House of Day, House of Night

by Olga Tokarczuk

  don't have to struggle with anything or achieve anything. You

  don't have to worry about railway connections and timetables,

  you don't need to experience any thrills or disappointments.

  You can put yourself to one side - and that's when you see the

  most.

  She said something like that and fell silent. It surprised me,

  because Marta has never been further than Wambierzyce, Nowa

  Ruda and Watbrzych.

  Some of the peas were maggoty so we threw them into the

  grass. Sometimes I suspect that whatever Marta has said is completely different from what I have heard.

  Then we started chatting about all sorts of things - about

  Bobo's dogs, the invasion of slugs on the lettuce patch, and wild

  cherry juice. Marta kept leaving large gaps between sentences,

  and my words kept sticking in my throat. R. laughs at us vhenever he happens to overhear our conversation. He says we talk to each other as if we're asleep. Marta sometimes becomes animated if she thinks of a wig she made to order a good dozen years ago, or more. Then her fingers wake up and she demonstrates some special sort of plaiting, or an ingenious parting.

  This sort of conversation always runs out of steam eventually.

  and we go on sitting on her steps or on my terrace , on metal

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  0 I g a To k a r c z u k

  chairs that have started to rust from last year's rain. The silence

  that has sown itself between us grows up all around us, hungrily

  devouring our space. There's no air left to breathe. And the

  longer we stay silent, the more impossible it becomes to say

  anything at all, the more remote and less important all kinds of

  topics seem to be. This sort of silence is velvety, warm, dry and

  silky, nice to touch. But sometimes I've been afraid Marta might

  not feel the same way as me and might lash out at that silence of

  ours with a thoughtless 'Well, yes . . .' or 'That's how it is . . .' or

  even an innocent sigh. And then this worry starts to ruin my

  enjoyment of the silence, because without wanting to I become

  its sentry, and at the same time i ts prisoner, and I tense myself

  up, bristling in readiness for the moment when this smooth and

  wonderful atmosphere, so simple and natural, will become

  unbearable and finally come to an end. And then what shall we

  say to each other?

  But Marta always proves wiser than I. Without a sound she

  gets up and wanders off to her rhubarb patch, or to the wigs she

  keeps in cardboard boxes, and the mutual silence that we have

  cultivated together trails after her, growing even more intense.

  Then I'm left alone in the midst of it, two-dimensional and featureless, only half existing, as if in a drawn-out moment of revelation.

  C o e l a c a n t h

  The northern edge of the local forest is always in shadow. The

  snow lies there until April, as if held to the ground by suction a great white parasite. There are similar places in the mountains that the sun doesn't reach at all, or only at a certain time of year.

  Mana told me about some caves, niches and clefts in the rock,

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h 1

  45

  one of which is home to a primeval blind creature, a small, pure

  white lizard that lives there and never dies. I t does die, I replied,

  every creature has to die - maybe the species never changes, but

  each individual specimen must die. But I understand what Marta

  means, just as once upon a time as a child I thought the coelacanth lived for ever, that this so-called representative of an extinct species had eluded death, or maybe a single one had

  been chosen for immortality, to bear witness to the existence of

  its species for ever.

  G u i d e b o o k s o n P i e t n o

  Pietno appears in the guidebooks as a sort of anomaly, because it

  is definitely not a tourist attraction. For instance, in the wellknown Pink Guide to the Sudety Mountains it says that Pietno is the only village in Poland located in a spot where the sun

  doesn't shine from October to March, because to the east and

  south it is surrounded by the Suche Mountains, and to the west

  by one of the highest elevations of the Wlodzicki Hills. In the

  1949 Guide to the Mountains of Silesia it says: 'Pietno , a settlement situated to the north-west of Nowa Ruda, on Marcowski Stream. First mentioned in 1 743 (as Einsiedler) . Population in

  1778 - 57; in 1840 - 1 1 2; in 1933 - 92; after the war, in 194 7 -

  39. In 1 840 there were 2 1 houses, and the owner was Count von

  Goetzen. On the lower part of the stream a watermill was

  erected. After 1945 the settlement was partly abandoned. The

  village is located in a deep, picturesque valley. It is known for its

  unusual location, as a result of which the rays of the sun cannot

  reach it in the winter months.'

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  Ve l v e t fo o t

  The velvet foot is a mushroom that grows in winter. From

  October to April it lives on dead trees. It smells wonderful

  and tastes delicious. It's hard not to spot it, because it's as

  yellow as honey. But no one gathers mushrooms in winter.

  There's a general consensus that the mushroom-picking season

  is in the autumn, so the velvet foot is like a person born too

  late, in the wrong era, a person to whom everything seems

  dead and rigid; it lives at a time when the world is over and

  done with for its kind. All around it can see nothing but a

  gloomy winter landscape, and sometimes powdery snow

  covers its yellow caps in white crowns. It can see the remains

  of other fungi - king boletus coated in white, their stalks

  weakened by decay, fallen birch boletus, and shelf mushrooms

  soggy with damp.

