Stone Upon Stone

V. Mother

They happened to be looking for someone to run wedding ceremonies at the district administration. In theory the district secretary was supposed to do weddings, but since the end of the war no more than three or four couples had gotten married in the registry office, mostly people still had a church wedding. Though legally a registry office marriage was just as valid as a church one, and you could be just as happy or unhappy after a civil wedding as a church one. Also, when you had a registry office wedding it was easier to get a horse through UNRRA, or building materials, or grain for sowing. And you could get divorced, the next day even, if things didn’t work out. Not like in the church, where that was an end of it, because what God hath joined together let no man put asunder, so you have to stay with some awful bitch for the rest of your life. Quite a few of them lived exactly like that, cat and dog, they’d fight, have running feuds, when one of them pulled left the other would pull right, but they’d have to keep on living together all the way till one of them died before the other. Though if you ask me, a life like that is actually against God and God ought to break it up. I mean, it can happen that the wrong two people end up together, no one can know ahead of time who’s meant for who, because destinies get mixed up as well, destinies are like days, you should only say they’re good after the sun’s gone down. That was another reason people preferred registry office weddings.

The first ones to have a civil wedding, right after the front passed through, were Florek Denderys and Bronka Makuła. The district administration gave them a better wedding than a lot of rich folk get, even the ones that have a church wedding. They put a flag on the administration building, they decorated the walls with fir branches, they laid down a carpet a good ten yards long leading up to the entrance, and over the doorway they hung a sign in cutout letters saying: The District Administration Congratulates the Happy Couple. On top of that they were awarded several thousand zlotys. Florek was given a length of material for a suit. Bronka got cloth for a dress, she got a horse, a cow, and baby clothes, because there was one on the way, and an alarm clock to wake them up for work if they ever overslept. Except they had to leave for the West soon after, because people in the village wouldn’t leave them alone, they kept calling Bronka a whore and saying the kid was a bastard, though it hadn’t yet been born. So after them, for a long time there weren’t any takers for a registry office wedding.

The mayor or the district secretary even visited anyone that they heard was getting married and tried to persuade them to do it at the registry office, they’d say that at the registry office you didn’t need to announce the banns, you didn’t need bridesmaids and veils, you just write it in the registry book and that’s that. Also, it was easier to get a horse, building materials, everything was easier. In the church the priest charged the earth. True, wedding vows were supposed to be before God. But has anyone ever seen God? Only in a picture. How can you be sure it’s him? Even before the war there were a few unbelievers in the village. Kruk for instance, he’d never taken confession in his life till his old lady and his daughters made him. And at the manor houses there was always a strike going on somewhere or other. Mostly at harvesttime, or sometimes during the potato lifting. Wicek Chrząszcz from over in Poddębice even did six months in prison for agitation, because he got drunk at the harvest festival and threatened the village elder he’d get hung from a tree the moment justice would arrive. But now it had arrived, what next? The folk from the county offices came asking how many couples had tied the knot at the district administration. And the answer was, none. What do you mean, none? Aren’t people getting married in your district? Well, sure they are, but everyone’s doing it at the church. So then, this district of yours is going to have to pony up if people there are refusing to understand the new times. The taxes’ll get upped, or they’ll maybe stop supplying coal. There’s always something you can stop giving.

And on the other side, every Sunday the priest would rage against those registry office weddings from the pulpit, he’d say they were godless, threaten folks with hellfire and eternal damnation. And anyone that was thinking of getting married at the registry office, he’d tell them, don’t you dare, otherwise you’ll get expelled from the church, and the Lord God would expel them from humankind. The worst part was that he poked fun at the district administration all he could, he said it was no house of God, that ever since the district administration has been there it was the place you go to pay taxes, and that wedding vows are a sacrament, not taxes, one of the seven holy sacraments, that they were established by God, not by earthly powers, because earthly powers come from Satan. And a good many pig sheds are cleaner than at the district administration, they haven’t had their walls whitewashed since before the war, and when you go in there the floor’s so dirty your shoes stick to it, and the officials there do nothing but smoke cigarettes and chase around after the secretaries. So then, young man and young lady, try going and swearing to be true to each other in that Sodom and Gomorrah. What will a vow like that really be worth?

It might have been because of what the priest was saying that they prepared a separate room in the administration building, they whitewashed the walls, decorated it with flowers, cleaned the floor, put in a new desk and chairs, laid a carpet, and started looking for an official whose only job would be to give those weddings. Though some people said an order had come down from above.

I ran into Rożek one time when I was transporting cabbage home from our patch. He was mayor in those days. He asks me:

“How would you feel about working at the district administration? You could be the one to give weddings. You’d hardly have any work, because no one wants to get married at the registry office. You’d get a regular salary. And you were already in the police once, you’d be one of ours.”

I thought to myself, why not, I’d rather sit behind a desk than cart cabbage. I wasn’t sure I believed in God either, so what did I care about the priest trying to scare people. And at least I’d be able to wear decent clothes, because all my clothes were starting to get ragged. When there was a dance I didn’t have anything to wear. Not to mention I had no money to buy drinks, or sometimes even for admission. My officer’s boots were still in okay shape, but not many people wore officer’s boots anymore. The war was further and further away, and now everyone wore shoes and suits, and the fashion was for pants as wide as skirts and coats big as sacks, as if people were getting as much freedom as they could after the war. Me in my britches and officer’s boots, I was like something from a different world. To the point that after I left the police I started wondering what to do with myself. Because father spent every penny he had on building new cattle sheds, and even when he gave me money for cigarettes he’d always complain, you smoke like a chimney.

I’d left the police because I was supposed to become the commanding officer, but instead they chose this snot-faced kid that hadn’t even been in the resistance, he’d just finished school. Plus he thought he could fix the world’s problems in the space of a week. But it’s easier to create a world in a week than fix it. Especially a world that’s been through a war. And instead of carrying on looking for guns, because people were still shooting at each other, or at least guarding the freight trains carrying cement that would stand in the sidings till half their load had been thieved, he went after Franek Gwiżdż for brewing moonshine, and he had his whole farm searched from top to bottom. After that Gwiżdż says to me, you son of a bitch, you came here drinking all the time, did I ever take a red cent from you, I’d even stick a bottle in your pocket for the road because I thought you were one of us. You just wait and see if you ever get vodka from me again, cause I’m still gonna make it, there’s not a fucking thing you can do to stop me. The Germans could kiss my ass, and you can too. Luckily he hid it all underground somewhere so all we found were the traces of a fire pit in the elder bushes behind the barn. But he explained that by saying he sometimes boiled potatoes for the pigs back there when it was too windy in the yard. So there I was, neither here nor there, actually nowhere, with nothing but work in the fields from dawn till dusk.

I even thought about maybe taking up haircutting again. True, there was a barber in the village now, Jaskóła’s brother-in-law. He’d moved here not long ago from the city because things hadn’t gone so well for him there, and he opened a place in Niezgódka’s outbuilding. Though before the war, when he married Kryśka Jaskóła, he was supposed to become a captain of horse in the uhlans. But no one brought that up. All sorts of changes happened to people through those years, what did it matter if a captain of horse became a barber. Though the farmers complained that he had a hand like a butcher, he’d put it on your head and it was like he was resting it on the block, you had to hold your neck firmly so he wouldn’t break it. On top of that he was a tight-lipped son of a gun. He’d often not say a single word the whole time he was cutting your hair. What kind of barber is that? You don’t go to the barber just to get your hair cut or get a shave, you go to sit and have a chat and listen to stories.

There were supposed to be buses that would start serving some of the villages and I thought about perhaps getting a job as a bus conductor. The work’s not too tough, you ride around and sell tickets, and people get on and get off, people you know, people you don’t, but the whole time you’re among people. And among people life’s always more enjoyable, especially if there’s a fair and the bus is packed, you can have a joke, shout at folks, when there are people all sorts of things can happen. What can happen in the fields? A hare runs past, a lark starts singing, clouds come and it’ll begin to rain?

Though on the quiet, most of all I was counting on Michał, that maybe he’d come visit finally, and he could give me some advice or maybe find me a job where he was. Because to tell the truth, I wasn’t that fired up about being either a barber or a conductor. With both of those jobs I’d still have to work on the land every spare moment after work. And instead of making my life easier, I’d be worn out. Besides, at that time Stasiek was still at home and he was meant for the land. But for some reason Michał never came or got in touch, though he’d promised he would the last time he was home. He was even going to come stop for a while. He was going to take some leave. Because the last time, he only just swung by for a moment. How long had he stayed? Less than half a day.

We’d finished lunch and we were just sitting around the table, me and father were smoking while mother washed the dishes. It was Sunday. All of a sudden a black limousine pulls up outside the window. Mother took fright. Who are they coming to see? It was us. Jesus and Mary, it’s Michał! Lord in heaven, Michał! Son! We thought something had happened to you! We didn’t hear a word from you all these years. Then there was the war. So many people died, and now after the war they’re still dying. So you’re here! He was looking very smart, he wore an overcoat and a hat, leather gloves, a cherry-red scarf, the driver of the limousine followed him in with two suitcases. Father’s voice trembled — Michał? Tears were rolling down mother’s face. The cases were so heavy the driver staggered as he crossed the threshold, then he put them down in the middle of the room. But Michał told the man to go wait for him in the car, because they had to be heading back before long.

A whole swarm of kids gathered around the limousine like flies on shit, they touched it, patted it, stared through the windows. The driver just sat there stony-faced. In the end father went out and shooed them away:

“Stand back there. Stop patting it, it’s not a cow. You’ll scratch it if you’re not careful.”

Older people stopped to look as well, wondering who’d come to visit the Pietruszkas. No one would believe it was Michał. It was only when father sent Stasiek out to tell people it was him. No one in the village had ever seen a car like that. Before the war the squire had a limousine, but it was only half the size of this one and it had an open roof, this one was all closed in and it had windows like a house. One time the bishop came for a confirmation in a limousine, but it couldn’t have held a candle to this one, even though it was all decorated and the bishop was in his purple.

The first thing Michał did was put his arms around mother and hold her for a long time, don’t cry, mama, come on now, don’t cry. Us he kissed just twice, once on each cheek. Then right away he started opening the cases. He’d brought all kinds of things for mother and father, though us brothers got our share as well. Me, I had socks, a tie, a scarf, some shaving soap. Mother got some material for a dress, a headscarf, needles and thread, cinnamon and pepper. Father, tobacco and cigarette papers and some winter gloves. Antek got a penknife with two blades and a corkscrew, Stasiek a mouth organ, and both of them got a shirt. Plus there were other things.

He said he was sorry to only come for a short visit, but he promised the next time he’d stay longer, maybe he’d even come for the harvest, because he’d not had a scythe in his hands all these years and he felt like doing some mowing, he wondered if he’d still know how. Today he’d just come by to see how we were all doing, how we’d gotten through the war. Since the end of the war he’d kept meaning to come see us, but something more important always got in the way. He’d not even had any time off till now, but he’d be back, for sure he’d be back.

There were some dumplings and broth left over from dinner, mother wanted to heat it up for him, but he said no, he wasn’t hungry, and besides they’d had something to eat on the way. He only drank some milk, because mother had just done the afternoon milking and it was still warm. He knocked a whole mugful back in one, it must have been more than a pint, and he actually gave a sigh and said it’d been a long time since he’d drunk real milk like that, straight from the cow. He even seemed to be made sad by the milk, because he fell to thinking for a moment. Mother said maybe he’d like some more, or she could pour some off into a bottle and he could drink it on the way back.

He laughed, as if about the bottle, though there wasn’t really anything funny about it. When he was apprenticed to a tailor and he’d come home every Sunday, mother always put milk in a bottle and he took it with him. But right away he hugged mother and kissed her on the forehead as if to say sorry for having laughed like that.

I found it hard to get used to the idea that this was Michał. Maybe it was because he’d dropped by so unexpectedly, plus he was about to leave again right away. It was another thing that it had been donkey’s years since I’d last seen him, just before the war. That time too he came out of the blue, because it wasn’t a Sunday like usual but the middle of the week, a Wednesday or Thursday. That time he’d been kind of bitter or sad. Father and mother both asked him, what’s up, son? Tell us. But it was like he’d lost his tongue, he just sat there thinking and thinking, and it was only when he was leaving that he said there was going to be a war and not to worry about him if he didn’t visit. Then later, after the war had started already, he came by wanting to see me because he had some important business, but he’d never gotten around to telling me what it had been.

