A N D R Z E J S TA S I U K

TA L E S O F G A L I C I A
translated from the Polish by Margarita Nafpaktitis

TWISTED SPOON PRESS PRAGUE 2003

Copyright 1995, 2003 by Andrzej Stasiuk Translation copyright 2003 by Margarita Nafpaktitis All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. This book, or parts thereof, may not be used or reproduced in any form, except in the context of reviews, without written permission from the publisher.

isbn 80-86264-05-x

CONTENTS
Jzek / 9 Wadek / 18 Blacksmith Kruk / 25 Janek / 32 Place / 42 Kociejny / 51 Lewandowski / 57 The Pub / 64 Grandma / 73 The Red-Haired Sergeant / 80 Night / 88 Maryka / 97 Confession / 106 The Second Night / 114 The End / 128
Translators Note / 133 Notes to the Text / 138

JZEK

He was some forty years old, with a foxs sly face and a body skinny as a rail. The last tractor driver on the state collective farm, the pgr, because he was driving the last tractor, and there wouldnt be any more new ones. Ever. But Jzek didnt know that word, because it belonged to the realm of the imagination. And he was trying just like hed always done, in motionless time, to breathe a little life into the iron corpse. His tractor was still running, but only because Jzek knew what to borrow from whom. So what does he need a generator for anyway, since he doesnt even know how to drive? he muttered to himself in the Egyptian darkness, using his #19 wrench as skillfully as a Chinese man would chopsticks. After a second, he put his own piece of scrap iron where the other generator had been, smeared the unscrewed bolts with mud, and no one would even notice.

His gure was the only thing moving across the landscape of the expiring world, among the remains of machines and their immobilized mechanisms, between the rust-eaten sowing-machines and the cold and silent smithy. A little over forty, he was already old. He remembered the days of paradise. You there! Bring that cement, take that wool, then head out again for manure and for oil. The customers would even get into st ghts, because back then, a private shop owner could get a kick in the ass and not a sack of cement. And everybody xed the bills. The boss couldnt even do anything about it if he didnt catch them red-handed. Fire them? Who else would come to work for him out here in the backwoods? But now . . . He waved his hand, jumped into the worn-out seat and left. As innocent as an angel, like a child, like a creature from the time when God had only begun to contemplate the notion of sin. People who have been disinherited live in the present. If they possess any kind of past, then it is a memory just as uncertain as the future. He came from somewhere in the neighborhood of Limanowa. Not by himself. His parents brought him when he was just a few years old. He could look around in this complete desolation and remember the creation of the world. The reality of the pgr was a universe unto itself. This was where a person comes into this world, lives and dies. No eight hours in a factory, riding the tram, and then the privacy of home. The same faces at work, the same ones on the muddy road that was their place for strolling, shopping, meeting and brawling. Nobody came, sometimes somebody left. Even the military barracks were something transitory, for

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waiting out times of peace. What kind of consciousness was bestowed upon the rst people? No doubt it was inversely proportional to their freedom. This subordination, more than any other, brings us nearer to animals. Once on the way to the pub, I asked why he had that handy crowbar up his sleeve. I dont know everyone there. I dont know whos one of us and whos an enemy. Once I found him in a ditch. Just sleeping in his tractor overturned on its side. Generally speaking, he often slept wherever sleep found him. And so, he was completely faithful to his senses and to wariness, to rapid reasoning for the moments advantage. When youre eating, then eat. When youre drinking, then drink. Those are the kind of instructions Zen masters give to adepts. In all likelihood, they would make Jzek burst into hearty laughter. Masters waste so much time on the discovery of basic truths. But even he would engage in reflection, if it could bring him solace. One day I ran into him in the forest. He was sitting in his tractor, pressing the gas pedal to the floor and slowly sinking into the swamp. He believed with drunken optimism that he would pull himself out of the oozing muck, even though the mud had already flowed in as high as the tops of his rubber boots. Take it easy. Thats the way life is, he repeated over and over, Sometimes you get lucky, and sometimes you dont. There is no doubt that uncomplicated minds are much better suited to the task of interpreting reality. The pgr civitas had been founded on the principles of collectivity. Availing himself of Ockhams razor, Jzek learned the ultimate lesson from the

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formula, to each according to his needs, from each according to his abilities. For all intents and purposes, this postulate did not set any limits. Because, after all, a persons abilities were hard to qualify. They presented themselves as the circumstances required and reason demanded. Not to mention a persons needs, with roots embedded in the dark and irrational will. And so he gave as much as he wanted and took as much as he could, accommodating his rational philosophy to mans impulsive nature. I have a vague suspicion that Jzeks pgr was a remote branch of a system that fell apart for reasons other than the resistance of a few people who exalted virtue, truth and integrity. Certainly, those values are beautiful, but too abstract and inadequate to withstand the actual conditions of life. The systems logical and mechanical, as well as abstract, structure shattered to pieces because Jzek and his brothers and sisters lived in it a legion of all those who had been disinherited and liberated from the harsh dictates of morality, religion and memory. Surrendering themselves to instinct, listening intently to natures murmured temptations, they became a mass that the most ingenious structure could not contain. One winter day I dug myself in so deep that I couldnt move backward or forward, even with a four-wheel drive. He was driving by right then. We rigged up a cable, and he dragged me out through a belt of snowdrifts a kilometer wide. The bottles on you, he said jokingly, contorting that foxs muzzle of his into a smile. And I replied in all seriousness, Its on me, and we went to drink. The pub was cold and empty, only the barmaid was there, standing behind a pyramid of mugs which looked like a prism of

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ice. After the third round, the spirit of Raymond Roussel descended into Jzeks body and began to dictate some kind of pieced together, patched up Locus Solus through his lips. It was almost like the author wanted to make up for the contempt he had been subjected to in his previous incarnation. Except that this spirit replaced the subtle semantic and sound associations with some kind of logopedic code of a few hundred words, for ease of composition. Because Jzek had about that many words, give or take a few, in his vocabulary, in that voluble flow he used to describe the whole of existence. It was all about his tongues convenience, literally about how easy it was for that little piece of meat to move in his mouth. Jzeks speech didnt stumble, never paused for reflection, and always seemed to get to the heart of the matter, because he didnt revise anything or state anything precisely. Jzek would settle down and, after a shot of vodka, his speech would be completely transformed into something that could change the world, all of reality, and even set to work on the universe like aqua regia on metal. The consequences of events disappeared, causes and effects disappeared, and sin disappeared right along with history. Everything happened simultaneously, started before time and reached the end before it began. Jzek deadened time with each successive glass and performed some kind of crazy autopsy that completely exposed the weak little skeleton over which we stretch our efforts, achievements, plans and hopes. Jzek himself disappeared into this flow, like the borderline between that which was and that which only will be. Sure, he settled himself behind the table and slumped against the back of the chair with a nonchalance that grew steadily stronger, along with the greedy drags on his cigarette that sucked the insides of his cheeks together. But his existence had

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become problematic. The zero point disappeared from the axis of time. After an hour, after the bottle had been drained, and over the course of subsequent misericordal beers, he transformed my name into some other, ancient one which had played a part in his life. He recovered it again after a moment and invited me into the future, to spring shing for trout, which took shape in his mind like a distant reminiscence from childhood, pulling a couple of other stories behind it. It was the brushwood of branching footpaths. Jzek did not choose which way to go. He went where the easy syllables, or a similarity in names, or the chance focus of his drunken gaze would carry him. At that time, or today or tomorrow, Jzek would swim like a sh in the ocean. His wake always assumed the shape of double looped innity. He tilted back the bottle and, gulping, swallowed down his own tail along with the beer. Because Jzek was an ancient serpent, maybe a Leviathan, that is, a form of chaos that God just couldnt handle, even with the passage of time. Or maybe He just didnt want to, because it would make our task too easy. Finally, as if he realized that only motion could liberate him from his logorrhea, he stood up, caught his balance, looked for his scarf but didnt nd it since it was hanging from his shoulders like some kind of big green lizard, mumbled something else, and left. He got into his tractor, which was like a well-traveled horse that would take its drowsing driver to the next petty embezzlements, frauds or swindles, these secrets of independent existence. Because Jzek was independent, and even if his freedom was bounded by some kind of inevitability, he had no knowledge of it. He devoted himself to a few favorite mortal sins with the same kind of freedom he had when he showed up in church on Sunday

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morning. He stood before the altar in navy blue pants, a white shirt and a green jacket everything festive and plastic. When he genuflected and when he made the sign of the cross he would shoot off sparks of static electricity with a quiet crackle. His childrens faces were washed, his wifes hair was done, and there was not a single whisper or a shove. The table was simple, covered with a lace tablecloth, and Jzek knew, although he was not conscious of it, that he, too, had his stake in absolution, that, in the arithmetic of the world, a fragment of white wafer is allotted for every sin. That is why his fox face was peaceful. He was at home. He surrendered himself to the cycle of things. Jzek was a being both chaotic and cosmic all at the same time. Nothing extreme could touch him. When the ceremony ended, when the divine was rendered unto God, he would return to his world. Smoke from his Populars mingled with the aroma of extinguished candles and incense, since the men let the women go ahead of them while they themselves held council near the church gate. A council concerning the rest of their day off. From the place where the sanctuary stood, you could see the

pgr laid out like on the palm of your hand: a white smooth mountain gently ascending along the horizon, surrounded by a ridge of forest. A few buildings like heavy barges, lichen-covered and dilapidated, taken on a journey to nowhere, motionless on a gigantic white wave. Sheds for wood, shelters for hay. Clothes on lines buffeting against each other, smacking like pieces of frozen meat. The wind from over the mountain pass laden with clouds of snow. That is how Jzeks world looked. A shapeless, listless reality, where gravity affected objects and bodies with equal force. Time was round. Women knew better about this because, for them, it
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was broken up into nine-month cycles. Between one childbirth and another sheep would also bear their young, and in terms of the number of deliveries, some women achieved a certain resemblance to animals. Five children, seven, ten, enough at any rate to believe that life was only an unending chain of birth and death. You needed either virtue or crime to break out of the circle. Jzek cultivated the former in so far as it was necessary for his existence among people. He did it casually and with moderation. But when he said in that way he had, Man, the way we used to guzzle it down, or when he described the eras under Gomuka and under Gierek in terms of numbers of thefts and how easy they were, then there was unconcealed pride and satisfaction in his voice. It was almost like those acts were the measure of his sovereignty, as if he had saved his own individual existence and invested it with meaning with their help. The last time I saw him was in summer. Denim jeans, an undershirt and a rusty black beret. Skin tanned to bronze, and with the eternally smoldering end of a cigarette in his mouth. Man, the Pepikis spit on my tractor. I was ready to punch somebody out, but nobody wanted to ght. At that time he was mowing the meadows right next to the Slovak border. Polish on one side, and the foreign state farm on the other. The guys on the other side were mowing with red Zetors: soundproof cabs, built-in radios, twentyrst century. When they saw Jzeks wreck, they rolled on the ground with laughter. A week later he was no longer among the living. It was the kind of summer when the sun scorches the sky white. Twenty hours in the sweltering heat and a machine gets as hot as an oven. His

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buddies said how on that day there was nothing to drink. Not even a drop of homemade wine or beer. When the afternoon was at its hottest, Jzek chased the frogs out of a stagnant puddle and drank the water. They say this noxious drink is what killed him. When the doctors in the hospital looked at his body, they claimed he looked at least a hundred years old. Whenever I think about him, I wonder about whether he was saved. He and the mass of people like him. Because in some sense they were a new tribe after all, a people who hadnt been reached by any good news or apostle Paul. That church on the hill where he went on Sunday was witness to the dualism of his world. You could enter it and cleanse yourself of guilt, so you could plunge back into a reality where categories of virtue and sin were indistinct and intermingled with one another, just like darkness and light before the rst day of creation. Could an intuition have emerged in Jzeks mind that this sanctuary was licensed by the chaos that surrounded it? That it was established so that he, Jzek, could submit himself to his own kind of psychotherapy once a week and ensure the peace of his soul?

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WADEK

It was a village like any other. A snaking three-kilometer chain of buildings scattering, splitting off, and then clustering densely together again. The concrete, wood, sagging roofs, relics of fences, and iron balustrades produced a fallen cake of poverty and a yearning for the world as seen on tv . The asphalt road barely grazed the outskirts of the area of densest settlement, barely brushed against it. Which was probably all for the best, since kids and dogs had taken possession of the pot-holed gravel road that served as the main artery. They devoted themselves to shared amusements, and no speeding vehicle could disturb this symbiosis. Sometimes a tractor would pass through, but tractors are slow, tame machines. Wadeks place was somewhere in the middle of that chain of houses, a link only slightly touched by corrosion, no better and no worse than the others. And in fact, it was better than those new,

white, occasionally two-storied houses that looked so overbearing and out of place against the horizontal landscape against the mountains, trees, and shacks that, in keeping with natures laws of erosion, were sliding their way into ruin. So there was Wadek, a roof with a broken spine, and a wife and twelve kids. Wadek was about forty, so you could say his fertility was of almost biblical proportions, although not too much out of the ordinary around here. Thats the way its always been small expenditure and substantial gain. The earth gave birth to stones most willingly, and piles of them were strewn along the fallow edges of his elds at regular intervals. And besides that, there were a few sheep, two cows. But raising grain was by this time art for arts sake, and probably just force of habit, since he had to do something else besides haymaking and potato farming. And thus, abundance will always assume the shape of lesser or greater poverty. When souls were handed out, there was doubtless some mistake, because Wadeks body, born and raised on this earth, received a spiritual organ that was a bit too light and insubstantial to cope in any way with the heaviness of matter. With his own limbs, with his dreams, with the passage of time, with the burden of the stony soil. He hardly felt the pulse of the ancient rhythm that drove his neighbors into the elds in spring, the meadows in summer, and the potato elds in autumn. Which is why Wadek, although a moderate drinker and a decent person, was on a fairly low rung in the village hierarchy, and if youre talking about income per capita, then maybe the lowest one. Attempting to make up for his lack of inner strength with resourcefulness, he sent his children around to the neighboring households supplied with little notes: Mrs. Gienia, we dont have enough for bread, please loan us fty thousand.

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Sometimes people would loan it to them, and sometimes theyd be thrown out, when a note to Mrs. Gienia would nd its way to her sworn enemy, Mrs. Wiesia. Sometimes they were taken in hand by the social welfare agency, and sometimes by the priest, but neither could provide anything more than temporary help. Because, when it came down to it, Wadek was a good father, and what gave him the greatest joy was having his little ones hanging all over him from head to foot. Then he would sit, happy as a Mormon, while his wife went to work in the forest. In the village there was a kiosk. When communism, that greatest of dispensers of grayness, had a desk job in the neighborhood, the booth looked like a dirty aquarium with a few toothbrushes, three kinds of cigarettes, and the saleswomans pale, bored face floating in it. You could get Team and Polish Farmer, full of solace and promises. Two bus tickets and a pack of Populars. Two packs of Populars and a bus ticket. And matches. So many possible combinations. And now it looked like the next creation of the world had taken place not in time and space, but in the realm of color. The display window was the most colorful place within a fteen-kilometer radius. Old ladies stopped to look, and the yellows, azure, seven shades of red, gold, silver, blue, green colors that people who lived here during the 70s had never seen lit up their dim, sunken eyes. The waters of the flood were receding, the last party secretaries had drowned or escaped, evil had been destroyed, and a new rainbow stretched across the sky, a sign of reconciliation. The old women stood there like animals let off the ark, looking at the signs of the newest covenant. The landscape had never awakened this

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much interest before. It was as if that old work of Gods had faded, as if rains, snows and suffering had washed away all its color and made it transparent. The display windows rainbow radiated a hard, determined glare, with incantations in an incomprehensible language floating in it. The color white Similac Isomil is purity, joy, innocence and eternal glory, it is the hue of Christs robes on Mount Tabor, the byssus in Solomons temple. Sky-blue Blue Ocean Deodorant this is the color of the Mother of God, of the rmament, and like white it represents purity. Red Fort Moka Desert this is the color of the Holy Ghost which kindles the flames of love and bursts forth as tongues of flame. It is also the color of Christs Passion, of the cross and of all those travelers who spilled blood on the road to faith. Black John Players Stuyvesant this is death, mourning, grief and conciliation but also contempt for the world, repudiation and darkness which only divine light can dispel. Green Fa Fresh Creme and Soap this is the color of hope, because the emerald rainbow of the Apocalypse manifests itself as a sign of compassionate Judgment. And there are many more, since there has been no mention here of any kind of virtue, of any variation in shade. It was a rectangular mandala stuck in the dark gray space between the dingy pub and the square. And like a window onto the other side of existence, it allowed us to look into the mysteries of the future, to establish our own place in it, and to choose the road to freedom. So those old women and little children stood before a map of the new world, whose continents had been laid out according to the desires of particular parts of the body, its whims and tastes. Here

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unambiguous colors reigned supreme. There was no room for imagination. Neither time, nor changing light, nor caprice of nature could wear it away. It was not inconceivable that the new Jerusalem was already at hand. This was Wadeks doing. In church, when the priest said that its hard, but necessary, because thats the price of freedom and Poland, and that the farmer always et cetera, Wadek felt the stirrings of a breeze from a new direction, one that had never blown through these valleys before. He sold whatever he had, bought an old, used Syrenka, rented the kiosk and started to bring all those splendors and marvels from somewhere out by Rymanw. His wife still spent half the day in the forest, relying somehow on the feeling of monotony in her movements and on her calloused hands, and his children went to school, hoping to conquer the world with anachronisms. In the evenings the rest of them sat at their tables and performed complicated calculations, guring the price of milk into the price of tractor fuel, the price of fuel into the price of livestock, livestock into feed, feed into electricity, electricity into wool, wool back into milk on and on without end. And whereas they ran short of existential absurdities every time since it was all about existence Wadek simply added up his receipts or loaded the car for the next day. Because by this time not just one village but the whole surrounding area had experienced the taste of Mars bars. And then came a plywood shed and a sign, foreign second-

hand clothes, and then a well-built kiosk, fruits and vegetables,

and a few more little tables out in the open, and ve kinds of beer. And a shelf in the corner of his house for video rentals. In the morning Wadek, wearing a leather jacket, got into his

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red Fiat Combi stationwagon. His wife, in a jeans outt, got into the six-year-old Fiat compact. They headed out for their mother lodes, their bonanzas, their wheeling and dealing with the Russians, to come back by evening with goods or good prospects. His kids took care of the local business, because school was looking like an anachronism by now: all that Polish language was a little unnecessary, and theoretical accounting was boring. And so there was Wadek, the proprietor of this altar before which the May-decorated church became but a distant reflection: its pastel, ethereal and transitory colors were wilting like flowers and fraying like ribbons. Wadek, like an Ariel among the Calibans, caught those sudden, unfamiliar stirrings in the breeze, and his soul rose into the air over the village, while all the rest of them devoted themselves to hard and hopeless occupations. Forty years of waiting, of hibernation in a state of poverty, only to transform in two years into a messenger and herald of a new worldwide religion which would eliminate the opposition, do away with controversies and fulll desires. What did Solovievs magus Apollonius do, after all, if not charm the purest and brightest colors from thin air? Colors the likes of which the world had never seen? Children and women, young and old, moved away from the display. It was hard to guess their thoughts, but it was not in their thinking that the transformations were taking place. They took hold of feelings, touched the places where wonder and enchantment are conceived. Miniature shop window displays like Wadeks started to appear in the new, whitewashed houses. Rows of empty cans of Dab beer, Maxim brandy boxes, lines of empty Gold Wiener and Orange Juice

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cartons were standing on credenzas, on televisions, on glossy shelves, empty cubes with not quite familiar contents. They sat a little lower than the old chromolithographs covered with dust: St. Joseph in sepia tones, the Mother of God in fading azure, a blackand-white Holy Father. One Mary, one Joseph, one Pope, compared to such quantity, such variety . . . Not long ago, Wadek bought himself a uk van, because there was no room for miracles in the Fiat anymore.

