more gloomy, found a newly finished coffin down there.
The Germans had left spices, salt-cellars, oil at the bottom of
bottles, containers full of buckwheat, sugar and ersatz coffee in
the sideboards. They had left curtains in the windows, irons on
the hotplates, and pictures on the walls. Bills, rental and sale
contracts, christening photos and letters lay about in drawers.
Some houses still had books, but they had lost their powers of
persuasion - the world around them had moved on to another
language.
There were children's prams, piles of yellowed newspaper and
broken suitcases full of Christmas tree baubles in the a! lic. An
alien smell still lingered in the kitchens and bedrooms, emanating most strongly from the wardrobes and chests of drawers. The women opened them timidly and fetched out articles of clothing.
one by one, with some amazement because t he clot hes were so
foreign, strange and funny Finally they plucked up the courage
to try on the dresses and jackets. They often didn't know the
names of the materials they were made of. As t hey stood before
the mirror, they instinctively plunged their hands into t he pockets and were surprised to find crumpled handkerchiefs. sweet wrappers and old banknotes. The women showed J special
talent for discovering closets no one had noticed. drawers t hat
had been overlooked, and well-hidden shoe-boxes. from which
children's milk teeth or locks of hair spilled forth. They ran t heir
fingers over the patterns on plates. admi ring their dt-.tinct ivc.
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sky-blue symmetry. They didn't know what the gadget with the
crank handle hanging on the wall was for, or what the labels on
the little china drawers in the sideboard meant.
Sometimes, while sorting out the cellar or digging in the
garden, someone found something special - a wooden box full
of chinaware or a jar of coins, or a set of silver cutlery wrapped
in oilcloth . The news went round the village in a flash, then the
whole district, and soon everyone was hoping to find a treasure
trove left by the Germans. There was a dreamlike quality to this
treasure hunting; it was like tracking down the roots of a dangerous, alien plant that might start growing again one day, that might rob them of all their possessions and hound them back
into homelessness.
Some people were remarkably blessed with these gifts, though
not by pure accident. You could choose to believe their story that
one day, while they were digging near the house, all of a sudden
their spade just happened to clang against a metal box. But they
could equally have taken a pickaxe and spade and headed into
the fields, dug under one of the bigger trees or near a lonely
shrine, shifted the stones in a ruined building, or explored an
old well.
For the first year none of the men in Pietno sowed their
fields - they were all looking for treasure i nstead. Only the
women bothered to plant cabbages and radishes in their gardens. Every morning, at the first hint of dawn, the men set off on their treasure hunts. They looked as if they were going to
work, because they had spades, pickaxes and coils of rope slung
over their shoulders. Sometimes they teamed up in pairs or
small groups and lowered themselves down into wells. Ever
since one of them had found a metal box containing a hundred
knives in the wall of a well - or rather, a hundred blades,
because the wooden handles had crumbled to dust - they had
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
245
started investigating all sorts of holes in the ground . Those with
foresight were already teaching their sons to look for treasure,
because t hey thought it a very good profession.
Years later their grandsons were still looking for treasure; they
bought metal detectors from the Ukrainians at the market and
waded through waist-high grass, as if they were examining the
ground through enormous magnifying-glasses. They spent their
afternoons loitering outside the shop with bottles of warm beer,
discussing the fact that yet another German coach had stopped
on the road, and some of the Germans had gone creeping about
in the bushes behind the church. Someone had seen them that
night , shining torches and quietly calling to each other in
excited whispers. In the morning there was a freshly dug hole in
that spot.
The greatest treasure hunter of all was old Poploc h. He
looked for treasure the way o ther people looked for mushrooms, and in both cases you have to have a nose for it. E'ery solid object in the Poplochs' house came from his treasure hunting - brass pots, plates and crockery, including a set of tiny cups so dainty that no one knew what to drink out of them.
Anything that was subject to decay or putrefaction, howe'er,
had to be bought.
Poploch used to wander nonchalantly ahou t the fields and
copses, staring at the sky as if scenting out tomorrow's weather.
Then suddenly he'd come across a stone lying on the boundary
between two fields, walk right round it and feel it, then dash
home for his pickaxe and spade. Under this sort of stone he
would find a suitcase fu ll of cutlery, or a pot full of Nazi army
badges. Two or three times in his life Poploch found a gun
Each time he took it home, cleaned it, showed his wife and
daughter how to put on the safety catch and hid it i n the attic with a gun in the house he felt safer. He had found a box fu ll llf
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stamp albums and drove to Walbrzych now and then to sell a
few German stamps. He also sold apparently useless old
objects, like wire-framed spec tacles, to one o f the antique
shops there.