I even thought about asking what he’d wanted from me that time during the war. Course, the war was over and there was no sense in going back to it. Still, it would give us something to talk about. But he looked at his watch, got up, and said it was time for him to go. All I said was:

“I thought we’d have a chance to talk, and here you are rushing off.”

“We will talk one day,” he said. “I’ll visit for longer. Maybe I’ll even come stay when I’ve got some leave. We’ll see.”

That time during the war we’d missed each other. I was in the woods with the resistance, though he must have been doing something as well, because he’d come and gone at night. He waited almost a week to see if I’d show up. He wouldn’t sleep in the house, instead he stayed in the barn, he dug himself a hole in the hay. He didn’t go outside at all, they brought him food to the barn at dusk each day. If anything happened, father or mother or Antek was supposed to go out into the yard and call the dog loudly three times — Burek! Burek! Burek! This was his first visit since then. After so many years you forget someone, even your own brother.

Though when you’re a brother, it’s for your whole life. And whatever happens to brothers, you can’t change the fact that they’re brothers. Of all my brothers he was the closest to me, closer than Antek or Stasiek. We’d gotten into all kinds of scrapes together when we were kids, we’d slept in the same bed. And I always defended him whenever anyone tried to hurt him, even if it was me against everyone else. Because even though he was three years older than me, I was a better fighter. That balanced things out. Sometimes I’d actually feel older than him, because I was tougher too.

He hadn’t changed that much in appearance. Only his eyes had gotten kind of sharper, so it was hard to look straight into them, it was like he was cutting you down with them, while before his eyes had been gentle and blue. But everyone’s eyes changed in the war, with some folks out of fear, others from lack of sleep, most from crying. On top of that those eyes of his darted to and fro like mice being chased. He wasn’t even able to keep them on mother for long, though mother herself couldn’t get enough of looking at him. She kept saying, Michał, Michał. Just the one time he got some warmth in his eyes, when a couple of chicks came out from under the brood hen in the basket. He even picked one of them up, but he put it down again right away as if it had scalded his hand. At another moment he lost himself in thought staring at the Last Supper, like he was remembering how he was supposed to become a priest.

I found him strange, sort of in a shell. If I hadn’t known it was him, my brother Michał, I might not have felt it was my brother. I might have thought he was some distant cousin on father’s side or mother’s that we’d never met before but we’d just heard there was such a person, though no one knew what he did in the world, only that he existed. And here he’d shown up one Sunday afternoon unannounced, like a bolt out of the blue, and no one knew what to say, and he wouldn’t even have anything to eat, if he’d eaten something it might have brought him closer to us. But he’d barely come in when he was hurrying off again, like the wind had blown him here by chance.

So there was no time to ask him what his job was, what he’d been up to, how things were going for him. You couldn’t just ask him straight out when you hadn’t known the first thing about him all those years. It was better to keep on not knowing anything. And the truth is, it’s not right to barge into someone else’s life right from the get-go, even if it is your own brother and son. I mean, who knows if you won’t touch on something painful? Or even if it’s still the same brother and son? To begin with you’d need to sit down quietly and stay there at least till the sun sets outside the window, to get used to that big gap of years. It’d be like taking a plow to land that’s not been plowed in a long time. After that you might figure out where to begin, and begin from the beginning, the way God began the world.

The only thing father asked was whether there’d be collective farms here. But he didn’t even answer that question, because the moment he was done unpacking the suitcases and handing out his presents, right away he started asking questions about what was going on with us here, and he asked and asked the whole time till he left. We couldn’t get a word in edgewise. It was like he was thirsting to know everything. Like he hadn’t come at all to see us after being away all those years, but that he was trying to grab as much as he could from us and take it with him. He hardly sat in one place for a moment, he kept standing up and pacing around, and there wasn’t a single thing he wasn’t interested in. He kept pulling things out of his memory like he was taking them out of a sack, anything he remembered, and he kept asking and asking. Sometimes he didn’t even wait for the end of the answer before he asked his next question.

As for whether we were all well, mother, father, us brothers, only mother managed to tell him that the stabbing pains in her chest were getting worse. He nodded, then right away he asked how many acres we’d gotten in the land reform, which office we’d dealt with, whether anyone had tried to scare us into not taking it, then after that how things had been here during the war, who had died then, how our cattle sheds had burned down and whether we were planning to build new ones, whether they’d be wooden or brick, whether we’d roof them in thatch like before or put up a tiled roof, how many cows we had, two or more, whether we had a calf, whether we were planning to save it and rear it, whether we had the same horse or a different one, whether they were thinking of bringing electricity to the village, why the lampshade was so sooty, whether we used kerosene in the lamps or some other poor quality stuff, whether Franciszek the sacristan was still alive, whether the priest was the same or a different one and did he mix God and politics in his sermons, which farmers carried the baldachin over him on Corpus Christi these days, why it was still the same rich ones, whether the winter had been hard this year and had there been a lot of snow, whether the river had burst its banks in the spring and who we took water from when the spring flooded, whether we weren’t thinking about digging a well, how the orchard was, whether that old masztan plum tree was still standing behind the barn, what had happened to it, whether father had planted any new seedlings, whether old Spodzieja was still mending shoes, so who’d taken over after he died, and the dog, was it still Burek, so what was this one called, Strudel, he laughed, Strudel, Strudel, and why had we given it such an odd name, whether mother kept a lot of chickens and geese, whether she had any trouble with polecats or hawks, or maybe with the neighbors, whether that old willow was still standing by the river, whether the blue tits still nested in it, where the girls and the young men went swimming these days, was it still down by Błach’s place, was the water deep, what had happened to the tin crucifix with the broken arm that had always stood on the table, where we’d gotten such a fancy table, why there was nothing in our windows when there’d always been lots of flowers on the windowsill, whether we’d planted garlic this year, whether it had been a good year for garlic, and for onions, cabbage, carrots, beets, and that mother must have whitewashed the house recently because it smelled of lime, whether her cheese pierogies were still as good fried up with sour cream, did we do our threshing with a treadmill or still in the old way with a flail, whether old Mrs. Waliszka was still alive and did her son Mietek still drink the way he used to, whether the storks still came and nested on our barn, why father was wheezing like that, did he have to smoke so much, whether mother still baked bread or did we eat store-bought, had there been mines in our fields, whether our crop had been good this year, then he asked about each one separately, how was the rye, how was the wheat, how was the barley, how were the oats, where they were grown and how much there’d been of them, and why we didn’t plant millet, whether people had stopped eating it in porridge, and what had happened to the steps that the stones were just lying there, whether I was still in the fire brigade and whether we had a motor pump, whether we had the same old fire engine, where they held dances nowadays, was it still in the firehouse, did people still have fights the way they used to or was there less of that now, and which grade was Stasiek in, was he a good student, did he have the books and notebooks he needed, whether there were partridges in the fields, or hares, or foxes, why the door to the hallway creaked so loud that when he was coming in he thought it was trying to stop him, who the mayor was now and whether we’d gotten our fair share of rationed goods, whether father wasn’t thinking of keeping bees, a couple of hives at least, if he did that him and his wife would come for honey. You’re married? He just nodded and right away he asked how Stefka Magiera was, whether she’d gotten married and who to, was she happy, was she still so good-looking, who had gone to high school from the village, who’d moved away and who was new, whether Mrs. Kasperek that used to teach Polish was still alive, who taught arithmetic now, who taught singing, whether there were still so many crows in the poplar trees up behind the mill, whether the boys still used to climb up there to knock down their nests, and who was best at it, because it used to be Szymek, and why were the tiles on the stove bulging out like that, were we still arguing with the Prażuchs over the field boundary, how had it happened that we’d stopped, but he wouldn’t listen to the answers, he just kept asking more and more questions, did people still go sledging on Pociej’s hill in the winter, did Pociej not chase them off, did the carol singers still go around into the New Year, who played Herod, and the devil, and who played death, and was the place by the willow tree at the footbridge still haunted, or maybe the devil had gone by now, whether Michał’s godfather Skubida was still alive, so why was he killed, and his godmother Mrs. Kaliszyn, and did the swallows still nest under our eaves, how many nests were there, whether we joined forces with other people during the harvest or if we just brought in our own crop, why we wouldn’t buy a clock, why mother was so thin, why father had gone so gray, why Antek, why Stasiek, why me, why this and that and the other, why, why, why?

In the end father couldn’t take it anymore and he interrupted all the questions:

“We’ve told you everything, what else do you want from us?”

Mother pleaded with him:

“You might at least sit down and tell us what’s going on with you.”

It was like he suddenly woke up. He looked at his watch and said it was time, he had to be going. Right away he shook my hand, because I was sitting closest to him, then father’s, Antek’s, Stasiek’s. He only said goodbye with a handshake, like we’d see each other again tomorrow, the day after at the latest, or like he was just someone we knew, not our brother and our son. Plus, while he was shaking hands he was looking somewhere else like he wasn’t thinking about saying goodbye at all, but about God only knows what. It was only when he finally said goodbye to mother, and the poor old thing started crying again, he took her head in his hands, looked in her eyes and said:

“Come on, don’t cry, mama. I’ll come again, for sure I will. Maybe I’ll even bring her. You have to meet her.”

And after that we didn’t hear from him again.

A year or so later mother sent him a letter, but he didn’t write back. She sent another one and he still didn’t reply. She was going to write again after a bit, but father got mad and said there was no point in writing all those letters, that he should answer the other ones first. Or maybe he was up to his ears in work, and she was just distracting him with all those letters of hers. When there’s work, everyone knows it needs doing. Even here, when harvesttime comes you don’t have time to so much as scratch your backside. Maybe it’s his harvesttime. When it’s over he’ll come visit without writing a letter even. He was gone all those years and he came back then. It’s not long till Christmas, he’s sure to come for Christmas, maybe both of them, I mean he said they’d both come. Mother, you’d better start thinking about what cakes to bake. Letters won’t do him any good, you can’t make the days pass any faster with letters, let alone hurrying up harvesttime.

But father turned out to be mistaken, Michał never came either that Christmas or the next. Mother kept writing, though in secret now. One day I went into the barn to tear off some hay for the horse and I saw her kneeling at a stool by the back doors, at the far end of the threshing floor. Her glasses were perched on her nose and she was writing something. She was startled and she slipped the hand with the pen under her apron. It took her a moment to look up.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said relieved. “I came here to pray. It’s hard to concentrate in the house, here’s it’s nice and quiet.”

“Couldn’t you go into the orchard? It’s just as quiet out there, and there’s more light,” I said, staring at her and at the same time at the inkwell, that she hadn’t managed to hide.

“There’s plenty of light in here from the holes in the walls,” she answered.

Another time I was going up to the attic to fetch something, I put my head through the trapdoor opening, and here I see mother sitting by a crack of light from the ridgepole with the chopping board on her lap, writing. I climbed back down as quietly as I could, making sure not to step on the creaky rung. It was the same after she was confined to bed, I’d often find her writing those letters, leaning over the stool with the medicines on it that stood by the bed. I’d try not to see, or leave right away pretending I’d just remembered something I had to do. Though I don’t know who took her letters to the post office. Antek and Stasiek had left home by then. The other people who came to the house, I couldn’t see her trusting any of them with her letters. Maybe it was father? He’d been opposed to her writing at one time, so perhaps now he was embarrassed to be seen with them and he mailed them when I was out. Because ever since it was just the two of them and me at home, he stuck to mother like a little child. He would have spent all his time sitting by her bedside telling her stories from the old days. Sometimes he didn’t even tell stories, he just sat there like he was half asleep. Time was, he’d be the one chasing everyone out to work. Now mother had to keep reminding him about the jobs that needed done. Even the most everyday things. That he had to water the cows, or cut chaff, or lay down straw in the cattle barn, or even give the dog its dinner.

“Come on, get on with it,” she’d often pester him.

But he’d just sit there waving her words away like pesky flies.

“What are you worried about? They’ll get their water, the chaff’ll get cut, the straw will get put down, the dog’ll get its dinner. You just stay where you are, you’re sick.” And he’d go on sitting there.

Harvesttime would be right around the corner and he’d sit there like winter was coming.

“The rye must be ripe already,” mother would remind him. “You might go take a look, see if it’s time to mow.”

