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

That day as usual I waited for him on the road to come back from work. I drove after him, and as usual he didn’t notice me. Nobody takes any notice of old women who wander around with their shopping bags.

I waited a long time outside Innerd’s house for him to emerge, but there was rain and wind, so finally I felt too cold and went home. However, I knew he’d come back via the Pass, taking the side roads, because they were sure to have been drinking. I had no idea what I was going to do. I wanted to talk to him, to stand face to face with him – on my terms, not his, like at the police station, where I had been an ordinary suppliant, a tedious madwoman who’s hopeless at everything, pathetic and laughable.

Perhaps I wanted to give him a fright. I was dressed in a yellow waterproof cape. I looked like a large gnome. Outside the house I noticed that the plastic carrier bag in which I had brought the Deer’s head home and which I had then hung on the plum tree had filled with water and frozen solid. I unhooked it and took it with me. I don’t know if I took it with the intention of using it. One doesn’t think about such things at the time when they’re happening. I knew Dizzy was due to come that evening, so I couldn’t wait long for the Commandant. But just as I reached the Pass, along came his car, and I took that to be a sign too. I stepped into the road and waved my arms. Oh yes, he did have a fright. I pulled off my hood to show him my face. He was furious.

‘What do you want now?’ he shouted at me, leaning out of the window.

‘I want to show you something,’ I said.

I had no idea what I was going to do. For a moment he hesitated, but as he was fairly drunk, he was in the mood for an adventure. He got out of the car and unsteadily walked a short way after me.

‘What do you want to show me, woman?’ he asked.

‘It’s to do with Big Foot’s death,’ I said the first thing that entered my mind.

‘Big Foot?’ he asked dubiously, and then instantly realised who that meant, and burst into spiteful laughter. ‘Yes, indeed, he really did have enormous feet.’

Intrigued, he followed me, taking several paces to the left, towards the undergrowth and the well.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you shot my Dogs?’ I asked, suddenly turning to face him.

‘What do you want to show me?’ he said angrily, trying to maintain control. He was the one who was going to ask the questions.

I pointed my index finger at him like a pistol barrel and prodded him in the belly. ‘Did you shoot my Dogs?’

He laughed, and immediately relaxed. ‘What are you on about? Do you know something that I don’t?’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Answer my question.’

‘It wasn’t me who shot them. It may have been Innerd, or the parish priest.’

‘The priest? He hunts?’ I was speechless.

‘Why shouldn’t he? He’s the chaplain. He hunts like anything.’

His face was puffy, and he kept adjusting his trouser belt. It never occurred to me that he had money there.

‘Turn around, woman, I want to take a piss,’ he said suddenly.

We were standing right by the well when he started scrabbling at his flies. Without thinking at all, I positioned myself with the bag of frozen ice as if for throwing the hammer. My only fleeting thought was: ‘This is die kalte Teufelshand ’ – oh yes, where is that from? Didn’t I tell you that the sport I won all the medals for was hammer throwing? I was the national vice-champion in 1971. So my body adopted the familiar position and gathered all its strength. Oh, how wise the body is. I could say it was my body that made the decision, it took the swing and struck the blow.

I just heard a crack. For a few seconds the Commandant remained upright, swaying, but the blood immediately began to pour down his face. The cold fist had struck him on the head. My heart was thumping and the roar of my own blood was deafening me. My mind was a blank. I watched as he fell beside the well, slowly, softly, almost gracefully, his belly blocking the opening. It didn’t take much effort to push him in. Really.

And that’s all. I didn’t stop to think about it. I was sure I had killed him, and it seemed quite all right. I had no pangs of conscience. I only felt great relief.

There was one other thing. In my pocket I had the Finger of God, the Deer’s hoof, one of the four I’d found in Big Foot’s house. I had buried the head and the other three feet, but I had kept this one for myself. I don’t know why. I made prints with it in the snow, lots of them, chaotically. I thought they’d still be there in the morning to imply that the Deer had been here. But no one saw them except you, Dizzy. Water poured from the sky that night and wiped out all the prints. That was a Sign too.

I went home and set about making our supper.

I know I had a lot of luck, and that was what emboldened me. For surely it means I’d chanced upon a good moment, a time when I had the permission of the Planets? How come nobody intervenes to stop all the evil that’s rife everywhere? Is it like with my letters to institutions? They should answer, but they don’t. Don’t we demand this sort of intervention convincingly enough? One can put up with the petty things that hardly cause any discomfort, but not with senseless, ubiquitous cruelty. It’s perfectly simple – if other people are happy, we’re happy too. The simplest equation in the world. As I drove to the Fox farm with the Cold Fist, I imagined I was triggering a process that would reverse everything evil. That Night the Sun would enter Aries and an entirely new year would begin. For if evil created the world, then good must destroy it.

And so I set off to see Innerd on purpose. First I called him and said we must meet; I said I had seen the Commandant just before his death and he’d told me to deliver something. Innerd agreed at once; at the time I didn’t know the Commandant had had some money on him, but now I can see that Innerd was hoping to get it back. I said I would come to his farm once he was alone there. He agreed. He was shocked by the Commandant’s death.

Earlier that day, in the afternoon, I had prepared a trap – I’d taken some wire snares from Big Foot’s shed. I’d removed them so many times before that I knew very well how they worked. You choose a young, springy tree and bend it to the ground; then you pin it down by trapping it under a solid branch. You attach a wire noose to it. When the Animal gets caught in the noose, it starts to struggle, and the tree straightens, breaking the Animal’s neck. I hid the wire noose among the ferns after making the effort to bend a medium-sized birch tree.

None of the employees ever stayed at the farm at night, the lights were switched off, and the gate was locked. That evening the gate was open. For me. We met inside, in his office. He smiled when he saw me.

‘Do I know you from somewhere?’ he said.

He can’t have remembered our encounter on the bridge. No one remembers meeting old biddies like me.

I said we must go outside, that’s where I had the thing from the Commandant, I hid it in the forest. He took his keys and his jacket and followed me. Once I was leading him through the wet ferns, he started to grow impatient, but I played my role well, replying to his insistent questions in monosyllables.

‘Oh, it’s here,’ I finally said.

He looked around uncertainly and cast me a glance as if he had only just understood. ‘What’s here? There’s nothing here.’

‘Here,’ I said, pointing, and he took that one step forwards, putting his foot in the noose. It must have looked comical from the outside – he did what I said like a child at playschool. I was assuming that my trap would break his neck, just like a Deer’s. That’s what I wanted to happen, because he’d fed my Little Girls’ bodies to the Foxes. Because he hunted. Because he stripped Animals of their skin. I think it would have been a perfectly fair Punishment.