Stone Upon Stone Read online

  Father tried every possible way to get at grandfather’s memory. In the morning he would make grandfather tell him what he’d dreamed about the night before. But old people don’t have much to dream about anymore, so grandfather hardly ever had dreams. Father got angry again. He really didn’t have any dreams? So sometimes grandfather had dreams, but it was never what father wanted. Because either he was wading in the river and picking mint from the buckets that were stuck there, and as if out of spite the water was murky. Or he was dancing with Karolka Bugaj at Karolka’s wedding, and Karolka strokes grandfather’s cheek and whispers in his ear, “Oh, Kacper, Kacper, how come you’re so old?” Or father and him were walking around the farmyard and father asks, maybe here, and grandfather says, look at that worm coming up out of the ground. That means the soil is sick, nothing’ll come from it anymore.

  So then father changed grandfather’s bedding, and instead of straw he filled the mattress with pea stalks, because if he wasn’t going to dream anything, at least he should sleep less soundly. If he twisted and turned more in the night he’d wake up more often, and his thoughts would come to him more and maybe he’d remember. He explained to grandfather that there’d been too many fleas and he’d had to refill the mattress, and there was only enough straw left for chaff. To begin with grandfather complained that he was stiff all over. But eventually he got used to it and in the end it was the same as straw for him.

  Then father heard somewhere that wormwood was supposed to be good for bringing back memory. He gathered it all summer long from the edges of the fields and dried it; people thought he had something wrong with his stomach, because wormwood is good for your stomach as well. Grandfather wouldn’t drink it because it was too bitter, he said. So without telling mother, father bought some sugar and sweetened it. But grandfather still couldn’t remember.

  Another time father took grandfather to the pub and got him drunk. He was hoping that when grandfather was drunk his soul would open up and let on where he’d buried those papers. But grandfather got all merry, as if he was fifty years younger. All of a sudden he felt like singing and dancing, he even almost got in a fight. And he bought drinks for anyone that happened to be at the pub, all on father’s penny it goes without saying. And when father tried to get him to go easy, saying he’d had enough, that they’d be left stone broke, he started calling him names, you little idiot, I’d never want a kid like you again! Not on your life!

  Afterward father had to sell off a calf to pay back what he owed at the pub. The only good to come of it was that the next day, when grandfather sobered up and he just had an awful headache, he promised father that when Poland got its independence back he’d remember for sure. There was still time. The fighting was still going on. Because without an independent Poland those papers weren’t worth anything anyway, and that was why he couldn’t remember where he’d buried them. But Poland got its independence and he still didn’t remember.

  Then he swore it would come to him when he was dying, because in the hour of death a person remembers their whole life. The person’s life stands by their bedside with a great book and says, I am Kacper Pietruszka, see all you’ve forgotten and all the sins you’ve committed, it’s written right here. You got crushed one time by that cart loaded with grain, you’d forgotten about it, but here it is. You never returned the sack of oats you borrowed from your neighbor Dereń, here it is. You wouldn’t give the Lord God your money that one time on Palm Sunday, here it is. And here are those papers you buried, right here on the first page. Written in the biggest letters in the whole book. But there was no way you could have remembered before the book was opened. Shall I read it to you?

  Father watched over him like a dog for three days and three nights when grandfather lay dying, he didn’t have a moment’s sleep, because for some reason grandfather wasn’t able to die. It even seemed he might get better, because that had happened once before, he got better after he’d been given last rites. Goddammit, he’d said back then, there I was thinking I was already dead, and I was just dreaming it. On the third day father dozed off for a minute and that was when grandfather died. Ever so quietly, as if a little fly had flown out of the house. So when father woke up he asked grandfather one more time:

  “So then, does it say in that book of yours where you buried them?”

