passages, guest rooms, draughty chambers into which a sudden
current of warm air flows, closets, twists and turns and cubbyholes, and larders full of forgotten supplies. I can move about inside them with impunity; in fact I am alone there.
From the inside these houses seem uninhabited. In the bedrooms the beds are made and covered in willow green bedspreads; the pillowcases are as tight as membranes, the curtains are open, the deep pile of the carpet is undisturbed, and there's a comb on the dressing-table. I cannot sit down on the
bed or pick up the comb in my hand. I'm disembodied, but I can
see everything, and I can peep into every nook and cranny.
I know that I'm inside people - I recognize it from tiny details.
One of the walls in the corridor is the colour of meat and is
throbbing gently. Sometimes from the depths a distant, steady
rumble reaches my ears, sometimes my foot slips on something
hard and veiny. If I stare at the sideboard in the kitchen for long
enough , I can see a shapeless, spongy, living structure shining
inside it.
T h e m o n s t e r
The first time I encountered Whatsisname he was standing on
our terrace with his mouth open, pointing into his rotting maw,
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looking like a shaggy, ugly little gnome. the sort that spring up
by the hundreds under the amanita caps each summer.
'Aaa,' he said, and then I saw a white pill on his tongue.
We stood facing each other on the terrace in the empty valley.
Behind him was the sun , behind me the shade. My only concern
was not to let him into the hall, for then he would sit there
incubating like a disease until evening, saying 'aaa' with his
mouth open - which is not something I understand. So I withdrew to the threshold and barred his entry. Panicking, I started wondering how to get to the phone without letting him out of
my sight. I suppose I was afraid of him. Then he made a gesture
as if raising a cup to his lips, and I realized that 'aaa' meant 'Give
me some water.' I told him to wait and ran to the kitchen for a
glass. When I came back he was still standing there, mouth
gaping, staring at the picture of a blue-eyed dragon that protects
the house. The pill vanished into the darkness of his gnome-like
body.
'A monster,' he said, pointing at the dragon.
just after the war, when there was still a pond in the village, a
monster appeared in it. It was huge, the size of a large cow, and
the shape of a crocodile, with horny claws and a muzzle full of
teeth sharp as knives. It ate all the fish left behind by the
Germans, all the reeds and all the rushes, and then it began to
prey on sheep, dogs, hens and geese. At night it would come out
on to the road by the church and shamble along the asphalt
towards Nowa Ruda, and in the morning, to their horror, people
would discover its tracks in their backyards. Ducks would suddenly disappear, nothing was left of the geese but violently twisted orange feet, and disgorged ram's horns lay scattered
about on the edge of the pool. The local authorities were busy
with other things - apportioning land, tracking down agents
provocateu rs, and founding cooperatives - so the men from the
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1 4 1
village decided to take action themselves. They threw carbide
and rat poison into the water, and then a rusty old grenade that
exploded. After that the pond looked like a puddle of dirty, poisoned water, but all in vain - the next night the monster ate a bullock, and i t looked as if i t would wreak vengeance. So the
men sharpened some long poles, nailed logs together to make
rafts and sailed out into the middle of the pond. Again and again
they jabbed at the surface, stabbing the muddy waters methodically, bu t the holes they made instantly closed over and the water remained just as impenetrable as before. The third time
they decided to apply technology and brought in a huge dynamo
with a crank handle that generated an electric current. From it
they extended wires, encircling the entire pool with them like a
net. Then they took turns to crank the handle, lashing the monster with electric shocks. Its great body writhed in pain beneath the surface, making the water spill on to the shores, until finally
it was still. That evening the villagers drank until dawn.
But a few days later the monster came to, and dragged an
incautious woman under the water in retaliation. Nothing was
left of her but a tin bucket on the edge of the pond.
That was the beginning of the end of the monster. Everyone
agreed - you can destroy plants and slaughter animals, but you
can't take people's lives. The monster had broken the rules. The
authorities came, the border guards and the Tatra Highland
troopers, and the sappers too. They opened the pond up imo the
stream with a huge explosion and the water poured out of it. At
the bottom of the pond lay the monster, wounded and weak, but
still alive. Then the soldiers got out their heavy machine-guns
and set them up by the waterside. The officer gave the signal and
bursts of gunfire slashed through the monster's body. Despite its
wounds it still tried to attack, and the people watch ing scuttled
away screaming. New bands of ammunition were quickly loaded
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and the hideous body was riddled with holes like a sieve. And
that was the end of the monster.
