Stone Upon Stone (8 page)

I moved my finger across the inscription. It was even as a ditch, first name and last name, and, died tragically, you could read it all, and in front of the last name Count. The manors didn’t survive, though you’d have thought manors were a whole lot stronger than tombs.

When the front passed through, of all the tombs Chmiel’s survived the best then as well. And there’s no harder test for tombs than a war. For six weeks there were two German artillery batteries stationed at the cemetery, firing to the east day and night. And they were huge guns, every one of them. On top of that they were half dug into the ground so only their muzzles were poking out from among the graves, and with every round the whole hill with the cemetery on it would jump, and each time the crews working the guns had to open their mouths so as not to go deaf. And all those trees they cut down to make room for the guns.

And from the east the Russki guns fired day and night the same, for six weeks. It looked as though the cemetery hill would turn into a valley. It was
so hellish even the worms couldn’t take it anymore, let alone the dead. It was like the earth itself was turned inside out, and all of eternity was flung to the surface.

There were skeletons, bodies, coffins, all over the place, like death had suddenly gone on the rampage all on its own because it had run short of living people and it had dragged the dead out of their graves so it could kill them all over again. Like even though they were supposed to already be dead, they were part of the earth now, some of them had rotted and some were nothing but dust – still they had to die a second time. And without even knowing they were dying. So when the front moved on they had to be buried again, like real dead people. And for years later the cemetery looked like a battlefield.

Any time you went there you’d see ruins and stumps of trees, the place was empty and silent, there was only the odd tomb or tree that had survived intact. As for the birds, it was like they’d vanished, you wouldn’t see even the lousiest little sparrow. And for the longest time afterward, even though there wasn’t any danger or anything for them there, they avoided the place like it was infected. They didn’t even perch there on their way to someplace else and sit and chirp. They didn’t even turn up there by accident. Or visit their old nest the way birds will do.

Before, the cemetery had been a paradise for birds. There were cuckoos, blackbirds, goldfinches, titmice, orioles, bullfinches, woodpeckers, crows, doves. Who could have even counted them all. The trees just about shook with them. They’d sing and chirp all day long, and cuckoo and caw. The moment you went into the cemetery you’d find yourself right in the middle of a hullabaloo of birds, before you even got to the graves. When you prayed, the words of the prayer would sometimes get lost in the din. Every so often Franciszek the sacristan would climb up into the trees and knock down the nests of the noisier ones, because he thought it was too cheerful for a cemetery. Though they didn’t just nest in the trees, but on the crosses and the
Lord Jesuses and in the grass on the ground. But after the front had passed through, whenever a bird happened to fly over the place it would rise up higher in the sky, sometimes as high as its wings would carry it. As if it was suddenly hemmed in by something and its only escape was to climb higher and higher.

Franciszek the sacristan, who used to think that because of the birds the cemetery wasn’t sad enough – now, he’d make bird feeders and put them up here and there where a tree was still standing, or even just a branch, or even on the crosses and the Lord Jesuses and angels, he’d hang them wherever he could. You’d see a cross over a grave and on its arms there’d be two bird feeders hanging, as if Jesus was holding them in his crucified arms to attract the birds. Or in the place where there’d been the head of an angel that had gotten blown off by a shell, the angel would have a feeder for a head. He put up so many of those feeders that when you saw them you’d be forgiven for thinking there were all kinds of birds at the cemetery. But there wasn’t a single one, they wouldn’t touch the feeders.

He also set out water in old tin cans from army rations, so the birds would have something to drink if they came. People kept removing the cans to put flowers in for the graves, so he put new ones down, luckily there was no shortage of tin cans. The front had been stationed there for months and the soldiers had emptied piles of cans. They were lying about all over the place along the roadsides, in ditches, in dugouts and trenches. People used them as containers for sugar and salt, if need be you could make a bowl or a mug out of a can like that. Boys even used them for goalposts. Sometimes you’d read the label in Russian,
svinskaya tushonka
, and that would be the closest you’d get to eating all day.

