A Swarm of Dust Read online

  He always returned late at night. And every night he and his mother pleased each other. It usually lasted until morning, when she went into the village to work and he disappeared on his familiar paths. They barely spoke; sometimes they whispered as if afraid they might wake someone, but even that was rare. They were scared they might say something loud enough to break something, destroy it. The whole time they had the feeling that what they were doing was mysterious and that it could bear no voices, apart from the cries and gasps emitted during lovemaking.

  At night his spiritual lethargy was transformed into sharp sensations that had hitherto been alien to him. He still beat his mother, tormenting her more every night. When he heard her gasp with pain he felt a particular passion. It was not unlike that time when he and Pišta Baranja had killed the puppies that no one wanted. They were little fluffy balls, still blind, crawling over each other and squealing and shaking their snouts, and when he touched them he felt how warm the little creatures were and how their blood was pulsing just below their skin. When Pišta Baranja grabbed the first one by its leg and bashed it against a tree, he broke out in sweat and felt fixed to the ground. This was despair or something like it, a kind of fear at incomprehensible action, but the more the fear grew, the more another feeling grew alongside it that suppressed the fear. And when that feeling prevailed, he leapt on the little creatures, trembling, saliva dripping from his mouth, his eyes glassy, and he bashed one puppy against the tree for so long that he shattered its blind head and reduced its body to pulp. Then he put his hand into the bloody mass of flesh and groped it.

  Making love with his mother filled him with a similar feeling; he tortured her until she bled and the more she panted with desire, the stronger grew the wish to make her suffer as much as possible. So she no longer felt enjoyment, but a kind of torment. The wildness of their relationship grew from night to night. When by chance they saw each other during the day he looked at her glassy–eyed, feeling a tremulous fear of her, but at the same time an intense hatred. The whole time he was gripped with a desire to torture her. She stared at him with docile humility. The whole time she reminded him of those crawling puppies, tumbling over each other. When on occasion he was weary of rushing through the woods and lay down on the moss and closed his eyes, he saw her convulsive movements, her distorted face in the moonlight, he heard her cries, and all this swirled together inside him, creating strange images, fading away and then returning. And when he walked among the trees all that floated before his eyes were images of their coupling, every object reminded him of some shade of night and he was flooded with the desire to hit, to beat, to torment.

  One evening, he didn’t know how, he returned home before dark. The sun was going down behind the hill, but it was still quite light. In front of Baranja’s house he saw Emma walking to and fro. He realised she was hanging clothes on a line between two pine trees. On the bench in front of the house was a wooden tub and she had just finished doing the washing. He saw her look at him as soon as he emerged from the trees and the whole time she watched him as he continued towards home. He was about to go inside when he heard her calling him. He stopped, but then moved quickly forward. ‘Janek!’ she called again, louder this time. ‘Come here, something’s happened to your mother.’ He was struck as if by lightning. He looked up, towards her, his legs took him in her direction, but something held him back. Emma wiped her hands on her apron and then kept beckoning with her finger. Her face bore a mysterious expression.

  ‘Come,’ she said and disappeared round the corner, then up into the woods. He followed her. His every vein was taut, and confused feelings flowed through him. When they got to the edge of the woods at the top of the slope she whispered to him to go quietly, and without meaning to he began to put his feet down without making a sound. Emma stopped behind some dense acacias and gestured to him again, then she pointed through the bushes. He came closer.

  Behind the thorns and brambles, around a large white hornbeam was a bed of moss. His mother was kneeling there, smoothing her creased skirt. Then she buttoned up her blouse. Beside her stood a tall, thin farmer, fastening his trousers. It was Geder. His mother picked up the basket that was leaning against the hornbeam and looked at Geder, but said nothing. They both turned and left, Geder to the left, towards the nearby road, his mother towards the gypsy settlement. Long after the rustle of her steps faded, Janek remained staring at the tree and the moss beneath it. The only feeling that gripped him at that moment was contempt for Geder, for he was certain that the man had not beaten his mother and so she would not be satisfied. Her words came back to him: you must beat me … then it is better …

