Stone Upon Stone (63 page)

There was some witch of a woman in a long nightshirt, her hair like a crow’s nest and holding a crucifix, she started going on about how the whole world was taking revenge because of us, it was all our fault, because we kept coming here to have our way with the local girls and do bad things, because we’d made whores of them all. Maruszew had become Sodom and Gomorrah! And now God was sending down a punishment! But why Maruszew of all places? Lord, why Maruszew?!

Someone galloped by on horseback shouting, run! run! They’ll burn the place down! They’ll throw people into the flames! Someone herded their cattle out from the farmyard into the road and drove them along, lashing their backs and legs. Two small children in ragged hemp shirts ran by hand in hand, crying. They were followed by their mother, her hair all awry, she was crying even louder than them and shouting, Iruś, Magda, come back! Where do you think you’re going, you little fools, come back! The first house at the edge of the village by the woods was already on fire.

Finally I managed to gather together some of the unit. We divided into three groups that were supposed to follow each other, and I gave the order to try and break through towards the river. I was in the last group. It was a good ways down to the river, plus the fields were bare because harvesttime was long past. Luckily it was just before the potato digging. We could crawl along the furrows in the potato fields, or at the very least hide our heads among the stalks. The nearest and surest way would have been to the woods, but they’d closed the woods to us like a barn door. In the first moment a dozen or so of the men had headed for the woods, with Sorrel in the lead. They’d been mowed down, hardly a handful made it back. It seemed like there wouldn’t be as many of the Germans around the fields, because that was the direction they’d least expect us to take. And in the fields they could be seen just like we could.

The last group started shooting first so we’d draw their fire, they immediately let loose a vicious barrage of shots. During this time the first two groups were crawling across the potato field. When they were about halfway the second group suddenly started firing, and under their cover the first group got even closer. Then, when the first group let them have it from right close up, you could even move forward in jumps. We started lobbing grenades. And we made it out. The only thing left was for us in the third group to provide cover for the other two groups to cross the river.

Suddenly, I felt a jolt in my stomach and my eyes went blank. It was even good not to feel or see anything. I don’t know how long I lay there, but when I opened my eyes I thought I was in the next world. And maybe the lark in the sky was Tereska’s soul that had risen from her burned body and was singing over me so as not to let me die. And the farmer that way far off in the distance was plowing something that seemed half like earth, half like sky – maybe that was her father, and he was only a spirit as well. And maybe only her mother was in this world, keening, “Lord Jesuuuus!”

Almost a third of our unit perished, including the ones they caught alive,
and the wounded. They packed them into trucks, threw in the menfolk from the village they’d not already burned or shot, and on the same Kawęczyn road we’d taken that time on the pilgrimage, they hung them from the acacia trees. They didn’t have enough nooses so they took all the halters off the cows in the squire’s herd. They didn’t have a high enough ladder so in Wicentów, where the procession had spent the night that time, they sounded the alarm and stuck the firefighters and their ladder in another truck. And once they started hanging they couldn’t stop, it was like when a drunk starts drinking and he just can’t stop himself. Actually they were also drunk, some of them couldn’t stand up straight, and one of them, when he clambered up the ladder to tie the noose to a branch, he fell off with a crash. The whole way there they were singing dirty songs. When they ran out of our men to hang and there were still some trees left, they hung whoever came down the road.

There was a doctor from Młynary came along in a wagon, he was on his way to a woman that was about to give birth. He even knew German but it didn’t do him any good, the bastards still hung him. They hung him higher up and the guy that had been driving the wagon, who was the husband of the woman having the baby, they hung him lower down on the same tree. Some musicians came up the road on bicycles on their way to play at a wedding somewhere, an accordionist, a fiddler, clarinet, trombone, and drums, five of them. First they made them play something. When they started up, the trees actually shook, though there was no wind at all. Truth be told, they couldn’t play as well as they played that day, because they weren’t the best musicians in the world, like Bargiel from Oleśnica, for instance, or Wojcieszko from Modrzejów. When Kużyk’s daughter over at Stary Bór got married, Wojcieszko’s band played at the wedding for three days without sleeping. They just kept their eyes open, ate, drank, and kept playing. But maybe the Lord God helped them out, or they were so afraid of death that they played better than they were really able. And they were probably already thinking
they’d play for a while then hop back on their bikes and ride off on their way. But those sons of bitches were enjoying it so much they stomped their feet and shouted, more, more! Turns out you can keep death away with music.

