But father didn’t hold the sword against me, because what use is a sword on a farm.
“They fought the Turks, you say? That would have been for our faith. You should have taken it to a church, it could have hung there instead of on a tree.”
But the chestnut mare and the saddle, he couldn’t stop thinking about them. With the mare at least I had the excuse that they’d killed her. But the saddle hadn’t been killed.
“Do you know how much a saddle like that is worth? All that leather and studs, and you said the stirrups were gold. You could have bought any amount of land. To have a saddle like that. But you’re not interested in land – all you care about is girls and dancing and fighting. You can’t spend your whole life gallivanting around the countryside playing your harmonica. You sure lucked out with that war – anything to get out of working.”
“I wouldn’t exactly say I lucked out, father. We worked ourselves into the ground, we gave our blood as well.”
“Fine, but what am I supposed to do when it comes time to divide up the farm among you all?”
“You don’t need to give me any share. I’m going away,” I’d snap back at him when he really got on my nerves.
The truth was, I’d thought about doing that right after I came back from the resistance. I wasn’t drawn to the land, and after those couple years of freedom I really couldn’t see myself plowing or mowing. I even regretted coming back. I should have done what quite a few of the guys did and gone straight into the army or to the city, anywhere so long as it was far away. But not going back home after the whole thing to see father, mother, my brothers, the village, it would have been like the war hadn’t finished at all, with its filth and lice and sleepless nights and killing. Besides, I was thinking I’d stay a month or two, catch up on my sleep, forget what needs to be forgotten, rest up, and then head out, instead of leaving right off the bat.
But I’d barely crossed the threshold and kissed everyone hello and sat down, when right away father starts in with his, we’ve been watching and watching for you, we didn’t think you’d come back, and here spring’s right around the corner and there’ll be plowing and sowing to get done. I didn’t say a word, I pulled off my tall boots, mother poured water into a basin and she didn’t say anything either, she didn’t even ask, how was it there? She just stood next to me, letting the tears roll down her cheeks. Then she kneeled down by the water, stirred it and started washing my feet.
And father went on and on. The plow would need to be hammered out because the share had gotten damaged on a rock. You’ll need to find another blacksmith to take the horse to, because the Siudaks’ smithy was blown up by a shell and now there’s no one in the village that can shoe horses, but maybe there’ll be someone in another village. One shoe’s completely fallen off and the other ones are worn down to the hoof. When he walks he slips around like he was on a sledge. There was so much fighting around here we didn’t even have time to muck out the pig sheds. But we should at least take some manure out to put down on the potatoes, and it needs to be done while the frosts last, because once the earth gets wet you won’t be able to drive the wagon onto the field. It doesn’t matter if the manure gets frozen, it can just lie there. There’s no need to plow the fields right after you’ve mucked them. And look up there – the ceiling’s leaking. It can’t just be whitewashed, the plaster’ll need to be scraped off. There’s a hole in the thatch from a piece of shrapnel. Whenever it rains your mother has to put a bucket under it. If we can rustle up a ladder from somewhere you could shin up and fix it. And we lost our table. We’d stay down in the cellar, so anyone could do whatever they wanted up here. They took stuff for firewood, not just tables but doors, wagons, barns. They cut down all the orchards. They needed the wood to build potato clamps. Now people are going around looking for what’s theirs. Maybe you could go look as well. You’ve got a decent pair of boots. Course, we can eat in our laps just as well, but not having a table in the house, it’s kind of like the middle is missing. Or maybe you’ll find something else. These days anything’ll come in handy. That was quite a war. And it hung around in these parts for the longest time. It owes us something back, instead of just bringing us bad luck. Our pig sheds burned down. Did you see? A shell hit them, they caught fire and that was the end of them. At least we got the animals out in time. Stasiek and Antek took turns minding them. The wind was blowing in the other direction, thank God, otherwise the barn and the house would have gone up and we’d be sleeping under the stars. The damn dog got loose from his chain and ran off. On a farm not having a dog is like not having an arm. You have to keep your ears pricked the whole time so thieves won’t sneak up on you. When he was still here he’d bark and run them off. Or at least wake you up if he couldn’t see to them himself. You could ask around if someone’s bitch has had puppies. Dogs, they don’t care if it’s wartime or no, the damn things still go around mating. The Lord alone knows what we’ve been through here. We stuck windows together from little pieces, then we had to board them up. What are you sitting there thinking for? You’re only just back and already you’re thinking.”
