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

He was in a bad mood. He settled in the passenger seat and didn’t say a single word the whole way to the firehouse. He held his red headgear on his knees and only put it back on once we had stopped outside the firehouse.

‘As you can see, I have absolutely no sense of humour,’ he said.

Everyone had come straight from a special mass for the mushroom pickers, and the toasts were just starting. The President was eagerly joining in with these toasts, so very sure of his own splendid appearance that he had simply come in a suit, and thus was dressed up as himself. Most of the partygoers were only now getting changed in the toilet; they wouldn’t have dared go to church in their costumes. But the priest, Father Rustle, was here as well, with his unhealthy complexion, and in his black cassock he too looked as if he were only disguised as a priest. Invited as guests, the Village Housewives’ Circle sang some folk songs, and then came the turn of the band, consisting of one man who artfully handled a device with a keyboard, managing to simulate all the best-known hits quite well.

That’s what it was like. The music was loud and intrusive. It was hard to talk over it, so everyone set to work on the salads, hunter’s stew and slices of cold meat. There were bottles of vodka standing in small crocheted baskets made to look like various species of mushroom. After some food and several glasses of vodka, Father Rustle got up from the table and crossed himself. Only then did people start to dance, as if the priest’s presence had made them feel awkward until now. The sounds echoed off the high ceiling of the old firehouse and came hammering down on the dancers.

Near me sat a petite woman in a white blouse, straight-backed and tense. She reminded me of Oddball’s Dog, Marysia – she was just as nervous and tremulous. Earlier I had seen her go up to the tipsy President and talk to him a while. He leaned over her, and then scowled, losing patience. He grabbed her by the arm and must have squeezed it tight, because she flinched. Then he waved a hand, as if shooing away an annoying Insect, and disappeared among the dancing couples. So I guessed she must be his wife. She went back to the table and poked at the stew with a fork. And since Oddball was having immense success as Little Red Riding Hood, I moved over to her and introduced myself. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, and the shadow of a smile appeared on her sad face. We tried to have a conversation, but the noise of the music was now augmented by the thunder of dance steps on the wooden floor. Thud, thud, thud. To understand what she was saying I had to stare closely at her lips. I understood that she was anxious to drag her husband home as soon as possible. Everyone knew the President was pretty good at carousing, and had a wild, typically Slavic streak, dangerous for himself and others. Afterwards it was necessary to hush up his antics. It turned out I was teaching their youngest daughter English, and that made the conversation easier, especially as the daughter regarded me as ‘cool’. It was a very nice compliment.

‘Is it true that you found our Commandant’s body?’ the woman asked me, while trying to spot the tall figure of her husband.

I confirmed that I had.

‘Weren’t you afraid?’

‘Of course I was.’

‘Do you know, all those things have happened to my husband’s friends. He was closely bound up with them. I think he’s afraid too, though I’m not entirely sure what sort of business they had in common. Just one thing bothers me…’ She hesitated, and fell silent. I looked at her, waiting for the end of the sentence, but she just nodded and I saw tears in her eyes.

The music became even brisker and noisier, for now they were playing ‘Hey, Falcons’. Everyone who hadn’t yet danced leaped to their feet as if scalded and headed for the dance floor. I wasn’t going to try making myself heard over the one-man band.

When her husband came into view for a while with an attractive Gypsy, she tugged at my paw and said: ‘Let’s go outside for a cigarette.’

The way she said it implied that whether I smoked or not was neither here nor there. So I didn’t protest, though I’d given up smoking a decade ago.

As we pushed our way through the now delirious crowd, we were jostled and impulsively invited to dance. The merry mushroom pickers’ ball had changed into a bacchanal. We found it a relief to stand outside, in a pool of light streaming from the firehouse windows. It was a wet, jasmine-scented June evening. Warm rain had just stopped falling but the sky hadn’t brightened at all. It looked as if it were just about to start pouring again. I remembered evenings like this one from childhood, and suddenly I felt sad. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on talking to this anxious, disoriented woman.

She nervously lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and said: ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. Dead bodies. You know what, whenever he comes home from hunting he tosses a quarter of a deer on the kitchen table. They usually divide it into four parts. Dark blood spills across the tabletop. Then he cuts it into pieces and puts it in the freezer. Whenever I walk past the fridge I think about the fact that there’s a butchered body in there.’ She took another deep drag on her cigarette. ‘Or he hangs dead hares on the balcony in winter to season, and they dangle there with their eyes open and caked blood on their noses. I know, I know I’m neurotic and oversensitive, and I should go and get treatment.’

She glanced at me with sudden hope, as if expecting me to contradict her, but meanwhile I was noting mentally that there are still normal people in this world. But I hadn’t time to react before she spoke again.

‘I remember when I was little they used to tell the tale of the Night Archer. Do you know it?’

I shook my head.

‘It’s from around here, it’s a local legend, they say it dates back to the Germans. It tells of the Night Archer, who prowled after dark, hunting down bad people. He flew on a black stork, accompanied by dogs. Everyone was afraid of him, and at night they locked and bolted their doors. One day a boy who came from here, or maybe from Nowa Ruda, or Kłodzko, shouted up the chimney, wishing the Night Archer would do some hunting for him. A few days later a quarter of a human body fell down the chimney into the boy and his family’s house, and then the same thing happened three times more, until they were able to put an entire body back together and bury it. The archer never appeared again, and his dogs changed into moss.’

A chill suddenly sailed in from the forest, making me shiver. The image of the Dogs changing into moss refused to vanish from my sight. I blinked.

‘It’s a strange story, like a bad dream, isn’t it?’ She lit another cigarette, and now I could see that her hands were shaking.

I tried to think of a way to calm her down, but I had no idea what to do. I had never seen a person on the edge of a nervous breakdown before. I laid a paw on her forearm and stroked it gently. ‘You are a good Person,’ I said.

She gazed at me with the eyes of Marysia, and suddenly began to cry. She cried very softly, like a little girl, except that her shoulders were quivering. It lasted a long time; evidently she had a great deal to cry about. I had to bear witness, stand by her and watch. It seems that was all she expected. I put my arms around her, and there we stood together – a fake Wolf and a small woman in a pool of light from the firehouse window. The shadows of the dancers flew across us.

‘I’m going home. I’ve run out of strength,’ she said pitifully.

Loud stamping noises came from inside. They were dancing to the disco version of ‘Hey, Falcons’ again – it must have been more popular than any other song, and over and over we heard them shouting: ‘Hey! Hey!’ Like shells exploding.