‘Are you familiar with Cucujus haematodes?’ I asked him, passing from initial courtesies to the heart of the Matter.
‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘More or less.’
‘And did you know that they lay their eggs in tree trunks?’
‘Yes, unfortunately.’ I could see that he was trying hard to foretell where this interrogation was leading. ‘In the process they destroy healthy, valuable wood. But what are you driving at?’
I briefly presented the issue. I repeated almost exactly what Boros had told me. But from Wolf Eye’s expression I could tell that he took me for a madwoman. His eyes narrowed in a nice, patronising smile and he spoke to me as if to a child.
‘Mrs Duszeńko…’
‘Duszejko,’ I corrected him.
‘You’re such a good woman. You care about everything in a very personal way. But surely you don’t imagine we’re going to stop harvesting timber because of some beetles in the logs? Have you anything cold to drink?’
Suddenly all the energy drained out of me. He wasn’t taking me seriously. If I were Boros, or Black Coat, perhaps he’d have heard me out, considered his arguments and debated the matter. But to him I was just an old woman, gone off her rocker living in this wilderness. Useless and unimportant. Though I wouldn’t say he disliked me. I could sense that he was even quite fond of me.
I trudged into the house, and he followed me. He made himself comfortable on the terrace and lapped up half a litre of compote. As I watched him drink, it occurred to me that I could have mixed extract of lily-of-the-valley into his compote, or powdered some of the sleeping pills that Ali had prescribed for me and added those. And once he’d fallen asleep, I could have locked him in the boiler room and kept him prisoner for some time on bread and water. Or vice versa – I could have fattened him up and checked each day by the thickness of a finger whether he was fit to be roasted yet. He’d have learned respect.
‘There’s nothing natural about nature any more,’ he said, and at that point I saw who this forester really was: just another official. ‘It’s too late. The natural processes have gone wrong, and now we must keep it all in control to make sure there’s no catastrophe.’
‘Are we in danger of a Catastrophe because of the Cucujus beetle?’
‘Of course not. We need timber for stairs and floors, furniture and paper. What do you imagine? Do you think we’re going to tiptoe about the forest because Cucujus haematodes is reproducing there? We have to shoot the foxes, or else their population will grow so large that they’ll be a threat to other species. A few years ago there were so many hares that they were destroying the crops…’
‘We could scatter contraceptives to stop them from multiplying instead of killing them.’
‘Do you realise how much that costs? And it’s not effective. One gets too little, another gets too much. We have to keep some sort of order, seeing the natural one no longer exists.’
‘Foxes…’ I began, with the noble Consul in mind, going to the Czech Republic and back again.
‘Well, quite,’ he interrupted me. ‘Can you imagine what a hazard those foxes released from the farm present, for example? Luckily some of them have been caught now and taken to another farm.’
‘No,’ I said with a groan. I found this thought unbearable, but at once consoled myself with the idea that at least they’d known a little freedom.
‘They weren’t suited to life at liberty, Mrs Duszejko. They would have perished. They didn’t know how to hunt, their digestive systems were altered, their muscles were weak. What use would their beautiful fur be to them at liberty?’
He cast me a look, and I saw that the pigment in his irises was very unevenly distributed. His pupils were completely normal, round, just like yours and mine.
‘Don’t get so upset about things. Don’t take the whole world on your shoulders. It’ll all be fine,’ he said, getting up from his chair. ‘All right, off to work. We’re going to take down those spruce trees. Would you like to buy some wood for the winter? It’d be a bargain.’
I refused. Once he was gone, I felt the weight of my own body acutely, and had no desire at all to go to a party, least of all the boring mushroom pickers’ ball. People who spend all day tramping about the forest in search of mushrooms are bound to be deadly boring.
I felt pretty hot and uncomfortable in my costume; my tail trailed on the ground and I had to be careful not to tread on it. I drove the Samurai up to Oddball’s house and admired his peonies while I waited for him. He soon appeared in the doorway. I was speechless with wonder. He was wearing black lace-up boots, white stockings and a sweet flowery dress with a little apron. On his head, tied under his chin with a bow, was a little red hood.
