Primeval and Other Times

by Olga Tokarczuk

  But time flows differently in an old people’s home from anywhere else; its stream is thinner. From one month to the next Izydor lost strength, and finally he gave up the graveyard visits.

  “I think I’m sick,” he told Sister Aniela, who took care of him. “I think I’m going to die.”

  “But Izydor, you’re still young and full of strength,” she said, trying to cheer him up.

  “I am old,” he insisted.

  He felt disappointed. He thought old age was going to open that third eye, which makes it possible to see right through everything, and to understand how the world works. But nothing became clear to him. Instead his bones ached and he couldn’t sleep. No one came to visit him, neither the dead nor the living. At night he saw his images – Ruta just as he remembered her, and the geometrical visions – empty spaces with angular and oval shapes in them. More and more often these images seemed faded and blurred, and the shapes were twisted and inferior, as if they were aging along with him.

  He no longer had the strength to work on his tables. He still dragged himself out of bed and roamed around the building to see his four points of the compass, and that took him all day. The old people’s home had not been built honestly and didn’t have windows facing north, as if its builders were trying to deny this fourth, darkest side of the world, to avoid upsetting the residents. So Izydor had to go out onto the terrace and lean over the railing. Then, around the corner of the building he could see the endless dark woods and the ribbon of the road. The winter completely deprived him of this view because the terraces were locked shut then. So he sat in an armchair in the so-called day room, where the television murmured non-stop, as he tried to forget about the north.

  He learned how to forget, and forgetting brought him relief. It was simpler than he had ever expected it to be. It was enough not to think about the woods and the river for one single day, not to think about his mother and Misia combing her chestnut hair, it was enough not to think about the house and the attic with four windows, and the next day those images were paler and paler, more and more faded.

  Finally Izydor could no longer walk. Despite all the antibiotics and irradiation, his bones and joints went stiff and refused to move at all. He was put to bed in an isolation ward, and there he gradually died.

  Dying involved the systematic disintegration of what had been Izydor. It was a very rapid, irreversible process, self-perfecting and marvellously effective. Like deleting unnecessary information from the computer where the accounts were done at the old people’s home.

  First to disappear were the ideas, thoughts and abstract concepts that Izydor had made such an effort to acquire in the course of his life. All of a sudden the things in fours disappeared:

  Lines Squares Triangles Circles

  Addition Subtraction Multiplication Division

  Sound Word Image Symbol

  Mercy Beauty Strength Rule

  Ethics Metaphysics Epistemology Ontology

  Space Past Present Future

  Width Length Height Time

  Left Up Right Down

  Struggle Suffering Sense of guilt Death

  Roots Stem Flower Fruit

  Sour Sweet Bitter Salty

  Winter Spring Summer Autumn.

  And finally:

  West North East South.

  Then his favourite places faded, then the faces of those he loved best, then their names, and finally whole people yielded to oblivion. Next Izydor’s emotions disappeared – some very old thrills (when Misia had her first child), some despair (when Ruta left), some joy (when the letter from her came), certainty (when he discovered the fourfold nature of things), fear (when he and Ivan Mukta were shot at), pride (when he got money from the post office), and many, many others. And finally, at the very end, when Sister Aniela said: “He has died,” the open spaces that Izydor had inside him began to roll up, spaces that were neither earthly nor celestial – they fell apart into tiny pieces, caved in on each other and vanished forever. It was an image of destruction more terrible than any other, worse than war, fires, stars exploding or black holes imploding.

  That was when Cornspike appeared at the old people’s home.

  “You’re too late. He’s dead,” Sister Aniela told her.

  Cornspike didn’t answer. She sat down by Izydor’s bed. She touched his neck. Izydor’s body wasn’t breathing any more, his heart wasn’t beating inside it, but it was still warm. Cornspike leaned over Izydor and said into his ear:

  “Go, and don’t stop in any of the worlds. And don’t be tempted to come back again.”

  She sat by Izydor’s body until they took it away. Then she remained at his bedside all night and all day, mumbling continually. She only went when she was sure Izydor had gone forever.

  THE TIME OF THE GAME

  God has grown old. In the Eighth World He is now old. His mind is getting weaker and it is full of holes. The Word has become gibberish. So has the world, which arose from the Mind and the Word. The sky is cracking like desiccated wood, the earth has decayed in places and now falls apart under the feet of animals and people. The edges of the world are fraying and turning to dust.

  God has tried to be perfect, and has come to a stop. Anything that does not move is at a standstill. Anything that comes to a standstill falls apart.

  “Nothing comes of creating worlds,” thinks God. “Creating worlds leads to nothing, nothing develops, or broadens, or changes. It is all in vain.”

  For God death does not exist, although sometimes God would like to die, as the people die, whom He has imprisoned in the worlds and entangled in time. Sometimes the people’s souls escape from Him and disappear from His all-seeing eye. That is when God feels the greatest yearning. For He knows that apart from Him there exists an invariable order, joining everything variable into a single pattern. And in this order, which even contains God Himself, everything that seems transient and scattered in time starts to exist simultaneously and eternally, outside time.

  THE TIME OF ADELKA

  Adelka got out of the Kielce bus on the Highway and felt as if she had woken up, as if she had been asleep, and had dreamed about her life in some city, with some people, amid muddled, unclear events. She shook her head and saw the avenue through the forest to Primeval ahead of her, with the lime trees on either side, and the dark wall of Wodenica – everything was in its place.

  She stopped to adjust her handbag on her shoulder. She glanced down at her Italian shoes and her camel-hair coat. She knew she looked beautiful, like someone from a fashion magazine, like someone from the big city. She walked ahead, teetering on her high stilettos.

  As she came out of the woods, she was struck by the vastness of the sky, which suddenly unfurled in its entirety. She had forgotten the sky could be so large, as if it also contained other, unknown worlds. She had never seen a sky like that in Kielce.

  She saw the roof of the house, and couldn’t believe how much the lilac tree had grown. When she came closer, for a moment her heart sank – Aunt Stasia’s house wasn’t there. Instead the sky had flooded the place where it had always stood.

  Adelka opened the garden gate and stopped in front of the house. The door and windows were shut. She went into the back yard. It was overgrown with grass. Some little bantam hens ran out towards her, as brightly coloured as peacocks. Then it occurred to her that her father and Uncle Izydor had died, but no one had told her, and now she had come to an empty house in her smart coat and her Italian stilettos.

  She put down her suitcase, lit a cigarette, and walked across the orchard to the spot where Aunt Stasia’s cottage used to stand.

  “So you smoke now,” she suddenly heard.

  Instinctively she threw the cigarette to the ground and felt a lump in her throat, caused by her old, childhood fear of her father. She looked up and saw him. He was sitting on a kitchen stool in the heap of rubble that had once been his sister’s house.

  “What are you doing here, Dad?” she asked in surprise.

 
“I’m keeping an eye on the house.”

  She didn’t know what to say. They looked at each other in silence.

  She could see he hadn’t shaved for weeks. His stubble was entirely white now, as if hoarfrost had settled on his face. She noticed that he had grown much older in all these years.

  “Have I changed?” she asked.

  “You’ve got older,” he replied, turning his gaze on the house. “Like everyone.”

  “What’s happened, Dad? Where’s Uncle Izydor? Doesn’t anyone help you?”

  “Everyone demands money from me and wants to take over the house as if I weren’t alive any more. But I am still alive. Why didn’t you come to your mother’s funeral?”

  Adelka’s hands were longing for a cigarette.

  “I just came to tell you that I’m doing fine. I graduated, and I’m working. I have a big daughter already.”

  “Why didn’t you have a son?”

  Again the familiar lump rose to her throat, and once more she felt as if she had just woken up. Kielce did not exist, there were no Italian stilettos or camel-hair coat. Time was sliding downwards, like the undermined bank of a river, trying to carry them both off into the past.

  “I just didn’t,” she said.

  “You’ve all got girls. Antek has two, Witek has one, the twins have two each, and now you. I remember it all, I keep a rigorous count and I still haven’t got a grandson. You’ve disappointed me.”

  She took another cigarette from her pocket and lit it.

  Her father stared at the lighter flame.

  “What about your husband?” he asked.

  Adelka inhaled with relief and blew out a cloud of smoke.

  “I haven’t got a husband.”

  “Did he leave you?” he asked.

  She turned and headed towards the house.

  “Wait. The house is locked. This place is full of thieves and all sorts of riff-raff.”

  He slowly walked after her. Then he took a bunch of keys from his pocket. She watched him open the locks, one, two, three. His hands were shaking. She noticed to her surprise that she was taller than him.

  She followed him into the kitchen and at once she smelled the familiar odour of the stove gone cold and burned milk. She inhaled it, like the cigarette smoke.

  There were some dirty plates on the table, with flies walking idly about on them. The sun was drawing the pattern of the curtains on the waxed tablecloth.

  “Dad, where’s Izydor?”

  “I took him to live at the old people’s home in Jeszkotle. He was already old and doddery. Eventually he died. The same thing’s in store for all of us.”

  She moved a pile of clothes from a chair and sat down. She felt like crying. Clods of earth and dry grass had stuck to her high heels.

  “There’s no need to feel sorry for him. They gave him proper care and full board. He was better off than I am. I have to see to everything, keep an eye on it all.”

