by Frank Wynne
‘It’s a grave,’ replied Ola.
‘Whose grave?’
‘What do you mean, whose? It’s Mummy’s.’
‘So your mummy’s buried here? Why isn’t she at the cemetery?’
‘It’s such a long way,’ replied Ola, ‘and it’s nice and close here.’
‘It’s nice and close all right, but why wasn’t she buried at the cemetery?’
‘The flooding after the thaw was terrible. The priest came on horseback.’
‘So it was in the spring?’
‘On horseback. He heard Mummy’s confession and then he just stayed. He was here for two days, he couldn’t move – the water had gone everywhere.’
‘Did he consecrate this ground?’
‘Yes, he did. He said it couldn’t be in unconsecrated ground. He kept insisting on taking her to Sławsk.’
‘And what did your daddy say?’
‘Daddy didn’t want to. He said it could be in the birch grove. It’s a pretty place.’
‘It is pretty!’
‘It’s very pretty, but I don’t like coming here.’
‘Don’t you?’
‘No, I don’t. I only come with Daddy. Daddy prays.’
‘Your daddy …’
‘Daddy comes here every day first thing in the morning or towards evening, and on Sundays he and I come and pray here. He reads from the book Mummy used to have.’
‘Do you remember your mummy?’
‘Of course I do, it’s only a year ago.’
‘Right. It’s a whole year now. And I only found out in the autumn. Your daddy rarely writes.’
‘Daddy doesn’t like letters.’
‘I wrote more often than he did.’
‘But Daddy doesn’t like your letters, Uncle.’
‘Did he ever read them to you?’
‘No … he did read me one, about how you went sledging. I’ve got a sledge too, but there aren’t any mountains here. Are there big mountains in Switzerland?’
‘Huge ones. I’ll show you my photographs.’
‘Then let’s go home now. Show me the photographs, Uncle.’
*
Back at home he began to show them to her, but she soon got bored. Besides, she didn’t really understand what ‘hotel’, ‘sanatorium’, or ‘Switzerland’ meant. As he sat on the oilcloth sofa that stood in his room, the photographs slipped off his knees. He gazed aimlessly out of the window, where rays of sunlight had started to shine through from behind the pine trees. The carpet of pine needles beneath the trees was wreathed in clouds of haze; the spaces between the trunks were filled with mist and vapours. But he wasn’t watching the doings of nature; he wasn’t even thinking about them. He sat still, wanting to be free of all thought. After a while he repeated, ‘Oh, it’s going to be tough here.’
He had not yet fully divined the atmosphere, but he already knew it wouldn’t be good. He was appalled by his brother’s state of mind and tried in vain to imagine what it was like; but as he had never experienced any real loss, it wasn’t easy. He had been present at his mother’s death, but the actual fact of it had seemed unreal. Afterwards he had been unable to understand it or feel it; it was just as if his mother were always in another room, and finally he got used to the idea that she would never come into the one he was in. But the sandy mound in the birch grove was impossible to ignore. He kept on seeing it, and the network of white tree trunks fading into the distance, creating a white, atomised shade, as if painted with the tip of the brush.
Meanwhile Bolesław was sitting across the hall, on his bed, staring at more or less the same landscape of pine trees, at the smoke among the tree trunks and at the first glimmers reviving on the wet leaves of the brushwood, which those same rays of sunlight were just beginning to reveal amid the desiccated tracery of the forest. Bolesław’s thoughts were even less focused than his brother’s. Nothing had been able to call him out of the fog that had enveloped him ever since his wife’s death; he saw everything through a veil, which greatly impeded his vision, but nothing worse. He did visit the grave regularly, that was true, and on Sundays he said prayers there with Ola, which was all the more upsetting as he wasn’t a believer. The mound, the body – to his mind none of it existed, but he really could feel the death of that ugly but dear woman who had been his wife for several years. He could feel her absence. He couldn’t forget that she was dead. He remembered her dying, and how she had died. And that was the only thing that was real, everything else was not. That was why his brother’s socks were such an awful thing; their colour would haunt Bolesław in his rare dreams. The world that the young man had left behind in order to stir up the mist among the pine trees was truly appalling. Stanisław’s arrival was like the advent of a Martian. Yet at the same time it evoked an undeniable sense of reality, of which Bolesław had been deprived for the whole year past.
