child.
Tuntzel insisted on staying at their graveside. He built himself
a wooden shelter and sat waiting for an angel to come and tell
him what to do next. Meanwhile, every few days the woodcutters came to see him. They brought him things to eat and marvelled at his knives. He swapped them a knife for an axe and
cut down the trees around his cottage, used the horse to pull the
roots out of the ground, and enclosed the field he'd made with a
wooden fence. At night he could .hear packs of wolves howling
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
287
as they crossed the mountains, but he wasn't afraid . Before
winter set i n he made a trip to his old settlement and 'isited his
family. Among other things, he told them he needed a dog and a
new wife. But the first winter he survived alone, though it co<,t
him a great deal. He spent the whole time chopping wood to
save himself from freezing, and he set snares for skinny hares
and deer. In spring his relatives brought him what he had asked
for. The woman was called Dorota; she was small, thin and re ticent. Tuntzel was afraid he would never come to lo'e her, but in time they did become close. Meanwhile the dog grew up to be
a wonderful companion. He was fast and strong, and could hunt
by himself; Ttintzel felt entirely safe when he went into the
forest with that dog at his side.
Look how it all starts from one single man. Each year Tuntzcl
and Dorota had a child, so with the help of the woodcuuers he
built a new cottage. He and his wife lllrned the whole hillside
into fertile fields, and sowed buckwheat and oats by the stream.
The woodcutters built their own cottages nearby, ami brought
women to live in them. When Tuntzel was old, the 'alley had
turned into a small settlement, which they called '1:eurode·.
meaning 'new clearing'.
One day, Ttintzel had a strange experience. In a freshly cut
clearing on the other side of the stream he saw a single tree that
the axes must have forgotten. I ntrigued, he went closer and
took a good look. It was a spruce, a fine one, tall and stra1ght,
the sort that are used to build houses. He walked aro u nd it and
noticed an object embedded in the bark; it looked as if it were
made of iron, and it shone like a burnished blade. First he prodded it, then tried to prise it up with a fingernai l, then with a stick, and finally with one of h is k n ives, hut to no a'a il. rhe
solid body of the tree had a firm grip on the ohjrct. as il t h e
metal and the tree had grown into each other, s o there " a" IHl
288
0 I g a To k a r c z u k
way of separating them. Tuntzel decided that at last this was a
sign - even if no angel had actually come and pointed out the
spot with a blazing finger, now he knew where to build the
church. He went to fetch his neighbours and together they felled
the great spruce. That night Tuntzel finally succeeded in
extracting the mysterious object from the tree. I t was a knife,
but not like the ones he made - i t was different. Its blade was
incomparably smoother, almost as smooth as a mirror - it
reflected the night sky. A tiny string of symbols carved into it,
however, meant nothing to Tuntzel, who knew no patterns
apart from the tracks of wolves and hares and the fascinating
shapes of snowflakes. But it wasn't the tree that was important,
or even the knife, but the spot it had identified. So they marked
out a rectangle on the ground and agreed unanimously to build
their church there.
A very long time after, when he was already so old that he got
everything confused, Tuntzel wondered if that tree really had
been growing there, or if perhaps he had seen a tree like that
with a knife forced into it when he was a little boy, somewhere
else entirely, and had then dreamed about it, because he always
had vivid dreams, as brilliant as a knife blade. He asked to be
buried with the knife he had discovered; unlike Tuntzel, its steel
blade had not aged at all. Before he died a kind-hearted literate
person read out to him the tiny row of symbols written there,
which formed the word SOLINGEN. This name meant nothing
to anyone.
Many centuries later a teacher at the N owa Ruda secondary
school presented a written proposal to the Town Council for a
monument to the Founder to be erected, but as this entire story,
like a good part of the history of the town, is recorded in
German rather than Polish, the petition was ignored and it all
came to nothing.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
2tN
T h e S a l v a t i o n M a c h i n e
The Cutlers had only one cosmological image , that o f t he
Salvation Machine. They used to draw it on the walls of their
houses and carve it on knife handles, and their infrequent children learned about i t from the tales told by the adults and drew pictures of it in the sand with sticks. It featured in the mournful
psalms they sang, which were so peculiar and sorrowful that
they alone could bear to listen.
