by AGNIESZKA SZPILA (Trans. SCOTIA GILROY)
The following is from Agnieszka Szpila’s Hexes of the Deadwood Forest. Szpila is one of Poland’s most critically acclaimed, bestselling, and transgressive writers. The Polish edition of Hexes of the Deadwood Forest was longlisted for the Nike Award, the country’s premiere literary award, and will be published in at least nine countries around the world.
Concerning the Flaming-Fucking-Fury, a Foreshadowing of Something Yet to Come
In a market square with church towers rising high above the roofs of magnificent houses and a huge, ornately decorated town hall, people were strolling about, dressed in old-fashioned clothing-women in wide ankle-length skirts and white embroidered blouses with ruffs at the neck and puffed sleeves stitched with silk thread, and men in long trousers tucked into boots topped with silver buckles or in short breeches revealing stockings that clung tightly to their calves and festive shirts, waistcoats, and long colorful coats, with elegant hats on their heads. Along the winding streets paved with cobblestones, shaded by the wealthy burghers’ three-story townhouses that had Dutch-style granaries on the upper floors and beautiful red-tiled roofs on which pigeons and sparrows contentedly perched for hours on end, cats were sauntering lazily, heading toward the market to try to snatch some scraps from the butchers’ stalls.
The hustle and bustle in the market square and the constantly flowing waves of people transporting wares of all kinds in wooden carts – squawking fowl, patterned fabrics, dried cuts of meat, and jugs so full of milk that they sloshed around, splashing some of the passersby – gave no indication that, apart from all the activity at the market, there was anything extraordinary happening in the town.
But there was an increased number of guards in the square compared to a typical market day, and this sent a shiver of uneasiness through the crowds.
Suddenly, bells began to ring in all the churches. They tolled unevenly, which caused even more anxiety throughout the town, cutting as it did like a wedge through the safe everyday life of the place.
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