Primeval and Other Times (2 page)

For an angel, events are something like a dream, or a film with no beginning or end. Angels are unable to get involved in them, they don’t need them for anything. A human being learns from the world, learns from events, learns knowledge about the world and about himself, is reflected in events, defines his own limits and potential, and names things for himself. An angel doesn’t have to source anything from the outside, but has knowledge through itself, it contains everything there is to know about the world and about itself within itself – that is how God has made it.

An angel doesn’t have an intellect like the human one, it doesn’t draw conclusions or make judgements. It doesn’t think logically. To some people an angel would seem stupid. But from the start an angel carries within it the fruit of the tree of knowledge, pure wisdom that can only be enriched by simple intuition. It is a mind devoid of reasoning, and so devoid of mistakes and the fear they produce, an intellect without the prejudices that come from erroneous perception. But like all other things created by God, angels are volatile. That explains why Misia’s angel was so often not there when she needed it.

When it wasn’t there, Misia’s angel would turn its gaze away from the terrestrial world and look at the other angels and other worlds, higher and lower, assigned to each thing on Earth, each animal and plant. It could see the vast ladder of existences, the extraordinary structure and the Eight Worlds contained within it, and it could see the Creator embroiled in creation. But anyone who thought Misia’s angel was gazing at the countenance of the Lord would be wrong. The angel could see more than a man, but not everything.

Mentally returning to other worlds, the angel had difficulty focusing attention on Misia’s world, which, like the world of other people and animals, was dark and full of suffering, like a murky pond overgrown with duckweed.

THE TIME OF CORNSPIKE

The barefoot girl to whom Genowefa gave a kopeck was Cornspike.

Cornspike turned up in Primeval in July or August. People gave her this name because she gathered ears of corn left over after the harvest and roasted them for herself over a fire. Then in autumn she stole potatoes, and once the fields were empty in November, she spent her time at the inn. Sometimes someone stood her a shot of vodka, sometimes she got a slice of bread and lard. But people are unwilling to give something for nothing, for free, especially at an inn, so Cornspike started whoring. A little tipsy and warmed up by the vodka, she would go outside with the men and give herself to them for a ring of sausage. And as she was the only woman in the district who was young and easy, the men hung around her like dogs.

Cornspike was big and buxom. She had fair hair and a fair complexion that the sun hadn’t ruined. She brazenly looked everyone straight in the face, even the priest. She had green eyes, one of which wandered slightly to the side. The men who took Cornspike in the bushes always felt uneasy afterwards. They’d button up their flies and go back into the fug inside the tavern with flushed faces. Cornspike never wanted to lie on her back in an honest way. She’d say: “Why should I lie underneath you? I’m your equal.”

She preferred to lean against a tree or the wooden wall of the inn and fling her skirt over her shoulders. Her bottom would shine in the darkness like the moon.

This was how Cornspike learned the world.

There are two kinds of learning, from the inside and from the outside. The first is regarded as the best, or even the only kind. And so people learn through distant journeys, watching, reading, universities and lectures – they learn from what is happening outside them. Man is a stupid creature who has to learn. So he tacks knowledge onto himself, he gathers it like a bee, gaining more and more of it, putting it to use and processing it. But the thing inside that is “stupid” and needs learning doesn’t change.

Cornspike learned by absorbing things from the outside to the inside.

Knowledge that is only grown on the outside changes nothing inside a man, or merely changes him on the surface, as one garment is changed for another. But he who learns by taking things inside himself undergoes constant transformation, because he incorporates what he learns into his being.

So by taking the stinking, dirty peasants from Primeval and the district into herself, Cornspike became just like them, was drunk just like them, frightened by the war just like them, and aroused just like them. What’s more, by taking them into herself in the bushes behind the inn, Cornspike also took in their wives, their children, and their stuffy, stinking wooden cottages around Maybug Hill. In a way she took the entire village into herself, every pain in the village, and every hope.

Such were Cornspike’s universities. Her diploma was her growing belly.

Mrs Popielska, the squire’s wife, heard about Cornspike’s fate and had her brought to the manor. She glanced at that large belly.

