Stone Upon Stone (59 page)

“When you’re old, taking a single step is like walking to Calvary.”

At that very moment it came to me.

“I was thinking,” I quoted from memory, “about how when Jesus was carrying his cross to Calvary and he fell, there was a farmer walking by on his way back from the fields, and he helped him carry it.”

“Not a farmer, Simon of Cyrene. What’s that damn priest been teaching you!” father said, getting all testy.

“I said so right from the beginning,” grandfather agreed with father. “The moment he first came here I said, he’s supposed to be a priest? He’s got a face like a little girl. He can’t even grow a beard, he’s just got fuzz here and there. How could he know anything. He doesn’t know the first thing about Jesus, just like he doesn’t know the first thing about people.”

“People are one thing, Jesus is another,” mother objected.

“What do you mean, another thing?” grandfather said, bridling in turn. “Was Jesus not a person? It was only after he died he became God.”

“Of course he was, he even let himself be crucified because he couldn’t take it anymore.”

“It wasn’t that he couldn’t take it anymore, he wanted to redeem people.”

“And in return they gave him something bitter to drink, and stabbed him in the side, am I right? I’d never have saved those villains. I’d have sent them to hell, let them roast down there, let them howl like wolves! Let them tear their hair out and shout for God’s mercy! Let them weep and weep till the darkness covers them over!” Mother was like a wasp with those villains, she wouldn’t leave them alone and she probably would have gone on longer if father hadn’t roared:

“What else?!”

My heart missed a beat. Luckily mother was still filled with anger at the villains that killed Jesus, and at that moment she started taking it out on father like he was one of them:

“Leave the boy alone, will you! He’s told you almost the whole gospel and all you can say is, what else, what else! Show me another child that knows that much. They can’t even tell you the ten commandments.”

Something came to me again.

“I was thinking, daddy, that he was proclaiming the ten commandments,” I threw out breathlessly, like I was trying to get this piece of good news out before mother.

But father bristled like a turkey-cock.

“Who?”

“You know, the Lord … God,” I said, though less surely, because I sensed something bad in his voice.

“Which one?” he asked with a frown.

“There’s only one Lord God, father. That’s what the priest told us. And there’s only one hanging on the wall there.”

“But in three persons! In three persons, you little twit!” He was shaking with anger.

I was all set to burst into tears. But something told me father wasn’t entirely on solid ground with Jesus. I pretended to be upset that someone had gotten it all muddled up, and I asked hesitantly:

“What do you mean, daddy, that there’s only one but in three?”

“Because it’s in three persons!” His chin twitched. “The Son of God! The Holy Ghost! And God the Father!”

“So which one of them is God?”

“They all are!”

“How can all of them be when there’s three of them, not one?”

“There’s only one!!” he roared. He grabbed a piece of kindling from the floor and chucked it at me, but I dodged and it hit Michał. Michał burst out crying and mother shouted:

“Have you gone mad?”

Even grandfather, though he didn’t like getting on father’s bad side, mumbled to himself:

“That’s not how you explain it. That’s not how you explain it.”

Father was so furious he grabbed the slop bucket with such a jerk that it splashed on his pants, and he charged out to take it to the cow.

Then there came a year that was worse than any other. First of all, during the entire spring not a drop of rain fell, then the whole summer it wouldn’t stop raining, and it kept up almost till autumn. The river, even though it had been just a little stream, it burst its banks, it grew to be the size of ten rivers and it kept on swelling. People were fretting, what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen? And the roosters went on crowing to show it wasn’t going to let up any time soon. Some folks spent whole days just standing at their
windows staring out to see if they couldn’t spot at least a tiny bit of blue sky to give them hope. Other people were expecting the end of the world, they thought there was going to be another flood like the one in Noah’s time. They’d even gather at Sójka’s place in the evening and read the Bible aloud to see if it was the same or not. At the church there was one special service after another. And anywhere there was a cross or a chapel or a wayside shrine, people would gather to pray or sing or at the very least cry together, instead of everyone on their own in their own house. As for confession and communion, there were lines like never before. Kruk the unbeliever even let himself be converted, because his old lady and his daughters kept on and on at him about how it was all because of him. He had five daughters, three of them were already old maids but two were still marriageable. Though why would God want to punish the whole world on account of Kruk. Afterwards the guy regretted it, because he still got no peace at home just like before, and outside the rains went on and on.