But when he found a real piece of treasure he didn't realize
what it was. What would you think if you found a wooden box
with iron fittings containing twenty-four place settings made of
light metal, most of it coated in verdigris or tarnished? It was
quite a nice set of plates, mugs, forks, knives, spoons and teaspoons, as well as some saucepans and pots with wooden handles. Mrs Poploch used to boil milk in them - they were
really solid and never got burned. They stacked all these items in
the sideboard, where they sat quietly for many a long year, until
martial law, when a dealer in old furniture came by and happened to notice the milk pan. He looked on the bottom for a mark, but he didn't say whether he had found one. When
Poploch showed him the whole sideboard full of the rest of the
service, the dealer went silent for a moment, then offered him an
enormous sum of money out of his own pocket. The Poplochs
didn't bother to haggle; only their daughter was sorry to part
with the silvery gleam of the pots and pans that, like the glow of
the television, used to fill the room of an evening. But for the
same amount she bought herself a living-room suite in Nowa
Ruda, and still had enough left over for a three-day office outing
to Rome.
I f you had X-ray eyes and could light up the earth like the
human body, what would you see there? Bones of rock, the clay
of the earth's internal
organs, livers of granite and hearts of sandstone, and the intestines of underground rivers, and some items of treasure buried in the ground, like implants or splinters of
shrapnel.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
247
D a h l i a s
Marta was sitting among the dahlias. I could see her head, and I
waved to her, but she didn't notice. She was poking about in the
leaves, tying them back perhaps, or maybe flicking the snails off
them. She planted the rhizomes in spring and has taken almost
as much care of them as of her rhubarb. They bloomed i n
August , and their petals were s o even that I felt like counting
them. Where do they get their perfect symmetry? Mana says
dahlias are always more popular with children than adults. Why
is that? No one knows. 'Adults prefer roses,' says Marta, because
roses are so unpredictable.
I'd like to be old like Marta. Old age seems to be the same
everywhere, consisting of long mornings, pleasantly protracted
afternoons spent watching a sluggish TV serial with the blinds
drawn down while the sun stands still above the rooftops. A n
expedition t o the shop i s a major event still being commented
on over dinner. Being old means washing the plates ca refully.
and collecting crumbs from the table in nylon bags for twiceweekly outings to feed the pigeons in the park. Old age means inspecting the wound on the stalk of a croton that has lost a leaf
in the night , shaking the aphids off the velvety leaves of a hibiscus, or putting the napkins straight; admiring the beet root in the vegetable patch for managing to grow so large, listening to
the radio with your hands idle, or planning some buuon-sort ing
for tomorrow. It also means worrying about the electricity hi ll
that came yesterday, watching the postman as he zigzags fmm
door to door, staring at the sky from the kitchen wi ndow and
knowing every phase of the sun. It means ope n i ng the fridge
casually to reassure yoursel f it's not empty, care fully tearing
leaves fro m the calendar and put ting them in a drawe r. keeping
museumfuls of old newspapers, and putting nwthh;d J.., anwng
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0 I g a To k a r c z u k
dresses that have gone brown with age, and are too small or too
large to fit.
Then I realized that it's not that I want to be old - it's not a
particular age I'm longing for, but a certain way of life, one that's
reserved for old age, perhaps. It involves not taking action, but
if you do, doing it slowly, as if it's not the result of the action that
matters, but the actual movement, the rhythm and melody of the
movement. It means watching the ebb and flow of time, but no
longer having the courage to go with the tide, or against it. It
means ignoring time, and doing nothing, just counti ng the
strokes of the living-room clock, the pit-a-pat of pigeons' feet on
the window-sill, and the beats of your heart - and then immediately forgetting them all. It means not longing or thirsting for anything - at most, it might mean looking forward to a holiday;
after all, that's what holidays are for. Being old means swallowing your spittle and feeling it slip down your throat, or touching the skin on your hand and feeling how icy smooth it has
become. It means cuddling up to your own knees, or remembering something in pedantic detail, from start to finish, until you nod off out of boredom.
The white fuzz on Marta's h ead shone silver among the
flowers. It wasn't moving; maybe Marta thought that by keeping still she might defeat the hot weather. Maybe she was counting the flower petals, or maybe their beauty had simply
taken her breath away. Suddenly, for a brief i nstant, I knew
exactly what she was thinking. The thought appeared in my
head, pushed its way forward among my own, exploded and
vanished. Surprised, I froze on the spot with my hand raised to
my eyes.
