began.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f � i g h t
2 1 7
The night always hatched somewhere down by the stream,
and it was from that damp, cool spot that the sky began to go
dark. Every evening Mister Bronek witnessed this transformation, as he sat on the steps in front of the house and watched .
First he heard the regular cry of a night bird that sounded like a
screechy clock ticking. Then, as total darkness fell, he started to
hear people. Their drunken voices stammered in the darkness,
dull , helpless and stinking of hastily home-made alcohol. As
ever, Mister Bronek tried not to think, or at least to think as little
as possible - about what he had to do tomorrow, whether he
should go to bed now, what was wrong with the black cow, or
where Bobol might have put the pitchfork. Finally he went
upstairs to bed, where he drank in the smells of dampness and
manure until morning.
But there were o ther nights too, Cl)'Stal clear and eerie, when
Mister Bronek couldn't sleep. In a dreamlike state he felt a craving for some tea; the saliva welled up in his mouth, and his throat felt constricted. He kept tossing and turning, feeling more
and more disturbed, and his legs tingled as if they wanted to
rush headlong down the stairs and out across the yard. I can't
bear it, he thought, because it was like a painful need to urinate,
something inevitable that demands an outlet and refuses to be
quiet.
Then he went to the forest and wandered among the trees,
kicking their trunks and clenching his fists so tight that h is fingernails cut into his skin. He remembered being on the edge of the forest at a little wayside shrine that barred his way like the
ticket booth at a stadium. The plaster was Oaking o ff it and the
stone was crumbling, and inside loomed a crucified figure with
chipped feet. He went past it reluctantly and on uphill towards
the border. The only thought in his muddled head was the hope
of hearing a shot, and for t hat shot to be aimed at hi m . to hi t
2 1 8 O l g a To k a r c z u k
him, and to go straight through his head with a monstrous crash
before anything could happen.
But the same thing always did happen - first he fel t pain
throughout his body, then nausea, until he was just about to
vomit, but as soon as his stomach began to convulse his mind
went dim and the last thing he saw, terrified out of his wits,
were claw-tipped paws and grey tufts of ruffled fur. From then
on he was in the grip of a desire that didn't enslave him, but
rather set him free.
Sometimes his master, Jasiek Bobol, fel t like having a chat. He
would take out a crumpled packet of 'Sport' cigarettes and light
two before saying anything. They'd sit on the doorstep with the
draught at their backs and their bums freezing on the eternally
cold stone. Jasiek Bobol knew nothing but bad news. He said
that on the radio they had talked about a woman who lives in
the Bieszczady forest and prophecies the future. One time three
tourists went there, and ended up having to stay the night at her
little cottage. She gave them some milk, and then said, 'I'll tell
you the future, but first you must buy me some shoes.' So they
sent the youngest down to the village, where he bought her
some plimsolls. The old woman put them on and showed the
tourists three coffins. One was full of grain, the second was full
of chaff, and the third was full of blood. That was how three
years would look, she said. Which years? the tourists wanted to
know, but she wouldn't reveal that secret. All she said was that
one year there would be a bumper harvest, the next the fields
would yield nothing but chaff, and in the third year blood would
flow. Whose blood? they asked, but she wouldn't ·say, so now
Bobol was trying to work out what this year would be like - full
of grain, chaff or blood. But the future always looked grim in
Pietno. The grass was full of slugs, the water in the stream was
muddy, the people were bloated, hungover or sick. A ewe had
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
2 1 9
dropped dead i n mysterious circumstances, a marten had eaten
the chickens, lightning had killed a cow and a litter of puppies
had drowned during a storm. There was always the most rainfall
here, so everything made of metal grated with rust , and the
cowpats, encrusted with white mould, ne'er decomposed.
Bronek was the one who buried the carcasses by the stream.
When Bobol's ever-hungry dogs brought in a mu tilated deer
from the forest, Bobol wouldn't let them cat it. An unexpected
tenderness shrouded his eyes, watery from alcohol, and he told
Bronek to bury the deer. By now Bronek was well qualified as
gravedigger for dead animals, but it's hard work burying the
body of a deer - you have to dig a deep hole, because a deer has
long, stiff legs that don't fit in any old grave. To make sure the
dogs don't dig it up again, you have to break its slender shanks
with a spade. That was what Bronek did, and e'en though the
deer was undeniably dead, breaking its legs was horrible.
He was thinking about it the first time he took the bus to
Ktodzko to give blood. The idea had suddenly come to him one
night when he was in such severe pain that he \·anted to howl .
