Evening had begun to set in. The nurse came in, she gave him a sort of funny look and hurried out. A moment later the doctor arrived, held his arm for a moment then left again. The nurse came back and gave him an injection. She asked if he wasn’t thirsty, and she brought him some compote. Someone wanted to put the lights on but I said no, it wasn’t time yet. No one was reading, and it was far from dark.
You couldn’t tell anything from looking at him. Though people say that when someone’s going to die, you can tell two days before. But truth be told, what were you supposed to be able to see? He was always pale as can be, he couldn’t have gotten any paler. He was skinny as a rake and he couldn’t have gotten thinner. As the dusk fell his eyes grew sort of dim, and you’d have needed to lean over him for him to see anything. Only that open book on the bedside table that he didn’t feel like reaching for even just to close it – that might have been the only sign he was dying.
I sat on the edge of his bed and it seemed strange to me that you couldn’t tell anything from looking at him, but that he was dying. Things went quiet on the ward, though there were twelve of us in there. No one said a word, no one coughed, no one sighed, and if anyone was in pain, they kept it to themselves. Though more than one of them could have died right after him. But it was always the way that when someone on the ward was dying, everyone else died a bit with him, and they set their own deaths aside. Someone started whispering the rosary in the corner, though it was so quiet every word could be heard all around the ward like pebbles falling on the floor.
“Don’t pay any mind to him,” I said. “In the country they always pray in the early evening.”
And I took him by the hand, the way you take a child’s hand to lead him across a footbridge over the river. His hand was actually like a child’s, it was so small and scrawny both of them would have fit in my one hand. At one moment he squeezed my hand so hard and so desperately it was like he was falling off a cliff, and I felt my hand and my arm were dying with him.
“Mr. Szymon” – his whisper reached me like something moving down a bumpy road – “you’ve been in the next world. What’s it like there?”
“That was a long time ago, Mr. Kazimierz. And it was in the war. In wartime things might be different in the next world as well as in this one. Besides, war doesn’t distinguish between one world and the other. Maybe I just thought I was there. Shall I tell you about rabbits? What kind do you like better, angoras or lop-eareds? Me, I prefer angoras. Lop-eareds are big, but if you keep them it’s for the meat. Angoras are white as can be, they like to keep clean, and their eyes kind of shine red. When you touch an angora’s fur it’s like touching the daybreak, or touching a cloud, or the sky. And I’ve been thinking, I’m going to start keeping rabbits when I come home from the hospital. To begin with I’ll only need a single pair. After that they’ll breed. One pair can have three litters a year, six or seven little ones each time. Then the next year the same. Because rabbits, once they start breeding there’s no stopping them. And as for food, they’ll eat anything, grass, peelings. Come visit sometime and you’ll see. When they eat, their jaws make a noise like they were talking to themselves. Though grass makes one noise, peelings a different one. With grass it’s a tiny sound like autumn drizzle, but with peelings it’s deep like warm rain in May. You could listen to it till the cows come home. And if you listen harder, you can even hear the rush of springwater, bees collecting honey, clouds rubbing against the sky. You can hear the earth turning, and people turning with it. Even though it’s nothing but rabbits making a noise while they eat. But you often have a yen to just lie down on the ground among them like you were lying on hay, in the meadow, by the river, in the shade of a tree, and just melt away in that noise, among the springs and the bees and the clouds, and let yourself be carried away by the tired, tired earth around you. Because there’s something about rabbits that makes everything get softer all around, and inside you as well. Maybe it’s their whiteness. Have you ever seen anything whiter than a rabbit’s fur? Nothing’s whiter than that – not an orchard in bloom, not an eiderdown airing in the sun, not geese swimming on the water. It looks like something that isn’t even born yet and that’s why it’s so white, because it hasn’t yet come into contact with the world. When you pick up one of those rabbits, pull it out of the mass of them and put it on your lap, it’s like you’d taken it out of a warm womb. It trembles, it fights, sometimes scratches, as if it’s afraid to come out into the world. Then when you stroke it, you can feel the fear through your hand, that its whiteness is going to forever be dirtied from your touch. Though on the face of it it’s no big deal, you’re sitting stroking a rabbit and the rabbit’s trembling. You just have to hold it by the ears with your other hand, or else it’ll hop off your lap and there’ll be an emptiness in your hands, it’ll be emptier on your lap than before. And you won’t be able to catch it again. It’ll mix in with the other rabbits and you’ll lose it in all the whiteness. White mixes with white like water mixes with water, sand with sand. When there’re all those white creatures, how can you pick out one of them? Has anyone ever picked a drop of water out of a pool of water, or one grain in a handful?”