“I don’t know, maybe I’ll go away?”
“Where to?” Father was stopped in his tracks.
“To the army maybe?”
“Have you not had enough of soldiering?”
“The war’s not over yet, father. And I was made lieutenant.”
“By who?”
“It was in the woods.”
“That doesn’t count, being made an officer in the woods. That’s not a proper promotion. I mean, making a farmer an officer. Farmers are made to work the land and nothing else. This is your place.”
“What am I supposed to do here?” I said, losing my temper, because it all seemed somehow foreign to me. The house. Father. And what he was saying.
“What do you mean?!” Father’s voice trembled like he was about to get mad, or burst out crying. “Are we short of work here? We barely know which way to turn first. We need to start from the beginning. But go! Go! All of you, go! Let the land die!”
And father wouldn’t have kept me back no matter what. Except they’d just opened the school, and Stasiek’s shoes had fallen apart and he didn’t have anything to wear on his feet. Outside, the boys would whistle and call, are you coming, Stasiek? It’s late! And Stasiek would be sitting there in straw slippers, crying. And it was seventh grade, it would have been a pity if he hadn’t gone back and finished. True, he was kind of in seventh grade during the war. But what could he learn at a school in an occupied country? He’d forgotten everything. I asked him who the first king of Poland was, and he didn’t know. He didn’t know who the king of the peasants was, and he thought Kościuszko was a king.
So I headed for the fields one day thinking I might find him some boots. People said there were bodies everywhere. So there had to be boots also. There was no point being squeamish. Is a dead person any worse than a living one? At one time he was alive as well, and now he’s dead, just like the people that are alive now are also going to be dead in their turn. Though it’s a bit rude taking things off a dead body, you can’t ask them is it all right if I take your boots, since you don’t need them yourself. But if they were only going to rot away, it’d be better if Stasiek wore them to school, and if the dead guy knew he might even be glad someone else was still using his boots.
There was a good number of them, Russkies as well as Germans. But none of them had boots on. I plodded around the entire day, and I only found one with his boots still on. I was all set to congratulate myself, I even said “zdravstvuytye” to him, because he was Russian. But when I got closer I saw there were holes in the soles and the heel on the left boot was completely missing. On top of that, he was barely older than our Stasiek. He lay face upward, his mouth open, as if some word had frozen in it, maybe “mama.” I pulled his blanket out from behind his back and covered him up so at least the wind wouldn’t blow in his face.
Some of them were lying in piles of two or thre
e, like they’d been clinging to each other for warmth. Some looked as if they’d only fallen asleep, as if they’d gotten tired of the war the way you get tired at harvesttime, and they’d slipped their boots off to ease their feet. Everyone knows that war is worst of all on the legs and feet. Many a time, from the waist up you’d be raring to fight but your feet wouldn’t budge. You’d be shouting hurrah, but your legs had no life in them. And many a time the war would be won not so much by bullets as by feet. Because war and feet are like half sisters.
When I was at war we didn’t do a whole lot of fighting. Instead, we just walked and walked, and if we went in the wrong direction we’d walked in vain. And you didn’t even hope for the end of the war so much as for a chance to take your boots off, even for a moment, and cool your feet in a stream.