After telling me this Whatsisname went off to Nowa Ruda,
pushing along his old G erman bike , but in the evening he
dropped by again, because he had remembered that that wasn't
quite the end of the story.
For the next few nights the villagers heard a dismal wailing
from the woods on the Czech side of the border. Some creature
was crying in the darkness in a voice so chilling that it made
your flesh creep. A month later, in the dried-up pond they found
the dead body of a female monster, who had come through the
woods and meadows and over the state border in search of her
beloved, and at the site of his terrible death she herself had died.
R a i n
On my name-day it began to rain, so we moved the chairs into
the hall to sit it out until the rain stopped. But i t never ended; it
came streaming down relentlessly, obscuring the horizon. The
hall gradually became soaking wet, I really don't know why;
maybe the water was seeping through the walls. Or maybe it was
the dogs' fault - they kept marking the floor with their five-spot
footprints. Outside the hay was quietly getting wet, and the
slugs were rejoicing in their underground, under-leaf world and
preparing for a festival - Dampness Day.
A couple of kilometres down the road towards Nowa Ruda
there's a strange house, or rather it isn't the house that's strange,
but its location. It stands in a narrow valley between dark green
wooded peaks. It's lower than any other house in the neighbourhood and can't actually be seen from anywhere , except perhaps from the top of those peaks. The stream laps against it
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on both sides, licking its damp walls.
As he stood in the doorway
staring at the rain R. began to tell the story of the slug family that
lives there: a big, tough brown father, a slightly smaller mother,
and two children. In the evenings they sit silently at the table in
the gloom - there's no light, because the dampness prevents the
electricity from working. Their dark, shiny skin only reflects
the weak gleam of the darkening day. At night the whole family
goes to sleep on the floor in the corner. Four bodies stuck to one
another, gently throbbing to the rhythm of their sluggish breathing. In the morning they glide off into the lush wet greenery, leaving slimy trails behind them. They bring home rotting strawberries coated in a pale film of mould and chew them in silence .
Water oozes on to the floors, covering them in a shiny lacquer.
Neither of us was amused by this story. Instead we opened up
bright computer worlds and disappeared into them . In the artificial sunlight of the screens our faces shone ghastly pale. Then we logged off and spent the evening playing patience: would it
ever stop raining? N ever ever. Through the window I could see
Marta's house , lashed with rain. Perhaps I should go and get
her, I thought; what could she be doing there all alone in the
darkness? She was sure to have opened her wig chest and now
she'd be weaving that dead headgear, of no use to anyone. She'd
be plaiting strands of hair from strange women who have ei ther
died or are living somewhere on the other side of the world ,
travelling, ageing in old people's homes, their youth dried up
inside them like a scab.
As I was putting on my gumboots I noticed that the water in
the pond was overflowing at the very spot R. had so carefully
built up that spring. It was pouring between the concrete floodgates and had almost reached the footbridge. It was thick, red and muddy. It was no longer making its fa miliar m urmuring
sound, but droning, as i f buildi ng up to a scream. In his yel l ow
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gumboots and yellow mackimosh R. looked like a ghost as he
ran helplessly along the embankment. I could see his fish in the
dark red foaming eddies anxiously preparing for death. The delicate, languid carp, usually so idle, were now skimming along the stirred-up surface, silently snapping their jaws open and
shut in amazement. Among them the trout were excited by the
unexpected promise of a journey to the Nysa River, to the Oder,
to the sea.
'I knew what you'd be doing,' I said as I came in.
Marta was sitting at the table spreading out her collection. She
was unwrapping tresses of hair from their newspaper, and combing them through with her fingers. Then she began to wind the strands on to the weaving frame. I took off my gumboots and
jacket; puddles of water poured off them.
'I can't ever remember so much water,' replied Marta. 'Or
maybe there's something wrong with my memory.' She smiled at
me. 'I want to give you a name-day present. I'm going to make
you a wig, out of real hair, on silk, specially for your head.'
She picked up a skein of fair hair from the table and held it to
my face, but she didn't like it and tried another. She told me to
choose the hair for myself, but I still couldn't bring myself to
touch it. She told me to sit down, took out a faded exercise
book and a Bic ballpoint that I had given her, and began to
measure my head, gently touching my temples and brow with
the tips of her fingers. I felt the same pleasant shudder as when
Mama used to take me to her dressmaker, Mrs Poniewierka, and
I had to stand still while she took my measurements. She would
build a space around me out of centimetres and the nips and
tucks of the pattern, kneading it with her hands, wrapping it
around my waist and shoulders. She hardly touched me at all,
but my skin still responded, with a muffled shudder of pleasure.
