Stone Upon Stone

III. Brothers

I decided to write a letter to Antek and Stasiek about the tomb. I went to the co-op, I bought paper and ink and a penholder and a nib. Because when was the last time I wrote anyone a letter? I don’t even remember. No one in the house went to school anymore so those things weren’t needed. All we had was an old dried-up inkpot lying around from back when mother was still alive and she still wrote to them. I never wrote after they left home, even though they were my brothers. And they never wrote to me. It just worked out that way. They were in the city and I was in the village. They had their lives, I had mine. What was there to write about? Was I supposed to tell them what was happening in the village, when they maybe weren’t that interested in remembering the village anymore? What was the point of forcing myself on someone else’s life, even if it was my brothers’? Besides, one or other of them would swing by for a visit every two or three years so we more or less knew what was going on with them. One of them traveled abroad, one of them bought a car. One of them got an apartment, three rooms and a kitchen, the other one split up with his wife and got married again. One has a daughter and a son, the other one only a son, but he’s not that interested in school. As for my news, well, when mother died I sent them a telegram: “Mother died. Come.” Then, a few years later another one: “Father died. Come.” That was all my news. Though even if there’d been more, would they have wanted to know?

While mother was alive she’d always have to write a few words to them every Christmas. And each time it was the name day of Saint Stanislaus or Saint Anthony. And sometimes when she’d suddenly miss them or when she had a dream about one of them. When the flour was bolted she’d send them a packet, and a letter to go with it. Then they’d write a thank-you for the flour and send their regards to everyone at home, “and Szymek as well.” That was enough. I mean, we didn’t stop being brothers.

But a tomb is a tomb, you only build one in your whole lifetime, so I had to ask them if they wanted to be buried with everyone else, because I’d planned eight places so there’d be room for them as well. Or maybe they’d rather be buried there, where they live — that way I wouldn’t have to spend more money unnecessarily, I’d have a smaller tomb built. Of course, I hope they live as long and as happily as possible, but sooner or later they have to die, because all of us that are alive are going to die. And please answer right away, because I’ve paid for the plot and gotten the cement, and I’m all set with Chmiel. They probably remember Chmiel, he built tombs even before the war, half the tombs in our cemetery are his work. He’ll make us a solid, comfortable tomb. I just have to let him know that my brothers agree.

I spent the whole evening on that letter. Not that I said a whole lot. The entire thing came out to less than one page. But I wanted to write something more than just about the tomb. I was embarrassed that it was the first letter I’d written to them in all those years, and it started with “Dear Brothers,” and the paper wasn’t that big, plus it was folded in two and not even written on to the end. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I thought and thought, I even had a drink. That reminded me I hadn’t milked the cows. I lit the lamp, took the pail, and even in the shed, as the milk was squirting between my fingers, I was thinking what else I could write to them about. But I couldn’t even make it to the end of the page, so the Love and the God bless, Szymek would at least fall on the next side. After a whole room’s worth of thinking there was no more than a handful of words. I guess I could have written how much the tomb was going to cost me, the plot and the materials and the labor. But I thought, they’d only get offended and write back that they just want to be buried in the city.

It was like I was writing an official letter, not to my own brothers. And when you’re writing an official letter you don’t just have to be careful not to say anything against yourself, you also need to make sure the words all agree with each other, that they’re not making nonsense of each other, because otherwise you’ll have the whole office laughing at you. And it shouldn’t be too long, because who’s going to read a long letter. I worked in the district administration and I know. You’d read the beginning and the end, but the whole middle was like it was written to God alone. Though the middle often contained the most pain.

On top of that, one of them’s got a degree and the other one’s an engineer, and I couldn’t just write the way you talk. Out here no one pays any attention to how they talk and they don’t talk that much anyway, because on a farm work comes before words. Plus, truth be told, who is there to talk to? The plow, the scythe, the pitchfork, the hoe, the field, the meadow? If I have a real strong urge to talk I can talk to the horse or to God, but most of the time I just talk to myself in my own thoughts. And in the evening at home, after work, sometimes to Michał. Though talking to Michał is like talking to your horse or to God, or to yourself in your own thoughts. I ask him, so how are things, did you go anywhere in the village today, or, did you eat the dumplings I left for you, or, did anyone come by today? As usual he doesn’t answer, and that’s it for the day. Some days I don’t feel like saying even that much, I’m fit to drop and I just want to go straight to bed.

Though there isn’t always work. In the fall, sometimes it rains and rains, there’s no way you can go out into the fields, or to the village, and it’d be the perfect moment to talk like brothers, not just, When is this rain ever going to let up. But I don’t want to ask him anymore questions. Because the most he’ll do is raise his eyes at you, and there’s no telling whether he’s heard you or not. And often those eyes look as if they’ve gone far, far away from him. What would be the point of asking him anything else. Though sometimes I feel sorry for him, he’s my brother after all, and at those times I want to at least ask him, Michał, tell me, who hurt you? But even if he told me, it wouldn’t help either of us. So maybe it’s better I don’t know.

It was the same when I was writing the letter, I wanted to ask him, shall I say hello to Antek and Stasiek from you? But I didn’t ask, I just wrote, Michał says hello as well.

The next evening I took the letter over to the Kuśmiereks’ next door. Their Rysiek goes to technical school in the town, I thought it’d be good for someone young to read it through. Maybe there are different ways of writing these days, or maybe I’d made some mistakes, even though they’re my brothers I didn’t want them laughing at me.

“Christ be praised.”

“Forever and ever.”

“Is Rysiek in? Listen, Rysiek,” I say, “take at look at this letter. I’m writing to my brothers. Put it right if there’s any mistakes. When I was young they taught us to write different than they do now. I’ll buy you an ice cream one Sunday as a thank-you.”

Kuśmierek was sitting by the kitchen stove. Through this cough that was choking him, because he has asthma, he says:

“What are you talking about, ice cream? Buy him a half-bottle. All he thinks about is vodka and whores.” He got such a bad coughing fit that his wife had to thump him on the back. “Yesterday he comes home from school rolling drunk. He’s lost all his notes and his books. So of course he needs new ones. Plus I have to write him a note to excuse him, say I needed him for the threshing. The little worm only got up a short while ago. The whole night his mother had to sit holding a cabbage compress to his head, he had such a bad headache. You see how his eyes are still all gummed up? He must have drunk a bucketful of water by now. I wish he’d go about his studying the same way. But he’s thick as two short planks, him. It’s a waste of money. The thing is, they say they have to go to school because otherwise you won’t be allowed to hand down your land.” Then all of a sudden it was like the helpless father sounded in Kuśmierek and he shouted hoarsely: “You ever come home drunk again and I’ll show you what’s what, you little shit! I’ll kick you out like a dog!” But he was stopped in his tracks again by his cough.

Rysiek muttered something back to his father, rubbed his eyes, and started reading.

“Read it out loud!” roared Kuśmierek, barely able to catch his breath. “Reading quietly’s no kind of reading.”

Rysiek did what he was told and started to read out loud. He must have been a bit afraid of his father after he’d gotten drunk, because otherwise he wouldn’t have let himself be ordered around like that. But the reading didn’t go too well. He cleared his throat, stammered, stumbled like someone walking across uneven ground. It felt like every word stabbed me, because I thought I’d written it that way. I was about to say to him, here, give it back, I’ll write it again. But I thought to myself, he mustn’t have sobered up yet, so I encouraged him:

“Keep reading, Rysiu, keep reading.”

He even stood under the lightbulb as if the light was too dim. But it was too dim for him there as well. He started complaining about the lightbulb being covered in fly droppings, and was it too much to expect someone to wipe it clean once in a while, he couldn’t do it because he had to study. And that his father needed to stop all that coughing, it was distracting him.

Kuśmierek made a big effort, he even clapped his hand over his mouth. But it didn’t help the reading much, he was still staggering through the words like a drunk. All of a sudden he stopped and, as if he was thinking, he began scratching his head. He thought and thought till in the end I asked him:

“What are you thinking about?”

“Tomb,” he mumbled.

“What about tomb?”

“I think it’s spelled wrong. I think it’s with a u. An open letter, not a closed one.”

“It always used to be written with an o,” I said. “Unless they changed it.”

That worried him a bit. And Kuśmierek, who was about to collapse from holding in his cough so as not to bother Rysiek, straightened up and said in a loud despairing voice:

“See what that damn kid doesn’t know! He’s going to fail his exams again! That’ll be the third time he’s taken the same class! Dear God. Then he comes back home and he’s a know-it-all, dammit! Tells me to sow corn instead of rye. What do you know, you dope, when you can’t even spell tomb! Can you imagine leaving the farm to him. He’d throw it all away in the blink of an eye. All he’d do is lie on his back watching his belly grow. An open letter. Go to the cemetery, do you see anyone in an open tomb? Everything’s covered in earth and stone slabs. The dead are apart forever from the living. That world from this world. Even closest family isn’t allowed to see what happens to someone after they die. Cause just like you have to be alive to know what’s going on here, you have to die to know what’s going on over there. Your time’ll come as well one day, damn you, it comes to everyone. You’ll see how you’d feel in an open tomb. No one would even come visit your grave, cause you’d be rotting, you’d stink like a dead dog. You’d be begging for someone to take a shovel and cover you with earth.” Kuśmierek was so bitter he’d gotten carried away, but all of a sudden his bitterness turned to anger. “And here he is, the little bastard, getting two hundred zlotys a month for his supper, and a hundred for bus money, that’s three hundred! Where are his notes and his books?! And there’s always something else he needs, this thing and that thing! And for what?! For what?!” He wound up in such a coughing fit it was a good while before he got the better of it. His eyes stared ahead like he was gone from the world.

“Jesus and Mary! Józef! Józef!” squealed his wife. I jumped forward as well to save him, though I didn’t exactly know how. Rysiek was yelping also:

“Dad! Dad!”

Luckily Kuśmierek came to and breathed a sigh of relief. Except he looked at us like he didn’t recognize us. That short moment had tired him out as much as if he’d been mowing on a steep slope.

I felt sorry for him. Any father wants the best for his kid.

“Don’t be mad, Józef,” I said. “He’s young, he’s got time.”

“Am I telling him to rush, damn him? I’m telling him to study!”

“There’s nothing you can do. That’s how it is with young folks — they’re in no hurry to study,” I said, because I was feeling sorry for the boy as well. Was it his fault he was bad at school? I just regretted bringing the letter. I told him not to bother reading any more.

“Leave it be, Rysiek. It’s fine as it is. If you change it you might make it worse.” I took the letter back. At this, Kuśmierek took offense as if for Rysiek.

“I mean, who even writes to their own brothers like that. You need to begin, In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. That would remind them right away about their family home. They might even give you something towards that tomb of yours.”

All of a sudden Rysiek started saying it wasn’t fashionable anymore to start letters with God. They’d had a lesson about how to write letters and he knew. It was like Kuśmierek was struck by lightning:

“You little bastard, you’re telling me God isn’t in fashion? That’s what I’m paying for you to learn?!”

But Rysiek had gotten over his fear and he snapped back at his father that he didn’t give a damn about studying. Give him what was his and he’d get married.

I got up and left, because what business was it of mine. Let them argue among themselves.

The next day I wrote the letter out again because it was all dirty from Rysiek’s fingers. I added that if they were planning to visit they should bring bags for flour, because as it happened I’d been bolting and I had some good flour. I was just saying that, because I didn’t at all think they’d come, but it made the letter a bit longer.

