Stone Upon Stone

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  “Well, he’s sort of here and sort of not, young lady. He’s drunk in the other room, sleeping. Even if we woke him you wouldn’t be able to talk to him. He only just got back. It’s like this almost every day. I keep praying to God.” The poor thing started crying. “Who are you, if I might ask?”

  “A friend. We used to work in the district administration together.” Her eyes got wet too. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag and made like she was wiping her nose. “I work in the town now.”

  “I don’t think he ever mentioned you. But when he sobers up I’ll tell him you were here. What’s your name now?”

  “Małgorzata. He’ll know.”

  “You’re so pretty, and I can see you’re a good person. Come again sometime, maybe he won’t be drunk. He doesn’t always drink.”

  I even thought I heard her voice through the door with mother’s voice as they were talking. But I was sure it was a dream. There was no point getting up for a dream. She never came again. Maybe that was finally the end.

  Though I’d thought it was the end that time I walked her back home after the dance and tried to kiss her and she ran away. What did I want with a girl that goes to a dance with you then won’t even let herself be kissed. When the next dance came I asked Irka Ziętek from the administrative offices. She didn’t run away. And she had a drink. And ate a whole plateful of sandwiches. She kept sighing about how good the vodka made her feel, how good. During the dancing she stuck to me like glue. And it had only just started to get dark when we took a stroll. She was the one dragged me out, come on, let’s go take a walk, I don’t feel like dancing anymore. I feel like doing something else. Hee, hee!

  Then a while later there was a dance in Bartoszyce and I even took two girls, both of them from highways. She didn’t mean anything to me by then. We’d pass in the hallway like people that barely know each other. Good morning. Good morning. Like before. And truth to tell, it’s a pity things didn’t stay that way.

  But one time, the workday was coming to an end, you could already hear the goodbyes in the next room, all of a sudden there’s a knock at my door, come in, and it’s her. She seemed a bit on edge as she entered. I’m not bothering you? Not at all. And she asks me if I could stay a little longer and help her, she has an urgent job she needs to turn in the next day and she can’t handle it on her own. She asked her girlfriends but none of them can do it. I could see right away it wasn’t a matter of helping her, she wanted to make the other thing right. Why did you put up a fight at the dance, you silly woman? I can stay behind. Why not. I often stay when someone needs help.

  We were recording tax receipts, me on one side of the desk, her on the other. I arranged them in alphabetical order, each letter in a separate pile. She checked every receipt against a list to make sure the payments agreed with the invoices. Everyone had left the building already. It was starting to get dark. It was the end of September. She turned a lamp on. Then we had to transfer the payment amounts from the receipts to separate entries on a form. Serial number, family name, given name, village, acreage, land quality, to be paid, paid, installment amount, still to pay. Mrs. Kopeć, the caretaker, dusted quickly, emptied the ashtrays, swept the floor, then said goodbye and she left too. Then the amounts on the forms had to be added up to check they matched the receipts. Evening came. It got dark around us. When you glanced up at the room, nothing looked like it usually did. The desks, that during the day they pushed their way into the room so you could barely squeeze through, now they just stood there quietly like the coffins of dead clerks. The cupboards, that not long ago had just been cupboards, now they looked like old willow trees that someone had cut the tops off of. There was only us in the light of the desk lamp, we looked like we were inside a brightly lit sphere. Though just like two office workers working on receipts. Nothing more. But if someone had seen us through the window they could have gone telling people we were cuddling, because we were sitting right up close to each other and there was no one else in the building. Of course, from time to time one of us would say something, me or her, but only what was needed for the job.

  “Could you pin those receipts together, Mr. Szymon.”

  “Is it Wojciech Jagła or Jagło?”

  “Ten acres, class two land, do you have one like that?”

  “How much do you make it, Miss Małgorzata? Mine comes out to such and such.”

  “This doesn’t match up. We need to check it again.”

