Stone Upon Stone (3 page)

Besides, on mother’s side I never even knew my grandfather Łukasz or my grandmother Rozalia. Way back in the last century grandfather killed a farm overseer and had to run away to America. And he stayed in his new land. Apparently the overseer was a brute and he would make passes at grandmother, while grandfather wasn’t the type to take any nonsense even from the lord of the manor himself. One time when they were in the fields during harvest, the overseer patted grandmother on the backside. Grandfather grabbed him by the throat and squeezed him against the sheaves till his eyes almost popped out. To get his own back, the overseer counted two days less work when grandfather was mowing the barley. Grandfather couldn’t count, but he remembered every day he’d worked. He got furious. He grabbed the tally stick that the overseer wrote the days of work on, tore it from his hand, snapped it over his knee, and tossed it aside. How do you like that, you son of a bitch! Grandfather thought he’d taken revenge on him big time. But all the overseer did was laugh so loud the field rang. And
after he was done laughing he said to grandfather, get the hell out of here! Without a second thought grandfather swung his scythe at the other man’s neck, and the overseer’s head went rolling all the way to the horses’ hooves. The horses took fright and tipped over a cart full of grain, and one of them broke its leg and had to be put down. The Cossack militiamen came; they turned the house upside down and combed the village from one end to the other, but grandfather was already on his way to America.

For a long time he gave no sign, no one even knew he was there. It was only a few years later, when everyone thought he was dead, that he sent Grandmother Rozalia a few dollars and a letter. He wrote to say he wasn’t ever coming back to the village, and that he didn’t regret what he’d done, because at least there was one less villain in the world, so it was a little bit of a better place. Though it wasn’t easy for him over there. For days on end, in the heat and dust, through the wilderness they drove cattle to the town to be slaughtered. They traveled farther than it took when you had to go to the war back home. And once they were done driving one herd, there was another. Sometimes when there was a drought they had to drink their own piss, because the rivers had all run dry, and the cattle would drop like flies. And even when there were clouds the rain would dry up in the sky before it reached the ground. But he would cut the overseer’s head off all over again if he tried it on with grandmother. One time he turned the food table over in a pub in America because he suddenly saw her kissing the overseer. “Get down on your knees before Lord Jesus, Rozalia, swear on His Passion. Maybe you’ve got some other feller now? Then hope the good Lord is watching over you, Rozalia, and may your brother Felek look out for you. And you, Felek, brother-in-law, keep an eye on her, because if anything happens, remember we’ll meet in the next world and we’ll have to settle our accounts there.” And he said the next time he’d write he would tell grandmother when she should come and join him. And it wouldn’t be soon, because this letter cost him five dollars, and five dollars, do you know what a fortune that is,
Rozalia? The letter to grandmother was written by Blume the tailor, that he went to to get his pants patched when they were driving cattle, and he turned out to be a good Christian even though he was a Jew.

But grandmother was just as much of a hothead as grandfather. Without waiting for him to write again like he promised he would, she left mother and mother’s brother Sylwester – the one that died later of dysentery – with her sister, even though they were both still small, and off she went to join grandfather over in America. People advised her against it, they said it was halfway around the world, that it was farther away than where the sun goes down, and people over there walk on their heads. Someone from Podleśna had come back from there and he was all upside down, he slept during the day and got up at night, and the dogs wouldn’t stop barking at him. He plowed in the night and mowed in the night, and one time he even went to market in the night. He didn’t sell anything or buy anything there and he never came back to his house. Eventually he washed up on the bank of the river. But grandmother ignored all the advice and the warnings.

