Primeval and Other Times

by Olga Tokarczuk

  The small book entitled Ignis fatuus, or an instructive game for one player was simply an instruction manual for the game written in Latin and in Polish. The squire flicked through it page by page, and found it all very complicated. The manual described in turn each possible result of throwing the die, each move, each pawn-figurine, and each of the Eight Worlds. The description seemed incoherent and full of digressions, until finally it occurred to the squire that here he had the work of a lunatic.

  The game is a sort of journey, on which now and then choices keep appearing, the first words read. The choices make themselves, but sometimes the player is under the impression that he is making them consciously. This may frighten him, because then he will feel responsible for where he ends up and what he encounters.

  The player sees his journey like cracks in the ice – lines that split, turn, and change direction at a dizzy pace. Or like lightning in the sky that seeks a way for itself through the air in a manner that is impossible to predict. The player who believes in God will say: “divine judgement,” “the finger of God” – that omnipotent, powerful extremity of the Creator. But if he doesn’t believe in God, he will say: “coincidence,” “accident.” Sometimes the player will use the words “my free choice,” but he is sure to say this more quietly and without conviction.

  The game is a map of escape. It starts at the centre of the labyrinth. The aim is to pass through all the spheres and break free of the fetters of the Eight Worlds.

  Squire Popielski leafed through the complicated description of the pawns and opening strategies for the Game, until he came to the description of the First World. He read:

  In the beginning there was no God. There was no time or space. There was just light and darkness. And it was perfect.

  He had a feeling he knew those words from somewhere.

  The light moved within itself and flared up. A pillar of light tore into the darkness and there it found matter that had been immobile forever. It struck it with full force, until it awoke God in it. Still unconscious, still unsure what He was, God looked around Him, and as He saw no one apart from Himself, He realised that He was God. And unnamed for Himself, incomprehensible to Himself, He felt the desire to know Himself. When He looked closely at Himself for the first time, the Word came forth – it seemed to God that knowing was naming.

  And so the Word rolls from the mouth of God and breaks into a thousand pieces that become the seeds of the Worlds. From this time on the Worlds grow, and God is reflected in them as in a mirror. And as He examines His reflection in the Worlds, He sees Himself more and more, knows Himself better and better, and this knowledge enriches Him, and thus it enriches the Worlds, too.

  God comes to know Himself through the passage of time, because only that which is elusive and changeable is most similar to God. He comes to know Himself through the rocks that emerge hot out of the sea, through the plants in love with the sun, through generations of animals. When man appears, God experiences a revelation, and for the first time He is able to name in Himself the fragile line of night and day, the subtle boundary, from which light starts to be dark and dark light. From then on He looks at Himself through the eyes of people. He sees thousands of His own faces and tries them on like masks and, like an actor, for a while becomes the mask. Praying to Himself through the mouths of people, He discovers contradiction in Himself, for in the mirror the reflection can be real, and reality can pass into the reflection.

  “Who am I?” asks God, “God or man, or maybe both one and the other at once, or neither of them? Was it I that created people, or they Me?”

  Man tempts Him, so He creeps into the beds of lovers, and there He discovers love. He creeps into the beds of old people, and there He finds transience. He creeps into the beds of the dying, and there He finds death.

  “Why shouldn’t I give it a try?” thought Squire Popielski. He went back to the beginning of the book and set out the brass figurines in front of him.

  THE TIME OF MISIA

  Misia noticed that the tall, fair-haired boy from the Boski family was always looking at her in church. Then, when she came out after mass, he would be standing outside looking at her again, and he kept on looking. Misia could feel his gaze on her, like an uncomfortable piece of clothing. She was afraid to move freely or breathe deeply. He made her feel awkward.

  So it was all winter, from Midnight Mass to Easter. When it started getting warmer, each week Misia came to church more lightly dressed, and felt Paweł Boski’s gaze on her even more strongly. At Corpus Christi this gaze touched her bare nape and exposed arms. To Misia it felt very soft and pleasant, like stroking a cat, like feathers, like dandelion fluff.

  That Sunday Paweł Boski came up to Misia and asked if he could walk her home. She agreed.

  He talked the entire way, and what he said amazed her. He said she was dainty, like a luxury Swiss watch. Misia had never thought of herself as dainty before. He said her hair was the colour of the dearest type of gold. Misia had always thought she had brown hair. He also said her skin had a fragrance of vanilla. Misia didn’t dare admit she had just baked a cake.

  Everything in Paweł Boski’s words discovered Misia anew. Once she reached home she couldn’t get down to any work. However, she wasn’t thinking about Paweł, but about herself: “I am a pretty girl. I have small feet, like a Chinese woman. I have beautiful hair. I smile in a very feminine way. I smell of vanilla. A person might long to see me. I am a woman.”