  At times a sadness passed across her face, but it was sadness from the receipts. The best medicine for that kind of sadness is an abacus. Immediately she started rattling away like a machine gun.

  It was eight, maybe a little after. We were still deep in receipts. If only she’d once given me a warmer look, or if she’d gotten flustered when I glanced at her. Nothing. It was even like she was chiding me for those glances, she’d tell me to check something or other, write it down, add it up a second time. In the end I started to think about getting out my watch and saying, look, it’s eight, nine, to finally make her lift her eyes from the receipts. Then I’d say:

  “Let’s take a bit of a break.”

  And she might reply:

  “Maybe I’ll make tea. Will you have some?”

  I wouldn’t have minded some tea. I started discreetly feeling my pockets for my watch. It was the same one I sold later to pay for the tomb. A silver one, on a chain. I got it off the Germans in a battle. Though truth be told, the men found it on a dead officer. It had slipped out of his pocket like it was trying to get away from the body, except the chain held it in place. It wasn’t much of a battle. It only lasted half an hour or so, like it was all about the watch. On our side Highlander was wounded, on the other side they all died. Actually there wasn’t really anything to fight about. Someone had told us there was a motorcycle and car with Germans coming down the road. We didn’t even know where they were going or what for. Though for sure they weren’t driving that way just for fun. We made an ambush in a gully that was overgrown on both sides with hazel and hawthorn and juniper. We blocked off the road in front and behind, we waited till they got close, then we let them have it from every side. There were a few bodies, a few guns, the watch, and that was the end of the battle. These days a watch doesn’t mean a thing, every other person has one on their wrist, but back then it was still something, plus a silver one to boot. And the thing worked tip-top right till the end. I never once had to get it repaired. Whenever I checked it against the sun it always showed the same time. In the village, at twelve noon the sun’s always right over Martyka’s chimney, and the watch always showed twelve noon. It came in handiest when I worked in the district administration. As if the officer that let himself get killed by us back then knew that one day I’d be a government worker.

  Except that it didn’t feel right to be taking out my watch and saying, oh look, it’s eight, or nine. She might have gotten embarrassed and started apologizing:

  “Oh, I’m really sorry for keeping you so long, Mr. Szymon. But you’ve been a big help. Thank you. Please go now if you’re in a hurry, I’ll stay behind. I have to finish today.”

  There was still a big pile of receipts between us that needed going through. All I did was, whenever she’d lean over more than usual I’d pretend I was lost in thought and I’d secretly stare at her hair. It was like a field of grain, much brighter by the light of the lamp than during the day, I felt as if I was standing at the edge of a wheat field. She must have been tired already. A couple of times she asked, how much is such and such times such and such again? Another time she got annoyed at the receipts because they weren’t written clearly. But they’d been like that from the beginning. Then she shifted the lamp over, saying it was too dark.

  I was copying out a receipt from a Jan Bielak, village of Zarzecze, three thousand five hundred and eighty-two zlotys. Second installment. With her head bowed over the desk, she said quietly:

  “Kiss me, Mr. Szymon.”

  I put down my pen. I thought she was
making fun of me. Just in case, I answered as if I was joking as well:

  “Maybe I’m not worthy of kissing you, Miss Małgorzata?”

  “Please,” she said even more quietly.

  So I stood up, raised her head from the desk and I kissed her, but like I’d kiss a sister. Because I was more unnerved by her having asked for it than if I’d kissed her by force, but of my own free will. And I didn’t enjoy it at all.

  Anyway, she jumped up right away.

  “It’s late,” she said in a kind of artificial voice, as if to show that nothing had happened. “We’ve been sitting over these receipts for hours. I didn’t think it would take all that long.”

  “I’ll walk you home, Małgosia,” I said.

  “No thanks, I’ll go on my own. I’ll be fine. I’ve often walked back at this hour. What’s there to be afraid of? That bit by the woods isn’t very nice, but I’ll be all right. The moon’s bright tonight. Then right after that is the village, the dogs’ll be barking. No. Another time, when you feel like it. But please, Szymek, not today.”