He was in a bad mood. He settled in the passenger seat and didn’t say a single word the whole way to the firehouse. He held his red headgear on his knees and only put it back on once we had stopped outside the firehouse.
‘As you can see, I have absolutely no sense of humour,’ he said.
Everyone had come straight from a special mass for the mushroom pickers, and the toasts were just starting. The President was eagerly joining in with these toasts, so very sure of his own splendid appearance that he had simply come in a suit, and thus was dressed up as himself. Most of the partygoers were only now getting changed in the toilet; they wouldn’t have dared go to church in their costumes. But the priest, Father Rustle, was here as well, with his unhealthy complexion, and in his black cassock he too looked as if he were only disguised as a priest. Invited as guests, the Village Housewives’ Circle sang some folk songs, and then came the turn of the band, consisting of one man who artfully handled a device with a keyboard, managing to simulate all the best-known hits quite well.
That’s what it was like. The music was loud and intrusive. It was hard to talk over it, so everyone set to work on the salads, hunter’s stew and slices of cold meat. There were bottles of vodka standing in small crocheted baskets made to look like various species of mushroom. After some food and several glasses of vodka, Father Rustle got up from the table and crossed himself. Only then did people start to dance, as if the priest’s presence had made them feel awkward until now. The sounds echoed off the high ceiling of the old firehouse and came hammering down on the dancers.
Near me sat a petite woman in a white blouse, straight-backed and tense. She reminded me of Oddball’s Dog, Marysia – she was just as nervous and tremulous. Earlier I had seen her go up to the tipsy President and talk to him a while. He leaned over her, and then scowled, losing patience. He grabbed her by the arm and must have squeezed it tight, because she flinched. Then he waved a hand, as if shooing away an annoying Insect, and disappeared among the dancing couples. So I guessed she must be his wife. She went back to the table and poked at the stew with a fork. And since Oddball was having immense success as Little Red Riding Hood, I moved over to her and introduced myself. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, and the shadow of a smile appeared on her sad face. We tried to have a conversation, but the noise of the music was now augmented by the thunder of dance steps on the wooden floor. Thud, thud, thud. To understand what she was saying I had to stare closely at her lips. I understood that she was anxious to drag her husband home as soon as possible. Everyone knew the President was pretty good at carousing, and had a wild, typically Slavic streak, dangerous for himself and others. Afterwards it was necessary to hush up his antics. It turned out I was teaching their youngest daughter English, and that made the conversation easier, especially as the daughter regarded me as ‘cool’. It was a very nice compliment.
‘Is it true that you found our Commandant’s body?’ the woman asked me, while trying to spot the tall figure of her husband.
I confirmed that I had.
‘Weren’t you afraid?’
‘Of course I was.’
‘Do you know, all those things have happened to my husband’s friends. He was closely bound up with them. I think he’s afraid too, though I’m not entirely sure what sort of busine
ss they had in common. Just one thing bothers me…’ She hesitated, and fell silent. I looked at her, waiting for the end of the sentence, but she just nodded and I saw tears in her eyes.
The music became even brisker and noisier, for now they were playing ‘Hey, Falcons’. Everyone who hadn’t yet danced leaped to their feet as if scalded and headed for the dance floor. I wasn’t going to try making myself heard over the one-man band.
When her husband came into view for a while with an attractive Gypsy, she tugged at my paw and said: ‘Let’s go outside for a cigarette.’
The way she said it implied that whether I smoked or not was neither here nor there. So I didn’t protest, though I’d given up smoking a decade ago.
As we pushed our way through the now delirious crowd, we were jostled and impulsively invited to dance. The merry mushroom pickers’ ball had changed into a bacchanal. We found it a relief to stand outside, in a pool of light streaming from the firehouse windows. It was a wet, jasmine-scented June evening. Warm rain had just stopped falling but the sky hadn’t brightened at all. It looked as if it were just about to start pouring again. I remembered evenings like this one from childhood, and suddenly I felt sad. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on talking to this anxious, disoriented woman.
