Stone Upon Stone (71 page)

I got up and added more hot water from the pot. I stirred it around his body.

“And remember before the war when you came home one time wearing a hat? You stood on the doorstep, it was like you were embarrassed about having the hat on. And we just stared at you. Is it Michał or isn’t it? You quickly pulled it off, but father says, put it back on, let me take a look. Actually it looks good on you, it’s just you don’t look like yourself. It cost a lot? Mother says, you shouldn’t have spent so much on a hat, son, you could have bought a whole suit for that much money. It was a Sunday. Father wanted us to go take a walk through the village, maybe we’d bump into the priest. He’s always kind of asking after you. But we were young men, the two of us, what did we care about the priest, plus it was so hot, so I dragged you down to the river. The girls had grown into young ladies by then, and the river was filled to bursting. I stripped off my clothes and dove right in. You sat on the bank, in the shade of the bushes. Stefka Magiera swam up to you and tried to get you to come in, won’t you get undressed, Michał? It’s hot as anything, take your clothes off and join us. Her breasts looked like they’d been drinking the water in the river. You look nice in that hat. Will you be staying for long? The Magieras thought you’d marry her. But you wouldn’t have been happy. During the war she hooked up with this one guy that used to come
buy flour, and she went off with him. Left her man and her baby. Michał! Michał! Come in and have a swim! Everyone was calling to you. In the end the guys actually got jealous. Leave him be! He must have the consumption. They’re not allowed to go swimming. Look, he went and bought himself a hat so he wouldn’t look like someone from the village! He looks like a tush behind a bush! One of them ran up from behind, snatched the hat off your head, and tossed it into the river. The whole mass of them jumped in after it. Someone scooped water up in it. Another one plopped it on his head and started swimming in it. I jumped in to fetch it back, but he threw it into the crowd. They pulled and tugged at it and grabbed it from each other. Stefka Magiera was so upset she started crying. You’re horrible! You’re horrible! she shouted. None of you’s ever going to have a hat like that! One guy dove down and got a rock from the river bottom. They put it in the hat so it would sink. In the end I managed to get it off them and I tossed it far downstream so I’d be the first to swim there and reach it. And I was. But Bolek Kuska jumped out onto the bank and got there before me. He grabbed the hat and ran even farther to where there was a shallow stretch. He went in and there, in the mud and sand and rocks, he started stomping the hat into the water. I beat him up so bad he couldn’t close his mouth for a month. He looked like he was smiling the whole time. I cut holes in his shirt and pants with my penknife, and I tossed his shoes into the river. Him and his brother Wicek came to our house afterwards with their old man to make a fuss, and I gave the old man a hiding as well. You, you didn’t do anything, you just watched them messing with your hat, then you got up and said, come on, Szymuś, let’s go. Leave them the hat, let them play.”

I got him up from the bathtub and dried him off. I didn’t have anything to put on him so for the moment I wrapped him in a sheet. Where I could I tied it, in other places I fastened it with safety pins. I managed to find three of them in the drawer of the sewing machine.

“Now I’m going to cut your hair and your beard.”

Turned out I still had the knack. I could cut hair and give a shave just like in the old days. Though there probably weren’t many people remembered I used to do it. Maybe just some of the older guys. But most of the old ones were already dead. Now the young people were the old ones. And after them the next young ones were already waiting to be old in their turn. They were younger and younger when their hair became speckled with gray, their foreheads got bare, and their faces started to sag and get furrows and pits. Though from day to day you couldn’t see old age passing across people. It was like old people had come to the village from somewhere else, while young folks had left and then come back when they were already old. It just sometimes seemed strange to me that they were the same people. But I guess they were.

I had to rest my backside against the table because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to stay in place. His hair was thick and strong, he had that from mother, like me. Because Antek and Stasiek got their hair from father, Stasiek was already almost completely bald, while Antek had bare patches that looked like holes in a thatched roof. I gave him a buzz cut, because his hair was crawling with lice. Then I washed his head.

“All right, now let’s eat.”