There was an accordionist lived in our village once. Grab was his name. He was a band all on his own, all he needed extra was a drum. He could make that accordion sound like a fiddle, a clarinet, a trombone, even a church organ. He didn’t stretch it out, he just ran his fingers over the buttons and played. His fingers bent both ways, like they were made of wicker. You couldn’t find another musician to equal him in the whole neighborhood, probably even farther. When he finally took to his bed, because he was really old, he put his accordion on a stool right by the bedside and whenever death drew close to him, he’d play. And death would go away again. He’d probably have lived till he got tired of life. But something went wrong with his accordion, the buttons still kind of worked but the bellows were somehow short of breath. And he died. People said that the kind of music he played for death, no one had ever heard it in their lives, there may never have been music like that ever before. It gave you gooseflesh, cats would run from the house, dogs would howl, horses would rear up as they were pulling their wagons. And if anyone happened to be passing by his house when he was playing they couldn’t help but stop and stand there like a dead man.

But that was long ago and there hadn’t been any war, maybe death liked listening to music. In wartime, though, death has no hearing. All that came of their playing on the Kawęczyn road was that they hung them on a single tree. They didn’t smash their instruments, they just hung them along with the musicians. The accordion with the accordion player, the fiddle with the fiddler, the drummer with his drum on his belly, and so on. One of the soldiers even took a picture of them, another one let off a round at the drum.

A farmer came by taking his cow to be serviced, they hung him too. One idiot went out in front of his house to watch them drive by. Actually they might not have hung him, because he was standing behind his fence
and there was only his head sticking out. But he wanted to make a good impression so he took off his cap and bowed. And that evidently made such a good impression they hung him. Another guy, they asked him where the village chairman lived. The guy didn’t understand, and he shook his head and shrugged to say he didn’t. How could he understand when our language comes from the earth and theirs comes from iron. Earth can’t understand iron. They hung him too.

They also hung the squire from Jasień, the same one that they took the halters off his cows. But him they hung from his gateway, not from a tree. There were three gates into the manor, two ordinary ones for everyday use, and a third one that was only used once in a blue moon, as the expression goes. The other two were on the side facing the village, the third one opened onto the road with the acacia trees. From there there was an avenue lined with lindens that led directly to the courtyard in front of the manor house. The third gate was usually closed, they’d only open it on special occasions, a ball, or if an important guest was coming. Even when the squire and his lady drove to church on Sunday, they’d just use one of the regular gates. But when the squire’s daughter Klementyna was coming home from her studies for the summer vacation, the big gate would stand wide open all day. All the boys from the manor and from the village would climb the trees along the road and watch to see if they could spot the carriage with the young mistress coming into view. They’d get twenty groszes for their pains. When the carriage appeared, they’d pass word from one tree to the next, all along the acacias, through the gate, along the lindens, and across the grounds to the manor, to say she was on her way. Every living soul would come out of the manor onto the courtyard, not just the squire and his wife and their relatives, but the footmen and the chambermaids and cooks. When the carriage pulled into the courtyard they wouldn’t let the young lady get out on her own, but they’d pluck her from her seat like a flower and stand her on the steps in front of her parents. The young lady would be all happy and smiling at everyone,
prattling away, and throwing her arms around some of the servants so her hat fell off and rolled down the steps, and everyone chased after it. It sometimes happened that dinner got burned, but no one was punished, since it was because of the young mistress.