She nervously lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and said: ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. Dead bodies. You know what, whenever he comes home from hunting he tosses a quarter of a deer on the kitchen table. They usually divide it into four parts. Dark blood spills across the tabletop. Then he cuts it into pieces and puts it in the freezer. Whenever I walk past the fridge I think about the fact that there’s a butchered body in there.’ She took another deep drag on her cigarette. ‘Or he hangs dead hares on the balcony in winter to season, and they dangle there with their eyes open and caked blood on their noses. I know, I know I’m neurotic and oversensitive, and I should go and get treatment.’
She glanced at me with sudden hope, as if expecting me to contradict her, but meanwhile I was noting mentally that there are still normal people in this world. But I hadn’t time to react before she spoke again.
‘I remember when I was little they used to tell the tale of the Night Archer. Do you know it?’
I shook my head.
‘It’s from around here, it’s a local legend, they say it dates back to the Germans. It tells of the Night Archer, who prowled after dark, hunting down bad people. He flew on a black stork, accompanied by dogs. Everyone was afraid of him, and at night they locked and bolted their doors. One day a boy who came from here, or maybe from Nowa Ruda, or Kłodzko, shouted up the chimney, wishing the Night Archer would do some hunting for him. A few days later a quarter of a human body fell down the chimney into the boy and his family’s house, and then the same thing happened three times more, until they were able to put an entire body back together and bury it. The archer never appeared again, and his dogs changed into moss.’
A chill suddenly sailed in from the forest, making me shiver. The image of the Dogs changing into moss refused to vanish from my sight. I blinked.
‘It’s a strange story, like a bad dream, isn’t it?’ She lit another cigarette, and now I could see that her hands were shaking.
I tried to think of a way to calm her down, but I had no idea what to do. I had never seen a person on the edge of a nervous breakdown before. I laid a paw on her forearm and stroked it gently. ‘You are a good Person,’ I said.
She gazed at me with the eyes of Marysia, and suddenly began to cry. She cried very softly, like a little girl, except that her shoulders were quivering. It lasted a long time; evidently she had a great deal to cry about. I had to bear witness, stand by her and watch. It seems that was all she expected. I put my arms around her, and there we stood together – a fake Wolf and a small woman in a pool of light from the firehouse window. The shadows of the dancers flew across us.
‘I’m going home. I’ve run out of strength,’ she said pitifully.
Loud stamping noises came from inside. They were dancing to the disco version of ‘Hey, Falcons’ again – it must have been more popular than any other song, and over and over we heard them shouting: ‘Hey! Hey!’ Like shells exploding.
‘You go, my dear,’ I said, after a pause for thought. I found it a relief to speak to her so personally and directly. ‘I’ll wait for your husband and give him a lift home. I’m quite prepared for that. I have to wait for my neighbour anyway. Where exactly do you live?’
She mentioned one of those turnings beyond Ox Heart Corner. I knew where it was.
‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ I said. ‘Run yourself a bath and get some rest.’
She took the car keys from her handbag and hesitated. ‘Sometimes I think you can entirely fail to know the person you’ve lived with for years on end,’ she said, looking me in the eyes with such horror that I stiffened. I realised what she had in mind.
‘No, it’s not him. It’s definitely not him. I’m sure of it,’ I said.
Now she was looking at me enquiringly. I was uncertain whether to tell her this at all.
‘I used to have two Dogs. They kept close watch to make sure everything was divided fairly – food, petting, privileges. Animals have a very strong sense of justice. I remember the look in their eyes whenever I did something wrong, whenever I scolded them unfairly or failed to keep my word. They’d gaze at me with such awful grief, as if they simply couldn’t understand how I could have broken the sacred law. They taught me quite basic, plain and simple justice.’ I stopped talking for a moment, and then added: ‘We have a view of the world, but Animals have a sense of the world, do you see?’
