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HOUSE OF DAY,
HOUSE OF NIGH T
Writings from an Unbound Europe
GENERAL EDITOR
Andrew Wachtel
EDITORIAL BOARD
Clare Cavanagh
Michael Henry Heim
Roman Koropeckyj
Ilya Kurik
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OLGA TOKARCZUK
HOUSE OF
DAY,
HOUSE OF
NICiHT
Translated from the Pol1sh
by Antonia Lloyd-Jones
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
PRESS
EVANSTON,
ILLINOIS
Northwestern University Press
Evanston, Illinois 60208-4210
Northwestern University Press edition published 2003. Copyright © 1988, 2002 by
Olga Tokarczuk. Translation copyright © 2002 by Antonia Lloyd-Jones. Dom dzienny.
dom nomy first published in Poland by Wydawnicrwo Ruta 1998. T his translation first
published in Great Britain by Granta Books 2002. All rights reserved.
Printed in Canada
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 I
ISBN 0-8101-1869-6 (cloth)
ISBN o-8101-1892-0 (paper)
Typeset by M Rules
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data are available from
the Library of Congress.
T he paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z}9.48-1992.
Translator's note
The book is set in south-west Poland, in the region known as
Silesia. This was part of the German Reich until 1945, when at
the Yal ta and Potsdam conferences the Allies agreed to move the
borders of Poland westwards. Many Polish citizens were transported from the land lost to the east (annexed by the USSR) and resettled in formerly German territory to the west, where they
were given the homes and property of evacuated Germans.
Readers are advised that some of the recipes in this book should
carry the health warning, 'Don't try this at home ! '
Your house is your larger body.
I t grows in the sun and sleeps in the stillness of the night;
and it is not dreamless.
Does not your house dream? And dreaming, leave the
city for grove or hilltop?
GIBRAN
Th e d re a m
The first night I had a dream. I dreamed I was pure sight, without a body or a name. I was suspended high above a valley at some unde fined point from which I could see everything. I
could move around my field of vision, yet remain in the same
place. It seemed as if the world below was yielding to me as I
looked at it, constantly moving towards me, and then away, so
first I could see everything, then only tiny details.
I could see a valley with a house standing in the middle of it,
but it wasn't my house, or my valley, because nothing belonged
to me. I didn't even belong to myself. There was no such thing as
T. Yet I could see the circular line of the horizon enclosing the
valley on all sides. I could see a turbulent stream flowing down
between the hills. I could see trees set deep into the ground like
huge, one-legged creatures. The stillness of what I could see
was only on the surface. Whenever I wished , I could look
through this surface to what lay underneath. Under the bark of
trees I could see rivulets of water, streams of sap flowing up and
down the trunk. Under the roof of the house I could see the
bodies of people asleep, and their stillness, too, was only superficial - their hearts were beating gently, their blood was rippling in their veins, I could even see their dreams, fragments of images
flashing inside their heads. In their tangled dreanHhoughts I
could see myself (this was when I discovered the strange truth.
that I was purely vision, without any values or emotions). Then
I discovered that I could see through time as wcil, and that just
2
O l g a Tok a rcz u k
as 1 could change my point o f view in space, so I could change
it in time, too. I was like the cursor on a computer screen navigating of its own accord, or at least oblivious of the hand that is moving it.
I seemed to dream like this for an eternity. There was no
before, or after, no sense of anticipation, because there was nothing to gain or lose. The night would never end. Nothing would happen. Even time would never change what I could see. I went
on staring, not noticing anything new or forgetting anything I
had seen.
M a r t a
When we moved in three years ago, we spent the whole of the
first day inspecting our property. Our gumboots kept sinking
into the reddish mud. It stained our hands, and when we washed
them the water ran red. R. examined the trees in the orchard
again. They were old, bushy and rambling in all directions. Trees
like that won't bear much fruit. The orchard stretched down to
the forest, stopping at a dark wall of spruces, standing there like
soldiers. In the afternoon the sleet began to fall again. Water collected in pools on the clay-clogged earth, creating streamlets and rills that flowed straight down to the house, seeping into the
walls and disappearing somewhere under the foundations.
Worried by the constant trickling sound, we went down into the
cellar with a candle. Water was pouring down the stone steps,
washing over the stone floor and flowing out again into the
pond. We realized that the house had been unwisely built on an
underground river, and it was too late to do anything about it.
