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  “Excuse me,” he said, “I don’t know whether …”

  “What?” Hipolit asked.

  “Death,” Fryderyk said briefly. He was looking aside. “To k-i-l-l him?”

  “What else? These are the orders.”

  “To k-i-l-l,” he repeated. He wasn’t looking at anyone. He was tête-à-tête with this word. There was no one else—just he and to k-i-l-l. His chalk-white paleness couldn’t lie, it came from the fact that he knew what it was to kill He knew it—at this moment—to the very depths. “I … will not … this …,” he said and shook his fingers somehow sideways, sideways, sideways, somewhere behind him. … All of a sudden he turned his face toward Vaclav.

  It was as if a suggestion of something appeared on his paleness—before he even spoke I knew with certainty that he had not broken down but was continuing to direct events, that he was maneuvering—not letting Henia and Karol out of his sight—in their direction! What then? Was he scared? Or was he chasing them?

  “Not you either!” he turned directly to Vaclav.

  “Not me?”

  “How could you do it … with a knife—because it must be done with a knife, not with a revolver, that’s too loud—how could you do it with a knife when just recently your mother was … also with a knife? You? You and your mother, and a Catholic too? I ask you! How could you possibly manage to do it?”

  He was becoming tangled in words, but they had been thoroughly lived through, supported by his face that, while shouting “no,” was glued to Vaclav’s face. Undoubtedly—“he knew what he was talking about.” He knew what it meant “to kill,” and he was at the end of his endurance, and unequal to the task. … No, this was not a game, nor tactics, at this moment he was genuine!

  “Are you a deserter?” Hipolit asked coldly.

  In reply Fryderyk smiled helplessly and stupidly.

  Vaclav swallowed saliva as if he had been forced to eat something inedible. I think that up to now he had been approaching this just as I was, that is, in the mode of war, that this killing was for him one of many, one more killing—repulsive yet after all ordinary and even necessary, and unavoidable—but now it was extracted for him out of many and placed separately, as something immense. Killing as such! He too went pale. After all, his mother! And the knife! A knife identical to the one that his mother … He would in this case be killing with a knife that had been pulled out of his mother, he would be aiming with the same thrust and would be repeating the same act on Siemian’s body. … Yet it was possible that behind his tensely wrinkled brow his mother became mixed up with Henia, and it was not his mother but actually Henia who became the deciding factor. He must have perceived himself in Skuziak’s role, administering the blow … but then, how was he to endure Henia with Karol, how could he resist their coupling, resist Henia in the (boy’s) embrace, the not yet matured Henia in his arms, Henia brazenly be-boyed? … To kill Siemian just as Skuziak had done—but who would he then become? Another Skuziak? But what would then counter that other force—the juvenile one? Had Fryderyk not isolated and overblown the Kill … but now it would be a Kill, and this blow with the knife would strike at his very dignity, his honor, virtue, everything he had used to fight against Skuziak for his mother, against Karol for Henia.

  This was probably why, turning to Hipolit, he announced bluntly, as if stating something already known:

  “I can’t do it.…”

  Fryderyk said to me, almost triumphantly, with a tone that demanded a reply:

  “And you? Will you kill him?”

  Ha! What? So this was merely a tactic! He was driving at something while feigning fear, forcing us to refuse. Inconceivable: this fear of his, pale, sweating, trembling, so extreme, was merely a horse on which he was galloping … to the young knees and hands! He was using his dread for erotic ends! A pinnacle of fraud, unbelievable baseness, something unacceptable and unbearable! He treated himself as he did his horse! But his onward rush seized me, and I felt I had to gallop with him. And, clearly, I did not want to kill. I was happy that I was allowed to squirm out of it—our discipline and unity had already cracked. I replied: “No.”

  “What a mess,” Hipolit rejoined coarsely. “Enough of this baloney. In that case I’ll do the job myself. Without anyone’s help.”

  “You?” asked Fryderyk. “You?”

  “I.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “Nnno …”

  “Listen,” Hipolit said, “just think of it. One can’t be a swine. One needs to have some sense of duty. This is duty, sir! This is military service!”

  “You want, out of a sense of duty, to k-i-1-1 an innocent man?”

