I escaped

 

It happened to me today... Walking down a shady street in Siemianowice, I saw someone approaching from the opposite direction, someone I particularly didn't want to meet. My acquaintance with her was a rather dark period, the memory of which fills me with a certain embarrassing disgust towards myself—myself with her.

What's more, the other day, when I happened to meet this person by chance, in the city, by accident, unexpectedly, awkwardly... she ran away—one might say!—she ran away!

So, you think, it was embarrassing. Because here I am again, and she is walking, I see, and she sees. A look—a look—heads lowered, eyeballs a great runaway.

I tell myself—she'll undoubtedly do something strange again, look at me reproachfully, or even without reproach, or, Jesus Mary, she'll run away from me again—even though she has nothing to run away from, oh, Holy Virgin! (Just as stupid, just as frustrating, just as licentious in mediocrity, just as embarrassing in disgrace, was her escape!)

Therefore, without thinking, I had to take certain measures myself, so as not to allow myself to become too ridiculous, too savage. To do! To do! To prevent!

But what is this? - I look at myself, at my limbs! How is this? - I look in the car window! By what right? - I look at my bags, my packages, and they are in chaotic fluctuation!

Because before I could decide anything, before my mind had even awakened from its drunken slumber - my body began to flee! Yes, horror, this time it was I who was fleeing! But why did I flee? Why not her again? If she could do it once, what harm could she do it again? Damn it, damn it! That escape from me, her escape from me, pushed me to flee on my own! Now I am a fugitive.

But—in the end—I escaped, and it was without an unnecessary encounter, a distasteful, reproachful stare.

I crossed the gate of the city park and felt, felt something welling up and growing in my face, distorting it, warping it! A smile! That was a smile! It was unknown to whom, from what, born, half-aborted, but a smile! And it swelled, puffed up, until it burst—Anointed One!—into laughter! A cackle! And it was laughter half-buried from outside, half-seeping from my doubts, my entrails.

But why was I laughing? To whom was I laughing? On what basis?

I suspect it was laughter "against"! Against the Tragedy for which those deep, sobbing eyes of hers would have postulated! But it was also laughter "for"! For the Farce that I had to awaken within myself, work out, to diminish the sense of guilt that keeps sprouting, breaking through the snow of immaturity and individualism. Farce is a Form-springboard that I must utilize to avoid going crazy! After all, I have bigger problems, after all, my thoughts are more important than these eyes, after all, "I" am more important, damn it!