As God could read Kurt’s thoughts like a map and was in the habit of fulfilling his wishes, He allowed him to stay in Primeval forever. He set aside for him one of those single, random bullets that they say are carried by God.
Before the people from Primeval dared to bury the corpses left after the January offensive, spring had set in, and so no one recognised Kurt in the decaying corpse of a German soldier. He was buried in an alder grove right by the priest’s meadows and lies there to this day.
THE TIME OF GENOWEFA
Genowefa was washing her white linen in the Black River. Her hands were going numb with cold. She raised them high towards the sun. Between her fingers she could see Jeszkotle. She saw four army trucks drive past Saint Roch’s chapel and enter the market square. Then they disappeared behind the chestnut trees by the church. As she plunged her hands into the water again, she heard shots. The current tore the sheet from her grip as the single shots changed into a rattle, and Genowefa’s heart began to pound. She ran along the riverbank, chasing the drifting white cloth, until it disappeared around a bend.
A cloud of smoke appeared over Jeszkotle. Genowefa stood helplessly on the spot, which was equidistant to her home, to the bucket full of linen, and to burning Jeszkotle. She thought of Misia and the children. Her mouth went dry as she ran to fetch the bucket.
“Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle, Virgin Mary of Jeszkotle…” she repeated over and over, glancing in despair at the church on the other side of the river. It was still there as before.
The trucks drove onto the common land. Soldiers poured out of one and formed a double file. Then the others appeared, their tarpaulin covers flapping. A column of people emerged from the shadow of the chestnut trees. They were running, stumbling and getting up, carrying suitcases and pushing barrows. The soldiers started pushing the people into the vehicles. It was all happening so quickly that Genowefa couldn’t comprehend the events she was witnessing. She raised a hand to her eyes because the setting sun was dazzling her, and only then did she see old Szlomo in an unbuttoned gabardine, the Gertzes’ and Kindels’ fair-haired children, Mrs Szenbert in a sky-blue dress, her daughter carrying a baby, and the little rabbi, who was being held up by the arms. And she saw Eli, as clear as day, holding his son by the hand. And then there was some confusion and the crowd broke through the line of soldiers. People started running in all directions, and those who were already in the trucks jumped out of them. From the corner of her eye Genowefa saw fire emerging from the barrels, then at once she was deafened by the thunder of multiple bursts of machine-gun fire. The figure of a man, from which she had not dropped her gaze, staggered and fell, just like others, like most of the others. Genowefa dropped the bucket and waded into the river. The current tugged at her skirt and tried to trip her feet. The machine guns fell silent, as if they were exhausted.
Once Genowefa was on the other bank of the Black River, one loaded truck was already driving towards the road. People were silently getting into another one. She saw them giving each other a helping hand. One of the soldiers was finishing off the people lying there with single shots. The next truck set off.
A figure got up from the ground and tried to run towards the river. Genowefa knew at once that it was Rachela, the Szenberts’ daughter, Misia’s friend. She was carrying a baby. One of the soldiers knelt down and unhurriedly aimed at the girl. She tried to dodge awkwardly. The soldier fired and Rachela stopped. For a moment she rocked sideways, and then fell. Genowefa watched as the soldier ran up to her and turned her on her back with his foot. Then he fired into the white bunting and went back to the trucks.
Genowefa’s legs gave way beneath her, so she had to kneel down.
Once the trucks had driven off, she struggled to get up and walk across the common land. Her legs were heavy, like stone, refusing to obey her. Her wet skirt kept dragging her to the ground.
Eli was lying nestled into the grass. For the first time in many years Genowefa saw him close up once more. She sat down beside him, and never stood on her own legs again.
THE TIME OF THE SZENBERTS
The next night Michał woke Paweł, and the two of them went off somewhere. Misia could not go back to sleep. She thought she could hear shots, faraway, anonymous, sinister. Her mother was lying still on the bed with her eyes open. Misia checked to see if she was breathing.
At dawn the men came back with some people. They led them down to the cellar and locked it.
