I was not aware of this. Frankly, I was pleased – it was as if a new family member had come to join us here.
‘What does it look like?’ I asked.
Boros reached into a tatty canvas knapsack and carefully extracted a small plastic box. He shoved it under my nose. ‘Like this.’
Inside the transparent box lay a dead Bug – that’s what I’d have called it, a Bug. Small, brown, quite average-looking. I had sometimes seen very beautiful Bugs. This one was not exceptional in any way.
‘Why is it dead?’ I asked.
‘Please don’t think I’m one of those amateurs who kill insects just to make them into specimens. It was dead when I found it.’
I cast a glance at Boros and tried to guess what his particular illness was.
He searched dead tree stumps and logs, whether they’d been felled or were rotting naturally, looking for Cucujus larvae. He counted and catalogued the larvae, and wrote down the results in a notebook entitled: ‘Distribution in the Kłodzko County Forests of selected species of saproxylic beetle, as featured on the lists of annexes II and IV of the European Union Habitat Directive, and proposals for their protection. A project.’ I read the title very carefully, which saved me from having to look inside.
Just imagine, he told me, the State Forests are totally unaware of the fact that article 12 of the Directive obliges member states to establish a rigorous system to protect reproduction habitats and prevent their destruction. But they were allowing the removal from the forest of timber in which the Insects were laying their eggs, from which the larvae would later hatch. The larvae were ending up at sawmills and wood-processing plants. There was nothing left of them. They were dying, but no one was taking any notice. So it was as if no one were to blame.
‘Here, in this forest, every log is full of Cucujus larvae,’ he said. ‘When the forest is cleared some of the branches are burned. So they’re throwing branches full of larvae onto the fire.’
It occurred to me that every unjustly inflicted death deserved public exposure. Even an Insect’s. A death that nobody noticed was twice as scandalous. And I liked what Boros was doing. Oh yes, he convinced me, I was entirely on his side.
As I had to go on my daily round anyway, I decided to combine the useful with the interesting, and went into the forest with Boros. With his help, the tree trunks revealed their secrets to me. The most ordinary stumps turned out to be entire kingdoms of Creatures that bored corridors, chambers and passages, and laid their precious eggs there. The larvae may not have been beautiful, but I was moved by their sense of trust – they entrusted their lives to the trees, without imagining that these huge, immobile Creatures are essentially very fragile, and wholly dependent on the will of people too. It was hard to think of the larvae perishing in fires. Boros scooped up the forest litter to show me other rare and less rare species: the Hermit Beetle, the Deathwatch Beetle – who’d have thought it was sitting here, under a flake of bark? – the Golden Ground Beetle – ah, so that’s what it’s called; I had seen it so many times before, and always thought of it as shiny but nameless. The Clown Beetle, like a lovely drop of mercury. The Lesser Stag Beetle. A curious name. The names of Insects should be given to children. So should the names of Birds and other Animals. Cockchafer Kowalski. Drosophila Nowak. Corvus Duszejko. Those are just a few of the names I could remember. Boros’s hands did conjuring tricks, drew mysterious signs, and lo and behold, an Insect appeared, a larva, or some tiny eggs laid in a cluster. When I asked which of them are useful, Boros was outraged.
‘From nature’s point of view, no creatures are useful or not useful. That’s just a foolish distinction applied by people.’
He came by that evening, after Dusk, because I had invited him to stay the night. As he had nowhere to sleep…I made up a bed for him in the dayroom, but we sat and talked a while longer. I fetched out half a bottle of liqueur left over from Oddball’s visit. Once Boros had told me about all the abuses and vile acts committed by the State Forests, he finally relaxed a bit. I found it hard to understand him, for how can one have such a very emotional attitude to something called the State Forests? The only person whom I associated with this institution was the forester, Wolf Eye. That’s what I called him because he seemed to have oblong pupils. He was a decent Person, too.
And so Boros settled in at my house for a good few days. Each night he announced that his students or volunteers from Action against the S.F. were coming to fetch him in the morning, but every day there was a new problem: either their car had broken down, or they’d had to go somewhere on urgent business, or they’d stopped off in Warsaw on the way, and once they’d even lost a bag full of documents. And so on. I was starting to worry that Boros was going to infest my house, like a Cucujus larva in a spruce log, and only the State Forests would be capable of smoking him out. Though I could tell he was trying hard not to be a nuisance, and was actually being helpful. For instance, he cleaned the bathroom from top to bottom with great care.
In his backpack he had a miniature laboratory, including a box full of small flasks and bottles, apparently containing some chemical Substances which, though synthetic, were deceptively similar to natural insect pheromones. He and his students had been doing experiments with these potent chemical agents, to be able in case of need to induce the Insects to reproduce in a different place.
‘If you smear this substance on a piece of wood, the female beetles will rush there to lay their eggs. They’ll come running to this particular log from all over the area – they can smell it from several kilometres away. All it takes is a few drops.’
‘Why don’t people smell like that?’ I asked.
‘Who told you that they don’t?’
‘I can’t smell anything.’
‘Maybe you don’t know you can, my dear, and in your human pride you persist in believing in your free will.’
Boros’s presence reminded me what it’s like to live with someone. And how very awkward it is. How much it diverts you from your own thoughts and distracts you. How another Person starts to irritate you without actually doing anything annoying, but simply by being there. Each morning when he went off to the forest, I blessed my glorious solitude. How do people manage to spend decades living together in a small space? I wondered. How can they possibly sleep in the same bed together, breathing on and jostling each other accidentally in their sleep? I’m not saying it hasn’t happened to me too. For some time I shared my bed with a Catholic, and nothing good came of it.
XI
THE SINGING OF BATS
A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
To the Police,
I feel obliged to write this letter, in view of my concern at the lack of progress by the local Police in their enquiry into the death of my neighbour in January of this year, and the subsequent death of the Commandant six weeks later.
As both of these grievous incidents happened in my immediate neighbourhood, you will find it no surprise that I feel personally Saddened and Disturbed by them.
It is my belief that there are many obvious pieces of evidence to imply that they were Murdered.
I would never venture to make such an extreme claim if not for the fact (and I realise that for the Police facts are what bricks are for a house, or cells for an organism – they build the entire system) that together with my Friends I was a witness, not to the actual deaths, but to the situation immediately after the deaths, before the Police arrived. In the first case my fellow witness was my neighbour, Świerszczyński, and in the second it was my former pupil, Dionizy.