‘Is it true that you found our Commandant’s body?’ the woman asked me, while trying to spot the tall figure of her husband.
I confirmed that I had.
‘Weren’t you afraid?’
‘Of course I was.’
‘Do you know, all those things have happened to my husband’s friends. He was closely bound up with them. I think he’s afraid too, though I’m not entirely sure what sort of business they had in common. Just one thing bothers me…’ She hesitated, and fell silent. I looked at her, waiting for the end of the sentence, but she just nodded and I saw tears in her eyes.
The music became even brisker and noisier, for now they were playing ‘Hey, Falcons’. Everyone who hadn’t yet danced leaped to their feet as if scalded and headed for the dance floor. I wasn’t going to try making myself heard over the one-man band.
When her husband came into view for a while with an attractive Gypsy, she tugged at my paw and said: ‘Let’s go outside for a cigarette.’
The way she said it implied that whether I smoked or not was neither here nor there. So I didn’t protest, though I’d given up smoking a decade ago.
As we pushed our way through the now delirious crowd, we were jostled and impulsively invited to dance. The merry mushroom pickers’ ball had changed into a bacchanal. We found it a relief to stand outside, in a pool of light streaming from the firehouse windows. It was a wet, jasmine-scented June evening. Warm rain had just stopped falling but the sky hadn’t brightened at all. It looked as if it were just about to start pouring again. I remembered evenings like this one from childhood, and suddenly I felt sad. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go on talking to this anxious, disoriented woman.
She nervously lit a cigarette, took a deep drag and said: ‘I can’t stop thinking about it. Dead bodies. You know what, whenever he comes home from hunting he tosses a quarter of a deer on the kitchen table. They usually divide it into four parts. Dark blood spills across the tabletop. Then he cuts it into pieces and puts it in the freezer. Whenever I walk past the fridge I think about the fact that there’s a butchered body in there.’ She took another deep drag on her cigarette. ‘Or he hangs dead hares on the balcony in winter to season, and they dangle there with their eyes open and caked blood on their noses. I know, I know I’m neurotic and oversensitive, and I should go and get treatment.’
She glanced at me with sudden hope, as if expecting me to contradict her, but meanwhile I was noting mentally that there are still normal people in this world. But I hadn’t time to react before she spoke again.
‘I remember when I was little they used to tell the tale of the Night Archer. Do you know it?’
I shook my head.
‘It’s from around here, it’s a local legend, they say it dates back to the Germans. It tells of the Night Archer, who prowled after dark, hunting down bad people. He flew on a black stork, accompanied by dogs. Everyone was afraid of him, and at night they locked and bolted their doors. One day a boy who came from here, or maybe from Nowa Ruda, or Kłodzko, shouted up the chimney, wishing the Night Archer would do some hunting for him. A few days later a quarter of a human body fell down the chimney into the boy and his family’s house, and then the same thing happened three times more, until they were able to put an entire body back together and bury it. The archer never appeared again, and his dogs changed into moss.’
A chill suddenly sailed in from the forest, making me shiver. The image of the Dogs changing into moss refused to vanish from my sight. I blinked.
‘It’s a strange story, like a bad dream, isn’t it?’ She lit another cigarette, and now I could see that her hands were shaking.
I tried to think of a way to calm her down, but I had no idea what to do. I had never seen a person on the edge of a nervous breakdown before. I laid a paw on her forearm and stroked it gently. ‘You are a good Person,’ I said.
She gazed at me with the eyes of Marysia, and suddenly began to cry. She cried very softly, like a little girl, except that her shoulders were quivering. It lasted a long time; evidently she had a great deal to cry about. I had to bear witness, stand by her and watch. It seems that was all she expected. I put my arms around her, and there we stood together – a fake Wolf and a small woman in a pool of light from the firehouse window. The shadows of the dancers flew across us.
‘I’m going home. I’ve run out of strength,’ she said pitifully.
Loud stamping noises came from inside. They were dancing to the disco version of ‘Hey, Falcons’ again – it must have been more popular than any other song, and over and over we heard them shouting: ‘Hey! Hey!’ Like shells exploding.
‘You go, my dear,’ I said, after a pause for thought. I found it a relief to speak to her so personally and directly. ‘I’ll wait for your husband and give him a lift home. I’m quite prepared for that. I have to wait for my neighbour anyway. Where exactly do you live?’
She mentioned one of those turnings beyond Ox Heart Corner. I knew where it was.
‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ I said. ‘Run yourself a bath and get some rest.’
She took the car keys from her handbag and hesitated. ‘Sometimes I think you can entirely fail to know the person you’ve lived with for years on end,’ she said, looking me in the eyes with such horror that I stiffened. I realised what she had in mind.
‘No, it’s not him. It’s definitely not him. I’m sure of it,’ I said.
Now she was looking at me enquiringly. I was uncertain whether to tell her this at all.
‘I used to have two Dogs. They kept close watch to make sure everything was divided fairly – food, petting, privileges. Animals have a very strong sense of justice. I remember the look in their eyes whenever I did something wrong, whenever I scolded them unfairly or failed to keep my word. They’d gaze at me with such awful grief, as if they simply couldn’t understand how I could have broken the sacred law. They taught me quite basic, plain and simple justice.’ I stopped talking for a moment, and then added: ‘We have a view of the world, but Animals have a sense of the world, do you see?’
She lit another cigarette. ‘And what’s become of them?’
‘They’re dead.’ I pulled the Wolf mask further down my face. ‘They had their games that involved playing tricks on each other for fun. If one of them found a long forgotten bone, and the other one didn’t know how to get it off her, she’d pretend a car was coming down the road that had to be barked at. Then the first one would drop the bone and race to the road, unaware that it was a false alarm.’
‘Really? Like people.’
‘They were more human than people in every possible way. More affectionate, wiser, more joyful…And people think they can do what they want to Animals, as if they’re just things. I think my Dogs were shot by the hunters.’
‘No – why on earth would they do that?’ she asked anxiously.
‘They say they only kill feral Dogs that are a threat to wild Animals, but it’s not true. They come right up to the houses.’
I wanted to tell her about the vengeance of Animals, but I remembered Dizzy’s warnings not to tell everyone my Theories. Now we were standing in darkness and couldn’t see each other’s faces.