Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

  Now it seemed clear to me why those hunting towers, which do after all bear a strong resemblance to the watchtowers in concentration camps, are called ‘pulpits’. In a pulpit Man places himself above other Creatures and grants himself the right to their life and death. He becomes a tyrant and a usurper.

  The priest spoke with inspiration, almost elation: ‘Make the land your subject. It was to you, the hunters, that God addressed these words, because God makes man his associate, to take part in the work of creation, and to be sure this work will be carried through to the finish. The hunters carry out their vocation of caring for the gift from God that is nature consciously, judiciously and sagaciously. May your association thrive, and may it serve your fellow man and all of nature…’

  I managed to get out of the row. On strangely stiff legs I walked almost right up to the pulpit.

  ‘Hey, you, get down from there,’ I said. ‘That’s enough.’

  Silence fell, and with satisfaction I heard my voice echoing off the vault and naves, becoming strong; no wonder one could be carried away by one’s own oration here.

  ‘I’m talking to you. Can’t you hear me? Get down!’

  Rustle stared at me with his eyes wide open, terrified, his lips quivering, as if, taken by surprise, he were trying to find something suitable to say. But he couldn’t do it. ‘Well, well,’ he kept saying, not exactly helplessly, nor aggressively.

  ‘Get down from that pulpit this instant! And get out of here!’ I shouted.

  Then I felt someone’s hand on my arm and saw that one of the men in uniform was standing behind me. I pulled away, but then a second one ran up and they both grabbed me firmly by the arms.

  ‘Murderers,’ I said.

  The children were staring at me in horror. In their costumes they looked unreal, like a new half-human, half-animal race that was just about to be born. People began to murmur and fidget in their seats, whispering to each other indignantly, but in their eyes I could also see sympathy, and that enraged me even more.

  ‘What are you gawping at?’ I cried. ‘Have you fallen asleep? How can you listen to such nonsense without batting an eyelid? Have you lost your minds? Or your hearts? Have you still got hearts?’

  I was no longer trying to break free. I let myself be calmly led out of the church, but right by the door I turned and shouted at all of them: ‘Get out of here! All of you! Right now!’ I waved my arms. ‘Go away! Shoo! Have you been hypnotised? Have you lost your last dregs of compassion?’

  ‘Please calm yourself. It’s cooler here,’ said one of the men once we were outside. Trying to sound threatening, the other one added: ‘Or we’ll call the Police.’

  ‘You’re right, you should call the Police. There’s an incitement to Crime going on here.’

  They left me and closed the heavy door to stop me from coming back into the church. I guessed that Father Rustle was continuing his sermon. I sat down on a low wall and gradually came to. My Anger passed, and the cold wind cooled my burning face.

  Anger always leaves a large void behind it, into which a flood of sorrow pours instantly, and keeps on flowing like a great river, without beginning or end. My tears came; once again their sources were replenished.

  I watched two Magpies that were frolicking on the lawn outside the presbytery, as if trying to entertain me. As if saying, don’t be upset, time is on our side, the job must be done, there’s no alternative… Curiously they examined a shiny chewing-gum wrapper, then one of them picked it up in her beak and flew away. I followed her with my gaze. They must have had a nest on the presbytery roof. Magpies. Fire-raisers.

  Next day, although I had no classes, the young headmistress called and asked me to come to the school that afternoon once the building was empty. Without being asked, she brought me a mug of tea and cut me a slice of apple cake. I knew what was in the wind.

  ‘I’m sure you understand, Janina, that after what happened…’ she said, sounding concerned.

  ‘I’m not “Janina”, I’ve asked you not to call me that before,’ I corrected her, but perhaps it was pointless. I knew what she was going to say – she was probably trying to boost her own self-confidence with these formalities.

  ‘Okay, Mrs Duszejko.’

  ‘Yes, I know. I’d rather you and the children listened to me and not the hunters. The things they say are demoralising for the children.’ The headmistress cleared her throat. ‘You’ve caused a scandal, and what’s more you did it in church. Worst of all, it happened in front of the children, for whom the person of the priest, and the place where it occurred, should be special.’

