The Graveyard (11 page)

Franciszek was about to reply when a mad turmoil broke out before the tall house, and both he and his companion turned their heads. The man with the shovel had succeeded in dropping an avalanche of snow on the heads of three passing hunchbacks, who stood dazed, not knowing what had happened to them. The onlookers were delirious with joy; the man on the roof was shouting merrily, triumphantly waving his shovel.

“Is it possible?” the stranger asked thoughtfully.

“What?”

“That electricity business.”

“Yes, certainly … someday. Goodbye.”

“Someday,” the stranger repeated, and walked off. To the accompaniment of the happy clamor, Franciszek continued on his way until he found the house he had been looking for. It was an old tumbledown building; the wind was tearing at pieces of rotten tarpaper on the roof. Surprised by the squalor of the place, Franciszek stood staring for a few moments, then, with a shrug, plunged into the shadows as into dark water. He waded on blindly, groping for the wall—at last he touched its rough ratlike dampness, and drew back his hand in disgust. There was a smell of washing, of children; from an
upper floor came the echoes of a quarrel. He struck a match, and looked for the number by the light of its uncertain flame. At last he stopped at a door, and knocked.

No one answered; a woman was shouting loudly on the same floor. Franciszek was about to leave when he thought he heard a rustling noise behind the door. He knocked again, and then again, louder; at last he heard the sound of shuffling feet.

“Who is it?” a woman’s voice asked.

“Is Mr. Zakrzewski at home?”

There was a moment’s silence. “What’s your business?”

“I want to see him.”

“And who are you?”

“Kowalski.”

There was another brief silence. “Wait a minute,” the woman said.

He lighted a cigarette; behind the door the sound of shuffling feet receded. From the street came a roar of rage and a triumphant clamor; once again a shovelful of snow had found its mark. The bolt creaked in the door.

“Come in,” the woman said.

He crossed a small passageway, and entered a room. Behind a table a giant of a man rose from his seat; he was so huge that the time it took him to lift his powerful bulk seemed infinitely long. “You wanted to see me?” he asked.

Franciszek was silent, looking him straight in the eyes. Then he said softly: “Bear—don’t you recognize me?”

“I’m sorry,” the man stammered. “But … my name is Zakrzewski, Wacław Zakrzewski. I’ll … show you … my identity card.”

“Bear,” Franciszek repeated, “is it possible you don’t recognize me? I am Kowalski, Franciszek—‘Skinny’—have
you forgotten everything? We fought together in the underground.”

For a long while they regarded each other in silence. The enormous man sat down heavily. “I knew you’d find me someday,” he said in a low voice. “Well, here I am. There’s nothing in life that can be wiped out, nothing can be forgotten …” He raised his head. “May I say goodbye to my wife?”

Franciszek stepped back. “You’re out of your mind,” he said. “What makes you think I’m from the secret police? I just wanted to see you, to find out how you were, to talk to you …” He walked up to him and held out his hand. Bear swerved violently. “Bear,” Franciszek said, looking with horror at his face, which had turned white, “what’s happened to you? Why do I find you like this? Bear …”

“Shh, quiet!” Bear hissed. “Don’t call me by that name. What do you want?”

Franciszek sat down, his hat in his hands. “So this is what you’ve come to,” he said thoughtfully. “Twelve years in Bereza prison before the war for being a Communist; a price put on your head by the Germans; songs written about you in the underground …” He passed his hand over his forehead. “My God,” he whispered, “where am I? Is it a dream? Is it real?” Once again he looked at the other’s huge dead face. He shook his head, and suddenly burst out laughing. “I remember you,” he cried; “I remember that I wanted to be like you; I remember that we were proud of you; I remember the day you were decorated; how we drank home-brew to the health of your medals—Jerzy, myself, everyone else …” He paused, and then asked dully: “What’s happened to you, Bear?”

“Shh, quiet!” Bear hissed. “Just a minute.”

He violently turned the handle of a phonograph and put on a record. A rasping voice came through the horn:

“What did you come for?” Bear asked.

