by Frank Wynne
‘You’re prattling nonsense, Ola, awful nonsense,’ he said. ‘Just for that I’m going to give you a bath in the raindrops, I’m going to give you a proper bath, a proper bath, I am, I’m going to throw you in the air!’
Ola was laughing now. ‘Uncle, Uncle, you’ll bash my head against a tree!’ she cried. ‘No, I’m a cat, I can see in the dark,’ said Staś solemnly. And laughing out loud they reached the veranda.
He handed Ola over to Katarzyna, but Bolesław wasn’t in. Staś’s sense of regret and fear had changed by now into good humour, and at the thought of his brother’s loneliness he was overcome with pity. He wanted to go and find him, he wanted to tell him that he wasn’t at all upset with him for making a scene, or for the things he had said. He thought he must have gone off into the night again, and would be out among the birches, standing over his wife’s little grave. He thought how awful his vigil was, and that it wouldn’t do him any good; also that it was wet and that the moisture and rainwater were seeping through the sand covering the coffin where Basia lay, which must be a terrible thought for Bolesław.
Slowly he walked over there, thinking as he went how little focus their life had, how much time they spent escaping from the lichen-blackened lodge, how they were always out and about, how even meal-times were becoming mobile and unfixed, rarely gathering the family of three around the same table.
The damp air had warmed up a bit before nightfall and the ground was steaming. He walked on slowly; as he stretched his legs his heart grew calmer and his shallow breathing deeper. He stopped near the grave and rested his hand on a slanting trunk, feeling its rough and smooth grains beneath his fingers. But Bolesław wasn’t there. For a while Staś went on standing there forlornly, trying to feel his way into his brother’s thoughts. What went through his head as he stood like this at the spot where a couple of metres away the woman he had loved lay buried beneath the sand? Staś had never loved anyone, so he had never been able to understand fully how Bolesław felt. Only now did he wonder, in this place of decay and new life. And he wasn’t even counting how many weeks were left before they would be burying him here. Bolesław was very strong and healthy and would certainly have to go on wandering from the birch grove to the clearing where Maryjka’s cottage stood for a long time to come …
Michał’s music had evaporated from his head; now he was listening to the gentle rustling of the trees, and he was thinking that if one could hear while lying three metres underground, would he be able to hear music played at his graveside? Maybe not. Earth, solid and heavy, did not let voices in, and deep down a desert-like silence reigns.
He heard a footstep, then a sigh close by. He took his hand from the birch tree and touched the person standing beside him; he felt the same roughnesses and smoothnesses as on the birch bark, the same drops of dew, the same coolness – except that beneath the fabric he was touching a hidden warmth lay slumbering, announcing its presence with a sigh.
Without a word to each other, they moved a few paces away from the grave. To one side a few small bushes grew and the moss on the ground was drier than elsewhere. With gratitude Staś thought how she had come all this way after him. They sat down. Silently he embraced her, his thin arm feeling her broad back, and the ridge of her spine girdled in fleshy muscles. He thought of that other woman, lying in the grave, and then tenderly, gratefully, with a languor he hadn’t suspected in himself, he nestled his head against her breast. Just as silently she embraced him, warm and moist with dew, she leaned him back and they lay down together. There they lay for ages, without moving, listening spellbound to the nightlife of the forest, to the murmur of frail birch twigs. Then Staś silently moved his hand to her heart; beneath his palm, beneath the swell of her breast, beneath her ribs he could feel it beating steadily, evenly and earnestly, as if it would never stop.
Then he got up, while she remained lying down, sleepy and serene. He stood up and felt how damp his clothing was; he took out a handkerchief, flicked the earth from his knees, mopped the water from his hair, and dried the scent of love from his face. Then he knelt down and leaned forward, tenderly wiping Malina’s face; as he did so, he could feel the perfection of her eyelids, like spring leaves beneath his touch. She lay without moving, saying nothing, just as from the very outset. He thrust his handkerchief into her hand and whispered in her ear: ‘Take it as a keepsake.’
