Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

^XI THE SINGING OF BATS

Boros had been staying with me for three or four days when I saw Oddball trudging over to my house, yet another special event, considering he never came to see me. I thought he may have been slightly put out by the presence of a strange man in my house and had come to investigate. He shuffled along bent double, resting a hand on the small of his back and wearing a pained look on his face. He sat down with a sigh.

‘Lumbago,’ he said by way of greeting.

It turned out that while building a new, dry path to his house from the courtyard he had mixed the concrete in buckets and had been on the point of pouring it, but when he’d leaned to pick up the bucket something had cracked in his spine. So he’d been stuck in the most uncomfortable position with a hand stretched out towards the bucket, for the pain wouldn’t let him straighten up at all. Now that it had eased a bit, he’d come to ask for my help, as he was aware that I knew all about construction – last year he’d seen me pouring concrete in a similar way. He cast a very critical glance at Boros, especially at his pigtail, which he must have found highly pretentious.

I introduced them to each other. Oddball offered his hand with noticeable hesitation.

‘It’s dangerous to wander the neighbourhood – there are strange things going on around here,’ he said ominously, but Boros ignored this warning.

So we went to save the concrete from solidifying in the buckets. Boros and I worked while Oddball sat on a chair and gave us orders disguised as advice, starting each remark with the words: ‘I’d advise you to…’

‘I’d advise you to pour a little at a time, now here, now there, topping it up once it evens out. I’d advise you to wait a while until it settles. I’d advise you not to get in each other’s way or you’ll have confusion.’

It was rather annoying. But once the work was done, we sat down in a warm patch of Sunlight outside his house where the peonies were slowly coming into bloom, and the whole world seemed covered in a fine layer of gold leaf.

‘What have you done in life?’ Boros suddenly asked.

This question was so unexpected that I instantly let myself be carried away by memories. They began to sail past my eyes, and typically for memories, everything in them seemed better, finer and happier than in reality. It’s strange, but we didn’t say a word.

For people of my age, the places that they truly loved and to which they once belonged are no longer there. The places of their childhood and youth have ceased to exist, the villages where they went on holiday, the parks with uncomfortable benches where their first loves blossomed, the cities, cafes and houses of their past. And if their outer form has been preserved, it’s all the more painful, like a shell with nothing inside it any more. I have nowhere to return to. It’s like a state of imprisonment. The walls of the cell are the horizon of what I can see. Beyond them exists a world that’s alien to me and doesn’t belong to me. So for people like me the only thing possible is here and now, for every future is doubtful, everything yet to come is barely sketched and uncertain, like a mirage that can be destroyed by the slightest twitch of the air. That’s what was going through my mind as we sat there in silence. It was better than a conversation. I have no idea what either of the men was thinking about. Perhaps about the same thing.

But we did agree to meet that evening, when we drank a little wine together. We even managed to have a singsong. We started with ‘Today I cannot come to see you…’, but softly and shyly, as if beyond the windows opening onto the orchard the large ears of the Night were lurking, ready to eavesdrop on our every thought, our every word, even the words of the song, and then submit them to the scrutiny of the highest court.

Only Boros wasn’t bothered. It’s understandable – he wasn’t at home, and guest performances are always among the craziest. He leaned back in his chair, pretending to be playing a guitar, and started to sing with his eyes closed:

‘Dere eeez a hooouse in Noo Orleeenz, dey caaal de Riiisin’ Sun…’

As if under a magic spell, Oddball and I picked up the words and tune and, exchanging glances, surprised by this sudden mutual agreement, sang along with him.

It turned out we all knew the words more or less up to the line: ‘Oh mother, tell your children’, which says a lot for our memories. At that point we started to mumble, pretending to know what we were singing. But we didn’t. We burst out laughing. Oh, it was lovely, touching. Then we sat in silence, doing our best to remember other songs. I don’t know about the other singers, but my entire songbook flew straight out of my head. Then Boros went indoors to fetch a little plastic bag, from which he took a pinch of dried herbs, and started to roll a cigarette with them.

‘Good heavens, I haven’t smoked for twenty years,’ said Oddball suddenly, and his eyes lit up; I looked at him in amazement.

It was a very bright Night. The full Moon in June is called the Blue Moon, because it takes on a very beautiful sapphire shade at this time of year. According to my Ephemerides, this Night only lasts for five hours.