  Agnieszka almost always comes for coffee when I'm making

  velvet foot croquettes, so I inevitably associate her with those

  winter mushrooms. She sits in the c hair that Mana is so fond

  of. Agnieszka lives up the hill from Pietno , and can see it from

  above in all its splendour and misery. She can see drunken

  men and dawdling children. She can see women shakily dragging wood down the hill - probably drunk too. She can hear dogs whining, cows mooing, jasiek Bobol's radio booming -

  only ever able to receive the one, local station - she can see a

  stream full of duck droppings, moulting cats, broken machinery, disused old pumps, and a murky shadow over the whole village. That's why Agnieszka has so much to say. For days on

  end she sits on a little bench in fron t of her house crocheting

  doilies and looking down on Pietno from above. She has a fullcolour, three-dimensional, panoramic view, far more interesting than satellite TV Besides, Agnieszka's husband is never at

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t 47

  home. He grazes his sheep God knows where , and in winter he

  works in the forest. And he drinks, like all of them. They have

  never been blessed with children, so Agnieszka is bound to

  talk a lot, whenever she finds someone willing to listen to her.

  If you do have children, your supply of words soon gets used

  up.

  But today she wasn't drawn to the subject of Pietno. She let

  her gaze glide past the frying-pan full of pancakes and took tiny

  sips at her coffee.

  'When I was still working at Blachobyt, those w
ere the days,'

  she said, and fell into a long silence. I knew she had been laid off

  several years ago.

  The Blachobyt enterprise used to organize annual outings for

  its workers. Agnieszka had once been on one, to Auschwitz. It

  was a nice trip, she said. On the coach the men drank vodka,

  while the women sang all the songs they knew, the whole way.

  Agnieszka would never forget Auschwitz. There was a shop

  there, not a large one, a grocer's, built out of breeze blocks.

  When they got out of the coach after the all-night journey, this

  shop had just opened. It turned out that they had a supply of

  cooking oil. In those days there was absolutely nothing in the

  shops - mustard and vinegar at best. And here they were sel ling

  oil, as much as you wanted, not one or two bottles each, mind,

  but as much as you wanted. So they all queued up and got the

  oil, as much as they wanted. Agnieszka got about ten bottles.

  They sold them to her. They didn't ask any questions, they didn't

  demand ration cards, they didn't count them. She had that oil for

  about two years, because how much oil can you use? It's only for

  chips, mushrooms and fish - you don't use oil for much else, do

  you? The oil from Auschwitz may have lasted for as much as

  three years, even.

  That was all she said .

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  The recipe for velvet foot croquettes is as follows:

  ten pancalzes

  half a lzilo of mushrooms

  one onion

  two slices of stale blacll bread

  salt, peppe1; nutmeg

  two tablespoons of breadcn1mbs

  half a tablespoon of margarine

  butter to flY the onions i n

  a tablespoon of sour cream

  half a glass of milk

  one egg

  Glaze the onion in butter. Then add the finely chopped

  mushrooms, season with salt and pepper and add a pinch

  of nutmeg. Fry for ten minutes. Meanwhile, soak the

  bread in milk, squeeze it out and blend it in the food

  processor. Add i t to the mushrooms with the egg and

  sour cream. Wrap the mixture in the pancakes, roll them

  in breadcrumbs and fry in margarine.

  O n b e i n g a m u s h ro o m

  If I weren't a person, I'd be a mushroom. An indifferent, insensitive mushroom with a cold, slimy skin, hard and soft at the same time. I would grow on fallen trees; I'd be murky and sinister, ever silent, and with my creeping mushroomy fingers I would suck the last drop of sunlight out of them. I would grow

  on things that had died. I would penetrate that deadness right

  through to the pure earth - there my mushroomy fingers would

  come to a stop. I would be smaller than the trees and bushes, but

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t

  49

  I would sprout up over blackberry patches. I would be

  ephemeral, but as a human being I am ephemeral anyway. I

  would have no interest in the sun, my gaze would not be drawn

  to it, and never again would I long for it to rise. I would yearn

  only for the damp. I would expose my body to the mist and rain ,

  I would catch the moist air in droplets. I would make no distinction between night and day, for why should I?

  I would have the same capacity as all mushrooms to hide

  myself from humans by confusing their timid minds.

  Mushrooms are hypnotists; they were given this property instead

  of claws, fast legs, teeth and intelligence. Mushroom pickers

  would dozily pass by above me with their eyes fixed on the

  colourful, twinkling images created by the sunligh t and the

  leaves. I would tangle their legs up in the forest litter and withered clumps of moss. For hours I would keep perfectly still on purpose, neither growing nor ageing, until I had reached the icy

  conviction that I have power not only over people, but also over

  time. I would only grow at the most important moments of the

  day and night - at dawn and at dusk, when everything else is

  busy waking up or falling asleep.