  Geder did it just like that, as if mother meant nothing to him? Just like that? The past, from which he’d been cut off for so long, assailed him and he slumped to the ground, seething with memories. Images appeared and vanished. He saw how once, in those other places, in school, he had stolen a large piece of bread from some farmer’s girl, how he had flown home with this bread, where his mother was ill and there was nothing to eat, and his father and sister were ignoring her; he saw how he fell to his knees beside her bed and shoved the dried up bread into her hand and said: bread, mother, bread … eat it.. And he remembered how he felt when he sat in the corner and watched his mother chewing the bread and looking at him with bright eyes. It was like a strange trembling, a yelling within him. And before him danced the priest, the one here … do you love your mother, he asked … Love, love … He broke into a sweat, he realised he felt something different towards his mother than he had before and he was overcome with torment at the memories. It all seethed inside him. The sense of confusion was so strong that he could not see clearly. He got up again and the contempt for Geder reappeared, for he should have beaten her, otherwise she was not happy. And mother must be happy. He felt tears running down his cheeks. Mother … he sobbed inside. He would always beat her, he would always yield to her, he would always do what she wanted.

  Through his tears he saw Emma crouching beside him, looking at him in fright. But there was also a kind of mockery in her eyes. ‘Janek,’ she said, ‘didn’t you know? They’ve been doing it for ages. Will you tell your father?’ Amazement grew within him. Emma talked on; he didn’t quite know what she was saying, but some of her words struck him sharply. ‘If they can, so can we … I’d like to … do you want to, Janek, my husband’s away … Janek … do you want to … ?’

  ‘You don’t understand!’ he yelled, startling her. He saw her wide open eyes, he saw her timidly withdraw. He was filled with confusion, it stirred within him, disintegrated. He was thrown upwards, and then down into the woods, where it was already getting dark …

  That night he was wild like never before. He bit his mother’s breasts and shoulder, drawing blood. Then at the end he whispered: ‘Was it good, mother? Was it good?’

  ‘Yes, son,’ she whispered, stroking him.

  ‘If it hurts, it’s … better?’

  ‘Yes, son … ’

  ‘Shall I keep beating you?’

  ‘Yes, son … ’

  Then they fell silent. He wanted to ask why the tall man didn’t beat her, why she didn’t ask him to do it. But something stopped him. Maybe he did, he thought. With this hope his loathing for Geder evaporated, to be replaced with something else. When he was drifting off to sleep, Geder assured him that he did beat his mother, that she was happy, and he felt he liked Geder, he even stroked his sleeve …

  … then he drifted off completely …

  … oblivious …

  From then on his mother no longer returned late at night and Janek no longer wandered the woods until dusk. In the evenings they sat inside, eating corn bread or boiled potatoes, speaking quietly, a benign peace between them. They enjoyed watching each other’s gestures, the former sense of alienation had gone, they kept meeting each other’s eyes and feeling comfort in their closeness. The evenings were still humid and the moon kept shining.

  One evening they heard a noise outside an
d a moment later the door opened. On the threshold stood the enormous figure of old Hudorovec.

  They turned to stone.

  Janek’s mother was poking the fire beneath the pot, Janek was sitting on the bed.

  ‘Home already?’ she asked in surprise, still mechanically poking at the fire.

  ‘Home, wife, home!’ said the old man. Janek was surprised that he gave ‘wife’ a strange emphasis. Usually he said ‘woman’. And he had never spoken so quietly, coldly, crisply. He put his battered suitcase in the corner. He closed the door behind him. He did everything slowly, pensively. Then he began to unfasten his belt.

  ‘What about you? You’re home, too?’ he asked, looking at her.

  ‘What do you mean?’ his wife whispered.

  Her voice was hoarse, it trembled slightly.

  ‘You should be up there, with that one. Eh, wife?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  Hudorovec, meanwhile, had removed his belt and ran it through his open left hand. Then he stretched it in front of his chest, as if testing its strength. He was doing everything coldly, thoughtfully.

