Stone Upon Stone (53 page)

But most of all I liked watching Małgorzata pottering about the place, among the chairs and table, the pots and plates and the washbowl, and the fire under the stove, and the curtains in the windows, and the pictures on the wall. It seemed so strange to me that this was the same secretary from the tax department at work. She somehow lost the unapproachableness that at work made her hold her head way up high and look down on everyone from above, and not smile too much, not talk unless she had to. And when she did speak, she chose her words carefully, as if they weren’t words but secret signs. She even walked almost like her feet were hobbled, or as if she’d figured out those particular steps ahead of time for when she needed to cross the hallway to get to a different room or leave work to go home.

Here, the moment she crossed the threshold she took off her shoes and put on slippers. Her mother sometimes even told her off, you shouldn’t be wearing slippers with a guest in the house. Or she’d put on an apron when there was washing or cleaning, peeling and chopping to be done, or if her
mother needed help with something, though her mother used to shoo her away, she’d say, I can manage on my own, you take care of the guest. And though she wasn’t all spruce the way she was at work, I preferred her here a hundred times more than there. I didn’t mind at all that she didn’t sit with me, that she left me to her father, or on my own when he wasn’t there, because I was fine on my own. It was enough for me that she was bustling about and I was watching her. I wasn’t bored in the slightest. I could have watched her like that all day and it wouldn’t have gotten boring. My whole life. And I’d forget I was only going to walk with her a couple more times. Spring came, summer was drawing near, and I’d virtually made myself at home there, because I almost always went in.

Though sometimes I had the impression she was running away from me with all that housework. We’d go in, she’d say hello to her father and mother from the doorway, and they’d say, oh, you’re back, what took you? Aha, Mr. Szymek’s here, come in, come in. And right away she’d scuttle over to the window and draw the curtains and say, it’s so dark in here. Or she’d go look in the pots and it’d be, I think you must’ve burned something, mama, it smells like it. She’d open the door and air the room. Or if the cat meowed she’d bend down and look under the table and under the bed, here kitty kitty. Then, when she got it out she’d take it on her lap and hug it and stroke it, you darling little thing, she’d talk to it in the sweetest words, just like to a baby, and she’d ask it if it had been hunting mice, if it had had some milk, and in the stream of tender words she’d throw out as if to keep me at bay:

“Have a seat, Szymek.”

Her father sometimes got annoyed with her:

“Leave him alone, you mother cat. If you’re not careful he’ll go throw up on you. He drank all your mother’s cream, there was no way he was gonna go mousing after that. Tell us what’s going on at work.”

“Nothing much. Szymek’ll tell you. I’ll tidy up a bit. Heavens, all these flies in here!”

At times, her first words from the doorway were:

“Heavens, all these flies in here!”

And the dance of the flies would begin. She’d open the windows and the door. She’d put a cloth in everyone’s hand, and she’d direct us as we danced around the room with her. Her mother and father were supposed to mind the door and windows to make sure the flies didn’t come back in again. Małgosia and me would be in the middle of the room, she’d do the walls and I’d do the ceiling and wherever else she told me to.

“Over there, Szymek! In the corner! On top of the picture! Above the stove! Over the cross! By the lamp! But don’t squash it! Careful! Right there!”

Eventually, the moment she’d exclaim, heavens, all these flies in here! I’d go right over and take the cloth from the nail by the stove. I even had my own cloth, a red-and-blue checkered one that worked best for me. But the first time it happened I didn’t know what to do with myself, I pressed against the wall so as not to get in their way. But she’d only taken a couple of swings and gone, shoo! shoo! when she turned to me and told me off:

“Come on, Szymek, don’t just stand there, grab a cloth and help out!”

Her mother got all embarrassed and took my side:

“Małgośka, what are you saying? Mr. Szymek’s our guest. You can’t have a guest chasing flies!”

“He’s no guest!” she shouted as she waved her cloth this way and that, but she probably only said it because she was carried away with chasing flies, she was all red.

“Well, I don’t know anything about that. You all know better than I do,” said her mother, as if she was caught off balance. “Maybe he could at least use this newer towel.” She handed me a towel from over the washbasin.