I felt a strange chill in the hand that was holding his hand. It was a bit like the chill of freshly plowed earth, or an apple picked when the dew’s still on it.
“I think he’s dead,” I said unsurely, as if it were him I was asking whether he’d died. Everyone on the ward held their breath a short while, like they’d died with him for a moment. Or maybe they were waiting to see if he’d answer me. In the end someone couldn’t take it anymore and they said as if they were surprised:
“He’s dead?” He probably said it not because he didn’t believe it but because you ought to be a bit surprised by death, that’s death’s right.
“Then he’s dead,” someone said almost with relief.
“So, he’s dead,” someone else sighed at the other end of the ward, as if he was saying, “so, it’s evening.”
“Then it’s evening,” someone agreed, because what else can you do with death except agree, “then he’s dead.”
I freed my hand carefully from his and sat back on my own bed.
“Turn the light on maybe,” someone said as though he was suddenly afraid. “Turn on the light.”
“What for, he’s not going to be doing any reading.”
“Well, so we can at least close his eyes.”
“Maybe he’s not dead? Maybe he’s not dead.” Old Ambroży jumped up from the bed right in the corner. No one had come to visit him that day. He’d had his leg amputated at the knee. He grabbed his stick and hobbled over, close to tears, as if he were still trying to keep death back. “Maybe he’s not dead. Look closely. Having cold hands doesn’t necessarily mean he’s dead. Nor having cold feet. Death’s a whole lot more than that. It’s not enough to just say he’s dead. You can say all manner of things, it doesn’t make them so. You can say it’s day, but it’ll still be night. Just like Jesus, he was supposedly dead, but he hadn’t died at all. Give him a shake! Now how am I supposed to get Stolarek back for the wrong he did me? Stolarek, Stolarek. Half my land is gone almost. Skin and bones, that’s all my land is. A dried-up branch. Give him a shake. Lawyers don’t just up and die like that. Maybe he’s sleeping only? When death comes, your tongue has to die as well, and the things on your conscience have to die, everything has to die. When you’re dead you can’t even blow your nose. He promised. Sure as he’s lying there now, he promised. Some people just can’t catch a break. Why? Because they’re fools. Stolarek’s land is rich as you like, and he’s still filching other people’s, the crook. All he does is flick his whip at his horses, and they’re just horses, they’re not worried about whose land they’re plowing. His father used to steal land from my father. But what could my father do when his father was backed up by lawyers. All my father had was a head full of anger and a mouth full of prayers. So all he did was pray and curse, pray and curse in turn, while that guy took hi
s land. Plus the other guy had a pair of horses, father only had the one horse, and with one horse there was no way he could have plowed back land that two horses had worked. He kept plowing his land back and his land kept getting smaller. Then one time he got riled up and took a whip to Stolarek. So Stolarek’s lawyers set on him like ravens, and it wasn’t long before he died. Besides, what kind of a life would it be anyway to live and watch your own land shrinking. I’ll leave it all to you, son, my father said, though you’ll need to take an ax with you one of these days. Me, I somehow didn’t have the strength to defend what was mine. You know, I let him have it with my whip, though I didn’t even hurt him that much cause he was wearing a thick cape, and now I have to die already. But you, don’t use a whip, take an ax. All a whip is, is anger and a strip of leather, and there’s nothing you can do against lawyers, it’s like beating a bull with a little twig. As for them, it’s not enough that they’re the law, they’re in with the devil to boot. And there’s no greater power on earth than the law and the devil in cahoots. All you can do then is grab an ax and kill the other guy. Even if you have to die in the slammer afterwards. It’s better to die than to live when you’re up against the law and the devil. God’ll forgive you, because when it’s about the land, he always forgives. He was born on the land, he lived on it and died on it, so he knows what it is. And God wasn’t one of the masters either, he was just a regular carpenter. Same