Even now, when I’m mowing I sometimes feel that I’m following behind him. And I even compare myself, whether I’m mowing like he did when he was alive. Is the field moving me along the same way, evenly, step after step. Is the scythe swinging my arms back and forth, and I’m just allowing it to. But I don’t think I’ll ever match him. You have to be a born mower to mow like him. I don’t know if Michał or Antek or Stasiek would have matched him either, though they were better sons than me. But it’s hard to say what would have been.
Michał was the smartest of the four of us and he was supposed to go into the priesthood, he left the village before he’d done a whole lot of mowing. Though before the war he’d come home almost every harvesttime to help out. Except that father usually wouldn’t let him mow, instead he’d have him do the raking or sweep up the loose ears. Leave it be, Michał, what’s the point in you mowing, you’ll only get blisters on your hands. Szymek, he’s another matter, he’s built like a cart horse. He could mow with one arm if he felt like it. So Michał never even had a chance to learn to mow properly.
Antek was pretty good, he didn’t mow as evenly as father yet, but it was like he moved the scythe even faster and drew it back even shorter. The thing was, though, he’d get mad at the slightest thing. It was enough for the crop not to be standing up straight, or he’d prick himself on a thistle. He never had the patience to get to the end of the swath in one go. He’d always have to take a break even if just for a minute, look around at the field and the sky, or go get a drink of water from the standpipe, because he was always too hot. But for whatever reason, father never hurried him up. The only thing he’d say occasionally was:
“Don’t drink so much water, it’ll take away your strength.” Or when he heard from the sound Antek’s scythe was making that it had gotten blunt, he’d tell him:
“Sharpen it up a bit.”
This played into Antek’s hands. Because even though he never knew by himself when the blade needed sharpening, he liked sharpening just as well as drinking water or staring at the field and the sky. He was better at sharpening than he was at mowing. The whetstone moved in his hand like he was whipping a cut branch, and sparks would fly from the scythe. Father’s face would light up when Antek was honing his scythe. He’d act worried and warn him in a good-natured way:
“Don’t let those sparks fall on the hay, Antek. We wouldn’t have time to stomp them out. And other fields would go up after ours. Field boundaries don’t mean a thing to fire, what’s mine and what’s yours.”
Maybe Antek was pulling the wool over father’s eyes with all the sharpening. Or father was waiting till Antek grew up and got as strong as he could, then he’d tell him if he’d gotten to be a better mower than me, or the other way around, and what kind of mower he was going to be.
For the while it was obvious the best mower one day would be Stasiek. The first time Stasiek picked up a scythe, right away he planted his feet apart like father did. He spat on his hands like father did. Just like father, he moved evenly, one step after another. He didn’t take a break till he got to the end of the swath. And he was no taller than the rye.
Though what’s the sense in wondering which one of us would have been the best mower. You’d have to live your life and then see. And there never was a harvest all four of us worked together. There’s no telling how it would have been if one of us had been mowing right behind the next one, then the third and the fourth. Michał, Antek, Stasiek, me, and if we’d all mowed the rye or the wheat on the same day, at the same time, under the same sun. Father could have been the judge.
“What was my life even for,” he’d sometimes complain. “Four sons, I thought when death comes I’d ask to be carried out onto the land and you’d all be standing there with your scythes ready to mow together. And I’d say, I’ve had a happy life. Thank you, God.”
Because one Sunday afternoon Stasiek came home from the village and like Antek a few years back, he said he was leaving.
“Where to?” asked father. He thought maybe Stasiek was off to a dance in Bartoszyce or Przewłoka. Maybe he had a girl and he didn’t know how else to say it.
“I’m going away,” he said.
“You’re going away as well?” Father sounded surprised, but he didn’t fully believe it yet. “Away to where?”
“To Poland,” Stasiek answered rudely, though he’d never spoken to father that way before. He always liked spending time with father, going places with him and talking with him.
