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

Now Boros was kneeling in that spot.

‘Give me some light, please,’ he said. ‘I think we have some Cleridae larvae here.’

‘Do you believe that wild Animals could kill a Person?’ I asked him, preoccupied with what I had seen in my vision.

‘Oh yes, of course they can. Lions, leopards, bulls, snakes, insects, bacteria, viruses…’

‘What about Animals like Deer?’

‘I’m sure they could find a way.’

So he was on my side.

Unfortunately, my vision did not explain how the Foxes from the farm had got out. Nor how the snare on his leg had been the cause of his death.

‘I found Acarina , Cleridae , wasp larvae and Dermaptera , that’s to say earwigs,’ said Boros over supper, which Oddball had made in my kitchen. ‘And ants of course. Yes, and lots of mould, but they damaged it very badly while removing the corpse. In my view it all proves that the body was found at the stage of butyric fermentation.’

We were eating pasta with blue cheese sauce.

‘You can’t tell,’ said Boros, ‘if it was mould or adipocere, in other words corpse wax.’

‘What did you say? What on earth is corpse wax? How do you know all this?’ asked Oddball with his mouth full of noodles; he had Marysia on his lap.

Boros explained that he used to be a consultant for the Police. And had done some training in taphonomy.

‘Taphonomy?’ I asked. ‘What on earth is that?’

‘It’s the science of how corpses decompose. “Taphos” is the Greek for a grave.’

‘Oh my God,’ sighed Dizzy, as if asking for divine intervention. But of course nothing happened.

‘That would indicate that the body was lying there for some forty to fifty days.’

We quickly did some mental arithmetic. Dizzy was the fastest.

‘So it could have been early March,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That’s only a month after the Commandant’s death.’

For three weeks no one talked of anything else, until the next incident occurred. But now the number of versions of Innerd’s death going around the neighbourhood was vast. Dizzy said that the Police hadn’t looked for him at all after he went missing in March, because his lover had disappeared too. Everyone knew about her, even his wife. And although various acquaintances had thought it odd that they’d gone away so suddenly, they were all convinced that Innerd had his own shady business going on. Nobody wanted to stick their noses into someone else’s affairs. And his wife was reconciled to his disappearance too – what’s more, it probably suited her fine. She had already filed for divorce, but obviously that was no longer necessary. Now she was a widow, and it was better for her that way. Meanwhile, the lover had been found; it turned out they’d broken up in December, and she’d been living with her sister in the United States since Christmas. Boros thought the Police should have issued a wanted notice for Innerd, seeing they had all sorts of suspicions. But maybe the Police knew something that we didn’t.

The next Wednesday I found out at Good News’ shop that apparently a Beast was stalking the neighbourhood, and that it was particularly fond of killing people. And that last year this same Beast had been on the prowl in the Opole region, the only difference being that there it had attacked domestic Animals. Now people in the countryside were scared out of their wits, and everyone was bolting their houses and barns at night.

‘Yes, I’ve nailed up all the holes in my fence,’ said the Gentleman with the Poodle, who this time was buying an elegant waistcoat.

I was pleased to see him. And his Poodle. It sat politely, gazing at me with a wise expression in its eyes. Poodles are more intelligent than people think, though they certainly don’t look it. The same thing applies to many other brave Creatures – we don’t appreciate their intelligence.

We left Good News’ shop together, and stood a while by the Samurai.

‘I remember what you said that time, at the City Guard post. I found it very convincing. I don’t think this is to do with a single killer animal, but animals in general. Perhaps thanks to climatic changes they’ve become aggressive, even deer and hares. And now they’re taking vengeance for everything.’

So said the old gentleman.

Boros left. I drove him to the station in town. His ecology students had never arrived – eventually their vehicle had broken down beyond repair. Maybe there weren’t any students at all. Maybe Boros had other matters to see to here, not just to do with Cucujus haematodes .

For several days I missed him very much – his toiletries in the bathroom and even the empty teacups he left all over the house. He called every day. Then less often, every other day or so. He sounded as if he were living in another dimension, in a spirit world in the north of the country, where the trees are thousands of years old, and large Animals move among them at a slowed-down pace, outside time. I calmly watched as the image of Boros Sznajder, entomologist and taphonomist, faded and evaporated, until all that was left of him was a little grey pigtail hanging in mid-air, ridiculous. Everything will pass.

The wise Man knows this from the start, and has no regrets.

Towards the end of June the rain began to come down in torrents. That often happens here in summer. Then in the omnipresent damp one can hear the rustle of the grasses growing, the ivy climbing up the walls, and the mushroom spore expanding underground. After the rain, when the Sun breaks through the clouds for a while, everything takes on such depth that one’s eyes are filled with tears.

Several times a day I went to examine the state of the little bridge across the stream, to make sure the agitated waters hadn’t washed it away.

One warm, stormy day Oddball appeared at my house with a timid request. He wanted me to help him make a costume for the mushroom pickers’ ball, taking place on Midsummer’s Eve, organised by the Penny Buns Mushroom Pickers’ Society, of which, as I learned to my surprise, he was the treasurer.

‘But the season hasn’t started yet,’ I said hesitantly, unsure what to think.

‘You’re wrong. The season starts when the first ceps and field mushrooms appear, and that’s usually in mid-June. After that there won’t be any time for balls, because we’ll be out picking mushrooms.’ As proof he stretched out a hand, in which he was holding two lovely birch boletes.

I happened to be sitting under my terrace roof, doing my astrological research. Since mid-May Neptune had been well-aspected to my Ascendant, which, as I had noticed, was having an inspirational effect on me.

Oddball tried to persuade me to go to a Society meeting with him. I think he even wanted me to enrol and instantly pay my member’s fee. But I don’t like belonging to any sort of society. I took a quick glance at his Horoscope too, and discovered that Neptune was well-aspected to Venus for him as well. Maybe it would be a good idea for me to go to the mushroom pickers’ ball? I glanced at him. He was sitting opposite me in a grey, faded shirt, with a small basket of strawberries on his knees. I went into the kitchen and fetched a bowl. We started to remove the strawberry stalks; they were slightly overripe, so we needed to hurry up. He used a special pair of tweezers of course. I tried removing the stalks with them too, but found it more convenient to do it with my fingers.

‘What is your first name, by the way?’ I asked. ‘What does the Ś before your surname stand for?’

‘Świętopełk,’ he replied after a brief pause, without looking at me.