“No way it’s ripe yet. Last year at this time it was still green. When you’re stuck in bed you think things are ripe already. But time in the fields is different from human time.”

When he finally had to get up and go, because she wouldn’t give him any peace, he was angry, he’d mutter something under his breath. Sometimes, out of irritation he’d grab the cat where it was curled up by the stove and chuck it outside.

“Go catch mice, damn you, instead of lying about indoors.”

Or he’d clang the empty buckets because there wasn’t any water and he was thirsty. One time he even kicked the door because the damn thing was creaking like it was ill.

Mother was finding it harder and harder to leave her bed. She’d only get up to cook something from time to time or to throw down some grain for the chickens when father forgot. When she did the laundry, she had to pull a stool up to the tub and wash the clothes sitting down. Father would heat the water, fill the tub then empty it afterwards, go down to the river to rinse the washing, and hang it out in the yard or up in the attic. It was only when Antek or Stasiek visited that she’d get better for the time they were here. She’d kill a chicken, cook up some broth, make dumplings, wash their dirty things that they brought with them. But after they left she’d get even sicker, and for a week or longer she wouldn’t even get out of bed. Her heart hurt more and more.

“Death’s on its way for me, you can tell,” she’d complain to father.

Father would reassure her that if death was coming it would come for him first, and he didn’t feel it coming yet. He gave her a rosary and told her to pray, that that would soon make her feel better. He’d take the prayer book as well and sit by her, but he wasn’t so good at reading and he’d sometimes ask her for help.

“Read what it says here, this part. I can’t see it properly.”

And mother would read:

‘ “Conceived without the stain of original sin …” ’

“That’s how you write ‘conceived’?” he’d say surprised.

She’d often get annoyed with him for interrupting her the whole time, she’d tell him to pray from memory, because what kind of praying was it when he didn’t know what was written there. He explained that when he prayed from memory the prayers got muddled up with his other thoughts and God got lost in the thoughts, and after that he couldn’t find him. He didn’t take offense when she got angry, and actually she wasn’t really that angry. Maybe they just grumbled at each other like that instead of sighing and complaining about being left alone. Or they had no need to talk any differently, because what was there to talk about, they’d already told each other everything there was to tell. Also, why use the same words when hundreds of thousands of them have already been spoken all through their life, and life had turned against the words anyway?

Sometimes I felt sorry for them. But I rarely went straight back home after work. I’d usually go out, either drinking or with girls. I’d often not get back till midnight, when they were long asleep. Many a time I’d just be going to bed in the morning as they were getting up. After you’ve been drinking, when you come back home you sometimes have trouble finding the door. And a drunk man, as well as being drunk, he’s a stranger even to his own kith and kin. They’d talk to me but my head would be humming, buzzing, I’d barely hear what they were saying. Or I’d have to remind myself who they were, that they were my father and mother, and that it was me they were telling off. Mother, like you’d expect, she’d be sighing and pleading with me, but at least quietly:

“Oh, Szymek, please, don’t drink, you need to change. Change, son, stop drinking.”

But father hadn’t forgiven me for going to work in the registry office at the district administration, and the moment he saw me having trouble making it across the threshold he’d come down on me like a ton of bricks, that I was bringing shame on the family, that this had been a God-fearing family for generations, that they were born in God and died in God, that one of them had even planned to travel to the Holy Land, one of them had bought a picture for the church, one of them had held the baldachin over the bishop when he came to visit, Michał would have been a priest if we’d only been able to afford it, but I was a disgrace. I had no education, I had no holy orders, I had no God, and there I was giving ungodly weddings.

“I don’t know what we did to deserve this. The devil’s got you in his clutches, that much is clear, you monster.”

“Well if you can’t go with God you have to go with the devil, father,” I’d answer him out of spite. “Besides, what do we know about the devil? No more than we know about God. Maybe God didn’t insist on having the whole world, maybe he divided it up with the devil. What do we know? All we do is plow and plant and mow over and over, God’s nowhere close and the devil’s far away as well.”

“But people are laughing at us, damn you! You wanted a priest in the family, you got one, that’s what they’re saying. You just need to buy him a cassock.”

“I don’t need a cassock, and people can kiss my ass. What are they, jealous that I work for the government?”

“Government, my eye. You’re a bad seed. Maybe you should start giving confession? Baptizing children? Burying the dead? Get yourself a censer. Though you’d have to put vodka in it — holy water would burn you. Why God is doing this to us, I’ll never know. What have we done? What have we done?”

“Stop doing all those things, son,” mother would say to back him up. “You’ll drive us to our graves. We’ve little enough time left as it is. Think about what you’re doing. You ought to get married.”

“How’s he supposed to get married?” father would say sarcastically. “Priests aren’t allowed to marry. They have to marry other people. Besides, who’d marry a no-good like him? He was so smart, he found a way to get out of working the land. You just wait, you good-for-nothing, you’ll come back to the land.”

Father’s predictions went in one ear and out the other. I mean, why would I go back to the land. I wasn’t wed to it and I didn’t owe it anything, and at the registry office I didn’t even work a quarter as much as I’d have had to on the land, because it was like Mayor Rożek had said, there was hardly any work. No one came to get married there, so all I did was sit at my desk and stare at the ceiling or go look out the window, chat with people that were waiting in front of the building, or read the newspapers. But you can’t fill the day with newspapers, even a day divided in two like at the administration. Often I’d get a tad bored. Once I was done reading I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. And so it went till four o’clock came around. Also, to begin with no one seemed to visit from the other offices. Maybe they were afraid of me, or were they deliberately keeping their distance? Only the district secretary would sometimes come by, his little eyes darting into the corners of the room, and he’d ask:

“How’s it going there, pal, still no takers? You need to make more of an effort.” Then he was gone.

Sometimes Mayor Rożek would call me in when he had a speech he needed to make at a farmers’ meeting, or to the children at some school.

“Here, Pietruszka, read this through. If you can think of anything smart to add, write it in. You were in the police, you know how things are. It shouldn’t be too antichurch, cause otherwise my old lady’ll chase me out the house with holy water if she finds out, plus the farmers might take offense. And correct any mistakes.”

Then he’d have me make a clean copy in good handwriting. Because he could read more or less okay, but his handwriting looked like chicken scratches. He couldn’t even sign his own name properly. The district secretary showed him several times how to do it in a single go with a flourish underneath instead of printing one letter after another like a schoolboy, because no one’s going to respect a signature like that. So whenever you went into his office you’d see piles of papers covered in practice flourishes.

“See, I’m learning. But I’m never going to get the hang of it, I can see that. Your hand would have to be born all over again. It wasn’t like that for the mayors before the war. Back then, Kurzeja or Zadruś or whoever would just put three crosses and the thing was signed. Nowadays you can’t get away with that. The nation’s educated. Back then, what did they have to think about? Filling a hole in the road. Now there’s politics as well.”

It was hardly surprising. He’d been a wagon driver at the manor all his life till suddenly he became mayor, his hand was used to holding a whip, not a pen. But when the speech went well he’d always bring a half-bottle. And when it went badly he’d bring one also, to get over his disappointment.

“It didn’t go off well, Pietruszka, it really didn’t. There were barely two or three of them clapping, the rest just stood there with their heads down, staring like wolves. It wasn’t like when I was a driver. You’d sit on your ass and the horses would pull the wagon. Plus, back then there were masters and so there was someone to rebel against. Who are you supposed to rebel against these days? Maybe if I rose higher, cause it’s always easier when you’re high up. The lowest place is always the worst, Pietruszka, and it’s always worst nearest the earth. I’m telling you, a mayor’s life is crap. And there I was thinking it’d be all sweetness. What do you reckon, maybe I could learn to drive a tractor? There aren’t going to be any horses anymore. The horses around the villages are just gonna die off and then there’ll be no more horses. The future is tractors.”

But he didn’t have time to learn. They shot him not long after that, no one knew why. He was going home on his bicycle like he did every day, because he lived in the old farmhands’ quarters in Bartoszyce, and something went wrong with the gears on his bike, so he was pushing it through the woods. In the morning they found him on the road, he had three bullets in his chest and a piece of paper pinned to his jacket: Death to the red stooges. His bicycle was lying on top of him.

The first wedding I gave was for Stach Magdziarz from Lisice and Irka Bednarek from Kolonie. Irka wore a kind of green outfit, Stach had a brown pinstriped suit. Stach’s mother was getting on, Irka worked at the mill. Stach hadn’t gone to church since the war because the priest wouldn’t give him absolution. It was because one time the priest had been on his way to administer last rites to a sick man, and here there was a fire at Sapiela’s place in Kolonie. All the horses were out working in the fields and there was nothing to hitch to the fire engine. So without a second thought Stach flagged down the priest’s wagon and hitched his horses to the fire engine, and off they went. It wasn’t such a big sin, because the sick man was only at the end of the village and it wouldn’t have hurt the priest to walk the rest of the way.

The mayor came, and the district secretary, and two other officials, to see how I did with my first wedding. I felt a bit awkward and a couple of times I got the words wrong, but it went more or less okay. Afterwards, Stach and I went to the pub and got so drunk we passed out. Because Irka would only have one drink, we couldn’t convince her to have another. She sat there like she was all worried and kept asking over and over whether they were going to be happy now they were married. I had to swear at least three times that they would be. I even stood them a bottle out of my own pocket, for that happiness of theirs. And they were happy, till Stach got ulcers in his stomach and died.

Before you could say Jack Robinson I’d figured out how to give weddings, and soon marrying people was no harder than eating a slice of bread for me. Like I’d been marrying people since God knows when. Though really, what was the big deal. To start off you said a few official words. Do you, Piotr, Jan, Władysław, Kazimierz, take Helena, Wanda, Bronisława, or whoever to be your lawful wedded wife, do you swear to love and honor her till death do you part. I do. And do you, Helena, Wanda, Bronisława, and so on. I do. Then you put the rings on their fingers, if they had rings. You said that they were married in the eyes of the law. Then you added something from yourself. I wish you a life spread with roses, and you should respect one another, because from this moment on you’re the closest one of all for each other.

I always spoke from the heart and the words pretty much flowed of their own accord, so whenever I was giving a marriage everyone in the offices would set aside their work and come down to watch and listen, even if it was through the half-open door. When the window in the room was open as well, it’d be lined with the heads of people listening outside, like flowerpots. Because the people that had come to the administration to get their business done, they wanted to see it as well. May you always help each other in hard times and in misfortune. May you never show anger, but always treat each other well, like land and sky. May you never be the source of worries for one another, because life itself will put enough worries in your way. Don’t ever curse one another, don’t insult each other, and may neither of you ever raise a hand against the other. If you do, may that hand wither. And not just because that’s what people always say, but because you, husband, and you, wife, together you’re like the hands of a single body, her the left, you the right. Your body is one. If one of you is struck down by illness, or is in pain, or if one of you weeps tears, it’s all yours in common. You, wife, you’ll never be able to say that you’re not the one in pain. Nor you, husband, that you’re not the one weeping. And may you both remember that you’ll not be young forever. How much of life is youth? The tiniest part, less than springtime out of the whole year. Your woman will get wrinkles, you’ll become an old man and go bald or gray, and then it’s hardest of all to be husband and wife. At that time some couples are at each other’s throats, though neither of them has done anything wrong. They’d kill the other one soon as look at them, though once upon a time they loved each other. Just remember that conflict never brought any relief to anyone, and you have to go on living till everything ends of itself. So it’s better to live in harmony. Because you haven’t gotten married only for a short time, till your youth passes, but until you stop being old as well. From now on you’re like that tree outside the window.

In front of the offices there happened to be a huge maple that remembered the times when there was no district administration, just the four-flat buildings where they used to keep the cholera patients. In the summer people that had come to do business at the offices would wait in its shade, and you often had to tell them to be quiet because they’d talk as loud as if it was market day. Quiet there! There’s a wedding going on! So then, you, husband, you’re like the trunk of the tree, and she’s like its branches. If you cut off the branches the trunk will dry up, and if you chop down the trunk the branches will dry up. I wish you good fortune, good health, and handsome children. Now you may kiss each other. Then I’d go for a glass of vodka with the newlyweds, because although it was mostly poorer folk that got married at the registry office, they’d always invite you for a drink.

