Primeval and Other Times by Olga Tokarczuk

which fed her, and also fed her dogs. She had a small orchard full of maggoty plums, and in summer some large hydrangea bushes bloomed in front of her house.
    Florentynka went mad without anyone noticing. First her head ached and she couldn’t sleep at night. The moon was disturbing her. She told the neighbours it was watching her, that its vigilant gaze came through the walls and windowpanes, and its glowing light left traps for her in the mirrors, windowpanes, and reflections in water.
    Then, in the evenings, Florentynka started going outside and waiting for the moon. It rose above the common, always the same, though in a different form. Florentynka shook her fist at it. People saw this fist raised at the sky and said: she’s gone mad.
    Florentynka’s body was small and thin. After her period of non-stop child-bearing she was left with a round belly which now looked comical, like a loaf of bread stuffed under her skirt. After this time of child-bearing womanhood she did not have a single tooth left, true to the saying: “One child – one tooth.” Everything costs something. Florentynka’s breasts – or rather what time does with a woman’s breasts – were long and flat. They nestled against her body. Their skin was like tissue paper for wrapping the decorations after Christmas, and the fine blue veins were visible through it – a sign that Florentynka was still alive.
    And those were days when women died sooner than men, mothers sooner than fathers, wives sooner than husbands, because they had always been the vessels that secreted mankind. Children hatched out of them like chicks from eggs. Then the egg had to find a way to glue itself back together. The stronger the woman, the more children she bore, and so the weaker she became. In the forty-fifth year of life, freed from the endless round of child-bearing, Florentynka’s body reached its own particular nirvana of sterility.
    Ever since Florentynka had gone mad, cats and dogs had started frequenting her yard. Soon people began to treat her as a refuge for their consciences, and instead of drowning the kittens or puppies, they tossed them under the hydrangea bushes. At Florentynka’s hands, the two feeder-cows nourished a whole pack of animal foundlings. Florentynka always treated animals with respect, as she did people. In the morning she said “good day” to them, and whenever she put down a bowl of milk for them, she never forgot to say “bon appetit.” What’s more, she never called them just “dog” or “cat,” because it sounded as if she were talking about objects. She said “Mr Dog” and “Mr Cat,” like Mr Malak or Mr Chlipala.
    Florentynka didn’t regard herself as a lunatic at all. The moon was persecuting her, like any normal persecutor. But one night something strange happened.
    As usual when there was a full moon, Florentynka took her dogs and went out onto the hillside to curse the moon. The dogs lay down around her in the grass, and she shouted into the sky:
    “Where is my son? How did you seduce him, you fat, silver toad? You beguiled my old man and dragged him into the water! I saw you in the well today, I caught you red-handed – you poisoned our water …”
    A light went on in the Serafins’ house and a man’s voice shouted into the darkness.
    “Shut up, you mad woman! We’re trying to sleep.”
    “So go to sleep, sleep yourselves to death. Why on earth were you born if you’re only going to sleep?”
    The voice fell silent, and Florentynka sat on the ground and stared at the silvery face of her persecutor. It was furrowed with wrinkles, rheumy-eyed, with marks left by some sort of cosmic cowpox. The dogs lay on the grass, and the moon was reflected in their dark eyes too. They sat quietly, and then the old woman laid a hand on the head of the big shaggy bitch. Just then she saw in her mind a thought that wasn’t hers, not even a thought, but the outline of a thought, an image, an impression. This something was alien