Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF MICHAŁ

Michał came back in the summer of 1919. It was a miracle, because in a world where war has pushed every kind of law beyond its limits, miracles often occur.

Michał spent three months getting home. The place he had set off from was on virtually the other side of the globe – Vladivostok, a city on the coast of a foreign sea. So he had broken free of the ruler of the East, the king of chaos, but as whatever exists beyond the boundaries of Primeval is blurred and fluid as a dream, Michał was no longer thinking of that as he stepped onto the bridge.

He was sick, emaciated, and dirty. His face was covered in black stubble, and there were swarms of lice revelling in his hair. The threadbare uniform of a beaten army hung on him as on a stick, without a single button. Michał had swapped the shining buttons with the imperial eagle for bread. He also had a fever, diarrhoea, and the tormenting feeling that the world he had set out from no longer existed. Hope came back to him as he stood on the bridge and saw the Black and White Rivers merging together in a never-ending wedding. The rivers were still there, the bridge was still there, and so was the stone-crushing heat.

From the bridge Michał saw the white mill and the red geraniums in the windows.

Outside the mill a child was playing, a little girl with thick plaits. She must have been three or four years old. White hens were earnestly tripping around her. A woman’s hands opened the window. “The worst is going to happen,” thought Michał. Reflected in the moving windowpane, the sun dazzled him for a moment. Michał headed for the mill.

He slept all day and all night, and in his sleep he counted all the days of the past five years. His tired, fuddled mind lost its way and wandered in the labyrinths of sleep, so Michał had to start his count all over again. During this time Genowefa took a close look at the uniform, stiff with dust, touched the sweat-soaked collar, and plunged her hands in the pockets that smelled of tobacco. She caressed the buckles of the rucksack but did not dare to open it. Then the uniform hung on the fence, so that everyone who walked past the mill was bound to see it.

Michał awoke the next day at dawn and examined the sleeping child. He gave precise names to what he saw:

“She has thick, brown hair. She has dark eyebrows, a dark complexion, small ears, a small nose, all children have small noses, her hands are plump and childish, but you can see the fingernails, they’re round.”

Then he went up to the mirror and examined himself. He was a stranger to himself.

He walked around the mill and stroked the great stone wheel as it turned. He gathered flour dust in his hand and tasted it with the tip of his tongue. He plunged his hands in the water, ran his finger along the fence boards, sniffed the flowers, and set the wheel of the chaff-cutter in motion. It creaked and cut off a swathe of crushed nettles.

Behind the mill he walked into the tall grass and peed.

When he came back into the room he mustered the courage to look at Genowefa. She wasn’t asleep. He gazed at her.

“Michał, no man has touched me.”