House of Day, House of Night

by Olga Tokarczuk

  what's happening now. What's over is dead and gone.

  People who are born where there's a lot of water, in fertile

  lakelands or on the banks of great rivers , are different. Their

  bodies are soft, fragile and sensitive, their skin is darker, with an

  olive tinge, cool and damp with blue veins beneath it. Their

  hands and feet easily get cold, and when they're young their

  foreheads arc covered in pimples and their hair is greasy. These

  people are attached to the past, which makes them cautious and

  not keen on change. I t is easy to offend them, to make an innocent remark that sinks deep into their memory and remains there for ever, engendering feelings that live on for the rest of

  their life. They cry easily, not just as a result of sorrow or grief of

  some kind , but also out of joy and excitement. They're as trustful as animals, so they fall in love early, and quickly form lifelong attachments. Their bodies grow accustomed to each other, while

  their souls merge together like two puddles, so they don't need

  speech to understand each other. Vhat they dislike mo�t is any

  kind of journey. They say that everywhere is the same, so it's

  better to stay at home and breathe your own air than go wandering about, even in the most interesting cou n t ries. I f they lose their home during wars or unrest, they die soon after. Their

  children arc difficult and tearful, and they have to get up i n the

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  night to comfort them. These children don't want to go to

  school, not because they're stupid, but because they're frightened by all the noise and confusion. Their animals are just the same - quiet and affectionate. Their cows give them lots of milk,

  their sheep have thick fleeces and their hens lay large, heavy

  eggs. They build their houses for their whole life or for many

  generations. They are squat, with thick walls.

  There are also people born on rocky ground, on sandstone or

  granite. Their skin is rough and hard, as are their muscles and

  bones. They have strong hair and teeth, and the skin on their

  palms and the soles of their feet is hard. On the surface they are

  tough and robust, because their bodies are like armour. They

  have a lot of empty space i nside, so everything they see and

  hear echoes within them like a bell. They never forget anything.

  They can remember almost every day of their lives, the taste of

  every dish they've eaten, and every word that has ever been said

  to them. They can get by without other people, although other

  people need them, because they're like road signs or boundary

  stones that show where something starts and finishes, and where

  the road is going.

  I asked Mana what type of person she is. Smart-aleck that she

  is, she said she doesn't know. 'You only think up these systems

  for other people,' she added after a while.

  T h e m a n s i o n

  The von Goetzen family lived in a mansion, although they didn't

  build it themselves, or even know the whole building, which

  berame apparent whenever essential renovations took place.

  They had lived in the mansion for as long as they could remember, from birth - sometimes they even felt as if they had lived in

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  it before then, in previous lives, because they dreamed of nothing but the mansion , its rooms and corridors, the courtyard and the park, as if their souls knew of no other place. They only had

  to do what was required to keep the mansion going, and to

  ensure that the fields and meadows brought in the necessary

  income for extensions and improvements. Besides, there was

  always money in some bank or other, so they would withdraw it,

  invest it cleverly and pay it back into the bank again. They only

  ever went away in order to learn something new about gardens,

  soil cultivation or sheep breeding, or to see the frescoes in

  Venice, the way a roof was capped in Switzerland, the interior at

  Versailles, or the tapestries and rococo furniture adorning a

  French chateau. And they brought it all home, either physically

  with the help of ships and trains, or else in their imagination.

  Some of them studied philosophy or literature, but this too was

  only so they could live out their lives in this heavenly place

  even more fully and intensely.

  For generations they had been born in the mansion. The children were brough t up rather neglectfully in the care of wet-nurses, peasant girls from the village who were always willing to heap their boundless affection on any little creature. They had no memory of any child having died before its time. They

  were healthy, robust and well proportioned, with pink fingernails and bright eyes. Their only weakness was their teeth, but it didn't really matter in a world where the apples were always

  peeled, only the soft part of the bread got eaten and the meat was

  cooked until tender. So when their teeth prematurely went black

  and fell out, there was always a barber who doubled as a surgeon

  or a dentist in the mansion, who had perfected the an of making

  false teeth for them, even finding ways to fit complete sets of

  dentures to their innocent gums. There should have been a set of

  false teeth on the 'On Goctzcn family coat of arms.

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  So the children grew up amid parks and gardens, verandas

  and bathrooms full of mirrors. I t was a painless process, without

  any ups or downs. They never rebelled against their pleasureabsorbed parents, or had any objection to life in the mansion.

  Occasionally they were drawn into the less well-defined world

  outside and would end up attending a harvest festival or a

  Corpus Christi fair in the village. But since they only enjoyed

  being there for a while, they'd soon grow disenchanted and go

  home for tea. As they grew up, they didn't even suffer from acne.

