Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF MICHAŁ

They were living in the kitchen with the cow. Michał had made it a place to lie down behind the door, where the buckets of water always used to stand. By day he ventured out to the barns for hay, then he fed the cow and threw out her manure. Genowefa watched him from her chair. Twice a day he took a bucket, sat on a stool and milked the animal as best he could. There wasn’t much milk. Just as much as two people need. Michał saved the cream from the milk to take it to the children in the forest one day.

The days were short, as if they were sick and had no strength to keep going to the end. It went dark early, so they sat at the table, on which an oil lamp flickered. They covered the windows with blankets. Michał lit the stove and opened the little door – the fire cheered them up. Genowefa asked him to turn her towards the fire.

“I can’t move. I am dead while still alive. I am a terrible burden to you that you don’t deserve,” she sometimes said in a sepulchral voice that emerged from somewhere deep in her belly.

Michał would reassure her.

“I like taking care of you.”

In the evenings he sat her on a chamber pot, washed her and carried her to bed. He straightened out her arms and legs. He felt as if she were looking at him from the depths of her body, as if she were trapped in there. In the night she would whisper: “Hold me.”

Together they heard the noises of guns, most often from somewhere near Kotuszów, but sometimes everything shook, and then they knew a shell had hit Primeval. At night some strange sounds reached them: squelching, mumbling, and then the rapid footsteps of a man or an animal. Michał was afraid, but he didn’t want to show it. Whenever his heart began to beat too fast, he turned on his side.

Then Misia and Adelka came to fetch them. Michał no longer insisted on staying. The mill of the world had stopped, its mechanism was broken. They waded through the snow along the Highway to the forest.

“Let me take one more look at Primeval,” asked Genowefa, but Michał pretended not to hear.