Ferdydurke by Witold Gombrowicz Read Free Book Online

my pupa. Farewell, O Spirit, farewell my oeuvre only just begun, farewell genuine form, my very own, and hail, hail, oh terrible and infantile form, so callow and green! Tritely proffed by him, I ran in mincing steps by the side of the giant prof who muttered on: "Chirp, chirp, little chickie ... The sniffling little nose ... I love, ee, ee . . . Little fellow, little, little man, ee, ee, ee, chirp, chirp, chickadee, Joey, Joey, little Joey, tiny Joey, tinier and tinier, chirp, chirp, tiny, tiny little, little pupa ..." Ahead of us a refined lady was walking her little pinscher on a leash, the dog growled, pounced on Pimko, ripped his trouser leg, Pimko yelled, expressed a unfavorable opinion of the dog and its owner, pinned his trouser leg with a safety pin, and we walked on.

2 Imprisonment and Further Belittlement
    And now before us—no, I don't believe my eyes—is a low building, a school, and Pimko drags me there by my little hand despite my tears and protestations, then pushes me in through a wicket gate. We arrived during lunch hour, and we saw in the school yard human beings of that transitional age between ten and twenty walking in circles and eating lunch, which consisted of bread and butter or bread and cheese. There were cracks in the fence surrounding the school yard through which mothers and aunts, never tiring of their little darlings, were peeking. Pimko, relishing the school aroma, breathed it in through his thoroughbred nasal tubes.
    "Chirp, chirp, chirp, little fellow," he called out, "little, little fellow..."
    At the same time an intelligent-looking man with a limp, a teacher on lunch-hour duty, no doubt, approached and greeted us, with all due servility to Pimko.
    "My dear colleague," said Pimko, "here's little Joey whom I would like to enroll into the ranks of your sixth-grade students, Joey, say 'hello' to the professor. In a moment I'll have a chat with Piorkowski, but in the meantime I'll leave him with you, break him in to school life." I wanted to protest, but instead I scraped the ground with my foot, a light breeze came up, branches of trees moved slightly and with them a tuft of Pimko's hair. "I hope he'll be on his best behavior," said the old pedagogue, patting me on my little head. "How are the youngsters doing?" Pimko asked, lowering his voice. "I see they're walking in circles—that's very good. They're walking about, chatting, while their mothers are snooping—very good. There's nothing better for a school-age boy than having his mother close by, behind the fence. No one can bring out that fresh baby pupa better than a mother, well placed behind a fence."
    "Even so, they are still not naive enough," the teacher complained sourly, "they just refuse to take on that new-potato look. We set their mothers on them, but even that's not enough. We're just not able to bring out that youthful freshness and naivete. You won't believe, my dear colleague, how stubborn they are and reluctant to comply in this respect. They simply don't want to."
    "That's because you're amiss in your pedagogical skills," Pimko sternly chastised him. "What? They don't want to? But they have to! I'll show you how to bring about naivete. I bet that in half-an-hour their naivete will be doubled. My plan is as follows: I'll start by watching the students, and I'll show them in the most naive manner possible that I think they are naive and innocent. This will infuriate them of course, they'll want to show me that they are not naive, and you'll see how this will plunge them into genuine naivete and innocence, so sweet to us pedagogues!"
    "Don't you think, though," asked the teacher, "that instilling naivete in the students is a somewhat outdated, antiquated pedagogical trick?"
    "Precisely!" replied Pimko, "give me more of those antiquated tricks! The more antiquated the better! There is nothing better than a truly antiquated pedagogical trick! The little cuties, educated by us in this perfectly unreal atmosphere, yearn for