Free Cosmos by Danuta Borchardt Page B

blazed forth. To action! A frantic wish for action, for a cleansing wind, beat within me, I was ready to attack anything!
    Yet this action of ours was pitiful, God be merciful—two conspirators with a frog, following the line of a whiffletree. Once more we swept the scene with our gaze: the house and the faintly visible trunks of the little trees, white with lime, the huge trees growing densely in the thicket, the spreading expanse of the little garden—I felt for the key at the window, in the ivy, and after inserting it into the lock I gently lifted the door on its hinges so it wouldn’t creak. At this time the frog in the box ceased to be important, it moved to the background. Instead, when the door opened, the cavern of the small, low room that gave off a bitter, oppressive odor, like that of a laundry room, or bread, or herbs, that cavern of Katasia’s excited me, the botched-up mouth suckled all over me, sucking me, and I had to be careful not to let Fuks catch on to the agitation in my breathing.
    He went in with the flashlight and the frog, while I remained in the partly open door to stand watch.
    The dimmed light of the flashlight, muted by a handkerchief, slid over the bed, the wardrobe, the little table, the wastepaper basket, the shelf, revealing in turn other places, corners, fragments,undergarments, odds and ends of clothes, a broken comb, a small mirror, a plate with coins, gray soap, objects and objects emerging one after another, as in a movie, while outside clouds followed clouds—at the door I was between the two processions: of objects and of clouds. And even though each one of the objects in the little room was hers, Katasia’s, they acquired the ability to express her only when taken as a whole, creating a substitute for her presence, a second presence that I was violating through Fuks—with his flashlight—while I was standing to one side, on watch. Violating slowly. The spot of light moving, jumping aside, stopped momentarily on something, as if in meditation, to then rummage again, ferret, grope in stubborn search for swinishness—that’s what we looked for, that’s what we sniffed for. Oh, swinish, swinish business! Meanwhile the frog was in the box on the table where he had left it.
    Servile inferiority, born of a dirty and jagged comb, of a greasy mirror, of a threadbare, damp towel—a servant’s chattels, already urban, yet still a villager’s, simple in nature, we pawed through them to gain access to the slippery, twirled-up sinfulness that was lurking here, in this mouth-like cavern, yet hiding its every trace . . .We groped for depravity, perversity, for villainy. It had to be here somewhere! Suddenly the flashlight came upon a large photograph in a corner past the wardrobe, and out of the frame emerged Katasia . . . with her mouth unblemished! Imagine that!
    Pure guileless mouth, good-hearted country mouth!
    On a much younger, rounder face! Katasia, all decked out, with a festive décolletage, on a bench under a palm tree behind which one could see the bow of a boat, a stout foreman with a mustache in a stiff collar holding Katasia by her little hand . . . Katasia smiling pleasantly . . .
    When, waking at night, we could swear that the window is on the right, the door behind our head, one single orienting sign, such as the light from the window or the murmur of the clock, is enough for everything to fall into place in our heads, all at once and in a definitive way, just so. What now? Reality intruded with lightning speed—everything returned to normal, as if called to order. Katasia: a respectable housekeeper who had injured her lip in a car accident; we: a couple of lunatics . . .
    Dejected, I looked at Fuks. In spite of this he kept on searching, the flashlight ferreted again, bills on the table, stockings, holy pictures, Christ and the Mother of God with a bouquet—but what of this search? He was merely making the best of it.
    “Get ready,” I whispered. “Let’s