Stone Upon Stone (64 page)

For the longest time after the war no one took that road to get to the market in Kawęczyn. They’d go through Zawady, though it was an extra four miles. Because all sorts of things happened to people when someone dug their heels in and insisted on riding that road, or taking it on foot. Sometimes, in the middle of the day they’d chance to look up and they’d see bare feet dangling among the leaves, or a rope with a big noose hanging from a branch. Or even the horses, you’d think they wouldn’t care about humans or the things that go on among them, but who knows if they don’t think humans are just like horses for them, just like they’re horses for people, in any case they’d prick up their ears and snort, and toss, and strain in the traces.

One farmer from Mikulczyce had a stallion black as a raven, with white fetlocks and a white flash on its forehead. Everyone envied him that stallion. When it was pulling his wagon it would hold its head up high and take short steps, like a young woman that’s trying to please the boys. The farmer never had to use the whip, he never had to call, whoa! or giddyup! like with other horses. He’d just hold the reins in his hand and give a slight tug, and the horse knew which way to go, left or right or straight on, at a trot. So the farmer reckoned a horse like that could go through hell and back, not just down the road to Kawęczyn. But when he started on that road, the horse suddenly reared up, and it wouldn’t budge an inch. The farmer gave it the whip on its legs and its back, god damn you, you this and you that, you think you’re getting any more oats you’re mistaken, it’ll be nothing but chaff from now on! But the horse just set off headlong across the fields. It tipped over the wagon, broke the shaft, the farmer messed up his back, and the horse ran all the way through one village and then the next and it probably would have kept running even farther, but its heart gave up and it fell down dead. Another guy rode that way on a pregnant mare, and everyone knows a pregnant mare is patient and obedient, it’ll go anywhere you tell it to. So it went down the road, but later it gave birth to a dead foal.

Or years after the war, the Sputnik was flying across the sky with a dog in it, when Drzazga was coming back from the district offices in Daszew. It was around noon. He was exhausted, because he’d waited forever at the offices and still not gotten what he wanted, so he sat under one of those acacia trees for a moment. Next to it there was the stump of another tree that had been cut down because it was too old. At one moment he looked over at the stump, and sitting on it there was a guy with a halter around his neck, barefoot, in pants and shirt, his hands tied behind with barbed wire, and he says to Drzazga:

“Do you know how far it is to Wólka from here? They cut down my tree, my land’s gone, and I don’t know where I am.”

Wólka? Wólka? Drzazga thought and thought and he was on the point of asking him, which one? Because Wólka’s a common name, there’s one in every district. Then all at once the guy jumps up and rushes off. All he remembered was he was really young and his hair was blond.

Blond and really young, it must have been “Grasshopper.” The hair on his chin was just beginning to sprout, he envied “Kuba” because Kuba had a beard like a dog’s coat, plus he shaved with a razor. He always held Kuba’s mirror for him when he was shaving, and in return Kuba would shave Grasshopper once a week. He’d lather him up nice and thick from his throat to his nose, almost up under his eyes, so it would look like he had a full beard like a grown man. Then he’d strop his razor, and he’d go about it wholeheartedly, like he was shaving a real man. He’d even pluck a hair from his own mop and use it to test whether the razor blade was good and sharp. And though the razor didn’t scrape against Grasshopper’s beard, like it was just wiping off the lather, Kuba would say to make him feel better:

“There, you hear it scraping? It’s starting to grow in. You’re gonna have a fine beard, thicker than mine.”

But Grasshopper never lived to see his beard. In return for shaving him, he’d taught Kuba how to make the sound of a turtledove. After Grasshopper died, Kuba would make turtledove noises over and over till it drove you nuts. Kuba had wanted to learn how to sound like a turtledove because he had an ash tree in front of his house that turtledoves nested in. And he figured that when he got home he’d be most likely to find out from the turtledoves what had really been going on while he was gone – in the village, at home, with his wife and children. Grasshopper wanted to teach him the stork as well, when you’re down you can cheer yourself up by clattering like a stork, Kuba. But no, he was only interested in turtledoves. He wanted to teach him the skylark, you can sing to yourself while you’re plowing, Kuba. No, only the turtledove. What did you need to know the truth for, Kuba?

