It wasn’t enough that he knocked me around, he also pulled the cap off my head and stomped on it. And he didn’t just point his finger at me, he used his whole hand. The soldiers grabbed me under the arms and dragged me out into the middle of the square with the other men that had already been picked out. Then a truck drove up and they ordered us to climb in.
To begin with it didn’t occur to anyone that they were going to kill us. How could they go straight from a meeting to killing us? We weren’t thieves or any kind of criminals, why would we have to die? Also, we were misled by the spades that were in the truck. If there were spades, that meant they needed laborers. Maybe they’d have us do some digging or fill something in. In wartime there’s always digging and filling in to be done. It would have helped to know which direction they were taking us, but we couldn’t tell because first, the truck was covered with a tarpaulin, and second, the sky was overcast that day and it seemed like the sun was on one side one minute, the next minute on the other, first in front of us then behind, like it wasn’t really there at all. Stelmaszczyk from Obrębów even got into an argument about the sun with Wrona from Lisice. One of them said he knew the sun like the back of his hand, the other one said he did too. The first one said he got up with the sun every morning, the other one said he got up with the sun every morning as well. The first one said he had the sun in his blood, he didn’t even need to look up in the sky to know where it was, the second one said he could have gone completely blind and he still would have known where the sun is in the sky. It’s over there. In the end someone said that maybe the sun in Obrębów was different than the one in Lisice, because perhaps each village had a different sun, and so the sun over the truck was a different one again. It was only then they stopped arguing.
You could feel the potholes and the bends in the road. But potholes and bends won’t tell you you’re being taken to your death. Sure, there were four soldiers sitting at the back of the truck with their guns pointed at us, but that didn’t surprise anyone, if they were taking us somewhere they had to guard us on the way. And even if we’d asked them where they were taking us they likely didn’t know, because it was probably their higher-ups made the decisions. Besides, what language could we ask them in when they didn’t know Polish. But Smoła couldn’t take it, in the end he asked them:
“Excuse me, can you tell me where you’re taking us? You probably need workmen, right? Am I right? We’ll do it, why wouldn’t we. Some of us were soldiers too, though in the old wars, so we even know how to dig trenches if need be. It’s just a pity we didn’t let the folks at home know we’d be gone a while. Because we haven’t done anything wrong, have we?”
The soldiers didn’t say a word. They just sat there all stiff with their eyes shining like cats’ eyes under their helmets.
“What could we have done wrong? You don’t need to go asking them, we know perfectly well ourselves,” said Antos from Górki, bridling up. He was known for talking straight to anyone, even if it was the priest or the squire. Before the war he was always going around to political rallies everywhere.
“Or maybe there’s no point in asking these gentlemen,” said Sitek, like he was trying to excuse the soldiers so they didn’t feel bad about not knowing. “They’re probably country folks like us, they only know as much as we do. But I’m sure they won’t hurt us, no way.”
“You’ll see, we’ll be back home this evening,” said Jagła, backing Sitek up. “There’s twenty-five of us, we’ll have the job done in two shakes. They’d have said if it was anything else.”
“What do you mean, anything else?” said another guy, suddenly worried, and he leaned forward on the bench towards Jagła.
“They might say, they might not.”
“Say what? What might they say?”
“Come on, what’s the point of worrying ahead of time, when we get there they’ll tell us.”
“I don’t like the look of this, I really don’t. We’re going somewhere and we don’t know where. What can it mean?”
“Maybe they’re going to kill us?” Strąk burst out, and everyone was suddenly terrified.
Strąk was the oldest guy in the truck, way older than Antos or Wrona. He could barely shuffle about, they’d had to help him into the truck because he couldn’t have climbed up by himself. His son-in-law had sent him to the meeting just like my father had sent me. Why would they have chosen Strąk as a laborer when so many other younger, stronger men had been left behind on the square? If someone had thought about Strąk earlier, maybe we’d have figured out right away where they were taking us.
