Stone Upon Stone

VII. Hallelujah

I don’t know if God died, if he rose again from the dead, if any of that is true, but blessed eggs taste different than eggs that haven’t been blessed. And nobody’s going to tell me it only seems that way to me. Ordinarily I’m not that wild about eggs, but blessed eggs, I can eat ten of them and still keep going. I don’t need to even have them with bread, just a little salt, of course salt that’s also been blessed. Best of all is with horseradish sauce, that ought to be not just blessed but so strong it knocks your socks off.

Mother would bake babkas for Easter. They were famous, those babkas of hers. The whole time before the next harvest there could be the worst shortage of flour, there could be no flour even to make the base for żurek, but when the harvest was done and the new flour was bolted she’d always set aside enough for her babkas, then the rest had to last as long as it could. And when she brought one of those babkas down from the attic, because that was where she kept them after they were baked, father and Michał and Antek and Stasiek would sit around the table like foxes round a henhouse, and their mouths would be watering as mother cut the babka. Me, I preferred blessed eggs even over babka. And usually we’d swap, I’d give someone my slice of babka and they’d give me their egg.

If it wasn’t for the blessed eggs I could have done without Easter at all. Because what kind of holiday is it actually? It’s neither in wintertime nor in spring. Also, you never know when it’s going to fall. You have to look at the calendar every year to see where it’s marked. So you have to buy a new calendar every year if you want to know, like you couldn’t just get used to the same day once and for all. I was born on Good Friday, but I can’t say it was on Good Friday, because Good Friday is different each year. So maybe Jesus didn’t die and rise from the dead after all, if it’s a different time every year?

I like Christmas better. It’s always in the same place. You don’t have to check. Besides which, the year is finishing, and there never was a year you’d want to keep. And I love carols. Way back, when we’d all sing carols together at home, the walls would ring. Then when you went down to the village to hear them singing in other houses, you felt like the Star of Bethlehem that appeared over the stable was about to come to earth. Here there was singing, there there was singing, there was singing at all the neighbors’ and at the edge of the village, and even far, far beyond.

These days too, when Christmas Eve comes along I like to sing a little. Because carols you can sing on your own and it sometimes still seems that everyone’s singing along like in the old days. The one I like best is “God is born.” I still have some of my old voice, and when I take a good deep breath I can make the walls ring like before. The neighbors stop their own singing to listen to me. Quiet there, Szymek’s singing. On a frosty night they can hear me all the way at the end of the village. Even Michał’s all ears when I sing, like he wants it to go on forever.

Sometimes I try and persuade him, if you want I’ll teach you and then the two of us can sing together. Say after me, God is born. First the words, then later the tune. They’re not hard. God is God, obviously. Is born, you know that too. I was born, you were born. A dog is born, a cat, a foal, a calf. Anything that wants to live has to be born. Remember, in the spring we had chicks, they were born as well, except from eggs. We used to sing this one every Christmas. We’d sit around the table, it was a different table back then, me, you, father, mother, and Antek, Stasiek would be in mother’s arms. When mother was serving the food she’d always give him to you to hold, because he didn’t cry when you had him. One time he peed in your lap. God is born, that’s all there is to sing, don’t be afraid.

Though when I was a young man I liked Easter too. In the fire brigade we’d always stand watch over Christ’s tomb on Good Friday. In our uniforms with all the straps, with our axes at our side, we’d compete whose uniform shone the brightest. The whole week leading up to it we spent polishing our helmets and boots. A helmet like that, the best way to clean it properly was first with ash, then spit, then cloth, and it would shine like a monstrance, when you wore it you looked like Saint George, or maybe another saint, I forget which one used to wear a helmet. For the boots the best thing was a mixture of soot and sour cream, then rabbit skin to give them a shine. Though beforehand you had to go all over the place to try and borrow boots from someone. Because none of the young men had tall boots, only the farmers had them, and then only the better-off ones. Four of us stood watch so we needed eight pairs for the changing of the guard, plus everyone had feet of different sizes, sometimes we had to go all the way to other villages looking for boots, and they were rarely a good fit for everyone. You often had to stand there in boots that were too small for you. They’d pinch and chafe, your legs would go numb up to your knees, and on top of that people would come to look at the tomb, so they’d be looking at us as well, and afterward there was no end of gossip in the village, so-and-so was standing crooked, so-and-so was rocking from side to side, so-and-so was blinking like you wouldn’t believe. But when it came to me they always said, he was standing straight as an arrow.

Then Easter Monday would come around and Dyngus Day, and we’d go from house to house from the early morning wherever there was a good-looking girl. We’d splash the parents a bit first, because you had to, then you’d throw more water over the daughter, though not too much, so you wouldn’t get it on the walls after they’d been freshly whitewashed. Because if her folks got mad they might not invite you in for something to eat and drink. It was only later, once we’d gone around to a dozen or so houses and we were on the tipsy side, then we’d go all out. We’d toss whole potfuls, whole bucketfuls over them. Any woman that was on her way to church or from church, whether she was single or married, none of them was safe. Some of them we’d lure all the way to the well. Some of us would keep her there, others would draw the water, the girl would scream and we’d all have a good laugh.

One time Zośka Niezgódka managed to get away from us and ran off towards the river. Unluckily for her we caught up with her by the bank. She cried and pleaded with us, she said she had a new dress on, that she had new pumps, a new blouse, everything was new, because her aunt had just sent it from America, and she’d be afraid to go back home if it got wet. So we took all her clothes off. But she cried and begged even more, when she struggled her boobs jumped up and down, and down below she had red hair. Stand still, Zośka, or your maidenhead’ll break and then none of us’ll want to marry you. We grabbed her by the arms and legs and flung her in the river.

We’d always bless a whole kopa of eggs, five dozen of them. We’d color half of them red by boiling them in onion skins, the other half green with young rye. And it was always me that took them to be blessed, I never trusted anyone else to do the job properly. I’d squeeze through to the front when the priest got started so the most number of drops from the sprinkler would fall on my eggs, because farther back the priest just waved the thing and hardly any drops made it that far. I still did it even after I grew up. It was only during the war, after I joined the resistance, that Antek started going, and after him Stasiek. But they didn’t keep it up for long. First one of them moved away then the other, and once again it became my job to go get the eggs blessed, because what kind of Easter would it be without blessed eggs. I could go without cake, I could go without sausage, but there had to be blessed eggs. When you eat one of those blessed eggs, even if you’ve got nothing to be happy about, it’s always hallelujah.

It was only those two years I spent in the hospital that I didn’t get my eggs blessed. But when I came home, the first Easter I boiled a whole kopa just like before. Though I didn’t have any of my own, I had to buy stamped ones from the co-op, because my chickens weren’t laying yet. Besides, I only had two chickens anyway, and a rooster. I’d just got the brood hen sitting on new ones, they hadn’t even hatched yet. I colored them all red with onion skins, because I didn’t feel up to tramping out to the fields for new rye, not on those lame legs of mine. I barely made it to the church. And I left home plenty early, if my legs had been healthy I could’ve gotten there and back again five times over. I thought I’d plop myself down in the pew and have a bit of a rest before the priest started the blessing, but I almost arrived too late, the priest was already going around doing the blessing. Fortunately he’d started from the side altar, and there was a whole crowd of people, in a lot of places they were having to stand, because our parish serves five villages, so before he got to my pew I’d already found a place between Mrs. Sekuła and some woman I didn’t know.

Except that when I leaned over to untie the scarf, because the basket was wrapped in mother’s old headscarf, the walking stick fell from my hand and crashed to the ground so loud it was like a thunderclap in the church. The noise went all the way up to the ceiling. Even the organ gave a groan in the choir stalls. Right away every head turned in my direction and frowned. The priest stopped the sprinkler in midair and followed where everyone was looking. I got all embarrassed, and for a moment I regretted wanting to get the eggs blessed. Why couldn’t I have waited till next Easter, maybe I’d be walking better by then.

As if that wasn’t enough, I couldn’t loosen the scarf, because I’d tied the ends firmly so it wouldn’t come undone on the way, and the priest was almost there. Plus I needed to kneel. How could I kneel when one leg was completely stiff and the other could barely bend either? All my efforts came to nothing, because the priest hurried by like a storm. And though Mrs. Sekuła helped me, and the other woman too, we didn’t manage to get the scarf off in time, and I only got a few drops of holy water on my hands, none of it fell on the eggs and they didn’t get blessed. So they didn’t taste the way they should. They tasted like you’d just gotten them from the hen and boiled them and you were eating them. Though at least I didn’t have to regret not having gone. There’d been worse times and I’d always gone, my legs weren’t that much of an excuse.

When I worked in the district administration, the fact was I was a government worker, and the times weren’t right for blessing eggs. Still, when Holy Saturday came around I’d leave work during the day, I’d say I have to go get my eggs blessed. I didn’t hide it. And even when I got transferred to the quotas department it was the same, I’d say I need to go get my eggs blessed. Though the quotas department wouldn’t employ just anyone, they were always holding meetings to get us to collect more and more. You often had to be hard as nails with folks. They hadn’t even harvested their crop yet, it was still standing in the fields, and here we were sending all kinds of deadlines, provide your quota, provide your quota, anyone who doesn’t is in deep trouble. But it all came from the higher-ups. Someone up there was setting the deadlines. It must have been someone that thought he was more important than the land. But only God is more important than the land, for anyone that believes in him. If you don’t believe in God, then the land is the most important of all. And you can’t hurry it either with deadlines or with whips. If you got mad at it for not obeying you it would just say, kiss my ass. But what could we do?

There were times my hand went numb from writing, because we’d write and write, directives, reminders, fines. My eyes would be red as a rabbit’s. I’d get up in the morning and I could barely see. Mother would ask me, why on earth are your eyes so red. Why? From writing. Father would say, sure it’s from writing. If that was the case no one would go to school, because there all they do is write. There wouldn’t be any priests or professors. It’s from drinking. Yesterday he barely made it over the threshold, then right away he crashed down on his bed like a hog. You were asleep, you didn’t see it. You just keep drinking. At work they even told me I should go see the doctor, maybe he could give me eyeglasses. Some people at work had glasses. Sąsiadek did, and this one guy in the insurance department, I think someone in highways did, the local policeman used to sometimes put them on as well when he got a written order to go somewhere and he couldn’t read where. And three of the women clerks wore glasses, but I didn’t like the looks of any of them. I tried Sąsiadek’s on one time, I actually looked pretty good, but it was like staring through fog.

Some people thought I’d taken the easy way out, but what was easy about it? After you’d dealt with them, people would come and curse me and the government to high heaven. At times my office would be bursting at the seams with all the papers I had to send out. And there was as much again stacked in the hallway or even outside. They’d bring in the letters they’d been sent and put them on my desk and say, you go and mow, and harvest, and thresh, you go collect it all. A good few of the women would point to their ass and tell me where I could stick my papers. All I could do was throw my hands up and keep repeating, it’s not me, it’s not my decision. Then whose is it? You’re all the damn same, the lot of you!

Of course, sometimes I’d help people out. One guy, I’d move his deadline back a bit, another I’d reduce his quota by a couple hundred pounds, with someone else I’d at least advise them how to write an appeal and where to send it. Then people would want to thank me somehow. How does one farmer say thank you to another? He invites him for vodka. Vodka isn’t a bribe. It isn’t that one person gives and the other one takes, no — both of them drink. So I got to drinking quite a bit. Actually, in a job like that you can’t not drink. Plus people think anything can be arranged with vodka, more than through God. And you never can tell. Sometimes it helps to have a drink, and sometimes even praying doesn’t help. But if you want to live among people, you have to drink. Because then they accept you as one of them. And that means something.

In addition, the pub was virtually just over the road from the district offices, all you had to do was cross the road. And everyone knows gratitude isn’t something you measure out, you do this much for me and I’ll do this much for you, so it rarely ended with just a single bottle. Because gratitude isn’t in the pocket, it’s in the soul. And I don’t care how much of a schemer a man is, after a bottle his soul has to come out. And at that point it’s the soul that’s standing the drinks, the soul that’s paying, and moving from one soul to another is just like entering someone’s house.

Also, someone or other always sat down with you, because even if he didn’t have an actual reason to be grateful to you, he wanted to be grateful just in case. Then someone else would come along, then someone else again, often it was whoever found themselves in the pub at the time. Because who doesn’t want to be a soul instead of just a body? When it came time to shut the pub, Jasiński, the manager, would lock up on the outside, and inside we’d carry on drinking. At most the prices would go up some, he had to earn a bit extra too on top of his salary. He’d go lie down on the chairs behind the counter and we’d drink on. I’m telling you, we drank like it was our souls celebrating because they were in heaven, and not us in a pub. Wake me up on your way out. Come off it, Jasiński, who’s leaving, where would we go. We’re not gonna come all the way down to earth again. We poured drinks left, right, and center, wake up Jasiński, we need another bottle. Because I was Eagle again. Come on now! You’ve abandoned us God, good job Eagle’s here. Come on now! Soon as Eagle’s here, every tear we shed is one dead enemy body! Come on now! Eagle’s in the village with his men, they’re drinking at young Marysia Król’s, there’s going to be a parade through the village, bring your flour and lard! Though it often ended sadly, one or another guy killed, a guy gets killed so many times and he has to keep on living. You were Eagle and now you’re a piece of crap, not a government official. Wake up, Jasiński, another bottle!

The next day you’d be sitting half dead at your desk, your head would be splitting and your belly would be aching, and on top of everything you’d have to listen to folks complaining about how hard life was. No one cared that maybe you had it even harder, but you weren’t going to take some form and go complain, who to? To God? Why is this happening to me, God?

Oftentimes I’d barely make it home when I had to be off to work, there’d only be time to have a quick mouthful of sour milk or cabbage juice. And though home was close by, once the devil began leading you astray he’d push you any which way, sometimes you even ended up back where you started. He’d mix your head up so bad you’d almost get lost in your own village. The only thing for it was to go from one house to the next. Luckily, in those days the houses were close together, like beads in a rosary, it was like they were only separated by the winter insulation on the outside, so you could count off the houses as you went, Hail Mary, full of grace, Our Father. Today almost all the houses are new, it’s like someone snapped the rosary and the beads got scattered to the four winds, and you’ll never be able to pray that way again.

When you get there, you still have to find the door, and find the handle in the door. There were times it was like searching for a needle in a haystack. I’d be looking and looking, and father would stand on the other side of the door and not open it.

“Open the door, father, it’s me, Szymek.”

“Open it your self, you drunken lout.”

“I can’t find the handle.”

“You hear that, mother? He can’t find the handle.”

“Come on, Józef, open the door for him, he’s your own son.”

“He’s a devil, he’s no son of mine. Do you hear him scraping his claws on the door? I’m not letting any devil into my house, not while it’s still mine. Keep scraping, Antichrist, scrape till your claws are worn away.”

“Open the door, Józef,” mother would plead with him.

“Get up and open it yourself.”

“I would, but I can’t get up. Open the door, Józef. Even a prodigal son is still a son.”

“I had sons, but they all left. Anything that’s good, it either dies or it goes away, only what’s bad stays behind.”

One time when he refused to open the door for me, I somehow managed to find the handle, but it turned out he’d put the hook on inside. I started hammering with my fists, I knew he was standing right there, and in the end I was so furious I kicked at the door and I shouted:

“Soon as mother dies, I’m out of here! Nothing’s gonna keep me!” And I walked off and sat on a rock outside the house. The night was maybe halfway through. I’d barely sat down when someone joined me.

“Shift up there a bit.”

I looked, and it was Grandfather Łukasz, the one that had run away to America before the first war. The moon was bright as a shiny coin, the stars were like grains on the threshing floor, I couldn’t fail to know him. It even made me sober up a bit. They say that in such cases you have to ask what their soul needs. But what can a soul from America need? It’s only village souls that are always in need of something. Is it you, grandfather, I ask. Then greetings to you. How are things over there in America? They said you made a fortune, now I see you’re back. Maybe it’s true that when a person dies, his soul goes back to where he was born. Though why did you have to take it all the way to America in the first place? You paid its passage, and now it’s back. You should have left it here when the Cossacks came looking for you, they wouldn’t have harmed it, and people would have comforted it somehow or other. Then you wouldn’t be drawn back here after you died. Was it so bad for you over there in America? If it makes you feel any better, you wouldn’t have had it any easier here. Here it’s the same as America, just on the other side of the world. Because America is anywhere we’re not, grandfather. Tell me at least, what’s it like in the next world? You killed the overseer, you know better than other people. You did the right thing, whether or not he was a bastard. A man often feels like killing someone, but these days there aren’t any more overseers. It’s a different system now. You probably don’t know what a system is? You know, like a government. You killed an overseer and you had to run away, and your grandson’s a government worker. You must have dreamed of having someone like that in the family? Here you are, he’s sitting right next to you on a rock. He’s a bit drunk, but that’s because of you, grandfather. With you grandparents, whatever popped into your head you lost yourselves dreaming about it, and because of that, afterwards your grandchildren have to drink. You’re all in the next world, your grandchildren are still in this one, and it’s all one big circle. And circles can’t be straightened out. So it’s better to go to the pub than go away, because it’s the same thing, just closer. Though sometimes, when there’s a full moon like tonight, I feel like tying myself up on a chain and howling. I’d be a better dog than our Twisty. I’d smell thieves, and I’d smell your soul, grandfather. You wouldn’t have to worry that no one would recognize you. Did you ever see a moon like that in America? You only ever get them here, over the village. Like someone took an ax and cut a hole in the sky. You could toss in a fishing net and catch yourself some fish. Do you know if fish from the sky are the same as fish from the river, grandfather?

