From Ferdydurke, by Witold Gombrowicz
Excerpt from Danuta Borchardt's translation

Then something terrible happened.  The High Professor of Synthesis could not contain himself.  Fascinated by the Analyst's masterful aim, by symmetry, bewildered by our cry of admiration, also veered his aim to one side and shot at the little finger of Flora Gente's hand, then laughed briefly, dryly, gutturally.  Gente lifted her hand to her lips, we gave a shout of admiration.

The Analyst then fired again, knocking off another of Mrs. Professor's fingers, and she lifted her hand to her lips--we gave a shout of admiration, a quarter of a second later, the Synthetist's shot, fired with unerring certainty from a distance of seventeen meters, knocked off Flora Gente's analogous finger.  Gente lifted her hand to her lips, we gave a shout of admiration.  And on it went.  The firing continued nonstop, fast and furious and as glorious as glory itself, and fingers, ears, noses, teeth fell like leaves tossed by the wind while we, the seconds, could hardly keep up with our shouts torn from within us by the lightning marksmanship.  Both ladies were shorn bare of all their natural appendages and protrusions, they didn't fall dead simply because they too could not keep up, but anyway, I think they were delighted--being exposed to such marksmanship. Finally the bullets ran out.  With the last shot the master from Colombo pierced the apex of Mrs. Professor Filidor's lung, and the master from Leyden immediately responded by piercing the apex of Flora Gente's lung, once more we gave a shout of admiration, and silence fell. Both torsos died and slid to the ground--the duelists looked at each other.

Now what?  They looked at each other, and neither knew--what now?  Actually what?  There were no more bullets.  In any case both corpses already lay on the ground.  There was nothing to do.  It was almost ten o'clock.  Actually Analysis had won, but so what?  Absolutely nothing.  Synthesis could have won equally well, and there would have been nothing to that, either.  Filidor picked up a stone and threw it at a sparrow, but he missed and the sparrow flew away.  The sun began to scorch us, anti-Filidor picked up a clod and threw it at a tree stump--he hit it.  In the meantime a hen chanced Filidor's way, he aimed at it, hit it, the hen ran away and hid in the bushes.  The scientists left their positions and departed--each in his own direction.

By evening anti-Filidor was in Jeziorna, Filidor in Vaver.  One hunted for crows by a haystack, the other found an out-of-the-way lamppost and aimed at it from a distance of fifty paces.

And so they wandered around the world aiming with whatever they could at whatever they could.  They sang songs, but they liked breaking windows best, they also liked to stand on a balcony and spit upon the hats of passersby, even more so if they were able to target some fat cats riding by in a carriage.  Filidor became so good at it that he could spit at somebody on a balcony from the sidewalk.  Anti-Filidor could extinguish a candle by throwing a box of matches at the flame.  But best of all they liked to hunt frogs with a BB gun or to hunt sparrows with a bow and arrow, or else they threw pieces of paper and blades of grass from a bridge onto the water.  But their greatest delight was to buy a child's balloon and run after it through fields and forests--hey, ho! and watch it burst with a bang as if shot with an invisible bullet.

And whenever anyone from the world of science reminisced with them about their splendid past, their spiritual battles, about Analysis and Synthesis and their glory irretrievably lost, they would reply dreamily:

“Yes, yes, I remember that duel . . . the pop-popping was great!”

“But Professor,” I exclaimed, and Roklewski, who in the meantime had married and started a family on Krucza Street, joined in, “but Professor, you talk like a child!”

To which the old man gone childish replied:

“The child runs deep in everything.”