  She stood up and went into the living room. He lumbered after her, not letting her out of sight. On the table she saw a pile of underwear that had gone grey: vests, underpants and knickers. On a newspaper there was an ink-pad and a seal with a wooden handle. She picked up a pair of underpants and read the print fuzzily stamped in ink: “Paweł Boski, Inspector.”

  “They steal,” he said. “They even take underpants off the washing line.”

  “Dad, I’ll stay here with you for a bit, I’ll clean up for you and bake a cake …” Adelka took off her coat and hung it on a chair.

  She pulled up the sleeves of her sweater and began to clear the dirty cups from the table.

  “Leave it.” Paweł’s tone was unexpectedly harsh. “I don’t want anyone acting as though they own the place. I can manage fine.”

  She went into the yard for her suitcase, and then put some presents on the dirty table: a cream-coloured shirt and a tie for her father, a box of chocolates and some eau de Cologne for Izydor. For a while she held a photograph of her daughter.

  “This is my daughter. Do you want to see?”

  He took the photograph and cast an eye at it.

  “She doesn’t look like anyone. How old is she?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “What have you been doing all this time?”

  She took a deep breath, because she thought she had a lot to say, but suddenly it all flew out of her head.

  Paweł picked up the presents in silence and took them to the sideboard in the living room. The bunch of keys jangled. She heard the rattle of patent locks forcibly set into the oak door of the sideboard. She looked around the kitchen and recognised things she had already forgotten. On a rack by the tiled stove there was a plate with a double bottom, where hot water was poured, so the soup wouldn’t go cold too quickly. On a shelf there were some ceramic containers with blue lettering saying flour, rice, buckwheat, and sugar. For as long as she could remember the container for sugar had been cracked. There was a copy of the icon of the Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle hanging above the living-room door. Her lovely hands alluringly exposed her smooth neckline, but where there should have been a breast there was a small, blood-red piece of flesh – a heart. Finally Adelka’s gaze landed on the coffee grinder with the porcelain belly and the neat little drawer. From the living room she heard the keys rattling as they opened the locks in the sideboard. She hesitated a moment, then quickly took the grinder from the shelf and hid it in her suitcase.

  “You’ve come back too late,” said her father in the doorway. “Everything’s already over. Time to die.”

  He laughed, as if he had told an excellent joke. She saw that there was nothing left of his fine white teeth. Now they sat in silence. Adelka’s gaze wandered along the pattern on the tablecloth and rested on some jars of blackcurrant juice that the fruit flies had got inside.

  “I could stay …” she whispered, and the ash from her cigarette fell on her skirt.

  Paweł turned to face the window and gazed through the dirty pane at the orchard.

  “I don’t need anything anymore. I’m not afraid of anything anymore.”

  She understood what he was trying to say to her. She got up and slowly put on her coat. She kissed her father awkwardly on both stubble-frosted cheeks. She thought he would see her to the gate, but at once he headed for the pile of rubble, where his stool was still standing.

  She emerged onto the Highway, and only then did she notice that it had been surfaced in asphalt. The lime trees seemed smaller. Light gusts of wind were shaking the leaves off them, which were falling on Stasia Papuga’s fields, overgrown with tall grass.

  By Wodenica she wiped her Italian heels clean with a handkerchief and tidied her hair. She had to sit at the stop for another hour or so, waiting for the bus. When it came, she was the only passenger. She opened her case and took out the grinder. Slowly she began to turn the handle, and the driver cast her a look of surprise in the rear-view mirror.

  About the Author

  Olga Tokarczuk was born in 1962 in Sulechów near Zielona Góra, Poland. A recipient of all of Poland’s top literary awards, she is one of the most critically acclaimed authors of her generation. After finishing her psychology degree at the University of Warsaw, she initially practised as a therapist and often cites C.G. Jung as an inspiration for her work, in which mythmaking has become a hallmark.

  Since the publication of her first book, a collection of poems, in 1989, Tokarczuk has published collections of stories, novellas, novels, and one book-length essay. Her novel House of Day, House of Night has been translated into English. Awarded the Nike Prize, Poland’s top book award, for Bieguni [The Runners] in 2008, she now divides her time between Wrocław and a small village near the Czech border.

  About the Translator

  Antonia Lloyd-Jones is among the leading translator of Polish prose into English. Having studied Russian and Ancient Greek at Oxford University, she has translated many works of Polish fiction, among them House of Day, House of Night by Olga Tokarczuk and Paweł Huelle’s Merced
es-Benz and Castorp. She is the recipient of the 2009 Found in Translation Award for her translation of Huelle’s The Last Supper. She lives in London.