Stone Upon Stone

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  Thanks to that, the bread lasted till Saint Blaise’s Day in early February. From then on we only ate potatoes. In the morning it was żurek with potatoes, at midday potato soup or potatoes and milk, in the evening potatoes baked in the ash pan, with salt. The ones from the ash pan were best. We wouldn’t light the lamp, we’d just sit around the stove in the kitchen with the door of the firebox open, and whatever light it gave would light the room. We were eating more salt now so we didn’t have the money for lamp oil, and besides, lamp oil would have been wasted on plain potatoes. True, father had sold the heifer because we didn’t have anything to feed it with, but almost all the money had gone on paying taxes.

  Mother would bring the potatoes from the cellar gathered in her apron like eggs. She’d lay them down on the ground at father’s feet. Father would take a burning ember from the firebox so he could see what he was doing, and he’d divide the potatoes into the same number of piles as there were people at home, except for Stasiek, because Stasiek was still at the teat. Then he’d even out the piles, moving bigger and smaller potatoes around, so they were all equal. Then mother would tell him to take two from her pile and give me and Michał an extra one each, because we were still growing. Grandmother said the same, that she didn’t have long to live and it was enough for her to say her prayers before she went to bed, she didn’t need to eat. So he’d rearrange the piles yet again.

  Sometimes he’d take so long organizing the piles of potatoes that he’d be covered in smoke from the ember he was using as a light. One time he even singed his eyebrows. Even so, the potatoes would get all mixed together when he put them in the ash pan and covered them with ash. I could never figure out how he knew which one belonged to who when he dug them out again afterward and put them back in the same piles, putting a name to each potato. This is Szymek’s, this is father’s, this’ll be mine, this one’s Michał’s, this is mother’s, Antek’s.

  When he’d shared them all out, without waiting for them to cool even a bit he’d take the first potato from his own pile and, as if it wasn’t burning his fingers in the slightest, he’d peel it and begin eating. Right away he’d start saying how good it was, that it was nice and well done, and what would we do if we didn’t have potatoes, and generally he’d talk and talk like he was describing some strange world. That though meat provides strength, potatoes give you patience. That you can find any kind of food you want in potatoes, if you only know how to eat them. Because eating is a skill just as much as reading and writing. But some people eat like hogs and for that reason they don’t know a thing. Or they only eat with their mouths and their bellies. Whereas you need to eat with your mind as well. That everything comes from the earth, and the earth has the same taste in all things. So potatoes can be beans and crackling, they can be cabbage and bacon, pierogies with cheese or with sour cream, even a chicken leg big as a mangel-wurzel. Even badness and goodness come from potatoes, because they come from the earth.

  During the daytime he was gruff and tight-lipped, but over those baked potatoes he’d talk till he was blue in the face, he sometimes even forgot to take salt and mother would have to remind him:

  “Put some salt on it.”

  My grandparents had lived way longer than he had, and they must have eaten way more potatoes, but they paid attention just the same like they were listening to some kind of prophecy. Though one time grandfather interrupted to back father up, he said that potatoes are eaten by kings just as much as by their servants, by generals and ordinary soldiers, by priests and paupers, because potatoes make everyone equal. And that death makes people equal too, but it doesn’t taste nearly as good. At this father jumped on grandfather, what did death have to do with potatoes. Death was death, it had to come to everyone. Potatoes grow so people can have food to eat. Grandmother didn’t much like what grandfather had said about equality either:

  “What a lot of nonsense you talk sometimes. Kings eating potatoes, when they have to rule the world.” But she evidently started feeling sorry for the kings, because she added: “Unless maybe they’re in a sauce, something you can’t even imagine is poured over them. And as much meat as there are potatoes, to go with them. With meat they could eat them.”

  “They eat them with whatever they eat them with,” father barked at grandmother. “People don’t need to know everything about kings. People don’t even know everything about their neighbors, even though they live right there. And that’s how things should be.”

