Stone Upon Stone Read online

  “It’s good and ripe, did you try it?”

  “Sure it’s ripe. It’s fall, this time of year everything’s ripe.”

  “You want to pick some seeds with me?”

  “I’m not the one the lice are bothering.”

  So he picked away. He’d only scratch himself once in a while, the rest of the time he picked seeds. You could hear them crack in his mouth and then he’d spit out the husks. I was already thinking he’d forget about the lice. Even I was itching less, though I wasn’t picking sunflower seeds. Then all at once he ups and says:

  “At the edge of the village, outside that blue house? That was where they were growing?”

  “Keep picking,” I said. “Why’ve you stopped?”

  “I’m going out to get more. Maybe they’re still there.” And he starts getting up to go.

  “Where are you off to? Sit the hell down, you’re fine here.”

  “I’ll bring some more and you can have some.”

  “What are you, nuts? The Germans are out there.”

  “So what? You heard the old man – they already chose the ones they’re gonna hang. Maybe they already hung them.”

  “They’ll kill you,” I said, trying to stop him. “There weren’t any sunflowers there. I was making it up. The sunflowers were in a different village.”

  “You weren’t making it up. I remember them. And I remember the girl. She brought me a knife. She told me to take the one with the big seeds. And I did. But now I’m out of seeds.”

  I buried him in the same cemetery, in the bare earth, without a casket or a funeral. I patted down the mound of earth, made him a cross. I took the wreath from the tomb we’d been hiding in, from the Siewierskis – if they were bastards they could do without a wreath – and I played him a tune on my mouth organ, because I always had my mouth organ with me. Honeybee, you damn fool. You should’ve stuck to picking sunflower seeds.

  That was mostly how we buried people in the resistance, wherever they fell. Without a casket, in the bare ground. For the cross you’d cut down a birch branch. You wouldn’t even strip the bark off, just fasten two pieces together with a bit of wire or a strip of leather and you had a cross. And you didn’t leave any information, no first name or last name. The person just lay there and they didn’t know who they were. Anyone who stopped by on their way wouldn’t know either. The Lord God himself might not have known. Though every one of them had some kind of name. Grzęda, Sowa, Smardz, Krakowiak, Malinowski, Buda, Gruszka, Mikus, Niecałek, Barcik, Tamtyrynda, Wrzosek, Maj, Szumigaj, Jamroz, Kudła, Wróbel, Karpiel, Guz, Mucha, Warzocha, Czerwonka, Bąk, Zyga, Kozieja, Donda, Zając, Lis, Gałęza, Kołodziej, Jan, Józef, Jędrzej, Jakub, Mikołaj, Marcin, Mateusz. There wouldn’t have been enough room in the calendar of saints. And all of them had to deny their own names and rot like carrion.

  Sometimes you’d just hang a forage cap on the cross, if the man had one. And it was, Sleep beneath the earth and dew, May you dream of Poland true. But not many of them had a forage cap. They mostly had caps with peaks, berets, ski caps. There were a few hats, a handful of four-cornered army caps, and once in a while someone would have a sheepskin hat or a fur hat. Some of them had hats that you didn’t even know what to call them, because they were whatever they’d brought from home or had come by during their soldiering. Mikus and Łukasik even had balaclavas like mothers make their children wear in the winter, with earflaps and a strap buttoned under the chin. But those two weren’t even sixteen, we’d found them sleeping in the woods in a clump of juniper, because the Germans had burned their village and killed their fathers and their mothers, they were the only ones from the whole village that had managed to escape. And if you didn’t have anything else you just wore a plain goddam cap. You just had to give it a good wash first, not to clean it so much as get rid of all the bad thoughts from the cap that might have taken root in the dirt. And you pinned a little eagle on the front, and under the eagle a tiny strip from a white-and-red flag.

