Stone Upon Stone (16 page)

People were gathering around me. I couldn’t figure out why. They were
shouting, their heads were bobbing like turkeys’ heads, they were waving their arms about. There were more and more of them. They shouted louder and louder, waved their arms faster and faster, and all of them were staring at me like crazy. Someone kicked my legs as they lay there on the blacktop. But it didn’t hurt at all. Someone else leaned over me, he was wearing a checkered shirt and he had eyes like a fish.

“He’s alive,” I heard him say, his voice was so loud it felt like it was boring into my ears.

He started to tug at my shoulders. And he must have woken me from my dream, because I saw I was sitting hunched over among the sheaves, and the people standing over me were real. Right next to me stood my horse, tangled in the traces, the shaft forcing his head all the way up to the sky.

“See, peasant like him, still alive.”

At that moment I felt it was my hand holding the whip, and I sensed a huge furious force gathering in that whip. I started lashing out blindly at all those screaming faces, and eyes, and shirts.

“You bastards!” I felt I was shouting at the whole world, though the sound might not even have passed my throat. Because the fog covered everything back up. As if I didn’t have a body again. Someone pulled the whip from my hand. Then when the fog rose again a moment later, I saw Kuś kneeling over me.

“You’re alive. Thank the Lord, you’re alive.”

I decided to write a letter to Antek and Stasiek about the tomb. I went to the co-op, I bought paper and ink and a penholder and a nib. Because when was the last time I wrote anyone a letter? I don’t even remember. No one in the house went to school anymore so those things weren’t needed. All we had was an old dried-up inkpot lying around from back when mother was still alive and she still wrote to them. I never wrote after they left home, even though they were my brothers. And they never wrote to me. It just worked out that way. They were in the city and I was in the village. They had their lives, I had mine. What was there to write about? Was I supposed to tell them what was happening in the village, when they maybe weren’t that interested in remembering the village anymore? What was the point of forcing myself on someone else’s life, even if it was my brothers’? Besides, one or other of them would swing by for a visit every two or three years so we more or less knew what was going on with them. One of them traveled abroad, one of them bought a car. One of them got an apartment, three rooms and a kitchen, the other one split up with his wife and got married again. One has a daughter and a son, the other one only a son, but he’s not that interested in school. As for my news, well, when mother died I sent them a telegram: “Mother died. Come.” Then, a few years later another one: “Father died.
Come.” That was all my news. Though even if there’d been more, would they have wanted to know?

While mother was alive she’d always have to write a few words to them every Christmas. And each time it was the name day of Saint Stanislaus or Saint Anthony. And sometimes when she’d suddenly miss them or when she had a dream about one of them. When the flour was bolted she’d send them a packet, and a letter to go with it. Then they’d write a thank-you for the flour and send their regards to everyone at home, “and Szymek as well.” That was enough. I mean, we didn’t stop being brothers.

But a tomb is a tomb, you only build one in your whole lifetime, so I had to ask them if they wanted to be buried with everyone else, because I’d planned eight places so there’d be room for them as well. Or maybe they’d rather be buried there, where they live – that way I wouldn’t have to spend more money unnecessarily, I’d have a smaller tomb built. Of course, I hope they live as long and as happily as possible, but sooner or later they have to die, because all of us that are alive are going to die. And please answer right away, because I’ve paid for the plot and gotten the cement, and I’m all set with Chmiel. They probably remember Chmiel, he built tombs even before the war, half the tombs in our cemetery are his work. He’ll make us a solid, comfortable tomb. I just have to let him know that my brothers agree.

I spent the whole evening on that letter. Not that I said a whole lot. The entire thing came out to less than one page. But I wanted to write something more than just about the tomb. I was embarrassed that it was the first letter I’d written to them in all those years, and it started with “Dear Brothers,” and the paper wasn’t that big, plus it was folded in two and not even written on to the end. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I thought and thought, I even had a drink. That reminded me I hadn’t milked the cows. I lit the lamp, took the pail, and even in the shed, as the milk was squirting between my fingers, I was thinking what else I could write to them about. But I couldn’t even make it to the end of the page, so the Love and the God
bless, Szymek would at least fall on the next side. After a whole room’s worth of thinking there was no more than a handful of words. I guess I could have written how much the tomb was going to cost me, the plot and the materials and the labor. But I thought, they’d only get offended and write back that they just want to be buried in the city.

It was like I was writing an official letter, not to my own brothers. And when you’re writing an official letter you don’t just have to be careful not to say anything against yourself, you also need to make sure the words all agree with each other, that they’re not making nonsense of each other, because otherwise you’ll have the whole office laughing at you. And it shouldn’t be too long, because who’s going to read a long letter. I worked in the district administration and I know. You’d read the beginning and the end, but the whole middle was like it was written to God alone. Though the middle often contained the most pain.

On top of that, one of them’s got a degree and the other one’s an engineer, and I couldn’t just write the way you talk. Out here no one pays any attention to how they talk and they don’t talk that much anyway, because on a farm work comes before words. Plus, truth be told, who is there to talk to? The plow, the scythe, the pitchfork, the hoe, the field, the meadow? If I have a real strong urge to talk I can talk to the horse or to God, but most of the time I just talk to myself in my own thoughts. And in the evening at home, after work, sometimes to Michał. Though talking to Michał is like talking to your horse or to God, or to yourself in your own thoughts. I ask him, so how are things, did you go anywhere in the village today, or, did you eat the dumplings I left for you, or, did anyone come by today? As usual he doesn’t answer, and that’s it for the day. Some days I don’t feel like saying even that much, I’m fit to drop and I just want to go straight to bed.

