina, from the Russian desyatina: a historical Russian measurement of land equivalent to 1.1 hectares. 67. Romanian city, the largest seaport on the Danube estuary. 68. The 1935 edition (183) is slightly different: “The way she thought now was more bodily than that previous reality (compare 1971, 153).” 69. Here a sentence from 1935 (185) has been omitted in 1971 (155): “Only that Edward gave cause for dissatisfaction.” 70. The 1935 edition (186) has a different word here: “the boundary of moral endurance” (“granica wytrzymałości moralnej”) as opposed to the later “resistance”

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(“granica odporności moralnej”; see 1971, 156). This is one of the most important, if not the most important, of the many “boundaries” implicit in the novel (see afterword). 71. Mary’s words from the Gospel, Luke 1:38: “And Mary said, Behold the handmaid of the Lord; be it done unto me according to Thy word” (Authorized Version). Variations on the line appear in Marian prayers and hymns. 72. Niska: niski/niska means 1) short; or 2) low, humble, mean, or abject. Here she has a full forename, Władysława, but she is known to all as: Władziowa. As is explained a bit later in the text, this name is derived from her “husband’s” name, Władzio. 73. The original has “śmieszne pawie bez ogonów” (“funny peacocks without tails”), but the lack of tails suggests the females (Polish: pawica) (1971, 205; both editions have the same). The reference also suggests the location as Warsaw’s Łazienki Park. 74. This could have been the École Libre des Sciences Politiques, founded in 1872, precursor of the current Institut d’études politiques Paris (Sciences Po). No contemporary Parisian institution would have been an exact equivalent of the name given in Nałkowska’s text; the actual institution where Zenon studied may well be fictional. 75. “Royal” implies eighteenth-century or earlier (there were no Polish “kings” after 1795). The 1971 edition (208) has “old castle”; 1935 (250) has “old palace.” 76. The 1971 edition (209) has “with them”; 1935 (251) “with that”: Nałkowska often shows in her novels written after 1920 how former idealists (mostly leftists or socialists) and fighters before 1918 for Polish independence adjust to power. Their methods are shown to be similar to the ones they had replaced; corruption and violence are rife, although carefully camouflaged, resulting in great disillusionment. Zenon is of the younger generation, hence unconnected with these pre-1918 circles. 77. The second part of the sentence from 1935 edition (253) is omitted from 1971 (211): “It’s only natural I should help her, you’ve said so yourself, and I feel responsible too.” 78. A reference to the famous textile factories of Bielsko-Biała. 79. The 1971 edition (215) has “magnate’s” (Polish: magnacki), whereas the 1935 edition (258) has only “private” (prywatny). 80. The 1971 edition (219) makes absolutely clear here that the position to which he is appointed in the town is that of mayor (prezydent miasta), whereas the 1935 edition (263) states only that it was a “position,” leaving the reader to learn later that Zenon is mayor. Nałkowska’s narrator also indicates here that he was “appointed,” i.e., not elected. 81. Again there is a difference between the editions, with “in Vienna” in 1971 (219), but with the single 1935 sentence (263) not identifying the “foreign capital”: “On the way Zenon stopped for a few days in a foreign capital, in order to familiarize himself with the urban architectural projects there.” The social housing complexes erected in Vienna by the Social Democratic council during its control of the city 1918–1934 are described in one of Nałkowska’s travel letters written for Express Poranny (The Morning Express), which is based on a similar stopover in Vienna (when she was on her way to Greece) in 1931; the letter was originally titled “Listy z podróży: Pałace robotnicze w Wiedniu” (Express Poranny, 1932, no. 283). The text is reprinted (as the continuation of another letter titled “Jaskółki wiedeńskie i wiedeński pocałunek”) in Zofia Nałkowska, Widzenie bliskie i dalekie, ed. Wilhelm Mach et al. (Warsaw: Czytelnk, 1957), 374–377. 82. The 1971 edition (221), but not the 1935 (266), specifically identifies Monaco. 83. This description, inspired by a visit to the Oceanographic Museum and Aquarium in Monaco, is very similar to that in Nałkowska’s diary record of her stay in Nice in 1928; see Dzienniki III: 1918–1928, ed. Hanna Kirchner (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1980), 342–343 (August 23, 1928); some images are transferred almost verbatim. Similarly, other details recorded in her diary during her 1928 trip to Nice and Monaco include the quail on the pediments

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(333), the crisscrossing transport lines (335), the giant agave flower (335), the horses—but not people—wearing sunhats (344), the rhomboidal pattern on the palm trunks (338). 84. This sentence appears in the 1971 edition (224) but not in 1935 (268). 85. Here and elsewhere in the 1971 edition, the salesgirl is called Mańcia. In the 1935 edition she is called Julcia. 86. Here the 1971 edition has the French word cache-nez (234), whereas the 1935 edition had cache-col (284), i.e., a long wide woolen scarf or muffler. 87. The 1971 edition (247) omits the next sentence from 1935 (297): “And she too wanted to get it over as quickly as possible.” 88. Another reference to how former social revolutionaries changed their attitudes after Polish independence in 1918 when they themselves assumed power (such as Niewieski). The date 1905 refers to the revolution across the whole of western Russia. 89. The prison episode reflects some of the things Nałkowska witnessed or became aware of when she volunteered to visit prisoners in the Grodno prison, also depicted in her short story collection Walls of the World (Ściany świata, 1931). See also afterword. 90. The 1971 edition (262) omits the second part of the sentence included in 1935 (317): “Maybe this was why she was so serene in her mourning—because she had nothing to make amends for or repair.” 91. Part of the 1935 sentence (317) is again omitted in 1971 (263): “She imagined that He liked her and praised her for being so likeable.” 92. Béchamel sauce is a white sauce made from butter, flour, and milk; it is the basis of many recipes. Borscht (Polish: barszcz) is beetroot soup, which can be with or without meat. Endive: a salad vegetable of the chicory genus (Cichorium endivia). 93. The opening of the well-known hymn with words by poet Franciszek Karpiński (1741–1825) titled Pieśń poranna (Morning Song). 94. See chapter 1, note 7. 95. Literally, “Negro ball.” In the 1920s and 30s, African culture, especially its jazz music and sensual style of dancing, was popular in Parisian nightclubs among intellectuals and artists as well as African immigrants. Nałkowska’s description here reflects Parisian appropriation of this culture, but also its degradation in downbeat locales. 96. The 1971 edition (270) excludes “from them”: “They knew at once I was a stranger who needed them, who was waiting for an answer or absolution from them” (1935, 326). 97. During the time that she was writing Boundary, Nałkowska uses a similar formulation at least twice in her diary: “Philosophy is the organization of wonderment, science—of curiosity. Religion has seemed to me for a long time to be organized terror” (July 12, 1933); “Faced by these Catholic counts, I am unable not to utter things distinctly ‘materialistic.’ [Antoni] Sobański especially appears struck by my formula that religion is organized terror” (March 2, 1934). See Zofia Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), ed. Hanna Kirchner (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1988), 382 and 411. To fully appreciate her thinking, however, these statements need to be read in context. Nałkowska was not actively against religion, but was rather someone whose apprehension of the world was primarily biological and empirical, and in this sense “materialistic.” The figure of the priest Czerlon is unusual in her writing. Contemporary anticlericalism is expressed in the novel by Cecylia Kolichowska. On the other hand, Czerlon’s existential philosophy of “suffering,” albeit with a different inspiration, is very close to Nałkowska’s own (see afterword). 98. This would appear to be John Locke’s An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, published 1690.

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99. Surmenage émotionnel: nervous or emotional exhaustion; causes occasionelles: occasional or circumstantial causes; causes déterminantes: determining or underlying causes. 100. The 1971 edition (289) slightly expands the sentence. The 1935 (348) has: “Borbocki was in prison.” 101. The 1971 edition (292) omits the previous sentence: “No, he was not unkind . . .” (1935, 352). 102. A gubernator or governor general was the head of a former Russian imperial province or administrative division (guberniya). Here, the implication of the schoolboys is that Kolichowski was unpatriotic, socializing with the “enemy.” 103. As in the earlier mention, the 1971 edition (305) specifies Vienna, whereas 1935 (369) refers only to a “foreign capital.” 104. Her idée fixe: a “fixed idea” or obsession.

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The purpose of this appendix is to explain the various forms taken by Polish names as they relate to this particular text, to list the names of the characters of the novel (some of which take more than one form) and provide guidance on how they should be pronounced. While this may not be a concern for those used to reading foreign fiction, the spelling and pronunciation of Polish names is often brought to my attention as a barrier to smooth reading, and thus to enjoyment, of the translated text. In my experience, this proves to be more of a problem than with Russian names, for example. This is because Russian uses a different alphabet, for which well-established transliteration systems exist (in the case of English the most widely used nowadays is that of the Library of Congress) suited to the pronunciation conventions of the target languages, i.e., the languages into which Russian is translated. Hence the transliterated forms of Russian in English are not difficult to deal with; appearing in the translated text in the Latin alphabet, they are adapted to the ear of the native English speaker. Polish, on the other hand, is itself written in the Latin script, and so it is generally not deemed necessary to transliterate or transcribe the Polish words in order for them to be accessible to the English-language reader. However, it is not the case that they are accessible, since such consonant combinations as “szcz” or letters with diacritics (ć, ś, ż, ź, ł, ó, or the nasal vowels ą and ę) can present a problem for readers unfamiliar with Polish. In order to assist readers troubled by this problem, I give the pronunciation according to an approximate transcription alongside each name or form of name in the list of characters below. This is not intended to be absolutely precise or scientific (I do not always distinguish between palatalized and non-palatalized consonants, for example), and