“Darn it!” said Kujda angrily, like it was Strąk’s fault that they might be going to kill us. “You should have sat on your backside and not gone to any meeting.”
“How was I supposed to know?” said Strąk, trying to defend himself. “The policeman said to go to the meeting.”
But everyone started in on Strąk.
“Your son-in-law should have come. He’s the head of the household, not you. You signed the farm over to him. You should stick to praying instead of going to meetings.”
“Or if they start telling us to dig, and they will, because why else would there be spades here, we’ll have to do your digging for you. No one’s got four arms.”
“He’s got one foot in the grave already, goddammit, he smells death everywhere.”
“You say they’re going to kill us? Why would they do that? Why?”
“If they were going to kill us they wouldn’t have bothered taking you. You dying doesn’t mean shit to them. It’d be a waste of a bullet. Death’ll take you without any help from them.”
Strąk hunched over like he’d been swallowed up by the earth. He might even have regretted saying what he said about being killed, it came out like it was about everyone dying, when he was likely just talking about himself.
“But what if they are taking us to our deaths? What if they are? Maybe they’re going to have us dig our own graves, that’s what the spades are for? Lord!”
“In that case they’d have taken someone to fill the graves in afterwards. I mean, we couldn’t do it ourselves. But they didn’t.”
“That can’t be it. There’s probably a dike burst somewhere, we had bad rains recently, it could have burst.”
“Hey, hear that? Quiet there. Sounds like there’s another truck behind us. I’m not just hearing things. My hearing’s still good, even if I am getting on.”
“What if there is, they’re not gonna wait back in the village are they?”
“It’s either the wind flapping the tarpaulin, or there’s a mill somewhere close by.”
“Do something, Lord. Make the axle break or whatever.”
“A broken axle won’t help you. One time my axle broke, I was taking rye to the mill, and instead of the miller I needed a blacksmith. A miracle’d be better.”
“Sure, you just order us a miracle.”
“There was a miracle over in Leoncin in the last war, but they didn’t take us in trucks back then.”
“I was supposed to go plow tomorrow, Stanuch and me were gonna team up our horses. You know, up by the hill.”
“One time, this Gypsy fortune-teller told me I’d live a long life. Wish I knew where the bitch is now.”
“Mind your language there, what if we are going to die?”
“What are you going to do about it? Run away? You can’t run away. Besides, we have to die sometime.”
“Dear God, the wife’ll be left on her own with four kids! Though what does God care?”
“I didn’t even say anything about what they should do at home if I don’t come back.”
“You’ll go back, why wouldn’t you. Błażek Oko came back from the war after twenty years, though no one ever thought he would. He was old and bald and his woman had gone to her grave, but he came back. And don’t people come back from over the sea?”
“The storks came back this year, though I was all set to knock the nest off, what good is an empty nest to anyon
e.”
“The moment we get back, I swear to God I’m gonna get legless. I’m gonna drink for three days. The hell with the horse and the cows and pigs and the land. There’ll be no farmer for three days. I’ll spend three days in bed with the missus, what do I care. We’ve got six kids, we’ll have a seventh, what do I care.”
“Hail Mary, full of grace …”
“Stop it, they’re looking at us. Let them think we’re not afraid of dying.”
“But we are afraid, Bolesław, we are. Though if it has to be, it has to be.”
“If you ask me, they’re going to have us plant trees. Oleś the woodsman, he paid one grosz per pine sapling before the war. I wonder if there’ll be a lot of soldiers.”
“I hope to God it’s trees.”
“I’m telling you, lads, it’s trees. I know trees. Can you hear the branches against the tarpaulin?”
“Listen, with lupin, is it better to plow it in while it’s still in bloom or wait till afterwards?”
“It’s better to make your confession.”
“Without a priest?”
“Each of us to himself.”
“How can you confess to everything on your own? Without a grille, without anything? Are the sins supposed to confess to each other? How will we know if they’re forgiven?”