  Before the holidays Misia told her father she would no longer be going to college in Taszów and that she had no head for calculations and calligraphy. She was still friendly with Rachela Szenbert, but their conversations were different now. They walked along the Highway to the forest together. Rachela urged Misia not to drop school. She promised to help her with arithmetic. And Misia told Rachela about Paweł Boski. Rachela listened, as a friend would, but she was of a different opinion.

  “I’m going to marry a doctor or someone like that. I won’t have more than two children so I won’t ruin my figure.”

  “I’m only going to have a daughter.”

  “Misia, do stay on until graduation.”

  “I want to get married.”

  Along the same road Misia went for walks with Paweł. By the forest they held hands. Paweł’s hand was big and hot. Misia’s was small and cold. They turned off the Highway down one of the forest roads, and then Paweł stopped, and with that big, strong hand he drew Misia close to him.

  He smelled of soap and sunlight. At this point Misia became rather weak, submissive and limp. The man in the white starched shirt seemed enormous. She barely reached up to his chest. She stopped thinking. It was dangerous. She came to her senses once her breasts were already bare and Paweł’s lips were roaming across her belly.

  “No,” she said.

  “You have to marry me.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m going to ask for your hand.”

  “Good.”

  “When?”

  “Soon.”

  “Will he agree? Will your father agree?”

  “There’s nothing to agree. I want to marry you and that’s all.”

  “But …”

  “I love you.”

  Misia tidied her hair and they went back to the Highway, as if they had never left it.

  THE TIME OF MICHAŁ

  Michał did not like Paweł. He may have been good looking, but that was all. Whenever Michał looked at his broad shoulders, strong legs in breeches, and shining boots, he felt painfully old and shrunken like a dried-up apple.

  Paweł came to their house very often now. He would sit at the table and fold one leg over the other. With her tail tucked under, the bitch Dolly would sniff his polished boots and their tops made of dog skin. He talked about the business he was doing with Kozienicki in the timber trade, about the school for paramedics where he had enrolled, and about his great plans for the future. He looked at Genowefa and smiled the whole time, giving a close, thorough view of
his even white teeth. Genowefa was delighted. Paweł brought her small gifts. With a blush on her face she would put the flowers in a vase, as the cellophane rustled on a box of chocolates.

  “How naive women are,” thought Michał.

  He got the impression that his Misia had been written into Paweł Boski’s ambitious life plans, like an object. With complete calculation: because she was the only daughter, virtually an only child, because Izydor didn’t really count. Because she was going to have a fine dowry, because she was from a wealthier family, because she was so different, elegant, beautifully dressed, delicate.

  As if by the way, Michał sometimes spoke in his wife’s and daughter’s presence of old Boski, who had said maybe a hundred or two hundred words in his life and spent all his time on the manor house roof, and of Paweł’s sisters, who were plain and mediocre.

  “Old Boski is a decent fellow,” Genowefa would say.

  “So what, no one’s responsible for his siblings,” added Misia, looking meaningfully at Izydor. “There’s someone like that in every family.”

  Michał would pretend to be reading the newspaper as his daughter dressed up to go dancing with Paweł on Sunday afternoons. She would spend about an hour preening before the mirror. He saw her fill in her eyebrows with her mother’s dark pencil and carefully paint her lips in a furtive way. He saw her standing sideways before the mirror to check the effect of her brassiere, and putting a drop of violet scent behind her ear, her first perfume that she had begged for as a seventeenth birthday present. He said nothing as Genowefa and Izydor looked out of the window after her.

  “Paweł has mentioned marriage to me. He said he’d like to propose now,” said Genowefa one such Sunday.

  Michał refused even to hear her out.

  “No. She’s still too young. Let’s send her to Kielce, to a better school than the one in Taszów.”

  “She doesn’t want to study at all. She wants to get married. Can’t you see that?”

  Michał shook his head.

  “No, no, no. It’s still too soon. What does she want a husband and children for? She should enjoy life … Where are they going to live? Where’s Paweł going to work? He’s still at school too, isn’t he? No, they’ve got to wait.”

  “Wait for what? Until they have to get married in a hurry, urgently?”

  That was when Michał thought of the house, that he would build his daughter a big, comfortable house on good land. That he would plant an orchard for it and provide it with cellars and a garden. A big house, so Misia would not have to leave, so they could all live there together. There would be enough rooms in it for everyone, and their windows would look out in all four directions. And it would be a house with foundations made of sandstone and walls made of real brick, which would be kept warm from the outside by the best timber. And it would have a ground floor, a first floor, a loft and cellars, a glazed porch, and a balcony for Misia, so she could watch the procession coming across the fields at Corpus Christi from it. In this house Misia would be able to have lots of children. There would also be a servant’s room, because Misia should have domestic help.

  Next day he ate his dinner early and went all round Primeval looking for a site for the house. He thought of the Hill. He thought about the common by the White River. All the way he calculated that building such a house would take at least three years, and would delay Misia’s marriage by that time.