  “These are the orders. We received orders. This is war, sir! I will not break ranks, we must all stand together. We must! It’s our responsibility! What do you want? To let him go alive?”

  “Impossible,” Fryderyk agreed. “I know that’s impossible.”

  Hipolit stared at us. Did he expect Fryderyk to say: “Yes, let him go?” Was he counting on it? If that was his secret hope, Fryderyk’s reply had cut off the retreat.

  “So what do you want?”

  “I know, of course … necessity … duty … orders … One cannot not … But you won’t … You will not slaugh-ter him. … You will nnnot. … You can’t!”

  Hipolit, coming up against that modest, softly spoken “nno”—sat down. That “nno” knew what it meant to kill—and this knowledge, at this moment, was directing itself at him, piling up enormous difficulties. Encased in his large body he looked at us as if through a window, his eyes staring out. An “ordinary” liquidation of Siemian was no longer an option after our three refusals, full of repugnance. Under the pressure of our revulsion, it became disgusting. And he could no longer allow himself to be shallow. Although he was not a deep or shrewd person, he was a man of a certain circle, a certain class, and as we had become deep he could not remain shallow, if only for social reasons. In certain instances one cannot be “less deep,” just as one cannot be “less refined”, being so disqualifies one socially. And this is how convention forced him to be deep, to exhaust, in unison with us, the meaning of the word “kill”, he saw it, as we saw it—as an atrocity. He suddenly felt, as we did, helpless. To murder someone with one’s own hands? No, no, no! But in that case all that was left was “not to kill”—but “not to kill” actually meant to break away, to betray, to be a coward, not to fulfill one’s obligation! He spread his hands. He was between two abominations—and one of them must become his abomination.

  “What then?” he asked.

  “Let Karol deal with it.”

  Karol! So this is what Fryderyk was driving at all along—that fox! The slyboots! Mounting himself, as if mounting a horse!

  “Karol?”

  “Sure. He’ll do the job. If you order him.”

  He said it as if it were incredibly easy—for him the difficulty had vanished. As if it meant Karol shopping in Ostrowiec. It wasn’t clear why this change in tone seemed somehow justified. Hipolit wavered.

  “We should put it on him?”

  “Who else? We won’t do it, this isn’t our sort of thing … yet it needs to be done, it can’t be helped! You’ll tell him. He’ll do it if he’s told. It won’t be a problem for him. Why shouldn’t he do it? Order him.”

  “Of course, if I order him he’ll do it. … But how’s that? What? So he’s supposed to … instead of us?”

  Vaclav anxiously intervened.

  “You’re not taking into account that it’s risky. … It’s a responsibility. One can’t just use him, shift the risk to him. That’s impossible! It’s not done!”

  “We can take the risk upon ourselves. If the matter comes to light we’ll say that we are the perpetrators. What’s the problem? It’s only a matter of someone else taking the knife and slashing him—it’ll go more smoothly for him than for us.”

  “But I’m telling you that we have no right to use him just because he’s sixteen years old, shov
e him into this … have him do our work. …”

  He was panicking. To shove Karol into a murder that he himself wasn’t capable of committing, taking advantage of Karol’s youth. Karol—just because he’s a kid … this was indeed not right, and it weakened him in relation to the boy … even as he had to be strong in relation to the boy! He began to pace the room. “It would be immoral!” he exploded in anger and blushed like someone whose most callous shame had been touched. Hipolit, however, was slowly getting used to the idea.

  “It’s feasible … the simplest thing really. … No one is shirking responsibility. It’s only a matter of not getting oneself dirty … with the act itself. … It’s not a job for us. It’s just right for him.”

  And he calmed down as if touched by a magician’s wand—as if the only natural solution had finally presented itself. He realized this was something in keeping with nature’s order. He wasn’t shirking. He was the one to give orders—and Karol the one to carry them out.

  He regained his calm and his wisdom. He became aristocratic.

  “It hadn’t occurred to me. But of course!”

