An Easter Pasha
IT WAS THE MIDDLE OF FEBRUARY AND SLEET WAS falling, even though since the morning my Tatra cabin barometer had had the highland man looking out to forecast sunshine. My grandmother added cream to the sour rye and potato soup and opened the window a crack. The sooty net curtains billowed out like fish swim bladders. My grandfather came home soaking wet, hung his hat on the back of a chair and proceeded to scoop mushroom pieces out of the soup with a ladle.
‘Get outta here!’ my grandmother scolded him.
My grandfather put on the face of a naughty child caught in the act, grabbed the fly swatter and chased away a cloud of flies that had been feeding on sugar crystals spilled on the plastic tablecloth.
‘What’s got into you, Władek?’ my grandmother asked.
‘The Director told me to play.’
‘To play what?’
‘To play in a play.’
He threw the swatter down on the windowsill, spat in the half-open ash pan, put his hat back on and went out again.
The next day, the buffet lady from the Jupiter Inn reported to my grandmother that the Director had bought my grandfather two doubles of vodka and spent a long time trying to persuade him to take part in some sort of performance at the Farmers’ Club. But even the buffet lady didn’t know exactly how this Director had found himself in Hektary and what sorts of things he directed or steered – apart from his Fiat 125p – though people said that he was a ‘delegate’ who’d been sent from somewhere. In practice, he organised social events and raffles, he had procured a VHS player for the community hall at the fire station, and the previous year he had invited Mum on a culinary course at the Country-women’s Association, where he demonstrated, among other things, how to make lemon soup. As a matter of fact, the words ‘lemon soup’ were later forbidden in our house – after a Christmas party during which Mum was stuck dancing a charity waltz with the Director.
My grandfather clearly wasn’t thrilled at the prospect of taking part in the show, but he was trying not to let on. Admittedly, he did like to perform, and he was known in the village for his appearances at harvest festivals and weddings and at the inn, where he’d pop in once a month after getting his pension and sing old Resistance songs and folk ballads until dawn. The problem was that my grandfather couldn’t stand the Director, who had to stick his nose into every celebration in Hektary. Shortly before, for example, he had turned up at a firemen’s meeting, as if by accident, and declared that the Easter Turks were a nonsense tradition which had to be abolished, since it wasn’t Turkish but Roman guards who had kept watch over the tomb of Jesus in Jerusalem. My grandfather was furious because he had always known, ever since he was a child, that the Easter Turks commemorated the victory of the Polish forces at the Battle of Vienna, and the fighting men who returned home a year later, just before Easter, dressed up in the trophy costumes of the Ottoman army.
On Good Friday, for as long as I could remember, my grandfather would put on a patterned tunic and a fringed waistcoat. Armed with a colourful Easter ‘palm’ – which was in fact a huge sceptre made from branches, flowers and leaves – he would go with the other firemen to guard the Holy Sepulchre at St Anthony’s Basilica. The following night, when the parish priest announced the good news during the Easter Vigil, the Turks would remove the black mourning ribbon from their flag and would all drop down to the floor with such a thud that pieces of amber would tumble from the necklaces adorning St Anthony of Padua’s altar, and votive offerings pinned to red velvet would curl up like aspen leaves. After the service, the Turks would form two rows, one on each side of the path in front of the church, and with their Easter palms they would gently poke at the shoes of selected girls, as if to confer on them a special blessing for the coming spring.
I was certain that my grandfather, rifleman of the 74th Regiment of the Lubliniec Infantry, former Stalag prisoner, tile-stove builder, carpenter, singer and Easter pasha all rolled into one, who up to now had never let anyone get the better of him, would sooner or later pull a fast one on the Director. Yet nothing happened. My grandfather obediently attended the rehearsals at the fire station, did everything the Director asked and practised his song in the mow of the barn:
There were red roses and poppies and lilacs,
smelling beautifully in a soldier’s song,
but in none of the melodies could flower
any yellow marsh marigolds.
In the afternoon on the eighth of March, the sun came out, even though since the morning my Tatra cabin barometer had had the highland woman looking out to forecast rain. Smudged posters stuck to posts were advertising a musical production at the Farmers’ Club called Yellow Marsh Marigolds, directed by none other than the Director. As usual on International Women’s Day, Mum was staying late at work to celebrate the occasion, my father had slunk off to go fishing, and only my grandmother and I remained at our posts at home to feed the chickens, milk the cow and help my grandfather with the final preparations for the performance.
After lunch, my grandfather gave my grandmother a shawl with a red poppy motif and golden thread, so she sang to herself merrily as she ironed his shirt, which she then carefully laid out on the bedspread. His polished shoes were drying by the stove, next to the cat. Around five, she suddenly looked at my grandfather and bellowed so loud that flies almost dropped from the flypaper and the ceiling almost lost the rest of its whitewash: ‘Jesus Christ, Władek! You gotta go in an hour and you still haven’t shaved?!’
‘No need to yell. I was just about to start.’
He sharpened his razor on a leather belt hung from the door handle, took a shaving brush out of a cocoa tin, picked up the soap, poured warm water from the kettle into a mug and proceeded to shave slowly, checking his reflection in a bicycle mirror. After he put on his suit, fastened his braces and tied his tie, he muttered under his breath, ‘Fuck a duck… yellow marsh marigolds and red tomatoes…’
‘What tomatoes?’ I asked, surprised, but he didn’t reply. He put on his polished shoes and with some foam still on his cheek dashed out to the privy behind the barn.
Fifteen minutes passed. Fifteen more minutes passed. I watched the hands of the clock anxiously, since he was gone for quite a long time.
‘He’ll be back. He’s just got caught short from the nerves,’ my grandmother kept reassuring me.
At half past six, Bear started to bark. The bantam hens hid under the tarpaulin which covered the remainder of the coal dust left over from the winter. A Fiat 125p pulled up to our gate. Three men got out, dressed to the nines: the Director, the village mayor, carrying a trombone, and the chief of the Volunteer Fire Service, in full dress uniform. My grandmother threw her fur waistcoat over her shoulders and stepped outside.
‘Hello, Stefa. Where’s Władek?’ the village mayor asked.
‘Lord be praised. It’s been a good half hour since he’s gone to the privy and that’s the last we’ve seen of him.’
‘Show us the way,’ the Director said in a commanding tone. ‘And you,’ he turned to the chief, ‘wait by the gate and keep an eye on the road.’
I ran outside through the little door by the pigsty to watch the whole scene from behind a gooseberry bush, where I’d have a good view.
‘Comrade Lubas, you’re to report immediately to the Farmers’ Club,’ the Director hissed and kicked the door to the privy.
‘Władek, say something,’ I heard my grandmother’s voice.
‘Open up, Władek, stop fooling around,’ the village mayor added.
‘Władek, open up, you hear me?’ my grandmother tried again.
‘Comrade Władysław, we don’t have time for this.’
‘Lubas, come on, I’ll buy you a round,’ the chief croaked in his drunkard’s voice.
‘You’ve got to talk some sense into him,’ the Director said, turning to my grandmother. ‘There’s no time…’
‘Sir!’ the chief interrupted him. ‘I can see the dignitaries’ cars on the hill!’
‘What a prick… I knew he’d take me for a ride.’
The Director spat on the daisies that for some reason had bloomed right next to the privy, wiped his muddy loafers with a handful of grass, adjusted the handkerchief in his breast pocket and looked at his watch.
‘I’ve got to get back to the fire station. Keep trying to persuade him!’ he yelled at the village mayor and headed for the gate.
Once the Fiat had disappeared beyond the bridge, the village mayor, who knew my grandfather well and had already suspected something earlier but didn’t want to say anything in front of the Director, took a swig out of his hip flask, passed his trombone to my grandmother, grabbed a stick, wedged it into the gap between the door and the wall of the privy and lifted the wooden latch. The door opened slightly. Apart from flies flailing about in spiderwebs, there wasn’t a soul inside. On top of a dried-up Easter palm hung my grandfather’s hat.
Spiders from Jerusalem
DURING STORMS, I USED TO HIDE IN THE HALLWAY and play at being Jonah. The shutters up in the attic would open with a bang. The faded curtain would billow out like the belly of a whale. The spirit level was one of its crossed eyes, and the chisels, saws and planes which hung on the unplastered walls were its fins. Water dripped from the ceiling and ran down the stone wall. I could sail to wherever I wanted, in a boat made from lime-tree wood shavings, but I preferred to stay put on a sack of oats under the ladder, somewhere between the rocking horse that had lost its rockers, the rickety cheese press and the duck sitting on its eggs in an old wooden washtub. Chaff fell like glitter onto spiderwebs. Above me, the electricity meter, with its porcelain fuses, ticked rhythmically. An old slug iron lay on the floor, showing its teeth. Just as I believed in bebok, the Jurassic Uplands monster which, according to grown-ups, would come after dark to kidnap naughty children, so I also believed that this iron, true to its name, contained some sort of supernatural slug.
My mother was terrified of storms. As soon as it began to thunder, she’d cross herself, take down the laundry from the lines strung between our two apple trees, bolt shut all the doors and windows, pull plugs out of sockets, hide metal objects and cover the top of the washing machine with a blanket, so that it wouldn’t draw lightning. Finally, she would sit on the bed, cover herself with a feather duvet and call me over.
‘Be straight with me, have you killed a spider again? You know well enough that it brings thunderstorms.’
‘This time it really wasn’t me, Mum. I swear, it was Mr Kuzior.’
‘Mr Kuzior?’ she asked, intrigued.
‘In biology class, we were putting cross spiders to sleep with ether, and I think mine breathed in too much, because it never made it out of its matchbox again.’
‘Spiders are sacred creatures and it’s forbidden to kill them. They saved Our Lady. When the Holy Family was fleeing from Jerusalem, spiders wove such a thick web around the road that the swords of Herod’s soldiers couldn’t pierce it.’
She would tell me story after story, about how Jesus brought twelve clay birds to life when he was a child, how he hung a pitcher of water on a sunbeam and how he walked on water, how he revived a dried fish and calmed a storm. Eventually she would fall asleep under her duvet, clutching a blessed medallion in her left hand.
Once during a storm, Natka Roszenko came to visit us. We didn’t know her well; we just knew that she was one of Cynga’s tarts. Cynga had come to the village in the mid-1980s, from who knew where. He had opened the Baboon nightclub in the basement of the forest amphitheatre by the road, and he spent a lot of time at the inn, with the Director and the village mayor. Knowing all this, Mum would still invite Natka over to our house, because the girl sold Hungarian tops and golden-thread shawls at a good price. Besides, how could you not let a person into your home during a storm?
As I sat under the table, playing house, different smells mingled in the stuffy August air: rotting mattress straw, laundry starch, mildew and cat piss. I stuck out my head. The flypaper swayed hypnotically under the ceiling lamp. On the wall, next to the memento of my First Holy Communion, hung a portrait of my grandmother Sabina Szydło. A beautiful, olive-skinned woman in a blue-grey georgette dress with a white lace collar was peeking at me from the picture. Her raven-black plait undulated behind the glass. I missed her, even though I had never met her.
When Mum fell asleep, Natka finished her coffee, crawled under the table and sat down next to me, smiling peculiarly.
‘Hey, you, I’ll tell you a story. No? Maybe we can play tickles?’
When I didn’t reply, Natka brushed aside her dark hair and put a slim arm around me. She smelled of musky perfume. She unbuttoned her blouse and bared her breasts. I shuddered with disgust, but she seemed to interpret this differently. She slipped a hand inside her knickers and half-closed her eyes. Luckily, the storm ended. Someone knocked on the door. My mother turned on the light.
I fled from under the table, shouting, ‘Mum, Mum, there are spiders from Jerusalem under there!’
Waves
I HAD BEEN FEELING NAUSEOUS SINCE THE EARLY morning and I didn’t fancy the buckwheat blood pudding which my grandmother had fried up with onions for breakfast. I slipped outside and decided to accompany my grandfather on his expedition to the farm field. When it turned out that the spring thaws had flooded the meadows overnight, we turned back. We passed rotting storage clamps, barberry bushes, a row of apple trees. Shells of Roman snails crunched under our boots. The earth smelled of decaying roots, mud, cardamom.
