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At this time of day the sky is barely separate from the earth, the boundary between them hasn’t yet been fixed; the two are simply different kinds of dark in which the imagination can run wild. Though what can people imagine to themselves, in fact, aside from all the things that others have seen in this place, banal things made from the faint, indistinct forms of reality; this is nothing but a kind of night blindness, an absurd game of Chinese whispers. And the truth of it is that sight touches the dark, cold, damp colors the way a hand strokes smooth satin, the warm lining of an overcoat when it’s chilly outside, in the same unthinking way, with the same sense of pleasure.

There won’t be any plot, there won’t be any story, especially in the night, when the terrain is stripped of its landmarks, when we’re driving from Rogi to Równe and on through Miejsce Piastowe. We’re traveling between place-names in a solution of pure idea. Reality doesn’t put up any resistance, so all stories, all consequences, all the old marriages of cause and effect are uniformly devoid of meaning.

Kombornia. Where do these names come from? It’s been so long since the last moment they still had any significance. The puttering sound of the car rising high into the air is like the rattle of a sewing machine. Darkness leaches into the seams, and tacking the journey together does no good whatsoever. The eastern skyline lightens like a silvery snake that’s come to rest stretched out between the peaks of the hills. Its cold hue is a forecast of heat and dust and so we need to get a move on, mount those motionless waves then plunge down again to the bottom of a desolate ocean where houses shake off the darkness like dogs coming out of water, or stand whitely there like skulls in flashing sunglasses. And that’s where all the people are. They’re lying on their backs, or on their bellies with their shoulders pointing upward, dreaming their dreams, sweating or calm, covered up or outside a kicked-off mound of sheets, some still in their Saturday clothes. They have no idea someone’s thinking about them. Actually they don’t even really exist. Their minds are at rest, the sickness that is life has let up temporarily and they’re like pieces of heavy fabric—almost lifeless and almost happy. Jan, Stanisław, Florian, Maria, Cecylia—a litany addressed to the old saints. Another minute and time will blow them out like the wind extinguishing a candle. They’ll become part of the past and nothing will be a danger to them anymore, no rising dawn, no sweltering day. Shades in the dark.

Domaradz. The mist is joining the sky. It reveals haystacks, black fences, pointed roofs. The air is dark green. A viscid sky detaches itself from the horizon. In the crack, the glow of another world can be seen. Those who were dying imagined that this was where they were going.