In the end father couldn’t take it anymore and he interrupted all the questions:
“We’ve told you everything, what else do you want from us?”
Mother pleaded with him:
“You might at least sit down and tell us what’s going on with you.”
It was like he suddenly woke up. He looked at his watch and said it was time, he had to be going. Right away he shook my hand, because I was sitting closest to him, then father’s, Antek’s, Stasiek’s. He only said goodbye with a handshake, like we’d see each other again tomorrow, the day after at the latest, or like he was just someone we knew, not our brother and our son. Plus, while he was shaking hands he was looking somewhere else like he wasn’t thinking about saying goodbye at all, but about God only knows what. It was only when he finally said goodbye to mother, and the poor old thing started crying again, he took her head in his hands, looked in her eyes and said:
“Come on, don’t cry, mama. I’ll come again, for sure I will. Maybe I’ll even bring her. You have to meet her.”
And after that we didn’t hear from him again.
A year or so later mother sent him a letter, but he didn’t write back. She sent another one and he still didn’t reply. She was going to write again after a bit, but father got mad and said there was no point in writing all those letters, that he should answer the other ones first. Or maybe he was up to his ears in work, and she was just distracting him with all those letters of hers. When there’s work, everyone knows it needs doing. Even here, when harvesttime comes you don’t have time to so much as scratch your backside. Maybe it’s his harvesttime. When it’s over he’ll come visit without writing a letter even. He was gone all those years and he came back then. It’s not long till Christmas, he’s sure to come for Christmas, maybe both of them, I mean he said they’d both come. Mother, you’d better start thinking about what cakes to bake. Letters won’t do him any good, you can’t make the days pass any faster with letters, let alone hurrying up harvesttime.
But father turned out to be mistaken, Michał never came either that Christmas or the next. Mother kept writing, though in secret now. One day I went into the barn to tear off some hay for the horse and I saw her kneeling at a stool by the back doors, at the far end of the threshing floor. Her glasses were perched on her nose and she was writing something. She was startled and she slipped the hand with the pen under her apron. It took her a moment to look up.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said relieved. “I came here to pray. It’s hard to concentrate in the house, here’s it’s nice and quiet.”
“Couldn’t you go into the orchard? It’s just as quiet out there, and there’s more light,” I said, staring at her and at the same time at the inkwell, that she hadn’t managed to hide.
“There’s plenty of light in here from the holes in the walls,” she answered.
Another time I was going up to the attic to fetch something, I put my head through the trapdoor opening, and here I see mother sitting by a crack of light from the ridgepole with the chopping board on her lap, writing. I climbed back down as quietly as I could, making sure not to step on the creaky rung. It was the same after she was confined to bed, I’d often find her writing those letters, leaning over the stool with the medicines on it that stood by the bed. I’d try not to see, or leave right away pretending I’d just remembered something I had to do. Though I don’t know who took her letters to the post office. Antek and Stasiek had left home by then. The other people who came to the house, I couldn’t see her trusting any of them with her letters. Maybe it was father? He’d been opposed to her writing at one time, so perhaps now he was embarrassed to be seen with them and he mailed them when I was out. Because ever since it was just the two of them and me at home, he stuck to mother like a little child. He would have spent all his time sitting by her bedside telling her stories from the old days. Sometimes he didn’t even tell stories, he just sat there like he was half asleep. Time was, he’d be the one chasing everyone out to work. Now mother had to keep reminding him about the jobs that needed done. Even the most everyday things. That he had to water the cows, or cut chaff, or lay down straw in the cattle barn, or even give the dog its dinner.
“Come on, get on with it,” she’d often pester him.
But he’d just sit there waving her words away like pesky flies.
“What are you worried about? They’ll get their water, the chaff’ll get cut, the straw will get put down, the dog’ll get its dinner. You just stay where you are, you’re sick.” And he’d go on sitting there.
Harvesttime would be right around the corner and he’d sit there like winter was coming.
“The rye must be ripe already,” mother would remind him. “You might go take a look, see if it’s time to mow.”
