VIRGINITY

by Witold Gombrowicz

Translated from the Polish by Christopher Makosa
 

       Nothing is more unnatural than descriptions of young girls and the fanciful similes used for that purpose. Lips like cherries, bosoms like rosebuds - oh, would that it sufficed to buy some fruit and flowers in a store! And if lips really did have the flavor of ripe cherries, who would have the courage to love? Who would be tempted by a caramel - literally, a sweet kiss? But hush, enough, mystery, taboo, let's not talk too much about lips. When viewed through the prism of affection, Alicia' s elbow was now a smooth, virgin white peak merging into the warmer flesh tones of her shoulder and then, with her arm hanging down passively, a sweet, circular hollow, a quiet corner, the side chapel of her body. Apart from that, Alicia resembled any other daughter of a retired Major, brought up by a loving mother in a suburban cottage. Like others, she sometimes caressed her elbow pensively; like others, she learned early on to fidget with her tiny foot in the sand...
       But no matter...
       The life of an adolescent girl can't be compared to the life of an engineer or a lawyer, or of a housewife, wife or mother. Let's just take the longing and murmuring of a young girl's blood, unceasing as the ticking of a watch. It has already been said somewhere that nothing is stranger than to be alluring. Although it's not easy to guard a being whose reason for existence is to entice, Alicia was well guarded by Fifi, the canary, by her mother - the wife of a Major - and by Bibi, a little pinscher she led on a leash during afternoon walks. The conspiracy of these household pets to protect Alicia was interesting. "Bibi," sang the canary, "Bibi, doggie, guard well our young missy. Beg on hind legs! Beg on hind legs and chase away evil thoughts! Be careful of the umbrella, it's so lazy, make sure it protects well our darling little miss from the sun!"
       One fine August evening, at sunset, Alicia was strolling along a narrow path of the garden, amusing herself by gouging round little holes in the gravel with the point of an umbrella. The smallish but pleasant garden was surrounded by a wall that was covered with climbing roses. A vagabond, who was basking in the sun on top of the wall, broke off a large piece of brick and flung it at Alicia. Hit in her shoulder blade, she reeled and almost fell - and was just about to scream when she noticed that her persecutor betrayed neither anger nor joy. Instead, he again hit her in the back with another piece of brick. The ruffian's face expressed merely the laziness of an afternoon siesta, indifference and cynicism. Seeing this, Alicia, her lips quivering with pain, gave him a faint smile. Then the vagabond slid off the wall and disappeared. She returned home, repeating: "I smiled..."
"Alicia! Alicia!" cried Mme. S, her mother. "Your afternoon tea, Alicia!"
"Coming, Mama," Alicia said.
"Why are you slurping like that, my child? That's no way to drink tea!"
"The tea is very hot, Mama," Alicia replied.
"Alicia - don't eat the piece of bread that fell to the floor."
"That's out of thrift, Mama."
"Look, Bibi is sitting up and begging for his little share of bread and butter. You should be ashamed of being selfish, my child - oh, oh, why did you step on the poor dog's foot? What's gotten into you today? What's the matter with you?"
"Oh, I'm so distracted," said Alicia, dreamily.
"Mama, why do men wear pants? After all, we also have legs, don't we? And why do men have short hair? Do men get their hair cut short because... because they have to or because they want to?"
"They wouldn't look good with long hair, Alicia."
"But why would they want to look good?"
       Saying this, she furtively hid up her sleeve a small silver spoon with which she had been drinking the tea.
"Why?" Mme. S. went on. "And why do you have your hair curled? So the world will seem more beautiful and the sun won't spare people its rays." But Alicia had already gotten to her feet and walked off into the garden. She drew the spoon from her sleeve and for a while looked at it irresolutely. "I stole it!" she whispered, astonished. "I stole it! What am I supposed to do with it now?" Eventually, she buried it under a tree. Oh, if Alicia hadn't been hit with a stone, she wouldn't have stolen the spoon. Perhaps women don't like extremes in external life, but internally they can exploit every situation to the utmost if they so wish.