as Kosiorek or Bzdęga in our village. Kosiorek built our cattle sheds, and Bzdęga made wagon wheels for us. And if God doesn’t forgive you, the land will. Because sometimes God doesn’t always see everything from up in his heights, but the land feels every hurt. Though even better than using an ax would be if you had enough to buy your own lawyers. Sell a few acres, sell the horse or a cow, go take a loan, but buy some lawyers. Then you can face Stolarek and his lawyers like an equal. Cause a guy like that, even if you cut him to death, his sons’ll rise up, their sons’ll rise up, their grandsons and great-grandsons, and they’ll be plowing your land over till kingdom come. But you need to find lawyers that are in with an even bigger devil than Stolarek’s. With devils it’s like with people, there’s bigger ones and smaller ones. Don’t keep with the small ones. A small devil is the same as a small calf, small boots. Not much of anything. Always keep with the big ones. However much they ask for. Even if you have to sell your soul. What do you need a soul for if you don’t have any land. A soul on its own, without land, it’s like its body didn’t want it and God’s driven it away. Take the religious pictures off the wall, smash the cross with a mallet and leave it there broken, pour the holy water into the night pail, then go get drunk and curse for all you’re worth, and the devil’ll come find you of his own accord. Prick your finger for him, he’ll do the same, and Stolarek’ll be quaking in his boots. Pity I won’t live to see it, we could have gone together. You’d knock at his window, hey there, Stolarek, I got my own lawyer now! Now we’ll see what’s what! Now we’ll see who’s stronger! We were like two brothers, our beds were next to each other in the hospital! He’s in with better devils than you are! He knows Lucifer! He knows Beelzebub! He knows the Antichrist! He knows all the important devils! He knows all of hell! Your devils are pisspots! He knows all the laws! A hundred times more than yours know! He knows every law there is! And he knows the right law for you, you thief! They cut my leg off, but I don’t care. I’d let them cut the other one off if it meant getting even with you. Come here, Stolarek, come outside, I’ve got more to tell you! He’s visiting Sunday! Come take a look through my window! You’ll see us drinking vodka, eating sausage together! My old lady’ll cook him some chicken! And we’ll laugh together. Ha, ha, ha! Hee, hee, hee! And it’s you we’ll be laughing at! It’s curtains for you, Stolarek! God is slow but just! And you know what he said to me? He said, there’s no reason we should lose against a guy like Stolarek. We don’t even need the devil on our side, Ambroży. All we need is regular justice. That’s what he said. He even laughed, he said those lawyers of Stolarek’s, they’re no more devils than fleas are wasps. When we’re done with them, all that’ll be left of them will be their farts. Ha, ha, ha! He laughed and laughed. Hee, hee, hee! He just kept laughing and laughing. You could see the devil flashing in his eyes. I asked if I should pay him, I said I could pay him, but please stop laughing like that. I can’t afford it, but I’d sell a few acres, the horse, a cow, take a loan, and I’d pay. If Stolarek could pay for a lawyer I could too. But he should stop laughing, cause it was frightening. The only thing left for Stolarek to do will be go hang himself. Pick your tree, Stolarek. And he asked me, Stolarek’s his name? Stolarek. Same as his father! And his father before him. As soon as we get out of here. He promised. But it looks like there’s no law for Stolarek, no God, no devil. That’s for sure.”
“Easy there now, don’t cry.”
Right off, two big brawny auxiliaries came in and took the lawyer away. Then Jadzia the orderly came in and changed his bed. She said, “So, the poor guy’s gone.” She checked around to make sure he hadn’t left anything behind. There were a few small things, like there always are after someone dies, so she gathered them in her apron. There was the glass of compote he’d not finished, she asked if anyone wanted it. But no one did so she poured it down the sink. She wiped the top of the bedside table with a cloth. She took down the old temperature chart and put up a new one. She was going to take the books as well but I told her to leave them, that maybe I’d read them.
