House of Day, House of Night

by Olga Tokarczuk

  one missed him - he was of absolutely no use at all. All around

  lived people who had not discovered books, who, if they ever

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  had a pile of them to hand that included Plato, Aeschylus and

  Kant, by some miracle would always find The Mushroom Picller's

  Handbooll or One Hundred Potato Recipes among them.

  The only thing with rhythm on the streets of that town devoid

  of all wisdom was a tuneful little ditty the children used to chant

  beneath his windows: 'Old man Virgil taught his kids to read,

  Tons of 'em he had, a hundred and forty three.'

  After that the Latin language seemed to him too heavy and

  uninspired, turned into nonsense by religious associations.

  That was why he preferred Greek. He missed it, because at the

  secondary school he could only teach Latin.

  Whenever his marking was going badly, he would reach

  despairingly for Plato, whom he still hoped to translate beuer

  than anyone else had done. He even felt as if this was his real

  language - the beautiful, sonorous Greek words reminded him

  of harmonious geometric shapes. He would exchange them for

  Polish words, which weren't as shapely, because they were

  ambiguous, with prefixes that unexpectedly changed the whole

  meaning. God, if he existed, would have spoken in Greek.

  He liked to imagine Plato and his friends holding their conversations, those four or five men semi-recumbent on stone couches. Naked shoulders, skin that, though no longer young, is

  still smooth, healthy and golden; the sunlight glinting on a tunic

  fastened with a clasp, a hand holding a wine-cup slight ly raised

  aloft, salt-and-pepper hair cut short on the temples - that's how he

  imagined the older man. The two younger would have dark hair,

  dark eyes and full lips. One of them is Phaedrus, thought Ergo

  Sum. A fourth man sits up to speak, beating out the rhythm of his

  statement in the air with one hand. A young boy pours wine, and

  the plates are full of grapes and olives, alt hough Ergo Sum was

  never quite sure what olives looked like. Judging fmm the word

  itself, they had to he smooth and springy, t heir rich juice pouring

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  on to your lips as soon as your teeth bite into the skin. The sun

  warms the stone pathways and dries out every stray drop of water.

  There's no word for fog, snow is a myth that lurks in tales of the

  night, but no one believes in it. Water appears only as Oceanus or

  as vine. The sky is one great rainbow of the gods.

  From the window Ergo Sum could see a dark courtyard with

  houses on three sides, sheltered on the fourth by a wooded hillside. To see the sky he had to put his face to the glass and stare straight up. Most often it was pearly grey.

  His flat was in an old, low apartment building by the river. It

  consisted of a kitchen, a bathroom paved with azure tiles, two

  larger rooms and a glazed veranda, which he didn't know what to

  do with. In winter he closed it off and insulated the door with

  rags. In summer he did exercises there while listening to the

  early morning radio broadcast before going to school. An ironingboard stood there too, that his housekeeper used to press his immaculate white shirts, and an old German sewing-machine. He

  thought of growing some flowers there in pots, like he had seen

  on other verandas, but he didn't know how to go about it. An old

  bachelor and his flowers. Ergo Sum hoped that one day he would

  get married, and then the flat would be just the right size - it was

  too big for him alone. Once a week M rs Lisowska cleaned it. She

  polished the parquet floors until they shone and baked him a

  tart - always the same kind, all that changed was the fruit. In

  winter and autumn it was apple, in summer blackberry or raspberry. In spring it had to be rhubarb bought in bunches at the market. Ergo Sum had come to associate the smell of floor polish

  with the smell of freshly baked pastry. He would make himself a

  pot of tea and reach for a book from the Plato shelf, the most

  important thing in the house, and start to read.

  What luxury, what bliss, to be sitting in his nice cool home,

  drinking tea, nibbling fruit tart and reading. He enjoyed chewing

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  over the long sentences, relishing their meaning, suddenly discovering a deeper meaning, mulling it over and letting himself drift off, staring at the rectangular window-pane. The tea would

  go cold in the nne china cup; a lacy wisp of steam would rise

  above it and vanish in the air, leaving behind just a hint of

  flavour. The little strings of letters on the white page provided a

  refuge for his eyes, his intellect, his whole being, and made the

  world safe and accessible. Crumbs lay scattered on the tablecloth, and his teeth tapped gently against the china cup. His mouth would start to salivate, because wisdom is as appetizing

  as pastry, as reviving as tea.