  One day father went off to see the blacksmith and get the plowshare hammered out, because there was a breath of spring in the air. Someone had said they’d heard a lark singing, though there was still snow on the fields. Mother was out too, she’d gone over to the neighbor’s to borrow some sifted flour to make żurek. Grandmother was rocking Stasiek, and grandfather was dozing by the stove, though his sleep was shallow because every so often he’d open his mouth and mutter that it wasn’t spring yet, not by a long shot. Potato soup was making on the stove top.

  I hadn’t gone to school because I’d said I had a stomachache. The whole time I sat bent double so it looked like it was true. Grandmother had given me some mint drops and every now and then she’d ask, how are you feeling, does your tummy still hurt? I groaned and said it did, but I’d been thinking about how to get out of the main room, because since early morning that slice of bread on the rafter up in the attic had been tempting me, it might even have made my stomach hurt a little. I didn’t have any bad intentions. I just wanted to look at it, to see what bread looked like.

  “It’s a little better,” I said when grandmother asked me for the umpteenth time. Because I figured it had hurt enough by now, and besides, any moment mother could come back from the neighbor’s or father from the blacksmith’s and I’d have to stay sitting there bent in two with an aching stomach.

  It was like grandmother had been waiting for me to say it, she started singing the praises of the mint drops. And when she was about to get carried away and say that sometimes the pain would just vanish as if by magic, I told her it had stopped hurting now, and I grabbed the bowl with the chicken feed and said I’d go see to the chickens. I put the bowl down in the passageway and quickly climbed up to the attic. At first, before my eyes got used to the dark, it looked like the thatched roof had collapsed onto the attic floor, it was so black up there. But I knew by heart the place where the bread was. I’d snuck up there a good few times when I had a particularly strong yen to take a look at it. Besides, all you had to do was tip your head back, open your eyes wide, and wait like that for a short while, the roof rose higher and higher, and the place became much much bigger, like you were standing in the middle of a church at dusk. Then it would gradually come into view out of the darkness, way up a height, like a sleepy pigeon huddled behind a rafter. It was gray like a pigeon. It even poked out from behind the rafter like a pigeon’s head, a little grayer than the gray of the thatch.

  I suddenly had an urge to touch it, stroke it, on its head at least. But how could I get to it? Father must have pulled the ladder up into the attic when he put the bread up there on the rafter. I tried climbing up the crossbeams. It was hard, though the beams were no farther apart than the rungs of a ladder. The thing was though, they were planted tight against the thatch like feet on grass, and each time I took hold I had to push my hand under the thatch with all my strength to get a decent grip. If I’d let go I would have come down on the attic floor like a ton of bricks. Then it would have been judgment day downstairs. I could just see grandfather starting up out of his seat saying, what’s that, is the house falling down?! And grandmother would shout, Jesus and Mary! And Stasiek would burst out crying. And mother would happen to come back right at that moment and she’d be wringing her hands saying, where’s Szymek? And father would be back from the blacksmith’s and he’d be going, where’s that little monkey gotten to?

  But I managed to clamber up to right by where the bread was, and hanging from a beam with one hand, with the other one I snatched the bread f
rom the rafter and put it in my shirt. Getting down was easier. I sat down by the chimney flue, but for some reason I didn’t have the courage right away to take the bread out. I listened carefully to check there weren’t any suspicious sounds coming from downstairs. But all I heard was grandmother singing to Stasiek, “Oh my people, how have I wronged you?” I looked around nervously. Everything was quiet as could be, even the mice seemed to have gone from the attic for the moment. The only sound was my heart hammering so hard it felt like it was outside my body. I put my hand cautiously under my shirt and, first of all, felt the bread while it was still in there. It was all dry and cracked, not like bread at all. And I couldn’t tell if it was my heart or if the bread itself was pounding. I took it out carefully with both hands. I bent my head to get a better look. But all I could see was a rough gray piece of something that was supposed to be bread. What was so special about it, I asked myself, that the land couldn’t do without it?

