Wieslaw Mysliwski: Stone Upon Stone

How so much life got into me I couldn’t say. Sometimes it’s destiny, and sometimes a person’s born that keeps on living however much everything gangs up against them. It’s as if life itself picked them to stand up to death.

I wasn’t quite three when the neighbor’s turkey-cock strayed into our yard. It was big as a young cow and all covered in dangling red wattles, like it had a cherry branch instead of a neck. The wattles made everything around go red, like a red glow from a fire. The barn, the cattle shed, the fence, the ground, it all suddenly turned red. The dog dashed out of its kennel and started yapping at the turkey, it was filled with red anger. The cat came out of the house, here kitty kitty, its fur was gray, and all of a sudden now it was red. The geese, it seemed like someone had taken their white covers off, as if they were pillows and they were waddling around in the red linings. And even the scythe leaning against the barn started to drip with red blood, drip, drip, drip.

I set off toward the turkey to pull off those wattles of his that had turned the whole world red, and hang them around my own neck. He probably thought I wanted to play with him, and to begin with he started running away. Then all of a sudden he came to a stop, bristled up, gobbled, and spread out like a whole cherry tree, and the blood almost burst from his wattles. I reached for his neck, and he ups and jabs me in the hand, jabs me in the head. Then he gobbles again and jabs me again. But by this time I’d already gotten ahold of his neck with both hands, and I held on like it was a fence post. He tugged and jumped, but I wouldn’t let go. He started hitting me with his wings, and with his head caught in my hands he jerked me one way and the other like he was trying to leave me his head and get free even if it meant going headless. He didn’t manage to, though, because in my little hands I could feel the strength of four grown-up hands. He dragged me all the way across the yard and back. In the end he must have decided there was nothing else for it. He stood still, spread his wings like two clouds, and tried to fly. He flapped and flapped, he thrashed and he twisted and turned, but for some reason the air wouldn’t lift him up. We both fell to the ground. We were covered in dust. You couldn’t have said what was turkey and what was me, we were just one big tangle.

I thought my eyes were covered in red from the wattles, and I didn’t mind one bit. But it was blood that was blinding me. I started to feel weak. The turkey was on his last legs too, he was just barely moving his wings. He tried to peck me again, but what could he do with nothing but his head sticking out of my grip like it was poking out of a hole. He didn’t peck any harder than if he’d been picking up grain from the ground. Besides, he might not even have been able to see what he was pecking, because his eyes were popping out like pebbles. He opened his beak wide and began hissing like a punctured tire, but he was weaker and weaker. I passed out and he collapsed on top of me. Father and mother came running out of the house. They thought we were dead. And that more likely the turkey had pecked me to death than that I’d strangled the turkey. I was a child, after all. And the turkey weighed twenty-two pounds even after it was plucked and dressed. Father carried me into the house. He was crying up a storm and all covered in my blood.

A whole horde of neighbors gathered. They sent to the village for holy water to splash on me before my soul left my body and it went cold. Some of them already began to say the prayers for the dead, others were comforting mother, telling her God wouldn’t let any harm come to me in the next world, and he might even make me one of his angels, because I’d not done any wrong in this world. And they waited for the holy water. But before it arrived I came to of my own accord. Except that when I saw the crowd of people over me I burst out crying and mother had to hold me in her arms for the longest time before I calmed down.

It was the same when I was older and I’d go caroling with the other boys, no one would agree to be King Herod, because death cut Herod’s head off and no one liked to be killed. So I was always Herod, because I preferred being king to being afraid of death. We had a real scythe, one that was used for mowing, not a fake one with a wooden blade. When death cut your head off with a real scythe you felt death was real too, and not Antek Mączka dressed up as death in a white sheet. Especially because each time I was killed the blade of the scythe had to touch my neck, not just knock my crown off. But I never once flinched. Though death cut my head off and I was a goner as many times as we visited houses in a night. The farmers we caroled for sometimes couldn’t even watch, and their wives would scream and cover their children’s eyes. But in the houses where they were most frightened, afterward they’d give us each an even bigger serving of pie, and a piece of sausage, and a glass of vodka. They always turned to me and said, you want a top-off? They’d check whether the scythe was honed and whether I didn’t have a cut on my neck. And they couldn’t get over it. He’s a brave one, dammit. That’s for sure. He’s a proper Herod. The real thing. There was just that one time Antek Mączka brought the scythe down and nicked me till I bled, so I took his scythe away from him and kicked his ass and he didn’t play death anymore.

Or in the resistance, seven times I was wounded. Once I thought I was already in the next world. I got hit in the stomach. When I opened my eyes I was actually surprised it was exactly the same woods, the same sky, that a skylark was singing somewhere up above. A skylark, okay, why shouldn’t there be skylarks in the next world. Except that not far away there was a village in flames. Cows were lowing there, a baby was crying, someone was wailing, Jesuuus! And way far away in the distance a farmer was plowing. He didn’t look like a farmer from this world but like the soul of a farmer, because he wasn’t looking in the direction of the fire, he didn’t hear the shouts or the howling and moaning, he was just bending over his plow and plowing. I didn’t know which world to believe in, this one or the next. Truth be told, I didn’t really feel much like coming back to this world. But the next one just seemed like a continuation of this one. Till I felt that I was lying soaked in blood, and that the lark above me was a lark from earth. Though I wasn’t glad about it at all. It felt like I’d died in the next world and I’d come to this one to live.

I figured it’d be almost fall before I got out of the hospital, maybe I’d be home after the potato lifting. Because I wasn’t in any kind of a hurry. For what? I was just a bit worried about Michał. But they told me he was getting by more or less. One day this person would bring him something to eat, another day someone else. The people from the farmers’ circle were supposed to take in the harvest for me, or if not them, the neighbors. As for the potatoes and the beets, someone would agree to do them in return for a third of the harvest, that was what I was offering.

Except that one day the doctor came. He told me to get out of bed and walk up and down across the ward, with sticks and without. He said he ought to keep me in till the fall, but he knew, he knew I’d want to be getting home for the harvest. So they discharged me, I just had to come back for checkups. I was going to tell him there wasn’t anything I particularly had to rush back for, that the farmers’ circle would take in my harvest for me and if not the neighbors would do it, like they’d done the previous two years. It wasn’t as if I was about to pick up a scythe myself from the get-go. When you’re working with a scythe your legs need to be as healthy as your arms. Mowers even say that with proper mowing, you use your legs and your back, that all your arms do is swing back and forth. But I didn’t say anything. I thought, you’ve been through umpteen harvests and now all of a sudden you’re going to try and get out of one, and here in front of a doctor. There were plenty of men on the ward who dreamed of getting out for the harvest, at least one last one before they died. Just to touch the spikes of wheat with their living hand, maybe see the mowing one last time, take a look at the fields, breathe in the earth. For a good many of them it’d be easier to leave for the next world if they knew there were harvests waiting for them there too. It’s common knowledge, a person lives by the earth, so they ought to be drawn to the harvest like a dog to a bitch.