Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

by Olga Tokarczuk

  When I woke up, the anxiety brought on by this dream was still intense. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I thought the best thing I could do would be to go and see Oddball. The Sun had not yet fully risen, and I hadn’t had much sleep. A gentle mist floated over everything, just about to change into dew.

  Oddball opened the door to me, looking sleepy. He couldn’t have had a proper wash: the red spots that I’d made for him the day before with lipstick were still on his cheeks.

  ‘What’s up?’ he asked.

  I didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Come in,’ he muttered. ‘So how did it go?’

  ‘Fine. Perfectly all right,’ I replied concisely, knowing that Oddball likes concise questions and concise answers.

  I sat down, and he set about making coffee. First he spent a long time cleaning the machine, then poured the water from a measuring jug, and I noticed that he never stopped talking. It was very strange to see him so animated. Świętopełk, who talks and talks.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to know what you keep in that drawer,’ I said.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said, opening it to show me. ‘Be my guest – nothing but essential items.’

  ‘Just like me in the Samurai.’

  The drawer silently slid open at a gentle tug of his finger. In dapper grey compartments lay some very neatly arranged kitchen Utensils. A rolling pin, an egg whisk, a tiny battery-powered milk beater and an ice-cream spoon. And also some Utensils that I couldn’t identify – some long spoons, spatulas and strange hooks. They looked like surgical Instruments for complicated operations. It was plain to see that their owner took extraordinary care of them – they were polished and put away in the right places.

  ‘What’s this?’ I asked, picking up some wide metal pincers.

  ‘Those are tongs for removing cling film when it sticks to the roller,’ he said, and poured the coffee into cups.

  Then he reached for a small whisk, used it to whip the milk into snowy froth and poured it onto the coffee. From the drawer he took out a set of circular stencils and a small container of cocoa powder. For a while he wondered which pattern to choose, and finally picked a little heart shape. Then he sprinkled cocoa powder onto it, and, lo and behold, a brown cocoa heart appeared on the snowy foam on my coffee. He smiled broadly.

  Later that day I thought about his drawer again, about how peeping into it brought me total calm, and how I would really like to be one of those useful Utensils.

  By Monday everyone knew the President was dead. The women who had come to clean the firehouse had found him on Sunday evening. Apparently one of them had suffered shock and had ended up in hospital.

  To the Police,

  I realise that for some very important reason the Police are not in a position to answer letters from the public (not just the anonymous ones). Without going into those reasons, I shall take the liberty of referring you once more to the topic that I brought up in my previous letter. But I would not wish the Police nor anyone else to be ignored in this manner. The citizen whom the public services ignore is in a way condemned to non-existence. Yet it would be a mistake to forget that he who has no rights is not bound by any duties.

  I am pleased to inform you that I have managed to obtain the date of birth of the deceased Mr Innerd and to draw up his Horoscope (without the time, unfortunately, which makes my cosmogram less precise), and have found an extremely interesting fact in it, which fully confirms the Hypotheses that I presented to you previously.

  Thus it appears that at the moment of his death the victim had transiting Mars in Virgo, which, according to the best principles of traditional Astrology, has many analogies with fur-bearing Animals. At the same time his Sun in Pisces indicates the weakest parts of the body, such as the ankles. So it looks as if Mr Innerd’s death was accurately forecast in his radix Horoscope. Therefore, were the Police to take note of the findings of Astrologers, many people could be protected from misfortune. The configuration of the planets clearly tells us that the perpetrators of this cruel Murder were fur-bearing Animals, most probably Foxes, either wild ones or runaways from the farm (or both acting in collusion), that somehow managed to drive the victim into the snares people had been setting there for years. He was caught in a particularly cruel type of trap, known as a ‘gibbet’, and had hung in the air for some time.

  This discovery leads us straight to a general conclusion. The Police should check exactly where each of the victims had Saturn. Then they will find that each one had Saturn in an animal sign; the President additionally had it in Taurus, which heralds a violent death by suffocation caused by an Animal…

  Please find enclosed a newspaper cutting about the reported sightings of a certain as-yet-unidentified Animal, seen in the Opole region, which is said to kill other Animals with a blow of its paw to the chest. Recently on television I saw a video recorded on a mobile phone, in which a young Tiger was clearly visible. All this has been happening in the Opole region, and thus not far away from us. Perhaps they are Animals that escaped from a zoo, managed to survive the floods and are now at liberty? In any case the matter is worth investigating, especially since, as I have noticed, the local population is gradually yielding to pathological fear, if not panic.