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BLACKSMITH KRUK

It wasnt hard to run into him, because even in retirement he was as mobile as ever. He shambled here and there for real and imagined purposes, and his pace may have been a little slower, but his walk was just the same flap, flap, flap as if he had suckers on the bottom of his feet to help him stick to the gray, broken-down road. It was a shuffling walk, slightly bow-legged if you stand in front of an anvil all your life the shock absorption gets into your bones. Mr. Czesiek, how about a beer, sir? Much obliged, but the next one is on me. The bench was sitting in the sun, and the shifting shadows made it feel a little like a slow journey somewhere. There was about as much gray in Blacksmith Kruks black mustache as there is glaze on a doughnut. Snow was moving down the slopes but

couldnt manage to slide off the bulging elds. No offense, but none of those new ones really . . . and he pulled out a pack of Populars a couple of shades darker than his light blue eyes. pgr workers children were hanging on to a seesaw. Everything was falling down around them, and the seesaw was the only thing that lifted them higher and higher. Blacksmith Kruk squinted into the sun at the children flying up into the air, and his face was a mirror of their puppyish laughter. A fairly wrinkled and unshaven one, but a true reflection for all that. And did you know, sir, I went to see my son in Silesia last week . . . This moment was the last chance for anyone with something to take care of, anyone in a hurry, or anyone afraid of the dark. I took the six-forty bus. I get on, hand over ten thousand, but the driver looks at me like he wants something, so nally I ask him. And what do you know, yes sir, tickets had gone up. But youve got to do what youve got to do, so I pulled out a couple thousand more, sat myself down in the back and off I go. On the hill, right after the roadside shrine, Makowskis tractor was stalled and he was messing around with it, and its a new tractor, just a month since he bought it and already theres something wrong with it, you know whatever they make these days is completely worthless, and I kept telling him not to buy a Russian one . . . Drags on his cigarette and swigs from the bottle took us past two more bus stops. Romek got on in Skowa, the one whose wife died this fall. I knew her pretty well, because she was Marykas cousin, you know, and Maryka lived right near us and she came over every Sunday and they went to church together, and I wont say a bad word

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against her, she was a good woman, but those daughters of hers are, if youll pardon the expression, tramps. Nowadays, though, theyre all tramps, so maybe thats nothing to shake a nger at. So Romek sat down near me, and, you know, its made him half the man he used to be. I ask him where hes going, and he says that hes going to go take a look at some pigs, because it was Tuesday, which was market day. I tell him you cant get anything for pigs these days, and he says to that, that he has to be raising something, because its not like he could just do nothing. Hes already on a pension now, but he used to work in petroleum in Libusza and he even made a decent living, drove a Syrenka. My son-in-law had a Syrenka too, good car, cant say anything against it. There were times in winter when the bus couldnt get through, and he got through. That was back when we had some kind of winter, back in the 70s, and then he sold it and bought a Fiat, but thats not the same thing at all. The seesaw was already abandoned, the kids had disappeared somewhere, and the bottles were empty, too, so Blacksmith Kruk got up and shuffled over to the little store and you had time to catch your breath. When he got back, the bus was already in Gorlice, and Blacksmith Kruk grabbed his beat-up satchel with sandwiches and a clean shirt in it and got off. . . . at Zawodzie, because I had some time before the train, and you know, I like to take a little stroll through a town, maybe not all that often, but about once a month or so, because you should go on a trip, just to look at people. And so I walked around where that butchers stall used to be where old Suchu chopped horse meat. We both came from the same village, and his father was shot by the Germans during the occupation, and that stall isnt there any

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more, because everything is changing so much now that you wouldnt recognize it a week later. I walked out that way because, you know, I wanted to take another look at the market. The market always cheers me up, because everything there is like it always was, and when I was walking along the highway that comes from Dukla, Kazek was driving by in a uk van, you know, hes the guy who used to work around here and then moved away because he married a widow, and she had a house near migrd and that uk, too, from the deceased. Even saw me and nodded to me, but they say that now hes so high and mighty even though he was always a good guy. I still remember how one spring we went out for trout, and the most sh were in that stream that . . . We were still more than two hundred kilometers from Silesia, so it was time to go for another beer and then calmly watch the sun sink behind the bare mountain ridge. The earth was letting go of the cold it had accumulated all winter, and the cigarettes tasted like the frosty mist. Thirty kilometers down, but more than two hundred kilometers still to go. Now for a short morning stroll through the little town: the market square by the river, horses, calves in two-wheeled carts, piglets in cages, bundles of birch twig brooms, rakes made of wood as white as bone, sieves, whips that smelled like tanned leather, snorting nags with their heads buried in feed bags. Jzeks, Jaeks, Wadeks, Jdreks nothing escaped the gaze of Blacksmith Kruk, but his mind did not differentiate between one thing and another. It was as if he were rooted in some primordial time when nouns, verbs and adjectives were rmly bound to objects, events and attributes, in a time when language was only a mirror reflection of the world and lived in perfect harmony with it. So anyway, there were also clay flowerpots, recollections of the Under

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the Tit pub, sacks of wheat, little yellow balls of squirming, squeaking chicks, bleating sheep, the smack of hands sealing a deal, and vodka mixed with the smell of horse sweat, and then it was on to the other side of the river, across the bridge, because you know, you should see what those Russians have over there, yes sir. The rundown cars of the East were groaning with riches. Hoods, roofs, trunks covered with rugs, and rows of stalls on the concrete desert of the marketplace. Samovars, crystal, the plastic gold of battery-powered rococo clocks, things whose purpose must be inquired about in a kind of grotesque Pan-Slavic language, utensils for everything, smuggled cigarettes and little sweaters made out of synthetic bers in colors never before seen by the human eye. Blacksmith Kruk recounted all of this as if he were reading out of some kind of catalog, and when some of those things pulled forgotten faces and events out of his memory, he abandoned his description of the trip to venture onto a side-track, and movement in space was transformed into wandering in time. But then he immediately returned and moved on, turned left past the courthouse, bought cigarettes at a kiosk, and went to the train station and right up to the counter, asked for a ticket, but couldnt work things out with the cashier, because he mentioned some station which, according to her, the cashier, didnt exist, thats what she told me, but even so thats where I always went and I nally got a ticket to Zabrze, and maybe she knows better but I still got off where I always got off. It was already dark. It was getting harder to sit there, you had to tap your feet, you could see your breath, and the frost was biting your ngers, but this round was on Blacksmith Kruk, and just so there were no bad feelings, you had to accept the next icy cold

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bottle, and the real journey was only just beginning. The train started off, and then there was one transfer after another, Stre, Bobowa, Cikowice. In Bobowa, the conductor came and checked the tickets. I gave him mine, and he punched it and moved on. I had a smoke because it was a smoking car, like it should be, and then I wanted to get some sleep, so I asked the guy who was sitting near me to wake me up in Tarnw. Because I was going to see my son take the oath, not this one, but the older one, and I slept right through Rzeszw, because he was in Rzeszw for military service, and I didnt wake up until Przeworsk. But right then there was a return train and I caught it. When we got to Tarnw the guy woke me up, I got off and I had an hour, so I decided to have something to eat. I went to that little snack bar there on the left when you walk out. I had pork knuckles, because theres nothing like good pork knuckles, and generally speaking theres nothing like pork. Other meat doesnt do much for me, but it doesnt get any better than a pigsticking, and Im not even talking about the meat, but all the rest of it, yes sir, when the blood pudding is still hot. During the occupation . . . And even though it was cold, Blacksmith Kruk didnt move, didnt hunch his shoulders, didnt try to button up his denim shirt. He continued his story mindful not to leave anything out, and everything had its own weight, everything had its own proper place in the story, as if memory and speech were gifts he was not allowed to waste. Not even the smallest drop could fall unnoticed. In the fading daylight, you could see frosty cracks appearing on the mirrors of the puddles. The water was hardening and losing its luster and there was something in Blacksmith Kruks voice like the

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monotone clatter of train car wheels. There was no skipping over things here, no rush. Krakw and its train station and a stroll around the kiosks were still to come, and for a little relaxation he had to re off another salvo of time because you know, the last time I was in Krakw and then there was space again, changing trains, slag heaps, flaming chimneys, the wheels of mine-shaft elevator towers, everything that he observed had to be told, and the magnitude and tedium of his story recalled the tedium and magnitude of all the don quixotes of literature, and all the tolstoys, prousts and joyces into the bargain, and at the moment when his face was just barely visible, a window opened somewhere in the darkness and a womans voice called out: Czesiek, Czesiek, time to come home. Czesiek heaved a sigh: Well, you know how it is. And he tossed his cigarette butt, collected the empty bottles, and took them back to the store. Then he came back and said, Ill tell you the rest next time.

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JANEK

Janek was a blond, dwarsh species of human in whom the muscles and tendons of a large man had shrunk and tightened without losing any of their strength. He looked like a forest kobold, shaped to the proportions of the dense thickets, wind-fallen trees, and tangled, chaotic scrub. His pants dragged along the ground, and his rapid, chaplinesque walk had worn down the heels of his shoes. Where he got those jackets from, the ones that were always too small, remained a mystery. But perhaps it was only studied elegance, since, as a result, his heavy Soviet watch never disappeared under his cuff. Even so, Janek lived according to the clock of the sun, whose adaptability was more compatible with a nature immersed in the cosmos. Because when the afternoon shadows grew disturbingly short, Janek inhaled damp breaths of air into his nostrils and

watched the slopes as darker shades crept into the white and nally broke it down into fraying, decaying material, last years rotten grass showing underneath it. Then there came a morning, maybe Monday, maybe Thursday. It was hard to tell, because as usual, yesterdays day had fled from memory, and todays trembling hands werent any different than they had been the week before. But today Janek was busy and did not head out as usual for a beer to start his day. He just walked into the wooden shed, opened the door as wide as it would go and surveyed that vehicle of his with a critical eye: gray, rusted and as bent as Janek himself. It had none of the conceit and arrogance of modern machines. When it moved out into the forest, it immediately vanished into natures disorder. The landscape claimed its irregular contours, its ruggedness and its simplicity as its own creation, its own child, just as it claimed the blocks of sandstone, the moss-covered logs, and the rest of natures abundance. Three cylinders, four-liter capacity, two caterpillar treads, a drip pan like a small bathtub, a gear case as big as a dresser, and that was about all. It was an artillery tractor from the Second World War. Janek walked all around it, muttered a few curses most likely the usual ones looked at the dented radiator, last years mud, the coil of steel cable on a winch, the three dead gauges, and then looked into the gas tank, checked the oil, and shook his head with disbelief. Next he took hold of the crank and tried to start the engine. It didnt go so well, so he tossed a clump of rags under the drip pan, doused it with oil and set it on re. He came back in half an hour. There was nothing left of the re, but its reek lled the shed, and the pile of scrap iron had warmed up by a few degrees. Then Janek removed the air lter and wrapped the exposed

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pipe with some old undershorts, doused it, set it on re and called his son just in case the decompressor had to be closed. His son walked in, rolled the sleeves of his Turkish denim shirt up to the elbows, and half-heartedly shoved his shoulder into the belly of the vehicle. Janek drew some fuel up with the pump, grasped the crank handle, and slowly, lethargically, ponderously, like a tortoise, the guts of the engine started to turn over. When all the pistons, the crankshaft, and the flywheel gathered momentum, he shouted, Close it! The engine went pukch and stalled. A half hour later they were both sweating and stripped down to their undershirts. On the thousandth turn of the crank handle the machine went pukch pukch, thought it over for a second, and then belched a pitch-black cloud of fumes, soot and sparks and settled into a monotonous, even pukch pukch pukch pukch. Dark, nomadic essences flowed under Janeks kobold skin. But they had been watered down by alcohol, the blood of sedentary generations, and the hopelessness of a limited horizon, where the sun rose behind a picket fence hung with babies diapers and womens cottons and linens. The houses were lled with childrens shrieking. Not wails of hunger yet, but then again, nobody knew what the future had in store. In the guise of springtime, it would reveal the deterioration. Old people would die as usual. And the vanishing snow would expose the slow gangrene in the elds and buildings and in the piles of laboriously collected things, rotting and leaning to one side only to collapse and return once again to the somnolent and sluggish earth. Like he did every other day, Janek could have walked by the

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leafless gooseberry bushes, past the hawthorn scrub where bustling clusters of waxwings contended with each other for the last blackened fruit, out onto the highway and then climbed up the hill. He could have caught his breath up there, surrounded by repulsive, pathetic, concrete dreams of wealth: collapsing, closely built, unnished houses. He could have come back down near the wooden police station, turned left and pushed open the door to the pub. A thin trickle leaked out of the darkness of the toilet to greet newcomers. Some customers stepped over it without really noticing it, and others marked a path to the bar, trailing the oldest smell of humanity behind them all the way to the dust-caked bottles of Napoleon, Cinzano and imitation Dutch whisky. When their vision became so blurred that it rolled all around within its limits, when the men could no longer distinguish between the faces of their comrades, the distant window, the tops of their rubber boots, or the cigarettes burning out in their ngers, their eyes would be drawn to those bottles. At six in the evening, the cosmos was coiled up in the ashtray like a snake swallowing its own tail, and only a shout from the waitress or a buddys punch in the arm could rouse some of them out of their mystical contemplation. The Napoleon, the whisky and the Cinzano slept on the highest shelf, as unreal in their beauty and as out of reach as the women in American television programs. In their struggle for a higher existence, these men were forever stuck on the level of their forefathers, on the lowest shelf, where the bottles of white vodka and fruit wine stood open and ready. It was a safe and familiar legacy, the limit of their patrimony, their christening, their Sunday mass and their graveyard. And so Janek could have, like every other day, walked into that foul purgatory, into that antechamber of the next day, and begun

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a conversation about anything. He could have waited until someone, tired of guzzling the cloudy beer, ordered a bottle of booze and livened up the stream of conversation, diverting it in the direction of remotest memory or into the misty tributaries of tomorrow. But Janek climbed onto the oilcloth seat, pressed the clutch, hesitated a moment, and backed out into the yard. Then he wound the steel cable around a barrel of fuel and hauled up the winch so that the barrel dangled just under his backside. Hey, Old Lady! So Im going! and he wanted to be gone already. But the Old Lady flew down the stairs like a bat out of hell, almost like shed been waiting for a long time, lurking behind the door. She shouted out a litany of some sort of female profanity, straining her voice to the limit, more entreaties than curses, so where do you think youre going with your damn worthless self, you said not before Sunday and here I am alone again, with the cows, the kids . . . Instinctively, he stepped on the gas a little and the machines noise protected him from the womans yelling. The caterpillar treads impatiently dug up the earth like the shoes of a restless horse, and nally, mingling tears and abuse, she tossed him a sack of food, made the sign of the cross and watched the vehicle graze the gooseberry bushes in its crawl toward the asphalt. Janek was going only twenty kilometers, but if he didnt leave before afternoon, then he wouldnt reach the place until dusk. Now he yanked the earflaps of his cap down, fastened his quilted jacket under his beard, and left his village behind, left that turbulent kingdom of women and children and chance that, with the passage of time, had imperceptibly become law. Breaking away and getting

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lost in the woods for a few months demanded a good deal of effort and indifference. Rolling along the edge of the highway, churning up the thawing snow with his right caterpillar tread, he would nally nd a clearing or an old logging-road and escape to the right, to climb up to the level summit, straight up along the bowstring instead of around along the bow. And so he must have made it there before it got dark. He wouldnt have run into anyone on the way, he would cross ve streams, and at dusk he would drive into that settlement of three barracks at the end of an enigmatic road in the middle of the woods. If it was Monday, then the men would have just arrived, still parading in their Sunday best, wardrobes full of trimmings, emblems and lettering which they made no attempt to decipher, taking them as marks of elegance. Only towards evening did the Turkish, Chinese, Thai and assorted other kinds of attire wander back to closets, hangers, and shelves lined with newspapers full of reports from the London stock market and the salons of the capital. I could hang them up so that they could dry out, said someone to his denim pants, snifng their sourish odor. Ill sit in my drawers and theyll dry out by tomorrow. Tomorrow, when they come back from the forest, their dark gray overalls will have recovered their own living scent. The men coming from the still will bring in with them the smell of burning, of charcoal, and the thick, sweetish aroma of beech smoke. The ones from the clear-cutting, the distinctive combination of sap and exhaust fumes. The ones from the tractors will come in with a whiff of oils, greases, and run-down, overheated metal. It was the smell of sweat that united the clashing auras. But not until tomorrow. Now, a trace

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of cologne trembled in the warm air like the memory of exhausting weekend entertainments. Janek occupied his old iron bed near the stove. He drowsed, smoking his Populars and listening to conversations and the sound of the television behind the wall, and then nally fell asleep until morning. When the black windows paled to blue and the light of dawn drew out their transparency and grime, the men would get up, one waking up the other, muttering the same curses their fathers had used. There would be cold food and then the usual hike into the mountains through the mists from the night before, still tangled in the hollows and gaps of the forest. To get up to the clearing, they had to slide down into a deep ravine and then climb for half an hour uphill in the slushy, wet snow along a beaten-down path, rst through pine trees, and then through a r wood, or rather, through a forest of stumps and hollow giants, since the rest had been cut down long ago. They clambered up the slopes like some kind of Antarctic ants, loaded down with cans of benzine, saws, axes, and with Coca-Cola bottles full of tea sticking out of their pockets with all of the gear necessary for work and survival as well as some jam and bread. They will forever ascend or descend into the valleys of one vanishing kingdom after another in search of wood, ore, precious stones, all things as essential, heavy, and rough as they were themselves. Descendants of the second son of Noah and unaware of this genealogy, they were entangled in the memories of their fathers and grandfathers what the eyes do not see, memory does not preserve. When enough wood had been collected in the clearing, Janek

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started his machine, hitched up a two-wheeled trailer, and set out uphill on tracks that nobody else knew about, through ravines and up steep slopes, where it would be difcult even on foot. But after twenty years, you learn where the border lies between risk and suicide. He loaded up a few tons of uniform, one-meter logs and began the descent, seeking out rm ground and favorable slopes, at times cutting down or crushing whatever stood in his path to make his way through. As steadily as a pendulum, he would repeat this journey until evening and then the next day and the day after that, feeling his muscles, which had gotten soft over the winter, get stronger and recover those few dozen specialized movements and stretches. That is how it would be for a month or even less, until the next payday, when time came to a standstill and he could head back for a few days. The men would wake up and sober up in the same place, the place where they would resume their labors. Because life was round, it moved in a circle, and if someone did manage to tear himself away from it, then someone else would immediately appear to take his place. Once a month Janek would show up in his village, breeze right through it, leaving some small change at home and taking the rest with him to the pub, which was no longer an everyday thing, but something festive. At last he could sit down and leave his body in peace, and his muscles would loosen up like his tongue and nally his mind, and everything would move toward the ultimate form of relaxation. We were already asleep when the police showed up. There was one on the stairs, and the rest came and stood around inside. They slapped a ne on us, as if we did a lot of damage. Just a couple of glasses, some iron chairs, nothing got smashed, the

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windows were still in one piece. Run? Nobody felt like it. Couldnt move a muscle. Wed been drinking for three days. When his money ran out, it would all start all over again. It would be spring already, the days would be getting longer, and work would turn up. He could have piled a mountain up to the sky out of the wood from all those years tons of it that he had carried on his own back, loaded and unloaded a wooden tower of Babel. But Janek was a stranger to the sin of pride. He wanted only one thing, that it was all scrupulously noted down and paid for. What was there to pride himself on, seeing as how labor and dirt were shared out fairly, and each took as much as he could? But at times there was a little pride, like when he drove his old goat thats what he called it on its caterpillar treads to the pub. People stepped back, the women squealed, and he drove straight up the ten steps to the door and probably would have drunk his beer at the bar, but the door frames were a little too narrow and held him back until whoever was more alert could pull him off the vehicle. Thats Cossack pride for you. When it came down to it, it was a mans kingdom, those couple of barracks in the woods, and a little like the Zaporozhian Cossacks, with no women allowed, although they sometimes showed up on payday to get their hands on the earnings. A kingdom of women and a kingdom of men. A delegation of guys in cheap suits with briefcases, members of clubs, sailors, gangsters, hotel workers, Cossacks . . . But one spring Janek didnt show up. He got on a ferry boat and sailed to Sweden to conquer it like the rebel Cossack haidamaks in their chaika canoes conquered Tsargorod. In six months he

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came back with plunder. Denim clothing covered with lettering and shiny decorations, a beautiful shirt with green palm trees and gold parrots on it, and white Adidas on his feet. He treated everybody in the pub and said, I go to the woods when I feel like doing some sightseeing. Then he set out again for the open sea.