For all the marriages I gave, there was only one time they had a proper wedding party afterward. The Kowaliks’ son Józef was marrying Zośka Siekiera. His old folks slaughtered a hog and hired a band. They invited a few relatives and neighbors, and me as well. It wasn’t about the young folks getting married, more that old Kowalik had too much land for those times and people were always accusing him of being a kulak and a parasite because he still kept a farmhand. Though the farmhand never complained, and when people asked him he even used to say he was better off with Kowalik than he would have been on his own. Actually Kowalik might not have had to worry about being called a kulak and a parasite, but when they started raising his quotas every year, in the end it was too much for him. He came running to the offices one day and said that either we should take his land from him, or he’d hang himself.

“I don’t want any land!” he shouted, waving his arms. “I don’t want it if all it’s gonna do is bring me harm! Take it away from me! Plow it, seed it, mow it, set aside any amount you like! It said in the prophecies of the Queen of Sheba there’d come a time when the farmers would be giving back the land of their own accord! Now it’s come true!”

At that time Mayor Rożek told him there was no need for him to give his land away like that or hang himself. Kowalik had a son, Józef. He should have Józef get married as soon as he could, because there were deadlines coming up, and he could divide his farm into two. Who should he marry? Anyone, whoever’s available. Afterwards, if they don’t hit it off they can get divorced. It won’t be a church wedding because the registry office isn’t a church and Szymon Pietruszka isn’t a priest. But in the books it’ll be written in stone that there are two medium-sized farms, and medium-sized farms aren’t a problem for anyone. Because it would have been easier to get married and divorced three times over than reduce the quotas by a single hundredweight.

They chose Zośka Siekiera for the job, because she happened to live next door and she was poor as a church mouse. And she could only dream of marrying a rich man like Józef. For her it made no difference whether she had a church wedding or one in the registry office, whether it was for her whole life or just till they could reregister the farm, with banns or without, in a veil or in a regular dress, in front of a priest or in front of me. She would have stood before the devil in hell if only she’d been able to marry Józef.

Kowalik stuck five hundred zlotys in my pocket so I wouldn’t make any speeches, just marry them and have done with it. Three months hadn’t gone by when he was already trying to get them to separate. Except that at that point, Józef put his foot down and said no. He hadn’t gotten married just so he could get divorced again right afterward. He’d taken Zośka to be his wife, not his serving woman, and he wouldn’t let them do wrong by her. And now that the land had been reregistered, his father could kiss his backside. At most he’d stay on his land, and his father could work his own.

But as long as the old man lived, and he lived a long time, Zośka didn’t have an easy time of it. Whenever he talked about her he’d only ever call her that beggar, that slut, that stray. He’d sometimes even kick her out of the house, he’d say, this isn’t your place, get back over the fence, that’s where you belong. Even when they had a child the old man didn’t soften a bit. He never once minded the baby or played with it the way other grandfathers do, when they laugh with their grandsons and talk to them and tell them all sorts of wonders about the world. Plus he kept on saying bad things the whole time.

“It can’t be yours, Józef, it doesn’t look anything like you. When it laughs it’s got the same beady little eyes as Heniek Skobel.”

Zośka never so much as said to the old man, have you no conscience? At the most she’d run into the pantry or out into the orchard to cry, and Józef would follow and comfort her. What was he supposed to do — beat his own father?

It was only when death came for the old man and Zośka looked after him like he was her father, one time when she was straightening his pillows he took her by the hand and said:

“I’ve been a bad man, Zosia. And you’ve been a saint. I don’t need God’s forgiveness, I need yours.”

After he died Zośka washed his body like it was her own father’s. And she cried at his funeral like he’d been her dad.

I sometimes go over to their place to watch television and they sit there like two turtledoves, though they’re gray now. Zosieńka, Józeńko, they call each other. They’d do anything for each other. They have grandchildren now. No, you just sit and rest, I’ll do it, Zośka. You’ve done enough work today. I won’t come to any harm. That’s as may be. You’ve done just as much work as I have, Józef. Here, have some sour milk. And even at harvesttime, when people are sweating from the work and cursing left, right, and center, they’re all, Zosieńka, Józeńko. Like they were singing along with life. Recently they even had a church wedding, because the priest had been pestering them about it, he wouldn’t leave them in peace, he said what harm would it do if God joined in their happiness. He wouldn’t get in their way.

Three years I spent giving weddings, then they transferred me to the quotas department where there was a huge lot of work, because it wasn’t just grain but livestock as well, and milk, and there was all kinds of writing to be done, more every year. At the registry office, every now and then someone would come along to get married and that was it. Of course, once in a while they’d give me some other work so I wouldn’t get bored. Correct something or write out a fair copy, or do some calculations. Or one time we got some books and the librarian had just gone on leave to have a baby, so the district secretary put me to work cataloging the books, putting plastic covers on them, sticking on the numbers and stamping them with the district administration stamp, then putting them on the shelves. Another time there was no one to supervise the workers mending the road to the mill. When the autumn rains came or a thaw in the spring you couldn’t get through even with a pair of horses because the mud came up higher than the wheel hubs. So who could do the job? As usual everyone was up to their ears in work, while the “priest” was just sitting at his desk staring at the ceiling. Maybe you could go, Mr. Szymek. No one’s going to be getting married today. And though supervising workers supposedly wasn’t really work and you could go lie down in the shade of a bush, because the workers would get on with the job without anyone watching over them, the thing was that I’d gotten used to the office and being able to stare at the ceiling, and I didn’t at all feel like I wasn’t doing anything. You could have a nice little doze if the sun was hot through the window or if you’d been drinking the night before. Or someone would come by and you’d have a chat. Or you’d go and visit the other offices, or go flirt with the girls.

There were more girls in those offices than bees in a hive. A good few of them had only come to work at the administration so they could find themselves a husband quicker, and an office worker to boot. If I’d wanted I could have even gotten married, and more than once. But why would I, when I could have the same thing without getting married. In those days girls still used to like nylon stockings, and for a pair of stockings any of them was putty in your hands. You’d pull a pair out and show them and say, listen, Agnisia, Józia, Rózia, would you like these to be yours? So meet me this evening at such and such a time. Because there was something about those nylon stockings that the moment a girl set eyes on them she’d get this glassy look, her voice would soften, and she’d very near reach for your pants then and there. It was another thing that when one of them had crooked legs her legs seemed to straighten out when she was wearing stockings. They made fat legs look thin, and skinny ones look just right. When they were wearing those stockings even what their faces looked like wasn’t such a big deal, their legs became the most important thing. And when one of the girls appeared in church wearing stockings, the whole congregation would look down instead of looking up. Mass would be ruined for all the other women, and a good few of the men only half paid attention to God.

I bought the stockings from this trader woman that would sometimes come to the village selling various things. I’d known her from when I was in the police, and one time I’d had her at the station because she was suspected of selling yeast to moonshiners. I searched her belongings and she happened to have one pair of nylon stockings that she was delivering to someone.

“Bring some more for me, I’ll buy them off you. Maybe even a few pairs,” I said. And since then she did.

One time I bought all the pairs she had, there must have been a dozen of them, all different sizes — large, small, medium — and in different colors, mouse gray, fox red, like scorched straw, like wholemeal bread, all as fine as gossamer.

“I’ll take the lot,” I said.

“Well she must be a real lady,” she said. “All these pairs. Some girls have all the luck. What size foot does she have?”

“Who would that be?”

“The woman you’re buying them for, your girlfriend or your wife, whoever.”

“Don’t know yet.”

“The thing is, these are different sizes and they might not fit. And they’re so fine you only need to scratch them with your nail and there’ll be a run. She needs to take care of her hands. You ought to buy her some hand cream. I’ve got that as well. Otherwise she’ll be bringing me stockings with runs in them, wanting her money back. And I won’t take them. I can’t be traveling all this way and come out at a loss.”

“They’ll be the right size. If not for one then for another. Why worry ahead of time.”

“Well I guess it’s none of my business. Shall I bring you more?”

“Sure, you do that.”

I hid the stockings up in the attic, in the rye, in a plaited straw barrel. I pushed them as deep as I could into the grain so father wouldn’t find them by chance when he went up to check that the rye wasn’t getting damp. Though you didn’t need to dig down deep to see whether it was damp, all you had to do was scoop a little from the surface or just put your hand in and hold it there a moment, when it was damp you could feel it right away, like putting your hand over steam. I was certain there was no better hiding place. In the old days people would keep whole fortunes in barrels of grain, dollars, rubles, and in wartime weapons. Because grain arouses the least suspicion. What could be more innocent than grain. And who would ever want to dig down to the bottom of those things when they held ten bushels or more each.

But one day I come home from work and I see my stockings laid out on the table like on a market stall.

“Where are those stockings from?” I asked. I was shaken.

Father was sitting by mother’s bed, and he says calm as anything:

“You know what, they grew in the rye up in the attic. I went to check if it wasn’t getting damp, and I picked some of them to show your mother. But she won’t believe me. Maybe she’ll believe you. Tell her they’re stockings. What else could they be? Nylon ones. That’s all they wear these days. I wonder how much one of them pairs costs? Probably as much as a bushel of rye. And see how many pairs grew up there. We didn’t even sow or muck. Obviously it’s not worth keeping rye anymore. We’ll have to start growing stockings instead of rye, since God’s blessed us this way. Since the beginning of time only rye has grown from rye, but we’ve had a miracle.”

I was all set to grab the stockings, slam the door, and go wherever my feet took me. But I looked at mother. She was lying with her head turned to the wall as if she was embarrassed, and I suddenly felt sorry for her. I thought to myself, oh well. I took a bowl, poured myself some potato soup from the pot, sat down on the chair by the stove, because the table was covered with stockings, and I began to eat. Father was still going on about what had grown from what and how God had smiled on us, till in the end he got mixed up and forgot whether rye was growing from stockings or stockings from rye. But I didn’t say a word. What could I say? He knew what he knew, I knew what I knew.

I wasn’t as young as I used to be and I wouldn’t just go running after a pair of beautiful eyes. But the girls weren’t as silly as before the war either. Not many of them went for you because of how much land you had. What kind of happiness was land? You work like a dog all the livelong day, day in, day out, and happiness only comes in the next life. And even that wasn’t a sure thing. These days, people were taken at face value. So they preferred to dress well rather than parade their virtue. On top of that you kept hearing how people were having their land taken away from them, and what use was virtue with shared land?

I gave out so many pairs of stockings that if one girl had gotten all of them she’d have been able to wear them for the rest of her life, and not just on Sundays. And she’d always be seen in a fresh pair. I sometimes spent my entire salary on those stockings when the trader woman came by. All I had left was cigarette money. It was another matter that the pay was lousy and if I hadn’t had meals at home I couldn’t have managed on that income. But of all the pairs I gave out, only one let me down.

During the time I was still giving weddings they hired this one girl from Łanów. Łanów is a village about two and a half miles from ours. It’s on the other side of the woods, but it still belongs to the żabczyce administration. She worked in the tax department. Małgorzata was her name. To begin with I didn’t pay much attention to her. Obviously we saw each other almost every day, because in the offices you couldn’t help it, there was only one entrance and one hallway and everyone arrived at the same time and left at the same time. But I’d pass her just like one office worker passing another. Good morning. Good morning. Nothing more. She seemed somehow unapproachable. Any of the other girls, you could pat them on the backside or pinch them or rub up against them in the hallway and you knew they wouldn’t take offense. With her, though, you’d be afraid she’d slap you. Maybe because she’d graduated from junior high. Back then, finishing junior high meant more than going to college today. There’s a few folks from the village studying at college now, and what of it? They won’t even take their cap off to an older person, they expect them to be the one to say hello first, because they’re educated. Only one of them, Jasiu Kułag, he’s nice and polite, he always stops and offers you his hand and asks how things are. He’ll be a decent guy.

I admit I liked the look of her, plus she always dressed nicely, she always had a fresh blouse and dress and jacket. Plus, on rainy days she’d bring a little umbrella, she was the only girl in the offices that had one. That was probably how the rumor got started that she was living with the chairman, because how could she afford everything. They’d just changed from having mayors to having chairmen. Mayor Rożek was followed for a short time by Mayor Guz, then after him was the first chairman, a guy by the name of Maślanka. He wasn’t from our village but his wife was, Józia Stajuda. No one knew where he was from. Whenever anyone asked him what he’d done in the war he’d squirm like an eel. They sent him from the county for us to elect as chairman.

