Flights

by Olga Tokarczuk

  Then she sits on a bench on the platform beneath a large ad. She eats what was left from her breakfast. She washes up in the bathroom and returns to her seat. Rush hour is about to begin. Those who went one way in the morning will now go back the other way. The train that stops in front of her is well lit and almost empty. Just one person in the whole carriage – that man in the cap. He stands taut as a chord. When the train starts, it jostles him a little; then the train disappears, swallowed up by the black mouth of the underground.

  ‘I’ll buy you a roll,’ Annushka says to the shrouded woman, who stops her rocking for a second, as though only able to digest a sentence if she stays still. Then after a second she sets off towards where the sandwiches are sold.

  They lean against the back of the kiosk and eat, after the woman has crossed herself a dozen or so times, and bowed.

  Annushka asks her about the people who were sitting in silence in the boiler room the day before, and once more she freezes, this time with a bite of the roll in her mouth. She says something unconnected, something like, ‘How so?’ And then she spits out spitefully, ‘Get the fuck away from me, little miss.’

  She leaves. Annushka rides the metro until one o’clock in the morning, and then, when it shuts down and the hellhounds chase everyone away, she circles around the place where she thought the entrance to the warm boiler room was, but she doesn’t find it. So she goes to the station and there, scraping up almost all of her remaining money, she spends the night over a series of teas and borshchts in small plastic cups, valiantly propped up on her elbows over the laminated tabletop.

  The second she hears the grating of the bars being opened, she buys a ticket from the machine and goes downstairs. In the window of the train she sees her hair’s become greasy already, that there’s no trace left of her hairstyle, and that the other passengers are somewhat reluctant to sit beside her now. Periodically she panics at the fleeting thought she might run into someone, but the people she knows don’t take this line; just in case she finds a place in the corner, against the wall. Come to think of it, who does Annushka even know? The postwoman, the woman from the shop downstairs, the man who lives across from them: she doesn’t even know their names. She feels like covering her face like that shrouded woman, that’s actually a good idea – putting a covering over your eyes to be as little visible to yourself as you can be, and to be seen as little as you can. She gets bumped into, but it only brings her pleasure, to be touched by someone. An older woman sitting near her takes an apple out of a plastic bag and offers it to her, smiling. When at the Park Kultury station she stands in front of the pirozhki kiosk a young guy with close-cropped hair buys a portion for her. She gleans from this that she must not look her best. She says thank you, and she doesn’t refuse, although she still has a couple of coins left. She is witness to a number of events: the police nabbing a guy in a leather jacket. A couple arguing, voices raised as loud as they will go, both of them drunk. A young girl, a teenager, who gets on the train at Cherkizovskaya and sobs, repeating: Mum, mum, but no one has the courage to do anything to help her, and then it’s too late, the girl has got off at Komsomolskaya. She sees someone running away, a short dark man, knocking into passers-by, but he gets stuck in the crowd at the stairs and gets caught there by two other men, who pry open his hands. A woman fleetingly bemoaning having just had everything stolen, everything, but her voice arrives from an ever-greater distance, dies down and finally dies away. And twice today she sees a stiff old man with absent eyes flitting before her on the brightly lit train. She doesn’t even know that it’s been dark for a long time now, and that lanterns and lamps are on, seeping yellow light into the icy, thick air; today sunlight has completely escaped Annushka. She goes up to the surface at Kievskaya and heads towards the temporary passageway along the building being built in the hopes of finding the shrouded woman.

  She is where she usually is, doing what she usually does – scampering in place, tracing circles of sorts and figures of eight and snarling out her same old curses, looking like a clump of dampened rags. Annushka stands in front of her for so long that the woman finally notices and stops. Then – although they’ve made no plans to – they both start hurriedly walking, without so much as a word, as though rushing towards some objective that will vanish for all time if they’re not quick enough. At the bridge the wind hits both of them like a kind of lady boxer.

  At the kiosk on the Arbat they have delicious blinis, not expensive, dripping with grease and with sour cream on top. The shrouded woman puts some coins on the little glass saucer and gets two warm servings. They find themselves a place on the wall where they can eat this treat. Annushka gazes as though hypnotized at the young people all along the benches despite the cold, playing guitar and drinking beer. Making a ruckus more than singing. Shouting over one another, mucking around. Two young girls ride up on horseback; an unusual sight indeed, the horses are tall, well-cared-for, evidently straight from the stable; one of these Amazons greets the kids with the guitar, elegantly dismounts, chatting, keeping a tight hold on the bridle. The other girl tries to talk some straggling tourists into giving her some money to feed the horse – or so she tells them – but they deduce the money is really for beer. The animal does not look like it lacks for nourishment.

  The shrouded woman elbows her. ‘Eat,’ she says.

  But Annushka cannot take her eyes off this little scene, she looks greedily at the young people with her blinis steaming in her hand. In all of them she sees her Petya, they’re around the same age. Petya comes back into her body, as though she’d never given him up into the world. He’s there, curled up, heavy as a stone, painful, swelling inside her, growing – it must be that she has to give birth to him again, this time out of every pore she has in her skin, sweating him out. For now he comes up in her throat, sticking in her lungs, and he won’t emerge in any other way besides a sob. No, she won’t be able to eat a blini – she’s full. Petya’s lodged in her throat, when he could have been sitting there and reaching up with a beer can in his hand, giving it to the girl with the horse, leaning into it with his whole body, bursting out laughing. He could have been in motion, could have bent down to his boots and then lifted his arms and placed his foot in the stirrup and swung his other leg over. Sat on the back of that animal, traversing the streets sitting straight up and smiling, a scraggly moustache shading his upper lip. He could have run down the stairs, storming them, after all he is the same age as these boys, and she, his mother, would have worried about him failing his chemistry class, not getting into university and winding up like his father, worried he’d have trouble finding a job, that she wouldn’t like his wife, that they’d have a baby too soon.

  This ocean of lead gathers heavily inside her and becomes unbearable and runs into a gesture one of the girls makes, wanting to tame the impatient horse – she jerks his head down by his bridle to force him to be still. And when the horse tries to pull away she cracks a whip over his back and screams, ‘Stay, goddammit! Hold still!’

  And now Annushka’s blinis with sour cream fall from her hand, and she has launched at the girl fighting the horse, begun attacking her blindly with her fists. ‘Leave him alone!’ she shrieks, her voice straining in her throat. ‘Leave him alone!’

  It takes a second for the startled kids to react, to try to pull off this woman in the checkered coat, suddenly deranged, but by now another woman is rushing to her aid, some shrouded lunatic all dressed in rags, and both of them are trying to take away the reins from the girl and to push her away. The girl whimpers, shielding her head with her hands – she hadn’t expected this furious attack. The horse kicks, whinnies and gets away from the girl, running down the middle of the Arbat, spooked (it’s a good thing the promenade is almost empty at this hour); the clatter of his hooves echoes off the walls of the buildings and brings to mind a street fight, a strike; people’s windows open. But now at the end of the street two policemen appear, walking serenely, probably talking about video games – there’s n
othing happening – but then they see the commotion, swing into action, grabbing their truncheons, taking off at a run.

  ‘Sway,’ says the shrouded woman. ‘Move.’

  They’re sitting at the police station awaiting their turn for the flushed and disagreeable policeman to take down their statements.

  ‘Sway.’ And for these couple of hours she chatters in a kind of frenzy, no doubt scared. Adrenaline has awakened the shrouded woman’s tongue. She whispers directly into Annushka’s ear so that no one else is privy to their conversation – not the man who was robbed, not the two young dark-skinned whores, not the man with the wounded head holding a bandage in place with one hand. Meanwhile Annushka cries, tears spilling down her cheeks incessantly, though her reserves will run out soon, it’s clear.

