House of Day, House of Night

by Olga Tokarczuk

  and infirm.' 'The night things fell from the sky.' The night of

  strange animals.' 'The night of receiving letters.' The night precious things got lost.' Maybe you could name the days after the previous night's dreams. Or name whole months, years, eras, in

  which people keep having similar dreams, their minds synchronized in a way that can no longer be felt once the sun is up.

  If someone were able to research this idea properly, if they

  could quantify the characters, images and emotions that appear

  in dreams, strip them down to their motifs, and apply statistics,

  including those correlation tests that work like a magic glue,

  linking things together that seem impossible to connect, maybe

  they would discover some sense in it all, like the pattern

  according to which stock exchanges function, or large airports

  operate.

  I have often asked Marta to tell me her dreams, but she just

  shrugs her shoulders. I don't think she's interested. Even if

  dreams did come to her at night, I don't think she would allow

  herself to remember them. She would wipe them away, like spilt

  milk off her oilcloth with the wild strawberry pattern. She would

  wring out the rag and air her low-ceilinged kitchen. Her gaze

  would fall on the pelargoniums; she would rub their leaves

  between her fingers, and the pungent smell would stiOe once

  and for all whatever she may have seen that night. I'd give a lot

  to know just one of Marta's dreams.

  But she has told me other people's dreams. I have never asked

  her where she gets them from. Perhaps she makes them up, just

  like those stories of hers. She makes use of other people's

  dreams, just as she makes wigs out of other people s hair.

  '

  26

  0 I g a To k a r c z u k

  Whenever we drive to town together, while she's waiting for me

  in the car outside the bank, she stares at people through the

  window. Afterwards, in the car, as she's rummaging about in her

  plastic carrier bags, quite casually she always starts telling me

  something, such as other people's dreams.

  I am never sure if there is a borderline between what Marta

  says and what I hear. I am unable to separate it from her, from

  me, from what we both know, and what we don't, from what I

  heard on the radio that morning, or what I read in the weekend

  newspapers, from the time of day, or even from how the sunlight

  shines on the villages in the valleys along the way.

  T h e d ay of c a r s

  We found a car in the forest. I t was so well hidden that we

  stepped into its long bonnet, buried in pine needles. There was

  a small birch tree growing on the front seat, and a strand of ivy

  on the steering-wheel. R. said it was German, a pre-war DKW:

  he knows about cars. The body of the car was completely corroded, and the wheels were half sunk in forest litter. When I tried to open the door on the driver's side, the handle came off in

  my hand. There were yellow mushrooms growing in cascades on

  the leather upholstery, right down to the rust-eaten floor. We

  didn't tell anyone about this find.

  That evening another car came out of the forest, from the

  direction of the border - a smart red Toyota with Swiss registration plates. The setting sun was briefly reflected in its crimson veneer as it coasted down into the valley with its engine off.

  During the night some agitated border guards with torches came

  hurrying after it.

  Next morning on the I nternet there were dreams about cars.

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t

  27

  A m o s

  Krysia from the Cooperative Bank in Nowa Ruda had a dream. It

  was early in the spring of 1 969.

  She dreamed she heard voices in her left ear. At first it was a

  woman's voice that kept on talking and talking, but Krysia

  couldn't work out what it was saying. She felt worried in the

  dream. 'How am I going to be able to work if someone keeps

  droning in my ear?' she said to herself. She thought she might be

  able to switch the voice off, just like switching off the radio or

  hanging up the telephone, but she couldn't do it. The source of

  the sound lay deep in her ear, somewhere in those small, winding corridors, those labyrinths of moist membrane, in the dark caverns inside her head. She tried sticking her fingers in her

  ears, she tried covering them with her hands, but she couldn't

  stifle it. She felt as if the whole world must be able to hear this

  noise. Maybe that was it - the voice was making the whole world

  vibrate. Some sentences kept being repeated - they were grammatically perfect and sounded fine, but they made no sense, they were just imitations of human speech. Krysia was afraid of

  them. But then she started hearing a different voice in her ear, a

  man's voice, clear and pleasant. 'My name is Amos,' he said. I t

  was nice to talk t o him. H e asked about her work, and about her

  parents' health , but in fact - or so she imagined - he didn't really

  need to, because he knew all about her already. 'Where arc you?'

  she asked him hesitantly. 'In Mariand,' he replied; she had heard

  of this region in central Poland. 'Why can I hear you in my ear7'

  she asked. 'You're an unusual person,' said Amos, 'and I've fallen

  in love with you. I love you.' Krysia dreamed the same dream

  three or four more times, always with the same ending.