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PLACE

It didnt take them long. Two months. A rectangle of gray, clayey earth was all that was left. That bareness looked like a strip of torn skin in the wooded and desolate landscape. Grass would grow here next year, for the rst time in two hundred years. Or rather, nettles. They show up more quickly than anything else in the places people abandon. What was here before? the man asked me. He had a backpack on, a map in his hand, and a camera around his neck. A Greek Catholic church, I answered. So what happened to it? Nothing. They took it to a museum. The whole thing? The whole thing, piece by piece. He walked into the beaten-down little square and looked all

around, as if he was searching for walls and a dome. Then he found a sunny patch around the presbytery and snapped his Practica. Too bad, he said. Yes, I muttered in reply. Ive tried to imagine the beginning many times. Giacomo Casanova was dying in a castle in Dux. Thirty thousand Don Cossacks were marching to India. Louis xvi, not suspecting a thing, was constructing his last locks and padlocks. All these dates are precisely xed, descriptions ll the space between them, and if any gaps had been left, then they would have been sealed up with carefully considered hypotheses, or with poetry. But in this case the date is uncertain. It was not recorded anywhere, as if the Gregorian and Julian calendars, which were both used here, had canceled each other out and consigned the event to unmarked Time. Remnants of broken shingles were scattered in the grass. The nails sticking out of them had a square prole that you never see today. They were probably forged, each individually, in some Gypsy blacksmiths shop or right there on the spot as the thatch was being nailed on. But that is why this unmarked Time is tempting. The imagination has just as much of a need for order, for a name, a result, a cause. This is where all the invented histories come from that we start to believe in with the passage of time. Maybe imagination and faith cannot exist without each other because they have a common essence they do not demand proof. Most likely it all began in winter. There is more time then, and

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transportation is relatively easy. If the edge of the forest at that time ran close to todays, then the nearest r trees would have been found a kilometer further out and higher up. They had to nd the best ones: thick, straight, growing in sunny places. And then cut them down. When I looked at the sloping pillars which made up the supporting structure of the sanctuary, their bulk gave a sense of how mighty the ancient forest had been. Some of the trees used in the building must have been close to a meter in diameter at the base. They had handsaws. Two men sawed one tree all day. They sawed, drove in wooden wedges, and stripped down to their shirts, steaming in the cold. The last moments were full of anxiety. They strained their ears for the cracking of wood bers snapping as the tree began its slow descent. After lopping off the thicker branches and boughs, they could harness the horses to the silver-gray trunk. Straps must have broken, chains must have snapped. Until they made their way through the snow-covered, wind-felled trees, rotting logs and scattered branches to the edge of the forest, the horses backs steamed just like the mens had an hour before. It was easier once they got to the slope. If other teams had come this way earlier, then a deep channel would be gouged into the snow. Fifty, a hundred trees, even more? At any rate, as many as the village, which numbered perhaps some twenty houses, could handle. In some places, the horses sank as high as their bellies into the snow. When I talk with old people, they remember that the winters were more like winters and the summers were hotter in their youth. The further an image reaches into the past, the more its colors, shapes, and events come to resemble allegories and symbols. Two

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dark silhouettes of horses toil up the slope, the small gure of a man behind them. Their pace is marked by the same weariness. The man undoubtedly has some name like Wasyl, Iwan, maybe Simon. Their march looks like theyre plowing through white eternity. The effort is absurd, because windblown snow quickly buries their deep prints. The return journey must have had something in it of escape or pursuit, in any case, something of a struggle. The horses sit back on their haunches while negotiating the turns. Held back by the reins, pressed forward by the slope, they try to flee ahead of the mass of wood which, with every passing moment, takes on more of the qualities of a living thing it becomes restless, agile, and vicious. There are fountains of powdery snow, froth, sounds are deadened, shouts are carried away by the wind. As if the whole thing were taking place not on earth, but on the ocean, in a chaotic, treacherous element they have to tear themselves free from in order to reach the valley floor, scattered with a few old oaks. The trunks, dragged and piled together and lying side by side, resemble a raft. I thought to myself that the man had photographed, doubtless by accident, the space where the iconostasis used to be. Now it was empty of gures but lled with light. As it usually was before sunset. On golden autumn afternoons the suns path fell opposite the entrance. All you had to do was push open the doors for the radiant sunshine to flow into the interior. The bright surge rolled through the nave full of the odor of decay, hurriedly swept past the walls covered with peeling polychromy, and broke right on the iconostasis. For those few minutes, the decaying gold of the wood carvings and the graying colors of the icons regained the original,

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miraculous glow that was rst conceived in the nostalgic imagination of the villages artists. The moment was short. The sun retreated behind a grassy hillock and semi-darkness returned to the sanctuary. The face of St. Dymitr darkened, becoming human once again, and Adams naked body resumed the dark gray tinge of clay. It was like a glimpse of the other side. Reality fractured and sealed up again a moment later, without leaving even a trace of a crack. The woodborers took up their interrupted work, mice and mold continued about their business. The man looked through the cameras viewnder at a pile of rotten boards. Are they going to rebuild it? I dont know. Thats what they had in mind, I answered. Winter ends late here. There are blizzards even in April, and the nights are frosty. The arrival of spring is preceded by a muddy season when colors run together. White struggles with black, with grayness, with the rst green. The slopes and valleys continually change their appearance. What the sun melts, the nights snowstorm reclaims. So it is likely that they started in the mud. And in that fourth uncertain state of matter they set the cornerstones marking the outlines of the porch, nave, and presbytery. The frame was made of squared larch trunks. That wood heavy, sticky, dripping with sap had deed the weather for hundreds of years. They chopped the trunks into shape with axes to give them a square or rectangular prole. It was arduous, slow work, considering that the successive rings of trunks had to t together perfectly. Against the background of the muddy landscape the wood had a light,

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almost white color. On warm and windless days the air was thick with an aromatic scent, as if the sanctuary were materializing in a space formed out of all the senses. The sounds of striking tools, multiplied by echoes, rang out through the valley until they either found a way to escape or lost themselves in the emptiness of the sky. The high-pitched sound of saws, the blows of axes shaping the corner joints, the master builders commands and curses as the next hewn log was raised. By autumn it was likely already done. The last shingles were nailed down. The structure was closed. Inside, the floor was laid out. A fragment of the world had been taken out of the world, brought to another realm. Like the prophet Elijah from the left side of the iconostasis. What is least fascinating in sanctuaries are the images and objects. They bear too much of a resemblance to the rest of reality. They try to tear themselves away from it and end up sinking back into it instead, testifying to the futility of all such efforts. Air, however, closed within a solid form, and space, shaped by vaulting, walls and architectural detail, becomes the most perfect representation of nostalgia. You can walk into it, feel its touch on your skin, but it all flows between your ngers, you can hold it in your lungs, but just for a moment. Not long ago, when the eastern border was opened up, the builders descendants began to turn up here, fty years after they had left, displaced from their home villages by brute force or by deceit. Old women stepped over the churchs threshold, entered the nave, kneeled on the clayey mud, since the floor was by now long gone, crossed themselves and bowed down low to the ground.

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To whom? The altar stood crookedly, propped against the wall, not a trace of its former splendor remaining. The tabernacle, with its little doors torn off, looked like a dilapidated wooden box. Parts of the icons, the ones that were the most important Christ, the Mother of God, St. Nicholas were missing. Others, those from the higher rows of the iconostasis, were lost in the gloom, swollen with moisture and difcult to make out. The interior reeked like a cellar. But the women kneeled. Or there was that old-timer who was brought by his family, which lived a few dozen kilometers further on. He sat up straight on a chair set in the middle of an ordinary peasant cart. I thought it was out of respect that he was transported so ceremoniously. But two men had to lift him and carry him together with the chair into the church. He was paralyzed. But his ninety-year-old mind was as lucid as ever. Sir, I was in Siberia, I was in Kazakhstan and saw the Mohammedans, I was in Mongolia, saw the Buddhists. I saw the Russians, too, who didnt believe in anything since the day they were born. My father helped to put the new roof on here in 95. They covered the shingles with sheet metal. And then they baptized me here. Later on, I walked alongside the cart and the old man pointed out the places where houses had stood, mentioned names, recounted fragments of past events. It was a tour through the village that existed in his memory. Neither time, nor flames, nor frailty could touch it. In the end, when he was leaving, he smiled a little ironically. His face looked like a frostbitten apple. And he said with an almost cheerful glint in his eye: Well I guess I can go ahead and die now.

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From time to time I would climb the narrow steps to the attic. You had to make your way carefully, and only along the joists, because the ceiling boards barely held together. The rafter framing, the high entablature of the bell tower all of it was joined together without a single nail, by hinging, doweling and dovetailing it reminded me of the inside of an old sailing ship. When the wind blew from the south, you could hear a monotone creaking. The skeleton was hard at work. It weathered the gusts of wind, groaned imperceptibly and, still unyielding and resilient, it sheltered the stillness of the closed space within it. A tawny owl made its nest in the place where the bells once hung. Its nocturnal hooting made the sanctuary seem not quite real. On ne, moonlit nights the small cupolas stood out in relief against the background of the sky. The wrought-iron crosses rose above the crowns of the oaks and the ash trees, but the silence, the stillness and the darkness of the secluded valley made the trees and crosses look as if they were made from the same substance. As if nature had completely reclaimed the church, which had been wrenched from it two hundred years before. It would have been good, said the man with the camera. He wanted to snap a shot of something else, but just then the sun disappeared. And I still wasnt sure. I kept on going back to the beginning and following the builders slow, uphill climb. From the consecration of that patch of earth, up through the risky operation of securing the round domes to the steep, banked rooftops. And then surely, whole decades must have passed before the interior took on its dignied and ceremonial appearance. There was something

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moving in the amateur polychromy imitating stone cornices, columns and pilasters distant memories of the sanctuaries of Jerusalem and Constantinople, perhaps a vision of the New Jerusalem. With time, the abandoned church started to lean to one side. Dampness bit into the northern foundations. Cracks appeared between the beams. Delicate, gold-tinted wood rot showed through the thin layer of limestone plaster. I thought that this was a sign of the triumph of impermanence. But it was the living bacteria, the mites, and the insects that conquered its illusory marble after all. The people who came to restore it brought the smell of death with them. The chemicals they used to stop the decay had an acrid odor. In the sweltering heat of August it all reeked like a hospital. Then they wrapped the beams in special fabric, like mummies, and loaded them into their cars. I am no lover of ruins. But the vision of a renovated sanctuary standing in the middle of other houses and implements uprooted from their time and place in the same way bears the taint of onedimensionality. Learned experts will argue over the Ruthenization or Latinization of friezes and paintings. The elements of Baroque and Byzantine will compete with one another, dimensions will be calculated, and someone will denitively determine the type and purity of its form. But places cannot be carried off. A place does not have dimensions. It is both a xed point and intangible space. That is why I still wasnt sure if it had really been taken away. The man closed his camera case. Where is the place where the entrance used to be? he asked. Here. Youre standing at the threshold.

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KOCIEJNY

Simon Wasylczuk showed up at Kociejnys and said come on. Kociejny took a long, narrow knife out from behind the doorframe. They walked two houses further down. Simon led out a mournfulfaced sheep and averted his gaze. Mount Cergowa was holding up the sky as usual, and snow still lay on its peak between the trees. It was over in a second. They lifted the animal up and hung it on a bare apple tree by a tendon in its hind leg. Kociejny looked like he usually did, a little like a scarecrow that had just escaped from the garden. Thats exactly how skinny, fortyyear-old men in overalls look. Time rubs their features away, and its only in old age, when they have become reconciled with it, that they get their own one-of-a-kind faces back. Maybe so death can tell them apart. But he wasnt thinking about death. Life was keeping him busy.

He cut off the head with short, quick strokes. Two mongrels were hanging around nearby. Then the tip of the knife slipped along the belly, along the legs, and the skin came off like a stocking. Steam was rising in the cold morning air. It was already over skin, carcass, entrails, everything neatly separated. A simple and precise dissection of existence. Should I cut it up? asked Kociejny. Ill cut it up myself. I just dont like doing the killing, said Simon Wasylczuk. He went into the house and came back with a bottle. They sat down against the wall of the barn, in the sun, and drank to each other and lit their cigarettes, watching Cergowa hold up the sky. Well I like it, said Kociejny. The most important thing is that the little beast doesnt get scared. Makes a bad job of it, and the meats no good. Stinks of fear. Its worst with a pig. You cant fool a pig, its smart. Im doin a pig tomorrow at your sisters. Yeah, Simon Wasylczuk replied. Who was Kociejny? His restless spirit drove him to do so many things. In winter he wore a nylon cap with a brim, and in summer he went bareheaded, shriveled by the sun and just as waterproof. When there was a shortage of calves and pigs in the village, or when peoples hunger was already satised, or when a Lenten calm descended between weddings and christenings, he harnessed two horses to his ashwood cart and headed south. His woman stayed at home. It was no big deal to beat a path a couple times a day between the house, the pigsty and the cow barn, thats what he thought. That much one woman could handle. He started the journey in the morning and he could have made it by afternoon, but there was a pub halfway there. No matter where youre headed,

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some pub or other is always standing by the side of the road, like a reward for the peace and quiet at home. He tied up the horses, tossed them a couple handfuls of hay and sat down to drink. And since everybody knew him, he always managed to nd himself an enemy. Come evening, the soberer ones heaved two grappling men out the door. They landed in the mud or the dust, trying to get at vulnerable places, each trying to force the other to feel some pain. Then Kociejny continued on his journey south. Peaceful, drowsing, just like the horses, one foot after the other to the edge of night, where darkness flowed over the mountains like rich, black milk. He unharnessed the horses in his sleep, and in his sleep he fell on a bed where he lay on his back until morning. The men living in that barrack at the end of the world said that Kociejny slept with his eyes open, that he must have been afraid of something. But they were the ones who were afraid, and they closed their eyes so they didnt have to look out at the dark. They got up in the morning and left for the clearing. Kociejny stayed behind and drank whatever he had brought with him. Rain was falling beyond the window. The room was cluttered with the debris of objects essential for living. Empty cans, dry bread crusts, leaky rubber boots, empty bottles . . . dirt and freedom always intermingle. Kociejny talked to himself and sang songs that nobody ever heard. He slumped on the bed, and the men returning at dusk ran up against his motionless gaze, which took in everyone and no one. On the third day he got up. He harnessed his horses and started up through the wet clearings to the ridge of Uhry, where the piles of cut wood looked like the ruins of a fortication, like long walls eaten away by siege. He worked until evening, until the moment when neither the whip nor the stick

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managed to give the animals any more strength. Half of that work consisted of cruelty to his animals, and half of cruelty to himself. The rest was pure effort. A whip lasts him two days, said the ones who dealt with the dead mechanisms of their motorized saws. But they said it quietly. They remembered the winter when Kociejny walked six kilometers barefoot, because he had bought new boots and thrown out the old ones but then felt sorry for those new ones when he saw the snowdrifts. Or that night when they found him in the stable. It was October. Silver dust sprinkled down from the moon and crunched like frost underfoot. It was quiet, so they heard the sobbing. He was kissing the sides of his horses, smearing their necks, which had been rubbed sore, with snot and tears. I didnt come to visit, said Kociejny when Simon Wasylczuk offered him a chair. He stood at the threshold. Warmth escaped through the open door and a white hen was scrabbling in the hallway. Wasylczuk sat under a religious painting and smoked, peering through the heavy air. Outside the window, the puddles of mud were overflowing. I came to tell you that my woman doesnt need your help. You were gone a long time. She said she needed it. No she didnt. Get married, Simon. Then you wont have to be goin around the village with your help. Did you come to make me a proposition? But Kociejny wasnt saying anything more. The door stayed open, he walked through the flood in the yard and disappeared behind the dark gray curtain of rain, where earth, mountains, sky, animals and people mingled with each other, dissolved in a

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multitude of waters, in a land of darkness, chaos and innocence. That same day he left for the barrack in the wilderness, where the men had almost nished drinking up their monthly wages. Who was Kociejny? The two ery substances in his body blood and alcohol made him resistant to seasons and to weather. But sometimes the soul needs cold and the heart a bit of rest. And even when he slept, he still watched the darkness closing in on him. Take it easy, Kociejny, the gamekeeper told him. You could work for fourteen hours and still not get the work done, just like with a woman you cant . . . you know. Its too late, gamekeeper, Im past forty. I dont feel sorry for you, I just pity the horses. And then it happened like this. The ones who saw it said that Kociejny was wearing a white shirt, and maybe thats why the whole pub went quiet when he walked between the tables over to the corner where Simon Wasylczuk was sitting. Nobody moved, nobody blinked, nobody said a word, and everything happened quickly and calmly with the help of that long, narrow knife. Kociejny wiped it on his pants and stood there another second to make sure. And then with that knife still in his hand, he went just as calmly to the door to go down the concrete steps, through the patches of light and shade underneath the three chestnut trees, and straight to the police station, where the fat, red-haired sergeant in his unbuttoned uniform said, For the love of God, Kociejny. He got twelve years. Did his time in Rzeszw. He could watch the bare, furrowed elds and the slow change of colors. They all

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emerged from winter white and to it they returned, as if December actually had the power to abolish time. On a snowy night, when the fluorescent lights glowed with a quiet hum, it always looked like the start of eternity. On ne days, the silhouettes of planes from the nearby airport moved through the sky. To Kociejny, they looked like little gold crosses. After three years he got out on a weekend pass. He was calm, quiet, and orderly, so he got out, because everybody thought he would be back at the appointed time. Just like, at the appointed time, he got up, went to bed, and performed all those activities that helped to give the innity of imprisonment the appearance of a nite form. He got a cloak for the road. Once again, there was snow lying in the elds. He sat in that same corner in the pub. The waitresses kept dropping things. The red-haired sergeant showed up to clarify whether he was a fugitive or a ghost. Take it easy, ofcer, its only for three days. He left last, showed up rst, ate a little, drank a little, and lit one cigarette off of another. He sat with his back to the room, and it seemed like his gure was shrouded in perpetual twilight. On the last day he left a tip for the barmaid and walked out into the night. The snow crunched under his feet, and the echoes of his footsteps mingled with the soft tinkling of the frozen stars. They found him a week later, at dusk, but it wasnt him anymore. It looked like him, sleeping, curled up in a ball. You could give it a few taps. Then it would make a wooden sound. In the distance, Cergowa was trying to hold up the sky, but darkness still tumbled down over the earth.

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L E WA N D O W S K I

His house stood at the edge, and beyond it there was only forest. It was a long, charcoal gray hulk, like a sharp-edged sh or something along those lines. There was nothing to conceal its ugliness. It was a huge sh, a whale hundreds of kilometers from the shore. But it all started two weeks earlier. The last bus was always drunk. Men rolled between the seats like billiard balls and fell into random pockets, starting up conversations with their neighbors, with women, and sometimes talking to a shadow. In winter, at nine oclock at night, it made absolutely no difference. He flopped down next to me, suddenly deflated, and he seemed to have fallen asleep. But when the darkness and snow mingled and swallowed up the last lights from town, he started to recite the names

of Warsaw streets. As if he were riding on the 21 or the no. 6: Ratuszowa, 11. Listopada, Wileska, wierczewskiego, Wjcika, Okrzei, Zbkowska . . . Biaostocka, I said, You missed Biaostocka. But it was his ride and nobody elses business, so he didnt even blink, he just rode by Kijowska and Skaryszewska, and fat flakes of snow whirled in the beams of the headlights like gold moths. And then when the mountains moved in on both sides, unseen, hulking, and darker and darker, he said, Szembek, and stood up. He staggered, and someone cheerfully and automatically deflected him like a ball. So there he was right in front of me again, and then he mumbled in my ear. This is where I live. Just ask for me. Lewandowski. He headed for the door, and I didnt even see his face. So they showed me his house. It was made entirely of unplastered cinderblocks and all under one roof, vast and dead and separated from the road by a muddy clearing that didnt have a single stray dog loitering in it. A cart was tilting its shafts toward the sky. Two crows flew away from a pile of manure. There wasnt even a cat. I walked into the low, small entryway. I stepped over cast-off rubber boots. He was sitting in the kitchen and looked unusually small. In a house of that size, a person expects bigger things. He sat by the window, as still and gray as the world was on that day, and I dont know if he recognized me, but I pulled up a chair. A light bulb burned near the ceiling, naked and helpless against the diluted darkness. He pulled a bottle and a thick-sided shot glass from underneath the table. I hide it when I dont know who it is, he said.

