Flights

by Olga Tokarczuk

  There were three reasons for coming to the island. Reason One, because you simply lived here; Reason Two, because you were a guest of the Director; and Reason Three, because of the windmill, to have a picture of yourself taken with it in the background.

  The ferry took twenty minutes. In that time some of the passengers got out of their cars and lit a cigarette, even though they weren’t allowed to. Others stood at the railing and just looked out at the water, until their rocking vision finally hooked onto the other shore. Soon, excited by the smells of the mainland, with all their incredibly important tasks and obligations, they would disappear onto the little streets by the waterfront, ebbing away like the ninth wave that reaches furthest and soaks into the ground and never returns to sea. Others would come to take their places. The veterinarian in his elegant pick-up; he earned his living by spaying and neutering cats. A field trip to investigate the flora and fauna of the island for a class on the natural world. A delivery of bananas and kiwis. A television crew coming to interview the Director. The G. family, returning from a visit to the grandmother. Another suntanned couple of cyclists would replace the first.

  During loading and unloading, which took almost an hour, Eryk would smoke a few cigarettes and try hard not to give in to despair. Then the ferry would return to the island. And so it would go eight times, with a two-hour break for lunch, which Eryk always ate in the same little place. One of three places around there. After work he’d buy potatoes, onions and bacon. Cigarettes and alcohol. He’d try not to drink until noon, but by the sixth trip he would already be smashed.

  Straight lines – how humiliating they were. How they destroyed the mind. What perfidious geometry, how it makes us into idiots – there and back, a parody of travel. Going forth merely in order to return again. Speeding up just to put on the brakes.

  So it was, too, with Eryk’s marriage, which had been brief and turbulent. Maria, a divorcée, worked in a shop and had a young son who went to a boarding school in the city. Eryk moved in with her, into her nice, cozy little house with its enormous television. She had a slim figure, with somewhat generous contours, light-coloured skin and tight-fitting leggings. She soon learned to serve his potatoes with bacon and started adding marjoram and nutmeg to them, while he threw himself into chopping wood for their fireplace on his days off. It lasted a year and a half; after a while the never-ending noise of the television started to wear him down, its gaudy illumination, the rag by the mat where you had to leave your muddy boots, and that nutmeg. After he got drunk a few times and swore at her like a sailor, finger raised, she threw him out of the house, and shortly thereafter she moved to the mainland, to be near her son.

  •

  Today was 1 March, Ash Wednesday. When he opened his eyes, Eryk saw the grey light and the sleet falling, which would leave blurred tracks on the windows. He thought of his old name. He’d almost forgotten it. He said it out loud, and it sounded as though he were being called by some stranger. He felt the familiar pressure in his head after yesterday’s drinking.

  Because it must be noted that Chinese people have two names: one given by their families, used to summon the child, scold and punish him, but also the basis for affectionate nicknames. But when the child goes out into the world, he or she takes another name, an outside name, a world name, a personage-name. Donned like a uniform, a surplice, a prison jumpsuit, an outfit for a formal cocktail. This outside name is useful and easy to remember. From here on out it will corroborate its person. Best if it’s worldly, universal, recognizable to everyone; down with the locality of our names. Down with Oldrzich, Sung Yin, Kazimierz and Jyrek; down with Blażen, Liu and Milica. Long live Michael, Judith, Anna, Jan, Samuel and Eryk!

  But today Eryk answered the call of his old name: I’m here.

  No one knew that name, so I won’t say it, either.

  The man named Eryk donned his green uniform with the logo of the United Northern Ferry Company, ran his fingers through his beard, turned off the heating in his little dwarf-like house and set out along the asphalt. Then, as he waited in his aquarium for the ferry to be loaded and the sun to finally come out, he had a can of beer and lit his first cigarette. He waved from on high to Eliza and her little daughter, friendly, as though wanting to reward them for the fact that today they wouldn’t make it to nursery school.

  After the ferry had left the shore and was already halfway between the two marinas, suddenly it stalled, then set out for open sea.

  Not everyone realized what was happening at first. Some, so accustomed to the routine of the straight line, looked at the disappearing shore indifferently, numbed, which would no doubt have confirmed Eryk’s drunken theories about the fact that travelling by ferry flattens out the brain’s coils. Others realized only after a long while.

  ‘Eryk, what are you doing? Turn around right now,’ Alfred shouted at him, and Eliza joined in with her high-pitched, squeaky voice: ‘People will be late for work…’

  Alfred tried to get up to where Eryk was, but Eryk had thought to close the gate and lock his cabin.

  From above he saw everyone simultaneously take out their phones and place calls, talking indignantly into empty space, gesticulating anxiously. He could imagine what they were saying. That they’d be late to work, that they wanted to know who would cover the punitive damages in question, that drunks like Eryk shouldn’t be allowed, that they always knew things would end up like this, that they don’t have enough jobs for their own people and here they were, hiring immigrants; who knew how they learned the language so well, but in any case there was always…

  Eryk couldn’t have cared less. He was pleased to see that after some time they settled down and looked out at the sky getting lighter and distributing beautiful beams of light down between the clouds. Only one thing worried him – the light blue coat of Eliza’s daughter, which (as every sea-wolf knows) was a bad omen aboard a ship. But Eryk closed his eyes and soon forgot about it. He headed for the ocean and went down to his passengers with a box of fizzy drinks and chocolate bars that he’d prepared for this occasion long ago. These refreshments did them a world of good, he saw: the kids quietened down as they gazed at the shore of the island fading into the distance, and the adults evinced increasing interest in their journey.