We talked on and on, almost till sunup. He didn’t say a word, while I talked about this and about that. In the morning father came outside and gazed up at the sky.

“This is quite some weather. I don’t know why the sky looks so high up or so deep? Imagine having a farm like that sky. On a big plain. All you’d need to do would be pray, and everything would sprout and grow and flower. Not the tiniest cloud in sight. A sun like Jesus’s eye. So then, maybe you could come do some work in the fields?”

“No way, not when I haven’t slept. I’ll do it tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow, tomorrow, how long has it been tomorrow. Everyone else’s fields are all plowed and harrowed, some folks have even done their sowing, and our fields haven’t been touched since harvesttime. People are starting to ask if we’re selling up, because the land’s not being worked, and he keeps saying tomorrow. Tomorrow’s good for the next world, in this one you have to plow and sow as long as the land’ll produce. Because when it stops, you won’t be able to beg it to start again. The land is good while it’s good, but if it sets its mind to it, it can be stone.”

“Grandfather was here with me all night,” I said to try and change the subject. “He just disappeared a moment ago.”

“So did he tell you where he buried those papers?” father asked, perking up.

“Not that one. Grandfather Łukasz from America.”

He waved his hand.

“Him, he was a good-for-nothing. What did he want?”

“Nothing. He just came to talk.”

“He must have needed to do penance. Was he barefoot?”

“I didn’t look at his feet.”

“He probably was. You always have to do penance barefoot.”

One time I came back drunk, it was almost nighttime. For some reason I’d thought to slip a bottle in my pocket as we were leaving the pub. You might have said I had a premonition. But I didn’t, it was just that I’d gotten paid that day, and when you got paid you sometimes took an extra bottle for the road. It came in handy in the morning when you couldn’t get yourself together. I was a bit surprised to see a light still on in our window. But I thought, father’s probably just soaking his feet. He had varicose veins and sores and when they were bothering him more than usual, he’d brew up herbs and soak his feet in them. He’d sit on a chair and put his feet in a pail till the cold woke him up or I got back.

I went in and I thought I was seeing things, it looked like Michał was sitting on the bench by the window. Except he seemed kind of sleepy, because he didn’t even raise his head when I came in. But it was him all right. Maybe he’d been traveling a long while and he was tired? He never did have much staying power. One time he came back from market with father and the wagon kept bouncing up and down, it made him throw up. Or if he stayed up late one night, the next day he’d be all pale and have rings under his eyes.

“You’re here, Michał,” I said. And though my head was spinning, I was pleased to see him. “It’s been years and years, we’ve been waiting all this time. Let’s have a drink, brother. As it happens I’ve got a bottle on me. I took it because I had a feeling. How about that.” I pulled out the bottle and stood it on the table. “Where are some glasses?” I ask. Father’s sitting on a chair with his head down, like he’s dozing. All of a sudden he jerks his head up and says to me:

“What, you want to give him vodka, you piece of work? Look at him.”

“What do I need to look for? I can see it’s Michał. Would I not know Michał? My own brother? He looks a bit older, but not even that much considering how many years it’s been. Tell him, Michał, we’re brothers, right? You’re off away, and I’m here, and we don’t know anything about each other, but you don’t need to know anything to be brothers. Say, do you remember Franek Maziejuk? You were in the same class together. He hung himself. He was missing twenty hundredweight of sugar from his warehouse. What did he need all that sugar for? Course, the priest says from the pulpit, you mustn’t sin. That’s easy to say. As for me, I’m more or less alive here. But never mind that, you’re here, you’ve come, that’s the main thing. Now where are those glasses, mother?”

Mother didn’t say a word. She was lying there with her eyes half closed, like she was asleep, though I knew she wasn’t. I thought maybe she was in a huff because Michał was back and I’d come home drunk. Oh well.

“Do you know where they are, father?”

But father wasn’t saying anything either. Besides, he might not have known if we had any glasses in the house. What would we have used them for? We only ever drank milk or water, sometimes herbs, and for that a mug was better than a glass. It’s bigger and thicker, it’s got a handle to hold it by, and mugs last much longer than glasses. There’s one tin mug, I’ve got it to this day, it’s my favorite thing to drink out of. Grandfather used it too and he said his grandfather did as well, show me a glass that’ll live that long. Water never tastes as good as from that mug. Sometimes I’m not even thirsty, but when I drink from the mug it’s like drinking straight from the spring. Or try picking up a glass with a hand that’s tired from work, it’s like picking up an egg with tongs. When you come back from mowing, whatever you pick up it’s like you were grabbing your scythe.

“Let’s look around then,” I said. I took the lamp from the table so I could see better. “We can’t go drinking from the bottle when my brother’s come to visit. It’s so good to see you, brother. At last we’ll be able to talk and catch up after all these years. And you can tell me what it was you wanted from me back then, during the war.”

I opened the dresser. Plates, big and little bottles, bags, it all began to dance in front of my eyes, but I didn’t see any glasses in the dance. I wasn’t sure myself whether there were any in the house, but I had this mighty urge to drink from a glass.

“How do you like that? Like the ground swallowed them up. Tomorrow I’m gonna go buy a dozen glasses and we’ll keep them on display.” I turned toward mother in bed. “Where are the glasses?” I tugged at her quilt. “Michał and me want a drink.” Then I saw in the light of the lamp that her eyes were filled with tears. “What are you crying for? There’s no reason. I’ve come home drunker than this many a time. I’m not that drunk tonight. Wicek Fulara had a baby boy. I married him and Bronka back when. You know what, tomorrow I’ll borrow Machała’s mowing machine and the whole lot’ll be done in a day. I helped him with his application, he’s sure to lend me his mower. Let him try not to, the son of a bitch.” I was still standing over mother, holding the swaying lamp, and she was crying more and more. “Don’t cry, mother,” I said. “Father, what’s up with mother?” I turned abruptly toward father and the lamp lurched in my hand like the flame had jumped out into the room. It went dark for a moment then got brighter again.

“Put the damn lamp down before you burn the place to the ground.” Father raised his head and I could see he had tears in his eyes as well. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

“Are you crying because Michał’s here?”

“He’s either Michał or he isn’t,” he said. “God alone knows.”

“Why would God need to know if someone is Mchał or not? I know I’m Szymek, you know you’re father, Michał knows he’s Michał. Everyone knows on their own better than God. Was he just born, that God has to know for him that he’s Michał? Me, even if I didn’t want to be Szymek there’s nothing I could do about it. Even when I’m drunk I know who I am, because no one’s going to be me in my place. Though you should have written to say you were coming, Michał. See, everyone’s crying now.”

“He didn’t come, he was brought.”

“By who?”

“His wife or whoever.”

“You have a wife, Michał? You never said anything. We could have at least sent congratulations. All the best to the newlyweds. Or, may the sun never set on the road of your new life together. Or, here’s wishing you health, happiness, good fortune, and your first son. You don’t even need to make anything up, you can choose a greeting at the post office. Jaśka the postmistress, she just asks you which one you want, the number two or the number five? Which one is cheaper? But for you I’d send the most expensive one. Maybe you did mention it? Maybe I forgot after all these years. Well now we really do need to have a drink. Father and mother, let them cry, that’s their job. Ours is to drink. Don’t you worry about them. I live here with them, they see me every day, and they sometimes cry over me as well. Not father, but mother does. And over you too, specially after you’ve been gone so long.”

The tin mug happened to be on the table and I rinsed it out.

“You use the mug. I can drink from the bottle. Tomorrow we’ll drink from glasses.” I poured him out the bigger amount and left the smaller half for myself. “Here’s to your health, because you came back, you didn’t forget us.”

I was just lifting the bottle to my mouth when father jumped up and covered the mug with his hand.

“Are you trying to get him drunk on top of everything, you damn godless animal? Drunken idiot, can’t you see him?”

“Of course I can see him! He’s my brother!” I slammed the bottle down on the table so hard the vodka splashed out of the neck. “Tell him you’re my brother, Michał.” I grabbed his head in both hands and jerked it up. He looked at me with eyes that saw almost nothing, had no life in them. “You’re my brother. Always were, always will be.”

At that moment mother got out of bed and asked him:

“Say something, Michał. Tell me, where does it hurt?”

“Where it hurts him is his business,” I snapped at mother, though she hadn’t done anything wrong. “He’s here, he’s back, that’s all that matters.”

“Well since he came back he’s been sitting there not saying a word.” Father got up from his chair and set off toward the water buckets, then when he got halfway he turned and went toward mother, then he turned back again, like he was cutting across a field but didn’t really know where he was going. “She looked after him for a bit. But what could she do. Said he’d be better off here. We keep asking him, Michał, Michał, but it’s like talking to a brick wall. Will you not tell your own mother and father? Even trees tell each other, any living thing will. A man’ll talk to the earth beneath his feet if he’s got no one else to talk to. You can’t live and not talk.”

“Have a drink, father.” I pushed the mug of vodka into the hands he was holding out helplessly in front of him, like he wanted to lay them down somewhere, ease his troubles at least that much. “He doesn’t need to talk. We can talk to him.”

Mother died not long afterwards. Not from her illness so much as out of worry, because she kept crying and crying and saying, Michał, son, what’s wrong? After she passed away father got sick too. Often he didn’t hear what you said to him, like all his attention was focused on listening to the next world where mother had gone. So now everything was on my shoulders. He and Michał did nothing at all. They just sat there, one of them on a stool by the stove, the other one on the bench, waiting for me to come back from work.

I even thought about quitting, because it was getting too much for me. Right after mother died I still got some help from the women that lived nearby. One of them would cook for us from time to time, another one would clean the house, another one would do the laundry, and a fourth one would at least come and offer her sympathy. But as mother’s death faded into the past, they stopped coming too. On the other hand I was reluctant to give up my job, because those few zlotys I brought in on the first of every month came in handy, you could always buy salt or sugar or a piece of sausage.

Then one day soon after Easter an inspector from the county came, and Chairman Maślanka showed him around the offices. This is highways, this is taxation, this is insurance, quotas, Mierzwa, Antos, Winiarski, Miss Krysia, Miss Jadzia. And I happened to be eating blessed eggs. In our offices we’d somehow gotten into the habit of always having a midmorning snack, Mrs. Kopeć, the caretaker, would even make tea and sell it for a zloty a glass. When I had something I could bring from home I did, so as to not be worse than the others. I mean, it wasn’t for being hungry, I could stand being hungry, I could go without food for three days straight. When they came in I’d set the eggs out on the table on a piece of newspaper and I was peeling them, one of them was colored red and the other one green.

“What’s this, you’re eating blessed eggs, Pietruszka?” said Maślanka, half asking, half making fun of me, and the guy from the county smiled awkwardly.

“That’s right.” I went on peeling them.

“So what, blessed ones are better than ordinary hen’s eggs?” says Maślanka.

“I think they’re better. If someone else disagrees they don’t have to eat them.”

“I see! You must have blessed a whole lot of them if you don’t have time to eat them all at home and you have to bring them to work?”

“A kopa.”

“The thing is, the district administration isn’t a church, Pietruszka!” he snapped like an angry dog.

“Right, but I’m not blessing them, I’m eating them.”

He didn’t say anything else, but I had the feeling he wasn’t going to let me off lightly with those blessed eggs, and in front of the county inspector as well. I must have really made him mad, because he started bugging other people about eating. Antos was having bread and cheese. Bread and cheese doesn’t have anything to do with God, except for saying, give us this day our daily bread, but believers and nonbelievers eat bread just the same. But he tore Antos off a strip, he said he had so many slices of bread he’d be eating for an hour, and the regulations specified fifteen minutes for the break.

A couple of days later he called me into his office, and though we’d been on first-name terms for a long time, he said:

“You drink too much, Pietruszka. It has to stop.”

I was so mad, if I’d had something at hand I would have smashed his skull open. But all there was on his desk was an inkpot and a blotter, that wouldn’t have been any good.

“Don’t you Pietruszka me, you little squirt. The name’s Szymek, in case you’d forgotten. And if I drink, it’s on my own time. Don’t think I don’t know what’s gotten your back up. It’s not my drinking. Like you don’t drink? I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen you under the table. You’re full of yourself because you’re the chairman. What did you do in the occupation? Shit your pants is what.”

A week later I lost my job. And it wasn’t because of the drinking like he was trying to make me believe, because at that time I was already drinking less. In reality it was those blessed eggs that had scared him. He might even have liked the taste of them just like me, except that him, he’d hide under his blanket to peel them, and on top of that he’d send his kid out in front of the house to look out, pretend he was playing when actually he was making sure no one was coming. Then all of a sudden he sees a government worker in a government office eating blessed eggs like it was the most natural thing in the world, and it felt to him like they were hand grenades, not eggs. Besides, he wasn’t just afraid of blessed eggs. He was afraid of everything. And God forbid you ever said in front of him, Dear God! He’d turn red as a beetroot and if he could he would’ve stuck the words right back down your throat.

“Save expressions like that for when you’re at home, after work! This is the district administration! We need to keep superstition out of here!” But people say those things without thinking, they’re just sighing. It’s easier to change the words you use or your thoughts than those kind of expressions. But that’s the sort of person he was.

When I started having a tomb built, all those years later, and I needed fifteen hundredweight of cement, he was still chairman, though his title had been changed to director. That was how much Chmiel had figured we’d need. And another two hundredweight on top, it might come in useful, we could at least make a couple steps so you wouldn’t have to jump down with the casket. I could have bought cement off someone under the counter, and if it was for something else I might have done, but not for a tomb. First I went to the co-op. They had cement, but you needed an allocation order from the district administration. I went there. You could get an allocation order, but you had to sign an application. I signed it.

“What’s the cement for?” the clerk asked me. She was maybe twenty years old, big blue eyes, she seemed a nice girl, a bit snub-nosed. But at her age even a snub nose looks pretty.

“I’m planning to build a tomb,” I said.

“A tomb!” She almost burst out laughing, she had to turn her head and pretend like she just happened to glance the other way. Then she took a sheet of paper out of her desk and started following down with her finger to see what you were allowed to get cement for. House, cattle shed, stable, barn, silo, manure pit, for breeding rabbits, poultry, foxes, coypu, for a greenhouse to grow vegetables, flowers, potted or cut. Look, they even mention chrysanthemums, she said, pleased. But there was nothing about tombs. She asked a clerk that was sitting in the corner by the window:

“Mr. Władek, are there any official instructions about cement allocations for tombs?”

“Who’s wanting to die?”

“This citizen here.”

The guy gave me a blank look and shrugged.

“So what am I supposed to do?” I asked.

She smiled, but she spread her hands helplessly.

“You’d need to go talk to the chairman.”

“Is he in?”

“He is, but he’s busy.”

“Then I’ll wait.”

Mr. Władek chipped in:

“If he’s busy, he’ll be busy till the end of the day.”

“I used to work here years ago,” I said. “This room was the tax department. It was before your time. They didn’t have those desks either.”

Mr. Władek seemed embarrassed. The girl hung her head too.

“Maybe I’ll go ask.” She looked at me, no longer with the eyes of an official this time, got up and went out of the room.

I didn’t have to wait long, he saw me right away, though he’d supposedly been busy.

“Have a seat, Szymek,” he said. I was surprised it wasn’t “Pietruszka.” He obviously remembered me, though a lot of years had passed. He’d really aged and put on even more weight, he was squashed against the arms of his chair. His nose had gotten lumpy as well and his eyes had a heavier look than before, or maybe he’d just been thinking hard about something before I came in. He gave a crooked sort of smile:

“So you’re planning to leave for the next world?”

I sat down, struggling with my walking sticks. But it was like he didn’t notice I had them.

“What’s the hurry?”

“There’s no hurry,” I said. “Even if there was, I don’t owe the government anything. Except for the taxes you let me pay in installments. But I’ll pay it off before I die, don’t worry.”

“Who said I was worried? You want to die, be my guest. Anyone’s free to die. It’s no business of the district administration. But if you want cement, well that is our business.”

“It’s only fifteen hundredweight.”

“Only fifteen hundredweight. It’s not a question of how much, it’s what it’s for. What do you think, that I can give the stuff out for people to do whatever they feel like with it? It’s written there plain as day in the regs what I can do. You want to increase your yield, by all means, that’s economic development, I can give it to you for that. But if something’s not listed it’s not listed and that’s that. What’s the big deal about a tomb? You’ve got plenty of time. You’d be better off thinking about life while you can. I’m not saying you should get cows or pigs, cause they need a lot of work and I can see your legs are, you know. But maybe a chicken farm or a duck farm. We support those kind of farms. You’d make yourself some dough, and the government would get something out of it as well. We could give you a loan. No problem. Write an application and I’ll sign off on it. The interest rate’s low and the payoff period is long, later on we can cancel part of the debt. Then instead of being a dead man you’re your own master. Your chickens are clucking, your ducks are quacking. All you do is swing by and feed them every so often, and the cash comes rolling in. If there’s a blight you’ve got insurance, the government refunds the value of the stock and you get another loan. It’s not like it used to be, when every dead hen was a cause for tears. The speckled one, the red one, the one with green legs. When one of them died it was like a person died, Walek or Franek or Bartek. You could even tell which egg came from which chicken. Now all the white ones are white, all the brown ones are brown. There’s no more laying hens, friend, it’s all just production. Or greenhouses. We support greenhouses. By all means. Cukes, tomatoes, chives, lettuce, radishes, it’s a seller’s market. You wouldn’t have to worry about delivery. They’d come and buy the stuff up, in any quantities. They have their own crates. A tomb isn’t a farm building, it doesn’t increase productivity. All that cement, however much it was, just going into the ground.”