He thought, for the first time, of the fact that it was a year already, that Basia must have undergone a terrifying change in the coffin, that he would never love anyone ever again, that Ola really was terribly neglected – for he gave no thought at all to the need to engage some sort of teacher for her – in short, that somehow life must go on. Where to and what for he couldn’t quite think for the moment, just that it must go on. This line of thought was already a very great change for him, and he owed it to Staś’s intolerable presence.
Suddenly on the stairs, then the veranda, the firm tread of strong bare feet resounded. A girl, hot from running, abruptly cast her shadow across Staś’s view of the pine trees. ‘Where’s the master?’
He didn’t have time to reply before Bolesław’s voice responded from the window on the other side of the veranda doors.
Apparently, the girl’s brother Janek, the watchman, who lived in the courtyard, had knocked out a pane of glass in the front door with his hand; he had a deep cut and the wound would need bandaging after a good coating of iodine. Both brothers went to see to the matter, which gave Stanisław the opportunity to get to know the courtyard and its inhabitants.
There weren’t many of them – just Janek, his sister and mother, and two teenage youths, Edek and Olek, who tended the cows and horses; that was it. The courtyard was small and clean, but cheerless. The horses and cows were stabled in a red brick building at ground level, and upstairs there was a small apartment, where the bandaging operation took place, with two rooms for the rifleman and his family, and another little room for the boys. The windows were very small and didn’t admit much light. The pine trees began right against the walls of the building, half of which was occupied by the stable. Separately, there was also a shed, a coach house, a henhouse and a small pigsty.
Stanisław went home feeling even sadder and more disheartened. He still wasn’t over his tiredness from the long journey; now and then he broke into a sweat. The air after the rain was sultry and the good weather, which had finally settled in the afternoon, did not promise to last for long. He lay down on the oilcloth sofa and waited patiently for lunch. Bolesław kept pacing up and down his room, although there was very little space between his bed and Ola’s. She and her doll were sitting in there too, in a corner behind the bed. The moment his mind went blank, Bolesław could hear her teaching the doll to say its prayers.
II
The next few days were exactly alike, with the single difference perhaps that Bolesław spent less time at home. Not only did he have to drive about the forest, supervising one job or another at a clearing or at the sawmill, which were quite far apart, but he also had to drive to town. He hadn’t been there for a year; the road was a bit better now, and he had remembered a lot of business left unsettled for ages, so off he went. He preferred to avoid being on his own with his brother, whose clothes, way of life and manner of talking were enough to tear open his almost healed wound. He couldn’t bear the pensive joy at life that Staś was so full of; it was there in his every word and gesture, in his smile. Bolesław wouldn’t admit it, but in his own brother he saw so much allure, so much wi
nsome charm that he simply couldn’t face, not for anything in the world. He couldn’t understand how exactly, but all that charm and allure cut him off from Basia. So he preferred to stay at the sawmill and listen to the Jews arguing. He would be late for lunch, but Staś would be waiting patiently; he had got into the habit of going for very long walks with Ola, which tired him greatly. Bolesław often found him lying on the oilcloth sofa, and in the evenings he went to bed early and didn’t want to go out after sunset.
‘It’s a habit left over from the sanatorium,’ he told his brother.
He was very sweet, but still very tactless – he laughed, he joked, he sang and whistled. Ola had cheered up a bit in her uncle’s presence and had learned two German songs which he sang to her. She had hardly ever sung before, but now she would hum to her doll in the evenings, after putting it to bed in a birch-bark cradle. This annoyed and upset Bolesław all the more.
It rained again, and cleared up again, and then the moonlit nights set in. Ola went to bed very late; one evening she sat in her uncle’s room on the sofa and watched as the red glow of the rising satellite broke through among the pine trees. She was speechless with wonder, for Staś was telling her how the moon rises in the clear mountain air, and how he had seen a total eclipse emerging from behind a red ridge opposite the sanatorium. It was going to be frosty then, and the air, light and pure, gave a hiss as you breathed it in. The little girl was terrified. But the moon changed from red to white, and brilliant patches of light appeared among the pine trees.