“They’ll kill us all,” she said into Paweł’s ear when he came back to bed. “They’ll stand us against the wall and burn down the house.”
“It’s the Szenberts’ son-in-law and his sister and her children. No one else survived,” he replied.
In the morning Misia went down to the cellar with some food. She opened the door and said “Good day.” She saw them alclass="underline" a stout woman, a teenage boy, and a little girl. She didn’t know them. But she knew the Szenberts’ son-in-law, Rachela’s husband. He was standing with his back to her, monotonously banging his head against the wall.
“What’s going to happen to us?” asked the woman.
“I don’t know,” replied Misia.
They lived in the fourth, darkest cellar until Easter. Only once did the woman and her daughter come upstairs to bathe. Misia helped the woman to comb her long black hair. Michał went down to them each evening with food and maps. On the second day of the holiday he took them to Taszów by night.
A few days later he was standing by the fence with Krasny, the neighbour. They were talking about the Russkies, and the reports that they weren’t far off. Michał didn’t ask about the Krasnys’ son, who was in the partisans. No one spoke about that. Right at the end, Krasny turned around and said:
“The news is there are some murdered Jews lying by the road to Taszów.”
THE TIME OF MICHAŁ
In the summer of 1944 the Russians arrived from Taszów. All day they trailed along the Highway. Everything was covered in dust: their trucks, tanks, guns, wagons, and rifles, their uniforms, hair, and faces – they looked as if they’d emerged from under the ground, as if a fairy-tale army put to sleep in the lands of the ruler of the East had risen again.
People lined up along the road and joyfully greeted the head of the column. The soldiers’ faces didn’t respond. Their gazes travelled indifferently across the faces of their welcomers. The soldiers had bizarre uniforms, overcoats with ragged hems, from under which there was the occasional flash of a surprising colour – magenta trousers, the black of evening-dress waistcoats, and the gold of trophy watches.
Michał wheeled Genowefa’s Bath chair onto the porch.
“Where are the children? Michał, fetch the children,” Genowefa kept mumbling.
Michał went out beyond the fence and seized Antek and Adelka tightly by the hand. His heart was pounding.
He was seeing not this, but that other war. Once again the vast stretches of the country he had once crossed appeared before his eyes. It must have been a dream, because only in dreams does everything keep recurring like a refrain. He kept dreaming the same dream, vast, silent and terrible, like columns of troops, like explosions muffled by pain.
“Granddad, when’s the Polish army coming?” asked Adelka, raising a flag she had made from a stick and a rag.
He took it away from her and threw it into the lilac tree, then took the children home. He sat down by the kitchen window and gazed at Kotuszów and Papiernia, where the Germans were still stationed. He realised that the Wola Road was now the front line. Exactly.
Izydor came rushing into the kitchen.
“Papa, come quickly! Some officers have stopped here and they want to talk to you. Come now!”
Michał went stiff. He let Izydor lead the way down the front steps. He saw Misia, Genowefa, the Krasnys from next door, and a small group of children from all over Primeval. In the middle stood an open-topped army car with two men sitting in it. A third was talking to Paweł. As usual, Paweł looked as if he understood everything. When he saw his father-in-law, he livened up.
“This is our father. He knows your language. He fought in your army.”
“In our army?” said the Russian in amazement.
Michał saw the man’s face and felt himself flush. His heart was in his throat, beating fast. He knew he had to say something now, but his tongue was tied. He turned it in his mouth like a hot potato, trying to make it form some words, if only the simplest, but he knew nothing, he had forgotten.
The young officer stared at him in curiosity. The black hem of a tailcoat was sticking out from under his soldier’s greatcoat. A joyful glint appeared in his slanting eyes.
“Well, Father, what’s up with you? What’s up with you?” he said in Russian.
Michał felt as if all this, the slant-eyed officer, this road, these columns of dusty soldiers, all this had already happened before, that even the “what’s up with you?” had happened before. He felt as if time had gone into a spin. He was seized with horror.
“My name is Mikhail Jozefovich Niebieski,” he said, his voice trembling, in perfect Russian.