  She’s an odd one, I thought. She tells me to kiss her then she won’t let me walk her home. Try understanding any of that. Go home on your own, be my guest! Except what kind of young man lets a young lady walk home on her own in the night. But go anyway! If something scares you in the woods you’ll regret it. In the woods there are graves from the first war. Didn’t old Pociej used to tell how one night he was coming back that way after walking a girl home, and all at once there’s a soldier with a bullet hole in his head standing in his way saying:

  “Stop this hole up for me, it’s been all these years and it keeps bleeding.”

  Pociej never went back to that girl. He married someone else, from our village, from across the road.

  I met her the next day in the hallway, she was coming from the other end. I stopped and gave her a big smile and said good morning. She nodded and smiled back. But she quickly went into one of the other offices, and I felt I’d been slapped in the face. Maybe those receipts yesterday had just put her in a funny mood, I thought, all those names, villages, acreages, installments, amounts, that was why she told me to kiss her. And today she’d had a good night’s sleep and forgotten all about it. There was evidently no point in me worrying my head over it.

  A few days passed, it happened to be a Tuesday and it was looking like rain. I leave the building and she’s standing out there in front, seemingly looking at the sky to see if it’s going to rain or not. The clouds are dark and swirly like they often are in the fall. I stopped next to her and I started looking at the clouds as well. All of a sudden, high up a wind appeared and began blowing the clouds and scattering them, driving them from the sky.

  “You know, I think the rain’ll hold off,” I said.

  She looked at me at first a little surprised to see me standing right by her. A moment later she gave me this nice smile.

  “Then maybe today you’ll walk me home, Szymek? If you feel like it.” She opened her umbrella and held it over the two of us. “Even if it rains we’ll be fine.”

  “You can fold it up again,” I said. “See, the wind’s already blown the clouds away.”

  And luckily it didn’t rain, because a little umbrella like that wouldn’t have had a chance of protecting us. Even if we’d held close to each other our backs would still have gotten wet. Besides, who was supposed to make the first move? I didn’t even have the courage to take her by the arm, and she didn’t seem willing either. We probably would’ve ended up getting soaked, and the umbrella would have been folded up between us.

  We walked the whole way like distant acquaintances that just happen to have met and be going the same way. As for talking, we pretty much talked about nothing at all, about the office, about the fall, she told me a bit about her girlfriends from school, and her teachers, and I told her about being in the resistance, though only the cheerier parts. And before we knew it we’d reached her house. Her mother was just lighting the lamp, because a glow like a will-o’-the-wisp started dancing about in the window, then the window lit up a moment later.

  I said they had a nice house. It had a brick foundation, with an asbestic tile roof, wide windows, and a verandah. It looked like it was recently built. I said I was planning to build a house as well, except I didn’t yet know when. First I needed to get ahold of the materials, then have someone make a plan for me, then hire masons, and these days there weren’t any good masons except maybe in other nearby villages. After that there didn’t seem to be anything else to talk about so I shook her hand.

  “Good night, then. See you tomorrow at work.”

  “Good night,” she said, but there was a quaver in her voice.

  I’d gone maybe a dozen yards or so, in any case I’d passed the end of their fence and reached the edge of the field, when all of a sudden I heard behind me:

  “Wait.” She trotted up to me. “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”

  I had an urge to throw my arms around her and hold her close, and be held close, and maybe more, not to look at anything else at all, maybe even just pull her into the field that was there, just beyond the edge, because who was she, was she any different from the others, she was the same flesh and blood, I was the stupid one. But something held me back, no. No, Szymek, like it was her voice, but it was mine. If I’d at least been drinking, but no, I was stone-cold sober. I even regretted not going with Winiarski when he tried to drag me out for a drink at lunchtime. I kissed her goodbye, and I said again:

  “Good night then.”