APPENDIX ON POLISH NAMES

does not include names that are already easily accessible. A similar list then follows at the end of this appendix of the various place names included in the novel, where I give not only an approximate phonetic rendering but also—in the case of street names—a translation, since most of the street names mean something, but I deemed it too domesticating to translate these locations. A better flavor of the original is preserved by keeping the names in Polish. I have decided on this occasion to retain the Polish forms of address even if this may seem to contradict my stated aim of making the Polish names more accessible to English-language readers. Mr., Mrs., and Miss have too much of a domesticating effect when used in English translations of foreign fiction, and retaining the foreign forms preserves more of the cultural context of the original. Hence, if we translate from French, is it not more appropriate to retain Monsieur, Madame, or Mademoiselle? Or from German, to use Herr or Frau, or—in the period in which Boundary is set—Fräulein? Apart from the crucial issue of retaining the foreign flavor, it seems to me inappropriate in today’s world to give preference to these forms and regard the Polish Pan or Pani as exotic or marginal and as such inaccessible. Occasions where I use these forms of address correspond to their occurrences in the original Polish. One important practical advantage is that the forms Pan or Pani can be used with forenames, whereas Mr. or Mrs. cannot, or if they are used in this way, they risk sounding very unnatural indeed. Hence: Pani Kolichowska or Pani Cecylia, Pan Ziembiewicz or Pan Walerian. Using Mrs. Kolichowska or Mr. Ziembiewicz may conceivably have been acceptable, but not Mrs. Cecylia or Mr. Walerian. The exception here might be Panna, a now outdated form but—like Fräulein—used in the 1920s and 1930s for an unmarried woman. Miss Elizabeth would have been potentially acceptable, since Miss can be used in this way with a forename in English texts of this period, as in Virginia Woolf ’s Mrs Dalloway, but I have preferred to preserve the Polish form, hence: Panna Elżbieta (Elżbieta is sometimes addressed or referred to as such by other characters, although, as one of the main protagonists, the narrator invariably refers to her simply as Elżbieta). I have not translated Polish names at all, but decided to leave them in the text in their Polish forms—to anglicize, i.e., domesticate, the names would, in my view, completely violate the original. One domestication nevertheless is my use of these terms of address with the capital letter: Pan, Pani, Panna, whereas the Polish text does not capitalize them. I decided to so this because the lowercase p would look awkward in the middle of

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an English sentence, since Mr./Mrs./Miss, Monsieur/Madame/Mademoiselle, Herr/Frau/Fräulein all have capitals. Many characters in the novel—including many women—are never referred to with the titles “Pan” or “Pani,” however, but only by their surnames, or, in some other cases, only by their forenames. These are markers of class and social divisions, an important theme in the novel and one of the crucial “boundaries” signified by the title. Servants and working-class characters, both men and women, tend to be known only by their surnames— Justyna’s mother, a cook, is almost always referred to only as Bogutowa, and Justyna herself as Bogutówna (i.e., daughter of Bogutowa)—but these usages are not always consistent (for example, the text has both Borbocka and Pani Borbocka, both Balinowska and Pani Balinowska, these being working-class women). Maids or other female servants well integrated into a household may be known by their forename, or even by a diminutive or affectionate reduced form of it: Pani Kolichowska’s cook is Michalina, and her maid is Ewcia (a reduced affectionate form of Ewa). Intimate friends, close family members, and children also tend to be referred to by their forenames, or by various diminutive forms of them: Jasia—this name is itself a reduced form—has a little girl called Jadwisia, which is a reduced form of Jadwiga; Zenon sometimes addresses Elżbieta as Elżunia, especially when he wishes to ingratiate himself and force her to do something unpleasant on his behalf. Sometimes names have several reduced forms: Zbysio, Zbysiunio. These variations are listed below, against the characters’ names. There are also several cases of lower-class female characters known only by a feminized form of their husband’s forename, i.e., a male name with a feminine ending; the wife of Pani Kolichowska’s caretaker Ignacy, for instance, is known only as Ignacowa, or the young Ziembiewiczes’ cook is called Józiowa, from Józio, itself a reduced form of Józef. A special case is the unmarried woman Władziowa (chapter 15), where a separate explanation is given in the text itself by the narrator. Another special case is Pani Żańcia, the main protagonist’s mother. We learn in the opening chapter that her name is Joanna. However, she is invariably referred to as Pani Żańcia, a combination of the Pani form of address with a forename (cf. Pani Cecylia, Pani Łucja) but where a reduced form of the name is used. Żańcia is not in fact a reduced form of Joanna (the more commonly reduced forms would be Joasia or Asia) but of Żaneta, a name imported from French (Jeanette). Although sometimes found in Polish, it is considerably less common than Joanna. The combination Pani Żańcia deliberately draws attention to Zenon’s mother’s affectations and may be

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interpreted as an illustration of the narrator’s general satire on the pretentious class aspirations of impoverished ex-nobility, or would-be nobility. Its slightly tasteless feel fits with Pani Żańcia’s superficial and self-satisfied cultural pretensions, such as her endless playing of the same popular waltzes on the out-of-tune piano, and the few words of (incorrect) French with which she addresses her servants, a hangover from former noble tradition. Although I have preserved Polish surnames, I have used an anglicized ending for the plurals. I made this decision because the plural forms in Polish are complex and themselves require additional explanations as to why they take different forms. For example, names ending in -ski go to -scy in the plural, whereas other names take a different form, such as Ziembiewicz > Ziembieczowie, Niestrzęp > Niestrzępowie. I felt this somehow overstepped the boundary of what is easily accessible and readable. Hence, I use the Gołąbskis, the Ziembiewiczes, the Niestrzęps. I have, however, always preserved the feminine endings for women: Cecylia Kolichowska, Jasia Gołąbska, but Karol Wąbrowski, Franek Borbocki. Note that the -icz ending is the same in the singular for men and women: Pan Ziembiewicz, Pani Ziembiewicz. For the two Countesses Tczewska, the feminine form of the family name will likewise be used. The reader never learns their own personal names; instead, they are referred to by a feminized form of their husbands’ forenames: Wojciechowa and Olgierdowa, along with the feminine form of the family name. In the translation, I have used: Countess Wojciech Tczewska and Countess Olgierd Tczewska. U. P. List of characters’ names with approximate pronunciation (in English alphabetical order) Note: Some names appear only in the family form, others are forenames, some are already diminutives or reduced forms. The stress falls on the penultimate syllable. Awaczewicz [Avachevich] Balinowska [Balinovska] Biecka [Bietska], Elżbieta [Elzhbieta = Elizabeth]. Diminutive forms: Ela, Elżunia [Elzhoonia] Bogutowa [Bogootova], Karolina

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Bogutówna [Bogootoovna], Justyna [Yustyna]. Diminutive form: Justynka [Yustynka] Borbocka [Borbotska] Borbocki [Borbotski], Franciszek [Franchishek]. Diminutive form: Franek Chąśba [Honshba], Marian. Diminutive form: Maniek Chąśbina [Honshbina] Chązowicz [Honzovich] Ciwidzka [Chividzka] Czechliński [Chehlinski] Czerlon [Cherlon], Adolf Ewcia [Evchia], diminutive form of Ewa [Eva] Gołąbska [Gowompska], Jadwisia [Yadvishia] Gołąbska [Gowompska], Jasia [Yashia] Gołąbski [Gowompski] Józef [Yoozef] Józiowa [Yoozhiova] Kolichowska [Kolihovska], Cecylia [Tsetsylia]. Diminutive form: Cesia [Tseshia] Kolichowski [Kolihovski], Aleksander. Diminutive form: Oleś [Olesh] Mańcia [Manchia] Michalina [Mihalina] Niewieska [Nievieska] Niewieski [Nievieski] Niestrzęp [Niestshemp] Niestrzępowa [Niestshempova] Posztraska [Poshtraska], Łucja [Wootsia = Lucy] Posztraski [Poshtraski], Maurycy [Maurytsy] Sobosławski [Soboswavski], Jan [Yan]. Diminutive form: Janek [Yanek] Świętowska [Shvientovska] Tawnicka [Tavnitska] Tczewska [Tchevska], Róża [Roozha = Rose] Tczewski [Tchevski], Olgierd Tczewski [Tchevski], Wójciech [Voychieh] Toruciński [Toroochinski] Wąbrowski [Vombrovski], Karol Wicuś [Vitsoosh] Wikcia [Vikchia] Warkoniowa [Varkoniova] Wisłowska [Viswovska], Lucia [Loochia]

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APPENDIX ON POLISH NAMES

Władziowa [Vwadziova], from Władzio [Vwadzio] Władysława [Vwadyswava] Wylamowa [Vylamova] Ziembiewicz [Zhiembievich], Walerian [Valerian]. Diminutive form: Waluś [Valush] Ziembiewicz [Zhiembievich], Zenon. Diminutive form: Zenio Ziembiewicz [Zhiembievich], Joanna [Yoanna]. Known as: Żańcia [Zhanchia] Zbysio [Zbyshio] or Zbysiunio [Zbyshioonio]

List of street and other place names with approximate pronunciation (in English alphabetical order) and translation where appropriate (some have no translation). Note: in Polish street names, the word for street (ulica) is usually omitted and only an adjective is used. Boleborza [Bolebozha] Chązebna [Honzebna] Długa [Dwooga] = Long Street Emerytalna [Emeritalna] = Pensioners’ Street Gwarecki [Gvaretski] as in Gwarecki Grange Kawno [Kavno] Kościelny [Koshchielny] = Church [Square] Krótka [Krootka] = Short Street Mostowa [Mostova] = Bridge Street Piaskowa [Piaskova] = Sandy Street Piesznia [Pieshnia] Popłoszna [Popwoshna] Sądowa [Sondova] = Courthouse Street Staszic [Stashits] Street [named after Stanisław Staszic; see note when it first appears in text] Świętojańska [Shvientoyanska] = St. John’s Street Witkowo [Vitkovo] Zielona [Zhielona] = Green Street

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AFTERWORD Ursula Phillips

The novel Boundary (Granica, 1935) by Zofia Nałkowska (1884–1954), one of Poland’s most celebrated interwar writers, a founder of the Modernist psychological novel in Polish, is well known in her native country and considered a classic. Included both during the Communist period (1945–1989) and subsequently in the Polish secondary school curriculum as a set text, it is a book with which Polish school students are familiar. Most remember it, however, as it was taught to them, as a novel about power, and the abuses of power, generally understood as political power. While it can certainly be interpreted in this light, it contains many dimensions—social, philosophical, existential, sexual, psychological, emotional, moral—that make it not only a consummate piece of social criticism of the specific reality that inspired it and to which it immediately relates (the Second Republic of Poland in the late 1920s and early 1930s, founded in the wake of World War I), but also a universal human tale of class and economic divisions, abandoned ideals and moral responsibility, corruption and abuse, sexual love and double standards, illness and old age, motherhood and abortion, suffering and the search for ultimate meaning. The diagnosis moves as it were from the specific to the universal, drawing general inferences about common human experience and standard patterns or mechanisms of behavior, highlighting in particular the interrelationship between the public and private spheres. First and foremost, however, it is a work of art: a piece of elegantly composed imaginative fiction that does not preach, tell us what to think, or offer solutions. The title itself is challenging. The Polish title has been translated in various ways when referred to in literary histories or academic articles in English,