The cosmic tool for salvation is rotary motion: both the
largest kind that turns distant stars on their orbits ami keeps the
zodiac and the entire universe in motion, and also the small
kind that activates man-made objects such as m i l l wheels.
crankshafts, clocks and cartwheels, and helps to grind poppy
seeds and make clay pots. I t also includes rotary motion on the
very smallest scale, oscillating within all the tiniest particles that
make up the world.
I would describe i t as follows: the sun, set in rotary motion at
the beginning of time, is like a gigantic vacuum cleaner
it
-
sucks light from matter and passes it on to t he orbits of planets
and the vast waterwheels of the zodiac. Their motion passes the
light on further, to the edges of the entire world, from where ib
light originates.
Light lives in the souls of people and animals, hiding there. 111
hibernation, as if shut in a box; the moon. meanwhile. is a transport ship - it carries t he souls of the dead from the eart h to the sun. I n the first half of each month it gat hers them up. get li ng
brighter and brighter, waxing until it is full. In the second hall 11f
the month it delivers them to the sun, so when the new moon
starts it has unloaded its cargo and is empty again. Then 11 '>It-.
between earth and sun like a silvery tan ker, 'Oid ami read' lor
its next task.
290
O l ga To k a r c z u k
The sun will go on and on, say the Cutlers' psalms, until it has
sucked up all the particles of ligh t and delivered them to the
Owner. Then it will come to an end, go dark and disintegrate ,
and with it the moon, and then the harmonies of the zodiac will
shatter into pieces. The whole great, elaborate cosmic machine
will screech to a halt and finally come crashing down. The galaxies won't be needed any more, and the outer edges of the world will end up at its centre.
We ' r e g o i n g , I s a i d , t o m o r r o w i s
A l l S a i n t s ' D ay
Mar
ta was sitting at the table rubbing her reddened eyes. Her
entire kitchen was incredibly clean; all the pots had been put away,
the oilcloth scrubbed, and the wooden floor polished to a shine.
She had even washed the windows and swept away all the cobwebs that caught the sun in summer. The stone window-sills looked sepulchral without the remains of a single dead moth. I had
brought her some leftover cake, which she devoured. Then she got
up and shuffled off to the other room; through the open door I
could see her immaculately made bed, all ready for the winter.
She brought out a wig, dark, almost black, made of finely
braided hair, exactly as I wanted. I put it on, and Marta smiled.
She had crumbs of poppy-seed cake on her lips.
'Wonderful,' she said, and showed me the mirror.
I loomed out of it fuzzy and alien, with a dark face - I didn't
recognize myself.
I plan to wear the wig instead of a cap. I'll put it on as soon as
I wake up, so I can get through the chilly rooms and reach the
bathroom unharmed . I might even sleep in it. I'll do my work
and plan the summer repairs in ,it, and I'll go out in it.
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
2g 1
I went over to Marta and hugged her. She came up to my
chin; she fel t as fragile and delicate as a parasol mushroom and
her short, white hair smelled of damp.
In the afternoon I went to say goodbye to her and to rem ind
her to light an All Saints' Day candle for us, in memory of t he
Frosts' child.
I went into her house, but it was empty. On the table lay a
threaded needle and that large pewter plate, the most touchable
thing in Marta's house. I sat down and waited for her, for about
an hour or two. I ran my finger along the elaborate metal pattern
on the plate. There were no flies buzzing and no flames crackling beneath the hotplate. It was so quiet that I could hear my own breathing.
I knew about the cellar door - it was behind me. It wa�
shut, but the padlocks were hanging open in the staple. I could
have stood up, opened the door and gone downstairs. I could haT
lain down beside her in the darkness and damp, a mong the
piles of potatoes waiting for spring. That's what ! was thin king,
but it's hard to think about anything properly in Marta's house ;
it's like a sponge that absorbs a thought before i t has a chance
to emerge.
Then I realized dusk had fallen; I hadn't even noticed it growing dark. I would have gone on sitting there, hypnot izing my�elf with my own breathing, and I would never haT awoken i f it
weren't for that old pewter plate, which was sh in i ng with a powerful, chilly glow, filling the whole ki tchen, i l l u m i na t i ng my hands and casting shadows on to things. It was reflect i ng all t he
past and future full moons, all the brigh t
all the
. starry sk ic�.
candle flames and lamps, and the cold stream of all sorb of ll u orescent lights.