“Poland,” father repeated, like he couldn’t quite figure out where it was. “That’s a big place. It’s easy to get lost there if you’ve never been. How will you get back?”
“I’m never coming back.”
“Never coming back?” Father was still calm. “So what are you going to do in this Poland of yours?”
“I’m going to build it.” Stasiek’s hackles were up.
“We were supposed to build new cattle sheds,” said father, not giving up. “We already got nearly all the materials. The bricklayers are coming in.”
“Never mind cattle sheds. These days Poland’s more important. You should go read about it, father. There’s an announcement on the firehouse wall. They talked about it on the radio as well. We’ve all signed up, the Tomalaks’ Antek, Bronek Duda, me …”
Father didn’t let Stasiek finish. He jumped up and ran to the door. He stood on the threshold, spread his arms, took hold of the door frame, and in a trembling voice he shouted:
“You’re not going anywhere! I won’t let you! I’ll kill you before I let you go! I’d rather get sent to hell! I’d rather die than let you! Why I am being punished like this, God?”
Stasiek burst into tears. Mother was already in bed, she started snuffling as well. And father just stood there blocking the door with his arms, furious, his hair all messy, his face screwed up, shouting:
“I won’t let you! I won’t allow it! You were supposed to be a farmer! We were supposed to buy more land! God meant for you to stay! Your Poland is here. Nowhere else! Nowhere!”
His hands slowly began to slide down the door frame, though he seemed so angry he was about to rip it out of the wall. Maybe he’d bring the whole house down with it and bury his misfortune. His voice softened. The words came with more and more difficulty, it was like they were getting more helpless. He wasn’t shouting now, just moaning. In the end he sank down on the threshold, lowered his gray head to his chest, and cried.
Mother dragged herself out of bed and slipped her skinny feet into her clogs. She tied her apron on and started busying about.
“You’ll need a couple of new shirts. But don’t wear one longer than a week or it’ll be hard to wash. Maybe you could take your father’s sleeveless jacket. Otherwise you’ll get cold. Away from home a sweater would be better. But you’ve grown out of yours, and there are holes in the elbows. Or we could buy something for you and send it on. You’d just have to write and tell us where you are. Here, you can have Antek’s old winter socks. They’re perfectly fine, I’ll just darn the heels for you. They might laugh at you if you wore footcloths. I’m giving you this little pillow so you’ll have something to lay your head on. Maybe you should take half a loaf of bread? Your own bread is always your own. You never know what you’ll get out there. Here’s a couple heads of garlic. If you catch cold, chop it up fine and spread it on a slice of bread. And here’s some onion, if you get hungry you can fry it up or just eat it raw with some bread. There’s a piece of bacon fat in the pantry, you can take that too. We’ll be fine. I ought to give you a pat of butter, but I haven’t got anything to make it with, one cow’s calving and the other one’s not giving milk, we barely get enough to add cream to the soup. I’m giving you some sage in case you get the toothache. Here’s horsetail for if you get a nosebleed, it’ll stop it right away. Here’s some linden flower. And chamomile for your throat. Make an infusion and gargle with it if it gets sore. We can’t give you any money because we don’t have any ourselves. Unless we borrowed
some. Or Szymek, you give him some if you’ve got a few zlotys. We’ll make it up to you. And here’s a prayer book. Pray once in a while if things get bad for you. Always go to mass on Sunday. I’ll pray for you here as well. Write to tell us how things are for you out there in the world. And come back when I die.”
It was a good six months before he wrote. We were already thinking something had happened to him. Mother was so worried her health got even worse. Father was all dejected, he didn’t have the will to do anything. When Stasiek finally did write it was only a couple of sentences, that everything was fine, he was working and studying, how was mother’s health, and that he’d visit soon though he didn’t know exactly when. But he never did visit. He just sent a photograph. He looked gaunt and skinny, he was wearing a cap like a forage cap. He hardly looked like the old Stasiek at all. Mother had me wedge the picture in the frame of the Our Lady that hung over her bed, and she gazed at him as she faded from day to day.
