There was a bit of a frost and maybe because of that I started getting the shivers, because as long as I’d been walking I was too hot, I’d been drenched in sweat. I crouched behind the corner of the barn and decided to wait there for mother to come out for the evening milking. I looked up at the sky, nothing had changed, the stars were still in their same places for that time of year. The Big Dipper was over the poplar tree at Błach’s place, the Little Dipper a bit farther. Maybe it was from staring at the sky that my head suddenly started to spin. For a moment I thought I was going to pass out, but it gradually passed.
I didn’t want to go into the house so as not to get into an argument with father like last time. It wasn’t for that I’d come all this way on foot, and wounded. I just wanted to see mother and tell her I was alive, because she could already be praying for my soul after what happened at Maruszew. Besides, that earlier time I’d come at the wrong moment, during the harvest. Everyone knows that during the harvest a person can only understand himself. They’d been getting ready for bed, mother was in her nightshirt kneeling by the turned-down bed, saying her prayers. Father was soaking his feet in a basin. He could at least have said:
“Thank God you’re alive.”
Or:
“You’re not looking so good.”
Or:
“So how are things?”
Mother started giving vent to all her grievances as she heated up some pierogies for me in the frying pan:
“It’s enough to make you dizzy, he disappears all this time, dear Lord. Then yesterday a magpie perched on the ash tree and it kept cawing and cawing, it set my heart pounding, something must have happened to Szymek. I said to father, Józuś, shoo that evil bird away, something bad must have happened to Szymek. In the end I threw a rock at it myself and chased it away. I pray so much for you, I ask Jesus and Mary to keep you in their care. Every night you’re in my dreams. One night I dreamed you brought a cross into the yard. I asked you where you got it and you said it was lying by the roadside when you were coming back from the fields. And you asked me, mama, where should I put it? I said, put it in Sekuła’s yard by his wagon barn. It’d be a waste, mama, you said, the wood in a cross like this must have a lot of resin in it. Szymek, I don’t think I could live if they killed you.”
All father did was take his feet out of the basin and rest them on the rim to let the water run off. Then all at once he yells at mother:
“Come on, give me something!”
“What do you want?”
“I need to wipe my feet!”
She threw him a cloth, and as he bent down he said:
“Why would they kill him. You think he has it so bad. I’m telling you, they made up that resistance stuff to get out of doing any work. They left their fathers and mothers, what do they care about anything. And you, you don’t even have time to scratch yourself on the backside, but you’re always praying for them, crying for them. There aren’t any dances for them to go play at, so now they’re playing at soldiers.”
“It’s not exactly a game, father,” I said, but without taking offense. “The work’s just as hard.”
“And what work do you do exactly?” He was so furious he was hissing.
So I got riled up as well and I said:
“We kill people.”
“You kill people? Not every day you don’t. If you were a good son you’d show up once in a while and do some mowing. Or I don’t have anyone to help me bring the crop in. Antek’s still little, all he does is run around among the sheaves!”
“Everyday, father. Sometimes the day’s not long enough.” I could barely hold my rage in check.
“Then once in a while, hold off with the killing and come help out.” He stopped wiping his feet, looked at me, and asked as if he was surprised: “And your hand never shakes when you’re doing it?”
“No.”
“Then you’re not our blood anymore.”
I leaped up and slammed the door so hard it groaned. Mother ran out after me, but I rushed off into the orchard and headed down toward the river.
This time, the front door creaked and the pale light of a lantern appeared on the threshold. Mother’s shadow moved off toward the cattle shed. It seemed smaller than usual, or maybe the night was bigger. In one hand she was carrying a pail for the milk, the other hand held the swinging lamp. The frozen ground crunched under her feet. I was about to go out to meet her, but it occurred to me that if I rose up in front of her out of the blue like that she might think it wasn’t me but my ghost. Because it was a starry, moonlit night, a night that seemed made for souls to do penance. And the dog was sitting quietly in its kennel, because dogs can’t smell ghosts. She went into the shed. I could still see a faint light from her lamp through the half-open doorway.
“Come here! Move back a bit!” I heard her say to the cow.
I looked over at the kennel to check whether the dog wasn’t going to jump out and give me away. But no, it evidently still got what I’d told it. I started creeping along the wall toward the light, and when I reached it I quietly stuck my face in the doorway. I felt a waft of warmth, animal sweat, manure. And I suddenly reckoned I understood why God wanted to be born in a cattle shed. Slow as anything I opened up the lighted crack. The door creaked, but mother seemed not to hear. She was sitting hunched over beneath the big belly of the cow, as if she was lost in prayer, with only her hands working somewhere in the belly’s depths. Milk was squirting from those hands of hers into the pail she held between her knees. The milk splashing into the pail was the only sound in the whole shed, maybe even the whole world.
“Mama,” I whispered.
At that exact moment the milk came to a stop in her hands. She raised her head slowly, looked around the roof and the walls, and asked softly:
“Szymek?”
“Not there, mama. Here,” I said more boldly, and walked into the shed, closing the door behind me. She looked at me unbelievingly. It was like she didn’t have the strength to get up from her stool. The cow even waved its tail a couple of times, asking why she’d stopped milking it.
