Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk Read Free Book Online Page B

and then leave the presbytery and go into the meadows. The cold wind sobered him up. He smiled to himself and said: “How can I get angry at a river, a common dip in the ground? A river is just a river, nothing more.” But once he was standing on its bank, it all came back. He was filled with disgust, revulsion, and rage. He would gladly have buried it in earth, from its source to its mouth. And he looked around to make sure no one could see him, then tore off an alder branch and lashed the shameless, rounded hulk of the river.
     
     
    THE TIME OF ELI
     
    “Go away. If I see you, I can’t sleep,” Genowefa told him.
    “And if I don’t see you, I can’t live.”
    She gazed at him with her light grey eyes and again he felt her touch the very centre of his soul with that look of hers. She put down her buckets and brushed a strand of hair from her brow.
    “Bring the buckets and come down to the river with me.”
    “What will your husband say?”
    “He’s at the manor.”
    “What will the workmen say?”
    “You’re helping me.”
    Eli grabbed the buckets and followed her down the stony track.
    “You’ve grown into a man,” said Genowefa without turning round.
    “Do you think about me when we don’t see each other?”
    “I think about you whenever you think about me. Every day. I dream about you.”
    “Oh God, why don’t you end it?” Eli abruptly put the buckets down on the path. “What sin have I or my fathers committed? Why must I suffer so?”
    Genowefa stopped and looked at her feet.
    “Don’t blaspheme, Eli.”
    For a while they said nothing. Eli picked up the buckets and they went onwards. The path widened, so now they could walk abreast of each other.
    “We won’t be seeing each other any more, Eli. I’m pregnant. I’m going to have the child in autumn.”
    “It ought to be my child.”
    “It has all become clear and sorted itself out …”
    “Let’s run away to the city, to Kielce.”
    “… Everything pushes us apart. You’re young, I’m old. You’re a Jew and I’m a Pole. You’re from Jeszkotle, I’m from Primeval. You’re single, and I’m married. You’re mobile, I’m fixed to the spot.”
    They stepped onto the wooden pier, and Genowefa started removing the laundry from the buckets and plunging it into the cold water. The dark water rinsed out the light soapsuds.
    “It was you that led me astray,” said Eli.
    “I know.”
    She put down the laundry, and for the first time leaned her head against his shoulder. He could smell the fragrance of her hair.
    “I fell in love with you as soon as I saw you. Instantly. Love like that never ends,” she said.
    “What is love?”
    She didn’t answer.
    “I can see the mill from my windows,” said Eli.
     
     
    THE TIME OF FLORENTYNKA
     
    People think madness is caused by a great, dramatic event, some sort of suffering that is unbearable. They imagine you go mad for some reason – because of being abandoned by a lover, because of the death of someone you love, or the loss of a fortune, a glance at the face of God. People also think madness strikes suddenly, all at once, in unusual circumstances, and that insanity falls on a person like a net, fettering the mind and muddling the emotions.
    But Florentynka had gone mad in the normal course of things, you could say for no reason at all. Long ago she might have had reasons for madness – when her husband drowned in the White River while drunk, when seven of her nine children died, when she had miscarriage after miscarriage, when she got rid of the ones she didn’t miscarry, and the two times when she almost died as a result, when her barn burned down, when the two children left alive deserted her and disappeared into the world.
    Now Florentynka was old, and had all her experiences behind her. Skinny as a rake and toothless, she lived in a wooden cottage by the Hill. Some of her cottage windows looked onto the forest, and others onto the village. Florentynka had two cows left