Stone Upon Stone

VIII. Bread

When we’d break the earth for the first time with the plow in springtime, we’d lay a slice of bread on the first piece of ground to be plowed. It goes without saying it wasn’t just a regular slice like you cut to eat with a glass of milk or a pickled cucumber, or on its own, without anything. It had to have been cut from a new loaf on Christmas Eve.

Mother would already have set the table for the Christmas Eve dinner without meat. Father would light the lantern, take the ladder from the hallway, and go fetch a loaf from the barn, because we kept our bread on the roof beams in the barn. There was a fresh draft in there so it didn’t go moldy, and it was high up. It was hard to get to without a ladder. We tried sometimes, me and Michał, we’d attempt to shimmy up the post the middle of the beam rested on, but we never managed it, and the ladder always stood out in the hallway.

There was żurek soup with buckwheat, noodles and poppy seed, and pierogies stuffed with cabbage, but we waited for mother to cut the bread like that was the most special dish. And dinner would start with the bread. Mother would rest the loaf against her stomach, she’d make the sign of the cross over it with the knife, she’d first cut a big slice that was going to be for the earth in the spring, then just a regular slice for each of us, according to our place in the family, first for grandfather, then grandmother while she was still alive, then father, us boys, and for herself last of all. Father would get the lantern again and put the first slice in the attic, he’d stick it way up high on a rafter beneath the thatch, usually in the darkest place. And there the slice of bread would wait for the spring like a sleeping pigeon.

And with each of us boys, the moment we were out of the cradle and could more or less keep on our feet, father would take us with him when the spring came and he went out to plow. He’d unwrap the bread from its white cloth and tell us to put it on the ground. Then he’d put our little hands on the handles of the plow, take hold with his own hands, and we’d plow over the bread. He did this with each of us in turn, Michał, me, Antek, and Stasiek. Right away he’d start teaching us how to plow. Don’t hold it like that, keep it tight, walk in the middle of the furrow, it needs to go deeper when the earth is dry, when your hands get bigger you’ll be holding the reins in this one and the whip in the other, as well as the plow. And don’t try to scare off the crows that are following behind you, let them be, because when you’re on your own out in the field with no one but the horse the crows’ll keep you company, and whatever they eat will grow again. And each time you turn, always let the horse have a little breather. Now what’s that singing in the sky?

“A lark, daddy.”

“That’s right, a lark. Do you know where the lark came from?”

“It flew here.”

“That’s true. But one day the Lord God was walking over the fields, and there was a farmer plowing. Is the work hard, God asked the farmer. I’ll say, Lord, answered the farmer. So God took a clod of earth and threw it up into the sky and said, let it sing for you, it’ll make the job easier.”

When we were a bit older we’d ask father what would happen if we didn’t put the slice of bread on the earth at first plowing. He’d frown and look at us like we’d been tempted by Satan or something, and he’d call on mother as a witness:

“You hear what ideas they’ve gotten into their heads, the little good-for-nothings? I ought to take a stick and knock those devilish thoughts out of them. Cross yourselves right now, or else!”

We’d be all scared and cross ourselves. Michał would often do it three times, but it didn’t calm father down and he’d take it out on mother:

“You’re their mother, why aren’t you saying anything!”

“They’re kids, they’re still allowed to ask about anything. You’re their father, you should explain it to them.”

“I never asked my father about anything. Nor did he ask his. You had to listen, not ask questions.” Angry that mother hadn’t taken his side, he’d turn to grandfather: “Did I ever ask you anything, father? Did you ever ask your father?”

But grandfather was really old by then, and often he’d be rubbing his feet, because they were always aching, and he didn’t quite get what father was after, whether he was supposed to nod or disagree with him, and he’d mostly give a vague answer:

“Well, when you didn’t know something, you’d ask. But back then children were different, they’re not the same these days.”

“What do you mean, not the same!” said father, turning on grandfather now. “Didn’t people plow and plant and harvest on the same land? You don’t know what you’re saying. Old age is starting to get to you, I can see.”

Because grandfather was the one father got mad at most often of all. For the slightest thing, sometimes without any reason at all. If the rain set in he’d complain that grandfather’s feet kept hurting and they wouldn’t stop. One time the wind blew down a poplar and it fell on the barn, and he went after grandfather about that too, he said why hadn’t he planted an ash or an elm, no, he had to go and plant a poplar, and poplars aren’t good trees at all, they’re crap, you can’t build anything with the wood, and you can’t burn it because it burns like straw. Or another time he stepped on a chick, because the chicks had gotten out of the basket where the brood hen was and they were pattering around the room, that was grandfather’s fault too because grandfather was sitting on the bench instead of by the stove where he always sat, and father had had to go around him. It was probably all because of those papers that grandfather had buried somewhere and couldn’t remember where. Or maybe because grandfather never got upset when anyone got angry at him. You could be as mad as you liked at grandfather, he’d just look at your anger like he was staring into space or he couldn’t hear anything. So us boys would get mad at him sometimes too, because we knew he’d never grab a stick and come after us, or tell on us to mother or father, or hold it against us. Sometimes he’d even take a pear or a greengage out of his pocket and he’d say, here, Szymuś, here, Michał, they’re sweet as sweet can be, have one and don’t be so angry.

Though just as father could suddenly get angry, the anger would pass equally as quickly. He’d reach for his tobacco pouch, roll himself a cigarette, and start to tell us what would happen if we didn’t give that slice of bread to the land:

“There’d be misfortunes.” And he’d start explaining what the misfortunes would be, starting with the land getting covered with weeds, then there was rains, hail, heat waves, drought, mice, vermin, and other plagues, all the way up to the most terrible possibility, that the land might stop producing anything at all, because it would have turned to stone. Then grandfather would add his own misfortunes to the ones that father said. Because grandfather knew even more than father about misfortunes that can happen to you. And not just because he’d lived longer. He’d worked on the squire’s land and he’d served in the tsar’s army, and one time everything he owned had been swept away in a flood, another time it had all been burned by lightning. So earth, water, sky, war, it was all the same to grandfather. But father didn’t like grandfather topping him when it came to misfortunes. Grandfather would barely get out the words:

“Back in the day —”

When father would immediately jump in with:

“Never mind back in the day. Misfortunes back in the day aren’t the same. You were working the squire’s land, so they were the squire’s misfortunes. It was the same in the army, the bread was rations, whether there was any or no the soldiers had to have some because otherwise they wouldn’t fight. Here the land is ours. If you treat it badly it won’t forgive you. There can be misfortunes like in the Holy Bible, or in the Queen of Sheba. The prophecies weren’t for nothing.”

Mother sometimes had to step in and protect us from all those misfortunes:

“Stop frightening them. They’re just children. When they grow up they’ll have their own misfortunes, what do they need yours for. All you’ll do is keep them awake at night.”

Sometimes Stasiek would wake up in his cradle and scream the place down like he’d been dreaming one of father’s misfortunes. It didn’t help to rock him, he’d just cry even louder. The only thing that worked was for mother to stop up his mouth with her breast.

At that time I didn’t know a whole lot about bread except that sometimes we had it and sometimes we didn’t, and that when we had it it was good, and when we didn’t it got even better. While we still had it we knew that when we finished one loaf father would go to the barn and bring another. And mother would ask while she was cutting it, how much shall I cut you? Because sometimes your eyes are bigger than your stomach and you end up throwing it to the dog.

But it also happened that spring would be a long way away and father would bring the last loaf and he’d say, this is the last one. Then we wouldn’t see bread for weeks on end. Not till Easter, because mother would always leave enough flour for one or two loaves at Easter, you couldn’t have Lord Jesus rising from the dead and us without bread. Then there’d be one or two loaves for the harvest, to keep the mowers’ strength up. The whole time in between you’d be living by the old taste of the bread. You’d dream about bread when you were asleep and when you were daydreaming. You’d miss it like it was someone close to you. Worst of all was in the evening, because in the evening it’d appear to you like a ghost. All of a sudden there’d be the smell of bread, like someone had walked past the window with a big loaf under their arm, or the neighbors had just taken bread out of the oven. You couldn’t stop yourself saying:

“There’s a smell of bread from somewhere.”

But father was always keeping an eye on our thoughts to make sure we were thinking about anything but bread, and he’d disagree right away:

“What are you talking about? The Maszczyks are probably just burning straw, they must be out of firewood. Or maybe Dereń was mucking out this morning, manure sometimes gives a smell like bread. Especially horse manure.” He’d sniff and make like he couldn’t smell anything himself. He’d even go over, open the door and let the air in, and he’d say he couldn’t smell a thing. To prove his point he’d sometimes ask grandfather:

“Can you smell anything, father?”

And grandfather wouldn’t smell anything either and he’d nod to say he couldn’t smell anything.

“There must be a thaw on the way. I’ve had ants crawling up my legs all morning, the little buggers. Biting ones. The weather must be about to change. Did you see there’s a wind blowing up? The wind often brings new weather. If anyone was baking bread it could only have been the Wronas, and they’re east of us, but when the wind blows for a change of weather it’s always from the west. One time the Turks were eating bread in their trenches, and we could smell it so plain in ours it made our bellies hurt from hunger. You can smell bread from miles away.”

Mother was the only one that believed I must have smelled bread, because otherwise I wouldn’t have said anything, and she started sending me to bed right away:

“It’s bedtime, you need to go to bed and get to sleep. Don’t think about bread, son.”

Because her too, when she was clearing the table, she’d often cup her hand and make as if she was gathering bread crumbs, she’d even cross over to the range and toss the crumbs into the firebox.

One time, despite myself I blurted out:

“Mama, there isn’t any bread!”

Father was sitting at the table staring out the window, he came down on me like a ton of bricks:

“What are you shouting about, you little nuisance? Let her throw it on the fire! If she’s swept it up let her throw it in! Crumbs always have to be thrown into the fire! It’s a sin to do otherwise!” He was so mad he actually stood up and walked back and forth across the room, then in the end he went outside.

I don’t know what could have ruffled his feathers like that, I hadn’t said it so loud. But maybe it was just the fact that it was bread? Because after the bread ran out, everyone would avoid talking about bread as well. No one actually said not to talk about it, but still it was as if we’d forgotten the word “bread.” Even grandfather, he’d be talking about what they ate in the different wars he’d been in, he’d mention beans and cabbage, kasha, noodles, sometimes meat, but he never mentioned bread. It was the same with us kids, when we were kneeling by our bed saying our prayers out loud, and mother was standing over us making sure we didn’t miss out any words, when it came time to say, our daily bread, we’d drop our voices and mother would let it go. Though there was even something about our prayers that bothered father, he’d say to mother:

“They ought to say a Hail Mary instead. Our Lady’s more likely to grant children’s wishes. She had a child of her own.”

Father seemed to be just sitting there and thinking, he rarely said anything, but he didn’t trust a soul. He must have known that at a time like that the slice of bread wedged up there on the rafter was like the apple in the Garden of Eden, it could have tempted anybody. Most of all he didn’t trust me. Whenever he watched us all, his gray eyes drilled into me more than any of us. But he didn’t even trust grandfather. Though grandfather didn’t have a single tooth in his head, how could he have been tempted by bread that had been there since Christmas Eve and had dried as hard as stone. Even when he had fresh bread he’d only pick out the inside, and he’d have to chew every mouthful forever before he swallowed it.

With Michał and me it was different, we had teeth like wolves, as far as we were concerned the bread could have been drying for a hundred years and it would still be bread. The best bread of all, that mother had held against her stomach and as she cut it she asked us how much we wanted. Your gums itched when you remembered about the bread that was up in the attic. Though you didn’t need to remember it, you always had it before your eyes. Half the time, hunger would stir you so your mouth watered, the rest of the time you’d be tempted so hard by the idea of being full that you could almost feel the bread filling your belly. It tempted you all the time, from morning till evening, and even for a long time into the night, after we’d gone to bed, it still wouldn’t leave us alone.