  THE TIME OF FLORENTYNKA

  On Easter Saturday Florentynka went off to church with one of her dogs for the blessing of the food. Into her basket she put a jar of the milk that fed her and her dogs, because that was all she had in the house. She covered the jar in fresh horseradish leaves and periwinkles.

  In Jeszkotle baskets full of the food to be blessed for the Easter Sunday meal are placed on the side altar of the Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle. It is the woman who should take care of the food – both its preparation and its blessing. God-the-man has more important matters in his head: wars, catastrophes, conquests, and distant journeys … Women take care of the food.

  So people brought their baskets to the side altar of the Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle and waited on benches for the priest to come and sprinkle holy water. Each person sat at a distance from the next and in silence, because on Easter Saturday the church is dark and hushed like a cave, like a concrete air-raid shelter.

  Florentynka went up to the side altar with her dog, whose name was Billygoat. She put her basket down among the other baskets. In the others there was sausage, cake, horseradish with cream, colourful painted eggs, and beautiful white bread. Ah, how hungry Florentynka was, and how hungry her dog was.

  Florentynka gazed at the picture of the Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle and saw a smile on her smooth face. Billygoat sniffed at someone’s basket and pulled a piece of sausage out of it.

  “Here you hang and smile, good Lady, while the dogs eat your gifts,” said Florentynka in a hushed tone. “Sometimes it’s hard for a person to understand a dog. You, good Lady, surely understand animals and people equally. Surely you even know the thoughts of the moon …”

  Florentynka sighed.

  “I’m going to pray to your husband, and you mind my dog.”

  She tied the dog to the railing in front of the miraculous icon, among the baskets, over which crocheted napkins had been thrown.

  “I’ll be back in a moment.”

  She found herself a place in the front row among the dressed-up women from Jeszkotle. They moved away from her a little and glanced at each other knowingly.

  Meanwhile the sacristan, who was meant to keep order in the church, went up to the side altar of the Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle. First he noticed something moving, but for some time his eyes could not make sense of what they were seeing. When he realised that a hideous great mangy dog had just been rummaging around in the baskets full of food to be blessed, he staggered in indignation and the blood rushed to his face. Horrified by this sacrilege, he leaped forward to drive away the impudent animal. He grabbed the string, and with hands trembling in dismay, undid the knot. Just then he heard a quiet woman’s voice coming from the icon:

  “Leave that dog alone! I’m minding him for Florentynka from Primeval.”

  THE TIME OF THE HOUSE

  The foundations were dug in a perfect square. Its sides corresponded to the four points of the compass.

  First Michał, Paweł Boski and the workmen built the walls out of stone – that was the underpinning – and then out of wooden beams.

  Once they had enclosed the cellars, they started talking about the place as a “house,” but only once they had built the roof and crowned it with a garland did it become a house for good and proper. For a house starts to exist as soon as its walls enclose a bit of space within them. It is this enclosed space that is the soul of the house.

  They spent two years building the house. They hoisted the garland onto the roof in the summer of 1936. They took a photo of themselves in front of the house.

  The house had several cellars. One of them had two windows, and this one was meant to be the basement and the summer kitchen in one. The next cellar had one window – they designated it the closet, laundry, and potato store. The third one had no windows at all – this was to be a storage space in case of need. Under this third one Michał ordered another, fourth little cellar to be dug, small and cold – for ice and goodness knows what else.

  The ground floor was high, on stone underpinnings. The way into the ground floor was up steps with a wooden balustrade. There were two entrances. One was from the road, via the porch straight into a large hallway, which led into the rooms. The second entrance led through a vestibule into the kitchen. The kitchen had a large window, and against the wall opposite stood the kitchen stove made of sky-blue tiles that Misia chose in Taszów. The stove was finished with brass fittings and rails. There were three doors in the kitchen: into the biggest room, under the stairs, and into a small room. The ground floor was a ring of rooms. If you opened all the doors, you could walk
around it in a circle.

  From the hallway a staircase led up to the first floor, where the next four rooms were waiting to be finished.

  Above all this there was yet another storey – the loft, which was reached via some narrow, wooden stairs. The loft fascinated little Izydor, because it had windows looking in all four directions.

  The outside of the house was covered in boards laid like fish scales. This was old Boski’s idea. Old Boski also laid the roof, just as beautiful as the manor house roof. In front of the house there was a lilac tree. It was already growing there before the house existed. Now it was reflected in the windowpanes. A bench was placed under the lilac. People from Primeval stopped there to admire the house. No one in the area had ever built such a fine house before. Squire Popielski also came on horseback and clapped Paweł Boski on the shoulder. Paweł invited him to the wedding.

  On Sunday Michał went to fetch the parish priest to come and bless the house. The priest stood on the porch and looked around approvingly.

  “What a beautiful house you have built for your daughter,” he said.