Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF MISIA

One day in August the Russians told Michał to gather all the people from Primeval and take them into the forest. They said Primeval was going to be on the front line any day now.

He did as they wanted. He went round all the cottages and said:

“Any day now Primeval will be on the front line.”

On impulse he dropped in at Florentynka’s house, too, but only when he saw the empty dog bowls did he remember that Florentynka was no longer there.

“What will happen to you?” he asked Ivan Mukta.

“We’re at war. For us this is the front.”

“My wife is sick. She can’t walk. We’re both staying.”

Ivan Mukta shrugged.

Misia and Mrs Papuga were sitting on the cart, hugging the children. Misia’s eyes were swollen with tears.

“Papa, come with us. Please, I beg you.”

“We’re going to take care of the house. Nothing bad will happen. I’ve survived worse things.”

They left one cow for Michał and tied one to the cart. Izydor led all the rest out of the barn and took the halters off their necks. They didn’t want to go, so Paweł picked up a stick and whacked them on the rumps. Then Ivan Mukta gave a long whistle and the startled cows set off at a trot across Stasia Papuga’s vegetable patches into the fields. Later they saw them from the cart, standing there, stupefied by their unexpected freedom. Misia cried the whole way.

The cart drove off the Highway into the forest, and its wheels fitted into the ruts carved out by the carts of those who had driven this way earlier. Misia walked after the cart, leading the children. By the road there were masses of chanterelles and ceps growing. Now and then she stopped, knelt down, and pulled mushrooms from the ground along with moss and turf.

“You have to leave the foot, a bit of the foot in the ground,” worried Izydor. “Otherwise they’ll never grow back again.”

“Too bad,” said Misia.

The nights were warm, so they slept on the ground, on quilts brought from home. The men spent all day making dugouts and chopping wood. As in the village, the women cooked and lent each other salt for the potatoes.

The Boskis took up residence between some big pine trees. There were diapers hung out to dry on their branches. Next to the Boskis the Malak sisters had their quarters. The younger one’s husband had joined the Home Army. The older one’s had joined the “Little Andrews” resistance fighters. Paweł and Izydor built the women a dugout.

Without any verbal agreement, the villagers arranged themselves just as they lived in Primeval. They even left an empty space between the Krasnys and Cherubin. In Primeval, Florentynka’s house stands there.

One day at the beginning of September, Cornspike and her daughter came to this forest settlement. The girl was evidently sick. She could hardly drag her feet along. She was bruised and had a high temperature. Paweł Boski, who performed the duties of a doctor in the forest, went up to them with his bag, in which he had iodine, bandages, pills for diarrhoea, and sulfamide powder, but Cornspike wouldn’t let him come near her daughter. She asked the women for hot water and brewed herbs for her. Misia gave them a blanket. It looked as if Cornspike wanted to stay with them, so the men cobbled together a home for her in the ground.

In the evening, when the forest was silent, everyone sat by glimmering bonfires and listened. Sometimes the night flared up, as if a storm were raging nearby. Then they heard a low, terrifying rumble, muffled by the forest.

There were brave people who went to the village, for the potatoes that were ripening in the small home gardens, for flour, or simply because they couldn’t stand living in uncertainty. Old Mrs Serafin, who no longer cared about life, went most often. Sometimes one of her daughters-in-law went with her, and it was from one of them that Misia heard:

“You haven’t got a house any more. There’s just a heap of rubble left.”