  As I was writing this letter, someone knocked timidly at my door. It was the Writer, the Grey Lady.

  ‘Mrs Duszejko,’ she said from the threshold. ‘What’s going on around here? Have you heard?’

  ‘Please don’t stand in the doorway, there’s a draught. Come inside.’ She was wearing a knitted cardigan, almost floor-length. She came in, taking tiny little steps, and sat down on the edge of a chair.

  ‘So what will become of us?’ she asked dramatically.

  ‘Are you afraid Animals are going to kill us too?’

  She bristled. ‘I do not believe in your theory. It’s absurd.’

  ‘I thought that you, as a Writer, had an imagination and a capacity for conjecture, and were not closed to ideas that at first glance seem improbable. You should know that everything possible to be believed is an image of the truth,’ I concluded, citing Blake, which seemed to make an impression on her.

  ‘I’d never have written a single line if I didn’t have my feet firmly on the ground, Mrs Duszejko,’ she said in the tone of an official, and then added in a softer tone: ‘I cannot imagine it. Would you please tell me – was he really suffocated by cockchafers?’

  I bustled about making tea. Black tea. Let her know what Tea is.

  ‘That’s right,’ I said. ‘He was covered in those Insects, they’d gone into his mouth, his lungs, his stomach, his ears. The women said he was crawling with Beetles. I didn’t see it, but I can perfectly well imagine it. Cucujus haematodes everywhere.’

  She gave me a penetrating stare. I couldn’t interpret that look.

  I served the tea.

  XIV

  THE FALL

  The Questioner who sits so sly

  Shall never know how to Reply.

  Early in the morning they came for me and said I must make a statement. I replied that I’d do my best to drop in during the week.

  ‘You don’t understand,’ replied a young policeman, the one who used to work with the Commandant. Since his death he’d been promoted and was now in charge of the police station in town. ‘You’re coming with us now, to Kłodzko.’

  In view of his tone of voice, I did not protest. I merely locked the house and took a toothbrush and my pills with me just in case. The last thing I needed was to have an Attack and fall ill there.

  As it had been pouring with rain for two weeks and there was a flood, we drove the long way round, on the asphalt, where it was safer. When we were descending into the valley from the Plateau, I saw a herd of Deer; they were standing still, gazing without fear at the police jeep. Joyfully I realised that I didn’t recognize them – it must be a new herd that had come across from the Czech Republic to graze on our luscious green mountain pasture. The Policemen weren’t interested in th
e Deer. They didn’t speak, either to me or to each other.

  I was given a mug of instant coffee with powdered cream and the interview began.

  ‘You were going to drive the President home? Is that right? Please tell us in detail, moment by moment – what exactly did you see?’

  And plenty more questions of this kind.

  There wasn’t much to tell, but I tried my best to be precise about every detail. I said I had decided to wait for the President outside because inside it was noisy. Nobody was bothering with the buffer zone any more, and everyone was smoking inside, which was having a very bad effect on me. So I sat down on the steps and gazed at the sky.

  After the rain Sirius had appeared, and the shaft of the Plough had risen…I wondered whether the stars can see us. And if they can, what might they think of us? Do they really know our future? Do they feel sorry for us? For being stuck in the present time, with no chance to move? But it also crossed my mind that in spite of all, in spite of our fragility and ignorance, we have an incredible advantage over the stars – it is for us that time works, giving us a major opportunity to transform the suffering, aching world into a happy and peaceful one. It’s the stars that are imprisoned in their own power, and they cannot really help us. They merely design the nets, and on cosmic looms they weave the warp thread that we must complete with our own weft. And then a curious Hypothesis occurred to me – maybe the stars see us in the same way as we see our Dogs, for example – having greater awareness than they do, at some points in time we know better what’s good for them; we walk them on leads so they won’t get lost, we sterilise them so they won’t senselessly reproduce, we take them to the vet for medical treatment. They don’t understand where this comes from, why it happens, for what purpose. Yet they yield to us. So maybe we too should yield to the influence of the stars, but in the process we should arouse our human sensitivity. That’s what I was pondering as I sat on those steps in the dark. And when I saw that most of the people were coming out, and either on foot or in cars were heading off, I went inside to remind the President that I was going to drive him home. But he wasn’t there, or anywhere else. I checked the toilets and walked around the firehouse. I also asked all the inebriated mushroom pickers where he’d got to, but nobody was capable of giving me a sensible answer. Some were still humming ‘Hey, Falcons’, others were finishing off the beer, flouting the rules by drinking it outside. So I assumed someone must have taken him home already, but I simply hadn’t noticed. And I’m still sure it was a reasonable supposition. What harm could possibly come to him? Even if he’d fallen asleep in a drunken state among the burdocks, the Night was warm and he wasn’t in any danger. Nothing suspicious occurred to me, so I fetched the Samurai and we went home.