  Then two days later I walked her home again, and again, and then every day, and this went on for maybe three weeks. And each time it was the same:

  “Good night then.”

  “Good night.”

  Sometimes she wanted me to kiss her, sometimes not. It was like there was a big bush growing between us that stopped us reaching each other. Though truth be told, I only had one thing on my mind. What she was thinking about, God alone knows. Maybe the same thing, though girls sometimes have strange ways of thinking. Here they put on all kinds of performances, and inside they’re like a little trembling rabbit. Here they seem like they’re going to live forever, and inside they only have a moment. Here there’s a single drop, inside there’s the ocean. Here there’s a rose, inside there’s a pitcher. In any case, with any other girl, after I’d walked her home that many times she’d have been mine long ago. And more than once. Apart from anything the road led by the woods, and the woods worked in my favor as well. The fall was well advanced, it was dark earlier and earlier, and it got so it’d almost be dusk already when we left work. By the time we reached her place it was nighttime. All the windows of the houses were lit up. And you could barely hear a human voice anywhere. Nothing but the occasional wagon that was late getting home. And the dogs would be barking the way they do in the night, in long howls.

  I was surprised at myself for still being prepared to walk her home. After all, it was two and a half miles. Two and a half one way, two and a half back, five in all. If I’d only had a reason. But it was all just so I could say good night. Good night. And sometimes a good-night kiss. Kissing’s fine for a beginning. Or when you’re engaged to each other and you know that sooner or later you’ll be together. But the only time we were together was from work to outside her house, from work to outside her house, and that could get boring. I never even took her arm because I thought she’d push my hand away and say, no, Szymek. Till one time she asked of her own accord:

  “Maybe you could take my arm?” But then right away she added: “I’ve got new shoes on and they’re a bit uncomfortable to walk in.”

  What was I supposed to do. I decided I’d walk her home a couple more times and call it quits. She wasn’t the only fish in the sea. Even just at work there were plenty of girls that you’d only need to walk back home once or twice, girls from our village or other villages, girls that didn’t even need to be walked home.

  But that couple of times stretched out
longer and longer, and I couldn’t decide how many more times it ought to be. Even when we hadn’t made any arrangement, at five to four I’d be looking out the window to make sure I didn’t miss her, or I’d leave early and wait for her on the way, by the footbridge outside the church. Then once again we’d walk those two and a half miles from work to her house, step by step.

  I figured it might be easier to put an end to it all in the spring. In the spring I’d have to plow and sow and there wouldn’t be as much time for walking her home. Once and twice I’d not do it, I’d say I have to work in the fields, and maybe things’d finish of their own accord. Father was already going on about how the larks had arrived, the swallows had arrived, something or other had arrived. He started checking the plowshare, making sure it didn’t need hammering out. Then he brought in some grain on a sieve and sorted through it under the lamp, figuring out which seeds were alive and which ones were dead, which ones would sprout and which wouldn’t.

  “Would you like to come in?” she said one day when we were standing outside her house. I was a bit taken aback, but I said yes. Why not?

  Her father and mother were at home. They gave me a warm welcome, like they’d known me a long time. Her father even told her off for not being hospitable, she was their daughter, she should have invited me in long ago, we’ve been walking back together all this time, they can see from the window. He also knew that I was “Eagle.” He took out a bottle and told Małgosia’s mother to cut some bread and sausage. When we were already sitting, drinking and eating, he said to Małgosia:

  “Listen, girl, do you know who Eagle was? Under the occupation he was the most famous of all of them. There was Tartar, Wheelwright. But they were amateurs compared to Eagle. One time Sokołowski the miller got robbed in the night, then in church someone recognized his daughter’s fur coat on Gajowczyk’s woman from the Colony. And Gajowczyk was in Wheelwright’s unit. Who had it been? Their neighbors. But Eagle, he was the scourge of God. Am I right, sir?”