I thought to myself, give it a try, what do I have to lose. If that’s what she’s like it won’t be hard. If he can do it so can I. We’ll see who’s better, chairman or no. When I put my Sunday suit on, you could never look as good, however many suits you were wearing. And you should see me in my officer’s boots. Have you ever even worn officer’s boots? You’d look like a bucket on a stool. Me, they said I could have served in the uhlans. Maybe I would have if things had worked out differently. So what if he was chairman. If the farmers had voted for you the way they used to choose the mayor, you’d have been village policeman at most. As for the ring, I used to wear one myself, and it was a whole lot bigger than yours, it had a stone like a twenty-pound carp. And it didn’t come from selling hogs, I got it from my father and his father before him, it’s been in the family for generations. You loser.
I got shot in the thigh during an attack on a mail train in Lipienniki. They drove me by cart to the manor, they said that was the safest place for me. They put me right under the roof in the attic, so I’d be hard to find if anyone came searching. I wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of my life in a place like that. Their attic was bigger than our whole house. There was a carpet covering the entire floor, a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, elk and stag antlers on the walls. A whole family could have slept on the couch I was lying on. Plus I had a window right by my bed with a view of the grounds, so I could hear birds chirping close by from morning to night. It was like there was no war at all.
If anything happened, the story was that I was a cousin of the owners and I was sick with the consumption. Why not, I could be their cousin. I’d already been a chimney sweep when we had to carry out a death sentence on the mayor of Niegolewo. And a monk when I had to get out of the town and there were roadblocks everywhere. One time I was even transported as a dead man in a coffin, they were pretending to be taking me back to my parish to be buried in my own cemetery. Being the cousin of the owners of the manor was a piece of cake. Especially when all I had to do was lie there with only my face and hands outside the sheets. My face was fine, in fact it was a bit scrawny so it even looked right for the consumption. In addition they gave me a pair of glasses so if need be I could put them on and read a book. Except they made everything blurred, because even today I’ve got eyes like a hawk. I never opened the book once, though it lay right there the whole time on the nightstand. Right away a maid came in with water and soap and a towel, and to begin with she soaked my fingers for a long time, then she trimmed the quick around all my nails till they bled. I asked her why she was doing it. She said the mistress had told her to. Then she trimmed my nails so short they were almost even with my fingertips, and when I tried to scratch myself all it did was tickle. And on this finger, the middle one, they put a big gold ring with a huge stone like I said, big as a twenty-pound carp. With the ring on, my hand felt like it wasn’t mine anymore, I was afraid to move it so I just kept it stiff on the quilt. They put one of the master’s nightshirts on me and for the first night I barely slept a wink. How can you sleep in something that’s more like a priest’s surplice than a shirt? It had lace and frills, and there was so much material two people could have fit inside it. On the nightstand they put the master’s gold watch. To my darling Maurycy, with love, Julia, it said on the cover.
To begin with I thought I was dreaming. But it didn’t take long for me to get used to it, and then I regretted I’d have to go back to the woods. It wasn’t going to be easy after I’d been lying there like the owners’ cousin, having my food brought to me in bed. Having a gunshot wound would have been one thing, but it had to be the consumption. What kind of illness was that? Franek Marciniak had the consumption before the war. He’d eat slices of bread spread twice as thick again with butter, and he drank endless amounts of dog lard and ate eggs and cream, they took the food from their own mouths so he could have it, and the young Marciniaks would say they wanted to have the consumption too. Because he looked like a doughnut in butter.
I’d occasionally think I could actually be one of the owners’ cousins, why not. For instance that Maurycy from the inscription on the watch. Though who had Julia been? Because neither the master nor his wife were Maurycy or Julia. Sometimes I imagined their life one way, sometimes another, but it was always a happy one. They wouldn’t have given each other a gold watch if they hadn’t been happy. And though they were probably long dead and in the ground, their happiness was still there, ticking inside the watch. When you listened carefully you could hear it clear as day, like far-off bells ringing over them in a dewy morning. I even wondered if time didn’t move forward but instead turned in circles like the hands of the watch, and everything was still in the same place.
From all that lying I put on weight and they started worrying that I didn’t look like I had the consumption anymore. Perhaps it’d be better if I was ill with something else. Except that nothing scared people off so much as the consumption, only typhus was better. But if they’d said it was typhus then word might get around and they’d come and take everyone to the hospital, and lock up the manor. On the other hand, I was looking more and more like I was their cousin. The maid, to begin with she treated me like I was just more work for her, when she brought my dinner she’d snap: “Dinner.” Now, she’d say:
“Here’s your dinner, your grace. Here’s your breakfast. Here’s your afternoon tea, see how tasty it is today. You’re looking better, your grace. For supper it’ll be butter rolls, tea, ham, cottage cheese, and plum tart.”
I had the feeling she was staring at me more and more. Till I started thinking, maybe I am her grace, I ought to check. So one day when she was putting the breakfast tray down on the bedside table, I put my hand under her dress and moved it up her thigh all the way to the top, and the only thing that happened was the plates rattled on the tray.
