Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

^IX THE LARGEST IN THE SMALLEST

Spring starts in May and is unwittingly heralded by the Dentist, who brings his ancient drilling equipment and his equally antique dental chair outside. He dusts it off with a few flicks of a cloth, one, two, three, and it’s free of cobwebs and hay – both pieces of equipment spent the winter in the barn, and were only brought out from time to time when an urgent need arose. The Dentist didn’t really work in winter; it’s impossible to do anything here in winter, people lose interest in their health, and besides, it’s dark and his sight is poor. He needs the bright light of May or June to shine straight into the mouths of his patients, recruited from among the forest workers and moustachioed men who spend all day standing about on the little bridge in the village, and as a result are known locally as the Bridge Brigade.

Once the April mud had dried, I started to venture more and more boldly into the neighbourhood on the pretext of making my rounds. At this time of year I was happy to drop in at Achthozja, the hamlet next to the quarry, where the Dentist lived. And like every year I came upon an astonishing sight – there on the brilliant green grass, under a sheet of blue sky, stood the dilapidated white dental chair, with someone half-lying on it, mouth wide open to the Sun, while the Dentist leaned over him, drill in hand. Meanwhile, his foot was moving monotonously, steadily pressing on the drill pedal. And a few metres away another two or three fellows were watching this scene in rapt silence as they sipped their beers.

The Dentist’s main occupation was pulling out aching teeth, and sometimes, more rarely, treating them. He also made dentures. Before I knew of his existence, I had very often wondered what sort of a race could have settled here, in this area. Many of the local people had quite distinctive teeth, as if they were all a family, with the same genes or the same configuration in their Horoscope. Especially the older ones: their teeth were long and narrow, with a blue tinge. Strange teeth. I came up with an alternative Hypothesis too, for I had heard that under the Plateau there were deep seams of uranium, which, as everyone knows, has an effect on various Anomalies.

By now I knew that these were the Dentist’s false teeth, his trademark, his brand. Like every artist, he was unique.

In my view he could have been a tourist attraction for Kłodzko Valley, if only what he did were legal. Unfortunately, some years ago he was stripped of his licence to practise his profession because of alcohol abuse. It’s odd that they don’t take away a dentist’s professional licence because of poor sight. This Ailment could be far more dangerous for the patient. And the Dentist wore powerful spectacles, with one of the lenses taped into place.

That day he was drilling a man’s tooth. It was hard to recognise the patient’s facial features, twisted in pain and mildly numbed by alcohol, with which the Dentist anaesthetised his patients. The dreadful noise of the drill bored into my brain, stirring the ghastliest childhood memories.

‘How’s life?’ I said in greeting.

‘Bearable,’ replied the Dentist with a broad smile, which reminded me of the old adage ‘Physician, heal thyself’. ‘You haven’t been here for ages. I think the last time we met was when you were looking for your…’

‘Yes, yes,’ I interrupted him. ‘It was impossible to walk this far in the winter. By the time I’d dug myself out of the snow it would be dark.’

He went back to his drilling and I stood with the other onlookers, pensively watching the drill working in the man’s mouth.

‘Have you seen the white foxes?’ one of the men asked me. He had a beautiful face. If his life had turned out differently I’m sure he’d have been a film star. But now his good looks were disappearing beneath a network of furrows and wrinkles.

‘They say Innerd let them out before he ran off,’ said a second man.

‘Maybe he had pangs of conscience,’ I added. ‘Maybe the Foxes ate him.’

The Dentist glanced at me with curiosity. He nodded and sank the drill into the patient’s tooth. The poor man jolted in the chair.

‘Isn’t it possible to fill a tooth without all that drilling?’ I asked.

But no one seemed particularly concerned about the patient.

‘First Big Foot, then the Commandant, now Innerd…’ sighed the Beautiful Man. ‘A man’s afraid to leave the house. After dark I tell my old woman to deal with everything outside.’

