basket, and the child was clever enough to distinguish them
from the equally white puffballs, because puffballs are rough as
a cow's tongue - the Frosts' child knew this much. But one thing
he didn't know was that on the shady edges of the meadows the
meadow mushroom's doppelganger sometimes grows. The
Amanita vema, brother of the albino A manita phalloides, a loner
that grows in the scrub on a stout stalk, is the death cap of the
meadows. It smells sweet and watches the herds of meadow
mushrooms from afar, like a wolf in sheep's clothing.
When they got home, Franz Frost's wife fried the mushrooms
in a little fat, and the amanita's beautiful, finely chopped body
also found its way into the pot, where its distinctive features disappeared in the sour cream. She laid the table and served the mushrooms with buckwheat. The child didn't want to eat, so she
had to feed him. One for Daddy at the war, she said, one for our
neighbour the wig-maker, one for your favourite dog, one for the
people in the village, one for the priest at Konigswald, one for
the little kittens who've just been born in the barn, one for the
whole world, let it not fall into madness. The child's mouth was
reluctant to open.
During the night he began to vomit. In the morning, terrified
by his condition, Mrs Frost carried him in her arms to the village, where the people who lived in the mansion took him by car
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
1 3 1
to the hospital in Neurode. They pumped his stomach, but it
was no good. On the fifth day the child died.
Several telegrams went looking for Franz Frost at the front,
but they never found him.
A manita verna in sour cream
half a kilo of mush rooms
three hundred grams of butter
one small onion
half a glass of sour cream
two tablespoons of flour
salt, peppe1; caraway seed
Simmer the finely chopped amanitas for about ten
minutes with the onion fried in butter, the salt , caraway
seed and pepper. Stir the sour cream into the Hour and
add to the mushroom mixture. Serve with potatoes or
buckwheat.
T h e w ay s M a r t a m i g h t d i e
From above the woods hazy white clouds drifted down over the
valley, and it began to rain. Marta was rolling out pastry on the
shabby old oilcloth. Beneath her rolling-pin the ball of dough
turned into a flat sheet, then she cut little circles out of it with a
glass. I watched her hands and the concent ration on her face. I t
had gone dark i n her small, low kitchen and the rain was beating against the rhubarb leaves outside. Marta's old radio was mumbling so quiet ly that it was incomprehensible. How will
death enter her body? I was wondering.
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O l g a To k a r c z u k
Through her eyes? Marta will look at something dark,
unidentifiable, damp and sticky and will no longer be able lO
avert her gaze. That dark, sodden image will enter her brain
and smother it. And that will be her death.
Through her ears? She'll stan to hear a strange, dead sound
that will drone in her head , low, vibrating, always at the same
pitch, the opposite of music. Because of it she won't be able to
sleep and she won't be able lO live.
Or through her nose? When she senses that her body no
longer smells, that her skin is becoming papery and is only
absorbing light from the outside like a plant, but exuding nothing. Worriedly, she'll sniff at her hands, her armpits and feet, but they'll have become dry and sterile, because smell, the most
volatile sense of all, is the first lO disappear.
Or through her mouth? Death will shove the words back into
her throat and brain. The dying don't feel like speaking, they're
too preoccupied. Whatever would they speak about, what would
they hand down to other generations? N othing but banal nonsense, common platitudes. What son of person is concerned about sending a message to humanity in the final moments of
their life? No words of wisdom at the end are worth as much as
the silence over there, on the other side, at the beginning.
Death can also enter through the mouth in another way -
Marta could eat a maggoty apple, one of those dark red ones
from her old orchard, an apple with a white embryo of death
inside. Death would be let in this way, and as there is no great
difference between the flesh of an apple and human flesh, death
would consume her from the inside. There would be nothing left
of her but a brittle empty shell that would crack and crumble the
next time she tugged at the gate with the stiff catch.
I watched Marta out of the corner of my eye; now she was
putting a spoonful of rosehip jelly on each little circle and
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
1 33
pinching the pastry cases shut, to make crescent shapes with
crinkly edges. I had brought my small Ukrainian stove so that
we wouldn't have to get a fire going in her ramshackle kitchen
range. Suddenly the sunlight broke through the wi ndows,
although it was still raining. We put the tarts into the stove on a
tin tray and went outside.
R. was standing on our terrace pointing at the sky. A rainbow
hung over the hills. It straddled our car, as if it had just given
birth to it.
T h e s m e l l
Everything bad happens in winter. In winter R. had an accident.
