Stone Upon Stone (24 page)

Then one day, after yet another time in court that hadn’t resolved a thing, father met Prażuch out in the fields. Father was harrowing his land, Prażuch was mucking his. Prażuch ups and says, when you need to sell that field to pay for the courts, I’ll buy it off you. Wishful thinking, answers father, because if the courts don’t finish you the Lord God will. One way or another you’ll get what you deserve, and then maybe you’ll finally drop dead, you crook. It turned into a terrible argument between the two of them, you could hear it way off, like two whole villages were at each other’s throats, or two whole manor houses, or the sky and the land. Anyone who was out working the fields straightened up, stopped their plow or their harrow, stood for a moment, and looked around to see where the quarrel was. They argued so loud the larks vanished from the sky. And even the sky, that had been clear, clouded over and there were flashes of lightning in the distance.

In the end father had had enough, he ran up to Prażuch and landed him one with his whip. Without thinking Prażuch pushed his pitchfork at father. Father fell down, there was blood, and the other man stood over him, leaned on his pitchfork, and jeered:

“Who’s dying now, you bastard? Who’s getting what they deserve?”

Father was barely conscious, but he threatened him back:

“You just wait till my Szymek grows up, you crook.”

And so when I did grow up there was nothing for it. One time I was plowing the same field, and Prażuch was in his field sowing wheat. A flock of crows landed on his field and mine, and they walked about pecking at things, the way crows do. All of a sudden the old guy bent down, grabbed a clod of earth, and chucked it, supposedly at the crows that were on his field. But the ones on mine flew up as well. That made me mad, because I like it when the crows follow behind me when I’m plowing. I stopped the horse and shouted:

“Leave the crows alone, you old fart! Scare them off your own land! Keep the hell away from mine!”

Not only did Prażuch keep throwing clods of earth at the crows, he also started cawing, caw! caw! caw!

“Shut it, or I’ll shut it for you!”

But on he goes with his, caw! caw! caw!

I ran up to him and landed my fist right between his eyes. He flipped over and all the grain scattered from his canvas sheet. I kicked him where he lay on the ground.

“Who’s getting what they deserve now?” I said. I went back and plowed half my field and he still couldn’t even get up, he just lay there grunting and cursing. People even said I’d done something to his back, because he was stuck in bed almost till the spring.

Then autumn came again, and Antek was grazing the cows one day among the potato stalks, and Prażuch was plowing his land. And somehow or other one of the cows strayed onto his field. Antek ran over to drive it back. Prażuch left his plow and horse and set about Antek with his whip. He beat the kid so bad he had purple welts all over. Then he whipped the cow that had strayed. And as if that wasn’t enough, he ran over onto our land and whipped the other cow, that hadn’t done a damn thing to him. Antek came
back home crying, it wasn’t even close to midday, and the cows were flogged so bad their skin was covered in ridges.

That finally did it for me. I grabbed an ax and ran out into the fields, I was going to kill the old man and be done with it. After that I could rot in prison. But he saw me coming from far off, he quickly unhitched the horse from the plow, jumped on the horse, flicked the reins, and galloped off down the road by the mill toward his house. I ran after him, but his place was all bolted up. I started hammering at the door.

“Open up, you son of a bitch, I’m gonna kill you! Open up, you hear! This world’s too small for the both of us!”

But I couldn’t even hear the slightest peep from behind the door – it was like no one was there. And they all
were
there. I looked through the window, there was a tin crucifix standing in it. I could have smashed the window, but it somehow didn’t seem right to clamber in over a crucifix. I just hacked the corner post of the house with my ax.

From that time on he avoided me like the plague. I never ran into him down in the village. Or at the store. And whenever I’d go into the fields, his land would already have been worked, like the devil himself had done it in the night. In the end we bumped into each other one time at the pub. He mustn’t have been expecting to see me, because it was still morning, the weather was perfect, and it was harvesttime. He’d come for tobacco, I was at the bar and I’d already had a bit to drink.

“So it’s tobacco you’re after, granddad?” I said. He shrunk his head in and didn’t utter a word. “What’s wrong with smoking clover? Or chop yourself up some cherry leaves!” Then I said to the Jew: “Chaim, give him a glass of anis vodka, let him drink to my health since we’ve finally run into each other.”

