Stone Upon Stone (31 page)

Those sons of bitches probably thought I was exhausted, because how could they have known that the whole way I’d been walking on stubble, at the height of summer, the height of the harvest, since they were leading me over snow. In the end they evidently got real cold themselves, because they started clapping their hands and blowing on them, and stamping their feet. On the left-hand side, right by the track there was a slope overgrown with juniper bushes, and at the bottom there was a deep twisting ravine. But they were so convinced I wouldn’t go an inch farther without being beaten that one of them even dug out a bottle and they all took a swig. They must have been telling dirty stories as well, because all of a sudden they all hooted with laughter as if on command. One of them opened his fly and took a leak. Right at that moment I ran for the slope. Before the first shots sounded I was rolling down through the junipers. Then I dropped like a sack into the
ravine. For them it was too steep to chase me. They just stood there shooting. But only one bullet got me, right here in the shoulder. The rest hit the snow, the junipers, the trees. I didn’t even feel anything at the time, only later, when I was already safe.

From that moment on, Jadzia started giving me special treatment with the meals. She’d bring me a bigger piece of meat for dinner, or more potatoes, or a second bowl of soup. Whenever she came onto the ward she’d always ask if I was hungry or thirsty, or if I’d run out of cigarettes, she could go buy me some. A few times she even got me a pack with her own money. Every so often she’d come onto the ward seemingly for no special reason, and while she was there she’d straighten my blanket, because it’s gone and fallen on the floor, Mr. Szymek. She’d plump my pillow, because you’ll get a headache, Mr. Szymek, from lying on a pillow that’s all squashed up like that. And she’d always slip something to eat under the pillow.

“Just make sure you eat it during the night, when everyone else is asleep, Mr. Szymek,” she’d whisper, as if to the pillow. “And watch out for that guy by the window, because he sleeps with one eye open.”

Or when she was bending down for the urinal under the bed, she’d murmur in my ear:

“Tomorrow it’s chops for dinner. You’ll have one on the outside like everyone else, but there’ll be another one hidden under the potatoes. Just don’t pull it out or people will see. The old guy in the corner has eyes like a hawk. He lost his leg but there’s nothing wrong with his eyesight. He watches everyone else’s plates while he’s eating his own dinner. But it won’t do him any good. And you, Mr. Szymek, you need to live so you need to eat. I’ll bake a plum cake for Sunday because my sister’s coming, and I’ll bring you some too.”

One time she brought me an orange. It was the first time in my life I’d eaten an orange. Those wounds of mine came in useful after all.

They happened to be looking for someone to run wedding ceremonies at the district administration. In theory the district secretary was supposed to do weddings, but since the end of the war no more than three or four couples had gotten married in the registry office, mostly people still had a church wedding. Though legally a registry office marriage was just as valid as a church one, and you could be just as happy or unhappy after a civil wedding as a church one. Also, when you had a registry office wedding it was easier to get a horse through UNRRA, or building materials, or grain for sowing. And you could get divorced, the next day even, if things didn’t work out. Not like in the church, where that was an end of it, because what God hath joined together let no man put asunder, so you have to stay with some awful bitch for the rest of your life. Quite a few of them lived exactly like that, cat and dog, they’d fight, have running feuds, when one of them pulled left the other would pull right, but they’d have to keep on living together all the way till one of them died before the other. Though if you ask me, a life like that is actually against God and God ought to break it up. I mean, it can happen that the wrong two people end up together, no one can know ahead of time who’s meant for who, because destinies get mixed up as well, destinies are like days, you should only say they’re good after the sun’s gone down. That was another reason people preferred registry office weddings.

The first ones to have a civil wedding, right after the front passed through, were Florek Denderys and Bronka Makuła. The district administration gave them a better wedding than a lot of rich folk get, even the ones that have a church wedding. They put a flag on the administration building, they decorated the walls with fir branches, they laid down a carpet a good ten yards long leading up to the entrance, and over the doorway they hung a sign in cutout letters saying: The District Administration Congratulates the Happy Couple. On top of that they were awarded several thousand zlotys. Florek was given a length of material for a suit. Bronka got cloth for a dress, she got a horse, a cow, and baby clothes, because there was one on the way, and an alarm clock to wake them up for work if they ever overslept. Except they had to leave for the West soon after, because people in the village wouldn’t leave them alone, they kept calling Bronka a whore and saying the kid was a bastard, though it hadn’t yet been born. So after them, for a long time there weren’t any takers for a registry office wedding.

The mayor or the district secretary even visited anyone that they heard was getting married and tried to persuade them to do it at the registry office, they’d say that at the registry office you didn’t need to announce the banns, you didn’t need bridesmaids and veils, you just write it in the registry book and that’s that. Also, it was easier to get a horse, building materials, everything was easier. In the church the priest charged the earth. True, wedding vows were supposed to be before God. But has anyone ever seen God? Only in a picture. How can you be sure it’s him? Even before the war there were a few unbelievers in the village. Kruk for instance, he’d never taken confession in his life till his old lady and his daughters made him. And at the manor houses there was always a strike going on somewhere or other. Mostly at harvesttime, or sometimes during the potato lifting. Wicek Chrząszcz from over in Poddębice even did six months in prison for agitation, because he got drunk at the harvest festival and threatened the village elder he’d get hung from a tree the moment justice would arrive. But now it
had
arrived, what
next? The folk from the county offices came asking how many couples had tied the knot at the district administration. And the answer was, none. What do you mean, none? Aren’t people getting married in your district? Well, sure they are, but everyone’s doing it at the church. So then, this district of yours is going to have to pony up if people there are refusing to understand the new times. The taxes’ll get upped, or they’ll maybe stop supplying coal. There’s always something you can stop giving.