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of which there are not many. Czesław Miłosz calls it Boundary Line.1 Alternatives include The Limit, The Borderline, and The Frontier. This is hardly surprising, since the Polish word has many dictionary meanings, and when taken out of its specific context, none of these suggestions can be said to be “incorrect.” Also, if we note the places where the word appears in the novel’s text, different solutions suit different situations, so one needs to be found that satisfies most. Examination of the text’s interpretative possibilities leads me to conclude that the best choice is indeed Boundary (not Limit, Borderline, or Frontier). My initial choice was for the plural—Boundaries—since, as the reader will discover, there are many boundaries in Boundary, symbolized for instance by the class and economic divisions within one of the novel’s crucial settings—the bourgeois town house on Staszic Street, where its owner Cecylia Kolichowska rents out rooms to tenants from different social classes and where they live on top of or underneath one another, “in layers.” The singular Boundary, however, more closely reflects the original Polish title and preserves something of its additional, less concrete meaning: the vaguer idea of “boundariness,” a moveable or shifting region, line, or limit, especially in the moral sense. I shall return to the moral “boundary” below. The publication date of Boundary is customarily given as 1935, the date of the first book edition.2 It began to appear in fact much earlier. In her diary entry for August 1, 1932, Nałkowska says “Boundary is being printed now in ‘Tygodnik,’” by which she means Illustrated Weekly (Tygodnik Ilustrowany), where tentative serialized parts were published in numbers 27–52. More polished sections began to appear from the beginning of 1933. Some were published as separate “stories” in other literary magazines or collections. For example, Literary News (Wiadomości Literackie 43, 1933) published a piece titled Patterns (Schematy), incorporated later into the final version of the novel as chapters 11 and 12 (without separate title); similarly, the literary and social criticism weekly Plumb Line (Pion 2, 1933) published a “novella” titled Motherhood (Macierzyństwo), which is almost identical to chapter 15 of the final version (also untitled); the final fragment titled Son (Syn) also appeared in the same journal (no. 30). Motherhood, meanwhile, was also included in the volume Suburb (Przedmieście) issued in 1934 by the leftist literary group of that name with which Nałkowska was connected for a limited time, under the editorship of Helena Boguszewska and Jerzy Kornacki.3 Nałkowska was therefore reworking the text over several years. A considerable proportion was written in Paris, where Nałkowska stayed from the end of August 1932 until March 1933, and which also had a significant bearing. Given that the crucial developments in the novel’s plot take place at the time

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of the Great Depression (there are several references to the world economic crisis of 1929 and associated decline in the Polish economy 1929–1930— prompting, for example, the steel mill closure, workers’ redundancies, and subsequent events in the fictional town), we can see that the action is exactly contemporary to Nałkowska’s writing of the text. The perspective of her narrator is therefore not one of historical hindsight, but of immediate reflection on contemporary events, those of the late 1920s and early 1930s. Boundary is the culmination of a series of novels and short stories that Nałkowska published in the 1920s and early 1930s reflecting the problems of the new Polish state struggling to govern itself after 123 years of nonexistence on the political map. As with Boundary, their content is not limited to this one theme, but rather provides the backdrop to the central action: The Romance of Teresa Hennert (Romans Teresy Hennert, 1924), which is set mostly in the capital city, Warsaw;4 Bad Love (Niedobra miłość, 1928), set like Boundary in the eastern provinces; and the short story collection Walls of the World (Ściany świata, 1931), inspired by Nałkowska’s visits to political and other prisoners. The trauma of transition, of building democracy and establishing state institutions (including a responsible police force and army), is shown to be intimately interconnected with social divisions and struggles for power—between ambitious individuals susceptible to corruption as well as between ideological groupings—and with the need to develop a strong economy, and alleviate the widespread grinding poverty of the urban proletariat and peasant masses. The new state was unstable, both internally and externally. A series of attempts to form a multiparty system and viable parliamentary government were thwarted by conflicts between opposing visions of Poland (whether it be Józef Piłsudski’s idea of a restored multiethnic society modeled on the former Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, or Roman Dmowski’s National Democratic ideology promoting an ethnocentric and exclusively Roman Catholic notion of Polishness), as well as between parties representing seemingly irreconcilable class and economic interests, a significant player being the Peasant Party led by Wincenty Witos.5 In December 1922 the first elected president, Gabriel Narutowicz, was assassinated outside the Zachęta art gallery in Warsaw. Meanwhile, the eastern border regions remained embroiled in various armed conflicts long after the Versailles treaties were signed: the war with Lithuania, which resulted in the Polish Republic’s regaining of Vilnius (Wilno); the Polish–Bolshevik War of 1919–1921 (the war in which the main protagonist of Boundary, Zenon Ziembiewicz, participates); the conflicts in Ukraine; as well as other ongoing instabilities caused by the Russian

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Civil War. Allusions occur in the novel to the fear of “Bolshevism”; whether a genuine threat existed from outside and/or from Bolshevik supporters inside the country, this fear was a significant factor underlying Polish interwar politics. Other contentious issues are also touched upon, such as gross urban poverty, unemployment, social injustice and inequality, and the antisemitism rife in certain milieus (expressed in the novel by Zenon’s father or by the resentful failed writer, Posztraski). In the early 1920s Piłsudski withdrew from active involvement in politics—only to return to power by leading an armed coup in May 1926, after which the regime became increasingly autocratic. Its watchword was “sanacja,” indicating the aim to “cleanse” public life of undesirable elements and restore its “health.” It should be noted that Nałkowska was not a distanced observer, though she was not an active participant either. As a result of her association with Piłsudski’s circle before 1918 and her subsequent marriage to one of his close associates, Jan Jur-Gorzechowski, who served in the 1920s as chief of the military police in Grodno, she found herself for a time (until her separation from Gorzechowski in the mid-1920s) very close to power. Her gradual disillusionment with the former revolutionaries and freedom fighters, who—in her perception at least—having assumed power, behaved as arbitrarily and cruelly as the authorities they had replaced, finds expression in the texts of her novels. The person of Piłsudski himself, though unnamed, is briefly portrayed in The Romance of Teresa Hennert, in the scenes describing the racecourse and horse trials. He does not appear in Boundary. However, politicians linked to his non-Party bloc (or its fictional equivalent) do appear, namely minister Niewieski and starosta Czechliński. The Non-Party Bloc for Cooperation with the Government (Bezpartyjny Blok Współpracy z Rządem, or BBWR) was formed in 1928, in order to support government policy and legislation in the Sejm, or parliament, since by this time Piłsudski lacked a party base of his own. The portrait of Niewieski in Boundary is that of a powerful, patronizing, and physically intimidating government politician, who has abandoned his earlier revolutionary (socialist is implied, though not directly stated) sympathies, concerned now above all with the exercising of power itself and not with relieving the economic and employment problems of the population. This last is the accusation of one the novel’s “revolutionaries,” Marian Chąśba. A similar type, with a similar past to minister Niewieski, is Walewicz in Bad Love. Czechliński in Boundary, meanwhile, is a vivid example of the cynical, self-made local politician whose ideological affiliations remain obscure, if they exist at all, thus leaving him free to act as he pleases when he pleases,

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since there is nothing to prevent him switching loyalties from one political grouping to another in pursuit of his own career. However, as a politician who manipulates and exploits other people’s weaknesses and underhand motives, the amoral Czechliński is astute. Key to the development of the novel’s plot is the influence these two politicians have on the career of Zenon Ziembiewicz. In the 1920s and 1930s, town mayors were not elected but were appointed by higher authority. Zenon’s promotion by Czechliński, first as his successor as editor of a local newspaper (in chapter 7, Niwa—The Open Field—is described as a “non-Party” daily) and then as mayor, endorsed by the powerful Niewieski in the capital, launches him on a career path that eventually sets him in conflict with his former socialist sympathies, not to mention basic principles of honesty and decent behavior. Following the armed clashes with the town’s unemployed workers, when his wife, Elżbieta, observes that he is now on the same side as all the things he formerly opposed, Zenon reacts with a cynical defense of the rationale of state power; ultimately, according to this vision, ideological conflicts will be resolved by the instruments of control and, if necessary, by physical violence and torture (chapter 27). Certain political scandals of the day, initially hushed up, but which Nałkowska records in her diary and which she protested along with a number of other literary figures, were the Brześć, Łuck, and Kobryń affairs. The central issue in all these cases was the imprisonment and alleged torture of political opponents of the regime—in the Brześć case, of elected members of parliament, in Łuck, of members of the Communist Party of Western Ukraine, and in the Kobryń region, disenchanted peasants.6 Echoes of these scandals appear in the novel along with the secret reports sent to Elżbieta, and prompt a furious outburst from Zenon about her “bourgeois” sentimentality. First he claims that the “evidence” is all invented, and then that “they” (communists, socialists, opponents of the authorities, the workers in the town) behave in exactly the same way in positions of power—that is, they too create the state and its instruments of enforcement.7 Meanwhile the town’s senior officials (the prison governor and the chief of police) are portrayed through Elżbieta’s eyes as legitimized thugs; the chief of police justifies beating prisoners on the grounds that it happens “everywhere—in America, England, France, even in Greece” (chapter 22). For Elżbieta, as for Nałkowska’s narrator and Nałkowska herself, human compassion and the morality surrounding the exercise of power are more important than political or ideological allegiances. Is it possible to identify the location on which Boundary’s unnamed provincial town is based? There is convincing evidence to suggest that it was Grodno (the present-day city of Hrodna in Belarus), in the then eastern

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borderlands of the Polish state where Nałkowska lived with Gorzechowski from September 1923 until April 1926.8 In the novel, it is portrayed as provincial, relatively small, and economically backward, especially when compared with the capital city or with the cosmopolitan “European” world of Paris, where Zenon as well as other characters spend time. Its anonymity underlines its role as “everytown”—typical of many contemporary provincial towns in the country—but also its potential as an allegorical setting for timeless patterns of human drama. Its representation, however, is above all realistic, based on concrete physical realia and details of everyday life that Nałkowska knew intimately. Apart from this experiential closeness, there are other factors that suggest Grodno, as Hanna Kirchner has demonstrated in her biography of Nałkowska.9 Kirchner identifies the prototype for Zenon Ziembiewicz as Maurycy O’Brien de Lacy, the husband of Nałkowska’s Grodno friend the minor writer Nadzieja Drucka; he served as mayor of Grodno. Drucka’s memoirs contain passages that suggest affinities. To quote just a short excerpt: A serious situation began with the unemployed workers. Maurycy received threatening anonymous letters. I trembled every day as he left for the town hall in his open motorcar (driving himself). I knew that the unemployed workers were gathering in front of the building, shouting and threatening.10