I found it hard to believe she’d be living with Maślanka. She didn’t look like that kind of girl. And I can say of myself that I know people, life’s taught me who to trust and who not to. In the resistance I didn’t trust a soul, and that mattered more than having a good eye or cold blood or a heart of stone. It might have been because of that that I survived. Because truth be told, you can only ever trust the dead. And not all of them, because with some folks even their death has something bogus about it.

Though on the other hand, why should I have trusted her. I didn’t even know her, and there’s always a bit of truth in gossip. Maybe she just knew how to cover her tracks. She wouldn’t have been the first one to set her sights on the chairman. He was the chairman, after all, and he could always make life difficult for you if you weren’t careful. What else could they have seen in him? Pudgy little guy, always sweating up a storm. But he knew how to turn on the charm. When he’d do his rounds of the offices in the morning he’d always have a nice word for each of them, smile at one, kiss the hand of another, stroke another one’s hair like a father. And he wore this big ring with a red stone, supposedly it was a keepsake from his father, he’d flash it in front of every girl. Except that when someone came from the county administration he’d slip it off and hide it in his drawer. Some people said it wasn’t anything to do with his father, that Maślanka had been a hog trader during the war and done well for himself. Whatever the truth was, after a guy like Rożek, whose every second word was “fuck,” because with him what was in his head was on his tongue, the new fellow was almost like a squire. So she could have been one of those that gave in to temptation.

I thought to myself, give it a try, what do I have to lose. If that’s what she’s like it won’t be hard. If he can do it so can I. We’ll see who’s better, chairman or no. When I put my Sunday suit on, you could never look as good, however many suits you were wearing. And you should see me in my officer’s boots. Have you ever even worn officer’s boots? You’d look like a bucket on a stool. Me, they said I could have served in the uhlans. Maybe I would have if things had worked out differently. So what if he was chairman. If the farmers had voted for you the way they used to choose the mayor, you’d have been village policeman at most. As for the ring, I used to wear one myself, and it was a whole lot bigger than yours, it had a stone like a twenty-pound carp. And it didn’t come from selling hogs, I got it from my father and his father before him, it’s been in the family for generations. You loser.

I got shot in the thigh during an attack on a mail train in Lipienniki. They drove me by cart to the manor, they said that was the safest place for me. They put me right under the roof in the attic, so I’d be hard to find if anyone came searching. I wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of my life in a place like that. Their attic was bigger than our whole house. There was a carpet covering the entire floor, a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, elk and stag antlers on the walls. A whole family could have slept on the couch I was lying on. Plus I had a window right by my bed with a view of the grounds, so I could hear birds chirping close by from morning to night. It was like there was no war at all.

If anything happened, the story was that I was a cousin of the owners and I was sick with the consumption. Why not, I could be their cousin. I’d already been a chimney sweep when we had to carry out a death sentence on the mayor of Niegolewo. And a monk when I had to get out of the town and there were roadblocks everywhere. One time I was even transported as a dead man in a coffin, they were pretending to be taking me back to my parish to be buried in my own cemetery. Being the cousin of the owners of the manor was a piece of cake. Especially when all I had to do was lie there with only my face and hands outside the sheets. My face was fine, in fact it was a bit scrawny so it even looked right for the consumption. In addition they gave me a pair of glasses so if need be I could put them on and read a book. Except they made everything blurred, because even today I’ve got eyes like a hawk. I never opened the book once, though it lay right there the whole time on the nightstand. Right away a maid came in with water and soap and a towel, and to begin with she soaked my fingers for a long time, then she trimmed the quick around all my nails till they bled. I asked her why she was doing it. She said the mistress had told her to. Then she trimmed my nails so short they were almost even with my fingertips, and when I tried to scratch myself all it did was tickle. And on this finger, the middle one, they put a big gold ring with a huge stone like I said, big as a twenty-pound carp. With the ring on, my hand felt like it wasn’t mine anymore, I was afraid to move it so I just kept it stiff on the quilt. They put one of the master’s nightshirts on me and for the first night I barely slept a wink. How can you sleep in something that’s more like a priest’s surplice than a shirt? It had lace and frills, and there was so much material two people could have fit inside it. On the nightstand they put the master’s gold watch. To my darling Maurycy, with love, Julia, it said on the cover.

To begin with I thought I was dreaming. But it didn’t take long for me to get used to it, and then I regretted I’d have to go back to the woods. It wasn’t going to be easy after I’d been lying there like the owners’ cousin, having my food brought to me in bed. Having a gunshot wound would have been one thing, but it had to be the consumption. What kind of illness was that? Franek Marciniak had the consumption before the war. He’d eat slices of bread spread twice as thick again with butter, and he drank endless amounts of dog lard and ate eggs and cream, they took the food from their own mouths so he could have it, and the young Marciniaks would say they wanted to have the consumption too. Because he looked like a doughnut in butter.

I’d occasionally think I could actually be one of the owners’ cousins, why not. For instance that Maurycy from the inscription on the watch. Though who had Julia been? Because neither the master nor his wife were Maurycy or Julia. Sometimes I imagined their life one way, sometimes another, but it was always a happy one. They wouldn’t have given each other a gold watch if they hadn’t been happy. And though they were probably long dead and in the ground, their happiness was still there, ticking inside the watch. When you listened carefully you could hear it clear as day, like far-off bells ringing over them in a dewy morning. I even wondered if time didn’t move forward but instead turned in circles like the hands of the watch, and everything was still in the same place.

From all that lying I put on weight and they started worrying that I didn’t look like I had the consumption anymore. Perhaps it’d be better if I was ill with something else. Except that nothing scared people off so much as the consumption, only typhus was better. But if they’d said it was typhus then word might get around and they’d come and take everyone to the hospital, and lock up the manor. On the other hand, I was looking more and more like I was their cousin. The maid, to begin with she treated me like I was just more work for her, when she brought my dinner she’d snap: “Dinner.” Now, she’d say:

“Here’s your dinner, your grace. Here’s your breakfast. Here’s your afternoon tea, see how tasty it is today. You’re looking better, your grace. For supper it’ll be butter rolls, tea, ham, cottage cheese, and plum tart.”

I had the feeling she was staring at me more and more. Till I started thinking, maybe I am her grace, I ought to check. So one day when she was putting the breakfast tray down on the bedside table, I put my hand under her dress and moved it up her thigh all the way to the top, and the only thing that happened was the plates rattled on the tray.

“Oh!” she sighed in a squeaky little voice like a baby bird. “You’re a quick one, your grace. Let me at least put the tray down.” And like a little chick going out onto a branch for the first time and shaking because it doesn’t know how to fly, she bent down over that hand of mine.

When I went back to the woods after that, for a while I lost the will to fight. I just kept thinking over and over, when it comes down to it, what’s the point of fighting? Wouldn’t it be better to just lie there in an attic like that? It was only when I got thinner from not eating so much that I started to feel like fighting again.

To begin with, one day I gave her a bolder nod than usual and instead of just good morning I also said Miss Małgorzata. Good morning, Miss Małgorzata. Then a few days later I added:

“You’re looking nice today, Miss Małgorzata.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Nice of you to say so, Mr. Szymon.” And though she was always so serious and she seemed to look down on everyone, you could tell I’d embarrassed her.

Some time later, it happened to be raining that day, the two of us stopped in the porchway to at least wait out the worst of it, because it was cats and dogs, and we got to chatting the way you do in the rain, that it’s been like this for a week already, that if it keeps up all the crops’ll rot. Since it wasn’t easing up we kept talking, and I invited her to come by sometime and watch me give a wedding.

Not long after that, Wojtek Lis married Kryśka Sobieska. As usual, almost every woman in the place gathered to see it, and quite a few of the men, including the district secretary. And the window that opened onto the courtyard was so crammed with heads it looked like they were all growing from a single body. I didn’t think she’d come. Then suddenly I saw her standing with the others in the half-open door, and my heart began to thump. I invited everyone to come inside, let Wojtek and Kryśka at least have a crowd of strangers at their wedding, since their parents weren’t there, or any of their relatives. Actually I liked Wojtek, though he was a good few years younger than me, and Kryśka was in about her sixth month, she had a belly big as a drum, and she was a bit embarrassed. But I said to her:

“Don’t be ashamed, Kryśka, you’ve got a person inside you, not a wild animal.”

And I gave such a speech that almost everyone was in tears. The girls were one thing, but even some of the guys looked like they’d been staring into a bright light for too long. Kryśka cried, Wojtek cried. The people in the window cried. Though I wasn’t saying anything sad. I talked about happiness. That you need to look for happiness inside yourself, not around you. That no one will give it to you if you don’t give it to yourself. That happiness is often close as close can be, maybe in the simple room where you spend your whole life, but people go looking for it in all kinds of strange places. That some people search for it in fame and riches, but not everyone can afford fame and riches, while happiness is like water and everyone’s thirsty. That often there’s more of it in a single good word than in an entire long life. Kryśka’s folks had disowned her and thrown her out of the house. Wojtek didn’t have a father and his mother had died a year before. That a person could be famous and rich but not be happy.

I told them about a certain king who lacked for nothing, but who never had any dreams. Because of this he was afraid to go to sleep, because when he got into bed it was like he was lying down in his coffin. Though his bed was made of solid gold and he had a quilt of the finest down, and down pillows too. The greatest doctors on earth were brought in, they cast all kinds of spells on him, gave him different herbs to drink, they poulticed him with flowers and scents, they played music for him without cease and six naked women danced for him, but he didn’t dream of so much as a daisy in the meadow. Nothing. Every royal night was an empty hole. He prostrated himself, he wore sackcloth, he even took off his golden crown set with diamonds and put on a crown of blackthorn. And he prayed endlessly, to different gods. Because some people advised him to pray to one god because that god was a king himself and he was more merciful than the others, while for another god faith was a great dream, and he might be granted some of that for one night at least. He built churches and almshouses, he washed the feet of the poor, anyone could walk into his palace as if it was his own cottage, and no one ever left empty-handed. In the end he grew thin as a lath and his brother started making secret preparations to take his place, because through all this time the kingdom had been shrinking like a fist. Just like one farmer will start plowing over another farmer’s land, his neighbors were doing the same, plowing over his kingdom from every side, and not just in the spring and fall but all the time. He got sicker and sicker, his servants caught him talking to himself and laughing, shouting, threatening himself with his fist and stamping his foot. He thought about throwing himself off a cliff, because what kind of life was it when you didn’t have any dreams, even if you were the king. It was like he was only half living, he lived in the day but he died at night. Imagine dying like that for years and years, when even dying once is so hard.

Then one day a certain peasant learned about the king’s unhappiness. He wasn’t a fortune-teller or a herbalist, just a goatherd that drove goats to market in the town. He came into the royal presence and said:

“Your majesty, there’s a remedy to make you have dreams. Move into my cottage, you’ll dream my dreams, and I’ll live awhile in your palace without any dreams.”

At the end I told them happiness is easier to find with a husband or a wife than on your own, and I wished Kryśka a son.

Where I got it all from I have no idea. What did I ever know about happiness, and today I know even less. But maybe happiness is only good for talking about, maybe it’s not something you can ever know. In any case I could tell I’d done a pretty good job, everyone in the offices congratulated me. And one of the farmers that had been listening outside through the window, who’d come to pick up his benefit money, he asked me if I’d known that king, and he couldn’t get over it:

“You’ve got the gift of the gab, son, you really have. If only everything you said could be believed. But even just listening to it is nice.”

So then, I was certain she must have liked it as well. But she disappeared soon as the wedding was over. It was only the next day I ran into her in the hallway.

“That poor king,” she said when she saw me. “Did he really not have any dreams?”

I couldn’t tell if she was making fun, or if she just said it because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. It hurt me a bit, but I let it go.

“I have something for you, Miss Małgorzata,” I said, because I’d decided to use the opportunity and give her some stockings.

“What’s that?” she said, intrigued.

“Come into my office.”

She came in, she seemed a little excited from curiosity. I took the stockings out of my desk. I’d even wrapped them in colored paper.

“What on earth is this?”

“Stockings. Nylon ones.”

She opened the package.

“They’re lovely. Thank you. How much do I owe you, Mr. Szymek?”

“Nothing. They’re a gift, Miss Małgorzata.”

She reddened.

“Mr. Szymek, I can’t. Please tell me how much. Really. No, in that case I can’t accept them.”

And she didn’t.