People even made the priest lead a procession out into the fields, they thought maybe that would help. But they didn’t get very far. Just beyond Midura’s place, where the road turns toward the fields, Franciszek the sacristan, who was carrying the cross up front, he got stuck in mud almost up to his knees. The banners got bogged down with him. Mrs. Karpiel and Mrs. Matyska ended up in it too, because they were tertiaries and they’d wanted to be in the lead. The priest got stuck, even though Skubida and Denderys had been holding his arms. They had to stand on either side of him and drag him out and carry him over to drier ground, he wouldn’t have been able to get out on his own. As it was, one of his shoes came off in the mud, and one of the women had to fish it out and put it back on his foot. Because Franciszek the sacristan was wearing tall boots, and he’d gone marching on ahead without looking back at the rest of the procession. People called to him, hey, Franciszek, wait up there! But he just kept going, and it was only when the mud reached up over the tops of his boots that he realized he was all on his
own. Luckily he had the cross with him, so he leaned on it like a shepherd’s crook and managed to get clear. Though the priest gave him a telling-off once he was on the drier ground, for abusing the cross like that. So that was the end of the procession. They prayed a bit and sang a bit at the edge of the fields, then they went back to the church.

Some of the better-off farmers took holy pictures out onto their land and made a little hut for them like a sentry box. But that did no good either. After all, it couldn’t have happened that the sun shone on some folks’ land while it rained on other people’s, when it rained it rained everywhere. Everyone went out to the fields and gathered what could be gathered in the rain and mud. There wasn’t much, because what hadn’t dried up in the spring had gotten waterlogged in the summer and the start of autumn.

We only picked three wagonloads of potatoes, after we’d planted a big stretch of field. And they were all the size of walnuts. Father came back with the third wagonload and said that was the lot, and grandfather came out, and mother, and us children, and we all cried. Father couldn’t even bring himself to get down off the wagon, he just sat there with the whip and the reins in his hand and watched grandfather crying and fingering the potatoes. All he said in consolation was:

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it. Whatever the land is like, the potatoes are like that too. And the land is rotten. I just hope it recovers from all this.”

During the threshing, when he took a full sieve and winnowed it there was nothing but chaff, and the grain at the very bottom. He left what he needed for the next sowing, he barely had half a sackful to take to the mill for grinding, and that was the end of the rye. Mother baked bread out of it just the once, she set aside a few measures for an emergency.

The bread from the one baking lasted us a month, month and a half, and it wouldn’t even have been that long except father took some of the loaves while they were still hot and hid them somewhere. Michał and I searched
the whole barn, we even jabbed the pitchfork into the hay in the bins, but we couldn’t find it. It had to have been hidden in the barn, but we would have needed to turn the place upside down. Michał wasn’t the person for that. The whole time I had to keep reassuring him that looking for the bread wasn’t a sin. When he stuck the pitchfork in, he’d only just go in with the very tips of the prongs, as if he was afraid that, God forbid, we might actually find the bread. He kept asking me:

“What’ll we do if we find it?”

“Eat it.”

“On our own?”

“Who else are we going to eat it with?”

“Are we not going to give any to father and mother?”

“Take them some, you’ll see what’ll happen. You’ll get a hiding for being so good.”

Then he remembered a story grandfather had told about how once during the uprising the Cossacks had been looking for rebels and they’d made grandfather stick a pitchfork into the hay. And grandfather had hid them himself in that hay. But what could he do, they ordered him to stick his pitchfork in, so he did. All at once he saw blood on the tip of the pitchfork. Right at that moment, pretending he’d stumbled on the sheaves, he rammed the pitchfork into his own foot with all his strength and started screaming to high heaven. The Cossacks all burst out laughing. But they didn’t make him search anymore.

