Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

When we’d break the earth for the first time with the plow in springtime, we’d lay a slice of bread on the first piece of ground to be plowed. It goes without saying it wasn’t just a regular slice like you cut to eat with a glass of milk or a pickled cucumber, or on its own, without anything. It had to have been cut from a new loaf on Christmas Eve.

Mother would already have set the table for the Christmas Eve dinner without meat. Father would light the lantern, take the ladder from the hallway, and go fetch a loaf from the barn, because we kept our bread on the roof beams in the barn. There was a fresh draft in there so it didn’t go moldy, and it was high up. It was hard to get to without a ladder. We tried sometimes, me and Michał, we’d attempt to shimmy up the post the middle of the beam rested on, but we never managed it, and the ladder always stood out in the hallway.

There was żurek soup with buckwheat, noodles and poppy seed, and pierogies stuffed with cabbage, but we waited for mother to cut the bread like that was the most special dish. And dinner would start with the bread. Mother would rest the loaf against her stomach, she’d make the sign of the cross over it with the knife, she’d first cut a big slice that was going to be for the earth in the spring, then just a regular slice for each of us, according to our place in the family, first for grandfather, then grandmother while she was still alive, then father, us boys, and for herself last of all. Father would get the lantern again and put the first slice in the attic, he’d stick it way up high on a rafter beneath the thatch, usually in the darkest place. And there the slice of bread would wait for the spring like a sleeping pigeon.

And with each of us boys, the moment we were out of the cradle and could more or less keep on our feet, father would take us with him when the spring came and he went out to plow. He’d unwrap the bread from its white cloth and tell us to put it on the ground. Then he’d put our little hands on the handles of the plow, take hold with his own hands, and we’d plow over the bread. He did this with each of us in turn, Michał, me, Antek, and Stasiek. Right away he’d start teaching us how to plow. Don’t hold it like that, keep it tight, walk in the middle of the furrow, it needs to go deeper when the earth is dry, when your hands get bigger you’ll be holding the reins in this one and the whip in the other, as well as the plow. And don’t try to scare off the crows that are following behind you, let them be, because when you’re on your own out in the field with no one but the horse the crows’ll keep you company, and whatever they eat will grow again. And each time you turn, always let the horse have a little breather. Now what’s that singing in the sky?

“A lark, daddy.”

“That’s right, a lark. Do you know where the lark came from?”

“It flew here.”

“That’s true. But one day the Lord God was walking over the fields, and there was a farmer plowing. Is the work hard, God asked the farmer. I’ll say, Lord, answered the farmer. So God took a clod of earth and threw it up into the sky and said, let it sing for you, it’ll make the job easier.”

When we were a bit older we’d ask father what would happen if we didn’t put the slice of bread on the earth at first plowing. He’d frown and look at us like we’d been tempted by Satan or something, and he’d call on mother as a witness:

“You hear what ideas they’ve gotten into their heads, the little good-for-nothings? I ought to take a stick and knock those devilish thoughts out of them. Cross yourselves right now, or else!”

We’d be all scared and cross ourselves. Michał would often do it three times, but it didn’t calm father down and he’d take it out on mother:

“You’re their mother, why aren’t you saying anything!”

“They’re kids, they’re still allowed to ask about anything. You’re their father, you should explain it to them.”

“I never asked my father about anything. Nor did he ask his. You had to listen, not ask questions.” Angry that mother hadn’t taken his side, he’d turn to grandfather: “Did I ever ask you anything, father? Did you ever ask your father?”

But grandfather was really old by then, and often he’d be rubbing his feet, because they were always aching, and he didn’t quite get what father was after, whether he was supposed to nod or disagree with him, and he’d mostly give a vague answer:

“Well, when you didn’t know something, you’d ask. But back then children were different, they’re not the same these days.”

“What do you mean, not the same!” said father, turning on grandfather now. “Didn’t people plow and plant and harvest on the same land? You don’t know what you’re saying. Old age is starting to get to you, I can see.”

Because grandfather was the one father got mad at most often of all. For the slightest thing, sometimes without any reason at all. If the rain set in he’d complain that grandfather’s feet kept hurting and they wouldn’t stop. One time the wind blew down a poplar and it fell on the barn, and he went after grandfather about that too, he said why hadn’t he planted an ash or an elm, no, he had to go and plant a poplar, and poplars aren’t good trees at all, they’re crap, you can’t build anything with the wood, and you can’t burn it because it burns like straw. Or another time he stepped on a chick, because the chicks had gotten out of the basket where the brood hen was and they were pattering around the room, that was grandfather’s fault too because grandfather was sitting on the bench instead of by the stove where he always sat, and father had had to go around him. It was probably all because of those papers that grandfather had buried somewhere and couldn’t remember where. Or maybe because grandfather never got upset when anyone got angry at him. You could be as mad as you liked at grandfather, he’d just look at your anger like he was staring into space or he couldn’t hear anything. So us boys would get mad at him sometimes too, because we knew he’d never grab a stick and come after us, or tell on us to mother or father, or hold it against us. Sometimes he’d even take a pear or a greengage out of his pocket and he’d say, here, Szymuś, here, Michał, they’re sweet as sweet can be, have one and don’t be so angry.

Though just as father could suddenly get angry, the anger would pass equally as quickly. He’d reach for his tobacco pouch, roll himself a cigarette, and start to tell us what would happen if we didn’t give that slice of bread to the land:

“There’d be misfortunes.” And he’d start explaining what the misfortunes would be, starting with the land getting covered with weeds, then there was rains, hail, heat waves, drought, mice, vermin, and other plagues, all the way up to the most terrible possibility, that the land might stop producing anything at all, because it would have turned to stone. Then grandfather would add his own misfortunes to the ones that father said. Because grandfather knew even more than father about misfortunes that can happen to you. And not just because he’d lived longer. He’d worked on the squire’s land and he’d served in the tsar’s army, and one time everything he owned had been swept away in a flood, another time it had all been burned by lightning. So earth, water, sky, war, it was all the same to grandfather. But father didn’t like grandfather topping him when it came to misfortunes. Grandfather would barely get out the words:

“Back in the day —”

When father would immediately jump in with:

“Never mind back in the day. Misfortunes back in the day aren’t the same. You were working the squire’s land, so they were the squire’s misfortunes. It was the same in the army, the bread was rations, whether there was any or no the soldiers had to have some because otherwise they wouldn’t fight. Here the land is ours. If you treat it badly it won’t forgive you. There can be misfortunes like in the Holy Bible, or in the Queen of Sheba. The prophecies weren’t for nothing.”