Ольга Токарчук - Flights

I was vividly reminded of an old engraving of a wanderer who had reached the edge of the world. Excited, he threw out his travelling bundle and was now looking out, beyond the Network. That traveller from the engraving can consider himself a fortunate man: he sees the stars and planets, spread out evenly across the firmament of the sky. And he hears the music of the spheres.

We’ve been denied that gift at the end of our travels. Beyond the Network there is silence.

In a city in South Asia the vegetarian restaurants are generally indicated with red swastikas, ancient signs of the Sun and life force. This makes vegetarians’ lives much easier in a foreign city – all you have to do is look up and follow that symbol. There they serve vegetable curry (the vegetables vary greatly), pakoras, samosas and kormas, pilafs, little cutlets, as well as my favourite rice sticks wrapped in dried algae sheets.

After a few days I’m conditioned like one of Pavlov’s dogs – I drool at the sight of a swastika.

I saw on the street some tiny shops where names are sold for children who will be coming into the world soon. You have to go in early and place your order. You have to give them the exact date of conception, as well as a copy of the ultrasound – because the sex of the child is extremely important when choosing a name. The salesperson records this information and tells you to come back in a few days. During this time they prepare the future child’s horoscope and dedicate themselves to meditation. Sometimes the name comes easily, materializing at the tip of their tongue in two or three sounds stuck together by saliva into syllables, which the expert hand of the master subsequently turns into red symbols on paper. Other times the name is resistant, unclear, in outline; it puts up a fight. It’s hard to enclose it in words. Then helping techniques are deployed that will, however, remain the secret of every name vendor.

You can see them through the open doors of the shops covered in rice paper, Buddha figurines and hand-painted prayer texts, drudging away with a brush in their hand aimed at the paper. Sometimes the name just falls from the sky like a blot – surprising, clear, perfect. In such circumstances nothing can be done. It does happen that the parents aren’t pleased, would prefer a gentle name filled with optimism, like Moon Glow or Good River, for girls, or for boys, for example, Always Going Forward, Fearless, or He Who Has Achieved His Aim. The explanations of the vendor that the Buddha himself named his son Fetter are for naught. The clients leave unsatisfied, and, huffing and puffing, head to the competition.

Far from home, at a video rental shop, rummaging around the shelves, I swear in Polish. And suddenly an average-sized woman who looks to be about fifty years old stops beside me and awkwardly says in my language:

‘Is that Polish? Do you speak Polish? Hello.’

Here, alas, her stock of Polish sentences is at an end.

And now she tells me in English that she came here when she was seventeen, with her parents; here she shows off with the Polish word for ‘mummy’. Much to my dismay she then begins to cry, indicating her arm, her forearm, and talks about blood, that this is where her whole soul is, that her blood is Polish. This hapless gesture reminds me of an addict’s gesture – her index finger showing veins, the place to stick a needle in. She says she married a Hungarian and forgot her Polish. She squeezes my shoulder and leaves, disappearing between shelves labelled ‘Drama’ and ‘Action’.

It’s hard for me to believe that you could forget the language thanks to which the maps of the world were drawn. She must have simply mislaid it somewhere. Maybe it lies wadded up and dusty in a drawer of bras and knickers, squeezed into a corner like sexy thongs acquired once in a fit of enthusiasm that there was never really an occasion to wear.

I met some ichthyologists who were not at all bothered in their work by the fact that they were creationists. We were eating vegetable curries at the same table and we had a lot of time before our next flight. So we moved from the table to the bar, where a young man with eastern features and a ponytail was playing Eric Clapton’s hits on his guitar.

They were talking about how it was God who created their beautiful fish – all those trout, pike, turbot and flounder, along with all the evidence of their phylogenetic development. To complete the set of fish, which he called into existence on the third day, he also prepared their excavatable skeletons, their bold imprints in sandstone, their fossils.

‘To what end?’ I asked. ‘Why create this false evidence?’

They were ready for my doubts, so one of them answered:

‘Describing God and his intentions is like a fish trying to describe the water it swims in.’

Another added after a moment:

‘And its ichthyologist.’

In a cheap little hotel above a restaurant, in the town of X, I was assigned to room number nine. The porter, handing me the key (made of ordinary patent silver, with the number attached on a ring), said:

‘Please be careful with the key. Nine gets lost the most.’

I froze with the pen raised over the form I was filling in.

‘What does that mean?’ I asked in a state of internal alert. He couldn’t have aimed better, this man behind the counter – me, a homegrown detective, a private investigator of signs and coincidences.

He evidently noticed my unease because he explained soothingly, almost amicably – it means nothing. Simply by the eternal laws of coincidence the key to room number nine gets lost most often by distracted travellers. He knows this for sure because every year he replenishes the stocks of keys and remembers that he has to order the largest quantity of nine. Even the locksmith was surprised.

I was careful with the key during my entire four-day stay in the town of X. When I’d return to the hotel, I would always put it in some visible place, and when I would leave, I handed it over to the safe hands of the receptionists. When once I unintentionally took it with me, I placed it in the safest pocket and made sure it was there with my fingers over the course of the day.

I wonder what law governed the number nine key, what cause and what effect. Or maybe the receptionist’s spontaneous intuition was right – that it was a coincidence. Or maybe it was the opposite – it was his fault; he was choosing without realizing it for room number nine particularly distracted guests, untrustworthy, susceptible to suggestion.

After a rather hurried departure from X because of a sudden schedule change, several days later, I was shaken to find the key in the pocket of my trousers – meaning I had inadvertently taken it with me. I thought of sending it back, but, to tell the truth, I no longer remembered the address of the hotel. My only consolation was that there were others like me – a small group of people leaving the town of X with a nine in their pockets. Perhaps even unconsciously we create a kind of community, the aim of which we cannot guess yet. Perhaps in the future it will be explained. The porter’s prophecy, however, did come true – he would once again have to order the key to number nine, to the unceasing astonishment of the locksmith.

A man awakens from an uneasy sleep on a big intercontinental plane and puts his face to the window. He sees below a massive dark land. Only here and there do weak groups of lights make their way out of that darkness – those are big cities. Thanks to the map illuminated on the screens he figures out that this is Russia, somewhere in central Siberia. He wraps himself up in his blanket and falls back asleep.