The Jew poured the drink, but Prażuch acted like it wasn’t meant for him.

“What, you’re not gonna drink to my health?” I grabbed his head in one
hand and the glass in the other, and I was about to pour the stuff down his throat by force, when he ups and spits in my face. “That’s the thanks I get, you son of a bitch? I buy you a drink and you spit on me?”

I lifted him almost as high as the ceiling and threw him down on the floor so hard the place shook. He gave a moan like it was his last breath. I got scared I’d maybe killed him, he was getting on and his old bones could have been smashed to pieces by a fall like that. But he managed to stand. The Jew helped him some. He staggered out of the pub almost on all fours, meek as a lamb. It was only when he was outside, when he’d climbed up on his wagon and taken the whip and reins, he started cussing me out:

“You bastard! You piece of shit! Antichrist!”

I ran out after him, but he whipped up the horse. And once he’d gotten a good ways away, he turned around to threaten me again:

“Just you wait till my boys grow up!”

He had three sons, Wojtek, Jędrek, and Bolek. And so when they grew up, though the oldest one, Wojtek, had barely come of age, they waited for me one time. I was coming back that night from a dance in Boleszyce. It was like everything conspired against me that evening. I’d had the urge to walk a girl back to her place, she lived almost at the edge of the village, and I stood with her outside her house for a while. But she wouldn’t even let me kiss her, she was stubborn as a mule, she squeezed her lips shut and kept turning her head away. And afterwards I had to walk back home alone because the guys had gone off somewhere. The night was black as pitch, there wasn’t a star in the sky or even any moonlight, just dogs barking in the distance. On top of that I’d taken a shortcut through the dense woods in this hollow, and there was one bush after another, hawthorn, juniper, hazel, you could barely see the path that led through them. But it wasn’t the first time I’d gone home on my own, and often it was from a lot farther away, so what did I have to be afraid of. I whistled as I walked, O my Rosemary, and, My darling war, and, Duckies and geese in the water clucking, run away girl or they’ll come pecking. All
of a sudden the Prażuch boys jumped out from behind the bushes waving sticks. Before I had time to reach for my knife I was already on the ground half dead. All I could feel was them kicking me from every side, but it only lasted a moment, after that I didn’t feel a thing, I couldn’t tell whether I was alive or dead. It wasn’t till the morning that a farmer came along the same path and went to tell people in the village there was a corpse in the hollow.

For two weeks I couldn’t get out of bed. Though everything hurt even when I was lying down. Mother kept making compresses for me, sobbing over me the whole while:

“Dear Lord Jesus, Szymek, how many times have I begged you! How many times have I prayed to God! Are you trying to send me to my grave? Promise me this’ll be the last time.”

But how could I make any promises, even to my mother, when I’d sworn to myself I wouldn’t forgive them. I’d burn their house down, I’d kill them, but I wouldn’t forgive them. Except that soon afterward, the war began and I had to go to war. True, before you could say Jack Robinson, the war was lost and I was back home before the potato lifting was even done. But after the war, all the things that had happened with the Prażuchs seemed like they’d been in a different world. Because losing the war bothered me more than the Prażuchs did. And I probably would have forgiven them. But father went on about Prażuch plowing over the field boundary again while I was away at the war, because the old fart was counting on me not coming back. And he kept telling me, you need to do something about it, you really do, the land can’t take it any longer. At the very least go take him to court. I couldn’t get him to understand that there was no court to take him to anymore. What court? Poland was gone, so the courts were gone as well. He just kept repeating:

“You lost the war, and on top of that I’m supposed to lose to the Prażuchs as well?”

So one day I threw the plow into the wagon, and although our field and
Prażuch’s were both sown already, and the crop was starting to come up, I plowed over what was ours so the old fart would know I was back.