  Then, when their turn comes, the red-faced policman shouts over his shoulder to someone in the other room:

  ‘It’s that runaway woman.’

  The voice from in there answers:

  ‘That one you can just let go, but write the other one up, for disturbing the peace.’

  And to the shrouded woman the policeman says:

  ‘Next time we’re going to ship you out of town, a hundred kilometres out, got it? We don’t want any cult members around here.’

  Meanwhile he takes Annushka’s I.D. from her, and as though he couldn’t read he also has her repeat her first name, patronymic and last name, and her address, he asks for her address. Annushka touches the tabletop with her fingertips and, partially closing her eyes as though reciting a poem, gives him her information. She repeats her address twice:

  ‘Kuznetskaya 46, apartment 78.’

  They release them separately, an hour apart, first the shrouded woman, so by the time Annushka gets out, there is no trace of her. Nothing surprising about that, the cold is horrendous. She meanders around the station, her legs urge her on, would carry her down these broad streets off somewhere to the source of all streets, to where they emerge from the hilly outskirts, and past them, to where new and different vistas open up – of the great plain that plays with its breath. But Annushka’s bus is arriving, she runs up and gets on it just in time.

  People are in motion already, the streets overtaken by morning movements even though the sun is not yet out. Annushka’s on the bus for a long time, reaching the city’s edge, and then she’s standing at the base of her apartment block, looking up at her windows, all the way up. They’re still dark, but when the sky starts to get lighter she sees that in the kitchen of her apartment there is a light that switches on, and she heads for the entrance.

  WHAT THE SHROUDED RUNAWAY WAS SAYING

  Sway, go on, move. That’s the only way to get away from him. He who rules the world has no power over movement and knows that our body in motion is holy, and only then can you escape him, once you’ve taken off. He reigns over all that is still and frozen, everything that’s passive and inert.

  So go, sway, walk, run, take flight, because the second you forget and stand still his massive hands will seize you and turn you into just a puppet, you’ll be enveloped in his breath, stinking of smoke and fumes and the big rubbish dumps outside town. He will turn your brightly coloured soul into a tiny flat one, cut out of paper, of newspaper, and he will threaten you with fire, disease and war, he will scare you so you lose your peace of mind and cease to sleep. He will mark you and record you in his records, provide you with the documentation of your fall. He’ll occupy your thoughts with unimportant things, what to buy, and what to sell, where things are cheaper and where they’re more expensive. From then on you will worry over trifles – the price of petrol and how that will affect the payments on our loans. You will live every day in pain, as though your life were a sentence. But for what crime? Committed when and by whom? You’ll never know.

  Once, long ago, the Tsar tried to reform the world but he was vanquished, and the world fell right into the hands of the Antichrist. God, the real one, the good one, became an exile from the world, the vessel of divine power shattered, absorbed into the earth, disappearing into its depths. But when he spoke in a whisper from his hiding place, he was heard by one righteous man, a soldier by the name of Yefim, who paid attention to his words. In the night he threw away his rifle, took off his uniform, unwrapped his feet and slid his boots off. He stood under the sky naked, as God had made him, and then he ran into the forest, and donning an overcoat he wandered from village to village, preaching the gloomy news. Flee, get out of your homes, go, run away, for only thus will you avoid the traps of the Antichrist. Any open battle with him will be lost outright. Leave whatever you possess, give up your land and get on the road.

  For anything that has a stable place in this world – every country, church, every human government, everything that has preserved a form in this hell – is at his command. Everything that is defined, that spans from here to there, that fits into a framework, is written down in registers, numbered, testified to, sworn to; everything collected, displayed, labelled. Everything that holds: houses, chairs, beds, families, earth, sowing, planting, verifying growth. Planning, awaiting the results, outlining schedules, protecting order. Rear your children thus, since you had them without understanding, and set out on the road; bury your parents, who brought you into this world without understanding – and go. Get out of here, go far away, beyond the reach of his breath, beyond his cables and wires and antennas and waves, resist the measurements of his sensitive instruments.