‘The Easter of 1913 was also wet,’ began my grandfather, who was more talkative than usual that morning. ‘The rain kept pouring with only short breaks. Streams joined up into one fast torrent. There was a flood, and our neighbours whose house was on low ground – you know, Balwierka and her family – ran away during the night and forgot to close their door and windows, and the water carried off their blessed Easter babkas and sausages.’
My grandfather stirred some thick liquid foaming in a ditch with his walking stick. Wire snares danced in the wind like the nooses of invisible hanged men.
‘The second wave came right at harvest time. Next to us was the district mayor’s field of oats, already in stooks. I tell you, what a sight it was when the water started carrying them off, stook by stook, and they floated towards the river like an army. Some of them got caught on the crowns of trees, broke apart into sheaves and drifted far off, to who knows where.’
‘Were you flooded too, in Brudzowice?’
‘No, we lived on a hill, but I still kept checking the water level by poking a stick into the ground. In the afternoon, I went to see if the water was rising or falling. I look and there’s at least a dozen hares running away from the water. They were hiding in the grass, and I wanted to grab one, but my mother said, “Leave it, they want to live too. Hurry, get the horse and ride out to the cattle in the pasture.” Because the cattle were there all summer, and in wet years the foot-and-mouth disease was everywhere.’
I stopped listening to my grandfather when he began recollecting the coming of the third wave. My belly started to hurt. The county helicopter was circling above the fields.
When we got home, the sun was shining over the nearby village of Kolonia. It was nearly noon. Drowsy flies were circling above a steaming pile of dung. Water from the roof was running down drainpipes in streams, battering the young jonquil buds. Snow-white doves strolled about the yard, which looked like a dirty wet rag. Bright patches of inundated fields showed through the gaps in the fence, where boards were missing after my grandfather had chopped them up in February, when the coal had run out. Next to the fence, a small stove with a cracked pipe and flaking patches of patina was dying a slow death. The bones of a rusty harrow protruded from under a tarpaulin among young nettles.
My grandmother scraped the remains of the previous day’s potatoes out of a pot to feed the chickens and told me to check if there were any fresh eggs in the pigsty, in the mow or among the nettles. I brought back a few in a farm sie
ve, sat down on a damp tree stump by the barn and started drawing a spiral on the ground with a stick. Suddenly, I felt a strong cramp in my lower belly. A wave of warmth flooded my crotch and thighs. I ran home.
‘Is it possible to bleed to death?’ I asked my grandmother. Worried, she stuck her head out of the cellar, where she was picking through potatoes, and when she saw the red stain on my tights, she guessed instantly what was going on. She climbed up the ladder, shuffled off in her wellies to her room and pulled out some starched linen rags from under her straw mattress.
‘Wash your tights in cold water, and here, take one of these to put down there. It’ll pass in a few days. Your mother can buy you some cotton wool at the corner shop tomorrow, but don’t bug me now because the potatoes are going to rot.’
I ran out into the yard. The sun, white and spotted like a goose egg, burned my cheeks. Blowflies were circling above a trough filled with fermented oats. I crawled inside the rabbit cage and fell asleep on the fresh hay. I dreamt about crimson dandelion clocks.
Gienek the Combine Driver
IN FEBRUARY, IT GOT DARK JUST AFTER FOUR. The air smelled of metal. An almost inaudible blues hummed in the web of telegraph wires taut from the frost. The house was filled with the aroma of hot lard. The cats were pulling out eggshells and empty vanilla-sugar packets from the coal scuttle and playing with them under the table. I sat on a stool by the hot stove, trying to make a brooch for my home economics class – a butterfly built out of wire, a safety pin and a scrap of nylon. In a drawer, I had found a few pairs of tights labelled ‘women’s, stylish, ladder resistant’, which Mum always got at work for International Women’s Day. But they were all flesh-toned or coffee-brown, and instead of a butterfly I kept ending up with a moth, which was ‘a bit the worse for wear’, as my father would describe himself every Monday, when he came home at dawn after a little game of poker, red-eyed and yawning, and made himself some water with baking soda and vinegar for his hangover. Finally, I couldn’t take it any more and told Mum, who was cutting strips of rolled-out pastry dough for faworki, that I had to drop by the dressmaker’s to get a piece of coloured nylon for the brooch.
Swallowing Mercury Page 4