“I’ve made up my mind to look up my comrades in the underground,” Franciszek said. “I remembered the names of the best among them and got their addresses. I must look them up and ask them to help me … You know me; you know what it was like in the underground,” he said imploringly. “You know how I talked, how I thought, how I behaved. I need help, Bear. I slipped, though it’s difficult to call it a slip. In short, what I want is—” He broke off; it was hard for him to collect his thoughts. He looked at Bear, expecting him somehow to come to his aid, but Bear remained silent, staring at the floor. The phonograph scratched on:

“One day I got drunk,” Franciszek said, “and I talked foolishly. At first the whole thing seemed trivial to me, but I know I said that I did not trust our leaders, that I had no faith in the party, and I told them to stick it all up somewhere. What I want is to get my old comrades to—well—to speak for me. If need be I’ll go to the boss himself, but I am interested in finding people who would be willing to say something in my behalf. After all, I don’t think that way, and I said all that when I was drunk. Surely you remember me. Will you help me, Bear?”

“Just a minute,” said Bear. He turned off the phonograph. “This music is no good,” he said. “There are people all around;
someone may be listening in.” He jumped up from his seat, rushed to the other room, and after a moment came back with a little boy. “This is my son,” he said to Franciszek, and made the boy stand in a corner with his face to the wall. “Recite Mayakovsky,” he said, and the boy began to declaim in a monotonous voice, staring with round eyes at the empty wall. “Now go on with your story,” Bear said to Franciszek.

“I was expelled from the party,” Franciszek said. “My case will go to the District Committee, perhaps to the executive of the Regional Committee. Tell me, Bear, was I ever …” He wanted to say “twofaced,” but he suddenly realized how ridiculous he was: what did they know about each other, he and the man facing him? He stared gloomily at Bear. Now one thing was clear to him: he was guilty. He must have done something that estranged him from the party, that estranged him even from Mikołaj; now that something was closing the mouth of this man. The thought of his guilt almost brought him relief. “Yes,” he said in a low voice, “I did something terrible, I know it’s terrible, and I don’t myself understand how it could have happened. But can one moment, in which a man is not accountable for his thoughts and words, wipe out his whole life and everything he has done? Is there really such a crime?”

Again he fell silent. The boy went on reciting in a voice as monotonous as the dripping of water from a spout:

“Will you help me, Bear?” Franciszek asked.

“Have you been to see anyone else?”

“No, I just telephoned Jerzy. I was told that he was on vacation, and that he’d be back in a few days. I looked you up first …” He took his hand. “You won’t refuse me, will you?”

“Now sing, Franek,” Bear said to the boy, who began at once, “On the Vistula, the broad Vistula, rose the builders’ song …” Bear said to Franciszek: “I named him after you, in memory of those days. How can I help you?”

“I beg your pardon,” Franciszek said, annoyed. “This is very nice of you, but must the child sing? Must he be present during our talk? Who the devil is listening in here, and what for?”

“No, that’s not it,” Bear stammered, “but you know, silence is no good either, so let him sing; he likes it, anyway. When it’s too silent, your neighbors think at once, ‘Aha, they’re plotting something; why should anybody live so quietly?’ And they begin to have foolish ideas, about spies, or enemies. Why, sometimes I have fights with my wife, just so as not to seem too quiet. Let him sing. But if it bothers you, he can recite poetry. Franek, recite ‘Vladimir Ilyich.’ ”

Franek began at once to declaim in the same bored tone:

“So what do you want?” Bear asked.

“I want you to help me. You, a former partisan, an officer. Don’t you understand? You are Bear, aren’t you?”

“No,” said Bear. “And I refuse even to remember it. Or to talk about it. Or to think about it. Do you understand?”

“So you’ve cut all that out of your past?” Franciszek asked. “You, a legendary partisan, a hero, the pride of your unit … you’ve cut all that out. Is that true?”

They measured each other.

“It’s true,” Bear said.

“Don’t turn around, Franek,” Franciszek said to the boy. And, while the child went on reciting, he walked up to Bear and slapped him in the face.

He walked out. Was that really water dripping—or was it Bear’s little boy still talking and staring with his black eyes at the murky grayness of the wall? He was in the street when Bear caught up with him. They walked side by side in silence, breathing heavily.