“So, mama. How are things with you all?”
“You’re alive?” she said. And it was like her entire body burst out crying, not just her eyes.
“Careful, or it’ll get in the milk,” I said, and took the pail from her. “It’d be a pity to have to throw it out.”
All at once she stopped her crying, like biting off a thread in her teeth. She wiped her eyes on her apron.
“Wait now, I’ll finish the milking,” she said.
“I have to be going right away,” I said, because what else was I supposed to say.
“Won’t you even come in the house?”
“I can’t. They’re waiting for me.”
“Then at least drink some milk.”
I lifted the pail to my mouth and tipped it.
“You’ve gotten thin, you’re not looking well, son,” she said, starting her lament. But my head was almost completely stuck in the pail, and her voice sounded like it was coming from far away. “Michał was here. He had something he needed to see you about. He looked bad too.” I guzzled the milk like it was the juice of the earth. “Forgive your father, those things he said only came out because he was angry.” I felt the milk giving me back my strength with every mouthful.
Not a cross, not a Lord Jesus, not a propeller. So what should I put on the tomb? I even thought about maybe building a gateway like the one out in the fields. A lot smaller, of course, because the one in the fields could be the gateway for the whole cemetery, not just a single tomb. Except these days who could make iron gates like that, there isn’t even anyone to shoe horses, you have to go all the way to Boleszyce. While Siudak was still alive he shod horses, did all the ironwork on wagons, whatever anyone wanted, plows, grates, grapnels for the fire brigade. For Pociejka the miller he made a whole iron fence for around his house. He was getting well on, but he kept working. Someone would be passing by the smithy, they’d stop f
or a while, operate the bellows for him, hold something for him, and he went on working almost till the very end. And the things you could learn from him, he knew more about iron than folks that lived all their lives in America could tell you about America. He’d say, for instance, that iron gets old just like a person, and it has a soul just the same. There ought to be a smithy if only for the sound it makes all through the village. But here the smithy’s stood empty a good few years now, since Siudak died. It’s going to ruin, and for some reason no one’s interested in being a blacksmith. Even Siudak’s sons got into mending televisions, and however much you asked them they couldn’t even repair a simple lock. And what would a gateway be without gates?
One time I had a dream about it. A huge crowd of people was cramming between the gateposts, it was as if there was no other way through, though all the fields were wide open. They milled around and squeezed together and cussed each other out, they were clambering over each other’s backs, it was exactly like people getting on the bus on market day. You could barely even see the gateway itself, there were so many people surrounding it they formed a big pile, and at the very top of the pile, among all the heads and backs, stood Wojtek Kubik with his arms stretched out, shouting: one at a time, one at a time! Stop pushing! Where do you think you’re all going, damn you! I’m over here, dad! Give me your hand, which one is yours? The one with calluses, Wojciu! They’ve all got calluses, which one is yours?! Then Mrs. Waliszyn pipes up, look at him, he’s standing on all our heads and he can only see his own folks! At that point I shouted to Wojtek as well, Wojciu, have you seen my family, did they go through already? No one’s gone through at all, Szymek, not the least little bug has passed, it’s empty as the fields.
But I probably needed to ask someone if it was right to put a gateway on a tomb. It’s another thing to have one out in the fields, anything can be there. On top of everything people’ll say I’ve got a screw loose. You put a gateway on your tomb? You don’t even have a gate into your yard. You ought to put new doors on your barn, the old ones are falling to pieces. You ought to mend your front door. One time they used to put a gateway up for the harvest festival, or when the starosta of the district was going to visit, or when newlyweds were coming back from the church they’d put one up so the young couple would buy them a bottle. For a barracks you need a gateway. Gate of Heaven you say in the litany, but that’s not a real gateway, it’s Our Lady. The best person to ask would be the priest, priests know about these things. But we’ve just gotten a new one and he’s a bit strange, he plays soccer with the boys, one time he brought the harvest in with Sójka like he was a farmhand, or he’ll go out in front of the presbytery and play the fiddle. His housekeeper says she’s going to quit, he’s such an oddball. You can’t ask someone like that for advice about what to put on your tomb.
The last one, if he’d still been alive he would have given me advice. He taught me religion way back in school, knew me since I was little. He knew everyone, he’d been in the village for years. But he passed away not long after I came back from the hospital. I just had time to go buy the plot for the tomb from him. Though he didn’t look at all like he was about to die. Sure he was getting on, but he had a good firm step and he held his head up straight. He even recommended that I choose a place closer to the wall, said it’d be quieter there, because these days on All Souls’ it gets like market day at the cemetery, people pushing their way around, trampling across the graves, they’ve no respect for anything. Though they bring ten times as many wreaths and flowers as they used to, and there’s enough candles to light the whole village. Best of all would be if I wanted to be right in the corner, where there’s that old oak tree, the only one that survived the war. But I happened to be fond of the propeller on Jaś Król’s tomb, and I wanted to be near him.
“As you prefer,” he said. “Your tomb, your wishes.”