Then they went for a walk among the birches. As they walked to and fro, it all seemed unreal to Staś. It took great strength of will to keep on laughing and joking as he held his little niece by the hand. As they were getting closer to the grave, Ola stopped and wouldn’t go further, but he told her gently that she shouldn’t be afraid, that there was nothing to be scared of. If and when the time came, he too would wish to lie down in the sand among the marbled tree trunks. They went closer to the fence, and then they saw Bolesław. He was just standing there, but his drooping head and broken figure spoke such volumes that Staś drew back.
‘Daddy’s there,’ said Ola.
They went home in silence. Ola went to bed, and the old cook, Katarzyna, tucked her in, while Stanisław fell to gazing at the pine trees, shining blue in the moonlight.
Suddenly Bolesław burst into his room. He had seen them walking away from him and from the grave, and couldn’t resist making some cutting remarks, but Stanisław couldn’t understand what was up. Then they went into the dining room and had a cup of tea in silence; finally, Bolesław started telling him the whole story from the very beginning. It was clearly a great relief for him to talk; not only was he casting off a great burden, but at the same time he was breaking the ice between himself and his brother. So, from the very beginning, he told him what Basia had been like, quiet, good and ordinary, but extremely dear; how she had generally been in poor health ever since Ola’s birth; what a very snowy winter they had had, and then the awful floodwater, and how the priest had had to come on horseback. It was everything that Ola had summed up in their first conversation, but in far more detail, with references back to themes touched on earlier, with refrains; he spoke very roughly and inarticulately, but Staś listened attentively without once taking his eyes off him. Even if he found his brother’s narrative lacking in refinement, through strength of suffering he could feel the full might and tenacity of his whole being, the full strength of his brother’s character coming through in his simple words. He realised that Bolesław was a strong person after all, able to suffer terribly and to love deeply. As he listened to this speech, which so perfectly illustrated Bolesław’s character, he started comparing himself to his older brother and smiled with compassion. There was nothing deep about him, it was all on the outside, and that was the end of it. And nothing would come of it.
Bolesław wasn’t pleased at his own outpouring, and went straight off to bed, but couldn’t sleep for ages. To his mind, Staś had taken it all very nonchalantly; he hadn’t been at all perturbed – he hadn’t shown due concern. He thought this confession of his, by showing Staś what was going on inside him, would bring them closer together. But the next day Staś was even more alien, even more cheerful and unapproachable. Letters had started flooding in for him (the post came twice a week) with foreign stamps, which he carefully cut out and presented to Ola. The days had a fine start now, and they would go for walks. From the veranda or the forest Bolesław would watch Staś’s tall, thin figure from afar. Dressed in grey, he almost entirely blended in with the grey glow emanating from the pine forest; he looked almost blue, while Ola’s flaxen hair shone like a patch of sunlight trailing after him.
Finally, Stanisław couldn’t stand it any longer and decided to have a piano brought from Sławsk.
III
It was a real voyage of the Argonauts. First Staś went to town accompanied by the rifleman who had cut his hand. The journey was long and monotonous in the extreme. It was impossible to sustain one’s admiration of the forest and the trees, and for the past few days Staś had been feeling worse: he seemed to have quite a temperature, although since leaving the sanatorium he had promised himself not so much as to look at a thermometer. The sky was grey-blue, like washed-out muslin; pines and birches alternated along the way in a soporific rhythm. Moreover, his attempts at conversation with the rifleman didn’t take off, although he was a pleasant enough fellow. Staś wanted to ask him about his sister, but it seemed a bit too forward and intimate. He couldn’t think why, but on the way, maybe because of the proximity of her brother, she kept on coming into his mind, common and impetuous, her feet pattering on the veranda floorboards the first time he had seen her. Only now did he remember that in her dark face she had the same limpid grey eyes as her brother. She had watched him closely as he was dressing the rifleman’s hand, with the same bandage, apparently, that was now a grey rag, still wound around the palm of his neighbour on the cart. Loose yellow sand shot from the wheels with a faint hum; it was fairly hot and sweat was pouring down Stanisław’s neck and body. This gave him a stronger sensation of his own body – the feeling grew more and more ticklish, which was enjoyable but irritating all at once; he gazed aimlessly ahead, as if hearing the humming of the sand inside himself.