‘You’ve found an intelligent solution,’ I said, and then slowly added: ‘Animals are taking revenge on them for hunting.’

‘You must be joking… Big Foot didn’t hunt,’ said the Beautiful Man doubtfully.

‘But he was a beater,’ said someone else. ‘Mrs Duszejko’s right. And he was the biggest poacher around here, wasn’t he?’

The Dentist smeared a bit of white paste onto a little plate and put it into the drilled tooth with a spatula. ‘Yes, it’s possible,’ he muttered to himself. ‘It really is possible – there has to be some justice, doesn’t there? Yes, yes. Animals.’

The patient moaned pitifully.

‘Do you believe in divine providence?’ the Dentist suddenly asked me, coming to a standstill over the patient. There was a note of provocation in his voice.

The men sniggered, as if they had heard something improper. I had to think about it.

‘Because I do,’ he said, without waiting for an answer. He gave the patient a friendly clap on the shoulder, and the man leaped from the chair, happy. ‘Next,’ he said. One of the group of onlookers stepped forward and reluctantly sat in the chair.

‘What’s up?’ asked the Dentist.

In reply the man opened his mouth, and the Dentist peeked into it. He instantly recoiled, saying: ‘What the fuck!’ which must have been the shortest possible assessment of the state of the patient’s dentition. For a while he prodded with his fingers to check how secure the man’s teeth were, and then reached behind him for a bottle of vodka. ‘Here, drink up. We’ll pull it out.’

The man mumbled something indistinct, utterly disheartened by this unwelcome verdict. He accepted the near full tumbler of vodka proffered by the Dentist and downed it in one. I was sure he wouldn’t feel any pain after that much anaesthetic.

While we were waiting for the alcohol to take effect, the men excitedly began to talk about the quarry, which apparently is going to be reopened. Year by year it will swallow the Plateau, until it has devoured the whole thing. We’ll have to move away from here. If they do actually reopen it, the Dentist’s hamlet will be the first to be relocated.

‘No, I don’t believe in divine providence,’ I said. ‘Form a protest committee,’ I advised them. ‘Organise a demonstration.’

‘Après nous le déluge,’ said the Dentist, sticking his fingers into the mouth of his patient, barely conscious by now. Then, with ease, without effort, he extracted a blackened tooth. All we heard was a slight crack. It made me feel faint.

‘They should take revenge for all of it,’ said the Dentist. ‘Animals should fuck it all to buggery.’

‘Quite so. Sodding well screw it into oblivion,’ I followed his lead, and the men glanced at me with surprise and respect.

I went home by a roundabout route; by now it was well into the afternoon. And that was when, at the edge of the forest, I saw the white Foxes, two of them. They were moving slowly, one behind the other. Their whiteness against the green meadow was like something from another world. They looked like the diplomatic service of the Animal Kingdom, come here to reconnoitre.

At the start of May the dandelions flowered. In a good year they were already in bloom on the holiday weekend, when the owners arrived at their houses for the first time after the winter. In a less good year they didn’t carpet the meadows in yellow spots until Victory Day, on the eighth. Every year, Dizzy and I admired this miracle of miracles.

Unfortunately, for Dizzy it was a harbinger of tough times; two weeks later his various allergies would hit him – tears streamed from his eyes, he choked and suffocated. In town it was just about bearable, but on Fridays when he came to see me I was obliged to shut all the doors and windows tight to stop the invisible allergens from getting inside his nose. In June, when the grasses were flowering, we had to move our translation sessions to his place in town.

After such a long, tiring, barren winter, the Sun was having an exceptionally bad effect on me too. I couldn’t sleep in the mornings, I’d get up at dawn and never stop feeling anxious. All winter I’d had to defend myself against the wind eternally blowing on the Plateau, but now I threw the windows and doors wide open to let it come inside and blow away my musty anxieties and every possible Ailment.