It made me so mad that after work I went to see Kaśka that ran the grocery store and I gave her the stockings. Though she was the only one you didn’t have to give anything to. You only had to go visit her, she always knew why you’d come. Because sometimes, when I didn’t have anywhere else to go I’d go to her. Or whenever I needed to get as far away from everything as possible, I’d go to her. Or I was so frustrated that I didn’t feel like going anywhere at all, I’d still feel like going to see her. Or when I didn’t have the strength or the will to go see anyone else, I’d go to her and it would always be the same. Because with other women you had to spend time with them and flirt with them and walk them home and promise them things the whole time, and sometimes you still came out losing. But with Kaśka I’d swing by for matches or cigarettes, lean over the counter and whisper:

“Stay back in the store after work today, Kaśka.”

With her, her heart was always on the outside.

“Just take your cigarettes or your matches, you don’t need to pay. I bet one of those bitches of yours went and dumped you again. Office girls, big deal. Like they don’t know what their body’s for. It’s for the same thing as all women. Either way you’re gonna end up eaten by worms. They’re not soap, they’re not gonna wear away from being used. What the hell are they afraid of? That the priest won’t give them absolution? So don’t tell him everything. When you don’t tell something it’s like it never happened. If I were you, Szymuś, I’d find myself a nice ordinary girl. She doesn’t need to be smart, the main thing is she should stand by you. You’re smart yourself, any girl is going to look dumb next to you anyway. What do you need an office girl for? You can’t even whack her one, she’d up and make a big fuss. Those kind make all sorts of noise. I saw it at the pictures one time. He didn’t even hit her that hard. She squealed so loud I had to cover my ears. What’s the point in making a racket? Lie down, your man wants you to, and don’t pretend you don’t either. Or she’ll start running around on you, and what’re you gonna do, tie her down? When you have sit on your ass for eight hours a day your ass can go crazy. And when your ass goes crazy it’s worse than when your head does. When your head gets like that, the worst it’ll do is talk nonsense. But asses are trouble. You’re getting old, Szymuś. Dear Lord. Though for me you’ll always be a first class young feller. Tell me which one it is, when she comes in the store I won’t sell to her, the bitch. Get out, slut! Go do your shopping in town! Office girl — big deal. She wants gingerbread. Not a snowball’s chance!”

She was just a shop assistant, but she was a tower of strength. Sometimes she seemed dumber than a sack of rocks, but she had more wisdom in her than a hundred wise men. And her thighs, her backside, two women could have shared them and they’d still have looked good. When she took her clothes off you’d never know she was a shop assistant. Her breasts, it was like there were four of them. They stretched from one arm to the other, from her neck to her belly, like pumpkins in a patch. And whatever she was lying on, whether it was sacks of salt or sugar or buckwheat, or on the floor, she’d always lie down like she was in a made-up bed, she didn’t like to do things any old how.

“Just a minute now, let me get undressed. I don’t want to get my frock all crumpled.” And she’d undress like it was her wedding night. “Touch my breasts first. I like it when I get gooseflesh. And I want us to do it for a long time. I’m not going to open up the store again anyway, so why do we need to hurry. It was open for hours, people could come buy whatever they wanted. There’s always this big rush, then when it’s over you regret hurrying. And you won’t be back for a month or two, maybe even longer. They say I’ve gotten fat. No way, it’s not true. What do you think? Tell me — am I fat?” Though sometimes it would be like she was suddenly afraid, and out of nowhere she’d ask: “Do you think there’s life after death, Szymuś?”

“Come off it, Kaśka. You’re a shop assistant, you believe in that nonsense? If there was it’d be the same as this life.”

“You’re a smart one, Szymuś. I’m glad you came today. Hee, hee! Just don’t make me a baby, so I don’t have to cry afterwards because of you. Though whatever you want. Oh, Szymuś. You’re a one, you really are. Dear Lord!”

“I’ve got something for you, Kaśka,” I said. “Close up the store.”

“Are you nuts?!” she snapped back. “It’s still early! Look how much bread I still have to sell. Almost two shelves’ worth. What, am I supposed to sell it stale tomorrow?”

“If there’s nothing else, they’ll buy stale. Close up.”

“What’s your hurry? Can’t it wait till the evening? It’ll be evening soon. Do you want them calling me a whore again? That bitch Karaska’s gonna come running and she’ll be all, you whore, you closed up shop again yesterday and I didn’t have any bread to give my man with his cabbage! Someone ought to report you, they ought to, it’s downright ungodly. Whenever her ass starts itching she closes up, like she didn’t have opening hours posted outside. So report me! I’ll tell you where you can stick your complaint. Come and work here yourself, you old witch. Stand here on those skinny legs of yours for two hours and your ass’d start itching too. She ought to have kicked the bucket years ago, the bitch. Same goes for her old man. He won’t eat his cabbage without bread, but that doesn’t stop him from coming to the store and being all, how about it, Kaśka, eh, how about it? How about what, spit it out! What’s under your dress. Buy some cigarettes, that’s all you’re getting. You think I don’t get enough of that sort of talk? Sometimes I think I must have a hole in my frock. The women are even worse than the men. You’ve put on weight, Kaśka. The hell do you care if I sleep around and put on weight? What do you need? Get on with your shopping. Don’t come hanging around here and complaining, it’s not a waiting room, it’s not a church. On top of that they’ll tell you you’re a lousy shop assistant. When the store’s out of something it’s your fault, because it says in the papers there’s plenty of everything. You’re screwing around instead of stocking up. How can there be no vinegar? How can there be no this, no that? Sometimes I just want to grab a broomstick and let them have it. I have to hand them such and such, measure something out, wrap it up. Or they take forever choosing, and all you can do is stand there waiting. Not this one, not that one, and inside you’re all furious. If it were my store I’d chuck the whole damn lot of them out, go choose on your own time. But as it is I even have to make suggestions. What do you think, Kaśka? Which one is better? Do I get paid for handing out advice? Beside, what is there to choose from? Take what there is, even that’s gonna be gone soon. With bread, one of them wants a well-baked loaf, the next one tells me to look for a lighter one. Sometimes they make me turn over every loaf in the place, because when they deliver it they’re either all well-done or all not. And God forbid you don’t have five groszes change, there’ll be a whole line of moaners standing there looking daggers, come on, give her the change. I’m not budging from here till you give her the change! What, am I trying to stop you? It’s not exactly a fortune. But am I supposed to give her the change from my own money? If I did that every time I’d be stone broke. And don’t think they don’t talk about me and you screwing. If you didn’t have things so easy with me you’d have gotten married long ago. As it is you come here, do your business, what do you need to get married for. About today, go have a drink at the pub, the time’ll pass quickly enough. I’ll close up once I’ve sold the bread. You’ll be even better if you’ve had a drink. Hee, hee! Not in such a hurry.”

“Don’t be mad,” I said. “I brought you something.”

“Me? Straight up? She must have really done a number on you. Or you’re just teasing me.”

“I’m not teasing. Here. Nylon stockings.”

“Seriously?” She wouldn’t believe me. “Oh my Lord! They’re lovely!”

“The seller came by and I bought them for you. You can wear them to church.”

She opened the packet and tried the stockings against her hair and her arms like they were ribbons. She hugged them and stroked them.

“Some of them already wear these to church,” she said. “Plus in church there’s always a crowd, you can’t see people’s legs. I’m going to wear them here in the store. It’ll make those bastards’ eyes pop out. They’ll be all, hey, Kaśka, where d’you get them stockings? From my boyfriend. You have a boyfriend? Sure I do. Don’t you think wearing them in the store is a waste? Why would it be a waste. If they get torn he’ll buy me new ones. So he’s rich then? He sure is. When we get married I’m not going to work in the store anymore. Even the richest women don’t wear stockings like these every day, but I’m going to. To hell with the lot of them.”

“But how are they going to see what’s on your legs when you’re behind the counter?”

“That’s true. Silly me, I hadn’t thought of it. In that case I’ll come out and close the door each time, because hardly any of them close the door after themselves. All day long I’m yelling at them, close the door, close the door. My voice gets hoarse. Or I’ll come out to chase flies. I know we already have flypaper up, but the stuff on it must be crap. Whenever a fly sticks to one of those strips it just buzzes its wings and it’s off again. I think I’m going to shut up shop. You’re worth it. Oh, Szymek, Szymek, what would I not do for you. But what sign should I put up? I can’t say receiving new delivery, because next morning they’ll all come running to see what came in. I’ll say, gone to office.”

With the other woman I went back to treating her like any other office worker. Good morning. Good morning. Nothing more. Till one day I’m leaving work at the end of the day and I see she’s moving away slowly, holding back, like she was waiting for someone. I was all set to walk past her when she suddenly came to a stop and turned to face me.

“Are you mad at me by any chance, Mr. Szymek?” she asked, and her voice was soft as silk.

“Me? Mad? Of course not. At you, Miss Małgorzata?” I answered a bit too eagerly.

“Because it’s like you’ve been avoiding me. I’m sorry if I hurt you with what I said the other day. But that story about the king amused me so much I couldn’t help myself.”

“There’s nothing to talk about. It’s forgotten already.” I walked with her all the way to the footbridge outside the village. And since that coming Sunday the fire brigade was holding a dance in a clearing in the woods, I asked her if she wouldn’t like to go with me. In the woods meant close to Łanów as well. I’d come pick her up and it went without saying I’d walk her home afterward. She agreed gladly, except that I shouldn’t pick her up, she’d come on her own and we’d find each other at the dance.

I got hopeful again. I was a first-rate dancer and I’d won more than one girl over with my dancing alone. When it came to the polka and the oberek especially, no one else in the neighborhood danced them as well as I did. After the war there were a lot of younger dancers showed up at dances and they knew all kinds of fancy fox-trots and what have you, but when it came to polkas and obereks I was it. I was no slouch at the tango and the waltz either. My favorite was On Danube’s Waves. But if it was a matter of coming to an understanding with a girl as fast as possible, the best thing was a polka or an oberek. With tangos and waltzes there was too much talking and making stuff up, when it was obvious what you were after. And if you didn’t talk at all, she might think you were a dud.

Turned out she didn’t like either polkas or obereks, so we danced nothing but slow numbers. On the other hand, she kind of held tight as we were dancing. Except what of it when there was some sort of strange force that wouldn’t let me move my hand an inch on her back. She even had an opening in her dress below the back of her neck, I could have accidentally on purpose tried to stroke her on that little bit of bare skin, maybe that would have made her hold me even tighter, because touching bare skin is always better than through a dress. But it was like my hand was glued there on her back, stuck in the same place the whole time. As for the other hand, the one holding hers, it felt like I was holding a little baby bird, I was afraid I’d smother it.

I thought to myself, I gotta get a drink, because otherwise nothing’s going to come of this. I was so distracted I even misstepped a couple of times, and that never happened to me. True, she told me she hadn’t imagined I was such a good dancer. She wasn’t bad herself. But what of it, when that wasn’t what I was after. I went to the buffet and brought back a bottle of vodka and some open sandwiches. I was counting on her drinking a quarter of the bottle or so. Not too much, not too little, just enough, from what I knew about girls. I’d have three-quarters of the bottle and we’d be even. But it turned out she didn’t drink vodka.

“Just half a glass, Miss Małgorzata,” I said, trying to persuade her. “It’ll do you good. What sort of dance is it when you’ve not had anything to drink? You might as well be at evening mass. Look, everyone’s drinking. The girls too. Some of them because of their troubles, others for good health, plus everyone has their own reasons for having a drink. Vodka helps people get by. It makes you feel more like having a ball, and if it’s time to die, it makes you feel more like dying. Because when you’ve had a drink of vodka, dying and having a ball kind of join into one. If I hadn’t drunk in the resistance I doubt I’d be dancing here with you today. Once you’d had a drink you’d go out among the flying bullets like you were just walking through a stand of willow trees. Many a time, if you’d been sober your hand would have been shaking from your bad conscience. Once you had a drink your conscience did one thing and your hand another. See, you didn’t bring a sweater, in the evenings it can be chilly. It’d warm you up. And it never hurts to make your head spin a little bit. There’s no shame in having just the one glass. There’s more shame in not drinking. Well then, Małgosia?”

