Primeval and Other Times

by Olga Tokarczuk

  “Either God exists and has always existed, or” – here he added the second finger – “God doesn’t exist and never has. Or else” – the third appeared – “God used to exist, but no longer does. And finally,” – here he poked all four fingers at Izydor – “God doesn’t yet exist and has yet to appear.”

  “Izek, go and fetch some wood,” said Misia in the same tone as when the men were telling filthy jokes.

  Off went Izydor, thinking about Ivan Mukta the whole time, and that Ivan Mukta must have a lot more to say.

  A few days later he finally managed to catch Ivan all on his own. He was sitting on a bench outside, cleaning a rifle.

  “What’s it like where you live?” Izydor asked boldly.

  “Exactly the same as here. Except there’s no forest. There’s one river, but it’s very big and very far off.”

  Izydor did not take this topic further.

  “Are you old or young? We can’t guess how old you might be.”

  “I’ve clocked up a few years.”

  “But could you be … seventy, say?”

  Ivan burst out laughing and put down the gun. He didn’t answer.

  “Ivan, do you think there’s a chance that God might not exist? Then where would all this have come from?”

  Ivan rolled a cigarette, then inhaled and pulled a face.

  “Look around you. And what can you see?”

  “I can see the road, and fields and plum trees beyond it, and grass in between them …” Izydor gave the Russian an inquiring look. “And further on the forest, and there are sure to be mushrooms there, except you can’t see them from here … And I can also see the sky, blue underneath, and white and swirling on top.”

  “And where’s this God?”

  “He’s invisible. He’s underneath it. He guides and runs it all, He makes the laws and adapts everything to fit Him …”

  “Very good, Izydor. I know you’re clever, though you don’t look it. I know you’ve got an imagination.” Ivan lowered his voice and began to speak very slowly. “So now imagine there isn’t any God, as you say, underneath. That no one takes care of it all, that the whole world is just one big mess, or, even worse, like a sort of machine, a broken chaff-cutter that only works on blind impulse …”

  And Izydor looked again, just as Ivan Mukta had told him to. He strained his entire imagination and opened his eyes wide, until they started to water. Then for a brief moment he saw everything completely differently. Open space, empty and endless, stretched away in all directions. Everything within this dead expanse, every living thing was helpless and alone. Things were happening by accident, and when the accident failed, automatic law appeared – the rhythmical machinery of nature, the cogs and pistons of history, conformity with the rules that was rotting from the inside and crumbling to dust. Cold and sorrow reigned everywhere. Every creature was trying to huddle up to something, to cling to something, to things, to each other, but all that resulted was suffering and despair.

  The quality of what Izydor saw was temporality. Under a colourful outer coating everything was merging in collapse, decay, and destruction.

  THE TIME OF IVAN MUKTA

  Ivan Mukta showed Izydor all the important things.

  He started by showing him the world without God.

  Then he took him to the forest, where the partisans shot by the Germans were buried. Izydor had known many of these men. Afterwards he came down with a fever and lay in the cool bedroom on his sister’s bed. Misia refused to let Ivan Mukta in to see him.

  “It amuses you to show him all those dreadful things. But he’s still a child.”

  In the end, however, she let Ivan sit by Izydor’s bed. He put his rifle at the foot of it.

  “Ivan, tell me about death and about what happens after it. And tell me if I have an immortal soul that will never die,” asked Izydor.

  “There’s a tiny spark in you that will never go out. And I’ve got one in me, too.”

  “Have we all got one? The Germans, too?”

  “Everyone. Now sleep. When you get better, I’ll take you to our place in the forest.”

  “Please go now,” said Misia, looking in from the kitchen.

  Once Izydor was better, Ivan kept his promise and took Izydor to the Russian units that were stationed in the forest. He also let him look through his binoculars at the Germans in Kotuszów. Izydor was amazed to see that through them the Germans looked no different from the Russians. They had uniforms of a similar colour, similar trenches, and similar helmets. So he found it even harder to understand why they shot at Ivan, as he carried orders from the gloomy lieutenant in his leather shoulder bag. They also shot at Izydor when he accompanied him. Izydor had to swear he wouldn’t tell anyone about this. If his father found out, he would tan his hide.