“No way it’s ripe yet. Last year at this time it was still green. When you’re stuck in bed you think things are ripe already. But time in the fields is different from human time.”
When he finally had to get up and go, because she wouldn’t give him any peace, he was angry, he’d mutter something under his breath. Sometimes, out of irritation he’d grab the cat where it was curled up by the stove and chuck it outside.
“Go catch mice, damn you, instead of lying about indoors.”
Or he’d clang the empty buckets because there wasn’t any water and he was thirsty. One time he even kicked the door because the damn thing was creaking like it was ill.
Mother was finding it harder and harder to leave her bed. She’d only get up to cook something from time to time or to throw down some grain for the chickens when father forgot. When she did the laundry, she had to pull a stool up to the tub and wash the clothes sitting down. Father would heat the water, fill the tub then empty it afterwards, go down to the river to rinse the washing, and hang it out in the yard or up in the attic. It was only when Antek or Stasiek visited that she’d get better for the time they were here. She’d kill a chicken, cook up some broth, make dumplings, wash their dirty things that they brought with them. But after they left she’d get even sicker, and for a week or longer she wouldn’t even get out of bed. Her heart hurt more and more.
“Death’s on its way for me, you can tell,” she’d complain to father.
Father would reassure her that if death was coming it would come for him first, and he didn’t feel it coming yet. He gave her a rosary and told her to pray, that that would soon make her feel better. He’d take the prayer book as well and sit by her, but he wasn’t so good at reading and he’d sometimes ask her for help.
“Read what it says here, this part. I can’t see it properly.”
And mother would read:
‘ “Conceived without the stain of original sin …” ’
“That’s how you write ‘conceived’?” he’d say surprised.
She’d often get annoyed with him for interrupting her the whole time, she’d tell him to pray from memory, because what kind of praying was it when he didn’t know what was written there. He explained that when he prayed from memory the prayers got muddled up with his other thoughts and God got lost in the thoughts, and after that he couldn’t find him. He didn’t take offense when she got angry, and actually she wasn’t really that angry. Maybe they just grumbled at each other like that instead of sighing and complaining about being left alone. Or they had no need to talk any differently, because what was there to talk about, they’d already told each other everything there was to tell. Also, why use the same words when hundreds of thousands of them have already been spoken all through their life, and life had turned against the words anyway?
Sometimes I felt sorry for them. But I rarely went straight back home after work. I’d usually go out, either drinking or with girls. I’d often not get back till midnight, when they were long asleep. Many a time I’d just be going to bed in the morning as they were getting up. After you’ve been drinking, when you come back home you sometimes have trouble finding the door. And a drunk man, as well as being drunk, he’s a stranger even to hi
s own kith and kin. They’d talk to me but my head would be humming, buzzing, I’d barely hear what they were saying. Or I’d have to remind myself who they were, that they were my father and mother, and that it was me they were telling off. Mother, like you’d expect, she’d be sighing and pleading with me, but at least quietly:
“Oh, Szymek, please, don’t drink, you need to change. Change, son, stop drinking.”
But father hadn’t forgiven me for going to work in the registry office at the district administration, and the moment he saw me having trouble making it across the threshold he’d come down on me like a ton of bricks, that I was bringing shame on the family, that this had been a God-fearing family for generations, that they were born in God and died in God, that one of them had even planned to travel to the Holy Land, one of them had bought a picture for the church, one of them had held the baldachin over the bishop when he came to visit, Michał would have been a priest if we’d only been able to afford it, but I was a disgrace. I had no education, I had no holy orders, I had no God, and there I was giving ungodly weddings.
“I don’t know what we did to deserve this. The devil’s got you in his clutches, that much is clear, you monster.”
“Well if you can’t go with God you have to go with the devil, father,” I’d answer him out of spite. “Besides, what do we know about the devil? No more than we know about God. Maybe God didn’t insist on having the whole world, maybe he divided it up with the devil. What do we know? All we do is plow and plant and mow over and over, God’s nowhere close and the devil’s far away as well.”
