Primeval and Other Times

by Olga Tokarczuk

  “I want to wake up,” she said aloud.

  Adelka looked at her in amazement, and Misia realised that no child would be capable of dreaming the shooting of the Jews, the death of Florentynka, the partisans, what they had done to Ruta, the bombardments, the displacement, or her mother’s paralysis.

  She looked upwards: the sky was like the lid of a can, in which God had shut the people.

  They passed a dark silhouette, and Misia guessed it was their barn. She stepped onto the verge and stretched out a hand in the darkness. She touched the rough boards of the fence. She heard some faint noises, strange and muffled.

  “Someone’s playing the accordion,” said Adelka.

  They stood by the gate, and Misia’s heart began to pound. Her house was standing, she could sense it, though she could not see it. She could feel its large, quadrangular mass, she could feel its weight and the way it filled space. Feeling her way, she opened the gate and went onto the porch.

  The music was coming from inside. The door from the porch into the hall was boarded up, just as they had left it, so they went to the kitchen entrance. The music became clearly audible. Some-one was playing jaunty songs on the accordion. Misia crossed herself, grabbed Adelka tightly by the hand, and opened the door.

  The music fell silent. She saw her kitchen plunged in smoke and semi-darkness. There were blankets hanging over the windows. Soldiers were sitting at the table, by the walls, and even on the sideboard. Suddenly one of them aimed his rifle at her. Misia slowly raised her hands.

  The gloomy lieutenant stood up from the table. He reached upwards for her hand and shook it in greeting.

  “This is our landlady,” he said in Russian, and Misia curtsied awkwardly.

  Among the soldiers was Ivan Mukta. His head was bandaged. From him Misia learned that her parents were living in the mill with the cow. Apart from that there was no one left in Primeval. Ivan took Misia upstairs and opened the door into the south-facing room for her. There before her Misia saw the wintry night sky. The south-facing room had ceased to exist, but she found it strangely unimportant. As she had been expecting the loss of the entire house, what did losing just one room mean?

  “Mrs Misia,” said Ivan Mukta on the stairs, “you must take your parents away from there and hide in the forest. Straight after your Christmas the front will move. There’s going to be a terrible battle. Don’t tell anyone about it. It’s a military secret.”

  “Thank you,” said Misia, and only after a pause did the full horror of his words get through to her. “Oh God, what’ll become of us? How will we manage in the forest in winter? What is this war for, Mr Ivan? Who’s running it? Why are you people going to a certain death and killing others?”

  Ivan Mukta gazed at her sadly and didn’t reply.

  Misia distributed knives to the tipsy soldiers for peeling potatoes. She fetched some lard that was hidden in the cellar and fried a big bowl of chips. They weren’t familiar with fried potato chips. At first they inspected them mistrustfully, but finally they started to eat them, with increasing relish.

  “They don’t believe they’re potatoes,” explained Ivan Mukta.

  More bottles of vodka appeared on the table, and the accordion started to play. Misia put Adelka to bed under the stairs, which seemed the safest place.

  The presence of a woman excited the soldiers. They began to dance, first on the floor, and then on the table. The rest clapped to the beat of the music. They kept pouring vodka down their throats and were seized by a sudden madness – they stamped, shouted, and banged their rifles against the floor. Then a pale-eyed young officer drew a pistol from its holster and fired several shots into the ceiling. Plaster showered down into their glasses. Deafened, Misia covered her head with her hands. Suddenly it went quiet and Misia could hear herself screaming. From under the stairs the child’s terrified crying joined in with her.

  The gloomy lieutenant yelled at the pale-eyed officer and touched his holster. Ivan Mukta knelt down beside Misia.

  “Don’t be afraid, Misia. It’s just a bit of fun.”

  They let Misia have a whole room. Twice she checked to make sure she had locked the door.

  In the morning, when she went to the mill, the pale-eyed officer came up to her and said something apologetically. He showed her the ring on his finger and some documents. Out of nowhere as usual, Ivan Mukta appeared.