It must have been a month or so later that a letter came from them saying they were going to visit the following Sunday. I didn’t know whether to believe it or not. But I cleaned the house. I got fresh bedding ready. I brought mother’s quilt down from the attic, because it was the biggest one. And though they were going to sleep in the same bed, I gave them two pillows so their heads would be apart. I changed the straw in the mattress. I threshed two sheaves with the flail so it wouldn’t be lumpy. Though it was hard for me to stand for long on those legs of mine. I had to pull the chaff-cutter up behind my back and lean on it, otherwise I couldn’t have done it. I even put some dried thyme under the sheet to keep the fleas away, like mother used to do.

I bathed Michał and shaved him, and I gave him a fresh shirt and a necktie. He’s their brother too, after all. There was an ash bucket stood in the room that was old and full of holes. For some reason I’d always been reluctant to throw it out, but because they were coming I tossed it without a second thought. I put in a brighter electric bulb. Let it be lighter while they were here, after they left I’d change it back again. I killed a rooster and made chicken broth. I was going to make noodles, but I decided to buy some instead. They’re used to the store-bought stuff, they might not like homemade. I also bought a bottle of vodka, because you have to have a glass with your brothers. I even took down the Lord Jesus with the apostles and put it in the other room, because I remembered Stasiek isn’t that big on God. He might get annoyed. And I won’t know how to defend him, because on the one hand it’s God, on the other hand it’s my brother. Oh well. What people won’t do to keep the peace in a family.

They came. But they’d barely crossed the threshold and said their hellos when they started in on me. That there wasn’t anything to sit on here except the same old bench and a single chair. That the table was the same one from the war. That why don’t I have a proper floor put in? Why don’t I plant an orchard? Why don’t I get married? I need a housekeeper! Am I waiting for a princess? One thing after another. Why not this? Why not that? And not a word about dying. It was like I’d never even written them the letter.

I was stunned, I barely said a word. I even forgot to ask what was new with them. And I didn’t let on about the bottle I’d bought. I mean, what for? So we could drink while we were arguing? Maybe a better opportunity would come along. Then we’d have a drink and we’d talk like brothers.

Because when brothers only get together once in such a long time they ought to have something to talk about. Talk all day and all night. Even if they don’t feel like talking, because what are words for? Words lead the way of their own accord. Words bring everything out onto the surface. Words take everything that hurts and whines and they drag it all out from the deepest depths. Words let blood, and you feel better right away. And not just with outsiders, with your brothers also words can help you find each other, feel like brothers again. However far away they’ve gone, words will bring them back to the one life they came from, like from a spring. Because words are a great grace. When it comes down to it, what are you given other than words? Either way there’s a great silence waiting for us in the end, and we’ll have our fill of silence. Maybe we’ll find ourselves scratching at the walls for the sake of the least little word. And every word we didn’t say to each other in this world we’ll regret like a sin. Except it’ll be too late. And how many of those unsaid words stay in each person and die with him, and rot with him, and they aren’t any use to him either in his suffering, or in his memory? So why do we make each other be silent, on top of everything else?

Though perhaps it was my fault. Because when I saw them I didn’t really know what to say and I just said in an ordinary way:

“Oh, you’re here.”

As if they’d just gotten back from the fields, or from market in town, or from the next village. When actually they’d come from the outside world. And when had we last seen each other? At father’s funeral. Stasiek was still at the university then. He was wearing a ragged old overcoat and shoes with worn-down heels. He didn’t even have any gloves, he was skinny and hollow-cheeked. I slipped a few zlotys in his pocket as he was leaving and he was so grateful he even tried to kiss my hand. I wouldn’t let him. Now, he was on the stout side, ruddy, his chin spilling out over his collar. The front of his head was completely bald, it was only at the back and on the sides he still had some of his old shock of hair left. At first I wasn’t even sure if it was Stasiek or not. But I pretended he hadn’t changed at all and I didn’t say a word about him being so bald. I welcomed him like you welcome your brother.

Antek had just gotten married back then. He even had a photograph of his wife. We’d barely buried father when he took the picture out of his wallet and asked if I thought she was pretty. I didn’t much like her, but what could I say. Yes, she’s pretty.

And I didn’t tell him off either for not letting me know, so I could have sent best wishes.

That time too we didn’t talk at all among ourselves. First because it was a funeral and the right thing to do was talk about father, because it was his day. He deserved at least a few words from each of us for his whole life. Second, Stasiek had some important examination the next day. So we just drank a bottle to mark our sorrow, and ate some sausage. Then they left.

Actually, when father and mother were alive it was the same thing, whenever one of them would visit it was always in a rush. They’d arrive and spend the night then in the morning they’d be gone. Or even the same day, they’d say hello in the morning and goodbye in the afternoon. One minute they were there, the next they’d vanished. Like the crack of a whip. You didn’t even notice they’d been.

The next day already mother would start missing them again, when will Antek and Stasiek visit, she’d say. She was always worried that something had happened to one of them because they hadn’t been in so long. When father reminded her that Antek or Stasiek had just been the previous Sunday, she still wouldn’t stop worrying.

“That’s true, he was here. But what kind of visit was it. There wasn’t even time for the cheese to be pressed dry, or he could have taken it with him.”

Or when someone in the village asked if Antek or Stasiek had been, you didn’t know whether to say they had or they hadn’t. To say they’d been but they were in a hurry was the same as saying they hadn’t been at all, but they’d be coming, they would.

When they left for the city it was the same — like they were here a moment ago but now they were gone. It was as if they’d just popped down to the village or gone out to the fields and they’d be back soon. Father kept forgetting for the longest time, he was always wanting one of them to give him a hand or do a job for him.

“Maybe Antek could do it … Maybe Stasiek could …”

Then he got used to it, and it was only before going to bed sometimes, he’d be sitting there fit to drop, like an ox that’s been working all day, and out of the blue he’d pipe up:

“It’s been such a long time since they wrote.”

And mother would mention their names more and more often in her prayers.

Antek was the first to leave. He was those few years older than Stasiek, maybe it was his due as the eldest. Stasiek was still a little kid when Antek was already off chasing after the ladies. True, he always was a bit of a hothead. But to leave all of a sudden like that? It’s not right even to die that way. In the morning he was still plowing the potato field by the wood, then in the afternoon Kulawik brought him a letter from the post office. He came back from the fields, opened it, read it, and said:

“I’m going.”

“Going where?” asked father.

“Away.” He was so pleased he actually danced around the room.

“Away, you say?” Father thought he’d misheard.

“Away, that’s right. Away! Away!”

“When’s this?”

“On the five o’clock train tomorrow morning.”

“I won’t even have time to iron your shirt for you!” Mother was in despair.

“What do I need a fresh shirt for? The one I’ve got on will do just fine.”

“You might at least take a bath. I can bring the bathtub and put water on to heat.”

“I’ll take a bath there. Wojtek said in his letter they go to the bathhouse there.”

“But you haven’t even got a decent pair of shoes. And I could make you some new clothes.”

“They’ll give me shoes there, clothes as well.”

“We could sell the heifer, you’d have a bit of money to take with you. I could bake you a cake.”

“What are you talking about, bake him a cake,” said father, though he was more upset than angry. “His train’s at five, didn’t you hear? And the heifer’s still growing. It’ll be another two weeks or so.”

“So he could wait. The world’s not going to run away. Instead of rushing off the minute he gets back from the fields.” The poor thing started to cry.

“And what exactly are you planning to do there?” Father could be tough when he had to be.

“What am I going to be doing? You’ll see!” He waved the letter. “Wojtek says they go to the cinema every day. As for work, they only work eight hours a day, and they get paid for it as well.”

“Perhaps you should go to confession, son,” mother started to beg him through her tears. “When people used to go away they’d always go confess their sins before they left. There might not be anywhere you can go confess when you’re there. Or they won’t let you.”

“They go to the cinema, you say?” said father as if to himself, because he didn’t really know what a cinema was.

The cinema even came to our village soon after that. The day it was supposed to arrive, a crowd of people went out to the edge of the village in the morning and waited for it. Someone even drew in the snow with a stick, “Welcome to our village, Cinema.” People thought it would be a car or at the very least a carriage drawn by two horses. No one believed at first that it was the cinema. Two men on a wagon and some bundles. Plus, the horse was so skinny its ribs stuck out. Instead of a proper seat there was just a sheaf of straw covered with an old cloth. The sides of the wagon were all smeared with something as if they’d been transporting manure. And the wagon driver and the other guy were so drunk they could barely see straight. They tried to nail up a poster on the firehouse but neither of them could even hit the nail on the head, the guys had to do it for them. But almost the whole village came to the cinema, because it was wintertime, there wasn’t much work, and also the watchman had gone around beating his drum to say the cinema was coming. So there were almost as many people outside as in the firehouse, because there wasn’t room inside. People blocked each other’s view, but they stood there anyway. It spoiled it a bit, but they still stood there.

Father went down there as well to see what it was that was taking Antek away from the village. He didn’t say what it had been like, but afterward from time to time he’d burst out:

“It’s because of the cinema, it’s all because of the cinema. Who’s going to do the work around here when you leave? Your mother and I are getting on. Stasiek’s too young to plow or mow. It’ll be another three or four years before he’s ready.”

“What about Szymek?” Antek started up like he’d been stung by a horsefly.

“True,” said father. “But it’s like he’s not here. He’s not drawn to the land and the land’s not drawn to him.”

“The land! The land! I’m sick of that land of yours! Out there I’ll at least learn something! What can I learn from the land?!”

“The land can teach you if you only want to learn from it. But you go, you go. I just hope you won’t come crawling back on your hands and knees.”

And he left, in a huff at father, mother, Stasiek, me.

Though at that time I was away from home. I was in the police and we were going around the villages searching the farms for guns. He slammed the door so hard whitewash came down from the ceiling. Father jumped up and shouted after him:

“Don’t you go slamming doors when it’s not your house anymore!”

I came back a week or so later, soaked to the skin, frozen to the marrow of my bones, covered in mud up to my knees and more exhausted than after the hardest plowing. On top of all that, father greeted me the moment I walked in the house:

“Oh, it’s Mr. Policeman. He’s been chasing so many people he can barely move his legs. We wanted a priest in the family and God gave us a policeman. What did we do to deserve that?”

I didn’t say a word. I stood my rifle in the corner by the door and flopped down on the bench. I didn’t even have the strength to pull the cap off my head. Water was dripping down my face. Mother begged me, come on now, take off your cap, take off your jacket, pull your boots off, but I could feel sleep wrapping around me like a rope, round my body and my eyes and my will. On my back, underneath my shirt I could feel the lice starting to itch from the heat. But I couldn’t even be bothered to reach back and scratch.

We’d been searching all sorts of barns and cattle sheds and wagon houses and cellars and attics, not to mention the houses themselves. And as it happened the harvest had just been taken in and the barns were filled to the roof, in the cellars there were potatoes and carrots and beets, the attics were packed with hay, and on top of everything else it rained day and night without a break as if the flood was coming. And wherever you went it’d be:

“You got any guns?”