Because there wasn’t a bird Grasshopper couldn’t imitate. He could do a
blackbird, a cuckoo, a kite, a nightingale, an oriole, a starling, a woodpecker, a roller, a bullfinch, whatever you wanted. He could do a magpie when it was going to rain, and a different magpie when it was a sign of something bad about to happen. A rooster, he crowed better than a real one. We’d be stationed deep in the woods but you’d think there were houses close by, because roosters kept crowing. And they crowed one way for midnight, another way when they’d been with a hen. He could croak like one crow or like a hundred when a flock of them roosts in the tops of the poplar trees, and like a thousand when they’re gliding across a deep blue sky at sunrise. Sometimes the guys would name birds that I didn’t even think existed. He could do every one. One of the men in particular, “Pistol,” he was a biology teacher. He’d come up with all kinds of weird names, I’d sometimes say to him, shut the hell up, Pistol, those aren’t real birds. I know a good few kinds of birds myself, but those ones I’d never heard of. Stuff like whimbrel, godwit, ruff, bunting. He swore they lived in the woods in Poland. Maybe they do, why would you not believe a teacher.

I was shot three times that day, twice in the side and the third one in the belly. They weren’t deep wounds, fortunately, they mostly just grazed the skin. I holed up in the attic of the presbytery at Płochcice. Not many people thought I’d pull through. They came to visit me, the doctor and the priest in turn. The doctor just shook his head like he couldn’t believe I was still alive, while the priest kept checking to see if it wasn’t time for last rites. It made me so mad that in the end I started making nice with the priest’s housekeeper. She gave me one of his old cassocks, a cloak, a hat, shoes, shirts, pants, even a prayer book, and one day at dawn, when everyone was still asleep I slipped out of the presbytery dressed as a priest.

I’d been home not so long before, in the summer during the harvest, so they weren’t expecting me. But they could have heard what went down in Maruszew. Besides, I had a yen stronger than ever to see mother. It was thirty-five miles or more from Płochcice to our village, plus I had to choose
a route so I’d meet as few people as possible, I had to avoid forest roads and paths and other villages. And it wasn’t enough that I was all bandaged up, I also felt awkward in the priest’s outfit. I regretted not having dressed as a regular person, it’s just there weren’t any other clothes at the presbytery. As it was, the housekeeper had given me all that stuff in fear that she was committing sacrilege. It was only when she saw me dressed up that she said:

“May God lead you, and may he forgive me.”

It was another matter that the priest was a bit shorter than me, and bigger in the belly, but in that place I couldn’t tighten the clothes because that’s where my wounds were, so I looked a bit like I’d borrowed an outfit from my younger brother. The sleeves barely reached past my elbows, the cassock came halfway up my shins, and the tightest part of all was across the shoulders. By the time I’d gone a few miles I was as exhausted as if I’d been carrying a heavy weight. On top of that, at every step it felt like someone was sticking a bayonet in my side, from the wounds. So I couldn’t even concentrate and think about the things a priest ought to think about. And all the while I had to hold myself straight like a priest, and have a cheerful expression on my face, like I was thinking about God. Plus, every other minute someone came along and greeted me, Christ be praised, and you have to raise your hat every time and answer, for all time. Though somehow I managed. What was worse, quite often when someone saw a priest coming toward them they’d immediately stop and wait, they were pleased as punch that chance had plonked a priest in their path for them to talk to. What do you think, father, how are things going to turn out for us? Did you hear what those villains did over at Maruszew, father, they hung them all along the Kawęczyn road. Where’s God in all that, father? How can he look down calmly on such things? And you’d have to make stuff up, tell lies about God when you had no idea what you were doing, say that his judgments are inscrutable, that all we can do is pray for the folks from Maruszew. Or
someone asks you, I guess you’re from a different parish, father, or have they sent us a new curate.

One farmer came by in his wagon, I even turned my head away, but he pulled up, whoa, and said he’d give me a ride, because he couldn’t allow a priest to go on foot. Whether I liked it or no, I had to get in. Then in the wagon he asks, have you come from far? Actually your face is sort of familiar, you look a bit like this guy that they say died at Maruszew. The parish ought to be ashamed they can’t afford a decent cassock for you.