I didn’t expect him to receive me in such a friendly way. When I went to him I was all set for a fight, in my head I was figuring out what to say to him when he asked questions. Because things weren’t as good as they might have been between us. A couple of times he’d singled me out during his sermon, when he needed a bad example that wasn’t from the Bible but from the village instead, so he could get through to people better. Because they were quite happy to hear about Judas or Mary Magdalene or the prodigal son, but then they’d go off and do whatever they wanted. On top of that, while my old folks were still alive he kept visiting them, scaring them, lecturing them, nagging them to get me to change. After every visit I’d get it at home even worse than in the sermon. I’d come through the door and right away father would be:
“I never thought I’d live to see the day. The priest criticizing our family from the pulpit. Like we’re no better than thieves. One of these days I’m gonna take my ax and smash your head in, you animal. Or you should leave this world of your own accord, then finally there’d be peace.”
When I went in he was sitting at his desk writing. He didn’t even raise his head, though I made a lot of noise, what with the legs and the walking sticks and all, also I struggled with the door. When I greeted him with “Christ be praised” he barely nodded. It was only when I clattered a bit more with my sticks that he glanced up over his eyeglasses and muttered something that was supposed to be:
“Oh, it’s you.”
I started in right away telling him why I was there, but he interrupted me.
“Are you still a wild one? It’s high time you settled down. Wait a minute while I finish.” He went on writing, his big gray head almost leaning on the desktop, as if he was writing something that took a huge effort.
“It’s a funeral oration,” he said when he finally stopped. A guy by the name of Molenda from Lisice had just died, and though he knew the man well, he knew all the parishioners like the back of his hand, still he didn’t have the memory he used to. He’d sometimes use the wrong name for the deceased at the graveside, and even get his life mixed up with someone else’s life. Though if you ask me, mixing up lives isn’t as bad, because either way it’s all the same water flowing into the same world.
But to get a person’s name wrong, it’s like that person never even existed, and there was no telling what you were burying.
He set aside his pen and took off his glasses. From the folds of his cassock he took out a handkerchief big as a headscarf and wiped the sweat off his forehead.
“I’m not as young as I used to be,” he said. “Time was, I could bury three or four, one after the other, and I’d have something different to say about each one of them. And from memory, I didn’t have to write anything beforehand. But back then one life seemed so different from the next.” He blew his nose into the handkerchief so loud that the glasses in the dresser jingled. He put the handkerchief away and said with a sigh: “So what, you’re finally giving it up? You thought you’d live forever. All those years fighting, and where’s it gotten you?”
“What do you mean, fighting, father,” I said as humbly as I could, because I thought to myself, if I start arguing with him he’ll just go and jack up the price of the plot. “I was living, is all. Better or worse, it wasn’t up to me. You can’t always live the way you’d like to, you live the way you have to. A person doesn’t choose their life, father, life chooses the person according to its will, depending on who it needs for what. One person’s good for one thing, another person for another, and someone else again isn’t good for anything. There’s no telling how it decides that one man’s a general, another’s a judge, a third one is a church man, that you’re a priest, father, for example, and as for me, I don’t even know what I can say about myself.”
“Come off it, you were a priest as well!” He gave a big grin from ear to ear. I was all riled up inside, but I said to myself, think your own thoughts but sit still and be good, and all I said was:
“When people have to, they can be anything, father. Even a bandit or a robber.”
“All right, all right,” he interrupted. “Tell m
e though, when was the last time you made confession?”
“Confession?” I felt like he’d called on me in the back row in religious instruction, behind Stach Niezgódka’s back, because I always sat in the back row. “Must have been after the war.”
“What do you mean, after the war?”
“You know, when it ended. I’d killed all those bad guys, I had to confess it so they wouldn’t come haunting me at night. Though if you ask me, father, you shouldn’t have to confess those kind of things. Course, there could have been an innocent guy among them. There were a few other sins that had mounted up a bit, the way they do in wartime, so I had to get clean.”
“So you cleansed yourself and went back to sinning, is that it? Do you at least come to church? Because I somehow don’t recall seeing you.”
“The last two years I was in a hospital bed, father, I couldn’t exactly go to church.”
He narrowed his eyes in a strange kind of way, as if against the light, though he was sitting with his back to the window. In order not to come out looking like a nonbeliever, I added:
“But before the war I never missed mass. Mother wouldn’t have let us. I’d sometimes go to the evening service, May Day services, the rosary. And I used to sing in the church choir. Maybe you remember me? Though it’s been donkey’s years. Kolasiński the organist even used to say that if they sent me to school I could sing in town at the opera. I was a bass. I often sang solo. But the land wouldn’t let me go. You can’t reconcile singing and the land. The land needs work, father. As for singing, it’s mostly good for making the work go easier, or for after work, on Sundays. Though even on Sundays you can’t have a good sing, because God sends rain clouds, and here your crop’s in sheaves still out in the fields.”
“Don’t you start talking to me about God!” he said, interrupting me with a sour face. “Hiding behind God. Do you even remember his ten commandments?”
Stone Upon Stone Page 52