And on the other side, every Sunday the priest would rage against those registry office weddings from the pulpit, he’d say they were godless, threaten folks with hellfire and eternal damnation. And anyone that was thinking of getting married at the registry office, he’d tell them, don’t you dare, otherwise you’ll get expelled from the church, and the Lord God would expel them from humankind. The worst part was that he poked fun at the district administration all he could, he said it was no house of God, that ever since the district administration has been there it was the place you go to pay taxes, and that wedding vows are a sacrament, not taxes, one of the seven holy sacraments, that they were established by God, not by earthly powers, because earthly powers come from Satan. And a good many pig sheds are cleaner than at the district administration, they haven’t had their walls whitewashed since before the war, and when you go in there the floor’s so dirty your shoes stick to it, and the officials there do nothing but smoke cigarettes and chase around after the secretaries. So then, young man and young lady, try going and swearing to be true to each other in that Sodom and Gomorrah. What will a vow like that really be worth?

It might have been because of what the priest was saying that they prepared a separate room in the administration building, they whitewashed the walls, decorated it with flowers, cleaned the floor, put in a new desk and chairs, laid a carpet, and started looking for an official whose only job would be to give those weddings. Though some people said an order had come down from above.

I ran into Rożek one time when I was transporting cabbage home from our patch. He was mayor in those days. He asks me:

“How would you feel about working at the district administration? You could be the one to give weddings. You’d hardly have any work, because no one wants to get married at the registry office. You’d get a regular salary. And you were already in the police once, you’d be one of ours.”

I thought to myself, why not, I’d rather sit behind a desk than cart cabbage. I wasn’t sure I believed in God either, so what did I care about the priest trying to scare people. And at least I’d be able to wear decent clothes, because all my clothes were starting to get ragged. When there was a dance I didn’t have anything to wear. Not to mention I had no money to buy drinks, or sometimes even for admission. My officer’s boots were still in okay shape, but not many people wore officer’s boots anymore. The war was further and further away, and now everyone wore shoes and suits, and the fashion was for pants as wide as skirts and coats big as sacks, as if people were getting as much freedom as they could after the war. Me in my britches and officer’s boots, I was like something from a different world. To the point that after I left the police I started wondering what to do with myself. Because father spent every penny he had on building new cattle sheds, and even when he gave me money for cigarettes he’d always complain, you smoke like a chimney.

I’d left the police because I was supposed to become the commanding officer, but instead they chose this snot-faced kid that hadn’t even been in the resistance, he’d just finished school. Plus he thought he could fix the world’s problems in the space of a week. But it’s easier to create a world in a week than fix it. Especially a world that’s been through a war. And instead of carrying on looking for guns, because people were still shooting at each other, or at least guarding the freight trains carrying cement that would stand in the sidings till half their load had been thieved, he went after Franek Gwiżdż for brewing moonshine, and he had his whole farm searched from top to bottom. After that Gwiżdż says to me, you son of a bitch, you came
here drinking all the time, did I ever take a red cent from you, I’d even stick a bottle in your pocket for the road because I thought you were one of us. You just wait and see if you ever get vodka from me again, cause I’m still gonna make it, there’s not a fucking thing you can do to stop me. The Germans could kiss my ass, and you can too. Luckily he hid it all underground somewhere so all we found were the traces of a fire pit in the elder bushes behind the barn. But he explained that by saying he sometimes boiled potatoes for the pigs back there when it was too windy in the yard. So there I was, neither here nor there, actually nowhere, with nothing but work in the fields from dawn till dusk.

I even thought about maybe taking up haircutting again. True, there was a barber in the village now, Jaskóła’s brother-in-law. He’d moved here not long ago from the city because things hadn’t gone so well for him there, and he opened a place in Niezgódka’s outbuilding. Though before the war, when he married Kryśka Jaskóła, he was supposed to become a captain of horse in the uhlans. But no one brought that up. All sorts of changes happened to people through those years, what did it matter if a captain of horse became a barber. Though the farmers complained that he had a hand like a butcher, he’d put it on your head and it was like he was resting it on the block, you had to hold your neck firmly so he wouldn’t break it. On top of that he was a tight-lipped son of a gun. He’d often not say a single word the whole time he was cutting your hair. What kind of barber is that? You don’t go to the barber just to get your hair cut or get a shave, you go to sit and have a chat and listen to stories.

There were supposed to be buses that would start serving some of the villages and I thought about perhaps getting a job as a bus conductor. The work’s not too tough, you ride around and sell tickets, and people get on and get off, people you know, people you don’t, but the whole time you’re among people. And among people life’s always more enjoyable, especially if there’s a fair and the bus is packed, you can have a joke, shout at folks, when there are
people all sorts of things can happen. What can happen in the fields? A hare runs past, a lark starts singing, clouds come and it’ll begin to rain?

Though on the quiet, most of all I was counting on Michał, that maybe he’d come visit finally, and he could give me some advice or maybe find me a job where he was. Because to tell the truth, I wasn’t that fired up about being either a barber or a conductor. With both of those jobs I’d still have to work on the land every spare moment after work. And instead of making my life easier, I’d be worn out. Besides, at that time Stasiek was still at home and he was meant for the land. But for some reason Michał never came or got in touch, though he’d promised he would the last time he was home. He was even going to come stop for a while. He was going to take some leave. Because the last time, he only just swung by for a moment. How long had he stayed? Less than half a day.