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In the course of our conversation we came to an understanding on that Biaostocka. The small, dirty little street had gotten lost in the confusion of side streets and stores around the railroad station, just like it had in his memory, since he hadnt been to Warsaw in twenty some years, maybe thirty, he couldnt recall that either. Generally speaking, we came to an understanding. I listened to him. When we lit our cigarettes, the flickers of the matches were reflected in the Christmas-tree ornaments. It was the beginning of February, and there was a cold draft from the stove. When night fell, the electric light brought out the rest of his features. He had a round, boyish face with a sparse gray moustache and fty years wear. The oily sheen of strenuous drunkenness made it resemble a tin mask. Nobody else is coming today, he said. Jaeks in the hospital. They took him away yesterday. The rest are all bastards. They come and poke around and then talk about how Im so poor. So what, do they have honey with sugar and lard with butter? I dont need any more than this. Ive got everything. He stood up and pulled me into the hallway, and then through a side door and along a corridor that ran the length of the house, until I caught a whiff of the stable. He switched on the light. A black rump gleamed with a dull luster. The cow was chewing and scarcely glanced at us. Darkness hovered in the corners. The little shed was abysmal and morbid, and the little gures of the animals were lost in its depths. She lives one day at a time, and hes an old thief. They caught him not too long ago, but it was me who got ned. We went back. The scent of weariness accompanied me, the

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aura of sadness that emanates from people who never cry, because their tears leave their bodies together with the drops of sweat. The windowpanes were already completely black. The light had acquired a sulfuric intensity. The speckled wallpaper, the peeling paint on the floor, the pile of lthy pots and pans, the knife on the table, the ebonite ashtray the outlines of everything around us were saturated with a supernatural distinctness. We nished his bottle so we could start on mine. It was easy for us to come to an understanding. I listened to him. He came to these parts twenty odd years ago. He kept moving for a long time, because somebody had to be picked up or somebody dropped off at the prisons along the way. Those four years, that was a sentence somebody would give his brother. Not much more than a couple of walks up and down the corridor. Thats what he said. He tended cows, red bricks, dug ditches, cut trees, and all around as far as the eye could see there were elds and forests and a rectangle of earth fenced in with barbed wire. Then he got out and did the same thing: trees, animals, ditches. Over the next few years he beat a path from one collective farm to another, a few dozen kilometers. Ratuszowa, Targowa, Szembek Paris, London, Lisbon time took on the shape of distance. He told me about it in a droning voice with a kind of motionless intonation, lling in the gaps with the next swallows or drags. A flash of Szembek and Targowa showed itself only once, when I rudely and indiscreetly asked him what for. For my convictions. I had the conviction that they wouldnt catch me. And he watched me with a scowl that came out of the sheds at the corner of Sulejkowska and Kwacza and from in between the pigeons and stalls at the bazaar where gold wedding rings were

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made out of tombac and French blouses by seamstresses on Grochowska Street. The thick light of night stuck to our bodies. We moved slowly and with effort. At such times you had to save your strength to hold out for the end of the story, for death, or for whatever else. Finally, he ended up not too far from here and did what he usually did, performed those genuinely manly tasks whose essence is the monotony leading out of innity and back into innity. No changes, a little money, getting up at dawn, and thats how the world kept going. In that last pgr he met a woman just as accidental and essential as he was, and he married her and started to build a house. Come on, Ill show you, he said. He got up and headed in the direction of a white door, and it was only then that I noticed that a smudged calendar from a couple of years before, with a large photograph of a red-haired David Bowie, was hanging on it. He wiped his hands on the seat of his pants and unlatched the door. It was dark in there and even colder than out here. He switched on the light but didnt step over the threshold. That smell. That was how all the rooms nobody looks into smell. Time dies out in them, and the erosion of minutes and years has the taste of damp and rot of elemental things the taste of the end and the beginning. It was like a stage in half-darkness before the performance begins. A single light bulb burned in the dense laments of a golden chandelier. A long table, six upholstered chairs, a wardrobe, a credenza. Large glossy surfaces gleamed like dark brown mirrors. The television stood under the window, against the background of a white curtain and crowned by the box of a vcr , and the corner of a doily hung down over it all like a

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playful forelock over the cold face of the screen. The only thing in the room which did not cast dim reflections was the carpet lying on the floor. Thats her, he said. I saw only two splotches of shadow in the black frame. A wedding picture. I had to imagine their faces myself. It was the model of ideal dignity, motionless, flat, smoothed by retouching. He switched off the light and gently closed the door. We returned to our table, to the yellow oil-cloth with red flowers, to the hyperreality of the kitchen, where life had not surrendered but looked at us intently from the corners and waited for what would happen next. What came next was what had been before. I listened to him. He returned to what there was, as if that white door over there locked in what was past, as if the past could be let in and out like a guest or the postman. He told me about everything. About the guy who had been sleeping with his own daughter for years, and how people had already gotten used to it and forgotten about it. He told me who had bought himself a fourteen-year-old girl for money and was waiting for the girl to grow up so he could marry her and for now he was just keeping her in the house for work of one kind or another. He told me that he had everything, that he didnt need anything, and to hell with everything else, because he paid for what he drank, his beasts were fed and nobody heard them making any noise at night. He told me his name and that he was thinking about going to Warsaw, and he wanted me to ask him about all the streets in order and about all the green and brown painted booths with light and dark beer. He wanted to show me something else and got up, but then he changed his mind. At that moment his eyes looked at me completely lucidly, the drunken lm cleared for a second.

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But when he sat down, his pupils were already just as lifeless as before. He asked if that pub at 160 Grochowska was still there, and I didnt know, but I didnt want to upset him, so I said that it was, that everything was just like it used to be. And I dont know what else I would have agreed to, maybe to a complete invalidation of time, to a train line to Wilanw, to men in cycling caps and quilted jackets, to vodka sold starting at dawn at every train station, to everything. But his head dropped, and he fell asleep stretched out in his chair, lips thrust forward, with his hands on his belly like a traveler, as if he were going somewhere. And I saw him one more time later on. It was daybreak, and the bus was rolling downhill. The sun splintered against the dirty windows, but individual needles of light shot through the vehicle. He got on at the usual place. He moved between the seats, and for a moment his silhouette was lost in a sunny aureole. He shattered the beams of light and then they fused behind his back again. When he sat down next to me, he was already back to normal, which means that he looked like he had gotten up from that kitchen table just a moment ago. He composed his face according to some complex conception of a smile. There was nothing in it but effort. Its like a carnival, its a carnival, he said. I asked him where he was headed. Exchange, my man, exchange, he almost whispered. He pulled a few trashy, colorful, boxes out of his black briefcase. Erotic Dreams, Pleasure Principle . . . I hardly had time to glance at them, because he had already stuffed the tapes back into his briefcase. You have to keep on living, my man, you have to keep on living . . .

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THE PUB

The jagged steps led to a door with a broken window and then into the damp half-darkness of the entryway, and you had to turn left, because if you didnt, then you could nd yourself rst off in the place you should only be visiting later. The barmaid had dark hair put up in a ponytail. Her eyes didnt t her bird-like face. They had the size and dim luster of a roe deers. And then there was that dark complexion: nobody knew if it was from the sun or from tobacco smoke. More likely from the latter, because there was never any sun in there. It shone outside, on the rotting twohundred-year-old town-hall tower under a four-sided roof. Nobody remembered what used to be there any more. Now it was just a pile of rubble, its windows boarded over, an absurd souvenir of a city, abandoned in the middle of a village square. The barmaid pressed a button on the tape player and the hollow,

dead sounds of the music made the set of glasses on the bar start tinkling. She called over her shoulder and the waitress appeared from behind a curtain of colorful plastic strips in makeup, jewelry and stretch pants covered with clusters of grape vines, her gold earrings in a duet with the tape player, just like the dreamily yawning, nal lazy aamoorree. She started to straighten up the tables all of them were askew, but each one at a different angle. And even though the music was hard and metallic, it was drowned out by the clatter of the iron chairs on the concrete floor. Then she went into the next room, put her hands on her hips and yelled into the depths of the echoing space. Her voice came back at her like it was coming from the inside of a well-shaft, but the two men didnt even look up. They were sitting under a signboard with the words the drinking of vodka brought from elsewhere is prohibited and will be punished burned into it. There was a bottle under the table, and they themselves were sunk deep in a conversation that had probably been going on since last Friday. The waitress wanted to yell one more time, but when she was lling her lungs, she raised her head a bit and her gaze fell on the last table way in the corner by the wall. And she saw Kociejny walking out of that corner through the stuffy, greasy air, and with that same white shirt on like that time when it happened, when everybody was quiet and he was walking, walking with the knife in his hand, but holding it so lightly, just with his ngers, really only with his ngertips, and nobody paid any attention to Simon Wasylczuk, since he was still sitting like he was before, motionless. Everybody looked at that knife will it drop or wont it they waited for the quiet clatter of metal or wood on the floor. Then there was just a rectangle of white cloth disappearing into the dark

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entryway, and it was only then that someone stirred, that someone went over to Wasylczuk. But most of them went over to the smudged windows to see what the other one was doing. But he had neither vanished nor run away. He just walked calmly down Wgierski Trakt and turned the corner. So now she was seeing it all over again. It was almost like the sun had broken through the tin roof and the ceiling to mold phantasmagoria out of the air. She shrank back and stumbled into a chair, but she never looked away, just felt her way back to the bar, bumping up against the wall with her rear end until she nally touched the cold chrome counter. What? Did you see him again? The barmaid was sitting on a table and looking through cassette tapes in a cardboard box. You always see him in the afternoon. Cross yourself. She looked in the direction of the entrance, poured a small shot with a flick of the wrist and shoved it at the waitress. Kociejnys ghost moved right through the little groups of people getting off the bus from Dukla, walked for a moment along Wgierski Trakt and turned the corner at the one-storied house with the arcades where Olgierd Giemza used to live. He was the one who painted icons for the Greek Catholic churches around here, but also farther out, over on the Slovak side. And then he confessed to performing the same service for the schismatics, but the priest did not want to give him any absolution and only told him at some point to paint the side chapel of St. Annes. But St. Paraskeva kept appearing to him, and they say that Giemza went crazy, threw away his paints, broke his brushes and went to the Holy Land in search of absolution or punishment. All that was a very long time ago.

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By now the bus had started off and was circling the market square. The ducks paddling in what was left of the puddles didnt even glance at the huge machine, as if it belonged to some other, invisible world. Women in kerchiefs with string bags scattered down the side streets, where the rough cobblestones broke off abruptly and without warning, and where the white clouds of blossoming trees crept out from behind the skeletal picket fences to conceal the wretchedness of the rotting buildings. The men were in no hurry. Time circled more slowly around the four-cornered square. To free themselves from its slower and slower circles, the guys went up those jagged steps, sat down at the tables, or stood at the bar and looked at the labels. But there was no miracle to be seen between the Goleszes and the Tytans or the Gastronomiczna vodka so they just said wine or, pour me a couple of short ones. On the top shelf, the Maxim brandy was overgrown with dust. The waitress was coping. No more ghosts. The way Edek slapped her on the ass and grabbed her around the waist was absolutely carnal. He got rapped on the knuckles, but her hips pressed against him with an understanding that no one else could see. It lasted hardly a moment, because Edek had already let her go and was walking away with that deliberately lazy walk of a male who knows that somebodys eyes are following him. The girl looked at his broad shoulders in a parrot-green American Kick Boxer jacket, at his rear end in purple Gladiator sweat pants, at his whole gure, which iridesced and phosphoresced from his feet on up to his lemon-colored Yellowstone cap. Edek brightened up the company at the table. He was like a ery angel, and when he found himself a place and sat down, the men pulled back maybe out of respect, and maybe out of anxiety before such radiance, which

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exposed the ordinariness and inadequacy of their own attire. The waitress set a mug in front of Edek, then she picked it up, wiped the tabletop, put it back, took away the empty ashtray, brought a new one, twirled flourishes with her dishtowel one more time between the elbows of the people sitting there, and nally caught a passing glance. Tell her to put somethin else on, not those frog-eaters. Edek, theyre Italians. So what. Tell her to turn it down or put somethin on in English. What difference does it make to you? said Lewandowski, staring down into what was left of his beer. Maybe theres no difference to you, but to me there is. Aha, Lewandowski nodded his head without looking up. A vehicle was coming in from the direction of Tatarska Grka. As it drove, it tried to avoid the deep ruts in the pavement. Where it was sunken in, there had once been vaults for barrels of wine brought from abroad. Old sun, imprisoned in the cellars for centuries, must have eaten into the walls, and now they were all falling to pieces. The vehicle drove up to the pub. It was a strange construction, the fruit of poverty and ingenuity an old ws motorcycle, two wheels and a platform in back. It was Jan Zalatywj, all in denim and an aureole of relentless poverty, and he came in to relax, accompanied by the smell of saltpeter and burning rubber. Zalatywj, hows business out there? Edek greeted him, even though he was sitting two tables away. He carefully and precisely placed his hands in front of him in their too-short sleeves and

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nodded at the waitress. Lewandowski abandoned the company, who were all ears listening to Edeks niuyorks, grinpoynts, djobs, blaks and kadylaks, and sat down next to him, mumbling under his breath: . . . and pigs with wings. Stand me a beer, Jasiu. Zalatywj took two Wyspiaskis out of a thin wad and held them in readiness. Its just not worth it, he said. Doesnt even cover gas. Oh, today I gave back three pairs and picked up two. Jan Zalatywj repaired rubber shoes. He went around to villages, collected galoshes and patched them up at home. Then he distributed the goods to his clients. He avoided asphalt roads, because a three-wheeler was illegal, not to mention Zalatywj the driver. Sometimes he raced through a few dozen kilometers during the night and then came back two, three days through the mountains. There were plenty of by-roads. You just had to know them. A few shacks in Mokryia, a pgr in Nina, a long snake of houses in Hucisko, a little here, a little there. The worst thing was the mud, the worst thing was that short-cut near Ubocze, where he had to push his foundering vehicle through a kilometer-long stretch of stinking swamp, and sometimes he had to unload all his gear and struggle with the reddish, sticky mess that reeked like rot and oil. At one time this track led straight into the middle of a penitentiary efdom where a few hundred prisoners would sweat in the endless elds, pastures and meadows, all of them craving vodka, tea and cigarettes. That time was long gone. The prisoners married the jailers daughters, and even though barbed wire was still hanging here and there, the windows didnt have bars on them any more. The doors were knocked out between the cells, and a mixed breed of the guarders and the guarded was maturing in the

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two-room apartments. A few buildings, looking like a slipshod raft on a windy ocean of hills, stretched out to the farthest horizon. There was no more contraband and all the poisons were local. So at the most, Zalatywj repaired something for someone, spent the night with friends, and at dawn he would set off further to the east, so that he could return after a day or two by the roads that nobody else ever used: Czertyne, Suczne, Spalona Polana around houses with vaulted cellars, gardens running wild, and the air thick with ghosts. By Suczne, the sky was turning red, and the edges of the clouds curled like decorations. He left his rickshaw in the bushes, took an old quilt and climbed a hill. A stone tower looked out over the surrounding countryside. The light from the west colored it pink. This was all that remained of the Greek Catholic church. Blackthorn bushes were blooming where the nave and presbytery used to be. Zalatywj wrapped himself up in the quilt, smoked cigarettes and watched as everything around him darkened, charred and turned to black ash with a few silver sparks in the east. You! Zalatywj! I asked you hows business out there! Edek was sipping a vodka and Pepsi and didnt even have to raise his voice too much, because everybody got quiet. He and his crimson face were bright, pulsating, and the whole pub was hanging on his words. You! Zalatywj . . . you gypsy motherfucker . . . This blow was aimed at his heart, but Zalatywjs heart was ftysix years old and could handle the pain. I still have to drive out to Speza, he said quietly, and Lewandowski answered: Yeah. You better go. He stood up, paid, and headed for the door through a quiet so thick, it was like he was walking out through tall, wet grass.

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In the evening, not even a ghost could have squeezed its way in there. It was full of sweaty bodies. Two guys were leaving for their military service, and four others were trying to sing The Reserve for them, but none of them knew the words, so only long live rose up above the crush, and their heads collapsed onto the tabletop immediately afterwards. The barmaid lled a procession of mugs and glasses like a tired, dark-skinned automaton. At that time of night her eyes looked like misted glass. Music was playing, and the sounds thumped off the ceiling. When they fell, they were absorbed by the spongy buzz, and even Edeks ear couldnt manage to make out the words. Now and then the waitress perched on his knees like a migratory bird, and the man stroked her and patted her like a faithful dog. The tincture of the electric light dissolved people, shapes and objects. Words, gestures, clinking glasses, shouts of laughter, everything slid toward immobility. The ones who had the strength were already long gone. Lewandowskis lips were moving. No sounds were coming out they were stuck somewhere inside his head and the smoke drifting from his cigarette looked like it was flowing out from underneath his eyelids. He raised his mug and discovered that it was empty. So he set it down and looked through the window, even though out there it was nothing but night falling and the gray lights of televisions flickering somewhere on its outskirts, on the far side of the square. The red-haired sergeant, in just his shirt-sleeves, was standing in the doorway, and Lewandowski saw his reflection in the windowpane. The cop said something to the barmaid and slowly walked through both rooms. The buzz quieted down, and Lewandowski instinctively flinched, but the policeman went back to the bar and asked the girl about something. The girl shook her

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head, the sergeant left, and the racket was turned up again. Lewandowski could stare out peacefully into the darkness. The wind stirred the branches of the chestnut tree, exposing the streetlamp and then covering it up again. Shadows flitted by the walls of the town hall. The soldiers-to-be got a little sleepy. They stood up, picked up their helmets, walked away from the pub after one last glass of Tytan for the road, and disappeared through the door. There was a sound of shattering glass, curses, and the sputter of gunning engines. They did a lap around the market square, just as the cavaliers of the Congregatio Adolescentium had done on horseback, in their red capes with crosses on them, when they set off to the south to guard the merchants caravan routes. The resemblance lasted only two times around. Maybe it was even the same moon. It hung over the city at the Wallachian Gate and had the yellowish color of the windows of the pub.

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GRANDMA

It was only elds running wild as far as the eye could see. In spring they were colorful with flowers, then they barely turned russet before the complete grayness of November. There were junipers, too, so stiff that the strongest wind couldnt bend them. The air rushed relentlessly through the low mountain pass. Its whistlings penetrated right through Grandmas shack, swept the dust from the floor, whipped the gray, braided straw ropes up the chimney and flung them into the sky, which was the color of celadon in the west when the twilight was ne. Grandma hardly ever looked up. Her body was subject to gravity, or perhaps it was the weight of the sky, it was bent at such an odd angle. She could squint up into the clouds only when she sat down. And in the evening it was dark up there, and there wasnt anything to see.

So it was just those wild elds and the white snake of the road, which hardly anybody ever took. The ones that went away left no traces. Six daughters left by that road to go out into the world. The seventh, the oldest, stayed, and if you asked Grandma how old she was, Grandma in her black head scarf would say: Well, she was born some time during the front. If it was late summer or autumn twilight right then, Grandma would get up, call her old dog and go out. They walked along the smooth slope at the foot of the mountain, past a straggling ridge of scrub, and when they found themselves in open space, on the gentle crest of a hill, their gures looked like silhouettes cut out of black paper. They differed from each other only in size, because Grandmas bent spine made her look like a four-legged animal. Im going to stand guard, she would say. At night, wild boars showed up at the potato patches. When the full moon was high, she could see them coming down the slopes of Bara. Three, four indistinct shadows the silvery shimmer gave them away when they disrupted the streams lazy current. Grandma shouted and beat a thick baking-pan with a piece of iron. It sounded like a cracked bell, but the air was too weak to carry the sound. Then the dog, half-blind and almost deaf, started to bark. Afterwards, Grandma wrapped herself up in an old quilt, huddled in a corner of the wooden shed, and fell into a shallow doze. The nights luminosity was airy nothing like the days massive brightness that her body had to make an effort to get through, bent over, creaking, and animated only by the hope of eternal rest in darkness. If it was September, hoarfrost would cover the ground before dawn. Thats a man for you, said Grandma when Czesiek the son-

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in-law was already sleeping. Broken furniture, a table covered with ax scars, shells crunching underfoot. The worst was in winter, when they had to take refuge at the neighbors. First a kilometer through the snowdrifts, and not only that, but out there everybody went to bed earlier, so they had to knock, pound on the door. The neighbors were used to it already and opened up practically in their sleep. Czesiek the son-in-law could see as clear as day in his white hot fury, and sometimes he ran after the women, right on their heels. Once or twice the neighbors set the dog on him just to get some peace and quiet. Her daughter was born around the time of the front, some forty years ago, so it was like winning the lottery that she nally found herself a man. He had a face like an old rock. You could hide anything under a mask like that, with that kind of stillness you didnt know what to expect. He was also on the other side of forty. At that age, habits dont change: he worked, he drank, he fought, he slept safety requires predictability. He was the rst one up in the morning, and sleep wiped his memory clean like a wet sponge. Since he was almost completely dressed already, he could head right out to catch the rst bus. There was a market square in Dukla with an angular tower, The Border pub, and sometimes there was work even if you werent much good at anything. That was the time when Grandma would wander through the ravines with her calves. The four skinny beasts were looking for shade more than grass. When the sun rose so high that it threatened to fall at any second, they hid in the muddy stream beds or in the sultry semi-darkness of the alders, and once one of them got stuck so deep that it had to be pulled out. There were wolves, too.

