Stone Upon Stone

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  I went in and I thought I was seeing things, it looked like Michał was sitting on the bench by the window. Except he seemed kind of sleepy, because he didn’t even raise his head when I came in. But it was him all right. Maybe he’d been traveling a long while and he was tired? He never did have much staying power. One time he came back from market with father and the wagon kept bouncing up and down, it made him throw up. Or if he stayed up late one night, the next day he’d be all pale and have rings under his eyes.

  “You’re here, Michał,” I said. And though my head was spinning, I was pleased to see him. “It’s been years and years, we’ve been waiting all this time. Let’s have a drink, brother. As it happens I’ve got a bottle on me. I took it because I had a feeling. How about that.” I pulled out the bottle and stood it on the table. “Where are some glasses?” I ask. Father’s sitting on a chair with his head down, like he’s dozing. All of a sudden he jerks his head up and says to me:

  “What, you want to give him vodka, you piece of work? Look at him.”

  “What do I need to look for? I can see it’s Michał. Would I not know Michał? My own brother? He looks a bit older, but not even that much considering how many years it’s been. Tell him, Michał, we’re brothers, right? You’re off away, and I’m here, and we don’t know anything about each other, but you don’t need to know anything to be brothers. Say, do you remember Franek Maziejuk? You were in the same class together. He hung himself. He was missing twenty hundredweight of sugar from his warehouse. What did he need all that sugar for? Course, the priest says from the pulpit, you mustn’t sin. That’s easy to say. As for me, I’m more or less alive here. But never mind that, you’re here, you’ve come, that’s the main thing. Now where are those glasses, mother?”

  Mother didn’t say a word. She was lying there with her eyes half closed, like she was asleep, though I knew she wasn’t. I thought maybe she was in a huff because Michał was back and I’d come home drunk. Oh well.

  “Do you know where they are, father?”

  But father wasn’t saying anything either. Besides, he might not have known if we had any glasses in the house. What would we have used them for? We only ever drank milk or water, sometimes herbs, and for that a mug was better than a glass. It’s bigger and thicker, it’s got a handle to hold it by, and mugs last much longer than glasses. There’s one tin mug, I’ve got it to this day, it’s my favorite thing to drink out of. Grandfather used it too and he said his grandfather did as well, show me a glass that’ll live that long. Water never tastes as good as from that mug. Sometimes I’m not even thirsty, but when I drink from the mug it’s like drinking straight from the spring. Or try picking up a glass with a hand that’s tired from work, it’s like picking up an egg with tongs. When you come back from mowing, whatever you pick up it’s like you were grabbing your scythe.

  “Let’s look around then,” I said. I took the lamp from the table so I could see better. “We can’t go drinking from the bottle when my brother’s come to visit. It’s so good to see you, brother. At last we’ll be able to talk and catch up after all these years. And you can tell me what it was you wanted from me back then, during the war.”

  I opened the dresser. Plates, big and little bottles, bags, it all began to dance in front of my eyes, but I didn’t see any glasses in the dance. I wasn’t sure myself whether there were any in the house, but I had this mighty urge to drink from a glass.

  “How do you like that? Like the ground swallowed them up. Tomorrow I’m gonna go buy a dozen glasses and we’ll keep them on display.” I turned toward mother in bed. “Where are the glasses?” I tugged at her quilt. “Michał and me want a drink.” Then I saw in the light of the lamp that her eyes were filled with tears. “What are you crying for? There’s no reason. I’ve come home drunker than this many a time. I’m not that drunk tonight. Wicek Fulara had a baby boy. I married him and Bronka back when. You know what, tomorrow I’ll borrow Machała’s mowing machine and the whole lot’ll be done in a day. I helped him with his application, he’s sure to lend me his mower. Let him try not to, the son of a bitch.” I was still standing over mother, holding the swaying lamp, and she was crying more and more. “Don’t cry, mother,” I said. “Father, what’s up with mother?” I turned abruptly toward father and the lamp lurched in my hand like the flame had jumped out into the room. It went dark for a moment then got brighter again.