  ‘Who is the Samurai?’ asked the policeman.

  ‘A friend,’ I replied, in keeping with the truth.

  ‘Surname, please.’

  ‘Samurai Suzuki.’

  He was put out, but the other one smiled to himself.

  ‘Please tell us, Mrs Duszeńko…’

  ‘Duszejko,’ I corrected him.

  ‘…Duszejko. Do you have any suspicions as to who might have had a reason to do harm to the President?’

  I was surprised. ‘You don’t read my letters. I explained it all in there.’ They exchanged glances. ‘No, but we’re asking a serious question.’

  ‘And I am giving you a serious reply. I wrote to you. In fact, I still haven’t received an answer. It’s bad manners not to answer letters. According to article 171, paragraph one of the Penal Code, persons under interrogation should be allowed to express themselves freely within the defined limits for the purpose of the task in hand, and only then may one pose questions aimed at supplementing, explaining or verifying their statements.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said the first one.

  ‘Is it true that he was entirely covered in Beetles?’ I asked.

  ‘We cannot answer that question. For the good of the enquiry.’

  ‘But how did he die?’

  ‘We’re asking the questions, not you,’ said the first one, and the second added: ‘The witnesses who saw you talking to the President during the party said you were standing on the steps.’

  ‘That’s right, I was reminding him that I’d be taking him home because his wife had asked me to. But he didn’t seem fully able to focus on what I was saying. So I thought I’d better simply wait until the ball ended and he was ready to leave.’

  ‘Were you familiar with the Commandant?’

  ‘Of course I was. You know that perfectly well,’ I said to the young one. ‘Why on earth ask, if you know? Isn’t it a waste of time?’

  ‘What about Anzelm Innerd?’

  ‘His name was Anzelm? I never would have guessed. I met him once, near here, on the little bridge. He was with his girlfriend. That was a while back, about three years ago. We had a brief conversation.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Just a general chat, I can’t remember. That woman was there, she can confirm it all.’

  I knew that the Police like to have everything confirmed.

  ‘Is it true that you behaved aggressively during the hunting here, in the locality?’

  ‘I would say that I behaved angrily, not aggressively. There’s a difference. I expressed my Anger because they were killing Animals.’

  ‘Did you make death threats?’

  ‘Anger can prompt one to utter various words, but it can also make one fail to remember them afterwards.’

  ‘There are witnesses who have stated that you shouted, and I quote’ – at this point he glanced at the papers spread on the desk – ‘“I’ll kill you, you (obscenity), you’ll be punished for these crimes. You have no shame, you’re not afraid of anything. I’ll beat your brains out.”’

  He read it dispassionately, which I found amusing.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ asked the second one in a wounded tone.

  ‘I find it comical that I could have said such things. I’m a peaceful person. Perhaps your witness is exaggerating?’

  ‘Do you deny that you appeared before the magistrate’s court on a charge of overturning and destroying hunting pulpits?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t dream of denying it. I paid a fine in court. There are documents to prove it.’

  ‘What aren’t there documents for?’ asked one of them, imagining he was posing a trick question, but I think I evaded it quite cleverly by saying: ‘For many things, sir. In my life and in yours. It’s impossible to record everything in words, let alone official documents.’

  ‘Why did you do it?’

  I gave him a look as if he had fallen from the moon. ‘Why are you asking me about something you know perfectly well?’

  ‘Please answer the questions. It must be included in the transcript.’

  By now I was entirely relaxed.

  ‘Aha. So, once again: I did it so that no one would shoot at Animals from them.’