The only option was to get used to the relentless murmur of
water disturbing our dreams.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
3
There was a second river outside - a stream full of mud-red
water that blindly washed away at the roots of the trees before
vanishing into the forest.
From the window of the main room we can see Marta's house.
Ever since I've know her, I have wondered who Marta really is.
She's always giving me a different version of the facts about herself - even the year of her birth changes. For me and R. Mana only ever exists in the summer; in winter she disappears, like
everything else around here. She is small, her hair is white as
snow, and some of her teeth are missing. Her skin is wrinkled,
dry and warm. I know this, because we have sometimes greeted
each other with a kiss or an awkward hug, and I have caught her
smell - of damp forced to dry out quickly. This smell lingers for
ever, it can't be got rid of. Clothing that has got wet in the rain
should be washed, my mother used to say, but then she was
always doing a lot of unnecessary laundry. She used to take
clean, starched sheets out of the wardrobe and throw them in the
washing-machine, as if not using them made them just as dirty
as using them. The smell of damp is usually unpleasant, bu
t on
Marta's clothes and skin it smells nice and familiar. If Mana's
around, everything's in its place and in perfect order.
She carne by on our second evening. First we drank tea, then
last year's rosehip wine, thick and dark, so sweet it makes you
feel dizzy at the first gulp. I was unpacking books. Marta held
her glass in both hands and watched without curiosity. It
occurred to me at the time that perhaps she didn't know how to
read. It was possible, as she was old enough to have missed out
on state education. I have noticed since that letters simply don't
hold her attention, but I have never asked her about it.
The dogs were excited and kept coming in and out of the
house, bringing the scent of winter and wind on their fur. As
soon as they had warmed up in front of the kitchen fire, they felt
4
O l g a To k a rcz u k
the lure of the garden again. Mana stroked their backs with her
long, bony fingers, telling them how beautiful they were. She
spoke only to the dogs all evening. I watched her out of the
corner of my eye as I arranged the books on wooden shelves. A
lamp lit up the crown of her head, from which fell a tuft of thin
white hair, tied at the nape of her neck into a little pigtail.
I ha'e such a lot of memories, but I can't remember the first
time I saw Marta. I remember all my first encounters with the
people who have subsequently become important to me: I can
remember whether the sun was shining and what they were
wearing (R.'s funny East German boots , for instance) , I can
remember how things smelled and tasted, and what the air was
like - whether it was crisp and sharp, or cool and smooth as
butter. That's what first impressions are made of- these things
get recorded somewhere in a detached, primitive part of the
brain and can never be forgotten. But even so, I can't remember
my first encounter with Marta.
It must have been early spring - that's when everything starts
here. It must have been in this rugged part of the valley, because
Marta never goes further afield on her own. There must have
been a smell of water and melted snow, and she must have been
wearing that grey cardigan with the loose buttonholes.
I've never known much about Marta, only what she has told
me herself. I have had to guess most of it, and I've been aware of
fantasizing about her, of inventing for her an entire past and
present. Whenever I've asked her to tell me something about
herself, about when she was young, how something that appears
obvious now looked then, she has changed the subject, turned
to face the window or simply fallen silent and concentrated on
chopping up a cabbage or plaiting the hair that she uses to
make wigs. It's not as if she has seemed reluctant to talk, but just
as if she simply has nothing to say about herself, as if she has no
H o u s e o f Da y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
5
history. She only likes to talk about other people - some I might
have seen once or twice by chance, others I may never have seen
at all, and never could, because they lived too long ago. She also
likes to talk about people who never actually existed - I have
since found proof that Marta likes to invent things - and about
the places where she has chosen to plant these people. I've
known her to talk for hours, until I've had enough and find an
excuse lO interrupt her politely and go home across the green.
Sometimes she breaks off these narratives of hers suddenly, for
no reason, and doesn't return to the subject for weeks, until
one day out of the blue she says: 'You remember how I was
telling you . . .