       Meanwhile, Major S., a portly stout man, appeared in the doorway of the house, calling: "Alicia! Your fiancé has returned from a voyage to China and is coming tomorrow!"
       Alicia's engagement had taken place four years before, when she was a young girl of seventeen summers. "Would you allow this small hand to be... mine?" asked the young man indistinctly.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I'm asking for your hand, Alicia," stammered the young suitor.
"Well, I hope you don't want me to cut off my hand, do you?" said the naive girl, blushing.
"Then you don't want to be my fiancée?"
"Of course I do," she replied, "but only if you give me your word that you'll never demand any of my limbs - that doesn't make any sense!"
"Wonderful!" he exclaimed. "You don't even realize how charming you are. Intoxicating!" He spent a whole evening wandering in the streets and repeating: "She took it literally, thinking that I... wanted to take her hand, as I might a piece of cake. This makes me want to drop to my knees!"
       Without question he was a very handsome young man: he had a white complexion and contrasting red lips, and his soul was in no way inferior to his physical beauty. How rich and varied is the human spirit! Some build their morality on rectitude, and others on the goodness of their heart; with Pavel, however, virginity was the alpha and omega, the fundament and the summit. Virginity constituted the foundation of his soul, and twined around it were all of his lofty instincts. Chateaubriand [50] also regarded virginity as perfect and sighed for it, saying: "Thus we see that virginity, which ascends from the lowest link in the chain of beings, reaches up toward man, from man to angels, and from angels to God, in whom it loses itself. God is the great recluse of the Universe, the eternal youth of the worlds."
       If Pavel fell in love with Alicia, that was because her elbow, small hands and tiny feet were more innocent, either by their nature or as a result of the scrupulous care of her parents, than usually happens - and because she seemed to him to be virginity itself.
"She's a virgin..." he thought. "She understands nothing. Stork. No, this is too beautiful to think about, unless - on bended knee."
       Passing by the municipal slaughterhouse, he added: "Maybe she also thinks that a stork brings little calves ready to serve...? Veal roast ready to serve on Mama's table...? Bah! This is sublime! How can I not love her?"
       How can I not worship the Creator?! Inconceivable! How wonderful of Nature to allow something like virginity to exist in this vale of tears. Virgins - that is to say, a separate category of beings, who are confined, isolated, unwary and separated from others by an invisible thin screen. They tremble from eager anticipation, breathe deeply, brush without penetrating, distinct from their surroundings, under lock and key, away from obscenity, sealed up - and that's not merely an empty phrase or a figure of speech, but a genuine seal, as good as any other. A striking combination of the physical and the metaphysical, of the abstract and the concrete - from a slight, purely corporeal detail emerges a whole sea of ideals and miracles, which are in flagrant contradiction to our sad reality.
       Eating a dish of veal roast she isn't aware of anything, doesn't suspect anything; she eats innocently, just as she does everything from morning till evening. When was it that she said "a little spider" instead of "spider" - a little spider eats tiny flies?! O Wonder! She is innocent in the living room and in the dining room and in her bedroom, behind the white lace curtain, and in the toil... Quiet! Awful thought!" He clenched his jaws and his whole face began to tremble nervously. "No, no," he whispered, "she doesn't do that at all, she isn't aware of that, or there would probably be no God in heaven." But he felt he was lying. "In any case, that happens beyond her consciousness, with her spirit being absent then - as if automatically...
       Still, what a horrible thought!
       And what about me? To think that I'm able to contemplate something like that without becoming deaf and blind in the face of this horror! I'm so vile! It's not her fault that this has befallen her but mine, for I'm spoiled and filthy, and I can't be inwardly silent. Don't I owe some of my own ignorance to her virginity? Yes, to truly love a virgin like her, I must be an unwary virgin myself, or our idyll will come to nothing.