But she dug her heels in, no. And right away she said she had to be going back because it was getting late, and I didn’t need to walk her home if I didn’t want to, she could go on her own. Let it be no, don’t think l’m going to beg. Wonder if Maślanka has to beg as well. But I will walk you back, I know the right thing to do. I tipped back the bottle and emptied it on my own. Then I tossed the bottle and the glasses and the rest of the sandwiches into the bushes. Normally a bottle was nothing for me. We’d usually drink two bottles each, it was only after two that your soul became like a wide-open barn, like a stream from a spring, and you felt you could grasp your whole life in your hand.

One time, after two bottles I bet two more I could shave without cutting myself. We were drinking at Wicek Kudła’s place. I’d managed to get Kudła’s quota reduced, because by that time I was working in the quotas department. He didn’t have a decent mirror, just a broken piece of an old one. And no one would even hold it for me, they were all drunk and they were afraid of putting their hand to some misfortune. They were babbling on trying to talk me out of it, but I sharpened the razor on the strop and lathered up, and I was ready. Don’t be crazy, Szymek, no one shaves after a bottle of vodka, after two bottles all you’re going to do is cut your face up, you don’t mess with razors. Razors or scythes or God. God, you might be able to beg him to change his mind. But a razor, when your hand’s shaking and your eye’s iffy it’s all up and down, and your face is nothing but ups and downs, that’s just how it is. You’d think all you’d need would be an eye somewhere in the middle of your forehead, you could use it for seeing, drinking, eating, talking, sniffing, crying, whatever you needed. But you, on top of everything you’ve got a hole in your chin and your jaw sticks out. Just give him the other bottles, don’t let him shave, I’d rather drink than watch someone bleed, it’s okay watching a hog bleed but with a person every drop hurts. I was seeing double, at times I could hardly see myself at all, and the razor in that scrap of mirror was shaking like it was afraid as well. But I shaved myself and I didn’t cut myself once. Give those bottles here.

But this time, that one stupid bottle went to my head and it was like I was walking up hill and down dale, and the ground under me was rocking into the bargain. At one point it must have rocked more than usual because I staggered and if she hadn’t caught me I would have hit the deck.

“You’re drunk, Mr. Szymek,” she said. “I can get home on my own from here.”

“It’s just my legs, Miss Małgosia,” I said. “My head’s as clear as the moon up there above us.”

The moon was like a cow’s udder, if you’d pulled at its teats we’d have been covered in streams of moonlight.

“I could go all the way to the edge of the world with you, Miss Małgosia, we’d never lose our way. Wherever you wanted to go, nearby or far away, it’d all be the same to me, I could walk through the woods, I could walk forever.”

Then I started going on about the resistance and how I had seven wounds. All healed up long ago, of course. But sometimes, like today, it’s as if I can feel them bleeding. If she wanted I could show her and tell about each one. Then I tried to count how many Germans I’d killed. But for some reason I couldn’t get past five. I checked them off on the fingers of my left hand, but when I got to the fifth finger the list broke off like the earth had swallowed it up. I couldn’t make head or tail of it. All that shooting I’d done, and there were only five of them? Could they have risen from the dead?

Aside from that I could feel anger welling up inside of me. I was walking and walking, and all for nothing. She wasn’t saying a word. It was probably the anger that made me think, so she’ll go with Maślanka but not with me. How is he better than me? He wasn’t even in the resistance, the loser, all he did was trade in hogs, other people spilled their blood for him. How do I know? People in the offices talk, you can’t hide anything there. Though the people that talk do the same things themselves, there’s nothing to get upset about. She wasn’t planning on being a saint, right? Why would she? She’d get old and then regret it. What pleasure was there in being a saint? All you’d do is be in a picture on the church wall, or they’d hand you out during the priest’s Christmastime visit or sell you at church fairs, or you’d have your name in the calendar. But you have to be a big-time saint for that. You’d have to kick another saint off, because there’s already four or five of them for every day. Even the most saintly ones are going to get squeezed out soon. It’s not worth the effort. On top of everything else, you never know if it’s only down here you’re considered a saint, but afterwards you’re actually going to go roast in hell. How can we know what happens afterwards? So then, Miss Małgosia, is it far yet? We’ll be through the woods soon. But I can keep going if you want. And if you want, I can marry you. It’s high time I got married. People go on and on at me about how I ought to be married. Tell me, Miss Małgosia, would you be my wife? I can’t promise you happiness because I don’t have happiness inside me. But we’d get by somehow or other. I could even marry you tomorrow. I’ll perform the ceremony myself. I’ll make such a speech they’ll remember us even after we’re dead. At Mayor Rożek’s funeral, the one that they shot, I gave this speech that had everyone in tears. The guy that came from the county offices, he just mumbled something, he didn’t say a word about Rożek, he just went on about enemies the whole time. In the end Rożek himself rose up out of his casket and said, you, piss off, I want Pietruszka to make the speech. And no blubbering, I want to be able to hear it clear. That’s how he was, he never minced his words, but he had a heart of gold. If you want, we can even get married in church. I don’t know if God exists. But if he exists for you, he’ll exist for me. The tailor could make me a suit and the dressmaker will sew a dress for you. What do you say, Miss Małgosia?

She was walking along like a shadow, still not saying a thing. I even had the impression that it wasn’t her walking along but the woods, and I was talking any old nonsense to the trees. And maybe because of not knowing whether it was her or not, I suddenly put my arms around her and whispered:

“Małgosia.”

She slapped me in the face, pulled free of my drunken embrace, and ran off.

“Małgosia, don’t run away! I’d never do anything to hurt you! Don’t run away!” I shouted. I started after her. But she ran like a roe deer. And me, the ground swayed underneath me and began spinning around. My legs got all tangled up. I tried to follow her, but I was pulled in every direction at once. I bumped into something once and twice, then in the end the road threw me to one side. Goddammit!

“Małgosia! Stop! Wait! I won’t touch you anymore! I thought you wanted it too! Wait!” I had the feeling it wasn’t just me shouting, but the whole woods were calling after her, and the moon over the trees, and the night. “Małgosia!”

Her shadow was getting farther and farther away, growing more and more faint, till it disappeared completely. I stood still for a moment thinking the road might stop dancing in front of my eyes and I’d be able to see her again and call her, and then she’d have to stop. Or maybe she’d get tired from all that running, or suddenly be scared. The road was lit up like a ribbon in the moonlight, but it looked even emptier. I didn’t know if I should keep after her or not. I pushed on. You idiot, for a minute you thought she was Kaśka the shop assistant. With Kaśka you can talk any kind of nonsense you like and she’ll still tell you you’re smart. You’re a smart one, Szymuś. If I was half as smart as you I’d have had my own store long ago. I could sell anything I wanted. I wouldn’t sell bread or salt. They can go bake their own bread. Buy salt in town.

“Małgosia!” I started yelling through the woods again. “Don’t be afraid of me! I’m not drunk anymore!”

All of a sudden, to my right I heard something like a tree crying. I don’t know if it was an oak or a beech. I even reached out my hand, then I saw her pressed against the tree trunk.

“Oh, it’s you,” I said. “Come on, don’t cry. There’s nothing to cry about. We’re not right for each other, that’s all. Let’s go, I’ll walk you home then head off back on my own.”

“I don’t want you to walk me home. I don’t want you to!” she said through her tears. “I thought that you at least, you were different. I thought you just seemed that way. I was close to trusting you.” She broke away from the tree and ran off again.

But this time I didn’t chase her. Run all you like, bitch, I’ve no intention of chasing you. They all want you to be different. How are you supposed to be different? Can a person be different from himself? He’s the way he is, and that’s how he has to be. I went back to the dance.

Now I really started to have a good time. Whoever showed up I bought them a drink, friends, strangers, enemies. Whether they wanted to drink or no, they had to. You won’t have a drink with Szymek? I wouldn’t even let the band go eat their supper, I brought them vodka and sandwiches and told them to keep playing. They played nothing but polkas and obereks, because that was what I wanted. Some folks were shouting that they were exhausted, they wanted a tango or a waltz. But I said no, polka, oberek, oberek, polka. And the band had to do what I said, here’s another five hundred for you! The emcee came up and said what was I doing taking charge here, was it my party? So I grabbed the ribbon off his chest and pinned it on myself. I’m the emcee now, you scram! If you don’t I’ll make such a ruckus there’ll be nothing to pick up afterwards. Count yourself lucky I’m feeling happy, because God forbid I’d be in a bad mood. Your whole dance would end up in the woods.

None of the girls would dance with me anymore, they all said they were tired and out of breath from all those polkas and obereks. Why was it all fast dances? Couldn’t they play something slow? Polkas and obereks are old hat. But I insisted they keep playing them. I could care less what you all think. Sit on your backsides, be wallflowers for all I care. I’ll give you old hat.

“Come on, Ignaś.” I pulled on Ignaś Magdziarz’s arm. He was drunk and sitting on a tree stump swaying, looking like he was about to fall off any minute. “We’ll show these bastards whether polkas and obereks are old hat. You be the girl and I’ll be the man. Come on. If you get bored we’ll switch, I’ll be the girl and you can lead. Just don’t step on my toes, and make sure you throw me up in the air at the right moment. Actually you can be two girls or two men if you like, makes no difference to me. One of them taller, one of them shorter, one fat the other thin, a red-haired one, a bald one, one of them blind, the other one lame, the hell with it all, Ignaś, I don’t even need to be there, just so long as you’ll party with me. I’ll marry the two of you if you want. You think I can’t? I can marry a guy to a guy, a woman to a woman, a dog with a bitch, an ox with a donkey, anyone I want, I can marry everyone to everyone else. If I want musicians I’ll marry the fiddler to the accordion player, the clarinetist to the trombonist, the drummer to his drums. You don’t believe me? Then drink up, cause you obviously haven’t had enough to drink, and you have to believe it, Ignaś, you have to. Even if you’ve never seen it, you have to believe it. If you’re drinking vodka and you don’t believe you’re drinking, it’s like you’re not actually drinking at all. People are hopping and jumping, but we need to party all the way around. The world turns around, life goes around, you need to drink around.”

Ignaś just sat there rocking and crying and repeating:

“I can’t, Szymuś, I can’t. I can’t be the girl or the man, not anymore. I have to puke. I’ve forgotten how to really party. Those were the days, Szymuś, those were the days. It was so fine back then.”

I gave up on him and started dancing on my own. People were shouting, stop pushing! He’s gone nuts! He’s drunk as a skunk! Me, I had my arms up in the air like the branches of an apple tree, like the wings of an eagle, and hey-ho! hey-ho! I was shoved and yanked one way and the other, they tried to force me off the dance platform. But once I gave a good wave of those wings of mine, I had a space around me that was big as the whole dance, and so deep you couldn’t see the bottom. All I could hear were squeals and shouts off to the side. I kept dancing.

I don’t even know when the clearing emptied and the band stopped playing. What did I care, I had a band inside me, the fiddle was fiddling away under my chin, the accordion swung between my sides, the drum beat in my belly, the trombone blared in my ear, and the clarinet whined from my heart. Dawn was dawning through the trees, dew had fallen from the sky to the earth, the birds had woken up and the air was trembling with birdsong, and I was still dancing, all on my own in the clearing, all on my own in the world, like on a battlefield after the battle. Everyone had gone except Ignaś Magdziarz, who was lying drunk next to his tree stump. Otherwise there was nothing but empty vodka bottles, broken crates, smashed glasses, plates, scraps of paper.

Afterwards, at work I got hauled over the coals by Maślanka for supposedly disgracing the district administration. That was probably why I got transferred from weddings to quotas soon after. But the firemen were even madder at me, they were collecting for a motor pump and the dance was meant to bring in the rest of the money. Because of me they came out at a loss, I frightened people away and they ended up with most of the vodka unsold and half a cartload of sandwiches. Though how could they have lost money if I spent my whole month’s salary there? On top of that, word went around I was getting married. One dance and I was already marrying. People! If that were the case I’d have been married a hundred times already. And this time things hadn’t even started before they were over. But say what you like, say I’m getting married. If I deny it they’ll just talk all the more.

It was another thing that I became a little bit meeker. People made jokes at my expense and I didn’t do a thing. I didn’t go around the other offices so much, I mostly just stayed at my desk. Besides, I didn’t want to see her because she’d probably heard what I got up to at the dance. And I had no intention of trying with her again. It hadn’t worked out, tough, let each of us go our own way. Good morning. Good morning. Nothing more. But more and more people seemed to be saying I was getting married. This person, that person, everyone I met. And that I’d changed, I was avoiding people, I didn’t come by anymore, didn’t visit with them. The girls were the worst of all. They’re like a bunch of vipers.

