From the windows of the monastery office the open space in front of the church is in full view, as is the row of linden trees along the stream and even the circular drive, where twice a day the bus makes a loop. From here she can survey everyone who arrives at Bílá Voda—the handful of commuting nurses, who each morning make their way with hurried steps towards the hospital, and the patients, who usually arrive on the afternoon bus and, long after it has departed, are still gloomily looking around the derelict courtyard. From time to time, an ambulance or a passenger car pulls up from the Czech side. But the vehicle with the Polish license plate approaching from the narrow border road has turned in for the first time.
Perched in the window seat of the office where she had been reading Church Secretary Maličký’s report, Lena watched as the car slowly drove onto the monastery road and parked in front of the gate before two men dressed in country clothes got out, shielding their eyes as they looked up at the massive church tower bathed in the rays of the late afternoon sun. Their sense of awe and hesitant movements gave away that this was their first visit.
“Niech będzie pochwalony Jezus Chrystus!” came the voice of the older man, who had spotted her first. “Agnieszka, is she here?” he continued in Polish.
Lena looked them over sullenly for a moment. There was something about those men she didn’t like—perhaps the way they flicked their hats in greeting, or their somewhat erratic movements, or maybe it was just her overall reluctance to engage in conversation, period. Despite that, she nodded grudgingly and answered in Czech: “Wait a moment, I’ll get her for you.”
At that hour the young Polish girl was usually in the garden; even now she was there, digging away with a handheld hoe among the beds, weeding. Lena stood by the wooden fence that separated the courtyard from the garden, cupped her hands to her mouth and called out: “Agnieszka, you’ve got company!” Even from a distance it was obvious that this news didn’t make her happy.
“A kto . . . who is it?” asked the girl somewhat sheepishly in Polish, once she had made her way up the zigzag path to where Lena was standing.
But Lena just shrugged her shoulders: “I don’t know, two men.”
“Really?” murmured Agnieszka as she rolled down the sleeves of her work-shirt, and once her trembling fingers had managed to fasten the buttons at her wrists, she wrapped her arms around herself as if she were freezing. She asked, still in Polish: “And what do they look like?”
“What do you mean, what . . . ” Lena retorted. “One is young, and one is older. You don’t want to see them?”
The girl shifted uneasily on her feet, but then took a deep breath and wordlessly made her way through the shadow cast by the monastery building towards the gate. Before she brushed through it to enter the courtyard, however, she stopped short, glanced back at Lena, who was about to slip back inside the monastery, and in a barely audible voice implored: “Won’t you come with me?”
*
The men stood leaning against the car in quiet conversation—the older one, arms folded resolutely across his chest, kept nodding to the younger one, whose agitated voice fell silent as soon as the two women came into view.
“Dzień dobry, Daddy,” Agnieszka, to Lena’s surprise, greeted the older man in Polish, having stopped a few steps away from where he stood, and then, after a moment’s hesitation, turned also to the younger man: “Cześć, Maciek.”
There was no response—her father was scrutinizing her, his eyes narrowed to dark slits from which ran deep wrinkles, whereas Maciek, in place of a greeting, promptly dove back inside the car and started to rummage through a large box on the back seat.
Her hands thrust deep inside her pockets, Lena stood beside Agnieszka and in the mounting silence reproached herself for not having come up with some excuse that would have allowed her to escape back to her work. She loathed family gatherings and this one seemed especially odd—this trio certainly would manage just fine without her. But by then the girl’s father had spoken up: “No to jak się masz, Agnieszko? Good?”
The harsh, strangely biting tone of his voice did nothing to defuse the tension. On the contrary. Agnieszka, nervously shifting from foot to foot beside her, stiffened, as if she had been spoken to by a hypnotist. By now, no amount of wishful thinking made it possible to imagine that the father would give her a smile, set at her feet the box in which Maciek was still rummaging, and present a care package from the family farm—some cabbage, carrots, and parsley, a few new potatoes, a little extra something for the girl. And indeed, no such thing happened. When the young man finally reemerged from the car, when the box from the back seat landed at the tips of his mud-spattered shoes, he was clutching something that at first was impossible to identify, until he dashed over and flung it around Agnieszka’s neck, bellowing with rage: “For what you did to my son, go burn in hell!”
Lena gasped in fright. She stood there unable to move, mutely staring at the flayed flesh on Agnieszka’s chest, the exposed sharp teeth and blind bulging eyes, the broken rabbit limbs dangling from the baby shirt, soaked with bloody stains.
“Innocent spilled blood cries out to God for revenge and it will come! For letting them smash his head, mangle his body, rip off his arms and legs, you’re going to pay for it in the court of God! God is just and won’t let murder go unpunished. Repent your sins, while you still can!”