  A rather remarkable sight indeed: two men, one man shamed by something that returned dignity to the other. The “taking advantage of a juvenile” filled one of them with a feeling of disgrace, the other with pride—and, as a result, it was as if it made one less masculine, the other more masculine. Yet Fryderyk was—oh, so brilliant! To be able to involve Karol in this … twisting the whole business toward him … and thanks to that the intended death heated up at once and flared up, not only due to Karol but also due to Henia, their hands, legs—and the planned corpse suddenly bloomed with the forbidden, boy-girl, awkward, coarse sensuality. Heat has made an ingress—the death now became amatory. And everything—the death, our fear, repugnance, helplessness—was there merely so that a young hand, too young, would reach for it. … I was already becoming immersed in it, not as if it were a murder, but as an escapade of their underdeveloped, dumb bodies. What a delight!

  And at the same time there was malicious irony, even a taste of defeat—that we, grownups, were resorting to the help of a youngster who could do what we couldn’t do—was this murder a cherry on a thin branch, accessible only to someone lighter? … Lightness! All of a sudden everything began to press in that direction, Fryderyk, myself, Hipolit, we all began to make our way toward the juvenile, as if by a secret alchemy that was easing our burden.

  Suddenly Vaclav also gave his consent to use Karol.

  Had he refused, he would be the one to deal with it, since we were already out of the contest. And second, he must have become confused—his Catholicism must have raised its voice, and all of a sudden he must have imagined that Karol, as a murderer, would become as abhorrent to Henia as he, Vaclav, as a murderer—a mistake that originated from the fact that he was smelling the flowers with his soul rather than with his nose, he believed too strongly in the beauty of virtue and in the ugliness of sin. He forgot that crime might take on a different flavor in Karol than in him. Latching on to that illusion, he agreed—because he actually couldn’t disagree if he didn’t want to break with us and find himself, in these dubious circumstances, totally by the wayside.

  Fryderyk, fearing they might change their minds, immediately began to look for Karol—and I went with him. He was not in the house. We saw Henia taking the laundry from a dresser, but she was not the one we needed. Our nervousness increased. Where was Karol? We were looking for him with increasing haste, not talking, as if we were strangers.

  He was in the stable, attending to the horses—we called him out—he came up to us, smiling. I remember that smile well, because the moment we called him I realized how reckless our proposal was. He adored Siemian, after all. He was devoted to him. How could one force him to do such a thing? But his smile instantly carried us into a different realm, where everything was friendly and eager. This child was already aware of his advantages. He knew that if there was anything we wanted from him it was his youth—so he approached us, scoffing slightly, but also ready to have fun. And his approach was filled with happiness, because it showed how chummy he had become with us. And it was a strange thing: the fun, the smiling lightness, was the best introduction to the brutality that was about to take place.

  “Siemian has turned traitor,” Fryderyk clarified succinctly. “There is evidence.”

  “Aha!” Karol said.

  “He must be bumped off today, tonight. Will you do it?”

  “Me?”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “No.”

  He stood by the whiffletree on which the harness was hanging. Nothing whatsoever hinted at his fidelity to Siemian. As soon as he heard about the killing he turned taciturn, perhaps even a bit embarrassed. He closed up and stiffened. It seemed he wouldn’t object. I realized that to kill Siemian, or to kill on Siemian’s orders, was one and the same thing to him—what united him with Siemian was death, no matter whose. In relation to Siemian he was blindly obedient and a soldier—but he was also obedient and a soldier when he was turning against Siemian on our orders. It was apparent that his blind obedience to the chief turned into an instantaneous, silent ability to put someone to death. It didn’t surprise him.

  It’s just that (the boy) looked at us briefly. His look held a secret (as if he were asking: are you after Siemian or … after me?). But he said nothing. He became circumspect.

  Overwhelmed by this incredible easiness (that seemed to take us into an entirely different dimension) we went with him to Hipolit, who gave him additional instructions—that he needs to go at night with a knife—that everything is to take place without noise. Hipolit had already totally regained his balance and was giving instructions like an officer—he was at his station.

  “And what if he doesn’t open the door? Surely he locks himself in.”

  “We’ll find a way to get him to open it.”

  Karol left.