“But people are laughing at us, damn you! You wanted a priest in the family, you got one, that’s what they’re saying. You just need to buy him a cassock.”
“I don’t need a cassock, and people can kiss my ass. What are they, jealous that I work for the government?”
“Government, my eye. You’re a bad seed. Maybe you should start giving confession? Baptizing children? Burying the dead? Get yourself a censer. Though you’d have to put vodka in it – holy water would burn you. Why God is doing this to us, I’ll never know. What have we done? What have we done?”
“Stop doing all those things, son,” mother would say to back him up. “You’ll drive us to our graves. We’ve little enough time left as it is. Think about what you’re doing. You ought to get married.”
“How’s he supposed to get married?” father would say sarcastically. “Priests aren’t allowed to marry. They have to marry other people. Besides, who’d marry a no-good like him? He was so smart, he found a way to get out of working the land. You just wait, you good-for-nothing, you’ll come back to the land.”
Father’s predictions went in one ear and out the other. I mean, why would I go back to the land. I wasn’t wed to it and I didn’t owe it anything, and at the registry office I didn’t even work a quarter as much as I’d have had to on the land, because it was like Mayor Rożek had said, there was hardly any work. No one came to get married there, so all I did was sit at my desk and stare at the ceiling or go look out the window, chat with people that were waiting in front of the building, or read the newspapers. But you can’t fill the day with newspapers, even a day divided in two like at the administration. Often I’d get a tad bored. Once I was done reading I didn’t quite know what to do with myself. And so it went till four o’clock came around. Also, to begin with no one seemed to visit from the other offices. Maybe they were afraid of me, or were they deliberately keeping their distance? Only the district secretary would sometimes come by, his little eyes darting into the corners of the room, and he’d ask:
“How’s it going there, pal, still no takers? You need to make more of an effort.” Then he was gone.
Sometimes Mayor Rożek would call me in when he had a speech he needed to make at a farmers’ meeting, or to the children at some school.
“Here, Pietruszka, read this through. If you can think of anything smart to add, write it in. You were in the police, you know how things are. It shouldn’t be too antichurch, cause otherwise my old lady’ll chase me out the house with holy water if she finds out, plus the farmers might take offense. And correct any mistakes.”
Then he’d have me make a clean copy in good handwriting. Because he could read more or less okay, but his handwriting looked like chicken scratches. He couldn’t even sign his own name properly. The district secretary showed him several times how to do it in a single go with a flourish underneath instead of printing one letter after another like a schoolboy, because no one’s going to respect a signature like that. So whenever you went into his office you’d see piles of papers covered in practice flourishes.
“See, I’m learning. But I’m never going to get the hang of it, I can see that. Your hand would have to be born all over again. It wasn’t like that for the mayors before the war. Back then, Kurzeja or Zadruś or whoever would just put three crosses and the thing was signed. Nowadays you can’t get away with that. The nation’s educated. Back then, what did they have to think about? Filling a hole in the road. Now there’s politics as well.”
It was hardly surprising. He’d been a wagon driver at the manor all his life till suddenly he became mayor, his hand was used to holding a whip, not a pen. But when the speech went well he’d always bring a half-bottle. And when it went badly he’d bring one also, to get over his disappointment.
“It didn’t go off well, Pietruszka, it really didn’t. There were barely two or three of them clapping, the rest just stood there with their heads down, staring like wolves. It wasn’t like when I was a driver. You’d sit on your ass and the horses would pull the wagon. Plus, back then there were masters and so there was someone to rebel against. Who are you supposed to rebel against these days? Maybe if I rose higher, cause it’s always easier when you’re high up. The lowest place is always the worst, Pietruszka, and it’s always worst nearest the earth. I’m telling you, a mayor’s life is crap. And there I was thinking it’d be all sweetness. What do you reckon, maybe I could learn to drive a tractor? There aren’t going to be any horses anymore. The horses around the villages are just gonna die off and then there’ll be no more horses. The future is tractors.”
