Primeval and Other Times

by Olga Tokarczuk

  He felt like an abandoned child, like a clod of earth thrown on the roadside verge. He lay on his back in the rough, elusive present, and felt that with every passing second he was dissolving into non-existence.

  THE TIME OF RUTA

  Ruta was even ready to love Ukleja. She could treat him like a large, sick animal. But Ukleja didn’t want her love – he wanted power over her.

  Sometimes Ruta felt as if the shaggy Bad Man were sitting inside Ukleja – he lay on top of her the same way as the Bad Man lay on her mother. But whereas her mother let it happen with a smile on her face, it made Ruta feel anger and hatred that grew and swelled like dough. Ukleja always fell asleep on top of her afterwards, and his body gave off a stink of alcohol. Ruta would slide out from under it and go into the bathroom. She would fill the bathtub with water and lie in it until the water went cold.

  Ukleja would lock Ruta in the house alone. He left lots of good food for her in the kitchen, from the “Cosy Corner” restaurant: cold chicken, pork knuckle, fish in aspic, vegetable salad, egg mayonnaise, herrings in sour cream – whatever there was on the menu. In Ukleja’s house she lacked nothing. She went from room to room, listened to the radio, changed into her dresses, and tried on shoes and hats. She had two wardrobes filled with clothes, a casket full of gold jewellery, about fifteen hats and dozens of pairs of shoes, so she had been given everything she wanted. To begin with she really thought she would be able to walk about the streets of Taszów in these outfits and parade outside the church in the market square, hear the sighs and catch the glances full of admiration. But Ukleja never let her go out alone. She could only go out with him. And he took her to see his pals and lifted her silk skirts to show off her thighs. Or he took her to the Boskis’ house in Primeval, or to play bridge with the lawyers and secretaries, where she got bored and spent hours staring at her nylon stockings.

  Then Ukleja took possession of a camera on a stand and some darkroom equipment from a photographer who owed him money. Ruta soon realised what taking photographs involved. The camera stood in the bedroom, and before getting into bed, Ukleja always set the automatic shutter release. Then in the red light of the darkroom Ruta saw Ukleja’s mounds of flesh, his backside, genitals, and fat breasts bulging like a woman’s, covered in black bristles. She also saw herself crushed and fragmented into breasts, thighs, and belly. So when she was left alone, she put on her dresses and stood perfumed and elegant before the eye of the camera lens.

  “Click,” said the camera in admiration.

  THE TIME OF MISIA

  The passage of time worried Misia in May in particular. May abruptly forced its way into its place in the rank of months and burst forth. Everything began to grow and flower – all at once.

  Familiar with the early-spring, tawny-grey view from the kitchen window, Misia couldn’t get used to the day-to-day changes in which May abounded. First of all, in just two days, the meadows went green. Then the Black River shone olive-green and let the light into its waters, which from then on assumed different shades daily. The woods at Papiernia went willow-green, then grass-green, and finally darkened and plunged into shadow.

  In May Misia’s orchard blossomed, and that was a sign that she could launder all the clothes, curtains, bedding, mats, napkins, and bedspreads that had gone musty over the winter. She stretched washing lines between the blossoming apple trees and filled the pink-and-white orchard with bright colours. The children, hens, and dogs came toddling after her. Sometimes Izydor came, too, but he always talked about things that didn’t interest her.

  In the orchard she thought about the fact that it was impossible to stop the trees from blossoming, and that the petals would inevitably fall, while in time the leaves would go brown and then drop. She wasn’t comforted by the thought that next year the same thing would happen again, because she knew it wasn’t true. Next year the trees would be different – bigger, their branches weightier, the grass would be different, and so would the fruits. This blossoming branch would never be repeated. “Hanging out the washing like this will never be repeated,” she thought. “I shall never be repeated.”

  She went back into the kitchen and set about making the dinner, but everything she did seemed to her crude and clumsy. The pierogi were shapeless, the dumplings uneven, the pasta thick and coarse. Peeled clean, the potatoes suddenly got eyes that had to be dug out with the tip of a knife.

  Misia was just like the orchard, and like everything in the world that is subject to time. After her third child she grew fat, her hair lost its shine and went straight. Now her eyes were the colour of bitter chocolate.

  She was pregnant for the fourth time, and for the first time she thought it was too much for her. She didn’t want this child.

  A son was born, to whom she gave the name Marek. He was calm and quiet.

  From the start he slept right through the night. He only came to life when he saw her breast. Paweł had gone on yet another course, so Michał looked after Misia in her confinement.