To which everyone would answer meek as lambs:

“Guns? What would we need guns for, officer? What are we, soldiers? We don’t even know how to use a gun. We work with plows, scythes, rakes — those are the tools the Lord meant for us. Not guns. Who would we even shoot at? The enemy’s all gone. There’s nothing but our own people everywhere. When you’re among your own, even if someone gets mad at someone else they just call them names, get even with them, threaten them. Maybe go after them with a fence post. But a fence post isn’t a gun. Besides, the war’s barely over. We’ve had enough gunfire to last us a lifetime. These days, you hear a bee buzz close to your ear and you think you’ve been hit. All we did was cry and pray for it to stop. So when it did, were we going to keep on shooting? The land was waiting for us. The land suffered too. It was tired out as well like everyone else. That Lord Jesus or Our Lady up there in that picture, they can be our witness — we don’t have any guns.”

But you only needed to reach behind the Our Lady or the Lord Jesus and pull out a pistol. You’d look in the stove, and inside there’d be a rifle. Have them open the chest, and there under a pile of headscarves, rounds and grenades. Or go up to the attic. Their Sunday suit was hanging from a rafter like it was just waiting for mass, but you’d nudge it and there’d be a clank of metal. Not to even mention what was in the hay, among their clothes, in with the onions, in the thatch, in barrels full of grain, in old shoes — everywhere you’d find stuff. Where did they not hide things. In dogs’ kennels, in chaff-cutters, in cows’ and horses’ mangers, in holes up in old trees.

At one guy’s place, under the grain in the barn we found an entire arsenal. He had everything you could imagine. Rifles, pistols, regular ones and automatics, all of it oiled and wrapped in rags. There were helmets, belts, mess kits, backpacks, Russian and German maps, over a dozen ammunition belts, a couple dozen pairs of boots.

“Where did you get all this?” It was a stupid question, because you knew where he got it, but we were staggered, we didn’t know what else to say.

“Off dead bodies, sir. You know — they were all over the place out in the fields. Was it all supposed to go to waste? And it didn’t feel right to bury it.”

“There was an order to turn in weapons, right?”

“That there was.”

“So why didn’t you hand them over?”

“Well, what if we have to fight again?”

“Fight who, for God’s sake?”

“Whoever. They might invade us again.”

At another guy’s, in the barn as well, we found four heavy machine guns and several cases of ammunition. Another one had a motorcycle and sidecar, and a whole pile of guns in the sidecar. They most of them hid the stuff in their barns, like they reckoned the crop was the most innocent place for it. You sometimes had to dig down through three or four layers of sheaves. And on your own, because the farmer would claim his back had suddenly gone out. At another farm we had to muck the place out ourselves, because the farmer ran away the moment he saw us.

There was one house we went to, all we find is this little old lady in bed. She’s got her cat with her, there’s no one else around.

“What a good thing you’ve come to save me! That Judas son-in-law of mine, he’s put so many rifles under my bedding my sides are all sore. I’m afraid to even move in case they go off.”

We took five wagonloads away from that place. You even felt envious there were so many guns, when in the resistance any old pistol could cost you your life.

Not many people got fined, because what were you going to fine them for. It was the war that brought folks all those guns, the war was the one that should have been punished. But how can you punish a war? Besides, there was enough to do fining the ones that got caught with guns actually in their hands. Even if you just went into the fields you’d always catch two or three of them that were out hunting hares. No one bothered setting snares anymore, there was no point when they had rifles, handguns, automatic pistols. And how many hares could there be left after that long of a war? When you saw one hopping by somewhere it was like seeing a miracle. Look, a hare, a hare! And it didn’t even look much like a hare, it’d have its ears shot away or a missing leg and it’d be peg-legging it along more like an old man than a hare.

Those days almost everyone went hunting with a gun. Not to mention when they were driving their wagon to market or to a wedding, or to gather wood in the forest, they’d always stick a pistol under the seat or in the horse’s feed bag.

One time we had to search a school because the teacher told us the boys were chasing the girls with pistols during the break. Another time Tomala comes rushing into the station all white and shaking and shouting, help! What is it, Wojtek? Turned out his wife is waking their Tomek saying it’s time to go to school, and Tomek pulls a gun from under the pillow and says he’ll shoot her if she doesn’t leave him alone. He needs his sleep, and he’s not going to go to school anymore. Or the boys grazing the cattle, every one of them would have a gun stuck in his belt. And day after day there’d be shooting out in the meadows like the war was still going on out there. And some parent would come running to the police to say their cow had a gunshot wound or it had come home with its horns shot away, because the little bastards had been using the cows’ horns for target practice like they couldn’t think of anything else to shoot at.

And if it had only been in the meadows. But sometimes it was in the middle of the village. Anyone that bore a grudge against someone else, before, they’d have just shouted at them and called them names, or at the most set fire to their place, but now they’d take out their gun and start firing. It could be over women, debts, field boundaries, anything. Wrongs from the time of their fathers or grandfathers. And even if they didn’t shoot directly at each other they’d fire over the guy’s head, at his windows or his roof if he had a tile roof or metal roofing, or they’d put a hole in his wagon or shoot his dog.

Or like it happened once at Rędzinówka. One farmer runs into his neighbor’s yard with an automatic handgun and shoots all his geese and chickens and ducks, then to finish he shoots up the stable door. So then the other guy takes revenge on the first guy’s orchard. He ties a couple of blocks of TNT with a fuse and a detonator to each of the trees, then he lights the fuse from his cigarette. He goes up on the hill and watches the trees blow up one after another. We went to take a look and it was like the worst war you could imagine had passed through that orchard. We had to put both of them away. Though some people said they were just crazy. But you can’t claim they were crazy when everyone was shooting guns left, right, and center. And it wasn’t just one person against another, there were whole villages fighting each other. One time we even had to call in the military because we thought we were being attacked by an army.

After a few months I’d had enough of the police. All I’d done was ruin my tall boots. They were the kind they call officer’s boots. I’d brought them back almost new from the resistance, but after the police you wouldn’t have known they were the same boots. You had to wade through manure and mud and water in them. And those were boots that should only have been worn to church. Plus, you’d think you wouldn’t work as much as when you’re working the land, but there I was, day and night, chasing, looking, searching like the worst bandit, and on top of that everyone was out to get their revenge on me. And instead of the number of guns getting smaller, it was like people were growing them in the fields.

Worst of all was at the dances. People stopped fighting with knives, now it was only ever with guns. There wasn’t a single dance without any shooting, and every second one someone got killed. And there were no culprits. No one could say who’d been shooting, who the killer was. Butter wouldn’t melt. They’d all been dancing and singing, they couldn’t hear anything over the music. Maybe the guy was already dead when he came to the dance? And you lost count of the number of shot-up windows, lamps, beer barrels, bottles, drums, fiddles. And when a fiddle gets shot there’s no more playing it. A drum can be patched up and it’ll still work. But when you put a gunshot in a fiddle it’s a goner, it’s dead. Like a person.

People really had fun in those days. They were happy because the war was over. There was one dance after another. Not a Sunday went by without one. Sometimes there were two or three dances on the same Sunday in different villages. Musicians even came by train from far away, because there weren’t enough local ones for all those dances. Besides, the local musicians played the way they used to before the war, but who danced like before the war now. Now different dances were in fashion.

There were times you didn’t know which dance to go to first. You get word from one here and you get word from one over that way. There’s shooting here and shooting there. And at the station there’s only five of us officers and one bicycle. And of course you can’t leave the station unmanned.

“You were asleep,” said father, not on my case anymore.

“No I wasn’t,” I answered, though I don’t know, maybe I was.

“Look around the house.”

I looked, but I didn’t notice anything in particular.

“What about it?”

“Antek’s gone,” said father in a painful voice.

“Where is he?”

“He left.”

Then a few years later Stasiek followed Antek. Though you’d have thought that of all us four brothers Stasiek was the one God intended to stay on the land. And that no force on earth could have torn him away from it. Ever since he was tiny, come rain or shine, heat or cold, he’d always be out in the fields with father. If father was plowing, Stasiek would walk alongside him holding the whip. Give her a flick, Stasiek, the damn creature’s stopping and starting. And Stasiek would flick the whip just like father told him to. When father was sowing, he had to at least tie one of mother’s shawls around Stasiek’s neck and give him a handful of grain so he could sow too. When father mowed, every time he stood the scythe upright and sharpened the blade with a whetstone, Stasiek would hold the handle for him. When he grew up a bit, one day he took the scythe himself and straight away he started mowing like he’d been doing it all his life. Me and Antek and Michał, father had to teach us for a long time, first how you had to stand, how to grip the scythe, how to take short, even steps, how to move the scythe back and forth, how to do it with rye and wheat and barley and oats, how to lay it down and how to keep it straight. And did he ever used to get mad while he was teaching us. He was forever having to tighten the handle and sharpen the blade. Our hands would be covered in blisters from those lessons. But with Stasiek, it was like he’d come into the world knowing how to do it. He just picked up the scythe and mowed.

“Stasiek now, he’ll be a proper mower soon as he gets his strength up.” Father would watch Stasiek mowing like he was gazing at the sunrise. “None of you is as good as him. He’ll probably end up better than me. I’ve been mowing all my life and I never move that evenly. He doesn’t jerk the scythe, he doesn’t leave too much stubble. If you look at his arms it’s as smooth as if he was scooping up water. And the way he walks forward, it’s like the earth itself was moving along under his feet. That’s how it is when God means someone to do something. You can see right away, even though he’s only a child. Take a break, Stasiek! Sit for a while! Drink some water! Or throw pebbles at sparrows a bit! You’ll do your fill of mowing yet!”

Or another time father was getting all worried about how little land we had, and how would he ever be able to divide it up between the four of us sons, and Stasiek pipes up like a true farmer that can find a solution to any problem:

“We can buy some more land, daddy. You said Kaczocha was looking to sell his two acres because he was going to the mill to be a miller. That would be two more acres!”

“He’s taking over the mill, you say.” Father fell deep in thought. After a moment he said: “Well, two acres is a lot of land, that’s for sure. And it’s right next to ours. All we’d have to do is plow over the field boundary.” And he cheered up right away. He slapped his knee and said to mother: “So? Maybe we could have a slice of bread each? Can you go bring us the loaf?”

“It’s the last one,” mother reminded him.

“Never mind that. Even the last one has to be eaten sooner or later.” Father was all cheerful, like he’d just had a drink, he was so pleased about those two acres of Kaczocha’s.

Mother went and brought the bread. She cut each of us a good thick slice, not a crumb more or less for anyone, we all got exactly the same. She only hesitated when she was cutting father’s slice, but she went ahead and gave him one too, though his was much thinner. She left herself out.

“What about you?” father said. “If we’re celebrating, everyone should. Or take mine. I’ll do fine without.”

He reached into his pocket and took out his tobacco pouch, then slowly, his mind somewhere else, he started rolling himself a cigarette. And when father rolled a cigarette it meant something good was happening inside him. Because he rarely felt like smoking when he was down. As he puffed out clouds of smoke, he said to mother:

“Cut Stasiek another slice. Why should we skimp on bread for him if he likes it so much. Szymek and Antek have done all the growing they’re going to, Stasiek’s only just starting. Or give him mine if you don’t want it.”