  ‘Special? All the more reason for preventing them from listening to such things. You heard it yourself.’

  The young woman took a deep breath, and without looking at me, said: ‘Mrs Duszejko, you’re wrong. There are certain rules and traditions that are inherent in our lives. We can’t just reject them out of hand.’ It was plain to see that she was girding her loins now, and I knew what she was going to say.

  ‘But I don’t want us to reject them, as you put it. It’s just that I refuse to let anyone encourage children to do evil things or teach them hypocrisy. Glorifying killing is evil. It’s as simple as that.’

  The headmistress rested her head in her hands and replied in a soft voice: ‘I have to terminate your contract. You must have guessed that already. It’d be best if you applied for sick leave for this term – that will be a nod in your direction. You’ve already been unwell, so now you can extend your sick leave. Please understand me – I have no other course of action.’

  ‘What about English? Who’s going to teach English?’

  She turned red. ‘Our religious instruction teacher studied at a language school,’ she said, casting me a strange look. ‘In any case…’ She hesitated before going on. ‘Rumours have reached me before now of your unconventional teaching methods. Apparently you burn candles, some sort of fireworks during lessons, then other teachers complain about a smell of smoke in the classroom. The parents are afraid it’s something satanic, Satanism. Perhaps they’re just simple people… And you give the children strange things to eat. Durianflavoured sweets, for instance. What on earth is that? If any of them were poisoned, who’d be responsible? Have you ever stopped to think?’

  These arguments of hers devastated me. I’d always done my best to surprise the children in some way, to excite their interest. Now I could feel all the strength draining out of me. I had lost the will to say anything more. I hauled myself to my feet and left the room without another word. From the corner of my eye I saw her nervously shuffling the papers on her desk; her hands were shaking. Poor woman.

  I had everything I needed in the Samurai. Falling before my eyes, the Twilight was in my favour. It always favours people like me.

  Mustard soup. It’s quickly made, without much effort, so I had it ready in time. First we heat a little butter in a frying pan and add some flour, as if we were going to make a béchamel. The flour sucks up the melted butter beautifully, then gorges on it, swelling with satisfaction. At this point we flood it with milk and water, half and half. That’s the end of the frolics between flour and butter, unfortunately, but gradually the soup appears; now we must add a pinch of salt, pepper and caraway to this clear, still innocent liquid, bring it to the boil and then switch off the heat. Only now do we add the mustard in three forms: whole-grain French Dijon mustard; smooth brown mustard or the mild, creamy kind; and mustard powder. It’s important not to let the Mustard boil, or else the soup will lose its flavour and go bitter. I serve this soup with croutons, and I know how much Dizzy likes it.

  The three of them arrived together, and I wondered what sort of a Surprise they had for me; perhaps I had an anniversary of some kind – they were in such a serious mood. Dizzy and Good News had lovely winter jackets, identical, and it occurred to me that they really could make a fine couple, both so small and beautiful, like fragile snowdrops growing by the path. Oddball seemed gloomy, and spent ages shifting from foot t
o foot, rubbing his hands together. He had brought a bottle of chokeberry brandy, his own home produce. I never liked his homemade alcoholic drinks; in my view he skimped on the sugar and his liqueurs always had a bitter aftertaste.

  By now they were sitting at the table. Still frying the croutons, I looked at them all together, maybe for the last time. That’s exactly what crossed my mind – that it was time to part ways. Suddenly I saw the four of us in a different way – as if we had a lot in common, as if we were a family. I realised that we were the sort of people whom the world regards as useless. We do nothing essential, we don’t produce important ideas, no vital objects or foodstuffs, we don’t cultivate the land, we don’t fuel the economy. We haven’t done any reproducing, except for Oddball, who does have a son, even if it’s just Black Coat. So far we’ve never provided the world with anything useful. We haven’t come up with the idea for any invention. We have no power, we have no resources apart from our small properties. We do our jobs, but they are of no significance for anyone else. If we went missing, nothing would really change. Nobody would notice.