Another instance noted by Kirchner is the source of the name of the priest Czerlon. This is a very unusual name for an unusual figure, but there is a small town named Czerlona (Cherlena), about 20 km southeast of Grodno. Father Czerlon is a key figure for understanding the existential underpinning of the novel, often overlooked in criticism, and I will return to him below. As mentioned above, Boundary was written over several years, built up from separately published parts, most of which were subsequently revised. Constant revision and dissatisfaction with her work were hallmarks of Nałkowska’s writing practice. Self-criticism and self-doubt, aggravated by frequent illnesses and lack of money as well as the pressure of delivering parts for publishing deadlines, accompanied the painful effort of the creative process. In a diary entry written in Paris (December 23, 1932), she complains as follows: Total loneliness, silence. Animal sadness. Illness comes almost as a relief. Justified rest. I have been dragging out this Boundary for the final number

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[for Illustrated Weekly] under mortal strain, of late these double fragments have been as if sucking out of me what remains of my blood. [. . .] And this Boundary—accursed and bad work. What’s the point of writing? It’s incomprehensible and absurd, when I don’t even have my own approval.11

This and similar passages bear witness to her depression, poor health, financial struggles, and sense of internal crisis over her work. However, it is important to recall a more positive factor associated with her stay in Paris that had a significant influence on her approach to her writing of Boundary— namely, her relationship with the renowned Croatian writer Miroslav Krleža (1893–1981). Nałkowska’s diary of the early 1930s records her relationships at this time—intellectual, emotional, and suggestive also of strong physical attraction—with three men in particular: the composer Karol Szymanowski (1882–1937), of whose sexual preferences she was nevertheless well aware; the writer Michał Choromański (1904–1972); and Krleža; this was the time immediately preceding her great friendship with the then emerging Bruno Schulz (1892–1942), whose work she highly prized and actively encouraged, and her relationship with the third male companion of her life (following one divorce and one separation), the now almost forgotten minor writer Bogusław Kuczyński (1907–1974). It was Krleža, however, whose approach to literary creation seems to have had most influence on the writing of Boundary. The two writers first encountered one another when Nałkowska became involved in March 1931 in improving a translation, on the request of Arnold Szyfman director of the Teatr Polski, of Krleža’s play In Agony (U agoniji, 1928), which had been recommended to Szyfman by the Croatian critic and translator Julije Benešić; Nałkowska met Krleža in February 1932 when he came to Warsaw in connection with the production.12 Nałkowska believed that Krleža, whose literary program she presented in a contemporary essay as reacting against avant-garde aestheticism in favor of more directly expressed “biological dynamics” and “sensual artistic perception” (combined nevertheless with great erudition and “historical and sociological knowledge”), persuaded her to convey her own true sense of reality, her “authentic” self in her writing: “His [Krleža’s] human being is authentic, the only genuine one, whose soul is blended with flesh, saturated with blood and suffering, intense and tragic. His nature has only three dimensions but is fully charged with energy, with the whole mystery of material existence.”13 Although their intimacy—maintained by letter and then by their meetings in Paris—was fading by the summer of 1933,14 Krleža’s influence on her self-awareness as a writer appears to have been crucial and lasting:

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And now a turning-point is happening in life: I shall not write things I don’t want to write, and I shall write only as I think—without seeing it or myself from the outside, as people see me. This decision emerges from deeper considerations, from my realization of the constant compulsion under which I live of late, from what had seemed to be some kind of internal crisis. [. . .] Once again I am entering all the pressures of an alliance with another person, entering young love, frantic and deep (Miroslav Krleža). (April 23, 1932) Lying in bed in the mornings, I write penciled notes to Boundary, which should be better than all my other books. This is also part of the complex M. K. [. . .] Now my unbelief is shaken, it is as though I am returning to my initial self, to my real self. He [Krleža] told me: “I have never written a single sentence or any opinion that I did not want to write.” For me, this is an instruction, for me, who has written so many times under constraints—moral or financial. (May 20, 1932) Now I can see that I simply wrote unintelligently. What is more amazing is that I wrote not as I thought, did not do what I wanted to do. My fault is weakness of character, succumbing to the pressure of suggestion, because of some feeling that others know better. The desire to be like others. That whole period of my marriage to Gorzechowski. It was precisely then that people began to praise my “noble simplicity”—here I subjected myself most to some sweet and worthy, mannered style. This discovery began before Miroslav Krleža, but it was he who made me more deeply aware of it—through contrast. His liberating influence was ultimately the pressure yet again of another stronger and greater individuality. It was based, however, on something essential in me that had previously existed. As if he gave me myself all over again.—I should get on with writing Boundary, where I am to reveal my true self—yet I can’t, I can’t. (July 1, 1933)15

While no particular philosophical viewpoint or political opinion can be said to emerge from the relationship with Krleža, he was crucial in supporting Nałkowska as an artist, in giving her the courage to be herself, irrespective of what was fashionable or the pressures she may have felt from other quarters. Hence Boundary may be regarded as her most “authentic” novel to date, in the sense that she conveys by artistic means her most truthful perception of the world—namely, a world that is essentially material, biological in nature, yet at the same time permeated by suffering and tragedy (because we cannot escape biology?), and for which, despite the world’s and humans’ materiality, some moral sense is nevertheless sought. This complex text, which can be read—as above—on another level as a commentary on contemporary

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politics, social divisions, and abuse of power, is also the narration of an existential consciousness imbued with suffering, where the keystone of ethics is empathy with fellow sufferers’ pain (animal as well as human). It is on this plane above all that the political/social, existential/ethical, and public/ private spheres of human experience and behavior may be said to interact. Moreover, it is also significant that at the time when she was starting to write Boundary, Nałkowska emphasized several times in her diary that she could have no one unilateral way of looking at the world, no one opinion or worldview: “During a conversation with [playwright, artist, and philosopher Stanisław Ignacy] Witkiewicz (in Warsaw), I had to admit that not only did I not have my own philosophical worldview, but that I also did not recognize anybody else’s. [. . .] This is linked to what I once discussed elsewhere with [writer] Maria Dąbrowska, that thinking through any thought to the end is hostile to me, that the logical conclusion of every line of thought is a ready-made cliché.”16 Thus it is important not to lose sight of the fact that for Nałkowska, human and artistic concerns overrode attachment to any single ideological solution. Boundary is unusual in Nałkowska’s œuvre because it contains the figure of a Catholic priest. Nałkowska was an agnostic. Intuition of the transcendental, if it is present at all, may be felt in her descriptions of nature or in her reception of art; even here, however, it is difficult to identify any spiritual dimension that is not dependent on the material, the physical, the bodily. Father Czerlon, a handsome larger-than-life specimen troubled by his own inexhaustible energy and sexual appetite, is a man deeply engaged with the physical, but it is through his plumbing the absolute depths of physicality that he experiences the humility that leads to epiphany: to the realization that suffering itself is the meaning of our existence, that our very existence in the world means to suffer. Coming from a completely different perspective from Nałkowska, his understanding of the human condition is remarkably similar to hers. Czerlon is one of her most impressive tours de force: she uses this unlikely character to express the vision closest to her own, as though she were at pains to distance her narrator from it (and herself as any kind of “preacher”) and thus not to disrupt the artistic unity of Boundary’s multidimensionality. It is not in confrontation with the “material” in the strictly biological or bodily sense, however, that Czerlon divulges his worldview, but in conversation with Karol Wąbrowski, a scientific materialist of the most cerebral kind (chapter 23). This exchange between two opposing and incompatible worldviews recalls the titanic clash between Naphtha and Settembrini in

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Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain (1924). In contrast to Czerlon, who since his early friendship with Karol in Paris has moved on in experience and subsequently become a priest, Karol has remained in the same place, as Czerlon puts it. Paradoxically, Karol’s dry scientific perception of the world is a less tragic and more optimistic one: while he appreciates the anxieties provoked by “the disturbing melancholy of interstellar distances,” he claims that there is nothing that human reason cannot fathom or master, thus making his own vision less deterministic than one driven by biology. This overweening faith in the power of the human intellect, however, stems from his detachment from life. Crippled since childhood by bone tuberculosis and condemned to live in an apparatus, he is in awe of Czerlon’s physical magnificence, but also unable to empathize—because focused on himself, or so it appears on the surface—with the suffering of others (see, for instance, his matter-of-fact letter to Zenon reporting the death of Adèle, chapter 6). However, it is Karol, not Elżbieta, who confesses his love for his mother on her deathbed. Notably, of all the male figures in the novel, the majority of whom are predatory and manipulative, it is Karol and Czerlon who emerge as the kindest and most sympathetic. Let us take a closer look at the materiality or “biologism” of the reality portrayed in Boundary. A key scene, occurring late in the text (chapter 19), is Zenon and Elżbieta’s visit to the Monaco aquarium while on their honeymoon. Like many other details in the descriptions of Southern France, the aquarium appears in Nałkowska’s diary record of her own visit to Nice and Monaco in 1928.17 It is indicative of one aspect of her technique: recording observations in her diary to be recycled later in fictional texts. A large proportion of this diary passage is transferred verbatim into Boundary. As with many other parts of the text (but not all), the narrator portrays the scene through Elżbieta’s eyes—so it is her intuition of reality to which the reader is exposed here: Cold enveloped them in the narrow corridor between glass walls. Wondrous deep-sea creatures emerged out of the dark green gloom and came toward them. Swaying on long bowed legs, they spun out their sad, pointless, suspect existences among the artificial rocks and flimsy seaweed. [. . .] Beyond the glass walls, the breathing of certain fish seemed distinctly to resemble torture, and their silence—the loss of all hope. One little fish wore a luxurious brocade costume on its stunted body, yet its big hideous face was sad and embittered. Some colored thing, some kind of ruby-like spangle, some luminous speck was constantly rotating around its eyes. With those eyes it stared out in mortal reproach from behind the glass pane—which for it was the wall of life.

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Elżbieta senses that humans are no different: we too are composed of precisely the same biological matter, while our main drive is that of reproduction—hence our craving for a sexual partner to relieve our existential loneliness: “I feel absolutely certain that we’re exactly the same in essence. Our consciousness is greater, but it’s not essentially different from the sighing of those fish.” The highest instance is human consciousness, nothing more: “Who is the God of those creatures?” she speculates. The aquarium and Elżbieta’s subsequent remarks prefigure another “fish” scene, where the focus on physical suffering and human identification with it are even more excruciating and poignant.18 This is Czerlon’s description of a fish being stripped of its scales, gutted and salted while still alive, a scene remembered from childhood so affecting that Czerlon is subsequently unable to consume fish: “The important thing is what the fish feels: most likely pain and horror— though it may also be ecstasy. But let us assume that it’s pain. And it’s important that it occurs within the confines of the world, and that there is no proper system in place for measuring torture. And so, if it is not simply a matter of words, if it tugs at the crucial thing hidden in our subconscious, then the absurdity of the world falls away of its own accord, becomes unacceptable. Suffering has to make sense, unless one is insane . . .”

