That boy, that Eli – as she heard him being called – aroused fear in her, anxiety and shame. At the sight of him her heart began to pound and her breathing became faster. She tried to watch coolly and indifferently. His dark, curling hair, strong nose and strange, dark lips. The dark, hairy atrium of his armpit as he wiped the sweat from his face. He swayed as he walked. Several times he met her gaze and was startled, like an animal that has come too close. Finally they bumped into each other in the narrow doorway. She smiled at him.
“Bring a sack of flour to my house,” she said.
From then on she stopped waiting for her husband.
Eli put the sack down on the floor and took off his linen cap. He crumpled it in his whitened hands. She thanked him, but he didn’t leave. She saw that he was chewing his lip.
“Would you like some fruit juice?”
He said yes. She handed him a mug and watched him drink. He lowered his long, girlish eyelashes.
“I’d like to ask you a favour…”
“Yes?”
“Come and chop some wood for me this evening, could you?”
He nodded and left.
She waited all afternoon. She did up her hair and looked at herself in the mirror. Then, once he had come, as he was chopping the wood, she brought him some buttermilk and bread. He sat down on the chopping block and ate. Without knowing why, she told him about Michał at the war. He said: “The war’s over now. Everyone’s coming back.”
She gave him a bag of flour. She asked him to come the next day, and the next day she asked him to come again.
Eli chopped wood, cleaned the stove, and did some minor repairs. They rarely talked, and always on trivial subjects. Genowefa watched him furtively, and the longer she looked at him the more her gaze grew attached to him. Finally she could not bear not to look at him. She devoured him with her gaze. At night she dreamed she was making love with a man, and it was not Michał, or Eli, but a stranger. She would wake up feeling dirty. She would get up, fill the basin with water and wash her entire body. She wanted to forget the dream. Then she would watch through the window as the workmen came down to the mill. She would see Eli furtively looking in at her windows. She would hide behind the curtain, angry with herself because her heart was thumping as if she had been running. “I won’t think about him, I swear,” she would decide, and get down to work. At about noon she would go and see Niedziela, always by some chance meeting Eli on the way. Amazed by her own voice, one day she asked him to come by.
“I’ve baked you a bun,” she said, and pointed at the table.
He timidly took a seat and put his cap down in front of him. She sat opposite, watching him eat. He ate cautiously and slowly. White crumbs remained on his lips.
“Eli?”
“Yes?” He looked up at her.
“Did you like it?”
“Yes.”
He stretched his hand out across the table towards her face. She recoiled abruptly.
“Don’t touch me,” she said.
The boy lowered his head. His hand went back to the cap. He said nothing. Genowefa sat down.
“Tell me, where did you want to touch me?” she asked quietly.
He raised his head and stared at her. She thought she could see flashes of red in his eyes.
“I’d have touched you here,” he said, pointing to a spot on his neck.
Genowefa ran her hand down her neck, feeling the warm skin and blood pulsing beneath her fingers. She closed her eyes.
“And then?”
“Then I would have touched your breasts…”
She sighed deeply and threw her head back.
“Tell me where exactly.”
“Where they are softest and hottest… Please… let me…”
“No,” she said.
Eli got up and stood in front of her. She could smell the scent of sweet bun and milk on his breath, like the breath of a child.
“You’re not allowed to touch me. Swear to your God you won’t touch me.”
“You whore,” he croaked, and threw his crumpled cap to the floor. The door slammed behind him.
Eli came back that night. He knocked gently, and Genowefa knew it was him.
“I forgot my cap,” he whispered. “I love you. I swear I won’t touch you until you want me to.”
They sat down on the floor in the kitchen. Streams of red heat lit up their faces.
“It has to become clear if Michał is alive. I am still his wife.”
“I’ll wait, but tell me, how long?”
“I don’t know. You can look at me.”
“Show me your breasts.”
Genowefa slipped her nightdress off her shoulders. Her naked breasts and belly shone red. She could hear Eli catch his breath.
“Show me how much you want me,” she whispered.
He unbuttoned his trousers and Genowefa saw his swollen member. She felt the bliss from her dream, which was the crowning moment of all her efforts, glances and rapid breathing. This bliss was beyond all control, it could not be restrained. What had appeared now was terrifying, because nothing could ever be any more. It had already come true, flowed over, ended and begun, and from then on everything that happened would be dull and loathsome, and the hunger that would awaken would be even more powerful than ever before.
THE TIME OF SQUIRE POPIELSKI
Squire Popielski was losing his faith. He hadn’t stopped believing in God, but God and all the rest of it were becoming rather flat and expressionless, like the etchings in his Bible.
For the squire, everything seemed to be all right when the Pelskis came by from Kotuszów, when he played whist in the evenings, when he had conversations about art, when he visited his cellars and pruned the roses. Everything was all right when the wardrobes smelled of lavender, when he sat at his oak desk with his pen with the gold holder in his hand, and in the evening his wife massaged his tired shoulders. But as soon as he went out, drove away from home somewhere, even to the dirty marketplace in Jeszkotle or the local villages, he entirely lost his physical immunity to the world.
He saw the crumbling houses, rotting fences, and time-worn stones cobbling the main street, and thought: “I was born too late, the world is coming to an end. It’s all over.” His head ached and his sight was growing weak – to the squire it all seemed darker, his feet were frozen and an indeterminate pain ran right through him. Everything was empty and hopeless. And there was no helping it. He would go home to his manor house and hide in his study – that stopped the world from collapsing for a while.
But the world collapsed anyway. The squire discovered this for himself when he saw his cellars on returning after his hasty escape from the Cossacks. Everything in them had been destroyed, smashed, chopped, burned, trampled, and spilled. He surveyed the losses as he waded up to his ankles in wine.
“Chaos and destruction, chaos and destruction,” he whispered.
Then he lay down on the bed in his plundered home and wondered: “Where does evil come from in this world? Why does God allow evil to happen, if He is so good? Or maybe God is not good?”
The changes taking place in the country provided a remedy for the squire’s depression.
In 1918 there was a great deal to do, and nothing is as good a cure for grief as activity. For the whole of October the squire gradually geared himself up for social action, until in November the depression left him and he found himself on the other side of it. Now for a change he hardly slept at all and had no time to eat. He ran about the country, made trips to Kraków and saw it as a princess awoken from sleep. He organised elections for the first parliament, founded several associations, two parties, and the Malopolski Union of Fish Pond Owners. In February the next year, when the Small Constitution was enacted, Squire Popielski caught cold and ended up in his room again, in bed, with his head turned towards the window – in other words, in the place where he had started.