  “Put the damn lamp down before you burn the place to the ground.” Father raised his head and I could see he had tears in his eyes as well. He wiped them away with the back of his hand.

  “Are you crying because Michał’s here?”

  “He’s either Michał or he isn’t,” he said. “God alone knows.”

  “Why would God need to know if someone is Mchał or not? I know I’m Szymek, you know you’re father, Michał knows he’s Michał. Everyone knows on their own better than God. Was he just born, that God has to know for him that he’s Michał? Me, even if I didn’t want to be Szymek there’s nothing I could do about it. Even when I’m drunk I know who I am, because no one’s going to be me in my place. Though you should have written to say you were coming, Michał. See, everyone’s crying now.”

  “He didn’t come, he was brought.”

  “By who?”

  “His wife or whoever.”

  “You have a wife, Michał? You never said anything. We could have at least sent congratulations. All the best to the newlyweds. Or, may the sun never set on the road of your new life together. Or, here’s wishing you health, happiness, good fortune, and your first son. You don’t even need to make anything up, you can choose a greeting at the post office. Jaśka the postmistress, she just asks you which one you want, the number two or the number five? Which one is cheaper? But for you I’d send the most expensive one. Maybe you did mention it? Maybe I forgot after all these years. Well now we really do need to have a drink. Father and mother, let them cry, that’s their job. Ours is to drink. Don’t you worry about them. I live here with them, they see me every day, and they sometimes cry over me as well. Not father, but mother does. And over you too, specially after you’ve been gone so long.”

  The tin mug happened to be on the table and I rinsed it out.

  “You use the mug. I can drink from the bottle. Tomorrow we’ll drink from glasses.” I poured him out the bigger amount and left the smaller half for myself. “Here’s to your health, because you came back, you didn’t forget us.”

  I was just lifting the bottle to my mouth when father jumped up and covered the mug with his hand.

  “Are you trying to get him drunk on top of everything, you damn godless animal? Drunken idiot, can’t you see him?”

  “Of course I can see him! He’s my brother!” I slammed the bottle down on the table so hard the vodka splashed out of the neck. “Tell him you’re my brother, Michał.” I grabbed his head in both hands and jerked it up. He looked at me with eyes that saw almost nothing, had no life in them. “You’re my brother. Always were, always will be.”

  At that moment mother got out of bed and asked him:

  “Say something, Michał. Tell me, where does it hurt?”

  “Where it hurts him is his business,” I snapped at mother, though she hadn’t done anything wrong. “He’s here, he’s back, that’s all that matters.”

  “Well since he came back he’s been sitting there not saying a word.” Father got up from his chair and set off toward the water buckets, then when he got halfway he turned and went toward mother, then he turned back again, like he was cutting across a field but didn’t really know where he was going. “She looked after him for a bit. But what could she do. Said he’d be better off here. We keep asking him, Michał, Michał, but it’s like talking to a brick wall. Will you not tell your own mother and father? Even trees tell each other, any living thing will. A man’ll talk to the earth beneath his feet if he’s got no one else to talk to. You can’t live and not talk.”

  “Have a drink, father.” I pushed the mug of vodka
into the hands he was holding out helplessly in front of him, like he wanted to lay them down somewhere, ease his troubles at least that much. “He doesn’t need to talk. We can talk to him.”

  Mother died not long afterwards. Not from her illness so much as out of worry, because she kept crying and crying and saying, Michał, son, what’s wrong? After she passed away father got sick too. Often he didn’t hear what you said to him, like all his attention was focused on listening to the next world where mother had gone. So now everything was on my shoulders. He and Michał did nothing at all. They just sat there, one of them on a stool by the stove, the other one on the bench, waiting for me to come back from work.

  I even thought about quitting, because it was getting too much for me. Right after mother died I still got some help from the women that lived nearby. One of them would cook for us from time to time, another one would clean the house, another one would do the laundry, and a fourth one would at least come and offer her sympathy. But as mother’s death faded into the past, they stopped coming too. On the other hand I was reluctant to give up my job, because those few zlotys I brought in on the first of every month came in handy, you could always buy salt or sugar or a piece of sausage.

