Stone Upon Stone

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  It was a Thursday, and on Saturday he went to the priest to have him give last rites, because he’d decided that he’d die on Sunday afternoon, and he didn’t want the priest to have to trek all the way to the other end of the village just for his death. Actually he could have managed fine without the priest. For a long time already he’d had an oak casket, a black suit, elastic-sided boots, a shirt and tie, all set. In the morning he saw to the livestock, fed the dog and the cat, swept out the house, swatted the flies, poured the sour milk into a muslin sack to make cheese. Then he took a bath, shaved, dressed, and called Strugała to come light a funerary candle for him. His last words were:

  “Staś, my will is under the picture of Jesus. Everything’s written there, who’s to get what, and when the cheese stops dripping you can have it.”

  And in that way my farm was left to the mercy of fate. Because even with my closest neighbors, if any of them did any work there it was only in their own interest, so they could take as much as possible for themselves. When I came back the place looked like a battleground. I didn’t know where to turn first. The main shaft of the wagon’s chassis was cracked, and the side panels had been stolen. All that was left of the dog was its kennel, even its chain must have come in handy for someone else. When I went into the barn, the mows were almost empty, though there was no shortage of sparrows. It sounded like I was standing under the sluice-gate of a mill and water was pouring down on me from above – the noise was deafening. They’d run so wild they weren’t even that afraid of me. Only the ones on the threshing floor rose up, though to the last moment they weren’t sure whether they needed to be scared of me or not. I threw one of my walking sticks at them, but you’re never going to hit a sparrow, they just flew up under the roof. And my walking stick bounced off the boards and into a mow, and I had to clamber over the partition to fetch it. I was so furious I tipped my head back and started cursing them and calling them names, you damn this and that! But they couldn’t even hear me. You’d have needed the trumpets of Jericho to be heard over that racket. Besides, sparrow talk is different from people talk, and they wouldn’t have understood anyway. You just wait, you little buggers!

  I hurried out to look for my whip. But try finding your whip when you’ve been gone two years. I went to the neighbor’s.

  “Franek, lend me a whip, will you.”

  “You in a hurry to get out into the fields? You only just got back from the hospital.”

  “It’s not for going to the fields, it’s for the sparrows.”

  “What the heck use is a whip, with sparrows?”

  I bolted the door, stood in the middle of the threshing floor, and leaning on a walking stick with one arm, with the other I started waving the whip and cracking it way up to the rafters, shouting, “boo! boo!” at the top of my voice. There was a swirling confusion of birds. It was like a sudden whirlwind was blowing them out of the mows, out from under the thatched roof, who knows where from, so they all gathered in a huge swarm that was frantic with fear, with the beating of thousands of little wings. Sometimes when a storm wind blows through the orchard the leaves on the trees make the same sound. They weren’t sparrows, they were a gale, a blizzard. The entire barn was shaking. And I kept going “boo! boo!” and cracking the whip. The birds were thrashing about, flying this way and that, up above, down below, I even had to duck because they were flying around me as well. They moved toward the door, but the door was bolted, then up toward the sky, but there there was the roof, then against the walls. In fact the walls had fist-sized holes in them, because the barn was a good old age, plus it had been hit by shrapnel in the war, and even a pigeon could have squeezed through those holes, never mind a sparrow. But the sparrows were so confused that one sparrow was a flock of sparrows, and a flock of sparrows can’t get through a hole for one sparrow. You could actually smell overheated feathers in the air, like the stink of chaff when the wind is in the grain. But it wasn’t chaff, how could it have been chaff? It was the fear of the sparrows that stank like chaff, as they rose up in a swarm to try and escape their sparrowy death.

