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

The day was dark and wet. I could hardly drag my feet along. I went to make myself some strong tea, and only then did I see that one page of the book was marked with a blade of grass. I read the text, a passage we hadn’t worked on yet, from a letter to Richard Phillips, subtly underlined in pencil (Dizzy hated scribbling in books):

‘I read in the Oracle and True Briton of Oct r13, that’ – and here Dizzy had added in pencil ‘a Mr Black Coat’ – ‘a Surgeon has with the Cold Fury of Robespierre caused the Police to seize upon the Person & Goods or Property of an Astrologer & to commit him to Prison. The Man who can Read the Stars often is oppressed by their Influence, no less than the Newtonian who reads Not & cannot Read is oppressed by his own Reasonings & Experiments. We are all subject to Error: Who shall say that we are not all subject to Crime?’

It took about ten seconds for the penny to drop, and then I felt faint. My liver responded with a dull, intensifying pain.

I had started to stuff my things and my laptop into my backpack when I heard the engine of a car, or rather at least two cars. Without a second thought, I grabbed it all and ran downstairs into the boiler room. Briefly I thought that maybe Mummy and Granny would be waiting there for me again. And my Little Girls. Perhaps that would have been the best solution for me – to join them. But nobody was there.

Between the boiler room and the garage there was a small hiding place for the water meters, cables and mops. Every house should have a hiding place like that in case of Persecution and War. Every house. I squeezed in there with my backpack and laptop under my arm, in my pyjamas and slippers. My stomach was aching more and more.

First I heard knocking, then the creak of the front door and footsteps in the hall. I heard them coming up the steps and opening all the doors. I heard the voices of Black Coat and the young policeman who used to work with the Commandant and had interviewed me later. But there were other, unfamiliar ones too. They spread about the entire house. They tried calling me: ‘Citizen Duszejko! Janina!’, and actually that was quite enough reason for me not to want to respond.

They went upstairs – they were sure to be bringing in mud – and visited every room. Then one of them started coming downstairs, and moments later the door into the boiler room opened. Someone came in and took a good look around, peeping into the larder too, and then went through to the garage. I felt a rush of air as he passed by, only centimetres away from me. I held my breath.

‘Where are you, Adam?’ I heard from above.

‘Here!’ he shouted back, right by my ear. ‘There’s no one here.’

Someone upstairs cursed. Obscenely.

‘Brr, what a nasty place,’ said the one in the boiler room to himself, switched off the light and went upstairs.

I could hear them standing in the hall, talking. They were conferring.

‘She must have simply cleared out…’

‘But she left the car. Odd, isn’t it? Did she go on foot?’

Then Oddball’s voice joined them, out of breath, as if he had followed the Police at a run.

‘She told me she was going to Szczecin to visit a friend.’

Where did he get that idea from? Szczecin! How funny!

‘Why didn’t you tell me before, Dad?’

No answer.

‘To Szczecin? She has a friend there? What do you know, Dad?’ asked Black Coat pensively. It must have been painful for Oddball to have his son drilling him like that.

‘How’s she going to get there?’ A lively discussion began, and I heard the voice of the young policeman again: ‘Oh well, we were too late. And we were pretty close to catching her at last. She took us in for a long time. And to think how many times we had her within our grasp.’

Now they were standing in the hall, and even at this distance I could smell that one of them had lit a cigarette.

‘We must call Szczecin at once to find out how she might have got there. By bus, by train, hitchhiking? We must issue an arrest warrant,’ said Black Coat.

And the young policeman said: ‘We’re hardly going to need an anti-terrorist squad to find her. She’s a crazy old woman. Round the twist.’

‘She’s dangerous,’ said Black Coat.

They left the house.

‘We must seal this door.’

‘And the one downstairs. All right, then. Come on,’ they said to each other.

Suddenly I heard Oddball’s ringing voice: ‘I’ll marry her when she gets out of jail.’

And at once Black Coat angrily replied: ‘Have you totally lost your marbles out here in the wilds, Dad?’

There I stood, squeezed into the corner, in total darkness, for a good while after they had gone, until I heard the roar of their car engines. After that I waited another hour or so, listening to the sound of my own breathing. I no longer had to dream. I really was in the boiler room, as in my dreams, in the place where the Dead came. I thought I could hear their voices somewhere under the garage, deep inside the hill, a great underground procession. But it was the wind again, whistling as usual on the Plateau. I crept upstairs like a thief and quickly dressed for the journey. I only took two small bags – Ali would have been proud of me. Of course there was a third way out of the house too, through the woodshed, and I slipped out that way, leaving the house to the Dead. I waited in the Professor’s outhouse until it grew dark. I only had the essential items with me – my notebooks, Blake, my medicine and the laptop containing my Astrology. And the Ephemerides of course, in case I were to end up on a Desert Island in the future. The further I moved away from the house across the shallow, wet snow, the more my spirits lifted. From the border I looked back at my Plateau, and remembered the day when I first saw it – I’d been delighted, but hadn’t yet sensed that one day I would live here. The fact that we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future is a terrible mistake in the programming of the world. It should be fixed at the first opportunity.

By now the valleys beyond the Plateau lay in dense Gloom, and from up here I could see the lights of the larger towns – Lewin and Frankenstein far away on the horizon, and Kłodzko to the north. The air was pure and the lights were twinkling. Here, higher up, Night had not yet fallen, the sky in the west was still orange and brown, still growing darker. I wasn’t afraid of this darkness. I walked ahead, towards the Table Mountains, tripping over frozen clods of earth and clumps of dry grass. I felt hot in my fleeces, my hat and scarf, but I knew that as soon as I crossed the border I wouldn’t need them anymore. It’s always warmer in the Czech Republic, nothing but southern slopes.

And just then, over on the Czech side, Venus, my Damsel, shone out above the horizon.

She was growing brighter by the minute, as if a smile had risen on the dark face of the sky, so now I knew I had chosen a good direction and was heading the right way. She glowed in the sky as I safely crossed the forest and imperceptibly stepped across the border. She was guiding me. I walked across the Czech fields, constantly moving in her direction, as she descended lower and lower, as if encouraging me to follow her over the horizon.

She led me as far as the highway, from where I could see the town of Náchod. I walked down the road in a light and happy mood – whatever happened now, it would be Right and Good. I felt no fear at all, though the streets of the Czech town were empty now. But what is there to be afraid of in the Czech Republic?

So when I stopped outside the bookshop, not knowing what would happen next, my Damsel was still with me, though out of sight behind the rooftops. And then I found that despite the late hour there was someone in the shop. I knocked, and Honza opened the door to me, not in the least surprised. I said I needed a place for the night.