Another time he fell to thinking about something or other, and lost in his thoughts he suddenly started bad-mouthing Kaczocha:

“Damn fool decides out of the blue to be a miller. He thinks wheat rolls are gonna come falling from the sky just like that. In that job you have to carry sacks. Him, he spends his whole day staring into space and cooing at the pigeons. Out in his fields anything grows that wants to. You’d need to not have a conscience to let land go like that. One year he was cooing away so long he didn’t notice the fall was over, and he forgot to sow. Though whether he sows or no, all that grows there is wheatgrass and other weeds. His father was the same, but at least he’d mend people’s shoes. But him, he just sits there making pigeon noises. The land would need to be cleared of weeds first of all. Plow it over in the fall, then again in the spring. And early, before the soil loosens up. Because once wheatgrass takes hold, afterward nothing can stop it. It’ll eat up the grain and eat up the land. We’d need to borrow a plow with a deep share from someone and dig that sickness out by the roots. Then go over it with the harrow. But even the harrow won’t get rid of all of it. After the harrow we’ll all have to go and pick it out by hand. Then we’d lay down manure and leave it awhile. Plow it over again. And then we could plant lupin.”

“For the love of God!” exclaimed mother. “How much do you think that land’s going to give you! And what do you need lupin for if you already have manure!”

“Well, did the bastard ever even muck his fields? The land’s starved to death, if we get a drought it’ll be like walking over dry bones out there.”

“Never mind lupin.” Mother refused to be convinced. “You should sow rye right away, or wheat, put some potatoes and cabbage in there!”

“I’m telling you, lupin!” said father, getting annoyed. He stood up from his chair and walked to and fro across the room, richer by those two acres of Kaczocha’s. “Dammit, she’s going to tell me what to do with land. All you think about is what’s on the surface. But land is what’s underneath as well. There’s nothing you can do about wheatgrass if you don’t get it out by the roots.”

“Though for a plow with a deep share we’d need another horse, daddy,” Stasiek put in. “One horse wouldn’t be enough.”

“That’s a good point.” Father’s eyes lit up with admiration for Stasiek. “Good you mentioned it, Stasiek. We could maybe borrow Kuśmierek’s. He could borrow ours afterward. Or we could help him out at harvesttime.”

“I’m not helping with anyone else’s harvest!” Antek burst out. “Ours is work enough for me! I’m not gonna be someone else’s farmhand.”

“Just the once,” said father good-naturedly. “It won’t do you any harm. No one’s going to lend us their horse for free. If you don’t want to mow you could help with the binding. We’re not always only going to have one horse. If we get two extra acres we should think about getting another horse as well. There’s plenty of people have less land and they’ve got two horses. We’d find the money.”

“And where would we do that exactly?” asked mother, bridling up. “Our bedsheets are one patch on another and we can’t afford new. Antek needs a new jacket, his elbows are poking out. Stasiek’s shoes are falling apart. Plus, I’d rather have another cow than another horse. At least that way we’d have more milk.”

“Another cow we can rear from a calf. A horse, we need to buy. We’ll never be able to work all that land with just the one. We won’t borrow any more — just this once. Do you know what it means to have two horses in farmwork?” Father was completely lost in his fantasies by now. “All you’ll need to do is crack the whip and they’ll be off! It’ll make no odds whether the plowshare’s deep or they’re going uphill. And when you bring in the crop you can stack three layers of sheaves in the wagon. Or on your way to market, you’ll pass everyone, leave them in a cloud of dust. When you get invited to a wedding, if you go there with two horses you’ll be like a proper lady. With one horse it’d be like going in clothes with holes in them. Because on the other side of the shaft it’s like there’s a hole there. Having two horses is like having two healthy arms. With one it’s like you’ve got one healthy arm and the other one’s withered, or you lost it in the war.”

“Let’s buy a chestnut mare, daddy!” Stasiek shouted, all excited.

“Shut up, you little twit!” Antek suddenly went for Stasiek. “Don’t listen to him, father. Everyone in the village has a chestnut mare. We should buy a stallion — a black one! A black stallion, that’s a proper horse.”

“The thing is, son, a mare’s better for farmwork,” father explained to Antek. “More manageable. It won’t balk, however much you put on the wagon it’ll pull it. However tired it is. With a stallion, once it gets an idea in its head you can beat it dead, it’ll turn your wagon over but it won’t budge an inch. Plus, with a mare you can raise a foal.”

“But a stallion would go like the devil, father. Especially a black one.” Antek had gotten all excited too. “You put the whip to him and he’d go like the wind. We could call him Lucifer.”

“Jesus and Mary!” objected mother. “Calling a horse Lucifer! And our horse too. What are you thinking, Antek?”

“A mare, dad!” Stasiek kept on. “We’d have a little foal.”

“A stallion!” insisted Antek, he was all worked up. “Otherwise I won’t lift a finger! You can do the harvest and the potato lifting on your own. I’ll leave the village!”

“A mare, dad.” Stasiek was almost in tears. But all of a sudden mother bursts out:

“Have you all gone completely crazy? Mares and stallions! I have to scrimp and save just to buy salt and lamp oil, otherwise you’d all be sitting in the dark eating unsalted food. For goodness’ sake, I just brought you the last loaf of bread! We’re running out of flour! There’s barely any potatoes left! And you’re all set to call a horse Lucifer! For the love of God! That Lucifer must’ve gotten into you! Tell them, Szymek, you’re more sensible than that! Why aren’t you saying anything?”

The reason I wasn’t saying anything was so father wouldn’t start in again about the mare I had when I was in the resistance. One time I’d made the mistake of boasting to him about it, and ever since then he wouldn’t let it go.

“You should have brought it home! At least you’d have had something from all that soldiering.”

I couldn’t convince him it wouldn’t have been any use for farmwork. Besides, the animal died on me, how was I supposed to bring it home?

“Because you didn’t look after it properly, dammit. Why would you take a creature like that into the line of fire. As for farmwork, we could’ve trained it. To begin with she could be harnessed to an empty wagon. You’d have to wrap the shaft in rags so it wouldn’t rub against her. Or we could borrow the priest’s chaise. She could pull that for a bit. Then she could be harnessed along with our bay. He’s old, he wouldn’t let her get carried away. Then we’d harness her to the harrow so the work wouldn’t be too hard to begin with. If she bucked you’d give her a lash once or twice. And you’d see, after that she’d be just fine with the plow.”

He’d have put anything to work on the farm. But the first time I got on her back I was afraid she’d collapse under me. Her legs were half as long again as your regular horse. Her muzzle was small and slim, and she had a long neck like a swan. When she walked, however rutted the road was, or whether she was walking over fields or tree roots or in the woods, you never felt anything except a slight swaying, like you were riding on a cloud, or on cushions in a fine carriage, or when a baby’s rocked by its mother in the cradle.

They gave us the horse at one of the manor houses, along with a saddle and a sword, because they wanted to help out in the war but they didn’t have any sons, only daughters. And what can daughters do in a war? They dressed our wounds and washed our ragged clothes, they played the piano for us a bit, had a laugh with us, and then when we were leaving they ran out after us into the courtyard and started crying. I must admit it’s nice to be going away when someone’s weeping for you and waving a white handkerchief wet with tears, and you’re on horseback with a sword at your side. I felt like that uhlan from the picture on the firemen’s calendar. All that was missing was for me to say, Don’t cry, I’ll be back to marry you.

The squire himself led the mare out and said:

“I chose the best horse from my stables. Let it serve its country.”

I looked at the mare and I had the feeling I’d seen her somewhere before. I went up to her and patted her on the face. She tossed her head and whinnied.

“Easy there.” I took hold of her fetlock. It was no thicker than my wrist, and it rose straight all the way to the knee. I’d often dreamed of taking a ride on a horse like that, instead of it always being the horse pulling the wagon, pulling the plow, the harrow, the lister. The horse with its head bowed to the ground. The horse in its suffering. And the man standing over it with a whip.

When I was a kid I’d sometimes take our bay down to the river to water him. I’d try to imagine I was riding a slim-legged steed fast as the wind, and I was galloping at breakneck speed through the village, across the fields, into the distance, so fast I could hardly breathe. But our bay was a long way from being swift as the wind. His legs were all cut up, his hooves were like millstones, his head hung down to the ground. And he would just plod along, because he was like any farmer’s horse, he took farmer’s steps and you couldn’t make him go any faster either with your whip or with your heels. As well, most of the time he was worked so hard all he thought about was eating his fill and flopping down. He probably reckoned splashing about in the river was just another scourge for horses.

I often used to think and think about how at least one time I could turn him into a proper horse. Because maybe he used to be a proper horse once, before he came to work for us. You read in books about those kind of horses.

One time father wasn’t at home, some neighbor had given him a ride to market in town. I whittled myself a lance out of a hazel stick. I stuffed a sack full of chaff and got the saddle ready. I made some spurs with wire from an old bucket handle and fixed them to my heels with straps. I led the bay out of the stable, stood him by the wagon, and from the wagon, because I couldn’t have done it any other way, I put the saddle on his back, climbed on, and with one hand holding on to his mane, the other gripping my lance, I headed down to the village. First at a walk, like the horse wanted. A whole bunch of boys gathered, they followed behind me and started shouting and egging me on. Women, men, whoever happened to be on the road, they all stopped and stared like it was some kind of show.

“That’s the Pietruszkas’ bay. I’d never have recognized it if it wasn’t for the crazy kid that’s riding him.”

“Where are you off to, seeing a young lady maybe?”

“Has he gone completely nuts or what?”

“It was just last spring he fell out of a tree. They’ve got their hands full with that one, the Pietruszkas.”

“Because they don’t smack their kids. You gotta smack them, otherwise they grow up bad.”

“What the heck is that, are you the cavalry or what? Wait till your father comes back, he’ll give you cavalry, you little pip-squeak!”

I was still riding at a walking pace, but in my mind the horse was stretched out like a blur he was going so fast, his hooves weren’t even touching the ground. We were hurtling above the village, and everyone down below was tiny as ants. They were shouting something or other and waving their hands. Let them. I was bursting with pride.

“Come on now,” I whispered in the bay’s ear. “You show them.”

And lightly at first, just to test, I jabbed his sides with the wire spurs. He seemed unsure whether to stop or carry on. No one had ever prodded him in the flanks like that before, how was he supposed to know what it meant. They’d always just use the whip on him. I poked him a bit harder, but he didn’t change his pace, he just kept plodding along. His head was drooping like it always did over the shaft, and it was all I could do to reach his mane. I kicked him again so at least it’d make him shiver. Nothing. By now the boys were helping me out with louder and louder shouts:

“Faster, Szymek! Off you go! Charge! Hurrah!”

All right, if you don’t want it that way we’ll try something else. I started pricking him in the belly with my lance. But all he did was flick his tail like he was waving off a bee, and he kept on walking. He probably thought it was just a bee stinging him, and he was strong as anything when it came to bees. Bees, cart, whip, plow — that was a horse’s life.

“Come on now. Faster. People are watching us,” I began begging him. “I’ll give you oats afterward, on their own, without any chaff. You can eat as much as you want. Just jump at least a bit off the ground.” And I poked him again and again with my spurs. I could feel the spurs digging into my heels till they bled, like when your shoes are too tight on the way to church. But I prodded, prodded and begged in turn, because the embarrassment hurt ten times worse that the pain in my heels.

The boys had already begun to lose faith in me when they saw my spurs weren’t working on the horse. They were still walking alongside but their shouts got quieter. They gave advice, they said I should sharpen the spurs maybe, or make some others out of thicker wire. Some of them offered to get the horse going with sticks.

Some of the grown-ups watching were starting to laugh and make fun of me:

“Stick a needle under his tail, make him run!”

“Or pour vodka in his mouth, that’d do the trick!”