  My walking stick fell out of my hand, but it was like a miracle had happened, my legs stood on their own. I didn’t even feel any pain, because I didn’t feel I had legs at all. I just hobbled this way and that around the threshing floor, and, boo! boo! My throat was as dry as a well in a drought and my arm was about to fall off from waving the whip. But the birds up by the roof were evidently also getting tired, because they started looking for somewhere they could perch even for a second. They weren’t that frightened anymore, either by the whip or by my shouting. I am not giving in to you, I said to myself, not if it kills me. I grabbed the flail that was standing in the corner by one of the mows, and I started smashing it against the threshing floor, the doors, the partitions, the pillars. This set the storm in motion again. They weren’t flying in a single dense cloud anymore, but in little groups, in tatters, birds on their own. They flapped about every which way, even bumping into each other. They didn’t look like sparrows so much as sparrow dust, sparrow fear, sparrow death, fluttering around the barn. And in that dust, that fear, that death, they crashed against the walls and rafters and beams and came tumbling down to the ground like rotten apples falling off a tree. At moments it was like someone had shaken the trunk of the barn, and there was an absolute hail. Though the others kept trying to get away, maybe they thought they’d already made it out of the barn to freedom, that they’d managed to pass through the walls and the roof like sparrow ghosts and they were soaring through the air farther and farther away from my flail. Because in a state of panic like that, even sparrows can think goodness knows what. A couple of them even fell on me, but what’s a sparrow, even a dead one. Just a little bundle of feathers. Besides, I was in a rage, and I’d gotten so carried away with the flail that even if rocks had fallen on me they would’ve felt like sparrows.

  I began to run out of strength, the flail got out of control and I hit myself on the head with the swingle. At that exact moment it felt like someone had kicked my legs from under me, and I had to grab hold of a pillar so I wouldn’t fall over. I dragged myself to a sack of bran and plumped down on it, exhausted and gasping like a dog that’s been rushing around. The sparrows were still flying all over the place and killing themselves up above, though the cloud wasn’t so dense now, it was like the last drops of rain. And even after they’d stopped flying, every so often one of them would still rise into the air then thump down into a mow or onto the threshing floor.

  My rage was through and I was even starting to feel bad about what I’d done. I mean, what had the sparrows done to me. But how could I help it if the sparrows had been on the receiving end? I could just as easily have turned the house upside down or taken an ax and cut down the orchard. Because I’d obviously needed to do something to come to terms with myself. What was I now? It wasn’t enough that I had to learn to walk from scratch, I also had to learn how to live all over again. Yet how could I live when everything here was in ruins. One of the cows was at least calving, but with the other one you felt bad even milking her. When you pulled her teats she twisted her head around to see why you were tormenting her. And she gave no more than a cupful of milk in the morning and the same in the evening. As for the horse, if I hadn’t known he was mine I’d never have recognized him. His ribs were poking through his skin. He only stood when I took him by the halter. And even when he was only harnessed to an empty wagon he staggered like he was about to collapse. He’d need to be fattened up on oats for at least a week to get his strength back a bit. But where was I supposed to get oats from when the bins were gaping empty. He had to eat chaff, and from borrowed straw at that. And on top of everything, the harvest had begun.

  I’d had about twenty chickens. Mrs. Makuła was looking after them for me, and that was a lot of eggs for her, minimum one egg every other day from each chicken. In return she was supposed to water the flowers in the window boxes. There was nothing left of the flowers except dry stalks
, and she claimed the chickens had gotten fowl cholera and it happened to be my chickens that all died. She gave me two of hers to replace my twenty, and she promised me a brood hen in the spring.

  As for the fence along the road, no more than half of it was left, though there hadn’t been a single post missing before.

  I had a chaff-cutter, I’d thought about motorizing it one of these days, but someone had borrowed it. I went around almost all the neighbors near and far, and eventually I found it all the way over by the mill with Przytuła, he even tried to convince me I’d lent it to him myself before I was taken to the hospital. I didn’t have the strength to argue. It might have been true, it might not have, so be it.

  My scythe had always hung under the overhang of the barn, now there was no sign of it. The rake had lived next to it, that had disappeared just the same.

