I trudged into the house, and he followed me. He made himself comfortable on the terrace and lapped up half a litre of compote. As I watched him drink, it occurred to me that I could have mixed extract of lily-of-the-valley into his compote, or powdered some of the sleeping pills that Ali had prescribed for me and added those. And once he’d fallen asleep, I could have locked him in the boiler room and kept him prisoner for some time on bread and water. Or vice versa – I could have fattened him up and checked each day by the thickness of a finger whether he was fit to be roasted yet. He’d have learned respect.
‘There’s nothing natural about nature any more,’ he said, and at that point I saw who this forester really was: just another official. ‘It’s too late. The natural processes have gone wrong, and now we must keep it all in control to make sure there’s no catastrophe.’
‘Are we in danger of a Catastrophe because of the Cucujus beetle?’
‘Of course not. We need timber for stairs and floors, furniture and paper. What do you imagine? Do you think we’re going to tiptoe about the forest because Cucujus haematodes is reproducing there? We have to shoot the foxes, or else their population will grow so large that they’ll be a threat to other species. A few years ago there were so many hares that they were destroying the crops…’
‘We could scatter contraceptives to stop them from multiplying instead of killing them.’
‘Do you realise how much that costs? And it’s not effective. One gets too little, another gets too much. We have to keep some sort of order, seeing the natural one no longer exists.’
‘Foxes…’ I began, with the noble Consul in mind, going to the Czech Republic and back again.
‘Well, quite,’ he interrupted me. ‘Can you imagine what a hazard those foxes released from the farm present, for example? Luckily some of them have been caught now and taken to another farm.’
‘No,’ I said with a groan. I found this thought unbearable, but at once consoled myself with the idea that at least they’d known a little freedom.
‘They weren’t suited to life at liberty, Mrs Duszejko. They would have perished. They didn’t know how to hunt, their digestive systems were altered, their muscles were weak. What use would their beautiful fur be to them at liberty?’
He cast me a look, and I saw that the pigment in his irises was very unevenly distributed. His pupils were completely normal, round, just like yours and mine.
‘Don’t get so upset about things. Don’t take the whole world on your shoulders. It’ll all be fine,’ he said, getting up from his chair. ‘All right, off to work. We’re going to take down those spruce trees. Would you like to buy some wood for the winter? It’d be a bargain.’
I refused. Once he was gone, I felt the weight of my own body acutely, and had no desire at all to go to a party, least of all the boring mushroom pickers’ ball. People who spend all day tramping about the forest in search of mushrooms are bound to be deadly boring.
I felt pretty hot and uncomfortable in my costume; my tail trailed on the ground and I had to be careful not to tread on it. I drove the Samurai up to Oddball’s house and admired his peonies while I waited for him. He soon appeared in the doorway. I was speechless with wonder. He was wearing black lace-up boots, white stockings and a sweet flowery dress with a little apron. On his head, tied under his chin with a bow, was a little red hood.
He was in a bad mood. He settled in the passenger seat and didn’t say a single word the whole way to the firehouse. He held his red headgear on his knees and only put it back on once we had stopped outside the firehouse.
‘As you can see, I have absolutely no sense of humour,’ he said.
Everyone had come straight from a special mass for the mushroom pickers, and the toasts were just starting. The President was eagerly joining in with these toasts, so very sure of his own splendid appearance that he had simply come in a suit, and thus was dressed up as himself. Most of the partygoers were only now getting changed in the toilet; they wouldn’t have dared go to church in their costumes. But the priest, Father Rustle, was here as well, with his unhealthy complexion, and in his black cassock he too looked as if he were only disguised as a priest. Invited as guests, the Village Housewives’ Circle sang some folk songs, and then came the turn of the band, consisting of one man who artfully handled a device with a keyboard, managing to simulate all the best-known hits quite well.
That’s what it was like. The music was loud and intrusive. It was hard to talk over it, so everyone set to work on the salads, hunter’s stew and slices of cold meat. There were bottles of vodka standing in small crocheted baskets made to look like various species of mushroom. After some food and several glasses of vodka, Father Rustle got up from the table and crossed himself. Only then did people start to dance, as if the priest’s presence had made them feel awkward until now. The sounds echoed off the high ceiling of the old firehouse and came hammering down on the dancers.
Near me sat a petite woman in a white blouse, straight-backed and tense. She reminded me of Oddball’s Dog, Marysia – she was just as nervous and tremulous. Earlier I had seen her go up to the tipsy President and talk to him a while. He leaned over her, and then scowled, losing patience. He grabbed her by the arm and must have squeezed it tight, because she flinched. Then he waved a hand, as if shooing away an annoying Insect, and disappeared among the dancing couples. So I guessed she must be his wife. She went back to the table and poked at the stew with a fork. And since Oddball was having immense success as Little Red Riding Hood, I moved over to her and introduced myself. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, and the shadow of a smile appeared on her sad face. We tried to have a conversation, but the noise of the music was now augmented by the thunder of dance steps on the wooden floor. Thud, thud, thud. To understand what she was saying I had to stare closely at her lips. I understood that she was anxious to drag her husband home as soon as possible. Everyone knew the President was pretty good at carousing, and had a wild, typically Slavic streak, dangerous for himself and others. Afterwards it was necessary to hush up his antics. It turned out I was teaching their youngest daughter English, and that made the conversation easier, especially as the daughter regarded me as ‘cool’. It was a very nice compliment.
‘Is it true that you found our Commandant’s body?’ the woman asked me, while trying to spot the tall figure of her husband.
I confirmed that I had.
‘Weren’t you afraid?’
‘Of course I was.’
‘Do you know, all those things have happened to my husband’s friends. He was closely bound up with them. I think he’s afraid too, though I’m not entirely sure what sort of business they had in common. Just one thing bothers me…’ She hesitated, and fell silent. I looked at her, waiting for the end of the sentence, but she just nodded and I saw tears in her eyes.
The music became even brisker and noisier, for now they were playing ‘Hey, Falcons’. Everyone who hadn’t yet danced leaped to their feet as if scalded and headed for the dance floor. I wasn’t going to try making myself heard over the one-man band.
When her husband came into view for a while with an attractive Gypsy, she tugged at my paw and said: ‘Let’s go outside for a cigarette.’
The way she said it implied that whether I smoked or not was neither here nor there. So I didn’t protest, though I’d given up smoking a decade ago.
As we pushed our way through the now delirious crowd, we were jostled and impulsively invited to dance. The merry mushroom pickers’ ball had changed into a bacchanal. We found it a relief to stand outside, in a pool of light streaming from the firehouse windows. It was a wet, jasmine-scented June evening. Warm rain had just stopped falling but the sky hadn’t brightened at all. It looked as if it were just about to start pouring again. I remembered evenings like this one from childhood, and suddenly I felt sad. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on talking to this anxious, disoriented woman.