  Then they reached the age for love. Their wise mothers usually provided them with objects for their affection on home ground, but they did sometimes travel with this aim in mind, to

  their relatives in Pomerania or Hess, and then love would take

  on an exotic quality. They would bring their wives or husbands

  home to the mansion, and then they would have to build a new

  wing or floor, or convert the attic into living quarters, so the

  mansion kept growing along with them, plunging deeper into

  the park or pushing higher into the sky.

  Young love always blossomed indoors, at tea parties, card

  games, or small family dances, with the light falling gently through

  the window, taking the gloss off their faces better than the finest

  powder. It was quiet, with no wind to drown out a whispered

  word or spoil a carefully arranged curl. They usually fell in love at

  first sight. Love had special powers in the mansion, where most

  couples lived long and happily - if not passionately in love, then at

  least with respect and friendship. Their betrayals were never very

  dramatic - involving a maid or a gardener, or a brief moment of

  forgetfulness in the cloakroom after a ball when they were guests

  at another mansion. There was once a Mrs von Goetzen who left

  her husband sudden!)� and for no reason - she simply disappeared

  into the dark world outside
. He suffered, but not for long - next

  year he married a lovely neighbour, and they even had twins.

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  Not many of the von Goetzens had children, however, perhaps to avoid overcrowding the mansion. Some had just one child, and to have two children , like those twins, was a rarity.

  Children introduced a certain degree of noise into the life of the

  mansion, but you could dress them nicely and let them get their

  mouths all smeared in strawberry jam, and at once they were the

  stereotype in miniature of their flourishing tribe, living

  metaphors for the bloom of youth or innocence, like the spring

  personified, or whatever the adults wished them to be.

  Dinners in the conservatory went on late into the night.

  Lamps burning in the garden emphasized the famously gigantic

  lime trees. One generation of von Goetzens had added a winter

  garden on to the conservatory, full of ivies, philodendrons and

  rubber plants. In the warmest part of the garden cactuses grew,

  one of which flowered once a year, always on the very same

  night. On that date the family held a ball , inviting relatives from

  all corners of the country and neighbours from other mansions,

  and the party went on until dawn. The flower was actually quite

  modest in appearance, rather like a thistle , nor was it part icularly large, yet it was immortalized in several paintings and later in photographs.

  Their old age was serene and healthy. None of them ever had

  a lasting illness or lost their powers of intellect, or succumbed to

  paralysis, sclerosis, high blood pressure or all the other ailments

  that plagued the lives of old people outside the mansion . Maybe

  it was just that the flies settled on them more often ; somehow

  flies always seem to know best who is first in line for death. At

  most they grew weak, imperceptibly at first, year by year, and

  then day by day, but they still found enough strength to draw up

  plans for extending one of the wings, to sort out old photographs or write their memoirs - or other peoplr's, as they didn't actually have many memories of their own. \'hen they were

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  old, they moved into rooms spread with Turkish carpets, whose

  windows looked on to the llowerbeds; they would lean out and

  pester the gardeners, saying, That's not the way to prune roses,'

  The azaleas are too tall,' The dahlias need weeding,' or The jasmine doesn't have much of a scent.' The resident dentist would gently encourage them to remove their false teeth more often,

  for their gums had grown softer and softer and, as in infancy,

  were coated in a fine layer of mucus - an unerring sign o f

  approaching death.

  The von Goetzens always died beautifully and gently. Death

  came over them like a mist, like a sudden break in the electricity

  supply - their eyes grew dim, their breathing slowed down and

  finally died away. Those attending the deathbed had only to close

  their departed relative's eyelids and then go about their business - in the warmth of the conservatory, the coolness of the ground-floor corridors, among the rustling pages of illustrated

  books on horticulture and art, or in sunny lethargy on the terrace, where they could hear the babble of people and animals drifting up from the village. There were photographs left of the

  deceased, as well as llowerbeds, diaries, cupboards full of mouldering clothing, and crumbs in the bed-sheets, but someone else would immediately occupy his room, so it was as if they had

  never died. Besides, as a result of all the family intermarrying they

  were all so alike that the lack of a particular individual was never

  felt. Someone else would soon stick their head out of the window

  above the llowerbeds and start ordering the gardener about in

  exactly the same tone of voice: That's not the way to prune roses,'

  'The azaleas are too tall,' or The jasmine doesn't have much of a

  scent' - so you could say that no one ever died in the mansion.

  Life is beautiful, despite the terrible things o ther people say

  about it. Life is beautiful - that could have been the family motto

  beneath the coat of arms.