“Oh!” she sighed in a squeaky little voice like a baby bird. “You’re a quick one, your grace. Let me at least put the tray down.” And like a little chick going out onto a branch for the first time and shaking because it doesn’t know how to fly, she bent down over that hand of mine.
When I went back to the woods after that, for a while I lost the will to fight. I just kept thinking over and over, when it comes down to it, what’s the point of fighting? Wouldn’t it be better to just lie there in an attic like that? It was only when I got thinner from not eating so much that I started to feel like fighting again.
To begin with, one day I gave her a bolder nod than usual and instead of just good morning I also said Miss Małgorzata. Good morning, Miss Małgorzata. Then a few days later I added:
“You’re looking nice today, Miss Małgorzata.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Nice of you to say so, Mr. Szymon.” And though she was always so serious and she seemed to look down on everyone, you could tell I’d embarrassed her.
Some time later, it happened to be raining that day, the two of us stopped in the porchway to at least wait out the worst of it, because it was cats and dogs, and we got to chatting the way you do in the rain, that it’s been like this for a week already, that if it keeps up all the crops’ll rot. Since it wasn’t easing up we kept talking, and I invited her to come by sometime and watch me give a wedding.
Not long after that, Wojtek Lis married Kryśka Sobieska. As usual, almost every woman in the place gathered to see it, and quite a few of the men, including the district secretary. And the window that opened onto the courtyard was so crammed with heads it looked like they were all growing from a single body. I didn’t think she’d come. Then suddenly I saw her standing with the others in the half-open door, and my heart began to thump. I invited everyone to come inside, let Wojtek and Kryśka at least have a crowd of strangers at their wedding, since their parents weren’t there, or any of their relatives. Actually I liked Wojtek, though he was a good few years younger than me, and Kryśka was in about her sixth month, she had a belly big as a drum, and she was a bit embarrassed. But I said to her:
�
��Don’t be ashamed, Kryśka, you’ve got a person inside you, not a wild animal.”
And I gave such a speech that almost everyone was in tears. The girls were one thing, but even some of the guys looked like they’d been staring into a bright light for too long. Kryśka cried, Wojtek cried. The people in the window cried. Though I wasn’t saying anything sad. I talked about happiness. That you need to look for happiness inside yourself, not around you. That no one will give it to you if you don’t give it to yourself. That happiness is often close as close can be, maybe in the simple room where you spend your whole life, but people go looking for it in all kinds of strange places. That some people search for it in fame and riches, but not everyone can afford fame and riches, while happiness is like water and everyone’s thirsty. That often there’s more of it in a single good word than in an entire long life. Kryśka’s folks had disowned her and thrown her out of the house. Wojtek didn’t have a father and his mother had died a year before. That a person could be famous and rich but not be happy.
I told them about a certain king who lacked for nothing, but who never had any dreams. Because of this he was afraid to go to sleep, because when he got into bed it was like he was lying down in his coffin. Though his bed was made of solid gold and he had a quilt of the finest down, and down pillows too. The greatest doctors on earth were brought in, they cast all kinds of spells on him, gave him different herbs to drink, they poulticed him with flowers and scents, they played music for him without cease and six naked women danced for him, but he didn’t dream of so much as a daisy in the meadow. Nothing. Every royal night was an empty hole. He prostrated himself, he wore sackcloth, he even took off his golden crown set with diamonds and put on a crown of blackthorn. And he prayed endlessly, to different gods. Because some people advised him to pray to one god because that god was a king himself and he was more merciful than the others, while for another god faith was a great dream, and he might be granted some of that for one night at least. He built churches and almshouses, he washed the feet of the poor, anyone could walk into his palace as if it was his own cottage, and no one ever left empty-handed. In the end he grew thin as a lath and his brother started making secret preparations to take his place, because through all this time the kingdom had been shrinking like a fist. Just like one farmer will start plowing over another farmer’s land, his neighbors were doing the same, plowing over his kingdom from every side, and not just in the spring and fall but all the time. He got sicker and sicker, his servants caught him talking to himself and laughing, shouting, threatening himself with his fist and stamping his foot. He thought about throwing himself off a cliff, because what kind of life was it when you didn’t have any dreams, even if you were the king. It was like he was only half living, he lived in the day but he died at night. Imagine dying like that for years and years, when even dying once is so hard.
Then one day a certain peasant learned about the king’s unhappiness. He wasn’t a fortune-teller or a herbalist, just a goatherd that drove goats to market in the town. He came into the royal presence and said:
“Your majesty, there’s a remedy to make you have dreams. Move into my cottage, you’ll dream my dreams, and I’ll live awhile in your palace without any dreams.”
At the end I told them happiness is easier to find with a husband or a wife than on your own, and I wished Kryśka a son.