So then — is a junior high graduate better than a girl who’s only finished elementary school? Does she put out just the same? You always used to prefer them broader in the backside. Your tastes have obviously changed. And call that a bust? Her breasts look like they had the life sucked out of them by babies. Surely you can’t be in love? You, in love! Unless it’s like a dog in love with a bitch. Anyway, who’d believe you. You can’t be believed even when you say good morning, the morning can still end badly. You’re not to be trusted. And her, she’s just a stupid girl and that’s that. She’ll be crying over you yet. You’d think school would have made her smarter, but she let herself get taken in like all the rest. You’re probably just pulling the wool over her eyes with all your fine words, while she thinks you’re going to marry her. You’ll marry her for one night, till you go chasing after someone else. Besides, even if you did get married, what kind of life would she have with you? You’re not a farmer, not an office worker either. Putting it in and taking it out, that’s all you know how to do. That, you’re good at. You talk away and before you know it, there you are inside. Where it’s neither bitter nor sweet. And you can’t be pushed out or pulled out either, it’s like you’ve put down roots in her body. And afterwards, girl, make sure he hasn’t left you with a baby in your belly. So you wait and see if the sickness begins. If you get a sudden yen for sauerkraut or sour apples. You run to the church to ask God for forgiveness. You beg him for your time of the month like you were asking for happiness. Lord, I’m suffering here, give me at least a drop of blood. Never, never again. But the moment it passes you take the bastard back inside yourself. Because fear is easy to forget, and God even easier. You’re probably trying to win her over with those seven wounds of yours, aren’t you, you weasel? Either way it’ll end in bed, or some old place. I ought to scratch your eyes out. But let her do it for me. I’ve done enough crying. I’m such a fool.

Mother and father heard I was getting married, and it looked like I was hiding it from them. I could see them giving me funny looks. But I thought it was because I was coming straight home after work, that I wasn’t drinking, and I’d stopped complaining about working in the fields. And maybe they were just waiting nervously to see how long it would last.

Till one day I’m sitting at the table having some cabbage soup, I was supposed go do some plowing, when suddenly mother pipes up from her bed that people are saying I’m getting married. That she was so pleased, so pleased, even if I was keeping it from them. God must have finally answered her prayers. Who was the young lady? Was she from a farming family? Was she a good person? And when were we planning to have the wedding, because she hoped she’d live long enough, so she wouldn’t have to worry about me in the next life. From now on she’d be praying for both of us like we were both her own children. That the gold medallion she wore would be for my wife. And that now, death seemed just like falling asleep, and she could die without any regrets. After that, how could I tell her none of it was true. I said:

“It won’t be that soon. It’s going to take a while.”

“Then bring her here one time so I can meet her. Maybe I’d be able to get out of bed and I could whitewash the walls.”

As for father, he didn’t ask about her. His only question was, how many acres do they have? It made me so mad, I was about to tell him they didn’t have any land at all, that they worked as hired hands and they rented a room from someone else. But he was so fired up about the acreage that I told him:

“Fifty acres.”

“Fifty?” He actually went pale. “Really! They’re rich folks then.”

“Yes, they are,” I said.

“And they’re fine with you marrying their daughter?”

“Why wouldn’t they be? Don’t you think your own son is worth something?”

“No one’s saying you’re not worth anything. It’s just that rich folks are always drawn to rich folks, they look down on poor people. The Bugajs? Bugaj. Yeah, I’ve heard of them. But I had no idea they have fifty acres. They must have bought extra land. Is there many of them for it?”

“For what?”

“For all those acres.”

“There’s just her.”

“She’s an only child?”

“No, there’s a brother, but he’s sick with the consumption.”

“Well if it’s the consumption, nothing’s going to come of him. Do they at least have a farmhand?”

“What would they need a farmhand for? They’ve got machines.”

“True enough, these days even if you wanted a farmhand, where would you get one from? They’ve all gone off, damn them, they’re all working in the factories, in town, in office jobs. You go there and even if you don’t know two times two they’ll take you on in an office. Back in the day they’d come begging for work. Now, you can’t just hire someone for a day or two to help with the mowing. They don’t even know how much they’re supposed to charge for a day’s work. And every one of them wants to be fed. Not just dumplings or buckwheat, no, they have to have meat, meat. Machines are definitely a lot better. How many cows do they have?”

“Five, maybe six. I’ve not been in the cattle barn. They might think I was only interested in their property.”

“Good point. But it’s always best to know from the get-go. With all that land you could keep ten cows. And not black and white ones, people say they give more milk but it’s all watery. No, red cattle. The cows are smaller so they don’t eat as much, but the milk they give is half cream. And it’d be good to have a bull. You can make a pretty penny off a bull. Maziarski had a bull before the war and he used to charge five zlotys for a covering, or four days’ work for him. Whether the cow got pregnant or not. When there’s a bull on the farm, people know you’re doing well. Poor folks don’t keep bulls. You should have lots of pigs as well. Pigs are the fastest way to make money. Though you need your own sow. Piglets are expensive to buy these days. Besides, why would you go buying them at market. That’s a waste of time. You know where you are with your own pigs. You buy someone else’s and they turn out to be runts, they won’t grow. You never know what you’re buying. They may look like piglets, then it turns out they’re little devils. Instead of growing they get smaller. And you have to be careful no one’s bringing the sickness into your sty. Don’t let any outsiders in. You never know who people are. Even your neighbor, how can you be sure? He might have a nice look in his eye, but how can you be sure he isn’t bringing death in? Death can be brought in with nice eyes, it can come in on your hands or on your boots, or even when you shake out your pockets. Think how bad it is when only one pig dies. But imagine what it would be like if all of them got the pest. Someone’ll say to you, you’ve got some nice-looking pigs there. Then he’ll do something to them out of envy, and afterwards it won’t matter how much you feed them, they’ll stay as small as cats. Because they will envy you, make no mistake. Rich folks are always envied. There’s two sorts of people, the ones that are envied and the ones that envy them. It was envy that made Cain kill Abel, and you remember Wojtek Denderys before the war, that was why he set fire to his brother-in-law’s place. All the evil in the world is from envy. Governments envy each other, one king envies another one, generals envy other generals, and so on down to ordinary people. Then if you look around the world you see mountains envying each other, and rivers, small things envying big ones, even one apple on the apple tree envying another apple. Of course people are going to envy you. Though you shouldn’t hold it against them. They have to envy someone. You should keep bees as well, because with bees you have honey. And when you have honey you have everything. That’s what they say, the land of milk and honey. Plus, the orchard looks more cheerful when there are hives between the trees. You’re more inclined to drop by than when it’s just trees. There’ll be times you don’t feel like visiting people, but you’ll visit your hives. With bees you can talk to them, and listen to them as well. But don’t plant plum trees. When they have a big crop the way plums do, who’s going to pick them for you? They’ll fall on the ground and make a mess of the whole orchard. You won’t be able to pick them all even if you and her do the job together. Especially if she’s an office girl like you say, she won’t want to be getting all dirty with plums. You keep picking and picking and there’s still just as many. You should only plant apple trees. At the most two or three pear trees so you’ll have pears. Or if the priest comes and visits once in a while you can give him a pear. Priests like pears. Or you can just go and look among the leaves and see if any of them have turned yellow yet. It’s nice when you pick the first one and bring it to your kid or your woman. Here, this is for you, it’s ripe already. Don’t plant oats. Unless it’s for the horses. Because you have to have a pair of horses. Machines are one thing, horses another. On fifty acres both’ll come in handy. Plus, what kind of farmer would you be if you didn’t have a pair of horses. To at least go to the stable and look at them. The smell of sweat and manure tickles your nose, it’s like something was growing. If the horse neighs you give it a pat and you feel better right away. You don’t have to run to God with every little thing. And you’ll probably have a chaise, right? So you’ll need horses as well. If you’ve got all those acres you can’t go walking to church on foot of a Sunday. Or if you get invited to a christening or a wedding. You will get invited. One time your woman will be the godmother, then you’ll be the godfather. And with a chaise you can’t get by without a pair of horses. With a wagon you can manage with one, a wagon’s a different matter. But a chaise is a chaise, first of all you need a pair of horses, then you can have the chaise. And they have to match each other. Because a pair isn’t just any two horses. A pair is two chestnuts or two roans. Or best of all one black and one gray. A black and a gray, that’s a proper pair. They’re like a wedding couple. The gray’s like the bride, and the black is the groom. Or they’re like day and night walking next to each other. But don’t trim their tails, let them grow down to the ground. And leave their manes. A horse without a mane looks like an army recruit. A horse’s whole strength is in the mane. And don’t forget to buy them breast-harnesses, especially the kind that have studs! And a decent springy whip would be good. You’ll probably give up your job at the administration? Why work in an office when you’re going to be a rich man?”

“Let him be!” Mother had run out of patience. “He’s not even married yet. He’ll know what he has to do without being told. Just don’t drink, son. And be good to her.”

Father suddenly felt silly, he hung his head and sat there, half thinking about something, half just staring at the floor.

“Maybe I should go feed the dog?” he said after a bit.

“He just ate!” said mother, still annoyed.

So he took his tobacco from his pocket and started rolling a cigarette, and when he’d wet the paper he said:

“I’m not asking anything of him. I’m just giving him advice. He was never interested in the land, and here he’s got fifty acres coming his way. Fifty acres, do you know how much that is? It’s like if you took Socha’s land, Maszczyk’s, Dereń’s, and Sobieraj’s, and ours, and joined them all together. Five farms, and one farmer to run them. Who else is going to give him advice? Besides, do you think he’ll listen? He’ll do whatever he wants. He knows better than his mother and father. You say one thing, he does the opposite. You want the best, but he doesn’t give a hoot what you have to say. Or he’ll take the whole lot and let it all go to waste, and go off drinking and gallivanting. What does he care about the land. He never did what he was told even when he was small. Besides, let him do whatever he wants. We’re going to be dead either way,” he said angrily, as if we’d been quarreling.

But I hadn’t said a word. I’d just been sitting there listening to his advice. I even regretted telling him they had so many acres. Where did I come up with that number? No one in our village had that much land. I should have said eight or ten tops, and leave out the brother with the consumption. Or there could have been a brother, but maybe a cripple that had to be looked after for the rest of his life. Mother would still have said what she said, but the most he’d have said would be:

“The Wronas have got that much. And they want you for their daughter as well. That way you could stay here in the village, you wouldn’t have to move all the way out to Łanów. A person should die where they were born. They’ll never get as used to a different place. Jagna’s a hardworking girl. And they’ll probably give her a cow, cause they have two.”

I didn’t think he’d believe they had so much land.

“That many acres,” he’d say, “you’d have heard about it. Winiarski in Boleszyce, he has thirty-five and everyone knows him. And he was a councilman before the war. The priest and the squire would always be visiting him. At the harvest festival it was always Winiarski made the speech. He sent his son to study to be a doctor, and his daughter was a schoolteacher. Those people wouldn’t want anything to do with you if they had so much land. The drink’s making you imagine things. Keep drinking and you’ll end up like Pietrek Jamrozek. He calls his own mother a whore when she won’t give him vodka money. And his hands shake like leaves in the wind. The priest is always on at him from the pulpit. They take him away but then they bring him back and he starts drinking again.”

But maybe it wasn’t so much that he believed me as that he believed himself. And when he asked me how many acres they had, he only wanted me to agree with what he was saying. And I did, I said fifty acres, let him have that many if that’s what he wants, let him at last have his fill of land, let him get dizzy from it at least once. I got carried away. I wanted to needle him, but the way it came out it seemed like God had finally answered his prayers.

In the end, though, he must have realized it was all made up, because from that time on he never once brought up those fifty acres. And he never asked once if I was getting married. Nor even if we were still seeing each other. Besides, it looked like he was starting to get a bit confused in the head, and after mother died he stopped talking almost completely, he’d only say something every once in a while. He didn’t even worry about our fields anymore, what did he care about me getting married. There was just one time, when I’d stopped working at the administration, I came back from mowing and I was sitting there exhausted on the bench, and suddenly he asked:

“Is it harvesttime already?”

“Sure is.”

“Are the children old enough to help yet? You should bring them one day. I’d forgotten they’re my grandchildren.”

And just like the time before, I had to nod and agree with him:

“Yes, I’ll bring them.”