I shared a bed with father and Michał, I was next to father. Michał slept crosswise at our feet, because he didn’t thrash around in his sleep, and also he was shorter than me, because for the longest time he didn’t grow. The moment father got into bed he’d turn his back toward me, maybe mutter something about me not pulling the quilt off him, and he’d be snoring right away. I didn’t need to wait much longer for Michał either. He’d dig around with his legs a bit at the beginning, because he could never find the right place for them. But once he’d found it, his legs would twitch a couple of times then he’d sleep like the dead. After that, by the bed under the window where mother slept with Antek, Stasiek’s cradle would stop rocking, sometimes Stasiek would whimper some more, but mother didn’t hear him now. As for Antek, even if he’d heard something he would just have pretended all the more to be asleep, more than if he’d actually been sleeping. Our grandparents slept in the other room across the hallway. Also, grandmother would go off to bed the moment it got dark, and grandfather would just sit on a stool for as long as he could, dozing. So when he finally went off to bed he was already as sound asleep as if it was the middle of the night. Mother would have to help him over the doorstep, because the threshold grew bigger under grandfather’s feet, like he was already dreaming that he was trying to cross over into his own house but he kept not being able to do it. Though as it happens the actual threshold was quite high. Because thresholds were made not just for the sake of it, but so there’d be somewhere to sit when you had more people than usual.

The roosters were already crowing for midnight. Father would turn on his other side so he was facing me. Then he’d turn his back again. Michał would move his legs because they’d gotten stiff. Stasiek would squeal in his sleep, and the cradle would start to rock. But I’d still be seeing that slice of bread high up on the rafter, it’d be shining there like the brightest star, and the picture wouldn’t go away. At times it ached like a sore tooth, other times it nagged at me like a bad conscience. If I could have wriggled around a bit it might have gone away. But there was no room in the bed, and right next to me was father’s back, big as a mountain. He could have woken up at any moment and asked:

“Are you not asleep yet?”

Just in case, I’d decided I would say the fleas were biting. But I don’t know if he would have believed me, because we didn’t have fleas in our house. Mother would air the sheets outside every day, and underneath she’d put dried thyme. When I finally managed to get to sleep, I could never tell whether I was dreaming or awake, because I still had the slice of bread before my eyes. One time I dreamed I went to the attic, and propped up the ladder, but the ladder was too short, so I climbed a poplar tree, but the poplar turned out to be too short as well. It could have been the same whether it was a dream or waking. In the morning father asked me:

“Why were you squirming around so much? Were you having a dream?”

I got out of it by saying it was probably from the cabbage and beans I ate the day before, because with dreams you can get out of it by saying anything at all. Luckily father wasn’t in the dream, so he believed me without a problem.

It was worse during the day, when he happened to be sitting in the main room. Sometimes he was just across the table from me. And it was like someone had deliberately pushed the bread into my mouth and told me to eat it in front of him, because it was only bread. And bread is there to be eaten. My whole head filled with the sound of me crunching the dry bread between my teeth. I looked around terrified, because I was sure everyone could hear. Father, mother, Michał, Antek, even Stasiek in his cradle. And grandfather seemed about to open his mouth and say:

“Listen, everyone, there’s some kind of crunching sound. Michał, go check under the bed, see if that damn cat’s eating a mouse under there.”

And father, it would be like he’d been waiting for exactly that:

“Cat? What cat? I put the cat outside! Come on, fess up, which one of you is it? Is it you, Szymek? Open your mouth this instant, you little pip-squeak!”

Because I think father suspected something as it was, he’d sometimes look at me like he was about to ask:

“What are you eating there?”

I’d cringe under his gaze, and I’d repeat to myself in my head, I’m not eating anything, I’m not eating anything, I’m not eating anything. Or, I’m just having a plum, because I was thinking how we had plums at the priest’s house in the fall. Or I was remembering how we went picking hazelnuts at the manor before the Assumption, I’m eating one of those. But they weren’t ripe, daddy. And the steward chased us off.

One time he stared and stared at me and then all of a sudden he asked:

“What are you thinking about?”

At first I froze, I couldn’t get a word out. It was as if my mouth was still full of bread. I was like a mouse being chased by a cat. So I pretended I thought he was asking Michał, not me. I looked at Michał like I was expecting him to answer. Michał looked at me. But father wasn’t fooled:

“Not Michał. I know what Michał’s thinking. Michał’s thoughts are clear as springwater. I mean you.”

“Me?” I said with a surprised look, buying myself a few extra seconds to decide what I was thinking about. Before he said anything back, I already knew.

“I’m thinking about Lord Jesus,” I got out in a single breath.

Father’s eyes opened as wide as they would go, he straightened up and looked at me like a blind man looking at the sun. He didn’t know what to say. I thought he’d leave me alone now. Maybe he’d get up and say:

“I have to go check on the horse.”

Or start to ask grandfather:

“So did you remember yet? Maybe you buried them under that wild pear behind the barn? Remember there was a wild pear that grew there?”

“Of course I remember the wild pear. It was taller than the barn, the fruit was sweet as honey.” Because the fact was, grandfather remembered absolutely everything, his whole life was written in his memory day by day. Except for that one matter of where he’d buried the papers. “But it wasn’t under the pear. More likely it was under the apple tree. There was one apple tree had apples that were half red and half yellow. But one day there was a storm and it got blown down along with its roots.”

Father narrowed his eyes again, he might have been wondering whether or not to believe me. Then, as if he wanted to hear one more time what I was thinking, he said:

“So you’re thinking about Lord Jesus?”

“Lord Jesus.” I nodded eagerly, and even grandfather was touched:

“You’re wanting to send Michał for a priest, but it looks like Szymuś is the one God’s chosen. Little kid like that, and see what ideas he’s got in his head. Lord Jesus, how do you like that. Even grown-ups might not think of that. I’m telling you, he’s the one going to be a priest.”

I bit my tongue to stop myself saying I wouldn’t be. I couldn’t see myself as a priest. Doing nothing but saying mass all my life, and on top of that having to wear a dress like a woman. Though the other boys said that under the dress the priest wore pants like any man. But what kind of pants could they be that he had to cover them up. Plus, I already liked Staśka Makuła. She grazed cows with us on the meadow, and even Wicek Szumiel, who was the oldest one of us, he couldn’t take her because she was too strong, even though she was a girl. And she cussed better than many a grown-up, however mad they might get. Her though, she’d not be mad at all, she’d be laughing and skipping about, but she’d be swearing up a storm. Come on, Staśka, let it rip, we’d say to egg her on, and she’d curse so much even the cows turned their heads to look. And when she ran off to bring the cows back in, her boobs would bounce up and down like pears in the wind. We’d chase behind her like dogs after a bitch, hoping they might pop out. Look at Staśka’s titties! Like you could already see them white against the grass.

We sometimes tried to get her to show us what she had under her dress, but she wanted a zloty to do it. So we scraped together a zloty, everyone put in what they could or pinched some change at home, and we gave it to her and said, okay, Staśka, show us what you’ve got there. But then she said that for a zloty she could only show us what she had up top, if we wanted to see more it would be another fifty groszes. Where were we supposed to get fifty groszes? Fifty groszes was what young men got from their fathers when they were going out with a young lady. But luck would have it that Kazek Socha’s father came back from the fair rolling drunk, they had to lift him down off his wagon, and Kazek swiped fifty groszy from his pocket. So now we had it. Come on, Staśka, show us. But she put the price up again, she said two zlotys, because she needed new silk stockings, like Tereska the miller’s daughter had. We were so mad we threw ourselves on her, we’ll take your clothes off ourselves, goddammit, but she got free of us, and she took out her penknife and stood there with her feet planted:

“If anyone comes closer I’ll cut their weenie off, you little bastards.”

It was only when we grew up that she didn’t ask for anything.

The only thing I liked about a priest’s work was confession. It must be great to sit there in the confessional behind the grate and listen to the sins of the whole village. Boy would you learn some stuff. And forgiving sins or not forgiving them, ordering penance. Most of all I’d have scared people with hell, I’d make their hair stand on end and their blood curdle, I’d make their teeth chatter and their eyes weep endless tears. Though I’d need to invent a different hell, because people have stopped being afraid of the old one. Perhaps it ought to be that it’s not just the soul that suffers, but the body along with it? Or that people wouldn’t be together, but each person would be alone? Maybe there shouldn’t even be any devils, just people and their own torments.

I’d give the longest confessions to three young women from our village: Kryśka Latra, Weronka Maziarz, and Magda Kukawa. And among the married women, Mrs. Balbus. Because before she married Balbus, she had more boyfriends than you could shake a stick at. Every evening her father would chase her around the village with a whip, and she’d be running away. People even said she’d had a bastard child, but that she’d drowned it. Though when she was with Balbus it didn’t change anything. But to find out if what people were saying was true, I’d have to give her confession. I wouldn’t confess old women or old men. The curate could do them. Well, maybe old Mrs. Przygaj, to find out if girls slept around in the old days as well. Because who would know better that Mrs. Przygaj. Apparently she never let an opportunity go by. The village mayor, a farmhand, the miller, a neighbor, whoever came along. And most of all with the soldiers that used to be stationed in the village. They had dark blue jackets and red pants, people said that was what drew her to them. Her husband would pray to God that he’d drive the demon out of her, and she’d just laugh at him. One time she brought three soldiers home at the same time and partied with them naked, and her husband had to look on. He beat her afterwards with a wet rope, so she arranged for him to be drafted into the army and he never came back. Though would she be willing to admit to all of that in the confessional?

“Michał or Szymuś,” said mother, “God grant it’ll be one of them.”

“I’m telling you, it’ll be Szymuś,” grandfather insisted. “Maybe he could serve right here, in our parish. I won’t live to see the day. But you could move to the presbytery. It’d be heaven there. The orchard alone must be four acres. And you’ve got the church right there.”

“What exactly were you thinking about?” Father didn’t let all that about the priest distract him from asking me more questions.

“I was thinking …” I tripped over my tongue, because I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d been thinking.

“What was he thinking about?” Grandfather came to my rescue. “He was thinking about Jesus, he already said. He’s hanging on the cross right up there, you only need to look, there’s nothing else to think about.”

I looked up at the cross in panic, and it was like something opened up inside of me.

“I was thinking,” I said, “about how he suffered for us and how he died on the cross.”

“He truly did suffer, that’s for sure,” mother put in from by the stove. “But people are the same as they always were.”

“Maybe they’d have been even worse,” grandfather suggested.

“Even worse?” Mother shuddered.

“Think about it, what if everyone was like that no-good Marchewka. Could you stand that? Think about all the chickens he’s stolen from you.”

“What else?” Father wouldn’t give it up.

“What else?” Grandfather bridled because he thought father was on at him. “He cut down those willows on your pasture. And he gave you an earful for good measure. Is that not enough for you?”

“I’m not asking you, father, I’m asking him.”

“Szymek? What on earth’s he done to you?”

“Not what he’s done, what he’s thinking about. Out with it.” It was like he was driving a horse uphill with a whip.

I got this sinking feeling in my belly. Out with what? On top of everything else it was lashing down outside, so there was no chance father would leave the house, a dog wouldn’t want to go out in that. He could keep grilling me all afternoon. I rooted around desperately among my thoughts, but my thoughts were like mice, they kept running away. All of a sudden grandfather got up, took a step toward the middle of the room, and sighed:

“When you’re old, taking a single step is like walking to Calvary.”

At that very moment it came to me.

“I was thinking,” I quoted from memory, “about how when Jesus was carrying his cross to Calvary and he fell, there was a farmer walking by on his way back from the fields, and he helped him carry it.”

“Not a farmer, Simon of Cyrene. What’s that damn priest been teaching you!” father said, getting all testy.

“I said so right from the beginning,” grandfather agreed with father. “The moment he first came here I said, he’s supposed to be a priest? He’s got a face like a little girl. He can’t even grow a beard, he’s just got fuzz here and there. How could he know anything. He doesn’t know the first thing about Jesus, just like he doesn’t know the first thing about people.”

“People are one thing, Jesus is another,” mother objected.

“What do you mean, another thing?” grandfather said, bridling in turn. “Was Jesus not a person? It was only after he died he became God.”

“Of course he was, he even let himself be crucified because he couldn’t take it anymore.”

“It wasn’t that he couldn’t take it anymore, he wanted to redeem people.”

“And in return they gave him something bitter to drink, and stabbed him in the side, am I right? I’d never have saved those villains. I’d have sent them to hell, let them roast down there, let them howl like wolves! Let them tear their hair out and shout for God’s mercy! Let them weep and weep till the darkness covers them over!” Mother was like a wasp with those villains, she wouldn’t leave them alone and she probably would have gone on longer if father hadn’t roared:

“What else?!”