He skidded on the snowy mountain bends and ran into a lorry.
He hit his head on the steering-wheel and broke his nose. The
car's long, nickel-plated bonnet saved his life. It was the kind of
accident where you say nothing happened.
But something did happen. Although his nose healed and the
stitches no longer show, ever since the accident R. has been aware
of a strange smell. The smell appears suddenly, in waves of varying intensity. He's most strongly aware of it in a particular spot on the way down to the pond. There are neules growing there ,
around a n ash tree, so h e sniffed the nettle leaves and the bark o f
the tree, but he couldn't find anything. He even thought the smell
might be coming from the water - it was neither nice uor nasty, a
bit sweet and a tiny bit sour. But it wasn't the water either. Once
he found the smell in a glass of brandy, then in some coffee and
then on a sweater that had been left lying in a cupboard full of
winter clothes. Finally he discovered that the smell was not a feature of one thing or another, that its source was not a particular object - in fact it had no source at all, it just allached itself to
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O l g a To k a r c z u k
things once in a while, quite by chance, and that's why it was so
hard to identify. It isn't like anything else, R. said once, but later on
he had the opposite impression, as if it were actually present in all
other smells, and his broken nose and scarred olfactory cells had
become sensitive to it, had discovered it and remembered it for
ever. And that's the nasty thing - not being able to identify something that you can smell, something that attracts your attention while it's there. It's torture not being able to pinpoint the source,
not being able to understand it, or interpret it. Some insects smell
like that and traces of them are left behind on berries; the smell of
a knife blade as it cuts a tomato; the smell of petrol mixed with the
odour of fermented cheese; my old perfume inside an unfashionable handbag; iron filings; the lead from a pencil; a new CD; the surface of the window-pane; spilt cocoa powder.
I have often seen R. stop in the middle of what he's doing and
sniff the air. H is face becomes concentrated. He sniffs his palms,
and suddenly in the middle of a conversation he starts sniffing a
button that's come off. Or he rubs wormwood leaves between his
fingers and finally thinks he's discovered what it is. But he never
has.
We have both guessed that it's the smell of death, and that R.
first sensed it when his car hit the lorry, in that split second
when anything could have happened and there was no going
back. It was a moment of great potency, loaded with possibilities,
like the gram of stuff that becomes an atom bomb. That's how it
smells, and it's the smell of death.
R. keeps worrying that he'll go on smelling it for ever, and
that never again will he innocently enter the snow-covered hairpin bends between Walbrzych and jedlina, or drive through the crossroads by the Town Station unaware, or even reach for any
of my mushroom dishes without thinking. He knows, and I
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
1 3 5
T h e v i s i o n of K u m m e r n i s fro m
H i l a r i a
Ego dormio et cor meum vigilat
I was lying on my back, reciting my final prayers before sleep.
Suddenly I felt myself rise up, as if I had become weightless, and
when I looked down I could see my body lying on its back in
bed, its lips still moving, as if it hadn't noticed that I was no
longer in it. And I discovered that I could move about in space .
I was able to move just by thinking about it; even the slightest
desire allowed me to move, so I raised myself still higher and
saw the convent from above, the wooden shingle of the roof, and
the stone coping of the chapel tower. After a while, from an
even greater height, I saw the whole world ; it was slightly
convex and steeped in darkness; only from somewhere beyond
its limits did long rays of sunlight illuminate it, casting black
shadows into the darkness. Those different gradations of darkness troubled me and filled me with sadness, for I knew that the light existed, but it was hidden. And as soon as I thought about
the light, I saw it - at first it was pale as a narcissus, weak as
mist, but it began to grow steadily stronger and I was afraid I
would be blinded by it. I realized that this must be heaven and
God, but I was surprised - for my mind was alert - that I
remained alone and had no guides from anywhere , since in
proximity to God there live hosts of angels and all manner of
resplendent beings. Then I felt something like a wind , neither
warm , nor hot, that wrapped itself around me as if I had fallen
into the sphere of a great whirlwind. This force was pushing me
away from the light; between me and the light there was an
invisible, yet palpable border. And although I wanted to cross it
and was drawn to the light like never before , I was weak and
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0 I g a To k a r c z u k
lacked the strength. Until a voice appeared in my head that
could have been my own voice as much as anyone else's, and
the voice said to me: 'This is time.' At once I realized the whole
truth about the world - that it is time that prevents the light
from getting through to us. Time keeps us apart from God and
as long as we are within time, we are imprisoned, doomed to
fall prey to darkness. Only death releases us from its shackles,
bu t at that point we have nothing left to say about life. Then I
was overcome with sadness, although my eyes could see the
vast expanse of light. I desired nothing else but to die for ever,
and maybe I did die, for suddenly the wind of time vanished
and I was plunged into the l ight. I could say nothing about
being in the light, for along with me all words had disappeared.
