I felt sorry for the man. I used to like listening to his army stories, he served with the heavy cavalry all the way over in the Caucasus.
“Come by tomorrow morning,” I said. “I’m at home then, because Stasiek wears my boots to school. Just bring a cloth I can wrap around you.”
I was never taught how to cut hair, but it’s no big deal. You can do harder things than that without being taught. Besides, the important thing wasn’t how you looked but feeling comfortable. If anyone doubted that, they could have told by looking at Bartosz what a relief it was to him. His eyes were brighter, he breathed more easily, and he held himself straight as a ramrod, like I’d taken twenty years off him. He looked at himself in a piece of mirror and he was so pleased his old soldier’s blood stirred in him.
“You’ve done a fine thing, young man. You weren’t in the resistance for nothing, I see. Anyone that can succeed at being a soldier can succeed at anything.”
Afterward one guy or another who saw Bartosz would come, and anyone that bumped into me in the village, then they started coming by of their own accord. It wasn’t surprising really, every farm had lost something to fire, if it wasn’t the house it was the barn or the cattle sheds. If their horses hadn’t been requisitioned they’d been killed. The cows’ udders would dry up from lack of feed. In the fields there were mines. Anyone would have been glad to at least get rid of the shock of hair they’d grown, to feel freer. But there was no barber in the village. Under the occupation there’d been one, an newcomer. Jan Basiak they called him. He told people he’d been resettled, and he seemed to fit in. He made a decent living, rented a room at Madej’s place on the side next to the road and hung up a sign: Jan Basiak, Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Hairdresser, Permanent Waves, Water Waves. All the women in the village went crazy, the young girls, the married women, the ones with small children – everyone. They cut off their braids and they all started getting those perms.
The first one was the Siudaks’ Gabrysia. She had braids like ropes of wheat straw, but with her new hairdo she looked like a scarecrow and right away she started sleeping with a German corporal from the police station. One time Siudak beat her, in fact he cut her till she bled, because he used a whip handle, so she told her corporal and the corporal beat Siudak up. Siudak couldn’t get out of bed for a month or more. On top of that he had to pay a fine for being disorderly. Ever since then he was scared of Gabrysia like she was the devil himself, though she was his own daughter. She had them all wrapped around her little finger.
Once she started sleeping with the corporal she even learned to be picky, she got as finicky as a fine lady though she was just a regular girl. She made them buy her a fur coat and knee-length boots, and Siudak had to sell a cow to pay for it. As for the hairdresser, she could spend half the day there. The thing that upset people even more than the corporal was the fact she had her hair washed at the hairdresser’s. Whoever heard of such a thing – a man washing a woman’s hair. The hairdresser fussed around her like he was dancing on eggshells, he’d do anything he could to satisfy her and it was always yes, Miss Gabryjela, no, Miss Gabryjela. In the end, as well as doing all those perms he became an informer. When the front got close, all of a sudden he disappeared overnight. And Gabrysia, she left for the West and married some official over there. She came back one year to visit her mother and father’s graves, but no one mentioned what she’d done when she was younger. What was there to mention? It was a different world, a different village; more than half the people from those times were in the cemetery. They were just lying there, what did they care about Gabrysia. From the other world it didn’t mean a thing that at one time, in this world, some Gabrysia used to sleep with a German corporal.
Me too, when I go to the cemetery I sometimes think it’s strange so many people are buried there that back then I shaved and cut their hair, and now they don’t remember anymore. Stanisław Kiciński. When he sat down and I told him, don’t move, he virtually turned to stone. Later I couldn’t turn his head either to the left or right. I had to squat down, twist and turn one way and the other. I asked him, I got annoyed with him, just turn a bit Stanisław or I won’t be able to finish cutting your hair. See, look over at that apostle at the Last Supper. The third one from Jesus’s left. Come on, look. Though on the other hand, when he finally stood up and passed his hand over his head, he said:
“It’s like a fellow was born a second time. God bless you, Szymuś.”