I liked chasing flies with her. She’d get all hot and bothered, her clothes would be awry, her hair flying, but she seemed closer than when we were walking arm in arm from work to her house, when we were alone, without
her mother or father around. And I liked it that the moment we crossed the threshold the jobs seemed to fall into her hands of their own accord. You might have thought the whole house was her responsibility alone, and the work was waiting for her to come back from work so she could do all the feeding and watering and washing and cleaning. Some days she didn’t even have time to sit down. When she did, it was only for a moment, then she’d be up again to get back to work.

As I watched her I could barely recognize myself. When she was mixing food for the pigs in the buckets, with those white arms of hers covered to the elbows in potato mush like mashers, in her apron, with her old slippers on, it made me warm inside to see her that way. It was like she’d let me in on a secret of hers. I could watch her endlessly, it took the place of thinking or of words for me, and I wasn’t at all distracted by what her father was saying to me, or what I was saying to him.

I sometimes had the sense that the work itself was passing her from hand to hand, that the furniture was moving her around the room. A bucket full of soapsuds is a heavy thing even for a man, but before I’d notice and jump up to help her she’d grab it by the handles and haul it out to the passage. Or when she was adding wood to the kitchen range, the kindling seemed to leap out of her hands into the fire all on its own. Or she’d be rolling dough to make dumplings, and she’d barely have sprinkled flour on the board when the flour was already shaped into a lump, then the lump was a patty, and the patty was cut up like a little sun. And when she was slicing the dumplings they’d fly from under her fingers, and her breasts would be galloping under her blouse like wedding horses, like any minute they were about to pop out onto the tabletop all naked. Or when she scraped carrots for soup. You’d think carrots were nothing special. But the whole room went red, like the sun was setting red when a high wind’s coming. Actually all she needed to do was stand at the range stirring one of the pots with a ladle, even then the whole room was filled with her, every nook and cranny, while the rest of us,
her father and mother and me, we were squashed into the tiniest corner. Or when she went outside, the chickens probably crowded around her even when she didn’t have any grain for them. And the dog would bark for joy though she wasn’t bringing anything for him. The cows mooed in the shed. The pigs grunted. Even the trees in the orchard were blooming. And so on and so forth, the way people tell these things.

It would seem she was just doing a simple thing like sewing a button on a pillowcase. It wasn’t even just that the button seemed to slide onto the needle and thread of its own accord. More, I sometimes felt like putting my hand under the needle and saying:

“Prick me, let it bleed. Maybe the blood will tell our future.” And the blood would drip and drip, then flow, then gush in a stream, a river, till death came.

Or when she wanted to sweep the floor she’d always herd her father and me into the other room. Even for that short time it seemed like it was going to be forever. And I’d say:

“We can stay here. Don’t worry, you’re not going to sweep us up by mistake. It’s always nicer to sit in the kitchen.”

At this her mother, who was watchful as a hawk, would say:

“Mr. Szymek’s like our Franiu. The doctors wouldn’t let him go out in the sun, he had to always stay in the shade, so he used to sit in the kitchen till the cows came home, he always said that was the best place for him. He’d probably have been about your age, Mr. Szymek. When Małgosia was born he was already big, he was already in school.”

But Małgorzata didn’t like her mother talking about Franiu and she’d interrupt right away:

“Maybe we could make fritters with apple, mama? Szymek, do you like apple fritters? They’re really good, with cream and sugar.”

Her father didn’t like apple fritters and so he’d pipe up:

“What kind of an idea is that? Apple fritters. A man needs bacon or sausage,
otherwise it’s like he hasn’t eaten. But as for Franiu, yeah, it’s a pity. He was our son, whatever else you might say. Though it’s been so many years now, you get used to it. I think there’s still some bacon in the larder. Go fetch it, will you, mother. I’ll see if there isn’t a drop in the bottle still. Mr. Szymek and I could have a drink together, one glass at least. Małgosia, you cut some bread.”

They baked their own bread. The loaves were big and round as cart wheels. One alone must have weighed fifteen pounds or more. Though why would anyone want to weigh it. You never weighed stuff when you loaned it to someone, or when they gave it back. It was your own bread, your own people, no one needed to know how much a loaf weighed. A loaf is a loaf, there’s a half-loaf, a quarter, an eighth, a slice, those were all the measures you needed. She’d brace the loaf against her stomach, putting her left arm around it like it was a pregnant belly, lean back, and her right arm would bring the knife through the bread toward her like it was moving downhill. It looked like the bread was rolling toward her, straight into her arms, huge and happy. Though sometimes I’d get gooseflesh thinking she might not feel where the bread ends and her body begins, because the loaf was like a part of her body. Even her father, however carried away he was talking about the war or about his bees, he’d fall silent and watch her cut the bread.