“Don’t waste the vodka, drink it yourself! The best thing for the horse’d be cowbane — that’d make him fly!”

“You have to spit in his ears or he won’t obey you!”

“Stop jabbing him like that, you damn fool! His sides are bleeding! What’s the horse ever done to you!”

All of a sudden the bay shook in an odd way, like it was coming from deep in his belly. He lifted his head, pricked up his ears, he even seemed brisker in the way he was walking. I thought he’d finally gotten it.

“All right,” I whispered gently to him, and I gave him a soft nudge with the spurs. The horse suddenly kicked up his hindquarters so high that I was thrown forward from his back onto his neck. The moment his back legs dropped, he flung his front hooves high in the air and jerked his head. I grabbed on to his mane with both hands. My lance fell to the ground, and there was a burst of laughter from the road. The horse threw up its hindquarters again, higher even than the first time. I almost came tumbling down like I was falling out of a willow tree into the river. Luckily I managed to hold on to his neck. He lifted his front legs way off the ground again — he was nearly vertical this time. He opened his mouth, bared his teeth, and neighed like he was full of bottled-up rage that had been gathering for centuries, for all the peasants’ horses that had been as meek as him. The saddle slipped from under my backside, my feet with their spurs flew out to the sides, and for a second I hung there in the air, clinging to his neck alone. He dropped back down, but not for long. He turned around, dropped his rear almost to the ground, then jerked it upward again, higher still. And he neighed, even louder than before. I could feel his guts churning inside him. Blood and rage and pain — it was like a dam had broken. The people on the road were shouting. The horse was leaping upward yet again, his front legs were clawing at the air as if he was trying to climb even higher, it was like he was trying to tear off a piece of the sky with his teeth. He was running amok, tossing his rear and his head in turn, he hardly seemed to come down to earth at all.

Suddenly, with a sort of furious tug he freed his neck from my grip and I fell to the ground like an apple falling from a tree. He kicked again to check I wasn’t still stuck to him like a burr. Then once and twice he spun in a wide circle, scaring all the people. He gave a great whinny of relief. And off he ran like a storm, leaving nothing but a cloud of dust.

People ran up to me and started to help me up. I didn’t want their help. But I couldn’t straighten my back or turn my head to the side, and I could hardly see out of one eye. Plus, the spurs were covered in my blood and the horse’s. On top of that, Michał had somehow shown up, even though he’d not been there when I led the horse out of the stable because he and mother had gone to the fields to do some weeding. He stood over me and burst into tears, as if I wasn’t embarrassed enough as it was.

“Szymuś, are you all right? Szymuś, are you all right?” he sniveled. He even kneeled by my feet and tried to untie the bloody spurs. I was so angry I almost kicked him.

“Leave me alone. I’m fine. Stop blubbering.”

Father came back from market and gave me a hiding and a good talking to, and it was only then we went off to the fields to look for the bay. He was feeding on someone’s clover near Boleszyce. When he saw us he neighed and ran a couple of fields farther off. Father told me to stay back and hide behind a field boundary, and he went to try and get close on his own. But whenever he came near, the horse rose up on his hind legs and kicked at father with his hooves. In the end we brought the wagon. We took the horse-collar and a full feed bag. It was only then he let himself be harnessed to the wagon.

And so father probably imagined my chestnut mare would have been like the bay. I didn’t ride her for long. We got ambushed and she was hit by machine-gun fire in the legs. I had to finish her off with a shot to the head. We took the saddle off her. It was all decorated with brass studs. The stirrups looked like they were made of gold. And there was so much leather in it you could have resoled who knows how many pairs of shoes. It would have been a shame to leave it. I even thought about finding another chestnut mare for the saddle. We searched around in the villages. But all the horses there were in terrible shape, overworked and worn out. We might have found one at a manor house somewhere. But there didn’t happen to be any manor houses on our way.

That saddle traveled with us almost the whole summer. Through the villages and woods and fields. No one knew what for. Everyone got sick of lugging it around. They had to be ordered. You carry it a bit. Now you. Now you. Now you take it off him. They cursed and complained. The hell do we need this for, sir? I wish I knew. We should have just dumped the damn thing somewhere so someone would find it. But what if the wrong person found it? And so on. Sometimes I’d rest my head on it. Sometimes I’d sit on it and think for a bit. Because thinking’s different in a saddle like that than on a tree stump or on the grass. In the end a farmer came along the road and we threw the saddle in his wagon. Maybe you’ll find a use for it, if not now then after the war. In return, if we find ourselves in these parts again we’ll come by for some sour milk.

Likewise, I never did much fighting with the sword. I mean, what can you do with a sword in the woods — cut branches? The squire had said his great-grandfather had thrashed the Turks with it. That may have been the truth, because whenever you wanted to take it out of its scabbard, one man would have to hold it between his knees while the other one pulled with all his strength to get it out, it was so rusty. Out of respect for the squire I wanted to at least cut one of the bastards’ heads off or chop off an arm, so the squire would have something to be pleased about, so he could say the sword had fought for its country during his lifetime as well. But they were always too far off and you could only reach them with bullets. I just took it out a couple of times so it could tell me about the Turks. But it was iron after all, and when you ask iron a question it doesn’t answer. Then once in a while I’d do the present arms with it when we were burying one of our own. But when the chestnut mare fell I wasn’t really able to keep walking with the sword, it kept rubbing against my boot. I thought to myself, maybe you were good against the Turks, but in this war you won’t be doing any cutting or slicing. If all I ever do is present arms when someone’s being buried, I’ll end up burying the lot of them. So I hung it on a tree in the woods. It could be dangling there to this day for all I know.

But father didn’t hold the sword against me, because what use is a sword on a farm.

“They fought the Turks, you say? That would have been for our faith. You should have taken it to a church, it could have hung there instead of on a tree.”

But the chestnut mare and the saddle, he couldn’t stop thinking about them. With the mare at least I had the excuse that they’d killed her. But the saddle hadn’t been killed.

“Do you know how much a saddle like that is worth? All that leather and studs, and you said the stirrups were gold. You could have bought any amount of land. To have a saddle like that. But you’re not interested in land — all you care about is girls and dancing and fighting. You can’t spend your whole life gallivanting around the countryside playing your harmonica. You sure lucked out with that war — anything to get out of working.”

“I wouldn’t exactly say I lucked out, father. We worked ourselves into the ground, we gave our blood as well.”

“Fine, but what am I supposed to do when it comes time to divide up the farm among you all?”

“You don’t need to give me any share. I’m going away,” I’d snap back at him when he really got on my nerves.

The truth was, I’d thought about doing that right after I came back from the resistance. I wasn’t drawn to the land, and after those couple years of freedom I really couldn’t see myself plowing or mowing. I even regretted coming back. I should have done what quite a few of the guys did and gone straight into the army or to the city, anywhere so long as it was far away. But not going back home after the whole thing to see father, mother, my brothers, the village, it would have been like the war hadn’t finished at all, with its filth and lice and sleepless nights and killing. Besides, I was thinking I’d stay a month or two, catch up on my sleep, forget what needs to be forgotten, rest up, and then head out, instead of leaving right off the bat.

But I’d barely crossed the threshold and kissed everyone hello and sat down, when right away father starts in with his, we’ve been watching and watching for you, we didn’t think you’d come back, and here spring’s right around the corner and there’ll be plowing and sowing to get done. I didn’t say a word, I pulled off my tall boots, mother poured water into a basin and she didn’t say anything either, she didn’t even ask, how was it there? She just stood next to me, letting the tears roll down her cheeks. Then she kneeled down by the water, stirred it and started washing my feet.

And father went on and on. The plow would need to be hammered out because the share had gotten damaged on a rock. You’ll need to find another blacksmith to take the horse to, because the Siudaks’ smithy was blown up by a shell and now there’s no one in the village that can shoe horses, but maybe there’ll be someone in another village. One shoe’s completely fallen off and the other ones are worn down to the hoof. When he walks he slips around like he was on a sledge. There was so much fighting around here we didn’t even have time to muck out the pig sheds. But we should at least take some manure out to put down on the potatoes, and it needs to be done while the frosts last, because once the earth gets wet you won’t be able to drive the wagon onto the field. It doesn’t matter if the manure gets frozen, it can just lie there. There’s no need to plow the fields right after you’ve mucked them. And look up there — the ceiling’s leaking. It can’t just be whitewashed, the plaster’ll need to be scraped off. There’s a hole in the thatch from a piece of shrapnel. Whenever it rains your mother has to put a bucket under it. If we can rustle up a ladder from somewhere you could shin up and fix it. And we lost our table. We’d stay down in the cellar, so anyone could do whatever they wanted up here. They took stuff for firewood, not just tables but doors, wagons, barns. They cut down all the orchards. They needed the wood to build potato clamps. Now people are going around looking for what’s theirs. Maybe you could go look as well. You’ve got a decent pair of boots. Course, we can eat in our laps just as well, but not having a table in the house, it’s kind of like the middle is missing. Or maybe you’ll find something else. These days anything’ll come in handy. That was quite a war. And it hung around in these parts for the longest time. It owes us something back, instead of just bringing us bad luck. Our pig sheds burned down. Did you see? A shell hit them, they caught fire and that was the end of them. At least we got the animals out in time. Stasiek and Antek took turns minding them. The wind was blowing in the other direction, thank God, otherwise the barn and the house would have gone up and we’d be sleeping under the stars. The damn dog got loose from his chain and ran off. On a farm not having a dog is like not having an arm. You have to keep your ears pricked the whole time so thieves won’t sneak up on you. When he was still here he’d bark and run them off. Or at least wake you up if he couldn’t see to them himself. You could ask around if someone’s bitch has had puppies. Dogs, they don’t care if it’s wartime or no, the damn things still go around mating. The Lord alone knows what we’ve been through here. We stuck windows together from little pieces, then we had to board them up. What are you sitting there thinking for? You’re only just back and already you’re thinking.”

“I don’t know, maybe I’ll go away?”

“Where to?” Father was stopped in his tracks.

“To the army maybe?”

“Have you not had enough of soldiering?”

“The war’s not over yet, father. And I was made lieutenant.”

“By who?”

“It was in the woods.”

“That doesn’t count, being made an officer in the woods. That’s not a proper promotion. I mean, making a farmer an officer. Farmers are made to work the land and nothing else. This is your place.”

“What am I supposed to do here?” I said, losing my temper, because it all seemed somehow foreign to me. The house. Father. And what he was saying.

“What do you mean?!” Father’s voice trembled like he was about to get mad, or burst out crying. “Are we short of work here? We barely know which way to turn first. We need to start from the beginning. But go! Go! All of you, go! Let the land die!”

And father wouldn’t have kept me back no matter what. Except they’d just opened the school, and Stasiek’s shoes had fallen apart and he didn’t have anything to wear on his feet. Outside, the boys would whistle and call, are you coming, Stasiek? It’s late! And Stasiek would be sitting there in straw slippers, crying. And it was seventh grade, it would have been a pity if he hadn’t gone back and finished. True, he was kind of in seventh grade during the war. But what could he learn at a school in an occupied country? He’d forgotten everything. I asked him who the first king of Poland was, and he didn’t know. He didn’t know who the king of the peasants was, and he thought Kościuszko was a king.