  Then one day soon after Easter an inspector from the county came, and Chairman Maślanka showed him around the offices. This is highways, this is taxation, this is insurance, quotas, Mierzwa, Antos, Winiarski, Miss Krysia, Miss Jadzia. And I happened to be eating blessed eggs. In our offices we’d somehow gotten into the habit of always having a midmorning snack, Mrs. Kopeć, the caretaker, would even make tea and sell it for a zloty a glass. When I had something I could bring from home I did, so as to not be worse than the others. I mean, it wasn’t for being hungry, I could stand being hungry, I could go without food for three days straight. When they came in I’d set the eggs out on the table on a piece of newspaper and I was peeling them, one of them was colored red and the other one green.

  “What’s this, you’re eating blessed eggs, Pietruszka?” said Maślanka, half asking, half making fun of me, and the guy from the county smiled awkwardly.

  “That’s right.” I went on peeling them.

  “So what, blessed ones are better than ordinary hen’s eggs?” says Maślanka.

  “I think they’re better. If someone else disagrees they don’t have to eat them.”

  “I see! You must have blessed a whole lot of them if you don’t have time to eat them all at home and you have to bring them to work?”

  “A kopa.”

  “The thing is, the district administration isn’t a church, Pietruszka!” he snapped like an angry dog.

  “Right, but I’m not blessing them, I’m eating them.”

  He didn’t say anything else, but I had the feeling he wasn’t going to let me off lightly with those blessed eggs, and in front of the county inspector as well. I must have really made him mad, because he started bugging other people about eating. Antos was having bread and cheese. Bread and cheese doesn’t have anything to do with God, except for saying, give us this day our daily bread, but believers and nonbelievers eat bread just the same. But he tore Antos off a strip, he said he had so many slices of bread he’d be eating for an hour, and the regulations specified fifteen minutes for the break.

  A couple of days later he called me into his office, and though we’d been on first-name terms for a long time, he said:

  “You drink too much, Pietruszka. It has to stop.”

  I was so mad, if I’d had something at hand I would have smashed his skull open. But all there was on his desk was an inkpot and a blotter, that wouldn’t have been any good.

  “Don’t you Pietruszka me, you little squirt. The name’s Szymek, in case you’d forgotten. And if I drink, it’s on my own time. Don’t think I don’t know what’s gotten your back up. It’s not my drinking. Like you don’t drink? I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen you under the table. You’re full of yourself because you’re the chairman. What did you do in the occupation? Shit your pants is what.”

  A week later I lost my job. And it wasn’t because of the drinking like he was trying to make me believe, because at that time I was already drinking less. In reality it was those blessed eggs that had scared him. He might even have liked the taste of them just like me, except that him, he’d hide under his blanket to peel them, and on top of that he’d send his kid out in front of the house to look out, pretend he was playing when actually he was making sure no one was coming. Then all of a sudden he sees a government worker in a government office eating blessed eggs like it was the most natural thing in the world, and it felt to him like they were hand grenades, not eggs. Besides, he wasn’t just afraid of blessed eggs. He was afraid of everything. And God forbid you ever said in front of him, Dear God! He’d turn red as a beetroot and if he could he would’ve stuck the words right back down your throat.

  “Save expressions like that for when you’re at home, after work! This is the district administration! We need to keep superstition out of here!” But people say those things without thinking, they’re just sighing. It’s easier to change the words you use or your thoughts than those kind of expressions. But that’s the sort of person he was.

  When I started having a tomb built, all those years later, and I needed fifteen hundredweight of cement, he was still chairman, though his title had been changed to director. That was how much Chmiel had figured we’d need. And another two hundredweight on top, it might come in useful, we could at least make a couple steps so you wouldn’t have to jump down with the casket. I could have bought cement off someone under the counter, and if it was for something else I might have done, but not for a tomb. First I went to the co-op. They had cement, but you needed an allocation order from the district administration. I went there. You could get an allocation order, but you had to sign an application. I signed it.

  “What’s the cement for?” the clerk asked me. She was maybe twenty years old, big blue eyes, she seemed a nice girl, a bit snub-nosed. But at her age even a snub nose looks pretty.