  Through the silence of the evening and the roar of the fire in the kitchen stove I heard sirens howling somewhere below, carried here from the village on a furious wind. I wondered whether they could hear this ominous sound too. But they were talking in hushed voices, leaning towards each other, calmly.

  As I was pouring the mustard soup into ramekins, I was overcome by such strong emotion that my tears began to flow again. Luckily they were too involved in their conversation to notice. I stepped back to put the pan down on the worktop under the window, from where I watched them furtively. I saw Oddball’s pale, sallow face, his grey hair politely combed to one side and his freshly shaved cheeks. I saw Good News in profile, the beautiful line of her nose and neck, and a coloured scarf wrapped around her head, and I saw Dizzy’s shoulders, small and hunched, in a hand-knitted sweater. What’s going to become of them? How will these children cope?

  And how will I cope? After all, I’m like them too. My life’s harvest is not the building material for anything, neither in my time, now, or in any other, never.

  But why should we have to be useful, and for what reason? Who divided the world into useless and useful, and by what right? Does a thistle have no right to life, or a Mouse that eats the grain in a warehouse? What about Bees and Drones, weeds and roses? Whose intellect can have had the audacity to judge who is better, and who worse? A large tree, crooked and full of holes, survives for centuries without being cut down, because nothing could possibly be made out of it. This example should raise the spirits of people like us. Everyone knows the profit to be reaped from the useful, but nobody knows the benefit to be gained from the useless.

  ‘There’s a glow down there, in the village,’ said Oddball, standing by the window. ‘Something’s on fire.’

  ‘Sit down. I’ll serve the croutons,’ I said, once I had assured myself that my eyes were dry.

  But they wouldn’t come to the table. They were all standing by the window, in silence. And then they looked at me. Dizzy with real anguish, Oddball with disbelief, and Good News furtively, with a sorrow that broke my heart.

  Just then Dizzy’s phone rang.

  ‘Don’t answer it,’ I cried. ‘It’s via the Czech Republic, you’ll pay through the nose.’

  ‘I can’t not answer, I’m still working for the Police,’ replied Dizzy, and said into the phone: ‘Yes?’

  We looked at him expectantly. The mustard soup was going cold.

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ said Dizzy, and a wave of panic swept over me at the thought that everything was lost, and now they’d be leaving forever.

  ‘The presbytery’s on fire. Father Rustle is dead,’ said Dizzy, but instead of leaving, he sat down at the table and started mechanically drinking the soup.

  I have Mercury in retrograde, so I’m better at expressing myself in writing than in speech. I could have been a pretty good writer. But at the same time I have trouble explaining my feelings and the motives for my behaviour. I had to tell them, but at the same time I couldn’t tell them. How was I to put it all into words? Out of sheer loyalty I had to explain to them what I had done before they found out from others. But Dizzy spoke first.

  ‘We know it’s you,’ he said. ‘That’s why we came today. To make a decision.’

  ‘We wanted to take you away,’ said Oddball in a sepulchral tone.

  ‘But we didn’t think you’d do it again. Did you do it?’ said Dizzy, pushing aside the half-drunk soup.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  I put the pan back on the stove and took off my apron. I stood before them, ready for Judgement.

  ‘We realised when we heard how the President died,’ said Dizzy quietly. ‘The beetles. Only you could have done that. Or Boros, but Boros had gone long ago. So I called him to check. He couldn’t believe it, but he admitted that some of his valuable pheromones had indeed gone missing, for which he had no explanation. He was in his forest and he had an alibi. I spent a long time wondering why, what on earth you had in common with someone like the President, but then I guessed it must have a connection with your Little Girls. Anyway, you’ve never hidden the fact that they hunted, have you? All of them. And now I can see that Father Rustle hunted too.’

  ‘He was their chaplain,’ I whispered.

  ‘I had some suspicions earlier, when I saw what you carry about in your car. I’ve never told anyone about it. But are you aware of the fact that your Samurai looks like a commando vehicle?’