So I headed for the fields one day thinking I might find him some boots. People said there were bodies everywhere. So there had to be boots also. There was no point being squeamish. Is a dead person any worse than a living one? At one time he was alive as well, and now he’s dead, just like the people that are alive now are also going to be dead in their turn. Though it’s a bit rude taking things off a dead body, you can’t ask them is it all right if I take your boots, since you don’t need them yourself. But if they were only going to rot away, it’d be better if Stasiek wore them to school, and if the dead guy knew he might even be glad someone else was still using his boots.

There was a good number of them, Russkies as well as Germans. But none of them had boots on. I plodded around the entire day, and I only found one with his boots still on. I was all set to congratulate myself, I even said “zdravstvuytye” to him, because he was Russian. But when I got closer I saw there were holes in the soles and the heel on the left boot was completely missing. On top of that, he was barely older than our Stasiek. He lay face upward, his mouth open, as if some word had frozen in it, maybe “mama.” I pulled his blanket out from behind his back and covered him up so at least the wind wouldn’t blow in his face.

Some of them were lying in piles of two or three, like they’d been clinging to each other for warmth. Some looked as if they’d only fallen asleep, as if they’d gotten tired of the war the way you get tired at harvesttime, and they’d slipped their boots off to ease their feet. Everyone knows that war is worst of all on the legs and feet. Many a time, from the waist up you’d be raring to fight but your feet wouldn’t budge. You’d be shouting hurrah, but your legs had no life in them. And many a time the war would be won not so much by bullets as by feet. Because war and feet are like half sisters.

When I was at war we didn’t do a whole lot of fighting. Instead, we just walked and walked, and if we went in the wrong direction we’d walked in vain. And you didn’t even hope for the end of the war so much as for a chance to take your boots off, even for a moment, and cool your feet in a stream.

The bodies that still had socks or footcloths maybe didn’t feel the cold so much. But the ones with completely bare feet, it hurt to even look at them. One time I was made to walk across snow barefoot and I know how painful it is. You could read from those bare feet like from a book. They were swollen from the frost, cracked till they bled, and rubbed sore from marching and from the boots. They were blue and dead. Though living feet also, you could read all sorts of sufferings from them, even more than from a person’s eyes, their face, or their words or their tears.

With some bodies the snow had covered their legs and all you could see were toes poking out of a snowdrift. Other ones were lying on their bellies with their bare heels jabbing at the sky. Or they’d be sticking out of the snow from the waist up, or from their belly button or their private parts, while their legs would be growing deep down in the snow like the roots of their body.

I found one under a sloe bush. He was some kind of officer — his epaulettes were all decorated with gold braid — so he ought to have had decent boots as well. Except his legs had been blown off at the knees, and it wasn’t even right to wish I could have had those boots, even though they’d probably been made of chamois leather, with stiffeners and pointed toes. All I did was pick a few sloes from over his head, because sloes taste best when they’re frozen.

Another one I found, I thought he was still alive. He was sitting outside a potato clamp leaning against his pack, his rifle in his lap, helmet on and playing his harmonica. I even thought I recognized the tune. But when I leaned over him I saw the harmonica was covered in dried blood, like he’d been blowing blood instead of air. He didn’t have any boots on either. Though if he had, I still wouldn’t have taken them. How could I do that — there he was playing the harmonica, and I come along and take his boots instead of listening? I used to play myself and I know, when you’re playing you get so carried away, someone could even steal your body and you wouldn’t notice, because at moments like that you’re pure spirit. There were times I could barely straighten my back from work but the moment I came home from the fields, instead of flopping down and sleeping, I’d go out in front of the house and play. Often the lights would go out in the village and the dogs would be chasing bitches, and I’d just play on and on.

The snow was trampled down everywhere and there was a path to each corpse. You could tell a lot of people had been there before me, like mushroom pickers in the woods, from all the local villages.

I even met a guy I knew from Łoziny. Łoziny is two and a half miles from our village and the front passed through there as well just as bad as here, and he’d come all the way from there.

“A decent greatcoat’s what I’m mostly after,” he said. “But everything’s all cut up from the shrapnel, either that or it’s German.”

“You haven’t seen any boots, have you?” I asked.

“Boots? You’re wearing boots. Nice tall ones too.”

“It’s not for me, it’s for my brother. He hasn’t got any shoes to wear for school.”

“You’re a bit late for that.” He pulled out a bottle of moonshine. “Here, take a swig — you’re blue with cold. If you’re gonna go looking around here you need vodka. First off, you could freeze to death, and second, you might dream of these poor guys afterwards. Right when the front moved on, then there were boots. You could pick any kind you wanted, find a pair that fit. Wide ones, narrow ones, lace-ups, tall boots, ones with buckles. Black, yellow. Hobnailed or with rubber soles. There were even some fancy ones like yours. But now they’ve all been taken. You might still find some, but you’d have to go off the beaten track. And a shovel would be a good idea, ’cause some of them are buried up to their neck and you have to dig down to get to their boots. You need to get a move on though, because when the weather eases off they’ll be burying the bodies. The village chairmen have announced it already. Maybe if you went up by the woods there’d still be some with their boots on. Thing is, though, there are mines up there. You might end up losing a leg or an arm instead of finding boots. Or even lose your life for a pair of boots, after you’ve made it through the war. Here, have another drink.”

There was nothing for it, I lent Stasiek my officer’s boots, because I mean he couldn’t not go to school. School was like first communion. Everyone went. People who’d only finished second or third grade. People who’d never even started school before. People that couldn’t read or write, bachelors, married guys, folks with kids. He looked like a stork in those boots, they almost came up over his knees. But who was interested in whether your boots were too big or too small, the important thing was they were in one piece. To begin with he walked around like he was on stilts, he even fell over a couple of times, but then he got used to them, he started walking in long strides without really bending his knees, and he looked pretty good, even though it’s not that easy to walk in tall boots when they’re the wrong size. I mean real officer’s boots, of course. Because people say officer’s boots whenever their shoes have any kind of uppers at all. Or any boots that an officer’s wearing. But real officer’s boots you can tell not from the uppers, not even from someone’s rank. Real officer’s boots have to be made of chamois, the toe caps and straps and stiffeners need to be leather that’s hard as metal, and the boot has to be the exact same shape as your leg. And not just around the foot, but at the instep, the ankle, the calf, everywhere, like it was your own skin. You might have been walking around like you had two left feet your whole life, the Lord God himself might have decided that’s how you’re supposed to walk, but the moment you put on officer’s boots it’s like you’d been given new legs. Because it’s not just that you’re wearing footwear that goes all the way from your toes to your knees, also the straps hold your heel like it was in a vise, and the stiffeners do the same for your calves, and you have to walk the way the boots tell you to.

Kurosad, the guy in Oleśnica that made those boots for me, he measured each leg separately, and in different places. On the calf alone he took three measurements, by the ankle, in the middle, and under the knee. And he did it both on bare flesh and in breeches. And by the way, you won’t find another shoemaker like Kurosad for love nor money. He made boots for “Eagle” — that was my resistance name — and he wasn’t the only one that knew who Eagle was. When you went into his shop you’d never know it was a shoemaker’s — there was a carpet and armchairs and mirrors, and Kurosad behind the counter with his, how can I help you, sir. He only made boots for SS officers, resistance fighters, and the gentry. And when it came to officer’s boots, he had no equal. When I tried them on, stood in front of the mirror and clicked the heels, I felt as if even dying in those boots would be a different kind of death than dying in ordinary shoes or barefoot. And Kurosad was licking his lips he was so pleased:

“All you need now is a pair of spurs and it’ll be: Mount up! mount up!”

I stayed in every morning with my feet in the straw slippers, waiting for Stasiek to come home from school and give me my boots back. It was only in the afternoon I could go down to the village. In the mornings I thought I’d go nuts with boredom. I couldn’t even watch the road from the window because the window was forever iced up and you had to breathe a hole in the ice to see out at all. Though father didn’t let me get too bored. He’d come right in with the horse-collar.

“If you’re just going to be sitting around doing nothing you can mend this.”

This, then that, then something else. Every day it was the same thing. I even got kind of depressed, to the point where I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Someone would come by and ask, so how was it in the resistance, but I didn’t even feel like talking about the resistance, and father would speak for me:

“Well, since he came back he’s just been thinking and thinking. But thinking’s no good. I mean, you’re not going to think something up unless you actually do it. People thought and thought, and what did they come up with? The world’s still the way it was, and all thinking does is make you want to think more and do less.”

There were times all I wanted to do was jump up, slam the door, and head out wherever. But how could I go without anything on my feet? So in the end I started cutting the farmers’ hair and shaving them. Luckily, from the resistance I’d brought home my razor, my scissors and brush and shaving cream, and I started cutting hair and giving shaves. Right after I came back I cut father’s hair and Antek’s and Stasiek’s, because their hair was so long they looked like sheep, and I did a pretty decent job of it. Then one day I met Bartosz down in the village. He was over seventy, but he was a soldier to the marrow of his bones, he’d served way back in the tsar’s army, and he always wore a crew cut. But this time I see his hair’s so long he looks like Saint Joseph, and he’s scratching away at it.

“I didn’t know you, Bartosz,” I say.

“I’m not surprised. I used to cut my hair the army way. Now look at me.”

“What are you scratching it for?”

“Lice, son, lice. The blasted things bite so much they won’t let you sleep, they won’t let you live. They bite when you’re praying. But in a mop of hair like this, of course they’re going to bite. Plus our house burned down and we’re sleeping with the cattle in the shed. Maybe you could cut my hair for me, I’d give you a rooster?”

I felt sorry for the man. I used to like listening to his army stories, he served with the heavy cavalry all the way over in the Caucasus.

“Come by tomorrow morning,” I said. “I’m at home then, because Stasiek wears my boots to school. Just bring a cloth I can wrap around you.”

I was never taught how to cut hair, but it’s no big deal. You can do harder things than that without being taught. Besides, the important thing wasn’t how you looked but feeling comfortable. If anyone doubted that, they could have told by looking at Bartosz what a relief it was to him. His eyes were brighter, he breathed more easily, and he held himself straight as a ramrod, like I’d taken twenty years off him. He looked at himself in a piece of mirror and he was so pleased his old soldier’s blood stirred in him.

“You’ve done a fine thing, young man. You weren’t in the resistance for nothing, I see. Anyone that can succeed at being a soldier can succeed at anything.”

Afterward one guy or another who saw Bartosz would come, and anyone that bumped into me in the village, then they started coming by of their own accord. It wasn’t surprising really, every farm had lost something to fire, if it wasn’t the house it was the barn or the cattle sheds. If their horses hadn’t been requisitioned they’d been killed. The cows’ udders would dry up from lack of feed. In the fields there were mines. Anyone would have been glad to at least get rid of the shock of hair they’d grown, to feel freer. But there was no barber in the village. Under the occupation there’d been one, an newcomer. Jan Basiak they called him. He told people he’d been resettled, and he seemed to fit in. He made a decent living, rented a room at Madej’s place on the side next to the road and hung up a sign: Jan Basiak, Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Hairdresser, Permanent Waves, Water Waves. All the women in the village went crazy, the young girls, the married women, the ones with small children — everyone. They cut off their braids and they all started getting those perms.

The first one was the Siudaks’ Gabrysia. She had braids like ropes of wheat straw, but with her new hairdo she looked like a scarecrow and right away she started sleeping with a German corporal from the police station. One time Siudak beat her, in fact he cut her till she bled, because he used a whip handle, so she told her corporal and the corporal beat Siudak up. Siudak couldn’t get out of bed for a month or more. On top of that he had to pay a fine for being disorderly. Ever since then he was scared of Gabrysia like she was the devil himself, though she was his own daughter. She had them all wrapped around her little finger.