Maybe the local radio had suggested i t to him, by talking about
voluntary blood donation, or maybe a scrap of newspaper had
fallen into his hands. He had already changed himself so fully
into Bronek that he didn't give it a second thought. It seemed
sweet and right to give someone his blood, something he had
inside him that the world never saw and the sunlight nc'er
reached, but that made him alive. He liked the idea of letting
those internal red rivers now out of himself, sicken ingly thick
and warm, in the belief that someone would want them, with all
their memories of blurred, white Siberian landscapes. soured h'
terror and Lain ted by lack of strength.
First a woman with white hands massaged the win in h1s
arm, then she stabbed it with a needle. and the plastic leech of a
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O l g a To k a r ..: z u k
tube drank up Bronek's blood. Afterwards he fell nothing but
relief. He was given coffee and a bar of chocolate that he ale at
once, without even lasting iL Later he felt a liule weak as he
clambered into the bus that took him back to the fool of the
moumain.
From then on he gave blood two or three times a monlh,
which was more often than he should. He could cheat because
the blood donor centre's paperwork was in a mess, the whitefingered nurses kept changing shifts, and their heads were filled with other things. He couldn't wait to go again - to yield his arm
lO the needle and let out a stream of blood. He even enjoyed feeling dizzy; il was the only luxury available to him. He learned to add up his donations, one hundred, then two hundred grams of
blood, the red juice that his body so persistently produced. One
night as he listened to the shrieks of his drunken neighbours he
&n
bsp; calculated that he had given two bucketfuls of blood - and he
still hadn't died.
M u s h ro o m s
August began with mushrooms, in other words as usual. The
sun was shining and drying out the ground, but our meadow
was still full of water; lush, dazzlingly green grass was growing
there.
I found the first mushroom by accidenl, right by the path to
Mana's house. It was a small orange birch boletus, looking like
a large matchstick, and above il the sky was like the side of a
matchbox. ll could have been a portenl of the fires that burn the
grass and turn the sky orange.
All morning I could think of nothing but mushrooms. During
the night I thought I could hear them growing. The forest was
H o u s e o f D a y , H o u s e o f N i g h t
22 1
crackling with a barely audible sound - perhaps I sensed it
rather than heard it - so I couldn't sleep. The first year I found
the number of mushrooms in the local forest intim idating. I
brought home whole basketfuls, spread them out on newspapers
and inspected my collection for as long as I could, until the
moment carne when I had to take a knife and cut up their soft ,
childish bodies, chop off their caps and spike them on blackthorn spines to dry out. The prickly branches with all the mushroom caps speared on them leaned against the walls of our
house all autumn, steeping them in the odour of dried boletus.
That was the first year, when everything was abundant, the
apples, and the plums - even the old cherry tree fruited like mad
and fed all the starlings in the neighbourhood. Ever since there
has been less and less of everything. This year I only found a few
apples. I counted them and kept an eye on them - I would have
been quite prepared to set the dogs on anyone who tried to steal
them.
Despite the damp there were no parasol mushrooms in the
meadows, although their time had come. August always starts
with their white caps on the edge of the woods.
The parasol is a mushroom that has no youth. I t's already old
when it emerges from the ground , looking like a white sheepski n hat. It has an elderly body, the body of an old lady; it reminds me of Marta. I ts thin, veiny stalk holds up a fragile cap
that always feels slightly warm to the touch. You have to kneel
down and sniff it before snapping the brittle stem a 1 1d taking it
home. Everyone knows how to cook parasols - you soak them
in milk, then dip them in egg and breadcrumbs and fry them
until they're as brown as chops. You can do the same thing
with a panther amanita that smells of nuts, hut people tlon't
pick aman itas. They divide mushrooms into poisonous and
edible, and the guidebooks discuss the features that al low you
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O l g a To k a r c z u k
to tell the difference - as if there are good mushrooms and bad
mushrooms. No mushroom book separates them into beautiful
and ugly. fragrant and stinking, nice to touch and nasty, or
those that induce sin and those that absolve it. People see what
they want to see, and in the end they get what they want -
clear, but false divisions. Meanwhile, in the world of mushrooms, nothing is certain.
Once August had started, on most days hungover men went
stumbling about the birch copses at dawn, then brought bags of
mushrooms to our door, wanting to swap them for a bottle of
home-made wine. 'Be my guest,' I usually said, but I was disappointed - they only picked king and birch boletus.