We were sitting in the orchard under an old apple tree on which the apples were already fruiting. The orchard was fragrant and soughed in the wind. I had lost my sense of time, and each break between utterances seemed endless. A great gulf of time opened before us. We chattered for whole centuries, talking nonstop about the same thing over and over, now with one pair of lips, now with another, all of us failing to remember that the view we were now contesting was the one we had defended earlier on. But in fact we weren’t arguing at all; we were holding a dialogue, a trialogue, like three fauns, another species, half human and half animal. And I realised there were lots of us in the garden and the forest, our faces covered in hair. Strange beasts. And our Bats had settled in the tree and were singing. Their shrill, vibrating voices were jostling microscopic particles of mist, so the Night around us was softly starting to jingle, summoning all the Creatures to nocturnal worship.

Boros disappeared into the house for an eternity, while Oddball and I sat without a word. His eyes were wide open and he was staring at me so intensely that I had to slip into the shadow of the tree to escape his gaze. And there I hid.

‘Forgive me,’ was all he said, and my mind moved like a great locomotive trying to understand it. What on earth would I have to forgive him for? I thought about the times when he hadn’t responded to my greeting. Or the day he’d talked to me across the threshold when I’d brought him his post, but refused to let me inside, into his lovely, spick-and-span kitchen. Another thought was that he’d never taken any interest in me when I was laid up in bed by my Ailments, breathing my last.

But why would I have to forgive him for any of these things? Maybe he was thinking of his cold, ironic son in the black coat. But we’re not answerable for our children, are we?

Finally Boros appeared in the doorway with my laptop, which he’d been using before now anyway, and plugged in his pendant, shaped like a wolf’s fang. For a very long time there was total silence, while we waited for a sign. Finally we heard a storm, but it didn’t frighten or surprise us. It dominated the sound of bells ringing in the mist. No other music could have suited the mood better – it must have been composed specially for this evening.

‘Riders on the storm,’ the words echoed out of nowhere.

Boros hummed and rocked in his chair, while the words of the song repeated over and over again, the same ones every time, never any others.

‘Why are some people evil and nasty?’ asked Boros rhetorically.

‘Saturn,’ I said. ‘The traditional ancient Astrology of Ptolemy tells us it’s down to Saturn. In its discordant aspects Saturn has the power to make people mean-spirited, spiteful, solitary and plaintive. They’re malicious, cowardly, shameless and sullen, they never stop scheming, they speak evil, and they don’t take care of their bodies. They endlessly want more than they have, and nothing ever pleases them. Is that the sort of people you mean?’

‘It could be the result of mistakes in their upbringing,’ added Oddball, enunciating each word slowly and carefully, as if afraid his tongue was about to play tricks on him and say something else entirely. Once he had managed to utter this one sentence, he dared to add another: ‘Or class war.’

‘Or poor potty training,’ added Boros, and I said: ‘A toxic mother.’

‘An authoritarian father.’

‘Sexual abuse in childhood.’

‘Not being breastfed.’

‘Television.’

‘A lack of lithium and magnesium in the diet.’

‘The stock exchange,’ shouted Oddball, with incredible enthusiasm, but to my mind he was exaggerating.

‘No, don’t be silly,’ I said. ‘In what way?’

So he corrected himself: ‘Post-traumatic shock.’

‘Psychophysical structure.’

We tossed around ideas until we ran out of them, a game we found highly amusing.

‘But it is Saturn,’ I said, dying of laughter.

We walked Oddball back to his cottage, trying hard to keep extremely quiet, for fear of waking the Writer. But we weren’t very good at it – every few seconds we snorted with laughter.

As we were off to bed, emboldened by the wine, Boros and I embraced, to say thank you for this evening. A little later I saw him in the kitchen, taking his pills and swallowing them with water from the tap.

It occurred to me that he was a very good Person, this Boros. And it was a good thing he had his Ailments. Being healthy is an insecure state and does not bode well. It’s better to be ill in a quiet way, then at least we know what we’re going to die of.

He came to me in the Night and squatted by my bed. I wasn’t asleep.

‘Are you asleep?’ he asked.

‘Are you religious?’ I had to put the question.

‘Yes,’ he replied proudly. ‘I’m an atheist.’

I found that curious.

I raised the quilt and invited him to join me, but as I am neither Maudlin nor Sentimental, I shall not dwell on it any further.