  At his bedside he had The Lives of the Philosophers by Diogenes

  Laertius, which served as his reading matter last thing at night,

  and sometimes he reached for it as and when ; if he were feeling

  tired of marking tests or the monotonous gabbling of the radio,

  he'd open it at random and read about heroes, outstanding and

  unusual people. The great Thales, who first had the courage to

  speak of the immortality of the soul , Pherecides, the teacher of

  Pythagoras, Socrates and his daemon, who predicted his glorious

  death to him, Epicurus ('It is impossible to live a pleasant life

  without living wisely'), Empedocles ('What combines the four

  elemen ts is Love') and the extraordinary Archemanes of

  Metapontum, author of On the Duality of Things (which explains

  how everything has its dual nature), but above all Plato.

  And then a strange thing happened. He knew Plato almost by

  heart, but there was one fragment that he had somehow never

  noticed. In the eighth book of The Republic he suddenly discovered

  a sentence that startled him. He stopped dead as he read it and

  absorbed its meaning: 'He who has tasted human entrails must

  become a wolf.' Yes, that's exactly what it said. Ergo Sum stood up.

  went across into the kitchen, looked out of the window at the

  apartment house opposite and thought he had already managed

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  to forget about the strange sentence. He switched on the radio,

  which poured out some quite indifferent music. He rummaged in

  a drawer, tore a leaf from the calendar, and picked bits of tan from

  between his teeth with a broken matchstick, but it was no good.

  The first crystals of frost had appeared in his mind and were now

  spreading in all directions, freezing everything in their path. The

  kitchen was still the same, so was the view, and the scent of the tea

  was still hanging in the air; the flies were fondly fingering the

  crumbs with their proboscises, but that terrible, empty landscape

  of eternal winter had already taken over in his mind - nothing but

  a white, frozen expanse all around, sharp edges, the cold and the

  sound of snow crunching underfoot.


  He checked the sentence several times a day in case he had

  imagined it - the subconscious loves to play tricks. Then he

  checked it in other editions, other copies, in translations into

  Polish, Russian and German. The sentence was there all right,

  and Plato had written it, so i t was true.

  How strange some thoughts are, how they expand like leavened pastry (all these culinary associations - how low I have fallen, thought Ergo Sum). That one sentence, that one image

  now filled his life. He took leave, although there were final

  exams going on, and spent his time sitting in an armchair. In the

  evenings he began to sweat and his skin became rough. He was

  afraid to look at his hands and was awoken by the chattering of

  his own teeth, until one night a full moon appeared briefly above

  the houses, and Ergo Sum began to howl. He crammed his hand

  in his mouth and dug his nails into his cheeks, but it was no

  use - he went on howling inside and, strangely, it brought him

  complete physical relief, as if he had been holding his breath for

  a long time and had breathed out at last.

  He only suffered when he got agitated and refused to give in

  to the wolf, when he was at an interim stage - no longer a

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  person, a classicist with a funny name, but not yet an animal. It

  was hellishly painful. H is whole body ached, every last little

  bone and every muscle, on top of which he felt such terrible fear

  that death seemed nothing but a mild ache in comparison . This

  was too much for Ergo Sum to withstand, and no wonder, so all

  of a sudden he let go of this whole convulsive effort to cling on

  to life; in one single moment he gave up the fight, sank to the

  very bottom of himself and lay there, breathing heavily. He didn't

  know how it had happened, but the wolf now had the upper

  hand. Ergo Sum went rushing about the park, into the long

  grass on the hill slopes, into the allotments and cemetery plots,

  as far as possible from people and the stink of their houses. His

  memory wiped itself clean, so that next morning he was quite

  unable to say where he had been the night before.

  The chestnut trees were in bloom when Ergo Sum went to

  Wrodaw. In the libraries there he found out that it was a classic

  case of lycanthropy - when a man becomes a wolf. As he walked

  about the war-torn city, now and again he looked at his hands in

  case coarse grey hair had started to grow on them. It even

  became a habit; whenever he was off guard and let his mind drift

  into visions of the future, imagining the conversations he would

  have with doctors, psychiatrists and quacks, and even imagining

  what he would say to the dead man he had eaten , he would

  automatically stretch out his hands in front of him and at once

  return to reality.

  Life went on like this throughout the school holidays. The year

  must have been 1 950, because the summer was damp and cloudy.

  The wet weather evidently sui ted the plants; the grass grew long

  and lush , and the bushes put out strong shoots, hut the people

  weren't happy and sat it out on their verandas, playing cards and

  drinking vodka.

  The j uly full moon came, Ergo Smn's third full moon as a

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  werewolf, for which he made careful preparations. He bought

  some twine in a gardening shop, changed the locks on the doors

  and even - at great risk - got himself a drop of morphine. The

  whole event was highly theatrical - the clouds drew aside ,

  revealing the moon, suspended overhead like a bomb. It began

  to rise over the allotments, got tangled in the fruit trees, then

  shot straight into the sky and took possession of the entire earth.

  Ergo Sum slept tied to a chair.