  I got the urge to break off a piece and try it. Maybe when it was in my mouth I’d taste whatever power was in it? A communion wafer isn’t anything special either, just flour and water, no taste at all, but it still contains Lord Jesus. Just a tiny bit. Father’ll never know. How can you remember a slice of bread from Christmas Eve till the springtime? It had been bigger and now it was dried up. People dry up in their old age as well.

  I stuck just the very edge between my teeth and bit down not hard at all, but all of a sudden there was a snapping sound like something had broken, and a piece came off that was half the size of my hand. I was terrified. My first thought was to get the heck out of there. But where to? I felt like I was choking. I’d have knelt down in front of that dried-up slice of bread and begged it to let itself be put back together. I could sense someone already hurrying up the ladder. Someone was coming from behind the chimney and stretching out their arms to grab me. The front door slammed. I seemed to hear voices, father and mother and grandfather and grandmother, calling, Szymek, what have you done! Szymek, for the love of God! Szymek!!

  And all at once, like I was trying to eat up the great guilt inside of me, I started biting on the broken-off piece. It crunched in my mouth so loud you could hear it across the entire attic. It felt like it could be heard downstairs, in the yard, in the whole village. People were coming running from all over to see what was happening at the Pietruszkas’. It prickled against my tongue and my gums and on the roof of my mouth. But I bit down like mad, in a rush, as if I was worried I’d run out of time. Because of that I didn’t taste the bread at all, all I could feel was my mouth being scratched inside, it was like I had a wound inside my mouth.

  Then I ate the rest of the bread as well, because I didn’t know what else to do with it. At that point something strange happened, my fear suddenly passed and I felt something like bliss coming over me. I could even have gotten up and gone back down, except I didn’t feel like it. Quiet and calm came back to the attic, and after a moment I was overcome with sleep. I dreamed of our fields, cracked with dryness, overgrown with weeds, horsetail and wheatgrass and pigweed, while right next door, on other people’s land there were handsome crops of rye, barley, wheat. But none of it made me sad at all, even father, who was walking across our fields and calling in a tearful voice, how wretched I am, and how wretched you are, land!

  I was woken by scuffles and shouts. Father was standing over me. He was furious, in a rage, like he’d lost his reason. He was waving his arms and screaming:

  “You monster! You animal!” And other names. “Dear God, hold me back or I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him like a dog! I wish you’d died before you were ever born! What are we going to do now? The land’ll never forgive us! Get up!!”

  I still had the sweetness of sleep and the bread inside me, I threw myself at father’s feet and started yelping:

  “I couldn’t stop myself, daddy! I must have the devil in me! Take me to the church, I’ll lie down with my arms spread the whole day! Maybe the devil will go out of me!”

  “I’ll devil you! Get up!” He kicked me in the stomach so hard I folded in two. Then without warning, as if he’d been overcome by an even greater attack of fury, he grabbed me by the waist and lugged me down the ladder like a sack of flour. Without putting me down he carried me all the way across the yard to the barn wall. He set me down and ordered me to stand there, while he started feverishly looking for something on the ground.

  Mother came out of the house and said:

  “What’s he done that’s so terrible?”

  Father was marching back and forth digging in the hay with his boots, muttering to himself, he seemed to have gone mad. Finally his shoe hit something that made a clinking sound, he bent over and pulled out the dog’s chain. We’d set the dog free halfway through the winter so it could feed itself, we didn’t have anything to give it.

  Mother asked again from the doorstep:

  “What has he done that’s so terrible?”

  But he probably didn’t hear her, he was busy untangling the chain. He pushed the barn door open furiously, grabbed me by the arm, and yanked me inside, though I didn’t resist. He pushed the door to behind us, gave it a couple of kicks because it wouldn’t close properly. He was shaking like he had a fever, it even made the chain rattle in his hand. He put the chain around my neck.

  “I’m going to hang you, you animal,” he muttered. “I don’t care if God won’t forgive me. You and I’ll go to hell together. But I’m going to hang you.”