  “He has a wife and child in Moscow. He says he’s very sorry for yesterday evening. It’s anxiety getting the better of him.”

  Misia didn’t know what to do. On sudden impulse she went up to the man and hugged him. His uniform smelled of earth.

  “Please try not to get killed, Mr Ivan,” she said to Mukta in parting.

  He shook his head and smiled. Now his eyes looked like two dark dashes.

  “People like me don’t die.”

  Misia smiled.

  “So goodbye,” she said.

  THE TIME OF MICHAŁ

  They were living in the kitchen with the cow. Michał had made it a place to lie down behind the door, where the buckets of water always used to stand. By day he ventured out to the barns for hay, then he fed the cow and threw out her manure. Genowefa watched him from her chair. Twice a day he took a bucket, sat on a stool and milked the animal as best he could. There wasn’t much milk. Just as much as two people need. Michał saved the cream from the milk to take it to the children in the forest one day.

  The days were short, as if they were sick and had no strength to keep going to the end. It went dark early, so they sat at the table, on which an oil lamp flickered. They covered the windows with blankets. Michał lit the stove and opened the little door – the fire cheered them up. Genowefa asked him to turn her towards the fire.

  “I can’t move. I am dead while still alive. I am a terrible burden to you that you don’t deserve,” she sometimes said in a sepulchral voice that emerged from somewhere deep in her belly.

  Michał would reassure her.

  “I like taking care of you.”

  In the evenings he sat her on a chamber pot, washed her and carried her to bed. He straightened out her arms and legs. He felt as if she were looking at him from the depths of her body, as if she were trapped in there. In the night she would whisper: “Hold me.”

  Together they heard the noises of guns, most often from somewhere near Kotuszów, but sometimes everything shook, and then they knew a shell had hit Primeval. At night some strange sounds reached them: squelching, mumbling, and then the rapid footsteps of a man or an animal. Michał was afraid, but he didn’t want to show it. Whenever his heart began to beat too fast, he turned on his side.

  Then Misia and Adelka came to fetch them. Michał no longer insisted on staying. The mill of the world had stopped, its mechanism was broken. They waded through the snow along the Highway to the forest.

  “Let me take one more look at Primeval,” asked Genowefa, but Michał pretended not to hear.

  THE TIME OF DIPPER THE DROWNED MAN

  Dipper the Drowned Man woke up and peeped out at the world’s surface. He saw that the world was rippling – the air was sailing by in great gusts, billowing and shooting into the sky. The water was ruffled and cloudy, and heat and fire were beating down on it. What had been above was now below, and what had been below was pushing its way above.

  The Drowned Man was prompted by curiosity and an urge to take action. He tried his strength and pulled a fog of mist and smoke from the river. Now the grey cloud went drifting after him along the Wola Road towards the village.

  By the Boskis’ fence he saw an emaciated dog. He leaned down to it without any intention. The dog whimpered in terror, tucked its tail under and ran away. This annoyed Dipper, so he sent the cloud of mist and smoke over the orchard and tried to lower it down the smoking chimneys, as he usually did, but now the chimneys weren’t warm. Dipper went around the Serafins’ house, and then he knew there was no one there. There was no one in Primeval. The noise of the barn doors set in motion by the wind expande
d in the air.

  Dipper wanted to romp and move about among all the human equipment, to make the world react to his presence. He wanted to control the air, stop the wind against his misty body, play with the shape of the water, beguile and frighten people, and startle animals. But the violent movements of air ceased, and everything became empty and silent.

  He stopped for a while and sensed somewhere in the forest the diffuse, feeble warmth that people exude. He was pleased and began to whirl. He went back along the Wola Road and frightened the same dog again. Low clouds were trailing across the sky, which gave the Drowned Man strength. There was no sun yet.

  Just by the forest something stopped him. He didn’t know what. He hesitated, then turned towards the river, not onto the priest’s meadows, but beyond, to Papiernia.