  To judge by the caps you might have thought we were a bunch of riffraff and pansies, not an army. A rabble that was only good for digging ditches, or building dikes, or beating game when the masters go hunting, not an army. But inside each man there was a devil, and each one of them had a heart of stone. They forgot about God and they forgot how to cry. And even when we were burying one of our own, no one shed a tear. It was just, Ten-shun! Because sometimes tears make bigger holes than bullets. No one dared so much as let their stomach rumble, even if they hadn’t had a bite to eat in three days and were hungrier than during Lent. Or even swallow loud. Or even sniff. And no one was allowed to whisper amen. I’d just look at everyone’s eyes to make sure none of them were wet. Because in my command, attention didn’t just mean feet together and hands at your buttocks. It meant attention in your mind, and standing up straight in your soul. Everything was at attention. I had a voice like a bell, I sang bass in the church choir and sometimes the priest even had to ask me to sing quieter, our church isn’t that big, you don’t want the Lord God to go deaf, do you? Remember you’re singing right in his ear. He doesn’t like it to be too loud, he even prefers it when someone’s feeling the hymn more than singing it, just like he prefers humbler people over greater people. So when I called Ten-shun! even a hunchback would have straightened up. But then, in the resistance my name was “Eagle,” and the difference between attention and at ease was the same as the difference between life and death. People might find it hard to believe that one word could have so much power. But it did. Like the power of fate when it settles on someone. Like the power of hell and heaven together. At attention a person can do anything, however much he doesn’t want to, or it’s beyond his strength. Like they say, he could knock over mountains and turn back rivers. At attention the heart beats slower and the mind thinks straighter. Who knows, maybe at attention you could even die without regrets. I sometimes wonder how so much power can fit in a single word like that. Whoever thought up that word must have known life through and through. Because there are times when you have no other choice than to say to your own self, attention!

  If I died they were forbidden the same to shed a tear, they had to just stand at attention. At most someone could play a song for me on the mouth organ. “Stone upon stone, on stone a stone.” Because if I had to choose only one tune to take with me to the next world, that would be the one. Of all the tunes in all my life.

  Sometimes I regret it didn’t happen that way. I’d have had it all over and done with, I wouldn’t have had to struggle with everything like I do now. Like with the tomb for instance. On top of that the district administration folks are always telling me how much grain I have to sell them, how many potatoes, how much beet, how much of this, how much of that, and every year it’s more and more. I’ll sell however much grows. A bitch won’t pup ten times a year, she’ll do it twice at the most. Likewise the earth’ll only give birth to what it can. And from you it’ll only buy the same shit. Though when I die you’ll take my land away anyway, it’s not like I have anyone to leave it to. You’ll be able to sell it and buy ten times as much. But while I’m alive it’s my land, and it’s just as well I feel like working it, because otherwise it’d be standing fallow. Yet you won’t get those folks to understand. They’ve never worked the land in all their lives, though they know all about it because they went to school. But you can only learn about the land from the land itself, not from any books.

  For years they went on at me to get rid of the thatch on my house and put up tiles or tar paper, because there was an ordinance against thatched roofs. But it’s in perfectly good shape, it’s not leaking or anything. They say it’s an eyesore. If you ask me, though, that thatched roof of mine is handsomer than any amount of tile or tar paper or even sheet-metal roofing. Besides which, I’ve got the attic. Come take a look, goddammit, you’ve probably all forgotten what an attic looks like. Where are you going to find an attic like that under tiles and tar paper and sheeting? Those aren’t attics, they’re boxes.
Crates. When it’s hot they’re hot as hellfire itself, and when it’s cold, up there it’s even colder. In my attic it’s warm in winter and cool in summer. Grain, flour, onions, garlic – it can all be kept up there without going moldy or without freezing. You can dry cheeses there, or hang clothes up to air. Or just go take a nap, when you’ve been working like a dog or you’ve had enough of everything it’s cozier than downstairs, there aren’t as many flies and it’s as if the thatch keeps the rest of the world at bay. What the heck have you got against thatched roofs? You know, you’d be better off building a road to the mill, because in springtime a pair of horses isn’t strong enough to pull a wagon out of the mud that’s there. Or find a blacksmith for the village, so people don’t have to go all the way to Boleszyce to get their horse shod. There’s not going to be an ordinance against horses any time soon. Have you heard the sound of rain on thatch? You won’t ever hear that sound under tiles or tar paper or metal sheeting – those make it sound like gravel falling from the sky. Under thatch it sounds like pure white grains of semolina pattering down. You can lie there forever listening to the rain making that sound. And if you need to gather your thoughts, you won’t find a better place to do it than under thatch. Not in the fields, not in the orchard, not by the river or in the church.

