Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF PAWEŁ

Paweł had to take several days’ leave from work because of his father’s death. His father died on the third day. It looked as if the end had already come, but an hour later old Boski got up and walked to the Highway. He stood by the fence and nodded. Paweł and Stasia took him by the arms and led him back to bed. For those three days their father said nothing. Paweł thought he was looking at him beseechingly, as if he wanted something. But Paweł reckoned he had done everything he could. He was with him the whole time, giving him things to drink and changing his sheets. How else you can help a dying father he didn’t know.

Finally old Boski died. Paweł dozed off at dawn, and when he awoke an hour later, he saw that his father was no longer breathing. The old man’s small body had caved in, gone floppy like an empty sack. There was no doubt there was no longer anyone inside it.

But Paweł did not believe in the immortal soul, so he found this sight appalling. He was seized with horror that soon he, too, would change into a lifeless scrap of flesh, and that would be all that was left of him. Tears fell from his eyes.

Stasia behaved very calmly. She showed Paweł the coffin that their father had made for himself. It was leaning against a wall in the barn. It had a lid made of shingle.

Now Paweł had to arrange the funeral and – like it or not – go and see the parish priest.

He met him in the presbytery courtyard, by the car. The priest invited him into a cool, gloomy office, where he sat down at a shiny polished desk. He spent a long time looking for the right page in the registry of deaths, and painstakingly recorded old Boski’s details there. Paweł stood by the door, but as he didn’t enjoy feeling like a supplicant, he came up to a chair by the desk and sat down.

“How much is it going to cost?” he asked.

The priest put down his pen and looked at him closely.

“I haven’t seen you in church for years.”

“I’m an atheist, sir.”

“Your father wasn’t easy to find at mass either.”

“He always went to Midnight Mass at Christmas.”

The priest sighed and stood up. He started pacing the office, snapping his fingers.

“My God,” he said, “he went to Midnight Mass. That’s just not enough for a decent Catholic. ‘Remember to keep the Sabbath day holy’ – that’s what the Scripture says, doesn’t it?”

“I’ve never bothered with all that, sir.”

“If in the past ten years the deceased had taken part in each Sunday holy mass and put the proverbial zloty on the collection plate, do you know how much would have accumulated?”

The priest did some mental arithmetic and then said:

“The funeral will cost two thousand.”

Paweł felt the blood rush to his head. He saw red spots before his eyes.

“Then fuck the whole thing,” he said and sprang to his feet.

In a split second he was at the door, grabbing the handle.

“Well, all right, Boski,” he heard from the desk. “Let’s make it two hundred.”