  “Four children is a lot for you,” he said. “You should be using some sort of protection. After all, Paweł knows a thing or two about it.”

  Soon Misia became certain that Paweł went whoring with Ukleja. Perhaps she shouldn’t resent him for that. First of all she had been pregnant – fat and swollen – then in her confinement, which she took badly. But she did resent him.

  She knew he was squeezing and screwing all those barmaids, butcher’s shop girls, and waitresses from the restaurants he monitored as a state official. She found lipstick marks and single long hairs on his shirt. She started noticing alien smells on his things. Finally she found an open packet of condoms, which he never used when they made love.

  Misia called Izydor upstairs to the bedroom, and together they divided the big double bed in half. She could see that Izydor liked this idea. He even added something of his own to this new arrangement – he put a flowerpot with a big palm tree in the middle of the room between the beds. Michał watched it all from the kitchen as he smoked a cigarette.

  When Paweł came home rather tipsy, Misia went up to him with all four children.

  “I’ll kill you if you ever do it again,” she said.

  He blinked, but didn’t try pretending not to know what was the matter. Then he threw his boots in the corner and laughed merrily.

  “I’ll kill you,” repeated Misia so grimly, that the baby in her arms began to cry pitifully.

  In late autumn Marek fell sick with whooping cough and died.

  THE TIME OF THE ORCHARD

  The orchard has two times that are interwoven, succeeding each other year after year. These are the time of the apple tree and the time of the pear tree.

  In March, when the ground becomes warm, the orchard begins to vibrate and digs its claw-like, underground paws into the earth’s flesh. The trees suck the earth like puppies, and their trunks become warmer.

  In the year of the apple, the trees draw from the earth the sour waters of underground rivers that have the power of change and motion. These waters contain the need to push, to grow and spread.

  The year of the pear is completely different. The time of the pear trees involves sucking sweet juices from the minerals, as inside the leaves they gently and gradually merge with the rays of the sun. The trees come to a stop in their growing and relish the sweetness of sheer existence, without moving, without developing. Then the orchard seems unchanging.

  In the year of the apple tree the flowers bloom briefly, but most beautifully. Often the frost beheads them or violent winds shake them off. There are lots of fruits, but they are small and not very impressive. Seeds roam far from the place of their birth: dandelion clocks cross the stream, grasses fly over the forest to other meadows, and sometimes the wind even carries them across the sea. Animal litters are weak and not large, but those that survive the first few days grow into healthy, clever specimens. Foxes born during apple-tree time do not hesitate to approach henhouses, and the same is true of falcons and martens. Cats ki
ll mice not because they are hungry, but for the sake of killing, aphids attack people’s gardens and butterflies assume the brightest colours on their wings. Apple-tree summers give birth to new ideas. People tread new paths. They fell forests and plant young trees. They build weirs on rivers and buy land. They dig the foundations for new houses. They think about journeys. Men betray their women, and women their men. Children suddenly become adult and leave to lead their own lives. People cannot sleep. They drink too much. They take important decisions and start doing whatever they have not done until now. New ideologies arise. Governments change. Stock markets are unstable, and from one day to the next you can become a millionaire or lose everything. Revolutions break out that change regimes. People daydream, and confuse their dreams with what they regard as reality.

  In a pear-tree year nothing new happens. Things that have already begun continue. Things that do not yet exist gather their strength in non-existence. Plants strengthen their roots and trunks, and do not soar upwards. Flowers bloom slowly and idly, until they are large. There are not many roses on a rose bush, but each of them is as big as a human fist. So are the fruits in the time of the pear tree – sweet and fragrant. The seeds fall where they grew, and instantly put down strong roots. The ears of corn are fat and heavy. If it weren’t for man, the weight of the seeds would crush them to the ground. Animals and people grow a layer of fat, because the barns are bursting with crops. Mothers give birth to big babies, and twins are born more often than usual. Animals, too, have large litters, and so much milk in their teats that they are able to feed their young. People think about building houses, or even entire cities. They draw plans and measure the ground, but they do not get down to work. The banks show enormous profits, and the warehouses of large factories are full of products. Governments grow stronger. People daydream, and finally notice that each of their dreams is coming true – even once it is already too late.

  THE TIME OF PAWEŁ

  Paweł had to take several days’ leave from work because of his father’s death. His father died on the third day. It looked as if the end had already come, but an hour later old Boski got up and walked to the Highway. He stood by the fence and nodded. Paweł and Stasia took him by the arms and led him back to bed. For those three days their father said nothing. Paweł thought he was looking at him beseechingly, as if he wanted something. But Paweł reckoned he had done everything he could. He was with him the whole time, giving him things to drink and changing his sheets. How else you can help a dying father he didn’t know.