But I have eaten all sorts of mushroom. Whenever I find
something I don't recognize, I break a little bit off and put i t in
my mouth. I wet i t with spittle, rub i t against my palate with
my tongue, taste it and swallow it. And I haven't died of mushroom poisoning yet. So I learned to eat Russula aeruginea, which no one picks and which turns the whole forest yellow in
August, and I learned to eat Helvella crispa, which has exotic
enough shapes to provide an architect with an example of a
perfect structure. And amanitas, wonderful amanitas - once I
fried their caps and sprinkled them with parsley. They were far
too delicious to be poisonous. I waited all night, then a second
night, and a third, because the symptoms of poisoning can be
very slow to appear. At dawn I was staring at the reflection of
the window, a brighter patch of wall with a cross at its centre.
The car keys lay on the table j ust in case, but those mushrooms didn't vant to kill me. R. said calmly that if any symptoms of poisoning were to appear, it would certainly be
too late by now. Pumping out my stomach and putting me on a
drip vould be pointless - the poison would already be in my
blood stream.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
223
'Why should anything wish me dead?' I asked him. 'Am I so
important that anything would want to kill me?'
When I was small I ate some young puffballs. They looked so
beautiful, so perfect amid the chaos of the grass that I excitedly
bolted them down - I can still remember their powdery taste.
I took some home and my mother told me to throw them away. I
didn't tell her I had more of them in my stomach. Since then I have
learned to eat them fried in butter with a sprinkling of sugar.
I took the first puffballs I found this year to Marta's house. \'e
Sweet puffball dessert
young white puffballs
butter for frying
caster sugar
Chop the puffballs into slices the thickness of coins. You
don't have to peel the mushrooms, but just cut off the
rough warts. Heat the butter in a frying pan and fry the
puffballs until golden. Sprinkle in caster sugar and serve
with a cup of tea.
W h o w r o t e t h e l ife of t h e s a i n t a n d
h o w h e k n e w i t a l l
Vearing a dress was like wearing a habit. The on ly differences
were that the dress fined on the waist - ,,·hich was rather unpleasant at first, because i t was t igh t - and was cut low on the chco.;t , which had to be covered up with something. Katka found a laded
woollen scarf and tied it round Paschalis's slender shoulder'>.
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O l g a To k a r c z u k
He didn't emerge from the room for several days. Katka
brought him food, mainly bread and milk, saying, 'Drink up
your milk and you'll grow breasts,' so he drank it. In the morning, or rather somewhere around noon, when they got up, she skilfully styled his hair, tying plaits on the crown of his head and
curling his locks on her fingers. With the money she earned she
bought him a crimson ribbon. Her speech was full of Czech
words, and he didn't always understand it all. She disappeared
for the whole afternoon and evening, so he took the saint's
works from his bag and read them again carefully, word by word,
searching for anything he may have overlooked before.
Kummernis wrote contradictory things, which Paschalis
found very disheartening. 'God is a vast creature that is pure respiration, pure digestion, pure ageing and pure dying,' she wrote.
'Everything is contained in God, but is mult
iplied, and thus
intensified, perfect and imperfect all at once.' Elsewhere she
wrote: 'God is perfect darkness,' or: 'God is a woman who is constantly giving birth. Lives pour from her incessantly. There is no respite in this endless procreation. That is the essence of God.'
'So who is God then ?' asked Katka sleepily when he read it to
her.
He didn't know how to answer.
'Have you ever thought about the fact that inside your body
it's completely dark?' he asked her, as they lay curled up together
on the mattress. The light can't shine through your skin. Down
there, where men enter you , it must be dark too. Your heart
works in the darkness, just like all your other organs.'
It was meant to be an ordinary question, but they were both
terrified by this idea.
Katka cuddled up to him more closely.
'I'd like to be wise and learned,' he said. 'I'd like to know
everything, then we wouldn't have to lie here and be afraid. I t's
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
2 2 5
a pity we don't know anything about the people who lived before
us, or those who will live after us. Maybe everything repeats
itself somehow.'
The summer was over, and the warm, russet prelude to
autumn was setting in. Paschalis was starting to pine for a wideopen space not hemmed in by city walls. He realized that it was pointless for him to stay in Glatz, and that he wasn't going to
achieve anything there, either for the saint, or for himself, or for
Katka, or for God. His journey had taugh t him nothing; he felt
homesick for the convent, but he wished it were much bigger, as
vast as the mountains, with open pasture instead of courtyards,
so that everything else fitted into it. Mother Aniela would be his
mother, and he would be someone else, someone like
Kummernis perhaps, or Katka, or someone he couldn't even
imagine. He realized that he must create himself over again, this
time out of nothing, because what he had been until now was
based on the one single misgiving that he had not been created
properly, or perhaps that he had been created in such a