Then he got down again and lay on his back; she put her hand beneath his head. He gazed upwards; the sky was pale and distant, and way up high among the branches a star was twinkling.
VII
On days when it drizzled but brightened up later Bolesław was continually on the move about the forest, never taking a break from his work, and it was the same at home where he fretted like a caged animal; he wasn’t especially sad, he just felt weighed down. He was physically aware of himself standing up, walking about and eating, as if he were carrying a burden. All these activities and functions seemed drained of colour, and all the more laborious for that. His feeling of desolation had grown so much deeper that he had even stopped going to Basia’s grave. On the last few evenings when he had gone there as usual his thoughts had contained such a mixture of elements that for the first time since her death he felt inclined to suspend his visits for the time being.
He grew numb at the thought that there might be another death on the way. Sometimes it felt as if the life they were leading was nothing but a dream, just their imagination, easily dismissed. He thought Staś had told him about his illness for a silly joke or to give him a fright, and he wasn’t in any real danger. But the rainy days when his brother had lain at home on the veranda, numb and silent, had filled him with fear that this was the end. So on the evening when the weather cleared and Staś, in a good mood, had gone for a walk with Ola, he was very pleased and even smiled at his own fears. He walked slowly after them; slightly surprised at the direction Staś had chosen, he followed to see where they had gone. When they stopped to look up at the lighted windows above the stables, so did he, and when they went inside he was left alone in the shadow of the rainy night. The accordion music grated on him as he stood and stared up at the lighted window. He saw the lamplight slip away into the depths of the room, and reflections of firelight began to flicker across the walls and window panes. Michał’s music struck him as wild and even more piercing than before.
There could be no doubt now that Staś had ‘fallen in love’ with the rifleman’s sister. That was the last straw! What on earth did he see in that simple girl? There were trollops like her by the thousand in these woods, but he had to fall for her, didn’t he? All those fine young foreign ladies whose photographs he had set up on the plain wooden table in his room were not enough for him. To put it bluntly, Malina was ugly, though her eyes were pretty and nicely set, with even brows, lids and lashes.
He closed his eyes, though it was almost entirely dark, and tried to imagine the girl’s face again. But raindrops were dripping noisily from the roof, bits of debris were rattling in the gutter, and these sounds at close hand prevented him from concentrating. He kept seeing some other pair of eyes, other faces and other eyelids. It felt as if he had only been there for a moment, and hadn’t yet managed to do all his thinking, as if Michał’s music, muffled from here, though audible, had not yet told him the whole story. The pine forest came almost right up to the building; there were four mature pine trees opposite the small square window, and he was tempted to climb up one to see what was going on inside. But the lowest branches started quite high up, and then he felt ashamed of the idea. ‘What’s it all coming to?’ he said, almost out loud, and drew back against the wall to hear better.
The music stopped, Stanisław and Ola’s footsteps rang out, and then came the little girl’s smothered whisper, ‘I love Michał so much … And Mummy … And Mummy …’ He didn’t know if Ola had failed to complete her sentence or if the rest of it had blown away on the night breeze. He heard them walk away quietly at first, then making louder and louder rustling nois
es in the bushes, while he stood still, rooted to the spot, unable to comprehend the words he had just heard, or his own feelings.
At a calm and steady pace he walked a long way into the forest and got home late. There he kept pacing his room again, stopping occasionally at the foot of Ola’s bed, where she lay fast asleep. He didn’t consider trying to find some hidden meaning in Ola’s words; such a very little girl could not possibly know of some awful, vulgar secret, and anyway, it was well over a year now since Basia had died. Michał hadn’t gone there at all in those days, he hadn’t been courting Malina then; the thought never even crossed his mind. He just wanted to know what the little girl had been saying, but he couldn’t ask her that directly. The real meaning of her words would have to remain a mystery, the secret of a dewy night, never to be disturbed. Let silence reign supreme, like the silence in the birch grove, the silence of the grave.
