Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF MICHAŁ

In the summer of 1944 the Russians arrived from Taszów. All day they trailed along the Highway. Everything was covered in dust: their trucks, tanks, guns, wagons, and rifles, their uniforms, hair, and faces – they looked as if they’d emerged from under the ground, as if a fairy-tale army put to sleep in the lands of the ruler of the East had risen again.

People lined up along the road and joyfully greeted the head of the column. The soldiers’ faces didn’t respond. Their gazes travelled indifferently across the faces of their welcomers. The soldiers had bizarre uniforms, overcoats with ragged hems, from under which there was the occasional flash of a surprising colour – magenta trousers, the black of evening-dress waistcoats, and the gold of trophy watches.

Michał wheeled Genowefa’s Bath chair onto the porch.

“Where are the children? Michał, fetch the children,” Genowefa kept mumbling.

Michał went out beyond the fence and seized Antek and Adelka tightly by the hand. His heart was pounding.

He was seeing not this, but that other war. Once again the vast stretches of the country he had once crossed appeared before his eyes. It must have been a dream, because only in dreams does everything keep recurring like a refrain. He kept dreaming the same dream, vast, silent and terrible, like columns of troops, like explosions muffled by pain.

“Granddad, when’s the Polish army coming?” asked Adelka, raising a flag she had made from a stick and a rag.

He took it away from her and threw it into the lilac tree, then took the children home. He sat down by the kitchen window and gazed at Kotuszów and Papiernia, where the Germans were still stationed. He realised that the Wola Road was now the front line. Exactly.

Izydor came rushing into the kitchen.

“Papa, come quickly! Some officers have stopped here and they want to talk to you. Come now!”

Michał went stiff. He let Izydor lead the way down the front steps. He saw Misia, Genowefa, the Krasnys from next door, and a small group of children from all over Primeval. In the middle stood an open-topped army car with two men sitting in it. A third was talking to Paweł. As usual, Paweł looked as if he understood everything. When he saw his father-in-law, he livened up.

“This is our father. He knows your language. He fought in your army.”

“In our army?” said the Russian in amazement.

Michał saw the man’s face and felt himself flush. His heart was in his throat, beating fast. He knew he had to say something now, but his tongue was tied. He turned it in his mouth like a hot potato, trying to make it form some words, if only the simplest, but he knew nothing, he had forgotten.

The young officer stared at him in curiosity. The black hem of a tailcoat was sticking out from under his soldier’s greatcoat. A joyful glint appeared in his slanting eyes.

“Well, Father, what’s up with you? What’s up with you?” he said in Russian.

Michał felt as if all this, the slant-eyed officer, this road, these columns of dusty soldiers, all this had already happened before, that even the “what’s up with you?” had happened before. He felt as if time had gone into a spin. He was seized with horror.

“My name is Mikhail Jozefovich Niebieski,” he said, his voice trembling, in perfect Russian.