“Fifteen hundredweight, like I said.”

“Even fifteen hundredweight. How am I going to explain afterwards that I allocated it to build tombs instead of silos. It’s a bad use of resources, a bad move. Or they might just come tell me I’m too old for the job. Believe me, there’s no shortage of folks that would like to see me gone. They’re starting to say it’s time for me to retire. But I’ve still got four years to go, that’s a long time. Other people say I never graduated from school, I just did some courses. I’m telling you, all the young folks these days have diplomas, and they’re stuck up about it like you wouldn’t believe. They don’t give a damn about this or that or the other, all they care about is whether things are done scientifically. Every cow has to have six teats, two ears on every blade of wheat, four trotters on every pig. It won’t be long before they start wanting to plow and plant in the next world as well. They won’t even believe there was a war once. Where can you go study in wartime? In the woods, with the resistance. You know that better than anyone. A person’s lucky to have a head on his shoulders and get by somehow. But times have changed, boy have they changed since you worked here. Nowadays, those ways wouldn’t fly. These days every hundredweight of cement has to give an increase in the yield, in meat, milk, eggs, produce. They calculate everything. And it’s always more and more. Then the farmers come along and they say, if you want more productivity I need cement. I can provide a hundred head like you want, director, but I’d need to build an extension on my hog shed. I could do this, I could do that, but I need cement! But we get a wagonload or two of cement and we’ve no idea when the next one’ll come along. It gives me a headache trying to figure out who I should give the cement to and who not. I go visit my father-in-law’s tomb on All Souls’, and instead of thinking about him I keep thinking how many cattle sheds or pig sheds or silos you could have made from the cement that’s gone into the ground there. It’s heartbreaking. And there’s one guy here in the building that’s just waiting for me to trip up. He’s always scheming against me. That director, he’s too old, he’s stupid, he’s a lousy party member. Son of a bitch finished college on a scholarship we gave him from the district. But try getting him to actually do anything. Or if a directive comes through, he says it’s dumb. For those people everything’s dumb. But directives are directives. There aren’t dumb ones and smart ones, you just have to obey them. Why do you think I went gray? Because of old age? No. I feel just as strong as when I was young. I sometimes have an urge to grab a tree and rip it up by the roots. I can do it with my Józka five times in a night. Except it’s too much for her, all she wants is the usual once a week. I’m too old for you, Leon, she says to me. If you’d married someone younger it’d make you younger as well. Well when we got married you were still young, I say, you can’t change anything now. Though sometimes I think about it, getting married, know what I mean? Why not? The girls in the offices are younger and younger. Everywhere you look they’re smiling and blushing, it makes your heart race. But just try getting married. Right away people’ll be saying this, that, and the other. Because when you’re in a position like this you have to be clean as clean can be. So let it be just Józka. Though it’s a pity, friend. You, you’re all set to head out for the next world, and you’re not the least bit gray, you’ve just got the odd gray hair. Me, I’m gray as a mouse. Why? It’s from all the thinking. And I have to think straight, think right, according to the instructions, not any way I feel like it. Think like a farmer. Be fair, think about the future. Imagine how much thinking that is. There’s not enough hours at work, I’m telling you. I have to think at home as well. In your day things were different. You could even go over to the pub during working hours. Or not come to work at all three days running. Try that today. If they even caught a glimpse of the director drinking. Though I have to tell you, often I feel like getting so drunk I’d pass out. Forget about it all if only for a moment. Night comes, everyone’s asleep, and I’m tossing and turning and thinking, for instance about who I should give cement to, and mostly who not to give it to. Because giving it, I could give it to everyone. Except how? People are crapping themselves over the new buildings they’ve planned. My Józka wakes up and says, lie still, can’t you. You’re thinking and thinking, but you’re not gonna think up anything new. You’d be better off praying. It’s true, I’d be glad to pray once in a while. But how can I pray when I have this job? You pray for me, Józka, maybe that’ll help me feel better. You see, an old wife is good for some things, when times are hard. A young one’d only be interested in fooling around. Though don’t think I’d be afraid to sign your application. I’ve been signing things all these years and so far I’m fine. It’d be different even if you only wanted to cement your yard. I’d just sign and be done with it. Or build steps to your front door. I’d sign and take it on myself. Your legs are bad, we do what we can to help invalids, there’s an explanation. Or even build an outhouse. I’d sign, it’s God’s will. You could argue whether it’s a farm building or not. But a tomb’s a tomb. Death, the next world, something to do with God. Well, not for everyone. For some people you’re just there one minute, gone the next. Though I wouldn’t trust anyone on that. People are complicated creatures, as they say. Not at all straightforward. You can never be sure they won’t change at some point. But here it’s all about life. You can hear it on the radio, they show it on the television, it’s in the papers, they talk about it at meetings. You’ve chosen a bad time, friend. We’re supposed to improve our lives. And rightly so. Because people ought to live better. We spent too long living in the next world, thinking we’d have it easier there. That there’d be more justice. And choirs of angels. It needs to be better here. And it will be! For instance, at the last meeting we passed a resolution to build a road through to Zarzecze, there’ll be a bus line. And if there’s going to be a road, there needs to be a bridge as well. No more wagons getting sunk in the river. The young folks want a soccer field so we’ll make a soccer field as well, better they kick a ball around than go drinking. We could use a community center as well. We’ll get one, not right away but eventually. And just so you know, we’re also thinking about getting in running water. We’ve spent enough time lugging buckets from the springs. You’ll just turn on the tap and water comes out. And if everything goes well, one of these days we’ll even dam that little river of ours and make a lake. We’ll build cabins and people’ll come on vacation. You’ll see what life’s gonna be like! Maybe there’ll even be fish. You and I can go fishing one day. And we’re planning to have pheasants in the fields. We’ll bring them in and set them free. You’re mowing away, and here there’s a pheasant in your field. It’ll make mowing a whole lot nicer. Also they’re working on getting rid of the potato beetle. They’re gonna turn the pub into a bookstore and build a new pub. While the old road lasted the old pub was fine. But nowadays there’s more outsiders passing through than locals, you have to think about them as well. Marzec already offered to donate his old wood plow. We’d hang it over the doorway and the place would be called ‘The Wooden Plow.’ And we’re thinking of starting a choir. Why should everyone sing on their own in their own house. Plus, the old people are dying and the old songs are going with them. Then one spring we’ll plant trees along the new road. We even thought of a slogan: Plant a Tree, Make Some Shade. We’ll put in a whole bunch of trees. Elms, lindens, acacias. You’ll see how green it’ll be. And here you are talking about a tomb. I told you already, a tomb is a thing of the next world. Anyone that’s in a hurry to go there, it means they’ve no wish to live in this one. It’s worse than not paying your taxes. Your taxes can be canceled or at least paid in installments. But if someone doesn’t want to live, it means they’re being dragged backwards, it means there’s something wrong with their consciousness. Szymek, Szymek, friend, when are you finally going to stop being a peasant? It’s more than a hundred years since there was serfs. Hardly anyone even remembers Piłsudski these days. Before you know it they’ll forget the occupation as well. And high time. The past has caused us pain for too long. We’ve gotten our tail mixed up with our head. It’s time to think of the future. And you want to face the future with a tomb? You’re not interested in anything else, cause you’re just going to go off and die? And me, push comes to shove how am I going to explain I’m allocating cement for the next world? That would mean I believe in life after death, if I’ve started giving out cement for building graves. Whereas actually, you know best of all I never was a believer. You’d never see a Christmas tree or a nativity scene at my place. And carol singers, I’d run them off like dogs. I only ever believed in a better life here on earth. A better life here was my Star of Bethlehem.”

He’d worked up a sweat and he was breathing so hard he had dried flecks of foam in the corners of his mouth. But you could see he was pleased with himself. It was like he didn’t know whether to laugh or spread his arms to show the conversation was over. Or maybe he was just waiting for me to say something now. I tell you one thing, Leon, you’ve got your head screwed on right. All those years being director have paid off. Times change, people die but you’re planted here solid as an oak tree. Not only that, you just saved fifteen hundredweight of cement from being put into the ground.

But I didn’t say a thing. I just shifted my walking sticks to get ready to stand. At that point he jumped up, pushed open the door to the secretary’s office, and called:

“Miss Hania! Two glasses and two coffees! And hold all my meetings for the rest of the day!” Then to me: “Wait up, what’s your hurry? Let’s have a drink. We haven’t seen each other in years.” It was like he was suddenly reluctant to part, not from me so much as from his own self-satisfaction. He even rubbed his hands and moved things around on his desk, and slapped me on the back. “I’m glad you came. Oh yes.” He shuffled over to the cupboard and took out a stubby bottle. “I don’t drink. Except sometimes, when the opportunity comes along. And this is something special.” He held the bottle in front of me, turning it in his hands.

“What kind of vodka is that?” I asked.

“It’s not vodka. It’s brandy. You ever try it?”

“I don’t recall. I’ve drunk all kinds of things, maybe I had this one time.”

“You sip it. Not like vodka.”

“Then I don’t think so.”

Miss Hania brought glasses and coffee on a tray. She passed right close by me, she sent a gust of air towards me from her body. She smelled of perfume and youth. I thought to myself, this isn’t the same place I used to work. We ate on sheets of newspaper, and here they were bringing things in on a tray. She had slim hands. You could almost see through the skin, and her fingernails were painted red. It was like she’d never worked the land, like she’d worked in these offices since she was a child.

“I made yours a bit weaker, director,” she said with an ingratiating smile, putting tiny little spoons on the saucers next to the coffee cups.

“Good job.” And he patted her on the backside like she was his Józka. She acted like she was embarrassed, but probably because it was in front of me, and she bounded out of the room like a deer. “Ha!” he laughed. “She’s a cute one, huh?”

“Do you pat all of them like that?”

“If you were in my place you’d be patting them too. When you’re in authority you have to pat the girls. You pat one of them, another one you don’t, and you know everything that’s going on in the building. Besides, they like it. You forget to give one of them a pat and she’ll sulk. You should see her without her clothes on. It makes you want to live twice as long. The fact is, when they’re properly fed everything else is the way it should be. Not like when we were young. Remember how many of the girls had crooked legs? They’d have the face of a Madonna and legs like a hoop on a barrel. These days it’s all vitamins. And bread, friend, bread, no one has to go without, and so the young women grow up so fine all you want to do is climb on top of them. But what of it, when a guy’s stuck with his Józka. And you might say it’s all because of the reforms. Sometimes I might do the odd thing, but you have to watch out. Someone else’ll knock her up and she’ll say it’s the director’s. And even if it wasn’t true they’d boot me out in a flash. Let’s drink.”

We clinked glasses. He drank a little bit, I did the same, because I was watching to see how much he took so I wouldn’t come out looking like a bumpkin, since it was this strange kind of vodka that you only sip. It was disgusting, like moonshine watered down with tea and soapsuds. On top of that you had to slurp it like a bird. There’s nothing like pure grain vodka, it slips down like a roaring stream. It makes you shudder and scrunch your face up, and it jabs you so hard you feel from the top of your head right down to your feet that it’s you. And no one else has the right to be you. Not like with this pisswater.

“Well?” He looked down at me.

“Not bad,” I said.

“There you go. You have to know what’s what. And it’s good for the heart. Do you take sugar? I don’t. I learned to drink it without.” He pushed the sugar bowl over.

“You’ve got a sugar bowl now as well.”