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Grandma would see them from time to time in broad daylight, through the haze of sweltering heat, as they emerged from the forest on Bara and froze in anticipation. Or it could have been the junipers, animated by the shimmering air. Grandmas sharp, screechy scream made them turn back. Sometimes she sat down under a tree and sleep overtook her. In a way, old age canceled out night and day. Times of effort and rest followed one another in a rapid rhythm. Maybe it was just that life was in a hurry. Around evening she came back down to the hut to get something to eat. Her grandsons were white and shapeless, like dolls made out of raw dough. The wind twisted horns out of the dust in the yard. In the womens house it was quiet, and you could hear the satiated buzz of flies. There werent enough words in the world to keep talking for forty years. Grandma gnawed on bread with her last tooth. She was waiting along with her daughter to see whether the son-in-law would show up or not. What about your man, Grandma? You dont get seven daughters out of thin air, no matter how full of ghosts it is, because Ive seen you spit over your shoulder and cross yourself, even in broad daylight. Grandma nodded her head. Her black wool kerchief framed her face in a hard, sharp outline a pale face, a flat image of halfconscious torment. There was, there was a man. But that was fteen years ago. It was Easter time, and the last remnants of snow were sliding down from the mountains. Pietr and a couple of others were getting drunk in peoples houses, now here, now there. Spring and the Lords Resurrection were on the way. So it was here a glass,

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there a measure, from house to house white vodka and water it looked like the strictest kind of fasting. Around evening they came to a stop in front of the store. A warm wind swept in from the south, from Bara. The stream that cut the village in half was the green color of hope, and the Leajsk beer had a bitterish autumnal flavor. It stopped blowing at dusk, and all things, trees and houses, reclaimed their true shapes in the still air. Pietr said hed better go, but nobody knew why he wanted to walk through the stream instead of across the little wooden bridge. The men standing around the shop watched how he staggered into the swift current, but the water didnt even reach his knees. You could get the best of that stream in summer by jumping from rock to rock. When hed made it halfway across, when he was already closer to the other bank, he fell down among the green-white whirlpools. Not one of the men standing there and sipping their beers made a move. It was almost like the story was still going on and that it had to have some kind of continuation. Pietr lay down, and now he was lying down and drinking. The ones who pulled him out later said that a bucket of water drained out of him, and the whole time they could hear it sloshing inside his body. The Greek Catholic church loomed above them on the slope. Thats because he didnt come from here. Grandma tied the knot of the kerchief tighter under her chin. She got up, put on her quilted jacket, took her stick and went out. Her bent gure in the doorway didnt reach much higher than the door handle. In the yard, she called the dog with an awkward womans whistle. Night was moving into the soaring sky from the direction of Dukla. Grandma went to dream her shallow dreams, full of bygone events emerging out of her unconscious the way animals emerge from the

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edge of the forest after nightfall. When the sun came up it was difcult to tell them apart: animals, events, dreams. Those last ones took on the shape of an airy, colorful kerchief shot through with gold thread, and a white Sunday handbag. A light frost hardened over the grass and the images by daybreak. In late August, Grandma was always gathering hay. Czesiek the son-in-law showed up and disappeared he preferred to work up a sweat on the construction sites outside of Dukla. The Border stood in the sun, but inside, it stayed cool. Her daughter fed the children dumplings with milk, and maybe thats why they wouldnt turn pink. So Grandma raked the hay herself and gathered it into stacks that were scattered by the wind sweeping in from the mountain passes. She took as much as she could carry in a tarp and came down with a bundle two times bigger than she was. Sometimes a neighbor would show up for an hour with his cart. And everything went on the same as usual. The rain soaked what had dried, her eyes went blind in the afternoon, and the day seemed like it had no end. But then, one afternoon, deliverance came. Grandmas shack was struck by lightning. There was no way it could have been an accident in that desolate place. Her daughter was standing in line at the store with the children, and Grandma saw everything from her elds high above. There was a flicker of lightning in the stormy black air, and the wind spread it out like a twisted scrap of paper. Grandma ran toward it, but the heat kept her from getting even as far as the yard. At dusk, the sky cleared and it stopped blowing. The flames subsided. They crept along the ground, the color of the western sky. A day or two later, when it all had cooled down, Grandma

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waded ankle-deep into the slimy grit where the re had been and raked the coals with her stick. There was nothing left. It wasnt like she had any gold or silver. Even the iron pots had acquired the brittle structure of minerals. And she herself looked as if she had been caught in the blaze black, frail, frayed. She poked around with her stick and muttered: The Lord God is a man, the Lord God is a man.

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THE RED-HAIRED SERGEANT

The red-haired sergeant sat behind his desk and looked out the window. It had been raining since morning. The roofs of the houses were dark and glistening. His uaz military jeep, parked that morning in the usual place, looked like a greenish island in the middle of a gray lake. The sergeant was a little worried about this: the waters for certain wouldnt subside before evening, and he felt a little strange about going and asking someone for rain boots. Commandeer them? He shook his head and banished the thought. He drained the rest of his cold coffee and turned on the fan, but then immediately turned it off again. He thought maybe he could switch the light on already and dispel the disturbing gloom, but there were no curtains on the windows, and he didnt want to look like somebody put on display. A truck was driving in from Nina. He took a good look at it, but the only cargo it was

carrying was rain. He stood up and walked over to the window, so that somebody, anybody, would see a white, vigilant face in the dark glass. On the other side of the highway there was a cement obelisk with p pr in red letters on it. Someone had knocked off the z, setting it back in time, or maybe giving it a good shove. That was a year ago, three guys on motorcycles, one evening when it was already getting dark. He walked outside, they saw the light from the open door. They tossed a couple of rude words in his direction and kicked-started their machines mz s were easy to re up and all he ended up with was a red helmet they left on the ground. He locked it in the cabinet and left it at that. So then, rain boots, he considered. He went out into the corridor and took a look around the storeroom, where there were some brushes, various odds-and-ends, and a bicycle. All he found was a pair of heavy, black combat boots. Those would do if nothing better turned up. He went back to his desk. The telephone sat there quietly. A black belt was dangling from the open door of the armor-plated safe, and somewhere further back was a holster with a pistol in it. The faucet dripped over the sink. The major aspect of being on duty is immobility, thought the sergeant. He walked back and forth, from one wall to the other. The floor creaked behind him step for step. He thumped his open palm with his st. Now was the time when he was supposed to go out, wearing his cap, one hand in the pocket of his pants, armed, along the steep, shady little street, to emerge onto the sunny clock face of the market square, where the church stood at noon, the pub at six oclock, the store at three, and the stop for outgoing buses at nine. Loiterers and locals either motionless or roaming around like mobile seconds. Jzek, who would leave his drunken tractor at the

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edge of town, always had a spot on one of those benches, where he sat and waited for a buddy to come along, or for nothing to happen at all. When Jzek died one day and didnt show up, Edek took his place. The red-haired sergeant always stood there for a moment or two, and Edek told him what he knew, expecting in return for the sergeant to know a little less about him. But today there was nothing doing. It was deserted, the church tower didnt cast a shadow, and the market square looked a little like an hourglass lled with water. Little streamlets of water trickled along the sloping pavement stones from west to east and crept into the side streets, taking the shortest route to the river. The sergeant looked at the electric tea kettle standing on the windowsill. A hardened trickle of sugar flowed from a paper bag. A fly sat on the granular heap and rolled a little frosted cube in its tiny paws. He tried to comprehend how it was that this light, almost bodiless creature could cope with hard, angular matter. He moved his hand close to the fly, but he couldnt tell whether it flew away with its prize or abandoned it. A few of the little crystals slid down the heap, and there was a tiny hollow in the place where it took off. A uk van drove in from Nina, along the road through the stunted, gloomy willows. A torn tarpaulin flapped like the cape of a horseman out of nowhere. Must be Dziunek, the sergeant thought as he twisted the knob. Radio Rzeszw was playing Nirvana, so he wandered around the dial. rmf was barely coming in. Station Three had Nick Cave, so he went back to Rzeszw, and then found Bratislava and left it there. The sounds of cymbals, violins and bass materialized in the still air in the likeness of a swarm of insects. Humming, droning and fluttering. It made things drier somehow.

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The sergeant unbuttoned two buttons of his uniform and then buttoned one back up again. Ducks were paddling in the puddles between the wheels of the jeep. It looked completely undignied. I can get someone to call their dog and tie it up, but that wont work with ducks, he thought. The birds disappeared under the belly of the vehicle, reappeared, playing house, or roof or bridge. He could hear a strained, high-pitched vibrating sound coming from somewhere off to the left, from the market square, and Jan Zalatywjs vehicle appeared a moment later. He had put up a canvas top to cover the back, and its ragged brim extended over the driver, but the south wind whipped the lashes of rain and drove them under the cloth. The old motorcycle climbed its way up the pot-holed, asphalt ribbon in the direction of Nina. The willows had already hidden him from view, and the damp air slowly watered down the wailing of the machine. God bless him, thought the sergeant. Hes probably the most law-abiding one of them, even without a drivers license or registration. Jan Zalatywj was passing the stone gure of an angel by now, which, on clear days, shone white on its mound, poised to take off. But today it stood heavy, dark gray, with lowered, soaking wings. Beyond that there was nothing. Earth and sky were basted together by an invisible seam. Zalatywj must have known about some hole in this curtain, about a secret entrance leading to the other side, into the valley with its decaying collective farm, where the wind blew past barns as long as trains and swept away whatever animal odors were left, and where huge spider webs fluttered in the windows instead of glass. Eh, said the sergeant, So what was all that for anyway?

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The music on the radio was over. Now they were talking in Slovak. He turned off the receiver, sat down behind the desk, pulled out the drawer, took out a sandwich, unwrapped the white paper and started to eat. He took The News out of another drawer. He spread it out and was soon absorbed in his reading, from time to time brushing away imaginary crumbs. Somebody in urawica had hacked off the sink and faucet in the pub with an ax, a tractor ran over its own driver near Medyka, a dead dog had been lying on the bridge in Nagnajw for more than two weeks. Life assumed various forms, taking on and then abandoning the bodies of animals and people, today its raining, the day after tomorrow it will stop, lord knows you dont move up in a hurry, you have to sit another hour or so, so that the citizenry feels safe and so that somebody or other doesnt start taking immunity from punishment for granted. He got to the sports column. The third league was ghting it out among themselves. There wasnt anything close to a stadium or a team around here, he thought with satisfaction. Because a crowd, even a third-league crowd, was capable of being unpredictable. And all he had for handling enthusiasm was a service Makarov with strict instructions on when to use it, one night stick, and the police station re extinguisher. He would have had to appeal to the crowd to disperse calmly, and this lled him with terror. Because the red-haired sergeant was shy and lost his composure in front of an audience. He felt cold. A draft scudded along the floor, and a corner of the newspaper lifted and fell. Someone was standing in the middle of the room. Citizen, what are you doing walking into a government ofce like . . . The door closed.

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The person who had just arrived stepped forward. The wet, gray light drifting from the window settled on his face and froze to a dull sheen. The sergeant squinted, blinded by the white of the newspaper. Whats your business? He put his unnished sandwich in the drawer, and ran the ngers of his other hand over the buttons of his uniform. He found two undone. He pushed them through the buttonholes with the lightning speed of many years practice and as he straightened up, the chair back creaked. Then his gaze, as if he had adjusted a lens at the end of it, regained its focus. Looks like that draft must be coming from you, said the redhaired sergeant. Thats cause I froze to death, answered Kociejny. Well maybe, but now its warm. You should be thawing out. They sat across from each other: one ruddy, stocky, the sweat of uncertainty beading on his forehead, and the other like wood, like a motionless, carved gure on the chair and not sweating at all, even though the moisture settled on his face like on a pot brought in from the cold. A snub-nosed Praga was heading downhill. The r logs it was hauling were the color of tobacco smoke. Gacek, thought the sergeant. He must be up to something. But he didnt do anything, just started folding up the paper. First in half, then in quarters, again and again. The truck slowly and coolly rolled past the police station. I was at the priests, Kociejny said. Well? Nothin. I went to the presbytery. He was eating soup. Tomato.

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It was hot. He blew on it. I stood by the table for a while. He didnt even look up. The housekeeper came in and brought the second course. It was a pork chop. Covered half the plate. The way it smelled, Sarge, the way it smelled . . . They didnt see you? No. The dark blue umbrella of the sky hovered in the air over the horizon. From the southeast, a narrow blade of gold edged in under the drooping ruffle of clouds. The evening shadows must have spread over the market square in Bardejov by now. So what are you doing walking around like this, Kociejny? Youre scaring people. Irkas seen you in the pub. Is it that bad over there? The sergeant made a vague gesture. There? There everybodys doin ne, better than here, but still . . . Kociejny straightened up in his chair, stretched out a large hand in front of him, closed it, opened it and closed it again. Theres nothin to hold on to, nothin to put your hands on. Did you go see your wife? She didnt see me then, so shes not lookin now. I go to the pub, because they drink vodka, they eat, they beat each other up there. Now I go when Irkas not around. I sit in the corner and watch til my heart almost breaks. The luminous gash floated over Czeremcha. A blue skull of drizzle broke off and rose upwards, and the wind rolled it north. The wall of the Austrian cemetery blazed red, and its re wheeled and spread to cover the hilltop. A sliver of orange pierced the windowpane, darted right through Kociejny, scattered against the wall and faded. Why me exactly? asked the red-haired sergeant.

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Exactly because you can see me, Sarge . . . and it so happens that the authorities usually dont get surprised or scared. Well then, said the sergeant and wiped his forehead. And I wanted you to tell me somethin. Well? Wheres there goin to be a pigsticking around here? A what? A pigsticking, Sarge. You know a lot, you talk to people. The thing I miss most over there are pigstickings.

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NIGHT

On the twenty-fourth of July, Kociejny, deprived of his own body, was walking along the road. The skys enameled lid t tightly to the earth. Lizards rustled in the brittle grasses. He didnt cast a shadow. His soul craving incarnation, he kept his left hand in the pocket of his denim trousers and felt no pain in his feet. The gray gash of the road cut the valley in half and vanished into the pass. The world looked just the same on the other side: the mountain peaks were livid blue from the sweltering heat, the stones white. He had obisk at his back. The church tower stood like a sail in the windless blue. Hed been there this morning. He stood where he used to stand when he was alive over on the right, near the vestibule. Nothing was going on. The sacristan walked out of the vestry. He bent his knee in front of the altar and moved toward the door. The metal plates on the soles of his shoes tapped like a

clock immersed in eternity. He opened one wing of the gate and came back. The sun shone horizontally through the stained-glass windows. Kociejnys sense of his own non-existence doubled. When he left, he reflexively dipped his hand into the font of holy water. The water remained undisturbed. The archangel over the altar blew his trumpet. Dust sprinkled down from his face. A trickle of tiny particles light as air fell through a patch of sunlight and trembled like a golden thread. It was a death watch beetle boring into Gabriel. Kociejny walked along the road and felt no weariness, even though he had known neither sleep nor rest the night before. He could see in the dark just as well as in daylight. Things, trees, animals, people. He watched it all happen, came a step closer, closer, went into houses, imbibed the smells of bodies. Events flowed right through him, and there were no secrets. He sat in front of televisions, watched movies, three, four in one evening. The green ciphers in the little windows flickered monotonously, measuring out the innity of endless plots, and he had a feeling that of all the living, the ones on lm were the most like him. They drifted through the air, died, and were born again, immortal, condemned to homelessness and void of meaning. Lewandowski sat in his house, in a dark room, like Jonah in the belly of the whale, and the furniture recalled its glossy intestines. The burning, drunken night rocked the enormous homestead and tried to cast it onto the shore, but Lewandowski hung on to his bottle and held off catastrophe. The men and women were doing what they usually did in the screens underwater glow. Their bodies were like sweaty and beautiful mechanisms, so Lewandowski hit the remote, paused it, hit it again, paused it, set it in motion again, fast-forwarded or made it

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start from the beginning. They performed flawlessly. Kociejny stood in the half-open doorway. He watched Lewandowskis slack, slow movements glass, bottle, cigarette watched the bare shoulders gleaming in the half-darkness. Then he moved closer, stood right behind him and caught the scent, the scent of slow, drunken deaths pale flame burning out mind and guts. Ech, Mietek, he said soundlessly and went out through the house, into the darkness full of shouts and wobbling motorcycle headlights, because now the store was open as late as people had the strength to get there. He walked along the edge of the highway. Dogs rattled their chains. Open windows looked like puppet theaters. Yellow light brightened the chore of Saturday or Sunday night supper, and Kociejny, hungry for life, stood at the windowsills and listened to the rattle of plates and stories. But not one of them uttered his name. Even the ones he used to ght and drink with. Sometimes, somebody got up from the table, looked out into the yard and said, Those dogs gone rabid or what? Now, walking along the road, Kociejny remembered it all, remembered the last several hours of roaming from village to village. The night tried to break up the places of settlement by unwinding its black bandages in the elds. But in July the darkness is never complete, because the air is full of voices. Outside of Maczny, a nightjar chattered in the wild elds that belonged to nobody. A monotonous, wooden sound reached him from somewhere underground. A faint rustle could be heard up above, even though not a tree was growing in this wasteland. The Greek Catholic church, he thought then, the church. There it was, falling to pieces to the right of the path. Young birch saplings, sown by the wind, were growing on the thick, roofless walls. He reached

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the highway. A stagnant stretch of sweltering heat hung motionless over the asphalt. He left the bird with its song of ill-omen and walked on, toward Maczny. He passed several dark houses. There was a warm, animal smell floating from the yards, and somewhere a horse snorted. He paused, but a snarling chain was dragged out of a shed and a dog started barking. He headed in the direction of obisk. Three streetlamps sprayed silver dust into the sky. A party was raging in a brick house under a tin roof. He turned, made his way through the farmyard cluttered with junk, passed Gaceks truck, and saw Edeks car gleaming in the shadow of the barn. A bottle was flung out the window and shattered somewhere in the depths of the yard. Kociejny walked into the hallway. The smell of rubber boots and denim reminded him of his past life. Gacek and Edek were sitting at the table, and a thirty-year-old woman was on the sofa bed. Gacek was naked to the waist. The outline of his undershirt showed white on his tanned shoulders. The buckles and snaps on Edeks jacket shone like medals. The woman had red hair and a lemon-yellow blouse. Edek set a full bottle on the table. Gacek speared a slice of canned meat with his fork, forgot about it and stared at the screen, which was mutely showing a lm about love. Dont think it over, Gacek, just you do it, said Edek. He raised his glass and the stone on his little nger glistened like a droplet of dark blood. Gacek looked at the pork and said: Fear at night what you risk during the day. Your boyfriends a coward, Maryka, Edek poured a glass and gave it to the man. Drink! For courage! Whatcha mean mine? I just stop by now and then . . . said the woman, smoothing her blouse over her bulging breasts.