  The sparse pine forest was smashed and smoking. Huge holes gaped in the earth. The end of the world must have passed this way yesterday. In the tall grass lay hundreds of human bodies going cold. Their blood was steaming redness into the grey sky, until it began to go a crimson colour in the east.

  The Drowned Man could see something moving among all this lifelessness. Then the sun broke free of the fetters of the horizon and began to release the souls from the soldiers’ dead bodies.

  The souls were emerging from the bodies confused and stupefied. They flickered like shadows, like transparent balloons. Dipper the Drowned Man was almost as overjoyed as a live person. He headed into the sparse forest and tried to set the souls whirling, to dance with them, startle them and drag them after him. There was a huge number of them, hundreds or maybe thousands. They got up and wavered unsteadily above the ground. Dipper glided among them, snorting, stroking and whirling, as eager to play as a puppy, but the souls took no notice of him, as if he didn’t exist. They swayed for a while between the layers of morning wind, and then, like untied balloons, they soared upwards and disappeared.

  Dipper couldn’t understand that they were leaving, and that there was a place you could go to when you die. He tried to chase after them, but they were already subject to a different law from Dipper the Drowned Man’s law. Deaf and blind to his courtship, they were like tadpoles driven by instinct, knowing only one direction.

  The forest went white with them, then suddenly emptied, and once again Dipper the Drowned Man was alone. He was angry. He spun around and crashed into a tree. A frightened bird let out a shrill scream and blindly flew off towards the river.

  THE TIME OF MICHAŁ

  The Russians collected their dead from Papiernia and transported them on carts to the village. They dug a large hole in Cherubin’s field and buried the soldiers’ bodies there. They laid the officers to one side.

  Everyone who came back to Primeval went to watch this hurried burial with no priest, no words, and no flowers. Michał went, too, and incautiously let the gaze of the gloomy lieutenant rest on him. The gloomy lieutenant clapped Michał on the back and had the officers’ bodies taken to the Boskis’ house.

  “No, don’t dig here,” asked Michał. “Is there so little ground for your soldiers’ graves? Why in my daughter’s garden? Why are you pulling up the flower bulbs? Go to the graveyard, I’ll show you other places, too …”

  The gloomy lieutenant, always polite and courteous until now, pushed Michał aside, and one of the soldiers aimed a rifle at him. Michał moved away.

  “Where is Ivan?” Izydor asked the lieutenant.

  “Dead,” he said in Russian.

  “No,” said Izydor, and for a moment the lieutenant fixed his gaze on him.

  “Why not?”

  Izydor turned and ran away.

  The Russians buried eight officers in the garden under the bedroom window. They covered them all with earth, and once they had driven away, snow fell.

  From then on no one wanted to sleep in the bedroom overlooking the garden. Misia rolled up the eiderdowns and took them upstairs.

  In spring Michał nailed a cross together out of wood and erected it under the window. Then he carefully made rows in the earth with a stick and sowed snapdragons. The flowers grew lush and colourful, with their little mouths open to heaven.

  Towards the end of 1945, when the war was already over, a military jeep drove up to the house, and out got a Polish officer and a man in civilian clothes. They said they were going to exhume the officers. Then a truck full of soldiers appeared and a hayrack wagon, on which the bodies removed from the earth were laid. The earth and the snapdragons had sucked the blood and water out of them. Best preserved were the woollen uniforms, and it was they that held the decaying corpses together. The soldiers who shifted them onto the cart tied handkerchiefs over their mouths and noses.

  People from Primeval stood on the Highway and tried to see as much as possible over the fence, but when the cart set off for Jeszkotle, they withdrew in silence. Boldest of all were the hens – they bravely ran after the cart as it bounced on the stones and greedily devoured whatever fell from them to the ground.

  Michał vomited into the lilac bushes. He never put a hen’s egg in his mouth again.