“Those slices are too thin, cut thicker ones. Bread, you have to feel it in your mouth.”

I was worried about something completely different, though it was about the bread also.

“Don’t cut it that way, Małgosia,” I’d say. “Lay it down on the table. The knife’s sharp, it might not be able to tell between the bread and your body.”

“We keep reminding her,” said her father. “But these days, you know, Mr. Szymek, children won’t listen to you. With me, it would’ve been enough for my mother or father to say something once.”

“Give it here.” I couldn’t take it any longer.

“I’m fine.” And she’d hunch over, like she was protecting the bread and the knife, almost afraid.

“Come on, give it to me, you can never be sure.”

“Give it to Mr. Szymek if he’s asking,” her mother put in. “Better a man do the job.”

I took the bread from her belly and the knife from her hand and I cut in the air over the table, holding the loaf in one hand, the knife in the other.

“You catch the slices.”

“You’re a strong one,” Małgosia’s father said in surprise. “I never saw anyone cut bread like that. Except maybe store bread. But not homemade.”

It was a Saturday. Małgosia’s father and mother had gone to their godson’s wedding in Zarzecze and they weren’t going to be back till noon the next day. I walked her home and we stood outside her house like we didn’t know what we were supposed to do with ourselves without her parents. She didn’t invite me in and I didn’t hold out my hand to say goodbye. We were mumbling something or other, glancing to the side so as to avoid looking at each other, and every moment made us feel more uncomfortable. The sun was already dropping toward the west, and we stood in its rays as if we were at an open fire, so on top of everything else we were hot. I was just about to reach out my hand and leave, but she must have sensed it, because she looked into the sun as if she wanted it to blind her and she said:

“Won’t you come in?”

“Maybe another time,” I said. “I promised my father I’d run the lister plow over the potato field.”

“As you like. But by the time you get home it’ll be starting to get dark. And it’s Saturday today.” After a moment she fluttered her eyes and said: “We’d be alone.”

“Maybe for a little while,” I said, as if I’d let her talk me into it, though there was no truth in what I’d said about helping father with the potato field.
“I can do the job on Monday. Maybe I’ll take the day off work, that way I could get started in the early morning.”

But we’d barely gotten through the door when she exclaimed:

“Oh Lord, how dirty it is in here!”

I couldn’t see any dirt. It was like it always was. Pots and plates were drying on the stove top. The bread on the table was covered with a white cloth. The bucket with soapsuds had been carried out to the hallway. The floor was swept.

“Where is it dirty?” I said.

But she insisted it was dirty.

“I have to tidy up a little at least. It’ll be nicer to sit together when it’s tidy.”

She immediately tied on her apron, kicked off her shoes and put her slippers on. It was as if she’d suddenly taken fright at the fact we were alone. Because up till now, whenever I came by her parents were in, or at least one of them, like they were waiting for us, watching for us, like they’d stayed back from their jobs because of us. And really, the only time we’d been alone was on the road. But the road isn’t home. There are trees, the sky, someone might always be coming. And here all of a sudden we had the whole house to ourselves. Plus, it was like the house was half asleep, not even the cat was mewing, they must have put it out as they were leaving.

“I don’t see the cat,” I said. And I bent down to look under the bed, here kitty kitty, because I felt odd too that her parents weren’t there, just the two of us. “Well, if it’s dirty then you should clean,” I said, no longer putting up an argument. “Your mother was probably in a hurry, she mustn’t have had time to clean. When you have a wedding to get to, that’s how it is. You want to leave the place tidy, but you don’t know where to turn. You’ve got to get yourself ready, but on top of that you can’t let the animals go hungry. The chickens and the geese have to be rounded up and put in the shed. You have to check every nook and cranny. Close it all up. Otherwise you never know
what you’ll find when you come back home. The Kukałas in our village, one time they went off to a wedding, they came back the next day and their place was just a smoking ruin. The house, the shed, the barn, everything burned to the ground. Luckily they were all so drunk they didn’t cry as much as if they’d been sober.”