' 'Yes, I remember.' 'Well, what happened next
was . . .' and she carries on with some tired old story, while I'm
racking my brains to remember who she's talking about and
where she broke off. Oddly, it's never the actual story that comes
back to me, but the memory of Marta telling it, a small figure,
with her round shoulders in the cardigan with the loose buttonholes and her bony fingers. Did she tell this one while staring straight ahead as we were driving to Wambierzyce to
order planks, or was it the time we were picking camomile in
Bobol's field? I've never been able lO reconstruct the story itself,
but always remember exactly when and where it was first rooted
within me, as if these stories are unreal somehow, nothing but
fantasies that exist only within our two heads. Sometimes she
breaks off in mid-story just as abruptly as she started ; a fork falls
to the floor with a metallic clang, shattering the last sentence,
and the next word comes to a halt on her lips. Or our neighbour, Whatsisname, comes in without knocking, as he always does, stamping his great big boots on the doorstep and trail ing
water, dew, mud - whatever there is outside - behind him, and
once he's around he makes so much noise that it's impossible to
have any sort of conversation.
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O l g a To k a rc z u k
Many of the things Marta has told me have not stayed in my
memory, but have just left a vague impression, like mustard on
t he edge of a plate after the food has been eaten. Odd scenes,
funny or frightening, and odd images torn out of context ha,·e
remained - children catching trout from a stream with their bare
hands, for instance. I don't know why I have stored this kind of
detail, while forgetting the rest of the story. It must have made
some sort of sense - it was a story, after all, with a beginning and
an end - but I remember nothing but the pips, which my
memory - quite rightly - has had to spit out later on.
It's not that I do nothing but listen. Sometimes I talk to her,
too. Once early on I told her I was afraid of dying, not of death
in general, but of the actual moment when I would no longer be
able to put anything off till later, and that this fear always comes
over me when it's dark, never in the daytime, and goes on for
several awful moments, like an epileptic fit. I immediately felt
embarrassed at having made this rather abrupt confession. That
time it was me who tried to change the subject.
Marta is not a therapist at heart. She doesn't keep asking questions, she won't suddenly abandon the washing up to sit down beside me and pat me on the back. She doesn't try, as others do,
to work out the chronological order of important events by
asking: 'When did it start?' Even Jesus couldn't have resisted
asking the madman he was about to heal, 'So when did it start?'
But in fact the most important thing is what's actually going on
here and now, right before your eyes, and questions about the
beginning and end tell you nothing worth knowing.
Sometimes I have thought Marta wasn't listening or that she
lacked sensitivity, like a lifeless cut-down tree, because when I've
told her something meaningful the kitchen utensils have not
stopped clattering, nor have her movements lost any of their
mechanical fluency. She has even seemed cruel somehow, not just
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
7
once or twice but often - like when she faLtens up those chickens
of hers, then kills and devours them in three days fiat each autumn.
I have failed to understand Marta in the past, and I don't
understand her now. But why should I? What would I get from
uncovering her motives, or the sources of her tales? What would
I gain from her life story, i f indeed she has a life story to speak
of? Maybe there are people with no life story, with no past or
future, who are different, always in the present?
W h a t s i s n a m e
For the past few evenings, just after the television news, our
neighbour Whatsisname has come by. Each time R. has warmed
up some wine, sprinkled it with cinnamon and thrown in some
cloves, and each time Whatsisname has talked about the winter,
because apparently the story of the winter has to be told before
the summer can come. It's always the same story - of how Marek
Marek hanged himself.
We've heard this story from other people too, but yesterday
and the day before we heard it from Whatsisname. The second
time he forgot he had told it already and started all over again
from the beginning, which was a question - why weren't we at
the funeral ? We couldn't come, we said , because it was in
January when we were away, and we simply couldn't get here. It
was snowing and the cars wouldn't start, their batteries were fiat.
The road beyond Jedlina was snowed up and all the buses were
stuck in wretched traffic jams.
Marek Marek lived in the cottage with the tin roof. Last
autumn his mare kept coming into our orchard to cat the windfall apples. She would dig them out from under the rotting leaves, staring at us nonchalantly. ironically even, R. said.
8
O l g a To k a r c z uk
One afternoon as darkness was starting to fall Vhatsisname
was on his way back from Nowa Ruda. He noticed that the door
of Marek Marek's house was slightly ajar, just as it had been that
morning, so he leaned his bike against a wall and looked in
through the window. He saw him at once. He was half hanging,
half lying by the door, twisted and undoubtedly dead.
Vhatsisname shaded his eyes with his hand to see better. Marek
Marek's face was livid, his tongue was sticking out and his eyes
House of Day, House of Night Page 1