Empathy with the suffering world prompts compassion. And it applies to animals as much as humans, since we are all made of the same stuff. Nałkowska’s empathy with animals is evident in many of her works,19 but in Boundary, the most harrowing example (apart from the fish) is Elżbieta’s compassionate championing of the dog Fitek (chapter 4), kept day and night on a chain in the backyard, but also by extension symbolizing her own and others’ imprisonment in the house. Biology—flesh and bones, our living bodily tissue—seems to be the ultimate definition of our being. There is no god in this existence and, as we saw above in Elżbieta’s identification with the creatures in the aquarium, there appears to be no meaning beyond biological continuation, except what our superior consciousness is capable of bringing to it—and it would seem that it is precisely this empathy, leading potentially to compassion, that is the origin of the moral impulse. Sometimes this material existence is portrayed—or could be interpreted—in categories that recall Julia Kristeva’s psychoanalytic concept of the “abject.” Put in general terms, the abject denotes those elements of our biological existence which we reject as “unclean” and “repulsive” because

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they disturb our secure identity or selfhood as social and cultural beings. Nałkowska’s narrator frequently focuses on such “abject” elements, as if intuitively conscious of their significance for subjectivity and interrelationship; it is as though her narrator attempts to make visible our bodies as the crucial starting point for understanding our existential reality, as well as exploring how the bodily operates as a factor determining human behavior on both the individual and social levels.20 Reception of “abject” elements depends, of course, to some extent on the reactions of the reader. There are many instances in Boundary, however, where bodily details are potentially disturbing and even shocking, provoking disgust and rejection. Such moments apply to both animals and humans. Apart from the disturbing descriptions of Fitek’s physical existence as seen through the eyes of Elżbieta, there is the additional detail in one such passage of the revolting wet hens sitting in the rain: It was cold and desolate. Three soaked hens stood in a row on the cherry trunks. One of them, the black one, pecked at her breast and under her wing, and then moved the louse she had caught with her beak along a wet feather in order to swallow it. (Chapter 4)

A similar feeling of disgust—though the extent of this again depends on the reader—may be aroused by the description of the numerous spiders in Pani Kolichowska’s sitting room: In the evening, the spiders concealed in the nooks and crannies of the room would come to life: unwieldy, hairy-legged, and harassed by the daily destruction of their webs, which Ewcia inconsiderately swept away with her feather duster. The windows opening onto the garden constantly encouraged this invasion. The spiders would emerge from the darkness— huge, black, shaggy, and bedraggled—and come to a standstill on the walls or ceiling completely unaware of how revolting and terrifying they were. (Chapter 12)

Reactions of disgust occur most frequently in the context of human sickness and aging. We know from this and other novels by Nałkowska, and from her diary, that losing her own youth—and the trump card she believed it gave particularly to women—verged on the traumatic. In the earlier novel Choucas (1927), Madame Saint Albert voices a formulation Nałkowska had previously used in her diary when referring to herself: “Youth is not

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a state. It is a value added to everything, it imparts reality to life. And old age is the removal of value from everything.”21 In Boundary, aging—and in particular the aspect of physical disintegration—is portrayed through Pani Cecylia Kolichowska’s reactions to her own aging, as well as through Elżbieta’s response to her aunt’s deteriorating body. The earlier chapter 3, meanwhile, consists largely of a description of Cecylia’s annual name-day party for elderly female acquaintances, where portraits of the women are based primarily on their physical attributes and hint at the mechanisms that cause women of a certain age to be rejected by society. On one level these portraits are grotesque, cruel, and hideous, yet they are imbued at the same time with understanding and compassionate solidarity. Some of the most abject images are associated with Elżbieta’s intimate physical contact with her aunt’s aging body. Chapter 13 describes the bed bath and then how Elżbieta combs her aunt’s hair and observes the condition of her flesh: Elżbieta would then brush and comb Pani Cecylia’s hair. It was not yet entirely gray but fell out so violently that only a long thin pigtail remained of the once luxurious plait. Between the oily strands raked by the comb, the bald skin shone through. [. . .] What Elżbieta felt was not disgust. Maybe it was something worse. She would wonder in amazement what exactly she was doing with this old woman’s body, what this process she served was meant to express? The limp yellowy skin still held the soft human flesh intact within its former framework. But an insignificant movement was enough for it to spill from one side to the other beneath the skin’s surface, as if it had come away from the bone, as if it were fluid.

The portrayal in Boundary of motherhood, meanwhile, is both diverse and conflicted. Nałkowska, however, has no general panacea, ideal, or theory of motherhood. She relates the different experiences of individual women from a cross-section of social classes. It is impossible to say how, if at all, her portrayals of motherhood were influenced by her own biography. The portrayals in the novel should not be read as reflections of her personal experiences. She had a remarkably close and positive relationship with her own mother, as is obvious from her diaries. As to her own position as a potential mother, this is much more opaque: she never gave birth to a child; it is possible she suffered miscarriages, but there is no evidence that she ever had an abortion. She was clearly aware, however, of how the biological need of some women—though not all—to have a child could become the obsession

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of their lives. By the same token, to deprive them of the desired child could lead to emotional trauma, depression, and psychological imbalance. In the novel there are various instances demonstrating how, in this context, biology affects the psyche. In an early scene—just one of many occasions in the novel’s structural underpinning where the narrator anticipates future developments—Elżbieta explains to Zenon that the first (i.e., before Cecylia) Pani Kolichowska died because she could not have children: “First she went crazy, and then she died. ‘Can you really go crazy from that?’ Zenon was horrified. ‘Evidently you can,’ replied Elżbieta, offended that he could doubt it.” (Chapter 2) An interesting portrait here, also anticipating the outcome with Justyna, is that of the poor tenant Władziowa. Like many other working-class mothers in the novel, she is single—in her case, it seems, not from abandonment but from choice: the main thing is to have a child, not a man; her pregnancy was the result of a chance and short-lived encounter. Władziowa’s main problem is that she needs work, and has jobs in domestic service, none of which last—because no household will employ her with a child, especially an illegitimate one. The child is therefore placed in a series of institutions, but Władziowa cannot survive emotionally without him and reclaims him several times—her “demonic” maternal instinct is so strong. She becomes a vociferous defender of her maternal rights: “I’m not interested in finding another man,” she tells Elżbieta, “but I am telling you hand on heart, that if they ever refuse to give me back my child, then I shall try at once for another. [. . .] For me, life without a child is no life at all.”22 The placing of this incident midway through the text in chapter 15, immediately before the fatal meeting between Elżbieta and Justyna, is masterly—it is no mere diversion, as the sudden introduction of Władziowa, not mentioned until then, might at first appear—since Justyna will be irreversibly damaged by the loss of her child. Through the inclusion of Władziowa’s story at this very point in the structure, Nałkowska’s narrator sets the psychological framework, as it were, for Justyna’s later breakdown, because Boundary is also a story about the potential consequences of abortion. Justyna’s decision to do away with her baby prompts her psychological crisis, depression, demoralization, and eventually the drastic course of action she takes to avenge her unborn child and relieve her pain (when interrogated by the police, she merely states that she was sent “from the dead”); it is therefore an integral part of the novel’s structure. Her final action, coinciding with the workers’ demonstration and its violent dispersal by the town authorities, also marks the confluence of the accumulated private and public consequences of Zenon’s actions. Chapter

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26 describes retrospectively the abortion and Justyna’s feelings of guilt. She has a botched private abortion performed illegally by a “midwife,” which provokes a fever lasting several weeks. However, her nightmares and waking reflections in chapter 26 show that for her, it is not just a question of how or where the abortion was carried out, or of her illness per se, but of conscience and regret. At the same time, other single mothers appear in the novel, notably Justyna’s own mother, the cook Bogutowa, who had encountered similar employment problems to Władziowa, yet mother and daughter had somehow survived, loved and supported one another (after Bogutowa’s death, Justyna literally has no one). Bogutowa’s case, like that of Władziowa, does suggest that despite the material and social hardships, single motherhood may be a preferable option to abortion, the long-term psychological consequences of which cannot be foreseen. Nałkowska presents here the potentially tragic results of interfering with biology. However, it would be misguided to read the novel as motivated by an anti-abortion agenda. There are also other, counterbalancing examples of motherhood. Elżbieta’s mother, for example, divorces her husband and abandons Elżbieta as a small child to the care of her aunt, her ex-husband’s sister, Cecylia; at the end of the novel, Elżbieta does the same with her own child, leaving him in the hands of her mother-in-law. In fact, there are very few portrayals in Boundary of happy parent-child or family relationships. Justyna’s relationship with her mother is an exception. Fathers are generally absent, irrespective of social class. Elżbieta’s childhood longing for a normal family life is expressed in her recurring dream of her mother, her father, and herself sitting around a modest dining-room table, a scene that never existed. Zenon, on the other hand, who has experienced such a childhood, is full of disturbing and embarrassed feelings toward both his parents and the defunct social order they represent. Issues surrounding motherhood, abortion, and sexual relationships prompt the question as to what extent Boundary can be said to be a “women’s” or even “feminist” text. It can certainly be read as such.23 Since Nałkowska’s youthful speech to the Polish Women’s Congress in 1907, when she criticized the “double standard” and declared women’s right to “the whole of life,” she frequently emphasized this fundamental inequality: men—of the upper and middle classes especially—felt free to have sexual relations with lower-class women, whereas it was socially unacceptable for women of any class to have sexual relations outside marriage, or even admit to enjoying sex.24 It is a striking feature of Boundary, as of much of Nałkowska’s writing, how naturally and uninhibitedly she portrays sexual relations (she is never coy or voyeuristic). The double standard also meant that working-class women