  ‘Where are we headed?’ asked the younger of the brothers T., matter-of-factly, then burping from the fizzy drink.

  ‘How long before we reach the open seas?’ Eliza, the nursery school teacher, wanted to know.

  ‘Did you make sure you have enough fuel?’ asked old S., the one with the kidney problems.

  Or at least it seemed to him that they were saying these things, rather than others. He tried not to look at them and not to care. He’d already steadied his eyes on the line of the horizon, its reflection slicing straight across his pupils, the top half lighter from the sky, the bottom half darker, from the water. And his passengers were calm, now, too. They’d pressed their caps snug onto their heads, pulled their scarves around their necks a little tighter. It might be said they sailed in silence, until their peace was pierced by the helicopter’s rumble and the wail of police motorboats.

  •

  ‘There are things that happen of their own accord, journeys that begin and end in dreams. And there are travellers who simply answer the chaotic call of their own unease. One of these stands before you now…’ So Eryk’s defence embarked upon his short-lived trial. Unfortunately, not even this moving defence could keep our hero from another prison sentence. I hope spending another spell inside worked out to his advantage. Life for someone like Eryk is made of inevitable highs and lows, similar to the rhythmic rocking of the waves and the sea’s inexplicable ebbs and flows.

  But this is no longer our concern.

  If, however, at the conclusion of this story someone wanted to ask me, wanting to dispel any last doubts regarding truth and nothing but the truth, if I were seized by the arm and shaken impatiently and shouted at: ‘Tell me, I beg you, if in keeping with your innermost c
onviction this story and its contents are completely true. Kindly forgive me if I press too much.’ I would forgive them, and I’d respond: ‘So help me God, I swear on my honour that the story I have told you, ladies and gentlemen, is in its contents and general terms true. I know this for a fact: it happened on our globe; I myself was on the deck of that ferry.’

  NORTH POLE EXPEDITIONS

  I’m reminded of something that Borges was once reminded of, something he had read somewhere: apparently, in the days when the Dutch were constructing their Empire, ministers announced in Danish churches that those who took part in North Pole expeditions would be practically guaranteed salvation of their souls. When nevertheless there were few volunteers, the ministers acknowledged that the expedition was a long and arduous one, certainly not for everyone – only, in fact, for the very bravest. But still few came forward. So to avoid losing face, the ministers finally simplified their proclamation: actually, they said, any voyage could be considered an expedition to the North Pole, even a little trip, even just a ride in a public carriage.

  I suppose these days even the subway would have to count.

  THE PSYCHOLOGY OF AN ISLAND

  According to travel psychology, the island represents our earliest, most primal state prior to socialization, when the ego has already individualized enough to attain a certain level of self-awareness, but without yet having entered into complete, fulfilling relationships with its surroundings. The island state is a state of remaining within one’s own boundaries, undisturbed by any external influence; it resembles a kind of narcissism or even autism. One satisfies all one’s needs on one’s own. Only the self seems real; the other is but a vague spectre, a Flying Dutchman just darting over a distant horizon. In fact, one can’t be altogether certain it was not a figment of one’s imagination, an adornment by an eye accustomed to a straight line that splits the field of view cleanly into an up and a down.

  PURGING THE MAP

  If something hurts me, I erase it from my mental map. Places where I stumbled, fell, where I was struck down, cut to the quick, where things were painful – such places are simply not there any longer.

  This means I’ve got rid of several big cities and one whole province. Maybe someday I’ll eliminate a country. The maps don’t mind – in fact, otherwise they miss those blank patches, the shape of their happy childhood.

  Whenever I have had to visit one of these non-existent places (I try not to bear grudges), I’ve become an eye that moves like a spectre in a ghost town. If I could fully focus, I would be able to slip my hand right inside the tightest blocks of concrete and traverse the jam-packed streets, making my way through backed-up traffic unfazed, incurring no damages, and making no fuss.

  But I have not done that. I’ve played by the rules as established by the people who live there. And I’ve tried not to betray to them the phantom nature of these places where they’re still stuck, poor things, all erased. I simply smile at them and nod at everything they say. I wouldn’t want to confuse them with the knowledge that they don’t exist.

  IN PURSUIT OF NIGHT

  It’s hard for me to get a good night’s sleep when I stay in a place for just one night. Now the city was slowly cooling off, calming down. My hotel was one run by the airlines and included in the price of my ticket. I was supposed to wait in it until tomorrow.

