Stone Upon Stone

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  Often one of them would set about marrying her in a way he’d never have done with his own wife, because she’d have knocked his block off. But Jadzia the orderly let anyone try to marry her as much as they wanted, and she laughed with each one the way she would have done with her own man. She was never sad, never angry. It was just that when one of them would try to arrange a wedding with her, she’d ask:

  “How am I going to get to the church? Are you planning to take me in a regular wagon with the boards all dirty with manure? Cause I’m not going unless it’s in a carriage drawn by four white horses.”

  One guy would promise she’d be a fine lady when she lived with him.

  “Then you’ll have to become a fine gentleman first.”

  One of them would swear she’d never lack for caviar in his house.

  “Caviar maybe not, but I’d lack for everything else.”

  One tried to tempt her by saying he had gold rubles buried under a mow in his barn, and when he got back home he’d dig them up and they’d all be hers.

  “Best go home first and dig them up, your kids might have gotten there first.”

  Another one kept pestering her about getting together in the morning when everyone was still asleep.

  “In the morning there’s no moonlight and your breath smells.”

  One guy sighed and said that if the Lord let him get well even just for a moment from being with her, he’d buy a new bell for the church.

  “Then buy the bell first so I can hear it ringing.”

  Someone else boasted that though he was old, if he went with her he’d get his youth back.

  “You should get your youth back first, because afterwards it might be too late and we’d both be embarrassed.”

  One of them asked if he could at least feel her breast.

  “What good would that do you? You’re not a baby anymore, you won’t get any milk from it.”

  Another one complained he wanted her so bad it hurt, but he couldn’t move arm or leg.

  “So you see yourself. No moving, no loving.”

  Another guy would grin at her when she was putting a urinal in place for him, though he couldn’t ever go.

  “You need to take a piss first, cause otherwise later it could be a problem.”

  When one of them was dying she’d sit by him and say to him:

  “You were supposed to marry me, and here you are dying. I laughed just because, but I would have gone with you even in a regular wagon with dirty boards.”

  Maybe that’s why she never took a husband, because they were forever marrying her and then dying, and it was like she was constantly being made a widow. I laughed myself a good many times that if it wasn’t for my legs, or if I’d met Miss Jadzia earlier, she would have had to be my wife. I’m no spendthrift, Miss Jadzia was a sensible woman too, we’d have made a good couple. But nothing was lost, when I got home I’d come visit her one day, bring her a chicken, some eggs, cheese, and we’d talk it through. The house would have a housekeeper, I’d have a wife, because my brothers had been on at me about getting married. There was no point even talking about it right now with these legs, who knew if I’d ever walk again, and Miss Jadzia wouldn’t have been able to carry me, even though she had strong arms.

  One time at the very beginning, when she was changing my sheets she saw the scars on my body and she was horrified:

  “Heavens almighty! Who gave you all those wounds, Mr. Szymek?”

  “Different people, Miss Jadzia, some of it was at dances, some was in the resistance.”

  “And you survived all of them? Lord have mercy!” And she asked me to tell about one of the scars at least.

  “Then you decide which one, Miss Jadzia,” I said playfully. She chose the scar on my shoulder, a small one though it had gotten bigger over the years. And so I had to tell her how it got there.

  I was spending the winter in hiding at the house of a guy I knew in Jemielnica. The village was a long way from any main road. To the south there were woods. And it was no ordinary winter either, there was snow everywhere and you could only travel by sleigh. The animals came out of the woods right up to the house. You’d step outside and there’d be a deer poking about in the yard, a hare hopping around, and partridges flying in like snow suddenly falling from the roof. What was there to be afraid of? I even moved my bed from the attic to the main room. Then one night, bang! bang! they start hammering on the door and shouting, open up! And before anyone could even open the door they smashed it in with their rifle butts. They virtually took me from my bed – I just had enough time to put my pants on when they started knocking me in the back and on the head with those rifle butts, and it was, forward march! Like they were in some kind of big hurry.

  They’d come in two sleighs. But three of them stayed back to escort me on foot, while the rest went ahead in the sleighs. They didn’t even let me put my boots on – for them I was probably already a corpse. So they pushed me along barefoot in pants and shirt, following the tracks made by the sleighs.

  The snow stuck to my feet, and from time to time I tried to rub one foot against the other. But right away one of them would thump me in the back. Though they kept hitting me the whole time anyway, probably to warm themselves up in the cold. Or they may have felt even colder than me, because every couple of yards one of them would bat his arms against his sides. They were wearing greatcoats and boots and balaclavas under their helmets, and gloves, but if you’re not used to it, you’ll be cold even if it’s not that cold. Plus they had their hands on metal the whole time, and metal is even colder than the ground.

  To begin with I walked as if I was on burning coals, and I felt I wouldn’t make it very far. I wanted to get beyond the village, at that point I was planning to jump them, let them kill me where I chose for it to happen, not them, especially since there was no telling where that might be. Besides, why go farther when it was all leading to the same thing. But once we got outside the village I started feeling sorry that it was about to happen right now, and I thought, I’ll keep going a little ways farther at least. Why should I worry about my feet, they’re going to be dead either way, and it would be good to go on even a little bit. The sleighs with the other men were farther and farther away, it looked like they were sinking into the snow, and in a minute they’d be out of sight. The guys behind kept prodding me for walking too slowly.

