House of Day, House of Night Read online

  were staring up into space. 'What a loser,' Vhatsisname said to

  himself, 'he couldn't even hang himself properly.'

  He took his bike and went home.

  During the night he felt a bit uneasy. He wondered i f Marek

  Marek's soul had gone to heaven or hell, or wherever a soul

  goes, if it goes anywhere at all.

  He woke up with a start at the first light of dawn, and saw

  Marek Marek standing by the stove, staring at him.

  Whatsisname lost his nerve. 'Please , I beg you, go away. This is

  my house. You've got a house o f your own.' The apparition

  didn't move; it kept staring straight at Whatsisname, but i ts

  weird gaze seemed to pass right through him.

  'Marek Marek, please go away,' repeated Whatsisname, but

  Marek Marek, or whoever it was, didn't react. Then, overcoming

  his fear of making any kind of movement, Whatsisname got out

  of bed and picked up a gumboot. Thus armed , he walked

  towards the stove, and the apparition disappeared right before

  his eyes. He blinked and went back to bed.

  In the morning on his way to fetch wood he looked through

  the window of Marek Marek's house again. Nothing had changed,

  the body was still lying in the same position, but today the face

  looked darker. Whatsisname spent the whole day carting wood

  down from the hills on the sledge he had made last summer. He

  brought down small birches that he had felled himself, and the

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t 9

  thick trunks of fallen spruces and beech trees. He stored them in

  the shed and got them ready to cut into smaller pieces. Then he

  whipped up the stove until the top plate was red hot. He made

  some potato soup for himself and his dogs, switched on the

  black-and-white television and watched the Oickering pictures as

  he ate. Not a word of it sank in. As he was getting into bed he

  crossed himself for the first time in decades, since his confirmation, or maybe since his wedding. This long-forgotten gesture prompted the idea that he should go and ask the priest about

  something like this.

  The next day he sheepishly hovered about outside the presbytery. Finally the priest came bowling along at high speed, sidestepping patches of melting snow on his way to the church.

  Whatsisname wasn't stupid, he didn't come straight out with it.

  'What would you do, Father, if you were haunted by a ghost?' he

  asked. The priest gave him a look of surprise and then his gaze

  wandered up to the church roof, where some endless repairs

  were under way. 'I'd tell it to go away,' he said. 'And what if the

  ghost was stubborn and wouldn't go away, then what would you

  do?' 'You have to be firm in all things,' replied the priest thoughtfully, and n imbly slipped past Whatsisname.

  That night everything happened the same as before.

  Whatsisname awoke suddenly, as if someone were calling him,

  sat up in bed and saw Marek Marek standing by the stove. 'Get

  out of here ! ' he shouted. The apparition didn't move, and

  Whatsisname even thought he could see an ironic smile on i ts

  dark, swollen face. To hell with you, why can't you let me sleep?

  Get lost!' said Whatsisname. He picked up the gumboot and

  mo'ed towards the stove. 'Will you please get out of my house ! '

  h e screamed, and the ghost vanished.

  On the third night the apparition didn't appear, and on the

  fourth day Marek Marek's sister found the body and raised the

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  Olg a To k a r c z u k

  alarm. The police arrived, wrapped Marek Marek up in black

  plastic and took him away. They questioned Whatsisname about

  where he had been and what he had been doing. He told them

  he hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. He also told

  them that when someone drinks like Marek Marek did, sooner

  or later it'll end like that. They agreed with him and left.

  Whatsisname took his bike and shambled off to Nowa Ruda.

  At the Lido restaurant he sat with a mug of beer in front of him

  and sipped it slowly. Of all his emotions, the strongest was

  relief.

  R a d i o N o w a R u d a

  The local radio station broadcasts twelve hours a day, mainly

  music. There's national news on the hour, and local news on the

  half hour. There's also a daily quiz, which almost always used to be

  won by the same person, a man called Wadera. He must have been

  immensely knowledgeable - he knew things that no one could

  have guessed. I promised myself that one day I'd find out who Mr

  Wadera was, where he lived and how he knew so much. I'd walk

  over the hills to Nowa Ruda to ask him something important, I

  don't know what. I imagined him casually picking up the phone

  each day and saying: 'Yes, I know the answer, it's Canis lupus, the

  largest member of the dog family,' or: The glaze used to coat

  ceramic tiles before firing is called "slip",' or: 'Pythagoras's teachers are thought to have been Pherecides, Hermodamas and Archemanes.' And so on, every day. The prizes are books from the

  local supplier. Mr Wadera must have quite a library.

  One day, just before setting the question , I heard the

  announcer say hesitantly: 'Mr Wadera, would you please not

  call us today?'

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t

  l l

  Between twelve and one a pleasant woman's voice reads a

  serialized novel. It's impossible not to listen to it, we all have to

  listen to every single novel because it's on when we're preparing

  the dinner, when we're peeling potatoes or making meatballs.

