THE TIME OF ELI
“Go away. If I see you, I can’t sleep,” Genowefa told him.
“And if I don’t see you, I can’t live.”
She gazed at him with her light grey eyes and again he felt her touch the very centre of his soul with that look of hers. She put down her buckets and brushed a strand of hair from her brow.
“Bring the buckets and come down to the river with me.”
“What will your husband say?”
“He’s at the manor.”
“What will the workmen say?”
“You’re helping me.”
Eli grabbed the buckets and followed her down the stony track.
“You’ve grown into a man,” said Genowefa without turning round.
“Do you think about me when we don’t see each other?”
“I think about you whenever you think about me. Every day. I dream about you.”
“Oh God, why don’t you end it?” Eli abruptly put the buckets down on the path. “What sin have I or my fathers committed? Why must I suffer so?”
Genowefa stopped and looked at her feet.
“Don’t blaspheme, Eli.”
For a while they said nothing. Eli picked up the buckets and they went onwards. The path widened, so now they could walk abreast of each other.
“We won’t be seeing each other any more, Eli. I’m pregnant. I’m going to have the child in autumn.”
“It ought to be my child.”
“It has all become clear and sorted itself out…”
“Let’s run away to the city, to Kielce.”
“… Everything pushes us apart. You’re young, I’m old. You’re a Jew and I’m a Pole. You’re from Jeszkotle, I’m from Primeval. You’re single, and I’m married. You’re mobile, I’m fixed to the spot.”
They stepped onto the wooden pier, and Genowefa started removing the laundry from the buckets and plunging it into the cold water. The dark water rinsed out the light soapsuds.
“It was you that led me astray,” said Eli.
“I know.”
She put down the laundry, and for the first time leaned her head against his shoulder. He could smell the fragrance of her hair.
“I fell in love with you as soon as I saw you. Instantly. Love like that never ends,” she said.
“What is love?”
She didn’t answer.
“I can see the mill from my windows,” said Eli.
THE TIME OF FLORENTYNKA
People think madness is caused by a great, dramatic event, some sort of suffering that is unbearable. They imagine you go mad for some reason – because of being abandoned by a lover, because of the death of someone you love, or the loss of a fortune, a glance at the face of God. People also think madness strikes suddenly, all at once, in unusual circumstances, and that insanity falls on a person like a net, fettering the mind and muddling the emotions.
But Florentynka had gone mad in the normal course of things, you could say for no reason at all. Long ago she might have had reasons for madness – when her husband drowned in the White River while drunk, when seven of her nine children died, when she had miscarriage after miscarriage, when she got rid of the ones she didn’t miscarry, and the two times when she almost died as a result, when her barn burned down, when the two children left alive deserted her and disappeared into the world.
Now Florentynka was old, and had all her experiences behind her. Skinny as a rake and toothless, she lived in a wooden cottage by the Hill. Some of her cottage windows looked onto the forest, and others onto the village. Florentynka had two cows left which fed her, and also fed her dogs. She had a small orchard full of maggoty plums, and in summer some large hydrangea bushes bloomed in front of her house.
Florentynka went mad without anyone noticing. First her head ached and she couldn’t sleep at night. The moon was disturbing her. She told the neighbours it was watching her, that its vigilant gaze came through the walls and windowpanes, and its glowing light left traps for her in the mirrors, windowpanes, and reflections in water.
Then, in the evenings, Florentynka started going outside and waiting for the moon. It rose above the common, always the same, though in a different form. Florentynka shook her fist at it. People saw this fist raised at the sky and said: she’s gone mad.
Florentynka’s body was small and thin. After her period of non-stop child-bearing she was left with a round belly which now looked comical, like a loaf of bread stuffed under her skirt. After this time of child-bearing womanhood she did not have a single tooth left, true to the saying: “One child – one tooth.” Everything costs something. Florentynka’s breasts – or rather what time does with a woman’s breasts – were long and flat. They nestled against her body. Their skin was like tissue paper for wrapping the decorations after Christmas, and the fine blue veins were visible through it – a sign that Florentynka was still alive.
And those were days when women died sooner than men, mothers sooner than fathers, wives sooner than husbands, because they had always been the vessels that secreted mankind. Children hatched out of them like chicks from eggs. Then the egg had to find a way to glue itself back together. The stronger the woman, the more children she bore, and so the weaker she became. In the forty-fifth year of life, freed from the endless round of child-bearing, Florentynka’s body reached its own particular nirvana of sterility.
Ever since Florentynka had gone mad, cats and dogs had started frequenting her yard. Soon people began to treat her as a refuge for their consciences, and instead of drowning the kittens or puppies, they tossed them under the hydrangea bushes. At Florentynka’s hands, the two feeder-cows nourished a whole pack of animal foundlings. Florentynka always treated animals with respect, as she did people. In the morning she said “good day” to them, and whenever she put down a bowl of milk for them, she never forgot to say “bon appetit.” What’s more, she never called them just “dog” or “cat,” because it sounded as if she were talking about objects. She said “Mr Dog” and “Mr Cat,” like Mr Malak or Mr Chlipala.
Florentynka didn’t regard herself as a lunatic at all. The moon was persecuting her, like any normal persecutor. But one night something strange happened.
As usual when there was a full moon, Florentynka took her dogs and went out onto the hillside to curse the moon. The dogs lay down around her in the grass, and she shouted into the sky:
“Where is my son? How did you seduce him, you fat, silver toad? You beguiled my old man and dragged him into the water! I saw you in the well today, I caught you red-handed – you poisoned our water…”
A light went on in the Serafins’ house and a man’s voice shouted into the darkness.
“Shut up, you mad woman! We’re trying to sleep.”
“So go to sleep, sleep yourselves to death. Why on earth were you born if you’re only going to sleep?”
The voice fell silent, and Florentynka sat on the ground and stared at the silvery face of her persecutor. It was furrowed with wrinkles, rheumy-eyed, with marks left by some sort of cosmic cowpox. The dogs lay on the grass, and the moon was reflected in their dark eyes too. They sat quietly, and then the old woman laid a hand on the head of the big shaggy bitch. Just then she saw in her mind a thought that wasn’t hers, not even a thought, but the outline of a thought, an image, an impression. This something was alien to her thinking, not just because – as she sensed – it came from outside, but because it was completely different: monotone, distinct, deep, sensual, scented.