The next day was Saturday, and early in the morning Dizzy appeared.

I was working in my garden patch, testing one of my Theories. I think I can find proof for the fact that we inherit phenotypes, which flies in the face of modern genetics. I had noticed that certain acquired features make irregular appearances in subsequent generations. So three years ago I set about repeating Mendel’s experiment with sweet peas; I am now in the middle of it. I notched the petals of the flowers, through five generations in a row (two a year), and then checked to see if the seeds would produce flowers with damaged petals. I must say that the results of this experiment were looking very encouraging.

Dizzy’s rickety old car emerged from round the bend in such a hurry that one could describe it as breathless and overexcited. Dizzy hopped out, just as agitated.

‘They’ve found Innerd’s body. Dead as a doornail. For weeks and weeks.’

I felt extremely faint. I had to sit down. I wasn’t prepared for this.

‘So he hadn’t run away with his lover,’ said Boros, emerging from the kitchen with a mug of tea. He didn’t hide his disappointment.

Dizzy looked at him and at me hesitantly, and was too surprised to say anything. I had to do a quick presentation. They shook hands.

‘Oh, they knew that ages ago,’ said Dizzy, his excitement waning. ‘He left his credit cards behind and his bank accounts haven’t been touched. Though actually his passport has never turned up.’

We sat down outside the house. Dizzy said he’d been found by timber thieves. Yesterday afternoon they had driven into the forest from the direction of the Fox farm, and there, just before Dusk, they had come upon the remains – that’s what they’d said. They were lying among the ferns, in a pit where clay was once mined. And apparently these remains were quite appalling, so twisted and deformed that it took them a while to realise they were looking at a man’s body. At first they had fled in horror, but their consciences had nagged them. Naturally, they were afraid to go to the Police for one simple reason – as soon as they did, their criminal activity would instantly be exposed. Oh well, they could always claim they’d just been driving through that way… Late that evening they’d called the Police, and during the Night the forensic team had arrived. From what was left of the clothing, they had provisionally managed to identify Innerd because he wore a distinctive leather jacket. But we’d be sure to know everything on Monday.

Oddball’s son later defined our behaviour as ‘childish’, but to me it seemed as coherent as can be – namely, we all got in the Samurai and drove to the forest beyond the Fox farm to the site where the body was found. And we were by no means the only ones to behave childishly – about twenty people had come, men and women from Transylvania, and also forest workers, those men with moustaches were there too. Plastic orange tape had been stretched between the trees, and from the distance stipulated for spectators it was hard to make out anything at all.

A middle-aged woman came up to me and said: ‘Apparently he was lying here for months on end and had already been well gnawed by foxes.’

I nodded. I recognised her. We had often met at Good News’ shop. Her name was Innocenta, which impressed me greatly. Beyond that I did not envy her – she had several ne’er-do-well sons who were no use at all.

‘The boys said he was all white with mould. They said he’d gone all mouldy.’

‘Is that possible?’ I asked in dismay.

‘Oh yes, madam,’ she said very confidently. ‘And they said he had a wire around his leg, as if it had grown into the flesh, it was drawn so tight it was.’

‘A snare,’ I said. ‘He must have been caught in a snare. They were always setting them around here.’

We moved along the tape, trying to make out something in particular. A crime scene always prompts horror, so the onlookers were hardly speaking to one another, and if they were, they were talking softly, as if at a cemetery.

Innocenta shuffled after us, speaking for all those who were shocked into silence: ‘But no one dies because of a snare. The Dentist keeps insisting it’s the animals’ revenge. Because they hunted, did you know that? He and the Commandant.’

‘Yes, I know,’ I replied, surprised that the news had spread so quickly. ‘I agree with him.’

‘Really? You think it’s possible that animals…’

I shrugged. ‘I know it is. I think they were taking revenge. There are some things we may not understand, but we can sense them perfectly well.’

She thought for a while, and finally agreed that I was right. We walked around the tape and stopped at a spot where we had a good view of the police cars and men in rubber gloves squatting close to the forest floor. Evidently the Police were now trying to collect all the potential evidence, to avoid making the same mistakes as they had in the case of the Commandant. Because they really had made mistakes. We couldn’t go any nearer, two policemen in uniform kept herding us back onto the road like a flock of Hens. But we could see that they were diligently searching for clues, and several officers were trudging about the forest, paying attention to every detail. Dizzy was frightened of them. He preferred not to be recognised in these circumstances; come what may, he did work for the Police. During an afternoon snack, which we ate outside – the weather was so lovely – Dizzy elaborated his thoughts.