Everything was starting to crackle, I could sense a feverish vibration under the grass, under the layer of earth, as if vast, underground nerves, swollen with effort, were just about to burst. I was finding it hard to rid myself of the feeling that under it all lurked a strong, mindless will, as repulsive as the force that made the Frogs climb on top of each other and endlessly copulate in Oddball’s pond.

As soon as the Sun came close to the horizon, a family of Bats began to make regular appearances. They’d fly in noiselessly, softly; I always thought of their flight as being fluid. Once I counted twelve of them, as they flew around each house in turn. I’d love to know how a Bat sees the world; just once I’d like to fly across the Plateau in its body. How do we all look down here, as perceived by its senses? Like shadows? Like bundles of shudders, sources of noise?

Towards evening I would sit outside and wait for them to appear, to fly in one by one from over the Professor’s house, as they visited each of us in turn. I gently waved to them in greeting. The truth is I had a lot in common with them – I too saw the world in other spheres, upside down. I too preferred the Dusk. I wasn’t suited to living in the Sunlight.

My skin reacted badly to the cruel, harsh rays, not yet tempered by any leaves or fluffy clouds. It became red and irritated. As every year, in the first few days of summer small, itchy blisters began to appear on it. I treated them with sour milk and the burn ointment that Dizzy gave me. I had to fetch out last year’s wide-brimmed hats, which I secured under my chin with ribbons to stop the wind from tearing them off.

One Wednesday when I was coming home from school in one of these hats I took a roundabout route in order to… in fact, I don’t really know why I took the detour. There are places we don’t choose to visit, and yet something draws us to them. Possibly that something is Dread. Maybe that’s why, just like Good News, I like horror stories too.

By some strange chance, that Wednesday I found myself near the Fox farm. I was driving home in the Samurai when suddenly, at the crossroads, I turned in the opposite direction from my usual route. Soon after, the asphalt came to an end, and at this point I could smell the dreadful stench that scared away anyone out for a walk. The nasty smell was still here, though officially the farm had closed down two weeks ago.

The Samurai was behaving as if it had a sense of smell too – it stalled. I sat in the car, assaulted by the stink, and a hundred metres ahead of me I saw some buildings surrounded by a high wire fence – some barracks lined up one behind the other. Along the top of the fence ran triple-strand barbed wire. The Sun was dazzlingly bright. Each blade of grass cast a sharp shadow, each branch resembled a skewer. It was as silent as the grave. I pricked up my ears, as if expecting to hear horrifying sounds coming from behind this barricade, the echoes of what had happened here in the past. But it was plain to see there wasn’t a living soul inside, neither human nor animal. In the course of the summer the farm would be overgrown with burdock and nettles. In a year or two it would vanish among the greenery, at best becoming a house of horror. It crossed my mind that one could set up a museum here. As a warning.

A little later I started the car and drove back to the main road.

Oh yes, I knew what the missing owner looked like. Not long after I moved here I met him on our little bridge. It was a strange encounter. I didn’t yet know who he was.

That afternoon I was on my way home in the Samurai from shopping in town. Ahead of the bridge across our stream I saw a four-wheel drive; it had driven onto the verge, as if it had suddenly felt the urge to stretch its bones: all its doors were open. I slowed down. I don’t like those high, powerful cars, made with war in mind, rather than walks in the lap of nature. Their large wheels churn up the ruts in the dirt roads and damage the footpaths. Their mighty engines make a lot of noise and produce exhaust fumes. I am convinced that their owners have small dicks and compensate for this deficiency by having large cars. Every year I protest to the village representative against the rallies held in these dreadful vehicles, and I issue a petition. I get a perfunctory reply, saying that the representative will consider my comments in due course, and that’s the end of it. But now one of them was parked here, right by the stream, at the way in to the valley, almost on my doorstep. Driving very slowly indeed, I scrutinised this undesirable guest.

There was a pretty young woman sitting in the front seat, smoking a cigarette. She had peroxide-blonde shoulder-length hair and carefully applied make-up, a notable feature of which were lips outlined with a dark pencil. She had such a deep tan that she looked as if she’d just been removed from the barbecue. Her toenails were painted red. She was dangling her legs outside the car, and a sandal had slipped off one of her feet and fallen into the grass. I stopped and leaned out of the window.

