Zurek* by Olga Tokarczuk

*zurek "zhu-rek": A soup similar to white borscht, prepared on a sour flour base, often served with sausage.

"We should have brought the baby carriage," said one woman to the other, as soon as they came out onto the road, long since snowed over after the last clearing, on their way to the bus stop.

The older of the two carried a baby wrapped in a little blanket, which appeared dirty in the gathering dusk. The younger woman made it easier for herself by following through the snow in her mother's footsteps.

"We should have come during the day, not at night," the older woman spoke up.

"Well maybe so, but I couldn't get ready on time," said the younger.

"You didn't have to get all dolled up."

"Look who's talking."

"I didn't get dressed up. I just couldn't find my hat."

They barely made it to the stop before the practically empty rattletrap vehicle chugged to a halt. A bunch of teenagers was seated in the rear, all pressed together. They were probably going to a dance in town. The younger woman looked at them with eyes aslant, observantly paying special attention to one girl in a leather coat and tight jeans. Her mother asked her something in a quiet voice, but she merely grunted in return. Then she wiped off the frosty window pane and looked out at the darkness, flickering with lights. The young people were going farther. The two women got out at the second stop, where a side road joined the highway roaring with the sounds of heavy trucks.

They walked past the motel, lit up for the holidays, and made for the fish-and-chips place. They came to a stop for a moment in front of a huge red sign illuminating the front of the newly renovated building,  flashing the message "Coke Is It!"

"Should we call out to him, or how should we do it?" asked the mother.

"You go, and I'll wait here with the baby."

The older woman went in and returned after a moment.

"He's not there. He's at home."

They looked at each other briefly and began walking toward the yard.

A dog leashed to a doghouse began to bark and an automatic light turned on. The whole mess — a pile of boards, bundles of styrofoam in cellophane, pyramids of concrete blocks — was considerately blanketed in a layer of snow. W∏adek was building a garage.

A well-built red-haired man in a hand-knit sweater coming apart at the seams came out to meet them. He looked at them in surprise.

"What in the world are you two doing here this time of night?" he asked without ceremony.

"We've come on business," the older woman said.

"Oh yeah?" he asked slowly, growing even more surprised.

"Can we come in?"

He hesitated imperceptibly, but only for a second, before letting them inside past the freshly whitewashed hallway, littered with bits of stucco which crunched under foot. They went into his cluttered kitchen. He must have been fiddling around with his sink, for one of the cabinets was moved away from the wall, revealing secrets of pipes and joints.

"Can we sit down?" the older woman asked.

He set two chairs out for them practically in the middle of the kitchen, while lighting himself a cigarette and coming to rest against the skewed cabinet. Only now did he see the baby, and he smiled.

"Boy or girl?"

"A boy, a boy," the younger woman said and unwrapped the baby from its blanket.

She removed a blue wool cap from over its eyes. The baby was asleep. Its tiny wrinkled faced reminded Wladek of a newly husked hazelnut. It was that ugly.

"It's beautiful," he said. "What's his name?"

"He doesn't have one yet," the younger woman said gaily.

"Wladyslaw," the older one quickly put in.

"Wladyslaw?" he said in surprise. "Who names their kid W∏adyslaw these days?"

He scowled and took a drag on his cigarette.

"So what's your business?"

"Your name is Wladyslaw, and his name is too," the older woman continued.

Well so what if it is, I never said it wasn't."

They fell silent as the man knocked his ash onto the floor.

"So tell me, what's this about?"

The woman quickly turned her gaze in the direction of the bundle leaning against the wall and said,

"That's your kid, Wladek. The holidays are coming and we want to get him baptized."

The man's face froze.

"You've must have a screw loose, Halina. How's that my kid? ... Huh, Iwonka?" he said, turning to the girl. "How do you figure that's my kid? What are you two up to?"

Iwonka2  bit her lips and began quickly to rock the baby back and forth. It soon woke up and began to cry.

"So who is the father?" he asked her.