‘This means my entire hypothesis is in ruins. I’ll admit that I was pretty sure Innerd had helped the Commandant to fall into the well. They had mutual interests, and they’d quarrelled, or maybe the Commandant was blackmailing him. I thought they’d met by the well and started squabbling. Then Innerd had pushed the Commandant, and the accident had occurred.’

‘But now it turns out to be even worse than everyone thought. The murderer is still at large,’ said Oddball.

‘And to think he’s lurking somewhere near here,’ said Dizzy, tucking into the strawberry dessert.

I found the strawberries completely tasteless. I wondered whether it was because they fertilise them with some muck, or maybe because our tastebuds have grown old, along with the rest of our bodies. And we shall never again taste the flavours of the past. Yet another thing that’s irreversible.

Over a cup of tea Boros gave us a professional description of how Insects contribute to the decomposition of flesh. I let myself be persuaded to go back to the forest again after Dark, once the Police had left, so that Boros could conduct his research. Disgusted by what they regarded as ghoulish eccentricity, Dizzy and Oddball stayed behind on the terrace.

The gleaming orange tape phosphoresced amid the soft darkness of the forest. At first I refused to go any closer, but Boros was very sure of himself and unceremoniously dragged me after him. I stood over him as he shone his headlamp torch into the undergrowth, searching among the ferns and poking a finger into the leaf litter for traces of Insects. It’s strange how the Night erases all colours, as if it didn’t give a damn about such worldly extravagance. Boros muttered away to himself, while with my heart in my mouth I let myself be carried away by a vision:

When he arrived at the farm and looked through the window, Innerd usually saw the forest, the wall of forest full of ferns, but that day he’d seen some beautiful, fluffy, wild red Foxes. They weren’t in the least afraid; they were just sitting there like Dogs, steadily watching him in a challenging way. Maybe in his small, avaricious heart a hope was born – that here he had chanced upon an easy profit, for such tame, beautiful Foxes could be lured and caught. But how come they’re so trusting and tame? he thought. Perhaps they’re a cross with the ones that live in cages and spend the whole of their short lives turning circles, in a space so small that their noses touch their precious tails. No, it’s not possible. And yet these Foxes were large and beautiful. So that evening, when he saw them again, he thought he’d go after them, to see for himself what exactly was tempting him, what sort of a devil it was. He threw on his leather jacket and off he went. Then he realised that they were expecting him – beautiful, noble Animals with wise faces. ‘Here, boy, here, boy,’ he called to them as if to puppies, but the closer he came, the further they retreated into the forest, still bare and damp at this time of year. He figured it wouldn’t be hard to grab hold of one – they were almost rubbing against his legs. It also crossed his mind that they could be rabid, but in fact it was all the same to him by now. He’d already been inoculated against rabies, when a Dog he’d shot had bit him. He’d had to finish it off with his rifle butt. So even if they were, it didn’t matter. The Foxes were playing a strange game with him, vanishing from sight and then reappearing, two, three of them, and then he thought he could see some beautiful, fluffy Fox Cubs too. And finally, when one of them, the biggest, most handsome Dog Fox, calmly sat down in front of him, Innerd crouched in amazement and began to advance very slowly, legs bent, leaning forwards, with a hand stretched out ahead of him; his fingers pretended to be holding a tasty morsel, which might tempt the Fox, and then he could be made into a fine fur collar. But then suddenly he realised he was tangled in something, his legs were stuck and he couldn’t move after the Fox. As his trouser leg rode up, he felt something cold and metallic on his ankle. His foot was caught. And when it dawned on him that he’d stepped in a snare, he instinctively yanked his leg backwards, but it was too late. By making this movement he passed his own death sentence. The wire tightened and released a primitive hook – a young birch tree, bent and pinned to the ground, suddenly sprang straight, pulling Innerd’s Body upwards with such force that briefly it hung in the air, waving its legs about, but only briefly, for at once it became still. Seconds later, the overburdened birch tree snapped, and that was how Innerd came to rest on the ground, in a dug-out clay pit, where fern shoots were budding beneath the forest litter.

Now Boros was kneeling in that spot.