Rabbit, infant, flayed flesh, eye bulging from its socket, blood dripping in slow motion onto Agnieszka’s shoes, Maciek’s fist raised against the sky, the impassive face of the girl’s father, and a scream that cut to the bone, a scream torn from Agnieszka’s throat, a desperate, earsplitting scream that rebounded off the monastery wall and engulfed them in its echo like an invisible avalanche. Aghast, held prisoner by that horrific sight, Lena stood there like a pillar of salt, until a wheezing sound came from behind them: “Get out! Out, I say! Don’t ever let me see you here again!”
Out of breath from having run all the way from the cemetery, Evarista was approaching them, her head menacingly thrust forward and a hoe that she hadn’t managed to put down in her hand. The men, engrossed in their holy indignation, slowly and reluctantly turned their attention towards her.
“Didn’t you understand?” Evarista repeated when she finally reached them—hunched forward, as if she were about to spring, she appeared even tinier than she really was. “Do you need me to help you?”
It was absurd. Each of the men towered over her by at least a head, and beneath their light summer shirts were outlined broad peasant shoulders and arms that could have disposed of her with a single stroke. Evarista seemed not to notice. She stood facing them and didn’t back down even a step. Maciek lunged for her first. But before he managed to grab her, Evarista swung her arm and with all her might brought the blunt side of the hoe down on the hood of the car—crunch! Instantly on the smooth, immaculate surface of the hood there appeared a crater, fanning out in a wide circle of finely corrugated ripples.
“Are you nuts, you old hag?” shrieked Maciek, dodging in fright and slamming into Agnieszka’s father. The open car door that caught the impact of both bodies groaned loudly.
“Get out of here now!” shouted Evarista, swinging her arm and bringing the hoe down again—this time on the back window. A densely spun spiderweb of fissures spread across the glass.
One could see the thoughts racing through Maciek’s head, how he was still itching to tackle her, knock her down, grip her by the throat and strangle that obnoxious voice inside her that was banishing and degrading them, but the hoe, which Evarista gripped like the Grim Reaper his sharpened scythe, rested firmly in her hands, and when they still made no move, she swung it a third time. The car’s taillight shattered in all directions; in the gravel beneath their feet the glass beads looked like teardrops.
That did it—neither one stuck around to wait for more. Maciek got in behind the wheel, Agnieszka’s father clambered onto the seat beside him, and before he had a chance to slam the door, the car jerked forward and with a screeching of wheels took off at full speed towards the road leading back to Poland.
“Won’t you get that off her!” Evarista hooted at Lena, who remained rooted beside the shivering Agnieszka as if petrified. But even before Lena had a chance to recover, the flayed rabbit in the baby shirt lay at her feet and Agnieszka was disappearing through the gate, into the safety of the stone walls of the monastery.
“You should go after her.” Evarista motioned to Lena as she leaned on the hoe, one hand bracing her lower back. “She’s going to need you!”
Lena, without a single word of protest, obediently backed away. Before slipping through the gate herself, however, she managed a backward glance.
“Such a waste!” she overheard the raspy voice say, after which Evarista scooped up what was lying in front of her with the hoe and made for the window of the monastery kitchen. Dangling from the noose the rabbit, which she then handed over to Paulita, really did look like a dead infant, swaddled in a burial shroud.
AGNIESZKA’S LAMENT
“I hate myself, hate what I did, hate Maciek for what he did, hate them all, father, mother, my brothers, who looked at me as if I were a cow, covered and brought in from pasture, hate the memory of their eyes, after they reckoned the profit I’d bring if I calved, just the thought of that moment terrifies me, when they realized it wasn’t what I wanted, when they closed in on me, from behind and on all sides, even my mother and sister, all around me, around the stupid, ungrateful daughter, who needed them to explain how the world works, all friendly like, but there was darkness in their eyes, so much that it made my head spin, and right then I knew, there was just one kind of good, just their kind, the good of decent and respectable people, but who knew just how to raise a cross on Golgotha, you’ll see what’ll happen to you if you don’t want our good, you’d be better off dead than to disgrace our family, what would others think of us, other good Catholics, who then would drag our name through the mud, but we won’t let that happen, it won’t take much, you just need to listen, the priest will explain, he’ll straighten out what’s twisted in that stupid head of yours, and they packed me off to the priest, he talked about creation, about man, about woman, about their union, about family, he talked about shame and the burden of conscience, that it would eat me alive, and then about the right to a respectable life, about tiny feet, tiny hands, the beauty of motherhood, the voice of a child, the tears in one’s eyes the first time it says mama, he asked me nothing, and whatever he did ask, he answered himself, no one expected me to say a word, because what weight did my word carry? None, because I’m just Agnieszka, a body made for working, that’s why they raised me, why they fed me, clothed me, why they didn’t send me off to study, because there was no point, and now, just when Agnieszka could finally be useful, she goes off the deep end, my fault, my fault, but no one bothered to ask