People said afterwards that God punished grandmother for abandoning her children and chasing off after her man. Because when she was already on the sea a huge storm blew up. The sky was full of thick clouds, and it went as dark as the darkest night. The gale howled like a pack of starving wolves. Lightning cracked the sky in two over and over. And there were thunderbolts the like of which no one had ever seen, that smashed holes in the sea all the way to the bottom. And the waves crashed over the ship with all their might. People were pulling their hair out, calling on God and Our Lady and all the saints, and strangers were saying goodbye to strangers. There was a priest on the ship, and some folk rushed to him to make their confession, but others just jumped into the sea. Grandmother knelt down and started shouting out, “Łukasz, Łukasz, I swore to Lord Jesus on His Passion just like you wrote me to! I never went with that pig of an overseer, or with anyone! You’re the only one, Łukasz! If I could count the tears I’ve cried! If the priest
could only pass on the holy secrets I told him at confession! Don’t believe my brother Felek! He’s a bad man even though he’s my brother! All he did was keep asking if you’d sent him any dollars! And saying that if you didn’t send him money he’d write to you and tell you things so you wouldn’t want anything to do with me. The key to the house is over the lintel on top of the door, if you ever want to go back! I left the children with my sister Agata, she’ll be good to them. I gave her a cow and all the chickens and some bed linen. If you say you’re their father they’ll know you. I wanted to tell you all this when I got there, but I’m not going to make it, Łukasz. God doesn’t want it. So I’m at least sending these words to you through Him, so you’ll know.” At that very moment a wave the size of a building hit the ship and the ship broke in two and sank, and grandmother with it. They say she always was a giddy one and that she liked to enjoy life. She never missed a church fair, or a wedding, or a christening, and she’d dance three nights in a row. And in the end she never even got her own grave, but instead she was eaten by the fishes.

Though if you ask me, eternity’s the same whether you’re eaten by worms in your grave or fishes in the sea. When the Day of Judgment comes, the folk in their graves and the ones from the sea will have to rise up just the same. And it’s a lot less trouble in the sea than when you have to build a tomb.

My grandmother on my father’s side, Paulina, died when I was still a kid, and I don’t remember her that well. Her husband, Grandfather Kacper, outlived her by a good few years, but what kind of life did he have. When he had to go to the outhouse, mother would send me out to keep an eye on him.

“You go, Szymuś honey, I’ve got pots on the boil here. Take grandpa behind the barn. If he wanders out onto the road again it’ll be embarrassing. And pull up a couple of parsnips for me.”

It’s hard to believe grandfather was supposedly the first person in the village to think up a hoop on the handle of a scythe. He either thought it up or
saw it somewhere, people said different things. Some folks reckoned he must have seen it on his way back from the war. Someplace the people mowed with hoops on their scythes, and so when he got back he started mowing like that with his own scythe. I mean, what was there to think up. A length of oak rod, two holes in the grip, anyone could have thought of it. Besides, there are some things that nobody has to think up because they’re just there. A horsewhip for instance. It’s there and you crack it when the horse won’t pull. It must have come with the horse. Or the roof on a house, wheels on a cart, soles on boots.

Grandfather was supposed to have also started the fire brigade. Before, when someone’s place was on fire people would just run up each with their own bucket of water and when they’d emptied it onto the fire they thought they’d done all they could to help. The women would start their wailing, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus! And the men would take out their tobacco and light up. Here something’s on fire, and they’re all sitting around wondering if it was God’s will or if someone set it deliberately. Because if it was God’s will there was no point trying to put it out. Though the fact was, there weren’t any pumps in the farmyards and you had to go down to the river to fetch water. And the houses were made of wood, with thatched straw roofs. One time half the village went up in flames, including our place.

Also, grandfather had gotten papers to say he had a right to some land, because he’d given refuge to a group of insurgents in the uprising. He didn’t remember how much land it was, but he said it was a whole lot. He could have been lord of the manor. Except that he buried the papers somewhere and he couldn’t for the life of him remember where. It was hardly surprising, for more than fifty years there’d been no need to show them to anyone or even admit he had them. You could be sent to Siberia at the drop of a hat, so the papers could just have gone and lost themselves somewhere. On top of everything else, that was the time half the village burned down, so it wasn’t just people’s memory that got muddled up, but even their land, and now the
papers were gone, because they’d been buried when the land was arranged differently.

