There was a pretty young woman sitting in the front seat, smoking a cigarette. She had peroxide-blonde shoulder-length hair and carefully applied make-up, a notable feature of which were lips outlined with a dark pencil. She had such a deep tan that she looked as if she’d just been removed from the barbecue. Her toenails were painted red. She was dangling her legs outside the car, and a sandal had slipped off one of her feet and fallen into the grass. I stopped and leaned out of the window.
‘Need any help?’ I asked amicably.
She shook her head to say no, then raised her eyes skywards and pointed her thumb somewhere behind her; at the same time she smiled knowingly. She seemed perfectly nice, though I couldn’t understand her gesture. So I got out of the car. The fact that she had answered with a gesture, rather than words, prompted me to act quietly; I approached her almost on tiptoes. I raised my brows enquiringly. I liked this air of mystery.
‘No worries,’ she said in a whisper. ‘I’m waiting for my…husband.’
For her husband? Here? I simply couldn’t understand the scene in which I too was accidentally taking part. I looked around suspiciously and then I saw him, this husband. He was coming out of the bushes. He looked rather weird and comical. He was dressed in something like a uniform, in green-and-brown camouflage. From head to toe he had spruce twigs stuck all over him. His helmet was covered with the same fabric as the uniform. His face was smeared in black paint, with a white, neatly trimmed moustache standing out against it. I couldn’t see his eyes – they were hidden behind an unusual optical device, a bit like an optician’s instrument for testing sight defects, with lots of screws and joints. Whereas his broad chest and ample belly were festooned in mess tins, map cases, compass sets and a bullet belt. He was holding a shotgun with a scope; it looked like a weapon out of Star Wars.
‘Holy Mother of God,’ I gasped in spite of myself.
For a few seconds I couldn’t produce any human sound. I gazed at this freak, feeling frightened and amazed, until the woman flicked her cigarette into the road and said in a rather ironic tone: ‘And here he is.’
The man came up to us and took off his helmet.
I don’t think I had ever seen a Person with such a saturnine look before. He was of average build, with a wide forehead and bushy eyebrows. He stooped slightly and stood with his feet pointing inwards. I couldn’t help thinking he was inured to debauchery, and that throughout his life he had been led by one thing – the consistent gratification of his own desires, at any cost. This was the richest man in the neighbourhood.
I sensed that he was pleased to be seen by someone other than his wife. He was proud of himself. He greeted me with a wave of the hand, but instantly ignored my existence. He put the helmet and the bizarre spectacles on again and gazed in the direction of the border. At once I understood everything and felt a surge of Anger.
‘Let’s get going,’ said his wife impatiently, as if to a child. Perhaps she could sense the waves of Anger emanating from me.
For a while he pretended not to hear, but then he went up to the car, removed all the tackle from his head, and set aside the shotgun.
‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him, for nothing else occurred to me.
‘What about you?’ he said, without looking at me.
His wife was putting on her sandal and settling in the driver’s seat.
‘I live here,’ I replied coldly.
‘Ah, you’re the lady with those two dogs…We’ve told you before to keep them close to the house.’
‘They’re on private land…’ I began, but he interrupted me. The whites of his eyes gleamed ominously in his blackened face.
‘For us there’s no such thing as private land, madam.’
That was two years ago, when I was still finding things easier. I had forgotten about this encounter with Innerd. What did he matter? But later on, a fast-moving planet had suddenly crossed an invisible point and a change had occurred, one of the kind we’re not aware of down here. Perhaps tiny signs reveal this sort of cosmic event to us, but we don’t notice them either – someone has stepped on a twig lying on the path, a bottle of beer has cracked in the freezer when someone forgot to remove it in time, or two red fruits have fallen from a wild rose bush. How could we possibly understand it all?