  ‘Come here, wife!’ he ordered. She froze.

  ‘Out, boy!’ He turned to Janek. ‘Did you hear me?’ he yelled, when Janek failed to move. Now his coolness was gone, his face distorted, saliva flew from his mouth, his eyes glistened.

  ‘Out!’ he yelled once more. Then his enormous paw grabbed Janek by the shoulder. As he flung him towards the door, Janek’s head struck it so hard he felt dizzy. Again the bony fingers reached for him and the next moment he was outside the door. It closed behind him. He got up, rushed at the nearest pine tree and grabbed hold of it, shaking.

  From inside he heard his mother moaning. He could hear the blows of the leather belt. Hudorovec was panting and swearing. It sounded as if he was banging her head against the floor.

  ‘Whore … ’ he gasped, ‘bitch … ’

  ‘Stop it, stop it!’ pleaded his wife. ‘I had no choice, husband … my dear husband! How was I supposed to live, when you go off, not caring whether we die of starvation!’

  ‘You could work, you slut! Take that … and that … And the boy could work … ’

  ‘I did, I did … ’ she insisted, but she was becoming quieter. She cried out a few times, then she was silent. The blows kept falling.

  Janek ran off through the woods. On the hill he stopped and watched the trunks of the beech trees trembling with light. He realised it was lightning. There was thunder above the plain, a wind had started up, a storm was coming, the first in quite some time.

  Long into the night he was washed by the rain. He turned his cheeks to the sky. He opened his mouth and eyes to feel the falling drops. The treetops were shaking. The flashes of light shimmered, never disappearing.

  The priest sat at the open window. He was looking across the valley to the village at the end of the ridge. He had a chilling recognition, for everything that he had planned to think calmly about was revealed in the first moment; but because it was revealed too quickly, he was confused. He felt he would be unable to focus, at least at the beginning, so that the delusions would be fragmented and deceptive.

  It had started with the tall chestnut tree above the valley, which was over three centuries old. It was a special thing, not only in appearance, but also in its significance. The wood around it had long ago been cut down, long before the priest came to these parts. Where the trees had been felled there were saplings growing and thick bush. Next to this miniature wood the chestnut seemed even bigger, like a great grandfather or guardian. It could be seen from the other side of the valley and from the north, where the low hills became a higher rise, and even from the plain, from the south, when it was clear. For many years it had been washed by storms and had lost its crown a number of times during turbulent nights. Since the winds blew mainly from the west, over the years it had wearied and leaned crookedly over the valley. It aroused unpleasant feelings, especially on stormy summer nights, when it swayed menacingly before the flashing background. But lightning hadn’t struck it for many years.

  People created a legend: when the burning hand from the sky shattered the solitary old tree or it was touched by unworthy human hand, then great misfortune would befall the valley. The legend had been woven from one generation to the next. The priest knew that all in the valley paid homage to the tree; they paid for masses to be said in its honour and spoke of it in whispers, cautiously. He also had a strange respect for it himself: whenever he went by he felt a special solemnity and hurried his step. Instead of fading away, the belief strengthened from one generation to the next, for children received it from their parents at that age when they are most open to the miraculous, the fairy-tale. The priest knew that the child’s soul is like a freshly ploughed field; when it absorbs faith, it carries it within, without being aware of it, for the rest of its days.

  But the monotony of the empty belief had gone on for so long that no one really believed in the prophecy. He had spoken about this quite often with Geder, the tall, skinny farmer, who lived a solitary life on the edge of the village. Then it suddenly happened. It must have been the suddenness of the event that made the priest succumb so excessively to the mysterious premonition. One night, a storm raged above the valley, the like of which hadn’t been seen for a long time. It was the first storm of the year: it was barely the end of April and the heavens had opened. The next morning the whole valley was gripped by horror. The previous evening they had seen the sacred chestnut swaying violently on the hill, illuminated by lightning, but the next morning where it should have stood there was only clear blue sky, washed by the storm.