The rifleman was simply called Janek, and his sister was Malina. This was the only question which he made up his mind to ask throughout the entire journey. But he was prepared for a lengthy drive, so he didn’t notice when the ploughed land began; then on completely flat ground the first rough-cast houses of the town came into sight. They stopped in the market-place; they would have to search about for a piano in working order. Staś started bargaining with the nearest Jew, who consulted another, and soon there were at least a dozen of them crowding around the wagon. They wagged their tongues and waved their arms about, but there was little progress, as first they had to define the problem and weigh up the chances of locating the desired object. Staś listened calmly to all this twittering.
Finally, an obscure alley was identified where there was an apartment with a grand piano for the taking. It was the home of a redundant railway or bank clerk who wanted to rent out the instrument. His wife, still young, lay sick in the same room as it, and as he tried the keys, Staś began to chat with her. The piano was her property – by no means did she wish to sell it, but she would gladly rent it out for a couple of months; they needed the money, they were terribly poor and their child had just died. In a couple of months she would be well again, and she would need the piano back; in the autumn she would start giving music lessons. Staś stared at her closely, but she averted her gaze. From his days in the sanatorium he had grown all too accustomed to the sight of sick people for this woman’s face to make any great impression on him, but he didn’t doubt for a moment that by autumn she wouldn’t be needing the piano. No, she wouldn’t, and neither would he, he thought.
The hardest bit was getting it home. The hired wagon dragged alo
ng, getting stuck in the sand time and again. Three horses, harnessed to a single shaft, moved crookedly, and the wheels kept grinding into the sand and slipping out of the ruts. The piano was short and not very heavy. Staś had promised the sick woman that he would look after it like his own flesh and blood, so he didn’t want to go ahead of the wagon but ordered Janek to follow it at snail’s pace. Sitting up in bed, the woman had wept softly as the piano was carried out, which had irritated Staś.
‘The old girl will soon have something to moan about,’ he had said to himself as he stood in the narrow street supervising the loading. Now, riding behind the piano, as if following a coffin, he could still see the thin woman’s tears, large and lucid, streaming down her cheeks.
Evening was setting in fast, but he hardly noticed. It was a May evening, and among the trees a violet haze was already showing; the sky, too, was half lilac, casting blue shadows among the furrows in the sand. The humming of the wheels was almost a sizzle now; the Jew on the coach box above the piano was braying at the horses. Even Staś had lost his good humour.
Only late in the evening did they reach the forestry lodge. With the help of Janek, the Jew from Sławsk, Edek and Olek, and finally Malina, Staś got the piano unloaded and set up in his room. The Jew led the horses off to the courtyard, and total silence fell. Staś sat down at the piano and, placing his hands on the lid, which shone in the gloom, he gazed out of the open window at the night, at the pine trees and the birches – just there began the birch grove – and his heart ached. He never gave it a thought, but life had become very tough indeed now.
He began to play very softly, to avoid waking little Ola. He began to play irrevocably passé tunes, which made no sense here at all, such as the tangos and slow foxtrots he used to dance to at the sanatorium, which against the backdrop of this severe landscape were as incongruous as last year’s fashions. Especially the Hawaiian tune he had danced to with Miss Simons. It was very pretty, just like his dancing partner, but like her, it made no sense here. Throughout the unloading of the piano Bolesław had not once showed his face. Evidently he had shut himself in his room and wouldn’t even come and look at the offensive instrument. The night was very warm, and Staś was no longer thinking about his brother. As he was playing the banal tunes he could sense the pain of this black night, and its terror. For the time being he wanted to remain in ignorance of Bolesław’s state of mind.