What upset him most was that his dismay at the words he had overheard was almost equal to his rage at Staś’s visit to Malina’s home. All right, he had only been there for a short time, and only to listen to the music, there were several people in the house, and Ola had gone with him, but all the same it was improper. He decided to have a word with Staś first thing in the morning to point out the inappropriacy of his behaviour. But as soon as he got up, he had to leave at once for a far-off district, where from early morning he had to supervise the job of marking trees for felling.
The weather had not settled; it was rather chilly with a sky full of clouds. He stayed in the forest till evening, overseeing the work, marking the trees with numbers and trying not to think about yesterday evening. In fact, it was like a vision in a dream. And of course he was thinking about Basia a lot and missing her terribly. He remembered her buying berries from an old woman and pouring a mound of wild strawberries from a jug into a dish, he remembered her walking through the forest with Ola in a white dress, and accepting a hare from Michał, which he had brought her as a gift. Yes, so Michał did come by in those days too – but he was a rifleman, wasn’t he, a peasant, someone one took no notice of, just as he took no notice of Michał’s fiancée, for instance.
He wasn’t the hysterical type, and he had too much respect for Basia to think anything bad of her, but the mere mental association of his late wife and carnal thoughts, or the body in general, caused him acute distress. For the first time it occurred to him that Basia could have found someone else attractive. That Michał’s perfect build, for instance, could have made an impression on her, could have evoked thoughts he had never suspected her of in the course of their short-lived marriage. That she had realms of sensual existence that had never been any of his business.
He didn’t go home for lunch and spent his break at the edge of a clearing, watching the wind dispel the clouds. It was getting ever warmer and finer, and the earth was drying out before one’s very eyes. He lay down in a ditch, half-closed his eyes and felt a lassitude come over him which hadn’t been able to touch him while he had been blindly occupied with the matter in hand. This lassitude was so very unfamiliar to him that it felt as if some completely alien element were flowing into his veins, like an injection of some magical liquid, changing the very essence of his being.
The afternoon was hot now, crickets were chirruping and there was a scent of June catchfly, blooming pink in the ditch. He scratched at the grass and flowers and felt crumbs of dampish earth beneath his fingernails, and a verse of the Bible came to mind: ‘Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return’. Basia had already returned to dust. It was painful for him to think of it; his misfortune was stronger than he was. Moreover he felt his own strength to be a misfortune, his health, the muscularity of his arms, his step, so very confident and resilient, even when he was loping from corner to corner, not knowing what to do with himself, with his life and his distress.
Finally, as he lay there amid the warmth and scent of the flowers, he fell into a fitful sleep, the sort slept on the ground and in grass by people who have slept their whole lives in a bed. When he awoke the workmen had got down to their task without him. They were moving in line along the young forest, scratching marks on the bark of some of the trees; the junior forester from the neighbouring district was walking along marking numbers with a red pencil and a brush soaked in tar.
The birds were singing like mad. The leaves were rich and green. The sense of composure in nature brought him a kind of solace. He sat in the ditch for a while longer, not even wondering if the work were going to plan. Nor was he thinking of his worries; he only had one thing in mind – that if he had still been married, he would never have slept through his lunch hour in a ditch, and that it was better like this, because he could stay here and keep a proper eye on things.
Although the days were long now, it was almost dark by the time he went home. He dismissed the workmen, then stopped to chat for a while with the junior forester, a very genial fellow; then the rifleman came and told him of the damage caused recently by people from the nearest village, about twenty-five kilometres away. Apparendy they had sawn into a magnificent old larch but had not managed to bring it down. For a day the tree had stayed standing – the rifleman had seen it – but before he got back the next day with the men, the wind had blown it over, destroying a lot of young trees. Kre˛pski, the junior forester, was annoyed. Bolesław drove him to his lodge, for it was quite a distance and he wasn’t in a hurry to get home.