"You're the father. It's your child."

The man got up and stubbed out his cigarette with his shoe.

"Get out of here, both of you. Out!"

They slowly got up, and Iwonka put the cap back over the baby's eyes.

"Come on, out!" he insisted.

"Well, O.K., W∏adek,  but in that case the baby's father is your son Jacek," the mother said suddenly as she was heading out the door.

"He was here at Easter," added Iwonka aggressively.

"Get out of here."

The door closed behind them. They stood in silence in the dirty trampled-down snow. After a while the light went out.

""So now what?"  Iwonka asked her mother.

"Nothing. That's what."

The bus was only due back only in an hour, so they set off on foot.

"I told you we should have brought the baby carriage. This way it's going to take at least an hour."

"It's better than waiting for the bus and freezing to death."

During the night the baby was restless. Iwonka was sleeping like the dead, so her mother moistened the corner of a diaper in warm water and gave it to the infant to suck, which he did helplessly with his tiny mouth. The fire in the kitchen flickered through the cracks in the side of the stove.

In the morning they went to the store, and Iwonka bought herself a Magnum ice-cream bar, which cost a fortune. Her mother chided her not about the money but because she'd catch cold and lose her milk. Iwonka calmly ate her ice-cream and shrugged her shoulders. The baby was asleep in a bright-blue baby-carriage.

"What a pretty boy," the shop-keeper said, who came out with them onto the stairs in front of the store in her non-iron apron thrown on over her sweater.

After a moment a line began to form in the store, as usually happened around noon. This time it was not only local men come for cheap wine or passers-through on their way to the border come to stock up on soft drinks and snacks. Today housewives had come for oil, vanilla sugar, margarine, and raisins for baking. With the care of a pharmacist the shop-keeper weighed out meringues, chocolate jellies, and the special holiday candies which were most valued for the shiny gold-and-purple foil wrappers, for those trinkets would hang on the Christmas tree.

People were not at all concerned that the line move more quickly. Not at all, for each person, as soon as he had made it up to the counter, started a conversation with the shop-keeper, and she, casting aside her columns of numbers and sacks of baking powder, would lean against the counter and listen with rapt attention to the latest gossip. It almost looked as though the people were not paying with money but with ritual pebbles. For raisins, baking power, or cheap wine one had to pay with some small story, question, or humorous response. That was why it took so long.

An elegant dark green automobile came to a stop in front of the store. It was the latest hatchback model with skis riding on top. A man dressed in Polar Tec and Gore-Tex, with a funny-looking ski-cap on his head, got out of the car. He said something to a woman who remained inside the car along with two teen-age children. The man briskly ran into the store and got on the end of the line right behind Matuszek.

"Do you have any zurek?" asked the polar man, rubbing his hands, and he added without any connection, "Wow, it's really cold out there."

The question about the ˝urek unleashed a ripple of comment across the store. The woman, called to order in the middle of a long monologue, glanced at the new-comer with disfavor.

"Zurek, the kind in a bottle, or in a jar, I don't know how you have it down her, in a bottle or in a jar."

"zurek," Mrs. Matwiejuk  prompted the shop-keeper, as she began packing her trifling purchases in a plastic bag.

Everyone discreetly gave the outsider the once-over. Snow was melting on his colorful and stylish apres-ski boots. Yellow writing on his blue jacket garishly proclaimed some flashy motto in a foreign language. The shop-keeper glanced down at the lower shelf.

"Yes, there's one bottle left," she said.

"Oh, so it's in bottles. Up north we get it in jars," the man explained and looked merrily around at people's faces. "We're going skiing to Austria, and it suddenly got into my wife's head that she has to have some zurek, and this is the last store before the border," he said, now more quietly, for no reason addressing himself to Matuszek.

Matuszek turned his head away and carefully examined the brands of cigarettes displayed behind the display case. The line moved up by one person, as Mrs. Matwiejuk counted her change by the door.