  Ivan Mukta showed Izydor another thing that he couldn’t tell anyone about. Not because he wasn’t allowed, or Ivan had forbidden him, but because the memory of it made him feel anxious and ashamed – too strongly to say anything about it, but not too strongly to stop him thinking about it.

  “Everything couples. It has always been like that. The need to couple is the most powerful need of all. You only have to look around.”

  He knelt down on the path they were walking along, and pointed at the coupled abdomens of two insects.

  “It’s instinct, in other words, something you can’t control.”

  Suddenly Ivan Mukta unbuttoned his flies and shook his penis.

  “That’s the tool for coupling. It fits in the hole between a woman’s legs, because there’s order in the world. Each thing fits into another.”

  Izydor went as red as a beetroot. He didn’t know what to say. He looked down at the path. They went out into the fields beyond the Hill, out of range of the German fire. A goat was grazing by some abandoned buildings.

  “When there aren’t many women, like now, the tool fits into your hand, into the backsides of other soldiers, into holes dug in the ground, or into various animals. Stay here and watch,” said Ivan Mukta quickly, and handed Izydor his cap and map case. He ran up to the goat, shifted his gun onto his back, and dropped his trousers.

  Izydor saw Ivan press against the goat’s rump and start rhythmically moving his hips. The faster Ivan’s movements became, the more Izydor was rooted to the spot.

  When Ivan came back for his cap and map case, Izydor was crying.

  “Why are you crying? Feeling sorry for the animal?”

  “I want to go home.”

  “Of course. Off you go! Everyone wants to go home.”

  The boy turned and ran into the forest. Ivan Mukta wiped his sweating brow, put on his cap and, whistling a sad tune, went on his way.

  THE TIME OF RUTA

  Cornspike was afraid of the people in the forest. She watched them secretly as they disturbed the peace of the forest with their foreign jabber. They had thick clothing that they never took off, even in hot weather. They lugged weapons about with them. They hadn’t yet reached Wydymacz, but she sensed that sooner or later it would happen. She knew they were tracking each other down to kill one another, and she wondered where she and Ruta could go to escape them. They often stayed the night at Florentynka’s house, but Cornspike felt nervous in the village. At night she dreamed the sky was a metal cover that no one was able to lift.

  Cornspike hadn’t been to Primeval for a long time, and she didn’t know the Wola Road had become the border between the Russians and the Germans. She didn’t know Kurt had shot Florentynka, and that the wheels of the army vehicles and the soldiers’ rifles had killed her dogs. She dug a shelter under the house, so they would both have somewhere to hide when the men in uniforms came. She was so absorbed in digging the shelter that she was careless, and let Ruta go to the village alone. She packed her a basket of blackberries and potatoes stolen from the field. Only when Ruta had left did Cornspike realise she had made a terrible mistake.

  Ruta walked from Wydymacz to the village, to Florentynka’s, taking her usua
l route through Papiernia, then down the Wola Road that ran along the edge of the forest. In the wicker basket she was carrying food for the old woman. She was to bring home a dog from Florentynka’s to warn them of people coming. Her mother told her that as soon as she saw any person, regardless whether it was someone from Primeval or a stranger, she was to go into the forest and run away.

  Ruta was only thinking about the dog, when she saw a man pissing against a tree. She stopped and slowly began to retreat. Then someone very strong grabbed her by the arms from behind and twisted them painfully. The man who’d been pissing ran up to her and hit her in the face so hard that Ruta wilted and fell to the ground. The men put down their rifles and raped her. First one, then the second, and then a third one came along.

  Ruta lay on the Wola Road, which was the border between the Germans and Russians. Beside her lay the basket of blackberries and potatoes. That was how the second patrol found her. Now the men had uniforms of a different colour. Each in turn they lay down on her, as each in turn they handed their rifles to the other to hold. Then, standing over her, they smoked cigarettes. They took the basket and the food.

  Cornspike found Ruta too late. The girl’s dress was pulled up to her little face and her body was injured. Her belly and thighs were red with blood, which had attracted flies. She was unconscious.