Suddenly we all swung forward like grain in a meadow and the truck pulled up. The four soldiers that had been guarding us quickly stood and rolled back the tarpaulin, then they jumped down, opened the tailgate, and all at once they’re yelling, get down, get down, hurry! Schnell, schnell!
To begin with we couldn’t see anything, the light blinded us like we’d just crawled out of a hole in the ground. I thought to myself that that might be what the light eternal looks like, except after that you can’t see anything ever again. But right away we made out some woods, and Garus from Borzęcin recognized it was the Borowice woods because it was where he used to pick mushrooms.
Everyone got to their feet and there was a commotion in the truck like there was suddenly twice as many of us, but no one was in any hurry to climb out, they made like they didn’t know if they should take the spades or not. On the way we might not have known, but now it was pretty obvious. I grabbed the nearest one and jumped to the ground. If I held back I’d attract their attention and they’d think I was up to something. Actually I was. I’d been thinking about escaping the whole journey, except there hadn’t been any way to do it. But here I decided I had to. Even if I failed, either way it was death, and if I was running away I might not feel the bullets in me, maybe death would come right away.
It was a smallish clearing. The woods were dense round about. Oaks, beeches, spruce. Juniper and hazel too. The grass was like a carpet, and it was covered with heather. You could have sat yourself down, got some fresh air, listened to the birds or just watched the trees swaying in the wind. And if you happened to have a girl with you, it wouldn’t be a forest clearing anymore but a little piece of heaven. You could imagine you were the first people. But we’d come there to die.
“You should’ve seen the agaric used to grow here, Lord those were some mushrooms.” Garus had gotten out after me, he was full of regret for life. “And over there, among the oaks, there was boletus, ceps. There were so many you could have cut them down with a scythe, because hardly anyone knew about this place.” He even started looking around for mushrooms, but a soldier thumped him in the back with his rifle butt and pushed him into the middle of the clearing.
They formed a wall around us and the same officer that had been screaming on the table outside the district administration started shouting again and waving his arms at the men that were still getting out of the truck. Schnell! Schnell! The younger guys jumped down without needing to be told, it was only the older ones that were left. For them, getting down off the bed of the truck was like jumping from the hayloft to the threshing floor. Plus there was nothing for them to hold on to or lean on, so it was no surprise they were afraid to climb down. Though why should they be in a rush? To go to their deaths? It wasn’t even right to hurry to your own death.
In the end they all managed to get down somehow or other, only Strąk was left. He stood there at the tailgate, leaning on his stick and looking helplessly from us to the ground and back again, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff. He realized no one was eager to help him and he shouted:
“Come give me a hand.”
Guz stepped forward but a soldier stuck the muzzle of his gun in his belly and made him go back to his place. At that exact moment the officer shouted, schiessen! The soldier nearest the truck fired his machine gun at Strąk like he was shooting at a tree. Strąk dropped his stick but kept standing there. It was only a second later his body fell too and hit the ground with a thud.
Right after that they started pushing us with their guns toward the middle of the clearing. They marked out a pit about twelve yards long and two wide and ordered us to dig. Some on one side, some on the other, which meant we’d be falling in with our heads toward each other.
I dug away any old how, thinking the whole time about how I could get away, because death was galloping full speed toward me. Zioło from Bartoszyce was digging opposite me. Tears were already rolling down his cheeks and he was sniffling like a child. But if I just started running and headed for the woods I wouldn’t even make it to the trees, the first shots would get me. It was no more than ten or fifteen yards to the edge of the woods. But those sons of bitches were standing right behind us, in a row, with their guns in our backs. I even heard one of them fart. I thought it was one of the guys out of nerves, but the smell definitely came from behind, it was like sour turnip.
I began to lose hope, because the pit was getting deeper and deeper. Everyone was whispering their prayers, you could tell from their lips, and every now and then you could hear the odd word over the rasp of the spades.