  It wouldn’t have been right for father to be mad at a dead person, but he put on a funeral for grandfather that wasn’t the kind a father should have. The casket was made of pine boards that weren’t even painted, just varnished over. And the priest didn’t lead the body out of the house, but only from the church. And at the cemetery all he did was sprinkle the casket and the family with holy water, throw in a piece of earth, and leave, because father didn’t even want those few words said over grandfather’s grave, that’s how bitter he was. And for years afterwards he never once looked in on grandfather, though grandfather and grandmother were in the same cemetery and close to each other, and he visited grandmother, but it was only mother and us grandsons that visited grandfather. He never gave money for a mass to be said for grandfather, mother had to do it on the quiet. And he never said grandfather’s name out loud. He would just give a sigh from time to time and say we could use more land than we had, because what was he going to leave to his four sons.

  And he kept digging. He dug at random, wherever he felt he should, because there was no one left to say to him, Not here. He dug in the barn, in the grain bins, in the cattle sheds under the mangers, round the wagon house, by the front door. He even wanted to dig inside the house, but mother wouldn’t let him. One time he dreamt that the papers were buried under the dog’s kennel, so he moved the kennel to the other side of the yard, then he moved it somewhere else, then somewhere else again. He must have moved it ten times or more, and he dug in each of those ten places, as if we had ten kennels and ten dogs. But we only had the one. And from having his kennel moved around the whole time the dog stopped knowing what he was supposed to bark at. So he barked at everything, people, horses, cows, chickens, geese, ducks. He even barked at father. In the end, one night he broke loose from his chain and disappeared. People said they saw him running across the fields like a mad dog.

  And father kept digging. When the mood struck him he wouldn’t even go out plowing but he’d dig holes instead. War came, the planes flew right over the thatched roofs, people ran away into the fields with their cattle and their bedding, and he just seemed to get more single-minded with his digging, and he’d make bigger and bigger holes.

  He kept digging after the war too, though he seemed to have lost faith, because often he’d just walk round and round the farmyard not knowing where to start, and all of a sudden he’d toss his spade down and go off to do the threshing or cut chaff. When he got old and his strength began to fail, once in a while he’d still go and do some digging. Sometimes he’d dig a pit as deep as half a man right in the middle of the yard, and it’d have to be filled in straightaway because the wagon couldn’t even drive in.

  When I wouldn’t let him dig in the yard he’d go into the orchard and dig there. From all that digging my russet tree withered up, and my masztan sweet plum. The plum tree used to bear plums like cow’s eyes. Some years there’d be so many that its branches were weighed down to the ground. I had to keep an eye on it the whole time to stop the local boys pulling the leaves off with the fruit. They were the best plums of all for fruit soup.

  Then, when he was dying he gave me a sign that he had something to say to me, and in a croaky voice that already seemed to come from the next world he told me I should keep digging, because although he never found the papers, I would for sure. Now, now he would know where to dig. But now it was too late for him.

  Father and mother were both buried in regular graves in the ground, and they’re lying there now waiting for me to finish this tomb. There’s probably not much left of them, it doesn’t take long for the earth to make them over. There may be more of father, because he was buried a lot later, but mot
her, after they brought Michał back she only lived another six months or so, that was all those years ago, and she first fell ill soon after the war. Maybe they even think I’ve forgotten about them. They’ve been lying there all this while, the earth working them over, perhaps they reckon I’ve turned to drink. “Szymek, Szymek, think what you’re doing.” Soon there won’t be the littlest bone left of them. But I made myself a promise that as soon as I finish that tomb I’ll have new caskets made for them and I’ll move whatever’s left of them. They’ll be in there next to each other, on the left lower side, that’s what I decided, because the bottom right is for me and Michał, and on top there’ll be Antek and Stasiek and their wives. In that way we’ll all be together and none of them’ll be able to say that I got the farm and they were left with nothing. If it wasn’t for that I wouldn’t be building a tomb, I wouldn’t have gone to all that expense and all that effort. I mean, when it comes down to it is it all that much better in a walled tomb than in the ground? If it was just me I’d actually rather be in the ground. So long as I had a mound of earth smoothed over with a spade, some kind of cross stuck in there, and the thirty years of eternity a person’s officially entitled to, I’d be fine. Then someone else could come lie in my place. And after them there’d be somebody else, and somebody else, and so on till the very end, as long as there are people in the world. Because there’s no point separating yourself from the earth with a stone wall after you’re dead. A person lives from the earth, and they should give their eternity back to the earth. The earth deserves something from people too.

