The Graveyard

by Marek Hlasko

  “What did you come for?” Bear asked.

  “I’ve made up my mind to look up my comrades in the underground,” Franciszek said. “I remembered the names of the best among them and got their addresses. I must look them up and ask them to help me … You know me; you know what it was like in the underground,” he said imploringly. “You know how I talked, how I thought, how I behaved. I need help, Bear. I slipped, though it’s difficult to call it a slip. In short, what I want is—” He broke off; it was hard for him to collect his thoughts. He looked at Bear, expecting him somehow to come to his aid, but Bear remained silent, staring at the floor. The phonograph scratched on:

  “And Jozio came and brought the doughnuts,

  And kissed her hands, and kissed her hands …”

  “One day I got drunk,” Franciszek said, “and I talked foolishly. At first the whole thing seemed trivial to me, but I know I said that I did not trust our leaders, that I had no faith in the party, and I told them to stick it all up somewhere. What I want is to get my old comrades to—well—to speak for me. If need be I’ll go to the boss himself, but I am interested in finding people who would be willing to say something in my behalf. After all, I don’t think that way, and I said all that when I was drunk. Surely you remember me. Will you help me, Bear?”

  “Just a minute,” said Bear. He turned off the phonograph. “This music is no good,” he said. “There are people all around; someone may be listening in.” He jumped up from his seat, rushed to the other room, and after a moment came back with a little boy. “This is my son,” he said to Franciszek, and made the boy stand in a corner with his face to the wall. “Recite Mayakovsky,” he said, and the boy began to declaim in a monotonous voice, staring with round eyes at the empty wall. “Now go on with your story,” Bear said to Franciszek.

  “I was expelled from the party,” Franciszek said. “My case will go to the District Committee, perhaps to the executive of the Regional Committee. Tell me, Bear, was I ever …” He wanted to say “twofaced,” but he suddenly realized how ridiculous he was: what did they know about each other, he and the man facing him? He stared gloomily at Bear. Now one thing was clear to him: he was guilty. He must have done something that estranged him from the party, that estranged him even from Mikołaj; now that something was closing the mouth of this man. The thought of his guilt almost brought him relief. “Yes,” he said in a low voice, “I did something terrible, I know it’s terrible, and I don’t myself understand how it could have happened. But can one moment, in which a man is not accountable for his thoughts and words, wipe out his whole life and everything he has done? Is there really such a crime?”

  Again he fell silent. The boy went on reciting in a voice as monotonous as the dripping of water from a spout:

  “Beyond the mountains of defeats the dawns glow,

  A new sunlit country is awaiting us.

  Against starvation, against the sea of pestilence

  Our million steps resound.

  Though a mercenary gang surrounds us …”

  “Will you help me, Bear?” Franciszek asked.

  “Have you been to see anyone else?”

  “No, I just telephoned Jerzy. I was told that he was on vacation, and that he’d be back in a few days. I looked you up first …” He took his hand. “You won’t refuse me, will you?”

  “Now sing, Franek,” Bear said to the boy, who began at once, “On the Vistula, the broad Vistula, rose the builders’ song …” Bear said to Franciszek: “I named him after you, in memory of those days. How can I help you?”

  “I beg your pardon,” Franciszek said, annoyed. “This is very nice of you, but must the child sing? Must he be present during our talk? Who the devil is listening in here, and what for?”

  “No, that’s not it,” Bear stammered, “but you know, silence is no good either, so let him sing; he likes it, anyway. When it’s too silent, your neighbors think at once, ‘Aha, they’re plotting something; why should anybody live so quietly?’ And they begin to have foolish ideas, about spies, or enemies. Why, sometimes I have fights with my wife, just so as not to seem too quiet. Let him sing. But if it bothers you, he can recite poetry. Franek, recite ‘Vladimir Ilyich.’ ”

  Franek began at once to declaim in the same bored tone:

  “The party is the backbone of our class,

  The party is our immortal cause,

  The party, the one thing that won’t betray me;

  Today I am a subject, tomorrow I abolish empires.

