for several days afterwards and I threw away the bones she
brought for my dogs. I thought an evil demon must have got into
her - she bought no meat all summer and ate only vegetables.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
87
Her chickens were tame , they weren't afraid of people, they
would eat cake crumbs from your hand and look you in the
eye. For three days in a row Marta made broth out of them,
after roasting the meat and gnawing the bones right down to
the last sinew. I found it hard to believe that this skinny old
woman had eaten three whole chickens in the course of three
days.
She was here at my window a minute ago. 'I've bought some
hens,' she said .
'I see,' I muttered.
'What are you doing?' she asked, trying to make peace.
Tm busy.'
For a while she was silent. I pressed 'Save'.
That's taking a long time,' she said. I could hear her walking
round to the terrace; any minute now she'd come up the steps.
I could hear her wiping her shoes very carefully. A moment later
I could see her sitting at the round table in the hall . She was
wearing an absurd baseball cap and smiling.
'Isn't that a waste of time?' she said, and then showed me the
young hens and the cockerel in her basket.
I suspect that Marta has trouble sleeping; maybe that's why
she keeps quiet about her dreams. She told me that her ent ire
night's sleep consists of a two-hour nap in the evening, as if her
body doesn't feel tired and only reacts to darkness out of habit.
After that she wakes up, fully rested, ligh ts the lamp in the
kitchen, or at least a candle, and stares into its name. And sometimes, when the night is clear, she sits in the dark and watches the moon from her kitchen window. It never looks quite the
same, she told me. It's always different, rising in a different spot
and taking di fferent routes round the tops of the spruce trees .
On clear nights Marta likes to go out into the road, cross it ncar
the wayside shrine and then go into the mountain pas�. below
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the Olbrichts' windmill, which is now nothing but a heap of
stones and a well. From there she can see the silver-edged mountains and valleys in the distance, dotted with the lights of houses. Over Nowa Ruda and distant Klodzko hangs a yellow
glow, most visible when the sky is clouded over. The towns are
shining, as if appealing for help.
But the most astounding thing Marta sees is the sleep of the
thousands of people who lie side by side, plunged in experimental death, in towns and villages, along highways, at border crossings, in mountain shelters, hospitals and orphanages, in
Klodzko and Nowa Ruda, and further afield, over an area that
you can't see or even get a sense of. Amid their own familiar
smell or in strange beds - the bunks in workers' hostels, or the
divan beds in cluttered bachelor flats - behind the partitions
separating sleeping space from living space, in each house lie
warm , inert bodies with their arms spread wide, or huddled
together, with flickering eyelids, beneath which their eyes dart
restlessly. She hears the music of breathing and snoring and
strange words blurted out, sees the involuntary dance of feet,
the movements of bodies roaming far from their duvets.
Meanwhile their minds see images, but they aren't in control of
themselves, those millions of people - half of humanity - who
are asleep at any moment in time, while the other half is awake.
While some are waking up, others are lying down, thus keeping
the world in balance. One n ight without sleep and people's
thoughts would start to smoulder, the letters in the world's
newspapers would get muddled up, speech would make no
sense and people would try to push it back into their mouths.
Marta knows that no moment on earth can be bright and intense
without being balanced on the other side of the planet by a
dark, dull moment.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f 1: i g h t
89
D r e a m s
Vhen dreams repeat e·ents from the past, when they turn them
into images, churn them up and sift them through a web of
meanings, I start to fear that the past, j ust like the future, will
remain obscure and inscrutable for ever. The fact that I haw
experienced something doesn't mean I ha·e unde rstood it.
Supposing it turned out that something I thought I knew about
and had always regarded as fixed and certain may have happened for a completely different reason and in a way I had never suspected. That it had led me to the wrong conclusion.
and I had failed to go in the right direction, because I was blind.
or asleep. If that might be true of my past, what hope is there
for my present?
The group of people I joined on the Internet ha-e shown me
that nothing connects us in the same way as dreams. \'e all
dream the same things in a peculiarly similar. muddled way.
These dreams are both our personal property, and everyone
else's. That's why dreams have no authors, that's why we're so
willing to record them on the Internet in all sorts of languages,
signing them with just an initial, a first name or a symbol. All
over the world, wherever people are sleeping, small , jumbled
worlds are flaring up in their heads, growing over reality like
scar tissue. There might be experts who know what each of
them means individually, but no one knows what they all mean
collectively.