“You’re going to give birth any day. How do you intend to support yourself? I’ll teach you to sew and to cook. You’ll even be able to work in the laundry. Who knows, if everything turns out well, you’ll be able to keep the baby.”

But when the squire’s wife saw the girl’s alien, insolent look, as it boldly travelled across the paintings, furniture and upholstery, she hesitated. And when this gaze moved across the innocent faces of her sons and daughter, she changed her tone.

“It is our duty to help our neighbours in need. But our neighbours must want help. I provide this sort of help. I run a shelter in Jeszkotle. You can hand in the child there, it’s clean and very nice there.”

The word “shelter” grabbed Cornspike’s attention. She looked at the squire’s wife. Mrs Popielska gained in confidence.

“I distribute food and clothing before the harvest. People don’t want you here. You bring confusion and depravity. You are a loose woman. You should go away from here.”

“Aren’t I free to be where I want?”

“All this is mine, these are my lands and forest.”

Cornspike revealed her white teeth in a broad smile.

“All yours? You poor, skinny little bitch …”

Mrs Popielska’s face stiffened. “Get out,” she said calmly.

Cornspike turned around, and now the sound of her bare feet could be heard slapping against the parquet floor.

“You whore,” said Mrs Franiowa, the char at the manor, whose husband had been crazy about Cornspike that summer, and slapped her in the face.

As Cornspike reeled her way across the coarse gravel in the drive, the carpenters on the roof whistled at her. So she lifted her skirt and showed them her bare behind.

Outside the park she stopped and stood wondering where to go.

On the right she had Jeszkotle, and on the left the forest. She felt drawn to the forest. As soon as she went in among the trees she was aware that everything smelled different, stronger and sharper. She walked towards an abandoned house in Wydymacz, where she sometimes spent the night. The house was the remains of a burned-down hamlet, and now the forest had grown over it. Swollen from the weight she was carrying and the heat, her feet could not feel the hard pinecones. By the river she felt the first, alien pain flooding her body. Gradually panic was starting to take hold of her. “I’m going to die, now I’m going to die, because there’s no one to help me,” she thought in terror. She stopped in the middle of the Black River and refused to take another step. The cold water washed at her legs and lower body. From the water she saw a hare, who was quick to hide under a fern. She envied it. She saw a fish, weaving among the tree roots. She envied it. She saw a lizard that slithered under a stone. And she envied it too. She felt another pain, stronger this time, more terrifying. “I’m going to die,” she thought, “now I’m simply going to die. I’ll start to give birth and no one will help me.” She wanted to lie down in the ferns by the river, because she needed coolness and darkness, but, in defiance of her entire body, she walked onwards. The pain came back a third time, and now she knew she did not have much time left.

The tumbledown house in Wydymacz consisted of four walls and a bit of roof. Inside lay rubble overgrown with nettles. It stank of damp. Blind snails trailed along the walls. Cornspike picked some large burdock leaves and made herself a bed with them. The pain kept coming back in more and more impatient waves. When at moments it became unbearable, Cornspike realised that she had to do something to push it out of her, throw it out onto the nettles and burdock leaves. She clenched her jaw and began to push. “The pain will come out the way it went in,” she thought, and sat down. She pulled up her skirt. She couldn’t see anything in particular, just the wall of her belly and her thighs. Her body was still taut and locked up in itself. Cornspike tried to peep inside herself there, but her belly got in her way. So with hands trembling from the pain, she tried to feel the spot where the child should come out of her. Her fingertips could feel her swollen vulva and her rough pubic hairs, but her groin couldn’t feel the touch of her fingers. She was touching herself like something alien, like an object.

The pain intensified and muddled her senses. Her thoughts were torn like decaying fabric. Her words and ideas were falling apart and soaking into the ground. Tumescent from giving birth, her body had taken total control. And as the human body thrives on images, they flooded Cornspike’s semi-conscious mind.