Though there isn’t always work. In the fall, sometimes it rains and rains, there’s no way you can go out into the fields, or to the village, and it’d be the perfect moment to talk like brothers, not just, When is this rain ever going
to let up. But I don’t want to ask him anymore questions. Because the most he’ll do is raise his eyes at you, and there’s no telling whether he’s heard you or not. And often those eyes look as if they’ve gone far, far away from him. What would be the point of asking him anything else. Though sometimes I feel sorry for him, he’s my brother after all, and at those times I want to at least ask him, Michał, tell me, who hurt you? But even if he told me, it wouldn’t help either of us. So maybe it’s better I don’t know.

It was the same when I was writing the letter, I wanted to ask him, shall I say hello to Antek and Stasiek from you? But I didn’t ask, I just wrote, Michał says hello as well.

The next evening I took the letter over to the Kuśmiereks’ next door. Their Rysiek goes to technical school in the town, I thought it’d be good for someone young to read it through. Maybe there are different ways of writing these days, or maybe I’d made some mistakes, even though they’re my brothers I didn’t want them laughing at me.

“Christ be praised.”

“Forever and ever.”

“Is Rysiek in? Listen, Rysiek,” I say, “take at look at this letter. I’m writing to my brothers. Put it right if there’s any mistakes. When I was young they taught us to write different than they do now. I’ll buy you an ice cream one Sunday as a thank-you.”

Kuśmierek was sitting by the kitchen stove. Through this cough that was choking him, because he has asthma, he says:

“What are you talking about, ice cream? Buy him a half-bottle. All he thinks about is vodka and whores.” He got such a bad coughing fit that his wife had to thump him on the back. “Yesterday he comes home from school rolling drunk. He’s lost all his notes and his books. So of course he needs new ones. Plus I have to write him a note to excuse him, say I needed him for the threshing. The little worm only got up a short while ago. The whole night his mother had to sit holding a cabbage compress to his head, he had
such a bad headache. You see how his eyes are still all gummed up? He must have drunk a bucketful of water by now. I wish he’d go about his studying the same way. But he’s thick as two short planks, him. It’s a waste of money. The thing is, they say they have to go to school because otherwise you won’t be allowed to hand down your land.” Then all of a sudden it was like the helpless father sounded in Kuśmierek and he shouted hoarsely: “You ever come home drunk again and I’ll show you what’s what, you little shit! I’ll kick you out like a dog!” But he was stopped in his tracks again by his cough.

Rysiek muttered something back to his father, rubbed his eyes, and started reading.

“Read it out loud!” roared Kuśmierek, barely able to catch his breath. “Reading quietly’s no kind of reading.”

Rysiek did what he was told and started to read out loud. He must have been a bit afraid of his father after he’d gotten drunk, because otherwise he wouldn’t have let himself be ordered around like that. But the reading didn’t go too well. He cleared his throat, stammered, stumbled like someone walking across uneven ground. It felt like every word stabbed me, because I thought I’d written it that way. I was about to say to him, here, give it back, I’ll write it again. But I thought to myself, he mustn’t have sobered up yet, so I encouraged him:

“Keep reading, Rysiu, keep reading.”

He even stood under the lightbulb as if the light was too dim. But it was too dim for him there as well. He started complaining about the lightbulb being covered in fly droppings, and was it too much to expect someone to wipe it clean once in a while, he couldn’t do it because he had to study. And that his father needed to stop all that coughing, it was distracting him.

Kuśmierek made a big effort, he even clapped his hand over his mouth. But it didn’t help the reading much, he was still staggering through the words like a drunk. All of a sudden he stopped and, as if he was thinking, he
began scratching his head. He thought and thought till in the end I asked him:

“What are you thinking about?”

“Tomb,” he mumbled.

“What about tomb?”

“I think it’s spelled wrong. I think it’s with a
u
. An open letter, not a closed one.”

“It always used to be written with an
o
,” I said. “Unless they changed it.”

That worried him a bit. And Kuśmierek, who was about to collapse from holding in his cough so as not to bother Rysiek, straightened up and said in a loud despairing voice:

“See what that damn kid doesn’t know! He’s going to fail his exams again! That’ll be the third time he’s taken the same class! Dear God. Then he comes back home and he’s a know-it-all, dammit! Tells me to sow corn instead of rye. What do you know, you dope, when you can’t even spell tomb! Can you imagine leaving the farm to him. He’d throw it all away in the blink of an eye. All he’d do is lie on his back watching his belly grow. An open letter. Go to the cemetery, do you see anyone in an open tomb? Everything’s covered in earth and stone slabs. The dead are apart forever from the living. That world from this world. Even closest family isn’t allowed to see what happens to someone after they die. Cause just like you have to be alive to know what’s going on here, you have to die to know what’s going on over there. Your time’ll come as well one day, damn you, it comes to everyone. You’ll see how you’d feel in an open tomb. No one would even come visit your grave, cause you’d be rotting, you’d stink like a dead dog. You’d be begging for someone to take a shovel and cover you with earth.” Kuśmierek was so bitter he’d gotten carried away, but all of a sudden his bitterness turned to anger. “And here he is, the little bastard, getting two hundred zlotys a month for his supper, and a hundred for bus money, that’s three hundred! Where
are his notes and his books?! And there’s always something else he needs, this thing and that thing! And for what?! For what?!” He wound up in such a coughing fit it was a good while before he got the better of it. His eyes stared ahead like he was gone from the world.

“Jesus and Mary! Józef! Józef!” squealed his wife. I jumped forward as well to save him, though I didn’t exactly know how. Rysiek was yelping also:

“Dad! Dad!”

Luckily Kuśmierek came to and breathed a sigh of relief. Except he looked at us like he didn’t recognize us. That short moment had tired him out as much as if he’d been mowing on a steep slope.