My heart missed a beat. Luckily mother was still filled with anger at the villains that killed Jesus, and at that moment she started taking it out on father like he was one of them:

“Leave the boy alone, will you! He’s told you almost the whole gospel and all you can say is, what else, what else! Show me another child that knows that much. They can’t even tell you the ten commandments.”

Something came to me again.

“I was thinking, daddy, that he was proclaiming the ten commandments,” I threw out breathlessly, like I was trying to get this piece of good news out before mother.

But father bristled like a turkey-cock.

“Who?”

“You know, the Lord … God,” I said, though less surely, because I sensed something bad in his voice.

“Which one?” he asked with a frown.

“There’s only one Lord God, father. That’s what the priest told us. And there’s only one hanging on the wall there.”

“But in three persons! In three persons, you little twit!” He was shaking with anger.

I was all set to burst into tears. But something told me father wasn’t entirely on solid ground with Jesus. I pretended to be upset that someone had gotten it all muddled up, and I asked hesitantly:

“What do you mean, daddy, that there’s only one but in three?”

“Because it’s in three persons!” His chin twitched. “The Son of God! The Holy Ghost! And God the Father!”

“So which one of them is God?”

“They all are!”

“How can all of them be when there’s three of them, not one?”

“There’s only one!!” he roared. He grabbed a piece of kindling from the floor and chucked it at me, but I dodged and it hit Michał. Michał burst out crying and mother shouted:

“Have you gone mad?”

Even grandfather, though he didn’t like getting on father’s bad side, mumbled to himself:

“That’s not how you explain it. That’s not how you explain it.”

Father was so furious he grabbed the slop bucket with such a jerk that it splashed on his pants, and he charged out to take it to the cow.

Then there came a year that was worse than any other. First of all, during the entire spring not a drop of rain fell, then the whole summer it wouldn’t stop raining, and it kept up almost till autumn. The river, even though it had been just a little stream, it burst its banks, it grew to be the size of ten rivers and it kept on swelling. People were fretting, what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen? And the roosters went on crowing to show it wasn’t going to let up any time soon. Some folks spent whole days just standing at their windows staring out to see if they couldn’t spot at least a tiny bit of blue sky to give them hope. Other people were expecting the end of the world, they thought there was going to be another flood like the one in Noah’s time. They’d even gather at Sójka’s place in the evening and read the Bible aloud to see if it was the same or not. At the church there was one special service after another. And anywhere there was a cross or a chapel or a wayside shrine, people would gather to pray or sing or at the very least cry together, instead of everyone on their own in their own house. As for confession and communion, there were lines like never before. Kruk the unbeliever even let himself be converted, because his old lady and his daughters kept on and on at him about how it was all because of him. He had five daughters, three of them were already old maids but two were still marriageable. Though why would God want to punish the whole world on account of Kruk. Afterwards the guy regretted it, because he still got no peace at home just like before, and outside the rains went on and on.

People even made the priest lead a procession out into the fields, they thought maybe that would help. But they didn’t get very far. Just beyond Midura’s place, where the road turns toward the fields, Franciszek the sacristan, who was carrying the cross up front, he got stuck in mud almost up to his knees. The banners got bogged down with him. Mrs. Karpiel and Mrs. Matyska ended up in it too, because they were tertiaries and they’d wanted to be in the lead. The priest got stuck, even though Skubida and Denderys had been holding his arms. They had to stand on either side of him and drag him out and carry him over to drier ground, he wouldn’t have been able to get out on his own. As it was, one of his shoes came off in the mud, and one of the women had to fish it out and put it back on his foot. Because Franciszek the sacristan was wearing tall boots, and he’d gone marching on ahead without looking back at the rest of the procession. People called to him, hey, Franciszek, wait up there! But he just kept going, and it was only when the mud reached up over the tops of his boots that he realized he was all on his own. Luckily he had the cross with him, so he leaned on it like a shepherd’s crook and managed to get clear. Though the priest gave him a telling-off once he was on the drier ground, for abusing the cross like that. So that was the end of the procession. They prayed a bit and sang a bit at the edge of the fields, then they went back to the church.

Some of the better-off farmers took holy pictures out onto their land and made a little hut for them like a sentry box. But that did no good either. After all, it couldn’t have happened that the sun shone on some folks’ land while it rained on other people’s, when it rained it rained everywhere. Everyone went out to the fields and gathered what could be gathered in the rain and mud. There wasn’t much, because what hadn’t dried up in the spring had gotten waterlogged in the summer and the start of autumn.

We only picked three wagonloads of potatoes, after we’d planted a big stretch of field. And they were all the size of walnuts. Father came back with the third wagonload and said that was the lot, and grandfather came out, and mother, and us children, and we all cried. Father couldn’t even bring himself to get down off the wagon, he just sat there with the whip and the reins in his hand and watched grandfather crying and fingering the potatoes. All he said in consolation was:

“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it. Whatever the land is like, the potatoes are like that too. And the land is rotten. I just hope it recovers from all this.”

During the threshing, when he took a full sieve and winnowed it there was nothing but chaff, and the grain at the very bottom. He left what he needed for the next sowing, he barely had half a sackful to take to the mill for grinding, and that was the end of the rye. Mother baked bread out of it just the once, she set aside a few measures for an emergency.

The bread from the one baking lasted us a month, month and a half, and it wouldn’t even have been that long except father took some of the loaves while they were still hot and hid them somewhere. Michał and I searched the whole barn, we even jabbed the pitchfork into the hay in the bins, but we couldn’t find it. It had to have been hidden in the barn, but we would have needed to turn the place upside down. Michał wasn’t the person for that. The whole time I had to keep reassuring him that looking for the bread wasn’t a sin. When he stuck the pitchfork in, he’d only just go in with the very tips of the prongs, as if he was afraid that, God forbid, we might actually find the bread. He kept asking me:

“What’ll we do if we find it?”

“Eat it.”

“On our own?”

“Who else are we going to eat it with?”

“Are we not going to give any to father and mother?”

“Take them some, you’ll see what’ll happen. You’ll get a hiding for being so good.”

Then he remembered a story grandfather had told about how once during the uprising the Cossacks had been looking for rebels and they’d made grandfather stick a pitchfork into the hay. And grandfather had hid them himself in that hay. But what could he do, they ordered him to stick his pitchfork in, so he did. All at once he saw blood on the tip of the pitchfork. Right at that moment, pretending he’d stumbled on the sheaves, he rammed the pitchfork into his own foot with all his strength and started screaming to high heaven. The Cossacks all burst out laughing. But they didn’t make him search anymore.

“Idiot,” I said to him, “we’re looking for bread, not rebels. Bread doesn’t bleed.”

But he wouldn’t search any longer.

I even thought about following father out when he went to bring a new loaf. But each time he did, he’d tell mother not to let us out till he came back. Or he’d say he was going down the village to see the blacksmith, or one of the neighbors, and he’d appear afterwards with a loaf under his arm. He’d give the loaf to mother, and she’d padlock it in the chest. Then each day she’d cut one slice each for us in the morning, another in the evening.

Thanks to that, the bread lasted till Saint Blaise’s Day in early February. From then on we only ate potatoes. In the morning it was żurek with potatoes, at midday potato soup or potatoes and milk, in the evening potatoes baked in the ash pan, with salt. The ones from the ash pan were best. We wouldn’t light the lamp, we’d just sit around the stove in the kitchen with the door of the firebox open, and whatever light it gave would light the room. We were eating more salt now so we didn’t have the money for lamp oil, and besides, lamp oil would have been wasted on plain potatoes. True, father had sold the heifer because we didn’t have anything to feed it with, but almost all the money had gone on paying taxes.

Mother would bring the potatoes from the cellar gathered in her apron like eggs. She’d lay them down on the ground at father’s feet. Father would take a burning ember from the firebox so he could see what he was doing, and he’d divide the potatoes into the same number of piles as there were people at home, except for Stasiek, because Stasiek was still at the teat. Then he’d even out the piles, moving bigger and smaller potatoes around, so they were all equal. Then mother would tell him to take two from her pile and give me and Michał an extra one each, because we were still growing. Grandmother said the same, that she didn’t have long to live and it was enough for her to say her prayers before she went to bed, she didn’t need to eat. So he’d rearrange the piles yet again.

Sometimes he’d take so long organizing the piles of potatoes that he’d be covered in smoke from the ember he was using as a light. One time he even singed his eyebrows. Even so, the potatoes would get all mixed together when he put them in the ash pan and covered them with ash. I could never figure out how he knew which one belonged to who when he dug them out again afterward and put them back in the same piles, putting a name to each potato. This is Szymek’s, this is father’s, this’ll be mine, this one’s Michał’s, this is mother’s, Antek’s.

When he’d shared them all out, without waiting for them to cool even a bit he’d take the first potato from his own pile and, as if it wasn’t burning his fingers in the slightest, he’d peel it and begin eating. Right away he’d start saying how good it was, that it was nice and well done, and what would we do if we didn’t have potatoes, and generally he’d talk and talk like he was describing some strange world. That though meat provides strength, potatoes give you patience. That you can find any kind of food you want in potatoes, if you only know how to eat them. Because eating is a skill just as much as reading and writing. But some people eat like hogs and for that reason they don’t know a thing. Or they only eat with their mouths and their bellies. Whereas you need to eat with your mind as well. That everything comes from the earth, and the earth has the same taste in all things. So potatoes can be beans and crackling, they can be cabbage and bacon, pierogies with cheese or with sour cream, even a chicken leg big as a mangel-wurzel. Even badness and goodness come from potatoes, because they come from the earth.

During the daytime he was gruff and tight-lipped, but over those baked potatoes he’d talk till he was blue in the face, he sometimes even forgot to take salt and mother would have to remind him:

“Put some salt on it.”

My grandparents had lived way longer than he had, and they must have eaten way more potatoes, but they paid attention just the same like they were listening to some kind of prophecy. Though one time grandfather interrupted to back father up, he said that potatoes are eaten by kings just as much as by their servants, by generals and ordinary soldiers, by priests and paupers, because potatoes make everyone equal. And that death makes people equal too, but it doesn’t taste nearly as good. At this father jumped on grandfather, what did death have to do with potatoes. Death was death, it had to come to everyone. Potatoes grow so people can have food to eat. Grandmother didn’t much like what grandfather had said about equality either:

“What a lot of nonsense you talk sometimes. Kings eating potatoes, when they have to rule the world.” But she evidently started feeling sorry for the kings, because she added: “Unless maybe they’re in a sauce, something you can’t even imagine is poured over them. And as much meat as there are potatoes, to go with them. With meat they could eat them.”

“They eat them with whatever they eat them with,” father barked at grandmother. “People don’t need to know everything about kings. People don’t even know everything about their neighbors, even though they live right there. And that’s how things should be.”

One day father went off to see the blacksmith and get the plowshare hammered out, because there was a breath of spring in the air. Someone had said they’d heard a lark singing, though there was still snow on the fields. Mother was out too, she’d gone over to the neighbor’s to borrow some sifted flour to make żurek. Grandmother was rocking Stasiek, and grandfather was dozing by the stove, though his sleep was shallow because every so often he’d open his mouth and mutter that it wasn’t spring yet, not by a long shot. Potato soup was making on the stove top.

I hadn’t gone to school because I’d said I had a stomachache. The whole time I sat bent double so it looked like it was true. Grandmother had given me some mint drops and every now and then she’d ask, how are you feeling, does your tummy still hurt? I groaned and said it did, but I’d been thinking about how to get out of the main room, because since early morning that slice of bread on the rafter up in the attic had been tempting me, it might even have made my stomach hurt a little. I didn’t have any bad intentions. I just wanted to look at it, to see what bread looked like.

“It’s a little better,” I said when grandmother asked me for the umpteenth time. Because I figured it had hurt enough by now, and besides, any moment mother could come back from the neighbor’s or father from the blacksmith’s and I’d have to stay sitting there bent in two with an aching stomach.

It was like grandmother had been waiting for me to say it, she started singing the praises of the mint drops. And when she was about to get carried away and say that sometimes the pain would just vanish as if by magic, I told her it had stopped hurting now, and I grabbed the bowl with the chicken feed and said I’d go see to the chickens. I put the bowl down in the passageway and quickly climbed up to the attic. At first, before my eyes got used to the dark, it looked like the thatched roof had collapsed onto the attic floor, it was so black up there. But I knew by heart the place where the bread was. I’d snuck up there a good few times when I had a particularly strong yen to take a look at it. Besides, all you had to do was tip your head back, open your eyes wide, and wait like that for a short while, the roof rose higher and higher, and the place became much much bigger, like you were standing in the middle of a church at dusk. Then it would gradually come into view out of the darkness, way up a height, like a sleepy pigeon huddled behind a rafter. It was gray like a pigeon. It even poked out from behind the rafter like a pigeon’s head, a little grayer than the gray of the thatch.