  In the morning she drank her coffee s urrounded by pi les of

  bank documents. Outside sleet was falling and immed iately

  28

  0 I g a To k a r c z u k

  melting. The damp penetrated the bank's central ly heated

  offices, permeating the overcoats on their pegs, the bank clerks'

  imitation leather handbags , their knee boots and even the

  clients. But on that unusual day Krysia Poploch, head of the

  credit division , realized that for the first time in her life she was

  wholly and unconditionally loved. This discovery was as powerful as a slap in the face. It made her head spin. Her view of the banking hall faded, and all she could hear was silence. Suddenly

  suffused with this love, Krysia fel t like a brand new kettle, filled

  for the very first time with crystal-clear water. Meanwhile, her

  coffee had gone cold.

  That day she left work early and made her way to the post

  office. She got out the phone books for all the large cities in central Poland: L6di, Sieradz, Konin, Kielce, Radom, and Cz�stochowa, home of the Black Madonna, the Virgin Mary's

  city. She opened each one at A and ran a painted fingernail down

  the columns of names. There was no Amos or Amoz in L6di,

  Sicradz, Konin and so on. She couldn't find him among the small

  list of names from the surrounding countryside either. What

  she felt now would best be described as indignation. She knew

  he must be out there somewhere. For a while she sat still, her

  mind a blank, and then she began all over again, taking in

  Radom, Tarnow, Lublin and Wlodawek as well. She found Lidia

  Amoszewicz and the Amosinskis. Then in desperation she began

  to contrive new combinations: Amos, Soma, Maso, Sarno, Omas,

  until finally her painted fingernails broke the dream code - there

  he was, A. Mos, 54 Sienkiewicz Street, Cz�stochowa.
>
  Krysia lived in the countryside, and every morning a dirty

  blue bus took her to town, crawling up the twists and turns of

  the road like a dingy beetle. In winter, when darkness fel l early,

  its blazing eyes swept over the stony mountain slopes. The bus

  was a blessing - it gave people the chance to know the world

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t

  29

  beyond the mountains. All manner of journeys started in it.

  Krysia's journey to work took twenty minutes, from the moment

  the bus picked her up at the stop to the moment she stood

  before the massive doors of the bank. In those twenty minutes

  the world changed out of all recognition. The forest became

  houses, the mountain pastures became town squares, the meadows became streets, and the stream became a river, which was a different colour every day, because unfortunately it flowed past

  the Blachobyt textile mill. Still on the bus, Krysia would change

  her gumboots for a pair of court shoes. Her heels clicked on the

  broad steps of the old German building.

  Krysia was the most elegant girl at the bank. She had a fashionable hairstyle - a well-shaped blonde perm with carefully dyed roots. The fluorescent lighting brought out its highlights.

  Her mascara-coated lashes cast subtle shadows on her smooth

  cheeks. Her pearly lipstick discreetly emphasized the shape of

  her mouth. As she grew older, she wore more and more makeup. Nowadays she sometimes told herself, 'Stop, that's enough,'

  but she worried that the passing years were blurring her features,

  depriving her face of definition. She thought her eyebrows were

  thinning, her blue irises fading, and the lines of her lips growing

  fainter and fainter - her whole face was becoming foggy, as if it

  were trying to disappear. This was Krysia's greatest fear - that

  her face would disappear before it had developed and truly come

  into being.

  At the age of thirty she still lived with her parents. Their

  house stood beside the winding, pot-holed local highway, looking hopeful, as if it expected this location to bring it a role in history, in the march of passing armies, in the advent ures o f

  treasure hunters, o r i n the border guards' pursuit o f bootleggers

  from the Czech Republic. But neither the highway nor the house

  had much good fortune. Nothing ever happened, except that the

  30

  0 I g a To k a r c z u k

  forest above the house grew sparser, like Krysia's eyebrows. Her

  father kept chopping down the young birch trees to make poles

  and rods, and every year he cut down the spruces for Christmas

  trees. Meanwhile the pathways in the tall grass grew blurred, just

  like the line of her mouth, and the sky-blue walls of their house

  kept fading, like Krysia's eyes.

  At home Krysia was quite important; she earned money and

  did the shopping, carrying it home in bags her mother had made.

  She had her own room in the attic, with a sofa-bed and a

  wardrobe. But only at the bank did she really start to come into

  her own. Her office was separated from the banking hall by a plywood partition as thin as cardboard. As she sat at her desk she could hear the hubbub of the bank - doors creaking, heavy farm

  boots shuffling across the wooden floor, the murmur of women's

  voices gossiping and the rattle of the two remaining abacuses

  that the management hadn't yet got round to replacing with the

  modern machines with handles that made a whirring sound.

  At about ten the daily coffee-drinking ritual began,

  announced by the clatter of aluminium teaspoons and the sound

  of glasses striking softly agai nst saucers - the usual office

  chimes. The precious ground coffee brought from home in jamjars was shared equally between the glasses, and formed a thick brown skin on the surface, briefly holding up the torrents of

  sugar. The smell of coffee filled the bank to the ceiling, and the

  farmers queuing for service kicked themselves for having run

  into the sacred coffee hour.