From the hospital I’d brought half a packet of tea, a little sugar, half a loaf of bread, a bit of cheese, and two pork chops. Jadzia the auxiliary had given it all to me as a parting gift. She came out into the hallway with me when I went to say goodbye.

“Here, take this.” She thrust a package into my hands. “You’re not going to go buying things at the store right away, but you’ll need to eat when you get home.”

I felt silly, because I’d not told her that much about home and what I did tell her mostly wasn’t truth, the way you talk to a woman, or a dead person. I
was even going to tell her they’d probably have dinner waiting for me. I’d let them know I was coming home. But she knew I didn’t have anyone, so who could be waiting for me. Besides, she didn’t let me hesitate very long.

“Just take it. For your own good.” I wanted to kiss her hand, but she hid both of them behind her back. “You can’t go kissing an auxiliary’s hand, Mr. Szymek. You know what, come visit us sometime, if you’re here for the market or something. It was fun being around you. I had a good laugh. Because mostly people just die.”

I didn’t even tell her about Michał. All I said was that I have three brothers, that much I told her, and that all three of them are in the city. Besides, Antek and Stasiek she’d met when they came and visited a week or so after the accident. I’ve no idea how they found out, because I didn’t let them know. They were dressed up to the nines. Spanking new suits, shirts, ties. It actually made me feel good to have brothers like that. But after an hour I’d had enough of them, though we hadn’t seen each other for two years. They barely even asked if one leg or both had been run over, or how long I was going to be in there, then already they started arguing with me, trying to say it was my fault. Because instead of sowing rye and wheat I should have started an orchard, kept bees, or shifted to raising cattle like they’d kept telling me to. That way I wouldn’t have had to hurry before the rain and bring the crop in on a Sunday. Sunday’s for resting. Sitting at home with your wife and kids. Or if the weather’s good, going for a ride in the car, to the woods or down to the river. But I imagined I’d be forever young. This girl wasn’t right for me, that one wasn’t either, and there you have it. Luckily Jadzia came in and I introduced her to them, these are my brothers, Antek and Stasiek, this is Miss Jadzia the auxiliary.

“Mr. Szymek, he’s a trooper,” she said, like she sensed they were quarreling with me. “He’s in all kinds of pain, but he doesn’t breathe a word of complaint. He even likes to joke around.”

It was only then that they stopped. Though Stasiek evidently hadn’t had enough, because when she left he said:

“Or you should marry her. She works in a hospital, she’s used to hard work, she’d be able to help you in the fields as well.”

Dusk was gathering in the windows, it was getting dark in the room. We sat there drinking tea and eating bread and cheese. I’d left the chops for the next day. You could still hear wagons loaded with sheaves creaking on the road. Occasionally someone would shout, giddyup! Other times a horseshoe would scrape against a rock. On someone’s wagon the perch was rubbing against the bodywork. There was a squeak of axles that needed oiling, the rattle of traces against the shaft. I was waiting for him to at least ask:

“So where were you all this time?”

If he was a cat he’d have jumped up into my lap right away and nuzzled me like it hurt him not to be able to say a word in human language. If he’d been a dog he probably would have been straining at his chain, he’d be so pleased to see me back. Everyone that met me at the very least said, oh, you’re back. And here he was, my brother, and he wasn’t saying a thing.

“Did they tell you I was in the hospital?”

He lifted his mug to his lips and opened his eyes so wide they were round as little coins, but you could never have guessed anything from them. You couldn’t tell whether they were looking, thinking, or whether they just wanted to die and not know anything. Also, he was holding the mug in a kind of odd way, with only two fingers round the handle. I even checked to see if I was holding mine the same way. But I was holding it normally, with my whole hand round the middle. With his bread and cheese he broke it into crumbs in the palm of his hand and only then picked it up and ate it, like he was picking seeds out of a sunflower. Actually he’d always eaten differently than other folks. When we had
żurek
with potatoes in the morning, my spoon would be half potatoes and half soup, I could hardly stuff it
in my mouth it was heaped so full. Him, he ate the potatoes and the soup separately, a tiny bit of potatoes and no more than a mouthful of liquid, on top of which he barely moved his jaws. That way he could scarcely eat his fill, and he was doing twice as much work with his hand. You eat so your belly will be full. It’s your belly that gives you strength. And strength lets you work. I sometimes asked him, when you eat like you do, does it taste better, does it make you fuller, or what? Tell me. Surely it isn’t a secret? Not that I wanted to learn how to eat that way, I was fine as I was. But I figured I could learn at least that much from him, because you can learn a lot from how someone eats.