It seemed to Cornspike as if she were giving birth in a church, on the cold stone floor, just in front of an icon. She could hear the soothing drone of the organ. Then she imagined she was the organ, and she was playing, she had all sorts of sounds inside her, and whenever she wanted she could emit them all at once. She felt mighty and omnipotent. But at once her omnipotence was shattered by a fly, the common buzzing of a large purple fly just above her ear. The pain hit Cornspike with new force. “I’m going to die, I’m going to die,” she moaned. “I’m not going to die, I’m not going to die,” she moaned a moment later. Sweat clogged her eyelids and stung her eyes. She began to sob. She propped herself up on her arms and desperately began to push. And after this effort she felt relief. Something splashed and sprang out of her. Cornspike was open now. She fell back on the burdock leaves and sought the child among them, but there was nothing there except warm water. So Cornspike gathered her strength and began to push again. She closed her eyes tight and pushed. She took a breath and pushed. She cried and stared upwards. Between the rotten beams she could see a cloudless sky. And there she saw her child. The child got up hesitantly and stood on its legs. It was looking at her as no one had ever looked at her before: with vast, inexpressible love. It was a little boy. He picked up a twig from the ground and it changed into a little grass snake. Cornspike was happy. She lay down on the leaves and fell into a sort of dark well. Her thoughts returned, and calmly, gracefully, floated across her mind. “So the house has a well. So there’s water in the well. I’m living in the well, because it’s cool and damp in there. Children play in wells, snails regain their sight and grain ripens. I’ll have something to feed the child on. Where is the child?”

She opened her eyes, terrified, and felt that time had stopped. That there was no child.

The pain came again, and Cornspike began to scream. She screamed so loud the walls of the tumbledown house shook, the birds were startled, and the people raking hay in the meadows looked up and crossed themselves. Cornspike had a choking fit and swallowed the scream. Now she was screaming to the inside, into herself. Her scream was so mighty that her belly moved. Cornspike felt something new and strange between her legs. She raised herself on her arms and looked her child in the face. The child’s eyes were painfully tight shut. Cornspike pushed once more and the child was born. Trembling with effort, she tried to take it in her arms, but her hands couldn’t reach the image her eyes could see. In spite of this she heaved a sigh of relief and let herself slip away into the darkness.

When she awoke, she saw the child beside her – shrunken and dead. She tried to set it to her breast. Her breast was bigger than it, painfully alive. There were flies circling above it.

All afternoon Cornspike tried hard to encourage the dead child to suck. Towards evening the pain returned and Cornspike delivered the afterbirth. Then she fell asleep again. In her dream she fed the child not on milk but on water from the Black River. The child was an incubus that sits on a person’s chest and sucks the life out of him. It wanted blood. Cornspike’s dream was becoming more and more disturbed and oppressive, but she couldn’t wake up from it. In it a woman appeared, as large as a tree. Cornspike could see her perfectly, every detail of her face, her hairstyle and her clothing. She had curly black hair, like a Jew, and a wonderfully expressive face. Cornspike found her beautiful. She desired her with her entire body, but it wasn’t the desire she already knew, from the bottom of her belly, from between her legs; it flowed from somewhere inside her body, from a point above her belly, close to her heart. The mighty woman leaned over Cornspike and stroked her cheek. Cornspike looked into her eyes at close range, and saw in them something she had never known before and had never even thought existed. “You are mine,” said the enormous woman, and caressed Cornspike’s neck and swollen breasts. Wherever her fingers touched Cornspike, her body became blessed and immortal. Cornspike surrendered entirely to this touch, spot after spot. Then the large woman took Cornspike in her arms and cuddled her to her breast. Cornspike’s cracked lips found the nipple. It smelled of animal fur, camomile and rue. Cornspike drank and drank.

A thunderbolt crashed into her dream and all of a sudden she saw that she was still lying in the ruined cottage on the burdock leaves. There was greyness all around her. She didn’t know if it was dawn or dusk. For the second time lightning struck somewhere very close by, and seconds later a downpour tumbled from the sky that drowned out the next peal of thunder. Water poured through the leaking roof beams and washed the blood and sweat off Cornspike, cooled her burning body, watered and fed her. Cornspike drank water straight from the sky.