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

But we did agree to meet that evening, when we drank a little wine together. We even managed to have a singsong. We started with ‘Today I cannot come to see you…’, but softly and shyly, as if beyond the windows opening onto the orchard the large ears of the Night were lurking, ready to eavesdrop on our every thought, our every word, even the words of the song, and then submit them to the scrutiny of the highest court.

Only Boros wasn’t bothered. It’s understandable – he wasn’t at home, and guest performances are always among the craziest. He leaned back in his chair, pretending to be playing a guitar, and started to sing with his eyes closed:

‘ Dere eeez a hooouse in Noo Orleeenz, dey caaal de Riiisin’ Sun… ’

As if under a magic spell, Oddball and I picked up the words and tune and, exchanging glances, surprised by this sudden mutual agreement, sang along with him.

It turned out we all knew the words more or less up to the line: ‘ Oh mother, tell your children ’, which says a lot for our memories. At that point we started to mumble, pretending to know what we were singing. But we didn’t. We burst out laughing. Oh, it was lovely, touching. Then we sat in silence, doing our best to remember other songs. I don’t know about the other singers, but my entire songbook flew straight out of my head. Then Boros went indoors to fetch a little plastic bag, from which he took a pinch of dried herbs, and started to roll a cigarette with them.

‘Good heavens, I haven’t smoked for twenty years,’ said Oddball suddenly, and his eyes lit up; I looked at him in amazement.

It was a very bright Night. The full Moon in June is called the Blue Moon, because it takes on a very beautiful sapphire shade at this time of year. According to my Ephemerides, this Night only lasts for five hours.

We were sitting in the orchard under an old apple tree on which the apples were already fruiting. The orchard was fragrant and soughed in the wind. I had lost my sense of time, and each break between utterances seemed endless. A great gulf of time opened before us. We chattered for whole centuries, talking nonstop about the same thing over and over, now with one pair of lips, now with another, all of us failing to remember that the view we were now contesting was the one we had defended earlier on. But in fact we weren’t arguing at all; we were holding a dialogue, a trialogue, like three fauns, another species, half human and half animal. And I realised there were lots of us in the garden and the forest, our faces covered in hair. Strange beasts. And our Bats had settled in the tree and were singing. Their shrill, vibrating voices were jostling microscopic particles of mist, so the Night around us was softly starting to jingle, summoning all the Creatures to nocturnal worship.

Boros disappeared into the house for an eternity, while Oddball and I sat without a word. His eyes were wide open and he was staring at me so intensely that I had to slip into the shadow of the tree to escape his gaze. And there I hid.

‘Forgive me,’ was all he said, and my mind moved like a great locomotive trying to understand it. What on earth would I have to forgive him for? I thought about the times when he hadn’t responded to my greeting. Or the day he’d talked to me across the threshold when I’d brought him his post, but refused to let me inside, into his lovely, spick-and-span kitchen. Another thought was that he’d never taken any interest in me when I was laid up in bed by my Ailments, breathing my last.

But why would I have to forgive him for any of these things? Maybe he was thinking of his cold, ironic son in the black coat. But we’re not answerable for our children, are we?

Finally Boros appeared in the doorway with my laptop, which he’d been using before now anyway, and plugged in his pendant, shaped like a wolf’s fang. For a very long time there was total silence, while we waited for a sign. Finally we heard a storm, but it didn’t frighten or surprise us. It dominated the sound of bells ringing in the mist. No other music could have suited the mood better – it must have been composed specially for this evening.

‘Riders on the storm,’ the words echoed out of nowhere.

Boros hummed and rocked in his chair, while the words of the song repeated over and over again, the same ones every time, never any others.

‘Why are some people evil and nasty?’ asked Boros rhetorically.

‘Saturn,’ I said. ‘The traditional ancient Astrology of Ptolemy tells us it’s down to Saturn. In its discordant aspects Saturn has the power to make people mean-spirited, spiteful, solitary and plaintive. They’re malicious, cowardly, shameless and sullen, they never stop scheming, they speak evil, and they don’t take care of their bodies. They endlessly want more than they have, and nothing ever pleases them. Is that the sort of people you mean?’

‘It could be the result of mistakes in their upbringing,’ added Oddball, enunciating each word slowly and carefully, as if afraid his tongue was about to play tricks on him and say something else entirely. Once he had managed to utter this one sentence, he dared to add another: ‘Or class war.’

‘Or poor potty training,’ added Boros, and I said: ‘A toxic mother.’

‘An authoritarian father.’

‘Sexual abuse in childhood.’

‘Not being breastfed.’

‘Television.’

‘A lack of lithium and magnesium in the diet.’

‘The stock exchange,’ shouted Oddball, with incredible enthusiasm, but to my mind he was exaggerating.

‘No, don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘In what way?’

So he corrected himself: ‘Post-traumatic shock.’

‘Psychophysical structure.’

We tossed around ideas until we ran out of them, a game we found highly amusing.

‘But it is Saturn,’ I said, dying of laughter.

We walked Oddball back to his cottage, trying hard to keep extremely quiet, for fear of waking the Writer. But we weren’t very good at it – every few seconds we snorted with laughter.

As we were off to bed, emboldened by the wine, Boros and I embraced, to say thank you for this evening. A little later I saw him in the kitchen, taking his pills and swallowing them with water from the tap.

It occurred to me that he was a very good Person, this Boros. And it was a good thing he had his Ailments. Being healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It’s better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we’re going to die of.

He came to me in the Night and squatted by my bed. I wasn’t asleep.

‘Are you asleep?’ he asked.

‘Are you religious?’ I had to put the question.

‘Yes,’ he replied proudly. ‘I’m an atheist.’

I found that curious.

I raised the quilt and invited him to join me, but as I am neither Maudlin nor Sentimental, I shall not dwell on it any further.

The next day was Saturday, and early in the morning Dizzy appeared.

I was working in my garden patch, testing one of my Theories. I think I can find proof for the fact that we inherit phenotypes, which flies in the face of modern genetics. I had noticed that certain acquired features make irregular appearances in subsequent generations. So three years ago I set about repeating Mendel’s experiment with sweet peas; I am now in the middle of it. I notched the petals of the flowers, through five generations in a row (two a year), and then checked to see if the seeds would produce flowers with damaged petals. I must say that the results of this experiment were looking very encouraging.