They started hammering on the gate with their rifle butts. First, one of the servants came out, but he didn’t have a key. They shot him dead. Then the squire came with the key, but he couldn’t get the gate to open, he tried every which way but nothing worked. In the end he managed to unlock it. But they were furious at having had to wait so long, so they hung him. Though was it his fault the gate wouldn’t open? They hadn’t unlocked it since the war began. The young mistress had come back from her studies for good and now she just stayed home, which is to say at the manor. And when someone important came it would be on the quiet, and they used one of the side gates. So apparently the big gate was so rusty they couldn’t open it even after it was unlocked, and the hinges creaked so loud the bastard soldiers held their ears and stamped their feet. People said that God was protesting that way. But what could even God do about it when there were twenty truckloads of them, all armed to the teeth.

The gate is actually still standing today, except it’s in the middle of fields and it doesn’t lead anywhere. Because when they divvied up the manor lands after the war, there wasn’t so much as a fence post left. Folks cut down the trees in the grounds for building houses or for firewood. The same went for the avenue of lindens that led down to the gate. The manor house was demolished down to the foundations. And now it’s just fields like everywhere else. Wherever you look there’s rye, wheat, clover, barley, potatoes, beets, carrots. And the gateway, standing in the middle of the fields like someone just stuck it there because otherwise things would be too flat. Two tall gateposts joined at the top with a half-rounded arch where there used to be a lamp on a wrought-iron chain. That was where they hung the squire. The gates themselves were wrought iron as well, they had twisted designs with
lilies and bindweed and vines or something. They always had to be opened by two men at once, one wouldn’t have been able to do it. And since then they were locked for good. Because when they took the squire’s body down someone locked the gate again, and the key disappeared.

After the war all kinds of people tried to open it. Some blacksmith guy, some cooper, a tiler, even a fellow that mended radios. Mechanics from the farmers’ circle, tractor drivers, all kinds of folks. It’s only natural, there’s never any lack of people that want to know what’s on the other side. One time somebody’s relative from America came and offered a hundred dollars to whoever could get it open. People started trying again. All sorts of different types rolled in from far and wide. To begin with, none of them had any luck. The relative from America was convinced it couldn’t be done, and he upped the offer to a hundred and fifty, then two hundred. And they got it open. What can money not do. Except that when they saw on the other side of the gate there was just grain and beets and carrots like everywhere else, they took fright and locked it up again so hard that the key twisted in the lock, and it stayed that way. And now it’s shut forever.

Not long ago a foreign tour was on its way to Kawęczyn by bus. When they saw the gateway in the middle of the fields they had the driver stop, and they got out and started laughing and laughing, saying what a strange country we were, building gateways in the middle of fields as if they led to mansions, when people could go any way they wanted around the gate. Kuśmierz from Jasień was plowing near the gateway, and they started taking photographs of him from every side as he worked. Then one of them gave him a pack of cigarettes. Kuśmierz didn’t want to take them because he didn’t know what he was being given them for, but one of the guys from the bus said:

“Gute Zigaretten.”

So he took them, but he lit up one of his own. Then they asked him:

“What’s this gateway? Did someone build it at the entrance to their field?
Do you have to go through it when you’re sowing? Is that maybe a custom in these parts? Does it make your crops grow better? How much do you get per acre?”

But Kuśmierz didn’t tell them the truth. He thought to himself, they came all this way to visit us, they even gave him a pack of cigarettes, he’d feel kind of foolish telling them the truth. So he told them that no one built the gateway, that it grew there of its own accord. Because gateways like that, they grow around here, some places are thick with them. No one plants them or sows them, they just grow there like trees. The soil is rich, all it takes is for the wind to bring a seed or a bird to drop one from its beak. Around here you can find whole stands of gateways.

Three days they all hung there on the acacia trees, because the local village chairmen were forbidden to take them down for three days, the same for the squire in the gateway. Their hands were tied behind them with barbed wire, their feet were bare, all they had on were pants and shirts. Luckily it was a warm September, day after day the sun shone in a clear sky, there was gossamer floating in the air and the nights were mild. So at least they didn’t freeze like they would have if they’d been hanging in the rain and cold, at least they weren’t swung back and forth by the storm winds that often blow that time of year.