  The priest once again looked across the valley and tried to work out whether the sky was really lighter. Of course it was, since it was early morning. He might not have realised what had happened if old Nancashka hadn’t rushed into the presbytery, fallen on her knees and sobbed that God had sent a sign and that the centuries-old chestnut tree was no more … It was then he turned and looked out of the window and saw empty sky. He was stunned, the ground felt unsteady beneath his feet. What disturbed him most was that a circle had been broken and he would need to work out what was happening.

  ‘What can you do,’ he tried to calm the almost hysterical woman, ‘we haven’t had such a storm … ’

  ‘No, Father!’ she almost yelled. ‘The chestnut was not uprooted, someone chopped it down! Can you imagine how much effort was involved? Only the devil could have done it!’

  And she rushed off, as if the devil really was hot on her heels. The priest was awash with uncertainty; a feeling that continued all that day and all night, and even more so the next morning – a Sunday, when more people flocked to church than he had ever known. He stood in the pulpit. They stared at him, waiting for him to announce a miracle. How much despair flooded his heart, how many lies and doubts awoke in him, how clear it became that things were happening of their own accord, spontaneously, irrationally, far from folks’ beliefs and their demands to elevate the trivia! He would prefer to avoid explaining the event, for he did not wish to pretend. He knew that he was in dire need of reflection, that he could say nothing that he would not doubt the next moment. But the people were staring at him, they were all eyes. It struck him that he could not reveal to them the ruin that existed inside him. He began to speak.

  ‘The old chestnut tree,’ he said, ‘which was and is no longer.’

  He was interrupted by a man’s voice from the congregation. ‘It still is, Father. After the storm it was wreathed in mist and for some time we couldn’t see it from the village. It’s standing there, where it always has. Go and look.’

  The priest saw the staring eyes of the congregation grow even bigger, darker, as if they had alighted on something completely incomprehensible. Almost as if they had expected that the prophecy had come true. He was gripped by waves of despair, he lowered his eyes and right below the pulpit he saw Geder with a scornful look on his unshaven face and blinking eyes that said: You don�
��t believe in God, Father, and nor do these people! Then he hung his head even lower. Again he had the feeling that the ground was unsteady beneath his feet. His legs carried him from the pulpit and in the sacristy he leaned for some time against the cold wall. Eventually, he gathered enough strength to go before the altar and lead mass.

  It began after that Sunday. He was increasingly conscious of how much deceptive light there was about him. And the valley, with its superstition, had shown itself to be an empty surface beneath which life followed its own laws and things happened of their own accord. Geder, who visited him a few days later, confirmed his suspicions. When the priest expressed his surprise that the irrational scare among the people had so quickly faded, Geder said that it was natural, for among these people faith, of whatever kind, was like straw: it burned up as soon as it was lit. But if the Church would confirm that the old chestnut tree was sacred, people would begin to panic, for the Church was the law that needed to be followed out of habit. They would have confirmation that what they believed was true, they would have support. But there was no belief among the people, although there was always a widespread conviction that the chestnut tree was an expression of some higher order.

  The priest never forgot what he said to Geder.

  ‘You, Geder, are the only one in the valley with your own world and probably even you are not capable of believing in it. You can be reconnected with the world of the people you belong to socially only by an accident that brings together those different worlds. But that which comes unexpectedly, cutting across man’s path and intentions comes from one source. If the chestnut really is connected with an evil that may cause harm, then it doesn’t matter whether we believe in it or not. For when evil is present, it is impossible to withdraw from it. Faith is thus not important, but rather the evil that is manifested. However, we can console ourselves that the evil that may befall the valley can be foreseen. It will either be a bad harvest, or an accident, or a death. But that is not real evil, that is nature, it’s what happens. And if what happens is reality, then evil is something that is not real, because it does not happen in accordance with nature but against nature. The evil that might affect you, Geder, or anyone else in the valley has only one source. When we talk about evil, we must talk about the source of that evil. And that source, Geder?!’