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

‘You go, my dear,’ I said, after a pause for thought. I found it a relief to speak to her so personally and directly. ‘I’ll wait for your husband and give him a lift home. I’m quite prepared for that. I have to wait for my neighbour anyway. Where exactly do you live?’

She mentioned one of those turnings beyond Ox Heart Corner. I knew where it was.

‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ I said. ‘Run yourself a bath and get some rest.’

She took the car keys from her handbag and hesitated. ‘Sometimes I think you can entirely fail to know the person you’ve lived with for years on end,’ she said, looking me in the eyes with such horror that I stiffened. I realised what she had in mind.

‘No, it’s not him. It’s definitely not him. I’m sure of it,’ I said.

Now she was looking at me enquiringly. I was uncertain whether to tell her this at all.

‘I used to have two Dogs. They kept close watch to make sure everything was divided fairly – food, petting, privileges. Animals have a very strong sense of justice. I remember the look in their eyes whenever I did something wrong, whenever I scolded them unfairly or failed to keep my word. They’d gaze at me with such awful grief, as if they simply couldn’t understand how I could have broken the sacred law. They taught me quite basic, plain and simple justice.’ I stopped talking for a moment, and then added: ‘We have a view of the world, but Animals have a sense of the world, do you see?’

She lit another cigarette. ‘And what’s become of them?’

‘They’re dead.’ I pulled the Wolf mask further down my face. ‘They had their games that involved playing tricks on each other for fun. If one of them found a long forgotten bone, and the other one didn’t know how to get it off her, she’d pretend a car was coming down the road that had to be barked at. Then the first one would drop the bone and race to the road, unaware that it was a false alarm.’

‘Really? Like people.’

‘They were more human than people in every possible way. More affectionate, wiser, more joyful… And people think they can do what they want to Animals, as if they’re just things. I think my Dogs were shot by the hunters.’

‘No – why on earth would they do that?’ she asked anxiously.

‘They say they only kill feral Dogs that are a threat to wild Animals, but it’s not true. They come right up to the houses.’

I wanted to tell her about the vengeance of Animals, but I remembered Dizzy’s warnings not to tell everyone my Theories. Now we were standing in darkness and couldn’t see each other’s faces.

‘That’s nonsense,’ she said. ‘I’ll never believe he shot a dog.’

‘Is there really such a big difference between a Hare, a Dog and a Pig?’ I asked, but she didn’t answer.

She got into the car and promptly drove off. It was a large, swanky Jeep Cherokee. I recognised it. I wondered how such a small, fragile woman coped with such a large vehicle, and I went back inside, because it was starting to rain again.

His cheeks comically flushed, Oddball was dancing with a stout woman in Kraków folk costume, and looked perfectly happy. I watched him. He moved gracefully, without exaggeration, calmly leading his partner. And I think he saw me looking at him, because suddenly he spun her around with panache. But he’d obviously forgotten how he was dressed, and it was a funny sight – two women dancing, one huge, the other tiny.

After this dance the results of the vote for the best costume were announced. The winners were a husband and wife from Transylvania, dressed as toadstools. The prize was a field guide to mushrooms. We came second, and were awarded a mushroom-shaped cake. We had to dance together in front of everyone as Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, after which we were completely forgotten. Only now did I have a glass of vodka, and a strong urge to have fun came over me – yes, I’d even have been happy for them to strike up ‘Hey, Falcons’ again. But Oddball wanted to go home now. He was worried about Marysia, whom he had never left alone for long; after all, she’d been traumatised by her experience of Big Foot’s shed. I told him I was committed to driving the President home. Most men would have stayed to keep me company in this difficult task, but not Oddball. He found someone who also wanted to leave the party early, the attractive Gypsy, I think it was, and disappeared in a not entirely gentlemanly fashion. Oh well, I’m used to doing difficult things on my own.

At dawn I had that dream again. I went down to the boiler room and there they were – my Mother and Grandmother. Both in summer dresses, flowery ones, both with handbags, as if they were off to church and had lost their way. They avoided my gaze when I began to reproach them.

‘What are you doing here, Mummy?’ I asked angrily. ‘How’s it possible?’

They were standing between a stack of wood and the boiler, absurdly stylish, though the patterns on their dresses looked washed-out and faded.

‘Get out of here!’ I shouted at them, but suddenly my voice stuck in my throat. I could hear shuffling noises and rising whispers coming from the garage.

I turned in that direction and saw that there were lots of people over there: men, women and children, in strangely festive clothing that had faded and gone grey. They had the same restless, terrified look in their eyes, as if they didn’t know what they were actually doing here. They were streaming in from somewhere in a swarm, crowding in the doorway, unsure whether they could come in. They were whispering to each other incoherently, and shuffling their boot soles against the stone floor of the boiler room and the garage. Pressing from behind, the crowd kept pushing the front rows forwards. I was seized with sheer terror.

I felt for the handle behind me and very quietly, doing my best not to draw attention to myself, I slipped out of there. Then, my hands trembling with fear, I spent a long time bolting the boiler room door.

When I woke up, the anxiety brought on by this dream was still intense. I didn’t know what to do with myself, and I thought the best thing I could do would be to go and see Oddball. The Sun had not yet fully risen, and I hadn’t had much sleep. A gentle mist floated over everything, just about to change into dew.

Oddball opened the door to me, looking sleepy. He couldn’t have had a proper wash: the red spots that I’d made for him the day before with lipstick were still on his cheeks.

‘What’s up?’ he asked.

I didn’t know what to say.

‘Come in,’ he muttered. ‘So how did it go?’

‘Fine. Perfectly all right,’ I replied concisely, knowing that Oddball likes concise questions and concise answers.

I sat down, and he set about making coffee. First he spent a long time cleaning the machine, then poured the water from a measuring jug, and I noticed that he never stopped talking. It was very strange to see him so animated. Świętopełk, who talks and talks.

‘I’ve always wanted to know what you keep in that drawer,’ I said.

‘Here you are,’ he said, opening it to show me. ‘Be my guest – nothing but essential items.’

‘Just like me in the Samurai.’

The drawer silently slid open at a gentle tug of his finger. In dapper grey compartments lay some very neatly arranged kitchen Utensils. A rolling pin, an egg whisk, a tiny battery-powered milk beater and an ice-cream spoon. And also some Utensils that I couldn’t identify – some long spoons, spatulas and strange hooks. They looked like surgical Instruments for complicated operations. It was plain to see that their owner took extraordinary care of them – they were polished and put away in the right places.