“Idiot,” I said to him, “we’re looking for bread, not rebels. Bread doesn’t bleed.”

But he wouldn’t search any longer.

I even thought about following father out when he went to bring a new loaf. But each time he did, he’d tell mother not to let us out till he came back. Or he’d say he was going down the village to see the blacksmith, or one of the
neighbors, and he’d appear afterwards with a loaf under his arm. He’d give the loaf to mother, and she’d padlock it in the chest. Then each day she’d cut one slice each for us in the morning, another in the evening.

Thanks to that, the bread lasted till Saint Blaise’s Day in early February. From then on we only ate potatoes. In the morning it was
żurek
with potatoes, at midday potato soup or potatoes and milk, in the evening potatoes baked in the ash pan, with salt. The ones from the ash pan were best. We wouldn’t light the lamp, we’d just sit around the stove in the kitchen with the door of the firebox open, and whatever light it gave would light the room. We were eating more salt now so we didn’t have the money for lamp oil, and besides, lamp oil would have been wasted on plain potatoes. True, father had sold the heifer because we didn’t have anything to feed it with, but almost all the money had gone on paying taxes.

Mother would bring the potatoes from the cellar gathered in her apron like eggs. She’d lay them down on the ground at father’s feet. Father would take a burning ember from the firebox so he could see what he was doing, and he’d divide the potatoes into the same number of piles as there were people at home, except for Stasiek, because Stasiek was still at the teat. Then he’d even out the piles, moving bigger and smaller potatoes around, so they were all equal. Then mother would tell him to take two from her pile and give me and Michał an extra one each, because we were still growing. Grandmother said the same, that she didn’t have long to live and it was enough for her to say her prayers before she went to bed, she didn’t need to eat. So he’d rearrange the piles yet again.

Sometimes he’d take so long organizing the piles of potatoes that he’d be covered in smoke from the ember he was using as a light. One time he even singed his eyebrows. Even so, the potatoes would get all mixed together when he put them in the ash pan and covered them with ash. I could never figure out how he knew which one belonged to who when he dug them out
again afterward and put them back in the same piles, putting a name to each potato. This is Szymek’s, this is father’s, this’ll be mine, this one’s Michał’s, this is mother’s, Antek’s.

When he’d shared them all out, without waiting for them to cool even a bit he’d take the first potato from his own pile and, as if it wasn’t burning his fingers in the slightest, he’d peel it and begin eating. Right away he’d start saying how good it was, that it was nice and well done, and what would we do if we didn’t have potatoes, and generally he’d talk and talk like he was describing some strange world. That though meat provides strength, potatoes give you patience. That you can find any kind of food you want in potatoes, if you only know how to eat them. Because eating is a skill just as much as reading and writing. But some people eat like hogs and for that reason they don’t know a thing. Or they only eat with their mouths and their bellies. Whereas you need to eat with your mind as well. That everything comes from the earth, and the earth has the same taste in all things. So potatoes can be beans and crackling, they can be cabbage and bacon, pierogies with cheese or with sour cream, even a chicken leg big as a mangel-wurzel. Even badness and goodness come from potatoes, because they come from the earth.

During the daytime he was gruff and tight-lipped, but over those baked potatoes he’d talk till he was blue in the face, he sometimes even forgot to take salt and mother would have to remind him:

“Put some salt on it.”

My grandparents had lived way longer than he had, and they must have eaten way more potatoes, but they paid attention just the same like they were listening to some kind of prophecy. Though one time grandfather interrupted to back father up, he said that potatoes are eaten by kings just as much as by their servants, by generals and ordinary soldiers, by priests and paupers, because potatoes make everyone equal. And that death makes people equal too, but it doesn’t taste nearly as good. At this father jumped on grandfather, what did death have to do with potatoes. Death was death,
it had to come to everyone. Potatoes grow so people can have food to eat. Grandmother didn’t much like what grandfather had said about equality either: