House of Day, House of Night

by Olga Tokarczuk

  for several days afterwards and I threw away the bones she

  brought for my dogs. I thought an evil demon must have got into

  her - she bought no meat all summer and ate only vegetables.

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  87

  Her chickens were tame , they weren't afraid of people, they

  would eat cake crumbs from your hand and look you in the

  eye. For three days in a row Marta made broth out of them,

  after roasting the meat and gnawing the bones right down to

  the last sinew. I found it hard to believe that this skinny old

  woman had eaten three whole chickens in the course of three

  days.

  She was here at my window a minute ago. 'I've bought some

  hens,' she said .

  'I see,' I muttered.

  'What are you doing?' she asked, trying to make peace.

  Tm busy.'

  For a while she was silent. I pressed 'Save'.

  That's taking a long time,' she said. I could hear her walking

  round to the terrace; any minute now she'd come up the steps.

  I could hear her wiping her shoes very carefully. A moment later

  I could see her sitting at the round table in the hall . She was

  wearing an absurd baseball cap and smiling.

  'Isn't that a waste of time?' she said, and then showed me the

  young hens and the cockerel in her basket.

  I suspect that Marta has trouble sleeping; maybe that's why

  she keeps quiet about her dreams. She told me that her ent ire

  night's sleep consists of a two-hour nap in the evening, as if her

  body doesn't feel tired and only reacts to darkness out of habit.

  After that she wakes up, fully rested, ligh ts the lamp in the

  kitchen, or at least a candle, and stares into its name. And sometimes, when the night is clear, she sits in the dark and watches the moon from her kitchen window. It never looks quite the

  same, she told me. It's always different, rising in a different spot

  and taking di fferent routes round the tops of the spruce trees .

  On clear nights Marta likes to go out into the road, cross it ncar

  the wayside shrine and then go into the mountain pas�. below

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  the Olbrichts' windmill, which is now nothing but a heap of

  stones and a well. From there she can see the silver-edged mountains and valleys in the distance, dotted with the lights of houses. Over Nowa Ruda and distant Klodzko hangs a yellow

  glow, most visible when the sky is clouded over. The towns are

  shining, as if appealing for help.

  But the most astounding thing Marta sees is the sleep of the

  thousands of people who lie side by side, plunged in experimental death, in towns and villages, along highways, at border crossings, in mountain shelters, hospitals and orphanages, in

  Klodzko and Nowa Ruda, and further afield, over an area that

  you can't see or even get a sense of. Amid their own familiar

  smell or in strange beds - the bunks in workers' hostels, or the

  divan beds in cluttered bachelor flats - behind the partitions

  separating sleeping space from living space, in each house lie

  warm , inert bodies with their arms spread wide, or huddled

  together, with flickering eyelids, beneath which their eyes dart

  restlessly. She hears the music of breathing and snoring and

  strange words blurted out, sees the involuntary dance of feet,

  the movements of bodies roaming far from their duvets.

  Meanwhile their minds see images, but they aren't in control of

  themselves, those millions of people - half of humanity - who

  are asleep at any moment in time, while the other half is awake.

  While some are waking up, others are lying down, thus keeping

  the world in balance. One n ight without sleep and people's

  thoughts would start to smoulder, the letters in the world's

  newspapers would get muddled up, speech would make no

  sense and people would try to push it back into their mouths.

  Marta knows that no moment on earth can be bright and intense

  without being balanced on the other side of the planet by a

  dark, dull moment.

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  D r e a m s

  Vhen dreams repeat e·ents from the past, when they turn them

  into images, churn them up and sift them through a web of

  meanings, I start to fear that the past, j ust like the future, will

  remain obscure and inscrutable for ever. The fact that I haw

  experienced something doesn't mean I ha·e unde rstood it.

  Supposing it turned out that something I thought I knew about

  and had always regarded as fixed and certain may have happened for a completely different reason and in a way I had never suspected. That it had led me to the wrong conclusion.

  and I had failed to go in the right direction, because I was blind.

  or asleep. If that might be true of my past, what hope is there

  for my present?

  The group of people I joined on the Internet ha-e shown me

  that nothing connects us in the same way as dreams. \'e all

  dream the same things in a peculiarly similar. muddled way.

  These dreams are both our personal property, and everyone

  else's. That's why dreams have no authors, that's why we're so

  willing to record them on the Internet in all sorts of languages,

  signing them with just an initial, a first name or a symbol. All

  over the world, wherever people are sleeping, small , jumbled

  worlds are flaring up in their heads, growing over reality like

  scar tissue. There might be experts who know what each of

  them means individually, but no one knows what they all mean

  collectively.