Some days you could find Franciszek at the cemetery at the crack of dawn wandering like a spirit with his pockets full of millet, flaxseed, wheat, poppy seed, bread crumbs. He’d be scattering it all among the tombs and calling to the empty sky: cheep-cheep, cheep-cheep. Every few steps he’d drop his
eyes from the sky to the ground, stop, and look to see if there wasn’t some starling or bullfinch or waxwing he’d managed to attract, pecking the grains and skipping about. Then he’d move on his way like someone sowing in the fields: cheep-cheep, cheep-cheep.

Some folks reckoned Franciszek was scattering sand instead of grain, and that the birds weren’t stupid and they wouldn’t let themselves be fooled by sand. I mean, think how much grain you’d need for a cemetery the size of ours. People didn’t even have enough to bake bread with. The fields were all churned up and trampled, and how could they harvest anything from under all the shells? But the birds must have been hungry too. And a hungry bird’ll be tempted even by sand. Besides, when you’re a bird and you’re flying way up a height, from up there you can’t see who’s scattering what down on the ground, whether it’s sand or grain. And if he’s going cheep-cheep and looking up at the sky, why shouldn’t you trust him?

Franciszek would teach the new altar boys how to serve at mass. The old ones had grown up because of the war and they preferred spending their time defusing mines and unexploded bombs. But anyone who had a yen to be an altar boy had to make a trap to catch starlings. And Franciszek would take his altar boys over to the hill along the edge of the woods. Then for days on end they’d try and trap starlings there. Whenever they caught one they’d bring it to the cemetery and release it there.

It sometimes happened that Franciszek would be lying there in the grass and bushes, with the ends of the strings from the traps in his hand and his altar boys all around him, and he’d forget about the church. Because trapping starlings is easier said than done. You can spend the entire day and not catch a single one. All it takes is for someone to whisper to someone else right at the moment the starling’s getting close, or even to just give a louder than usual sigh, and the bird’ll get spooked and fly away. And altar boys are altar boys, they see a starling coming close and their heart immediately starts pounding, and with starlings, they can even hear your heart if it’s beating
too loud. But anyone who scared a bird away wouldn’t be an altar boy any longer.

“Clear off, you little imp. You think you can serve the Lord God when you don’t have the patience for a starling?”

And it wouldn’t do any good to cry or say sorry, or that you’d get a hiding from your parents. Franciszek could be stern as they come. Though really he was a good person. When I was learning to be an altar boy we mostly spent our time just scraping wax off the candlesticks. Whenever anyone asked what
saecula saeculorum
or
Dominus vobiscum
meant, he’d claim it was a divine mystery.

“You need to know when to turn the page in the missal, and when you’re supposed to pour the water and the wine into the chalice, and when you have to ring the bells. The rest, you just need to be able to mumble along.”

There were times people would come to mass and it would be so stuffy in the church it was like a holy cattle shed, because there was no one there to air the place out. The priest himself would have to fetch the long pole and open the windows, because Franciszek was out trapping starlings. Or folks would start to arrive for the service and the church door would be locked, because Franciszek had been out after starlings since early morning and wasn’t back yet. Or mass was already supposed to have begun, the church is full, the priest’s in his chasuble and he keeps popping his head out of the vestry to see if the candles are lit, but here the candles aren’t lit and the altar’s not prepared either, the organist is playing on and on, and Franciszek’s nowhere to be seen.

Sometimes one of the parishioners who could remember his altar boy duties would throw on a surplice and carry in the missal behind the priest. Franciszek wouldn’t turn up till the priest was raising the chalice. He’d be all flushed still from the starlings. His gray hair would be full of grass, and his shoes and pants wet and muddy from the dew. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been embarrassed and knelt down quietly. Nothing of the kind – he’d
plonk himself down on his knees so loud it would echo all round the church. And the guy that was taking his place, he’d push him aside and be all angry he was in the way. And he’d shout out
et cum spiritu Tuo
or at the very least amen like he’d been kneeling in front of the altar the whole time.

