Early in January, when I was still plunged in the blackest despair because of my Little Girls, he had visited me on his traditional new-year round of the parish. First his acolytes had called by, in white surplices on top of warm jackets, boys with red cheeks, which undermined their gravity as emissaries of the priest. I had some halva, which I liked to nibble from time to time, so I broke off a piece for each of them. They ate it, sang some songs and then went outside.
Father Rustle appeared, walking fast and out of breath; without shaking the snow from his boots he entered my little dayroom, stepping straight onto the rug. He sprinkled the walls with his aspergillum, dropped his gaze and recited a prayer, then quick as blinking, placed a holy picture on the table and perched on a corner of the sofa. He did it all at lightning speed – my eyes could barely keep up with him. It looked to me as if he didn’t feel at ease in my house and wanted to leave as soon as possible.
‘A cup of tea, perhaps?’ I asked shyly.
He refused. For a while we sat in silence. I could see the altar boys having a snowball fight outside.
Suddenly I felt an absurd need to nestle my face into his wide, starched sleeve.
‘Why do you weep?’ he asked in that strange, impersonal priest’s slang, in which they say ‘trepidation’ instead of ‘fear’, ‘attend’ instead of ‘take notice’, ‘enrich’ instead of ‘learn’ and so on. But not even that could stop me. I went on crying.
‘My Dogs have gone missing,’ I said at last.
It was a winter afternoon, Gloom was already pouring into the dayroom through the small windows, and I couldn’t see the expression on his face.
‘I understand your pain,’ he said after a pause. ‘But they were just animals.’
‘They were my only loved ones. My family. My daughters.’
‘Please do not blaspheme,’ he bristled. ‘You cannot speak of dogs as your daughters. Don’t weep any more. It’s better to pray – that brings relief in suffering.’
I tugged at his lovely clean sleeve to draw him to the window, and showed him my graveyard. The gravestones stood sadly, covered with snow; a small lantern burned on one of them.
‘I’m already reconciled to the fact that they’re dead. They were probably shot by hunters, did you know?’
He didn’t answer.
‘I wish I could have buried them at the very least. How am I to mourn them without even knowing how they died and where their bodies are?’
The priest twitched nervously. ‘It’s wrong to treat animals as if they were people. It’s a sin – this sort of graveyard is the result of human pride. God gave animals a lower rank, in the service of man.’
‘Please tell me what I should do. Perhaps you know, Father?’
‘You must pray,’ he replied.
‘For them?’
‘For yourself. Animals don’t have souls, they’re not immortal. They shall not know salvation. Please pray for yourself.’
That’s what came back to my mind, this sad scene from almost a year ago, when I didn’t yet know what I know now.
The mass was still in progress. I took a seat quite near the exit, next to the third-year children, who were looking rather quaint, by the way. Most of them were dressed as Does, Stags and Hares. They had masks made of cardboard and were growing impatient to perform in them. I realised the performance would take place straight after the mass. They obligingly made room for me. So there I sat among the children.
‘What sort of show will it be?’ I whispered to a girl from 3A with the lovely name Jagoda.
‘How Saint Hubert met the deer in the forest,’ she said. ‘I’m playing a hare.’
I smiled at her. But in fact I couldn’t understand the logic: Hubert, not yet a saint, is a ne’er-do-well and a wastrel. He adores hunting. He kills. And one day, during the hunt, he sees Christ on the cross, on the head of a Deer that he is trying to kill. He falls to his knees and is converted. He realises how badly he has sinned until now. From then on he stops killing and becomes a saint.
How does someone like that become the patron saint of hunters? I was struck by the fundamental lack of logic in it all. If Hubert’s followers really wanted to emulate him, they would have to stop killing. But if the hunters have him as their patron, they’re making him the patron saint of the sin he used to commit, from which he broke free. Thus they’re making him the patron saint of sin. I had already opened my mouth and was drawing air into my lungs in order to share my doubts with Jagoda, but I realised this was not the time or place for a debate, especially as the priest was singing very loudly and we couldn’t hear each other. So I simply set up a Hypothesis in my mind, that the point here was appropriation via antithesis.
The church was full, not so much because of the schoolchildren who had been herded in here, but a large number of quite unfamiliar men who were filling the front pews. Everything went green before my eyes because of their uniforms. There were yet more of them standing to the sides of the altar, holding drooping coloured flags. Even Father Rustle was festive today, but his baggy, grey face looked ponderous. I couldn’t sink into my favourite state and abandon myself to contemplation as usual. I was anxious and worked up, and felt as if I were gradually slipping into a state where vibrations began to run around inside me.
Someone touched me gently on the arm and I looked round. It was Grześ, a boy from the senior class, with lovely, intelligent eyes. I taught him last year.
‘Did you find your dogs?’ he whispered.
Instantly I was reminded of how last autumn his class had helped me put up notices on fences and at bus stops.
‘No, Grześ, unfortunately not.’
Grześ blinked. ‘I’m very sorry, Mrs Duszejko.’
‘Thank you.’
Father Rustle’s voice broke the cold silence, with only a light scattering of foot-scraping and throat-clearing, and everyone shuddered, moments later to fall to their knees with a rumble that rolled to the very vault.
‘O Lamb of God...’ the words thundered overhead, and I heard a strange noise, a faint thudding sound from all directions – it was people beating their own chests as they prayed to the Lamb.
Then they started heading for the altar, moving out of the pews with their hands folded and their gaze lowered, repentant sinners, and soon there was a scrum in the aisle, but they all had more goodwill than usual, so without exchanging glances they made way for each other, looking deadly serious.
I couldn’t stop wondering what they had in their bellies. What they had eaten today and yesterday, whether they had already digested the ham, whether the Chickens, Rabbits and Calves had already gone through their stomachs yet.
The green army in the front rows had also stood up and was moving down the pew to the altar. Father Rustle was now coming along the railing, accompanied by an altar boy, feeding them their next bit of meat, this time in symbolic form, but nevertheless meat, the body of a living Being.
It occurred to me that if there really was a Good God, he should appear now in his true shape, as a Sheep, Cow or Stag, and thunder in a mighty tone, he should roar, and if he could not appear in person, he should send his vicars, his fiery archangels, to put an end to this terrible hypocrisy for once and for all. But of course no one intervened. He never intervenes.