Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF MISIA’S ANGEL

As Misia was giving birth to her first child, the angel showed her Jerusalem.

Misia was lying in bed in her bedroom between white sheets, amid a scent of floors scrubbed with lye, shielded from the sun by grosgrain lily-pattern curtains. The doctor from Jeszkotle was there, and a nurse, and Genowefa, and Paweł, who kept sterilising all sorts of instruments, and the angel, whom no one could see.

Everything was muddled in Misia’s head. She was tired. The pains came suddenly, and she couldn’t cope with them. She drifted into a sleep, a half-sleep, a waking dream. She imagined she was as tiny as a coffee bean and was falling into the funnel of a grinder as vast as the manor house. Down she fell into the black abyss, and landed in the grinding machinery. It hurt. Her body was being turned into dust.

The angel could see Misia’s thoughts and felt for her body, though it could not understand what the pain was really like. So for a brief moment it took Misia’s soul away to a completely different place, and showed her Jerusalem.

Misia saw vast stretches of a tawny desert that undulated as if it were in motion. In a gentle depression in this sea of sand lay a city. It was circular. Around it there were stone walls, in which stood four gates. The first gate was the Milk Gate, the second Honey, the third Wine, and the fourth Olive Oil. From each gate a single road led into the middle. Along the first oxen were being driven, along the second lions were being led, along the third falcons were being carried, and along the fourth people were walking. Misia found herself in the middle of the city, where on a cobbled marketplace stood the Saviour’s house. She was standing outside his door.

To her surprise, someone knocked from the inside, and Misia asked: “Who’s there?” “It’s me,” replied a voice. “Come in,” she said. Then the Lord Jesus came out to her and hugged her to his chest. Misia could smell the scent of the cloth in which he was dressed. The Lord Jesus and the entire world loved her.

But at this point Misia’s angel, who was paying close attention all the time, took her from the arms of the Lord Jesus and threw her back into her child-bearing body. Misia sighed and gave birth to a son.