"It's just not a holiday without zurek, right?" the man spoke again. His high-pitched, loud, and self-assured voice grated on the ears of his listeners. "It's our Polish specialty. I've been all over Europe and the world, but I've never found ˝urek anywhere. Of course, they have their own specialties, but not ˝urek. So I figure to myself, if I can't get it here, then I won't get it at all. The Czechs sure don't have ˝urek.

No one responded. The man began to stamp his feet and blow on his hands. The shop-keeper, usually so talkative but now feeling cramped by the presence of the stranger, did her work efficiently and conscientiously. The line quickly moved forward quickly, too quickly, for no one was actually in a hurry.

""It's cold, isn't it," said the stranger to Matuszek, rubbing his palms together theatrically.

Matuszek looked at him and almost imperceptibly smiled out of politeness. Then he turned his head back to the cigarettes on display.

"We have an apartment reserved in the Alps. Man, what ski lifts they have, and what snow. You can descend for an hour or more. And a bar and swimming pool downstairs in the hotel. Every apartment has a kitchen, so the wife will have someplace to heat up that ˝urek. And I'll probably need another piece of sausage, as long as it's good. Do they have good sausage here?" he grew suddenly worried.

The last woman moved unwillingly away from the counter. The shop-keeper loosened the zipper at the neck of her sweater.

"I see there's sausage, but if sausage costs six zlotys a kilo, it can't be any good," the man said.

Someone honked outside. The man went to the door and let a billowing cloud of cold air into the store. He shouted something toward the car and returned to his place in line.

"She's starting to get concerned, because we're supposed to be in the Alps by evening. But I just have to have some of that zurek.

Matuszek bought some cigarettes, orange extract, half a liter of vodka, and a loaf of bread. The shop-keeper quickly added up a column of numbers and wrapped the bottle up in the receipt.

"And some zurek," he said. I'd like a bottle of zurek."

Suddenly in the store it became dead silent. The shop-keeper ceremoniously handed him the bottle, and Matuszek quickly paid.

"My dear sir..." the man in Polar Tec began as soon as he had recovered from his surprise, but Matuszek took up his purchases in a flash and left the store.

In front of the store he ran into Halina with her mildly retarded daughter and handed her the bottle.

"Here, take this. At our house we don't eat zurek, only borscht," he said, and reminded her to come over that evening to pick up the quilt he had promised her some time ago.

* * *

Iwonka was too bashful to enter. She remained by the gate with her teeth chattering, whether from the cold or from fright.

"What are you afraid of, you silly? They're not going to eat you. You should have been afraid when you did that, not now," her mother told her.

"There's men in there. You go and I'll wait out here with the baby."

"It's good that there's men in there. Maybe now we can get something done in front of witnesses. Come on!"

The girl moved forward reluctantly.

It was nice and warm inside. Four men were sitting around a table in the kitchen. Matuszek was just pouring out the final round. His wife, a large, rotund woman, was bustling about straining some milk. A glazed cake was cooling on the counter-top.

"Hey, mom, the girls have come for the quilt," Matuszek stated.

He shoved the one vacant chair toward them. Halina sat down on the edge, while Iwonka stood with the baby by the door.

"To your health," Goral said, and emptied his glass. The others did the same in silence. Then they cleared their throats and took a gulp of orangeade.

Matuszek's wife went into the other room and quickly returned with a bundle packaged in plastic and tied with string. She began to chirp at the baby.

"What's his name?"

"He doesn't have one yet," Halina answered quickly. Iwonka nervously stepped back and forth in place.

"When's the christening?"

Halina shrugged her shoulders.

"That's a real good feather-blanket," Mrs. Matuszek said. "It aired out all summer long in the attic. Do you have a case for it?

"That's the baby's father," Iwonka suddenly spoke up from next to the door and nodded with her head at Goral.

Iwonka's words were followed by an embarrassed silence.

"Come on, speak up, Iwonka!" her mother encouraged her.

"You're the father," she said, looking him straight in the eyes.

Mrs. Matuszek pushed the tiny cap from off the baby's head and observed him carefully.