The whole thing tired me out even more than the wounds. I got as far as Mierniki, there I went to a fellow I knew and changed into ordinary clothes. Besides, what would mother have said if she’d seen me dressed as a priest? I spent the night there and continued on my way. The man I stayed with wanted to give me a bicycle. I tried, but riding was worse than walking. A couple of times someone gave me a ride a bit of the way. I wasn’t a priest anymore so I wasn’t afraid to talk about why I was on the road. I’d say I was going to see about a horse, that most of all I was hoping for a dapple. Another time I said I was setting up as a beekeeper and I was looking for a good queen.

It was late when I found myself in our yard. The dog recognized me at once and started whimpering and rubbing against my leg. I took hold of its snout and said, quiet, Burek, I’m not here, you’re a dog but you have to understand, I’m nowhere to be seen. Like a person he understood and wagged his tail, and slunk back to his kennel.

There was a bit of a frost and maybe because of that I started getting the shivers, because as long as I’d been walking I was too hot, I’d been drenched in sweat. I crouched behind the corner of the barn and decided to wait there for mother to come out for the evening milking. I looked up at the sky, nothing had changed, the stars were still in their same places for that time of year. The Big Dipper was over the poplar tree at Błach’s place, the Little Dipper a bit farther. Maybe it was from staring at the sky that my head
suddenly started to spin. For a moment I thought I was going to pass out, but it gradually passed.

I didn’t want to go into the house so as not to get into an argument with father like last time. It wasn’t for that I’d come all this way on foot, and wounded. I just wanted to see mother and tell her I was alive, because she could already be praying for my soul after what happened at Maruszew. Besides, that earlier time I’d come at the wrong moment, during the harvest. Everyone knows that during the harvest a person can only understand himself. They’d been getting ready for bed, mother was in her nightshirt kneeling by the turned-down bed, saying her prayers. Father was soaking his feet in a basin. He could at least have said:

“Thank God you’re alive.”

Or:

“You’re not looking so good.”

Or:

“So how are things?”

Mother started giving vent to all her grievances as she heated up some pierogies for me in the frying pan:

“It’s enough to make you dizzy, he disappears all this time, dear Lord. Then yesterday a magpie perched on the ash tree and it kept cawing and cawing, it set my heart pounding, something must have happened to Szymek. I said to father, Józuś, shoo that evil bird away, something bad must have happened to Szymek. In the end I threw a rock at it myself and chased it away. I pray so much for you, I ask Jesus and Mary to keep you in their care. Every night you’re in my dreams. One night I dreamed you brought a cross into the yard. I asked you where you got it and you said it was lying by the roadside when you were coming back from the fields. And you asked me, mama, where should I put it? I said, put it in Sekuła’s yard by his wagon barn. It’d be a waste, mama, you said, the wood in a cross like this must have a lot of resin in it. Szymek, I don’t think I could live if they killed you.”

All father did was take his feet out of the basin and rest them on the rim to let the water run off. Then all at once he yells at mother:

“Come on, give me something!”

“What do you want?”

“I need to wipe my feet!”

She threw him a cloth, and as he bent down he said:

“Why would they kill him. You think he has it so bad. I’m telling you, they made up that resistance stuff to get out of doing any work. They left their fathers and mothers, what do they care about anything. And you, you don’t even have time to scratch yourself on the backside, but you’re always praying for them, crying for them. There aren’t any dances for them to go play at, so now they’re playing at soldiers.”

“It’s not exactly a game, father,” I said, but without taking offense. “The work’s just as hard.”

“And what work do you do exactly?” He was so furious he was hissing.

So I got riled up as well and I said:

“We kill people.”

“You kill people? Not every day you don’t. If you were a good son you’d show up once in a while and do some mowing. Or I don’t have anyone to help me bring the crop in. Antek’s still little, all he does is run around among the sheaves!”

“Everyday, father. Sometimes the day’s not long enough.” I could barely hold my rage in check.

“Then once in a while, hold off with the killing and come help out.” He stopped wiping his feet, looked at me, and asked as if he was surprised: “And your hand never shakes when you’re doing it?”