  One time in the resistance I spent three days alive in one of those walled tombs and I won’t say it was all that comfortable. I tried imagining that I was a corpse myself, but it didn’t help. On top of everything else, probably to keep people out they’d made the entranceway small as a rabbit cage, you couldn’t even stand up or turn around. There was two of us, me and this other guy, Honeybee was his resistance name, and we had to squat facing each other the whole time. Our legs were all tangled up, his next to mine, mine next to his; it was like they all belonged to both of us at once, because there wasn’t room for us to each have our own legs. And we kept asking each other, is that your leg or mine? I’ve gotten the worst goddam pins and needles in it. I kept thinking it was yours. When one of us needed to stretch, he’d slide over into an empty space where there was room for a new body. Three of the places were still free and three had coffins. They weren’t even walled in, they’d just slid the caskets in there. But you couldn’t lie for long in those slots, you got stiff from the lack of room and from the concrete.

  We’d been on a recce to this one village and we’d gotten caught in a manhunt. Before we knew it the place was crawling with Germans. There was no woods and no river, and the village was right in the middle of a flat plain. Plus it was autumn, the crops had been harvested and the fields were bare. There were just a few orchards behind people’s barns, that was it. Luckily there was an old man sitting outside his house, and when he saw us running away he shouted to us:

  “Go to the cemetery! The cemetery! Over there!” And he pointed with his stick at a stand of trees that looked as though they’d popped up in the middle of the flatness just to give us shelter.

  We ran there and crawled into the first tomb we found. We pulled the cover over and stayed there. They must have buried someone in it not that long ago, because on the top there was still a wreath made of fir and spruce and flowers, all dried up. Over the whole thing there was the most beautiful Lord Jesus I think I’ve ever seen. He had one hand on his heart and the other stretched out in front of him like he was checking whether it was raining out in the world. Inside, it was dark and smelly, but you just had to say to yourself, tough. Though it was actually hard to say anything at all, words just left a bitter taste in your mouth. Besides, what can you talk about in a tomb. You let out a fuck it or whatever and that’s pretty much all you have to say. Even when we tried to talk to pass the time, the only thing that came to our lips were more cusswords, like we’d forgotten all the decent words. But there are times when all the decent words in the world won’t do the job of a single fuck it. It’s like they’re all hollow and blind and lame. And too stupid for the whole situation, however decent they are. Decent words are good for when life is decent. But in there the lice were biting like there was no tomorrow, it was all we could do to just keep it together. Once they got properly going there wasn’t an inch of our bodies that didn’t itch. We were a paradise for them in that tomb. And in addition, it was like we were sharing the lice and our bodies were shared as well. When his body started to itch, mine upped and started to also. I’d scratch my belly or the back of my neck, and he’d start scratching in exactly the same place. Though it was hardly surprising. We were crammed in there, bent double, and they could hop about on us to their heart’s content. Besides, if we hadn’t had lice we would have itched anyway. When a person isn’t talking or thinking or moving, they have to at least have an itch.

  I was tougher, I’d scratch and for a while it would go away. But he was a town kid and he’d probably never had to deal with lice before. He’d start scratching his head and all you could hear was scrit, scrit, scrit, like someone was planing a casket nearby.

  “Cut it out,” I’d say, because I was starting to hurt from his skin. But he’d just keep on, scrit, scrit, scrit.

  “Cut it out for chrissakes, you hear?”

