THE TRAGIC TALE OF THE BARON AND HIS WIFE

Witold Gombrowicz

The Tragic Tale of the Baron and His Wife

The Baroness was a charming creature. The Baron had taken her from a family of high principles and had no reason to mistrust her, despite the fact that the tooth of time had already gnawed into him quite deeply... And yet a disquieting element of grace and charm lay dormant within her, which could easily complicate the practical application of the Baron’s imponderabilia (since the Baron was a bit of a stickler). One day, after a period of conjugal life graced with the quiet bliss of marital duty, the Baroness came running to her husband and threw her arms around his neck. “I think I ought to tell you this. Henryk has fallen in love with me... Yesterday he declared himself to me, so quickly and suddenly that I had no time to stop him.”

“And are you in love with him, too?” he asked.

“No, I don’t love him, because I have pledged my love to you,” she replied.

“Very well then,” he said. “If you are in love with him but do not love him because it is your duty to love me, then my esteem for you doubles and I love you twice as much. And the young chap’s suffering is a well-­deserved punishment for his weakness of character—losing his heart to a married woman! Principles, my dear! Should he ever make another declaration of love, tell him that you also have a declaration to make—but of principles. A man of unshakable principles can walk through life with his head held high.”

But soon after, the Baron received some dreadful news. Henryk had no pluck in him whatsoever. Spurned by the Baroness, the young man took to drinking and carousing, then he became melancholic, nothing interested him anymore, the world lost its charm, and he seemed to be at death’s door. According to widespread rumor, his imminent demise was due to unrequited love. “Fine doings, these!” said the Baron to his wife. “Here we are eating canapés while he can’t get anything down... Do you realize?... Because the image of you is preying on his mind. I wonder what he sees in you. I’ve been living with you for all these years and I’ve never had any feelings for you that could be called violent. In any case, this is a serious business and I am surprised to see you looking so well, knowing that wretch is suffering because of you.”

A week later he was in an even fouler mood. “Well, bravo!” he sneered. “You should be proud of yourself! Your charms have proved most effective—Henryk has one foot in the grave.

“What can I do about it?” she replied with tears in her eyes. “I never led him on, I have no reason to reproach myself.”

“Good grief! You are the cause of his hopeless state, your arabesques, your curves and features are the germs eating away at him.”

“What can I do? He’s gone mad. Do you know what he suggested the day he declared his love? Divorce!”

“What? Divorce? You’re not a strumpet yet, are you? Yes, of course, you’ll get your divorce, but you know when?—when I die, when I breathe my last, while still professing the same unshakable principles.”

“And what if he dies?”

“Dies!” exclaimed the Baron furiously. “That’s blackmail, for which I refuse to break my vow to keep you until my dying day!”

The Baroness suffered bouts of terrible anguish. The last thing she wanted to do was to act unethically, and yet her heart bled at the thought of Henryk’s misery. Besides, the Baron, a member of many societies, had ­developed a distinct aversion to her. He simply could not bear to look at her beauty. Her bodily functions started to disgust him. One day he asked her, “How about a bread roll?” And when she declined, he laughed with ferocious scorn: “Ha-ha, he is at the point of death, and she is unable to eat a bread roll.” As she floated around the house, gracefully swinging her hips, as she smiled wanly, as she slept or combed her hair, all he saw in her actions was shameless cruelty and dark eroticism. One time she tried to show him affection. “Pray do not touch me,” he shouted. “You hellcat! A fine mess you’ve got me into. Not another word out of you! Now I can see that a morally responsible man should never get involved with someone else’s carnality, under no circumstances whatsoever.

“Right!” the Baron continued. “It can’t go on like this. This morning I heard that he made an attempt on his life. Are you even capable of grasping that to push a man into suicide is far worse than to strangle him with your own hands? That unprincipled whippersnapper is going to ruin us as well as himself. I have made up my mind—we cannot burden our conscience with such an ­awful responsibility. If there is no alternative—too bad, I give you my blessing, I’ll jolly well go along with it; and now you, in the name of higher ­necessity, go ahead and play your part—do as your filthy womanhood dictates.”

“Darling!”

“Too bad! Could I have foreseen when I married you that one day you would be forced to choose between murder and adultery?”

“If there really is no other way out, and if you believe it’s the right thing to do, I’ll go along with it,” she said. “As for my part, I will find it hard, but as God is my witness, I am entirely blameless.”

“Ptooey!” said the Baron.

At this point the young man started to recover. The Baroness, however, was visibly wasting away. Her domestic life was hell on earth. Her husband required her to dine apart at a little table and had her use a special set of tableware. One day she accidentally touched him. “You are besmirching me,” he said with cold indifference. “Look here! You touched me; now I must interrupt my reading and go to the bathroom to wash.” He ­frequently blurted out the insulting word adulteress. At four o’clock he would take out his watch: “Now then,” he would say, “it’s time for you to go, don’t be late for your wanton philanthropy.” She tried in vain to explain that she was ­innocent. “There is one thing I ask of you,” he replied. “Please refrain from introducing an atmosphere of indulgence and tolerance of sin into this house.Otherwise we might as well invite common streetwalkers for luncheon—after all, it is God’s honest truth that they are just as innocent.” The distraught Baroness tried several times to break off her reluctant affair, but each time the young man threatened to kill himself, and it was clear that this was not mere rhetoric.

“No,” said the Baroness, “I cannot bear it anymore. My life has become unspeakable torment. I have fallen into atrocious sin—but why? Because I am alluring. No one can understand, without personal experience, how strange it is in moral terms to be alluring. I am fed up with it. I shall disfigure myself, only I’m not sure if Henryk will be able to cope with it.”

“That’s more like it!” exclaimed her husband enthusiastically. “This might indeed plunge Henryk into madness, but our sorry plight requires us to take certain risks, and besides, we will prepare him for it. And to prove that I, ever the loyal husband, always stand by you when it comes to the moral burden, I shall disfigure myself, too.”

“You won’t have that much to do,” she replied.

They went to their rooms, and soon there emerged two hideous scarecrows. The Baron hugged and kissed his wife. “And now Henryk must be prepared for this blow.” So he wrote the following letter:

Dear Sir,

It is with great sadness that I must inform you of my wife’s frightful ­accident. One of her lovers, in a fit of jealousy over an admirer who had recently ceased to be a platonic friend, threw vitriol in her face. The poor woman has lost the charms that she was so good at putting to use all around her. Please come and take a look at her.

Nota bene: in my attempt to rescue her I, too, was horribly maimed.

“There, we have done our duty,” he declared.

It looked as if Henryk would go insane, but the news of his lover’s unfaithfulness gave him strength. He got over his feelings, which could not withstand that monstrous sight. The Baroness, however, started to sink fast, and it soon transpired that the cause of her pernicious anemia was her love for Henryk, which erupted with elemental strength following the end of the affair.

“Is there a curse on my house?” cried the Baron. “Here she goes again!”

The dying woman asked to see Henryk, and the doctors ­endorsed her wish. “For God’s sake,” the Baron whispered to Henryk, “she is ready to die with a declaration of sinful love on her lips.” “Have you gone mad?” he shouted at his wife. “In your place I would prefer to enjoy a clean conscience. I don’t think you realize how dreadful you look. And as for the lover who used to burn for your body, he has been scorning and disdaining you ever since you disfigured yourself for his sake. Break it off and you will soon ­recover and return to the world of principles.”

“This time I won’t be fooled,” said the Baroness, and expired.

The two men were left alone with the corpse.

“She perished as a victim of duty,” said the Baron. “I hold you responsible for her death.”

“It’s your wife,” replied the young man. “It’s your corpse.”