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So would you come to see me? Edek hooked his thumbs onto his belt and leaned back in his chair. I aint a scaredy-cat. She flashed her silver tooth and blew out a scornful puff of smoke. Kociejny stood next to the dresser, where the tape player was playing you were my one and only and now you dont notice me. Outside the window, a tractor drove by with its headlights off. On the television, a black-haired woman was walking along the beach, and the sea was the color of washing blue. Moths fluttered around the lamp. Their shadows bumped against the wall, as if they were looking for an exit. Edek flicked ash onto the green linoleum. Dont you need some cash, Gacek? One run, an hours drive there and back. A fork clattered as it was set down, a fly flew up over the plate, and the beach turned into an elegant apartment. No, said Gacek and he poured himself a drink. When he raised it to his lips, a clear trickle ran down his ngers. His ngernails were black from grease. Edek stood up and took off his jacket. His undershirt, white an hour ago, was now the color of wet snow. Hey Maryka! The nights almost over! and he pulled her up to dance. They collided heavily with each other, soundlessly and fleshily, waltzing out from behind the table near the door to the sound of clanking glass, and then along the wall and back again, like a heavy spinning top. A glass fell and rang out as it hit the floor, but the crunch of glass under their feet was lost in Marykas laugh. She swept the air with her red hair, and its heat whipped Gaceks naked shoulders. The sweltering heat poured into the window like black honey, and the dancers bodies spun slowly around, intertwined, joined by that certainty which comes at the rst touch, when

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virtually everything that is going to happen has happened already. That spinning, heavy with blood, sucked up everything around it. The speckled wallpaper, the half-naked Sandy in the newspaper, the yellow globe of the chandelier, the table and its satellites of ashtrays and dishes, the sofa bed, the Black Madonna of Czstochowa behind glass, the floor. Its throbbing spread through the house all the way up to the attic and as high as the soft skin of the sky, where constellations rubbed against each other, sliding into the west, into a rift that was darker than the night, and only Gacek remained motionless. The music suddenly broke off, but they kept swaying back and forth, as if its sounds were not even necessary. A chair fell over onto the floor. Edek kicked it into the corner and tried to do something with the cassette, but he didnt want to let his partner go even for a moment. Drink! Maryka called out, but the bottle was already empty. Well, Gacek? You scared to go get vodka too? Edek burst out laughing. Now the road was sloping down into the hot shade of the spruce trees. It looked like a dried up river. Dark blackthorns twined around the crosses in the Ruthenian cemetery, and the dead lay beneath the earth, deaf and blind to the world. Kociejny passed an overturned gravestone made out of sandstone and then another, crowned with a rusted Christ. An arm of the cross had been knocked off and the gures right hand stretched out lonely against the background of the sky. After ten more steps, he stopped envying the dead. Those moments he had left behind caught up with him. Especially that moment when quiet lled the room and Gacek

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slowly pulled himself together, tense, strained, ngers white from his grip on the tables edge, which looked like it was going to crack and break off like a wafer. But the music exploded out of the speakers again, and he just stood up slowly, holding on to the tabletop the whole time, as if he wasnt sure of his own legs. The other two had already forgotten him, because their pounding blood pushed them into the television, which swayed but kept on showing what it was showing. Now they were like those shadows of the moths, and if it were not for the walls, if it were not for the six sides of the house, their bodies would have long since tumbled out into the sultry, unrolled bedding of the night. Yeah. Ill be afraid alright, Gacek said quietly. He let go of the table and walked to the door. In the light of the cab, Kociejny saw that his face was like a wet stone. But he couldnt tell if it was from sweat or from tears. The engine roared at the rst try, and the truck lurched forward, missing the back of Edeks Ford by a hair. By the time they reached the gate, the length of wooden fence lay down before them as softly as grain under a scythe, and the post that the gate was hanging on snapped against the fender and disappeared. They drove out onto the highway. The headlights couldnt reach the end of the darkness, the sticky asphalt held the car back, and the drive was like a bad dream about running, when nothing gets any closer or moves farther away. Gacek floored the accelerator and the speedometer needle held steady. The darkness spit out houses and swallowed them up again. The diesel engines harsh rattle lled the cab, shattered against the horizon, rebounded, and fell back down, multiplied by the echo of the cosmos, and Kociejny thought pointlessly: Damn, they can probably hear us in Krosno. Gacek was

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whispering to himself: Oh God, therell be fear, oh God . . . They ran off the road coming around the turn before obisk. They heard the scrabble of the wheels on loose gravel. Handfuls of pebbles crackled against metal. The lumber hook mowed down a post, and its red reflector died as it was tossed into the ditch. A minute later, they stopped in the little town. He nally walked out into the pass. The sun had the bigger part of the sky already behind it. A single cloud was floating in from the west, from somewhere between Czumak and Sukowaty. Its edges were gold and it looked like a whiplash had outlined its shape in the air. Its cold there, thought Kociejny. Clumps of overgrown apple trees were as dark as their own shadows spilling out onto the road like puddles of ink. This cold should have separated him from the heat and turmoil of the past night. Because even now he needed consolation, just like when he was alive. But he didnt have a body to experience it, so he imagined relief, quiet, and stillness to himself, searching for them in his memory. But all he sensed was the oily smell of the machine left in the middle of the sloping market square. It stood under the wan street lamp as motionless as a jaded horse, and Gacek disappeared into a yard, came out, vanished into the next one, and his appeals rebounded off the walls together with his curses until he nally stumbled upon the right door and returned with three bottles. He climbed back in behind the wheel with surprising soberness and agility. But the odor of madness was palpable through the smell of overheated metal, rubber and oil. The stormy, electric air has that kind of avor when the Devil crawls into a human skin, and a man

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becomes calm, because he knows he is already set on the thing that he has to do. They drove fast but steady on the return trip. Gacek drank out of a bottle and got more sober with every gulp. Kociejny watched his Adams apple. Edeks car was parked in the shadow of the barn. All the lights in the house were out.

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M A RY K A

When it gets this hot, it messes with your head. Have you ever seen in August how dry meadows catch re and how the south wind whips the flames and all thats left is black earth, black dust, bird bones and the skeletons of poor little grass snakes that had crawled out of their holes? They crumble in your ngers. Maybe youve never seen it, but thats how it mustve looked. It was so hot . . . air like a tin roof . . . one match is all it takes when the wind is blowing. Thats how it mustve been. So what if it was night? Like I said: It was so hot the heat poured down your throat right along with the vodka. One match is all it takes. One word. Even if you were there, you couldnt get to the whole truth of it. Anyway . . . youre not from around here. I knew all three of them like everybody here knows them. But that was in the daytime. Night comes on and you see that it all doesnt mean a thing. Gacek, Edek,

Maryka . . . Maryka, Edek, Gacek. When and where did it all start . . . She, you know . . . I remember when she was sixteen and wore a white dress above her knees. Beginning of June and her legs were already tanned. Maybe thats why nobody ever saw her in pants, even when the rest of the gals wore nothing but pants. This way, through the market square, you could go through the willow trees to the riverbank. The guys, girls behind them, a little off to the side, because you know how it is: they wanted to, but they were scared. She was the only one who wasnt scared. I remember how one spring, maybe it was May, nobodyd gone swimming yet. The guys were just sitting on the bank, getting their feet and their shhooks wet, and she just took off her clothes. She unbuttoned something and that little white dress dropped, she stepped out of it and walked as calm as could be over to the dam, the one the Germans built during the war from Jewish gravestones. It got quiet. Everybody turned their heads to look at her. Nope, she wasnt naked. She had something on, but the wind was blowing and that black hair wrapped all around her, and maybe thats why she looked like she was naked. It was so quiet . . . She walked right to the middle of the dam. The water was green, mustve rained the day before. It was green and came up to her knees, but higher up she was brown, like shed been lying in the sun her whole life. She looked at the guys, like she wanted to tease them, and then pushed off from those stone slabs and jumped. Head rst. It wasnt all that deep there. Just past the dam the bottom got shallower and the stones, you know, the stones are bigger than a horses head. But she came back up again. And when she started coming out of the water, so wet, everything sticking to her, they all saw it was like something guys dream about at night. She was all glistening like

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some kind of snake. She pulled on her dress and left, not even looking at them stare. Thats the way it was, Im telling you, even if youre not from around here. How about if you go get some wine. Theres more to this story. She had six sisters, and they were about as a poor as it gets. Not too long ago her mothers shack was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. You know, all the sisters were light-haired, I mean blonde, and they had eyes the color of water when it turns to ice. She mustve felt something while she was growing up. Later on, she mustve heard it too, because people are people and just cant keep their mouths shut. Six pale as the moon, and she was the lone black sheep. She was only waiting to run off into the world, rst for the people, and second because her restless blood just wouldnt let her sit still in one place. She went to one of her older sisters who was already married with kids, somewhere in Krosno. But she came back quick. Her brother-in-law probably couldnt take his eyes off her. Came back to that same backwater, that shack propped up with stakes even crows would turn around and fly back where they came from mother scarcely alive and those girls like some kind of Sleeping Beauties, wandering around the yard in the afternoon in their nightshirts, feathers in their hair. Her father? Her father did what he did, and then went and died. He drowned right after his youngest was born. They say he was coming home and fell asleep in the stream. Nobody was around to wake him up. So what was left for her there? She took off again, escaped. To another sister somewhere near Rymanw, married already, too. You know, someone like her should have a brother, so shed have somewhere to go. Someone like her cant nd what she needs around women, and thats why she came here, to obisk, even though

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there wasnt anything here for her either. Got a cigarette? Drinking wine makes you want to light up. There used to be dancing here once a month. In the old depot. Now its not there any more. It was right next to the police station. Once a month a bar and a band, accordion, percussion, guitar, and so much dust kicked up off the floor that it just made you want to drink and drink. It was dark, a couple light bulbs in crepe paper, and empty in the middle at rst, since everybody was still standing back against the walls, the guys off by themselves, and the gals on the other side. After only a couple songs, a couple trips to the bar, those couples who knew each other better started to shuffle their feet. Off to the side at rst, in the shadows, and then closer to the middle, near the stage, near the drums. She went there, too. Alone, not with anybody. In that white dress, drifting, fluttering from one girlfriend to another. But she was really waiting for some number where she could spin around in the middle of the floor and show what she could do, and she waited til the musicians felt the heat, til they warmed up, til they loosened up, because at the beginning no matter what they played it always sounded like a march. And it was only then she jumped in with the couples, the ones who knew her, and they made room for her and she started that dance of hers. All by herself. Sometimes some guy from out of town or somebody feeling bold would ask her to dance, but two, three times around the room was all it took and hed had enough. Their faces got all red, they got sweaty and stupid, stepping on their own pants, and with their shirttails all pulled out. But herself, she fell into that spinning, that whirling, so her black hair wrapped around her neck, and that white dress around her legs and hips, and sometimes everybody just stood there and those

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hometown musicians played only for her, louder and louder, faster and faster, they stood there watching how she nally kicked off her shoes and spun around and around in place, barefoot, with her hands over her head, with her eyes closed, like theyd lowered her down on some kind of string from the ceiling, because those bare heels seemed like maybe they werent even touching the floor anymore. Thats how it was. As for me, back then Id lean against the wall or the bar and watch. That was still the time when people didnt dance much by themselves, and thats why they looked at her like she was some crazy woman, but they couldnt stop looking. The gals out of jealousy, and the guys maybe because it was something to think about at night. Who could she have danced with anyway? And she never stayed til the end. Soon as the real fun got started, with couples sneaking out and giggling in the dark behind the depot and in the willows by the dam, after midnight, soon as the night nally got off to a good start, then she disappeared. Nobody ever saw her with anybody, even though more than one of them wouldve wanted to. What am I saying more than one? They all did. And maybe because nobody did anything with her, people would talk about her being with everybody. She mustve known about that. Everybody knows about everything here. But she didnt care. Like some kind of queen. She came, she danced, nobody was bold enough to come near her. Maybe it was from fear? Because she was one of us and she wasnt. See there, thats the road to Dukla. Thats the way people go out into the world. In the end she waited long enough. She was maybe about twenty. Rzeszw license plate, dark suit, dark glasses, a Fiat, bahama yellow thats what they were calling it back then. She sat next to him, not in that white dress anymore, but in

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a different, new one and looked at obisk like she was seeing it for the last time. They drove around the square maybe three or four times. Slow, real slow, so everybody could watch, so everybody had time to see for themselves that she got what she wanted, so she could show them what she thought of them. Its getting hot. Lets go nd some shade. Later on nobody recognized her. How many years was it? Five? Six? She looked like it was fteen. Filled out, made up, even her voice had changed. Looked like a tramp. That hair of hers, that hair as black as funeral banners in church, she went and had it dyed red. Later it turned out she did it from shame, because it was turning gray. And she wasnt the way she used to be anymore, too good for the rest of us. She was tamed, and you could see her rst with one guy, then with another. Maybe not that kind of thing at rst, but in the evenings here on the square, on a bench, out by the river. But as she was tamed, then the others got more bold. Maryka this, Maryka that, come with us Maryka, and in the end it was dont be afraid, Maryka, its not like its soap, you wont use it up. She was already different, not like she used to be. She had this wild laugh. She snorted, threw her head back, her red hair fell down over her shoulders and her gold tooth shone. Before, all of them used to be straight and white like pearls on a string. She even gurgled when she laughed, but when they wanted her, she went, when they asked her, she sat down, when they were treating, she didnt say no. She started to hang around in the pub even though, you know, around here thats not a place where women just stop by, unless maybe its some young one with her boyfriend. And she even came by herself. To have a drink. Thats how it was. Quiet at rst, cautious, like she was with somebody, and later

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without any of that. A year went by and she was a pitiful sight. In summer she slept in haystacks. If you were walking by in the morning, youd see legs sticking out. Sometimes two, sometimes four. Youre thinking for sure shes a shameless hussy, right? Maybe so, but she did it on purpose. Thats what it felt like. Like it was all for show. Once in the pub there was this gal who said something about her. Loud. So everybody heard it. And she made a big mistake. Maryka grabbed her by the hair and dragged her into the middle of the room. With one hand she hung on to her head, and with the other she pulled up her skirt and shouted at the top of her lungs: Take a good look! Everybody look! Because she seems to think shes got something else down there, that shes some kind of angel and not a woman! Take a look! They could hardly break them up. Gacek was there, too. Thats when it all started. Because, see, he was the only one who remembered her from those longgone times. And for him she hadnt changed at all. Thats how it had to be. Maybe he was only waiting til everything worked itself out, and shed come for him herself, til there came a time when she didnt have anywhere else to go. Because then, when they got them apart, that other gal took off, but Maryka still went on ranting and raving for a while, wild as a she-devil, cursing, and then she flopped into a chair and burst into tears. Hell if I know, maybe she was crying for the rst time in her life, because even the glasses rattled and it sure enough took peoples breath away. She sat with her hands hanging down, she was shaking all over, snot running out of her nose, tears and black mascara running from her eyes. Whodve thought it could get any worse? Then Gacek stood up, went over to her, took her by the hand and led her to the door. Like he was showing a blind person the way, and she didnt ght

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him at all. He had to come get her like that a lot more times. From the pub, and from other places . . . In the end there was that night. In the morning the ambulance came with the siren wailing and headed right back at full speed. Edeks car wasnt there anymore. Maybe he was the one who called the doctor, or maybe he took off before that from fear. When they brought out the stretcher, it was Gacek flying after them, screaming, he wanted to go along, but the paramedics that came with the doctor wouldnt let him. He hung onto the doors, and in the end people had to hold him back to let them get by. They said he looked terrible, that he was pale as a corpse. The ambulance got going and then they let him go. But he had no intention of standing around. He jumped into his flatbed truck and went weaving all over the yard. People scattered, but he was all confused. He tried to go forward, backward, jerked, started, he was so shook up he forgot everything he learned in twenty years of being a truck driver. In the end, somehow he swerved around and headed for the gate. A couple guys were standing there, but it wouldnt have been too wise to try and stop him. Everybody was watching to see what would happen next. But there wasnt much more. After he got past the gate he drove through a culvert into the ditch and that rolled him over onto his side. There he was, tilted over, but he revved the engine and his wheels were spinning in the mud, and in the end he was hanging there by the chassis. Somebody came up to him, somebody opened up the door, somebody shut off the engine. He sat with his hands on the wheel and stared off into space. People stood around for a while longer and then they left. But he sat and waited, and he knew theyd be coming to get him soon.

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Yeah. When it gets this hot, your mind gets confused. When it gets this hot you want to drink double, and something catches re in people. Even if you were there, you couldnt get to the whole truth of it. A wildre, like in August, at night, when the grass is burning . . . When all that red smoke drifts up to the sky.

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CONFESSION

The red-haired sergeant made a slow round of the market square, but nothing was going on. A couple of guys were sitting near the store waiting for a third one who was supposed to have a little pocket change. The day overflowed from the south into the west, and it thickened there like jelly heated on the stove. A dog ran diagonally across the square and dragged its long dark shadow behind it. He followed the mutt with his eyes, but it immediately disappeared without a trace. He walked a few more steps, stopped, folded his arms behind his back and started to inspect the sunny side of the market square from under the brim of his cap. Nothing could hide in the glare of the slanting rays, so he moved on, very slowly, as slowly as he could. And for a second, he was absorbed by his own boots: he walked so that he would not step on the cracks between the cement slabs. But soon the sidewalk ended and the

street pavement began, and there was just a strip of trampled earth on the other side. He squinted off to the left, but there was only dust whipping along the road no way to stop it, no way to demand identication. Five in the afternoon, a Monday. The real stretch of time was too long, the day was too hot and, in all honesty, he could have gone home a long time ago and nobody would have noticed. He blinked and waited until the gray cloud of dust passed by and hurtled onward. He could feel particles of dust in his mouth and the thought came into his head: Where is this dust flying to? Could those little bits of earth which were now quietly crunching in his teeth fly past obisk, over the village houses, over the road and the river and as far as the market square in Dukla with its sad, bluish town hall, fly in between the intricate contours of the Bernardine tower? If the wind would not subside, if it would keep blowing, if it blew as hard as it could, then maybe they could get even as far as Rzeszw, where he visited a friend from the police academy seven years ago . . . He took a step forward, unable to take his eyes off the receding cloud. The honk of a horn roused him from his meditations. He hopped back onto the curb. An orange Syrenka swerved to avoid him, made a sharp turn and rolled on. He reflexively smoothed the lapels of his jacket, stuck his chest out and discreetly looked around to either side, but all he spotted was a red-haired cat on the windowsill of a house on the other side of the street. He crossed the street and walked along the length of a fence overgrown with lilac. Further back, between the ordinary shrubbery, there were gleams of carmine phlox and golden asters, and the tall mallows cast a shadow onto the dark scarlet dahlias. Summer was on its last legs. An old woman sat against the gable wall of her house. He

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bowed and slightly moved his lips. She looked at him impassively. The same way the cat had a moment before. He passed the next three houses: whitewashed pale blue, brown timbered and oiled, and dark gray with rotting corners caving in. He turned right, glanced at the padlocks on the door of the kiosk out of habit, and then slowly began to climb the stairs to the pub. Sunny patches lay on the tables like gold tablecloths. Everything else was lost in the dim light, which was the shade of cloudy water. He waited for a moment in the doorway for his eyes to adjust. It was quiet. The stale smell of cigarettes hung in the air, but the slanting afternoon light was still invisible, and it didnt refract into a single, even the tiniest, arabesque. He passed the dark and empty recess of the bar. The bottles glimmered with faint greenish and silver lights, but only slightly, only slightly, as if from the depths of an abyss. He walked through the rst room. No one was there. He heard the crunch of grains of sand on the tile floor. In the other room, two men were sitting in a rectangle of radiance. Lewandowski was sleeping, stretched out on a chair. His shoulders were sagging toward the floor, his beard was resting on his chest, and he looked a little like a puppet after somebody had cut the strings. Jan Zalatywj sat across from him, staring into space and rolling an unsmoked cigarette between his ngers. The tabletop was already cleared and clean. The red-haired sergeant stood over them and folded his hands behind his back. Whats up, Zalatywj? Zalatywj looked up. Not much, Sergeant. Mieteks sleeping, and Im sitting. The sergeant shifted his weight from his toes to his heels and back again. To do something, anything at all, he reached for the newspaper that was lying on the table next to him. The Warsaw Life

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was a couple of weeks old. He shrugged his shoulders and put the tattered roll back down. When he wakes up, get him out of here. When he came back out, the barmaid was yawning in the dark niche of the bar. Irkas not here today? he asked. Nope. Shes got the day off. Shell be here tomorrow. Not much going on. They collected unemployment last week and the forest isnt paying for a couple of days yet. Can I get you something? He shook his head and walked out. Nothing had changed. Only the shadows of the trees crawled slowly toward the east like black velvet gloves, and the dust from the market square left no trace on them. He stood at the top of the stairs with one hand in his pocket and thought that he should have ordered something in the pub after all. He pulled out his cigarettes and put one in his mouth. The third guy had showed up to meet the two waiting by the store. They were drinking Leajsks. He could almost taste the bitter flavor, and he looked away. The peak of Cergowa looked like something torn out of green paper. The wind was still blowing. It covered the sky with a smoky, rainy crimson. One cloud had the pearly tint and shape of a sh skeleton. He flicked his lighter, but the little flame went out right away. He tried again and again. Resigned to his fate, he put away the cigarettes. Nothing felt like happening, nothing, nothing. The stream of time slipped between the houses, rolled through the market square, and passed the two benches set crosswise. It flowed over the ruins of the townhall tower, which over the past two hundred years it had managed to erode, infect with rot, and wash clean of plaster, and which it

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would certainly overcome in the end, like a flood carries away things that are light, unnecessary, and forgotten. Time also flowed from the sky, poured out like slow molasses and sloshed against the pavements metallic shell. But neither its stream nor a single splash could manage to pull any greater event behind it. A few women walked out of the church. They slowly dispersed, each in her own direction, and their gures were just as dark as their shadows. The red-haired sergeant waited another half minute and slowly, counting the steps in his head, walked down to the sidewalk and started in the direction of the church doors. They looked at each other in silence. The priest was taken by surprise. The sergeant was daunted by the sound of his own footsteps, dying out somewhere under the vaulted ceiling. The curate clasped his hands over his belly. His thumbs assumed the shape of a Greek delta or a little steeple. It looked a bit like the sergeant was standing at attention, and he brushed invisible crumbs away with his ngers. He looked at the priests soutane, shiny from long wear, and thought that his own uniform was just as old and worn. Mr. . . . ? A cold draft carried the scent of extinguished candles. This smell reached the sergeant from somewhere that was a very long time ago, from the distant past. He glanced at the back of the nave. It was bright there. The sun was hanging low in the sky. And it was probably that strong wind that forced its radiance through the simple stained-glass windows. Thats what it must have been, because light is matter. The pale lilies in tall glass vases looked as if they had been cut out of supernatural gold leaf or foil. Mr. . . . ? The priest clasped his hands more rmly and the

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little steeple vanished. And only when the sergeant could sense that the faded, blue gaze was aimed somewhere just a little above his head did he understand. Excuse me, he said hurriedly and quietly. Excuse me. He took off his cap and held it in both hands for a moment, as if he wanted to crush the stiff brim and stuff it into his pocket, but in the end he just hid it behind his back. Ive never seen you here before. I know. I dont go . . . But today I have a reason. I have something Id like to discuss with you, Father. I am at your service. The sergeants gaze slid over his surroundings. The dark pews, the banners, the gure of Saint Joseph, the picture of Saint Anne, the swallows nest of the pulpit, the luminous patches of light, it all whirled around his head. All right. Lets go to the presbytery, said the priest. That would be better, he replied. He headed for the exit and felt like he really wanted a cigarette. The dusk slowly rubbed their silhouettes between its ngers. The clock on the wall struck eight. The light falling from the window had no color at all. The dark blue sky stuck to the glass like paper. Ive been a priest for twenty-six years. And Ive been a policeman for twenty. The glowing red ends of their cigarettes hovered above the ashtray, over the tabletop, floated near their faces, and then you could tell that they were turned toward each other, maybe even trying to look each other in the eye.