  The brain of the class, the cause of the class …”

  “So what do you want?” Bear asked.

  “I want you to help me. You, a former partisan, an officer. Don’t you understand? You are Bear, aren’t you?”

  “No,” said Bear. “And I refuse even to remember it. Or to talk about it. Or to think about it. Do you understand?”

  “So you’ve cut all that out of your past?” Franciszek asked. “You, a legendary partisan, a hero, the pride of your unit … you’ve cut all that out. Is that true?”

  They measured each other.

  “It’s true,” Bear said.

  “Don’t turn around, Franek,” Franciszek said to the boy. And, while the child went on reciting, he walked up to Bear and slapped him in the face.

  He walked out. Was that really water dripping—or was it Bear’s little boy still talking and staring with his black eyes at the murky grayness of the wall? He was in the street when Bear caught up with him. They walked side by side in silence, breathing heavily.

  “Listen,” Bear stammered. He gripped Franciszek’s arm and looked in his eyes, stumbling all the while. “It isn’t the way you think it is. Listen, you’ve got to understand. I have a son …”

  “Franek,” Franciszek said. “In memory of those moments.”

  “Those moments, those moments,” Bear stammered. “What are they next to life? Next to the fear you’ve got to live with, constantly, without interruption, from morning till night? Can we bask in the days of glory when we live in a time of pestilence? They’ll finish us off, you, me, Jerzy. Our time is over; and the others, the ones on top, they know it. They commit crimes when they have to, but in spite of everything they’re laying the foundations for faith in man; they believe in you, in me, in Jerzy, and that’s why they’ll finish us off when the time comes. They believe that we’re somehow decent, and that someday we’ll wake up, and let out a wild shout: no! And maybe this shout will be taken up by a few others. It’s neither you nor I that’s at stake, but something beside which we mean nothing at all. Ah, Franciszek, we wanted to take the road to life, and we’ve come to a graveyard; we set out for a promised land, and all we see is a desert; we talked about justice, and all we know is terror and despair. Once I lived on the fourth floor, and all day long I did nothing but count people’s footsteps on the staircase—were they coming for me or not? Someday they would come, I thought. History has no use for witnesses. The next generation will rush headlong into whatever is expected of it. It will regard each of the crimes now being committed as sacred, as necessary. And what about us? You? Me? We’ve done our part, and now we must try to survive, just survive as long as possible. Do you want to be the righteous man of Gomorrah? What do you want? Testimonials? Give it up. Can’t you die like a strong animal, alone and in silence? You’ve nothing left, no teeth to bite with, and nothing to shoot with. Go away, and if you don’t understand, at least leave the rest of us alone. After all, we’re entitled to something in return for our days of glory; at least we have the right to be forgotten.”

  “Have you seen Jerzy since those days?” Franciszek asked.

  “No, and I don’t want to see him.”

  Franciszek slackened his pace. “You certainly don’t think,” he said, “that he would ever be capable of saying the kind of thing you’ve just said. Do you?”

  They were silent for a while.

  “No,” Bear said. “Jerzy? No, Jerzy will never say such things, I know. I often think of him; he was t
he purest of all, better than either of us. Maybe that’s what has saved him.”

  They stopped.

  “Farewell, Bear,” Franciszek said.

  “Goodbye, Skinny,” Bear said.

  Neither of them saw the other’s face: they were far from any street lamp, standing in darkness and rain. After a moment’s hesitation, each of them extended a hand. Their hands did not meet, but they pretended not to notice.

  XI

  STILL WEARING HIS OVERCOAT, HE WALKED INTO his living room. “Why don’t you turn on the light, Elzbieta?” he asked. He walked up to her and saw her face was drenched with tears. “Something bad happened to you, my little girl?”

  She tried to smile. “No, no.”

  He sat down beside her. “Then why are you crying?”

  “Really, it’s nothing.”

  “Something unpleasant?”

  “Yes,” she said, and began to sob. “At school.”

  “What was it?”

  She opened her mouth, but he saw that she was making up an answer. “I don’t know why,” she said, staring over his head, “but the instructor picks on me all the time.”

  “And why isn’t Roman with you?”

  Once again she raised her face. “He’s very busy now,” she said. “You know it will soon be May Day.”

  “Yes,” he said. He walked to the window and rested his burning head against the cold glass. “Don’t let my troubles upset you, Elzbieta. I’ll manage somehow. I’ll look up my former companions; they’ll help me.”

  He gazed at the hysterical quivering of the neon sign and thought: “And yet I must have done something. Somewhere inside me there must be some doubt I wasn’t aware of; it rose to the surface at the first opportunity, in a moment of exhaustion. What was it I doubted? The party? The people? The leadership? Or could it be the cause? How strong a man must be to go through life with a clear head, ignoring doubts, fears, sordid thoughts! What would I have been if I had no faith in the cause, if it had not been my goal, if it were not my goal even now, my brightest star? Bear? A madman. What did Mikołaj say? Stand up and fight. Very well, I will.” He was strong again. It seemed to him that from the silent city, from the calm sky, from the streets below and the stars above, faith invaded him, effacing all his trials, and that this faith would endure in him as long as the earth turned around the sun.

  “Good night, Elzbieta,” he said.

  XII

  HE WAS ABOUT TO LEAVE THE FACTORY: THE SIRENS were wailing. He punched his timecard and was walking toward the gate, when the porter stopped him. “I have a little note for you,” he said in a strangely official tone, without his usual wink. He took out his receipt book, and slowly moved his trembling finger over the page, looking for the place. “Oh, here it is,” he said finally. “Please, sign here.”

  Franciszek signed and walked out. In the street he stopped to read the note. The Personnel Department was notifying him that his employment would be terminated in three months; during that time he would have to look for another job and another apartment.

  “Hey, Citizen!” someone cried behind him.

  He turned around. Jarzebowski was running toward him, his overcoat unbuttoned, his hair flying in the wind.

  “Well?” he shouted from a distance. “Well, how about it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You don’t know? Our glee club. You’re gifted, you know; there’s no doubt that you have a real talent …”

  Franciszek smiled and walked away. He stared at the crumbling wet sidewalks, thinking: “Aren’t they right? They don’t trust me and they don’t want me—it’s simple.” At this moment he was proud of his party, of the men who had expelled him; he was proud of their logic, inflexibility, purity; he was proud of his son, Mikołaj. And he thought happily that had he been in their place he would have acted as they did. Stand up and fight, return to them pure, and deserving to be trusted—that was what he had to do.

  The sidewalk ended suddenly at a long red wall; he was walking across an empty square, full of mud. Somewhere at the end of it a group of people had gathered, murmuring joyfully; he could also hear the barking of a dog—undoubtedly a very big dog. He walked up to them without thinking, and elbowed his way through the ring of bystanders. The object of their curiosity was a man in a fencing mask and gauntlets, who was pulling a beautiful dog by a chain, addressing it with horrible curses. It was obvious that the beautiful dog was quite unimpressed by the curses. Franciszek thought at first that the strangely dressed man was some sort of trainer, and was about to turn away, when the man suddenly removed his mask with a tired gesture, and Franciszek saw before him the frantic eyes of Comrade Nowak.

  “Nowak,” he cried in surprise. “What the devil are you doing here?”

  Nowak wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Ah, it’s you,” he said in a wooden voice. “Have you got a cigarette? I’m exhausted …”

  “What are you doing with that dog?”

  “The dog?” asked Nowak, staring vacantly. He had a bitter smile. “True, for you it may be only a dog, but for me …” He suddenly raised his fists to the sky, and howled: “For me it’s worse than a hyena, worse than leprosy.” He jerked the chain, but the dog did not even budge. “Red, you damn’ beast,” Nowak cried, “stand up! Stand up, I say!”

  The crowd around them laughed happily. The beautiful dog sat motionless, staring haughtily out of its bronze-colored eyes.

  “Red,” Nowak whispered. He lurched as he raised his right hand in a dramatic gesture. “Red, I implore you … Red, my precious, stand up, please …”

  “For God’s sake,” said Franciszek angrily, “what do you want of this dog?”