  Throughout April it was Anna Karcnina.

  "'He loves another woman, that is clearer still," she said to

  herself as she entered her own room. "I want love, and it is lacking. So everything is Hnished ! and it must be finished. But how?" she asked herself, and sat down in the armchair before

  the looking-glass.'

  Sometimes Marta comes over at noon and automatically starts

  helping with something, such as dicing the carrots.

  Marta listens quietly and solemnly, but she never says anything - about Anna Karo1ina, or any other novel read on the radio. I sometimes wonder if she can understand these stories

  made up of dialogue read out by a single voice, and think maybe

  she's only listening to individual words, to the melody of the language.

  People of Marta's age suffer from senility and Alzheimer's.

  Once I was weeding the kitchen garden when R. called me from

  the other side of the house. I hadn't had t ime to answer.

  'Is she there?' he asked Marta, who was standing where she

  could see both of us. She glanced at me and shouted in reply:

  'No, she's not here.'

  Then she calmly turned round and went home.

  M a re k M a r e k

  There was something beautiful about that child - that's what

  everyone said. Marek Marek had white-blonde hair and the face

  of an angel. His older sisters adored him. They used to push him

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  O l g a To k a r c z u k

  along the mountain paths in an old German pram and play with

  him as if he were a doll. His mother didn't want to stop breastfeeding him: as he sucked at her, she dreamed of turning into pure milk for him and flowing out of herself through her own


  nipple - that would have been better than her entire future as

  Mrs Marek. But Marek Marek grew up and stopped seeking her

  breasts. Old Marek found them i nstead, though, and made her

  several more babies.

  Despite being so lovely, little Marek Marek was a poor eater

  and cried at night. Maybe that was why his father didn't like

  him. Whenever he carne horne drunk he would start beating

  Marek Marek. If his mother came to his defence, his father

  would lay into her too, until they'd all escape upstairs, leaving

  old Marek the rest of the house to fill with his snoring. Marek's

  sisters felt sorry for their little brother, so they taught him to

  hide at an agreed signal and from the fifth year of his life Marek

  Marek sat out most of his evenings in the cellar. There he would

  cry silently, without any tears.

  There he realized that his pain did not come from the outside,

  but from inside, and had nothing to do with his drunken father

  or his mother's breast. It hurt for no particular reason , the way

  the sun rises each morning and the stars come out each night. It

  just hurt. He didn't know what it was yet, but sometimes he had

  a vague memory of a sort of warm, hot light drowning and dissolving the entire world. Vhere it came from, he didn't know. All he could remember of his childhood was eternal twilight, a darkened sky, the world plunged into gloom, the chill and misery of evenings without beginning or end. He also remembered the

  day electricity was brought to the village. He thought the pylons

  that carne marching over the hills from the neighbouring village

  were like the pillars of a vast church.

  Marek Marek was the first and only person from his village to

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t

  1 3

  subscribe to the district library i n N owa Ruda. Then he took to

  hiding from his father with a book, which gave him a lot of time

  for reading.

  The library in Nowa Ruda was housed in the old brewery

  building and it still smelled of hops and beer; the walls, Ooors

  and ceilings all gave off the same pungent odour - even the

  pages of the books reeked as if beer had been poured over them.

  Marek Marek liked this smell. At fifteen he got drunk for the

  first time. It felt good. He completely forgot about the gloom, he

  could no longer see the difference between dark and light. His

  body went slack and wouldn't obey him. He liked that, too. It

  was as if he could come out of his body and live alongside himself, without thinking or feeling anything.

  His older sisters got married and left home. One younger

  brother was killed by an unexploded bomb. The other was in a

  special school in Klodzko , so old Marek just had Marek Marek

  left to beat - for not shutting in the hens, for not mowing the

  grass short enough, for breaking the pivot off the threshing

  machine. But when Marek Marek was about twenty he hit his

  father back for the first time and from then on they beat each

  other up on a regular basis. Meanwhile, whenever Marek Marek

  had a little time and no money for drink, he read Stachura, the

  beat poet. The library ladies bought the collected works especially for him, covered in blue fabric that looked like jeans.

  Marek Marek was still as handsome as ever. H e had fa ir,

  shoulder-length hair and a smooth, girlish face. And he had very

  pale eyes, faded even, as if they had lost their colour through

  straining for light in dark cellars, as if they were worn out from

  reading all those blue-covered volumes. But women were afraid

  of him. Once, during a disco, he went outside with nne, dragged

  her into an elder bush and ripped off her blouse. It's a good

  thing she yelled, because some other boys ran out ami punched

  1 4 O l g a To k a r c z u k

  him. I3ut she liked him; maybe he just didn't know how to talk

  to women. Another time he got drunk and knifed a guy who was

  friendly with a girl he knew, as if he had exclusive rights over

  her. Afterwards, at home, he cried.