  And the fact that he left agitated and infuriated me. Where did he go? To his room? What did this mean—his room? What was this, this realm of his, where one dies as easily as one kills? We came upon a readiness, an obedience that indicated how well-suited he was for this—that’s how smoothly it went! Oh, he left us so beautifully, quietly, obediently … and I had no doubt that he went to her, to Henia, with those hands where we had placed a knife. Henia! There was no doubt that now, as a boy with a knife, a boy putting someone to death, he was closer to conquering and possessing her—were it not for Hipolit, who stopped us for further counsel, we would have run after him to spy. But after a while we left Hipolit’s study in order to go into the garden, to follow him, her—and no sooner had we reached the hallway than we heard Vaclav’s muffled voice, suddenly cut short, coming from the dining room—something had happened there! We went in. The scene was like one of those on the island. Vaclav was two steps from Henia—we didn’t know what their problem was, but something must have happened between them.

  Karol was standing a little farther away, by the sideboard.

  When he saw us, Vaclav said:

  “I slapped her face.”

  He left.

  She then said:

  “He’s hitting me!”

  “He’s hitting her,” Karol repeated.

  They were laughing. Snickering. Maliciously yet amused. Not really—not overly—they were just snickering a bit. What elegance in their snickering! And they rather enjoyed his “hitting” her, they seemed to get off on it.

  “What’s come over him?” Fryderyk asked. “What upset him?”

  “What do you think?” she asked. She cast a glance with amusement, coquettishly, and we understood at once that this had to do with Karol. It was so wonderful, so charming, that she didn’t even indicate him with her eyes, she knew it wasn’t necessary—she had become coquettish, and that was enough—she knew we would like her only “with” Karol. How easily we could now communicate—and I saw that they were both sure of our goodwill. Playful, frolicking discreetly, perfectly c
ognizant that they were ravishing us. This was obvious.

  It wasn’t difficult to guess that Vaclav couldn’t stand it—they must have teased him again with an almost imperceptible look or touch … oh, those childish provocations of theirs! Fryderyk asked her abruptly:

  “Did Karol tell you anything?”

  “About what?”

  “About tonight … what he’ll do … to Siemian …”

  He made a funny gesture imitating cutting a throat—it would have been funny if the fun were not something so serious. He was having fun, in all seriousness. He sat down. No, she knew nothing, Karol hadn’t let her in on anything. So Fryderyk briefly told her about the planned “liquidation,” and that Karol was to carry it out. He talked about it as if it pertained to something totally ordinary. They (since Karol was still here) listened—how shall I put it—without opposing it. They couldn’t listen in any other way, because they had to please us, and this made it difficult for them to react. The significant thing was that when he finished she said not a word—nor did he—and their silence grew. It wasn’t exactly clear what it meant. But (the boy), there, by the sideboard, stood gloomy, and she too turned dark.

  Fryderyk went on to explain: “The main difficulty is that at night Siemian may not open the door. He’ll be afraid. You could both go together. You, Henia, could knock on the door under some pretext. He will open it for you. It won’t even dawn on him not to open it. You’ll say, for example, that you have a letter for him. And when he opens the door, you’ll step back and Karol will slide in … this seems the best way … what do you both think?”

  He was suggesting this without undue pressure, “just so,” which made sense—because the whole plan was already stretching it, there was no assurance that Siemian would open the door for her just like that, Fryderyk was barely hiding the real meaning behind this suggestion: to pull Henia into it, so that they would both … He was setting it up like the scene on the island. It wasn’t just the idea that dazzled me, but rather the way it was carried into life—because he was suggesting it out of the blue, almost casually, and he took advantage of the moment when they were particularly inclined to treat us graciously, to be our allies, or to simply charm us—both together, both together! It was obvious that Fryderyk was counting on the couple’s “goodwill”—that they would agree without great difficulty in order to satisfy him—he was thus counting again on the “ease,” the same ease that Karol had already demonstrated. He simply wanted them to crush the worm “together.” … But now the erotic, sensual, love-like meaning of his design was barely hidden—it was obvious! And I thought for a moment that the two faces of this venture were struggling with each other right in front of us: because on the one hand the proposal was rather horrible, since it surely meant also sticking the girl into sin, into murder … but on the other hand the proposal was “intoxicating and exciting,” because the purpose was for them to be in it “together.” …