It’s clear that the largest things are contained in the smallest. There can be no doubt about it. At this very moment, as I write, there’s a planetary configuration on this table, the entire Cosmos, if you like: a thermometer, a coin, an aluminium spoon and a porcelain cup. A key, a mobile phone, a piece of paper and a pen. And one of my grey hairs, whose atoms preserve the memory of the origins of life, of the cosmic Catastrophe that gave the world its beginning.
X
CUCUJUS HAEMATODES
Kill not the Moth nor Butterfly
For the Last Judgment draweth nigh.
By early June the houses were inhabited, at the weekends at least, but I was still taking my duties quite seriously. For instance, at least once a day I’d go up the hill and conduct my usual surveillance through binoculars. First I’d monitor the houses, of course. In a sense, houses are living creatures that coexist with Man in exemplary symbiosis. My heart swelled with joy, for now it was plain to see that their symbionts had returned. They had filled the empty interiors with their comings and goings, the warmth of their own bodies, their thoughts. Their dainty hands were mending all the little cuts and bruises left by the winter, drying out the damp walls, washing the windows and fixing the ballcocks. Now the houses looked as if they had awoken from the deep sleep into which material sinks when it’s not disturbed. Plastic tables and chairs had already been carried into the front yards, the wooden shutters had been opened, and finally the Sunlight could get inside. At the weekends smoke rose from the chimneys. The Professor and his wife appeared more and more often, always in the company of friends. They’d walk along the road – they never ventured onto the field boundaries. They went on a daily post-prandial walk to the chapel and back, stopping on the road, deep in conversation. Occasionally, when the wind was blowing from their direction, the odd word would reach me: Canaletto, chiaroscuro, tenebrism.
Every Friday the Wellers started to show up too. In unison, they set about tearing up the plants that had been growing around their house until now, in order to plant others that they’d bought at a shop. It was hard to tell what logic was driving them, why they didn’t like elderberry, but preferred wisteria in its place. One time, standing on tiptoes to look at them over their enormous fence, I told them the wisteria probably wouldn’t survive the February frosts here, but they just smiled, nodded and went on doing their thing. They cut down a beautiful wild rose and ripped up some clumps of thyme. They arranged some stones to build a fanciful mound in front of the house, and planted it with conifers, as they put it: ornamental cedars, creeping pine, dwarf cypresses and firs. Utterly pointless, to my mind.
The Grey Lady was coming for longer stays by now, and I’d see her walking along the field boundaries at a slow pace, stiff as a post. One evening I went to her house with the keys and the repair bills. She offered me some herbal tea. To be polite, I drank it. Once we had finished settling the accounts, I dared to ask a question.
‘If I wanted to write my memoirs, how would I go about it?’ I said, sounding confused.
‘You must sit at the table and force yourself to write. It’ll come of its own accord. You mustn’t censor yourself. You must write down everything that comes into your head.’
Strange advice. I wouldn’t want to write down ‘everything’. I’d only like to write down the things that I find good and positive. I thought she was going to say more, but she didn’t. I felt disappointed.
‘Disappointed?’ she asked, as if she could read my thoughts.
‘Yes.’
‘When one can’t speak, one should write,’ she said. ‘It helps a lot,’ she added, and fell silent. The wind grew stronger, and now we could see the trees outside swaying steadily to
the rhythm of inaudible music, like the audience at a concert in an amphitheatre. Upstairs a draught slammed a door shut. As if someone had fired a shot. The Grey Lady shuddered.
‘Those noises upset me – it’s as if everything here were alive!’
‘The wind always makes that noise. I’ve grown used to it,’ I said.
I asked her what sort of books she wrote, and she replied horror stories. That pleased me. I must definitely introduce her to Good News, they’re sure to find plenty to talk about. They’re links in the same chain. Anyone who’s capable of writing things like that must be a courageous Person.
‘And does evil always have to be punished at the end?’ I asked.
‘I don’t care about that. I’m not concerned with punishment. I just like to write about frightening things. Maybe because I’m so fearful myself. It does me good.’
‘What happened to you?’ I asked, emboldened by the falling Dusk, and pointed at the orthopaedic collar around her neck.