       So I want to be a virgin, but what should I do to become one? In fact, I'm not a virgin. True, I could wrap myself, like a priest or a monk, in black cloth, commit myself to fasting and cassock, and live in chastity - but what good would that do me? Is a monk or a priest a virgin? No, a hundred times no, the secret of male virginity lies elsewhere. First, I have to close my eyes tightly, and then obey my instinct. I feel that my instinct will show me the way. Yes, just as I feel by instinct - although I wouldn't be able to say why her ears are more innocent than her nose or why even more innocent than her ears is the gentle slope of her shoulders, and her thumb is less innocent than her forefinger - so I can, in this respect, evaluate every detail of her figure. Likewise, instinct will be my guide in achieving male virginity and becoming worthy of Alicia.
       Is it necessary to dwell on the question where his instinct led him? After all, everyone experiences a similar feeling between the ages of thirteen and fourteen. His parents had intended him to become a merchant, but he hesitated only between two occupations - those of soldier and sailor. True, in the occupation of soldier there are blind obedience and a hard bunk, but then there is also lack of space. Sailors, on the other hand, have an advantage over others because, deprived of the company of the opposite sex as they are, they have space, the sea and freedom. What's more, seawater is full of salt. Rocking slightly, the ship whirls them away to distant lands, amid fantastic palm trees and colored peoples, to a world as unreal as that which Alicia and her peers dream about in their white beds. People have good reason to call these distant lands "virgin" - lands where men wear braids and where ears, weighed down by metal hoops, droop as far as shoulder blades and where, under the baobabs, idols devour slaves or newborns while the whole populace engages in ritual contortions. A kiss by rubbing noses, practiced among savage tribes - didn't it originate in a dreamy innocent little head? Pavel had spent long years there. He was amazed to discover that the local virgins, who wore neither skirt nor blouse, were turned all inside out. "Hideous...," he thought. "Obliteration of charms..." Indeed, color itself decides the matter... If you're red, black or yellow - with skirt or without - you can't aspire to be a virgin, and that's that.
"Hey, you there - Moni, Buatu," he said to a certain Negress, "you be naked... you no blush... you be black, grinning, grotesque - you can't grasp the divine embarrassment of innocence which makes a virgin avert her face timidly."
       Short skirt, blouse, small umbrella, chatter, saintly naiveté dictated by instinct - it's all delightful, but not for me. Being a man, I can neither hunch my shoulders nor strike an innocent pose. Quite the opposite: honor, courage, dignity and reticence are the attributes of male virginity. Yet in my attitude toward the world, I should preserve a certain form of male naiveté, analogous to that of a female virgin. I have to sweep everything with a clear glance. I have to eat lettuce. Lettuce is more innocent than a radish. Why? Who would take a guess? Maybe because it's more sour. But then again, a lemon is even less innocent than a radish.
       So too there exist, on the masculine side, lovely mysteries, matters sealed up by seven seals - a banner, death under a banner. What else? Faith, blind faith, is a great mystery. A godless wretch is like a woman of easy virtue, who is accessible to everyone. I should love, believe blindly and be ready to consecrate my life, to elevate something to the rank of my ideal - yes, but what? Anything. Just to have an ideal. I'm a male virgin overwhelmed by my own ideal!"
       And so, after an absence of four years, he was strolling with his fiancée along the alleys of the small garden. They made a fine-looking couple. Mme. S., embroidering a napkin, was watching them lovingly from the window, and Bibi, on the lawn, was chasing small birds which, all atwitter, were fleeing from his red little tongue.
"You've changed," said the young man with an air of sadness. "You don't chatter as in the old days and you don't wave your little arm about..."
"No-no, I love you just as always," replied Alicia, distractedly.
"There, you see! Back in the old days, you wouldn't have said that you loved me. I didn't expect this of you, Alicia - didn't expect this to pass from your lips, didn't expect your tongue and your lips to shape this shameful word. At any rate, you're sort of restless, excited... you're not ill, are you?"
"I love you, but..."
"But what?"
"But won't you laugh at me?"
"You know that I never laugh. I only smile a radiant smile."
"Please tell me all about love and about myself."
"Oh, I've been waiting for this moment for so long," he exclaimed. "What's love about? Let's go and sit on that bench."