  Tw o l i t t l e d r e a m s fro m t h e I n t e r n e t

  l . I'm looking at myself from behind. I can see the layer of loose

  fat that covers my back. There are sparse, single black hairs

  growing on it. The skin is warm to the touch , a bit rough. I'm

  amazed, because it's the first time I've ever seen my own back

  view. But the unnatural skin doesn't make me feel disgusted or

  put me off - I go on staring in wonder. With even greater surprise I notice a navel there. I didn't know my back had a navel too. This navel is like the reverse of the front one: the front

  navel points inwards, whereas this one sticks out.

  2. I'm standing on a bridge, a low bridge, and I plunge my

  hands into the pure water. I can see my reflection. In the water

  there are a lot of little golden fish and I'm catching them. The

  more I fish out, the more appear.

  C u t t i n g h a i r

  Marta and I were sitting on the wooden steps of the terrace. R.

  had made a horseradish ointment using home-made alcohol and

  I Vas rubbing Marta's hands with it.

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  Marta is old. The skin on her hands is thin and smooth, and

  covered in brown spots. Her nails are white and look lifeless, as

  if she had never worked. Beneath the skin I could feel fragile

  little bones that were swollen around the joints. It was rheumatism that was causing her pain, like a frost in the body. Maybe that's why Marta always feels cold, even during the heatwave.

  She wore the same long-sleeved cardigan all summer, with a

  grey dress under it. The collar of the dress was completely worn

  out, fraying at the neck. The horseradish ointment smelled

  sharp, drowning out the fragrance of the flowers in the borders.

  I rubbed it into Marta's hands until it vanished under the skin,

  where its heat would melt the ice that was attacking her body.

  A cart full of manure came along the road. A man was walking alongside it, staring at us. For a while the smell of horseradish was mixed with the smell of dung.

  Later we drank some tea, which tasted of everything around

  us. Marta took a look at my hair and asked, 'How do you manage

  to cut it so evenly? Look at mine.'

  She stuck her fingers into her pure white locks. Her hair really

  was uneven; she must have cu t it herself. She had probably

  muddled through by looking in two liule mirrors, which always

  makes you confuse left and right. I got up and fetched the little

  Philips clippers that R. got for Christmas. I shoved her how they

  work, demonstrating the blades and the lengths you can set

  them to. Her grey eyes wandered from the machine to my head ,

  and then suddenly she asked me to cut her hair.

  All right, I said. I extended the cable into the hall and plugged

  it in. Marta held two fingers apart to show how long her hair was

  to be, I put the blade on the right setting, and the first tufts fell,

  fine and white like downy feathers. Marta shook them from her

  cardigan on to the floorboards. When I had fi nished her head

  was covered in a soft, silvery velour. Ve both rubbed our hands

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  over it. Mana suddenly burst out laughing, so for fun l put the

  clippers in her hand and presented my own head. At first she

  sheared
it rather awkwardly, then more and more boldly. My

  dark hair fell beside her light curls. When I tried to throw away

  the tufts we swept up from the terrace afterwards, Mana took

  them, rolled them into a dark-and-light ball and went to bury it

  in the flowering borders. We sat down on the steps and stroked

  each other's sheared heads again.

  The sun was slowly disappearing from the terrace. The

  shadow on the floorboards was creeping further forward with

  every passing second, until finally it reached our backs and

  divided our bodies in half - into dark and light. Then, painlessly

  and imperceptibly, it swallowed us.

  M a r t a c r e a t e s a ty p o l o gy

  Marta and I went to pick wild camomile. Despite the heatwave,

  she was wearing her warm , woollen cardigan as usual. We

  plucked the bright, yellow-and-white heads and tossed them

  into a basket. Marta said that people are like the ground they live

  on, whether they like it or not, whether they are aware of it or

  not.

  People born where the soil is light and sandy are small, with

  fair, dry skin. At first glance they seem rather weak and lacking

  in energy, but they're like the sand - dogged, and able to hold on

  to life just as pine trees hold on to the sand in which they grow.

  They're mistrustful, and don't believe in things that others regard

  as definite and certain. They're mobile and ubiquitous, and

  they're not afraid of long journeys, so they often emigrate to

  other countries, because they feel all right in lots of different

  places. They soon get used to new things, and quickly forget

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  what has happened to them in the past . They don't suffer for

  long after misfortunes, losses and let-downs in love. They can

  scent out the future, they know what's going to happen . They do

  have a failing of not keeping their promises - because everything

  seems to them so temporary and changeable; the person who

  makes the promise is not the same person as the one who keeps

  it. They produce a lot of children, small and fair like themselves.

  These children grow up quickly and leave their parents without

  any regrets. Then they send greetings cards home. Such people

  never yearn for the past - they're always more interested in