‘Give me some light, please,’ he said. ‘I think we have some Cleridae larvae here.’

‘Do you believe that wild Animals could kill a Person?’ I asked him, preoccupied with what I had seen in my vision.

‘Oh yes, of course they can. Lions, leopards, bulls, snakes, insects, bacteria, viruses…’

‘What about Animals like Deer?’

‘I’m sure they could find a way.’

So he was on my side.

Unfortunately, my vision did not explain how the Foxes from the farm had got out. Nor how the snare on his leg had been the cause of his death.

‘I found Acarina, Cleridae, wasp larvae and Dermaptera, that’s to say earwigs,’ said Boros over supper, which Oddball had made in my kitchen. ‘And ants of course. Yes, and lots of mould, but they damaged it very badly while removing the corpse. In my view it all proves that the body was found at the stage of butyric fermentation.’

We were eating pasta with blue cheese sauce.

‘You can’t tell,’ said Boros, ‘if it was mould or adipocere, in other words corpse wax.’

‘What did you say? What on earth is corpse wax? How do you know all this?’ asked Oddball with his mouth full of noodles; he had Marysia on his lap.

Boros explained that he used to be a consultant for the Police. And had done some training in taphonomy.

‘Taphonomy?’ I asked. ‘What on earth is that?’

‘It’s the science of how corpses decompose. “Taphos” is the Greek for a grave.’

‘Oh my God,’ sighed Dizzy, as if asking for divine intervention. But of course nothing happened.

‘That would indicate that the body was lying there for some forty to fifty days.’

We quickly did some mental arithmetic. Dizzy was the fastest.

‘So it could have been early March,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘That’s only a month after the Commandant’s death.’

For three weeks no one talked of anything else, until the next incident occurred. But now the number of versions of Innerd’s death going around the neighbourhood was vast. Dizzy said that the Police hadn’t looked for him at all after he went missing in March, because his lover had disappeared too. Everyone knew about her, even his wife. And although various acquaintances had thought it odd that they’d gone away so suddenly, they were all convinced that Innerd had his own shady business going on. Nobody wanted to stick their noses into someone else’s affairs. And his wife was reconciled to his disappearance too – what’s more, it probably suited her fine. She had already filed for divorce, but obviously that was no longer necessary. Now she was a widow, and it was better for her that way. Meanwhile, the lover had been found; it turned out they’d broken up in December, and she’d been living with her sister in the United States since Christmas. Boros thought the Police should have issued a wanted notice for Innerd, seeing they had all sorts of suspicions. But maybe the Police knew something that we didn’t.

The next Wednesday I found out at Good News’ shop that apparently a Beast was stalking the neighbourhood, and that it was particularly fond of killing people. And that last year this same Beast had been on the prowl in the Opole region, the only difference being that there it had attacked domestic Animals. Now people in the countryside were scared out of their wits, and everyone was bolting their houses and barns at night.

‘Yes, I’ve nailed up all the holes in my fence,’ said the Gentleman with the Poodle, who this time was buying an elegant waistcoat.

I was pleased to see him. And his Poodle. It sat politely, gazing at me with a wise expression in its eyes. Poodles are more intelligent than people think, though they certainly don’t look it. The same thing applies to many other brave Creatures – we don’t appreciate their intelligence.

We left Good News’ shop together, and stood a while by the Samurai.

‘I remember what you said that time, at the City Guard post. I found it very convincing. I don’t think this is to do with a single killer animal, but animals in general. Perhaps thanks to climatic changes they’ve become aggressive, even deer and hares. And now they’re taking vengeance for everything.’

So said the old gentleman.

Boros left. I drove him to the station in town. His ecology students had never arrived – eventually their vehicle had broken down beyond repair. Maybe there weren’t any students at all. Maybe Boros had other matters to see to here, not just to do with Cucujus haematodes.

For several days I missed him very much – his toiletries in the bathroom and even the empty teacups he left all over the house. He called every day. Then less often, every other day or so. He sounded as if he were living in another dimension, in a spirit world in the north of the country, where the trees are thousands of years old, and large Animals move among them at a slowed-down pace, outside time. I calmly watched as the image of Boros Sznajder, entomologist and taphonomist, faded and evaporated, until all that was left of him was a little grey pigtail hanging in mid-air, ridiculous. Everything will pass.

The wise Man knows this from the start, and has no regrets.