       "Since our first parents in Paradise tasted from the Tree of Knowledge at Satan's instigation, everything, as you know, has changed for the worse. 'Oh, God!' begged the people, 'give us back just a little bit of our lost chastity and innocence.' God looked hopelessly down on that mob - and he didn't know how and where to place Chastity and Innocence in that filthy horde. And it was then that He created a virgin, closed that vessel of chastity up tight, and sent her down to the people, who were burning for the virgin with a nostalgic longing."
"What about married women?"
"Married women are nothing, they're a joke, an opened stale bottle."
"But why do men throw stones at virgins?"
"What do you mean, Alicia?"
"It's happened to me more than once," said Alicia, a blush suffusing her cheeks, "that a man or two that I met in an empty street threw a stone at me... when nobody was watching."
"What is it you're saying?" said Pavel, astounded. "I've never heard anything quite like it," he whispered. "What do you mean, a man threw a stone at you?"
"He picked up a stone, a large piece of brick, and threw it at me. It was painful," whispered Alicia, quietly.
"That ... that was nothing... It must have been wicked people.... doing it for fun or for target practice. Don't think about it anymore."
"But why do virgins smile then?" persisted Alicia.
"Why do they smile? What do you mean? What is it you're saying, my child? Did it often happen to you?"
"Oh, very often, almost every day, when I was by myself or with Bibi."
"What about your girlfriends?"
"They complain about that too. You can't help but smile, even though it hurts," she went on pensively.
"How original," thought Pavel as he returned home. "How poignant, and even brutal! Throwing stones at virgins - I've never heard anything quite like it. True, these things are usually kept secret. She herself admits that this happens only when nobody is watching. It's brutal, no doubt - but at the same time charming. Why? Because it's instinctive. I'm deeply moved and oddly excited. Oh, the world of virgins, the world of love, is full of these enchanted oddities. Strangers smile at each other in the street; somebody caresses somebody else's elbow; a smile through the tears or a kiss by rubbing noses is not at all less strange than the throwing of a stone. It's possible that there exists a whole code of agreed-upon signs and methods of which I, constantly staying with the savages in China and Africa, know nothing.
       The distinctive characteristic of virginity is that everything connected with it takes on a different meaning than it has in reality. The throwing of a stone is not as offensive to a male virgin as even the slightest brush of a cheek with a hand. Any ordinary person or common woman would have fled screaming - but she smiled out of some unfathomable depths. An ordinary person would have been concerned only about fleeing the site of battle, if possible saving his or her own skin. To me, on the contrary, honor and a flag are everything - a flag or, strictly speaking, a colorful rag flapping in the wind.
       Monarchy is more innocent than republics, for it has more of a mystery about it than talkative members of Parliament. A monarch - revered, sinless, without blemish, free of responsibility - is a virgin and, on a smaller scale, a general is also a virgin.
       O holy secret of existence! O wonder of being! Receiving your gifts I will not watch you closely. Quite the opposite, only a humble bow of the head, deep sigh, reverence and gratitude, pantheism [51] and contemplation - but no fatal results of analysis. Virginity and mystery are one; let's beware, then, of lifting the sacred veil."
       Alicia, in her turn, also gave herself up to reflection.
"How strange is the world! Nobody will give you a straight answer, but always a symbolic one. You can't find out about anything. Naturally, Pavel told a legend. I'm everywhere surrounded by symbols and legends, as if everybody conspired against me. Paradise, God... who knows, maybe this was also invented especially for me or for us, young girls. I have a definite feeling that everybody is concealing something and pretending, and that everything is based on conspiracy. Mama is also in league with Pavel. It's so sweet to slurp drinking tea and step on puppies' feet... Yes... Religion, duty and virtue, but it seems to me that behind that, as behind a screen, there exist some definite gestures, some movements and that every lofty slogan can be resolved into a definite gesture and a definite point.
       Oh, I can imagine! Generally, everyone is fully dressed and acts kindly, but when left alone with one another, men throw stones at women, while the latter smile because it's painful. Then they steal... - didn't I myself steal the silver spoon and bury it in the garden because I didn't know what to do with it? Mama often read out loud about theft in the papers - now I understand what it means. People steal, slurp drinking tea, step on dogs' feet and altogether act perversely - and that's what love is. Virgins are raised in ignorance so that things will be... more agreeable. I'm trembling all over."