‘Need any help?’ I asked amicably.

She shook her head to say no, then raised her eyes skywards and pointed her thumb somewhere behind her; at the same time she smiled knowingly. She seemed perfectly nice, though I couldn’t understand her gesture. So I got out of the car. The fact that she had answered with a gesture, rather than words, prompted me to act quietly; I approached her almost on tiptoes. I raised my brows enquiringly. I liked this air of mystery.

‘No worries,’ she said in a whisper. ‘I’m waiting for my… husband.’

For her husband? Here? I simply couldn’t understand the scene in which I too was accidentally taking part. I looked around suspiciously and then I saw him, this husband. He was coming out of the bushes. He looked rather weird and comical. He was dressed in something like a uniform, in green-and-brown camouflage. From head to toe he had spruce twigs stuck all over him. His helmet was covered with the same fabric as the uniform. His face was smeared in black paint, with a white, neatly trimmed moustache standing out against it. I couldn’t see his eyes – they were hidden behind an unusual optical device, a bit like an optician’s instrument for testing sight defects, with lots of screws and joints. Whereas his broad chest and ample belly were festooned in mess tins, map cases, compass sets and a bullet belt. He was holding a shotgun with a scope; it looked like a weapon out of Star Wars.

‘Holy Mother of God,’ I gasped in spite of myself.

For a few seconds I couldn’t produce any human sound. I gazed at this freak, feeling frightened and amazed, until the woman flicked her cigarette into the road and said in a rather ironic tone: ‘And here he is.’

The man came up to us and took off his helmet.

I don’t think I had ever seen a Person with such a saturnine look before. He was of average build, with a wide forehead and bushy eyebrows. He stooped slightly and stood with his feet pointing inwards. I couldn’t help thinking he was inured to debauchery, and that throughout his life he had been led by one thing – the consistent gratification of his own desires, at any cost. This was the richest man in the neighbourhood.

I sensed that he was pleased to be seen by someone other than his wife. He was proud of himself. He greeted me with a wave of the hand, but instantly ignored my existence. He put the helmet and the bizarre spectacles on again and gazed in the direction of the border. At once I understood everything and felt a surge of Anger.

‘Let’s get going,’ said his wife impatiently, as if to a child. Perhaps she could sense the waves of Anger emanating from me.

For a while he pretended not to hear, but then he went up to the car, removed all the tackle from his head, and set aside the shotgun.

‘What are you doing here?’ I asked him, for nothing else occurred to me.

‘What about you?’ he said, without looking at me.

His wife was putting on her sandal and settling in the driver’s seat.

‘I live here,’ I replied coldly.

‘Ah, you’re the lady with those two dogs… We’ve told you before to keep them close to the house.’

‘They’re on private land…’ I began, but he interrupted me. The whites of his eyes gleamed ominously in his blackened face.

‘For us there’s no such thing as private land, madam.’

That was two years ago, when I was still finding things easier. I had forgotten about this encounter with Innerd. What did he matter? But later on, a fast-moving planet had suddenly crossed an invisible point and a change had occurred, one of the kind we’re not aware of down here. Perhaps tiny signs reveal this sort of cosmic event to us, but we don’t notice them either – someone has stepped on a twig lying on the path, a bottle of beer has cracked in the freezer when someone forgot to remove it in time, or two red fruits have fallen from a wild rose bush. How could we possibly understand it all?

It’s clear that the largest things are contained in the smallest. There can be no doubt about it. At this very moment, as I write, there’s a planetary configuration on this table, the entire Cosmos, if you like: a thermometer, a coin, an aluminium spoon and a porcelain cup. A key, a mobile phone, a piece of paper and a pen. And one of my grey hairs, whose atoms preserve the memory of the origins of life, of the cosmic Catastrophe that gave the world its beginning.