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were seduced and then abandoned once they fell pregnant, thus leaving them with the stigma of illegitimate children and the problem of finding work; meanwhile, the higher-class wives found themselves betrayed (not to mention exposed to disease), often on a regular basis, which was certainly the experience of Nałkowska and something she found emotionally (and biologically?) traumatic. This treatment by men is shown in Boundary to be the experience of most female characters, so much so that Elżbieta’s mother advises her to reflect again on breaking off her engagement, “Because it’ll be just the same with any other man” (chapter 17). Whether it be the farm girls seduced by Zenon’s father, Zenon’s own exploits as a student in Paris before and after his engagement to Elżbieta, the actress kept by Count Tczewski, Cecylia Kolichowska’s betrayal by two successive husbands, or the tales related by the elderly ladies at her parties, the sexual infidelity of men is universal, as though it were a biological necessity over which no moral control could or should be exercised, and therefore tacitly tolerated by society— tacitly being the word, since the standard external norms of social behavior frown upon extramarital affairs, and Zenon is aware how damaging his affair would be to his public career were it to come to light. Hence it has to be hidden and those in the know are complicit in keeping it hidden. And yet the novel’s action demonstrates its disturbing consequences. The standard social mechanisms revolving around sexual behavior and its consequences are often kept in motion, however, by women themselves— by those patriarchal women who opt to indulge their husbands’ demands (the idea that “men will be men,” and so the easiest course of action is not to complain or make an “unattractive” nuisance of oneself), the most important example being Pani Żańcia, Zenon’s mother. She is described by Cecylia’s friends as knowing how to “handle her husband”: she forgives his betrayals and transgressions, deriving a sweet and perverse satisfaction from his constant confessions, which then leave him totally free to repeat his “sins.” It is his mother, in fact, who originally encourages Zenon in his affair with Justyna, and she is also proud of how he gradually abandons his rebellious youthful ideals and grows visibly more like his father. It would be insufficient, however, to claim that the narrator always assumes a female perspective; consider the crucial discussion between Czerlon and Karol Wąbrowski. The position of the narrator’s gaze shifts, as befits the Modernist narrator who assumes no all-seeing dominant narrative position. Developments are perceived from a number of different perspectives, including Zenon’s, where his reasoning is followed as much as, for example, Elżbieta’s or Justyna’s. It would therefore be misguided to assume

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that Elżbieta—or any other female voice, Justyna or Cecylia for instance—is a porte parole of the narrator, or author. It is a measure of Nałkowska’s psychological observations and insights that she manages as a woman to get inside the head, so to speak, of her male protagonist and also to present the action from his point of view. This does not mean she necessarily endorses it, or anyone else’s specific viewpoint to the exclusion of others, only that her narrator presents it with understanding while also presenting a number of other perspectives simultaneously. These standard patterns of sexual and social behavior (Polish: schematy) are a crucial component of the novel’s social criticism. Chapters 11 and 12 of the final text, where Justyna’s pregnancy and Zenon’s reactions to it are described, were originally published separately under the title Schematy (Patterns).25 After confessing the situation with Justyna to Elżbieta, moreover, Zenon demands of her the same “pattern” of behavior his mother showed toward his father: she must forgive him and help him out of the practical difficulties that now threaten his career, including warding off potential scandal. In order to understand more precisely what Nałkowska meant by the term “schemat,” let us turn to her own commentary. It is interesting that she felt bound to write her own review (autorecenzja)—an unusual and risky step, as she admits in her preamble—in response to contemporary criticism of the novel, since she felt she had not been properly understood on this point: I have come across the opinion in many reviews that my original intention was to title my latest book Schematy. That was not the case. The title Granica (Boundary) was fixed from the very beginning. The persistence of this view has convinced me that it is precisely this motif that attracts the attention of critics, as if it were the most important. Therefore I shall address it, since it expresses the social standpoint of Boundary as I intend it.26

She then goes on to explain this motif with particular reference to Zenon Ziembiewicz, the main protagonist, although the mechanism can be seen to apply also to the self-perceptions and behavioral patterns of other figures in the novel, especially men. It is worth quoting her at length, since her own words not only explain her conception succinctly, but also lead to what for Nałkowska was the most significant “boundary” of the many boundaries present in Boundary: Inherent in a person’s individual nature is resistance to having one’s personal characteristics reduced to fixed standard norms, according to which

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one can then be socially categorized. A person is curious how he looks from the outside, wants to see himself through the eyes of others—and at the same time is afraid of the results of this external glimpse. [. . .] Adoption of a different place from which to view oneself, thinking via the opinion of other people according to the category of their moral judgment, requires an effort not only of will, but also of imagination. Viewed from the outside according to one’s actions, “judged by one’s deeds,” a person always allows himself to be reduced to some kind of readymade, repetitive system of relationships. Elements of one’s character allow themselves to be ascribed to a type of some sort; the conflicts to which they succumb seem to have been already foreseen according to ready-made patterns [schematy], and on this basis, the judgment of a person by a given community repeats itself—a judgment, which determines his place, role, or even fate in that community. In the case of Zenon Ziembiewicz, the problem of the pattern [schemat], or—let us say more modestly—fear of the pattern, has the self-defensive nature of an individual confronted by the community and its moral norms. This fear is twofold. It is not just that his harmful relationship with Justyna will be discovered and subject to judgment. More dangerous for him is the pattern of his public role, his categorization by society.

Nałkowska refers to an early scene in the novel when the schoolboy Zenon, at home in the country for the summer holidays, suddenly sees himself as the farm laborers see him—namely, as the son of the overseer (who treats them cruelly) and a representative of a different social class—and as a result experiences a “metaphysical” fear, since this external vision of himself threatens his own subjective sense of who he is. Later, in his role as mayor, he realizes that he cannot escape the way people perceive him, and indeed judge him. Meanwhile, he clearly sees himself and his intentions quite differently—in his own eyes, he is “still the radical student” with well-meaning socialist sympathies that he was in Paris, now doing his utmost to improve the lot of the socially deprived in the town. However, when the investment promised him by his political masters in the capital is withdrawn (as part of austerity measures necessitated by the deteriorating world economic crisis), his failed housing and employment projects are judged negatively by the hungry disillusioned workers for not having been delivered, a situation for which they hold him personally responsible (irrespective of his good intentions, of which they have no knowledge). According to Nałkowska, the street demonstration represents

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the culmination of the tension between his “subjective” and “social” self, between his private and public persona—the masterful image of his reflection in the glass door of the town hall as he tries to enter, with the advancing crowd in the background: The crowd was coming closer. And then, with the accuracy of a vision, he saw a peculiar image reflected in that dark pane. He saw the collar of his fur coat, his bowler hat, the whole outline of his body, and the countenance effaced by the darkness. [. . .] The clear image of the advancing people was sliced in half by the black silhouette of a man in a fur coat and bowler hat. In the reflection, it seemed he stood at their head. In reality, he was running away from them. (Chapter 26)

In this context, Nałkowska explicates the “boundary,” although it is not the only one: In the moment when these two aspects of his personality, the subjective and the social, confront one another, when they intersect (the streets scenes outside the town hall), the subjective aspect is compromised. And Ziembiewicz feels this moment as a boundary, beyond which no further delusion is possible. The pattern, whose adoption he had been resisting, thrusts itself upon him as obvious proof, the persuasive dialectics of which he now has to acknowledge. He comes to the conclusion that “we are like the place in which we find ourselves” [chapter 27] although he had not wanted to believe it for a long time. And irrespective of his vain attempts to solve individually problems that can only be settled by the community, he understands that “we are only what other people think we are.”27

This is how Nałkowska explains the boundary in her short review. There are, however, several further, associated observations that can be made. The boundary described here pinpoints the moment when Zenon Ziembiewicz realizes he has, as it were, “crossed over”: his subjective individual self (the one he believes himself internally to be) has been “compromised”—this is not what he had hitherto regarded as his real self, but the self as seen by society and its categorizing typological judgments, “what other people think we are.” What he imagines to be his true or inner self, what he really thinks, is rendered irrelevant, because what matters is society’s (the community’s) judgment of his outward behavior. It is a psychological (mental) and also moral boundary. This boundary, however, is not fixed—it shifts with the

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circumstances, depends on the context of who one is with, on what kind of moral or political pressures one is under. Earlier in the novel, when Zenon is working as the editor of a local newspaper before he becomes mayor, he senses a similar moral boundary when he realizes that, in order to maintain his credentials with local people more powerful than himself (Czechliński, the various local aristocrats), he has to play politics, has to be all things to all men, has eventually even to learn to hunt (something he previously scorned), just as he had toned down for Czechliński the more radical elements in a student article sent from Paris: Had he been insincere when he wrote it? Had he bent his views to suit what was expected of him here? Now he believed, he had not. He simply had not expressed his thoughts fully to the end, always having to interrupt them at some point so that they could be written down. He had to confine them within a limited theme, as if within bounds [sic: the Polish here also has granica], so they did not penetrate the sphere where reservations and doubts began, where everything became relative and could be envisaged quite otherwise. (Chapter 10) Within the course of an hour Zenon would have moved up and down an entire scale of contrary points of view several times. He himself was astonished at the proficiency with which he now did this. For the time being it did not look like defeat. In whatever place he found himself, there would always be something worse lying close by, which it was still possible to oppose in all good faith. However the ultimate boundary of such attempts at opposition—the boundary of moral resistance—was moving imperceptibly further and further away. (Chapter 13)

The shifting boundary is thus above all a moral one. Zenon partly justifies his behavior by implying that whatever unpleasant compromise he might make, there is always something worse going on somewhere else close at hand, just as he justifies his treatment of Justyna by suggesting that many other men behave worse than he does, have more affairs than his one. Elżbieta also uses the motif of the moral boundary to challenge Zenon’s behavior, which in the second half of the novel she finds increasingly disturbing. She observes how he “crosses over” in an additional sense: when it comes to the arrest and alleged torture of the revolutionary workers, she sees how all the things he once said he hated, most specifically political violence and abuse of power, are now on his side:

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“All those things you never wanted are now on the same side as you [. . .] it’s about something having to exist. Some kind of boundary, over which you should not step, beyond which you cease to be yourself.” “Boundary,” he muttered and shrugged his shoulders, “Boundary.” (Chapter 27)