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What exactly is it that you want? Id like you to help me, Father. A priest should know about these things. Good Lord . . . Im supposed to know about this? Am I? Somewhere in the distance an empty truck rolled by. The rumble and rattle rebounded off the four sides of the market square and both men listened intently, as if this were something extremely important, as if this were precisely what they had been waiting for the whole time. The racket faded and the priest stood up. He took a few steps into the darkness, the floorboards squeaked as delicately as a mouse, and the tapping of his metal-reinforced heels was off by a quarter of a beat from the ticking of the clock. Did you know her, Father? Like all the others I dont see on Sunday. Sometimes I get the feeling I know them better than the ones who do come. Its just that I think about them more when I cant sleep. He moved in the direction of the door and stretched his hand out toward the light switch, but withdrew it at the last moment, imagining that it would be better if night lled the room. Because after all it occurred to him while he was standing there, stopped halfway through his gesture this is something in the nature of a confession. And the other two? Yes. Them, yes. Just that . . . how did you call him? Kociejny. Him, no. He wasnt from this parish. He said that hed been here. He said you were eating soup and then a pork chop.

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That must have been Sunday. He came to see me again just now, and he said he knows, that he was there, and that it wasnt Gacek, that they have to let him out, and also that hes had enough, that hes tired. These words poured out of the sergeant in a rush. He did it in one breath, as if he were being pursued by the shame or fear that would come with the light. But the priest nally walked away from the switch, and then he started to speak more calmly. Because you see, Father, that rst time he came to see me, he said that he was bored over there and he wanted to be here, and now he says that it would be better there after all. Even when he was alive he couldnt nd a place for himself. Thats the way he always was. They listened to the darkness begin to stir behind the windows and above the roof. As if a huge, shaggy beast were rubbing itself against the house. And then the rain beat against the windows and the sergeant raised his voice. And just now when he was here he said Gacek is in jail even though hes innocent, that hes not the one guilty of her death. He said hell tell me how it was, its just that for him I have to . . . There was a lightning flash like white quicksilver, and right after that thunder rolled over the presbytery, over obisk, over the whole Krosno region. The sergeant imagined that this sudden flash in the gloom lit up the faces of all the people he knew and didnt know right at the same moment, lit up all the deeds that they would have wanted to hide in the darkness. When the gure of the priest was once again barely visible, he nished: . . . for him I have to even though Im not a believer he wanted me to have a mass said for him.

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THE SECOND NIGHT

Where does that supernatural radiance go when darkness descends on all souls together with the night? Phlitt stars flickered out over the ridge of the mountain. One, then another, and another. From the hardest ones, sharp and white like the prick of a knife made of celestial steel, to those last, most inferior ones, smeared with darkness like pebbles in a river overgrown with slime. Where was that light which should fall like a watchmans lantern on those who were sleeping, exhausted and unconscious, and close their hearts in its golden circlet, that they might have the strength to get up in the morning and start everything all over again? Nights black map unrolled between the horizons. Neither peaks nor towers were hard enough to break through it. Villages were like patches of sticking plaster on the earths cheek, roads like scratches, a rash of small towns an hour after midnight. Three

hours before dawn, nothing foretold awakening, nothing foretold the absolution of guilt, although heaven was greater than earth. Night, night, night, and Blacksmith Kruk was telling a story in his sleep, a story without end, as long as the life of all humankind, as if he wanted to confess to everything that he had seen, that he had heard, confess to all things good, bad, and indifferent. Because likely as not, life is its own kind of sin that you can forget about during the day, but the night knows no mercy. Lewandowski knew this, Gacek knew this, and Edek they all did. Because when your mind sleeps, past and future deeds sit on your chest, and their weight is inexpressible. That is when your heart hardly beats, when it dies within you, when it hardly pumps your terried blood. Not even the smallest splash of radiance can thin out matter thickened by fear, and you can only wait until the dark bluing of dawn suffuses the windowpanes. That is all you can do. The heavy black map of night, the low ceiling of the sky. Lewandowski was sleeping on his back, and the television leered at him with its web-eyed screen from the depths of the room. It kept watch over its master. The wind was blowing from the south. A loose patch of asbestos tile rattled against the roof like the stiff wing of a huge bird. An unnished glass of Kazaczok wine, illuminated by the televisions gaze, was the color of watery blood. Lewandowski was snoring. Dreams floated out from his nostrils. They lled the room, settled down on the chairs around the table and argued over his soul. Ill come and get it when the time comes. No, its mine. No, Im the one whos tormented him the longest. And what if he doesnt have a soul? Every one has one. Thats how it is written. Then they melted away into the air

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to make room for the next, because Lewandowski dreamed dozens, hundreds of them a night, for every year of his life, for every day of every year. Jzek came at daybreak. The flies always woke up rst. It took just a shred of gray light and they were already bumping against the windowpanes. Jzek sat down on the bed. Still not ready to go yet Mietek? Things are still good for you here? Lewandowskis body tensed, his back arched, and his mouth gulped at the air. So whats making you suffer so much, Mietek? A nightjar chattered, an owl hooted, and the night was silent. Souls floated like sh in black water, hung motionless in the meanders of dark hours like pike waiting for prey. And nothing floated up except bygone days, those mirrors of the days that are yet to come. Zalatywj was tossing from side to side in his house on the edge of the village. A hot wind was blowing through the open window and wouldnt let him sleep. He got out of bed and went to the enameled bucket and drank. But the water tasted just as windy, warm and restless, so he groped in the dark for his pack of Populars and matches and walked out in his gray T-shirt to the front of the house. The smoke tasted like the water and the wind. From that height, almost from the mountain pass, he could see the whole village, how it lay overturned on its stomach. Not a single light to be seen. The deaf, blind houses nestled close to the ground to forget about the world around them. Sharp roof edges were embedded between the rustling crowns of the trees. Like stones in a river. What a wind, thought Zalatywj. A shiver ran down his back, and that November day rose up in his memory. He was driving out to Speza. It was getting dark. He could

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have stopped and slept for a while in Smereczny, but he thought that he could do another four kilometers or so, drive through the village, and spend the night in an empty house that had been built a long time ago and never nished. He had no desire for human company, vodka, or talk that day. The smell of snow was in the air. The frozen ground would thaw for two or three hours in the afternoon and then harden back up again, and he knew that this would already be his last trip before winter, so he wanted to look at the sky and the mountains, and he wanted to be alone. The beech trees were bare and the color of purple mist, and the sky in the west along the horizon glowed like a crest of red feathers. He parked his wagon, got his bag with a quilt in it, and walked in through the splintered door. Someone had boarded the windows over so he had to light a match. It smelled like dampness and lime. He walked through the entryway, and his giant shadow slunk behind him. The matchstick burned his nger and went out. Then he heard a quiet creaking. He lit another match. The light was yellow-gray, like sand, but he saw the trousers with legs in them. They were swinging back and forth. One rubber boot was on, the other had fallen off. The foot had shrunken, curled up toes. Zalatywj never went back for his bag. People from the village brought it to him. They also said that what he saw had happened a year before. Now he was standing on the wooden porch and wondering why it was that Fedor Feko was haunting him right then. The moon was huge and looked like it was made of frosted re. It was rising slowly. If it could have touched the forest, the forest would have caught re and the wind would have spread the blaze over the whole area, transforming the valley in a few moments into a conflagration, into a bowl of flame that would splash over

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the edges of the mountain ridges like stormy water and spread out farther and farther, as far as the outermost reaches of the darkness. So Zalatywj crushed his cigarette butt very carefully with a calloused heel, grinding it on the stone step, and went back into his room. The bed creaked just like the rest of the house. Time flowed in the priests clock the same as it did in the other clocks in the parish. In the complete silence in the middle of the night, its striking streamed out through the half-open window and floated in the alley like wafts of sultry scent. Tall, narrow, and French-polished like a cofn, it stood in the corner of the room and did its chiming every hour. The priest had it brought in from the church when he noticed how often peoples gazes would wander off to the side during mass, in the direction of the dark recess near the confessional where it stood not quite furniture, not quite machine. It was, at any rate, the one thing in the sanctuary that appeared to have its own, independent life. This story kept coming to the priests mind: There was a time when old women used to come and sit for hours in churches, because they believed that it was a way to steal those hours from death, that their bodies would not grow older while they sat there, that the scent of wax, incense and cold stone was the scent of eternity. Once he was dozing in the confessional, and the chiming of the clock woke him up. Night had already fallen. There wasnt a living soul in the church. For a moment he didnt know where he was. The baritone peals made the air tremble. He spent a few seconds in unfamiliar space and couldnt recall who he was, what his name was, he didnt know anything. He was sure it was the clock that had pushed him back into reality. Without it, that state could

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have gone on and on. So that was when he nally decided to bring the clock into the presbytery. And then he tried to repeat the experience. Those few seconds when he found himself between dreaming and waking, when he fell into a dark abyss, paralyzed with fear, but with the dim consciousness that he was experiencing something similar to the belief and the desire of those old women. He stayed in the church after nightfall. Old Gawlicki snuffed the candles, carried out the missal and left, leaving the weak echo of his seventy-year-old footsteps behind him. Left alone, he sat down in the confessional. He closed his eyes but sleep would not come. In the quiet and the dimness, the slightest sounds were preternaturally magnied. The market square beyond the wall, obisk, cows lowing in a distant pasture all of it grew to universal proportions and the priest experienced a sense of being lost, but it was a completely physical one. He knew that he was sitting in the confessional. He knew that, in essence, he was whirling and spinning in the cosmos like, lets say, Gagarin, and this was nothing new. He even caught a glimpse of his church from somewhere very high above, like a white patch, a speck on the dark, boundless blue, and he could glimpse himself, an even smaller speck, enclosed in a whitewashed, wood-paneled shell. But that was only ordinary reality and ordinary imagination. Sleep did not come, waking did not come. It was as if space, even though it was universal, was keeping the priest imprisoned in a glass globe. He stood up, walked out, locked the door and went to the presbytery. He fell asleep in his bed and woke up, but nothing like that ever happened to him again: those few moments when instead of feeling fear, he felt that time had split open like rotten fabric, and he was flying and flying, downwards or upwards, stripped of

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his name, stripped of his memory and of its reverse, that is, of any kind of image of the future, stripped of knowledge. And instead of feeling terror, he wanted it to go on, because he felt that in one more second he would also learn something, something would open up. And then, with the striking of the clock, he felt the cold and the numbness in his feet. One evening he set his alarm for two in the morning. He felt the absurdity of the situation, but he had decided to go to the church. I should fall asleep, fall asleep because I wont have gotten enough, he thought. In the hallway, he groped in the darkness to nd his coat, and he threw it on over his pajamas. The October night smelled of deserted gardens. He stole cautiously through the yard, under the branches of the apple tree, to the gate. It creaked, but the dog in the neighbors yard did not start barking. He practically ran across the few meters of open space. Brushing against the wall, he reached the doors. The large lock was icy to the touch, and the key was burning hot. But a lot of time had passed since then. Now it was a different night and the priest was listening to his clock. Tomorrow he had to say a mass for Kociejnys soul and just like then, he was feeling the absurdity of the situation. The world doesnt have any grooves of its own. It bounces like a ball. he thought. Mass for the soul. He repeated the words silently, and then a little louder, to hear their harmonious sound. Then once again, and again, until they turned into a meaningless whisper. . . . for the soul, which the policeman and the girl from the pub, an unmarried woman with a child, saw. Do you believe it? he had asked the sergeant then, and he answered: No, I dont believe it, but I saw him and he talked to

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me and Im repeating it to you, Father, because a priest is supposed to be able to deal with these things. But do you believe what he promised to tell you? I dont know. Maybe it will be something that can be veried in some way. The clock measured out the third stroke and fell silent. Veried, thought the priest. Then Id like to verify something, too. A small, red light was burning in the depths of the gloom. Like a droplet of blood or like a plucked-out eye that could not see anything anymore. The four windows were darker than it was inside. Almost as if little particles of daylight had been lost in the interior of the church and were still alive. A moment after he closed the door to the confessional behind him, he had the absurd sensation that he was trying to sit inside his clock. But the clock had been taken away after all. This thought reassured him. He wrapped himself up in his coat, folded his hands on his chest and sat motionless, in the pose of all travelers waiting at night for a train. A woman in a black dress woke him up at dawn. She had pinned her gray hair up with the help of a few combs made of brown plastic, combs the likes of which you cant buy today. It was open. Even though I was surprised it was so early in the morning, I came in. I was sitting down there and I wouldnt have seen you at all, Father, until I heard you snore. Lord! I got so scared I nearly screamed. So then, nothing happened. Everything stayed just the way it was, answers still lay in questions like chicks in their shells. The clouds above obisk went on tracing their flourishes. At certain moments their edges recalled the ery crack of a whip. But sometimes, especially to the west, when the sun was already falling

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beyond the horizon and its light swept all the houses, trees, dead pgrs, former prisons, passers-by and drunks, cows, motorcyclists and the yellow pks bus from Dukla off the earth. When the slanting rays pulled up all visible things like a magnet, then the clouds were a mirror of the world and everything could be seen on them like on a huge screen as on earth, so it was in heaven. But it lasted only for an instant, because time was the gray color and shape of a bird with a transparent body: one brush of its wings and dusk began to fall. At four in the morning, four strokes of the clock drew out and spread through the presbytery like circles in still water, and the depths of sleep nally carried the priest away. That same night, in someone elses house, Grandma wanted something to drink. She hadnt put a mug of water by her bed in the evening. She always did, but this time she forgot. It was too hot in this attic room. The sweltering heat had been collecting in the pine boards and beams the whole day. Resin was dripping from the knots. Now it was coming out of the wood and thinning out the air. The small window had been closed for good, nailed shut with three nails. Somebody had pasted newspapers over two of the walls. Girlfriend, Country Road, The News, The Sub-Carpathian, Edward Gierek in a light-colored suit, a smiling Szewiska, the large black bulk of Mt. Giewont against a background of greenish clouds she had looked at all of this in daylight many times. Some of the photographs reminded her of something. Others meant as little to her as the pattern of the wallpaper. But she couldnt see anything now, and all Grandma had was memory to shorten the time for herself until morning. In the darkness, every

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thought was sharply outlined, swift, coming from who knows where. It wasnt from her head, after all, during the day that same head scarcely managed to connect one thought to another in any kind of relationship, in any order that would allow her to perform simple motions: washing the dishes, doing laundry, cooking, all those things that cling to reality like a wet shirt to your back. So where did they come from? Perhaps time is something like air, and reflections of things linger in it the same way that a Fata Morgana bears the distant images of cities and landscapes. So Grandma was lying on her back on the white, bony bed, which had likely wandered its way there from some hospital. Through her half-open lips she breathed in the past, which blossomed out in her head like tissue-paper flowers in a magicians hand, exploded like reworks at a village fair and lasted for just as short a time. She saw the sky, tinted deep blue with the sweltering heat and the reddened crest of the grassy hill, where two horses suddenly appeared, and a third a moment later, lurching down at a limping trot. The sun was on its way down in the west. The riders shadows were long and black, they reeked of dirt, exhaustion and fear. They pulled up next to her and one, the tallest, asked: Giermacy?! He had stopped with the sun at his back, and she could see only his dark silhouette and the whites of his innitely weary eyes. Grandma pointed to the village down below: Down there. They looked around and along the wide valley, and nally the tallest one said something quickly. They set off down the slope and reached the stream. Grandma saw them jump off their horses and drop down on all fours by the water to drink, pushing themselves in between the heads of the animals. Then two men mounted their horses and started back uphill. The third, that last one, tried

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to climb into the saddle, slipped off, tried again, until nally the restless horse walked away, and the soldier crawled along the ground, clinging to the stirrups with his hands. He called out to his companions. The two of them returned and said something to him. One of them took the loose horse by the bridle, and the tall one took out his pistol and red. A moment later they disappeared between the juniper trees. Grandma walked a few dozen steps up the hill. The soldier had Tatar features and a red hole in his forehead, and a dark stain was spreading on his stomach, soaking the old, clotted blood. And then she felt the child move violently inside her, so she headed back toward the house to make it there in time. All of this passed, and a winter scene floated out of the darkness. The crowd was pressing against the gates of the church. The wood shattered into white splinters under the blows of an ax, and the lock gave way. The priest, standing off to the side, raised his hand and said something to the people. Clattering and crashing could be heard from inside. Women whose faces were reddened from exertion and agitation dragged the broken pieces of the iconostasis out into the snow. Gold, azure and crimson gleamed in the January sun. Then Jan Zalatywj walked up, who knows where from, but his gure had preserved that same magnetic odor through the thirtysome years since he stood in the middle of the village and asked about work in the hay elds, at building sites, tending sheep, it was all the same to him. And only once did she look at him and tell him to come, even though she still didnt know exactly what work she had for him to do. The colors and light were changing. The oldest events could be seen the most clearly, and then everything faded. That evening,

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maybe because it was evening, it was as if she saw it through a mist. They brought her husband on a wagon. The cold rising over his dark, heavy, water-logged body felt like it was coming from a wellshaft. Her younger daughters stood in the doorway of the alcove and whispered to each other, Shhhhh, Daddys sleeping. They got scared only when, at the end of an endlessly long moment, a scream forced its way out of her. But now, when she was so thirsty, the phantom was indistinct and deprived of strength and reminded her of Fedor Feko, when he stood in her doorway one November, and the hoarfrost thickened the gray air of dusk behind his back. She didnt even let him in the house. But he probably didnt intend to come in anyway, because he was burning with fever, and his eyes were coated with the glaze of madness. It was the kind of craziness that settles on the inside, flows through the veins, rubs against the guts, burrows into the body like a mole into the ground, and never works its way out during a persons time on this earth it only burns in the eyes. And when it escapes, its always the end. It leaves an empty shell, and the madness moves on, since, things being what they are, there are still plenty of people on earth. So she didnt let him in, just said over and over: Shes not here, shes not in the house, she left, shes not here, but you know that anyway, and I cant tell you anything more, I dont know exactly where she is myself. And he just looked at her and moved his mouth, but no sound came out. Yet that movement of his lips was so precise that Marykas name was clearly shaped in the air like a ring of cigarette smoke. There was a dried residue of spittle in the corners of his mouth. This image increased her thirst even more, but Grandma would have to wait until morning, until everyone got up down below.