I'd be lulled to sleep standing up.
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And now Marta was repeating this ritual. I felt embarrassed by
the pleasure of i t and closed my eyes. You have a large head. You
have a small head. I don't know what Marta said.
T h e f l o o d
Last night there was a storm. The dogs kept barking anxiously
so we woke up at dawn and saw that despite the rain, the daylight had come.
The pond had vanished. The stream was flowing where it
used to be, but now it was more powerful, rough and angry.
There were no floodgates, no footbridge, none of the sheets of
metal that R. had used yesterday i n a desperate attempt to
strengthen the edges. There were no graceful carp, or impatient
trout. Our pond had run away. It had let itself be seduced by the
water that was pouring in from all sides and had flowed down
across the meadow, along the edge of the forest, through Pietno,
into another river, and on into the Nysa. It could be in Klodzko
by now, maybe even further away. The aristocratic carp, unaccustomed to such a violent journey, would have got stuck in the twists and turns of the river, or been crushed by the current in
the waterlogged undergrowth. There is no pond . R. is eating
beetroot soup and staring out of the window. Marta is emptying
some very full rainwater barrels. I wave to her; she waves back
and then disappears into her little house.
After dinner R. went back to the story of the slug family. He
described the activities of the master of the house. At night the
father slug glides through the grass to the road, rests a while, and
people's gardens and the tender young courgette shoots. He enjoys
gnawing holes in them, but it's not out of malice - it is his form of
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creativity. He revels in the holes and the rain. But what he likes
most of all is bonfire ash that has turned to mud. He wallows
about in it, and goes home dirty, drunk on the damp remains of
the fire. His wife silently reproaches him - she was dying of worry.
N a i l s
Marta and l went to Nowa Ruda to get nails. The cars moved
slowly, crawling along in single file, because the flood had torn
up part of the highway. From the bus stop in the village we
picked up Krysia, who was wearing men's gumboots and getting
soaked in the rain. As soon as she got in she took them off and
put on a pair of shoes she had in a carrier bag.
All the little streets along the river were caked in mud. The
buildings were smeared in the stuff up to the ground floor windows. The shopkeepers were busy drying out their wares. The owner of the second-hand shop was hanging out used clothes
that had already been through a lot in their ragged lives -
moving house, changing cupboards, broken washing-machines,
overheated irons, their owners getting fatter, sometimes even
dyi ng - and now a river run wild at night.
Someone had arranged pairs of trainers on the sandbags,
dozens of identical Adidases and N ikes. Their laces hung down
to the water like wicks, and their garish colours blazed against
the grey of the muddied walls.
Krysi
a thanked us for the lift and went on her way, straightening her lemon-yellow jumper. We parked past the bridge by the jeweller's and bought some pickling cucumbers. Then that
lunatic everyone knows came up to us - the Prophet, the
Clairvoyant - a shaggy fellow in a poncho made out of an old
blanket. He smiled at Marta; they must have known each other.
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'How are you?' he asked.
'As ever,' said Marta.
He looked at her in disbelief. 'As ever?'
At that moment I thought I saw his face cloud over, as if he
were about to burst into tears. Marta told him to take care or
something of the kind, but he took a cucumber from the scales,
turned and walked away.
T h e c l a i r v oy a n t
That man had a beautiful, exotic name - Leo. And that's what he
looked like too, like a lion.
He had let his hair and beard grow long, and one harsh winter
they'd both gone grey, God knows why.
Leo the clairvoyant lived on a state pension because, although
it's hard to believe it, once upon a time as a young man he had an
accident in a mine and lay buried for two days almost one hundred metres down in a hot, black hole, like a mother's womb, painfully conscious the whole time, his bright spirit shining
around his head in a phosphorescent halo. He was s ure he
would die, but he didn't. The rescue team pulled him out, and
then he spent a long time in hospital . After it was all over he got
down to real life - reading books from dawn till dusk. First he
read whatever came his way, but in time he was drawn to unpublished manuscripts that he got from a semi-legal mail-order bookshop in Krakow. These included the writings of Iksall l .
I3lavatsky and Ossowiecki, muddled reports of spiritualist
seances, H indu and jewish cabbalas and prophecies of all kinds.
One day he came across the address of the Astrologers' Society in
I3ydgoszcz, and from the book they sent him, he taught himsel f
t o read horoscopes one Christmas. From then o n noth ing gave
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him so much pleasure as immersing himself in the intricate