Him and Antek, the two of them only came back for mother’s funeral. And they left the same day, after the burial, because they didn’t have time. And after that it was always the same. One of them or both of them would visit, but there was never time to sit and talk or ask them how things were, what they were up to, they were always in a hurry. And right away they’d start arguing with me about any little thing, that the table was still the same one from the war, that I’d not put a wooden floor in, even that the lightbulb was covered in fly droppings, one thing on top of another, as if their old home was somehow painful to them. Yet it was still their home.
It was the same when they came about the tomb. They shouted and protested, and I didn’t say a thing. In the end I took the sacks they’d brought for the flour and went to the pantry to fill them. I didn’t have anything to give them except for flour. Then they left.
I didn’t know how to tell Chmiel that we’d be putting up a smaller tomb now. We’d already settled on eight places. Chmiel had measured it all and done the calculations. I’d even given him a down payment. I’d been holding off on the final decision just in case, till they wrote back and said yes. I didn’t want to go ahead without their say-so. The tomb was for them as well. If they were going to be buried in it they had a right to decide. I only had to go and tell Chmiel they’d agreed.
Whether they say yes or no, they have to be reckoned with, I’d said to myself. They were good boys one time. Maybe the outside world had just gotten to them a bit. When they came they were wearing suits and overcoats and hats, it all looked brand-new. Stasiek even had an umbrella. Antek was wearing eyeglasses and he had a little leather case. It was no surprise they weren’t in any hurry to die. But if not now, then maybe another time, or maybe when they got old. Because when people get old you can never tell. When death’s staring you in the face even a college graduate becomes a person again, so does an engineer. At those times everything falls off life like leaves dropping from a tree in the fall, and you’re left like a bare trunk. At those times you’re not drawn to the outside world but back to the land where you were born and grew up, because that’s your only place on this earth. In that land, even a tomb is like a home for you.
So I went and told Chmiel they’d agreed.
Sometimes I think to myself, what does the land actually care about me? What does it know about me? Does it even know I exist? Does it know how long I’ve traipsed around it? If you counted up all the steps together I might even have gone all the way around this world of ours. Or maybe I’d even have made it into the next world, and I’m still walking along. Over ridges and furrows and ruts, over stubble fields, in rain and cold and swelter, in agony, spring and summer and autumn, with scythe or plow. And for what?
On top of that, does it know how much you’ve quarreled over it, how much you’ve hated? To the point that you were amazed where all that hatred inside you came from. Did you enter the world with it already in you? And the hatred only later turned into the land?
In any case, before I was ever born, father had a law case with the Prażuchs over our field boundary. He didn’t believe in earthly justice, but he came back from the field one time shaking with anger, saying:
“Whether there’s any justice or no, that crook Prażuch needs to be taken to court. The land can’t take it anymore.”
What had happened was, Prażuch had yet again plowed over our field boundary. And so it began. One time father sued Prażuch, then Prażuch sued father, and so on in turn, depending on whose land happened not to be able to take it any longer. It went on for years, because the courts weren’t exactly in any kind of hurry to make a final judgment. Judges have to earn a living too.
Maybe you couldn’t even say who was in the wrong, maybe the Lord God himself couldn’t have decided. Because when it comes to the land there aren’t any guilty or innocent folks, only those that are wronged. And everyone knows what courts are like, it’s all about being guilty or innocent. But that wasn’t the right measure. And so the courts took their course, while father and Prażuch doled out their own justice. Where Prażuch would plow over a strip of our land in the spring, father would plow it back in the autumn, and add at least another half-furrow from Prażuch’s field to make up for the wrong he’d suffered. That bandit shouldn’t think he can get off scot-free.
Then one day, after yet another time in court that hadn’t resolved a thing, father met Prażuch out in the fields. Father was harrowing his land, Prażuch was mucking his. Prażuch ups and says, when you need to sell that field to pay for the courts, I’ll buy it off you. Wishful thinking, answers father, because if the courts don’t finish you the Lord God will. One way or another you’ll get what you deserve, and then maybe you’ll finally drop dead, you crook. It turned into a terrible argument between the two of them, you could hear it way off, like two whole villages were at each other’s throats, or two whole manor houses, or the sky and the land. Anyone who was out working the fields straightened up, stopped their plow or their harrow, stood for a moment, and looked around to see where the quarrel was. They argued so loud the larks vanished from the sky. And even the sky, that had been clear, clouded over and there were flashes of lightning in the distance.
In the end father had had enough, he ran up to Prażuch and landed him one with his whip. Without thinking Prażuch pushed his pitchfork at father. Father fell down, there was blood, and the other man stood over him, leaned on his pitchfork, and jeered:
“Who’s dying now, you bastard? Who’s getting what they deserve?”
Father was barely conscious, but he threatened him back:
“You just wait till my Szymek grows up, you crook.”
And so when I did grow up there was nothing for it. One time I was plowing the same field, and Prażuch was in his field sowing wheat. A flock of crows landed on his field and mine, and they walked about pecking at things, the way crows do. All of a sudden the old guy bent down, grabbed a clod of earth, and chucked it, supposedly at the crows that were on his field. But the ones on mine flew up as well. That made me mad, because I like it when the crows follow behind me when I’m plowing. I stopped the horse and shouted:
“Leave the crows alone, you old fart! Scare them off your own land! Keep the hell away from mine!”
Not only did Prażuch keep throwing clods of earth at the crows, he also started cawing, caw! caw! caw!
“Shut it, or I’ll shut it for you!”
But on he goes with his, caw! caw! caw!
I ran up to him and landed my fist right between his eyes. He flipped over and all the grain scattered from his canvas sheet. I kicked him where he lay on the ground.
“Who’s getting what they deserve now?” I said. I went back and plowed half my field and he still couldn’t even get up, he just lay there grunting and cursing. People even said I’d done something to his back, because he was stuck in bed almost till the spring.
Then autumn came again, and Antek was grazing the cows one day among the potato stalks, and Prażuch was plowing his land. And somehow or other o
ne of the cows strayed onto his field. Antek ran over to drive it back. Prażuch left his plow and horse and set about Antek with his whip. He beat the kid so bad he had purple welts all over. Then he whipped the cow that had strayed. And as if that wasn’t enough, he ran over onto our land and whipped the other cow, that hadn’t done a damn thing to him. Antek came back home crying, it wasn’t even close to midday, and the cows were flogged so bad their skin was covered in ridges.
That finally did it for me. I grabbed an ax and ran out into the fields, I was going to kill the old man and be done with it. After that I could rot in prison. But he saw me coming from far off, he quickly unhitched the horse from the plow, jumped on the horse, flicked the reins, and galloped off down the road by the mill toward his house. I ran after him, but his place was all bolted up. I started hammering at the door.
“Open up, you son of a bitch, I’m gonna kill you! Open up, you hear! This world’s too small for the both of us!”
But I couldn’t even hear the slightest peep from behind the door – it was like no one was there. And they all were there. I looked through the window, there was a tin crucifix standing in it. I could have smashed the window, but it somehow didn’t seem right to clamber in over a crucifix. I just hacked the corner post of the house with my ax.
From that time on he avoided me like the plague. I never ran into him down in the village. Or at the store. And whenever I’d go into the fields, his land would already have been worked, like the devil himself had done it in the night. In the end we bumped into each other one time at the pub. He mustn’t have been expecting to see me, because it was still morning, the weather was perfect, and it was harvesttime. He’d come for tobacco, I was at the bar and I’d already had a bit to drink.
“So it’s tobacco you’re after, granddad?” I said. He shrunk his head in and didn’t utter a word. “What’s wrong with smoking clover? Or chop yourself up some cherry leaves!” Then I said to the Jew: “Chaim, give him a glass of anis vodka, let him drink to my health since we’ve finally run into each other.”
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