why, after all Maciek was there, Maciek recognized me, Maciek even loved me, my father approved of him, my mother liked him, but nobody asked what happened between Maciek and me, how it was that night after the harvest festival, when he walked me home, how not even he asked what I wanted, how he took what already belonged to him anyway, bent over the railing, skirt over my head, caught in his arms like a vise, I stared into the pond, at the reflection of the moon, and couldn’t believe that this sound of smacking flesh, this grunting, the filthy pap pouring out of his mouth, I’m going to whitewash that cunt of yours, that this was us, Maciek and me, but what about me? Who asked about me? What about my ‘no,’ didn’t it count? No, because it was me, Agnieszka, about whom everyone else always made decisions, my father, my brothers, and now even Maciek, so do you understand now, asked the priest? I understand, I nodded, nothing else came out of my mouth, but I still didn’t get a blessing, the priest kept on frowning, even when my dad took him off to the side and whispered something urgently into his ear, scrunching his hat in his calloused hands that knew how to handle animals better than people, and the others all stood around me like bailiffs, pretending not to listen, but straining their ears just the same, all but me, I was hearing the sound of smacking flesh, it filled my head, and I knew what horror was waiting for me, Maciek, his child, then more of his children, who’d crawl through me like a pipeline, because at the beginning was his seed and at the end was his son, who would spend just a little bit of time inside me, just long enough to ripen, to grow big, and then go out into the world to the delight of Maciek, my father, the priest . . . What don’t you like about it? hissed my mother, my sister was tapping her forehead, you’re stupid, so unbelievably stupid, just complicating everything, Daddy’s ashamed of you, you’ve made Ma cry, but in the end they stood there, satisfied that the priest had persuaded me, had convinced me, had explained to me what was most important in life, now all that’s left are the formalities, he said, when he came back with his datebook, banns in two weeks, he pronounced solemnly, wedding the last day of October, on Wednesday come by together, with Maciek, around five, it’ll be all right, girl, now go. And so I went, that same night, with one suitcase and a bit of saved money, the train to Warsaw took three hours, no one was waiting there for me, but I went straight to Anna’s anyway, her address was seared in my mind, long ago I must’ve written it on an envelope at least a hundred times, Praska ulica 17, her surname was still on the buzzer, even though we hadn’t written each other a single line in years, two girls who’d been tentmates at camp, and she easily could have moved away, but suddenly there she was, standing in the doorway, one side of her head shaved, the other with hair hanging down past her chin, kind of a strange hairdo, holding a cigarette in her hand, she couldn’t believe her eyes, but she laughed, come on in, she said, you’re a sight, these rags your usual getup? Want some coffee? What are you doing here? So I blurted it all out, sobbing so hard I practically choked, she couldn’t calm me down, no one made coffee, the cigarette sat in the ashtray, all that was left was a roll of gray ash that collapsed when she accidentally knocked into the table, she was seriously upset, you’re only eighteen, what’re we going to do, she repeated over and over, and then she opened her computer and started searching, she read, she phoned, and I just sat next to her, same thing the next day, I don’t think she went to school that whole week, she was studying at the university, so she said it didn’t matter, but then we had it, and she looked at me to see how I’d decide, and I nodded, even though I wasn’t at all sure if this was better than the horror I’d run away from, I felt like there was a rock behind me and a cliff in front of me, so which of these paths was I supposed to choose? But I nodded and we drove out to some woman doctor across the Czech border, it was nighttime, when supposedly the clinic was less busy, I cried before, when I was getting undressed, and afterwards too, when it was all over, and before I left, the doctor came over and said, I know a place where they could take care of you for a while if you want, you could lay low there for a bit and think about what’s next, it’s way up in the mountains by the Polish border, but it’s peaceful, would you like to go? So I nodded again, I didn’t care, I didn’t care about anything, because at that moment only one thing mattered, and that was the kid, a mangled mess of blood and slime in the bottom of a bucket, and after that nothing, as if the world lost its shapes, its colors, as if sounds and smells disappeared, everything swallowed up in a void, just occasional flashes of filth and hatred, always scorching, stinging, stabbing, never going away, just like I’ll never be able to undo what I did, you understand, you understand?”
But Lena did not understand. She sat beside Agnieszka, who was hugging her knees and rocking back and forth like a damaged doll, and her ears were buzzing, maybe so that she wouldn’t have to listen to her. She had long since pulled her hand away from Agnieszka’s back and now sat stiffly beside her, as if Agnieszka’s precipitous, garbled confession had sucked all the life out of her. No, she did not understand. She couldn’t grasp how anyone could snuff out a budding life, how anyone could go on living with the knowledge that they had killed their own child, blood of their blood, flesh of their flesh.
Really? flashed through her mind in the next instant. How was it, then, that she had remained in the world alone?