I suddenly had an urge to touch it, stroke it, on its head at least. But how could I get to it? Father must have pulled the ladder up into the attic when he put the bread up there on the rafter. I tried climbing up the crossbeams. It was hard, though the beams were no farther apart than the rungs of a ladder. The thing was though, they were planted tight against the thatch like feet on grass, and each time I took hold I had to push my hand under the thatch with all my strength to get a decent grip. If I’d let go I would have come down on the attic floor like a ton of bricks. Then it would have been judgment day downstairs. I could just see grandfather starting up out of his seat saying, what’s that, is the house falling down?! And grandmother would shout, Jesus and Mary! And Stasiek would burst out crying. And mother would happen to come back right at that moment and she’d be wringing her hands saying, where’s Szymek? And father would be back from the blacksmith’s and he’d be going, where’s that little monkey gotten to?

But I managed to clamber up to right by where the bread was, and hanging from a beam with one hand, with the other one I snatched the bread from the rafter and put it in my shirt. Getting down was easier. I sat down by the chimney flue, but for some reason I didn’t have the courage right away to take the bread out. I listened carefully to check there weren’t any suspicious sounds coming from downstairs. But all I heard was grandmother singing to Stasiek, “Oh my people, how have I wronged you?” I looked around nervously. Everything was quiet as could be, even the mice seemed to have gone from the attic for the moment. The only sound was my heart hammering so hard it felt like it was outside my body. I put my hand cautiously under my shirt and, first of all, felt the bread while it was still in there. It was all dry and cracked, not like bread at all. And I couldn’t tell if it was my heart or if the bread itself was pounding. I took it out carefully with both hands. I bent my head to get a better look. But all I could see was a rough gray piece of something that was supposed to be bread. What was so special about it, I asked myself, that the land couldn’t do without it?

I got the urge to break off a piece and try it. Maybe when it was in my mouth I’d taste whatever power was in it? A communion wafer isn’t anything special either, just flour and water, no taste at all, but it still contains Lord Jesus. Just a tiny bit. Father’ll never know. How can you remember a slice of bread from Christmas Eve till the springtime? It had been bigger and now it was dried up. People dry up in their old age as well.

I stuck just the very edge between my teeth and bit down not hard at all, but all of a sudden there was a snapping sound like something had broken, and a piece came off that was half the size of my hand. I was terrified. My first thought was to get the heck out of there. But where to? I felt like I was choking. I’d have knelt down in front of that dried-up slice of bread and begged it to let itself be put back together. I could sense someone already hurrying up the ladder. Someone was coming from behind the chimney and stretching out their arms to grab me. The front door slammed. I seemed to hear voices, father and mother and grandfather and grandmother, calling, Szymek, what have you done! Szymek, for the love of God! Szymek!!

And all at once, like I was trying to eat up the great guilt inside of me, I started biting on the broken-off piece. It crunched in my mouth so loud you could hear it across the entire attic. It felt like it could be heard downstairs, in the yard, in the whole village. People were coming running from all over to see what was happening at the Pietruszkas’. It prickled against my tongue and my gums and on the roof of my mouth. But I bit down like mad, in a rush, as if I was worried I’d run out of time. Because of that I didn’t taste the bread at all, all I could feel was my mouth being scratched inside, it was like I had a wound inside my mouth.

Then I ate the rest of the bread as well, because I didn’t know what else to do with it. At that point something strange happened, my fear suddenly passed and I felt something like bliss coming over me. I could even have gotten up and gone back down, except I didn’t feel like it. Quiet and calm came back to the attic, and after a moment I was overcome with sleep. I dreamed of our fields, cracked with dryness, overgrown with weeds, horsetail and wheatgrass and pigweed, while right next door, on other people’s land there were handsome crops of rye, barley, wheat. But none of it made me sad at all, even father, who was walking across our fields and calling in a tearful voice, how wretched I am, and how wretched you are, land!

I was woken by scuffles and shouts. Father was standing over me. He was furious, in a rage, like he’d lost his reason. He was waving his arms and screaming:

“You monster! You animal!” And other names. “Dear God, hold me back or I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him like a dog! I wish you’d died before you were ever born! What are we going to do now? The land’ll never forgive us! Get up!!”

I still had the sweetness of sleep and the bread inside me, I threw myself at father’s feet and started yelping:

“I couldn’t stop myself, daddy! I must have the devil in me! Take me to the church, I’ll lie down with my arms spread the whole day! Maybe the devil will go out of me!”

“I’ll devil you! Get up!” He kicked me in the stomach so hard I folded in two. Then without warning, as if he’d been overcome by an even greater attack of fury, he grabbed me by the waist and lugged me down the ladder like a sack of flour. Without putting me down he carried me all the way across the yard to the barn wall. He set me down and ordered me to stand there, while he started feverishly looking for something on the ground.

Mother came out of the house and said:

“What’s he done that’s so terrible?”

Father was marching back and forth digging in the hay with his boots, muttering to himself, he seemed to have gone mad. Finally his shoe hit something that made a clinking sound, he bent over and pulled out the dog’s chain. We’d set the dog free halfway through the winter so it could feed itself, we didn’t have anything to give it.

Mother asked again from the doorstep:

“What has he done that’s so terrible?”

But he probably didn’t hear her, he was busy untangling the chain. He pushed the barn door open furiously, grabbed me by the arm, and yanked me inside, though I didn’t resist. He pushed the door to behind us, gave it a couple of kicks because it wouldn’t close properly. He was shaking like he had a fever, it even made the chain rattle in his hand. He put the chain around my neck.

“I’m going to hang you, you animal,” he muttered. “I don’t care if God won’t forgive me. You and I’ll go to hell together. But I’m going to hang you.”

He was fiddling with the chain around my neck, and the chain was jingling like bells on a horse. I even had the impression father was putting bells on me like he was getting me ready for a sleigh ride, not for death. And maybe it was because of that that I wasn’t afraid at all. I had an ache in the pit of my stomach, but it wasn’t from fear of dying, it was probably from the bread. Because I didn’t yet know what it meant to die. I’d seen dead bodies, of course. All kinds. People that had died of old age, of illness, who’d drowned or been hung. There was even one, Paluch his name was, he’d been bringing in his crop, he’d slipped off the sheaves and a wagon wheel had run him over. He was already dead, but he was holding on to the wheel so hard they couldn’t pry his fingers off. Or Kurzeja the miller, he got dragged into the belts at the mill, he didn’t look either like he’d been killed or that he’d died naturally. Or another time Sylwester Sójka killed his brother, Bolesław Sójka, with a flail, in a fight over property. It looked like it had been an accident, that they’d been doing the threshing together and they’d either been standing too close together, or their flails had been too long. He even cried over his brother’s body, he was shouting, get up, Bolesław, come back to life, brother! Like he was calling him to get back to the threshing. You felt that the other guy would just wipe his eyes and stand up, because who wouldn’t react when their brother was calling. Or Kułaga beat his old lady up so bad she ran out of the house onto the road completely naked, then she dropped down dead in the road. Actually it was hard to say exactly what had really happened, because some people said she’d dropped dead, others that she was a tramp. Or Rżysko, one time he was at the pub and he drank so much he never got up from his drinking. A drunken dead body looks like it’s just drunk. The Jew was pulling his beard out because no one would pay for what the man had drunk. He’d even owed him from before, he was going to settle up with him that day. But they went through his pockets and he didn’t have a red cent on him. Or my school friend Jędrek Guzek, when I saw him in his coffin he was dead and all, but he was dressed in a brand-new suit with brand-new shoes and a new shirt, and his hair was cut and combed, I’d never once seen him like that when he was alive. I even thought to myself, seems like it’s not such a bad thing to die. He’d made a bet for a penknife with Jaś Kułaj that without using a strap he could climb all the way up the highest poplar tree over on the far side of the dike behind the mill. He’d almost made it to the top when he fell. We took him to his mother so she could put him to bed, because there was something wrong with him. She cussed us out, called us the worst names. It was only later she started wailing, Jędrek, Jędrusieniu!

I could go on and on. But I’d never yet seen what it was to die on your own. I might not know even today. Though when it comes to the dead my memory is good. I could even write them all down in a list in order, starting with Wróbel, when I was three years old and mother took me with her, saying, let’s go say goodbye to Wróbel, because he’s dying. I was a little afraid because I thought death would be sitting at Wróbel’s side. I’d never seen death, except with the Christmas carol singers of course, but that was always one of the young guys dressed up. We went in. Mrs. Wróbel was stirring something on the stove. Their Józef was sitting on a bench by the window mending some reins, and in the corner of the room, high on white pillows, was Wróbel’s head with his big mustache spreading like the branches of a tree. We went up to the bed, mother crossed herself and knelt and told me to kneel down as well. Then the mustache on the pillow moved, and a scrawny hand reached out from under the quilt and rested a moment on my head. Then we got up, and mother asked:

“Has the priest been yet?”

“He has,” sighed Mrs. Wróbel, and at the same moment she started in on Józef: “Józef! Józef! You need to be going! I keep asking him and asking him.”

I was about to say to mother:

“Mama, where’s death?”

But she tugged me by the hand and we left. Outside, the sun was nice and warm and Kozieja was leading a calf up the road, and the calf was prancing around in such a funny way that I started to laugh, and mother did too, and anyone that was coming down the road stopped and laughed as well.

“Kneel down,” father grunted.

I dropped instantly to my knees, the chain rattled around my neck.

“Say all the deadly sins,” he said. “Beat yourself on the chest. Ask God to forgive you. And say three Hail Marys so Our Lady will help you as well.” He knelt next to me. He clasped his hands on his stomach, half closed his eyes, and started praying. The sparrows were chirping above us all around the barn, as if they were mad at being disturbed. I repeated all the seven deadly sins like father told me to, but none of them resembled the sin I’d committed. I wondered to myself, what’s father hanging me for if it’s only the deadly sins that God doesn’t forgive?

All of a sudden the barn door creaked softly. I turned my head and in a patch of light at the edge of the threshing floor I saw mother. I looked over to father, but he seemed not to have heard her, he was still praying, his hands on his stomach, his eyes half closed.

“There’s no wrongdoing so bad you can’t forgive your own child,” said mother. “And he’s your child. Bad or good, he’s yours.”

I suddenly twisted my whole body around toward mother, the chain rattled again, and I called out:

“Mama, what’s father hanging me for? I can just go climb the highest poplar across the dike and throw myself off!”

“Even if you kill him, he’ll still be yours.” This time it was like she hadn’t heard me. “Except you won’t be his father anymore, you won’t even be a human being.”

At that moment father’s hands parted on his stomach and came to rest heavily on his knees. He seemed to be holding back tears under his half-closed eyelids. After a moment he wiped his eyes and said in a tired voice:

“Take him away. I’m going to kneel here awhile yet.”

Another time, mother took me with her on a pilgrimage after the harvest. A whole crowd of people went from our village and from other villages. Old folks, children, men, women, young girls and young men, married folks, single family members and whole families. The priest was there, and the organist, and Franciszek the sacristan. There were banners and the picture of Our Lady from our church. We walked from dawn till dusk with two breaks for a rest and one for dinner. Though some people wouldn’t have rested at all, they’d have just kept on walking and walking. At night we mostly stopped in the villages, though one time we slept in the woods in the open air, and another time in haystacks that belonged to a manor. The breaks were also breaks from singing, because they sang the livelong day. Some folks even ignored the organist, who was supposed to be leading the singing, and they sang on in the breaks, mostly the people up front.

People went hoarse from all the singing, and after a couple of days it was nothing but rasping and croaking and barking till it hurt your ears to listen. The organist, it was like one of his lungs had dried up, he kept ordering more and more frequent breaks and he’d cough longer and longer after each hymn. But people didn’t pay any mind to his coughing either and when he didn’t begin the singing they’d start up themselves, and the organist had to join in whether he wanted or no. The keenest singer of all was Zdun. Maybe because people said he should have been the organist, if he’d only been a bit younger. Because apparently it used to be that if someone wanted a Veni Creator to be sung at their wedding so you could hear it all around the church, they’d always pick Zdun, and only the organist would accompany him. On the way back home Zdun actually lost his voice from all the singing and he had to communicate with people in sign language. My mother went hoarse as well, for two months afterward she kept drinking chamomile tea for her throat. It wasn’t really surprising, given that the whole way we were walking in a cloud of dust. Twice there was a bit of drizzle, otherwise it was nothing but sunshine, and people got lumps in their throats from the dust and dryness.

I didn’t sing because I didn’t yet know the hymns, but my throat was dry as well and I kept spitting the whole time. Mrs. Orysz was walking in front of us and she moved farther forward because she said the Pietruszkas’ kid wouldn’t stop spitting. Mrs. Waliszyn actually got into an argument with mother, saying I’d spat on her skirt, she showed it and said, see, are you telling me the little brat didn’t spit on me, take a look. Then he’ll try to tell me I sat in some shit in the dust. I spat on Mikuta’s boots as well because he happened to be passing by and he got in the way of my spit. But it hit the tops, he didn’t feel it and he just carried on walking.

Mother gave me a rosary so I could say a few Our Fathers and Hail Marys instead of daydreaming. To begin with I carried it in my hands. But it felt awkward, like I had my hands tied together. Besides, even if you carry a feather for long enough it starts to feel as heavy as a whole chicken, or a goose or duck. So the rosary got to feel as heavy as a chain. I hung it round my neck and my arms immediately felt like wings.

We happened to be walking past a fruit orchard. There were raspberry apples shining in among the leaves. I could see mother was lost in song, her head held high, her eyes half closed, because we had the sun in our eyes. Below, the cloud of dust came up over our knees. To make matters worse Kolasa was walking next to us and he had a stiff leg from the war, it was like he was dragging that leg deliberately through the dust. Everyone was always moving away from him and telling him to go walk at the back, but he insisted on being in the middle.

To begin with I drifted away a bit so I wouldn’t be right next to mother. Then I moved to the edge of the procession, and from there I slipped into the orchard. At that moment they were singing O Mary, we greet thee, and no one noticed me. Besides, everyone had gotten used to people disappearing off to the side to go to the toilet, they could have thought that’s what I was doing. I ran to the apple tree with the most fruit and started picking as fast as my hands would go. I’d gotten an armful when I suddenly heard a shout through the trees:

“Get him, Azor! Catch the thief! I’ll teach you to steal apples, you little bastard!”

But before Azor could reach me I was already back in the pilgrimage. The dog ran to the edge of the orchard and stopped in its tracks dumbfounded, because he’d been chasing one person and all at once he saw a whole swarm of people, all of them singing into the bargain. Instead of barking, he started this terrible howling. A moment later the farmer appeared out of the orchard, he shouted something and waved his walking stick and I thought he was about to chase me through the procession. I decided that if push came to shove I’d shelter under the banner. But all of a sudden he came to a halt too and fell silent, maybe it had occurred to him that he ought to go on a pilgrimage as well, because he’d racked up a whole lot of sins, that was for sure.

“Quiet, Azor, quiet,” he said, calling the dog to heel. He took his hat off, and we walked on.

Later, two women up front started an argument, one of them said the other one had stepped on her heel so hard she’d made it bleed. Actually you couldn’t even figure out who’d done what to who, they were jabbering so loud you could barely hear one of them saying the other one walked like a cart horse, the other one said the first one waddled like a duck, one of them sang like she only wanted Our Lady to hear her, the other one sounded like kasha boiling in the pan. The first one said the other one’s husband ran around after other women, but you couldn’t blame him because who could stand being with a dragon like her. The other one said the first one went chasing after other men herself. They were virtually at each other’s throats, so maybe it wasn’t just because of one stepping on the other one’s heels. People from way the other end of the procession started calling out:

“Hey, quiet down at the front there! We can’t hear ourselves sing! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”

One guy with a pockmarked face lifted up his walking stick and started pushing his way forward shouting:

“Get out of here! Get out! Damn nuisances! Witches!”

Other folks got mad with him in turn, asking him what he was doing pushing through like that. The way to God was the same whether you were at the front or the back. The important thing was to have a pure soul.

“Jesus and Mary!” someone yelled. “Goddammit! Are you blind?!”

“Stop cussing!” people told them off. “We took an oath there wouldn’t be any bad language!”

I took advantage of the commotion and made my way back to mother.

“Where were you?” she asked me sharply.

But right at that moment, in an attempt to calm the procession down the organist started singing:

“Sing out, our lips, and tell the Virgin’s praise!..”

The rest of the hymn followed from the crowd:

“Sing of her glory to the end of days!..” Mother joined in too.

I took an apple from inside my shirt and started eating. I ate four of them or more before the hymn ended. I was just finishing the last one when mother asked:

“Where did you get that?”

“From the orchard. We passed by an orchard, didn’t you see, mama?”

“Throw it away,” she snapped.

“It’s ripe, mama!” I said almost in a shout. “Do you want a bite?”

“I said throw it away. And where’s your rosary?”

It turned out the rosary had ended up on my back when I’d run from the orchard to get away from Azor. Or maybe I’d twisted it back there when I was sticking apples under my shirt.

“You should be embarrassed,” she said, all upset, though she was talking in a whisper. “You’re on a pilgrimage to repent your sins, and here you go stealing. He’s a punishment from God, this boy. Are you ever going to mend your ways?”

Luckily Duda and his daughter were walking right behind us. Duda was as quarrelsome as the worst old woman, in the breaks between hymns he was forever arguing with someone, even his own daughter if there wasn’t anyone else. She was an old maid and ugly as sin, but she was a real angel. It rarely did her any good though. Duda started grumbling again now:

“This isn’t the right way. I’m telling you, we’ve been on the wrong road the whole time. This isn’t the road. It’s nothing but dust, and there’s sight nor sound of the highway.”

No one wanted to get into it with Duda about the road, because it wasn’t the first time he’d said it. Besides, there was nothing but women around, the men were all closer to the back where they could at least have a bit of a natter. The women, even when they weren’t singing they were whispering prayers or saying them in their heads, or counting their rosaries that they wore wrapped around their hands. But one of them couldn’t take any more of Duda’s griping and she said the priest was leading the pilgrimage, not Duda, and the priest knew which way was right and which way was wrong better than him. He wasn’t going to get us lost, after all. Duda should cut it out or go take his own route if this one was the wrong one. But it didn’t do any good, she just spurred Duda into attacking her and the priest as well, he said he’s just a boy, not a priest, he’s still wet behind the ears, all he knows is book learning. Her he went after for defending the priest, she was a young’un just like him, she was probably always hanging around the presbytery trying to get in his pants. How was a priest any better than a regular guy? The woman went red, she lowered her head and started quickly saying her rosary. The other women lost themselves in prayer the same, because none of them felt like tangling with Duda. Mother was the only one that told him off:

“Shame on you, Duda. There’s a child present.” This was meant to refer to me. She hugged my head to her side, forgetting about the apples.

Duda carried on bellyaching about the road, saying it was the wrong way.

“Whether it’s the wrong one or the right one, it’s leading us to God, daddy.” His daughter Weronka tried to cheer him up. “Why don’t you think about what you’re going to ask him when we get there? Or would you like some bread and cheese?”

We stopped for the night in some village and we were already lying on hay in a barn when mother remembered about the stolen apples. Had I thrown them away? But she wasn’t mad.

“It’s just that my throat is dry,” she said.

I still had four. I pulled one out of my shirt and pressed it into her hand in the dark.

“Here, mama,” I said. “It was such a big orchard, the wind’ll blow down more than this, or they’ll fall on their own.”

She took the apple, but it was like her hand was lifeless.

“It’s a sin, Szymek,” she said.

“Then let it be my sin,” I said. “You can eat it, mama.” To encourage her I took out another apple and started crunching away loudly. But I didn’t hear her eating. Though maybe she just ate real quiet, or after I’d fallen asleep.

It was black as pitch in there, but you could hear absolutely everything, even from the farthest corners of the barn, who was doing what. Some people were eating, others were rubbing their aching feet, others still were saying their prayers, and some were already snoring. It was only the young folks that evidently weren’t tired from the journey, and they were messing around like there was no tomorrow, every other minute you could hear a squeal from one of the girls accompanied by guffaws from the guys. In the end someone couldn’t take it any longer and they shouted from the threshing floor down below:

“Get to sleep, damn you! Or if you have to fool around, go outside!”

Silence filled the darkness for a moment, then things slowly started up again. Close to us some people took out a bottle of vodka, because as well as the smell, they were given away by the sound of the bottle as they pulled it from their lips. You could even tell if it was a man or a woman drinking. From time to time there was a gulping sound when someone must have taken too big a swig, or maybe their throat was sore from singing and the drink wouldn’t go down smoothly.

For the longest time I couldn’t get to sleep. The hay was prickly, and folks were snoring on every side. I could never have imagined that people snored in such different ways, even when they were all together in one big group. Some of them were quiet as anything, like they were just whistling a little under their breath to show what a good sleep they were having. Some were a little noisier, but it was still just as if they were spitting out the last remnants of their singing in their sleep. With others it came from the lungs, but it was still bearable. Worst of all were the old men, it was like they were struggling through a thicket of blackthorn and juniper and haw, or they were crossing pastureland and getting deeper and deeper into mud. At times one of them would make a cracking sound like he’d just torn down the trunk of a willow tree, then sat on the trunk and he was gasping. Though it could also have been a woman. On the pilgrimage there were women built like men, women like stoves, like barrels, sacks, drums, not just the skinny quarrelsome ones, or the spitfires or the painted young things. Some people in the corner nearby started giggling in a funny way, as if they were trying to be as quiet as they could, almost secretly, but you could tell they felt like laughing so loud the whole barn would hear them, maybe even the whole world. I thought they must be tickling each other, probably under the arms, because when you’re tickled under your arms you want to laugh so bad you feel like jumping out of your skin.

“Mama, people are tickling each other over there,” I whispered in mother’s ear, not knowing she was barely awake.

“Don’t listen, son, go to sleep,” she sighed, and pulled me closer to her.

But how could I sleep when it sounded like at any moment one of them was about to jump up and run, probably the woman, run off over the hay and the other people, because it sounded as if they were short of breath. A short time later they started groaning and making a rustling sound. Mother was dog-tired and she fell asleep for good, the whole barn was asleep, and those people just kept groaning and groaning. Then every so often the woman said, oh Jasiu, oh Jasiu. And he’d say, shh.

The next day we were walking down a gravel road lined with acacias and suddenly someone said it was this road where bandits robbed farmers when they were on their way back from the market at Kawęczyn. At that, one woman burst out saying that it wasn’t bandits, they just drank all their money away and afterward they blamed it on bandits. The farmers from our village used to travel to the Kawęczyn market, even though it was a long ways from us. They’d leave by night so as to arrive in the morning, then they’d travel back the whole of the next night and again arrive in the morning. And it also happened that someone would come back without two cents to rub together because he’d been robbed by bandits. Franek Szczerba’s father came back one time on foot, without his horse and wagon, a week later, aching and hollow-cheeked. After he got back he didn’t have the will to do anything, all he wanted was to sit around all day at the pub and drink, supposedly out of bitterness at having been robbed like that, and it goes without saying, on credit. But Franek let on to us that it wasn’t bandits, his father had spent everything on an “auntie,” but she’d dumped him anyway. Because Szczerba had had a lady friend in town in Kawęczyn. Franek had been at the lady’s once when his father took him to market, and the lady had stroked Franek’s hair and made him shiver. Then she gave him an orange and said:

“You have a nice son, Ignacy. All right, go play outside awhile, kid.”

So maybe she was right, the woman that said it wasn’t bandits, because what would bandits be doing on an ordinary road like this one. We took a break and sat on either side of the road in the shade of the acacias, and right away we felt sleepy. It hurt to think we’d have to be setting off again in just a moment. Plus, birds were chirping so nicely among the leaves. Not far away there was a manor house, you could see its roof peeping out from the grounds. Some people started talking about what life must be like in a manor like that, on its grounds. But the organist got up, and the priest, and we had to set off again.

I might not have remembered that road, it was just a road like any other, there are roads like that everywhere, if it hadn’t come back to me several years later. A couple of miles from Kawęczyn, in the Kawęczyn woods, it was September, my unit was stationed in the village of Maruszew. One day, out of the blue we were surrounded by Germans. Someone must have informed on us, otherwise how could they have known? The village was right in the middle of the woods, and the woods were huge. Beyond the village there was a river and more woods. There was one guy, maybe he’d been the one? But if it wasn’t him, may God strike me down. His code name was “Prosecutor.” Truth be told, I didn’t like those kind of names. I liked “Honeybee,” “Birchtree,” “Mint,” “Goldfinch.” But he picked Prosecutor, let it be Prosecutor. When I asked him why that name, he said he wanted to study law after the war.

“Putting all this on trial. Measuring out punishments. There’ll be more work than you can shake a stick at,” he said.

“Who’s going to believe in the law after the war, are you daft?” I tried to convince him. “And what kind of profession is the law. All they’ll do is curse you out. Even being a farmer’s better than that, though that’s no profession either. But at least you don’t get in anyone’s way. You’d be better off being a dentist. People’s teeth are going to be all messed up from the war, then you’d really have all the work you could handle. And Dentist sounds better than Prosecutor.”

Before the war he’d worked for the town hall. He’d graduated high school, he was a smooth talker and he had nice writing. So I thought to myself, he could write the death sentences, if he’s so keen on being Prosecutor. Because no one was willing to write them. And there were orders from above, you weren’t allowed to kill even the biggest bastard without a sentence. No one knew why, because why did a son of a bitch like that need a written judgment, but that’s how it was. His eyes sparkled and he got to work right away. We were supposed to rub out this restaurant owner in Tylice, because he’d turned out to be a snitch. So write it down, Prosecutor. He brings it to me, I read it and I can’t tell if it’s a sentence or a sermon.

“Make it shorter,” I tell him. “Write it again.”

He brings it again and it’s the same thing. I start explaining to him, but I’m already getting annoyed.

“When you’re killing someone, there’s no time to be reading stuff. Why would you even want to? He’s not gonna remember it. Write it again.”

He brings it once again, and this time I’m really pissed off.

“Are you nuts? We’re just going there to kill him, what the heck have you written here? Who’s even going to listen to any of this? God? Not the guy, for sure! Even a son of a bitch like him, when he’s about to die death’ll stop up his ears and his eyes. What the hell are you talking to him about Satan for?! Have you ever seen Satan? No! Then don’t talk bullshit! When someone doesn’t see the person inside them, they’re not going to see Satan. They’ll either go to hell or they won’t. You don’t know, and neither do I, even though I’m your commanding officer. No one knows. There are times you could be sent there for less, then for worse things you repent and you’re not sent. Piece of work like him, he could have all kinds of ways to get out of being sent. If he wants he’ll pull the wool over God’s eyes, and Satan’s as well, and he’ll do a bunk while you lot are still reading to him. Plus, how do you know a guy like that isn’t going to be better off in hell than in heaven. I mean look, we’ve got hell on earth down here but him, the scumbag, he’s opened a restaurant and on top of that he’s selling people out. Besides, what’s it to you whether he goes to hell or not? Hell or heaven, he just needs to be gone from here. Got it? Hell doesn’t have to be what you think. You can spend your whole life working in the fields or going to your office with your briefcase, and that can be hell. Did you used to have a briefcase? There you go then. Write it again.”

But nothing came of it even though he kept trying and trying, and in the end we had to kill the restaurant owner without a sentence. Afterwards Prosecutor moped around all dejected, and in the end I felt sorry for him and I called him in again.

“Try writing a couple more,” I told him. “Make up some bad guys. You’ll get the hang of it, you will.”

Maybe I’d been wrong to throw him in at the deep end like that, I thought. Doing anything well takes hard work. Sometimes you need to go one small step at a time, for years sometimes. Take mowing, no one’s born knowing how to pick up a scythe and just start mowing. Their father has to teach them, they have to watch other people doing it, they have to make a mess of a good few swaths, even bang up their scythe. I think I gave him good advice when I said to make up bad guys as an exercise. What else was I supposed to tell him? He was an office worker that had graduated high school, I’d barely finished seventh grade. Also, in the spring of seventh grade father took me out of school for good because he’d started the plowing, he happened to be doing the hill up by the woods, and he didn’t have anyone else to lead the horse by the head to make sure the furrow was straight. Of course there was Michał. Except Michał was afraid of the horse’s head, and besides, he always got headaches from the sun. But it didn’t matter, no one ever went anywhere after seventh grade, they just kept working the land, so leaving school a couple months early made no difference. So he says to me, I have a request. Go on? He says, if he had a typewriter he’d learn to write sentences in two shakes of a lamb’s tail. He just couldn’t get the hang of it when he wrote in longhand. Besides, what kind of sentence is it when it’s written by hand.

“A typewriter?” I was taken aback. But he used to work in an office, I guessed he must know what you could write on a typewriter and what you could write by hand. “Well, if we can get one somewhere it’ll be yours.”

A short time later we organized a raid on the Arbeitsamt in Kołomierz. We were after the lists of people being sent to do forced labor. He was supposed to just take a typewriter, but he also got writing paper, carbon paper, paper clips, pencils, erasers, other things as well, even a hole punch. He carted a whole sack full of stuff into the woods. He was as pleased as a little kid with a bag full of toys.

After that he’d take the typewriter off into the woods, hide himself away in the bushes, and write. He’d put it on a tree stump and kneel in front of it. Often you could hear him, it was like a woodpecker pecking away far off in the woods. The lads made fun of him, they said he must be writing love letters to his girlfriends or maybe poetry, and some of them wanted him to write a poem for them so they could send it to their own girlfriends. Because other than me, no one knew what he was actually writing.

In the end, curiosity got the better of one of the men, he took the sentences out of the other guy’s knapsack while he was asleep and he brought them straight to me to read. I started reading and my hair stood on end. Every one of them was for someone in the unit. Carp, Rowan, Honeybee, Pinecone, Birchtree, Stag, Cricket, Burdock, Knothole. There was one for me too. On every one there were crimes like the worst son of a bitch. And every one of them was sentenced to death. The higher ranking ones were sent to hell as well. Naturally that included me. I thought to myself, that damn typewriter’s driven him insane. Maybe there’s something inside a machine like that, if it makes a man stop trusting his own hand.

“Get Prosecutor in here this second! What the hell have you written here, you bastard? Who told you to do this?”

“You did, sir.”

“Me?! I told you to make up some bad guys! Dear God, if I wasn’t your commanding officer I’d smack you in the face!” I ripped up all the sentences. “From now on, no more writing!” I changed his code name from “Prosecutor” to “Skylark,” and I ordered the typewriter to be smashed against a tree, who needed a typewriter in the woods.

After that he went around with a wild expression in his eyes, like he was looking but not seeing. He didn’t talk to anyone. They even said he wasn’t eating much, he’d just poke his spoon in his mess can a bit then throw the food out for the birds. A few days later he disappeared from the unit and we never heard from him again.

Dawn was just breaking when first from the river, then from the woods, we heard shots, and the dogs in the village started barking. To this day I can’t figure out how it could have happened. We had lookouts posted, and for several days before there hadn’t been any outsiders in the village, no one from the village had left. It was another thing that they took us from the woods, and from the south side at that, where no one would have expected them. There wasn’t even a cutting through the trees that way. And the Germans were scared to death of the woods. Especially woods like around Kawęczyn, where there was no telling where they began or where they ended. Maruszew was surrounded by woods on three sides, and half on the fourth. There was just the one road led there, and that was only a track. It was a good three and a half miles to the dirt road and twice as far to the highway, and you had to ride a whole day by wagon to get to the railroad stop. No German had ever appeared there, they might not even have known there was such a village. God himself seemed to have forgotten about Maruszew. As well as being far away from the rest of the world, people had a poor life of it there. The earth was sandy, and what can you grow in sandy soil. Rye, oats, potatoes, and that was how they lived out their days. Though in front of every house there was a little garden, and in each garden there were sunflowers, so you could have thought people led happy lives there. Because the sunflowers shone like little suns, even when the big sun went behind the clouds.

Whenever we wanted to clean up and wash our clothes, lick our wounds and get our strength back, and live like humans at least for a bit, we’d go to Maruszew even just for a couple of days. They’d take us in and share whatever they had with us, and though they didn’t have much, when you were there you felt the war wasn’t happening. You ate potato pancakes, drank homebrew vodka, and slept in beds. I even had a girl there. Tereska was her name. She was pretty as a picture and the kindest soul you could hope to meet. Her parents never said anything, even though when I was there we’d live like husband and wife. I never said anything about marrying her. Sometimes I’d promise to visit after the war if I lived, but maybe they didn’t believe I’d survive, and they preferred me to leave their daughter sinful and single than a widow. I still have the little religious medal she gave me one time so I’d always come back safe and sound. I’d often not see her for half a year or more, but every time she’d greet me like the dry earth greets the rain. Right away she’d bring the bathtub, set the water to heat in the kettles, and make the bed. Her parents would go off without a word and busy themselves with something, or go in the other room, and she’d tell me to take my clothes off and get in the tub. She’d soap up my back, pour water over me out of a mug, then help me dry myself. Who knows, maybe I might have married her after the war, but they burned her along with the whole village. She had broad hips, breasts like cabbage heads, she would have made children, two, maybe three.

I pulled on my pants and boots in a flash, grabbed my Sten from the chair, and put my jacket on as I ran. As I was crossing the hallway, behind me I heard her sob, Szymek! But there wasn’t even time to turn around and say, Tereska. I rushed outside. A few of the lads were crouching and moving along outside the house, firing straight ahead. But there were furious bursts of machine-gun fire coming at the village from every direction, from the fields, the woods, the river. I tried to give orders, but there was no one to carry them out and no one to pass them on. The village wasn’t at all big, but in the confusion everyone was trying to escape however they could. They fired every which way, without rhyme or reason, from attics, round the corners of houses, the men were pressed against the ground, against walls, a tree, a fence. Some of them I had to shake, I gave an order, didn’t you hear? No firing at random! Retreat to the end of the village! We’ll take up positions there! On top of it all, the villagers starting running out of their homes. What’s happening?! It’s the end of the world! Jesus and Mary! There was shouting, wailing. Women, men, mothers with babies, children woken from their sleep.

There was some witch of a woman in a long nightshirt, her hair like a crow’s nest and holding a crucifix, she started going on about how the whole world was taking revenge because of us, it was all our fault, because we kept coming here to have our way with the local girls and do bad things, because we’d made whores of them all. Maruszew had become Sodom and Gomorrah! And now God was sending down a punishment! But why Maruszew of all places? Lord, why Maruszew?!

Someone galloped by on horseback shouting, run! run! They’ll burn the place down! They’ll throw people into the flames! Someone herded their cattle out from the farmyard into the road and drove them along, lashing their backs and legs. Two small children in ragged hemp shirts ran by hand in hand, crying. They were followed by their mother, her hair all awry, she was crying even louder than them and shouting, Iruś, Magda, come back! Where do you think you’re going, you little fools, come back! The first house at the edge of the village by the woods was already on fire.

Finally I managed to gather together some of the unit. We divided into three groups that were supposed to follow each other, and I gave the order to try and break through towards the river. I was in the last group. It was a good ways down to the river, plus the fields were bare because harvesttime was long past. Luckily it was just before the potato digging. We could crawl along the furrows in the potato fields, or at the very least hide our heads among the stalks. The nearest and surest way would have been to the woods, but they’d closed the woods to us like a barn door. In the first moment a dozen or so of the men had headed for the woods, with Sorrel in the lead. They’d been mowed down, hardly a handful made it back. It seemed like there wouldn’t be as many of the Germans around the fields, because that was the direction they’d least expect us to take. And in the fields they could be seen just like we could.

The last group started shooting first so we’d draw their fire, they immediately let loose a vicious barrage of shots. During this time the first two groups were crawling across the potato field. When they were about halfway the second group suddenly started firing, and under their cover the first group got even closer. Then, when the first group let them have it from right close up, you could even move forward in jumps. We started lobbing grenades. And we made it out. The only thing left was for us in the third group to provide cover for the other two groups to cross the river.

Suddenly, I felt a jolt in my stomach and my eyes went blank. It was even good not to feel or see anything. I don’t know how long I lay there, but when I opened my eyes I thought I was in the next world. And maybe the lark in the sky was Tereska’s soul that had risen from her burned body and was singing over me so as not to let me die. And the farmer that way far off in the distance was plowing something that seemed half like earth, half like sky — maybe that was her father, and he was only a spirit as well. And maybe only her mother was in this world, keening, “Lord Jesuuuus!”

Almost a third of our unit perished, including the ones they caught alive, and the wounded. They packed them into trucks, threw in the menfolk from the village they’d not already burned or shot, and on the same Kawęczyn road we’d taken that time on the pilgrimage, they hung them from the acacia trees. They didn’t have enough nooses so they took all the halters off the cows in the squire’s herd. They didn’t have a high enough ladder so in Wicentów, where the procession had spent the night that time, they sounded the alarm and stuck the firefighters and their ladder in another truck. And once they started hanging they couldn’t stop, it was like when a drunk starts drinking and he just can’t stop himself. Actually they were also drunk, some of them couldn’t stand up straight, and one of them, when he clambered up the ladder to tie the noose to a branch, he fell off with a crash. The whole way there they were singing dirty songs. When they ran out of our men to hang and there were still some trees left, they hung whoever came down the road.

There was a doctor from Młynary came along in a wagon, he was on his way to a woman that was about to give birth. He even knew German but it didn’t do him any good, the bastards still hung him. They hung him higher up and the guy that had been driving the wagon, who was the husband of the woman having the baby, they hung him lower down on the same tree. Some musicians came up the road on bicycles on their way to play at a wedding somewhere, an accordionist, a fiddler, clarinet, trombone, and drums, five of them. First they made them play something. When they started up, the trees actually shook, though there was no wind at all. Truth be told, they couldn’t play as well as they played that day, because they weren’t the best musicians in the world, like Bargiel from Oleśnica, for instance, or Wojcieszko from Modrzejów. When Kużyk’s daughter over at Stary Bór got married, Wojcieszko’s band played at the wedding for three days without sleeping. They just kept their eyes open, ate, drank, and kept playing. But maybe the Lord God helped them out, or they were so afraid of death that they played better than they were really able. And they were probably already thinking they’d play for a while then hop back on their bikes and ride off on their way. But those sons of bitches were enjoying it so much they stomped their feet and shouted, more, more! Turns out you can keep death away with music.

There was an accordionist lived in our village once. Grab was his name. He was a band all on his own, all he needed extra was a drum. He could make that accordion sound like a fiddle, a clarinet, a trombone, even a church organ. He didn’t stretch it out, he just ran his fingers over the buttons and played. His fingers bent both ways, like they were made of wicker. You couldn’t find another musician to equal him in the whole neighborhood, probably even farther. When he finally took to his bed, because he was really old, he put his accordion on a stool right by the bedside and whenever death drew close to him, he’d play. And death would go away again. He’d probably have lived till he got tired of life. But something went wrong with his accordion, the buttons still kind of worked but the bellows were somehow short of breath. And he died. People said that the kind of music he played for death, no one had ever heard it in their lives, there may never have been music like that ever before. It gave you gooseflesh, cats would run from the house, dogs would howl, horses would rear up as they were pulling their wagons. And if anyone happened to be passing by his house when he was playing they couldn’t help but stop and stand there like a dead man.

But that was long ago and there hadn’t been any war, maybe death liked listening to music. In wartime, though, death has no hearing. All that came of their playing on the Kawęczyn road was that they hung them on a single tree. They didn’t smash their instruments, they just hung them along with the musicians. The accordion with the accordion player, the fiddle with the fiddler, the drummer with his drum on his belly, and so on. One of the soldiers even took a picture of them, another one let off a round at the drum.

A farmer came by taking his cow to be serviced, they hung him too. One idiot went out in front of his house to watch them drive by. Actually they might not have hung him, because he was standing behind his fence and there was only his head sticking out. But he wanted to make a good impression so he took off his cap and bowed. And that evidently made such a good impression they hung him. Another guy, they asked him where the village chairman lived. The guy didn’t understand, and he shook his head and shrugged to say he didn’t. How could he understand when our language comes from the earth and theirs comes from iron. Earth can’t understand iron. They hung him too.

They also hung the squire from Jasień, the same one that they took the halters off his cows. But him they hung from his gateway, not from a tree. There were three gates into the manor, two ordinary ones for everyday use, and a third one that was only used once in a blue moon, as the expression goes. The other two were on the side facing the village, the third one opened onto the road with the acacia trees. From there there was an avenue lined with lindens that led directly to the courtyard in front of the manor house. The third gate was usually closed, they’d only open it on special occasions, a ball, or if an important guest was coming. Even when the squire and his lady drove to church on Sunday, they’d just use one of the regular gates. But when the squire’s daughter Klementyna was coming home from her studies for the summer vacation, the big gate would stand wide open all day. All the boys from the manor and from the village would climb the trees along the road and watch to see if they could spot the carriage with the young mistress coming into view. They’d get twenty groszes for their pains. When the carriage appeared, they’d pass word from one tree to the next, all along the acacias, through the gate, along the lindens, and across the grounds to the manor, to say she was on her way. Every living soul would come out of the manor onto the courtyard, not just the squire and his wife and their relatives, but the footmen and the chambermaids and cooks. When the carriage pulled into the courtyard they wouldn’t let the young lady get out on her own, but they’d pluck her from her seat like a flower and stand her on the steps in front of her parents. The young lady would be all happy and smiling at everyone, prattling away, and throwing her arms around some of the servants so her hat fell off and rolled down the steps, and everyone chased after it. It sometimes happened that dinner got burned, but no one was punished, since it was because of the young mistress.

They started hammering on the gate with their rifle butts. First, one of the servants came out, but he didn’t have a key. They shot him dead. Then the squire came with the key, but he couldn’t get the gate to open, he tried every which way but nothing worked. In the end he managed to unlock it. But they were furious at having had to wait so long, so they hung him. Though was it his fault the gate wouldn’t open? They hadn’t unlocked it since the war began. The young mistress had come back from her studies for good and now she just stayed home, which is to say at the manor. And when someone important came it would be on the quiet, and they used one of the side gates. So apparently the big gate was so rusty they couldn’t open it even after it was unlocked, and the hinges creaked so loud the bastard soldiers held their ears and stamped their feet. People said that God was protesting that way. But what could even God do about it when there were twenty truckloads of them, all armed to the teeth.

The gate is actually still standing today, except it’s in the middle of fields and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Because when they divvied up the manor lands after the war, there wasn’t so much as a fence post left. Folks cut down the trees in the grounds for building houses or for firewood. The same went for the avenue of lindens that led down to the gate. The manor house was demolished down to the foundations. And now it’s just fields like everywhere else. Wherever you look there’s rye, wheat, clover, barley, potatoes, beets, carrots. And the gateway, standing in the middle of the fields like someone just stuck it there because otherwise things would be too flat. Two tall gateposts joined at the top with a half-rounded arch where there used to be a lamp on a wrought-iron chain. That was where they hung the squire. The gates themselves were wrought iron as well, they had twisted designs with lilies and bindweed and vines or something. They always had to be opened by two men at once, one wouldn’t have been able to do it. And since then they were locked for good. Because when they took the squire’s body down someone locked the gate again, and the key disappeared.

After the war all kinds of people tried to open it. Some blacksmith guy, some cooper, a tiler, even a fellow that mended radios. Mechanics from the farmers’ circle, tractor drivers, all kinds of folks. It’s only natural, there’s never any lack of people that want to know what’s on the other side. One time somebody’s relative from America came and offered a hundred dollars to whoever could get it open. People started trying again. All sorts of different types rolled in from far and wide. To begin with, none of them had any luck. The relative from America was convinced it couldn’t be done, and he upped the offer to a hundred and fifty, then two hundred. And they got it open. What can money not do. Except that when they saw on the other side of the gate there was just grain and beets and carrots like everywhere else, they took fright and locked it up again so hard that the key twisted in the lock, and it stayed that way. And now it’s shut forever.

Not long ago a foreign tour was on its way to Kawęczyn by bus. When they saw the gateway in the middle of the fields they had the driver stop, and they got out and started laughing and laughing, saying what a strange country we were, building gateways in the middle of fields as if they led to mansions, when people could go any way they wanted around the gate. Kuśmierz from Jasień was plowing near the gateway, and they started taking photographs of him from every side as he worked. Then one of them gave him a pack of cigarettes. Kuśmierz didn’t want to take them because he didn’t know what he was being given them for, but one of the guys from the bus said:

“Gute Zigaretten.”

So he took them, but he lit up one of his own. Then they asked him:

“What’s this gateway? Did someone build it at the entrance to their field? Do you have to go through it when you’re sowing? Is that maybe a custom in these parts? Does it make your crops grow better? How much do you get per acre?”

But Kuśmierz didn’t tell them the truth. He thought to himself, they came all this way to visit us, they even gave him a pack of cigarettes, he’d feel kind of foolish telling them the truth. So he told them that no one built the gateway, that it grew there of its own accord. Because gateways like that, they grow around here, some places are thick with them. No one plants them or sows them, they just grow there like trees. The soil is rich, all it takes is for the wind to bring a seed or a bird to drop one from its beak. Around here you can find whole stands of gateways.

Three days they all hung there on the acacia trees, because the local village chairmen were forbidden to take them down for three days, the same for the squire in the gateway. Their hands were tied behind them with barbed wire, their feet were bare, all they had on were pants and shirts. Luckily it was a warm September, day after day the sun shone in a clear sky, there was gossamer floating in the air and the nights were mild. So at least they didn’t freeze like they would have if they’d been hanging in the rain and cold, at least they weren’t swung back and forth by the storm winds that often blow that time of year.

For the longest time after the war no one took that road to get to the market in Kawęczyn. They’d go through Zawady, though it was an extra four miles. Because all sorts of things happened to people when someone dug their heels in and insisted on riding that road, or taking it on foot. Sometimes, in the middle of the day they’d chance to look up and they’d see bare feet dangling among the leaves, or a rope with a big noose hanging from a branch. Or even the horses, you’d think they wouldn’t care about humans or the things that go on among them, but who knows if they don’t think humans are just like horses for them, just like they’re horses for people, in any case they’d prick up their ears and snort, and toss, and strain in the traces.

One farmer from Mikulczyce had a stallion black as a raven, with white fetlocks and a white flash on its forehead. Everyone envied him that stallion. When it was pulling his wagon it would hold its head up high and take short steps, like a young woman that’s trying to please the boys. The farmer never had to use the whip, he never had to call, whoa! or giddyup! like with other horses. He’d just hold the reins in his hand and give a slight tug, and the horse knew which way to go, left or right or straight on, at a trot. So the farmer reckoned a horse like that could go through hell and back, not just down the road to Kawęczyn. But when he started on that road, the horse suddenly reared up, and it wouldn’t budge an inch. The farmer gave it the whip on its legs and its back, god damn you, you this and you that, you think you’re getting any more oats you’re mistaken, it’ll be nothing but chaff from now on! But the horse just set off headlong across the fields. It tipped over the wagon, broke the shaft, the farmer messed up his back, and the horse ran all the way through one village and then the next and it probably would have kept running even farther, but its heart gave up and it fell down dead. Another guy rode that way on a pregnant mare, and everyone knows a pregnant mare is patient and obedient, it’ll go anywhere you tell it to. So it went down the road, but later it gave birth to a dead foal.

Or years after the war, the Sputnik was flying across the sky with a dog in it, when Drzazga was coming back from the district offices in Daszew. It was around noon. He was exhausted, because he’d waited forever at the offices and still not gotten what he wanted, so he sat under one of those acacia trees for a moment. Next to it there was the stump of another tree that had been cut down because it was too old. At one moment he looked over at the stump, and sitting on it there was a guy with a halter around his neck, barefoot, in pants and shirt, his hands tied behind with barbed wire, and he says to Drzazga:

“Do you know how far it is to Wólka from here? They cut down my tree, my land’s gone, and I don’t know where I am.”

Wólka? Wólka? Drzazga thought and thought and he was on the point of asking him, which one? Because Wólka’s a common name, there’s one in every district. Then all at once the guy jumps up and rushes off. All he remembered was he was really young and his hair was blond.

Blond and really young, it must have been “Grasshopper.” The hair on his chin was just beginning to sprout, he envied “Kuba” because Kuba had a beard like a dog’s coat, plus he shaved with a razor. He always held Kuba’s mirror for him when he was shaving, and in return Kuba would shave Grasshopper once a week. He’d lather him up nice and thick from his throat to his nose, almost up under his eyes, so it would look like he had a full beard like a grown man. Then he’d strop his razor, and he’d go about it wholeheartedly, like he was shaving a real man. He’d even pluck a hair from his own mop and use it to test whether the razor blade was good and sharp. And though the razor didn’t scrape against Grasshopper’s beard, like it was just wiping off the lather, Kuba would say to make him feel better:

“There, you hear it scraping? It’s starting to grow in. You’re gonna have a fine beard, thicker than mine.”

But Grasshopper never lived to see his beard. In return for shaving him, he’d taught Kuba how to make the sound of a turtledove. After Grasshopper died, Kuba would make turtledove noises over and over till it drove you nuts. Kuba had wanted to learn how to sound like a turtledove because he had an ash tree in front of his house that turtledoves nested in. And he figured that when he got home he’d be most likely to find out from the turtledoves what had really been going on while he was gone — in the village, at home, with his wife and children. Grasshopper wanted to teach him the stork as well, when you’re down you can cheer yourself up by clattering like a stork, Kuba. But no, he was only interested in turtledoves. He wanted to teach him the skylark, you can sing to yourself while you’re plowing, Kuba. No, only the turtledove. What did you need to know the truth for, Kuba?

Because there wasn’t a bird Grasshopper couldn’t imitate. He could do a blackbird, a cuckoo, a kite, a nightingale, an oriole, a starling, a woodpecker, a roller, a bullfinch, whatever you wanted. He could do a magpie when it was going to rain, and a different magpie when it was a sign of something bad about to happen. A rooster, he crowed better than a real one. We’d be stationed deep in the woods but you’d think there were houses close by, because roosters kept crowing. And they crowed one way for midnight, another way when they’d been with a hen. He could croak like one crow or like a hundred when a flock of them roosts in the tops of the poplar trees, and like a thousand when they’re gliding across a deep blue sky at sunrise. Sometimes the guys would name birds that I didn’t even think existed. He could do every one. One of the men in particular, “Pistol,” he was a biology teacher. He’d come up with all kinds of weird names, I’d sometimes say to him, shut the hell up, Pistol, those aren’t real birds. I know a good few kinds of birds myself, but those ones I’d never heard of. Stuff like whimbrel, godwit, ruff, bunting. He swore they lived in the woods in Poland. Maybe they do, why would you not believe a teacher.

I was shot three times that day, twice in the side and the third one in the belly. They weren’t deep wounds, fortunately, they mostly just grazed the skin. I holed up in the attic of the presbytery at Płochcice. Not many people thought I’d pull through. They came to visit me, the doctor and the priest in turn. The doctor just shook his head like he couldn’t believe I was still alive, while the priest kept checking to see if it wasn’t time for last rites. It made me so mad that in the end I started making nice with the priest’s housekeeper. She gave me one of his old cassocks, a cloak, a hat, shoes, shirts, pants, even a prayer book, and one day at dawn, when everyone was still asleep I slipped out of the presbytery dressed as a priest.

I’d been home not so long before, in the summer during the harvest, so they weren’t expecting me. But they could have heard what went down in Maruszew. Besides, I had a yen stronger than ever to see mother. It was thirty-five miles or more from Płochcice to our village, plus I had to choose a route so I’d meet as few people as possible, I had to avoid forest roads and paths and other villages. And it wasn’t enough that I was all bandaged up, I also felt awkward in the priest’s outfit. I regretted not having dressed as a regular person, it’s just there weren’t any other clothes at the presbytery. As it was, the housekeeper had given me all that stuff in fear that she was committing sacrilege. It was only when she saw me dressed up that she said:

“May God lead you, and may he forgive me.”

It was another matter that the priest was a bit shorter than me, and bigger in the belly, but in that place I couldn’t tighten the clothes because that’s where my wounds were, so I looked a bit like I’d borrowed an outfit from my younger brother. The sleeves barely reached past my elbows, the cassock came halfway up my shins, and the tightest part of all was across the shoulders. By the time I’d gone a few miles I was as exhausted as if I’d been carrying a heavy weight. On top of that, at every step it felt like someone was sticking a bayonet in my side, from the wounds. So I couldn’t even concentrate and think about the things a priest ought to think about. And all the while I had to hold myself straight like a priest, and have a cheerful expression on my face, like I was thinking about God. Plus, every other minute someone came along and greeted me, Christ be praised, and you have to raise your hat every time and answer, for all time. Though somehow I managed. What was worse, quite often when someone saw a priest coming toward them they’d immediately stop and wait, they were pleased as punch that chance had plonked a priest in their path for them to talk to. What do you think, father, how are things going to turn out for us? Did you hear what those villains did over at Maruszew, father, they hung them all along the Kawęczyn road. Where’s God in all that, father? How can he look down calmly on such things? And you’d have to make stuff up, tell lies about God when you had no idea what you were doing, say that his judgments are inscrutable, that all we can do is pray for the folks from Maruszew. Or someone asks you, I guess you’re from a different parish, father, or have they sent us a new curate.

One farmer came by in his wagon, I even turned my head away, but he pulled up, whoa, and said he’d give me a ride, because he couldn’t allow a priest to go on foot. Whether I liked it or no, I had to get in. Then in the wagon he asks, have you come from far? Actually your face is sort of familiar, you look a bit like this guy that they say died at Maruszew. The parish ought to be ashamed they can’t afford a decent cassock for you.

The whole thing tired me out even more than the wounds. I got as far as Mierniki, there I went to a fellow I knew and changed into ordinary clothes. Besides, what would mother have said if she’d seen me dressed as a priest? I spent the night there and continued on my way. The man I stayed with wanted to give me a bicycle. I tried, but riding was worse than walking. A couple of times someone gave me a ride a bit of the way. I wasn’t a priest anymore so I wasn’t afraid to talk about why I was on the road. I’d say I was going to see about a horse, that most of all I was hoping for a dapple. Another time I said I was setting up as a beekeeper and I was looking for a good queen.

It was late when I found myself in our yard. The dog recognized me at once and started whimpering and rubbing against my leg. I took hold of its snout and said, quiet, Burek, I’m not here, you’re a dog but you have to understand, I’m nowhere to be seen. Like a person he understood and wagged his tail, and slunk back to his kennel.

There was a bit of a frost and maybe because of that I started getting the shivers, because as long as I’d been walking I was too hot, I’d been drenched in sweat. I crouched behind the corner of the barn and decided to wait there for mother to come out for the evening milking. I looked up at the sky, nothing had changed, the stars were still in their same places for that time of year. The Big Dipper was over the poplar tree at Błach’s place, the Little Dipper a bit farther. Maybe it was from staring at the sky that my head suddenly started to spin. For a moment I thought I was going to pass out, but it gradually passed.

I didn’t want to go into the house so as not to get into an argument with father like last time. It wasn’t for that I’d come all this way on foot, and wounded. I just wanted to see mother and tell her I was alive, because she could already be praying for my soul after what happened at Maruszew. Besides, that earlier time I’d come at the wrong moment, during the harvest. Everyone knows that during the harvest a person can only understand himself. They’d been getting ready for bed, mother was in her nightshirt kneeling by the turned-down bed, saying her prayers. Father was soaking his feet in a basin. He could at least have said:

“Thank God you’re alive.”

Or:

“You’re not looking so good.”

Or:

“So how are things?”

Mother started giving vent to all her grievances as she heated up some pierogies for me in the frying pan:

“It’s enough to make you dizzy, he disappears all this time, dear Lord. Then yesterday a magpie perched on the ash tree and it kept cawing and cawing, it set my heart pounding, something must have happened to Szymek. I said to father, Józuś, shoo that evil bird away, something bad must have happened to Szymek. In the end I threw a rock at it myself and chased it away. I pray so much for you, I ask Jesus and Mary to keep you in their care. Every night you’re in my dreams. One night I dreamed you brought a cross into the yard. I asked you where you got it and you said it was lying by the roadside when you were coming back from the fields. And you asked me, mama, where should I put it? I said, put it in Sekuła’s yard by his wagon barn. It’d be a waste, mama, you said, the wood in a cross like this must have a lot of resin in it. Szymek, I don’t think I could live if they killed you.”

All father did was take his feet out of the basin and rest them on the rim to let the water run off. Then all at once he yells at mother:

“Come on, give me something!”

“What do you want?”

“I need to wipe my feet!”

She threw him a cloth, and as he bent down he said:

“Why would they kill him. You think he has it so bad. I’m telling you, they made up that resistance stuff to get out of doing any work. They left their fathers and mothers, what do they care about anything. And you, you don’t even have time to scratch yourself on the backside, but you’re always praying for them, crying for them. There aren’t any dances for them to go play at, so now they’re playing at soldiers.”

“It’s not exactly a game, father,” I said, but without taking offense. “The work’s just as hard.”

“And what work do you do exactly?” He was so furious he was hissing.

So I got riled up as well and I said:

“We kill people.”

“You kill people? Not every day you don’t. If you were a good son you’d show up once in a while and do some mowing. Or I don’t have anyone to help me bring the crop in. Antek’s still little, all he does is run around among the sheaves!”

“Everyday, father. Sometimes the day’s not long enough.” I could barely hold my rage in check.

“Then once in a while, hold off with the killing and come help out.” He stopped wiping his feet, looked at me, and asked as if he was surprised: “And your hand never shakes when you’re doing it?”

“No.”

“Then you’re not our blood anymore.”

I leaped up and slammed the door so hard it groaned. Mother ran out after me, but I rushed off into the orchard and headed down toward the river.

This time, the front door creaked and the pale light of a lantern appeared on the threshold. Mother’s shadow moved off toward the cattle shed. It seemed smaller than usual, or maybe the night was bigger. In one hand she was carrying a pail for the milk, the other hand held the swinging lamp. The frozen ground crunched under her feet. I was about to go out to meet her, but it occurred to me that if I rose up in front of her out of the blue like that she might think it wasn’t me but my ghost. Because it was a starry, moonlit night, a night that seemed made for souls to do penance. And the dog was sitting quietly in its kennel, because dogs can’t smell ghosts. She went into the shed. I could still see a faint light from her lamp through the half-open doorway.

“Come here! Move back a bit!” I heard her say to the cow.

I looked over at the kennel to check whether the dog wasn’t going to jump out and give me away. But no, it evidently still got what I’d told it. I started creeping along the wall toward the light, and when I reached it I quietly stuck my face in the doorway. I felt a waft of warmth, animal sweat, manure. And I suddenly reckoned I understood why God wanted to be born in a cattle shed. Slow as anything I opened up the lighted crack. The door creaked, but mother seemed not to hear. She was sitting hunched over beneath the big belly of the cow, as if she was lost in prayer, with only her hands working somewhere in the belly’s depths. Milk was squirting from those hands of hers into the pail she held between her knees. The milk splashing into the pail was the only sound in the whole shed, maybe even the whole world.

“Mama,” I whispered.

At that exact moment the milk came to a stop in her hands. She raised her head slowly, looked around the roof and the walls, and asked softly:

“Szymek?”

“Not there, mama. Here,” I said more boldly, and walked into the shed, closing the door behind me. She looked at me unbelievingly. It was like she didn’t have the strength to get up from her stool. The cow even waved its tail a couple of times, asking why she’d stopped milking it.

“So, mama. How are things with you all?”

“You’re alive?” she said. And it was like her entire body burst out crying, not just her eyes.

“Careful, or it’ll get in the milk,” I said, and took the pail from her. “It’d be a pity to have to throw it out.”

All at once she stopped her crying, like biting off a thread in her teeth. She wiped her eyes on her apron.

“Wait now, I’ll finish the milking,” she said.

“I have to be going right away,” I said, because what else was I supposed to say.

“Won’t you even come in the house?”

“I can’t. They’re waiting for me.”

“Then at least drink some milk.”

I lifted the pail to my mouth and tipped it.

“You’ve gotten thin, you’re not looking well, son,” she said, starting her lament. But my head was almost completely stuck in the pail, and her voice sounded like it was coming from far away. “Michał was here. He had something he needed to see you about. He looked bad too.” I guzzled the milk like it was the juice of the earth. “Forgive your father, those things he said only came out because he was angry.” I felt the milk giving me back my strength with every mouthful.