Read Online Cosmos by Danuta Borchardt - Free Book Online Page B

singled it out from many other things which they also talked about. And so it was this coincidence that was partially (oh, only partially!) of my own doing—and that’s exactly what was so difficult, awful, misleading, I could never know to what degree Iwas the perpetrator, configuring the configurations around me, oh, the criminal keeps returning to the scene of the crime! When one considers what a great number of sounds, forms reach us at every moment of our existence . . . the swarm, the roar, the river . . . nothing is easier than to configure! Configure! For a split second this word took me by surprise like a wild beast in a dark forest, but it soon sank into the hurly-burly of the seven people sitting here, talking, eating, supper going on, Katasia handed Lena the ashtray . . .
    “We’ll have to explain everything, clarify, get to the bottom of it . . . ” but I didn’t think inspection of the little room would yield anything, our project for tomorrow would merely help us cope with the strange dependence of mouth on mouth, city on city, star on star . . . and, in the final analysis, what’s so strange about mouth returning to mouth, when all the time, unceasingly, one thing was returning me to another, one thing lurked behind another, behind Ludwik’s hand was Lena’s hand, behind a cup a glass, behind the streak on the ceiling an island, the world was indeed a kind of screen and did not manifest itself other than by passing me on and on—I was just the bouncing ball that objects played with!
    Suddenly something tapped.
    The sound of someone tapping a stick against a stick—a brief, dry sound. Not loud—even though it was a distinct sound, so distinct that it rose above all the other sounds. Did someone tap? Did something tap? I went numb. Something like “this is the beginning” flashed through my head, I was petrified, get on with it, you, the apparition, crawl out! . . . But the noise was lost in time, nothing happened, perhaps it was the creak of one of the chairs . . . nothing important . . .
    Nothing important. Next day, Sunday, introduced turmoil into the flow of our life, although today, like any other day, Katasia woke me and stood over me for a moment out of sheer friendliness, but it was Mrs. Wojtys herself who took care of cleaning our room and, while rolling around with her dustcloth, recounted how in Drohobycz they had a “lovely first floor in a villa, with amenities,” she used to rent rooms with board, or without, then six years in Pułtusk “in a comfortable apartment on the third floor,” but besides regular tenants she often had as many as six boarders “from the city” on her hands, usually older people, with assorted ailments, so, a soft pap for this one, soup for another, nothing acidic for yet another, until one day I told myself, no, no more of this, enough, I can’t do it, and I said this to my old fogies, you should have seen their despair, oh, dear lady, who will take care of us, so I replied: can’t you see, I put too much heart into this, I wear myself down to the bone, why do it, why should I be killing myself, and especially since I’ve had to look after Leon all my life, you have no idea, this and that, always something, I just don’t know how this man would have managed without me, coffee in bed all his life, all his life, fortunately that’s how I am, I hate to be idle, from morning ’til night, from night ’til morning, but also enjoying ourselves, visiting, entertaining guests, you know, Leon’s aunt is married to count Koziebrodzki, if you please, and when I married Leon his family stuck up their noses, even Leon himself was so scared of his auntie, the countess, that he didn’t introduce me to her for two years, so I say, Leon, don’t you be scared, I’ll show this auntie of yours a thing or two, and one day I read in the newspaper there’s a charity ball, and that the countess Koziebrodzka is on the organizing committee, I don’t tell Leon anything,