“Life’s not actually that bad when you think of it. And it’s going to be even better. There’ll be more cement, more of everything. There won’t need to be allocations, or applications, or signatures. Remember way back when, it was the same with buckets. If you wanted to buy a bucket you had to buy a book as well. Nowadays you can buy all the buckets you want. Zinc-plated ones, enamel ones, plastic ones, yellow, red, blue. And the district administration won’t care who’s buying stuff or what it’s for, whether they’re building a silo or a tomb. All you need is what you might call the right attitude. Not demand too much. It’s all right to complain a bit, so long as it’s harmless. The most important thing is to look boldly into the future. Not backwards. Efficiency, plans, cultivation, investment, indicators — these are measures for today. Not blood and wounds. No one’s yet lost out on the future, but the past has left a good many folks stranded. If you can get that into your head you won’t come out the loser. Don’t think I’m arguing for cooperatives. Even if that was what I wanted, this isn’t the right moment. Today it’s doing things of your own free will. Course, you have to help out when people want to join their farms, cancel someone’s loan, or give them priority. But individual farmers count with us also. And they can do well for themselves. We’re not standing in their way. Take Sieniak for instance. He has an apartment building, a car, his wife’s got a fur coat, he’s got a fur coat and his daughter too, and he’s got two million in the bank. From what? Flax. No problem. The government gets a cut, let him have his share too. Kulaks and middling peasants and poor peasants, those labels don’t hold anymore. Back then it had to be that way because of the dialectics, friend. You had to grab the peasants by the shoulders and shake them so they didn’t sleep through the revolution. And also so they believed less in God and more in us. Besides that, we had to show people who was in charge. But that’s all been and gone. There’s no turning back. You have to change your soul, friend, your soul. These days you can’t live with a peasant soul anymore. And things’ll get even worse. They put aside class reckonings long ago. Now we’re all children of the same mother again. There’s no more orphans, no more stepsons, no one that doesn’t belong to anyone. There’s an enemy, of course. There’ll always be an enemy. That’s the nature of enemies. But it’s not the same enemy that burned haystacks or that killed Rożek. That enemy, we could more or less live with them. These days people are their own enemy. And that’s the worst kind of enemy, because he’s hidden in your thoughts, in what you feel, he’s tied up like a dog on a chain. In the old days, when someone had the devil in them it was easy to see. But how can you tell today, when there aren’t any more devils? Me, if I’d been trying to live with the same soul as before I’d be long gone. Better folks than me lost the fight. But me, I sense things before they’re even coming. I don’t need swallows to know the spring. You just have to constantly believe, not just once in a while, but each day, every hour. And during working hours you have to believe twice over. Exactly what you believe in might change, but you just keep on believing. Because the worst thing of all is when you run out of steam, then it’s all over for you. You’re gone before you can say Jack Robinson. Looks like you’re still there, but in reality you’re not. My Józka says to me, Leon, it’s like you were born a second time. You know everything in advance, you understand everything. Me, I keep praying and praying and I don’t understand a thing, all I feel is regrets. You see? And you’d have thought she’s just a dumb woman. Shall we have another? I’m glad you came. Ever since morning I’ve been feeling like having a drink with someone. Though I’m not supposed to. Because of my heart. Before you know it you’re left behind. And you’ll never catch up ever, friend. Because the peasant soul only ever travels by foot, or on a pony, it’s never in a hurry, God forbid you should ever overtake the day. For the peasant soul every road leads to death, every life leads to the cross. These days people fly by jet, they overtake centuries, not just days. You ever been in a plane? I flew to France. I brought Józka a handbag back, got myself a pipe. Maybe I’ll start smoking it. Pipes are fashionable these days. The trees, the fields, rivers, houses, it’s all underneath you. It’s so tiny you could take a whole village in the palm of your hand and watch the little people living there. You feel like you’re an angel, or God himself. On top of that they give you things to eat and drink. Administrating from up there would be a piece of cake. All you’d need to do would be point your finger. This guy gets this, that guy gets that. And if you touched someone on the head he’d think he’d been struck by lightning out of a clear sky. If any of them complained you’d just squeeze them a bit, here, they could squeal away. Or when you needed to organize a day of community service, you could just drum your fingers on the village and it’d be like an earthquake, they’d all come rushing out of their houses. You wouldn’t have to talk them into it, persuade them, beg them. You’d just grab them by the hair and here, here’s your spade, here’s your pickax. When you think how much time I’ve wasted on those kind of things. I’m telling you, when I get home from work all I wanna do is collapse on the bed and sleep. Just as well there’s the television, it can talk to the missus for you, and the children, keep them entertained, do some of your worrying for you. Even better than you. All you do is press a button and you can go to sleep. Who’d’ve thought there’d be such wonders? People didn’t believe there’d be the radio, or telephones. And here you have pictures flitting around your house like they were dreams. Yours, other people’s. And you can watch. Maybe people’ll stop dreaming one of these days? I mean, when it comes down to it why do they need to? You get all tired, all sweaty, you jerk about and run away and get scared, and on top of everything you never know what it all means. Back in your time what did they use to calculate on in the office? The abacus. There was only one in the whole building. It was on Rożek’s desk so you could tell he was the mayor. Now, you saw, there’s a machine on every desk, and they do all the adding on their own. Hundreds, thousands, millions, in a split second — all it does is hum for a moment. That peasant soul of yours is applesauce, if I say so. It was thought up by the masters to stop the peasants rebelling. But the masters are all long gone. There’s no more manor houses. Did we have a reform? We did. Did you get your five acres? You did. In other words, your hunger for land was satisfied. If it wasn’t, we can give you another five. The Walichs’ land is standing fallow, they handed it over to the government in return for a pension. If you want it it’s yours, help yourself. But you ought to know that with a peasant soul, you could have a hundred acres and you’d still be eating żurek and potatoes and sleeping on a sheet of canvas. Because you can’t bring yourself to use up anything you have. Anything except yourself. If the land produces, you’ll take what it gives. If it doesn’t, you won’t. And you won’t say a bad word against it, in case it punishes you even worse the next year. At most you’ll have a mass said for it or you’ll put up a shrine, a shrine to the holy earth, so it’ll take care of you. You, Szymon Pietruszka. Except these days the earth doesn’t believe anymore either. It needs superphosphates, lime, nitrolime, saltpeter, not superstitions. And you might say it’s not even as attached to people as it used to be. If the farmer’s bad at what he does the land’ll just abandon him and move on to the next one and the next one after that, whoever can calculate better. The peasant soul doesn’t like to calculate, it only likes to suffer. But why should you suffer when calculating is better for you. It’s gotten used to it, suffering is its lot. And for the peasant soul the land is nothing but suffering either. And that’s bad for the land. The land has to produce things, my friend. The world wants more and more food. Mountains of food. Bigger and bigger mountains. And the land has to provide it. It has to! Even if it spills its guts trying. And the peasant soul can go rest in the museum for all the centuries of work it’s done. It deserves it. Let it remind people they used to be peasants. Young people can go take a look, or tourists. Tourism, I’m telling you, that’s happening all over the world. More and more people are traveling all over the place and back again. Pretty soon everyone’ll be traveling. Even old folks won’t want to stay at home. You’ll go knocking, and the place’ll be empty. It’s like people discovered that the world goes around, so they have to go around the world as well. Hardly anyone’s capable of just sitting on their ass. Back in the day, someone went traveling it was either out of hardship or because they were going for a soldier. These days everyone wants to be a tourist, like there was nothing else they could be. Think of everything that’s needed, all the trains, boats, airplanes, roads, hotels, stations, and of course all the sights. And the sights have to be there whether they exist or not. We thought about maybe turning the Bąks’ place into a traditional cottage. It’d be perfect for it — it’s got no soleplates, it has a thatched roof and tiny little windows like knots in trees. Bąk could be the farmer, and his missus would be the farmer’s wife. We’d make them traditional costumes, we could round up some wooden spoons and dishes and what-have-you, they’d be paid. We’d put up signs, traditional cottage half a mile. But they won’t agree, they want us to build them a proper house in return. They’d just go to the cottage during working hours. What else can tourists go see in a village? You can’t show them rye growing, or wheat. It’s just growing there, let it grow. Or cows being milked. Or calves putting on a pound and a half to two pounds daily. All they’d say would be, why are their eyes so sad? What kind of eyes are they supposed to have! They eat all they want, they don’t care what they see or what they don’t. People are no different, when they’ve eaten their fill they can’t see much, on the outside they might even look happy. But if you really want to see their happiness, look in their bellies. With calves it’s the same, their happiness isn’t in their eyes. Or maybe they’ve just seen the people that are gonna eat them, and that’s why they’re sad. The thing is, that would never occur to those folks, they just go on about sad eyes. Damn philosophers. Try sticking a plate of meat in front of them, see if they complain about its eyes then. A peasant soul’d be just about right for them, they could get all sentimental over it as much as they wanted. And it would be a sight that had to do with class. Harmless, you might say. The burden of the ages. A thing to itself. As for you, friend, I mean good grief, you were a policeman but you still don’t have the consciousness. I mean, you’re not that old. Older people than you have started over. Take Boleń for example, going on seventy and he’s building a farm. Maryka’s planting flax, Janiszewski’s switching to cauliflower. You’ll have plenty of time to build your tomb! The job won’t go away. Besides, maybe soon they’ll stop burying people in tombs. They’ll cremate them instead. That way you’d save your money. The land, there’s less and less of it, not more and more. It’s not such a problem when it’s used for factories. But for cemeteries? There’s more and more people. And everyone has to die sooner or later. Just think how much land you’d need if everyone was buried. And in walled tombs on top of that. The dead would take up all the land there was. Then where would we go — the moon? Besides, let me tell you, death isn’t what it used to be either. You’re here and then you’re gone. There’s a hundred others jockeying to take your place. They even occupy the memory of you. Back when, friend, when you died there was a hole left in the village, like in the road. But in those times, you might say death was attached to people. Everyone lived their whole life in one place, so the death of one person was kind of like the death of all of them. These days everyone’s in motion, so death moves around as well. And moving around is like being in the front lines. They’re attacking you left and right, and all you can do is keep pushing forward. People die of no one knows what, no one knows when, no one knows if it can still be called death. You don’t even need to fall ill, there can be no reason at all. You get tired and bam, you’re gone. Before, when you got tired you sat down on a field boundary, you took a breather and went on living. I’m telling you, the way we die you can’t see we’re dead after we’re gone. Sometimes you can’t even tell if someone’s dead or they’re still alive. And dying doesn’t give you anything at all. It’s only life that can still give you something. So live while you can. It won’t be long. Few more years at the most, then maybe you won’t need that tomb. They’ll just slide you in the oven and all that’ll be left is a heap of ashes. And it won’t cost you a penny. The district’ll cover it. You worked here for a good few years, you deserve it. The whole of you will fit in a clay jar. Would you rather get eaten by worms? That way’s disgusting, friend. Even when a fly lands on you you brush it away. Down there there’s masses of them. You’ve plowed, you know how much there is in the earth. They’ll be tucking into you like you were shit, pardon my French, and you won’t even be able to scratch yourself. Because how do you know you won’t feel anything? Maybe death lasts a long time, not just a moment? Maybe it has no end? But what’s left after fire? Fire is clean as can be. Cleaner than air or water. Even cleaner than conscience. You’d be the first in the village. The first in the whole district. Though I dunno why I’m saying all this to you. I know you’re not going to agree. That peasant soul of yours mewling inside you, it won’t allow it. And they don’t do cremations here yet. Though you have to be able to see the future today already. Otherwise you’ll go astray. Or go backwards. And what then? Start out all over again? That’s not gonna happen, friend. I know life. You have to when you’ve worked with it as long as I have. At different stages. Here, there. And it’s always been like a soldier in the trenches, so to speak. When it comes to life, I can say I’m something of an expert. I could run rings around a good few folks that are higher up than me. So what if I’m still here in the district administration. Do I have it bad here? If I fall, at least I won’t fall far. And there’s always those seven acres of mine. I’ve got my own potatoes, my own tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots. I’m telling you, I know life better than almost anyone. And not from any school. The kind of life they write about in those schools, it’s suckered all kinds of people. Ground them up like a machine. Forgotten they ever existed. But me, I’m still here, like you see. Sure, in school they teach you your multiplication tables, you need that, like they say. But they don’t teach you life. You can fill your head with all sorts of stuff and you can know everything, but not know how to live. Because life, so to speak, isn’t just living. Like you’re just there, and life goes on regardless. Better or worse, uphill or downhill, it just keeps going. You’re born, you’ll die, and that’s life. If it wants to knock us over it will, if it wants to set us up it’ll do that too, it can cast us down or raise us up. And we just do what it wants, because either way we’re alive. It’s the wind and we’re a feather in the wind. Oh no. No, no, friend. That’s not it. That’s all crap. Life is an occupation like any other. Who knows, it could be the hardest occupation of all. Because like, a doctor or an engineer, how much do they have to study? Or even a professor? Five years, ten, let it even be twenty. They give him his diploma, now he knows what he’s doing. But life, how long do you have to learn it? There’s no set number of years. And no diplomas. You can be a prophet with a long white beard and still not know how to live. Because it all depends on the person, whether they have the gift or not. Some folks would never learn even if they lived twice over. For some, eternity wouldn’t be enough time. A dumbass is a dumbass. Though it goes without saying that I don’t believe in eternity. It’s just an expression, just a measure. Like people saying the sun rises, when everyone knows it doesn’t rise, it’s just the earth turning. Habit of speech. If it wasn’t for habits like that, our steps would be longer, believe me. And we wouldn’t be walking in the dark. I mean we’re not blind, but sometimes we act like we were. Like we were walking along a milky way, when we need to be walking on the earth. We need to know how to walk. And of course something has to light the way. Because no one’s got a candle inside them. Life has its twists and turns, its gullies, its cliffs, its whirlpools, its fine weather, all those things. Plus, as they say, it flows. Except some people think it keeps flowing in the same direction. Because that’s supposedly how rivers flow. Time flows like that. And everything that flows, flows that way. But that’s applesauce, friend. Because one moment it flows one way, the next it flows in a whole other direction, it even flows against itself, across itself, every which way. It’s half like a whirlpool, half like mist, half like space. It doesn’t have any fixed direction. When you don’t know how to live, you take a step and you’re a drowned man. Me, I could swim in it with my eyes shut. When it comes to numbers, I’m not disputing there are people better than me, I’ve never minded about that. But when it comes to life, they’re all useless. Because with life, when you have to you need to move cautiously, but when the road is clear you gotta charge ahead. And before you hear what you need, you have to listen hard. When you see something, don’t hurry up till you can see clearly what it is. But don’t think things are always that way. This isn’t like blackjack or poker where there’s a fixed way to play. There are times when no one’s said a word yet but you have to have heard them. You can’t see someone, but you have to have seen them already. Because if you don’t see them, they’ll see you. And you need to know what might hurt you and when. And when you need to be healthy as a horse, however much you may be in pain. Though there’s no point getting excited about good health. Obviously anyone who’s constantly on the march here, there, and everywhere can’t be completely healthy. I have a heart. I don’t know if it’s in good shape or not. But it works. If it needs to hurt it will, if it doesn’t it won’t. A hundred doctors could examine it and each of them’d say something different. It’s just a heart. True, it’s the director’s heart. And sure, the district is big. But it’s no more than a fingernail on the body of the district. In any case I’ll tell you one thing, you have to know when to die as well. You, you’ve chosen the wrong time. Under the occupation, for instance, that was a good time. A historical moment, you might say. People died for a reason, even if a tree just fell on you. Or right after the war, that wasn’t bad either. So long as you were on the right side, of course. But today, have you really given it enough thought? Sit on your backside and don’t be in such a hurry. You wouldn’t even have anyone to leave the farm to. The government would have to take it, which is to say the district administration. And all these farms that folks hand over in return for a pension, I don’t know what to do with them. We’d have to arrange a funeral for you at our expense as well. You have brothers, of course, but they’re in the city, they might come back or they might not. And since you used to work here it’s only fair. At least get you a wreath. But where’s the money supposed to come from? The librarian’s on my case about how people are reading less and less, because the books are all old, and here we have youngsters growing up. I don’t have money for that either. I even have to borrow gas money from the arts budget. Do you think there are times I don’t howl inside? Damn right I do. Sometimes I go out into the fields and stare at the crops, it makes me go all soft inside. I could just sit there on the field boundary and listen to the larks singing. But I say to myself, where’s your consciousness, eh, Mr. Director? You’re supposed to be building a new life but you haven’t uprooted the old one from inside yourself. Keep sitting there and you won’t have a reason to get up again. Or there was a picture here in the offices, remember, in Rożek’s time. A peasant plowing with oxen. I had to change it, because anyone who came to visit would just gawk at the picture. So I had a local guy paint me another picture, he charged ten thousand. See, now it’s a tractor doing the plowing. Though between you and me, for some reason I can’t get used to it. Everyone says they like it, but me, every time I look at it that soil causes me pain. It’s like it was under attack. There are times I can actually hear it groaning and moaning, but the tractor’s louder and when the driver steps on the gas he drowns out the noise. Try sitting for years under a picture like that.” All of a sudden he grabbed the bottle, poured out another one for himself and for me, clinked his glass against mine and downed it in one, like he’d already forgotten you’re supposed to sip it. “We’ve had quite a talk.” He looked at his watch. “It’s good to talk like that once in a while.” He snatched a sheet of paper from a pile and started writing something. “You sure fifteen’s enough? I’ll give you seventeen just in case. Here.” He handed me the paper. “Just be sure and tell Borek to take it from what’s set aside for the creamery. Those are my instructions. And don’t die on us just yet. Ha, ha!” He laughed and stood up. I rose too, though it’s not so easy to get up from a chair when you have walking sticks. But he didn’t come out from behind the desk till I was on my feet. Then he walked me to the door and slapped me on the back. “One more thing,” he said, like he’d just remembered now. “It’s too bad I canned you back then. Maybe you didn’t drink that much after all.”

I didn’t say anything — what was the sense after all those years. I knew why he’d fired me. Besides, it was good it happened that way, I had to go anyway. How long was that job supposed to drag on? I mean, there was nothing keeping me there. Małgorzata had long left for the town, she was working in the county offices. I heard she’d gotten married, but maybe it was just a rumor? A year or so before mother died she’d come by our place to visit.

This nicely dressed lady in a suit and hat and with a handbag came to the house. She was pretty and a little sad. It was her. I was lying drunk in the other room. When mother heard she was asking for me she had her take a seat. And of course, being mother she says:

“Well, he’s sort of here and sort of not, young lady. He’s drunk in the other room, sleeping. Even if we woke him you wouldn’t be able to talk to him. He only just got back. It’s like this almost every day. I keep praying to God.” The poor thing started crying. “Who are you, if I might ask?”

“A friend. We used to work in the district administration together.” Her eyes got wet too. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag and made like she was wiping her nose. “I work in the town now.”

“I don’t think he ever mentioned you. But when he sobers up I’ll tell him you were here. What’s your name now?”

“Małgorzata. He’ll know.”

“You’re so pretty, and I can see you’re a good person. Come again sometime, maybe he won’t be drunk. He doesn’t always drink.”

I even thought I heard her voice through the door with mother’s voice as they were talking. But I was sure it was a dream. There was no point getting up for a dream. She never came again. Maybe that was finally the end.

Though I’d thought it was the end that time I walked her back home after the dance and tried to kiss her and she ran away. What did I want with a girl that goes to a dance with you then won’t even let herself be kissed. When the next dance came I asked Irka Ziętek from the administrative offices. She didn’t run away. And she had a drink. And ate a whole plateful of sandwiches. She kept sighing about how good the vodka made her feel, how good. During the dancing she stuck to me like glue. And it had only just started to get dark when we took a stroll. She was the one dragged me out, come on, let’s go take a walk, I don’t feel like dancing anymore. I feel like doing something else. Hee, hee!

Then a while later there was a dance in Bartoszyce and I even took two girls, both of them from highways. She didn’t mean anything to me by then. We’d pass in the hallway like people that barely know each other. Good morning. Good morning. Like before. And truth to tell, it’s a pity things didn’t stay that way.

But one time, the workday was coming to an end, you could already hear the goodbyes in the next room, all of a sudden there’s a knock at my door, come in, and it’s her. She seemed a bit on edge as she entered. I’m not bothering you? Not at all. And she asks me if I could stay a little longer and help her, she has an urgent job she needs to turn in the next day and she can’t handle it on her own. She asked her girlfriends but none of them can do it. I could see right away it wasn’t a matter of helping her, she wanted to make the other thing right. Why did you put up a fight at the dance, you silly woman? I can stay behind. Why not. I often stay when someone needs help.

We were recording tax receipts, me on one side of the desk, her on the other. I arranged them in alphabetical order, each letter in a separate pile. She checked every receipt against a list to make sure the payments agreed with the invoices. Everyone had left the building already. It was starting to get dark. It was the end of September. She turned a lamp on. Then we had to transfer the payment amounts from the receipts to separate entries on a form. Serial number, family name, given name, village, acreage, land quality, to be paid, paid, installment amount, still to pay. Mrs. Kopeć, the caretaker, dusted quickly, emptied the ashtrays, swept the floor, then said goodbye and she left too. Then the amounts on the forms had to be added up to check they matched the receipts. Evening came. It got dark around us. When you glanced up at the room, nothing looked like it usually did. The desks, that during the day they pushed their way into the room so you could barely squeeze through, now they just stood there quietly like the coffins of dead clerks. The cupboards, that not long ago had just been cupboards, now they looked like old willow trees that someone had cut the tops off of. There was only us in the light of the desk lamp, we looked like we were inside a brightly lit sphere. Though just like two office workers working on receipts. Nothing more. But if someone had seen us through the window they could have gone telling people we were cuddling, because we were sitting right up close to each other and there was no one else in the building. Of course, from time to time one of us would say something, me or her, but only what was needed for the job.

“Could you pin those receipts together, Mr. Szymon.”

“Is it Wojciech Jagła or Jagło?”

“Ten acres, class two land, do you have one like that?”

“How much do you make it, Miss Małgorzata? Mine comes out to such and such.”

“This doesn’t match up. We need to check it again.”

At times a sadness passed across her face, but it was sadness from the receipts. The best medicine for that kind of sadness is an abacus. Immediately she started rattling away like a machine gun.

It was eight, maybe a little after. We were still deep in receipts. If only she’d once given me a warmer look, or if she’d gotten flustered when I glanced at her. Nothing. It was even like she was chiding me for those glances, she’d tell me to check something or other, write it down, add it up a second time. In the end I started to think about getting out my watch and saying, look, it’s eight, nine, to finally make her lift her eyes from the receipts. Then I’d say:

“Let’s take a bit of a break.”

And she might reply:

“Maybe I’ll make tea. Will you have some?”

I wouldn’t have minded some tea. I started discreetly feeling my pockets for my watch. It was the same one I sold later to pay for the tomb. A silver one, on a chain. I got it off the Germans in a battle. Though truth be told, the men found it on a dead officer. It had slipped out of his pocket like it was trying to get away from the body, except the chain held it in place. It wasn’t much of a battle. It only lasted half an hour or so, like it was all about the watch. On our side Highlander was wounded, on the other side they all died. Actually there wasn’t really anything to fight about. Someone had told us there was a motorcycle and car with Germans coming down the road. We didn’t even know where they were going or what for. Though for sure they weren’t driving that way just for fun. We made an ambush in a gully that was overgrown on both sides with hazel and hawthorn and juniper. We blocked off the road in front and behind, we waited till they got close, then we let them have it from every side. There were a few bodies, a few guns, the watch, and that was the end of the battle. These days a watch doesn’t mean a thing, every other person has one on their wrist, but back then it was still something, plus a silver one to boot. And the thing worked tip-top right till the end. I never once had to get it repaired. Whenever I checked it against the sun it always showed the same time. In the village, at twelve noon the sun’s always right over Martyka’s chimney, and the watch always showed twelve noon. It came in handiest when I worked in the district administration. As if the officer that let himself get killed by us back then knew that one day I’d be a government worker.

Except that it didn’t feel right to be taking out my watch and saying, oh look, it’s eight, or nine. She might have gotten embarrassed and started apologizing:

“Oh, I’m really sorry for keeping you so long, Mr. Szymon. But you’ve been a big help. Thank you. Please go now if you’re in a hurry, I’ll stay behind. I have to finish today.”

There was still a big pile of receipts between us that needed going through. All I did was, whenever she’d lean over more than usual I’d pretend I was lost in thought and I’d secretly stare at her hair. It was like a field of grain, much brighter by the light of the lamp than during the day, I felt as if I was standing at the edge of a wheat field. She must have been tired already. A couple of times she asked, how much is such and such times such and such again? Another time she got annoyed at the receipts because they weren’t written clearly. But they’d been like that from the beginning. Then she shifted the lamp over, saying it was too dark.

I was copying out a receipt from a Jan Bielak, village of Zarzecze, three thousand five hundred and eighty-two zlotys. Second installment. With her head bowed over the desk, she said quietly:

“Kiss me, Mr. Szymon.”

I put down my pen. I thought she was making fun of me. Just in case, I answered as if I was joking as well:

“Maybe I’m not worthy of kissing you, Miss Małgorzata?”

“Please,” she said even more quietly.

So I stood up, raised her head from the desk and I kissed her, but like I’d kiss a sister. Because I was more unnerved by her having asked for it than if I’d kissed her by force, but of my own free will. And I didn’t enjoy it at all.

Anyway, she jumped up right away.

“It’s late,” she said in a kind of artificial voice, as if to show that nothing had happened. “We’ve been sitting over these receipts for hours. I didn’t think it would take all that long.”

“I’ll walk you home, Małgosia,” I said.

“No thanks, I’ll go on my own. I’ll be fine. I’ve often walked back at this hour. What’s there to be afraid of? That bit by the woods isn’t very nice, but I’ll be all right. The moon’s bright tonight. Then right after that is the village, the dogs’ll be barking. No. Another time, when you feel like it. But please, Szymek, not today.”

She’s an odd one, I thought. She tells me to kiss her then she won’t let me walk her home. Try understanding any of that. Go home on your own, be my guest! Except what kind of young man lets a young lady walk home on her own in the night. But go anyway! If something scares you in the woods you’ll regret it. In the woods there are graves from the first war. Didn’t old Pociej used to tell how one night he was coming back that way after walking a girl home, and all at once there’s a soldier with a bullet hole in his head standing in his way saying:

“Stop this hole up for me, it’s been all these years and it keeps bleeding.”

Pociej never went back to that girl. He married someone else, from our village, from across the road.

I met her the next day in the hallway, she was coming from the other end. I stopped and gave her a big smile and said good morning. She nodded and smiled back. But she quickly went into one of the other offices, and I felt I’d been slapped in the face. Maybe those receipts yesterday had just put her in a funny mood, I thought, all those names, villages, acreages, installments, amounts, that was why she told me to kiss her. And today she’d had a good night’s sleep and forgotten all about it. There was evidently no point in me worrying my head over it.

A few days passed, it happened to be a Tuesday and it was looking like rain. I leave the building and she’s standing out there in front, seemingly looking at the sky to see if it’s going to rain or not. The clouds are dark and swirly like they often are in the fall. I stopped next to her and I started looking at the clouds as well. All of a sudden, high up a wind appeared and began blowing the clouds and scattering them, driving them from the sky.

“You know, I think the rain’ll hold off,” I said.

She looked at me at first a little surprised to see me standing right by her. A moment later she gave me this nice smile.

“Then maybe today you’ll walk me home, Szymek? If you feel like it.” She opened her umbrella and held it over the two of us. “Even if it rains we’ll be fine.”

“You can fold it up again,” I said. “See, the wind’s already blown the clouds away.”

And luckily it didn’t rain, because a little umbrella like that wouldn’t have had a chance of protecting us. Even if we’d held close to each other our backs would still have gotten wet. Besides, who was supposed to make the first move? I didn’t even have the courage to take her by the arm, and she didn’t seem willing either. We probably would’ve ended up getting soaked, and the umbrella would have been folded up between us.

We walked the whole way like distant acquaintances that just happen to have met and be going the same way. As for talking, we pretty much talked about nothing at all, about the office, about the fall, she told me a bit about her girlfriends from school, and her teachers, and I told her about being in the resistance, though only the cheerier parts. And before we knew it we’d reached her house. Her mother was just lighting the lamp, because a glow like a will-o’-the-wisp started dancing about in the window, then the window lit up a moment later.

I said they had a nice house. It had a brick foundation, with an asbestic tile roof, wide windows, and a verandah. It looked like it was recently built. I said I was planning to build a house as well, except I didn’t yet know when. First I needed to get ahold of the materials, then have someone make a plan for me, then hire masons, and these days there weren’t any good masons except maybe in other nearby villages. After that there didn’t seem to be anything else to talk about so I shook her hand.

“Good night, then. See you tomorrow at work.”

“Good night,” she said, but there was a quaver in her voice.

I’d gone maybe a dozen yards or so, in any case I’d passed the end of their fence and reached the edge of the field, when all of a sudden I heard behind me:

“Wait.” She trotted up to me. “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”

I had an urge to throw my arms around her and hold her close, and be held close, and maybe more, not to look at anything else at all, maybe even just pull her into the field that was there, just beyond the edge, because who was she, was she any different from the others, she was the same flesh and blood, I was the stupid one. But something held me back, no. No, Szymek, like it was her voice, but it was mine. If I’d at least been drinking, but no, I was stone-cold sober. I even regretted not going with Winiarski when he tried to drag me out for a drink at lunchtime. I kissed her goodbye, and I said again:

“Good night then.”

Then two days later I walked her home again, and again, and then every day, and this went on for maybe three weeks. And each time it was the same:

“Good night then.”

“Good night.”

Sometimes she wanted me to kiss her, sometimes not. It was like there was a big bush growing between us that stopped us reaching each other. Though truth be told, I only had one thing on my mind. What she was thinking about, God alone knows. Maybe the same thing, though girls sometimes have strange ways of thinking. Here they put on all kinds of performances, and inside they’re like a little trembling rabbit. Here they seem like they’re going to live forever, and inside they only have a moment. Here there’s a single drop, inside there’s the ocean. Here there’s a rose, inside there’s a pitcher. In any case, with any other girl, after I’d walked her home that many times she’d have been mine long ago. And more than once. Apart from anything the road led by the woods, and the woods worked in my favor as well. The fall was well advanced, it was dark earlier and earlier, and it got so it’d almost be dusk already when we left work. By the time we reached her place it was nighttime. All the windows of the houses were lit up. And you could barely hear a human voice anywhere. Nothing but the occasional wagon that was late getting home. And the dogs would be barking the way they do in the night, in long howls.

I was surprised at myself for still being prepared to walk her home. After all, it was two and a half miles. Two and a half one way, two and a half back, five in all. If I’d only had a reason. But it was all just so I could say good night. Good night. And sometimes a good-night kiss. Kissing’s fine for a beginning. Or when you’re engaged to each other and you know that sooner or later you’ll be together. But the only time we were together was from work to outside her house, from work to outside her house, and that could get boring. I never even took her arm because I thought she’d push my hand away and say, no, Szymek. Till one time she asked of her own accord:

“Maybe you could take my arm?” But then right away she added: “I’ve got new shoes on and they’re a bit uncomfortable to walk in.”

What was I supposed to do. I decided I’d walk her home a couple more times and call it quits. She wasn’t the only fish in the sea. Even just at work there were plenty of girls that you’d only need to walk back home once or twice, girls from our village or other villages, girls that didn’t even need to be walked home.

But that couple of times stretched out longer and longer, and I couldn’t decide how many more times it ought to be. Even when we hadn’t made any arrangement, at five to four I’d be looking out the window to make sure I didn’t miss her, or I’d leave early and wait for her on the way, by the footbridge outside the church. Then once again we’d walk those two and a half miles from work to her house, step by step.

I figured it might be easier to put an end to it all in the spring. In the spring I’d have to plow and sow and there wouldn’t be as much time for walking her home. Once and twice I’d not do it, I’d say I have to work in the fields, and maybe things’d finish of their own accord. Father was already going on about how the larks had arrived, the swallows had arrived, something or other had arrived. He started checking the plowshare, making sure it didn’t need hammering out. Then he brought in some grain on a sieve and sorted through it under the lamp, figuring out which seeds were alive and which ones were dead, which ones would sprout and which wouldn’t.

“Would you like to come in?” she said one day when we were standing outside her house. I was a bit taken aback, but I said yes. Why not?

Her father and mother were at home. They gave me a warm welcome, like they’d known me a long time. Her father even told her off for not being hospitable, she was their daughter, she should have invited me in long ago, we’ve been walking back together all this time, they can see from the window. He also knew that I was “Eagle.” He took out a bottle and told Małgosia’s mother to cut some bread and sausage. When we were already sitting, drinking and eating, he said to Małgosia:

“Listen, girl, do you know who Eagle was? Under the occupation he was the most famous of all of them. There was Tartar, Wheelwright. But they were amateurs compared to Eagle. One time Sokołowski the miller got robbed in the night, then in church someone recognized his daughter’s fur coat on Gajowczyk’s woman from the Colony. And Gajowczyk was in Wheelwright’s unit. Who had it been? Their neighbors. But Eagle, he was the scourge of God. Am I right, sir?”

“I guess.”

“Then here’s to your health. You’re a hero. Another thing I like about you is that you don’t go around with your nose in the air like some of them that either carried a gun through the war or they didn’t, but now you’d think they shot every German there was, single-handed. So you work in the district administration now?”

“That’s right.”

“With our Małgośka?”

“Yes, except we’re in different departments.”

“So the country at least showed its gratitude by giving you a government job.”

We talked the whole evening, even into the night a bit. Whenever I started getting up to go it was, sit down, it’s early yet. It’d be a sin to meet a fellow like you and not properly listen to him. Though actually I was the one doing the listening, while he talked about me. Here Eagle disarmed so-and-so, there he led an attack, here he set up an ambush, there he was surrounded but he got away. He just confirmed every once in a while that that was how it had been. That’s how it was, sir, am I right? And though in some cases it was completely different, I just nodded, because the way he told it was truer than it actually was.

“Your health then.”

Małgorzata and her mother were more bustling around the room than listening. Her mother would just sigh from time to time:

“Oh my Lord, the things you went through.”

Małgorzata didn’t say a word. I got the feeling she was mad at her father for talking so much, I don’t think it could have been on my account.

At one moment her father got up, reached into the dresser, and brought out another bottle, this time of homemade honey vodka, because they kept bees. And when we finished it he insisted he had to drive me home, because how would it look for someone like me to go home from their house on foot. He stuck his cap on his head and set off to harness the horse, but he tripped over the stoop and Małgorzata and her mother eventually managed to convince him not to go. Because me he wouldn’t listen to at all. He even hammered his fist on the table and said I had no say in the matter. It was his horse, his wagon, his idea. I was his guest. And not just any guest. He wouldn’t have driven any old guest back home.

Małgorzata was embarrassed about her father getting drunk. But I took a liking to him. He was a straightforward guy, he said what was on his mind, and you could tell he was a good man. Her mother seemed a decent woman as well. A few days later I visited them again. Because since that time Małgorzata asked me in every day. Though I had the impression she didn’t always want me to agree, just it was the right thing to ask. I didn’t want to cause problems so I’d say, maybe not today, but inside I’d be hoping she would insist, please, do come in. But she’d say, as you wish. Or at most, my father would like it.

But one time I’d bought a bottle and I said, I have some time, I’ll come in. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything, it was just that I wanted to repay their hospitality. Because whenever I visited, the mother would always ask, maybe you’d like something to eat? And she’d slice some bread and bacon, make scrambled eggs. The father would bring a pot of honey from their larder, sometimes it was linden honey, sometimes heather, or acacia, or honeydew honey, and I’d satisfy my sweet tooth, and listen to him talking about bees, how they’re smart creatures, a whole lot smarter than humans, though humans think they’re the smart ones. He even encouraged me to do it myself, and I started planning to keep bees. A couple of hives to begin with.

But most of all I liked watching Małgorzata pottering about the place, among the chairs and table, the pots and plates and the washbowl, and the fire under the stove, and the curtains in the windows, and the pictures on the wall. It seemed so strange to me that this was the same secretary from the tax department at work. She somehow lost the unapproachableness that at work made her hold her head way up high and look down on everyone from above, and not smile too much, not talk unless she had to. And when she did speak, she chose her words carefully, as if they weren’t words but secret signs. She even walked almost like her feet were hobbled, or as if she’d figured out those particular steps ahead of time for when she needed to cross the hallway to get to a different room or leave work to go home.

Here, the moment she crossed the threshold she took off her shoes and put on slippers. Her mother sometimes even told her off, you shouldn’t be wearing slippers with a guest in the house. Or she’d put on an apron when there was washing or cleaning, peeling and chopping to be done, or if her mother needed help with something, though her mother used to shoo her away, she’d say, I can manage on my own, you take care of the guest. And though she wasn’t all spruce the way she was at work, I preferred her here a hundred times more than there. I didn’t mind at all that she didn’t sit with me, that she left me to her father, or on my own when he wasn’t there, because I was fine on my own. It was enough for me that she was bustling about and I was watching her. I wasn’t bored in the slightest. I could have watched her like that all day and it wouldn’t have gotten boring. My whole life. And I’d forget I was only going to walk with her a couple more times. Spring came, summer was drawing near, and I’d virtually made myself at home there, because I almost always went in.

Though sometimes I had the impression she was running away from me with all that housework. We’d go in, she’d say hello to her father and mother from the doorway, and they’d say, oh, you’re back, what took you? Aha, Mr. Szymek’s here, come in, come in. And right away she’d scuttle over to the window and draw the curtains and say, it’s so dark in here. Or she’d go look in the pots and it’d be, I think you must’ve burned something, mama, it smells like it. She’d open the door and air the room. Or if the cat meowed she’d bend down and look under the table and under the bed, here kitty kitty. Then, when she got it out she’d take it on her lap and hug it and stroke it, you darling little thing, she’d talk to it in the sweetest words, just like to a baby, and she’d ask it if it had been hunting mice, if it had had some milk, and in the stream of tender words she’d throw out as if to keep me at bay:

“Have a seat, Szymek.”

Her father sometimes got annoyed with her:

“Leave him alone, you mother cat. If you’re not careful he’ll go throw up on you. He drank all your mother’s cream, there was no way he was gonna go mousing after that. Tell us what’s going on at work.”

“Nothing much. Szymek’ll tell you. I’ll tidy up a bit. Heavens, all these flies in here!”

At times, her first words from the doorway were:

“Heavens, all these flies in here!”

And the dance of the flies would begin. She’d open the windows and the door. She’d put a cloth in everyone’s hand, and she’d direct us as we danced around the room with her. Her mother and father were supposed to mind the door and windows to make sure the flies didn’t come back in again. Małgosia and me would be in the middle of the room, she’d do the walls and I’d do the ceiling and wherever else she told me to.

“Over there, Szymek! In the corner! On top of the picture! Above the stove! Over the cross! By the lamp! But don’t squash it! Careful! Right there!”

Eventually, the moment she’d exclaim, heavens, all these flies in here! I’d go right over and take the cloth from the nail by the stove. I even had my own cloth, a red-and-blue checkered one that worked best for me. But the first time it happened I didn’t know what to do with myself, I pressed against the wall so as not to get in their way. But she’d only taken a couple of swings and gone, shoo! shoo! when she turned to me and told me off:

“Come on, Szymek, don’t just stand there, grab a cloth and help out!”

Her mother got all embarrassed and took my side:

“Małgośka, what are you saying? Mr. Szymek’s our guest. You can’t have a guest chasing flies!”

“He’s no guest!” she shouted as she waved her cloth this way and that, but she probably only said it because she was carried away with chasing flies, she was all red.

“Well, I don’t know anything about that. You all know better than I do,” said her mother, as if she was caught off balance. “Maybe he could at least use this newer towel.” She handed me a towel from over the washbasin.

I liked chasing flies with her. She’d get all hot and bothered, her clothes would be awry, her hair flying, but she seemed closer than when we were walking arm in arm from work to her house, when we were alone, without her mother or father around. And I liked it that the moment we crossed the threshold the jobs seemed to fall into her hands of their own accord. You might have thought the whole house was her responsibility alone, and the work was waiting for her to come back from work so she could do all the feeding and watering and washing and cleaning. Some days she didn’t even have time to sit down. When she did, it was only for a moment, then she’d be up again to get back to work.

As I watched her I could barely recognize myself. When she was mixing food for the pigs in the buckets, with those white arms of hers covered to the elbows in potato mush like mashers, in her apron, with her old slippers on, it made me warm inside to see her that way. It was like she’d let me in on a secret of hers. I could watch her endlessly, it took the place of thinking or of words for me, and I wasn’t at all distracted by what her father was saying to me, or what I was saying to him.

I sometimes had the sense that the work itself was passing her from hand to hand, that the furniture was moving her around the room. A bucket full of soapsuds is a heavy thing even for a man, but before I’d notice and jump up to help her she’d grab it by the handles and haul it out to the passage. Or when she was adding wood to the kitchen range, the kindling seemed to leap out of her hands into the fire all on its own. Or she’d be rolling dough to make dumplings, and she’d barely have sprinkled flour on the board when the flour was already shaped into a lump, then the lump was a patty, and the patty was cut up like a little sun. And when she was slicing the dumplings they’d fly from under her fingers, and her breasts would be galloping under her blouse like wedding horses, like any minute they were about to pop out onto the tabletop all naked. Or when she scraped carrots for soup. You’d think carrots were nothing special. But the whole room went red, like the sun was setting red when a high wind’s coming. Actually all she needed to do was stand at the range stirring one of the pots with a ladle, even then the whole room was filled with her, every nook and cranny, while the rest of us, her father and mother and me, we were squashed into the tiniest corner. Or when she went outside, the chickens probably crowded around her even when she didn’t have any grain for them. And the dog would bark for joy though she wasn’t bringing anything for him. The cows mooed in the shed. The pigs grunted. Even the trees in the orchard were blooming. And so on and so forth, the way people tell these things.

It would seem she was just doing a simple thing like sewing a button on a pillowcase. It wasn’t even just that the button seemed to slide onto the needle and thread of its own accord. More, I sometimes felt like putting my hand under the needle and saying:

“Prick me, let it bleed. Maybe the blood will tell our future.” And the blood would drip and drip, then flow, then gush in a stream, a river, till death came.

Or when she wanted to sweep the floor she’d always herd her father and me into the other room. Even for that short time it seemed like it was going to be forever. And I’d say:

“We can stay here. Don’t worry, you’re not going to sweep us up by mistake. It’s always nicer to sit in the kitchen.”

At this her mother, who was watchful as a hawk, would say:

“Mr. Szymek’s like our Franiu. The doctors wouldn’t let him go out in the sun, he had to always stay in the shade, so he used to sit in the kitchen till the cows came home, he always said that was the best place for him. He’d probably have been about your age, Mr. Szymek. When Małgosia was born he was already big, he was already in school.”

But Małgorzata didn’t like her mother talking about Franiu and she’d interrupt right away:

“Maybe we could make fritters with apple, mama? Szymek, do you like apple fritters? They’re really good, with cream and sugar.”

Her father didn’t like apple fritters and so he’d pipe up:

“What kind of an idea is that? Apple fritters. A man needs bacon or sausage, otherwise it’s like he hasn’t eaten. But as for Franiu, yeah, it’s a pity. He was our son, whatever else you might say. Though it’s been so many years now, you get used to it. I think there’s still some bacon in the larder. Go fetch it, will you, mother. I’ll see if there isn’t a drop in the bottle still. Mr. Szymek and I could have a drink together, one glass at least. Małgosia, you cut some bread.”

They baked their own bread. The loaves were big and round as cart wheels. One alone must have weighed fifteen pounds or more. Though why would anyone want to weigh it. You never weighed stuff when you loaned it to someone, or when they gave it back. It was your own bread, your own people, no one needed to know how much a loaf weighed. A loaf is a loaf, there’s a half-loaf, a quarter, an eighth, a slice, those were all the measures you needed. She’d brace the loaf against her stomach, putting her left arm around it like it was a pregnant belly, lean back, and her right arm would bring the knife through the bread toward her like it was moving downhill. It looked like the bread was rolling toward her, straight into her arms, huge and happy. Though sometimes I’d get gooseflesh thinking she might not feel where the bread ends and her body begins, because the loaf was like a part of her body. Even her father, however carried away he was talking about the war or about his bees, he’d fall silent and watch her cut the bread.

“Those slices are too thin, cut thicker ones. Bread, you have to feel it in your mouth.”

I was worried about something completely different, though it was about the bread also.

“Don’t cut it that way, Małgosia,” I’d say. “Lay it down on the table. The knife’s sharp, it might not be able to tell between the bread and your body.”

“We keep reminding her,” said her father. “But these days, you know, Mr. Szymek, children won’t listen to you. With me, it would’ve been enough for my mother or father to say something once.”

“Give it here.” I couldn’t take it any longer.

“I’m fine.” And she’d hunch over, like she was protecting the bread and the knife, almost afraid.

“Come on, give it to me, you can never be sure.”

“Give it to Mr. Szymek if he’s asking,” her mother put in. “Better a man do the job.”

I took the bread from her belly and the knife from her hand and I cut in the air over the table, holding the loaf in one hand, the knife in the other.

“You catch the slices.”

“You’re a strong one,” Małgosia’s father said in surprise. “I never saw anyone cut bread like that. Except maybe store bread. But not homemade.”

It was a Saturday. Małgosia’s father and mother had gone to their godson’s wedding in Zarzecze and they weren’t going to be back till noon the next day. I walked her home and we stood outside her house like we didn’t know what we were supposed to do with ourselves without her parents. She didn’t invite me in and I didn’t hold out my hand to say goodbye. We were mumbling something or other, glancing to the side so as to avoid looking at each other, and every moment made us feel more uncomfortable. The sun was already dropping toward the west, and we stood in its rays as if we were at an open fire, so on top of everything else we were hot. I was just about to reach out my hand and leave, but she must have sensed it, because she looked into the sun as if she wanted it to blind her and she said:

“Won’t you come in?”

“Maybe another time,” I said. “I promised my father I’d run the lister plow over the potato field.”

“As you like. But by the time you get home it’ll be starting to get dark. And it’s Saturday today.” After a moment she fluttered her eyes and said: “We’d be alone.”

“Maybe for a little while,” I said, as if I’d let her talk me into it, though there was no truth in what I’d said about helping father with the potato field. “I can do the job on Monday. Maybe I’ll take the day off work, that way I could get started in the early morning.”

But we’d barely gotten through the door when she exclaimed:

“Oh Lord, how dirty it is in here!”

I couldn’t see any dirt. It was like it always was. Pots and plates were drying on the stove top. The bread on the table was covered with a white cloth. The bucket with soapsuds had been carried out to the hallway. The floor was swept.

“Where is it dirty?” I said.

But she insisted it was dirty.

“I have to tidy up a little at least. It’ll be nicer to sit together when it’s tidy.”

She immediately tied on her apron, kicked off her shoes and put her slippers on. It was as if she’d suddenly taken fright at the fact we were alone. Because up till now, whenever I came by her parents were in, or at least one of them, like they were waiting for us, watching for us, like they’d stayed back from their jobs because of us. And really, the only time we’d been alone was on the road. But the road isn’t home. There are trees, the sky, someone might always be coming. And here all of a sudden we had the whole house to ourselves. Plus, it was like the house was half asleep, not even the cat was mewing, they must have put it out as they were leaving.

“I don’t see the cat,” I said. And I bent down to look under the bed, here kitty kitty, because I felt odd too that her parents weren’t there, just the two of us. “Well, if it’s dirty then you should clean,” I said, no longer putting up an argument. “Your mother was probably in a hurry, she mustn’t have had time to clean. When you have a wedding to get to, that’s how it is. You want to leave the place tidy, but you don’t know where to turn. You’ve got to get yourself ready, but on top of that you can’t let the animals go hungry. The chickens and the geese have to be rounded up and put in the shed. You have to check every nook and cranny. Close it all up. Otherwise you never know what you’ll find when you come back home. The Kukałas in our village, one time they went off to a wedding, they came back the next day and their place was just a smoking ruin. The house, the shed, the barn, everything burned to the ground. Luckily they were all so drunk they didn’t cry as much as if they’d been sober.”

“Szymek, what’s wrong?” She looked at me almost frightened.

“Nothing. I’m just saying what can happen sometimes.”

“Are you angry at me for cleaning?”

“Course not. Clean all you like. I’ll just sit here.”

She carried the pots out into the passageway. She took the bread from the table and put it away in the dresser, then she gathered the crumbs and threw them into the firebox under the stove. Though I hadn’t seen any crumbs on the table. The table stood by the window, the sun was shining in and you could see every smallest speck on the tabletop. She swept the floor. Then she opened the door and the windows. I thought to myself, any minute now we’ll be chasing flies, but she let the flies be and just aired the place out. Then she started wiping the plates from the stove and putting them away in the dresser.

I sat there watching her and looking out the window, but I didn’t say a word about her cleaning, I didn’t tell her to hurry up. When she asked me to put the chairs back in their usual places, I got up and did it. She thought Jesus in the Garden of Olives was hanging crooked, so I raised it a bit on the left like she wanted. Though if you asked me, it was straight to begin with. Then she told me to check if the kerosene in the lamp was low. I checked. It wasn’t. She didn’t want anything more after that, so I lit a cigarette and started blowing smoke rings, watching them float away and break up and disappear. Maybe I wasn’t even waiting for her to finish the cleaning. It was like it was always going to be that way. Me at the table blowing smoke rings, her drying dishes by the stove. Every now and then she said something, asked me something, nothing much, but for her it was like she’d almost become talkative. Or maybe she was just annoyed that I’d agreed so easily to her doing the cleaning, that I wasn’t even asking if she’d be done soon. A couple of times she laughed, and it was such a joyful laugh I was taken by surprise, she never laughed like that. Maybe she wanted me to laugh with her. Except I wasn’t much feeling like laughing, and I didn’t completely believe in that laughter of hers.

The last yellow rays of the sun lay on the wall opposite the window, but the lower parts of the room were already getting dark. Where the water buckets stood in the corner, it seemed evening was beginning. All of a sudden there was a crash, she’d dropped a plate, the shards flew every which way across the floor.

“Oh, you clumsy thing,” I said but in a well-meaning way, why would I care about a plate.

She gave me a bitter, reproachful look, hid her face in her hands, burst into tears, and ran off into the other room.

“Małgosia, what’s wrong?” I called after her. “There’s no point crying over a plate. We’ll pick up the pieces and that’ll be that!” I bent down and got to work. I gathered every last little fragment, put it all into the biggest piece, laid it on the stove, and went to ask her where I should throw it out.

“All done.”

She was lying on the bed with her head thrust in the pillow, crying like a wronged child.

“There’s no need to cry,” I said. “A plate got broken is all. No big deal. Could have happened to anyone. One day I was taking myself some potato soup, the bowl knocked against the kettle and it shattered. Another time, I put a plate upside down on some cabbage to cover it and the plate slipped off and broke. If we cried over every broken plate we’d run out of tears to cry over people.” I sat down on the edge of the bed, by her head, and started stroking her hair. “Don’t cry now. Time was, when plates and bowls were made out of tin, a plate would last you your whole life. A young woman would get a set of six plates in her dowry, and on her deathbed she’d be able to leave them to her daughter. Some had flowers on them, some not. When one of those plates fell on the floor the worst that could happen was it would get dented. You’d eat and eat from it. And you could put it down on a hot stove top. When one of them got a hole you’d fill it with a rivet and hammer it out, or plug it with a piece of rag, and you’d keep eating from it. Then when it was really old the cat would eat from it, the chickens, you’d carry the dog’s food out in it. Or you could give it to a kid as a toy to play with, it wouldn’t do itself any harm with a plate like that. Come on now, don’t cry.”

For the longest time she wouldn’t calm down, but gradually, gradually the crying eased off. Though she still lay there with her head in the pillow. I guessed she must be embarrassed because of her tear-stained face, worried that I’d think the crying made her look ugly. I got up intending to get rid of the broken plate.

“Where can I throw away the pieces?”

She didn’t answer right away. After a moment, in a voice still wet with tears, she said:

“Just leave them there.”

“It won’t take a second,” I said. “I’ll get rid of them and that’ll be the end of it.”

I stood over her, waiting for her to say:

“Go throw them out then.”

There’d be a bucket for rubbish outside the shed. Or under the verandah. Or by the fence. Or at the edge of the orchard, by the apple tree. Different people kept it in different places. They buried it, or tossed it in the river. I’d even have gone down to the river, but there was no river in their village. Otherwise I thought her crying would never end, it’d subside, but it wouldn’t end.

It looked like she’d stopped crying, that she was just lying there hugging the pillow. But she was still full of tears. You could smell them in the air, like the smell of roasting salt.

“Don’t go,” she whispered. “I don’t want to be left on my own.”

“Fine,” I said. “I just thought that you did all that cleaning, but there’s still the broken plate.”

“Sit by me. Where you were sitting before.”

I sat down. Dusk had slipped into the room for good, like smoke from a bonfire. Underfoot you could barely tell whether the floor was boards or earth. The ceiling overhead, even though it was high and painted white, it looked like it was covered with mold. On the wall they had a stuffed hawk on a branch, in the daytime it looked like it was swooping down on a chicken in the yard, that it already had it in its talons, Małgosia’s folks were running out and shouting, let it go, you bandit! Now, it was like someone had hung out a hawk carcass to scare off the other hawks. It was the same with the Apostles at the Last Supper. They were already old but the dusk made them even older, like they were tired of sitting at the same table for two thousand years, when would they finally be able to get up? And Małgosia’s parents in their wedding portrait over the bed, they’d also gotten darker, as if they hadn’t just gotten married but had just died, though her mother was still in her white veil like a bride.

“I want to be yours today,” she said, suddenly raising her head from the pillow. She said it in an ordinary way like she was saying, the sun’s rising. The forest is rustling. The river’s flowing. “Do you want that?”

I leaned over and kissed her hair, because what could I say? It would be like someone asking, “Do you want to live?” And you answered: “I do.” A better answer would be: “No, I want to die.” So as to feel how painfully you want to live.

“I’ll get the bed ready.”

She got up, took off the bedspread, folded it in four and hung it over the armrest of a chair. She arranged the pillows, shook out the quilt. It was hard to believe she’d been crying just a moment ago. It was like she’d been making the bed for us every day before nightfall, and today another of those nights had come. And not even a Sunday night but a regular weekday one, like Tuesday to Wednesday, Wednesday to Thursday, and it was time to go to bed after a full day of life. It seemed like any minute now she’d go down on her knees at the bedside and start saying her prayers and telling me off, saying I should at least cross myself, because all the two of us had inside was exhaustion after that whole long day of life. Though it was the same as other days, no harder and no easier. Maybe I’d been mowing, and she was gathering. Maybe I’d been plowing and she’d been doing the laundry.

She took off her blouse and her skirt. She didn’t tell me to turn around or not to look, she wasn’t the least bit embarrassed. But why should I have been surprised, when you’ve gotten through a whole day you don’t have the strength or the desire to be embarrassed. Your body’s just an aching weight, and the eyes looking at it are blind. It probably would never have occurred to her that after all those years I could look at her any differently than the way I looked at the earth, at the landscape. After so many years I knew her body like I knew the earth and the landscape, and landscape and earth don’t know what embarrassment is. I knew it in health and in sickness, in joy and in sorrow, in laughter and in tears, at every hour of the day and the night. What was there to be embarrassed about? How many times had I poured water over her to rinse off the soap as she crouched in the bathtub, and looked down at her naked body like the Lord God who made her looking down from above. How many times had I pulled off her sweat-soaked blouse when she was in a fever and too weak to even raise her arms. Why should she be embarrassed now. Or how often in the night had I listened so closely to her breathing that I even had the same dream as her, because when body lives alongside body for so many years, they dream the same dreams together too, why would they need two different ones. I knew the whole of her and every part. I knew her belly, her thighs, her knees, her elbows. I knew each of her arms and each of her legs, and all the fingers on her hands and the toes on her feet separately and together. I knew every vein under her skin, every scar and every spot. I knew her belly button had been poorly tied after she was born, and I knew she had a way of sighing that sounded like a sob. I sometimes thought she was all of life, I sometimes thought she was no more than a speck of grass in my eye. Sometimes I could see death within her, sometimes only a broken fingernail. So it was no surprise that she couldn’t understand it when I still desired her. Something almost like fear came into her eyes. How could it be, her youth had passed and she’d even forgotten how to be embarrassed, why then? It’s only in youth that bodies desire each other for no reason. And here we were after a whole day of life and I desired her, and it felt as if it was after an entire life. Sleep was weighing on her eyes, her arms and feet ached, her body felt like it had just been taken down from the cross, and here you were desiring her. And in an ordinary way, as if you’d come home from mowing and wanted a drink of water.

“Unfasten my brassiere behind,” she said.

She bowed her head and as if she was afraid she waited to see whether my hands would touch her. There was only one button, unfastening it should have been the simplest thing in the world, I mean you fasten and unfasten buttons all your life. Yet that button kept slipping out of my hands like a fish. But she stood there with her head lowered and didn’t so much as sigh at my clumsiness. Though her back was covered with goose bumps. She slipped the brassiere from her shoulders, threw it on the chair, then turned around to face me and said:

“See, I’m not embarrassed in front of you. I’m not embarrassed at all.” Without warning she threw her arms around me. “Oh Szymek.”

I put my arms around her too, but she pulled away and jumped into bed as agilely as a she-goat, snuggling deep into the puffy quilt so even her head was barely visible.

“Are you coming?” I heard her whisper anxiously.

It was already dark in the room, though the remains of the day were still lingering in the windows like in a puddle. We lay side by side without moving, under the heavy quilt, because she wanted us to lie awhile like that. I put my arm around her, her head pressed into my shoulder like in the pillow before. I was hot, I could feel my skin covering with sweat, but I didn’t have the nerve either to move or to say anything. And she just lay there as well, she was just as afraid to move or speak. It was like we’d been scalded by our own nakedness, or as if being naked we only felt our own aches and pains, instead of desire.

She still smelled of her recent tears, I was on the verge of telling her she smelled of tears. But she must have sensed I was about to speak, because she put a finger on my lips to stop me talking. She told me to shut my eyes, and she shut hers too. When mine opened on their own, for the shortest moment, so I didn’t even have time to make anything out except the darkness, right away I heard her telling me off in a whisper:

“Did you open your eyes?”

“Only by accident. But they’re closed again now. What about you?”

“Mine have been closed the whole time.”

Maybe because she was cuddled up to me so trustfully, she seemed as fragile as a roadside wildflower, that all it would take would be to reach over, pull it up, and throw it away. Her heart was humming right by mine, under the arm I’d put around her, and into the pillow, but it was so soft it wasn’t like a heart. From that close up a heart usually pounds like a hammer, but hers was like the sound of grain being poured. Or maybe she was still nervous and she couldn’t calm down. I took even tighter hold of her. She must have thought I didn’t want to lie there anymore, because I heard another whisper:

“Let’s stay like this a bit longer. Do you like it?”

“Yes.”

The moon must have risen already, because the dogs began to bark, first the odd one, then more and more of them, howling, yelping, the way they only ever do to the moon, or when somebody dies. Someone was playing a harmonica far away, from time to time a couple of low notes reached us, sometimes part of a tune. There must have been a wagon on the road somewhere, because its axles squeaked. And we lay there like we were healing our aches and pains after a whole day of life or an entire life that we’d lived together, and the only thing left to do was die together. Except we didn’t know how. I even tried imagining that we were lying there after death, under the weight of the quilt, that had lain on us so long it had turned to stone. But once it had been real feathers. Real geese had worn them as they lived and ate and grew and went down to the water, they had red beaks and cackled the way geese do. Then the women plucked the feathers from the geese. The women lived once just like the geese did. Those might even have been their happiest moments, when they gathered on winter evenings to pluck feathers, because why else would they have lived? If you listened really closely, you could still hear the sound of their hands in among the down, and the songs they sang. Though it might also have been that one of them was unhappy at the time and she put a curse on the feathers. And that curse caused our sudden and unexpected death, so we barely had time to cling to each other in a final attempt to save ourselves.

“Does it hurt?” I heard her whisper.

“What?”

“The first time.”

“Everything hurts the first time.” Because I was still seeing our death.

The harvest came a little earlier than usual that year. It was another matter that it had been dry for a long time, there hadn’t been a drop of rain. Mother and father barely knew me. Mother thought God had answered her prayers, father reckoned I’d finally wised up, because everyone has to wise up in the end. I hammered out the blade of the scythe, cleaned out the mows in the barn, put new racks on the wagon. I went out to the field and brought back a handful of spikes, father crushed them on the palm of his hand, blew on them, studied them, put one grain between his teeth and bit it, bit another, and he reckoned we should wait another three or four days, but I said we should start right away.

We were among the first in the village to harvest our rye, people thought something must have happened, maybe my brothers had come to help? Małgorzata’s folks got her to help in the harvest as well, because there are no indulgences for getting out of the harvest, just like there aren’t any for mortal sins. So we didn’t see much of each other during that time. It was only when I’d finished storing the rye in the barn that I walked her home again one day, but I didn’t go in. She seemed odd to me, she wasn’t saying much and she wouldn’t look at me. I thought maybe she was just overworked, maybe a bit embarrassed too, because I found it hard to look her in the eye as well, I mostly looked at the sky or to the side, I just stole glances at her when she was looking the other way. Because with eyes it’s often the way that it’s easier to say a bitter word than look someone straight in the eye.

She complained a bit that her arms were all pricked from the harvesting, she had to wear a long-sleeved blouse, her back ached. But when we were saying our goodbyes in front of her house, she threw her arms around me even though it was still light out and her mother could have been standing in the window.

“Oh Szymek,” she sighed. But she often sighed like that. I said:

“Soon as the harvest’s done, Małgosia.”

Then I mowed the barley and brought it in, then the wheat, though there was only a couple of acres of that. Then right away I began the plowing. As I was plowing the last part, behind Przykopa’s place, the storks were gathering in the meadows getting ready to fly away. They’re strange birds. They clattered their bills for the longest time, then they all walked off in different directions and started preening, then they picked out one of their own kind and went for it with their bills. I ran at them with my whip, because they were going to peck it to death. But before I reached them they took off and flew farther away down the meadow, including the one they’d been attacking. Then they finished it off. Afterwards Bida found it dead when he was grazing his cows.

All I needed to do now was harrow and I could get on with the sowing. But it was dry, the earth was all clumpy, I thought I’d wait a few days and see if it rained. So at work I arranged with Małgosia that I’d walk her home. We walked slowly, dragging our feet, we even held hands and we looked each other in the eye this time, and she talked willingly, and laughed, she was the way she always used to be. But as we were saying goodbye outside her house, it was only then she seemed to remember she had something to tell me, and almost in a hurry she started explaining that she’d be gone for two, maybe three weeks, because she was taking some leave from tomorrow, she had to go visit her cousin, she’d gotten a list from her and the cousin was begging her to go and stay. She didn’t tell me sooner because we hadn’t seen each other, and she’d only gotten the letter the day before yesterday. The cousin was only a distant relative, the daughter of her father’s cousin, and Małgosia’s mother was her godmother, but they were as close as sisters, and they hadn’t seen each other in three years. Before she got married she’d come to stay with them in the country every summer. Then her husband had gone off with another woman and left her with two small children, plus the younger one, Januszek, had been born with a crooked head and he was having an operation, so she had to go.

I was a bit angry, she could have told me on the way at least instead of waiting till we were outside her house. We’d have sat down somewhere and said our goodbyes properly, not just any old how. Though I had no doubts it was all true. Everyone has cousins they sometimes don’t even know, they don’t remember them, they don’t know they exist, then all of a sudden they show up like ghosts from the underworld. She must have felt I was mad, because she clung to me and asked me not to hold it against her. She had to go. She even had tears in her eyes.

“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “Believe me.”

My anger passed, but I was a little sad, as if she was leaving for the next world, not to stay with her cousin for a couple of weeks.

“Go then,” I said. “But come back quickly.”

“It’ll be no time,” she said.

“Of course it will,” I said. “Maybe I’ll take some leave too. I could fix the roof on the barn. I never have time to get to it.”

“Will you think of me? Think of me. Please. It’ll make it easier for me.”

It rained, I harrowed and sowed, I fixed the barn roof and the time passed like the crack of a whip. I wanted to walk her home the first day she was back, but she said she was in a hurry because her mother was baking bread and she had to get home quickly to help. The next day she left work early and I didn’t see her. This went on for a few days, if it wasn’t one thing it was another, forgive me, I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry, I have to be back earlier than usual, I have an errand to run. Till one day, as we passed each other in the hallway I said:

“You’ve changed since you came back, Małgosia.”

“Why would I have changed? You’re imagining it.” She disappeared into her office.

I wasn’t going to force myself on her. Though various thoughts started rattling around in my head. But one day I leave work and I see she’s walking slowly in front of me, eventually she stops and smiles that sad smile of hers and asks if I’m mad at her. Me, mad at you, of course not. Then could I walk her home maybe? And, like nothing had happened, she starts telling me how she and her cousin hadn’t been able to get their fill of talking, every day they’d gone to the cinema, to visit her friends, on walks, sometimes to a café, but she didn’t like the taste of coffee, she preferred tea, and most of all she liked some of the cakes, she even said the name of them but it was something strange. She could have eaten four at once, except apparently they make you fat. But I haven’t gotten fat, right? She gave me a flirtatious look.

“What about Januszek?” I asked.

“Januszek?” She seemed flustered. “You know, it turned out he was too small, so he didn’t have the operation after all.”

And again I believed her. If that’s what she said, that’s how it must have been.

Some time passed, I’d almost forgotten about her leave and I was even thinking it was time to ask her seriously if she’d be my wife. I mean, how long would we be walking from work to her house, over and again? She was still young, but I was getting on for a bachelor. I decided that at Christmas I’d have a talk with her, and before then I’d think everything through. Because strange to say, up till then we’d never talked about what was going to happen with the two of us in the future, it was like we were unsure of each other the whole time or we were hiding something from each other.

It was November, gray and cold and windy, put your arm around me, she said. We happened to be by the woods when at one moment she slipped out from under my arm and stood still and said:

“Szymek, I have to tell you after all.”

“So tell me.” I was sure it wasn’t anything important, I didn’t sense anything from her tone of voice.

“I was pregnant,” she said.

My heart started pounding so hard it almost jumped out of my chest. But I stayed calm, like I was just a bit surprised, and I asked her:

“What do you mean, was?”

“Because I’m not anymore. That time, when I took time off, I went to a doctor. That was why I went away.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

It was as if the woods that were rustling all around us started to fall on me. Rage flooded through me. I didn’t know what was happening. Maybe that’s what it’s like to die a sudden and unexpected death.

“You whore!” I howled, and somewhere deep inside, tears began to choke me. Maybe I had to be furious to keep myself from crying.

“Szymek, forgive me!” She cowered, put her hands together like she was praying. “I was sure you wouldn’t want it!”

“You’re no different from all the other whores! Whores I can have as many as I want, as many as these trees! You, I wanted you to be the mother of my children!” I grabbed her by the hair and twisted my hand, she sank to her knees.

“Forgive me!” she sobbed.

I started hitting her in the face, on the head, wherever the blows fell. Inside myself I no longer felt rage, only tears like a flooding river, and it was the tears that hated her like nothing else in the world. I dragged her across the grass by the hair like a tree branch.

“Forgive me,” she begged. “Forgive me or kill me.”

I left her like that, weeping and beaten on the ground, and I set off walking quickly as if I was escaping, faster and faster.

“Szymek!” I heard her calling in despair. “Come back! We can still have children! As many as you want! I didn’t know! I was afraid! Come back! Szymek!!”

It was nearly night and a drizzle had started by the time I reached the village. The first house was Skowron’s cottage, crooked with age. It had a thatched roof and no soleplates. I dropped onto a rock by the wall to try and pull myself together. Skowron came out. He wasn’t even surprised to see me there. He looked at the sky:

“Well, it’s finally started. It’s gonna be raining a week or more, you can tell. Come inside or you’ll get wet.”

“No, I’ll be off in a minute, I just sat down for a moment. You wouldn’t have a glass of something, would you, Skowron?”

“There was a bit left over from Easter, but my old lady rubbed my back with it one time. It’s been aching like the blazes, evidently from the rain.”

I had the impression there were swallows chattering in the empty nests under the eaves, though how could there have been swallows at that time of year. I must have been imagining it. I was imagining all sorts of things that seemed to exist and not exist at the same time. The rain, the village, even Skowron standing on the stoop. The rain had set in for good, but I couldn’t feel it falling on me, I couldn’t feel anything at all. All I wanted to do was get drunk. But for that I’d have had to get up off the rock outside Skowron’s place and go somewhere. That’s easier said than done when you don’t know where to go. I didn’t want to be in the pub. The pub was good for drowning your everyday sorrows, when a hog dies, or hail flattens your crop, or you lose a court case and you need to tell someone about it. But here, if God himself had sat by me I wouldn’t have said anything to him. At most it would have been, it’s raining, Lord. But he’d know that already.

I remembered that Marcinek used to sometimes have vodka. Back when I was in the police I even searched his house. I didn’t find anything, but there was an old milk can in the pantry. What’s that, I asked. Kerosene, he says. I smelled it, pure moonshine. But let it be kerosene. You have to get along with folks.

Marcinek was sitting by the stove in his long johns and shirt putting kindling in the firebox. His missus was feeding the baby, but it might have been sick, because it was screaming to high heaven and she had to force her nipple into its mouth. The three other kids were already in bed all in a row, propped against the wall, and they all seemed sleepy though they weren’t actually asleep, because when I came in they all looked at me with blue blue eyes. This wasn’t Marcinek’s whole family. His eldest, Waldek, worked in Lasów minding cows for Jarociński, and the next one down, Hubert, had been taken in by his grandmother. But they all had strange names like that: Rafał, Olgierd, Konrad, Grażyna.

“Let me have a quart,” I said.

At first he didn’t speak, he just kept putting sticks in the stove, then after a moment he said:

“Where am I supposed to get that from?”

“Come on, I’m not here to spy on you.”

“Go to the pub. It’s still open. I don’t sell vodka anymore. I work on the railroad now.”

“Give him it, Jędruś,” his old lady spoke up. “Don’t you see he’s all wet? He can’t go to the pub looking like that. Don’t you remember that milk can? You have to help people.”

Marcinek gave his woman an angry look.

“Don’t you know how to feed a baby, dammit? All he does is scream and scream, it’s more than a man can bear!” He went on feeding the fire.

“You got a bottle?” he said gruffly.

“No.”

“Then what? You want me to pour it in your cap? You don’t even have a cap.”

But he got up and left the room. The baby started screaming again in its mother’s lap.

“Hush now, hush, you’ll get some dill leaves, just suck a little longer.” She took her other breast out of her blouse. “Maybe there’ll be more in this one.” The baby tried it but started up again. “Little thing like this doesn’t even know he’s alive, but he’s already done more than his fair share of crying. Are you not going to get married, Szymuś? It’s high time, life on your own’s no picnic.”

Marcinek came back with a quart bottle under his shirt. He’d filled it right up to the top.

“Though I don’t have anything to stop it with,” he said. “Unless I make a cork out of paper.”

“There’s no need,” I said.

“Why don’t you wait awhile,” said the wife. “Potato soup’s almost ready. You could have something to eat.”

“Why would he want potato soup,” Marcinek interrupted her. “His folks are probably waiting for him at home, they’ll have sausage.”

I took my first drink right outside the door. Then a second at the gate. On the other side of the road, at the crossroads there’s the shrine, and I collapsed on the steps under the Lord Jesus. The rain not only didn’t let up, it fell harder and harder, or maybe that was just how it appeared in the darkness, because in the darkness all sorts of things seem to happen that you wouldn’t see with your eyes in the daylight. So I sat there in the rain taking swigs from the bottle, and I even started feeling good. I talked a bit to Jesus, who was sitting above me under his little roof, his chin resting on his hands, pondering. And he talked to me. And so we talked to each other, till I’d finished the bottle and there was nothing left to talk about anymore. I said:

“I’ll be off, then, Lord, because otherwise I’ll start pondering like you, when you and I aren’t equal. I’ll just leave you this empty bottle, maybe it’ll come in handy if someone brings you flowers.”

I set off, though I wasn’t entirely sure where to. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe Kaśka was still in the store. I hadn’t been to see her for a long time. I’d just drop in there once in a while for cigarettes, though I preferred to buy them at the pub. When I had to go buy other things, I would just be going to the store, not to see her. One time she even asked me, are you ever gonna come see me again? Swing by sometime. Swing by, you won’t regret it. Maybe you could come today, I could stay late.

I stood in front of the door, it was locked up already. I called out, Kaśka, open up! Open up, you hear? Bitch isn’t there. She was supposed to stay late. I got so mad I started hammering on the door with my fists and kicking it. Open up! But on the other side it was quiet as the grave. I was all set to plop down in front and wait for her till morning, when I heard her voice from the other side of the door, she was all in a huff:

“Who’s there?”

“It’s me, Szymek. Open up!”

She gave me an angry welcome:

“Could you not find a worse time to come? The bastards are doing an inventory starting tomorrow. And here I’ve got half a sack of sugar too much and I’ve no idea where it came from. My mind’s on other things, I don’t have time for fun and games today.”

“Do you want me to go?”

“Never mind what I want. Get yourself inside, since you’re here already.” She turned the key in the lock behind me and slid the bolt shut. “You look for him the whole year and he’s nowhere in sight. Where did you get so drunk?” She took a strong hold of me under the arms and led me through into the storeroom. The light was on there. She sat me on a sack of sugar or salt. She exclaimed:

“Dear Lord in heaven, you look awful! Were you trying to drown yourself or something? You’re soaked to the skin. Were you with some slut? You should have just stayed with her. Why did you have to come bothering me? I’ve thought and thought, the moment I closed up today I counted everything over and over, but I still have half a sack too much. And that bitch in accounting’s just waiting for a chance to kick me out and put her bastard boyfriend in my place. Whenever she visits the store she always finds something to complain about. There’s too many flies. You’ve got flypaper up, right? Sure, but the stuff they put on it is crap. Plus the store’s in the country, not the town, there have to be flies. Or the next time she says the floor’s not been swept. Sweep it yourself, bitch! Doesn’t say anything in the contract about sweeping. Or have people wipe their shoes before they come in, then no one’ll need to sweep the floor. Is it my fault her fella’s got the hots for me? He can have the hots for her as well, did I say he couldn’t? Though with a face like hers the devil himself wouldn’t be interested. He’s all, here Miss Kaśka, there Miss Kaśka. And when he laughs it sounds like someone stepped on a rat, the prick. Go to hell, Mr. Marzec, this is a store, not whatever you think it is. He forgets there are other people there. That old witch Mrs. Skrok pipes up, for goodness’ sake, Kaśka, all those men, you’ll end up in hell. I’ll see you there then. I’ll tell you where you can stick that hell of yours.” All of a sudden she grabbed me under the arms and tugged so hard I lurched toward her. “Come sit over here, that sack’s got sugar in it, it’ll get wet and lumpy. If you weren’t such a bad boy I’d buy you an umbrella. You could carry it around with you. Have you seen the priest’s umbrella? He follows behind a coffin, it’s pouring, everyone’s looking like scarecrows, but him, he’s dry as a bone. He even has the sacristan carry it for him. And you, you’re not just anyone either, you’re a government worker. Even Smotek’s got an umbrella. His son-in-law gave it to him. He wandered in here one time with the umbrella open. I say, it isn’t raining inside. I just need mustard, he says, it’s not worth folding it then having to open it again. Maybe you wanna take a nap?”

“I didn’t come here to sleep.”

“You can barely stay upright you’re so drunk. And sopping wet into the bargain.”

“I’m not sleepy.”

“Then let me at least dry your hair, the water’s dripping in your eyes.” She snatched a towel from a hook and started rubbing my hair so hard I thought she was dragging me down the road. But I had no wish to stop her, let her drag me, maybe she’d fall down a hole and then she’d stop of her own accord.

“Your hair’s like a horse’s mane,” she said. She wasn’t angry anymore, she was even being nice. “I’m not sure I’d like you as much if you didn’t have hair. I can’t stand bald men. I’d never sleep with a bald guy, whoever he was. One time Kuśmider wouldn’t leave me alone, he kept going on about how he’d come by. Come by where? To the store, Kaśka, to see you. Then go buy yourself a rug first. You can wear it in the winter instead of a cap. You won’t even have to take it off in church. Your hair’s all wet, but it’s so thick. If you keep chasing after the other girls and ignoring me, one of these days I’ll pull it all out. Though chase whoever you like, I could care less. Men are like cats, they’d die if they only had one place to go poking. They have to run around. But if one of them took you away from me forever, I think I’d kill her. Then you, then myself. With that butcher’s knife up there, see it? Imagine how people would talk in the village. Did you hear what that Kaśka went and did? Who’da thought. There she was selling sugar and soap and salt and candies, and she had it in her to kill? Then that piece of work in accounting could give the job to her son-of-a-bitch boyfriend, let him come work here. I mean, what is there to sell? Sugar, salt, soap, candies, matches. Over and over. Sometimes I’ve had it up to here. One time they delivered a barrel of herring. My hands, my apron, face, hair — I was covered in herring. On top of that people almost broke down the door buying them. Everyone was taking five pounds, ten pounds. Have you all gone nuts? Fighting over fish? I felt like knocking them over the head with those herring. It’d be nice if I got a delivery of chocolate one day, or raisins or almonds. In town people drink coffee, they could start drinking it here as well. Instead of just vodka the whole time. But instead of that the bastards have me doing inventory every other day. Couldn’t you have called by this morning, let me know you were coming? I’d have gotten the job out of the way. Now what am I supposed to do?”

“What do you think? Get undressed.”

“Oh, you.” She pressed my head against her belly. “You’re a bad one, but I don’t know what I’d do without you. Things might be worse or they might be better, but they wouldn’t be the same. I’d probably give up the store. Maybe I’d go become a nun. I’m telling you, life in a nunnery isn’t bad. They feed you, and all you have to do is pray. When I reached old age I’d be all set. Duda wanted to marry me. But what would that mean? Dirty dishes and dirty kids. He can hire a maid.”

She took off her apron. She was wearing a green dress with white dots, it looked nice on her. I thought she looked like a green tree covered in snowflakes that were falling from the sky. But she got all riled up again and started shaking the snowflakes off.

“They can kiss my you-know-what!” she exclaimed. “I’ll put a sign up to say I’m sick. They can come do the inventory next week.” She reached around and started unbuttoning her dress. But suddenly something seemed to stop her, because she frowned and her hands fell to her sides.

“Your eyes are closing, Szymuś,” she said. “This isn’t gonna be any kind of loving.”

She stood there for a moment helpless, looking at me as if in reproach, then she said uncertainly:

“So shall I take all my clothes off?” But she didn’t seem to expect a reply, because she sat down on a sack with a sigh: “Oh, you.”

She kicked her shoes off.

“I need to take them to the cobbler, have him put taps on. They’re getting worn down,” she said, and she pushed one of the shoes toward me with her foot as if to show me. She unfastened her stockings. She took the left one off, then got up, pulled the chair closer and hung the stocking over the armrest, and only then took the other one off. But with her dress she hesitated, she unfastened it at the back, but it was like she couldn’t decide whether to take it off or not. In the end she did, and she slipped off her blouse as well. Then she got mad again:

“God damn them! How long is it since the last inventory? No more than a month. And I’ve not taken so much as a zloty’s worth of anything. But the heater, I’ve been asking and asking and they don’t have anyone to repair it. I could’ve turned it on, you would have dried out a bit. How will you manage all wet like that?” She took off her brassiere, her breasts seemed to jump out toward me. She stood there with the brassiere in her hand, she gave me a kind of tender look and said:

“Szymuś, you’re so drunk you won’t be able to get it up.”

“I will, Kaśka, I will. When you touch it it’ll get up. The worst thing is, I don’t even feel like living.”

“What are you saying, Szymuś!” She stepped back like she’d been burned, and tossed the brassiere on a pile of sacks. “Did you hear that? He doesn’t want to go on living! Spit and cross yourself!” She dropped down onto her knees by me and held my head against her huge breasts. “Maybe you killed someone, Szymuś? What is it, tell me! You can tell me. I won’t breathe a word. Oh, my darling. Even if you’ve killed someone.” She started to cry.

“What are you blubbering for, you silly thing? I haven’t killed anybody.”

“Then you must have had a bellyful.” She pushed my head away from her breasts and instantly stopped crying. “Maybe someone slipped something in your glass? Cigarette ash or something worse. You should at least have eaten. Even if you didn’t want to, you should have forced yourself. Next time don’t drink with just anyone. You’re a government worker, respect yourself. God damn them, to your face they’re the Angel Gabriel, but behind your back they’d pull you down to hell and convince you you were in your own home. Getting pie-eyed like that, dear Lord. I knew right away you’d only come to me cause you were drunk. He doesn’t feel like living. Who does? Ask around the village, no one does, but they’re all living away, stuffing themselves with food. And buying anything that comes along, whether they need it or no. And me, do you think I feel like living? What kind of life do I have? It’s just as well you remember me once in a while and come visit. Or when one of those bitches of yours won’t give it up for you. Otherwise it’s nothing but the store. From morning to night I’m wondering and wondering, will he come by or not. I play games, I say, if the next customer’s a woman he’ll come. Then the next customer’s a guy or a kid. Sometimes I even run out onto the road and ask, don’t you need anything, Mrs. Oryszko, or you, Mrs. Stefańska? Just so it’s a woman. What’s gotten into you today, Kaśka? they say. Have you been to confession? Come on by, I just got some new baking powder in. I got this in, that in. I pray, the moment I open up the shop, even before I sweep it out, come by, Szymuś, come by, my sweet one. You might at least come for cigarettes. But evidently the pub’s closer. He must have bought them there. I think to myself, I’ll go over to the pub and talk to Irka, tell her not to sell him cigarettes, she should say only my store has Sports. Don’t be so silly, she’ll say, he’ll just buy some other kind. Holidays or some other brand, they’re just as good. It doesn’t make any difference to them, so long as they can have their smoke. So what am I supposed to do, curse him out? Have a mass said? Or have him make me a baby? What if he says it isn’t his? He’ll end up hating the baby as well. How can you hate a little thing like that? Maybe it’d come to love its mother in time. It’s your own fault, I say to myself. You slept around, it could be anybody’s. Well, I did sleep around, but I know whose baby it is. What was I supposed to do, wait till you showed up whenever, or not at all? Blood is thicker than water. And what am I a girl for? Am I supposed to touch myself? I know you won’t marry me either way. But while I’m young I can’t help it if I want it. Sometimes I even wake up at night because I think someone’s on top of me. But whoever it is, it’s you, Szymuś. I close my eyes and I see you, I smell you. I ruffle that big mane of yours. And I say to myself inside, it’s Szymuś, I’m so glad. I thank the good Lord that you exist. Like if it’s Stach Niezgódka or Franek Koziej, he does his business, fastens his pants, and leaves. At most he’ll say, you’re a good kid, Kaśka. And it’s on the tip of my tongue to say, where’s Szymek? Szymek was here. I thought you were Szymek. You tricked me, you whoring son of a bitch! I’ll scratch your eyes out! Get the hell outta here or I’ll start shouting, I’ll say you were robbing the store! You thought you had me? The hell you did! You were just screwing someone’s hole, you fucker! Kaśka may be a whore, but she’s not just anyone’s. When she wants she’s a whore, and when she wants she’s a virgin. If I wanted, I could even be a princess. Miss Kaśka, you’re like a princess, one guy said to me once. They were mending the railroad. If only I was a prince, he said. I’d dress you in furs, in a hat, in shoes with those big heels, and I’d drive you to church in a carriage! And you all think I’m just a shopgirl and anyone can have their way with me. All you village big shots. No damn way! Only Szymek has had me. You can tell whatever stories you like. Where I’ve got a beauty spot. Who enjoyed me more. I’m his whore. Only his. I’m almost like a wife to him. The Lord God, he knows how it really is. I don’t have to take a vow. He’ll still join us together forever when we’re dead, it’ll be the same as if it was here on earth. He’ll ask, Szymon, do you take Katarzyna to be your lawful wedded wife? She ran the store in your village. You used to buy cigarettes from her. People said different things about her and some of them were true, but her soul was faithful as a dog to you, and her body’s already rotting. And you, Katarzyna? I do, Lord. That’s what I died for. Because I could’ve gone on working in the store for a long time to come. It wasn’t so bad. Once in a while I’d get a delivery of something good. One time I got lemons, Lord. People were in such a rush to get them they almost killed each other. Over lemons. People are so dumb. I’d understand if the things were sweet, but they were sour as hell. Or I’d take a bread crust and keep chewing it till I stopped feeling weepy. Or when I’d get so mad I didn’t have the strength to cry. Or I’d think, maybe he’ll come tomorrow. I dreamed I saw him on his way somewhere, I thought, maybe he’s on his way to me? I’d look out the window the next day. Szymek! Szymek! I dreamed about you! But you didn’t even wave, you just kept on walking. You were probably going to one of those tramps of yours. I hope you break your leg and never make it, and her, I hope she goes bald. Do you think I don’t know? People tell me everything. A shop is like a church. I set aside a loaf or something for somebody and I know everything, what you did, where you went. If you’re drinking in the pub they come tell me right away, he’s drinking in the pub. When you were going with that redhead, before anyone else managed to tell me she was in here herself boasting about it, the slut. I wouldn’t sell her a damn thing. I’m going to complain, she said. Complain all you like, go see the district representative for all I care. We’ll see whose side he takes. It was only after that that people told me, he’s with that redhead, Kaśka. The redhead. They were standing together down by the footbridge, laughing up a storm. You should go down there and push her in, the bitch. The water under the bridge is deep, it’s just waiting for folks to drown in it. You’re a damn fool, Kaśka, you’re dumb as a doorknob. You might be the dumbest girl alive, in this village at any rate. But I never ask myself if I want to live, Szymuś. What would be the point? Ask a stupid question and you’ll get a stupid answer. And how much life do we have? No more than a thimbleful. Even if the thimble was full of bitterness, it’s not enough to poison you. I’ve told you time and time again, give up that damn office job. It’s not gonna make you any smarter. All that writing, even the smartest guy would go dumb. So what if you’re a government worker. Did government workers ever come up with anything smart? My shop always used to close at six in the evening, now they’ve decided it’s going to stay open till seven. What do I sell that I need to stay open till seven for? It was probably one of those tramps of yours. You should dump that one too. She should go down on her knees, damn her, beg you not to leave her, instead of breaking up with you. I’d rip her hair out if I knew which one it was. They say it’s some floozy from Łanów. What, is she the only woman in the world? They’re common as flies, all they do is wiggle their asses and flash their teeth, their tits are out on display almost, it’s an embarrassment. Ugh! Every one of them just looking for someone to leech on to. If it’s not Jaś then it’s Staś. Plus, they think they’ve found the key to happiness. Think again. He drinks and he beats her and all he wants to do is make babies. Chasing happiness is a waste of time. Even if you catch it, who knows whether it’s really happiness? There’s a good many of them have had more than their share of that kind of happiness, but they all go on and on about being happy. You know why someone’s happy? Because they’re dumb. Maybe you’re the only one made to be happy, Szymuś? If that’s it, you need to find a woman you can be happy with. I’m not going to stand in your way. If you have to you can say, that Kaśka, she’s real stupid. What kind of shopgirl nonsense has she gotten into her head. Just look at her. There’s nothing worse than a whore that takes to dreaming. Pity, she was a really good lay. God shouldn’t allow just anyone to have dreams. If someone’s running a store they should run their store. You’ll find yourself someone at a dance one of these days. She’ll come fluttering up to you of her own accord. There’s no shortage of dances, they hold them all the time, and the dresses are getting shorter and shorter. Pretty soon a guy won’t need to put his hand up a girl’s dress, there won’t be dresses anymore. What’ll it be like walking around then, what do you think, Szymuś? To have no shame? It’s easier somehow when you’re ashamed. It’s often the way that the more shame you feel, the more enjoyable it is. You can slap his wrist. That’s enough of that, big boy. Keep your hands to yourself. Reach for your fly if you can’t reach for heaven. Tomorrow I’ll run over to Zośka Malec’s, see if she’s got anything new. I could have one of those dresses made. I’m no worse than those other girls. Except I’ve got fat knees. See how fat they are? It’s not so bad when I stay behind the counter. But you wouldn’t want to take me to a dance. You need a girl with knees like little apples. That don’t always make you look at them when she bends them. Maybe you’ll find yourself a woman like that. You’ll dance a polka together, you’ll stamp your foot down and her dress’ll fly up, you’ll see if she’s the one for you. Just don’t let anyone make a fool of you, Szymuś. She maybe meant for you but you’re not meant for her. You think she’s an angel, and those kind are the worst. Afterwards she’ll be sickly, or she’ll never want to do it with you. What can you do with yourself then? You’ll be running to the john all the time. That’s not heaven, Szymuś. You’ll spit on your happiness then. You’ll say, the hell with this kind of happiness. Come to Kaśka then. Even if you’re as drunk as you are today. But come here, I mean it. Even when it’s raining like it is now. Or worse. At midday. In the early morning. Anytime. You just need to say, shut up the store, Kaśka, and I’ll do it. Of course I will. It’s not a drugstore where someone needs medication or they’ll die. You can buy your salt tomorrow. It won’t hurt you to eat an unsalted dinner for once. Can’t you read, damn you, I’m doing inventory. I’ve gone to the office, read what it says. Closed for delivery, it’s written plain as day. Delivery of what? Nothing, I’m just getting it on with Szymek. We were just feeling frisky for some reason. Couldn’t you find a better time, dammit? We have things we need to buy. Well I could, but he came by and told me to close up shop. Did he have to come to you of all people? Aren’t there other girls, even rich ones? But who else can he do whatever he wants with? Come here all wet and drunk and say he doesn’t feel like living. And Kaśka’s just a hole in the fence, she has to comfort him, who else will? If he wants he can come in the morning, afternoon, evening, or in the middle of the night. If he wants, he can come for the rest of my life. I could do it with him in the dew, in the thistles, on the threshing floor, on the stubble field. If he wanted we could do it on a bed of nails and it would be like a king’s bed, so long as it’s with you, Szymuś. I wouldn’t mind. Why should I? It’s only the kind of women that go on about happiness, they think they’re still in the Garden of Eden. Every one of them wants to be tempted by the serpent. They should all damn well stay there! You should just spit on all that, and come to me. You don’t need any temptations with me. Just say, take your clothes off and I will, for you. Or say, just lift your dress up, I’m in a hurry. I’ll do it. It makes no difference to Kaśka one way or the other. I want things to be good for you, Szymuś. I’ll be good enough to make up for all the other girls. I’m not overworked here, what is there to do. All I do is sell stuff. I’ve got plenty of energy. I’ll never tell you I’m exhausted, not today, Szymuś, another time. I’ll always want to do it. Why wouldn’t I. There’ll be all the more to remember in the next world, make the angels blush. And when God calls me and says, why are you making the angels blush, I’ll say, it’s not me, Lord, you created me for Szymek. I’m just the rib that was meant for his comfort, that’s me. And if you get bored with me, Szymuś, don’t come here anymore. But if you get dumped again, come even if it’s only because you’re hurting. Just don’t say you don’t feel like living. Because I won’t feel like living twice over. And then who’ll run the store? Unless it’s the accountant’s bastard boyfriend. But come even if it’s just because you’re hurting. Whether you’re hurting or not, say, get undressed, and I will. Sometimes it’s even nicer when you’re hurting. As long as I’m able to, come, Szymuś. And when I can’t anymore I’ll tell you myself. Don’t come any more, Szymuś. My boobs are sagging. My skin’s starting to come off my body. See how my belly button’s all spread. I’m going gray, Szymuś. Even the old guys that come in the store have stopped their sweet talk, they don’t call me Kaśka anymore but that old hag Kasia. She moves around like a fly in honey but she’s still got a mouth on her. Find yourself a younger woman, Szymuś. You need someone younger. For me it’s time to start praying, begging God to forgive me. Just buy me a rosary in return for everything. When you’re with one of your floozies at a church fair, you can buy it there. It doesn’t need to be an expensive one, so long as it’s strong. So it won’t fall apart in my hands. Because I’ve got a good few rosaries I need to say. Do you not know how many, Szymuś? I never held back with you, you should know that. And I don’t regret it. But now my back’s killing me from working in the store, Szymuś. The veins in my legs look like ropes. Sometimes I think about what it’s going to be like to die. And that I’d like to die with you, Szymuś. Let it be the next life already. Maybe you’ll come there one time and say, close up the store, Kaśka. But till then, you have to live, Szymuś, you have to live. What else is there that’s better?”