The following year there was a church fair in Lisice for Saint Peter and Paul’s Day. Normally I might not have gone, but there wasn’t anywhere to mill rye for bread because the military police were minding the mill like guard dogs, and you needed to have a chit to say you’d provided a levy. Though even when you had the chit, they’d still sometimes requisition part of your crop and smack you in the face into the bargain. Plus, the mill in Lisice belonged to a guy called Pasieńko that had a daughter he was trying to marry off. She was an old maid already, Zośka was her name. I knew her from different dances and she’d often invited me to come by. But first off, Lisice was a fair ways from us, and second, she was a plain, dumpy thing, her back was level with her rump, she had teeth like a horse, on top of which all she did was laugh. All the same, what won’t a person do for bread. I thought to myself, I’ll go over there, take her to the fair, and her old man’ll grind at least a quarter bushel of rye for me on the down low. I can even spend a bit of time with her, let him think I’m interested in marrying her, maybe the war won’t last that long. At most I’ll buy her a puppy or a kitten at the fair, or a string of beads, so she won’t bad-mouth me later.

Luckily people were crowding round the stalls like bees on honey, and there was no way we could elbow through. Though as it happened I didn’t feel a whole lot like pushing anyway, and for Zośka it was enough that she was on my arm. She would have given anything to be seen around the fair with a young fellow like me, never mind puppies or kittens or beads. Also, even though it was wartime the fair was grander than many a one before the war. The rows of stalls stretched all the way to the cemetery. There were as many wagons as on market day. And the crowd was so big the place was stifling, it was like processions moving this way and that, you couldn’t even tell which one was going which direction, because they were all squeezed
together. And all the squeals and shouts and laughter, and trumpeting, and whistling, and roosters crowing, like there was no war and the whole world was one giant fair. Plus, I told her I liked it when she laughed, so she kept laughing the whole time.

All at once the three Prażuchs are standing there in front of us like three pine trees. They’re eyeing us like bandits. Uh-oh, I think to myself, this could turn nasty. I tried to go around them, because I had rye flour and bread-making on my mind, not fighting. But on the right there happened to be a stall with a crowd of customers, and on the left a wagon that someone was selling cherries off of, and I wasn’t about to turn around and beat a retreat. I let Zośka go ahead first, thinking it might be easier if we passed them one by one. They let her through, though as she passed Bolek, the youngest one, he said with a sneer:

“He’s found himself a genuine dwarf girl.”

The three of them snickered, and I was sure they’d let me past too, at Zośka’s expense. Then suddenly the oldest one, Wojtek, blocks my way with his shoulder and he’s all, Where the hell do you think you’re going? Can’t you see we’re standing here?

“Of course I can see,” I answered. And without a second thought I punched him in the mouth as he stood there still grinning. He didn’t even have time to duck. He swayed, I straightened him up with my other fist and he rolled backwards onto the wagon with the cherries. His head hit the wheel and after that he didn’t get up. Bolek jumped forward and grabbed me by the shoulders, and we struggled for a moment. There was a commotion. Some folks got out of the way, but others pushed forward so they could see. There were even some wanted to join in. Someone called out like they were selling candy:

“Fight! There’s a fight!”

Someone else shouted:

“Jesus and Mary! Isn’t it enough there’s a war on, damn them!”

“Get the priest! Have him spray holy water on them, the goddam fools! Get the priest!”

Zośka was tugging at my jacket.

“Szymek! Szymuś! You’re the smart one! Let the stupid idiots have their way!”

At that exact moment a massive weight hit my head from behind. I reeled, and my eyes went blank. But I managed to stay on my feet, and I swung my fist blindly into the darkness in front of me. I missed. It made me stagger, and so as not to fall over I lurched after my arm. My head landed in someone’s belly and there was a grunt. I got my sight back. I saw Bolek, it was his belly, spin back against a stall and knock it over. Plaster figures flew every which way. The stall owner let rip with a stream of curses, he took Bolek by the shoulders and pushed him back toward me. I held up my fist, and Bolek smashed into it with his nose like it was a wagon shaft. His eyes spun. But he was a strong one, even though he was the smallest of the three of them. He just shook his head like someone had thrown a bucket of water over him. I gave him a left hook, he rocked but stayed upright. If I’d punched him one more time that probably would’ve done it. But by now Jędrek, the tallest one, had pushed all the people aside and he was reaching his arms out toward me like he wanted to put them round me and crush me. I leaned back a bit and with all the force I could muster I hit him halfway between those arms. They opened up like wings. It was almost like he was suspended by them. All at once he clapped his left hand to his eye and gave a terrible howl: