Stone Upon Stone

IX. Gateway

Not a cross, not a Lord Jesus, not a propeller. So what should I put on the tomb? I even thought about maybe building a gateway like the one out in the fields. A lot smaller, of course, because the one in the fields could be the gateway for the whole cemetery, not just a single tomb. Except these days who could make iron gates like that, there isn’t even anyone to shoe horses, you have to go all the way to Boleszyce. While Siudak was still alive he shod horses, did all the ironwork on wagons, whatever anyone wanted, plows, grates, grapnels for the fire brigade. For Pociejka the miller he made a whole iron fence for around his house. He was getting well on, but he kept working. Someone would be passing by the smithy, they’d stop for a while, operate the bellows for him, hold something for him, and he went on working almost till the very end. And the things you could learn from him, he knew more about iron than folks that lived all their lives in America could tell you about America. He’d say, for instance, that iron gets old just like a person, and it has a soul just the same. There ought to be a smithy if only for the sound it makes all through the village. But here the smithy’s stood empty a good few years now, since Siudak died. It’s going to ruin, and for some reason no one’s interested in being a blacksmith. Even Siudak’s sons got into mending televisions, and however much you asked them they couldn’t even repair a simple lock. And what would a gateway be without gates?

One time I had a dream about it. A huge crowd of people was cramming between the gateposts, it was as if there was no other way through, though all the fields were wide open. They milled around and squeezed together and cussed each other out, they were clambering over each other’s backs, it was exactly like people getting on the bus on market day. You could barely even see the gateway itself, there were so many people surrounding it they formed a big pile, and at the very top of the pile, among all the heads and backs, stood Wojtek Kubik with his arms stretched out, shouting: one at a time, one at a time! Stop pushing! Where do you think you’re all going, damn you! I’m over here, dad! Give me your hand, which one is yours? The one with calluses, Wojciu! They’ve all got calluses, which one is yours?! Then Mrs. Waliszyn pipes up, look at him, he’s standing on all our heads and he can only see his own folks! At that point I shouted to Wojtek as well, Wojciu, have you seen my family, did they go through already? No one’s gone through at all, Szymek, not the least little bug has passed, it’s empty as the fields.

But I probably needed to ask someone if it was right to put a gateway on a tomb. It’s another thing to have one out in the fields, anything can be there. On top of everything people’ll say I’ve got a screw loose. You put a gateway on your tomb? You don’t even have a gate into your yard. You ought to put new doors on your barn, the old ones are falling to pieces. You ought to mend your front door. One time they used to put a gateway up for the harvest festival, or when the starosta of the district was going to visit, or when newlyweds were coming back from the church they’d put one up so the young couple would buy them a bottle. For a barracks you need a gateway. Gate of Heaven you say in the litany, but that’s not a real gateway, it’s Our Lady. The best person to ask would be the priest, priests know about these things. But we’ve just gotten a new one and he’s a bit strange, he plays soccer with the boys, one time he brought the harvest in with Sójka like he was a farmhand, or he’ll go out in front of the presbytery and play the fiddle. His housekeeper says she’s going to quit, he’s such an oddball. You can’t ask someone like that for advice about what to put on your tomb.

The last one, if he’d still been alive he would have given me advice. He taught me religion way back in school, knew me since I was little. He knew everyone, he’d been in the village for years. But he passed away not long after I came back from the hospital. I just had time to go buy the plot for the tomb from him. Though he didn’t look at all like he was about to die. Sure he was getting on, but he had a good firm step and he held his head up straight. He even recommended that I choose a place closer to the wall, said it’d be quieter there, because these days on All Souls’ it gets like market day at the cemetery, people pushing their way around, trampling across the graves, they’ve no respect for anything. Though they bring ten times as many wreaths and flowers as they used to, and there’s enough candles to light the whole village. Best of all would be if I wanted to be right in the corner, where there’s that old oak tree, the only one that survived the war. But I happened to be fond of the propeller on Jaś Król’s tomb, and I wanted to be near him.

“As you prefer,” he said. “Your tomb, your wishes.”

I didn’t expect him to receive me in such a friendly way. When I went to him I was all set for a fight, in my head I was figuring out what to say to him when he asked questions. Because things weren’t as good as they might have been between us. A couple of times he’d singled me out during his sermon, when he needed a bad example that wasn’t from the Bible but from the village instead, so he could get through to people better. Because they were quite happy to hear about Judas or Mary Magdalene or the prodigal son, but then they’d go off and do whatever they wanted. On top of that, while my old folks were still alive he kept visiting them, scaring them, lecturing them, nagging them to get me to change. After every visit I’d get it at home even worse than in the sermon. I’d come through the door and right away father would be:

“I never thought I’d live to see the day. The priest criticizing our family from the pulpit. Like we’re no better than thieves. One of these days I’m gonna take my ax and smash your head in, you animal. Or you should leave this world of your own accord, then finally there’d be peace.”

When I went in he was sitting at his desk writing. He didn’t even raise his head, though I made a lot of noise, what with the legs and the walking sticks and all, also I struggled with the door. When I greeted him with “Christ be praised” he barely nodded. It was only when I clattered a bit more with my sticks that he glanced up over his eyeglasses and muttered something that was supposed to be:

“Oh, it’s you.”

I started in right away telling him why I was there, but he interrupted me.

“Are you still a wild one? It’s high time you settled down. Wait a minute while I finish.” He went on writing, his big gray head almost leaning on the desktop, as if he was writing something that took a huge effort.

“It’s a funeral oration,” he said when he finally stopped. A guy by the name of Molenda from Lisice had just died, and though he knew the man well, he knew all the parishioners like the back of his hand, still he didn’t have the memory he used to. He’d sometimes use the wrong name for the deceased at the graveside, and even get his life mixed up with someone else’s life. Though if you ask me, mixing up lives isn’t as bad, because either way it’s all the same water flowing into the same world.

But to get a person’s name wrong, it’s like that person never even existed, and there was no telling what you were burying.

He set aside his pen and took off his glasses. From the folds of his cassock he took out a handkerchief big as a headscarf and wiped the sweat off his forehead.

“I’m not as young as I used to be,” he said. “Time was, I could bury three or four, one after the other, and I’d have something different to say about each one of them. And from memory, I didn’t have to write anything beforehand. But back then one life seemed so different from the next.” He blew his nose into the handkerchief so loud that the glasses in the dresser jingled. He put the handkerchief away and said with a sigh: “So what, you’re finally giving it up? You thought you’d live forever. All those years fighting, and where’s it gotten you?”

“What do you mean, fighting, father,” I said as humbly as I could, because I thought to myself, if I start arguing with him he’ll just go and jack up the price of the plot. “I was living, is all. Better or worse, it wasn’t up to me. You can’t always live the way you’d like to, you live the way you have to. A person doesn’t choose their life, father, life chooses the person according to its will, depending on who it needs for what. One person’s good for one thing, another person for another, and someone else again isn’t good for anything. There’s no telling how it decides that one man’s a general, another’s a judge, a third one is a church man, that you’re a priest, father, for example, and as for me, I don’t even know what I can say about myself.”

“Come off it, you were a priest as well!” He gave a big grin from ear to ear. I was all riled up inside, but I said to myself, think your own thoughts but sit still and be good, and all I said was:

“When people have to, they can be anything, father. Even a bandit or a robber.”

“All right, all right,” he interrupted. “Tell me though, when was the last time you made confession?”

“Confession?” I felt like he’d called on me in the back row in religious instruction, behind Stach Niezgódka’s back, because I always sat in the back row. “Must have been after the war.”

“What do you mean, after the war?”

“You know, when it ended. I’d killed all those bad guys, I had to confess it so they wouldn’t come haunting me at night. Though if you ask me, father, you shouldn’t have to confess those kind of things. Course, there could have been an innocent guy among them. There were a few other sins that had mounted up a bit, the way they do in wartime, so I had to get clean.”

“So you cleansed yourself and went back to sinning, is that it? Do you at least come to church? Because I somehow don’t recall seeing you.”

“The last two years I was in a hospital bed, father, I couldn’t exactly go to church.”

He narrowed his eyes in a strange kind of way, as if against the light, though he was sitting with his back to the window. In order not to come out looking like a nonbeliever, I added:

“But before the war I never missed mass. Mother wouldn’t have let us. I’d sometimes go to the evening service, May Day services, the rosary. And I used to sing in the church choir. Maybe you remember me? Though it’s been donkey’s years. Kolasiński the organist even used to say that if they sent me to school I could sing in town at the opera. I was a bass. I often sang solo. But the land wouldn’t let me go. You can’t reconcile singing and the land. The land needs work, father. As for singing, it’s mostly good for making the work go easier, or for after work, on Sundays. Though even on Sundays you can’t have a good sing, because God sends rain clouds, and here your crop’s in sheaves still out in the fields.”

“Don’t you start talking to me about God!” he said, interrupting me with a sour face. “Hiding behind God. Do you even remember his ten commandments?”

“Of course I remember them. You taught us religious instruction at school, father.”

“So tell me, what’s the third commandment?”

“The third commandment?” I hesitated. “I think it’s, thou shalt not steal,” I said. It was mostly a shot in the dark, because at my age how are you supposed to remember which one is third, fourth, tenth, your memory doesn’t remember them all in the right order. People can’t even live in the right order, let alone remember things.

“The third is to keep the Sabbath day holy.” He pointed his index finger at me as if he’d suddenly spotted me in the congregation from the pulpit. “I see you’re a bigger sinner than I thought,” he said with a bitter sigh, though a bit indulgently as well.

“I won’t deny it, father, I’m no saint,” I said a little more boldly. “Though in my view sins oughtn’t to be connected to a person so much as to their life. For a person it’s often too much just to have to live.”

“But they have to die as well, and then what?” This time he was seriously upset. I regretted annoying him unnecessarily, because as well as raising the cost of the plot he might stick me next to some guy that drowned or was hung. Not long before, Bolek Brzostek had hung himself. He worked in the warehouse at the co-op, there’d been an inspection and it turned out he was a million zlotys short. The Brzostek women had so many clothes they couldn’t decide what to wear, they were constantly heading into town to go to the pictures, because his old lady liked the pictures so much she used to say she could spend her whole life there. He had a new house built, bought a car, people couldn’t figure out how they did it on that little salary. You’ve got a head on your shoulders, Bolek. Your Dziunia’s a lucky woman.

“Well, when you have to die, you have to,” I said, humble again. “But death knows best of all when to come, father, there’s no point hurrying out to meet it.”

“Maybe you’re in no hurry to meet it. But it might be in a hurry to meet you. How can you know?”

“I guess I can’t.”

“Is it not said, ‘ye know neither the day nor the hour’?”

“It is.”

“You see then. And you also remember ‘memento mori’? You used to serve during holy mass, you’d have picked up a bit of Latin there, Franciszek the sacristan used to teach it.”

“Kind of, though he mostly had us scraping the wax off the candlesticks. Saecula saeculorum, forever and ever. Dominus vobiscum, the Lord be with you. And ite missa est, the mass is over. That’s all,” I said, because I was afraid he’d start asking me questions about the mass as well. “Other than that he just made sure we knew when to carry the missal from one side to the other.”

He gave a good-natured laugh:

“Oh, that Franciszek. As for you, don’t worry, I’ve no intention of taking you on as an altar boy. Besides, these days it’s all in Polish. I had to learn everything all over again myself. Though I still can’t get used to it. It sounds funny to me. There are times, may God forgive me, when I feel it’s like a whole other faith. But enough of that. So you say you need a place for a tomb?”

I nodded. He started getting up from behind the desk, his head shook a bit, maybe from all that writing, because sitting like that with your head down, you couldn’t have held it up for long even in two hands, let alone just having it on your neck. It was another thing that he seemed to have put on weight, not that much, it was just that back in the day he was thin as a rake. All these young newlywed women, unmarried women, probably even old grannies would come flocking in for every service just for his sake, they’d compete with each other who would bring the most flowers for the church, till there were times he’d tell them to stop, he’d say it’s too much, too much, ladies. God doesn’t like too many riches, he was poor himself, remember. They may even have believed more strongly in God for his sake than they would have if it’d been someone else.

I braced myself to see how much he would say, because I was convinced he was standing up so as to tell me the price, and he wasn’t on the cheap side, oh no. He always said, it’s not me you’re paying, it’s God, so don’t sell God short.

“Will you have a glass of wine?” I was floored at first, I would have expected all kinds of prices rather than wine. He looked at me in a mock-angry way. “Surely you won’t say no to your religion teacher?”

“I wouldn’t want to take up your time,” I stammered, because I didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sure you’ve got as much work in the church as we do in the fields. I still have my potatoes to bring in. And you have that funeral.”

“Don’t get all concerned about me.” He walked over to the dresser. “What a hypocrite,” he said, pretending to be in a huff. “You never bothered about my feelings before, you just did whatever you felt like. That vulture, that greedy pig with the big belly. Have you forgotten the things you used to say? And where’s that big belly of mine? I was always skinny, still am. When you passed me on the road, I wouldn’t have expected a ‘Christ be praised’ because it wouldn’t pass your lips, but you might at least have said good morning. Yet all you’d do was look down and scowl like there was no tomorrow. Or start gazing at the sky as if you’d heard an airplane. I was the one that taught you God’s ten commandments. You’re not going to try and tell me they never came in useful? For each of my students, good and bad, every day I say at least one Hail Mary.” He put a bottle of wine and two glasses on the table. “And don’t you worry about my time either. My time is for God and for my parishioners. Your potatoes can wait awhile too. The Lord’s given us a mild fall, thank goodness, you’ll have time to get them in.” He seemed to lose himself in thought for a moment. “Though I’m not sure I have the right to say this is still my time. I sometimes have the feeling I’m living at the expense of eternity. Come on, take a seat.”

He gestured to an armchair that happened to be right beneath a huge larchwood cross that took up almost the whole wall from ceiling to floor. It was like it was fresh from the ax, none of it had been planed, there were splinters everywhere. If you’d touched it you’d for sure have gotten a hand full of spelks. I was about to say that the carpenter that made the cross, I wouldn’t hire him to build a cattle shed, how could he leave so many splinters, but he spoke before me:

“You’re looking at the cross? It was made by someone special.”

“I can see,” I said, and dropped into the armchair. I sank into it like it was a pile of hay.

He took my walking sticks from me. One fell on the ground and he picked it up himself, though you could tell it was an effort for him to bend over, and he grunted and turned red. He looked around to see where to put the sticks, and in the end he hung them over one of the arms of the cross. He poured out two glasses, a full one for me, just a little for himself, explaining that he still had to lead the rosary because the sacristan was sick. He handed me the glass so I wouldn’t have to get up, because he’d put it down a short ways away. I tried to stand, though I don’t know how I would have managed it without my walking sticks. But he put a hand on my shoulder to tell me to stay seated. He took the armchair opposite.

The wine was so sweet it was sickly. Truth be told, I’m not a big fan of wine. When it’s sweet I can hardly get it down, I don’t know how people can drink the stuff. But I couldn’t tell him that. I said it was nice.

“Must be foreign.”

“No, it’s made with blackcurrants,” he said. “You like it? Helenka, my housekeeper, she makes it. She’ll be pleased when I tell her you said it was good. She adds a little rose hip, juniper seeds, something else besides. Though she won’t say exactly what, she treats it like a big secret. She won’t even tell me exactly what she makes it from. If you like it, father, she says, then drink it and don’t ask questions. There’s no need to know everything right from the get-go.” He raised his glass. “Your health, then.” He barely touched the rim of the glass, smacked his lips, and set the wine aside.

I raised my glass too.

“Your health, father.” Again I started worrying about what he’d charge for the plot. Because he suddenly started staring at the wall, like he was bothered by the same thought, how much he should ask. Or maybe he was just looking at the larchwood cross. He suddenly broke off staring and sighed:

“So are you not afraid of death?”

I gave a sigh of relief that he hadn’t been thinking about the price.

“What’s there to be afraid of? A person’s only afraid when they’re not certain about something.”

“All the same, everyone’s afraid of death.”

“Because that’s how life is, father, the fear comes from life. A person’s afraid of storms. He falls asleep and he’s afraid. He’s afraid of the next person. He’s constantly afraid. Even yesterday, it’s already past and it’s no threat to him, but he’s afraid of it. And it’s not just people. Animals, the land, water, everything’s afraid. Or take trees for instance, do you think they’re not afraid? They won’t say it because they can’t talk, they can’t cry, they just stand there. But why is it an aspen’s leaves shake the whole time? Even when there’s no wind. With oaks, of course, it doesn’t show. They’re hard as rock. And they live for centuries. But when an oak tree finally falls, the whole forest is terrified. And what’s a human next to an oak tree, father?” I grabbed my glass from the table and knocked it back in one. I felt like I’d just swallowed a frog, but I made sure it didn’t show.

“Will you have some more?” he asked, and without waiting for me to at least nod he filled my glass again. “That’s for sure,” he sighed, as if lost in the deepest thought. He might not even have been listening to what I was saying, because after a moment he said: “The thing is, I thought you needed me to comfort you. Forgive me, though — put it down to priestly weakness.”

I didn’t know how to respond, so I took another sweet mouthful of frog juice.

“I’m not sure if a person can comfort another person, father.” It came out too arrogant, but the sweetness was making me sick to my stomach. “It’s a bit like a blind man leading another blind man through the woods. One’s as unfortunate as the other, and the woods are dark and unknown. You have to live alone, for yourself, and you have to die the same way, no one can die for someone else. Besides, people have tried to kill me so many times that when I come to die it won’t be the first time. As for living, I’ve done a good bit of that too, enough for three men. In the resistance I was wounded seven times. Once I even thought I was in the next world. No one believed I’d pull through. But here I am.”

“Has it not occurred to you that maybe God wanted you to live?”

“It’s hard to say whether it’s God, father. I was always strong. Before the war, at dances we’d sometimes stick each other with knives, I’d bleed so much another guy would’ve been dead, but me, I’m still alive. It’s only now that our wounds become so unforgiving, the slightest thing and you’re a goner. You might not believe me, but I’ve never had so much as a cold in all my life. Though in the resistance we often slept on the bare ground, in rain and mud, on moss, on snow. You’d wake up frozen to the earth, like you’d become part of it. You couldn’t open your eyes, the frost was so heavy you’d have ice in your mouth and your arms and legs would be stiff as boards. But we always had vodka with us, a mouthful or two and it would all thaw out. Or this accident of mine. The doctors were shaking their heads saying there was nothing they could do to save my legs. They explained they’d have to be amputated. First they said both of them. Then, that I’d lose at least one. I refused, because how can a person live without legs. And here I am walking.”

“You certainly are a tough nut, my son,” he said like it was part of a mass or service or confession that he’d memorized — he knew all those things by heart. “But that’s pride, believe me, it’s pride. Beware of pride. It can destroy the human soul worse than anything else. Don’t try to be strong at any cost. Strength separates us from other people. Remember that Jesus was God but he allowed himself to be crucified so he could experience human weakness. You have to admit to weakness as well, because it’s in you, it really is. It may even want you to weep over yourself. Weep, even if you have to force yourself to. Otherwise you’ll never understand yourself, or other people.”

“Is it my fault I had to be strong, father? That’s just how my life was, and maybe those were the times also. You said Jesus was God. But with people, a single moment of weakness can sometimes cost you your whole life, and without salvation. You say I should cry. But life made me forget how to cry, father. Life can make you forget how to do various things, and not teach you anything in return. Course, they say life teaches. But it’s not true. Besides, however much someone wants, he still has to do what he has to do. He’s got it written somewhere in that book of his that he has to be strong, so he has to be. Just like another guy has it written that he has to be bald, or another one that he has to marry a particular person, and he has to, even though she’s a real vixen. That he’s going to be born in this village here, in this house, and not a hundred years earlier or a hundred years later, because from long ago all the way to the end of the world everyone has their assigned time, their place, their life. What’s there to cry over? Crying over yourself is like crying against yourself. People always cry to someone, father. Even when you’re crying over yourself, you’re crying to someone. However deep it is inside you, however secret, it’s always to someone. And me, I don’t even know if there’s anyone inside of me.”

“But God is standing over you, have you ever thought about that?”

“If he is, he sometimes lets himself be forgotten. It may even be wisdom on God’s part that when there’s nothing he can do, he lets himself be forgotten.”

“Now you’re blaspheming, my friend, you’re blaspheming terribly.” He raised his hands as if he wanted to push away from me. He made the sign of the cross. “But may he forgive you in his great mercy.” He hung his head as if he was praying silently. Also, our conversation might have tired him a bit, he was old after all, sometimes he’d fall asleep during confession. All of a sudden he started and gave me a sort of kindly look. “You’re going to stand before him as well one day, what will you say to him then?”

“I won’t say anything. When your lips are dead your words are dead as well, father. Whatever you may or may not have said here on earth, you won’t say it up there. God too, what he had to say to people, he said it all here, on earth. Up there he became a mystery and he keeps his peace.”

“I truly feel sorry for you, my son. But perhaps one day you’ll understand, if only in your final hour, that you too, you were only human. A lost, stray human being like every one of us in this vale of tears. And that strength of yours you keep going on about is nothing but ordinary human weakness that you won’t accept, that you hate so much in yourself.”

“What do you mean?” I was upset, who was he to talk to me that way, even if he was a priest. “Do I not know who I am? I paid a heavy price for that knowledge. It didn’t come for free.”

“Right, my son. Perhaps you hated it within yourself more than others do. Perhaps you were harder on it than others. Perhaps it hurt you more than it hurt other people. But believe me, it’s only thanks to our weakness that we’re connected to other people, that we recognize ourselves in other people, and they recognize themselves in us. And that’s how our human fate is shared. It has room for everyone. In it our humanity is fulfilled. Because we don’t exist outside of our fate. We belong to human fate through weakness, not strength. And it’s in this weakness of ours that God manifests himself in every person, not in their strength. So you too, be forbearing toward it, don’t shield yourself from it, submit to it, because otherwise you’ll have a hard death. And that’s not the same thing as having a hard life. And who knows, you might take months and years to die, the way God sometimes tests people, they’re confined to their bed by some terrible illness, their death has no end. The sight fades in their eyes, their ears stop hearing, their mind stops understanding, and they lose all feeling except pain. How are you going to die then, if you can’t come to terms with yourself, or at the very least understand yourself?”

“Death’ll come somehow or other. Death isn’t anything special, father. People aren’t just living from cradle to grave, they’re also dying from cradle to grave. Dying isn’t something you do just the one time. Who knows, maybe dying takes longer than living. I mean, dying goes on even after you’re dead. You continue to die among the people that are still alive. That one time, maybe it’s only the end of dying. But before a person reaches that end, how many times do they have to die first. The truth is, father, with each person that dies in our life, those of us left behind die a little bit ourselves. The person goes away and they leave us their death, and we have to shoulder it. They just lie there rotting in their grave and they don’t know, they don’t feel that they’re rotting because they don’t know anything or feel anything at all, not even that they left someone behind. And even if there’s no one close to follow them in death, still those further from them die, their neighbors, people they know, even strangers, though the strangers might not even be aware of it. You see, father, it’s enough for us to be surrounded by constant dying for it to shape us. Or say a cow dies, or a horse drops dead, or a hawk gets in among the chicks. Those are our deaths as well. Maybe it’s from those deaths, when too many of them collect inside you, that your own death comes. I sometimes even have the feeling that I come from the dead. I seem to be alive, but it’s like death is just letting me be so I can bury the last ones. And as if that’s to be the end of something ending forever.”

“But what about the next world? Has it ever occurred to you that you’ll have to go on living there? Eternity’s promised to everyone, after all. Whether it’ll be good or bad, that God has to decide.”

“Has anyone ever come back from there, father, so we can believe something’s there? We only die in the one direction, not the opposite one.”

“And what about hell? Are you not afraid of hell?” he exclaimed in a bitter tone.

“What’s hell to me, father, after I’ve been on earth.”

His head drooped, he folded his hands across his stomach and froze like that without a word. I began to regret getting drawn into the discussion. Stach Sobieraj was supposed to give me a hand bringing in the potatoes. In return I was going to lend him my horse the next day. What could I tell him now? That I’d been at the priest’s all this time? What, were you making confession? No. Then what on earth were you up to?

He said in a voice that seemed to emerge from his thoughts:

“I knew you’d come one of these days. If not of your own free will, then because of the tomb. You have no idea how much I was looking forward to this moment. How long is it since I came to this parish. Half a century it’ll be. I can still remember you running around in short pants. Your hair was the color of flax. And I seem to remember that for the longest time you wouldn’t grow.”

“That wasn’t me. Maybe you’re thinking of Michał, father. Michał didn’t grow for a long time.”

“Come on, don’t try to wriggle out of it. I remember I used to make fun of you, so when do you finally plan to start growing, Pietruszka? See, Bąk’s already getting a mustache. And Sobieraj’s going to start chasing after the young ladies any day now. Now what’s the seventh commandment, Pietruszka? Do you know or don’t you? Tell him, Kasiński. Because Kasiński couldn’t contain himself, he knew. That Kasiński, he always knew everything. That’s why he rose so high. I can’t remember if the two of you sat side by side at the same desk or if he was right in front of you. But when it came to picking apples from my orchard, I remember, the two of you went together. Except you never wanted to even repeat after Kasiński. You’d stand there like a post, your eyes on the floor. By the end the whole class was prompting you, but you, it was like you’d set your mind on not knowing. And when Franciszek the sacristan and my dog Flaps caught you in the apple tree, remember? Kasiński got away, and you were left in the tree and you wouldn’t come down. Flaps was barking at you, Franciszek was shouting, get down this minute, you little monkey! In the end I heard the ruckus in the orchard and came out, I pleaded with you, threatened, come down, Pietruszka. Come down or in school I’ll make you recite the ten commandments and the seven deadly sins and the six articles of faith. And you’ll have to stand in the middle of the classroom, not just say them from your seat. Come down. In the end Franciszek had to go get a ladder and bring you down by force. He was so mad he was all set to thrash you then and there, he’d already taken his belt off, but I stopped him:

‘ “Beating’s wrong, Franciszek. He’ll come to confession tomorrow morning and confess his sins. You will come, won’t you, Pietruszka?’

‘ “He needs a good hiding,’ he said, angry at me as well. ‘He’ll come to confession and you’ll absolve him, father, is that it? He ought to go picking apples at Macisz’s place, that’s no church orchard! Macisz never so much as shows his face in church! On top of that he goes around saying there’s no God, that everything came from water. Heretic. See, the apple tree was bent over it had so much fruit, look at it now. And all you’ll do is give him three Hail Marys to say, for all those apples. You punish people more when they only sin in their thoughts. Twelve or more — and litanies, not Hail Marys. One litany is like five Hail Marys. What’s a Hail Mary? Hail Mary, Mother of God, that’s it. And sins in your thoughts are no sins at all, those people aren’t going to go stealing somebody else’s apples. You even make me bring apples to religious instruction, father. The last priest, Father Sierożyński, he had this oak ruler and he’d whack the little monsters on the hands till they swelled up and they weren’t even able to pick apples. But you, you tell me, go get a basketful of the raspberry apples by the fence there. I’ve got religious instruction tomorrow, let God be good to those little kids of mine if he can’t be good to everyone. And God is good, Franciszek is bad because he’s the one that has to chase after the little buggers. When one lot grows up, another bunch comes along, it never stops, your whole life chasing and minding. And they’re worse and worse behaved. Not one of them’s ever going to learn properly how to serve at mass. All they want to do is dress up in their surplices. But carrying the missal from left to right, for that they need a shove in the back from Franciszek, go on, now’s the moment. See, another broken branch.’

“I waited all morning for you back then,” he suddenly said in a resentful voice. His resentment seemed so old it was like it came from another world. Half a century is a long time. “I would’ve forgiven you. I even came much earlier to the church, though I hadn’t intended to take confession that day. Franciszek wasn’t there yet, and he usually came right after sunrise. I truly don’t know why that youthful confession of yours was so important to me. Over a handful of apples from my orchard. But God must have known. All I remember is that when I was already sitting in the confessional I suddenly felt crushed by the great silence in the church. I had the impression the church was built of that silence. And it was strange, but I had no desire to pray, though praying’s in a priest’s blood, it’s a matter of habit, anywhere and anytime. Perhaps I didn’t want the words of the rosary to give away the fact that I was there. Even to myself, even to God. I just leaned my head against the grille and surrendered to the silence that was still dark from the night. It was like I was curled up in its darkest corner, like I was hiding, not there. It was only in the depths of my soul I heard something like the soft sound of a barely smoldering hope that you would come, that any minute now in the silence I’d hear your nervous steps, like drops of water falling on the floor of the church. At the same time I was worried that God would see that hope in me, because it could be the shadow of a sin I didn’t know to confess. That hope has smoldered in me all my life now. Often afterwards I’d come much earlier to the church, just to sit in the confessional and listen to the silence of the dark building. Besides, when you’re in the confessional it’s as if it forces you to listen hard, and you listen even if you don’t hear anything, even when there’s nothing but complete silence on the other side of the grille you can still hear the whisper of people’s confessions. And still in your helplessness you never know how to tell sins from sufferings. At a certain moment the door would creak and I’d look out to see if it was you. But it would be Franciszek arriving.

‘ “You’re here early, father,’ he’d grunt. You could tell he was annoyed. And he’d set about sweeping the floor. Out of irritation he’d not sprinkle water on it and he’d end up brushing big dust clouds through the whole church. You could barely see him through the dust.

‘ “You’re spreading it around, Franciszek,’ I’d tell him off. ‘You need to sprinkle some water.’

‘ “You’re wasting your time, father! He’s not going to come!’ he’d call back, and carry on what he was doing. ‘He’d come for apples! You’d be better off taking a stroll and getting some fresh air instead of sitting in all this dust! The sun’s shining, the sparrows are chirping, it’ll do you good! A church needs to be properly swept so people don’t say afterward that it’s the house of God but it looks like a pigsty in there!’

‘ “Leave off with the sweeping, Franciszek! Come over here, I’ll confess you.’

‘ “Me?’ He was so taken aback he stopped sweeping. ‘My sins are old ones, father, and they’re always the same. You gave me confession just last week. This week all I’ve done is dig potatoes for my sister. What new sins could I have committed?’

‘ “We’ll always find something or other. Come on.’ It was ever so easy to comfort Franciszek. He was a simple, trustful soul, and he’d spent his whole life around the church. Though I may have been a bit too generous with the Kingdom of Heaven when I offered consolation. Perhaps I promised folks too much in return for everything they lacked, for all their wanderings and despair and fear. After all, I’ve been providing consolation here for so, so many years. The world passes by me, but also through me, time passes, people pass, and I keep on and on giving consolation. I sometimes wonder if I ever really succeeded in comforting anyone at all, if anyone fully believed me. I mean, how much do I actually know about what the Kingdom of Heaven is like, what hell is like? What do I actually know about where one person or another is going to end up, what his fate in eternity is going to be? Whether it won’t just be a continuation of his life here? Because if we take our souls from this world, maybe we take our fates as well? These are probably sinful thoughts that I’m admitting to you here, may God forgive me. But I sometimes think that the only wisdom life has left us is to be horrified at life. And despite that I offer comfort, because that’s the kind of service I chose to perform. Though when I realize that the people I’ve offered consolation to might be damning me and cursing me, I don’t know if God might not tell me I made the wrong choice. Of course, it’s said that whoever you absolve, their sins will be absolved, whoever you deny, they’ll be denied. But can I really be certain who deserves forgiveness and who doesn’t? What I’d most like to do is to absolve everyone, because I feel sorry for everyone. But do I have the right to use God’s mercy as my own mercy, even when I feel great pity toward someone? Does God also feel that pity? It’s true his mercy is without limit. But I have no idea how what I’m allowed to do relates to that boundlessness. I’m just a human among other humans, everything connects me to them. So I absolve them, perhaps in vain, I deny them absolution when I’m no longer able to absolve them, but I wander among these mysteries the way only humans can wander, not knowing in the painful way only humans can not know, taking other people’s sins on my own conscience and being sinful myself. But perhaps my calling isn’t to know but to offer comfort? It’s truly a hard way to earn your daily bread, spending your whole life comforting those without comfort, the helpless, the lost. Hard and so very bitter. You have to be one of them yourself, perhaps even the poorest of the poor, lost in uncertainty about this world and the next, maybe even as sinful as them, in order for the comfort you provide to be more than just words, for you both to share your comfort the way you share your fate. I sometimes wonder if in all the hopes I’ve tried to stir in human hearts, all those hopes of others, I wasn’t seeking consolation for myself. It’s just that the longer a person consoles others, the less he finds for himself, and the worse he’s prey to doubt. So you see, that’s why I’m a sorry kind of priest. Or perhaps it’s old age. Yes, it’s probably old age. All that’s left for me is solitude with God.” He lost himself in thought for a moment, but he livened up right away. “So who’s going to be building the tomb for you?”

“Some folks have suggested the Woźniaks,” I said. “But I was thinking of Chmiel.”

“Go with Chmiel,” he said abruptly. “The Woźniaks are bunglers.”

I knew they were bunglers, I only mentioned them so he’d recommend Chmiel. Because I wanted it to look like I was choosing Chmiel on his say-so, so maybe he’d charge me less for the plot. But he didn’t charge anything at all. When I asked him, so how much will that be, father? he just waved his hand.

“I hope that there at least you’ll be able to lie at peace. It won’t be anything.”

Truth was, I’d already gotten Chmiel to agree to do it. Right after I got back from the hospital, straight from the bus I went to see him. He lived just beyond the bus stop, so I thought to myself, I’ll swing by and find out now what I’m going to need for a tomb like that, and if he’d do it, and when. There was no sense putting it off, you put it off once and twice and after that it never gets done. But Chmiel was out. Only his missus was there.

“Goodness me, you’re back!” She seemed genuinely pleased to see me. “He’s gone to see his brother in Boleszyce. Why do you want to have a tomb built though? You’re not so old. Are you sick maybe?”

“No, I’m not sick. Tell him I’ll come on Sunday. Do you know how things are looking at my place?”

“Have you not been there?”

“I came here directly from the bus, I thought I’d swing by, talk to him on the way.”

“Well you can imagine, you’ll see for yourself in a minute.”

“How’s Michał?”

“Oh, I saw him by here one time, would have been a month or so ago, he was standing outside the co-op. I said to him, how are things, Michał, are you not missing Szymek? One of your cows is with Borzych, I believe, Talar took the other one. Can’t tell you who’s got your horse. They did say, but I don’t remember. There’s always so much to keep in your mind.”

Sołuch had my horse, Stach Kwiecień told me on the way. “They’ve starved it so bad you won’t recognize it. Theirs stayed in the stable while they used yours to do all the work. So are you going to be lame for the rest of your life?”

Aside from that he told me old Mrs. Waliszyn had died, that No-Hope Jasiu had killed himself on his motorcycle. And that I no longer had a dog, though he couldn’t say whether the dog had gotten free from its chain on its own, or whether someone had let it loose, you know how it is with dogs. Besides, I could get a new puppy from Mikus, his bitch had just pupped. He’d seen Michał, but when was it now, when was it? Oh yeah, he’d been sitting on the steps one time scraping carrots with a piece of glass. Those are good carrots, huh, Michał? You make sure you eat them, carrots give you more blood. Look, Miętus is coming, he might have seen him. Say, Miętus, you seen Szymek’s Michał by any chance?”

“Is he not at home?”

“I don’t know, I just got back from the hospital, I’m on my way from the bus.”

“He’s probably at home. Where else would he be. So you’re walking with sticks now, is it? Will you always have to from now on?”

“There’s not so much of that ‘always’ anymore, Walerian.”

“Maybe, maybe not, but it’ll feel like you’re doing more walking now in a day than you did before in a month. You could well have a long road ahead of you. Because me, I’m almost there.”

“You look okay.”

“Maybe on the outside, but inside I’m like that old willow that used to stand by the footbridge. I want to go see my sister in Zochcice one more time, then I think l’m going to die.”

Michał wasn’t at home. I went around the yard, the barn, the cattle sheds, I called, Michał! Michał! Everything was in ruins. I started digging around, I thought maybe there’d be a little grain left in one of the sacks, I could take it to the mill to get it ground and make some bread. Bread would be a beginning. But there was only one sack left, with bran. I’d had three before. There was rye in the first one, the second had wheat. I went into the orchard. Some of the trees had withered, others were looking crooked and sick, and all the earth there was trampled flat as a threshing floor. After that I went to the attic. Getting up there wasn’t actually that hard, though climbing down was worse. Then I sat and thought awhile in the main room, although there wasn’t really all that much to think about, either way I had to start from scratch. But before I did anything else I got up and headed out to the village to track Michał down.

I went around the nearest neighbors. One place after another was closed up, everyone was out in the fields because it was harvesttime. At the Kuśmiereks’ only Rysiek was in.

“Say, Rysiek, you haven’t seen Michał have you?”

“What Michał?” His hair was all matted and his eyes were red, you could tell he must have been drinking the day before. It was vacation time and he wasn’t going to his technical school.

“You know, my brother.”

“Oh, the old guy.”

“He’s not exactly old.”

“What do you mean not old? He’s got a beard down to here, like what’s-his-name, Lord Jesus, or that other one.”

“He’s got a beard? I didn’t know.”

“Yeah. Will you have a drink, uncle? My head’s splitting, plus father’s making me go help him in the fields. I told him, don’t sow rye. Turn the whole thing over to corn, and get into rearing livestock. Beef cattle, hogs — do you have any idea how much money you can make off those things? I could buy myself a motorbike. A car even.”

I went by Kałuża’s, two doors beyond Kuśmierek’s, but only his old lady was there, she was sitting outside on the bench feeding the chickens.

“You haven’t seen Michał have you, Mrs. Kałuża?”

“Oh, you’re back, thank heaven! We didn’t think you’d come back. Michał? I don’t go anywhere these days, sweetie. My legs won’t carry me anymore. Sometimes just down to the road. When did you get lame now? And in both legs as well? Our Irka’s got another little girl already, but that ne’er-do-well still won’t marry her, can you imagine. And her pretty as a picture. Never were such times.”

I remembered Mrs. Chmiel saying Borzych had my cow. Maybe Michał was at their place as well. But only the cow was there. Michał had used to visit, but he’d not been since spring. Only one time he’d come by there recently, Borzych’s wife had given him a bowl of cabbage, he’d wolfed the whole thing down in a flash so she gave him seconds, plus he ate like half a loaf of bread. Ask Koziara maybe. They were saying he’d helped Koziara bring his hay in. All right, let me have my cow. I put the halter around the cow’s neck, I’m leading it out of the cattle shed and Borzych pipes up, says he’s owed something.

“For what?”

“What do you mean, for what? For the cow. It’s been here a whole year, since Prażuch died.”

“You son of a bitch!” I was furious. “You must have milked it! I used to get two bucketfuls every day, how much cheese and cream and butter have you had from that?!”

I took the cow into my shed, tied it up, and went back down to the village to continue looking for Michał. Kwiatkowski was driving his wagon to go gather his sheaves.

“Have you seen Michał maybe?”

“Whoa.” He stopped his horse. “Michał?”

“You know, my brother.”

He took his cap off and scratched his bald head.

“I think I saw him somewhere or other. Hang on. Might it have been at the church? Or maybe at the shrine outside Myga’s place. Hop in, I’ll drive you over to Myga’s and you can ask him.”

At Myga’s no one was in, there was only his dog minding the door. I whacked it with my walking stick.

“They must be out in the fields!” shouted Kwiatkowski from the wagon. “Maybe Michał went with! Come on, let’s have a smoke!”

“Which fields, do you know?”

“Across the river, or the old manor fields. They’ve got rye both places. Too bad I’m not headed that way or I’d give you a ride. Best of all would be to wait till they get back in the evening, then they’ll tell you.”

Where was I supposed to go, across the river or to the manor fields? The manor was closer so I went there. As luck would have it, that was where they were mowing. Their rye looked good, it was just a little bit laid down on one side. Edek was mowing, Helka was gathering.

“God bring you happiness!”

“God give you thanks! Oh, Szymuś, you’re back? Just in time for the harvest. Your rye’s on the far side of Przykopa’s place, the farmers’ circle sowed it for you. Though how are you going to bring it in on those sticks, you poor thing? We’ll give you a hand once we’re done with ours.”

But Michał wasn’t with them and they didn’t know where he might be. He’d visited them a month or two before. He wasn’t hungry, he just wanted a drink of whey. He helped them do their threshing. They didn’t make him, he did it of his own free will. He’s a strong one, he is, Edek could barely keep up with bringing him hay. They told him to come for dinner the next day but he didn’t show up. Maybe go ask the Pająks. Mrs. Pająk sometimes used to take him something to eat after he stuck a pitchfork in his foot last year. From the ankle down to here, it almost went right through. He was bleeding so bad they couldn’t stop it, till in the end Pająk poured spirit on it and dressed it. He’d been going around the sheaves in the farmyard sticking a pitchfork in them like he was looking for something. One time Mrs. Pająk swept your place out and cleaned up in there, and she washed all his clothes. Mrs. Błach met her when she was rinsing them down at the river. Apparently they were crawling with lice. She changed his bedding, and she gave him one of Pająk’s old shirts and a pair of pants. And Pająk went there every day and changed the dressing. There are some good people in this world.”

“I won’t bother you any more. I’ll go down to the road, see if someone’s passing in a wagon and they can give me a ride.”

“Come visit sometime.”

But no one came along. My right leg was hurting and I had to sit down, take a rest, I rubbed it a bit. It was only when I got close to the village that Kudła came by. Can I get a ride from you? Hop on. Even a short way helps. No, he hadn’t seen Michał or heard where he could be. He lives beyond the mill, it’s kind of outside the village, all he knows is when his old lady goes down the store and hears this and that. They do have a radio, but it broke and now it’s just been sitting there silent for a year or more. The Siudaks’ kid promised to come fix it, but he’s hard to get ahold of, and when you do meet him he scratches himself on the back of the head and all he’ll say is, yeah, I’ll try and call by sometime, I will. You had to go build your house so far away, if you were closer I might come sooner. Now it’s harvesttime, the missus doesn’t have the time to listen to what all they’re talking about. Besides, you won’t learn the truth, but it’s nice to at least have a bit of a gab.”

“Pull up here, by the shrine, I’ll swing by Florek Zawada’s.”

Florek and I had sat next to each other at school, then the whole time we were young men we’d gone out on the make together, gone to dances, we’d been in the fire brigade together, so I figured he’d probably know something. He’d visited me a couple of times in the hospital and he always brought something, cigarettes, a cake, another time some sausage and a bottle of vodka, and each time he’d say, what are you worried about, what are you worried about. Michał’s not gonna die. Concentrate on getting out of here. He was pleased to see me, we exchanged kisses and he clapped me on the back, commiserated about my walking sticks, told me who had my horse, who had my cows, he wanted to share a bottle with me. His Magda tried to get me to stay for dinner, though they’d both just gotten back from the fields when I arrived. But where Michał was they didn’t know. He’d been there the previous Sunday. They’d given him dinner, he ate it and stayed awhile, but he didn’t come again after that. They even wanted him to stop with them. They said, stay here, Michał, we have to go get the harvest in, you can mind the place for us. You don’t need to keep going from one house to another. Maybe you should try Żmuda the barber, he cuts people’s hair, shaves them, he knows more. Plus his window looks out onto the road, he can always see who’s coming along, which way they’re headed. Us, these days we’re in the fields all day long. I think he was supposed to cut Michał’s hair and give him a shave, the district ordered it. Someone was saying about it, you remember who it was, Magda?”

I went by Zmuda’s. So you’re back, Mr. Szymek? How are things? Are you always gonna have to be like that? No, it’s true, I had instructions from the district administration to cut your brother’s hair and give him a shave. Someone brought it up at a meeting, that it reflected badly on the village. It was embarrassing that someone should go without being looked after. But you understand yourself, Mr. Szymek, I’m not going to plonk him down in the chair by force. Getting your hair cut, having a shave, those are matters of free will, so to speak. If someone wants to, be my guest. Just like they ask for it to be shorter, longer, crew cut, down to the skin, sideburns straight down or angled, cut wet or dry, would you like aftershave. By all means. I don’t impose myself on anyone. If they bring him here and sit him down I’ll cut his hair and shave him like anyone else. Whenever he walked past I’d run out, Mr. Michał! Mr. Michał! But I never managed to get him to come in. Maybe now that you’re back. By all means. I’m here.”

Zdun came by. Hey there, Zdun, you haven’t seen my brother Michał anywhere have you? Let me see, your brother? Has he gone somewhere? Well, yeah. If he’s gone then he’ll come back. But what’s up with your legs there? You fall off a ladder?

I went to see Fularski. They don’t have any land, they gave everything to their sons-in-law, all that was left was the orchard and the beehives out among the trees. So they were probably home and they might know where Michał was. But they didn’t. He came by one time, but it was last year, Fularski was fumigating his bees. He came up and stood right by one of the hives. Step away or the bees’ll sting you! He didn’t move. The bees were crawling all over him and he didn’t do a thing. Either he didn’t feel anything, or they didn’t sting him. Because you should know that bees, they can tell a good person from a bad person. The bad person they’ll sting to pieces, the good one, they’ll crawl around all over him and not one of them will sting him. Go try Wrona or Maciejka maybe, they live closer to you and they’re more likely to know something, we’re right at the edge of the village.

Wrona said yeah, he’d met him a couple of times. He was walking through the village. But where was he going? He didn’t want to ask, because why would you ask someone where they were going. If someone’s walking then they’re going somewhere, they know best of all where, it’s not necessary for everyone else to find out.

My legs wouldn’t carry me any farther. The right one felt like it had a nail stuck in it, the pain was shooting all the way up to my armpit. I could barely put weight on it, so I mostly just dragged it along the ground. My hands were swollen from the sticks. I thought I’d go by Wojtek Kapustka’s. It was unlikely Michał was there, but theirs was the closest house. Oh, you’re back, they’d say, and I’d at least sit and rest up awhile, get a drink of water, because my throat was dry. But as if out of spite they weren’t yet back from the fields. The only person there was their boy, he was bringing in the cows. I asked him, you haven’t seen my brother Michał have you? Guy with a beard down to here? He looked at me like I was trying to strangle him and didn’t say a word. Was he a mute or something? He’d been able to speak when he was little. So what grade are you in these days, Iruś? Still not a word.

His grandfather appeared out of the barn all covered in chaff and straw. Michał? I was looking for eggs, cause those damn chickens, they lay them and you can’t find them afterwards. They lay them in the nettles, under the raspberry bushes, then later that dragon of a daughter-in-law of mine says I stole them and sold them to buy cigarettes. I don’t even smoke, hand to God I’ve not smoked these fifty years. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t sleep nights, so I quit. Plus, all this used to be mine. Mine, not hers, damn outsider. I could throw eggs at the fence, at the barn if I wanted. It was mine, as God’s my witness. He was an important guy, that brother of yours. I saw him, but way back when. He came here once in this big black limousine, I remember that. Big important fellow, but he still recognized me. Shook my hand. Asked how much I got out of the land reform. If things were fair now. Two and a half acres, Michał. Other people got eight, ten. It’s hot, he could have gone down to the river. Look, Kulawik’s coming up the road. Ask him. Hey, Sylwester, you’ve not seen Michał anywhere have you? Szymek’s brother?

Michał? Oh, your brother, Szymek. So you’re back. Praise the Lord. And you still have your legs, they didn’t take them off. Thank God. I saw him standing in the window one day, be a week or two ago. I was on my way to the co-op, he was standing there just watching the world go by, it looked like. I was going to ask him, how are things, Michał? But how could I ask through the glass. Besides, he was looking in sort of a funny way, maybe he wasn’t watching the world. Go try Wojcio Zadrożny. One time in the pub he said he’d seen him at Macała’s place, he was cutting the tops off beets. We were having a beer.

Zadrożny got all mad and started swearing and fuming, he hadn’t said anything of the kind, Kulawik had gotten it all mixed up. Maybe Mielczarek had told him. Besides, you cut beet tops in the fall, it’s summer now. He wouldn’t even have remembered from last fall till now. That time in the pub there were twenty guys or more, not just him. And beer, he could swear he hadn’t been drinking beer, he didn’t even like beer. He drank lemonade. He’d been talking about how they needed a new director of the district administration, because the one we had now had been doing it for too long, and he was the biggest crook. That’s what we were all talking about. But how could he be replaced? Everyone was thinking about how to do it, and saying their ideas. In the end one of them upped and stood us a bottle, they said that without vodka it was even less clear how to get the job done. Then another bottle. Then everyone stood us a bottle, so how could he remember if Michał had been cutting beet tops at Macała’s. Once we saw him here, we were on our way back from church, when was that? Zośka, you remember by any chance when that was? Back in May. May, that’s right, because we were surprised it was still May and he was barefoot already. Why don’t you have any shoes on, Michał? It’s only May, the ground’s still cold.

I went out onto the road, but I had no idea where to turn next. Maybe I should try Macała? But I see Dereń coming along. You’ve had more than your fair share of suffering for your sins, you poor guy! Was Michał at your place maybe? If not today then yesterday or the day before? If you want the truth, he wasn’t. And I’ll tell you another thing, he’s a stubborn bastard, even if he is your brother. One time in the winter I went to see him, the missus made me go over there and check he wasn’t sick in bed, there was a frost like you wouldn’t believe. And if I’m to be honest with you, that place of yours was like an animal’s den. The windows looked like someone had put lime on them, it was freezing cold in there. And he’s sitting on the bench blowing on his hands. Do you not want to come over to our place, Michał, I say, you could get warm, have a hot meal. Do you think he came? No. I tell you one thing, you’re gonna find it hard to mow or do the plowing with those legs of yours. People were saying they were going to amputate one of them. But I see you got both of them. You’ll need to get some hired help. You any idea what they’re asking for day work these days? And it’s hard to find anyone. They’d rather go work in the factories. Look, Mrs. Antosz is coming. Her head’s all messed up these days, but what does it hurt to ask, sometimes fools know better.

Have you seen my brother Michał? Why, have you lost him? You should keep a better eye on him. I’ve been gone two years. If it’s two years then you’ll not likely find him. Dear Lord, the folks that have died these last two years. Jadwisia Oko? Wasn’t a moment ago the two of us were little girls scattering flowers on Corpus Christi. I remember she had these pinker-than-pink ribbons in her hair. And there you have it, she’s gone. What’s up with your legs there? Nothing really. I just need to walk with sticks. You look like those guys on stilts. It is more comfortable that way? Yes, it is. God bless.

Szymek, you’re back! Stach Sobieraj came running out of his house when he saw me through the window standing by his gate. We were going to come visit you Sunday! Tereska was gonna kill a chicken, make you some soup! Here, come back up the house. So here you are. I was even going to bring a bottle. We didn’t think you’d be back till the fall. Sit down, tell me how things went there. Maybe another time, Stach, right now I have to go look for Michał. I can see he’s not at your place. He was here, he’s come by from time to time, quite often actually, he’d always eat something and sit awhile. One time he spent the whole day chopping wood. We didn’t tell him to, he did it of his own accord. He took the ax, it happened to be lying by the chopping block. Have you been to Borzych’s? He’s got your cow. I was there, the cow’s back in my shed already. Then try Zadrożny. I’ve been there. Maybe Kapustka. Been there too. Tell you who’s most likely to know, Żmuda the barber. He cuts folks’ hair, does shaves. I’ve been there as well. Oh well, I’ll just keep looking. Swing by maybe Sunday, we’ll have a drink to celebrate you coming back.

Franek Duda drove by in his wagon bringing sheaves from the fields. You haven’t seen my Michał anywhere have you, Franek? What, is he missing? Yeah. I’m telling you, pal, right now even neighbors don’t see each other. Everyone’s in the fields, they’re mowing, gathering, they leave before dawn and don’t get back till it’s dark again. He might be out in the fields with someone and you’ll never find him here. Giddyup! Hang on a minute. Whoa! I think I might have seen him. It would’ve been last week, I was going over to the pub for a beer, he was sitting under an ash tree at the Malec place rocking a stroller. Their girl Elka had a baby. Go try them.

I hobbled over to the Malecs’ place, Elka Malec was actually there, she was giving her baby the breast. You had a baby, Elka? Boy or girl? A boy. When did you get back, uncle? Mama cried when she heard you were going to lose your legs. She was beside herself. She kept saying, dear Lord, dear Lord, a man like that. Does he have a name? It’s Miruś, Mirosław. That’s what Zenek wanted to christen him. Because my dad was all, call him Walenty. But that’s no kind of name for a child. Miruś, Miruś, you’re a pretty little boy. I heard Michał was here, Franek Duda told me, I’m looking for him. Yes, he was, just yesterday. He’s been here a lot. He often looked after Miruś when I had an errand to run. He’d take him out in the stroller, rock him. One time they went all the way down to the river, I couldn’t find them. They say he can’t talk, uncle. But he talked to Miruś.

I went out onto the road. I thought, I’ll knock my sticks on Malec’s ash tree, maybe it’ll tell me. Goddammit! Evidently I was going to have to go from house to house. Only, in which direction? Toward the co-op? Or was it better to go toward the mill? No, the co-op. The mill. Co-op. Mill. It was like the road had a hundred directions. I called by Bąk’s. They’d not seen him. I went to Sójka’s. They hadn’t seen him. Sobczyński’s. There was no one in and the place was padlocked. I was shocked. They’d padlock the door when they were out working in the fields? No one ever used to lock their door. Unless these days you need to. At Madej’s I shouted, Walek! Walek! Because since they built their new house you have to go up some steps, and by this point I could barely walk on the level. I even thought I saw a curtain twitch in the window, either that or my eyes were starting to play up.

Heat poured down from the sky, and the earth was hot underfoot. I could feel it, not just in my feet and through the sticks, but even up under my ribs. My back was in agony. I’d never had any problems with my back before. I could lift all I wanted, walk anywhere, didn’t feel a thing. I needed to rest up at least a short while.

“Afternoon, Seweryn!” Old Grabiec was sitting on the bench outside his house. I’d been sure he was dead already. I don’t know where I got the idea. It was another matter that at his age he could have been dead three times over. Perhaps someone told me in the hospital. “I’ll join you for a minute.”

“Help yourself, there’s room enough for the both of us. And who are you?”

“Don’t you know me? It’s Szymek Pietruszka.”

“Right, Szymek. My eyes are going dark, son, I can only half see. But now I see you. You used to be quite the fighter at the dances, you put on a show. And you used to like to drink. Are you coming from the fields?”

“No, I’m looking for my brother Michał. He’s gone off somewhere.”

“Doesn’t he know where he’s gone?”

“He probably does, but in his own way.”

“How else is he supposed to know? Everyone knows in their own way. Is he older than you or younger?”

“Older.”

“Then he’ll know better than you. Are your folks still alive?”

“No, they died a long time ago.”

“They did right. There’s no sense living too long. One war for one life, then a person should move on. Not like me, four of them. Were you in a war as well?”

“I was. But that was a while back.”

“I thought you might have been, cause you’ve got walking sticks.”

“That’s not from the war. It was on the road.”

“You fell off a wagonload of sheaves.”

“Kind of.”

“There’s no point taking too many at one go. The wagon can rock. And it’s harder for the horse. It’s better to make two trips. Tell me now, is it true about them Sputniks?”

“Well, they’re flying up there, it must be.”

“I guess, though who’s actually seen them. You can see the stars on a clear night. And the dogs would bark.”

“It’s too high for dogs.”

“The moon’s even higher, and they bark at that. Have you heard anything about a war, maybe? Are they getting ready to fight?”

“Why are you so interested in war? It’s not been that long since the last one.”

“Because the powers that be have to go head-to-head. Otherwise they wouldn’t be powers. At least I might get out of paying my taxes. It’s got to the point I owe thousands, dammit. They keep adding penalties. And I’ve got nothing.”

“No one does, Seweryn. One harvest goes well, then the next one rots. How’s your grain been?”

“Like everyone else’s.”

“Kernels big?”

“Neither big nor small.”

“Why aren’t you mowing yet?”

“I’m waiting for one of them to bring their wagon.”

“What did you sow?”

“Nothing. What’s the point in sowing when there’s no one to get the harvest in.”

“Doesn’t it pain you that the land’s just lying there?”

“Why should it pain me. Pain doesn’t feel pain. The world was there, then it went away. You have to accept it.”

“Get your scythes! Get your scythes! Get out into the fields! Another day or two and the weather might turn.” Gula had appeared in front of us, his missus had sent him out to buy salt for their dinner and he was on his way back from the co-op.

“Say, Marian, you haven’t seen my Michał anywhere, have you?” I was only asking, because I knew he wouldn’t know. And Gula just casually says:

“Yeah, he’s mucking out at Skobel’s place.”

“Mucking out at Skobel’s?” I jumped up and grabbed my walking sticks. “Damn, and here I am looking all over the village for him!”

“What were you looking for him for? You should have just gone straight to Skobel’s.”

Luckily Skobel’s place wasn’t far, he lived right the other side of the co-op, it was just a bit downhill, closer to the river. It would never have occurred to me to go ask Skobel if Michał was there. No one ever went to Skobel’s even to borrow a whetstone for a scythe, or leaven for bread, base for żurek, you wouldn’t borrow his plow or wagon or horse, not to mention money. I walk into his yard and his dog comes out at me, it won’t let me take a step farther, just stands there yapping at me. I whacked it on the back with my stick like it was Skobel himself. Get lost, you little sod! It yelped and slunk back. Skobel came out of the barn.

“What’s the dog ever done to you?”

“Where’s Michał?”

“What are you all upset about? You’re supposed to say, Christ be praised, when you go visiting someone. He’s in the cattle shed, he’s mucking out.”

I hurried into the shed and I saw Michał, my brother, barefoot, up to his ankles in manure, working a pitchfork like he was Skobel’s farmhand. He was skin and bones. His beard reached his chest, his hair was all the way down his back. I barely recognized the brand-new dark blue suit with white stripes that I’d bought him the Easter before I went into the hospital. Thirty-five hundred zlotys it cost me. And it looked like he was wearing the same cherry-red tie with white dots I’d gotten him at the same time, since he had something tied around his neck. But I was just guessing, because he was covered in filth from head to foot like some animal.

“Michał! It’s me, Szymek!”

He looked in my direction, but only as if to say, who’s blocking the light in the doorway there, then he lowered his eyes again and dug the pitchfork back into the manure.

“You bastard, Skobel! How you could let him do the mucking out? A guy like him!”

“Keep your shirt on. You think this is the old days? Not anymore, things are different now. Was I supposed to feed him for free? Wasn’t for me, he’d have starved to death. Everyone else is only good for feeling sorry. But looking after him, feeding him, all of a sudden they don’t feel so sorry anymore. Let God look after him. One time I found him here in the orchard, he’s eating green plums.”

“So in return for a bowlful of food you make him your farm boy! You’re a piece of work! And him, do you know who he was?”

“Everyone knows. Like people don’t talk? But they forget when someone’s down on their luck.”

“People don’t know squat!”

“People know everything!”

“Michał!” I snatched the pitchfork from his hands. “Home now! Come on, on the double! You miserable shit, Skobel, I’d like to give you a taste of this!” I jammed the pitchfork in the ground inches from his feet, it made him blanch. I pushed Michał out ahead of me.

He walked in front obediently, with me barely limping along behind. Maybe he thought another farmer was taking him to a new job. He never asked questions about who and where, you could lead him anyplace. They could have led him to his death and he never would have even asked, why? It was like there was nothing inside him except the fact that he was walking. I was seething with anger. It was like someone had taken a big stick and stirred me up inside all the way to the bottom, like a pot filled with bubbling kasha. I felt I needed to do something to make him understand that I was back, that I was his brother, that I was taking him home and no Skobel or Macała or anyone else would ever take him again to tie up sheaves or cut beet tops or muck out the cattle shed.

“Hurry up.” I prodded him in the back with one of my sticks, though I couldn’t go any faster myself. My legs were fit to drop off, my hands were wet and stinging from blisters that had burst.

We came into the house.

“This is your home,” I said. “Sit down.”

I went to the cattle shed and took the halter from around the cow’s neck. It was too long so I folded it in four. I returned to the house. He was sitting there like I’d told him to, resting his forehead on his hands and staring at his feet. He stank so bad the whole place smelled of Skobel’s manure. I stood at arm’s length from him. I put the right-hand stick aside and leaned on the left one alone, broad and firm, so as not to lose my balance.

“I have to beat you,” I said, and with all my strength I struck him on the back with the folded-up halter. I did it so hard it made me stagger. He didn’t so much as flinch, or look to see who was hitting him or why. All that happened was a cloud of dust went up from him and there was an even stronger smell of manure. I had to straighten myself because the stick had slipped in my hand, then I whacked him again, and again, and one more time. He didn’t react. Though he’d only have had to give me a slight push and I would have gone crashing to the floor. He was still a strapping guy just the same, even though he was underweight, and I was leaning on a single walking stick with a red-raw, swollen hand, and on a pair of exhausted crippled legs, and I had nothing to prop myself up with. Plus, with every blow the halter shook me like a reed in the wind, when for a beating like that you need to be planted foursquare like a table, your feet rooted to the ground, and the ground afraid to shift beneath you. Then you can give a beating. Not just with the halter but with your whole body, with all your pain, your rage. Then you could even make a rock shed tears. Though it would’ve been easier to make a rock cry than him. All of a sudden he took his head from his hands, put his palms on his knees and leaned forward, like he was trying to make his back as broad as possible for the beating. I started beating that back, gathering myself for every blow like I was passing sacks of grain to be put on the wagon. My whole body twisted with each swing. The rage grew within me. It would have been enough for a dozen halters. I felt it around me even, like the room was furious along with me, the whole house, the cattle shed, the barn, the farmyard, the whole village, the land. It was the rage helped me forget that me, a brother, I was beating my own brother. And what was I beating him for? Truth was, I didn’t really know, and I don’t think I ever will. Only he knew. But not the slightest murmur passed his lips. His beaten body didn’t even groan of its own accord, the way bodies do when they’re being beaten. Even a tree, if you hit it it’ll groan, a rock will make a sound. But here, only the halter moaned. The halter was doubled up with pain. If it could have, it probably would have leaped at me and at the very least stayed my hand to stop me beating any more. Or it would have wrapped itself around my neck like a snake and hung me from the ceiling.

I was breathless. I felt like I’d climbed a high mountain on those crippled legs of mine. I felt I was stopping. My arm weakened and the halter was just flopping from my back to his. All at once the stick, which for a long time had been shaking under me like a willow branch, fell out of my hand when I took another swipe. I staggered so bad I would have fallen over if I hadn’t grabbed the side of the table at the last moment. My first reaction was to bend over and pick up the stick. But I was stopped by a terrible pain in my right knee. I broke out in a cold sweat, and something popped in my lower back. Ever so slowly, one hand holding on to the table, the other reaching toward the floor like a rake, I bent over farther and farther. Finally I got ahold of it. Except that when I straightened up, I got dizzy. I barely made it to the bench, and I dropped down exhausted, like I’d just come back from the fields after a whole day bringing in the harvest.

“You’re not to muck out at Skobel’s ever again,” I said.

He sat there with his head drooping on his chest and his hands on his knees, like he hadn’t even noticed I’d stopped beating him. From outside there was a constant creaking of wagons, everyone was bringing in the harvest. By now almost everyone had rubber tires on their wagons, and you couldn’t hear them the way you used to with iron rims. Now you could hear the horses more. They were walking slowly, like they were carrying the wagons on their backs.

I suddenly wished that one of the neighbors would come by, someone from the village. Or a stranger. I had no business with anyone, nor anyone with me. But I wanted someone to come, maybe it would be on his way, or he was coming home from the fields and he heard I was back. Or just like that, because he didn’t have anyone else to visit. Kuś, or Prażuch, they’d have come for sure if they’d still been alive. Because the ones that were dead were the ones you could most rely on. I even started listening to see if I couldn’t hear steps in the passage. Maybe the door handle would rattle. The door would open. Someone would stand at the threshold, they’d say, Christ be praised, or just, good afternoon.

“What are you sitting like that for, like you were perched on a field boundary outside? Have you just come in from the fields, or did someone die?”

“Neither the one nor the other. I was just giving Michał a beating. With this halter, see?”

“A beating? A brother giving a brother a beating? You’re grown up, the both of you. Brothers mostly only fight when they’re young.”

And maybe it was from waiting in vain that it occurred to me to give him a bath. I’ll cut his hair and give him a shave, then someone can come. I got up from the bench. I put the walking sticks in my raw hands. It stung all the way to my elbows. I could barely stay on my feet.

“You stay put,” I said. “I’m going to give you a bath.” I shuffled off to find a bathtub. Luckily they had one at the Pająks’, so I didn’t have to go far. Pająk even brought it to the house for me. He set it in the middle of the room and wedged it in place with laths so it wouldn’t wobble. Then he brought two bucketfuls of water from the spring, filled some pots, and put them on to heat.

“People should help each other in their misfortune. You helped me in my bad hour. Remember the oration you made at our Włodziu’s funeral?”

“How long ago was that, Bronisław. I’m amazed you still remember.”

“Course I remember, I’ll remember till the day I die. The priest said what he had to to be over and done with it. All he was thinking about was how to get back home to the presbytery soon as he could, he was stamping his feet. It made no difference to him whether it was our Włodziu or somebody else. Son of a bitch didn’t even say he’d been blown up by a mine, it looked like he’d just died of typhus or dysentery. Don’t go there, Włodziu, I said to him, the sappers’ll come and clear the mines from our land. But no, off he went. And you, you didn’t care that there was a frost, though it was so cold everyone’s tears froze. You didn’t miss anything out, you said he was a good child, he respected his parents, and he was like a grain of wheat sprouting from the seed, but that he never grew to be a spike. Because it was like someone cut him down deliberately with a willow switch. You hear, mother, I said to my old lady, you hear what kind of son we had? And God took him from us.”

I gathered a few sticks around the yard and lit the stove. The fire took, and right away it was like something came to life in the house. Soon steam started rising from the pots.

“Take your clothes off,” I said. I set a chair between the stove and the bathtub. I leaned with all my weight on the stove. I put one pot first on the chair, then from the chair onto the ground right next to the tub, and only then I leaned over and poured it out. My face covered with condensation from the steam. I added a little cold water from the bucket. “Come on, it’ll get cold. Take your clothes off.”

He didn’t respond, he just sat there. As best I could I undressed him with one hand, because I had to hold on to the table with the other one. Luckily he didn’t resist. He still stank so bad from Skobel’s manure it stung my nose. It was only when I pulled off his underwear that he suddenly curled up and started shivering, like he was ashamed of being naked.

“There’s no need to be embarrassed in front of me,” I said. “I’m your brother. There’s no one here but you and me. Pająk went home. Come on.” I took him by the hand and led him to the tub. He stood there, hesitating. “Don’t be afraid, it’s only water,” I said.

He squeezed my hand and wouldn’t let go, as if I was leading him into a deep pool, though it barely came up to his ankles. As he stood in the tub he reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t figure out who. Maybe it was the hair falling down his back and the beard that reached down to his waist. He was so skinny his bones almost poked through his skin, and also the skin hung from him the way snow sometimes hangs from a branch when there’s a thaw. His back was covered in blue welts from where I’d beaten him. The hair between his legs was gray as a mouse, though on his head he only had the odd gray hair, same with his beard. Usually your private parts are the last to go gray.

“Sit down,” I said. “First of all I’m going to soap you up.”

I’d brought myself a piece of soap from the hospital. Someone had left it in the washroom and I took it, like I had a feeling it’d come in handy. I moved the chair up to the tub, sat down, and poured water all over him out of a mug so he’d soak a bit. Then I lathered up some soap in my hands. And carefully, so as not to hurt him, I soaped up his back, his chest, his arms, everything. His skin was twitching like a rabbit’s when you stroke it. I could feel the trembling pass into me as well, though I was barely touching him, more with the lather than with my hands.

“Stop shivering,” I said. “I’m not doing anything bad to you. I’m washing you. You always liked to get washed. Remember when mother would give us a bath for Christmas or Easter, you’d never want to get out of the water? While me, father would sometimes have to chase me into the tub with his belt because I’d be pretending to still be asleep. Or the water would be too hot for me, or the soap got in my eyes. Or when we’d go down to the river to wash, remember? First you’d soap my back, then I’d do yours. Then we’d scrub our feet with a rock or with sand. When we didn’t feel like washing we’d scare each other with ghost stories. Mostly I’d scare you. Look, Michał, there’s something standing over there. See, there by that willow tree. It’s white, like it’s dressed in a sheet. It’s a ghost! And we’d take to our heels. Me first, you behind. Mother and father would say, what’s happened? We saw a ghost! You’re just trying to get out of bathing, these boys are a cross to bear! Mother was always like that. And you’re going to get into bed with those dirty feet? If it was down by the river it must have been the Bartosz girl’s ghost, father would say. He was always more likely to believe us. You should have said to it, in the name of the Father and the Son, what is it your soul needs? The Bartosz girl wouldn’t have done anything to hurt you. She used to like going down to the river when she was still alive, seems she still does now. She’d sit on the bank and stare at the water. What on earth do you see out there, Agata, I asked her one time, I’d gone to fetch water from the spring. Oh, it’s always something different, Józef, always something different. Though what could she see there, sand, mud, rocks, and the river flowing.”

I took the chair and moved to the other side of the tub, because it was hard for me to reach all of him from the one place.

“Do you remember that time we went swimming by Błach’s place on Saint John’s Day at the end of June? Because swimming would start on Saint John’s Day always. That’s the day Saint John blesses the rivers. Though I often used to go swimming before Saint John’s Day, even in May sometimes. It was so hot that year the leaves were curling up. There were hordes of boys and girls, more bodies than water. Even the willows along the bank were wet from all the splashing. Fredek Zięba brought their horse down, as many of us as could fit climbed up on it, and it was giddyup! into the water. There were kids hanging from its neck, clinging to its tail. Shouts and screams, you’d think the heavens were coming down. But you were sitting on the bank, by the osier bushes, and you were trying to stop yourself from crying, because you couldn’t swim. I kept trying to persuade you, come on, Michał, you’ll learn, hold on to the horse’s tail and kick your feet as hard as you can. Come on! Everyone was encouraging you. You should just jump in headfirst, Michał! Put your hands together like you’re praying, stretch them out in front of you, and jump! Go for it! Or, let’s throw him in, that’s the fastest way to learn! Let’s get him! You ran away, we chased after you. We caught up with you in Mrs. Machała’s field, you slipped and fell in a furrow. You fought, spat, bit our hands. But there were four of us. We carried you down to the river, swung you by the arms and legs, and boom! The splash was so big we got soaked. Wave your arms, Michał! Wave your arms and legs! But you, as if to spite us you didn’t move either your arms or your legs, and you went straight to the bottom. I had to dive in and fish you out. You’d swallowed so much water you couldn’t catch your breath, and afterwards you had hiccups for the longest time. Later on father gave me the belt for trying to drown you. But that was the quickest way to learn! That’s how everyone was taught, they’d take your arms and legs and wham! Save yourself or you’ll drown! Me, they even threw me from a willow tree so it’d be from even higher. And that was exactly the right thing for me. When I was in the resistance, one time I had to jump from a bridge. I was being chased from behind, ahead of me the road was blocked, there wasn’t any other way out.”

I got up and added more hot water from the pot. I stirred it around his body.

“And remember before the war when you came home one time wearing a hat? You stood on the doorstep, it was like you were embarrassed about having the hat on. And we just stared at you. Is it Michał or isn’t it? You quickly pulled it off, but father says, put it back on, let me take a look. Actually it looks good on you, it’s just you don’t look like yourself. It cost a lot? Mother says, you shouldn’t have spent so much on a hat, son, you could have bought a whole suit for that much money. It was a Sunday. Father wanted us to go take a walk through the village, maybe we’d bump into the priest. He’s always kind of asking after you. But we were young men, the two of us, what did we care about the priest, plus it was so hot, so I dragged you down to the river. The girls had grown into young ladies by then, and the river was filled to bursting. I stripped off my clothes and dove right in. You sat on the bank, in the shade of the bushes. Stefka Magiera swam up to you and tried to get you to come in, won’t you get undressed, Michał? It’s hot as anything, take your clothes off and join us. Her breasts looked like they’d been drinking the water in the river. You look nice in that hat. Will you be staying for long? The Magieras thought you’d marry her. But you wouldn’t have been happy. During the war she hooked up with this one guy that used to come buy flour, and she went off with him. Left her man and her baby. Michał! Michał! Come in and have a swim! Everyone was calling to you. In the end the guys actually got jealous. Leave him be! He must have the consumption. They’re not allowed to go swimming. Look, he went and bought himself a hat so he wouldn’t look like someone from the village! He looks like a tush behind a bush! One of them ran up from behind, snatched the hat off your head, and tossed it into the river. The whole mass of them jumped in after it. Someone scooped water up in it. Another one plopped it on his head and started swimming in it. I jumped in to fetch it back, but he threw it into the crowd. They pulled and tugged at it and grabbed it from each other. Stefka Magiera was so upset she started crying. You’re horrible! You’re horrible! she shouted. None of you’s ever going to have a hat like that! One guy dove down and got a rock from the river bottom. They put it in the hat so it would sink. In the end I managed to get it off them and I tossed it far downstream so I’d be the first to swim there and reach it. And I was. But Bolek Kuska jumped out onto the bank and got there before me. He grabbed the hat and ran even farther to where there was a shallow stretch. He went in and there, in the mud and sand and rocks, he started stomping the hat into the water. I beat him up so bad he couldn’t close his mouth for a month. He looked like he was smiling the whole time. I cut holes in his shirt and pants with my penknife, and I tossed his shoes into the river. Him and his brother Wicek came to our house afterwards with their old man to make a fuss, and I gave the old man a hiding as well. You, you didn’t do anything, you just watched them messing with your hat, then you got up and said, come on, Szymuś, let’s go. Leave them the hat, let them play.”

I got him up from the bathtub and dried him off. I didn’t have anything to put on him so for the moment I wrapped him in a sheet. Where I could I tied it, in other places I fastened it with safety pins. I managed to find three of them in the drawer of the sewing machine.

“Now I’m going to cut your hair and your beard.”

Turned out I still had the knack. I could cut hair and give a shave just like in the old days. Though there probably weren’t many people remembered I used to do it. Maybe just some of the older guys. But most of the old ones were already dead. Now the young people were the old ones. And after them the next young ones were already waiting to be old in their turn. They were younger and younger when their hair became speckled with gray, their foreheads got bare, and their faces started to sag and get furrows and pits. Though from day to day you couldn’t see old age passing across people. It was like old people had come to the village from somewhere else, while young folks had left and then come back when they were already old. It just sometimes seemed strange to me that they were the same people. But I guess they were.

I had to rest my backside against the table because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to stay in place. His hair was thick and strong, he had that from mother, like me. Because Antek and Stasiek got their hair from father, Stasiek was already almost completely bald, while Antek had bare patches that looked like holes in a thatched roof. I gave him a buzz cut, because his hair was crawling with lice. Then I washed his head.

“All right, now let’s eat.”

From the hospital I’d brought half a packet of tea, a little sugar, half a loaf of bread, a bit of cheese, and two pork chops. Jadzia the auxiliary had given it all to me as a parting gift. She came out into the hallway with me when I went to say goodbye.

“Here, take this.” She thrust a package into my hands. “You’re not going to go buying things at the store right away, but you’ll need to eat when you get home.”

I felt silly, because I’d not told her that much about home and what I did tell her mostly wasn’t truth, the way you talk to a woman, or a dead person. I was even going to tell her they’d probably have dinner waiting for me. I’d let them know I was coming home. But she knew I didn’t have anyone, so who could be waiting for me. Besides, she didn’t let me hesitate very long.

“Just take it. For your own good.” I wanted to kiss her hand, but she hid both of them behind her back. “You can’t go kissing an auxiliary’s hand, Mr. Szymek. You know what, come visit us sometime, if you’re here for the market or something. It was fun being around you. I had a good laugh. Because mostly people just die.”

I didn’t even tell her about Michał. All I said was that I have three brothers, that much I told her, and that all three of them are in the city. Besides, Antek and Stasiek she’d met when they came and visited a week or so after the accident. I’ve no idea how they found out, because I didn’t let them know. They were dressed up to the nines. Spanking new suits, shirts, ties. It actually made me feel good to have brothers like that. But after an hour I’d had enough of them, though we hadn’t seen each other for two years. They barely even asked if one leg or both had been run over, or how long I was going to be in there, then already they started arguing with me, trying to say it was my fault. Because instead of sowing rye and wheat I should have started an orchard, kept bees, or shifted to raising cattle like they’d kept telling me to. That way I wouldn’t have had to hurry before the rain and bring the crop in on a Sunday. Sunday’s for resting. Sitting at home with your wife and kids. Or if the weather’s good, going for a ride in the car, to the woods or down to the river. But I imagined I’d be forever young. This girl wasn’t right for me, that one wasn’t either, and there you have it. Luckily Jadzia came in and I introduced her to them, these are my brothers, Antek and Stasiek, this is Miss Jadzia the auxiliary.

“Mr. Szymek, he’s a trooper,” she said, like she sensed they were quarreling with me. “He’s in all kinds of pain, but he doesn’t breathe a word of complaint. He even likes to joke around.”

It was only then that they stopped. Though Stasiek evidently hadn’t had enough, because when she left he said:

“Or you should marry her. She works in a hospital, she’s used to hard work, she’d be able to help you in the fields as well.”

Dusk was gathering in the windows, it was getting dark in the room. We sat there drinking tea and eating bread and cheese. I’d left the chops for the next day. You could still hear wagons loaded with sheaves creaking on the road. Occasionally someone would shout, giddyup! Other times a horseshoe would scrape against a rock. On someone’s wagon the perch was rubbing against the bodywork. There was a squeak of axles that needed oiling, the rattle of traces against the shaft. I was waiting for him to at least ask:

“So where were you all this time?”

If he was a cat he’d have jumped up into my lap right away and nuzzled me like it hurt him not to be able to say a word in human language. If he’d been a dog he probably would have been straining at his chain, he’d be so pleased to see me back. Everyone that met me at the very least said, oh, you’re back. And here he was, my brother, and he wasn’t saying a thing.

“Did they tell you I was in the hospital?”

He lifted his mug to his lips and opened his eyes so wide they were round as little coins, but you could never have guessed anything from them. You couldn’t tell whether they were looking, thinking, or whether they just wanted to die and not know anything. Also, he was holding the mug in a kind of odd way, with only two fingers round the handle. I even checked to see if I was holding mine the same way. But I was holding it normally, with my whole hand round the middle. With his bread and cheese he broke it into crumbs in the palm of his hand and only then picked it up and ate it, like he was picking seeds out of a sunflower. Actually he’d always eaten differently than other folks. When we had żurek with potatoes in the morning, my spoon would be half potatoes and half soup, I could hardly stuff it in my mouth it was heaped so full. Him, he ate the potatoes and the soup separately, a tiny bit of potatoes and no more than a mouthful of liquid, on top of which he barely moved his jaws. That way he could scarcely eat his fill, and he was doing twice as much work with his hand. You eat so your belly will be full. It’s your belly that gives you strength. And strength lets you work. I sometimes asked him, when you eat like you do, does it taste better, does it make you fuller, or what? Tell me. Surely it isn’t a secret? Not that I wanted to learn how to eat that way, I was fine as I was. But I figured I could learn at least that much from him, because you can learn a lot from how someone eats.

Or when he cut himself a slice of bread, it was so thin you could see through it. And even if he was eating it without anything on it, he’d still always hold it flat on his spread fingers, as if it had slices of sausage on it that he didn’t want to drop. Or when he had an apple, he’d always first cut it into four equal-sized pieces, dig out the pips, peel the skin, and only then eat the pure white quarters. Or even when he drank water, you never heard a sound from his throat like thirsty people usually make.

But maybe over those two years I’d gotten unaccustomed to him. Now it was hard for me to go back to knowing that this old man in a white sheet was my brother Michał. Maybe he’d also forgotten we were brothers. What does that mean anyway, to be brothers? When we were kids I didn’t even like him that much. I preferred playing with other boys. He couldn’t swim, couldn’t shoot a catapult, couldn’t climb trees. When he crossed a stubble field barefoot he’d complain that it prickled. Whereas me and the other boys, we’d have races to see who could make it to the far edge of the field first. We’d even choose stubble that had been cut with a sickle instead of a scythe, because it pricked even more. Or where there were the most thistles growing in among the crops. It was usually on Waliszka’s fields or Boduch’s because their fields were long and thin like sausages. When you ran the length of a field like that your feet were covered in blood, but you wouldn’t dare let it hurt.

True, he was the best student of the four of us brothers. One time he even got a book as a prize for being the best in the school. They wrote on the book, For Michał Pietruszka for outstanding achievement and exemplary behavior, with gratitude also to his parents. It was because of the parents being mentioned that father often let him off working in the fields. When we went to church he’d give us one coin to give for the collection from the four of us, except Michał was the one who had to put it on the plate. When mother was carving up the chicken of a Sunday, father would supposedly make sure everyone got the same amount, but it would always turn out Michał had less, and father would tell her to at least give him the neck or the stomach as well. Michał could read his book late into the night and it was never a waste of oil. It was another matter that I didn’t like books. You had to read whatever they told you to at school, but that was all. I could never figure out why people read at all, it seemed a waste of time. Father would explain to me:

“You little monster, it’s so you can at least praise God with your reading.”

So one time I told him that when I grew up I wasn’t going to believe in God. Then I ran out of the house. I didn’t actually know what it meant to believe or not believe, I was just trying to needle him. The moment I stopped attending school, my books were thrown in the corner and I started going to dances. After the first dance father gave me a hiding. The same after the second one. After the third I grabbed a pitchfork, come on, father, just you try. That time he beat me with a chain off the wagon. I was covered in welts, mother had to dress them.

“What did you do this to him for?” she said tearfully. “Beating your own child like that, dear God in heaven!”

“He’s no child. He’s a bandit! He’ll throw you out of your own house in your old age.”

But Michał read. The years passed and he kept on reading. Then one day a distant cousin of mother’s came from the city, a tailor he was. Mother begged him to take Michał on, and he agreed. Let him at least learn tailoring, because what could he do here at home. Antek was already minding the cows, Stasiek looked after the geese. And there wasn’t so much land they couldn’t work it without him. Tailoring was a good trade, you’re sitting down, you have a roof over your head, and you can make your own clothes. There wasn’t any tailor in the village, so if he learned how to do it he could come back and be the tailor here. We could set up a room for him, maybe even buy a new sewing machine. For the moment he could use the one we already had.

“You won’t regret it, cousin. He’s a good boy, and he’ll be a good tailor. He doesn’t have a yen to go wandering every which way like the other boys. All he does is read books. We’ll make it up to you, in flour or with a chicken.”

“You know, being a priest would’ve been even better,” father said to back her up. “We were planning for him to be a priest. But we can’t afford it. Like you see, we still have three of them left at home. There won’t be enough land to go around. That way, we’d have one less mouth to feed.”

So off he went to mother’s cousin to learn to be a tailor. He was there three years or so. Every other Sunday, sometimes even every one, he’d come home. And for each harvest or potato digging. He’d always bring mother at the very least a reel of thread, some needles, cigarettes for father, candy for Antek and Stasiek, a bottle of beer for me. Except he got really close mouthed. He wouldn’t say anything about what things were like for him there, good or bad, whether they fed him properly, how the cousin’s wife treated him. Father would ask:

“So do you know how to make pants yet?”

He’d never give you a straight answer yes or no. He’d just shrug and you couldn’t tell if he knew or not.

“Being a tailor evidently takes as much learning as being a priest,” father would have to say in answer to his own question.

Each time he went back, mother would give him whatever she could so he wouldn’t arrive back at her cousin’s empty-handed. Flour, kasha, peas, a slab of bacon, some cheese, sometimes a chicken. And eggs, every one we had she kept for when Michał would come. Us, we ate any old stuff, boiled noodles on their own, kasha with milk, because everything else was for the cousin. Once I caught a jackrabbit in a snare, that went to the cousin as well. Oh, he’ll be so pleased. We’d never dried our plums before, but now we did, so we’d have something to send to the cousin. We’d had that cousin up to here. Stasiek was little and he didn’t yet understand anything, one day he asked if mother’s cousin was a dragon, since he needed to eat so much. Even father would let out a sigh every now and then and say, a priest would have been better. But mother would just say, quiet now, hush, she’d calm us down. Sometimes you need to take the food out of your own mouth, when Michał is done learning he’ll make clothes for Stasiek, and Antek, and Szymuś, and for you too, father.

Then one Sunday he came and said he wasn’t at the cousin’s anymore, that he was working in the factory now, and mother didn’t need to get anything ready because he wouldn’t be taking anything from us anymore. It made us sad, because all that flour, kasha, peas, eggs, cheeses, everything had gone for nothing. Father just said:

“I thought we’d maybe buy some drill and you’d make me a new suit. But obviously it’s God’s will. This suit’s still fine.”

From that moment on he came less and less. Once a month, once every two months, for Christmas, Easter, harvest. Though he had problems mowing. He’d jerk the scythe and move forward too quickly, and he’d take such big swings you’d think he was trying to cut down a whole acre at one go. He ended up jamming the scythe into the ground a couple times, it got blunted a bit, then after one swath he was as tired as if he’d mowed the entire field. Though the fact was he’d never been that good a mower. When could he have learned? They’d been going on about him becoming a priest from when he was tiny, and a priest has a farmhand, he doesn’t need to do his own mowing. Though if you ask me, I don’t think he’d have made much of a priest either. To be a priest you need to have a calling, you need the gift of the gab. Anew sermon each Sunday, plus for every wedding, every funeral. And all those people you have to remind in the confessional, don’t sin, don’t sin, God is watching you. God died for our sins. It’ll all be reckoned up on Judgment Day. Where could he find the talking for all that?

Also, if you’re a priest you need to believe in life after death. But here, one Sunday there were a few of the neighbors round, and father and mother, and they’d gotten to talking about life after death, one of them had seen one thing, another one something else. Michał was getting ready for the train, he was fastening his suitcase, he was running late and as if out of spite his case wouldn’t shut. All of a sudden he exclaims, there’s no life after death! All there is is what’s here, that’s what you have to believe in! The neighbors’ jaws dropped, mother and father went red as beetroots. Michał just grabbed the suitcase, even though it wasn’t properly closed, he charged through the door, and only from the hallway he threw out:

“Goodbye.”

I had to go with him whether I liked it or no, because I’d agreed to walk him to the station. But he didn’t utter a word to me the entire way. Though the fact was we were walking as fast as our legs would carry us, because the train had already whistled on the far side of the woods. It was only at the station, when we were quickly saying our goodbyes, that he muttered:

“Tell father and mother I’m sorry.”

He didn’t come again till Christmas, then after that only at Easter, and from then on that’s how it always was. And when he did come he never said much, he’d just sit there thinking and thinking. Father asked him:

“So what is it you do in the factory?”

“What people usually do in factories. Different stuff.”

“Do they pay you well?”

“Not that much, but it’s enough.”

“And where do you live?”

“With this family.”

“Are they at least decent folks?”

“They’re okay.”

Mother asked him:

“Do you have a young lady? Just don’t worry about whether she has money, son. Take the poorest one, even if she only has the shirt on her back, so long as she’s an honest woman.”

“This isn’t the time for young ladies, mother, there are more important things.”

After that I didn’t ask him any more questions, because for me young ladies were the most important thing. What could be more important than that? You send a guy like that off to the city and he just goes strange on you. If it was me there, I’d for sure know how to enjoy life in the city. You heard various things. Sometimes Gienek Woś would come home on leave, he was a professional soldier, boy did he have stories to tell. It gave you gooseflesh. Florek Sójka would get so excited he’d jump up and down:

“Fucking hell! What are we waiting for! This I gotta see!”

“They stand on the sidewalk in the evening like street lamps. They give you a nice friendly smile as if they’ve known you forever. And they’re all dressed up like royalty, their dresses barely come down over their asses. Some of them have this fox fur thing on, and under that they’re bare. You take the fur off and she’s yours. You don’t even have to go far, round the corner where it’s dark, just make sure the cops won’t see you. Some of them stand there in their underwear or in their stockings, everything’s on view. You can get ahold of their tits like you’d take a cow by the udder, and all you do is ask, how much? Their perfume takes your breath away. Whatever you want, a short one, a tall one, a thin one, two at once if you like. You say, come on, and they go with you. Plus they’re not afraid you’ll make them a baby. They don’t ask you if you’ll marry them. They don’t give a damn who you are. But it’s best not to say you’re from the country. And it’s not wham-bam, you on her, her under you. There’s all kinds of different ways. Left, right, and center. Any way you want, I’m telling you. There’s any number. Though those ways cost more. Or there’s others that wait in horse-drawn carriages, except they charge even more. You get into the carriage, it sets off, it’s a ride to heaven. The most expensive are those that one of them takes you one way, one the other, and you have three more of them at your feet.”

“Christ, how much would that cost? How much would it be, Gienek?”

“You’d need maybe a couple hundredweight of rye per person. Not that much actually. But you could enjoy it all for yourself. What’s there to enjoy out here?” Gienek would try and get us going when he’d had a few. Because for the time being we’d just gone to the pub to get drunk. “Though it depends. Bondarek now, he’d have to pay one and a half times that much cause he’s a redhead and a shortass. You, Szymek, it would only cost you half. Come visit sometime, the two of us’ll go out have some fun. I know this one carriage driver. He’ll take us all over town.”

The dark was growing denser and denser in the house. In the gloom his face looked like it had gotten darker. People were still bringing in their crops.

“Remember,” I said, “there was a time you were supposed to come stay longer. We were going to talk. But don’t say anything if you don’t want to. If you want to live like that without a single word, be my guest. Though how would it be if everyone in the village fell silent? All they did was plow and plant and mow and bring in the harvest, and no one would say so much as a God bless you in greeting. And what if along with the people the dogs and cats went quiet, and all the other animals, and the birds stopped chirping and the frogs stopped croaking. Would there be a world? Even trees talk if actually you listen to them. Each kind has its own language, the oaks speak oak, the beech trees speak beech. Rivers talk, corn. The whole world is one big language. If you really listened carefully to it, you might even be able to hear what they were saying a century back, maybe even thousands of years ago. Because words don’t know death. They’re like see-through birds, once they’ve spoken they circle over us forever, it’s just that we don’t hear them. Though maybe from God’s heights every person’s voice can be heard separately. Even what I’m saying to you now. What they’re saying at Maszczyk’s, at Dereń’s, in every house. If you leaned your ear close to the world, who knows, you might be able to hear people whispering and make out what they’re thinking, what they’re dreaming about, whose house a cat is purring in, whose stable a horse is neighing in, whose child is sucking at its mother’s breast, whose is just being born, all that is language. God tells people to pray in words because without words he wouldn’t know one person from the next. And people wouldn’t be able to tell each other apart either if they didn’t have words. Life begins with a word and ends with words. Because death is also just the end of words. Start maybe from the first ones at hand, the ones that are closest to you. Mother, home, earth. Maybe try saying, earth. I mean, you know what earth is. Where do you spit? On the earth. You know, what you walk on, what houses are built on, what you plow. You’ve done your share of plowing. Remember father teaching us to plow? He taught us one by one, you, me, Antek, Stasiek. Whenever one of us had barely grown taller than the plow, he’d take us with him when he went out to do the plowing. He’d put our hands on the grips, then put his hands over ours and walk behind, like he was holding us in his arms. You could feel his warmth at your back, his breath on your head. And you’d hear his words like they were coming from the sky. Don’t hold it like that, it needs to be firmer, follow the middle of the furrow, it has to go deeper when the earth is dry, when your hands get bigger you’ll also be holding the reins in this hand and the whip in that one. You’ll learn, you will, you just have to be patient. Moles, they know how to dig in the earth, trees put down their roots in it, men dig trenches in it in wartime. Springs rise up out of the earth and people’s sweat soaks into it. It’s this earth, no other, that every person is born in. And remember when anyone was leaving the village, they’d always take a little bit of earth with them in a bundle. Or sailors, when the land’s still way far away, they say they want the earth under their feet again. And God came down to the earth. And when people die they’re buried in the earth. We’ll be put there too. I’m planning to have a tomb built. Eight places, so there’ll be room for all of us. Maybe Antek and Stasiek will agree to be buried with us. There’s a saying, may the earth weigh lightly on him. So wherever it’ll be lighter for them. They say that when a person’s born, the earth is their cradle. And all death does is lay you back down in it. And it rocks you and rocks you till you’re unborn, unconceived, once again.”