  ‘How come you have such precise knowledge of certain details of the murders?’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘To do with the President, for instance. How did you know the insect was’ – he looked at his notes – ‘Cucujus haematodes? That’s what you told the Writer.’

  ‘Oh, did I? It’s a common Beetle in these parts.’

  ‘So how do you know that? From that ento…the insect fellow who stayed with you in the spring?’

  ‘Perhaps. But above all from Horoscopes, as I have already explained. Horoscopes contain everything. All the smallest details. Even how you’re feeling today, or your favourite colour for underwear. You just have to know how to read it all. The President had very bad aspects in the third house, which is the house of small Animals. Including Insects.’

  The Policemen couldn’t stop themselves from exchanging meaningful looks, which to my mind was impolite. In their line of work nothing should surprise them. I continued with complete self-confidence; by now I knew they were a pair of bunglers.

 
; ‘I have been practising Astrology for many years, and I have extensive experience. Everything is connected with everything else, and we are all caught in a net of correspondences of every kind. They should teach you that at Police training college. It’s a solid, old tradition. From Swedenborg.’

  ‘From whom?’ they asked in unison.

  ‘Swedenborg. A Swede.’

  I saw that one of them noted the name down.

  They talked to me like this for two more hours, and that afternoon they presented me with a forty-eight-hour detention order and a warrant to search my house. Feverishly I wondered if I had left any dirty underwear out on view.

  That evening I was handed a carrier bag, and I guessed it was from Dizzy and Good News. There were two toothbrushes in it (why two? For morning and evening perhaps?), a nightdress, very luxurious and sexy (Good News must have dug it out of the new stock), some sweets and a volume of Blake translated by someone called Fostowicz. Dearest Dizzy.

  For the first time in my life I ended up in a purely physical prison, and it was a very difficult experience. The cell was clean, poor and dismal. When the door was locked behind me, I was seized with panic. My heart thumped in my chest and I was afraid I’d start to scream. I sat down on the bunk bed and was afraid to move. At this point it occurred to me that I would rather die than spend the rest of my life in a place like this. Oh yes, without a doubt. I didn’t sleep all Night – I didn’t even lie down. I just sat in the same position until morning. I was sweaty and dirty. I felt as if the words I had spoken that day had soiled my tongue and mouth.

  Sparks come from the very source of light and are made of the purest brightness – so say the oldest legends. When a human Being is to be born, a spark begins to fall. First it flies through the darkness of outer space, then through galaxies, and finally, before it falls here, to Earth, the poor thing bumps into the orbits of planets. Each of them contaminates the spark with some Properties, while it darkens and fades.

  First Pluto draws the frame for this cosmic experiment and reveals its basic principles – life is a fleeting incident, followed by death, which will one day let the spark escape from the trap; there’s no other way out. Life is like an extremely demanding testing ground. From now on everything you do will count, every thought and every deed, but not for you to be punished or rewarded afterwards, but because it is they that build your world. This is how the machine works. As it continues to fall, the spark crosses Neptune’s belt and is lost in its foggy vapours. As consolation, Neptune gives it all sorts of illusions, a sleepy memory of its exodus, dreams about flying, fantasy, narcotics and books. Uranus equips it with the capacity for rebellion; from now on that will be proof of the memory of where the spark is from. As the spark passes the rings of Saturn, it becomes clear that waiting for it at the bottom is a prison. A labour camp, a hospital, rules and forms, a sickly body, fatal illness, the death of a loved one. But Jupiter gives it consolation, dignity and optimism, a splendid gift: things-will-work-out. Mars adds strength and aggression, which are sure to be of use. As it flies past the Sun, it is blinded, and all that it has left of its former, far-reaching consciousness is a small, stunted Self, separated from the rest, and so it will remain. I imagine it like this: a small torso, a crippled being with its wings torn off, a Fly tormented by cruel children; who knows how it will survive in the Gloom. Praise the Goddesses, now Venus stands in the way of its Fall. From her the spark gains the gift of love, the purest sympathy, the only thing that can save it and other sparks; thanks to the gifts of Venus, they will be able to unite and support each other. Just before the Fall it catches on a small, strange planet that resembles a hypnotised Rabbit, and doesn’t turn on its own axis, but moves rapidly, staring at the Sun. This is Mercury, who gives it language, the capacity to communicate. As it passes the Moon, it gains something as intangible as the soul.