  Eventually, to make me forget I was walking on snow I started imagining to myself that I was walking over stubble. Stubble pricks and hurts just as bad, but at least your feet are warm. Though if you know what you’re doing, walking on stubble is no big deal. All you have to do is shuffle your feet along instead of picking them up. If you do that you can move as fast as you like, and you can run away when you’re being chased. And so I felt less and less that I was walking on snow, and more and more I could feel the stubble under my feet, I could feel the earth warm from the sun and dusty dry. I could even hear the chink of a whetstone against a scythe blade. The heat from the crop stuck in my chest. For a moment, way up overhead I heard a lark. But one of the bastards behind me must have heard it as well because he fired a shot over my head and the lark stopped singing.

  My throat started to feel dry, as if from the baking heat from the grain and the earth, and I stooped down to take a handful of snow. At that moment one of them whacked me as hard as he could on the side of the head. I went sprawling and I thought about not getting up. I even wanted them to finish me off. But with them it’s never that easy. They don’t like it when someone chooses his own death. They have to take him to where they’ve decided he’s going to die. Even if it’s the same death. They started yapping like wolves, beating me and kicking me, and I got up. But it was harder and harder for me to walk. My ankles were aching. Every step felt like I was treading on a nail. So I started to imagine the grain must be full of thistles, and it was because of the thistles that it hurt so much walking through the stubble. Or maybe it’d been cut with sickles. Stubble that’s been cut with sickles
feels like it’s packed with nails. Then I imagined my father was calling me from the far end of the field to bring him his whetstone, and I was on my way to him. Or that my cows had wandered onto the squire’s land and they were eating his beets, and I was hurrying towards them across the stubble, heart in mouth, as fast as I could, to shoo them out of there. At a time like that, who’d be thinking about whether their feet hurt when you can barely breathe, you’re so afraid that any minute now the squire’s steward is going to confiscate the cows before you get there. Or that I was racing the other boys across the stubble field, seeing who’d make it to the field boundary first. I won.

  Those sons of bitches probably thought I was exhausted, because how could they have known that the whole way I’d been walking on stubble, at the height of summer, the height of the harvest, since they were leading me over snow. In the end they evidently got real cold themselves, because they started clapping their hands and blowing on them, and stamping their feet. On the left-hand side, right by the track there was a slope overgrown with juniper bushes, and at the bottom there was a deep twisting ravine. But they were so convinced I wouldn’t go an inch farther without being beaten that one of them even dug out a bottle and they all took a swig. They must have been telling dirty stories as well, because all of a sudden they all hooted with laughter as if on command. One of them opened his fly and took a leak. Right at that moment I ran for the slope. Before the first shots sounded I was rolling down through the junipers. Then I dropped like a sack into the ravine. For them it was too steep to chase me. They just stood there shooting. But only one bullet got me, right here in the shoulder. The rest hit the snow, the junipers, the trees. I didn’t even feel anything at the time, only later, when I was already safe.

  From that moment on, Jadzia started giving me special treatment with the meals. She’d bring me a bigger piece of meat for dinner, or more potatoes, or a second bowl of soup. Whenever she came onto the ward she’d always ask if I was hungry or thirsty, or if I’d run out of cigarettes, she could go buy me some. A few times she even got me a pack with her own money. Every so often she’d come onto the ward seemingly for no special reason, and while she was there she’d straighten my blanket, because it’s gone and fallen on the floor, Mr. Szymek. She’d plump my pillow, because you’ll get a headache, Mr. Szymek, from lying on a pillow that’s all squashed up like that. And she’d always slip something to eat under the pillow.

  “Just make sure you eat it during the night, when everyone else is asleep, Mr. Szymek,” she’d whisper, as if to the pillow. “And watch out for that guy by the window, because he sleeps with one eye open.”

  Or when she was bending down for the urinal under the bed, she’d murmur in my ear:

  “Tomorrow it’s chops for dinner. You’ll have one on the outside like everyone else, but there’ll be another one hidden under the potatoes. Just don’t pull it out or people will see. The old guy in the corner has eyes like a hawk. He lost his leg but there’s nothing wrong with his eyesight. He watches everyone else’s plates while he’s eating his own dinner. But it won’t do him any good. And you, Mr. Szymek, you need to live so you need to eat. I’ll bake a plum cake for Sunday because my sister’s coming, and I’ll bring you some too.”

  One time she brought me an orange. It was the first time in my life I’d eaten an orange. Those wounds of mine came in useful after all.