I could no longer even think, for there were no thoughts
either. Nor could I exist, here or anywhere else, for neither
here nor there existed any more, and no motion existed. In
this state there were no qualities, good or bad, and I do not
know how long i t lasted, for there were neither moments nor
millennia.
I would have remained like that eternally, neither alive nor
dead, if I had not suddenly felt a yearning for the world. At once
an image as brightly coloured as a painting unfurled before me.
I couldn't tear my eyes away from it.
Seen from above, the world was full of people sleeping. It was
a far more densely populated world than the one I was familiar
with, for everyone whom we thought had died was there too. I
realized that it was judgement Day and the angels were already
starting to scroll up the furthest edges of the world, as if they
were the fringes of an enormous carpet. From above and below
came the rumble of a great battle - the clash of weapons and the
drumming of horses' hooves, but I couldn't see who was fighting whom, for my eyes were fixed on the Earth unfurled before
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
me. Some people were already waking up, rubbing their eyes
and staring into the sky. But their attention was weak and
unstable - they didn't know what they were looking at. I could
see mountains that were shaking as if with fear, and their contours were blurring in the thinning air. The sun had stopped at its zenith and was illuminating the air with a bright and burning light. The grass began to burn on the steppes and the water began to boil in the streams. Animals emerged out of the forests
and, heedless of their natural enemies, came down into the
clamour of the valleys. People also came marching along the
dried up roads to some appointed place. They came briskly and
confidently, no one dragged their feet. The sky was not smooth
and blue, but seething and swirling. Plants were turning to
stone beneath it.
And then I understood with all my heart that I was watching
the very last moments of time, that I was destined to witness the
end.
And I realized that our judgement will be an awakening, for
throughout our lives we are just dreaming, imagining that we are
alive. But there was once a time when we really were alive, then
we died, and now we are dead. And these dream-lives of ours
that we take as real mean nothing to God, because nothing has
really happened in them. We shall not have to answer for our
dreams - the only thing we are responsible for is the life that we
can't remember, for death has put us to sleep. Only that forgotten existence was real; in it we either sinned or were virtuous.
We do not know what we shall awaken to - hell fire or eternal
life in the light.
Once again I must repeat it: our world is popu lated by the
sleeping, who have
died and are dreaming that they are alive.
That is why there are more and more people in the world , for it
is populated by the sleeping dead who keep growing in number,
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0 I g a To k a r c z u k
while the real people living for the first time are few. In all this
confusion none of us knows or can possibly know if he is someone who is only dreaming life , or really living it.
C o r p u s C h r i s t i
Mana said that you should not take what you see too seriously.
She said it as we were looking out of the window at a Corpus
Christi procession that went marching by, across the fields where
the flax has been sown. The priest came first, and after him two
banners and a small group of people. Lower down along the
crisply green meadow ran a dog, as if joining in at a distance
with this unexpected crowd walking across the fields.
I don't know why she told me this; she was supposed to be on
her way out and was already holding the handle of the open
door.
That evening I remembered her remark. Eyes are constructed
to see nothing but still photographs from a living, moving film,
and whatever they see they pin down and kill. When I look at
something, I believe that what I'm seeing is fixed, but that's a
false image of the world. The world is constantly in motion,
always vibrating. It has no zero point that can be committed to
memory and understood. Our eyes take pictures that are nothing
but images, mere outlines. The landscape is the greatest illusion
of all, because there is nothing constant about it. You remember
a landscape as if it were a picture. Your memory creates postcard
images, but doesn't really comprehend the world at all. That's
why a landscape is so affected by the mood of the person looking at it. In it a person sees his own inner, transitory moments.
Wherever he looks, he sees nothing but himself. That was what
-tana wanted to tell me.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
1 39
A d re a m
I dream I am able to enter people through their mouths.
People are built like houses inside - they have stairwells, spacious halls, vestibules that are always too weakly lit to count the doors into the rooms, row upon row of apartments, damp chambers, slimy, tiled bathrooms with cast-iron baths, steps with handrails taut as veins, artery-like corridors, joint-like landings,