  He was fiddling with the chain around my neck, and the chain was jingling like bells on a horse. I even had the impression father was putting bells on me like he was getting me ready for a sleigh ride, not for death. And maybe it was because of that that I wasn’t afraid at all. I had an ache in the pit of my stomach, but it wasn’t from fear of dying, it was probably from the bread. Because I didn’t yet know what it meant to die. I’d seen dead bodies, of course. All kinds. People that had died of old age, of illness, who’d drowned or been hung. There was even one, Paluch his name was, he’d been bringing in his crop, he’d slipped off the sheaves and a wagon wheel had run him over. He was already dead, but he was holding on to the wheel so hard they couldn’t pry his fingers off. Or Kurzeja the miller, he got dragged into the belts at the mill, he didn’t look either like he’d been killed or that he’d died naturally. Or another time Sylwester Sójka killed his brother, Bolesław Sójka, with a flail, in a fight over property. It looked like it had been an accident, that they’d been doing the threshing together and they’d either been standing too close together, or their flails had been too long. He even cried over his brother’s body, he was shouting, get up, Bolesław, come back to life, brother! Like he was calling him to get back to the threshing. You felt that the other guy would just wipe his eyes and stand up, because who wouldn’t react when their brother was calling. Or Kułaga beat his old lady up so bad she ran out of the house onto the road completely naked, then she dropped down dead in the road. Actually it was hard to say exactly what had really happened, because some people said she’d dropped dead, others that she was a tramp. Or Rżysko, one time he was at the pub and he drank so much he never got up from his drinking. A drunken dead body looks like it’s just drunk. The Jew was pulling his beard out because no one would pay for what the man had drunk. He’d even owed him from before, he was going to settle up with him that day. But they went through his pockets and he didn’t have a red cent on him. Or my school friend Jędrek Guzek, when I saw him in his coffin he was dead and all, but he was dressed in a brand-new suit with brand-new shoes and a new shirt, and his hair was cut and combed, I’d never once seen him like that when he was alive. I even thought to myself, seems like it’s not such a bad thing to die. He’d made a bet for a penknife with Jaś Kułaj that without using a strap he could climb all the way up the highest poplar tree over on the far side of the dike behind the mill. He’d almost made it to the top when he fell. We took him to his mother so she could put him to bed, because there was something wrong with him. She cu
ssed us out, called us the worst names. It was only later she started wailing, Jędrek, Jędrusieniu!

  I could go on and on. But I’d never yet seen what it was to die on your own. I might not know even today. Though when it comes to the dead my memory is good. I could even write them all down in a list in order, starting with Wróbel, when I was three years old and mother took me with her, saying, let’s go say goodbye to Wróbel, because he’s dying. I was a little afraid because I thought death would be sitting at Wróbel’s side. I’d never seen death, except with the Christmas carol singers of course, but that was always one of the young guys dressed up. We went in. Mrs. Wróbel was stirring something on the stove. Their Józef was sitting on a bench by the window mending some reins, and in the corner of the room, high on white pillows, was Wróbel’s head with his big mustache spreading like the branches of a tree. We went up to the bed, mother crossed herself and knelt and told me to kneel down as well. Then the mustache on the pillow moved, and a scrawny hand reached out from under the quilt and rested a moment on my head. Then we got up, and mother asked:

  “Has the priest been yet?”

  “He has,” sighed Mrs. Wróbel, and at the same moment she started in on Józef: “Józef! Józef! You need to be going! I keep asking him and asking him.”

  I was about to say to mother:

  “Mama, where’s death?”

  But she tugged me by the hand and we left. Outside, the sun was nice and warm and Kozieja was leading a calf up the road, and the calf was prancing around in such a funny way that I started to laugh, and mother did too, and anyone that was coming down the road stopped and laughed as well.

  “Kneel down,” father grunted.

  I dropped instantly to my knees, the chain rattled around my neck.