A d re a m fro m t h e I n t e r n e t
I'm in a gloomy, old town, full of narrow tenements. I'm mn·stigating a peculiar phenomenon, namely that there a rc round
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holes in the walls of the houses and no one knows how they got
there. I'm studying the holes in walls, wire netting, fences and
window-panes, and I discover that they are clearly aligned - it's
as if there's a tunnel through the objects, as if something flew
along making holes in whatever came into its path. But I don't
try to establish what it was. I'm simply fascinated by the trajectory of its flight. At first it looks to me as if this thing flew down from the sky, went close to the ground and flew back up into the
sky again. But the evidence is indisputable - it must actually
have flown out from underground and disappeared into the sky.
The objects aren't particularly bothered by the fact that they're
full of holes.
T h i n g s fo rg o t t e n
l went to Marta's and hacked down the nettles along the path to
the stream for her. She came toddling after me with her arms
folded, saying that there were all sorts of creatures God had forgotten to create.
The wodger, for instance,' I said. 'It would have had a hard
shell like a tortoise, but with long legs and strong, crushing
teeth. It would have gone along the stream gobbling up all the
dirt, slime and dead branches, even the rubbish that the water
brings down from the vil lage.'
We began to think up all the animals that God for some
reason or other had never created. There
were so many birds and
animals that He had left out. Finally Marta said what she missed
most was that large, sluggish creature that sits at the crossroads
at night. She didn't say what it was called.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f :' i g h t 9 1
T h e G e r m a n s
Early this summer the Germans began to appear in the meadows. Their grizzled heads came Ooating by on a sea of grass, and their wire glasses glit tered gaily in the sunshine.
Whatsisname said that you can recognize Germans by t heir
shoes, which are clean and white. Ve don't take care of our
shoes, they're scruffy and always made of dark material, or else
we wear gumboots, rubber farm boots. Our shoes are made of
imitation leather, garish black-and-white counterfeits of popular brands. They're permanently muddy because of the soggy, red earth, and misshapen from being repeatedly soaked and
dried out again.
Every year the Germans come pouring out of coaches that
park timidly on the hard shoulder, as if trying to be inconspicuous. They walk about in small groups or pairs, most often pairs, a man and a woman, as if looking for a spot to make love. They
take photos of empty spaces, which many people find puzzling.
Why don't they take pictures of the new bus stop or the new
church roof, instead of empty spaces overgrown with grass? Vc
have often treated them to tea and cakes. They never sit down or
ask for more . They just finish their tea and are off. We feel
embarrassed if they try to press a few marks into our hands.
We're afraid we must look like savages, living as we do among
eternal repairs, with Oaking plaster on the walls and the rotten
step on the terrace stairs.
Wherever the Germans go, they always end up at the shop,
where small children arc waiting for them, holding out thei r
hands for sweets. Some of them resent th is and there·s always
some unpleasantness. During those few minu tes when the
Germans are handing out sweets, a patriotic feel ing fi lls the air
and everything goes red and white, as i f the national flag, worn
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O l g a To k a r c z u k
thin as gauze, were floating on high, and, despite the sweets,
we're actually aware of being Poles.
Some of the Germans come again and again. Some of them
have even invited people from the village to the Reich (only one
or two, mainly those who take care of the German graves) and
arranged jobs for them.
One year an old couple turned up on our land and showed us
where houses that no longer existed had stood. Afterwards we
sent each other Christmas cards. They reassured us that the
Frost family was no longer interested in our house.
'Why should anyone be interested in our house?' I asked
Marta resentfully.
'Because they built it,' she replied.
One evening, as we were clearing the empty teacups and
plates from the terrace, Marta said that the most important
human duty is to save things that are falling into decay, rather
than create new ones.
P e t e r D i e t e r
As Peter Dieter and his wife Erika crossed the border, a ladybird
landed on Peter's hand. He inspected it closely and found that it
had seven spots. He was pleased.
'That's a sign of welcome,' he said.
They drove along a strange stretch of motorway, with girls in
short, tight little skirts standing on either side of it waving at the
cars.
In the evening they reached Vrodaw, and Peter was amazed
to find that he recognized the place - except that it all seemed
darker and smaller, as if they were on the inside of a shabby photograph. At the hotel he had to take his pills before bed, because
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t 93
his heartbeat felt irregular, as though the space between each
beat were going to last for ever.
'We've come here too late,' said Erika solemnly and sat down
on the bed. 'We're too old for excitement. Look how swollen my
legs are.'