Marta was thinking, 'The most beau tiful petals are the
ones chewed jagged by snails. The most beautiful are the least
perfect.'
H o u s c o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
249
Stuffed amanitas
three large fresh amanita caps
five hundred grams of dried amanita
two rolls
a glass of milk
one onion
parsley tops without stalhs
a whole egg
an egg yolk
breadcrumbs
salt and pepper to taste
Soak the rolls in the milk. Fry the onion in fat , add the
soaked and finely chopped dried mushrooms, beat in the
egg yolk, add the chopped parsley, and season the stuffing
mixture to taste. Coat the mushroom caps in egg and
breadcrumbs and fry until golden. Fill with stuffing and
bake au gratin in the oven.
A h e a n d a s h e
They came here just after the war, as evacuees from t he cast.
They fell in love - amid empty houses and empty streets, their
empty hearts were ready for love. Nothing existed properly yet it was all just starting to gear up for normal existence . Trains ran without a set timetable, someone still fired t he occasional shot at
night, and it was hard to understand the German signs ahm-e the
broken shop windows.
Her slender, wel l-groomed hands, that c'c n the war had n"t
ruined , found work a mong the l i t t l e medicine bot t l r.., in a
2 50
pharmacy embellished with Asclepius's serpent. For the first few
months she stuck on German labels and wrote in the Polish
names. He meanwhile, in his glossy knee-high boots, was busy
reviving the mine. They got married two months after meeting,
and were allocated a house, into which they moved furniture
from some abandoned flats near the marketplace - a mahogany
sideboard decorated with little turrets, huge still-lifes in heavy
frames, a desk full of papers and photographs that she used to
light the fire, and some leather chairs with worn, shiny arms.
Both of them had always dreamed of such a home; it had a
narrow stairwell lit by colourful stained-glass panels in the front
door, a solid staircase with a handrail, a hall full of mirrors too
huge to have been looted, a living-room with a veranda and
sliding doors, and a large cool kitchen with tiled walls. The tiles
showed rural scenes - a windmill in a cobalt blue landscape, a
village by a pond, and hills criss-crossed by paths. The pattern
repeated every few tiles, giving the room order. Each thing had
to have its own special place, even the marble paperweight
shaped like a scorpion .
From then o n they were always attracted b y pretty things:
beautiful flats, and eye-catching clothes in the latest fashion -
they were so elegant and refined, the opposite of uniforms,
wartime rags and canvas knapsacks slung across shoulders. In
the afternoons they went to neglected gardens and dug up flowers
they couldn't name. They planted them in borders around their
house like fortifications. Now as they played whist in the evenings
they could smell the scent of the flowers, but half-way through
dealing out the cards they'd want to go to bed and make love.
He wa
s quickly promoted , and moved from the mine to
Blachobyt, the biggest enterprise in town. She became manageress of the pharmacy. They went on shopping expeditions to Swidnica and Wrodaw. They often went out walking, to show
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
25 1
themselves to the town, and so the town could show itself to
them.
As they sauntered about in their bright, clean, fashionable
clothes that seemed to give their faces a heavenly glow, the very
sight of this self-possessed couple made you feel like kneeling
down on the pavement at their feet and crossing yourseiL
They didn't want children from the start. They were careful,
took precautions and felt somehow superior to all those couples
who lost control and got into trouble. They thought it banal to
live like that, to produce a child and watch everything become an
everyday routine - a stink in the kitchen of milk and piss, nappies
drying in the bathroom, and an ironing-board and its unsightly
metal frame as a new, permanent fixture in the living-room. I t
meant having to queue for veal, go t o the doctor, worry about
milk teeth and whether they'd come through yet. 'We're doing so
well,' he whispered in her ear and, snuggling up to his manly
chest with the scars she never asked about, she added, 'How
could I share my love for you?' 'We'd be torn apart if we had to
love someone else too - it would take up all our time and affection .' So condom wrappers lay scattered by their bed, and a douche stood on the little shelf in the bathroom - vulgar evidence
of the fact that they had their lives under control, which meant
they were free, really and truly free. They were among the first in
town to have a car, and they used to drive to Klodzko, sometimes
all the way to Wrodaw, to go to the theatre, or the tai lor's for fi ttings when they needed a new suit , or a beautiful d ress with a froth of petticoats. Whenever other couples, painfully growmg
older, asked them about children, they replied in unison: "\'by on
earth have children in such uncertain t imes, in a part of the country that still doesn't fully belong to us. after all that happened during the war, after what they shmved us at the cinema about the
camps. What on earth should we have children forr
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