  I went to Stajuda’s because he’d been the last one to look after my land, all I wanted to know was whether he’d mucked my fields, because the muck stall was completely empty. Sure, he’d gone and mucked the fields and plowed them over, he swore he had. Except his eyes were darting about in this odd way and he didn’t look at me once, he just kept squinting at the walls the whole time. I had to believe him. I mean, I couldn’t go ask the land, tell me, did the bastard muck you or not?

  The floor in the house was so covered in mouse droppings it was like walking over spilled buckwheat, scrit scrit scrit. I grabbed a broom and started sweeping. All at once I hear a scratching sound in the pail. I look in, and there’s a mouse. Where did you come from? It made me think, because a bucket for a mouse is like a well for a person. There’s no way to either get in or get out without a ladder. So I had to think it had been born from the water. The water had dried up and the mouse was left behind. I set it free, why should I go blaming a stupid little mouse for everything and killing it.

  When I looked at the Our Lady over the bed I saw the glass was broken. There were umpteen empty vodka bottles under the bed. The lightbulb had been removed. It was just as well I’d come back during the day, I managed to go buy a new one. Except that when I screwed it in it turned out there was no light, because there hadn’t been anyone to pay the bill and my electricity had been turned off.

  I’d had an alarm clock. Admittedly it was broken, it was stopped on nine o’clock. But at least it showed nine o’clock. You looked at it and you knew you had to do this and do that, go here, drive there, bring such and such, take something down, throw it out, feed the animals, milk them. And everyone has the time inside them anyway, they don’t need a clock to tell them. But someone had found a use even for a broken clock.

  Someone else had taken a liking to the calendar, though it was a good few years old. It hung on the wall under the crucifix and I got so used to it being there that I’d been reluctant to throw it out. Plus, once in a while I’d write something on it, maybe someone died, or there was a big hailstorm, or the cow was taken to be covered. Maybe they’d liked the sayings, because there was a different saying for each day. And if someone doesn’t know how to live, a saying like that can often be good advice.

  I’d had a bucket I took the food out to the pigs in, that had gone too.

  I’d had two stools, only one was left.

  What I missed most were my haircutting things. Whoever took them, I cursed him to high heaven. I wished him a lingering death. I’d been counting on maybe beginning to offer haircuts and shaves for the local men, though there was a barber in the village now. Olek żmuda was his name. But they’d come to me as well, if not the young folks then the older ones, and I’d earn a bit of money to help get me started again.

  Or my fireman’s helmet, these days you won’t find a helmet like that anymore, all gold, with a crest and a peak and a studded chinstrap. It had hung on a nail in the main room. The bastard who took it couldn’t even wear it, I mean where would he go in it? To a fire? Everyone would stare at him instead of putting out the fire. There aren’t any more parades, and the firemen don’t guard Christ’s tomb at Easter anymore.

  Or my prayer book. I got it from mother when she was dying. She had four prayer books, the same as her number of sons. She prayed for each one of us from a different one. From one she prayed for Stasiek, from another for Antek, a third one for Michał, and the one she prayed from for me she’d gotten from her own mother. That was all I had of hers. It was in the drawer in the table. I mean, how can a son of a bitch like that pray from a stolen prayer book? Will God listen to him?

  I had a saw used to always be propped up in the hallway. Someone took that as well.

  I had a raincoat. It had holes in it, but I’d still always put it on for going out into the fields when it was raining, or taking the animals down to the river to water them. That was gone.

  The hoe for weeding, it was almost brand-new, I bought it the spring before my accident, someone even stole the handle.

  Then there were all kinds of things I only remembered later.

  The basket I always used to take food to be blessed, I didn’t remember till Easter when I’d already boiled the eggs to take them to be blessed.