“Listen,” Bear stammered. He gripped Franciszek’s arm and looked in his eyes, stumbling all the while. “It isn’t the way you think it is. Listen, you’ve got to understand. I have a son …”

“Franek,” Franciszek said. “In memory of those moments.”

“Those moments, those moments,” Bear stammered. “What are they next to life? Next to the fear you’ve got to live with, constantly, without interruption, from morning till night? Can we bask in the days of glory when we live in a time of pestilence? They’ll finish us off, you, me, Jerzy. Our time is over; and the others, the ones on top, they know it. They commit crimes when they have to, but in spite of everything they’re laying the foundations for faith in man; they believe in you, in me, in Jerzy, and that’s why they’ll finish us off when the time comes. They believe that we’re somehow decent, and that someday we’ll wake up, and let out a wild shout: no! And maybe this shout will be taken up by a few others. It’s
neither you nor I that’s at stake, but something beside which we mean nothing at all. Ah, Franciszek, we wanted to take the road to life, and we’ve come to a graveyard; we set out for a promised land, and all we see is a desert; we talked about justice, and all we know is terror and despair. Once I lived on the fourth floor, and all day long I did nothing but count people’s footsteps on the staircase—were they coming for me or not? Someday they would come, I thought. History has no use for witnesses. The next generation will rush headlong into whatever is expected of it. It will regard each of the crimes now being committed as sacred, as necessary. And what about us? You? Me? We’ve done our part, and now we must try to survive, just survive as long as possible. Do you want to be the righteous man of Gomorrah? What do you want? Testimonials? Give it up. Can’t you die like a strong animal, alone and in silence? You’ve nothing left, no teeth to bite with, and nothing to shoot with. Go away, and if you don’t understand, at least leave the rest of us alone. After all, we’re entitled to something in return for our days of glory; at least we have the right to be forgotten.”

“Have you seen Jerzy since those days?” Franciszek asked.

“No, and I don’t want to see him.”

Franciszek slackened his pace. “You certainly don’t think,” he said, “that he would ever be capable of saying the kind of thing you’ve just said. Do you?”

They were silent for a while.

“No,” Bear said. “Jerzy? No, Jerzy will never say such things, I know. I often think of him; he was the purest of all, better than either of us. Maybe that’s what has saved him.”

They stopped.

“Farewell, Bear,” Franciszek said.

“Goodbye, Skinny,” Bear said.

Neither of them saw the other’s face: they were far from any street lamp, standing in darkness and rain. After a moment’s hesitation, each of them extended a hand. Their hands did not meet, but they pretended not to notice.

STILL WEARING HIS OVERCOAT, HE WALKED INTO
his living room. “Why don’t you turn on the light, Elzbieta?” he asked. He walked up to her and saw her face was drenched with tears. “Something bad happened to you, my little girl?”

She tried to smile. “No, no.”

He sat down beside her. “Then why are you crying?”

“Really, it’s nothing.”

“Something unpleasant?”

“Yes,” she said, and began to sob. “At school.”

“What was it?”

She opened her mouth, but he saw that she was making up an answer. “I don’t know why,” she said, staring over his head, “but the instructor picks on me all the time.”

“And why isn’t Roman with you?”

Once again she raised her face. “He’s very busy now,” she said. “You know it will soon be May Day.”

“Yes,” he said. He walked to the window and rested his burning head against the cold glass. “Don’t let my troubles upset you, Elzbieta. I’ll manage somehow. I’ll look up my former companions; they’ll help me.”

He gazed at the hysterical quivering of the neon sign and thought: “And yet I must have done something. Somewhere inside me there must be some doubt I wasn’t aware of; it rose to the surface at the first opportunity, in a moment of
exhaustion. What was it I doubted? The party? The people? The leadership? Or could it be the cause? How strong a man must be to go through life with a clear head, ignoring doubts, fears, sordid thoughts! What would I have been if I had no faith in the cause, if it had not been my goal, if it were not my goal even now, my brightest star? Bear? A madman. What did Mikołaj say? Stand up and fight. Very well, I will.” He was strong again. It seemed to him that from the silent city, from the calm sky, from the streets below and the stars above, faith invaded him, effacing all his trials, and that this faith would endure in him as long as the earth turned around the sun.