Alicia to Pavel:
"Oh, Pavel! Somehow things are different from what you say. Oh, I'm bursting out all over! Yesterday I heard Mama say to Father that the unemployed were 'multiplying' terribly, that they were walking around 'half-naked', eating some disgusting scraps of meat, and that the number of thefts, fights and robberies was growing by leaps and bounds. Tell me everything - tell me what it all means, what do they need these 'scraps of meat' for, why 'half-naked'? Oh, Pavel, let me finally know what to hold on to, I'm begging you. Ever yours, Alicia."

Pavel to Alicia:
"My dearest! The things that you imagine in that poor little head of yours! I implore you by our love: don't ever think of that. True, such things do exist, you see them once in a while, but you can easily lose your virginity thinking about them - and then what? The truth of chastity is vastly superior to the filth of reality! Let's be ignorant, let's live sustained by innocence, let's live by our youthful virginal instinct and let's beware of mentally inquiring into unnecessary matters, as once happened to me when I first met you. Awareness makes things ugly, and unawareness beautiful. Eternally yours - Pavel."

       "Instinct," thought Alicia, "instinct... yes... but what does this instinct want? What is it I want? I myself don't know... to die or to eat something tart. I won't regain my peace of mind, unless... I'm so ignorant, blindfolded, as Pavel would say - sometimes it's truly frightening... My instinct, the instinct of a virgin - it will show me the way!"
       The next day she said to her fiancé who, intoxicated with bliss, was contemplating her elbow:
"Pavel... I have such wild fantasies!"
"All the better, my dearest, that's exactly what I expect from you," he replied. "What would you be without whims and fantasies? I adore that pure unreason!"
"But my fantasies are strange... and I'm ashamed to reveal them."
"You can't have any other because you're unaware of things," he replied. "The wilder and the stranger the fantasy, the more eagerly I would fulfill it, my precious flower. By giving in to it, I'll pay homage to your virginity and mine."
"But... You see - somehow things are different... Oh, I'm bursting out all over... Tell me... have you ever... have you also... stolen anything...like others?"
"Who do you take me for, Alicia? What is this supposed to mean? Could you ever, even for a moment, take a liking to a man tainted with such an offense? I've always tried to be worthy of you and chaste - obviously, within the bounds of my own manhood."
"I don't know, I don't know, Pavel - but tell me, and please be frank, tell me if you ever, you know - deceived or bit anyone, or walked around... half-naked or slept on top of the wall, or mugged anyone or licked anything, or ate something disgusting?"
"My child! What is it you're saying? Whatever gave you that idea? Think again, Alicia... could I possibly lick or deceive? What about my honor? You must be insane!"
"Oh, Pavel," said Alicia, "what a wonderful day - there isn't a single cloud in the sky and you need to shield your eyes from the sun."
       Engrossed in conversation, they went around the house and stopped in front of the kitchen where, lying about on a garbage heap was a bone, abandoned by Bibi, with pink remnants of meat.
"Look, Pavel - a bone," said Alicia.
"Let's leave here," said Pavel. "Let's leave here. I can't stand that evil smell and those noisy scullery maids. No, Alicia, I'm surprised that a sweet person like you can think such thoughts."
"Wait, Pavel - let's not leave yet. It seems that Bibi didn't gnaw it clean... Oh, Pavel ... Oh, what I'm like... I myself don't know... Oh, Pavel."
"What is it, my dearest, perhaps you're feeling faint? Perhaps you're exhausted from the heat, it's so hot."
"Oh no, not at all... Look, it's watching us - as if it wants to bite us, devour us. Do you love me very much?"
       They stopped in front of the bone, which Bibi had sniffed and licked, reviving memories.
"Do I love you? I love you with the kind of lofty love you can probably find only in the mountains."
"I wish so much, Pavel, that you would gnaw... I mean, that we would gnaw clean that bone on the garbage heap. Don't look, I blushed," she snuggled close to him. "Don't look at me now."
"The bone? What was that, Alicia? What did you say?"