  Her mother picked her up and put her in the hole she had dug under the house. She laid her on some burdock leaves – their fragrance reminded her of the day her first child had died. She lay down beside the girl and listened closely to her breathing. Then she got up and, with trembling hands, mixed herbs. There was a scent of masterwort.

  THE TIME OF MISIA

  One day in August the Russians told Michał to gather all the people from Primeval and take them into the forest. They said Primeval was going to be on the front line any day now.

  He did as they wanted. He went round all the cottages and said:

  “Any day now Primeval will be on the front line.”

  On impulse he dropped in at Florentynka’s house, too, but only when he saw the empty dog bowls did he remember that Florentynka was no longer there.

  “What will happen to you?” he asked Ivan Mukta.

  “We’re at war. For us this is the front.”

  “My wife is sick. She can’t walk. We’re both staying.”

  Ivan Mukta shrugged.

  Misia and Mrs Papuga were sitting on the cart, hugging the children. Misia’s eyes were swollen with tears.

  “Papa, come with us. Please, I beg you.”

  “We’re going to take care of the house. Nothing bad will happen. I’ve survived worse things.”

  They left one cow for Michał and tied one to the cart. Izydor led all the rest out of the barn and took the halters off their necks. They didn’t want to go, so Paweł picked up a stick and whacked them on the rumps. Then Ivan Mukta gave a long whistle and the startled cows set off at a trot across Stasia Papuga’s vegetable patches into the fields. Later they saw them from the cart, standing there, stupefied by their unexpected freedom. Misia cried the whole way.

  The cart drove off the Highway into the forest, and its wheels fitted into the ruts carved out by the carts of those who had driven this way earlier. Misia walked after the cart, leading the children. By the road there were masses of chanterelles and ceps growing. Now and then she stopped, knelt down, and pulled mushrooms from the ground along with moss and turf.

  “You have to leave the foot, a bit of the foot in the ground,” worried Izydor. “Otherwise they’ll never grow back again.”

  “Too bad,” said Misia.

  The nights were warm, so they slept on the ground, on quilts brought from home. The men spent all day making dugouts and chopping wood. As in the village, the women cooked and lent each other salt for the potatoes.

  The Boskis took up residence between some big pine trees. There were diapers hung out to dry on their branches. Next to the Boskis the Malak sisters had their quarters. The younger one’s husband had joined the Home Army. The older one’s had joined the “Little Andrews” resistance fighters. Paweł and Izydor built the women a dugout.

  Without any verbal agreement, the villagers arranged themselves just as they lived in Primeval. They even left an empty space between the Krasnys and Cherubin. In Primeval, Florentynka’s house stands there.

  One day at the beginning of September, Cornspike and her daughter came to this forest settlement. The girl was evidently sick. She could hardly drag her feet along. She was bruised and had a high temperature. Paweł Boski, who performed the duties of a doctor in the forest, went up to them with his bag, in which he had iodine, bandages, pills for diarrhoea, and sulfamide powder, but Cornspike wouldn’t let him come near her daughter. She asked the women for hot water and brewed herbs for her. Misia gave them a blanket. It looked as if Cornspike wanted to stay with them, so the men cobbled together a home for her in the ground.

  In the evening, when the forest was silent, everyone sat by glimmering bonfires and listened. Sometimes the night flared up, as if a storm were raging nearby. Then they heard a low, terrifying rumble, muffled by the forest.

  There were brave people who went to the village, for the potatoes that were ripening in the small home gardens, for flour, or simply because they couldn’t stand living in uncertainty. Old Mrs Serafin, who no longer cared about life, went most often. Sometimes one of her daughters-in-law went with her, and it was from one of them that Misia heard:

  “You haven’t got a house any more. There’s just a heap of rubble left.”

  THE TIME OF THE BAD MAN

  Ever since the people from Primeval had run away into the forest and lived there in dugout shelters, the Bad Man could find no place for himself in the forest. People were pushing in everywhere, into every grove, into every clearing. They were digging up peat and looking for mushrooms and nuts. They wandered to one side of their hurriedly established camps to relieve themselves straight onto a strawberry bush or fresh grass. On warmer evenings he could hear them copulating in the bushes. He watched in amazement as they built miserable shelters, and was surprised how much time it took them.