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  The von Goetzen roses are the finest in all Silesia. At the back

  of the mansion there is a sizeable terrace with a rose garden. The

  rose bushes grow along espaliers and are arranged in carefully

  planned Oowerbeds. The paths are covered in fine gra'el that

  crunches beneath your feet, as the intoxicating fragrance of all

  sorts of roses envelops you. A dark border of crimson wilhelminas surrounds the entire garden. The flowers are lush and glossy, but their fragrance is not intense - that would have been too

  much. Inside this blood-red circle there are four beds, each

  planted with a different variety of rose: warm pink odet tes, the

  fuchsia-coloured 'Pope joan' variety, and bright red and yellow

  melittas. Between them winds a sinuous border planted with

  tea roses, eulalias - these have the strongest scent, a fragrance of

  exotic fruit that pours over the wall into the village, where on

  fine days it blends with the smell of cows and freshly mown

  meadows. I t's breathtaking. The petals are delicate with pointed

  tips. At the centre of the flowerbeds there's a ring of white roses the rarest and most precious variety. They don't have a name; they were cultivated by one of the Mrs von Goctzens, but no one

  remembers which. Their whiteness is dazzling, like snow, with

  the slightest hint of blue in the deepest folds of the petals. N o

  one could fail t o b e struck b y their beauty, but something has

  gone wrong with their fragrance. When they grow and reach full

  bloom, they start to smell like wine that's gone sour, or rotting

  apples. Maybe that's why no one has ever ventured to give them

  a name.

  The approach to the mansion is between two lime trees that

  always blossom at the beginning of july. A road paved in sandstone leads up to the broad steps and a small courtyard shielded from the road by the servants' quarters. On the huge from door

  is the coat of arms of the von Goetzen family, which features an

  eye-catching rocking horse against a field of fleur-de-lis - a sign

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  of the famtly's wider European connections. The door opens

  into a large hall, off which there is a dining-room that leads into

  the conservatory. a library and two reception rooms opening on

  to the terrace. There is also a music-room, with a grand piano

  and a harpsichord, and a smoking-room originally for the gentlemen, but eventually the ladies too. A staircase laid with a cream carpet leads up to two ballrooms and an irregular

  drawing-room, added on at some point. Beyond these rooms

  are living quarters for the older generation of the family, while

  the second floor consists of apartments for the younger. All this

  is crowned by a vast attic, with high, sloping ceilings and little

  windows on to all four corners of the world. From them you can

  see the mountains, and houses set into the valleys like valuable

  cutlery pressed into a plush-lined box. The crowns of the spruce

  trees polish the skies as they float by. All this belongs to the von
/>   Goetzen family.

  There was no warning that they would have to leave their

  mansion. The very idea was unthinkable - as absurd as expecting a mussel or a snail to leave its shell. And yet one of the von Goetzens had had a presentiment - he wasn't sure how it had

  come about, but before the war he had bought a smallish estate

  in Bavaria. The landscape was strikingly similar - the same

  gentle hills dark with spruce, the same shallow streams with

  stony beds - even the people looked the same, as did the

  churches, wayside chapels and winding little roads. The

  Bavarian palace was admittedly smaller, but by that token all the

  more sui table for development. He didn't pay much for it,

  because its former owners, who were strangely reticent, had

  gone off somewhere abroad. In fact he never even saw them; he

  made all the arrangements through a lawyer.

  He hadn't said a word to anyone - it was meant to be a surprise. Then, as he got caught up in autumn hunting, winter

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  balls and spring picnics, he simply forgot about the new mansion. When the family were orficially informed that the Bolsheviks were just around the corner, they assembled in the

  drawing-room and decided to break into their oldest wine stock.

  One of the women played the grand piano, while another played

  patience. Then the von G oetzen with the estate in B::IVaria

  brought down photographs and showed them the new mansion.

  For a long time no one said anything, but the prospect of all the

  potential renovation and rebuilding was very tempting. They

  liked the solid classical form of the new house. They started to

  sketch out plans, but towards evening they fell strangely silent

  and felt dispirited. They slunk about the great house, running

  their fingertips over the English panelling and casting their gaze

  across the patterns on the wallpaper.

  'Can't someone find a way for us to stay here?' asked the

  oldest of the ladies.

  But in the morning she instructed the gardener to dig up the

  roses.

  A tremor ran through their dreams. Prompted by a strange

  feeling of anxiety, the von Goetzen who had bought the mansion

  in Bavaria went off to the local town and found it in lllter confusion. People were packing their belongings on to cans ami trucks, and pressing doggedly along the only road west between