But it wasn’t anything to be surprised at. Starlings are best caught in the morning, especially on a Sunday, when they’re hungry from the night and everything’s quiet out in the fields. And from the hillside by the woods it was a good mile and a half to the church, Franciszek was getting on and it might only have been those starlings that were keeping him among the living. Or maybe the Lord God had said to him, trap some starlings before you die, Franciszek. And so the priest went easy on Franciszek too, and he never told him off. He’d even ask him when Franciszek was helping him off with his chasuble in the vestry after mass:

“So how was it with the starlings today, Franciszek? Do we have any more at the cemetery?”

Besides, Franciszek was too old to do any heavy jobs around the church. Trapping starlings on the hill up by the woods and bringing them down to the cemetery – that was all he could handle.

One time he brought a nest of blue tits with the young birds still in it and he put it in a tree in the cemetery. Adult birds would probably have flown away, but the young ones grew up and stayed there. Then someone brought him a squirrel from the woods and he let that loose among the graves as well. Someone else brought a woodpecker. Someone brought a blackbird. Someone a dove. And gradually life came back to the cemetery.

There was a road ran through our village. It wasn’t the best of roads, like most roads that go through a village. It had bumps and potholes. In spring and fall there was mud, in the summertime it was dusty. But it did okay for people. Every now and then they’d level it out here and there, fill it in with gravel, and you could drive on it just fine. You took it to get to market in town, or to other villages around here, and whether you were going off to war or headed for the outside world, the road would lead you there just the same.

As well as the road being for everyone, each person had a bit of it that was their own, depending on where their farmyard was. And before every Sunday or holiday in the summer they’d sweep it, in the fall they’d scrape the mud off it, in the winter they’d clear the snow and put down ash so nobody would slip and fall in front of their house. On Whitsun it’d be spread with stalks of sweet flag. The sweet flag would crunch underfoot when you were on your way to church, it smelled like in the woods, and people said it was the road that had that smell. And almost everyone had a bench or a big rock by the roadside. They could go out and sit there of an evening, chat with the neighbors, have a smoke, or just stare up at the dark sky over them. Ask God about this or that. And see nothing but the lights of the fireflies.

People, cows, geese – they’d all walk down the middle of the road, there was no left or right side. You could leave your horse and wagon by the side of the road and go to the pub for an orange soda or a beer, or sometimes even a half-bottle of vodka. You’d have your drink and your horse would just stand there. Or if you were on your way back from the fields with your crop and someone was coming from the opposite direction, you’d stop the wagons next to each other, like standing shoulder to shoulder, and no one would honk their horn to say you were blocking the road. And you’d take the same road on your final journey, because there wasn’t any other. Except the women would hurry out of their houses and shoo their chickens and geese into their farmyard. The farmers would keep the dogs in their kennels to stop them from barking. Wagons would pull over to the side. Mowers would take the scythe off their shoulder. Mothers would bring their babies out in front of the houses. And even drunks would take their cap off and sober up a bit.

On both sides there were acacia trees. When you walked down the road and they were in bloom, the smell would almost choke you. At night you’d have to close your windows or you’d wake up in the morning with a headache. When the farmers smoked on their benches or rocks in the evening, it was like the acacia was smoking. Watchdogs would lose their sense of smell and just lie there outside their kennels. If you had a young lady with you under one of those acacias in bloom you didn’t even have to do much talking. Today there’s maybe three or four of those trees left in the village. They cut them down when they were building the new road. Time was, acacias were planted for their wood that was used in making wagons. If you had an acacia, you’d have a wagon. Well, maybe not the shaft or the sides. For the shaft the best thing was young oak, and one-inch pine planking for the sides. But you’d have the perch, the bench, the tapers, the clouts, the futchel, the bolster, the weight, the singletree, the stanchions, the reach, and of course the wheels. For wheels there was no better wood than acacia. Even oak ones
couldn’t match them. They were too hard, they were prone to crack. And the wheels are the most important part of a wagon.