  Or the masher for mashing potatoes up for the pigs. It stood by the door in the passageway, I remember well, twice a day I’d take it and twice a day I’d put it back in its place. And not just for a year or two, but even when mother and father were still alive. Mashers would come and go, but they were always kept in the same place, behind the door in the passageway. But what use was a memory. Sometimes it’s best not to remember at all, because when you remember something it ought to be there.

  When I went up into the attic, there’d used to be a sack of feathers hanging from a rod, an old cloak of Michał’s, some other old clothes, half a dozen strings of garlic, a horse-collar, two lengths of rope. Only the rod was left.

  I’d had an almost full sack of bolted flour, one and a half hundredweight, yellow as the sun, I didn’t even need to add eggs when I was making noodles. There was no sign of flour or sack.

  There’d been two cheeses hanging from a rafter in wicker baskets, I thought they’d be just what was needed when the cow stopped giving milk before it had its calf, but someone had cut the baskets down and left just rag-ends of cord.

  Wherever I looked there was something missing. I didn’t want to look anymore. But on the way back from the attic to the main room I noticed the sieve was gone, though there’d always been one hanging on a nail by the ladder. This was gone, that was gone, and two of the rungs of the ladder were broken.

  I threw myself on the bed to try and gather my thoughts. Though that’s easier said than done, gathering your thoughts. There are times a man would much rather scatter his thoughts to the four winds. Then turn into a table or a stool. And just be that stool or table till his time came. Because it was like pouring sand from one hand to the other, back and forth, endlessly. You could pour it there and back again all your life, you’d never make it into a whip. And even if you did, who would you use it on? Szymon, Szymon – I thought I heard someone calling me. But I didn’t want to hear who. I stared at the room, or the room stared at me, and there was nothing but a dead reflection in my eyes. And then the cat appeared.

  It stood on the threshold, meowed, and jumped up onto my lap. I’d forgotten all about it. I couldn’t remember everything. Besides, truth be told, I never liked it. It was lazy as the day is long, and you had to force it to go out mousing, it would hardly ever go of its own accord. And when it came back it would be all hungry and bedraggled like it had been the one being bitten by the mice, and it would look at me to get me to toss it a crust of bread at least. It would have just laid there by the stove and slept all day. There were times it drove me mad when the mice were running wild in the barn, and the cat’s in here sleeping, maybe even enjoying a nice dream. Though I don’t think cats have dreams, because if cats do then other animals must, horses, cows, dogs, pigs, chickens, geese, rabbits – why would a cat be any better than them? If all of them had dreams every night on the farm, with all tho
se animals and on top of that all those dreams, a man would go mad. It’s enough that people dream, sometimes even that’s too much.

  Often it would sleep all day and all night, and still not want to wake up in the morning, not until I’d lit the stove and it felt warm enough. And even then it wouldn’t hop down right away. It would stretch and arch its back, stick its tail up in the air then curl it underneath, till I lost patience, I’d grab it by the scruff of the neck and force it to get up. Or I’d take it straight to the barn and bolt the door, this is where you belong, damn you. Can you smell mice? Then go catch some. But sometimes it’d be less than half an hour before it was back scratching at the door again. And how could I not let it in. Sure, it was an idle one, but without a cat the place felt somehow empty, just like a farmyard feels empty without a dog and cows, fields without a horse, the sky without birds. Come evening, it’s nice just to hear purring from something that’s alive. You listen to the purring and it’s like someone was sleeping in the other bed, or like mother was kneeling way over in the corner saying her prayers.

  I thought it would have disappeared in the two years I was gone. I wouldn’t have minded much. And here it’d even grown fat. If it wasn’t for the fact it was a tomcat, you might have thought he was about to have kittens and that was why his belly was so big. Even his meow was deeper. And his tail had gotten all bushy, like a fox’s. His head had almost become one with his body. It was hard to even believe it was my old cat. But how could I have not known my own cat? He was dark gray with green eyes and half his tail was white. No one else had a cat like that in the whole village. I stroked his back, and it was like stroking sun-warmed grass.