292
O l g a To k a r c z u k
D i v i n a t i o n fro m t h e s k y
R.'s been telling me hmv when he was little he used to read the
clouds - at least that's how he remembers it.
As he saw them, the clouds formed into clear patterns - the
shapes of ammals, battleships and sailboats, flocks of white
sheep herded from below by a darker, swifter sheepdog, cars,
eYen fire engines, or monsters - snakes, dragons, huge chasmlike jaws on short legs, and winged, ethereal skeletons. Once he had started school he began to see letters and symbols too.
Sometimes arithmetical problems were solved right before h is
eyes - a washed-out Two would add itself to a pot-bellied
Three, and finally the wind would blow along a snaky shape
that was a Five. In time, more complex mathematical equations appeared. When he was in the second year at school, this was how he learned his multiplication tables. From his
window, which looked out on to the railway tracks, he could
see a bit of sky. On one side the clouds were always slightly reddish or orange, because they were lit up by the flames from the coking plant. On that vast blackboard he saw a whole skyful of
algebra . He had a particularly strong memory of Seven times
Eight, because that was the worst sum and the hardest to learn.
Seven reminded him of a bent croissant, and Eigh t of two little
round clouds joined together. After them came the result - a
Five, in the form of a slightly blurred hook, and an amazingly
sharp Six, the coiled exhaust fumes of a jet plane, perhaps. For
hours he'd sit at the window and gaze at the sky. In the seventh
year, when he first fell in love, he saw hearts and four-leafed
clovers. Later in life he used to see other signs - a peace symbol
the size of half the sky, slowly making its way across the city
from west to east, and a huge Tao symbol that he noticed over
the castle at Bolk6w while on a student outing. Finally the time
H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t
29 3
came to be occupied with more important things than staring at
the sky.
Lately R. has realized that right now, between the ages of
thirty and forty, is the best time in life for seeing this sort of
thing, so recently he bought a tripod from the Ukrainians at the
market, and as soon as spring comes he'll set up a camera on the
east-facing terrace. He'll aim the lens up at the sky, above the
crowns of the twin spruce trees, and leave it there until autumn.
Each day h e'll take one photograph, even when the sky is
shrouded in uniform grey. R. is certain that in autumn we'll have
a set of stills showing a rational sequence of skies, which is sure
to mean someth ing. I t'll be possible to put all the pictures
together like a jigsaw puzzle, or to load them one on top of
another in the computer, or to make one single sky out of them
with the help of a software programme. And then we'll know.
Document Outline
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Translator's Note
Epigraph
The dream
Marta
Whatsisname
Radio Nowa Ruda
Marek Marek
Dreams
The day of cars
Amos
Peas
Coellacanth
Guidebooks on Pietno
Velvet foot
On being a mushroom
Ego dorma et cor meum vigilat
The border
Who wrote the life of the saint and how he knew it all
Hens and cockerels
A dream from the Internet
Things forgotten
The Germans
Peter Dieter
Rhubarb
Cosmogonies
Who wrote the life of the saint and how he knew it all
Grass cake
A dream from the Internet
Ephemerides
The fire
Who wrote the life of the saint and how he knew it all
Grass alergy
Franz Frost
The ways Marta might die
The smell
The vision of Kummernis from Hilaria
Corpus Christi
A dream
The monster
Rain
&nbs
p; The flood
Nails
The clairvoyant
Mismancy
The Second-Hand Man
Whiteness
July full moon
Hearing
Who wrote the life of the saint and how he knew it all
A dream
Lurid boletus in sour cream
The heatwave
Words
Ergo Sum
Sorrow, and that feeling that's worse than sorrow
Two little dreams from the Internet
Cutting hair
Marta creates a typology
The mansion
My mansion
Roofs
The Cutlers
The forest that comes crashing down
The man with the chainsaw
Ergo Sum
Half of life takes place in the dark
Mushrooms
Who wrote the life of the saint and how he knew it all
The end
The aloe
The bonfire
To the Lord God from the Poles
The pewter plate
The nanny
Treasure hunting
Dahlias
A he and a she
Silence
A she and a he
The eclipse
Marta's awakening
Tidying up the attic
Nowa Ruda
The founder
The Salvation Machine
We're going, I said, tomorrow is All Saints' Day
Divination from the sky