When he got back, he found only Katarzyna at home. She told him that Staś had gone for a walk, and Ola had run off somewhere. In silence he ate his reheated lunch and went out onto the porch. Just as Staś’s piano-playing had upset him earlier, now he was maddened by the silence. He would have liked to hear the stupid, hoarse tunes tearing his nerves to shreds. He remembered Michał’s accordion and went out into the courtyard. Janek was feeding the horses; upstairs a light was burning. He hesitated for a while, then went up the stairs and opened the door without knocking. He stood in the doorway unnoticed. His daughter was sitting on a bed in the gloom, leaning against Malwina’s high pillows. By the bed sat Michał, telling her a complicated fairy tale about some silly people. There was no one else in the room. Ola saw her father, sprang to her feet and ran up to him. ‘Daddy, Daddy, Michał’s been telling me such wonderful stories.’
Bolesław kissed his daughter. Michał stood up straight and Bolesław took his first careful look at him. He was tall and magnificently well built, with coarse but pleasant features. He had very fair hair and a blond moustache, his eyes were small and very blue. Bolesław smiled at him. Michał gave him a deferential look. He was clearly a good man.
‘Don’t get up,’ said Bolesław, unusually softly, ‘let Michał finish the story, then quickly home. It’s time for bed!’
He turned and went out, trailed down the stairs and wandered off to one side; he wanted to go into the forest so they couldn’t see him, and so he couldn’t see anything either. He didn’t know how to tell fairy tales, he didn’t even know how to talk to Ola, he never knew what he should say to her. But she was all he had left in the world. Staś was right, the little girl was very neglected. But what could he do about it? He was so busy with his work.
Today had been a day of new elements: within surroundings so familiar and so ordinary he had noticed new things. And he didn’t regret it; it was as if life had been reawakened in him – it interested him. His midday lassitude had coloured his entire afternoon and evening in an unfamiliar way. He felt as if he were fighting off a dangerous narcotic. For the first time today he had had a good look at Michał, and he could tell he was a fine lad, a likeable sort. For the first time he had felt a pang in his heart at Ola’s neglect, a lonely little girl, off to the watchman’s room for fairy tales.
Emerging beyond the stable and the pine trees, again as if for the first time, he saw the birch grove where his wife lay buried. The white trunks stood out against the late evening sky, illuminated by the remains of light like pearls set in velvet. Those tree trunks, smooth, white and scu
lptured, reminded him of women’s arms, lots of entangled arms, rising upwards imploringly or exultantly, sometimes bent back downwards in a gesture of submission and resignation. High up, the clusters of arms joined hands, entwining fingers, though some of the trees stood forlorn and single. Moist, steamy air filled the gaps between the birches with condensation, and all together it gave the impression of a sort of temple of the senses. The arms created a glittering colonnade. Never had the forest looked like this before, this forest of anxious whispers, of chill breezes, of wintry nights when the stars were so immense; of autumn days when petals fell like golden rain onto the burial mound, when they hung in the air in a rippling, golden stream. On this June evening there was neither death nor anxiety in the birch grove, but there was life, the forest was breathing it; it had become so powerful and unsettling that Bolesław’s own regular breathing suddenly grew troubled. The air caught in his throat and his heart ached. There he stood and gazed; now and then a gentle shudder ran through the forest, the arms slanted and changed formation, then fell back in line; each time the darkness, into which these white limbs were plunging, gave a sweet murmur. Suddenly, like a single point of gold riven into the shadows, the first note of a belated nightingale rang out. It made him choke, still standing there, like a lump of ice. And the lump was melting in his throat, becoming sweet and salty, filling his eyes to overflowing with warmth.
VIII
Neither that evening nor for the next few days did the brothers meet at table. Only over a rapid lunch did they exchange a few banalities. Bolesław had taken to spending the afternoon wherever his work found him, whether at fellings, plantings or land clearances. Staś was free to do as he liked. In the early evening he often took the horses out, driving them himself and taking Ola with him; Malwina would be waiting for them at an agreed spot and they would all go out together. During the drive they hardly exchanged a word. They would travel a stretch of the sandy road, or wander about the forest, and then go home, all in total silence. If Ola was with them she did most of the talking. Staś did not stop to think about what he was doing; Malina just came along for the ride and that was it.