  Suddenly I felt myself losing the power in my legs, and I sat down on the floor. The strength supporting me had left me, evaporated like air.

  ‘Do you think they’ll arrest me? Are they going to come for me now and shut me in prison again?’ I asked.

  ‘You’ve murdered people. Are you conscious of that? Are you aware?’ said Dizzy.

  ‘Easy now,’ said Oddball. ‘Easy.’

  Dizzy leaned forward, grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me. ‘How did it happen? How did you do it? Why?’

  On my knees, I shuffled over to the sideboard, and from under the wax cloth I pulled the photograph I’d taken from Big Foot’s house. I handed it to them without looking at it. It was etched in my brain, and I couldn’t forget the tiniest detail.

  XVI

  THE PHOTOGRAPH

  The tygers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction.

  It was all plain to see in the photograph. The best proof of a Crime that one could possibly imagine.

  There stood the men in uniforms, in a row, and on the grass in front of them lay the neatly arranged corpses of Animals – Hares, one beside another, two Boars, one large, one smaller, some Deer and then a lot of Pheasants and Ducks, Mallards and Teals, like little dots, as if those Animals’ bodies were a sentence written to me, and the Birds formed a long ellipsis to say ‘this will go on and on’.

  But what I saw in the corner of the picture almost caused me to faint, and everything went dark before my eyes. You didn’t notice, Oddball, you were occupied with Big Foot’s dead body, you were saying something while I was fighting my nausea. Who could have failed to recognise that white fur and those black patches? In the corner of the picture lay three dead Dogs, neatly laid out, like trophies. One of them was unfamiliar to me. The other two were my Little Girls.

  The men cut proud figures in their uniforms, smiling as they posed for the photograph. I had no trouble identifying them. In the middle was the Commandant, and beside him the President. On the other side stood Innerd, dressed like a commando, and next to him was Father Rustle in his clerical collar. Then the head of the hospital, the fire chief, and the owner of the petrol station. The fathers of families, exemplary citizens. Behind this row of VIPs, the helpers and beaters were standing slightly to one side; they weren’t posing. There was Big Foot, turned three-quarters facing, as if he had been holding back, and had only run into the picture at the last moment, and some of the Moustachios with armfuls of branche
s for the large bonfire they were about to make. If not for the corpses lying at their feet, one might have thought these people were celebrating a happy event, so self-satisfied did they look. Pots of hunter’s stew, sausages and kebabs skewered on sticks, bottles of vodka cooling in buckets. The masculine odour of tanned hide, oiled shotguns, alcohol and sweat. Gestures of domination, insignia of power.

  I had fully memorised every detail at first glance, without having to study it.

  Not surprisingly, above all I felt relief. I had finally found out what had happened to my Little Girls. I had been searching for them right up to Christmas, until I lost hope. I had been to all the tourist hostels and asked people; I had put up notices. ‘Mrs Duszejko’s dogs are missing – have you seen them?’ the children from school were asking. Two Dogs had vanished into thin air. Without trace. Nobody had seen them – and how could they, considering they were dead? Now I could guess where their bodies had gone. Someone had told me that Innerd always took the leftovers from hunting to the farm and fed them to the Foxes.

  Big Foot knew about it from the very start and he must have been amused by my distress. He saw me calling them, in desperation, and walking all the way to the other side of the border. He never said a word.

  That fateful night he had made himself a meal of the Deer he’d poached. To tell the truth, I have never understood the difference between ‘poaching’ and ‘hunting’. Both words mean killing. The former in a covert, illegal way, the latter openly, within the full majesty of the law. And he had simply choked on one of its bones. He met a well-deserved Punishment. I couldn’t help thinking of it like that – as a Punishment. The Deer punished him for killing them in such a cruel way. He choked on their flesh. Their bones stuck in his throat. Why didn’t the hunters react to Big Foot’s poaching? I don’t know. I think he knew too much about what went on after the hunting, when, as Father Rustle would have us believe, they devoted themselves to ethical debate.