  Finally old Boski died. Paweł dozed off at dawn, and when he awoke an hour later, he saw that his father was no longer breathing. The old man’s small body had caved in, gone floppy like an empty sack. There was no doubt there was no longer anyone inside it.

  But Paweł did not believe in the immortal soul, so he found this sight appalling. He was seized with horror that soon he, too, would change into a lifeless scrap of flesh, and that would be all that was left of him. Tears fell from his eyes.

  Stasia behaved very calmly. She showed Paweł the coffin that their father had made for himself. It was leaning against a wall in the barn. It had a lid made of shingle.

  Now Paweł had to arrange the funeral and – like it or not – go and see the parish priest.

  He met him in the presbytery courtyard, by the car. The priest invited him into a cool, gloomy office, where he sat down at a shiny polished desk. He spent a long time looking for the right page in the registry of deaths, and painstakingly recorded old Boski’s details there. Paweł stood by the door, but as he didn’t enjoy feeling like a supplicant, he came up to a chair by the desk and sat down.

  “How much is it going to cost?” he asked.

  The priest put down his pen and looked at him closely.

  “I haven’t seen you in church for years.”

  “I’m an atheist, sir.”

  “Your father wasn’t easy to find at mass either.”

  “He always went to Midnight Mass at Christmas.”

  The priest sighed and stood up. He started pacing the office, snapping his fingers.

  “My God,” he said, “he went to Midnight Mass. That’s just not enough for a decent Catholic. ‘Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy’ – that’s what the Scripture says, doesn’t it?”

  “I’ve never bothered with all that, sir.”

  “If in the past ten years the deceased had taken part in each Sunday holy mass and put the proverbial zloty on the collection plate, do you know how much would have accumulated?”

  The priest did some mental arithmetic and then said:

  “The funeral will cost two thousand.”

  Paweł felt the blood rush to his head. He saw red spots before his eyes.

  “Then fuck the whole thing,” he said and sprang to his feet.

  In a split second he was at the door, grabbing the handle.

  “Well, all right, Boski,” he heard from the desk. “Let’s make it two hundred.”

  THE TIME FO THE DEAD

  When old Boski died, he found himself in the Time of the Dead. In some way this time belonged to the cemetery in Jeszkotle. On the cemetery wall there was a plaque on which was clumsily engraved:

  God sees

  Time escapes

  Death pursues

  Eternity waits

  When Boski died, he immediately realised he had made a mistake; he had died badly, carelessly, that he had made a mistake in dying and that he would have to go through the whole thing again. He also realised that his death was a dream, just like life.

  The Time of the Dead imprisoned those who naively reckoned you don’t have to learn death, those who had failed death like an exam. And the more the world moved forwards, the more it extolled life, the more firmly attached to life it was, the larger a crowd prevailed in the Time of the Dead and the noisier the cemeteries became. For only here did the dead gradually gain consciousness after life and find they had lost the time granted to them. Only after death did they discover the secret of life, and it was a futile discovery.

  THE TIME OF RUTA

  Ruta made bigos stew for Christmas and threw a handful of cardamom pods in it. She threw in cardamom because its seeds were beautiful – they had a perfect shape, they were shiny black and aromatic. Even their name was beautiful. It sounded like the name of a faraway country – the Kingdom of Cardamom.

  In the stew the cardamom lost its black sheen, but its aroma pervaded the cabbage.

  Ruta was waiting for her husband to come home for Christmas dinner. She lay on the bed and painted her nails. Then from under the bed she took out the German newspapers that Ukleja brought home, and looked through them with great interest. What she liked most were the pictures of faraway countries. They showed views of exotic beaches, beautifully sun-tanned men and slender, smooth women. Ruta understood just one word in the entire newspaper: “Brazil.” This country was Brazil. In Brazil a great river flowed (a hundred times bigger than the Black and White Rivers combined) and a vast forest grew (a thousand times bigger than the Great Forest). In Brazil the cities enjoyed all kinds of riches, and the people looked happy and contented. Suddenly Ruta longed for her mother, though it was the middle of winter.

  Ukleja came home late. As he stood on the threshold in a fur coat sprinkled in snow, Ruta instantly knew he was drunk. He didn’t like the smell of cardamom and he didn’t like the stew.

  “Why didn’t you make beetroot soup and ravioli? It’s Christmas Eve!” he screamed. “You only know how to screw. You don’t care who you do it with, whether it’s Russkies or Germans or that halfwit Izydor. That’s all you’ve got in your head, you bitch!”