At one point I even took the book he’d left open by his bed and started to read it. It was about this guy that went around asking about a carpenter. It wasn’t really a carpenter he was interested in, but he didn’t know what he ought to ask about so he asked about a carpenter. Was he nuts or what? You ask about a carpenter when you need someone to make a door or a table or a chest. If he’d come to our village any little child would have told him where the carpenter is. Józef Kalembasa, on the way to the mill, third house after the roadside shrine, the one with the acacia in the yard.
I only read a few pages. I couldn’t get any further because his bed was taken by a damn kid that wanted to be my best buddy right from the get-go and talked my ear off from morning till night. His head was all wrapped in bandages, both his legs were broken, he’d crashed his motorbike when he was drunk, and he was all pleased because he was getting out of doing jobs for his father. He never shut his trap once, whether anyone was listening or no. Most of all he liked to go on about his girlfriends, though it was mostly just dirty stories. Which one he’d been with, and where, and when, and how. Lying down, standing up, from the front, from the back, kneeling, squatting, straight up, and upside down. You really felt sorry for the girlfriends.
One time one of them visited him, she was a nice, good-looking young lady. She brought a basket of apples and gave one to each of us, she even had me take two, and she picked another one out herself and put it on my table. She gave you the impression she was visiting her father and grandfather and uncles, not the kid. She even took her basket around the beds like she was embarrassed at being the only girl among all those men. Though they weren’t much in the way of men, they were all wrinkled and feeble and gray and bald, their teeth falling out, their eyes failing, some of them with one foot in the grave. But they were kind of embarrassed as well, they were supposedly just taking apples from her, but everyone lowered their eyes so as not to look at her without her clothes on, because it was like she was giving out her breasts instead of apples after that animal had undressed her in front of us all.
Not only did he undress those girlfriends of his, he laughed at them as well. He laughed so much sometimes he slapped himself on the thigh, on his cast. He laughed the way a fool laughs at the slightest thing. He laughed to himself. And though it was none of our business, everyone looked at him as he laughed like he was on his way to his own funeral. How could you laugh like that on a bed that was still warm after someone else had died. Maybe he was so stupid he didn’t even know that through all that laughter and all tho
se undressed girlfriends he was just continuing the other man’s dying. Old men can see straight through the world, and they could see that too.
Besides, is it true that there’re so many different ways? Stallions don’t do anything like that with mares, nor dogs with bitches. Why would people? And what for? After all, whichever way you do it the result’s the same. I was a young man too in my day and I may even have had more girls than him, but I always did it the way you’re supposed to.
The only one to laugh was old Albin in the corner by the door, he’d squeal with delight whenever the kid would put his hand between his girlfriend’s legs, or she’d do the same to him. But Albin’s back was broken and he just lay there like a tree stump, and his arms and legs lay next to him like chopped-off boughs. He could only dream of sleeping with a woman one more time before he died. He was forever cursing his life, cursing his injury, his children, everything. He promised an acre of land to the ward orderly, Jadzia, if she’d only put her hand under his covers, it could even be right before he died. Jadzia laughed and said death was probably a lot nicer than her hand, her hand was all work-worn and chapped and not exactly young. Because Jadzia was able to laugh at even the saddest things. Another woman would have given him an earful, but she laughed. Another woman would have burst into tears, but Jadzia laughed. Often it’d be quiet as the grave on the ward, then Jadzia would come in and say something and everyone would be laughing.
It wasn’t surprising really. To be surrounded like her for so many years by misery and pain and death and moaning, and it was constantly, clean up shit and piss, tidy the place, change the beds, take this out, bring this in – after all that you’d learn to laugh at anything. Plus, everyone was always trying to marry her, old, young, widows, married men, though all of them had half a foot in the next world. A good few couldn’t even stand up on their own, or turn over in bed by themselves, they were armless, legless, they shat their pants, their faces were all crooked, they ached everywhere. But the moment Jadzia came on the ward, every one of them was all set to marry her. Some of them would have married her one day and died the next. And she never turned anyone down, she never said no, she just laughed.
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