Where I got it all from I have no idea. What did I ever know about happiness, and today I know even less. But maybe happiness is only good for talking about, maybe it’s not something you can ever know. In any case I could tell I’d done a pretty good job, everyone in the offices congratulated me. And one of the farmers that had been listening outside through the window, who’d come to pick up his benefit money, he asked me if I’d known that king, and he couldn’t get over it:
“You’ve got the gift of the gab, son, you really have. If only everything you said could be believed. But even just listening to it is nice.”
So then, I was certain she must have liked it as well. But she disappeared soon as the wedding was over. It was only the next day I ran into her in the hallway.
“That poor king,” she said when she saw me. “Did he really not have any dreams?”
I couldn’t tell if she was making fun, or if she just said it because she couldn’t think of anything else to say. It hurt me a bit, but I let it go.
“I have something for you, Miss Małgorzata,” I said, because I’d decided to use the opportunity and give her some stockings.
“What’s that?” she said, intrigued.
“Come into my office.”
She came in, she seemed a little excited from curiosity. I took the stockings out of my desk. I’d even wrapped them in colored paper.
“What on earth is this?”
“Stockings. Nylon ones.”
She opened the package.
“They’re lovely. Thank you. How much do I owe you, Mr. Szymek?”
“Nothing. They’re a gift, Miss Małgorzata.”
She reddened.
“Mr. Szymek, I can’t. Please tell me how much. Really. No, in that case I can’t accept them.”
And she didn’t.
It made me so mad that after work I went to see Kaśka that ran the grocery store and I gave her the stockings. Though she was the only one you didn’t have to give anything to. You only had to go visit her, she always knew why you’d come. Because sometimes, when I didn’t have anywhere else to go I’d go to her. Or whenever I needed to get as far away from everything as possible, I’d go to her. Or I was so frustrated that I didn’t feel like going anywhere at all, I’d still feel like going to see her. Or when I didn’t have the strength or the will to go see anyone else, I’d go to her and it would always be the same. Because with other women you had to spend time with them and flirt with them and walk them home and promise them things the whole time, and sometimes you still came out losing. But with Kaśka I’d swing by for matches or cigarettes, lean over the counter and whisper:
“Stay back in the store after work today, Kaśka.”
With her, her heart was always on the outside.
“Just take your cigarettes or your matches, you don’t need to pay. I bet one of those bitches of yours went and dumped you again. Office girls, big deal. Like they don’t know what their body’s for. It’s for the same thing as all women. Either way you’re gonna end up eaten by worms. They’re not soap, they’re not gonna wear away from being used. What the hell are they afraid of? That the priest won’t give them absolution? So don’t tell him everything. When you don’t tell something it’s like it never happened. If I were you, Szymuś, I’d find myself a nice ordinary girl. She doesn’t need to be smart, the main thing is she should stand by you. You’re smart yourself, any girl is going to look dumb next to you anyway. What do you need an office girl for? You can’t even whack her one, she’d up and make a big fuss. Those kind make all sorts of noise. I saw it at the pictures one time. He didn’t even hit her that hard. She squealed so loud I had to cover my ears. What’s the point in making a racket? Lie down, your man wants you to, and don’t pretend you don’t either. Or she’ll start running around on you, and what’re you gonna do, tie her down? When you have sit on your ass for eight hours a day your ass can go crazy. And when your ass goes crazy it’s worse than when your head does. When your head gets like that, the worst it’ll do is talk nonsense. But asses are trouble. You’re getting old, Szymuś. Dear Lord. Though for me you’ll always be a first class young feller. Tell me which one it is, when she comes in the store I won’t sell to her, the bitch. Get out, slut! Go do your shopping in town! Office girl – big deal. She wants gingerbread. Not a snowball’s chance!”
She was just a shop assistant, but she was a tower of strength. Sometimes she seemed dumber than a sack of rocks, but she had more wisdom in her than a hundred wise men. And her thighs, her backside, two women could have shared them and they’d still have looked good. When she took her clothes off you’d never know she was a s
hop assistant. Her breasts, it was like there were four of them. They stretched from one arm to the other, from her neck to her belly, like pumpkins in a patch. And whatever she was lying on, whether it was sacks of salt or sugar or buckwheat, or on the floor, she’d always lie down like she was in a made-up bed, she didn’t like to do things any old how.
“Just a minute now, let me get undressed. I don’t want to get my frock all crumpled.” And she’d undress like it was her wedding night. “Touch my breasts first. I like it when I get gooseflesh. And I want us to do it for a long time. I’m not going to open up the store again anyway, so why do we need to hurry. It was open for hours, people could come buy whatever they wanted. There’s always this big rush, then when it’s over you regret hurrying. And you won’t be back for a month or two, maybe even longer. They say I’ve gotten fat. No way, it’s not true. What do you think? Tell me – am I fat?” Though sometimes it would be like she was suddenly afraid, and out of nowhere she’d ask: “Do you think there’s life after death, Szymuś?”
Stone Upon Stone Page 28