A labyrinth of grim and fantastical tales mirroring modern anxieties
The forest seemed somehow changed. It rustled softly, betraying uneasy signals – the trees were not all healthy, the birdsong broke off, and the beetles and ants skittered about strangely.
‘Odd, this forest,’ Wróbelek said, after a pause, to Stanisław.
‘Odd it is, my Lord, odd indeed.’ Wróbelek tugged at his moustache.
And again, Stanisław felt an unpleasant prick, right in his heart.
****
The holidays wiped clean all memory of the events of Palm Sunday, and life in Miszków resumed its normal course. Stanisław and Wróbelek were regular guests in the manor, which, it seemed, met with the approval of the entire household. Jan was pleased to have an old comrade with whom to while away the evening, chatting about the old days, listening to tales of expeditions, or discussing matters of utmost gravity with Wróbelek. Samuel was pleased, for, under Stanisław’s watchful eye, he could practice his swordplay and other military arts befitting a young man. The grey-beards gathered in the home were happy for their part, because their guest amused them with various diversions and stories of faraway lands. For Stanisław had seen a thing or two in his time, he had brushed shoulders with foreign cities and distant lands, where he’d sampled delicacies ranging from Swedish herring to the figs of the Turkish sultans. This meant the days passed amiably enough, immersed in conversation or tending to jobs. Yet Stanisław could not stop his mind from drifting toward the strange forest, which roused a peculiar unease in his breast. He made a few attempts to speak about it with his host, but was always deflected with silence or a wave of the hand. A few times, turning things over in his mind, he even approached it, something he had never before supposed he might do. Once he stumbled across the steward Węgorek, skirting the line of the trees.
‘Ho, peasant, what of this forest?’
‘Yes, your Grace?’ The servant stared at him wide-eyed and alert.
‘The forest, is it always like this?’
‘How do you mean, your Grace?’
He rummaged in his head for the right word, but found it to be lacking, until the peasant came to his aid.
‘I don’t venture there, your Grace,’ Węgorek blurted.
‘You don’t go there?’
‘That’s a wicked place, old spirits run rampant there at this season.’
‘At this season?’
‘That is, in April, I never enter there come April,’ the peasant replied.
‘And why is that?’
‘Evil things transpire at this time, people wander astray, animals lose their minds, it’s a wicked time.’
Stanisław scratched his head.
‘Do you understand any of that, Wróbelek?’ he said, turning to his companion.
‘Best to heed the simple folk,’ Wróbelek mumbled aphoristically.
The forest would give Stanisław no rest. He made inquiries in the manor, but no one knew a thing about it, save for the tales that people told. Samuel recalled that his uncle had advised him to avoid it, Urszula knew nothing about the forest either, apart from the fact that the simple folk indeed were wont to say it was a mistake to enter the woods in April. Why was that? Apparently something wicked was lurking within. And then even Jan, who never gave much credence to such things, remained categorical on this score.
Translated by Soren Gauger
A labyrinth of grim and fantastical tales mirroring modern anxieties
Translation rights: Piotr Wawrzeńczyk, piotr@literatura.com.pl
Conventional wisdom might have it that the fiction writer’s only appropriate response to our troubled, and troubling, times is to address all the political, ecological and social chaos head on. This means that, on the surface, there could hardly be anything more out of step than Paweł Rzewuski’s mock-Baroque Chinese box of a novel, filled with colourful mayhem and fantastical creatures.
And yet, while the setting comes from a remote time and place, the anxieties on display in Harm (the title shares its name with the protagonists’ family coat of arms) are distinctly 21st century: the mass deaths of animals and sudden withering of trees, the sense of nature gone horribly awry. The blithe nastiness of noblemen toward maids, the raunchy misadventures of the clergy, the inability of the sexes to get along. The decay of national politics seemingly mirroring the environmental disaster. Is that a frenzied bear ripping apart those who stray unwarily into the forest, or maybe a werewolf? Have the Giedko brothers really been possessed by the Devil?
Rzewuski unravels his mysteries slowly, with a real sense of purpose. And though his language is playfully anachronistic and his setting quite unfamiliar, most English-language readers ought to be surprised at how immediate and entertaining this 17th-century romp really is.
Soren Gauger
Selected samples
She climbed her first peaks in a headscarf at a time when women in the mountains were treated by climbers as an additional backpack. It was with her that female alpinism began! She gained recognition in a spectacular way. The path was considered a crossing for madmen. Especially since the tragic accident in 1929, preserved … Continue reading “Halina”
First, Marysia, a student of an exclusive private school in Warsaw’s Mokotów district, dies under the wheels of a train. Her teacher, Elżbieta, tries to find out what really happened. She starts a private investigation only soon to perish herself. But her body disappears, and the only people who have seen anything are Gniewomir, a … Continue reading “Wound”
A young girl, Regina Wieczorek, was found dead on the beach. She was nineteen years old and had no enemies. Fortunately, the culprit was quickly found. At least, that’s what the militia think. Meanwhile, one day in November, Jan Kowalski appears at the police station. He claims to have killed not only Regina but also … Continue reading “Penance”
The year is 1922. A dangerous time of breakthrough. In the Eastern Borderlands of the Republic of Poland, Bolshevik gangs sow terror, leaving behind the corpses of men and disgraced women. A ruthless secret intelligence race takes place between the Lviv-Warsaw-Free City of Gdańsk line. Lviv investigator Edward Popielski, called Łysy (“Hairless”), receives an offer … Continue reading “A Girl with Four Fingers”
This question is closely related to the next one, namely: if any goal exists, does life lead us to that goal in an orderly manner? In other words, is everything that happens to us just a set of chaotic events that, combined together, do not form a whole? To understand how the concept of providence … Continue reading “Order and Love”
The work of Józef Łobodowski (1909-1988) – a remarkable poet, prose writer, and translator, who spent most of his life in exile – is slowly being revived in Poland. Łobodowski’s brilliant three- volume novel, composed on an epic scale, concerns the fate of families and orphans unmoored by the Bolshevik Revolution and civil war and … Continue reading “Ukrainian Trilogy: Thickets, The Settlement, The Way Back”