  He continued to drink, and he liked the way it felt when his

  legs made their own way across the hills while everything

  inside - and thus all the pain - stopped, as i f a switch had been

  snapped off and darkness had suddenly fallen. He liked to sit in

  the Lido pub amid the din and smoke and then suddenly to

  find himself, God knows how, in a field of flowering flax and to

  lie there until morning. To die. Or to drink at the j ubilatka

  and then suddenly to be snaking his way along the highway

  towards the village with a bloody face and a broken tooth. To

  be only partly alive, only partly conscious, slowly and gently

  ceasing to be. To get up in the morning and feel his head

  aching - at least he knew what hurt. To feel a thirst, and to be

  able to quench it.

  Finally Marek Marek caught up with his father. He gave the

  old man such a battering against a stone bench that he broke his

  ribs and knocked him out. When the police came they took

  Marek Marek away to sober up, then kept him in custody, where

  there was nothing to drink.

  Between the waves of pain in his head, in his drowsy, hungover

  state Marek Marek remembered that once, at the very beginning,

  he had fallen ; that once he had been high up, and now he was

  low down. He remembered the downward motion and the

  terror - worse than terror, there was no word for it. Marek

  Marek's stupid body mindlessly accepted his fear and began to

  tremble; his heart thumped fit to burst. But his body didn't know

  what it was taking upon itself - only an immortal soul could

  bear such fear. His body was choked by it, shrank into itself and

  struck against the walls of his tiny cell, foaming at the mouth.

  H o u s e o f D a y, H o u s e o f N i g h t

  1 5

  'Damn you, Marek!' shouted the warders. They pinned him to the

  ground, tied him up and gave him an injection.

  He ended up in the detox ward, where with other figures in

  faded pyjamas he shuffled along the wide hospital corridors and

  winding staircases. He stood obediently in line for his medicine

  and swallowed it down as if taking Communion. As he stared out

  of the window it occurred to him for the first time that his aim

  was to die as soon as possible, to free himself from this roLLen

  country, from this red-grey earth, from this overheated hospital,

  from these washed-out pyjamas, from this drugged-up body. From

  then on he devoted every single thought to contriving a way to

  die.

  One night he slashed his veins in the shower. The white skin

  on his forearm split open and Marek Marek's inside appeared. I t

  was red and meaty like fresh beef. Before losing consciousness

  he felt surprised because, God knows why, he thought he saw a

  light in there.

  Naturally he was locked up in isolation, a fuss was made and

  his stay in hospital was extended. He spent the whole winter

  there, and when he got back home he discovered that his parents

  had moved to their daughter's place in town and now he was

  alone. They had left him the horse, and he used it to brin
g down

  wood from the forest, which he chopped up and sold. He had

  money, so he could drink again.

  Marek Marek had a bird inside him - thats how he felt. But this

  wretched bird of his was strange, immaterial, unnameable and no

  more birdlike than he was himself. He felt drawn to things he

  didn't understand and was afraid of: to questions with no answer:

  to people in whose presence he always felt uncomfortable. He felt

  the urge to kneel clown and suddenly start praying in desperation ,

  not t o ask for anything i n his prayers, but just t o talk and talk and

  talk in the hope that someone might he listening.

  1 6 Ol g a Tokarczuk

  He hated this creature inside himself because it did nothing

  but increase his pain. If it weren't there, he would have drunk

  away quietly, sitting in front of the house and gazing at the

  mountain that rose before it. Then he would have sobered up

  and cured his hangover with the hair of the dog, then got drunk

  again without thinking, without guilt or decisions. The hideous

  great bird must have had wings. Sometimes it beat them blindly

  inside his body, flapping at its leash, but he knew its legs were

  fettered, maybe even tied to something heavy, because it could

  never fly away. My God, he thought, though he didn't believe in

  God at all, why am I being tortured by this thing inside me? The

  creature was immune to alcohol; it always remained painfully

  conscious; it remembered everything Marek Marek had done

  and everything he had lost, squandered or neglected; everything

  that had passed him by. 'Fuck it,' he mumbled drunkenly to

  Whatsisname, 'why does it torment me like this, what's it doing

  inside me?' But Whatsisname was deaf and didn't understand a

  thing. 'You've stolen my new socks,' he said. They were drying

  on the line.'

  The bird inside Marek Marek had restless wings, fettered legs

  and eyes filled with terror. Marek Marek assumed it was imprisoned inside him. Someone had incarcerated it in him, though he hadn't the faintest idea how that was possible. Sometimes, if he

  let his thoughts wander, he ran into those terrible eyes deep

  inside himself and heard a mournful, bestial lament. Then he

  would jump up and run blindly up the mountain, into the birch

  copses, along the forest paths. As he ran he looked up at the