  On the bedside table there was a light blue pack of condoms. Right by the bed there was a Bible and the Teachings of the Buddha. Unfortunately, the plug for my electric kettle didn’t fit into the socket – so I would have to do without tea. Although perhaps it was coffee I should be drinking at this hour? My body was in no state to interpret the numbers on the clock built into the radio on the bedside table, although it would appear that numerals are international, despite being known as Arabic. Was the yellow glow out the window the onset of dawn, or was it a dusk that had already largely condensed into night? It was hard to determine whether this part of the world – over which the sun was about to appear or else had just vanished – was the East or the West. I concentrated on counting up the hours I’d spent on the plane, employing as an aid an image I’d once seen on the internet of a globe with a nocturnal bar that moves from east to west like a giant mouth that systematically devours the world.

  The square in front of the hotel was deserted, just stray dogs skirmishing around its closed stalls. I finally decided it must be the middle of the night, and without tea or a bath I went to bed. Although on my time, on the time I was carting around on my mobile phone, it was early afternoon. So I could not naively count on drifting off to sleep.

  What you do is get under the covers and turn on the TV – volume down, let it grumble, flicker, whine. You hold the remote out like a weapon, and you take shots at the very centre of the screen. Each shot kills one channel, but then another follows directly on its heels. My game this time, though, was to pursue the night, to choose only those channels that were broadcast from places where it was currently dark. To picture the globe and the dark scar running down its gentle curvature, evidence of some past attack – disfigurement after an audacious operation to separate light and dark, those conjoined twins.

  Night never ends. Its dominion always spans some section of the world. And you can keep up with it with your remote, look exclusively for stations that fall within the shadowy purview of that dark, concave hand that upholds the earth, and in this way you can continue westwards country by country, hour by hour. You will encounter an interesting phenomenon if you do.

  The first shot I fired at the smooth, mindless forehead of the television produced Channel 348, the Holy God Channel. Here I beheld a crucifixion scene – some movie from the sixties. The Virgin Mary had perfectly plucked eyebrows. Mary Magdalene must have had a corset on underneath her peasant dress, which was a dingy blue – you could tell it was a black and white movie that had been inexpertly coloured later on. Her massive breasts, cone-shaped, protruding absurdly; her tiny waist. As the unattractive soldiers cackled and divided the outer garments, the filmmakers interspersed images of every cataclysm imaginable, footage that appeared to have been ripped right out of nature programmes and inserted here without alteration. Now there were clouds gathering at an accelerated rate, lightning bolts, sky, funnel pointing down at the ground, whirlwind, finger of God – which would next sketch a series of flourishes on the earth’s surface. Now furious waves pounding a shore, some sailboats, some cheap-looking dummies blown to pieces by that riled water. Volcanoes erupting, a fiery ejaculation that might well have inseminated the sky – but it was a non-starter; the lava slid inertly down the volcanoes’ sides. Thus was ecstasy unignited, demoted to plain old nocturnal emission.

  Enough. I took another shot. Channel 350, Blue Line TV. A woman masturbating, her fingertips disappearing between her slim thighs. The woman was talking to someone in Italian, speaking into a microphone that was clipped to her ear and reminiscent of a long thin tongue licking each of those Italian words right off her lips, every si, si, and prego.

  354, Sex Satellite 1: this time it was two girls masturbating, both bored – they must have been finishing up their shift, unable to hide their tiredness. One of them ran the camera that recorded them with her own remote control, so in that sense they were entirely self-sufficient. Every so often a kind of grimace would surface on their faces, as though they suddenly remembered what they were doing – eyes closed, mouth half-open – but it would evaporate again in a flash, and tiredness and distraction would set in in its place. No one was calling them, despite what I presumed were alluring words in Arabic at the bottom of the screen.

  And suddenly Cyrillic – I’d taken another shot at the screen – Genesis in Cyrillic. The words that scrolled along the bottom of the screen were no doubt illustrious ones, illustrated in fact by images of mountains, of the sea, of clouds, plants, and animals. On 358 they were showing the best scenes by an apparent pornographic sensation whose name was Rocco. I paused here for a moment, noting a drop of sweat on his brow. As he ex
ecuted his pelvic thrusts into anonymous buttocks, the porn star put one hand on his hip, and you might have mistaken him for someone concentrating on the practice of some samba move, or salsa move: one-two, one-two.

  On 288, Oman TV, they were reading verses from the Koran. So I supposed, anyway. A lovely and utterly unintelligible pattern of Arabic script floated placidly across the screen. It made me want to reach out and catch them first, hold them a while before trying to decipher their meaning. Tease out those intricate flourishes, pull them out into a simple, soothing line.

  Another shot and there was a black minister and an audience eagerly rejoining hallelujahs.

  Night, then, quieted the raucous and aggressive news and weather and film channels, setting to one side the daytime ruckus of the world, bringing in instead the relief of the simple coordinate system of sex and religion. The body and the divine. Physiology and theology.

  SANITARY PADS

  Each of the wrappers from the pads I’d picked up at the pharmacy had entertaining little facts on them:

  The word ‘lethologica’ describes the state of being unable to recall the word you’re looking for.

  Ropography is a painting term for the attention the artist pays to trifles and details.

  Rhyparography is the painting of decaying and disgusting things.