Free Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk Page B

child. Kucmerka told me ‘daughter,’ I remember that. Then something must have happened, Cornspike could have beguiled Kucmerka, because when I woke up it was a son.”
    Michał sat down and lit the lamp. He saw his wife’s tear-stained face.
    “Genowefa, you can’t think like that. That’s Izydor, our son. He looks like me. And we wanted a son, didn’t we?”
    Something of this short, nocturnal conversation remained in the Niebieskis’ house. Now they both watched the child. Michał sought similarities. Genowefa surreptitiously checked her son’s fingers, examined the skin on his back and the shape of his ears. And the older the child got, the more proof she found for the idea that he was not their offspring.
    On his first birthday Izydor still didn’t have a single tooth. He could hardly sit up and hadn’t grown much. It was clear that all his growth was going to his head – though his face remained small, Izydor’s head was growing, lengthways and widthways from the line of his brow.
    In the spring of 1930 they took him to Taszów, to the doctor.
    “It might be hydrocephalus, and the child will most probably die. There’s no cure for it.”
    The doctor’s words were a magic spell that awoke the love in Genowefa that had been frozen by suspicions.
    Genowefa loved Izydor the way you love a dog or a crippled, helpless small animal. It was the purest human compassion.
     
     
    THE TIME OF SQUIRE POPIELSKI
     
    Squire Popielski had a good time for business. Every year he acquired one more fish pond. The carp in these ponds were huge and fat. When their time came, they crowded into the net of their own accord. The squire loved to walk along the dikes, circling right round them, gazing into the water, and then into the sky. The abundance of fish soothed his nerves, and the ponds allowed him to get a grip on the sense of it all. The more ponds, the more sense. Busy with the ponds, Squire Popielski’s mind had a lot to do: he had to plan, ponder, count, create, and devise. He could think about the ponds the whole time, and then his mind didn’t wander off into cold, dark areas that dragged him down like a quagmire.
    In the evenings the squire devoted his time to his family. His wife, as slim and fragile as a reed, would shower him in a hail of problems, trivial and unimportant, as it seemed to him. About the servants, the banquet, the children’s school, the car, money, the shelter. In the evening she sat with him in the living room and drowned the music from the radio with her monotonous voice. Once the squire had been happy when she massaged his back. Now once an hour his wife’s slender fingers turned a page of the book she had been reading for a year. The children were growing, and the squire knew less and less about them. The presence of his oldest daughter, with her disdainfully pouting lips, made him feel uncomfortable, as if she were someone alien, or even hostile to him. His son had become reticent and timid, and never sat on his knees or tugged his moustache any more. His youngest son, the pampered favourite, tended to be wayward and had fits of rage.
    In 1931 the Popielskis and their children went to Italy. On returning from the holiday Squire Popielski knew he had found his passion – in art. He started collecting albums about painting, and then spent more and more time in Kraków, where he bought pictures. Moreover, he often invited artists to the manor, held discussions with them, and drank. At dawn he would take the entire company to his ponds and show them the olive-green hulks of the enormous carp.
    The next year Squire Popielski fell violently in love with Maria Szer, a young painter from Kraków, a representative of futurism. As happens in sudden loves, meaningful coincidences started appearing in his life, chance common acquaintances, and the necessity for sudden journeys. Thanks to Maria Szer, Squire Popielski fell in love with modern art. His lover was like futurism: full of energy, crazy,