Once she started sleeping with the corporal she even learned to be picky, she got as finicky as a fine lady though she was just a regular girl. She made them buy her a fur coat and knee-length boots, and Siudak had to sell a cow to pay for it. As for the hairdresser, she could spend half the day there. The thing that upset people even more than the corporal was the fact she had her hair washed at the hairdresser’s. Whoever heard of such a thing — a man washing a woman’s hair. The hairdresser fussed around her like he was dancing on eggshells, he’d do anything he could to satisfy her and it was always yes, Miss Gabryjela, no, Miss Gabryjela. In the end, as well as doing all those perms he became an informer. When the front got close, all of a sudden he disappeared overnight. And Gabrysia, she left for the West and married some official over there. She came back one year to visit her mother and father’s graves, but no one mentioned what she’d done when she was younger. What was there to mention? It was a different world, a different village; more than half the people from those times were in the cemetery. They were just lying there, what did they care about Gabrysia. From the other world it didn’t mean a thing that at one time, in this world, some Gabrysia used to sleep with a German corporal.

Me too, when I go to the cemetery I sometimes think it’s strange so many people are buried there that back then I shaved and cut their hair, and now they don’t remember anymore. Stanisław Kiciński. When he sat down and I told him, don’t move, he virtually turned to stone. Later I couldn’t turn his head either to the left or right. I had to squat down, twist and turn one way and the other. I asked him, I got annoyed with him, just turn a bit Stanisław or I won’t be able to finish cutting your hair. See, look over at that apostle at the Last Supper. The third one from Jesus’s left. Come on, look. Though on the other hand, when he finally stood up and passed his hand over his head, he said:

“It’s like a fellow was born a second time. God bless you, Szymuś.”

“Here, take a look in the mirror.”

“I don’t need to look, I can feel it.”

Or Wincenty Mitręga, may he rest in peace. He looked at himself in that scrap of mirror, ran out the house without a word, then a short while later he came back with a milk can full of moonshine.

“I was going to buy myself some new pants and a new dress for the old lady, but have a drink, lads, because that goddam war finally finished today. Your health, Szymek!” He tipped the can back and took the longest swig you ever saw. When he finally set it aside he didn’t even have the strength to pass it to the next person, he just hunkered down on the stoop and fell asleep.

There were days so many men came by that Stasiek would get back from school and I still hadn’t finished. They’d sit around the place wherever they could, on the beds, on the doorstep, some would stand or squat by the wall. They’d smoke till the room was black with smoke. Mother would complain she couldn’t breathe, and every so often she’d air the place out. But father was in seventh heaven, because everyone would give him a smoke and he could at least have his fill of cigarettes. I brought two logs and laid down a board to make a bench, because people even started coming from other villages.

To begin with my hands were a bit stiff when I worked. But anyone sitting there with hair that hadn’t been cut for months, that was dirty and sometimes full of lice, their mind was on other things and so what did they care about my hands. They could only feel themselves. Some folks would shudder like a horse being stung by a bee when I’d pass the comb through their hair. Some of them, the skin on their heads would stretch tight as sheet metal. Some of them shut their eyes as hard as they could. Or they’d grip the chair with both hands like I was about to cut their head off, not their hair. Or they’d clam up and not say a single word the whole time, till it was over and they could relax. Some of them even let other people in line go ahead of them just to put off the moment. You’d have been forgiven for thinking I was baptizing them, not cutting their hair.

I got better and better at it from one head to the next. I stopped doing everyone the same, instead I’d ask do you want it longer, shorter, to the side or to the back. I learned to do shading. I’d shave necks till they shone. And I did sideburns in two different ways, straight and angled.

Later I bought an electric razor from a Russian guy for a half-gallon of moonshine. He’d worked as a barber as well, but the war was over and he was heading home. Another time a traveling saleswoman sold me a bottle of cologne, and after that I’d ask, splash of cologne? Naturally cologne was more expensive, so not everyone wanted it. I bought a sheet and mother made me cloths to put around people’s necks. I was going great guns. All I needed was to hang out a sign. And as I worked I’d tell stories about the resistance, so no one got bored even if they had to wait the whole morning.

I probably would have stuck with being a barber, because winter passed and spring came, Stasiek gave me the boots back since he could go to school barefoot now, but I was still cutting people’s hair and giving shaves. I even thought about renting the room at Madej’s that Basiak had used. Luckily Madej’s place survived the war except for the roof got damaged and the windows were broken. But Madej had already more or less repaired it. Maybe one day I’d learn how to do perms. Szymon Pietruszka, permanent waves, water waves. No worse than Jan Basiak. Hairdressing’s a decent trade, and it’s a whole lot easier than working the land. At the most I’d just go take a course. Or I might not even have to do that. The war had done away with a good number of hairdressers as well. In town there used to be three of them and now only one was left.

Plus, harvesttime was getting close. And harvesttime was a curse. From dawn till night you worked like an animal. Your head’s pounding from the mowing, your eyes are blinded by sweat. Instead of crossing the sky, the sun just keeps moving to and fro across your back, all the time from when it rises in the east till when it sets in the west. It’s like its claws were sunk into your skin. Because it’s not even the sun, the sun is what shines over the river and the meadow and in the reeds, this thing is a huge bright bird that’s got it in for you. The moment you feel like straightening up a bit, it jabs you in the back of the head with its beak. Like it was reminding you your life belongs down below, not up above, that your life is this eternal unmown field that you keep moving across, swinging your scythe. And you don’t even know if you’ll ever finish mowing it. You’ll only be done when death takes you.

It was the same when I went to war, I was glad to be missing the harvest because it had just begun. Father had gone out into the fields with his scythe at the crack of dawn, I was supposed to follow with mine and we were going to mow, the two of us. It was right then Gunia brought me the letter with my call-up. I was so pleased, I forgot to take the scythe with me, I just grabbed the letter and ran out to the field to tell father:

“It’s war, father.”

Father looks at me surprised and says:

“Where’s your scythe? You were supposed to bring your scythe.”

“I just said, it’s war.” I waved the letter in front of him. “Read this.”

“I don’t need to read anything. If there was a war we’d be hearing it. Can you hear anything?” He tipped his head back as if he was listening, but the only sound was larks singing in the sky. “There’s nothing but larks. It’s probably just talk. I mean, how long has it been since the last war? And there’s going to be another one? What are they fighting about? When there’s a war, first there has to be a sign in the sky. When the last one started there was a burning cross up there in the south at night. Come on, get to work. You can mow with my scythe, I’ll bind the sheaves.”

He pushed the scythe into my hands, then he laid out some straw rope, gathered an armful of crop, held it down with his knee, tied it up, and the sheaf was ready. It was a good-sized one as well, because father liked his sheaves to be man-sized.

“What are you still standing there for? Job needs finishing.”

He bound a second sheaf and a third. Then all of a sudden it was like he’d gotten exhausted, he sat himself down on one of the sheaves and fell to thinking. He thought and thought, he could’ve tied a good few sheaves more in that time, and it was only when he’d sat through eight or nine sheaves that he said:

“So you’re going to go?”

“I think I have to.” I sat down next to him on another sheaf. “Everyone’s going. The Dudas’ Franek, Kasperek, Jędrek Niezgódka, other guys.”

“Maybe you could be the only one not to go. When it’s war you don’t see the one man, just the war. Plus, once they shave your heads and stick you in uniform you’ll all look like sons of the same mother. You’ll all get mixed up like leaves, like trees, no one’ll be able to tell you apart.”

He lost himself in thought again. The sun was climbing into the sky and getting hotter and hotter. The cool of night was gone from the crop and it was warming up too. A stork flew across the sky.

“Oh look, a stork,” I said for the sake of saying something.

“Who’s going to do the work around here,” he said, “before Antek and Stasiek grow up? Four sons and no help. I mean, we might at least finish the harvest, there’s a whole lot still needs doing. Maybe it’s not our war, this one?”

“Whose war could it be?”

“What do we have to fight about? We plow and plant and mow, are we in anyone’s way? War won’t change the world. People’ll just go off and kill each other, then afterwards it’ll be the same as it was before. And as usual it’ll be us country folks that do most of the dying. And nobody will even remember that we fought, or why. Because when country folks die they don’t leave monuments and books behind, only tears. They rot in the land, and even the land doesn’t remember them. If the land was going to remember everyone it would have to stop giving birth to new life. But the land’s job is to give birth.”

“Maybe that’s what the war is about, father, so the land can give birth. If that’s what it’s about then it is our war.”

“The land gives birth, war or no war. Only God can stop it giving birth.”

“Even Romcia the thief is going,” I said. “He ran over to make confession first thing this morning. Now he’s drinking at the pub. He says, I’m drinking my own tears, pal, no one can stop me doing that. But at night he’s gonna go rob someone one last time. He says he couldn’t go killing people if he was all holy.”

I thought father would get worried about Romcia and say:

“Maybe it’ll be us he robs? You should’ve sounded him out a bit more.”

But he didn’t pay any attention, he just said:

“What if you get killed? My hands and your mother’s, that’s not enough for all this land!” He threw his arms open wide like we had fields all the way to the horizon, when there was barely one acre where we were.

“Morning!” someone called from the road. It was Ginger Walek with his scythe over his shoulder. “Father and son together, a sight for sore eyes! Your rye’s looking good.”

“God bless you.”

“I won’t get killed. I won’t, father. Romcia’s more likely to get killed. He says it’s going to be his last thieving, after that he’s going straight.”

Father calmed down a bit, he lowered his eyes from the fields and looked at his feet. He plucked an ear of rye, crushed it against his hand, blew away the chaff, and stared at the glittering grain as if he was telling the future in his mind, even numbers for good luck, odd numbers for bad.

“Even if they don’t kill you, who knows how long this war could last. The other one went on four years.”

“That was when we had a tsar, this one’ll be shorter. We’ll win and we’ll come back. There’s a whole ton of men going, from our village, from others. Back then, who wanted to fight for the tsar. He was foreign, no one cared one way or the other about him.”

“Foreign he might have been, but you could draw lots and have a chance of staying home. If you were well off you could even pay for someone else to go in your place. And if some guy was really stubborn about it, even the draw couldn’t make him go. Before the Cossacks came for him he’d already be hanging from a tree. He was damned by the church but at least he got to stay among his own. Though those kind of men, they weren’t in any hurry either to go to war or to do much of anything else. Or they’d put their leg under the wheel of a wagon and let it run them over, and afterwards, even though they limped, they were limping on their own land, not all around the world. Or they’d put their eye out, because the army wouldn’t take a one-eyed man. When you’re at home you can see just as well with one eye as with two. Besides, what’s to see, you know everything by heart, you can find anything you need in the darkest night. There’s that saying, blind as a bat, but bats find their way around just fine. You can sleep just as well with one eye as two, you can cry just the same. Back then people obeyed their parents more than you all do these days. Or you just needed to lose your trigger finger. You’d cut it off and they’d not take you. You’d dress it with bread mixed with cobwebs, it would hurt a bit, then you’d say you lost it in the chaff-cutter when you were cutting chaff for the horses. There’s many a farmer missing a finger to this day, and they never went to war, they just cut it off in the chaff-cutter. What’s one finger out of ten. A tailor needs it to hold his needle and thread. A rich man, cause he has to keep counting his money. A priest when he has to point at sinners from the pulpit. But when you work the land you use your whole arm, up to the elbow, not just your fingers. One more or less, what’s important is to want to work.”