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Only then would the son-in-law lift the latch on the door leading to her attic. And then there was Gacek. Far away, listening intently to the distant rumble of trains mingling with the echoes of the prison. Sound reverberated off the sky the same way it did off the walls. Freight, passenger, express trains rolled through the tunnel of night. Dim trestles, viaducts in the darkness, and wailing sirens barely brightened the road. Sounds wandered along the corridors, wrapped themselves around the stairwells and crept from the top floor to the basement. A single rattle of a key against the bars would resound through the whole building, slip through the connecting corridor, wind itself in a spiral around the neighboring annex and make its way out onto the roof, where it would grow and branch out like a bare winter tree and intertwine with all the sounds of the world, with a horn in the suburbs, with the rumble of tank cars on the sidings, with the whine of a jet plane drifting east. Gacek, in the cell where Kociejny had been, walked barefoot from the window to the door. Seven men were sleeping on their backs under white sheets. Their breaths left their mouths in vertical streams, like the rising and falling of columns of mercury. Their bodies absorbed the sweltering heat like sponges. Gacek wasnt sleeping, because his time was made up of sounds. A policeman in an unbuttoned uniform at the headquarters in Krosno had yelled at him, Out with it in the order that it happened, but he couldnt remember any order to it, any sequence or sense. A crash, Edeks raised voice, the music suddenly went crazy and started to mimic itself like a scratched record, even though it was coming from a tape player. The way it was . . . the way it was . . . the way it

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was . . . Those words overlapped onto the rhythm of his footsteps and lled Gaceks empty skull the same way that the striking of a key against the bars lled the emptiness of the prison in Zae.

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THE END

The sergeant crossed the market square shoulder to shoulder with Kociejny, the former feeling like he was under guard, and the latter like he was the doing the guarding. The policeman let the ghost go in ahead of him when they got to the door of the church. He had a white shirt on under his uniform, and he looked a little more imposing than usual. Whereas Kociejny was a little less visible it was almost like his weariness had weakened him or he had somehow gotten older. They stood in the small vestibule and looked into the depths of the sanctuary. Grandma was kneeling on a pew near the altar. Three other women were sitting far from one another, as motionless and isolated as abandoned statues. The door to the sacristy was ajar, and the priest was most likely putting on his robes. Four candles were already burning, although their little flames were eclipsed by a wave of brilliant sunshine pouring in

from the western windows. What about music? asked Kociejny. Where am I supposed to nd you music? whispered the sergeant. There arent any organs around here. Maybe the women will sing. And people. I want people here. Kociejny, its not Sunday you know, its a regular weekday, and you feel like having a wake . . . muttered the policeman, stiff as a poker, perspiring, and staring straight ahead so as not to draw attention to himself. I want a decent mass, and if its not . . . Gawlickis tiny gure emerged from the sacristy. The white surplice gave him the look of a small child in a nightshirt. He genuflected with difculty, stood up with even greater difculty, and placed the great book on the altar. For Christs sake, Kociejny, could you just be a reasonable . . . The sergeant looked around uncertainly to either side, glanced up helplessly and wanted to say something else, but Kociejny walked further into the church. No help from anywhere, he thought, not from anywhere. And then he got an idea. He turned on his heel, ran outside and headed straight for the pub. Over there it was Saturday afternoon, and there was so much smoke the door wouldnt close. He pushed the hot curtains aside and drunken tables reeled under his feet. His eyes started watering, but before he was blinded he managed to spot Lewandowski. He walked up to him. The laugh faded from Lewandowskis face as quickly and smoothly as a glove slips off a hand. You play, Lewandowski, dont you?

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Not me, ofcer, I cant remember the last time I held cards in my hand. I meant the harmonium. I seem to recall that you used to play it . . . Its been a while . . . Get up then, and go wait by the door, and dont try to cut out. The whole room watched, not understanding a thing. The sergeant was holding his cap in his hand. He pushed through the motionless throng and chose the more alert ones. Get up, get up and dont ask what for, because you know well enough, and I remember. And you, out you go, and you too, move it, go out and wait by the entrance. All of you are under arrest. When the priest saw them, his arms, outstretched over the altar, slowly began to fall. They squeezed themselves sideways through the half-open door and immediately came to a standstill. One, a second, a third, and another, and they were immediately subdued by the setting suns eternal light. The red-haired sergeant came in last, closed the door behind him, and started pushing them further into the church, into the sunshine and swirling dust. They shuffled their feet along the floor, like blind people feeling for the road. They were gray, sweating and quiet. The pubs uproar, which had saturated their bodies, evaporated. The ones who had caps used them to cover their private parts. There was a white and red CocaCola baseball cap in Janeks hands, and a green military-surplus eld cap in Zalatywjs. The policeman grabbed Lewandowski by the shoulders and steered him into the corner on the right side of the vestibule, where there was an old harmonium. The women turned their faces away from the altar. Their eyes got round, their

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mouths shaped themselves into mute os. The prayer from the altar lost its melodiousness and rhythm, the priest floundered uncertainly from word to word, and the syllables dripped in slower and heavier drops. The sun was already hanging at the height of the windows. The horizontal slash of its gold blade sliced off the roof and bell tower. They stood under the open sky in the scent of resinous wood, rot, bird feathers, and nests clinging between the rafter beams. Lewandowski played the best he knew how. Air leaked out of the harmonium through a hundred cracks. The clouds split, and light the color of honey and blood lled the churchs structure like water, like a wave of flood. And for an instant Janek, and Grandma, and Zalatywj, and Lewandowski hunched over the yellowed keyboard, and the sergeant, and everyone became as transparent as angels or as their own most secret dreams that they never remembered when they woke up on all of the dawns that had been allotted to them. For a moment the radiance shattered their bones, burned them to ashes and pulverized their bodies, so that they forgot about their own names and shapes, about their pain and their burdens, and about the time that had collected in their veins and felt like hot sand or lead and never, but never, allowed them to know rest. But there was no clock to measure the moment. The suns disk fell into Cergowas black money box and the redhaired sergeant saw that Kociejny, standing right next to the altar, was smiling at him and motioning for him to come over and cock his ear, before it was too late.

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TRANSLATOR S NOTE

Andrzej Stasiuk belongs to the generation of writers who made their debut in the years immediately following the fall of communism in Poland. Political, social and economic changes set in motion in 1989 created a climate much more open to new and experimental literary voices, and Stasiuk, along with his contemporaries (among them Stefan Chwin, Natasza Goerke, Pawe Huelle, Jerzy Pilch, Olga Tokarczuk, and Magdalena Tulli), responded by creating a literature that engaged both Polands past and recent Western literary, cultural and critical preoccupations. Among other things, the new Polish prose is characterized by a strong centrifugal tendency and a corresponding rootedness in so-called little homelands. Stasiuks Beskid Mountains, the Gdask of Huelle and Chwin, the Silesia of Pilch and Tokarczuk all are essentially as far away from Warsaw as one can be without crossing the border. A strong inclination toward generic experimentation is also characteristic, manifesting itself, for example, in Goerkes rejection of conventional, realistic, cause-and-effect narrative structure; in Tokarczuks mosaics of voices and styles; and in Stasiuks continual interrogation of canonical textual boundaries. Where Stasiuk could be said to differ from his counterparts is in his readiness to explicitly address the effects of transition in Polands here and now. This engagement is not achieved at the expense of historical and mythical sensibilities, but rather, Stasiuk deftly incorporates these sensibilities into the broader sweep of his narrative. He also demonstrates a somewhat grittier aesthetic his protagonists are often murderers and alcoholics, fugitives and wastrels, who are depicted in their respective elements: killing, drinking, fleeing and idling. Stasiuks extraordinary range also sets him apart. He has published poetry (indeed, he prefers to think of himself

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as a poet), short stories, novels, screenplays, an autobiography, and numerous essays on a wide variety of topics. Tales of Galicia owes much to both his poetry and his work as a journalist. One of the most striking, omnipresent features of Stasiuks work, regardless of genre, is a fascination, verging on obsession, with borders, thresholds, margins, limits, peripheries. While this might be characteristic of the new Polish prose in general, Stasiuk arguably pushes these limits with an exceptional intensity, not only seeking out borders, but then crossing and recrossing them, as if to test their permeability. In the process of negotiating this passage, he also deliberately, provocatively even, inhabits the in-between space, exploiting the tensive energies generated by the overlapping, displacement and collapse inherent in crossing from one side to another. In no other work does Stasiuk so thoroughly realize this border-crossing potential as he does in Tales of Galicia. Indeed, the entire text is constructed as a site for testing the limits of a densely mapped ground of explicit and implicit lines of demarcation. The setting for Tales is a fictional village on Polands periphery, on its southern border with Slovakia. The action of the book takes place a few years after 1989, and this peripheral setting offers a prime vantage point from which to view the effects of transition spreading out from the center. Stasiuk also uses this setting to activate a diachronic awareness of the region as a centuries-old palimpsest created by a succession of migrating (or invading) cultures. A prominent theme is the cyclical efflorescence and decay of a series of belief systems brought from over the border: the migrant Lemko population brought their own Greek Catholic, or Uniate, church (itself suspended over the boundary of two confessions, observing the rites of Eastern Orthodoxy but looking to the Pope in Rome); materials were salvaged from the demolished Lemko settlement to build the collective farm, a monument to communism; and a kiosk selling Western

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consumer products rises out of the ashes of the gray economy of deficit, bathed in the shining aura of capitalism. Resonating throughout is the attempt to identify what Stasiuk calls the fissure in existence, where boundaries dissolve between the natural and the supernatural, and where passage can be made from one side to another. The character, Kociejny, whom Stasiuk has identified elsewhere as the books protagonist, is alive in the first half of the narrative and a ghost in the second half. After death, he wanders restlessly between heaven and earth, feeling uneasy and alien in both. Thus Kociejny becomes the embodiment (and disembodiment) of the tension between matter and spirit that lies at the core of Stasiuks metaphysics. Other significant vehicles for expressing this tension include television, dreams, alcohol, forces of nature, and time, all of which have the power to suspend Stasiuks characters for at least a moment over the fissure in existence that makes death, as well as life, less certain. Testing implicit lines of demarcation plays out on several structural levels as well. For example, Stasiuk problematizes the narrative persona of Tales. The narrator is not only semi-autobiographical, but he simultaneously assumes two roles: he is an outsider to the villagers, but a local to tourists. In constructing the books narrative trajectory, Stasiuk deliberately plays with the limits between fallibility and omniscience, several times surrendering the narrative (to a greater or lesser degree) to another persona altogether. On another level, the book is rich in intertextual referents, which almost hypertextually transgress the lines of demarcation between his work and others. His eclectic allusions range from the Bible to William of Occam to fin-de-siecle 19th-century Russian philosophy to French proto-surrealism to late-20th-century Western pornography. Genre, too, is implicated in Stasiuks border-crossing project. What is presented and indeed begins as a collection of individual stories gradually

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metamorphoses into a single, coherent work, even developing a mystery plot as the stories become interdependent chapters. Stasiuks predilection for setting up oppositions and then subverting or subsuming them presents a number of challenges to the translator. Keeping the text suspended above boundaries, re-activating the energy of in-between spaces through another language, is hard and not always entirely successful work. The exigencies of language may sometimes propel the text too far to one side or the other, or precipitate new slippages that lose the semantic weight and structure of the crossed and collapsed borders plotted by the author. These challenges take on an additional element of complexity because they play out not only on a lexical, syntactical and grammatical level, but also on a thematic one as conventional categories are deliberately broken down. For example, liquid qualities and movement are applied not only to water, alcohol, and blood, but also to light, time, dream and memory. English verbs do not have the same nuanced possibilities of motion, quantity, and force offered by Polish affixes. Verb tense shifts back and forth easily in the original this is allowable, even neutral in Polish, but Stasiuk knowingly exploits its potential to efface boundaries between past, present, and future. The translator is faced with the task of marking this purposefully constructed synchronicity without offending the sensibilities of readers accustomed to narratives in a uniformly past tense. To offer a final example, Stasiuk makes use of several different language registers simultaneously, and this signals both his narrators otherness and his gradually acquired status as local, but this idiom is exceedingly difficult to render in a translation. Nonetheless, the guiding principle throughout has been to remain as faithful to the original as a translation will allow. I am especially grateful to Bogdana Carpenter for her encouragement,

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judicious advice, and superb translation workshop. Signal thanks are also due to Howard Sidenberg, W. Martin, Elbieta Wjcik-Leese, and Ewa Maachowska-Pasek for their essential, invigorating editorial suggestions and their commitment to the translation of Polish literature. Without the help of the following people, several linguistic, cultural, and metaphysical conundrums posed by this text would have remained arcane: Zdenka Brodska, Piotr Fory, Rachel Harrell, Kelly Miller, Daniel Reynek, Andrzej Stasiuk, Agnieszka widniewicz, Monika Sznajderman, Kamil Targosz, Andrzej Wajda, Barbara and Jerzy Wajda, Ewa Wampuszyc, Piotr Westwalewicz, and the anonymous business traveler Piotr coopted in the train car on our way to Gdask. Grants administered by the University of Michigans Center for Russian and East European Studies and International Institute offered pivotal opportunities for continuing my study of Polish language and literature. This translation was made with the support of a Fulbright award and the sponsorship of the Jagiellonian University Institute of Polish Philology. Margarita Nafpaktitis Ann Arbor, 2002

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NOTES TO THE TEXT

p. 9 pgr : Pastwowe Gospodarstwa Rolne [State Agricultural Farms], the ofcial title for state collective farms in the Peoples Republic of Poland from 19491976. Renamed Pastwowe Przedsibiorstwa Gospodarki Rolnej [State Enterprises for Agricultural Farming], or ppgr, in 1976, they had their subsidies abolished and assets privatized in the 1990s. p. 15 Populars [Popularne]: made from the poorest quality tobacco, were some of the cheapest domestic cigarettes available during the communist era. p. 16 Gomuka, Wadysaw: (19051982); First Secretary of the Polish United Workers Party (pzpr ), 194348, 195670; Deputy Prime Minister of the Peoples Republic of Poland, 194751. p. 16 Gierek, Edward: (19132001); First Secretary of the Polish United Workers Party, 1970-80. Successor to Gomuka. p. 16 Pepiki: a pejorative colloquialism referring to Czechs and Slovaks. It derives from Pepi, the common diminutive of Josef in Czech. p. 16 p. 19 Zetors: a Czech make of tractor. Fifty thousand zotys: roughly $3.50 in the early 1990s.

p. 20 Team [Gomada] and Polish Farmer [Rolnik Polski]: communist-era newspapers that were often the only ones available in the villages. In addition to the usual ideological propaganda, they also offered practical advice and tips. Urban readers looked upon these newspapers as symbols of unsophisticated village life. p. 21 p. 21 p. 21 Similac Isomil: a foreign brand of baby formula. Fort Moka Desert: a widely available foreign brand of coffee. John Players Stuyvesant: a well-known foreign brand of cigarettes.

p. 22 Syrenka: Syrena is the brand name for a Polish-made sedan produced from 1953 to 1983. The Polish government commissioned the

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Syrena, requesting a design that would be inexpensive and suitable for the general public. No longer in production, replacement parts are harder and harder to nd. p. 22 Rymanw: (pop. 3,600) a town in the Krosno province, in the Beskid Niski mountains near the Slovak border. Founded in 1378, it is situated on the Bukowski Plateau, on the left bank of the Tabor River. p. 23 Fiat compact: a maluch in Polish, or little one, is a very small (1.3 meters tall and 1.3 meters wide), almost miniature, domestically produced hatchback car with room for only two seats. p. 23 Solovievs magus Apollonius: a reference to Vladimir Solovievs Short Tale About the Antichrist. p. 24 uk [beetle]: the brand name of a widespread, Polish-made van (similar to a Volkswagen bus). p. 40 Zaporozhian Cossacks: Cossacks from Zaporozhets, which might be an allusion to Nikolai Gogols Taras Bulba. According to Stasiuk, this metaphor was prompted by imagining somewhere around thirty men who set sail in a craft a chaika. They are armed with swords, flintlock rifles, and maybe some light artillery. They set off across the Black Sea to conquer Constantinople. Of course there are, lets say, maybe several dozen of these chaikas, against the capital of a sultanate . . . And they actually land at the gates of Constantinople. They dont conquer it, to be sure, but they ravage the surrounding area, take their plunder and head out again to sea for a journey of just under a thousand kilometers (from a correspondence with the author). p. 40 p. 40 Haidamaks: 18th century Cossack rebels. Chaikas: Cossack canoes.

p. 43 Practica: a German camera that was manufactured for export to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. p. 43 Thirty thousand Don Cossacks were marching to India: In 1800, Russias Czar Paul, having lost Malta to the British, sent the Don Cossacks to invade distant India over unmapped territory. After Pauls death in a palace revolution in March 1801, which brought Alexander I to power, the Cossacks were recalled.

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p. 67 Golesz and Tytan: the names of cheap fruit wines, referred to collectively in Polish as alpaga. They are synonyms for boozing, drinking in the bushes, a major hangover. Positively the cheapest alcohol in Poland (from a correspondence with the author). p. 67 Wyspiaski: a 10,000 zoty bill with a picture of the Polish dramatist, poet, and artist, Stanisaw Wyspiaski (1869-1907), on it. p. 81 ppr : the abbreviation of Polska Partia Robotnicza, the Polish Workers Party, which existed from 19421948. It eventually merged with the Polish Socialist Party in 1948 to form the Polish United Workers Party (pzpr ; Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza), which was the ofcial name of the Polish Communist Party until the collapse of communism in Poland. p. 81 mz : the abbreviation for Motorradwerk Zschopau, a German motorcycle manufacturer. p. 82 rmf : the abbreviation for Radio Muzyka Fakty [Radio Music Facts], one of the most widespread and popular radio stations in Poland. On January 1, 1990, rmf broadcast the rst commercial radio in Poland, and it has several afliates in the sub-Carpathian region. p. 84 The News [Nowiny]: a communist newspaper published in Rzeszw that had fairly wide circulation, especially in southeastern Poland. It is still published today. p. 122 Szewiska, Irena: (b. 1946), Polish track-and-eld champion, recipient of many gold, silver, and bronze Olympic medals, ve-time European champion, world record holder in sprint and relay events, and the rst woman in the world to run 400 meters in under 50 seconds.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Novelist, poety, essayist, and literary critic, Andrzej Stasiuk was born in 1960 in Warsaw, Poland. After being kicked out of high school he was involved in the pacist movement of the early 1980s and spent a year and a half in prison for deserting the army in a tank. Upon his release, he began writing for underground newspapers, and his rst book, The Walls of Hebron, a collection of twelve stories based on his prison experience, achieved cult status. With little interest in Warsaw literary life, he moved in 1987 to an isolated hamlet in the Carpathian Mountains, where he keeps a herd of goats, breeds llamas and writes for Gazeta Wyborcza, Polands leading daily newspaper. From here he and his wife run the independent publishing house Czarne, which they founded in 1996. Stasiuk is the recipient of the 1994 Foundation of Culture Prize, the 1995 Kocielski Prize, and has been nominated three times for the Nike Prize, Polands National Book Award.

ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR

Margarita Nafpaktitis is currently a doctoral candidate in Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of Michigan. Her translations of Polish writers Stefan Chwin, Ewa Lipska, and Andrzej Stasiuk have appeared in a number of journals.

TA L E S O F G A L I C I A
by Andrzej Stasiuk
Translated by Margarita Nafpaktitis from the original Polish Opowieci galicyjskie (Krakw: Znak, 1995) Design by Jed Slast Text set in Janson Frontispiece: Zetor 3011 tractor This is a rst edition published in 2003 by

twisted spoon press

P.O. Box 21Preslova 12, 150 21 Prague 5, Czech Republic info@twistedspoon.com / www.twistedspoon.com Printed in the Czech Republic Grateful acknowledgment is made to the editors of the following publications where earlier versions of the translation rst appeared: Chicago Review; prezkadaniec Distributed in North America by

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