"I have four of my own," Goral finally spoke up. "I don't need yours too. You don't even know who you slept with."

"Hey, watch what you say!" Halina said threateningly.

"It was me. I slept with her," cried out Kawka.

His drunken eyes flashed. He could barely speak, for the man had no head for liquor.

"Yes, I slept with her," he repeated slowly, "but that's all I did. I slept. I was so drunk I just fell asleep. So it wasn't me."

"She was already at Wladek's and tried to pin it on him. There's no telling whose child it is..."

"A child is still a child," said Matuszek's wife.

She was hanging out with some soldier from the border patrol. Everybody saw it," added Goral. "It's like looking for a needle in a haystack.

He got up, took his cap off a hook, and headed for the door.

"Oh my God," wailed Mrs. Matuszek. "Why didn't you look after her, Halina?  It's all your fault."

"Oh, you think so, do you? What was I to do, tie her by the foot to the bedpost? I wonder how you’d've managed. She's a child in a woman's body."

"What about you, Jerzyk?" Matuszek's wife now turned full of suspicion to the youngest man there, her nephew.

Goral was still standing by the door.

Jerzyk blushed to the tips of his ears; it seemed as if his terrified mountaineer's eyes were going to catch on fire.

"It wasn't me, aunt. I took precautions. "

Kawka burst out in a raucous broken laugh.

"You won't find out anything more with an empty bottle, Mrs. Matuszek. Better bring out some more."

Matuszek's wife stood helplessly in the middle of the kitchen and looked now at Jerzyk, now at Goral, now at her husband. She seemed even more corpulent than before, heavy as a piece of furniture. Everyone waited for her to say something, but she just stood there moving her mouth, as though she were slowly fashioning with her lips a single word which would name everything all at once, from beginning to end. However, she evidently didn't find it, for she went up to the table, whacked its oilcloth surface with her hand, and said:

"Enough drinking. Off with you all. Tomorrow's Christmas Eve, and I'm sure you've all got lots of work to do at home."

She grabbed the bundle and shoved it into Halina's arms. Halina embraced it as though it were a monstrous large baby bunting. She pressed the cellophane to her face and burst out crying. Mrs. Matuszek feverishly began clearing the table. The guests rose silently and moved toward the door.

Then her husband spoke up.

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," he said. "Just a second."

He fell silent, as if thinking things over and trying to make a decision, drumming on the table with his fingers.

"I am the baby's father."

A long silence followed. He remained seated while his wife stood in the middle of the kitchen, and everyone else pressed together near the door in a puddle of melted snow. Then Matuszek's wife shouted at the top of her lungs.

"Have you gone out of your mind? You know you can't have children. We haven't had any children in twenty years of marriage, and everyone knows you can't have children because of that accident you had."

"Be quiet, woman. Shut your mouth. It's my child."

Kawka tottered over to a chair and sat down.

"Well then, fine. Since that's settled, let's have a drink."

Iwonka continued to stand, rocking the baby and shifting back and forth from foot to foot.

"But..." Mrs. Matuszek tried to speak. Her plump hands found the end of her apron and she pressed it against her eyes. Then she ran out, slamming the door behind her.

Matuszek reached for the cupboard and pulled out a bottle. He retrieved the glasses from the sink and poured out vodka all around, six portions.

"Not her," said Halina, indicating Iwonka. "She's not yet eighteen, and she's breast-feeding."

They all drank in an elevated state of silence.

"So when's the christening?" asked Matuszek.

"The priest said we could have it on New Year's."

"Then here's to the christening on New Year's!" Kawka stammered while  tipping his glass again in front of everyone.

Then Matuszek told them all to go home. He said that tomorrow was Christmas Eve and they had work to do. On the way out Halina wiped away her tears and looked at Matuszek with a smile.

"Thanks for the zurek," she said.

They returned home across an open field of untouched snow, Iwonka placing her feet in her mother's footsteps.

Translated by Oscar E. Swan