Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF CORNSPIKE

The Bad Man came to Wydymacz in the evening. He would emerge from the forest at dusk, and it looked as if he had come unglued from its wall: he was dark, on his face he had the shadow of the trees which never disappeared. Cobwebs shone in his hair, earwigs and maybugs roamed in his beard – it disgusted Cornspike. And he smelled different. Not like a man, but like wood, like moss, like a wild boar’s hair, like a hare’s fur. Whenever she allowed him to enter her, she knew she wasn’t copulating with a human. He wasn’t a human being, despite his human form, despite the two or three human words he was able to say. When she realised this, she was seized with terror, but excitement, too, at the idea that she herself was changing into a doe, a sow, an elk, that she was nothing more than a female animal, like billions of female creatures the world over, and that she had in her a male like billions of males the world over. Then the Bad Man let out a long, piercing howl that must have been heard all over the forest.

At dawn he would leave her, and on his way out he always pinched some of her food. Many times Cornspike tried to follow him through the forest to spot his hideout. If she knew where it was, she would have more power over him, because in his hiding place an animal or a man reveals the weak sides of his nature.

She never succeeded in tracking the Bad Man further than to the big lime tree. If she turned her gaze for just a moment from his hunched shoulders flashing between the trees, the Bad Man vanished, as if the earth had swallowed him.

Finally Cornspike realised that she was betrayed by her human, female smell, and so the Bad Man knew he was being followed. So she gathered some mushrooms and tree bark, took some pine needles and leaves, and put it all in a stone pot. She poured in rainwater and waited a few days. And when the Bad Man came to her, and then at dawn went off into the forest with a bit of pork fat between his teeth, she quickly undressed, smeared the mixture on herself and set off after him.

She saw him sit down on the grass at the edge of a meadow and eat the pork fat. Then he wiped his hands on the ground and went into the long grass. In an open space he looked around fearfully and sniffed. Once he even fell to the ground, and only a little later did Cornspike hear the rattle of a cart on the Wola Road.

The Bad Man went into Papiernia. Cornspike threw herself down in the grass now and, bending close to the earth, ran after him. When she found herself at the edge of the forest, she couldn’t see him anywhere. She tried sniffing, just as he did, but she couldn’t smell anything. She hung about helplessly under a large oak tree, when suddenly a branch fell beside her, then another, and a third. Cornspike realised her mistake, and looked up. The Bad Man was sitting on a branch of the oak tree, baring his teeth. She felt terrified of her nocturnal lover. He didn’t look like a human being. He growled at her in warning, and Cornspike realised she must go away.

She went straight to the river, where she washed off the odours of the earth and forest.