  Also, I’ve got swallows under the eaves. When the little ones hatch they start chirping for food right from first light, and I wake up with them. There’s fewer and fewer swallows in our village, ever since people started getting rid of their thatched roofs. Because swallows won’t just build their nests again when you change your roof. They won’t take to any old roof. For instance they can’t stand tar paper, metal sheeting the same. With the metal sheeting, when it’s hot the heat makes their nests all sticky, while tar paper stinks. Storks, now, they’re more likely to get used to a different roof, so long as you mount an old wagon wheel up there for them or a handful of sticks woven together. Doves can be lured back too, you just need to put down some grain for them. Not to mention sparrows – to them it’s all the same what kind of roof you have, as long as they’ve got food to eat. But swallows, even if they’ve lived under the same roof as humans for years, they’re constantly afraid. The fear of God, human fear, trembling like aspen leaves. And they’re forever in flight. Forever on the wing. Close by one minute, way far away the next. Up high and down low. One minute skimming the ground, the next up a height. Like they were always on the run from something. From what, though? Sometimes you look at them up there, and it’s as if they’re a blade of grass making the eye of the sky water. Other times, seems they feel hemmed in by the world and they’re bouncing about like they’re trapped in a cage between the sky and the earth. Like they’re losing their senses from all that flying. They keep chasing, chasing. Chasing what? Because even when they fly ever so low over the house they make such sharp turns that they almost cut your eye, it’s like they don’t want you to even remember them at all. If it wasn’t for the fact that they’re half black you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the sun glinting up in the sky. It’s only when they’re high up that they get a bit calmer. Though even then they’re nowhere near as calm as storks, or doves. There are times the whole world is broiling, the heat’s so sleepy even the dogs are too tired to bark, they just doze in their doghouses. Even the chickens move over to the shade and put their heads under their wings. There’s not so much as a leaf moving. The flies can’t be bothered to bite. There’s nothing but the swallows trembling high up in the air or plunging down close to the ground. You wonder how they have the energy, what they’re doing it for. Then the next day there’s either a storm or there isn’t. Because swallows know no peace.

  People have one swallow’s nest, maybe two, but under my roof there must be ten of them. We got so used to each other that even in the hospital they’d wake up with me. It would usually start with a noise that sounded like a drop of dew falling on something soft. That was the first hungry nestling waking up. I’d open my eyes and look out the window. Dawn through the window looks like an empty tin pail. After the first drop there’d come a second, though this time it was like it hit the pail, it was hungrier. After that a third, a fourth, a tenth, each one hungrier than the last. Then the dawn would start to grow brighter. At first it was like someone was rinsing out the dark blue of the pail. Then after a bit someone else would bring milk in the pail from the milking and put it in the middle of the room. Right away the beds would start creaking. Someone would say something. Someone would give a sigh to God. Someone missing a leg or an arm would turn over on his other side and the whole ward would turn with them. After that you couldn’t sleep any longer.

  It might even have been one of those dawns when I got the idea of maybe having a tomb built, so everyone would have a place they could be buried in. Because your thoughts after you’ve been asleep are like swallows at dawn. And in the hospital wanted and unwanted thoughts come to you alike. Even thoughts that would never have occurred to a healthy person. Because healthy people only think on this side of the world. When you try and think on the other side, your thoughts slip like they were on glass. Because if you’re going over there you need to go body and soul with your thoughts. For good.