  I would be generous to all insect life; I would give away my

  body to snails and maggots. I would feel no fear, I would never

  be afraid of death. What is death, I would think - the only thing

  they can do to you is to tear you from the ground, slice you up,

  cook you and eat you.

  E g o d o r m i o e t c o r m e u m v i g i l a t

  'Marta, Marta, you take care of everyth ing,' said Vhatsisname to

  Marta when he met her on the road making channels with a

  stick for the water to drain away.

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  Then Whatsisname went on his way, pushing his bike down

  w :--lowa Ruda for cigareues. I saw them through the open

  window. Marta finished making her channels and picked her

  way downhill. The grass was already tall , just right for

  mowing. I thought I could detect Marta's smell all the way

  from my house - the smell of her old cardigan, her snow white

  hair, her thin, delicate skin. I t's the smell of an object that has

  been lying in the same place for a long time. That's why it's so

  noticeable in old houses. It's the smell of something that was

  once soft and pliable, but has now gone hard; it hasn't died, but

  has solidified - in fact, death is no longer a threat to it. I t's like

  a dab of jam that has stuck to the edge of a plate. It's the smell

  of sleep soaked into the bedclothes, the smell of loss o f consciousness - that's how your skin smells when they finally revive you with an injection , shake you and slap your face.

  That's how your breath smells too, when you have your face

  pressed to the window-pane and your breath comes bouncing

  off the glass.

  That's how old people smell. Marta is old, though not very

  old. If it were still the past, if I were as young as I was when I

  worked in the old people's ward, Marta would seem very old to

  me. She would be shu ffling about the hot, dry corridors clutching a plastic bag. Her nails would have grown cuticles for lack of activity.

  That afternoon we drove to Vambierzyce to see the carpenter someone from the village had recommended to me. After seeing to my business with him we went to the basilica. Marta

  had only been there once or twice a long time ago, despite

  living so nearby. She seemed captivated. She spent the longest

  time looking at the votive icons hung about in the naves,

  human gratitude turned into pictures, showing all kinds of misfortunes and happy endings. They provided dozens of liule

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t

  5 1

  case-histories o f illnesses, metamorphoses and conversions, as

  well as a parade of past fashions, with terse German captions evidence of the existence of miracles among cloisters full of shadows.

  On the steps we silently ate ice lollies, which made us feel

  cold, so to warm ourselves up and shake off the numbing effects

  of our visit to the basilica, we set off down the narrow little

  paths of the Way of the Cross. All of a sudden Marta joyfully

  pointed out one of the stations of the cross to me.

  On the cross hung a woman, a girl, in such a tight-fitting

  dress that her breasts looked naked beneath the paint. Her

  tresses curled exquisitely arou
nd her sad, rough face, as if the

  stone the face was carved from had weathered faster than the

  hair. One shoe was poking out from under her dress, while the

  other foot was bare; from this I recognized that the same figure

  hung in the little chapel on the road to Agnieszka's. But that

  one had a beard, so I had always thought it was Christ in an

  exceptionally long robe. Underneath was written 'Sane.

  Wilgefortis. Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat'. Marta said she

  was Holy Care.

  Then it began to rain, and the scent of fresh greenery filled the

  air. The little town was virtually empty. In the souvenir shop

  Marta bought herself a cut-price wooden box inscribed ·A

  Souvenir of Vambierzyce'. Among the booklets on the lives o f

  the saints for one new zloty I found what I was destined t o find

  that day: the life of Saint Kummernis, also known as Wilgcfortis,

  with no page numbers, no author's name, no year or place of

  publication, but on the cover, in the top right-hand corner someone had crossed out '30 groshys· and written ' 10.000 zlotys' , a reminder of the era of rapid inOation.

  5 2 O l g a To k a r c z u k

  The Life of Kummernis of Schonau, written with the aid of the

  Holy Spirit and of the Mother Superior of the Benedictine Order

  at Kloster by Paschalis, monk

  I. As I set out to write the life of Kummernis I call upon the Holy

  Spirit living within her to grant me, as it did her, rare virtues and to

  bestow on me the mercy of a martyr's death, and give me the eloquence and litheness of mind to relate the events of her life efficiently and in order, and the ability to put them into words. For I am a

  simple, uneducated man; moreover I have gone astray, and the realm

  of the word is not my natural element. Therefore I beg forgiveness for

  my simplicity, perhaps naivety, and boldness too in undertaking the

  task of describing the life and death of such a great and unusual

  person, worthy of an equally great and unusual pen. The aim of my

  work is honest - I wish to bear witness to the truth and to record

  events that happened many years before I appeared on earth, but