To return, however, to the schematy and the subjective/social or private/ public confrontations, we should add to the political situation already noted above by Nałkowska herself, in relation to the workers’ demonstration, the implications of the affair with Justyna—because here Zenon’s inner perception of himself and his external actions as perceived by others result in a parallel compromise of his “subjective” identity, and mark a similar confluence of the “subjective” and the “social.” He tries hard to convince himself, and Elżbieta, that the relationship with Justyna is substantially “different” from the usual pattern of married middle or upper-class men having working-class lovers on the side, and constantly absolves himself of personal guilt, blaming things on external circumstances. He sees his own affair as less sordid than others, and claims it does not follow the customary pattern of ideal life companion (Elżbieta) versus casual sexual pleasure (though for Justyna, of course, the affair is not casual): Thus the whole affair took shape precisely in accordance with the familiar pattern: the girl from the village and the young lady from the bourgeois town house—fiancée and lover, ideal love and desire. And yet it only looked like that from the outside, as though it were the result of a fatal irony, pure coincidence. Zenon resisted this assertion, feeling certain the real truth lay elsewhere. First and foremost, nothing would have happened if Justyna’s mother had not died and if at Boleborza they had paid old Bogutowa her whole salary. [. . .] Their subsequent meetings were merely a consequence of the first. Everything was completely different from how you might imagine it in other cases. (Chapter 12) “Listen, Elżbieta, you shouldn’t look at it just the way it seems. [. . .] But you have to understand, you especially have to understand, that this is not how it always is, not the usual banal thing when she is there and you are here. That’s how it often is, I know, but it only looks like that on the surface . . . But what’s underneath is different.” He was unable to explain on what this difference depended. [. . .] The stark crude fact remained: a commonplace pattern leaving no room for doubt. Justyna was in effect an honest girl whom he had seduced, taking advantage of her being in love with him. Elżbieta was his

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fiancée, whom he had betrayed. Ultimately, these were the facts of the matter. Such was the real state of affairs. (Chapter 14)

The same dichotomy is referred to in the novel’s opening passages, where Zenon is described as having already been judged “by the street” for his visible actions, while his own inner motivations remain forever hidden to the public gaze. The obvious, visible scandal of an affair with a working-class girl, plus the judgment of the crowd that he ordered the police to fire on it (even though the text suggests that it was not he but Czechliński who gave this order, it is never made clear) come together to condemn Zenon on both private (intimate) and public (political) levels. The critical reception of the novel was complex, as is clear from the fact that Nałkowska felt bound to write her own “review” in response. According to her own record, reviews started to appear from October 1935; the reactions were various, and all of them played on her own insecurities about her talent: “I am reading lots of reviews of Boundary. I rarely inspire enthusiasm, rather cool recognition and even then with reservations” (October 8, 1935); “I may believe that Boundary is a sensation, even a masterpiece. The first edition of three thousand is already exhausted, a lot of reviews, each one different” (October 30, 1935); “Still lots of reviews, enthusiastic ones among them—but such words as ‘mastery,’ ‘genius,’ ‘masterpiece’ are less credible to me than the accusations” (December 18, 1935).28 At the end of 1935, the jury unanimously awarded Nałkowska the State Literary Prize for Boundary.29 Meanwhile, in a survey conducted in January 1936 by the journal Prosto z mostu to discover the “most interesting book I have read during 1935,” several leading literary figures including Józef Ujejski, Witold Gombrowicz, and Jan Nepomucen Miller, singled it out.30 Its psychological realism and stylistic and compositional artistry were the aspects that attracted positive criticism. The novel was widely discussed immediately after its publication, arousing both admiration and controversy. It is interesting that in a mock trial of Justyna held in a Warsaw theater in May 1936, enacted by a group of well-known actors and literary critics, the audience voted overwhelmingly to pronounce her innocent. The outcome suggested not merely sympathy for the unhinged young woman, who felt forced to have an abortion she did not want, but also condemnation of the widespread poverty and social injustice suffered by Justyna and other working-class figures in the novel.31 The novel tended to be interpreted at the time either as a Marxist approach to the class struggle and the thesis that “social existence determines consciousness” (J. N. Miller, Ludwik Fryde, among others) or, on the contrary,

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as an expression of “moral relativism”—Kazimierz Wyka, for example, who felt the lack of a clear, satisfactory explanation of the “boundary” of the title and found the “patterns” inconsistent and undeveloped, especially in relation to Justyna (yet it is Justyna, more than anyone, who is shown by the novel’s narrator not to be enslaved by them).32 These groups of critics show little appreciation of the key role of Czerlon and his discussion with Wąbrowski, and include relatively little discussion of Nałkowska’s aesthetics or methods of conveying psychology or personality. Hanna Kirchner usefully explains, however, that the majority of critics’ reactions make sense when read in the context of 1930s Polish literary criticism, which persisted in a nineteenth-century demand for social realism, for “the social novel with an unambiguous ‘persuasive’ energy, for active involvement and ‘moral heroism.’ The fulfillment of these postulates—and they were expressed, amazingly, by young critics—seemed possible only within the usual categories: a distinct, integrated (one might say: positive) hero, full-blooded characters, shown in action rather than described, a lively plot, an engaged narrator. Critics were simply not particularly conscious of what was different and new in Nałkowska, to such an extent that they did not even see what was in the novel, and what they accused it of lacking—because it was expressed differently.”33 Some critics, however, did observe what was different and what was specific to Nałkowska. Tadeusz Sinko, who wrote contemporaneously in another context about Narcyza Żmichowska’s novel The Heathen (Poganka, 1846), sees Nałkowska as part of a tradition of women writers in Polish, claiming that “in recent years, Nałkowska is no skeptical relativist proclaiming the absurdity of life, but a thinker maintaining the worthy traditions of our philosophizing literary women, starting with the Enthusiasts [Narcyza Żmichowska’s group] and [Eliza] Orzeszkowa and ending with M. [Maria] Dąbrowska.” Sinko emphasized Nałkowska’s interest in psychology, the influence of “today’s psychoanalysis,” and similarities with Karol Irzykowski’s approach to analyzing human personality in his novel Pałuba (1903).34 Another critic who emphasized Nałkowska’s interest in psychology, especially in relation to social issues, was Emil Breiter.35 Not surprisingly perhaps, one of the most insightful contemporary critics of Nałkowska’s novel was Witold Gombrowicz, although he too refers to her alleged “extreme amoral relativism.”36 However, it is not the content that impresses him so much as her art, her style, her “culture”—in other words, her aestheticization of experience, which lifts her above and beyond the content and renders her not the advocate of any point of view, of any ideology, but supremely humanitarian:

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Instead of the desperate content, her form shines forth—admirably settled, calm, harmonious, smooth, elegant, noble. In the form, we find hierarchies for which we would seek in vain in the content. And when we read in the press that Nałkowska has touched upon a particular problem and wants to “say” this or that on the subject, it is hard not to claim that she is not so naïve. Nałkowska has nothing to say on the subject of any problem, it is enough for her to articulate it. [. . .] How come? No slogans, no ideals, no ideology? Only style? It is precisely this that characterizes her magnificent work, its true humanitarianism. [. . .] Faced today by an overproduction of slogans, by the bankruptcy of slogans, by the extraordinary trivialization of ideology, Nałkowska’s institute of beauty, without cosmetics, without cameras, is perhaps the only rational system for fostering culture—in an age of confusion.37

Nałkowska anticipates both significant aspects of Gombrowiczan “form”: it is not exclusively a question of style, of aesthetics, but also of the two writers’ similar interpretations of human interaction and psychology, or personality formation—in fact, Nałkowska could be said to be his precursor, as Kirchner has previously pointed out, especially in relation to Bad Love (1928), the last full-length novel Nałkowska published prior to Boundary.38 The first-person narrator’s opening remarks in Bad Love on human psychology and character could be said to anticipate not only the socially predetermined stereotypical “patterns” described in Boundary, but also Zenon Ziembiewicz’s conclusions about being “like the place in which we find ourselves.” What we are is never fixed, since we are ultimately shaped by the external personalities and judgments of others (or by what Gombrowicz elsewhere calls the “interhuman”): There is no such thing as character, if we look at it in isolation. Character does not exist in and of itself. Every inborn feature stretches into a limitless depth of possibility, reaches as far as the stars. Only someone else’s world, closing in on us from all sides and from close by, shuts off those open roads, demarcates the ultimate boundary of possibility. After all, in relation to every other person, we become, we are [Z. N.’s emphasis] someone else. Not one after the other, in the course of our lives, but in one and the same hour. The character of someone else is the only measure of our own character. The quality of another human soul, its changing scope, unknowable and fluid, designates a constantly new role for us, defines us differently every time.39

While Gombrowicz’s appraisal of Nałkowska’s method, style, art, culture, is persuasive, the current translator of Boundary and author of these

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reflections remains unconvinced of her “amoral relativism.” While agreeing that her writing is indeed supremely “humanitarian” rather than partisan, I would add that her portrayal of suffering, tragedy, and pessimism as the fundamental truth of the world (articulated in Boundary above all by Father Czerlon) and the palpable empathy, conveyed by the gaze of the anonymous narrator, for pain and deprivation, as—for instance—in the portrayal of the tribulations of Jasia Gołąbska and her family, prompt the compassion of the reader, at least potentially. It cannot therefore be said to be morally neutral or relativistic. Furthermore, her art was not simply a way of aestheticizing and thereby objectifying and preserving experience (or turning it into “culture”), it was also a means of personal survival. Her style or “form,” in life as well as in literature, was her way of making sense of the tragedy she observed all around her. As Grażyna Borkowska puts it in the following insightful passage, not only did she cultivate her particular “form” throughout her career for the sake of art itself, this was also the thing that saved her in extreme conditions and enabled her to record them for posterity through her art: It is not only her pessimism that is intriguing in Nałkowska’s writing but also her means of coming to terms with it. The road to salvation for Nałkowska was “form,” understood here as the relationship of individuals to the reality surrounding them. “Form” was not only a method of writing, but also a method of being, conscious activity, based on rules of logic and aesthetics, imbued with a feeling of good taste. Both as a human being and as an artist, Nałkowska kept up good form regardless of circumstances. [. . .] Accustomed to an environment of existential pessimism, Nałkowska was internally prepared for the war [the Nazi Occupation, 1939–1945]. She knew how to survive war because she knew how to survive life.40

*** The current translation of the novel is the first into English, and marks the third of a recent set of Nałkowska translations published by the Northern Illinois University Press.41 There have been translations of Boundary into several other languages: Czech (1937), Estonian (1937), Slovak (1946), SerboCroatian (1956), German (in the German Democratic Republic 1958, 2nd ed. 1966), Russian (1960), Lithuanian (1960), Slovenian (1965), Romanian (1975) and Ukrainian (1978). A few fragments translated into French