“Here, take a look in the mirror.”
“I don’t need to look, I can feel it.”
Or Wincenty Mitręga, may he rest in peace. He looked at himself in that scrap of mirror, ran out the house without a word, then a short while later he came back with a milk can full of moonshine.
“I was going to buy myself some new pants and a new dress for the old lady, but have a drink, lads, because that goddam war finally finished today. Your health, Szymek!” He tipped the can back and took the longest swig you ever saw. When he finally set it aside he didn’t even have the strength to pass it to the next person, he just hunkered down on the stoop and fell asleep.
There were days so many men came by that Stasiek would get back from school and I still hadn’t finished. They’d sit around the place wherever they could, on the beds, on the doorstep, some would stand or squat by the wall. They’d smoke till the room was black with smoke. Mother would complain she couldn’t breathe, and every so often she’d air the place out. But father was in seventh heaven, because everyone would give him a smoke and he could at least have his fill of cigarettes. I brought two logs and laid down a board to make a bench, because people even started coming from other villages.
To begin with my hands were a bit stiff when I worked. But anyone sitting there with hair that hadn’t been cut for months, that was dirty and sometimes full of lice, their mind was on other things and so what did they care about my hands. They could only feel themselves. Some folks would shudder like a horse being stung by a bee when I’d pass the comb through their hair. Some of them, the skin on their heads would stretch tight as sheet metal. Some of them shut their eyes as hard as they could. Or they’d grip the chair with both hands like I was about to cut their head off, not their hair. Or they’d clam up and not say a single word the whole time, till it was over and they could relax. Some of them even let other people in line go ahead of them just to put off the moment. You’d have been forgiven for thinking I was baptizing them, not cutting their hair.
I got better and better at it from one head to the next. I stopped doing everyone the same, instead I’d ask do you want it longer, shorter, to the side or to the back. I learned to do shading. I’d shave necks till they shone. And I did sideburns in two different ways, straight and angled.
Later I bought an electric razor from a Russian guy for a half-gallon of moonshine. He’d worked as a barber as well, but the war was over and he was heading home. Another time a traveling saleswoman sold me a bottle of cologne, and after that I’d ask, splash of cologne? Naturally cologne was more expensive, so not everyone wanted it. I bought a sheet and mother made me cloths to put around people’s necks. I was going great guns. All I needed was to hang out a sign. And as I worked I’d tell stories about the resistance, so no one got bored even if they had to wait the whole morning.
I probably would have stuck with being a barber, because winter passed and spring came, Stasiek gave me the boots back since he could go to school barefoot now, but I was still cutting people’s hair and giving shaves. I even thought about renting the room at Madej’s that Basiak had used. Luckily Madej’s place survived the war except for the roof got damaged and the windows were broken. But Madej had already more or less repaired it. Maybe one day I’d learn how to do perms. Szymon Pietruszka, permanent waves, water waves. No worse than Jan Basiak. Hairdressing’s a decent trade, and it’s a whole lot easier than working the land. At the most I’d just go take a course. Or I might not even have to do that. The war had done away with a good number of hairdressers
as well. In town there used to be three of them and now only one was left.
Plus, harvesttime was getting close. And harvesttime was a curse. From dawn till night you worked like an animal. Your head’s pounding from the mowing, your eyes are blinded by sweat. Instead of crossing the sky, the sun just keeps moving to and fro across your back, all the time from when it rises in the east till when it sets in the west. It’s like its claws were sunk into your skin. Because it’s not even the sun, the sun is what shines over the river and the meadow and in the reeds, this thing is a huge bright bird that’s got it in for you. The moment you feel like straightening up a bit, it jabs you in the back of the head with its beak. Like it was reminding you your life belongs down below, not up above, that your life is this eternal unmown field that you keep moving across, swinging your scythe. And you don’t even know if you’ll ever finish mowing it. You’ll only be done when death takes you.