  “I’m planning to build a tomb,” I said.

  “A tomb!” She almost burst out laughing, she had to turn her head and pretend like she just happened to glance the other way. Then she took a sheet of paper out of her desk and started following down with her finger to see what you were allowed to get cement for. House, cattle shed, stable, barn, silo, manure pit, for breeding rabbits, poultry, foxes, coypu, for a greenhouse to grow vegetables, flowers, potted or cut. Look, they even mention chrysanthemums, she said, pleased. But there was nothing about tombs. She asked a clerk that was sitting in the corner by the window:

  “Mr. Władek, are there any official instructions about cement allocations for tombs?”

  “Who’s wanting to die?”

  “This citizen here.”

  The guy gave me a blank look and shrugged.

  “So what am I supposed to do?” I asked.

  She smiled, but she spread her hands helplessly.

  “You’d need to go talk to the chairman.”

  “Is he in?”

  “He is, but he’s busy.”

  “Then I’ll wait.”

  Mr. Władek chipped in:

  “If he’s busy, he’ll be busy till the end of the day.”

  “I used to work here years ago,” I said. “This room was the tax department. It was before your time. They didn’t have those desks either.”

  Mr. Władek seemed embarrassed. The girl hung her head too.

  “Maybe I’ll go ask.” She looked at me, no longer with the eyes of an official this time, got up and went out of the room.

  I didn’t have to wait long, he saw me right away, though he’d supposedly been busy.

  “Have a seat, Szymek,” he said. I was surprised it wasn’t “Pietruszka.” He obviously remembered me, though a lot of years had passed. He’d really aged and put on even more weight, he was squashed against the arms of his chair. His nose had gotten lumpy as well and his eyes had a heavier look th
an before, or maybe he’d just been thinking hard about something before I came in. He gave a crooked sort of smile:

  “So you’re planning to leave for the next world?”

  I sat down, struggling with my walking sticks. But it was like he didn’t notice I had them.

  “What’s the hurry?”

  “There’s no hurry,” I said. “Even if there was, I don’t owe the government anything. Except for the taxes you let me pay in installments. But I’ll pay it off before I die, don’t worry.”

  “Who said I was worried? You want to die, be my guest. Anyone’s free to die. It’s no business of the district administration. But if you want cement, well that is our business.”

  “It’s only fifteen hundredweight.”

  “Only fifteen hundredweight. It’s not a question of how much, it’s what it’s for. What do you think, that I can give the stuff out for people to do whatever they feel like with it? It’s written there plain as day in the regs what I can do. You want to increase your yield, by all means, that’s economic development, I can give it to you for that. But if something’s not listed it’s not listed and that’s that. What’s the big deal about a tomb? You’ve got plenty of time. You’d be better off thinking about life while you can. I’m not saying you should get cows or pigs, cause they need a lot of work and I can see your legs are, you know. But maybe a chicken farm or a duck farm. We support those kind of farms. You’d make yourself some dough, and the government would get something out of it as well. We could give you a loan. No problem. Write an application and I’ll sign off on it. The interest rate’s low and the payoff period is long, later on we can cancel part of the debt. Then instead of being a dead man you’re your own master. Your chickens are clucking, your ducks are quacking. All you do is swing by and feed them every so often, and the cash comes rolling in. If there’s a blight you’ve got insurance, the government refunds the value of the stock and you get another loan. It’s not like it used to be, when every dead hen was a cause for tears. The speckled one, the red one, the one with green legs. When one of them died it was like a person died, Walek or Franek or Bartek. You could even tell which egg came from which chicken. Now all the white ones are white, all the brown ones are brown. There’s no more laying hens, friend, it’s all just production. Or greenhouses. We support greenhouses. By all means. Cukes, tomatoes, chives, lettuce, radishes, it’s a seller’s market. You wouldn’t have to worry about delivery. They’d come and buy the stuff up, in any quantities. They have their own crates. A tomb isn’t a farm building, it doesn’t increase productivity. All that cement, however much it was, just going into the ground.”