  They happened to be looking for someone to run wedding ceremonies at the district administration. In theory the district secretary was supposed to do weddings, but since the end of the war no more than three or four couples had gotten married in the registry office, mostly people still had a church wedding. Though legally a registry office marriage was just as valid as a church one, and you could be just as happy or unhappy after a civil wedding as a church one. Also, when you had a registry office wedding it was easier to get a horse through UNRRA, or building materials, or grain for sowing. And you could get divorced, the next day even, if things didn’t work out. Not like in the church, where that was an end of it, because what God hath joined together let no man put asunder, so you have to stay with some awful bitch for the rest of your life. Quite a few of them lived exactly like that, cat and dog, they’d fight, have running feuds, when one of them pulled left the other would pull right, but they’d have to keep on living together all the way till one of them died before the other. Though if you ask me, a life like that is actually against God and God ought to break it up. I mean, it can happen that the wrong two people end up together, no one can know ahead of time who’s meant for who, because destinies get mixed up as well, destinies are like days, you should only say they’re good after the sun’s gone down. That was another reason people preferred registry office weddings.

  The first ones to have a civil wedding, right after the front passed through, were Florek Denderys and Bronka Makuła. The district administration gave them a better wedding than a lot of rich folk get, even the ones that have a church wedding. They put a flag on the administration building, they decorated the walls with fir branches, they laid down a carpet a good ten yards long leading up to the entrance, and over the doorway they hung a sign in cutout letters saying: The District Administration Congratulates the Happy Couple. On top of that they were awarded several thousand zlotys. Florek was given a length of material for a suit. Bronka got cloth for a dress, she got a horse, a cow, and baby clothes, because there was one on the way, and an alarm clock to wake them up for work if they ever overslept. Except they had to leave for the West soon after, because people in the village wouldn’t leave them alone, they kept calling Bronka a whore and saying the kid was a bastard, though it hadn’t yet been born. So after them, for a long time there weren’t any takers for a registry office wedding.

  The mayor or the district secretary even visited anyone that they heard was getting married and tried to persuade them to do it at the registry office, they’d say that at the registry office you didn’t need to announce the banns, you didn’t need bridesmaids and veils, you just write it in the registry book and that’s that. Also, it was easier to get a horse, building materials, everything was easier. In the church the priest charged the earth. True, wedding vows were supposed to be before God. But has anyone ever seen God? Only in a picture. How can you be sure it’s him? Even before the war there were a few unbelievers in the village. Kruk for instance, he’d never taken confession in his life till his old lady and his daughters made him. And at the manor houses there was always a strike going on somewhere or other. Mostly at harvesttime, or sometimes during the potato lifting. Wicek Chrząszcz from over in Poddębice even did six months in prison for agitation, because he got drunk at the harvest festival and threatened the village elder he’d get hung from a tree the moment justice would arrive. But now it had arrived, what next? The folk from the county offices came asking how many couples had tied the knot at the district administration. And the answer was, none. What do you mean, none? Aren’t people getting married in your district? Well, sure they are, but everyone’s doing it at the church. So then, this district of yours is going to have to pony up if people there are refusing to understand the new times. The taxes’ll get upped, or they’ll maybe stop supplying coal. There’s always something you can stop giving.

  And on the other side, every Sunday the priest would rage against those registry office weddings from the pulpit, he’d say they were godless, threaten folks with hellfire and eternal damnation. And anyone that was thinking of getting married at the registry office, he’d tell them, don’t you dare, otherwise you’ll get expelled from the church, and the Lord God would expel them from humankind. The worst part was that he poked fun at the district administration all he could, he said it was no house of God, that ever since the district administration has been there it was the place you go to pay taxes, and that wedding vows are a sacrament, not taxes, one of the seven holy sacraments, that they were established by God, not by earthly powers, because earthly powers come from Satan. And a good many pig sheds a
re cleaner than at the district administration, they haven’t had their walls whitewashed since before the war, and when you go in there the floor’s so dirty your shoes stick to it, and the officials there do nothing but smoke cigarettes and chase around after the secretaries. So then, young man and young lady, try going and swearing to be true to each other in that Sodom and Gomorrah. What will a vow like that really be worth?

  It might have been because of what the priest was saying that they prepared a separate room in the administration building, they whitewashed the walls, decorated it with flowers, cleaned the floor, put in a new desk and chairs, laid a carpet, and started looking for an official whose only job would be to give those weddings. Though some people said an order had come down from above.

  I ran into Rożek one time when I was transporting cabbage home from our patch. He was mayor in those days. He asks me:

  “How would you feel about working at the district administration? You could be the one to give weddings. You’d hardly have any work, because no one wants to get married at the registry office. You’d get a regular salary. And you were already in the police once, you’d be one of ours.”

  I thought to myself, why not, I’d rather sit behind a desk than cart cabbage. I wasn’t sure I believed in God either, so what did I care about the priest trying to scare people. And at least I’d be able to wear decent clothes, because all my clothes were starting to get ragged. When there was a dance I didn’t have anything to wear. Not to mention I had no money to buy drinks, or sometimes even for admission. My officer’s boots were still in okay shape, but not many people wore officer’s boots anymore. The war was further and further away, and now everyone wore shoes and suits, and the fashion was for pants as wide as skirts and coats big as sacks, as if people were getting as much freedom as they could after the war. Me in my britches and officer’s boots, I was like something from a different world. To the point that after I left the police I started wondering what to do with myself. Because father spent every penny he had on building new cattle sheds, and even when he gave me money for cigarettes he’d always complain, you smoke like a chimney.