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

Unfortunately, I’m no expert on Murder. The wire caught around his ankle, and as the tree sprang straight, it merely knocked him over. He fell and howled with pain – the wire must have cut into his skin, possibly the muscle too. I had my back-up plan, involving the carrier bag. This time I had prepared it deliberately, in the freezer. The ideal murder Weapon for an old woman. Old girls like me always go about with plastic bags, don’t they? It was simple – I hit him with all my might as he tried to get up, once, twice, maybe more. After each blow I waited a while to see if I could still hear him breathing. Finally he went quiet. I stood over the dead body in silence and darkness, my mind a blank. Once again I felt nothing but relief. I extracted his keys and passport from his jacket, pushed the body into the clay pit and covered it with branches. I quietly returned to the farm and went inside.

I wish I could forget what I saw there. Weeping, I tried to open the cages and chase out the Foxes, but then I discovered that Innerd’s keys only fitted the first hall, which led into the others. For ages I searched desperately for the remaining keys, delving in the contents of closets and drawers, until at last I found them. I told myself I wouldn’t leave this place until I had freed the Animals. It took a long time for me to open all the cages. The Foxes were bewildered, aggressive, dirty, sick, and some had wounds on their legs. They didn’t want to leave the cages – they weren’t familiar with freedom. When I waved my hands at them they growled. Finally I came up with an idea – I fully opened the door to the outside world and withdrew to my car. And later it turned out they had all escaped.

On my way home I threw away the keys, and after memorising the date and place of his birth, I burned Innerd’s passport in the boiler room. I did the same with the carrier bag, though I try not to burn waste plastic.

I got home without being noticed. Once I was in the car I couldn’t remember a thing. I felt exhausted, my bones ached and I spent the whole evening vomiting.

Sometimes the memory came back to me. I wondered why Innerd’s body hadn’t been found yet. I fantasised that the Foxes had eaten him, picked his bones clean, and then dragged them about the forest. But they hadn’t touched him. He went mouldy, which in my judgement is proof that he was not a human Being.

From then on I carried all my Tools about in the back of the Samurai. A bag of ice in the portable cooler, a pickaxe, a hammer, nails, even some syringes and my glucose. I was ready for action at any moment. I wasn’t lying when I kept insisting it was Animals taking revenge on people. That was the truth. I was their Tool.

But will you believe me when I say I didn’t do it entirely consciously? I instantly forgot what had happened, as if there were some powerful Defence Mechanisms protecting me. Perhaps I should ascribe it to my Ailments – quite simply, from time to time I was not Janina, but Bellona or Medea.

I don’t know how and when I took Boros’s bottle of pheromones. He called me later to ask about it, but I didn’t confess. I said he must have lost it, and expressed my sympathy for his absent-mindedness.

So when I said I would take the President home, I already knew what was going to happen. The stars had started their countdown. I only had to follow them.

He was sitting against a wall, dumbly staring into space. When I came into his field of vision I didn’t think he had noticed me at all, but he coughed and said in a sepulchral tone: ‘I feel unwell, Mrs Duszejko.’

This Man was suffering. ‘Unwell’ didn’t just apply to his present physical state after overindulging in drink. He was ill in general, which brought him closer to me.

‘You shouldn’t overdo it with alcohol.’

I was ready to carry out my sentence, but hadn’t yet taken the final decision. It occurred to me that if I was in the right, everything would fall into place and I’d know exactly what to do.

‘Help me,’ he wheezed. ‘Take me home.’

It sounded sad. I felt sorry for him. Yes, I should take him home, he was right. Release him from himself, from the rotten, cruel life he led. This was the Sign, I understood it at once.

‘Wait here a moment, I’ll be right back,’ I said.

I went to the car and took the bag of ice from the cooler. A chance witness might have thought I was going to make him a cold compress for a migraine. But there weren’t any witnesses. Most of the cars had driven off by now. Someone was still shouting at the front entrance; I could hear raised voices.

In my pocket I had the little bottle that I had taken from Boros.

When I returned he was sitting with his head tilted backwards, crying.

‘If you’re going to drink that much, one day you’ll have a heart attack,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

I took him under the arm and dragged him to his feet.

‘Why are you crying?’ I asked.

‘You’re so kind…’

‘I know,’ I replied.

‘What about you? Why are you crying?’ he said.

That I didn’t know.

We walked into the forest. I kept pushing him further among the trees; only once the lights of the firehouse were hardly visible did I let him go.

‘Try to vomit, it’ll make you feel better at once,’ I said. ‘And then I’ll send you home.’

He glanced at me with an absent gaze. ‘What do you mean, you’ll “send” me home?’

I patted him reassuringly on the back. ‘Go on, throw up.’

He rested against a tree and leaned forwards. A trickle of saliva streamed from his mouth. ‘You want to kill me, don’t you?’ he wheezed.

He started to cough and hawk, but then I heard a gurgling noise, and he vomited. ‘Oh,’ he said, ashamed.

That was when I gave him a little of Boros’s pheromones to drink in the bottle cap. ‘You’ll feel better right away.’

He drank it without batting an eyelid, and started to sob. ‘Have you poisoned me?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

And then I was sure that his time had come. I wrapped the handles of the carrier bag around my hand, and twisted my body to take the very best swing. I hit him. I struck him on the back and neck, he was much taller than I am, but the blow was so mighty that he sank to his knees. And again it occurred to me that things fall into place just as they’re meant to. I hit him once again, this time with success. Something cracked, he groaned and fell to the ground. I had the feeling he was grateful to me for this. In the dark I positioned his head to make sure his mouth was open. Then I poured the rest of the pheromones onto his neck and clothing. On the way back, I threw the ice under the firehouse, and hid the carrier bag in my pocket.

That’s exactly how it happened.

They sat motionless. The mustard soup had gone cold long ago. Nobody said a word, so I threw on my fleece, left the house and walked towards the Pass.

From the direction of the village I could hear sirens howling; their plaintive, mournful sound was carried on the wind across the entire Plateau. Then it all went silent. I just saw the lights of Dizzy’s car driving into the distance.

Dizzy must have called by early that morning, while I was still sleeping off my pills. How else could I have slept after what had happened? I hadn’t heard him knocking. I didn’t want to hear anything. Why hadn’t he stayed longer? Why hadn’t he tapped on the window? He must have wanted to tell me something important. He’d been in a hurry.

I stood on the porch, confused, but all I saw lying on the doormat was the volume of Blake’s letters, the one we had bought in the Czech Republic. Why had he left it here for me? What was he trying to tell me? I opened the book and leafed through it vacantly, but no scrap of paper fell out, nor did I notice any message.