I remember one time, I’d not yet properly learned to mow, we were mowing rye, father was in front and I was behind him, and I deliberately hit the scythe against a rock and it broke the whole thing. But he didn’t even get mad at me. He just looked at the notch in the blade and said:

“You’ve not quite got the trick. But one or two more harvests and you’ll be there. I had trouble too at the beginning.”

And it was always like that, even when I’d gotten the hang of it and we’d both be mowing, him in front and me behind, it was like he was always watching over me to make sure I didn’t lose patience during the harvest.

“You don’t have to cut a whole swath in a single swing! If you lived the way you’re mowing you’d run out of steam halfway through your life. And you’d lose the will to work even sooner. Slow down a bit, we’re just getting started.”

Because with me the first swath was always angry, like I was getting my own back. I’d often send the earth flying from under the scythe. And it’d be as wide as I could swing my arms. And though I was strong as a horse in those days, by the second swath the anger and spite had gone, by the third my eyes were filled with sweat, and by the next one I had to stop for a moment and sharpen up the blade with the whetstone so I could catch my breath. Because you can’t keep mowing for long out of anger and spite. To mow well you have to start like you were in the middle of a swath and finish as if you were just beginning. That was how father mowed. He wasn’t a big man, and when it was a good year and the rye or the wheat had grown well it was as tall as him, but when he mowed it was like the field was moving him along of its own accord, evenly, step by step. And he’d finish the whole field like that, step by step, evenly. And whole harvests the same way. It looked like it wasn’t him swinging the scythe through the rye or the wheat, the scythe itself was moving his shoulders back and forth, and he was only letting it.

Even now, when I’m mowing I sometimes feel that I’m following behind him. And I even compare myself, whether I’m mowing like he did when he was alive. Is the field moving me along the same way, evenly, step after step. Is the scythe swinging my arms back and forth, and I’m just allowing it to. But I don’t think I’ll ever match him. You have to be a born mower to mow like him. I don’t know if Michał or Antek or Stasiek would have matched him either, though they were better sons than me. But it’s hard to say what would have been.

Michał was the smartest of the four of us and he was supposed to go into the priesthood, he left the village before he’d done a whole lot of mowing. Though before the war he’d come home almost every harvesttime to help out. Except that father usually wouldn’t let him mow, instead he’d have him do the raking or sweep up the loose ears. Leave it be, Michał, what’s the point in you mowing, you’ll only get blisters on your hands. Szymek, he’s another matter, he’s built like a cart horse. He could mow with one arm if he felt like it. So Michał never even had a chance to learn to mow properly.

Antek was pretty good, he didn’t mow as evenly as father yet, but it was like he moved the scythe even faster and drew it back even shorter. The thing was, though, he’d get mad at the slightest thing. It was enough for the crop not to be standing up straight, or he’d prick himself on a thistle. He never had the patience to get to the end of the swath in one go. He’d always have to take a break even if just for a minute, look around at the field and the sky, or go get a drink of water from the standpipe, because he was always too hot. But for whatever reason, father never hurried him up. The only thing he’d say occasionally was:

“Don’t drink so much water, it’ll take away your strength.” Or when he heard from the sound Antek’s scythe was making that it had gotten blunt, he’d tell him:

“Sharpen it up a bit.”

This played into Antek’s hands. Because even though he never knew by himself when the blade needed sharpening, he liked sharpening just as well as drinking water or staring at the field and the sky. He was better at sharpening than he was at mowing. The whetstone moved in his hand like he was whipping a cut branch, and sparks would fly from the scythe. Father’s face would light up when Antek was honing his scythe. He’d act worried and warn him in a good-natured way:

“Don’t let those sparks fall on the hay, Antek. We wouldn’t have time to stomp them out. And other fields would go up after ours. Field boundaries don’t mean a thing to fire, what’s mine and what’s yours.”

Maybe Antek was pulling the wool over father’s eyes with all the sharpening. Or father was waiting till Antek grew up and got as strong as he could, then he’d tell him if he’d gotten to be a better mower than me, or the other way around, and what kind of mower he was going to be.

For the while it was obvious the best mower one day would be Stasiek. The first time Stasiek picked up a scythe, right away he planted his feet apart like father did. He spat on his hands like father did. Just like father, he moved evenly, one step after another. He didn’t take a break till he got to the end of the swath. And he was no taller than the rye.

Though what’s the sense in wondering which one of us would have been the best mower. You’d have to live your life and then see. And there never was a harvest all four of us worked together. There’s no telling how it would have been if one of us had been mowing right behind the next one, then the third and the fourth. Michał, Antek, Stasiek, me, and if we’d all mowed the rye or the wheat on the same day, at the same time, under the same sun. Father could have been the judge.

“What was my life even for,” he’d sometimes complain. “Four sons, I thought when death comes I’d ask to be carried out onto the land and you’d all be standing there with your scythes ready to mow together. And I’d say, I’ve had a happy life. Thank you, God.”

Because one Sunday afternoon Stasiek came home from the village and like Antek a few years back, he said he was leaving.

“Where to?” asked father. He thought maybe Stasiek was off to a dance in Bartoszyce or Przewłoka. Maybe he had a girl and he didn’t know how else to say it.

“I’m going away,” he said.

“You’re going away as well?” Father sounded surprised, but he didn’t fully believe it yet. “Away to where?”

“To Poland,” Stasiek answered rudely, though he’d never spoken to father that way before. He always liked spending time with father, going places with him and talking with him.

“Poland,” father repeated, like he couldn’t quite figure out where it was. “That’s a big place. It’s easy to get lost there if you’ve never been. How will you get back?”

“I’m never coming back.”

“Never coming back?” Father was still calm. “So what are you going to do in this Poland of yours?”

“I’m going to build it.” Stasiek’s hackles were up.

“We were supposed to build new cattle sheds,” said father, not giving up. “We already got nearly all the materials. The bricklayers are coming in.”

“Never mind cattle sheds. These days Poland’s more important. You should go read about it, father. There’s an announcement on the firehouse wall. They talked about it on the radio as well. We’ve all signed up, the Tomalaks’ Antek, Bronek Duda, me …”

Father didn’t let Stasiek finish. He jumped up and ran to the door. He stood on the threshold, spread his arms, took hold of the door frame, and in a trembling voice he shouted:

“You’re not going anywhere! I won’t let you! I’ll kill you before I let you go! I’d rather get sent to hell! I’d rather die than let you! Why I am being punished like this, God?”

Stasiek burst into tears. Mother was already in bed, she started snuffling as well. And father just stood there blocking the door with his arms, furious, his hair all messy, his face screwed up, shouting:

“I won’t let you! I won’t allow it! You were supposed to be a farmer! We were supposed to buy more land! God meant for you to stay! Your Poland is here. Nowhere else! Nowhere!”

His hands slowly began to slide down the door frame, though he seemed so angry he was about to rip it out of the wall. Maybe he’d bring the whole house down with it and bury his misfortune. His voice softened. The words came with more and more difficulty, it was like they were getting more helpless. He wasn’t shouting now, just moaning. In the end he sank down on the threshold, lowered his gray head to his chest, and cried.

Mother dragged herself out of bed and slipped her skinny feet into her clogs. She tied her apron on and started busying about.

“You’ll need a couple of new shirts. But don’t wear one longer than a week or it’ll be hard to wash. Maybe you could take your father’s sleeveless jacket. Otherwise you’ll get cold. Away from home a sweater would be better. But you’ve grown out of yours, and there are holes in the elbows. Or we could buy something for you and send it on. You’d just have to write and tell us where you are. Here, you can have Antek’s old winter socks. They’re perfectly fine, I’ll just darn the heels for you. They might laugh at you if you wore footcloths. I’m giving you this little pillow so you’ll have something to lay your head on. Maybe you should take half a loaf of bread? Your own bread is always your own. You never know what you’ll get out there. Here’s a couple heads of garlic. If you catch cold, chop it up fine and spread it on a slice of bread. And here’s some onion, if you get hungry you can fry it up or just eat it raw with some bread. There’s a piece of bacon fat in the pantry, you can take that too. We’ll be fine. I ought to give you a pat of butter, but I haven’t got anything to make it with, one cow’s calving and the other one’s not giving milk, we barely get enough to add cream to the soup. I’m giving you some sage in case you get the toothache. Here’s horsetail for if you get a nosebleed, it’ll stop it right away. Here’s some linden flower. And chamomile for your throat. Make an infusion and gargle with it if it gets sore. We can’t give you any money because we don’t have any ourselves. Unless we borrowed some. Or Szymek, you give him some if you’ve got a few zlotys. We’ll make it up to you. And here’s a prayer book. Pray once in a while if things get bad for you. Always go to mass on Sunday. I’ll pray for you here as well. Write to tell us how things are for you out there in the world. And come back when I die.”

It was a good six months before he wrote. We were already thinking something had happened to him. Mother was so worried her health got even worse. Father was all dejected, he didn’t have the will to do anything. When Stasiek finally did write it was only a couple of sentences, that everything was fine, he was working and studying, how was mother’s health, and that he’d visit soon though he didn’t know exactly when. But he never did visit. He just sent a photograph. He looked gaunt and skinny, he was wearing a cap like a forage cap. He hardly looked like the old Stasiek at all. Mother had me wedge the picture in the frame of the Our Lady that hung over her bed, and she gazed at him as she faded from day to day.

Him and Antek, the two of them only came back for mother’s funeral. And they left the same day, after the burial, because they didn’t have time. And after that it was always the same. One of them or both of them would visit, but there was never time to sit and talk or ask them how things were, what they were up to, they were always in a hurry. And right away they’d start arguing with me about any little thing, that the table was still the same one from the war, that I’d not put a wooden floor in, even that the lightbulb was covered in fly droppings, one thing on top of another, as if their old home was somehow painful to them. Yet it was still their home.

It was the same when they came about the tomb. They shouted and protested, and I didn’t say a thing. In the end I took the sacks they’d brought for the flour and went to the pantry to fill them. I didn’t have anything to give them except for flour. Then they left.

I didn’t know how to tell Chmiel that we’d be putting up a smaller tomb now. We’d already settled on eight places. Chmiel had measured it all and done the calculations. I’d even given him a down payment. I’d been holding off on the final decision just in case, till they wrote back and said yes. I didn’t want to go ahead without their say-so. The tomb was for them as well. If they were going to be buried in it they had a right to decide. I only had to go and tell Chmiel they’d agreed.

Whether they say yes or no, they have to be reckoned with, I’d said to myself. They were good boys one time. Maybe the outside world had just gotten to them a bit. When they came they were wearing suits and overcoats and hats, it all looked brand-new. Stasiek even had an umbrella. Antek was wearing eyeglasses and he had a little leather case. It was no surprise they weren’t in any hurry to die. But if not now, then maybe another time, or maybe when they got old. Because when people get old you can never tell. When death’s staring you in the face even a college graduate becomes a person again, so does an engineer. At those times everything falls off life like leaves dropping from a tree in the fall, and you’re left like a bare trunk. At those times you’re not drawn to the outside world but back to the land where you were born and grew up, because that’s your only place on this earth. In that land, even a tomb is like a home for you.

So I went and told Chmiel they’d agreed.