But he didn’t have time to learn. They shot him not long after that, no one knew why. He was going home on his bicycle like he did every day, because he lived in the old farmhands’ quarters in Bartoszyce, and something went wrong with the gears on his bike, so he was pushing it through the woods. In the morning they found him on the road, he had three bullets in his chest and a piece of paper pinned to his jacket: Death to the red stooges. His bicycle was lying on top of him.
The first wedding I gave was for Stach Magdziarz from Lisice and Irka Bednarek from Kolonie. Irka wore a kind of green outfit, Stach had a brown pinstriped suit. Stach’s mother was getting on, Irka worked at the mill. Stach hadn’t gone to church since the war because the priest wouldn’t give him absolution. It was because one time the priest had been on his way to administer last rites to a sick man, and here there was a fire at Sapiela’s place in Kolonie. All the horses were out working in the fields and there was nothing to hitch to the fire engine. So without a second thought Stach flagged down the priest’s wagon and hitched his horses to the fire engine, and off they went. It wasn’t such a big sin, because the sick man was only at the end of the village and it wouldn’t have hurt the priest to walk the rest of the way.
The mayor came, and the district secretary, and two other officials, to see how I did with my first wedding. I felt a bit awkward and a couple of times I got the words wrong, but it went more or less okay. Afterwards, Stach and I went to the pub and got so drunk we passed out. Because Irka would only have one drink, we couldn’t convince her to have another. She sat there like she was all worried and kept asking over and over whether they were going to be happy now they were married. I had to swear at least three times that they would be. I even stood them a bottle out of my own pocket, for that happiness of theirs. And they were happy, till Stach got ulcers in his sto
mach and died.
Before you could say Jack Robinson I’d figured out how to give weddings, and soon marrying people was no harder than eating a slice of bread for me. Like I’d been marrying people since God knows when. Though really, what was the big deal. To start off you said a few official words. Do you, Piotr, Jan, Władysław, Kazimierz, take Helena, Wanda, Bronisława, or whoever to be your lawful wedded wife, do you swear to love and honor her till death do you part. I do. And do you, Helena, Wanda, Bronisława, and so on. I do. Then you put the rings on their fingers, if they had rings. You said that they were married in the eyes of the law. Then you added something from yourself. I wish you a life spread with roses, and you should respect one another, because from this moment on you’re the closest one of all for each other.
I always spoke from the heart and the words pretty much flowed of their own accord, so whenever I was giving a marriage everyone in the offices would set aside their work and come down to watch and listen, even if it was through the half-open door. When the window in the room was open as well, it’d be lined with the heads of people listening outside, like flowerpots. Because the people that had come to the administration to get their business done, they wanted to see it as well. May you always help each other in hard times and in misfortune. May you never show anger, but always treat each other well, like land and sky. May you never be the source of worries for one another, because life itself will put enough worries in your way. Don’t ever curse one another, don’t insult each other, and may neither of you ever raise a hand against the other. If you do, may that hand wither. And not just because that’s what people always say, but because you, husband, and you, wife, together you’re like the hands of a single body, her the left, you the right. Your body is one. If one of you is struck down by illness, or is in pain, or if one of you weeps tears, it’s all yours in common. You, wife, you’ll never be able to say that you’re not the one in pain. Nor you, husband, that you’re not the one weeping. And may you both remember that you’ll not be young forever. How much of life is youth? The tiniest part, less than springtime out of the whole year. Your woman will get wrinkles, you’ll become an old man and go bald or gray, and then it’s hardest of all to be husband and wife. At that time some couples are at each other’s throats, though neither of them has done anything wrong. They’d kill the other one soon as look at them, though once upon a time they loved each other. Just remember that conflict never brought any relief to anyone, and you have to go on living till everything ends of itself. So it’s better to live in harmony. Because you haven’t gotten married only for a short time, till your youth passes, but until you stop being old as well. From now on you’re like that tree outside the window.
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