Next day they looked round Wrodaw: it was the same as all
the other cities they had seen in their lives. Cities in decline,
cities on the up, cities sloping down towards rivers, cities with
deep foundations and cities built on sand, fragile as cobwebs.
Ruined, deserted cities and cities rebuilt on top of cemeteries,
where people live as if they were dead. Cities divided in half, balancing on a single bridge, like a stone fulcrum.
Then they reached the mountains. First came Karpacz, which
was ful l of souvenir kiosks, then Szklarska Porttba, which Peter
insisted on calling Schreiberhau, as if afraid to tackle the new
Polish name. But in fact all they could think of was finally getting to Neurode and G latz, and whether they would manage to see everything.
Peter wanted to see his village again, and Erika wanted to sec
Peter looking at it. She thought it would finally help her to
understand him fully, from start to finish, with all his sadnesses,
laconic answers to her questions, and sudden changes of mood
that so worried her - or even those stubborn games of patience,
all the time he wasted on that sort of nonsense, his dangerous
way of overtaking on the motorway, and all the other strange
things about him that forty years of married life had done nothing to change.
They stopped at a country inn where all the signs of welcome, warning and information were in German. Before breakfast Peter was u p and about in front of the house. I t "·as
May, and the sow thistles were in bloom much later than on the
plains. He could see his mountains, like mist-wreathed. ltquid
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lines on the horizon. He sniffed the air. The smell, rather than
the view, released an avalanche of images, like an over-exposed
film, torn and out of focus, with no sound, point or plot.
They set off after a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs. At first the
road led downhill, then gently up, twisting and turning until
they had entirely lost their sense of direction. They passed villages sprawled along the slopes, large and small houses, and some mysterious streams that were actually all the same little
river. Each village had its own valley, and lay there like chocolates in the velvety hollows.
The worst moment that day was when Peter didn't recognize
his own village. It had shrunk to the size of a hamlet, with
houses, backyards, lanes and bridges missing. Only a skeleton of
the original village remained. They left the car in front of a padlocked church, behind which Peter's home had once stood among the lime trees.
He sniffed around the place, and again that strange film of the
past started playing in his head. He found that he could set it off
anywhere - in the bar by the petrol station, in the underground,
on holiday in Spain or at the shopping centre. Maybe elsewhere
the adored film would be clearer, because it wouldn't be interrupted by the scenes before his eyes.
They wandered along a narrow, well-trodden path and looked
down from the hilltop at the skeleton village, with i ts few
remaining houses, tiny little gardens and tremendous lime trees.
The whole scene was full of life - people were wa
lking along
driving cows, dogs were running about, a man burst into sudden
laughter, a car tooted its horn, higher up a man with a bucket
waved to them, smoke from the chimneys drifted into the sky,
and birds new blithely westwards.
They sat down on the grass by the roadside and ate some
crisps. Erika peeped at his face, afraid his eyes might be damp or
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t 95
his chin shuddering, in which case she would have put down
her bag of crisps and embraced him. But he looked as if he were
watching television .
'You go on alone,' she said, then, 'Look how swollen mr legs
are,' which was beginning to sound like a refrain. He didn't answer.
'We've come too late. I'm old and I haven't the strength to go
on up the hill. I'm going back to the car. I'll wait for you there.'
She stroked his hand gently and turned away. She caught his
final remark, 'Give me two, three hours maybe.' She felt sad
Peter Dieter walked at snail's pace, staring at the stones and
the wild rose bushes, already in bud. Every few dozen metres he
stopped and caught his breath while he looked at the leaves and
plants, and the slender-stalked fungi that were slowly eating
away at the fallen trees.
The road went through fallow land, then into a spruce forest.
When the forest came to an end, Peter finally caught sight of the
mountain panorama that he had carried inside him all this time.
On the way up he only looked round behind him once, because
he was afraid of ruining the view by staring at it, like valuable
stamps that lose their shape and colour if you look at them too
often . But once he was on the crest he stopped and turned right
round, savouring the scenery and drinking it in. He had seen
mountains the world over, and had always compared them with
these , but none had ever seemed as beautiful. They were either
too big and imposing, or too modest, too wild, dark and forested
like the Schwarzwald, or too bright and domesticated like the
Pyrenees. He got out his camera and used it to pin down the
view. Snap - the scattered village buildings. Snap - the clark
spruce forests, full of black shadows. Snap - the thread of a
stream. Snap - the yellow rapeseed fields on the Czech side of
House of Day, House of Night Page 11