Father would beg grandfather by all that was holy to remember, because it was already going around that Poland was going to be reborn. There’d be an end of servitude, obviously people would be grabbing land, and whoever grabbed it first, it would be theirs for good. They even tried to remember together. They’d get up at the crack of dawn, say a prayer, then father would lead grandfather around the farmyard and they’d go step by step, ever so slowly, staring at the ground, and at each step father would say, maybe here? They’d pause, grandfather would think and think and think, father’s eyes would start to light up with hope, but mostly grandfather would say, no, not here. Though sometimes, as if he’d gotten some kind of inspiration, he’d say, you know what, we should dig here. And father would dig. He’d dig a hole, then fill it in afterward. Later he’d get mad at grandfather, and start going on at him about how the devil must have clogged up his memory, that grandfather was a freeloader, because he never forgot how to eat, and if he hadn’t drunk so much back then his memory would be fine now, that he remembered all sorts of things he didn’t need to. What a song and dance there was about grandfather’s memory. Some days my mother even defended grandfather, saying what was father getting so hot under the collar about, we didn’t have that land before and we didn’t need it now to keep us healthy. Perhaps God didn’t want grandfather to remember, and there was no point getting angry at God, because God knew what he was doing. And grandfather was all timid, his bad memory weighed on him like some great wrongdoing, he was afraid to even look father in the eye. It was only when father reached for his tobacco pouch, which was a sign he was through being angry, that grandfather’s words also got their courage back:

“Dammit, I remember everything, but not that. I could even tell you who died when the epidemic came. Go on, ask me. They said it was Bolek Koseł brought it from somewhere else to Górki. Right after he came back from
the army people in Górki started falling ill, and soon the whole village was dead. After Górki there were other villages, though people weren’t allowed to travel from one village to another, and everything was bleached, houses, fences, trees, shrines. And all those crosses they put up! There was a cross in every direction. And there weren’t just four directions, like now. Everywhere you turned there was a cross. And at every one of them people would be praying, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy. Luckily it only reached the edge of our village. The Powiślaks died, and Kasperski the miller. The Powiślaks were bandits, they got what they deserved. And Kasperski used to mix low-grade flour in with the regular stuff and he never gave you back all your bran. He was a straight-up crook. But there weren’t as many mills back then as there are now. There was the one here, then the next one was all the way over in Zawodzie. Sometimes it’d take you three days to get the job done. But people rode all the way to Zawodzie, though they cheated you there as well, even if it wasn’t by so much. There never was a world without cheating and there never will be. Once I bought some boots at the market. They looked like leather. When you spat on the sole it didn’t soak in. They were supposed to be for rain or shine, for church and for working in the fields, but they barely made it through the spring. I rode back over there to make the bastards give me my money back, but the people I bought them from weren’t there anymore. There were other people and they were saying the same thing, that their boots were the real deal. And do you know how much those boots cost? Go ahead, ask me. Just about the boots. Why shouldn’t you. Three rubles. I remember. I could even tell you the names of all the horses we ever had, in order. Ask me. At the very beginning we had a roan. Ruffian was his name, because he’d bite you and kick, he was a son of a bitch. He wasn’t a good workhorse so father sold him. But he didn’t tell the merchant the horse’s name was Ruffian. He said he was called Kuba, not Ruffian, and that our family name was Kapusta, not Pietruszka, and that our village was Oleśnica. Oleśnica was three miles in the opposite direction. And
he never found us. You see, I remember. So I’ll remember about the papers as well. I’ll not die before it comes to me. Can I have a smoke?”

And though father was still acting like he was mad, he’d pass grandfather the tobacco. Then the next day he’d lead grandfather round the farmyard again. Step by step, and at every step: “Maybe here?” If you’d counted all those steps together they would have gone halfway around the world, though our farmyard isn’t that big at all. They walked the area behind the barn as well, and around the pond, they went into the cattle sheds and the barn itself, and father even carried grandfather down into the cellar, because our cellar’s a deep one with a couple dozen steep steps, and grandfather wouldn’t have been able to make it down there on his own. But it was always, not here. And just once in a while, we should dig here. And father would dig. He’d dig a hole then fill it in afterward. And once again he’d get mad at grandfather.