The bodies that still had socks or footcloths maybe didn’t feel the cold so much. But the ones with completely bare feet, it hurt to even look at them. One time I was made to walk across snow barefoot and I know how painful it is. You could read from those bare feet like from a book. They were swollen from the frost, cracked till they bled, and rubbed sore from marching and from the boots. They were blue and dead. Though living feet also, you could read all sorts of sufferings from them, even more than from a person’s eyes, their face, or their words or their tears.
With some bodies the snow had covered their legs and all you could see were toes poking out of a snowdrift. Other ones were lying on their bellies with their bare heels jabbing at the sky. Or they’d be sticking out of the snow from the waist up, or from their belly button or their private parts, while their legs would be growing deep down in the snow like the roots of their body.
I found one under a sloe bush. He was some kind of officer – his epaulettes were all decorated with gold braid – so he ought to have had decent boots as well. Except his legs had been blown off at the knees, and it wasn’t even right to wish I could have had those boots, even though they’d probably been made of chamois leather, with stiffeners and pointed toes. All I did was pick a few sloes from over his head, because sloes taste best when they’re frozen.
Another one I found, I thought he was still alive. He was sitting outside a potato clamp leaning against his pack, his rifle in his lap, helmet on and playing his harmonica. I even thought I recognized the tune. But when I leaned over him I saw the harmonica was covered in dried blood, like he’d been blowing blood instead of air. He didn’t have any boots on either. Though if he had, I still wouldn’t have taken them. How could I do that – there he was playing the harmonica, and I come along and take his boots instead of listening? I used to play myself and I know, when you’re playing you get so carried away, someone could even steal your body and you wouldn’t notice, because at moments like that you’re pure spirit. There were times I could barely straighten my back from work but the moment I came home from the fields, instead of flopping down and sleeping, I’d go out in front of the house and play. Often the lights would go out in the village and the dogs would be chasing bitches, and I’d just play on and on.
The snow was trampled down everywhere and there was a path to each corpse. You could tell a lot of people had been there before me, like mushroom pickers in the woods, from all the local villages.
I even met a guy I knew from Łoziny. Łoziny is two and a half miles from our village and the front passed through there as well just as bad as here, and he’d come all the way from there.
“A decent greatcoat’s what I’m mostly after,” he said. “But everything’s all cut up from the shrapnel, either that or it’s German.”
“You haven’t seen any boots, have you?” I asked.
“Boots? You’re wearing boots. Nice tall ones too.”
“It’s not for me, it’s for my brother. He hasn’t got any shoes to wear for school.”
“You’re a bit late for that.” He pulled out a bottle of moonshine. “Here, take a swig – you’re blue with cold. If you’re gonna go looking around here you need vodka. First off, you could freeze to death, and second, you might dream of these poor guys afterwards. Right when the front moved on, then there were boots. You could pick any kind you wanted, find a pair that fit. Wide ones, narrow ones, lace-ups, tall boots, ones with buckles. Black, yellow. Hobnailed or with rubber soles. There were even some fancy ones like yours. But now they’ve all been taken. You might still find some, but you’d have to go off the beaten track. And a shovel would be a good idea, ’cause some of them are buried up to their neck and you have to dig down to get to their boots. You need to get a move on though, because when the weather eases off they’ll be burying the bodies. The village chairmen have announced it already. Maybe if you went up by the woods there’d still be some with their boots on. Thing is, though, there are mines up there. You might end up losing a leg or an arm instead of finding boots. Or even lose your life for a pair of boots, after you’ve made it through the war. Here, have another drink.”