‘Degeneration of the cervical vertebrae,’ she said impassively, as if telling me about a broken domestic appliance. ‘Evidently my head is too heavy. That’s how it seems to me. My head’s too heavy. My vertebrae can’t hold up the weight of it, so crunch, crunch, they degenerate.’
She smiled and poured me some more of the awful tea.
‘Don’t you feel lonely here?’ she asked.
‘Sometimes.’
‘I admire you. I wish I were like you. You’re brave.’
‘Oh no, I’m not in the least brave. It’s a good thing I have something to do here.’
‘I feel uneasy without Agata too. The world here is so large, so impossible to take in,’ she said, fixing her gaze on me for a few seconds, testing me. ‘Agata is my wife.’
I blinked. I had never heard one woman referring to another as ‘my wife’ before. But I liked it.
‘You’re surprised, aren’t you?’
I thought for a while.
‘I could have a wife too,’ I said with conviction. ‘It’s better to live with someone than alone. It’s easier to go through life together than on one’s own.’
She didn’t respond. It was difficult to talk to her. Finally I asked her to lend me her book. The most frightening one. She promised she’d ask Agata to bring it. Dusk was falling, but she didn’t put on the light. Once we were both plunged in darkness, I said goodbye and went home.
Now, confident that the houses were back in the care of their owners, I enjoyed going on longer and longer walks, though I still called these expeditions my round. I was widening my estates, like a solitary She-Wolf. I was thankful to leave behind the views of the houses and the road. I would go into the forest – I could wander around it endlessly. Here things were quieter; the forest was like a vast, deep, welcoming refuge in which one could hide. It lulled my mind. Here I didn’t have to conceal the most troublesome of my Ailments – the fact that I weep. Here my tears could flow, bathing my eyes and improving my sight. Maybe that’s why I could see more than people with dry eyes.
First I noticed the lack of Deer – they had vanished. Or perhaps the grass was so high that it hid their perfect red backs? What it actually meant was that the Deer had already started to calve.
On the same day when I first came upon a Young Lady with a beautiful spotted Fawn, I saw a man in the forest. At quite close range, though he did not see me. He had a backpack with him, green with an external frame, like the ones they used to make in the 1970s, so it occurred to me that the man must be of a similar age to me. And to tell the truth, he looked it too – old. He was bald, and his face was covered in grey stubble, trimmed short, probably with one of those cheap Chinese clippers bought at the street market. His oversized, faded jeans bulged unattractively on the buttocks.
This man was moving down the road that ran along the forest, cautiously, gazing underfoot. That was probably why he let me come so close. When he reached the intersection, where felled pine trunks were stacked, he took off his pack, leaned it against a tree, and went into the forest. My binoculars showed me a wobbly, out-of-focus image, so I could only guess what he was doing there. I did see him leaning down to the forest floor and rummaging in the pine needles. One might have thought he was a mushroom picker, but it was too early for mushrooms. I watched him for about an hour. He sat on the grass, ate sandwiches and wrote something in a notebook. For thirty minutes or so he lay on his back with his arms folded behind his head and stared into the sky. Then he took the backpack and disappeared into the greenery.
From the school I called Dizzy to tell him this news – that I’d seen a stranger roaming about in the forest. I also told him what people were saying at Good News’ shop, which was that the Commandant was mixed up in the illegal transportation of terrorists across the border. Some suspicious types had been caught not far from here. But Dizzy reacted rather sceptically to these revelations. And refused to be persuaded that the stranger could be wandering about the forest in order to erase potential evidence. Maybe a weapon was hidden there?
‘I don’t want to worry you, but the investigation is probably going to be shelved, because nothing has been found that could cast new light.’
‘What do you mean? What about the Animal prints around the site? It was the Deer that pushed him down the well.’
There was silence, and then Dizzy asked: ‘Why do you keep telling everyone about those Animals? No one believes you anyway, and they take you for a bit of a…a…’ he faltered.