  A d re a m fro m t h e I n t e r n e t

  I'm in a gloomy, old town, full of narrow tenements. I'm mn·stigating a peculiar phenomenon, namely that there a rc round

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  holes in the walls of the houses and no one knows how they got

  there. I'm studying the holes in walls, wire netting, fences and

  window-panes, and I discover that they are clearly aligned - it's

  as if there's a tunnel through the objects, as if something flew

  along making holes in whatever came into its path. But I don't

  try to establish what it was. I'm simply fascinated by the trajectory of its flight. At first it looks to me as if this thing flew down from the sky, went close to the ground and flew back up into the

  sky again. But the evidence is indisputable - it must actually

  have flown out from underground and disappeared into the sky.

  The objects aren't particularly bothered by the fact that they're

  full of holes.

  T h i n g s fo rg o t t e n

  l went to Marta's and hacked down the nettles along the path to

  the stream for her. She came toddling after me with her arms

  folded, saying that there were all sorts of creatures God had forgotten to create.

  The wodger, for instance,' I said. 'It would have had a hard

  shell like a tortoise, but with long legs and strong, crushing

  teeth. It would have gone along the stream gobbling up all the

  dirt, slime and dead branches, even the rubbish that the water

  brings down from the vil lage.'

  We began to think up all the animals that God for some

  reason or other had never created. There
were so many birds and

  animals that He had left out. Finally Marta said what she missed

  most was that large, sluggish creature that sits at the crossroads

  at night. She didn't say what it was called.

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  T h e G e r m a n s

  Early this summer the Germans began to appear in the meadows. Their grizzled heads came Ooating by on a sea of grass, and their wire glasses glit tered gaily in the sunshine.

  Whatsisname said that you can recognize Germans by t heir

  shoes, which are clean and white. Ve don't take care of our

  shoes, they're scruffy and always made of dark material, or else

  we wear gumboots, rubber farm boots. Our shoes are made of

  imitation leather, garish black-and-white counterfeits of popular brands. They're permanently muddy because of the soggy, red earth, and misshapen from being repeatedly soaked and

  dried out again.

  Every year the Germans come pouring out of coaches that

  park timidly on the hard shoulder, as if trying to be inconspicuous. They walk about in small groups or pairs, most often pairs, a man and a woman, as if looking for a spot to make love. They

  take photos of empty spaces, which many people find puzzling.

  Why don't they take pictures of the new bus stop or the new

  church roof, instead of empty spaces overgrown with grass? Vc

  have often treated them to tea and cakes. They never sit down or

  ask for more . They just finish their tea and are off. We feel

  embarrassed if they try to press a few marks into our hands.

  We're afraid we must look like savages, living as we do among

  eternal repairs, with Oaking plaster on the walls and the rotten

  step on the terrace stairs.

  Wherever the Germans go, they always end up at the shop,

  where small children arc waiting for them, holding out thei r

  hands for sweets. Some of them resent th is and there·s always

  some unpleasantness. During those few minu tes when the

  Germans are handing out sweets, a patriotic feel ing fi lls the air

  and everything goes red and white, as i f the national flag, worn

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  thin as gauze, were floating on high, and, despite the sweets,

  we're actually aware of being Poles.

  Some of the Germans come again and again. Some of them

  have even invited people from the village to the Reich (only one

  or two, mainly those who take care of the German graves) and

  arranged jobs for them.

  One year an old couple turned up on our land and showed us

  where houses that no longer existed had stood. Afterwards we

  sent each other Christmas cards. They reassured us that the

  Frost family was no longer interested in our house.

  'Why should anyone be interested in our house?' I asked

  Marta resentfully.

  'Because they built it,' she replied.

  One evening, as we were clearing the empty teacups and

  plates from the terrace, Marta said that the most important

  human duty is to save things that are falling into decay, rather

  than create new ones.

  P e t e r D i e t e r

  As Peter Dieter and his wife Erika crossed the border, a ladybird

  landed on Peter's hand. He inspected it closely and found that it

  had seven spots. He was pleased.

  'That's a sign of welcome,' he said.

  They drove along a strange stretch of motorway, with girls in

  short, tight little skirts standing on either side of it waving at the

  cars.

  In the evening they reached Vrodaw, and Peter was amazed

  to find that he recognized the place - except that it all seemed

  darker and smaller, as if they were on the inside of a shabby photograph. At the hotel he had to take his pills before bed, because

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  his heartbeat felt irregular, as though the space between each

  beat were going to last for ever.

  'We've come here too late,' said Erika solemnly and sat down

  on the bed. 'We're too old for excitement. Look how swollen my

  legs are.'