  After the Easter holiday the bank received information about

  a training course for employees to be held in Cz�stochowa .

  Krysia saw it as an undeniable sign and decided to go. As she

  was packing her things into her synthetic leather bag, she

  thought of God, and that, despite what they say about him, he

  always turns up at the crucial moment.

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t

  3 1

  Sluggish trains full o f crumpled people took her there. There

  were no seats free in the compartments, so she stood glued to a

  grubby window in the corridor and dozed standing up. Someone

  got out in the middle of the night, and at last she could sit down.

  Squashed between hot bodies in the dry air she fell into a heavy,

  solid sleep, without any images at all, not even the tail-ends of

  thoughts. Only when she awoke did she realize that she was on

  a journey; until then she had just been drifting about in space,

  casually changing location. Only sleep closes the old and opens

  the new - one person dies and another awakes. This black, featureless space between days is the real journey. Luckily all the trains from N owa Ruda to the world at large run at night. It

  crossed her mind that after this journey nothing would ever be

  the same.

  She found herself in Cz�stochowa before daybreak. It was

  still too early to go anywhere, so she ordered some tea at the station bar and warmed her hands on the glass. At the neighbouring tables sat old women swathed in checked shawls

  and men stupefied by tobacco - husbands and fathers crushed

  by life, with leathery faces like old wallets, and children flushed

  with sleep, from whose half-open mouths trickled thin streaks of

  dribble.

  Two lemon teas and one coffee later, dawn finally came. She

  found Sienkiewicz Street and walked right up the middle of it,

  because the cars weren't awake yet. She looked into the windows

  and saw thick, pleated curtains and rubber plants nestling up

  against the glass. In some of the houses the lights were still shining weakly. By this light people were hurriedly getting dressed and eating breakfast, women were drying out their tights O'er

  the gas or packing sandwiches for school, beds were being made,

  trapping the warmth of bodies until the following night, there

  was a smell of burned milk, shoelaces were being threaded back

  32

  O l g a To k a r c z u k

  into their nice safe holes, and the radio was broadcasting news

  that no one was listening to. Then she came across the first

  bread queue. Everyone in the queue was silent.

  Number 54 Sienkiewicz Street was a large, grey apartment

  block with a fishmonger's shop on the ground floor and a

  canyon-like courtyard. Krysia stood in front of it and slowly

  studied the windows. My God, they were so ordinary. She stood

  there for half an hour, until she stopped feeling the cold.

  The training course was extremely boring. In the exercise

  book she had bought specially to make notes, Krysia doodled

  with her pen. The green cloth on the chairman's table cheered

  her up a bit. Absent-mindedly, she stroked it. The Cooperative

  Bank employees seemed all alike to her. The women had fashionably cut perox
ide hair and bright pink lips. The men wore navy blue suits and had pigskin briefcases, as if by mutual

  agreement. They cracked jokes in the cigarette breaks.

  For dinner there was bread and cheese and mugs of tea. After

  dinner everyone went through to the clubroom, where vodka

  and gherkins had appeared on the tables. Someone produced a

  set of tin shot glasses from his briefcase. A man's hand wandered over a woman's nylon-clad knees.

  Krysia went to bed feeling rather tipsy. Her two room-mates

  turned up around dawn and shushed each other in a loud whisper. And so it went on for three days.

  On the fourth day she stood before a brown door bearing a

  china nameplate reading 'A. Mos'. She knocked.

  The door was opened by a tall, thin man in pyjamas with a

  cigarette in his mouth. He had dark, bloodshot eyes, as if he

  hadn't slept for days. They blinked when she asked, 'A. Mos?'

  'Yes,' he said. 'A. Mos.'

  She smiled, because she thought she recognized his voice.

  'Well, I'm Krysia.'

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i gh t

  33

  Surprised, he stepped aside and let her into the hall. The flat

  was small and cramped, flooded in fluorescent light, which made

  it look grubby, like a station waiting room. There were boxes of

  books, piles of newspapers and half-packed suitcases lying about.

  Stearn carne gushing through the open bathroom door.

  'It's me,' she repeated. 'I've come.'

  The man turned round and laughed. 'But who are you?' he

  said. 'Do I know you?' He clapped his hand to his brow. 'Of

  course, you're . . . you're . . .' he said, snapping his fingers in the

  air.

  Krysia realized that he didn't recognize her, but there was

  nothing odd about that. After all, he knew her in a different

  way, through a dream, from the inside, not the way people usually know each other.

  'I'll explain everything. May I go on in?'

  The man hesitated. The ash from his cigarette fell to the floor

  and he ushered her into the sitting-room. She took oiT her shoes

  and went in.

  'I'm packing, as you can see,' said the man, explaining the

  mess. He removed the crumpled bedclothes from the sofa-bed

  and took them into another room, then came back and sat down

  opposite her. His faded pyjamas exposed a strip of bare chest; it