  Now he spent all day long watching them, and the longer he looked at them, the more he feared and hated them. They were noisy and deceitful. They never stopped moving their mouths, spouting noises that made no sense. It wasn’t weeping, or shouting, or purring with satisfaction. Their speech didn’t mean anything. Everywhere they left their tracks and their smells behind them. They were insolent and incautious. When the ominous booming noises came, and the sky was coloured red at night, they fell into panic and despair, they didn’t know where to run or where to hide. He could smell their fear. They stank like a rat when it fell into the Bad Man’s trap.

  The smells that surrounded them irritated the Bad Man. But among them there were also pleasant, though new odours: the smell of roast meat, boiled potatoes, milk, sheepskins and furs, the smell of coffee made of chicory, ashes, and rye. There were also terrible smells, not animal, but purely human: of grey soap, carbolic, lye, paper, weapons, grease, and sulphur.

  One day the Bad Man stood at the edge of the forest and gazed at the village. It was empty, gone cold like carrion. Some of the houses had smashed-in roofs, others had broken windows. There were no birds or dogs in the village. Nothing. This sight pleased the Bad Man. As the people had gone into the forest, the Bad Man went into the village.

  THE TIME OF THE GAME

  In the little book entitled Ignis fatuus, or an instructive game for one player, this is how the description of the Third World begins:

  Between Earth and Heaven there are Eight Worlds. They hang motionless in space like eiderdowns hung out to air.

  God created the Third World a very long time ago. He started with the seas and volcanoes, and finished with the plants and animals. Yet as there is nothing sublime about creating, just hard work and effort, God grew tired and disheartened. The newly made world seemed boring to Him. The animals couldn’t unde
rstand His harmony, they didn’t admire Him or praise Him. They ate and multiplied. They didn’t ask God why He had made the sky blue and the water wet. The hedgehog didn’t wonder at his prickles or the lion at his teeth, the birds didn’t give their wings a second thought.

  This world went on for a very long time, and bored God to death. So He went down to Earth and forcibly equipped each animal He met with fingers, hands, faces, soft skin, reason and the capacity to wonder – He changed the animals into people. But the animals didn’t want to be changed into people at all, because people seemed to them as terrible as monsters. So they plotted, caught God, and drowned Him. And that is how it remained.

  In the Third World there is no God and no people.

  THE TIME OF MISIA

  Misia put on two skirts and two sweaters and wrapped her head in a shawl. Silently, to avoid waking anyone, she crept out of the dugout. The forest was muffling the monotonous rumble of distant guns. She took a rucksack and was just about to set off when she saw Adelka. The child came up to her.

  “I’m coming with you.”

  Misia was cross.

  “Go back to the dugout. Right now. I’ll be back in a moment.”

  Adelka clutched her skirt tightly and began to cry. Misia hesitated. Then she went back to the dugout for her daughter’s little sheepskin coat.

  Once they were standing at the edge of the forest, they thought they could see Primeval. But Primeval wasn’t there. Against the dark sky not the thinnest trail of smoke was visible, there were no lights shining, and no dogs barking. Only in the west, somewhere over Kotuszów, low clouds showed as a brown glow. Misia shuddered and an old dream came back to her, in which it had looked just like this. “I’m dreaming,” she thought. “I’m lying on the bunk in the dugout. I haven’t gone anywhere. This is in my dream.” And then she thought she must have fallen asleep even earlier. It seemed as if she were lying on her new double bed, with Paweł sleeping beside her. There was no war. She was having a long nightmare, about the Germans, the Russians, the front line, the forest, and the dugouts. That helped – Misia stopped feeling afraid and went out onto the Highway. Wet stones on the road crunched under her shoes. Then Misia had a hopeful thought that she had fallen asleep earlier still. Tired of monotonously turning the coffee grinder’s handle, she had fallen asleep on the bench outside the mill. She was only a few years old, and now she was having a child’s dream about adult life and war.