  Next day they looked round Wrodaw: it was the same as all

  the other cities they had seen in their lives. Cities in decline,

  cities on the up, cities sloping down towards rivers, cities with

  deep foundations and cities built on sand, fragile as cobwebs.

  Ruined, deserted cities and cities rebuilt on top of cemeteries,

  where people live as if they were dead. Cities divided in half, balancing on a single bridge, like a stone fulcrum.

  Then they reached the mountains. First came Karpacz, which

  was ful l of souvenir kiosks, then Szklarska Porttba, which Peter

  insisted on calling Schreiberhau, as if afraid to tackle the new

  Polish name. But in fact all they could think of was finally getting to Neurode and G latz, and whether they would manage to see everything.

  Peter wanted to see his village again, and Erika wanted to sec

  Peter looking at it. She thought it would finally help her to

  understand him fully, from start to finish, with all his sadnesses,

  laconic answers to her questions, and sudden changes of mood

  that so worried her - or even those stubborn games of patience,

  all the time he wasted on that sort of nonsense, his dangerous

  way of overtaking on the motorway, and all the other strange

  things about him that forty years of married life had done nothing to change.

  They stopped at a country inn where all the signs of welcome, warning and information were in German. Before breakfast Peter was u p and about in front of the house. I t "·as

  May, and the sow thistles were in bloom much later than on the

  plains. He could see his mountains, like mist-wreathed. ltquid

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  lines on the horizon. He sniffed the air. The smell, rather than

  the view, released an avalanche of images, like an over-exposed

  film, torn and out of focus, with no sound, point or plot.

  They set off after a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs. At first the

  road led downhill, then gently up, twisting and turning until

  they had entirely lost their sense of direction. They passed villages sprawled along the slopes, large and small houses, and some mysterious streams that were actually all the same little

  river. Each village had its own valley, and lay there like chocolates in the velvety hollows.

  The worst moment that day was when Peter didn't recognize

  his own village. It had shrunk to the size of a hamlet, with

  houses, backyards, lanes and bridges missing. Only a skeleton of

  the original village remained. They left the car in front of a padlocked church, behind which Peter's home had once stood among the lime trees.

  He sniffed around the place, and again that strange film of the

  past started playing in his head. He found that he could set it off

  anywhere - in the bar by the petrol station, in the underground,

  on holiday in Spain or at the shopping centre. Maybe elsewhere

  the adored film would be clearer, because it wouldn't be interrupted by the scenes before his eyes.

  They wandered along a narrow, well-trodden path and looked

  down from the hilltop at the skeleton village, with i ts few

  remaining houses, tiny little gardens and tremendous lime trees.

  The whole scene was full of life - people were wa
lking along

  driving cows, dogs were running about, a man burst into sudden

  laughter, a car tooted its horn, higher up a man with a bucket

  waved to them, smoke from the chimneys drifted into the sky,

  and birds new blithely westwards.

  They sat down on the grass by the roadside and ate some

  crisps. Erika peeped at his face, afraid his eyes might be damp or

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  his chin shuddering, in which case she would have put down

  her bag of crisps and embraced him. But he looked as if he were

  watching television .

  'You go on alone,' she said, then, 'Look how swollen mr legs

  are,' which was beginning to sound like a refrain. He didn't answer.

  'We've come too late. I'm old and I haven't the strength to go

  on up the hill. I'm going back to the car. I'll wait for you there.'

  She stroked his hand gently and turned away. She caught his

  final remark, 'Give me two, three hours maybe.' She felt sad

  Peter Dieter walked at snail's pace, staring at the stones and

  the wild rose bushes, already in bud. Every few dozen metres he

  stopped and caught his breath while he looked at the leaves and

  plants, and the slender-stalked fungi that were slowly eating

  away at the fallen trees.

  The road went through fallow land, then into a spruce forest.

  When the forest came to an end, Peter finally caught sight of the

  mountain panorama that he had carried inside him all this time.

  On the way up he only looked round behind him once, because

  he was afraid of ruining the view by staring at it, like valuable

  stamps that lose their shape and colour if you look at them too

  often . But once he was on the crest he stopped and turned right

  round, savouring the scenery and drinking it in. He had seen

  mountains the world over, and had always compared them with

  these , but none had ever seemed as beautiful. They were either

  too big and imposing, or too modest, too wild, dark and forested

  like the Schwarzwald, or too bright and domesticated like the

  Pyrenees. He got out his camera and used it to pin down the

  view. Snap - the scattered village buildings. Snap - the clark

  spruce forests, full of black shadows. Snap - the thread of a

  stream. Snap - the yellow rapeseed fields on the Czech side of