‘A nutter, right?’ I said, to help him.
‘Well, yes. Why do you keep going on about it? You know perfectly well it’s impossible,’ said Dizzy, and it occurred to me that I really would have to explain it to them clearly.
I was outraged. But when the bell rang for lessons, I quickly said: ‘One has to tell people what to think. There’s no alternative. Otherwise someone else will do it.’
I didn’t sleep too well that Night, knowing that a stranger was lurking so close to the house. But the news of the potential closure of the investigation prompted stressful, disagreeable anxiety too. How could it be ‘shelved’ just like that? Without checking all the possibilities? And what about those prints? Had they taken them into consideration? After all, a Person had died. How could they ‘shelve’ it, for goodness’ sake?
For the first time since moving here I locked the door and windows. At once the house felt stuffy. I couldn’t get to sleep. It was early June, so the Nights were already warm and scented. I felt as if I had been locked for life in the boiler room. I listened out for footsteps around the house, analysed every rustle, and jumped at every snap of a twig. The Night magnified the subtlest sounds, changed them into grunts, groans, voices. I think I was terrified. For the first time since coming to live here.
The next morning I saw the same man with the backpack standing outside my house. At first I was paralysed by fear and started reaching a hand into the secret closet for the pepper spray.
‘Good morning. Excuse me for disturbing you,’ he said in a low baritone, which set the air quivering. ‘I’d like to buy some milk from the cow.’
‘From the Cow?’ I said in amazement. ‘I don’t have milk from a Cow, only from the Froggy, will that do?’ The Froggy was the name of the village grocery store.
He was disappointed.
Now, in the daylight, he looked perfectly agreeable. I wouldn’t have to use my spray. He had a white linen shirt with a mandarin collar, the sort people wore in the good old days. Close up, it was also plain to see that he wasn’t bald after all. He still had some hair left at the back of his head, and he’d plaited it into a skinny little pigtail, which looked like a grubby shoelace.
‘Do you bake your own bread?’
‘No,’ I replied in surprise. ‘I buy that at the shop down the hill too.’
‘Aha. Good, all right.’
I was already on my way to the kitchen, but I turned round to inform him: ‘I saw you yesterday. Did you sleep in the forest?’
‘Yes, I di
d. May I sit here a while? My bones are rather stiff.’
He seemed distracted. The back of his shirt was green with grass stains. He must have slipped out of his sleeping bag. I giggled to myself.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’
He flapped his hands. ‘I don’t drink coffee.’
Plainly, he wasn’t very bright. If he were, he’d have known that I wasn’t interested in his culinary likes and dislikes.
‘Then maybe you’d like a piece of cake,’ I said, pointing to the table, which Dizzy and I had recently brought outside. There was a rhubarb tart on it, which I had baked the day before yesterday and had almost entirely eaten.
‘May I please use the bathroom?’ he asked, as if we were bargaining.
‘Of course,’ I said, letting him into the house ahead of me.
He drank some tea and ate a slice of tart. He was called Borys Sznajder, but he pronounced his first name funnily, stretching the vowels: ‘Boorooos’. And for me, that name stuck. He had a soft, eastern accent, and his next few remarks explained its origin – he was from Białystok.
‘I’m an entomologist,’ he said with his mouth full of cake. ‘I’m studying a particular species of flat bark beetle, endangered, rare and beautiful. Do you know that you live at the southernmost site in Europe where Cucujus haematodes is found?’
I was not aware of this. Frankly, I was pleased – it was as if a new family member had come to join us here.
‘What does it look like?’ I asked.
Boros reached into a tatty canvas knapsack and carefully extracted a small plastic box. He shoved it under my nose. ‘Like this.’
Inside the transparent box lay a dead Bug – that’s what I’d have called it, a Bug. Small, brown, quite average-looking. I had sometimes seen very beautiful Bugs. This one was not exceptional in any way.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Page 13