  And he’d just be scrit, scrit, scrit. He was going to scratch himself to death, or give us away. At one moment I got so mad I pulled my gun on him.

  “If you don’t cut it out I’ll shoot you, I swear to God I will.”

  “Fire away. Makes no difference to me whether I die from a bullet or from lice.”

  That same day, in the late afternoon, the old man that had pointed the way to the cemetery came to visit. How he figured out which tomb we were in I couldn’t say. First we heard this light tapping on the cover. Our hearts stopped and I grabbed the other guy’s arms in case he felt the need to scratch himself. Then all of a sudden there’s this banging noise, and when you’re in a tomb it sounds like you’re inside a drum.

  “Hey there, say something. I know you’re in there. It’s me.” I moved the cover aside a bit and I saw it was the old man from outside the house. He was kneeling with his hands together as though he was praying.

  “Because of you I gotta kneel at the Siewierskis’ tomb, and they’re a right bunch of good-for-nothings. One of those bastards in there with you stole my heifer, the crook. But what can I do. I brought you some moonshine and some bread and lard. You ought to eat something.”

  “God bless you,” I said. “How are things in the village?”

  “Not good. There’s going to be hangings. They gathered all the men outside the firehouse and picked out ten of them that haven’t provided a levy like they were supposed to. The carpenters are building a gallows. When they’re gone I’ll let you know.”

  The moonshine was strong – not at all watered down. We each tried a mouthful to begin with. He was going to refuse, said he didn’t drink, but I made him. Then we took another mouthful. It was supposed to just warm us up and help with the lice, because when you’ve got vodka in your system they don’t bite so bad. But would that work from two mouthfuls only? Your blood has to be properly drunk, so there’s not a single drop left sober. And if you could measure it, two mouthfuls wouldn’t even be enough to get your finger tipsy. So we had another drink. In addition, we didn’t want to waste the food, because who knew if the old man would come back again. So we drank without eating, like we were drinking to the dead, on empty bellies. He started saying no, he couldn’t drink any more, that it stank of beetroot.

  “Drink,” I said. “You see, the lice aren’t biting. If you were sober you’d already be scratching away.”

  So we drank, him a mouthful, me a mouthful, and so on in turns till the bottle was empty. Nothing was biting, nothing was itching, and the tomb seemed less cramped. You even f
elt you could have stood up and stretched. In the end we fell asleep.

  Except that when we woke up, then the lice really started in. Once he got to scratching himself I thought I’d lose it. I gave him some of the bread and lard. He ate it with one hand and with the other he just went on scratching. Plus he started whining about whether there wasn’t a little drop of hooch left. There wasn’t. I could’ve used a drink myself. I felt sorry for him. I was itching like hell myself, but you could tell it was worse for him. In the end I pulled my belt out.

  “Give me your hands, I’ll tie them.”

  He started begging me not to do it because he’d itch even more. True, I thought.

  “Then get a goddam grip!”

  “I can’t though, it itches so bad.”

  “Then eat sunflower seeds.”

  “Sunflower seeds? Where would I find sunflower seeds?”

  “Don’t ask questions, just get on with it.”

  “I would, but how can I do it without a sunflower?”

  “It’s easy. It’s so dark in here you can’t see a thing anyway. Just imagine you’ve got a big sunflower dial on your lap and you’re picking out the seeds. You’re putting the seeds in your mouth and biting out the insides. Don’t you remember? You found the sunflower at the edge of the village outside that one house. The one that was painted blue, with the pots drying on the fence and the cat sunning itself by the wall and chickens pecking in the dust. You slipped into the yard and tried to twist off the head of a sunflower but it wouldn’t come off. Then this girl came out of the house and said, I’ll get a knife. And she did. Take that big one, she said. Or you can take all of them if you want. And she kept smiling at you. What about that one, see, it’s got nice big seeds. You got it there? Just don’t spit the husks out on me.”