Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF MRS PAPUGA

Stasia Boska lived alone with her father after her mother’s death, and after her sisters had gone to live with their husbands and Paweł had married Misia.

It was hard living with old Boski. He was always dissatisfied and quick tempered. Sometimes he thrashed her with something heavy if she was late with his dinner. Then Stasia would go among the currants, crouch among the bushes and cry. She tried to cry quietly, to avoid enraging her father even more.

When Boski found out from his son that Michał Niebieski had bought land to build a house for his daughter, he couldn’t sleep. A few days later he scraped together all his savings and bought some land too, right next to Michał’s.

He decided to build a house there for Stasia. He spent a long time thinking about it, as he sat on the manor house roof. “If Michał Niebieski can put up a house for his daughter, why can’t I, Boski, do the same?” he reflected. “Why shouldn’t I build a house, too?”

And Boski started building a house.

He marked out a rectangle on the ground with a stick, and next day began to dig the foundations. Squire Popielski gave him a holiday. It was the first holiday old Boski had ever had. Then Boski fetched large and smaller rocks from the neighbourhood, white chunks of limestone that he arranged evenly in the excavated pits. It took a month. Paweł came to see Boski and lamented over the excavated pits.

“What are you doing, Papa? Where will you get the money? Don’t make a fool of yourself by building some henhouse under my nose.”

“Big-headed already, are you? I’m building your sister a house.”

Paweł knew there was no way of convincing his father, so finally he fetched the planks for him by horse and cart.

Now the houses were rising almost in parallel. One was big and shapely, with large windows and spacious rooms. The other was small, pressed to the ground, hunched, with tiny windows. One stood on an open space, with the forest and River behind it. The other was wedged in between the Highway and the Wola Road, hidden in the currant bushes and wild lilac.

While Boski was busy building the house, Stasia had more peace. By noon she had to feed the animals, and then she got down to making the dinner. First she went to the field, and from the sandy earth she dug up some potatoes. She dreamed she might find treasure under the bushes, jewels wrapped in a rag or a tin full of dollars. Later on as she peeled the small potatoes, she would imagine she was a healer, the potatoes were the sick people who had come to her, and she was removing their illness and cleansing their bodies of all foul matter. Then as she tossed the peeled potatoes into the boiling water she would imagine she was brewing an elixir of beauty, and as soon as she drank it, her life would change once and for all. Some doctor or lawyer from Kielce would see her on the Highway, shower her in gifts and fall in love with her like a princess.

That was why making the dinner took so long.

Imagining is essentially creative; it is a bridge reconciling matter and spirit. Especially when it is done intensely and often. Then the image turns into a drop of matter, and joins the currents of life. Sometimes along the way something in it gets distorted and changes. Therefore, if they are strong enough, all human desires come true – but not always entirely as expected.

One day, when Stasia went outside to pour away the dirty water, she saw a strange man. And it was just as in her dreams. He came up to her and asked the way to Kielce, and she replied. A few hours later he came back and ran into Stasia again, this time with a yoke across her shoulders, so he helped her and they talked for longer. He was not actually a lawyer or a doctor, but a postal worker, employed to install the telephone line from Kielce to Taszów. Stasia found him jolly and self-confident. He arranged to meet her for a walk on Wednesday and for some fun on Saturday. And the amazing thing was that old Boski liked him. The newcomer was called Papuga.

From then on Stasia’s life started taking a different course. She bloomed. She spent time in Jeszkotle and went shopping at Szenbert’s, and everyone saw Papuga driving her there in a chaise. In the autumn of 1937 Stasia fell pregnant, and at Christmas they were married and she became Mrs Papuga. The modest wedding reception was held in the one room of the newly completed cottage. The next day old Boski put up a wooden wall across the room, and in this way he divided the house in two.

In the summer Stasia gave birth to a son. By now the telephone line went far beyond the boundaries of Primeval. Papuga only appeared on Sundays, when he was tired and demanding. His wife’s endearments irritated him, and he was annoyed at having to wait so long for his dinner. Then he only came every other Sunday, and at All Saints he didn’t turn up at all. He said he had to visit his parents’ graves, and Stasia believed him.

As she waited for him with the Christmas Eve supper, she saw her reflection in the windowpane, which the night had made into a mirror, and realised Papuga had gone for good.