  “What do you mean?” Nowak asked. “You yourselves ordered me to change his name!” He moved closer to Franciszek. “He used to be called Sambo, and everything was fine,” he whispered passionately. “A real jewel, not a dog: he brought me the newspaper in his mouth; he loved the children; he walked my little girl home from school; he looked after a blind old man from across the street; and so on … But ever since the party secretary ordered me to call him Red—you remember, don’t you?—his character has changed. He attacks everybody; he snaps; my wife is leaving me; she can’t get along with him. She’s already seen a lawyer …” He sighed. “All because of the dog. Of course, this won’t be mentioned in court; we mustn’t compromise the party …” He gritted his teeth. “We’ve decided she will say I didn’t satisfy her sexually, and that she believes in free love. Of course, we’ll keep seeing each other somehow. But we can’t do it any other way without compromising the party; we can’t. There’s no other way, really there isn’t. I’ve thought it over very carefully.”

  “But can’t you get rid of the dog?”

  “Get rid of him?” Nowak repeated, suddenly amused, and looked at Franciszek as if he were a kind of imbecile. “Get rid of him? I tried to drown him; I gave him a pound of rat poison a day; I turned on the radio full blast and left my family for three days; I took him a hundred miles from Warsaw, and he came back. But I can’t sell him with the name Sambo—that would be like giving arms to the enemy. No, I can’t get rid of him: the Michurin-Pavlov Society would get after me in a second— What have you done with your dog? Why do you mistreat animals? Don’t you realize what a dog can do for a man, particularly for a party comrade?…” He resolutely put on his mask. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I’ve got to get to work. This is my party assignment; for this purpose I was released from participation in the city-to-village campaign.” He jerked the chain desperately. “Come on, Red,” he cried. “Stand up!”

  The dog pricked up one ear, then lay down on its belly, stretching out its two aristocratic forelegs: he looked like a fur rug. Jerks, curses, caresses, promises—nothing helped. Nowak toiled and sweated, the crowd roared happily, and amid this commotion only the dog remained noble and calm.

  “What’s going on here?” a brisk voice cried suddenly. A young policeman forced his way through the crowd. “What’
s this?” He turned to the nearest spectator and looked him sternly in the eyes. “Is there something you don’t like? Now tell the truth: you don’t like the regime?”

  “Mr. Authority,” said the other. “I’m leaving. I’ve already left. I’ve never been here.”

  He tipped his hat, and vanished. Reluctantly the crowd began to disperse. Only Franciszek, Nowak, the policeman, and the dog, who was exquisitely licking his paw, remained on the square.

  “What are you up to?” the policeman asked Nowak. “What’s the matter with you? Is it a joke or what? I see you don’t like it here. If so, better say so, right away.”

  “I’m training a dog,” Nowak replied haughtily. He removed his mask and fanned his flushed face. “If you don’t believe me, there”—he pointed—“there’s my factory, and you can find out all about me. I’m training the dog on the secretary’s orders.”

  They stared at each other.

  “What are you teaching it?” the policeman asked.

  “Attitude,” Nowak said dryly. “An attitude befitting a dog.”

  Again they exchanged stares.

  “If that’s the case,” the policeman said, “everything is in order.” He turned violently to Franciszek. “And what are you doing here, Citizen?” he asked sharply. “Maybe you …”

  “I like it here,” Franciszek said. “Everything is just as it should be.” Nowak had gone away dragging his dog as a tow-man pulls his barge; Franciszek and the policeman looked at each other in silence. Suddenly Franciszek smiled. “Do you remember me?” he asked. “Surely you remember me.”

  The policeman moved a step forward, and his face lit up. “Why of course,” he cried in a happy clear voice. “Of course I remember. I hooked you, didn’t I, for disturbing the peace …” He was as happy as a child who has just been given a beautiful toy, and patted Franciszek on the arm. “Yes, yes,” he repeated, his eyes sparkling, “It was you who disturbed the peace.”

  “Well,” said Franciszek, smiling gloomily, “you might call it that.”