"Pavel," said Alicia, snuggling close to him, "that... stone, you know, made me strangely restless. I don't want to know anything, don't tell me anything - but I feel oppressed by the garden and the roses and the wall and my white dress, and oh, I don't know, perhaps I would like to have a bruised back... The stone whispered to my back that there was something out there beyond that wall and that I would eat that something, gnaw that something off that bone, or rather, we would gnaw it off together, Pavel, I and you, you and I, I must, I must," she persisted vehemently, "without it I must die young!"
       Pavel was astonished.
"My dear child, what do you need that bone for? You're insane! Since you're so determined to have it, order a fresh bone in bullion."
"But the point is to gnaw the one on the garbage heap!" cried Alicia, stamping her small foot in a fit of petulance. "And on the sly too, in fear of the cook!"
       All of a sudden they had an argument, which was heated and oppressive as the scorching heat of a setting sun in July. "But Alicia, it's disgusting, smelly, ugh, it simply makes me sick to the stomach. Come on, this is the exact spot where the cook pours out the refuse!"
"The refuse! I feel sick and faint myself - and the refuse also makes my mouth water! Believe me, Pavel, you can gnaw it, you can eat it! I have the feeling that everybody is doing it when nobody is watching."
       They argued a long time.
"This is disgusting!
"This is blind, strange, mysterious, shameful and delicious!"
"Alicia!" Pavel exclaimed at last, rubbing his eyes in amazement. "For God's sake ... I'm beginning to doubt. How is it possible? Dream or reality? I don't want to question you, God forbid, I'm not curious, but... Are you joking with me or making fun of me? What's happened here? A stone, you said? Could it be that - that stones were thrown and from this... comes some unhealthy desire for bones? It's too wild, too sort of impure, no, I respect your fantasies - but it's no more any instinct of a virgin - it's all pulled out of thin air."
       "My finger?" asked Alicia, mishearing him. "My fingers, aren't they a part of my virginity? After all, you yourself said that I must close my eyes without thinking, quietly, naively and purely, and - oh, Pavel, quick, look, the sun is shining and that little worm is creeping sluggishly along the leaf - and oh, I'm really bursting out all over! Everybody is doing it, I can tell you, only we...only we aren't aware of it! Oh, you think that nobody ever... but I'm telling you that in the evening stones whistle by and fall like heavy hail, so that you can't even blink while people, in the shade of trees, hungry and half-naked, gnaw bones and other garbage! It's love - love!"
"Ha! You really are insane!"
"Stop it!" she shouted, tugging at his sleeve. "Come on, let's go to the bone!"
"Never! Never!"
       In fact, out of desperation he might have hit her! Just at that moment, however, they heard something like a thud and a groan beyond the wall. They ran up to it and craned their necks over the climbing roses: out there in the street, under a tree, a young girl, barefoot and doubling up in pain, was pressing her lips to her upraised knee.
"What's that?" Pavel whispered.
       Suddenly another stone pierced the air and caught the nape of the girl's neck. She fell, but instantly sprang to her feet and darted behind the tree - and then, out of some depths, a man's roar reached them:
"I'll teach you! There's more where that came from! You'll see! Thief!"
       The air was caressing and burning, and the silence of Nature ensued - one of those quavering, fragrant moments of rapture...
"You see?" whispered Alicia.
"What was that?"
"They're throwing stones at girls... throwing stones... for fun... for the delight of it..."
"No, no... Impossible..."
"Well, you've seen for yourself... Come on, the bone is waiting for us, let's go to that bone! We'll gnaw it clean together - do you want to? - together! I and you, you and I! Look, I already have it in my mouth! Now it's your turn! It's your turn!"



 

NOTES
 

50. Vicomte de François Auguste René Chateaubriand (1768-1848): French writer and statesman, one of the greatest stylists in French literature. Although passages similar in style (rather than in content) can be found in "Atala" (1801) and "The Genius of Christianity" (1802), the "quotation" given by Gombrowicz appears to be a tongue-in-cheek misattribution.
51. pantheism: doctrine that identifies the universe (Greek pan "all") with God (Greek theos).


© Translation and notes by Christopher Makosa