It was the same when I went to war, I was glad to be missing the harvest because it had just begun. Father had gone out into the fields with his scythe at the crack of dawn, I was supposed to follow with mine and we were going to mow, the two of us. It was right then Gunia brought me the letter with my call-up. I was so pleased, I forgot to take the scythe with me, I just grabbed the letter and ran out to the field to tell father:
“It’s war, father.”
Father looks at me surprised and says:
“Where’s your scythe? You were supposed to bring your scythe.”
“I just said, it’s war.” I waved the letter in front of him. “Read this.”
“I don’t need to read anything. If there was a war we’d be hearing it. Can you hear anything?” He tipped his head back as if he was listening, but the only sound was larks singing in the sky. “There’s nothing but larks. It’s probably just talk. I mean, how long has it been since the last war? And there’s going to be another one? What are they fighting about? When there’s a war, first there has to be a sign in the sky. When the last one started there was a burning cross up there in the south at night. Come on, get to work. You can mow with my scythe, I’ll bind the sheaves.”
He pushed the scythe into my hands, then he laid out some straw rope, gathered an armful of crop, held it down with his knee, tied it up, and the sheaf was ready. It was a good-sized one as well, because father liked his sheaves to be man-sized.
“What are you still standing there for? Job needs finishing.”
He bound a second sheaf and a third. Then all of a sudden it was like he’d gotten exhausted, he sat himself down on one of the sheaves and fell to thinking. He thought and thought, he could’ve tied a good few sheaves more in that time, and it was only when he’d sat through eight or nine sheaves that he said:
“So you’re going to go?”
“I think I have to.” I sat down next to him on another sheaf. “Everyone’s going. The Dudas’ Franek, Kasperek, Jędrek Niezgódka, other guys.”
“Maybe you could be the only one not to go. When it’s war you don’t see the one man, just the war. Plus, once they shave your heads and stick you in uniform you’ll all look like sons of the same mother. You’ll all get mixed up like leaves, like trees, no one’ll be able to tell you apart.”
He lost himself in thought again. The sun was climbing into the sky and getting hotter and hotter. The cool of night was gone from the crop and it was warming up too. A stork flew across the sky.
“Oh look, a stork,” I said for the sake of saying something.
“Who’s going to do the work around here,” he said, “before Antek and Stasiek grow up? Four sons and no help. I mean, we might at least finish the harvest, there’s a whole lot still needs doing. Maybe it’s not our war, this one?”
“Whose war could it be?”
“What do we have to fight about? We plow and plant and mow, are we in anyone’s way? War won’t change the world. People’ll just go off and kill each other, then afterwards it’ll be the same as it was before. And as usual it’ll be us country folks that do most of the dying. And nobody will even remember that we fought, or why. Because when country folks die they don’t leave monuments and books behind, only tears. They rot in the land, and even the land doesn’t remember them. If the land was going to remember everyone it would have to stop giving birth to new life. But the land’s job is to give birth.”
“Maybe that’s what the war is about, father, so the land can give birth. If that’s what it’s about then it is our war.”
“The land gives birth, war or no war. Only God can stop it giving birth.”
“Even Romcia the thief is going,” I said. “He ran over to make confession first thing this morning. Now he’s drinking at the pub. He says, I’m drinking my own tears, pal, no one can stop me doing that. But at night he’s gonna go rob someone one last time. He says he couldn’t go killing people if he was all holy.”
I thought father would get worried about Romcia and say:
“Maybe it’ll be us he robs? You should’ve sounded him out a bit more.”
But he didn’t pay any attention, he just said:
“What if you get killed? My hands and your mother’s, that’s not enough for all this land!” He threw his arms open wide like we had fields all the way to the horizon, when there was barely one acre where we were.
“Morning!” someone called from the road. It was Ginger Walek with his scythe over his shoulder. “Father and son together, a sight for sore eyes! Your rye’s looking good.”