  THE TIME OF GENOWEFA

  Genowefa’s body had frozen solid like a clay pot scorched in the embers. It was propped in a Bath chair. Now it was at the mercy of others. It was put to bed, washed, sat up, and taken out onto the porch.

  Genowefa’s body was one thing, and Genowefa was another. She was stuck inside it, trapped and deafened. She could only move the tips of her fingers and her face, but she could no longer smile or cry. Her words, hoarse and angular, fell from her mouth like pebbles. Words like these had no power. Sometimes she tried to scold Adelka, who was hitting Antek, but her granddaughter didn’t take much notice of her threats. Antek took refuge in his grandmother’s skirts, and Genowefa could do nothing to hide him or even hug him. She watched helplessly as the bigger, stronger Adelka pulled her brother’s hair, and she felt a burst of anger that immediately died away, however, because it had no chance of finding any sort of outlet.

  Misia talked to her mother a lot. She moved her chair from near the door to the warm stove tiles and prattled on. Genowefa didn’t listen very carefully. The things her daughter talked about bored her. She was less and less curious about who was left and who had perished, she didn’t care about the masses being said, Misia’s girlfriends from Jeszkotle, new ways of bottling peas, the radio news that Misia always commented on, her nonsensical doubts and questions. Genowefa preferred to focus on what Misia was doing and what was happening in the house. So she saw her daughter’s belly growing for the third time, the miniature snowfall of flour that fell from the pastry board to the floor as Misia kneaded dough for noodles, a fly drowning in the milk, a poker left on the hotplate that had gone red-hot, the hens trying to pull out bootlaces in the hall. This was the concrete, tangible life that was drifting away from her day by day. Genowefa saw that Misia couldn’t cope with the large house they had given her. So she dug a few sentences out of herself and persuaded her daughter to take on a girl to help. Misia brought home Ruta.

  Ruta had grown into a beautiful girl. Genowefa’s heart ached as she looked at her. She watched out for the moments when both of them, Misia and Ruta, were standing next to each other – then she compared them. And – had no one noticed? – they were so alike. Two versions of the same thing. One was smaller and darker, the other taller and fuller. One had chestnut-brown eyes and hair, the other’s were honey-coloured. Apart from that, everything was just the same. Or so it seemed to Genowefa.

  She watched Ruta washing the floors, shredding large heads of cabbage, and grating cheese in a mixing bowl. And the longer she looked at her, the more certain she was. Sometimes, when they were doing the laundry or cleaning the house, and Michał was busy, Misia told the children to take Granny to the forest. The children took the chair outside carefully, and then, past the lilac, once they were no longer visible from the house, they raced down the Highway, pushing the chair that carried Genowefa’s stiff, majestic body. They would leave her, with windswept hair a
nd a hand fallen helplessly over the armrest, while they ran into clearings looking for mushrooms or strawberries.

  On one such day, from the corner of her eye Genowefa saw Cornspike coming out of the forest and onto the Highway. Genowefa could not move her head, so she waited. Cornspike came up to her and curiously walked right round the chair. She knelt down before Genowefa and peered into her face. For a while they eyed each other. Cornspike no longer resembled the girl who had walked through the snow barefoot. She had become stout and even bigger. Her thick plaits were white now.

  “You switched my child for yours,” said Genowefa.

  Cornspike burst out laughing and took her lifeless hand in her warm palm.

  “You took the girl and left me the boy. Ruta is my daughter.”

  “All young women are the daughters of older women. Anyway, you don’t need daughters or sons any more.”

  “I’m paralysed. I can’t move.”

  Cornspike raised Genowefa’s lifeless hand and kissed it.

  “Get up and walk,” she said.

  “No,” whispered Genowefa and, without feeling her own movement, shook her head.

  Cornspike laughed and set off towards Primeval.

  After this encounter Genowefa lost the desire to speak. She just said “yes” or “no.” One time she heard Paweł whispering to Misia that the paralysis was attacking her mind, too. “Let them think that,” she thought. “The paralysis is attacking my mind, but even so I still exist somewhere.”