But that was long ago and there hadn’t been any war, maybe death liked listening to music. In wartime, though, death has no hearing. All that came of their playing on the Kawęczyn road was that they hung them on a single tree. They didn’t smash their instruments, they just hung them along with the musicians. The accordion with the accordion player, the fiddle with the fiddler, the drummer with his drum on his belly, and so on. One of the soldiers even took a picture of them, another one let off a round at the drum.
A farmer came by taking his cow to be serviced, they hung him too. One idiot went out in front of his house to watch them drive by. Actually they might not have hung him, because he was standing behind his fence and there was only his head sticking out. But he wanted to make a good impression so he took off his cap and bowed. And that evidently made such a good impression they hung him. Another guy, they asked him where the village chairman lived. The guy didn’t understand, and he shook his head and shrugged to say he didn’t. How could he understand when our language comes from the earth and theirs comes from iron. Earth can’t understand iron. They hung him too.
They also hung the squire from Jasień, the same one that they took the halters off his cows. But him they hung from his gateway, not from a tree. There were three gates into the manor, two ordinary ones for everyday use, and a third one that was only used once in a blue moon, as the expression goes. The other two were on the side facing the village, the third one opened onto the road with the acacia trees. From there there was an avenue lined with lindens that led directly to the courtyard in front of the manor house. The third gate was usually closed, they’d only open it on special occasions, a ball, or if an important guest was coming. Even when the squire and his lady drove to church on Sunday, they’d just use one of the regular gates. But when the squire’s daughter Klementyna was coming home from her studies for the summer vacation, the big gate would stand wide open all day. All the boys from the manor and from the village would climb the trees along the road and watch to see if they could spot the carriage with the young mistress coming into view. They’d get twenty groszes for their pains. When the carriage appeared, they’d pass word from one tree to the next, all along the acacias, through the gate, along the lindens, and across the grounds to the manor, to say she was on her way. Every living soul would come out of the manor onto the courtyard, not just the squire and his wife and their relatives, but the footmen and the chambermaids and cooks. When the carriage pulled into the courtyard they wouldn’t let the young lady get out on her own, but they’d pluck her from her seat like a flower and stand her on the steps in front of her parents. The young lady would be all happy and smiling at everyone, prattling away, and throwing her arms around some of the servants so her hat fell off and rolled down the steps, and everyone chased after it. It sometimes happened that dinner got burned, but no one was punished, since it was because of the young mistress.
They started hammering on the gate with their rifle butts. First, one of the servants came out, but he didn’t have a key. They shot him dead. Then the squire came with the key, but he couldn’t get the gate to open, he tried every which way but nothing worked. In the end he managed to unlock it. But they were furious at having had to wait so long, so they hung him. Though was it his fault the gate wouldn’t open? They hadn’t unlocked it since the war began. The young mistress had come back from her studies for good and now she just stayed home, which is to say at the manor. And when someone important came it would be on the quiet, and they used one of the side gates. So apparently the big gate was so rusty they couldn’t open it even after it was unlocked, and the hinges creaked so loud the bastard soldiers held their ears and stamped their feet. People said that God was protesting that way. But what could even God do about it when there were twenty truckloads of them, all armed to the teeth.
The gate is actually still standing today, except it’s in the middle of fields and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Because when they divvied up the manor lands after the war, there wasn’t so much as a fence post left. Folks cut down the trees in the grounds for building houses or for firewood. The same went for the avenue of lindens that led down to the gate. The manor house was demolished down to the foundations. And now it’s just fields like everywhere else. Wherever you look there’s rye, wheat, clover, barley, potatoes, beets, carrots. And the gateway, standing in the middle of the fields like someone just stuck it there because otherwise things would be too flat. Two tall gateposts joined at the top with a half-rounded arch where there used to be a lamp on a wrought-iron chain. That was where they hung the squire. The gates themselves were wrought iron as well, they had twisted designs with lilies and bindweed and vines or something. They always had to be opened by two men at once, one wouldn’t have been able to do it. And since then they were locked for good. Because when they took the squire’s body down someone locked the gate again, and the key disappeared.
After the war all kinds of people tried to open it. Some blacksmith guy, some cooper, a tiler, even a fellow that mended radios. Mechanics from the farmers’ circle, tractor drivers, all kinds of folks. It’s only natural, there’s never any lack of people that want to know what’s on the other side. One time somebody’s relative from America came and offered a hundred dollars to whoever could get it open. People started trying again. All sorts of different types rolled in from far and wide. To begin with, none of them had any luck. The relative from America was convinced it couldn’t be done, and he upped the offer to a hundred and fifty, then two hundred. And they got it open. What can money not do. Except that when they saw on the other side of the gate there was just grain and beets and carrots like everywhere else, they took fright and locked it up again so hard that the key twisted in the lock, and it stayed that way. And now it’s shut forever.
Not long ago a foreign tour was on its way to Kawęczyn by bus. When they saw the gateway in the middle of the fields they had the driver stop, and they got out and started laughing and laughing, saying what a strange country we were, building gateways in the middle of fields as if they led to mansions, when people could go any way they wanted around the gate. Kuśmierz from Jasień was plowing near the gateway, and they started taking photographs of him from every side as he worked. Then one of them gave him a pack of cigarettes. Kuśmierz didn’t want to take them because he didn’t know what he was being given them for, but one of the guys from the bus said:
“Gute Zigaretten.”
So he took them, but he lit up one of his own. Then they asked him:
“What’s this gateway? Did someone build it at the entrance to their field? Do you have to go through it when you’re sowing? Is that maybe a custom in these parts? Does it make your crops grow better? How much do you get per acre?”
But Kuśmierz didn’t tell them the truth. He thought to himself, they came all this way to visit us, they even gave him a pack of cigarettes, he’d feel kind of foolish telling them the truth. So he told them that no one built the gateway, that it grew there of its own accord. Because gateways like that, they grow around here, some places are thick with them. No one plants them or sows them, they just grow there like trees. The soil is rich, all it takes is for the wind to bring a seed or a bird to drop one from its beak. Around here you can find whole stands of gateways.
Three days they all hung there on the acacia trees, because the local village chairmen were forbidden to take them down for three days, the same for the squire in the gateway. Their hands were tied behind them with barbed wire, their feet were bare, all they had on were pants and shirts. Luckily it was a warm September, day after day the sun shone in a clear sky, there was gossamer floating in the air and the nights were mild. So at least they didn’t freeze like they would have if they’d been hanging in the rain and cold, at least they weren’t swung back and forth by the storm winds that often blow that time of year.
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 someo
ne 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.
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