She lit another cigarette. ‘And what’s become of them?’
‘They’re dead.’ I pulled the Wolf mask further down my face. ‘They had their games that involved playing tricks on each other for fun. If one of them found a long forgotten bone, and the other one didn’t know how to get it off her, she’d pretend a car was coming down the road that had to be barked at. Then the first one would drop the bone and race to the road, unaware that it was a false alarm.’
‘Really? Like people.’
‘They were more human than people in every possible way. More affectionate, wiser, more joyful…And people think they can do what they want to Animals, as if they’re just things. I think my Dogs were shot by the hunters.’
‘No – why on earth would they do that?’ she asked anxiously.
‘They say they only kill feral Dogs that are a threat to wild Animals, but it’s not true. They come right up to the houses.’
I wanted to tell her about the vengeance of Animals, but I remembered Dizzy’s warnings not to tell everyone my Theories. Now we were standing in darkness and couldn’t see each other’s faces.
‘That’s nonsense,’ she said. ‘I’ll never believe he shot a dog.’
‘Is there really such a big difference between a Hare, a Dog and a Pig?’ I asked, but she didn’t answer.
She got into the car and promptly drove off. It was a large, swanky Jeep Cherokee. I recognised it. I wondered how such a small, fragile woman coped with such a large vehicle, and I went back inside, because it was starting to rain again.
His cheeks comically flushed, Oddball was dancing with a stout woman in Kraków folk costume, and looked perfectly happy. I watched him. He moved gracefully, without exaggeration, calmly leading his partner. And I think he saw me looking at him, because suddenly he spun her around with panache. But he’d obviously forgotten how he was dressed, and it was a funny sight – two women dancing, one huge, the other tiny.
After this dance the results of the vote for the best costume were announced. The winners were a husband and wife from Transylvania, dressed as toadstools. The prize was a field guide to mushrooms. We came second, and were awarded a mushroom-shaped cake. We had to dance together in front of everyone as Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, after which we were completely forgotten. Only now did I have a glass of vodka, and a strong urge to have fun came over me
– yes, I’d even have been happy for them to strike up ‘Hey, Falcons’ again. But Oddball wanted to go home now. He was worried about Marysia, whom he had never left alone for long; after all, she’d been traumatised by her experience of Big Foot’s shed. I told him I was committed to driving the President home. Most men would have stayed to keep me company in this difficult task, but not Oddball. He found someone who also wanted to leave the party early, the attractive Gypsy, I think it was, and disappeared in a not entirely gentlemanly fashion. Oh well, I’m used to doing difficult things on my own.
At dawn I had that dream again. I went down to the boiler room and there they were – my Mother and Grandmother. Both in summer dresses, flowery ones, both with handbags, as if they were off to church and had lost their way. They avoided my gaze when I began to reproach them.
‘What are you doing here, Mummy?’ I asked angrily. ‘How’s it possible?’
They were standing between a stack of wood and the boiler, absurdly stylish, though the patterns on their dresses looked washed-out and faded.
‘Get out of here!’ I shouted at them, but suddenly my voice stuck in my throat. I could hear shuffling noises and rising whispers coming from the garage.
I turned in that direction and saw that there were lots of people over there: men, women and children, in strangely festive clothing that had faded and gone grey. They had the same restless, terrified look in their eyes, as if they didn’t know what they were actually doing here. They were streaming in from somewhere in a swarm, crowding in the doorway, unsure whether they could come in. They were whispering to each other incoherently, and shuffling their boot soles against the stone floor of the boiler room and the garage. Pressing from behind, the crowd kept pushing the front rows forwards. I was seized with sheer terror.
I felt for the handle behind me and very quietly, doing my best not to draw attention to myself, I slipped out of there. Then, my hands trembling with fear, I spent a long time bolting the boiler room door.
Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead Page 17