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appeared in 1934 in Pologne Littéraire (nos. 94–95), i.e., before the book edition of the whole novel in Polish. The most recent is the Dutch translation De Grens by Esselien ’t Hart (2006).42 The novel is the only one by Nałkowska to remain almost constantly in print. The basis of the current translation is the Biblioteka Narodowa edition, introduced and edited by Włodzimierz Wójcik (Wrocław: Ossolineum, 1971). This edition is based, as is the usual practice, on the last version published during the author’s lifetime: in the single-volume Pisma wybrane (Selected Works) published by Czytelnik in 1954, authorized by Nałkowska herself. I have also referred closely to the original edition, published in 1935 by Gebethner and Wolff, since this represents Nałkowska’s original intentions. The differences between the two editions, however, are minimal, and I have recorded these in my notes to the translated text. Feature films of Granica were released in 1938 and 1977. The 1938 film, directed by Józef Lejtes with screenplay by Lejtes, Stanisław Urbanowicz, and Eugeniusz Bunda, and starring Elżbieta Barszczewska as Elżbieta Biecka, adapts and interprets the novel rather freely and did not meet with Nałkowska’s approval; having attending the premiere, she described it simply as “bad.”43 The 1977 version, directed by Jan Rybkowski, with a screenplay by Józef Hen, stars Andrzej Seweryn as Zenon Ziembiewicz and Krystyna Janda as Elżbieta Biecka. Some aspects of the interpretation are also controversial. While certain elements have to be left out, one assumes, due to restrictions on length (the role of Czerlon, for example, is significantly reduced, while that of Czechliński is overemphasized, thus stressing the local politics, as one might expect from a Communist-era release), it is not clear why the ending as it relates to Zenon himself is changed: in the book, he is not shot dead on the spot by Justyna. In addition, the novel has been filmed twice for television, in 1960 and 1984.44

Notes to Afterword 1. Czesław Miłosz, The History of Polish Literature, 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 431. For a general introduction in English to Nałkowska’s work, see Hanna Kirchner, “Zofia Nałkowska,” in Dictionary of Literary Biography, vol. 215: Twentiethcentury East European Writers, first series, ed. Steven Serafin (Detroit: Gale Research, 1999), 273–282. 2. Zofia Nałkowska, Granica: Powieść (Warsaw: Gebethner i Wolff, 1935). 3. Zofia Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), ed. Hanna Kirchner (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1988), 45, 356–357, 387–388. For a detailed list of the many places where sections of the novel first appeared, see Hanna Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie

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pisane (Warsaw: Wydawnictwo W.A.B., 2011), 419. See also Helena Boguszewska and Jerzy Kornacki, eds. Przedmieście, foreword by Halina Krahelska (Warsaw: Rój, 1934), 233–240. 4. Also recently translated into English: Zofia Nałkowska, The Romance of Teresa Hennert, trans. Megan Thomas and Ewa Malachowska-Pasek, foreword by Benjamin Paloff (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014). 5. For general introductions to Polish interwar politics, see Jerzy Lukowski and Hubert Zawadzki, A Concise History of Poland, 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006); Norman Davies, God’s Playground: A History of Poland, vol. 2 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981); Poland Between the Wars 1918–1939, ed. Peter D. Stachura (London: Macmillan, 1998); and Antony Polonsky, Politics in Interwar Poland (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972). 6. The three cases are discussed in her diary: Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), 237, 242–248, 251–252, 311 (Brześć), 301–302, 444–445 (Łuck), and 387–389 (Kobryń). 7. This analysis is very close to that of a Bolshevik exile, Madame Wogdeman, in another of Nałkowska’s novels, published in 1927: “A great deal has changed. But these things, however, have remained the same: war, imprisonments, and the power of some over the lives and deaths of others.” See Zofia Nałkowska, Choucas, translated with an introduction by Ursula Phillips (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014), 105. 8. The town had also been the home of prolific Polish author Eliza Orzeszkowa (1841–1912) and likewise the setting of many of Orzeszkowa’s novels, though she too does not always identify it directly. 9. Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie pisane, 426. 10. Quoted in Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie pisane, 426. See also Kirchner’s introduction to the third volume of Nałkowska’s diary: Dzienniki III: 1918–1929 (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1980), 9, where she also underlines the importance of Grodno for Bad Love and Walls of the World; and Nadzieja Drucka O’Brien de Lacy, Trzy czwarte . . . Wspomnienia (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1977), 121. All translations of quotations in this afterword are my own unless otherwise stated. 11. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), 363–364. 12. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), 255, 259–260. The play in Nałkowska’s improved translation was performed on September 9, 1932 under the title Baronowa Lenbach. On the history of Nałkowska’s intimacy with Krleža, see Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie pisane, 381–390. 13. Zofia Nałkowska, “Miroslav Krleža,” in Widzenie bliskie i dalekie, ed. Wilhelm Mach et al. (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1957), 175–178; originally published in Gazeta Polska 311 (1933). 14. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), 380, 388. 15. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), 350, 354, 377–378. 16. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), 287–288. 17. Nałkowska, Dzienniki III: 1918–1929, 342–343. Other references will be given in notes to the translated text where they occur. 18. See also the fish scene in Nałkowska, The Romance of Teresa Hennert, 150–151, which prefigures that novel’s ending. 19. My Animals (Moje zwierzęta, 1915); Book about My Friends (Księga o przyjaciółach, 1927, with Maria Jehanne Wielopolska); and Among Animals (Między zwierzętami, 1934). These were recently republished along with other animal passages extracted from her

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novels; see Zofia Nałkowska, Między zwierzętami: Opowiadania, fragmenty, edited and introduced by Hanna Kirchner (Warsaw: W.A.B., 2013). 20. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). For a Kristevan approach to Boundary, see the article by Piotr Krupiński, “Dom nad szczurami: O Granicy Zofii Nałkowskiej,” in Granice Nalkowskiej: Praca zbiorowa, 2nd revised ed., ed. Agata Zawiszewska (Szczecin: Uniwersytet Szczeciński, 2015), 51–68. On the relationship between sexual aggression and collective violence, see also Nałkowska’s article “Organizacja erotyzmu” in Widzenie bliskie i dalekie, 455–457, originally published in Wiadomości literackie 25 (1932); and the recent commentary by Grażyna Borkowska, “Modernizm, kobiety, wojna,” Tygodnik Powszechny 28 (2014), 11–12. 21. Nałkowska, Choucas, 91, and Dzienniki III: 1918–1929, 160–161. 22. Władziowa was modeled on a certain Stasiowa, whose child Nałkowska placed in the children’s home Nasz Dom (Our House), run by Janusz Korczak, in January 1930: “What maternal demonism,” she remarks in a diary entry for January 28, 1930; see Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 1 (1930–1934), 45, 57. This was the basis of the story “Macierzyństwo,” which appeared first in Pion (1933) and then in volume 1 of Przedmieście (1934, see note 3 above) before being incorporated into chapter 15 of Boundary. 23. See Ewa Kraskowska, Piórem niewieścim: Z problemów prozy kobiecej dwudziestolecia międzywojennego (Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 1999), 38–74; Kto się boi Zofii Nałkowskiej? ed. Agnieszka Gajewska and Arleta Galant, Poznańskie studia polonistyczne: Seria literackie 21 (41) (2013); and Zawiszewska, Granice Nałkowskiej. 24. Nałkowska, “Uwagi o etnycznych zadaniach ruchu kobiecego,” in Widzenie bliskie i dalekie, 235–240. 25. Zofia Nałkowska, “Schematy,” Wiadomości literackie 43 (1933): 1–2. 26. Zofia Nałkowska, “Komentarz do ‘Granicy’ (Autorecenzja),” in Pisma wybrane, introduced by Wilhelm Mach (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1954), 606–608. Originally published in Oblicze dnia 454 (1936). 27. Nałkowska, “Komentarz do ‘Granicy’ (Autorecenzja),” 607–608. 28. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 2 (1935–1939), 33, 42, 76. For a full listing of contemporary reviews, see Słownik współczesnych pisarzy polskich, ed. Ewa Korzeniewska et al., vol. 2 (Warsaw: Państwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1964), p. 536; discussion in Włodzimierz Wójcik’s introduction to Granica (1971), lxxxv-lxxxix, and Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie pisane, 419–420, 442–445. 29. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 2 (1935–1939), 78–79. The judges that year were Andrzej Strug, Tadeusz Boy-Żeleński, Władysław Zawistowski, Wincenty Rzymowski, and Józef Ujejski. 30. See Prosto z mostu: Tygodnik literacko-artystyczny 2 (1936) and subsequent numbers; Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 2 (1935–1939), 97–100. 31. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 2 (1935–1939), 109–110. 32. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 2 (1935–1939), 98; Ludwik Fryde, “Granica Zofii Nałkowskiej,” in Fryde, Wybór pism krytycznych, ed. Andrzej Biernacki (Warsaw: Państwowy Instytut Wydawniczy, 1966), 323–338, originally in Droga 7–8 (1936); Kazimierz Wyka, “Spór o Granicę,” in Wyka, Stara szuflada i inne szkice z lat 1932–1939, ed. Maciej Urbanowski (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2000), 279–285, originally in Czas 306–307 (1935). 33. Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie pisane, 442–443. 34. Tadeusz Sinko, “Nowa powieść Nałkowskiej,” Kurier literacko-naukowy 39 (1935). Quoted here from Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie pisane, 443. On Narcyza Żmichowska’s

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novel, see Tadeusz Sinko, “Dookoła ‘Poganki’ Żmichowskiej,” Przegląd współczesny 132– 133 (1935), 80–90, 233–239. 35. Emil Breiter, “Dno jest inne,” Wiadomości literackie 42 (1935); Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie pisane, 443. 36. Witold Gombrowicz, “O stylu Zofii Nałkowskiej,” in Gombrowicz, Dzieła XII: Proza (fragmenty), reportaże, krytyka literacka 1933–1939, ed. Jan Błoński and Jerzy Jarzębski (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1995), 205–209; originally in Świat 5 (1936). 37. Gombrowicz, “O stylu Zofii Nałkowskiej,” 207–208. 38. Hanna Kirchner, “Nałkowska—prolegomena do Gombrowicza,” in Gombrowicz i krytycy, ed. Zdzisław Łapiński (Kraków: Wydawnictwo Literackie, 1984), 573–586. 39. Zofia Nałkowska, Niedobra miłość (Warsaw: Czytelnik, 1979), 8. Translation is my own. 40. Grażyna Borkowska, “The Feminization of Culture: Polish Women’s Literature, 1900–1945,” in A History of Central European Women’s Writing, ed. Celia Hawkesworth (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan in association with School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London, 2001), 153. 41. Choucas, trans. Ursula Phillips (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014) and The Romance of Teresa Hennert, trans. Megan Thomas and Ewa MałachowskaPasek (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 2014). 42. See Wójcik’s 1971 introduction for translations published before that date, lxxxix–xl. 43. Nałkowska, Dzienniki IV: 1930–1939, Część 2 (1935–1939), 344–345; Kirchner, Nałkowska albo życie pisane, 467 and 847n17. 44. For full details of these films, see http://www.filmpolski.pl/fp/.

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