Ольга Токарчук - Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Dizzy had received some encouraging news. The local weekly, the Kłodzko Gazette , had offered to publish his translations of Blake in its poetry corner. He was excited and intimidated all at once. We drove along the almost deserted highway towards the border.

‘First I’d like to translate his Letters , and only then go back to the poetry. But if they’re asking for poetry… My God, what can I give them? What shall we give them first?’

To tell the truth, I couldn’t concentrate on Blake any more. I saw that we were passing the shabby buildings at the border crossing and entering the Czech Republic. The road here was better and Dizzy’s car stopped rattling.

‘Dizzy, is it true about those foxes?’ Good News asked him from the back seat. ‘That they escaped from Innerd’s farm and are going about the forest?’

Dizzy confirmed that it was. ‘It happened a few days ago. At first the Police thought he’d sold all the animals to someone before disappearing. But it looks as if he let them go. Strange, isn’t it?’

‘Are they searching for him?’ I asked.

Dizzy replied that no one had reported him missing, so there was no reason to look for him. His wife hadn’t come forward, nor had his children. Maybe he’d given himself a holiday. His wife claimed it wasn’t the first time it had happened. Once he’d vanished for a week, and then called from the Dominican Republic. Until the banks were after him there was no reason for alarm.

‘A man’s free to do what he wants with his life, until he falls foul of the banks,’ Dizzy sermonised with contagious certainty. I think he’d make a superb press spokesman for the Police.

Dizzy also said the Police were trying to establish the source of the money that the Commandant had under his trouser belt. It was a bribe. By now they were sure he’d been on his way back from a meeting with Innerd. It takes the Police a long time to establish things that seem obvious.

‘And there’s another thing,’ he said finally. ‘The weapon that must have been used to kill the Commandant had traces of animal blood on it.’

We called at the bookshop at the last moment, just as it was about to close. When silver-haired Honza handed him the two books he had ordered, I saw a blush appear on Dizzy’s cheeks. Beaming with joy, he looked at us, then raised his arms, as if to give Honza a hug. They were old editions from the 1970s, properly annotated. Like gold dust. We all went home in a state of elation, and no one mentioned the sinister incidents again.

Dizzy lent me the Selected Letters for a few days, and as soon as I got home, I lit the stove, made myself some strong tea and started to read.

One passage particularly appealed to me, so I translated it quickly for myself on a paper bag.

‘I believe my Constitution to be a good one,’ wrote Blake, ‘but it has many Peculiarities that no one but myself can know. When I was young, many places always laid me up the day after, & sometimes two or three days, with precisely the same Complaint & the same torment of the Stomach. Sir Francis Bacon would say, it is want of Discipline in Mountainous Places. Sir Francis Bacon is a Liar. No discipline will turn one Man into another, even in the least particle, & such discipline I call Presumption & Folly.’

I found this captivating. I read and read, unable to stop. And perhaps it was just as the Author would have wished – everything that I read pervaded my dreams – and all Night I saw visions.

Spring starts in May and is unwittingly heralded by the Dentist, who brings his ancient drilling equipment and his equally antique dental chair outside. He dusts it off with a few flicks of a cloth, one, two, three, and it’s free of cobwebs and hay – both pieces of equipment spent the winter in the barn, and were only brought out from time to time when an urgent need arose. The Dentist didn’t really work in winter; it’s impossible to do anything here in winter, people lose interest in their health, and besides, it’s dark and his sight is poor. He needs the bright light of May or June to shine straight into the mouths of his patients, recruited from among the forest workers and moustachioed men who spend all day standing about on the little bridge in the village, and as a result are known locally as the Bridge Brigade.

Once the April mud had dried, I started to venture more and more boldly into the neighbourhood on the pretext of making my rounds. At this time of year I was happy to drop in at Achthozja, the hamlet next to the quarry, where the Dentist lived. And like every year I came upon an astonishing sight – there on the brilliant green grass, under a sheet of blue sky, stood the dilapidated white dental chair, with someone half-lying on it, mouth wide open to the Sun, while the Dentist leaned over him, drill in hand. Meanwhile, his foot was moving monotonously, steadily pressing on the drill pedal. And a few metres away another two or three fellows were watching this scene in rapt silence as they sipped their beers.

The Dentist’s main occupation was pulling out aching teeth, and sometimes, more rarely, treating them. He also made dentures. Before I knew of his existence, I had very often wondered what sort of a race could have settled here, in this area. Many of the local people had quite distinctive teeth, as if they were all a family, with the same genes or the same configuration in their Horoscope. Especially the older ones: their teeth were long and narrow, with a blue tinge. Strange teeth. I came up with an alternative Hypothesis too, for I had heard that under the Plateau there were deep seams of uranium, which, as everyone knows, has an effect on various Anomalies.

By now I knew that these were the Dentist’s false teeth, his trademark, his brand. Like every artist, he was unique.

In my view he could have been a tourist attraction for Kłodzko Valley, if only what he did were legal. Unfortunately, some years ago he was stripped of his licence to practise his profession because of alcohol abuse. It’s odd that they don’t take away a dentist’s professional licence because of poor sight. This Ailment could be far more dangerous for the patient. And the Dentist wore powerful spectacles, with one of the lenses taped into place.

That day he was drilling a man’s tooth. It was hard to recognise the patient’s facial features, twisted in pain and mildly numbed by alcohol, with which the Dentist anaesthetised his patients. The dreadful noise of the drill bored into my brain, stirring the ghastliest childhood memories.

‘How’s life?’ I said in greeting.

‘Bearable,’ replied the Dentist with a broad smile, which reminded me of the old adage ‘Physician, heal thyself’. ‘You haven’t been here for ages. I think the last time we met was when you were looking for your…’

‘Yes, yes,’ I interrupted him. ‘It was impossible to walk this far in the winter. By the time I’d dug myself out of the snow it would be dark.’

He went back to his drilling and I stood with the other onlookers, pensively watching the drill working in the man’s mouth.

‘Have you seen the white foxes?’ one of the men asked me. He had a beautiful face. If his life had turned out differently I’m sure he’d have been a film star. But now his good looks were disappearing beneath a network of furrows and wrinkles.

‘They say Innerd let them out before he ran off,’ said a second man.

‘Maybe he had pangs of conscience,’ I added. ‘Maybe the Foxes ate him.’

The Dentist glanced at me with curiosity. He nodded and sank the drill into the patient’s tooth. The poor man jolted in the chair.