  It’s not surprising really. You’re lying there confined to your bed, you’ve got more time than there are flies on shit and you don’t know what to do with it. You don’t feel like sleeping any more, how much can a person sleep anyway. There’s nothing to talk about either, because it’s always about the same thing. An hour seems as long as a day, a day as long as a month, a month as long as a year. I doubt you’d have so much time even in eternity. And that kind of empty time is worse than the sickness itself. On top of that, you’ve got twelve beds on the ward. And in each one of them there’s either an amputated leg or a crushed arm, someone run over by a tractor, someone that broke their back, or someone else with a pipe in their Adam’s apple making this whistling sound, here someone’s had half their stomach cut out, next to them someone’s head is wrapped in bandages, and over there it’s hard to know exactly what’s wrong with him. Every day the whole place is sighing, hacking, groaning, dying. And everybody’s going on and on and on about his illness and all. There’s nowhere to run, so you run away in your thoughts, though it’s not much better in there.

  I never did as much thinking in my whole life as I did during those two years in the hospital. When I got out I felt as if my head was twice as heavy. It kept buzzing like a beehive. But you couldn’t not think. Even if you didn’t want to, your thoughts thought themselves on their own. If you shooed them out of your head they just flew around you like a flock of crows driven out of a poplar tree. Cawing and squawking. There was no way you could stop them, even though they were your thoughts.

  If someone had said to me before that I’d be the one to have a tomb built I’d have laughed them out. Me build a tomb. I wasn’t either the youngest or the oldest. And I had no intention of running the farm. I wasn’t drawn to the land. I did what I did because father told me to, but in my thoughts I was always somewhere else.

  Of us four brothers Stasiek was the one most likely to take over the farm, he looked like a farmer ever since he was small. Father even used to imagine how Stasiek would probably have a new house built when he grew up. And Stasiek and him would discuss it back and forth, because Stasiek wanted it to have stone walls, with cellars and a verandah and rounded windows, with sheet-metal roofing and laid floors in all the rooms. While father wanted to leave an earthen floor at least in the kitchen, because how could you walk on floorboards in muddy boots when fall comes. And sometimes you needed to spit or stamp out a cigarette butt. Stasiek wanted three rooms. Two downstairs, one for him and his wife when he got married, and a separate one for father and mother. And a third one upstairs so that when one of us brothers came to visit we’d also have a room of our own to stay in. Plus a storeroom and a larder. You were supposed to get to all the rooms separately from the hallway. Father tried to convince Stasiek that at least hi
m and mother should be able to go into their room from the kitchen. Their whole lives they’d lived like that and it would be hard to change. But Stasiek wouldn’t budge, it had to be from the hallway only, because he’d seen it done like that at the presbytery and at the miller’s, where you went into each of the rooms separately. You were supposed to take your boots off in the hallway and put slippers on, because he’d seen that at the presbytery and the miller’s as well. Though before he built the house, father would probably have persuaded him to let him and mother get to their room from the kitchen. They were old and they wouldn’t have used that doorway long. Then afterward he could’ve altered it. Or maybe he would have changed when he got older himself, and he’d want to get to his room straight from the kitchen just like father and mother.

  And if he’d had a house built he probably also would have put up a tomb. Because a real farmer ought to have his own tomb too. The house is the trunk and the tomb is the roots, and it’s only house and tomb together that make up the whole tree. Besides, if father and mother had died he wouldn’t have just buried them in an ordinary grave. Even just for when you visit the cemetery on All Souls’ Day it’s nicer to stand at a stone-built tomb where everyone’s all together than at separate graves in the earth. It’s nicer to pray and to light candles there, even your grief feels better. And when your tomb is better looking than the other ones, you feel like you’re not just master of your own however many acres but that you’ve worked a decent piece of land in the next world as well.