Or when he cut himself a slice of bread, it was so thin you could see through it. And even if he was eating it without anything on it, he’d still always hold it flat on his spread fingers, as if it had slices of sausage on it that he didn’t want to drop. Or when he had an apple, he’d always first cut it into four equal-sized pieces, dig out the pips, peel the skin, and only then eat the pure white quarters. Or even when he drank water, you never heard a sound from his throat like thirsty people usually make.

But maybe over those two years I’d gotten unaccustomed to him. Now it was hard for me to go back to knowing that this old man in a white sheet was my brother Michał. Maybe he’d also forgotten we were brothers. What does that mean anyway, to be brothers? When we were kids I didn’t even like him that much. I preferred playing with other boys. He couldn’t swim, couldn’t shoot a catapult, couldn’t climb trees. When he crossed a stubble field barefoot he’d complain that it prickled. Whereas me and the other boys, we’d have races to see who could make it to the far edge of the field first. We’d even choose stubble that had been cut with a sickle instead of a scythe, because it pricked even more. Or where there were the most thistles growing in among the crops. It was usually on Waliszka’s fields or Boduch’s because their fields were long and thin like sausages. When you ran the
length of a field like that your feet were covered in blood, but you wouldn’t dare let it hurt.

True, he was the best student of the four of us brothers. One time he even got a book as a prize for being the best in the school. They wrote on the book, For Michał Pietruszka for outstanding achievement and exemplary behavior, with gratitude also to his parents. It was because of the parents being mentioned that father often let him off working in the fields. When we went to church he’d give us one coin to give for the collection from the four of us, except Michał was the one who had to put it on the plate. When mother was carving up the chicken of a Sunday, father would supposedly make sure everyone got the same amount, but it would always turn out Michał had less, and father would tell her to at least give him the neck or the stomach as well. Michał could read his book late into the night and it was never a waste of oil. It was another matter that I didn’t like books. You had to read whatever they told you to at school, but that was all. I could never figure out why people read at all, it seemed a waste of time. Father would explain to me:

“You little monster, it’s so you can at least praise God with your reading.”

So one time I told him that when I grew up I wasn’t going to believe in God. Then I ran out of the house. I didn’t actually know what it meant to believe or not believe, I was just trying to needle him. The moment I stopped attending school, my books were thrown in the corner and I started going to dances. After the first dance father gave me a hiding. The same after the second one. After the third I grabbed a pitchfork, come on, father, just you try. That time he beat me with a chain off the wagon. I was covered in welts, mother had to dress them.

“What did you do this to him for?” she said tearfully. “Beating your own child like that, dear God in heaven!”

“He’s no child. He’s a bandit! He’ll throw you out of your own house in your old age.”

But Michał read. The years passed and he kept on reading. Then one day a distant cousin of mother’s came from the city, a tailor he was. Mother begged him to take Michał on, and he agreed. Let him at least learn tailoring, because what could he do here at home. Antek was already minding the cows, Stasiek looked after the geese. And there wasn’t so much land they couldn’t work it without him. Tailoring was a good trade, you’re sitting down, you have a roof over your head, and you can make your own clothes. There wasn’t any tailor in the village, so if he learned how to do it he could come back and be the tailor here. We could set up a room for him, maybe even buy a new sewing machine. For the moment he could use the one we already had.

“You won’t regret it, cousin. He’s a good boy, and he’ll be a good tailor. He doesn’t have a yen to go wandering every which way like the other boys. All he does is read books. We’ll make it up to you, in flour or with a chicken.”

“You know, being a priest would’ve been even better,” father said to back her up. “We were planning for him to be a priest. But we can’t afford it. Like you see, we still have three of them left at home. There won’t be enough land to go around. That way, we’d have one less mouth to feed.”