Read Online Cosmos by Danuta Borchardt - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Danuta Borchardt
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going? I took a piece of brick in my hand, I looked at it, set it back and said: “Well then? Shall we follow the line of the whiffletree?”
He laughed self-consciously.
“Can’t be helped. You understand, don’t you. For the sake of peace. Tomorrow is Sunday. It’s her day off. We’ll have to inspecther room, we’ll see if there is anything to be seen . . . And if not, it will be the end of all this bother!”
I fixed my eyes on the rubble, so did he—as if I wanted to read from it a slight but swinish, sulky slipaway of a lip and, indeed, it seemed that the rubble, the whiffletree of the cart, the leather straps, the garbage began to pulsate with an atmosphere of roving slipperiness, with a profile of disfigurement . . . together with the ashtray, with the wire net of the bed, with the closing and parting of lips . . . and it all vibrated, seethed, reaching Lena, which terrified me because, I wondered, how on earth were we going to act again and, by acting, bring about . . . we’ll bring this whiffletree into action, then I’ll get at the mouth by way of the rubble—which thrilled me—because, I thought, aha, now we’ll begin to act, and by our action we’ll penetrate this riddle, indeed, yes, yes, let’s work our way into Katasia’s little room and search it, look, check on it! Check! Oh, an all-clarifying action! And, oh, an obscuring action, in the dead of night, leading into a chimera!
And so, in spite of everything, I felt better—our return along the gravel path was like the return of two detectives—working on our detailed plans allowed me to survive with honor until the next day. Supper passed peacefully, my field of vision was increasingly confined to the tablecloth, I found it increasingly difficult to look at people, I watched the tablecloth where Lena’s little hand lay . . . quieter today, without obvious quivering, (yet this could have actually been proof that she was the one who had set up the whiffletree!) . . . and the other hands, Leon’s hand for instance, sluggish, or Ludwik’s erotic-nonerotic hand, and Roly-Poly’s hand like a potato atop a beetroot, her little fist sticking out of her patulous old crone’s arm and shoulder, evoking a silently mounting unpleasantness . . . becoming even more unpleasant in the vicinity ofthe elbow, where a chapped redness eventually continued as bluish-gray and violet bays, leading into other recesses. Complex, wearisome configurations of hands, similar to the configurations on the ceiling, on the walls . . . everywhere . . . Leon’s hand stopped drumming, he lifted a finger of his left hand with two fingers of his right hand and held it thus, looking at it with attention that froze into a dreamy smile. The conversation of course, high above, above the hands, went on unceasingly, but only this and that reached me, they touched on various subjects, and at one point Ludwik asked what do you think, father, imagine, ten soldiers marching Indian file, what do you think, father, how long would it take to exhaust all the possible configurations of the soldiers in file by moving, for example, the third man to the place of the first, and so on . . . assuming that we make one change each day? Leon pondered: three monthies? Ludwik said:
“Ten thousand years. It’s been calculated.”
“Oh, Ludwik,” Leon said, “oh, Ludwik . . . Ludwik . . . ” He fell silent and sat bristling. It seemed that Ludwik’s word “configuration” was in some way tied to the “configurations” that had occurred to me, it seemed like a peculiar coincidence that he mentioned configurations of soldiers, just as I was drowning in so many configurations myself—wasn’t it almost like putting my own anxieties into words?—oh, the “almost,” how many times already had this “almost” made my life miserable—yet one also has to take into account the fact that I was struck by the story about the soldiers because it connected with my own anxieties, and therefore I
He laughed self-consciously.
“Can’t be helped. You understand, don’t you. For the sake of peace. Tomorrow is Sunday. It’s her day off. We’ll have to inspecther room, we’ll see if there is anything to be seen . . . And if not, it will be the end of all this bother!”
I fixed my eyes on the rubble, so did he—as if I wanted to read from it a slight but swinish, sulky slipaway of a lip and, indeed, it seemed that the rubble, the whiffletree of the cart, the leather straps, the garbage began to pulsate with an atmosphere of roving slipperiness, with a profile of disfigurement . . . together with the ashtray, with the wire net of the bed, with the closing and parting of lips . . . and it all vibrated, seethed, reaching Lena, which terrified me because, I wondered, how on earth were we going to act again and, by acting, bring about . . . we’ll bring this whiffletree into action, then I’ll get at the mouth by way of the rubble—which thrilled me—because, I thought, aha, now we’ll begin to act, and by our action we’ll penetrate this riddle, indeed, yes, yes, let’s work our way into Katasia’s little room and search it, look, check on it! Check! Oh, an all-clarifying action! And, oh, an obscuring action, in the dead of night, leading into a chimera!
And so, in spite of everything, I felt better—our return along the gravel path was like the return of two detectives—working on our detailed plans allowed me to survive with honor until the next day. Supper passed peacefully, my field of vision was increasingly confined to the tablecloth, I found it increasingly difficult to look at people, I watched the tablecloth where Lena’s little hand lay . . . quieter today, without obvious quivering, (yet this could have actually been proof that she was the one who had set up the whiffletree!) . . . and the other hands, Leon’s hand for instance, sluggish, or Ludwik’s erotic-nonerotic hand, and Roly-Poly’s hand like a potato atop a beetroot, her little fist sticking out of her patulous old crone’s arm and shoulder, evoking a silently mounting unpleasantness . . . becoming even more unpleasant in the vicinity ofthe elbow, where a chapped redness eventually continued as bluish-gray and violet bays, leading into other recesses. Complex, wearisome configurations of hands, similar to the configurations on the ceiling, on the walls . . . everywhere . . . Leon’s hand stopped drumming, he lifted a finger of his left hand with two fingers of his right hand and held it thus, looking at it with attention that froze into a dreamy smile. The conversation of course, high above, above the hands, went on unceasingly, but only this and that reached me, they touched on various subjects, and at one point Ludwik asked what do you think, father, imagine, ten soldiers marching Indian file, what do you think, father, how long would it take to exhaust all the possible configurations of the soldiers in file by moving, for example, the third man to the place of the first, and so on . . . assuming that we make one change each day? Leon pondered: three monthies? Ludwik said:
“Ten thousand years. It’s been calculated.”
“Oh, Ludwik,” Leon said, “oh, Ludwik . . . Ludwik . . . ” He fell silent and sat bristling. It seemed that Ludwik’s word “configuration” was in some way tied to the “configurations” that had occurred to me, it seemed like a peculiar coincidence that he mentioned configurations of soldiers, just as I was drowning in so many configurations myself—wasn’t it almost like putting my own anxieties into words?—oh, the “almost,” how many times already had this “almost” made my life miserable—yet one also has to take into account the fact that I was struck by the story about the soldiers because it connected with my own anxieties, and therefore I
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