“What do you think you’re doing? Dig properly.” It was Antos to my left suddenly telling me off. I looked over. What was he saying that for? I always thought he was a smart guy, but fear had obviously made him stupid. At the same time I glanced at Kuraś, who was digging to my right. It took me aback, it was like I’d never noticed he was so short, even though I’d known the guy for years and I knew how small he was. But so what if he was short. It had never mattered. One man grows tall and another one’s short, in the village you don’t see it somehow, it’s just how God measures things out. Besides, it often happens a little guy like that is stronger than a big one, and smarter. I thought to myself, God must have sent him to me, and on my right side too. If he’d been big like Antos there wouldn’t have been any sense in even trying. I kind of felt bad for him, but they were going to kill him anyway, so he wasn’t going to be out for revenge, while me, I might save myself.
It was only right though, to pray for his soul. So I started, but more in my thoughts than on my lips, so he wouldn’t see. Forgive me, Antoni, may the earth lie lightly on you. Don’t hold it against me that I made use of your death to escape. Just think how many of us are about to die, and every death a wasted one. Only your death will serve a purpose, Antoni. And if I make it, I’ll take revenge for all of you, I promise. Look down from heaven and count every one of those bastards as I’m taking them out. Because each one of them will be partly for you. I promise, Antoni. Lord Jesus, who art in heaven, receive Antoni Kuraś, and not just his soul, but his body too if you can. Because even though he died in the woods, not on the cross, it’s still a crucifixion just like yours. And forgive him all his sins, or give them to me and they can be mine till the end of my life and till the end of the world. Punish me for them, and save him. Antoni Kuraś is his name. Don’t forget, Lord. And don’t get him mixed up with anyone else. May he not have to wander around the woods for a long time after he’s dead. Farewell, Antoni.
I grabbed him under the arms, he was light as a feather, and I threw him onto the soldier that was standing behind me. The soldier fired off a short burst then they both fell to
the ground. Him underneath and Kuraś on top of him, already dead. First off they thought Kuraś was the one trying to run away, before they realized it was me I’d reached the nearest oak tree and gotten behind it, and it was only then they started firing and chasing after me. But beyond that oak tree there were more oaks, beeches, spruce, the whole forest. Plus, death was driving me along and I was running like a stag, dodging between the trees till they hid me completely. Though for the longest time it felt like they were right at my back, I could hear them running through the woods and shouting, and their bullets kept zinging around me.
I must have kept running for a heck of a long time, because I could barely breathe, I felt a stabbing pain in my chest, and it was harder and harder to swerve around the trees. I kept crashing into some obstacle, I’d fall over and get up, but it was all I could do to stay on my feet. Then I smashed into something again, fell over again, and this time I didn’t have the strength to stand back up. Fortunately I couldn’t hear anyone chasing me or shooting at me, all I could hear was silence surging through the woods. But I didn’t want to live so much as just sleep and sleep.
All of a sudden I felt a twinge in my left side. I reached my hand down, and it came back covered in blood. The sleepiness passed instantly. I rolled my jacket up and saw that a part of my side had been almost completely shot away. There were lumps of half-dried blood in my torn shirt, blood all around my belt, and the leg of my pants was soaked in blood all the way down to the ankle. Though I hadn’t even felt I’d been hit. I tried to stop the blood with my hand, but it kept running through my fingers. I struggled to my feet and set off again. But which way should I go to find people? Suddenly the woods spun around me like a merry-go-round, my eyes went dark, and I had to lean against a tree. I thought I heard a rooster crowing. I figured maybe I was dying and I was imagining things. But no, I heard it again, and it sounded like it was right close by, just beyond the trees. So I dragged myself that way, either holding on to the trees or on all fours. After a few yards, in a gap in the trees I saw a cottage with a roof of golden-colored shingles, smoke rising from its chimney. I passed out.
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