  Whoever pauses will be petrified, whoever stops, pinned like an insect, his heart pierced by a wooden needle, his hands and feet drilled through and pinned into the threshold and the ceiling.

  This is precisely how he died, Yefim, he who rebelled. He was captured and his body nailed to the cross, immobilized like an insect, on display for human and inhuman eyes, but most of all inhuman eyes, which take the most delight in all such spectacles; hardly a surprise that they repeat them every year and celebrate, praying to the corpse.

  This is why tyrants of all stripes, infernal servants, have such deep-seated hatred for the nomads – this is why they persecute the Gypsies and the Jews, and why they force all free peoples to settle, assigning the addresses that serve as our sentences.

  What they want is to create a frozen order, to falsify time’s passage. They want for the days to repeat themselves, unchanging, they want to build a big machine where every creature will be forced to take its place and carry out false actions. Institutions and offices, stamps, newsletters, a hierarchy, and ranks, degrees, applications and rejections, passports, numbers, cards, election results, sales and amassing points, collecting, exchanging some things for others.

  What they want is to pin down the world with the aid of barcodes, labelling all things, letting it be known that everything is a commodity, that this is how much it will cost you. Let this new foreign language be illegible to humans, let it be read exclusively by automatons, machines. That way by night, in their great underground shops, they can organize readings of their own barcoded poetry.

  Move. Get going. Blessed is he who leaves.

  JOSEFINE SOLIMAN’S THIRD LETTER TO FRANCIS I

  Your Majesty maintains a silence and is no doubt engaged in important affairs of state. But I will not abandon my efforts, and so I write to Your Majesty once again in order to beg for mercy. My last letter was written over two years ago, yet I have had no response. I repeat, then, this plea.

  I am the only child of Angel Soliman, Your Majesty’s servant, eminent diplomat for the Empire, an enlightened and widely respected man. I beg for mercy for myself, for I shall never know peace so long as I should have the knowledge that my father, my father’s body, has not yet obtained a Christian burial but is instead – stuffed and chemically treated – on view in the Cabinet of Natural Curiosities at the court of Your Majesty.

  Since the birth of my son, I have suffered from an illness that continues to get worse. I fear this matter is as hopeless as my own health and now believe that if I am to obtain anything – whi
ch I think I shall not – it will be but by the skin of my teeth. The word ‘skin’ fits perfectly here, as – if I may be permitted one more mention of it – my father was skinned when he died, subsequently stuffed, and now serves as an exhibit in Your Majesty’s collection.

  Your Majesty refused the young mother, but perhaps the same shall not be true of the young mother on her deathbed. I visited that horrible place before leaving Vienna. For I married Your Majesty’s servant, Herr von Feuchtersleben, military engineer, subsequently transferred to the northern reaches of our country – to Krakow. I was there and saw it. I might say that I went to visit my father in hell, since as a Catholic I believe that without his body he will not be able to be resurrected in the Last Judgement. That faith also suggests that in spite of what some think, the body is our greatest gift – that it is sacred.

  When God became man, the human body was forever sanctified, and all the world took on that form of one single individual man. There is no other access to other people or to the world other than by way of the body. Had Christ not taken on a human form, we could never have been saved.

  My father was skinned like an animal, stuffed haphazardly with grass, and placed in the company of other stuffed human beings among the remains of unicorns, monstrous toads, two-headed fetuses floating in alcohol and other similar curiosities. I watched as they crowded in to see Your collection with their own eyes, My Lord, and I saw how their faces flushed as they beheld the skin of my father. I heard them praise You for Your vigour and Your courage.

  When You visit Your exhibit, my Lord, go to him. Go to Angel Soliman, Your faithful servant, whose skin serves You even after death. Those hands, which have since been stuffed with grass, once embraced and reassured me; that face, now dried out and caved in, once brushed up against my own. That body loved and was loved, until attacks of rheumatism finally finished my father off.