“God bless you.”
“I won’t get killed. I won’t, father. Romcia’s more likely to get killed. He says it’s going to be his last thieving, after that he’s going straight.”
Father calmed down a bit, he lowered his eyes from the fields and looked at his feet. He plucked an ear of rye, crushed it against his hand, blew away the chaff, and stared at the glittering grain as if he was telling the future in his mind, even numbers for good luck, odd numbers for bad.
“Even if they don’t kill you, who knows how long this war could last. The other one went on four years.”
“That was when we had a tsar, this one’ll be shorter. We’ll win and we’ll come back. There’s a whole ton of men going, from our village, from others. Back then, who wanted to fight for the tsar. He was foreign, no one cared one way or the other about him.”
“Foreign he might have been, but you could draw lots and have a chance of staying home. If you were well off you could even pay for someone else to go in your place. And if some guy was really stubborn about it, even the draw couldn’t make him go. Before the Cossacks came for him he’d already be hanging from a tree. He was damned by the church but at least he got to stay among his own. Though those kind of men, they weren’t in any hurry either to go to war or to do much of anything else. Or they’d put their leg under the wheel of a wagon and let it run them over, and afterwards, even though they limped, they were limping on their own land, not all around the world. Or they’d put their eye out, because the army wouldn’t take a one-eyed man. When you’re at home you can see just as well with one eye as with two. Besides, what’s to see, you know everything by heart, you can find anything you need in the darkest night. There’s that saying, blind as a bat, but bats find their way around just fine. You can sleep just as well with one eye as two, you can cry just the same. Back then people obeyed their parents more than you all do these days. Or you just needed to lose your trigger finger. You’d cut it off and they’d not take you. You’d dress it with bread mixed with cobwebs, it would hurt a bit, then you’d say you lost it in the chaff-cutter when you were cutting chaff for the horses. There’s many a farmer missing a finger to this day, and they never went to war, they just cut it off in the chaff-cutter. What’s one finger out of ten. A tailor needs it to hold his needle and thread. A rich man, cause he has to keep counting his money. A priest when he has to point at sinners from the pulpit. But when you work the land you use your whole arm, up to the elbow, not just your fingers. One more or less, what’s important i
s to want to work.”
I remember one time, I’d not yet properly learned to mow, we were mowing rye, father was in front and I was behind him, and I deliberately hit the scythe against a rock and it broke the whole thing. But he didn’t even get mad at me. He just looked at the notch in the blade and said:
“You’ve not quite got the trick. But one or two more harvests and you’ll be there. I had trouble too at the beginning.”
And it was always like that, even when I’d gotten the hang of it and we’d both be mowing, him in front and me behind, it was like he was always watching over me to make sure I didn’t lose patience during the harvest.
“You don’t have to cut a whole swath in a single swing! If you lived the way you’re mowing you’d run out of steam halfway through your life. And you’d lose the will to work even sooner. Slow down a bit, we’re just getting started.”
Because with me the first swath was always angry, like I was getting my own back. I’d often send the earth flying from under the scythe. And it’d be as wide as I could swing my arms. And though I was strong as a horse in those days, by the second swath the anger and spite had gone, by the third my eyes were filled with sweat, and by the next one I had to stop for a moment and sharpen up the blade with the whetstone so I could catch my breath. Because you can’t keep mowing for long out of anger and spite. To mow well you have to start like you were in the middle of a swath and finish as if you were just beginning. That was how father mowed. He wasn’t a big man, and when it was a good year and the rye or the wheat had grown well it was as tall as him, but when he mowed it was like the field was moving him along of its own accord, evenly, step by step. And he’d finish the whole field like that, step by step, evenly. And whole harvests the same way. It looked like it wasn’t him swinging the scythe through the rye or the wheat, the scythe itself was moving his shoulders back and forth, and he was only letting it.
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