There was nothing for it, I lent Stasiek my officer’s boots, because I mean he couldn’t not go to school. School was like first communion. Everyone went. People who’d only finished second or third grade. People who’d never even started school before. People that couldn’t read or write, bachelors, married guys, folks with kids. He looked like a stork in those boots, they almost came up over his knees. But who was interested in whether your boots were too big or too small, the important thing was they were in one piece. To begin with he walked around like he was on stilts, he even fell over a couple of times, but then he got used to them, he started walking in long strides without really bending his knees, and he looked pretty good, even though it’s not that easy to walk in tall boots when they’re the wrong size. I mean real officer’s boots, of course. Because people say officer’s boots whenever their shoes have any kind of uppers at all. Or any boots that an officer’s wearing. But real officer’s boots you can tell not from the uppers, not even from someone’s rank. Real officer’s boots have to be made of chamois, the toe caps and straps and stiffeners need to be leather that’s hard as metal, and the boot has to be the exact same shape as your leg. And not just around the foot, but at the instep, the ankle, the calf, everywhere, like it was your own skin. You might have been walking around like you had two left feet your whole life, the Lord God himself might have decided that’s how you’re supposed to walk, but the moment you put on officer’s boots it’s like you’d been given new legs. Because it’s not just that you’re wearing footwear that goes all the way from your toes to your knees, also the straps hold your heel like it was in a vise, and the stiffeners do the same for your calves, and you have to walk the way the boots tell you to.
Kurosad, the guy in Oleśnica that made those boots for me, he measured each leg separately, and in different places. On the calf alone he took three measurements, by the ankle, in the middle, and under the knee. And he did it both on bare flesh and in breeches. And by the way, you won’t find another shoemaker like Kurosad for love nor money. He made boots for “Eagle” – that was my resistance name – and he wasn’t the only one that knew who Eagle was. When you went into his shop you’d never know it was a shoemaker’s – there was a carpet and armchairs and mirrors, and Kurosad behind the counter with his, how can I help you, sir. He only made boots for SS officers, resistance fighters, and the gentry. And when it came to officer’s boots, he had no equal. When I tried them on, stood in front of the mirror and clicked the heels, I felt as if even dying in those boots would be a different kind of death than dying in ordinary shoes or barefoot. And Kurosad was licking his lips he was so pleased:
“All you need now is a pair of spurs and it’ll be: Mount up! mount up!”
I stayed in every morning with my feet in the straw slippers, waiting for Stasiek to come home from school and give me my boots back. It was only in the afternoon I could go down to the village. In the mornings I thought I’d go nuts with boredom. I couldn’t even watch the road from the window because the window was forever iced up and you had to breathe a
hole in the ice to see out at all. Though father didn’t let me get too bored. He’d come right in with the horse-collar.
“If you’re just going to be sitting around doing nothing you can mend this.”
This, then that, then something else. Every day it was the same thing. I even got kind of depressed, to the point where I didn’t feel like talking to anyone. Someone would come by and ask, so how was it in the resistance, but I didn’t even feel like talking about the resistance, and father would speak for me:
“Well, since he came back he’s just been thinking and thinking. But thinking’s no good. I mean, you’re not going to think something up unless you actually do it. People thought and thought, and what did they come up with? The world’s still the way it was, and all thinking does is make you want to think more and do less.”
There were times all I wanted to do was jump up, slam the door, and head out wherever. But how could I go without anything on my feet? So in the end I started cutting the farmers’ hair and shaving them. Luckily, from the resistance I’d brought home my razor, my scissors and brush and shaving cream, and I started cutting hair and giving shaves. Right after I came back I cut father’s hair and Antek’s and Stasiek’s, because their hair was so long they looked like sheep, and I did a pretty decent job of it. Then one day I met Bartosz down in the village. He was over seventy, but he was a soldier to the marrow of his bones, he’d served way back in the tsar’s army, and he always wore a crew cut. But this time I see his hair’s so long he looks like Saint Joseph, and he’s scratching away at it.
“I didn’t know you, Bartosz,” I say.
“I’m not surprised. I used to cut my hair the army way. Now look at me.”
“What are you scratching it for?”
“Lice, son, lice. The blasted things bite so much they won’t let you sleep, they won’t let you live. They bite when you’re praying. But in a mop of hair like this, of course they’re going to bite. Plus our house burned down and we’re sleeping with the cattle in the shed. Maybe you could cut my hair for me, I’d give you a rooster?”
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