Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

And so I came home. And right away on the third day I headed out for the cemetery to take a look around. I took a tape measure, a pencil, and a piece of paper, because I wanted to measure some of the graves to see what would be best for me.

Our cemetery is just outside the village. You pass the last houses, hang a left, and walk uphill a bit. When they’re taking a dead person in his casket from one of the houses you can make it all the way with three changes of bearers, four at the most. Even from the farthest places, from the mill or by the school. I’ve been a bearer many a time, always at the head. The head is a lot heavier than the legs, because from the stomach up you’ve got the back and the shoulders and the head, while what is there to carry at the legs, just thighs and shins and ten toes. But I could’ve gone the whole way without being spelled, except it wouldn’t be right not to have a change of bearers. And that’s probably what made me think the cemetery was close. Besides, I’d forgotten that my legs weren’t the same legs they used to be, and every step was like a hundred steps before.

I looked to see if there wasn’t someone driving that could give me a ride part of the way. But I’d picked the wrong time — it was noon, everyone was in the fields. My hands went numb from the walking sticks, the uphill part at the end was the worst. So the moment I made it past the cemetery gate I plopped down on the nearest tomb. I was staggered, my eyes were blinded with sweat.

Kozioł Family, I read on the stone I was sitting on. It didn’t look that big. No one would have believed you could’ve gotten more than three or four people in there. But when they buried old Kozioł here a few years ago there were already five of them in the tomb and he was number six. Though the fact is they barely managed to squeeze him in there. The coffins were squashed next to each other like barrels in a cellar. There wasn’t enough room to go inside and set the casket on its rails. They looked for the smallest farmer to climb in, but no one wanted to be the smallest one. Each one they asked said no, it wasn’t him, so-and-so was smaller. Anyway, how can you tell who’s the smallest in a crowd of people like that. You’d have had to take out a tape measure and measure them. In the end they found someone, maybe he wasn’t the smallest one, but he went in there. Except afterwards he couldn’t get out, because the casket was blocking his way and they had to pull it out again. So then they lifted it up because they thought it might be easier to get it in from the top, but this time the coffin lid got in the way. When they took the lid off, it came out that they were burying their father in resoled shoes. Another time I went to the firehouse to watch the farmers playing cards. The Koziołs’ kid Franek was playing with Jasiu Bąk and Marciniak and Kwiatkowski. Jasiu Bąk had gotten a full house, Marciniak had a straight flush, Kwiatkowski was carrying a pair, and Franek didn’t have a thing, but he was the most fanatical of all of them. In the end he bet the whole pot, and in the pot there must have been ten pairs of shoes, a suit, a shirt, a tie, maybe even a coffin. And he lost the lot, because Jasiu called him. Franek didn’t bat an eyelid. He even took another two hundred from his pocket and sent Gwóźdź out for a bottle of vodka.

I measured a dozen or so of the tombs. I didn’t just measure them, I looked them over carefully and sounded them. From what I could see, the tombs that Chmiel built were way sturdier than the ones the Woźniaks had made. Also, in comparison with Chmiel’s, the Woźniaks’ ones were tiny, even when they were for the same number of coffins. And even the oldest tombs Chmiel had built, from before the war, were still good, it was like they were part of the earth. Because Chmiel had been building tombs for donkey’s years. The Woźniaks only started during the war, when Chmiel couldn’t keep up with the work.

Some people told me to go with the Woźniaks, they were a lot younger and they worked the two of them together, while Chmiel was old and took his time. And that with the Woźniaks I wouldn’t have any trouble getting lime or cement, because they bought it directly off the people that filched it from the trains. It was just that I didn’t like the Woźniaks’ work, and on top of that they like to eat well and at each meal you have to buy them a bottle, because otherwise they’ll go work for someone else and leave your job unfinished. Chmiel didn’t drink. Also, whenever he ate too much or he had food that was too greasy he’d get the bellyache and he’d have to squat down a bit to put pressure on his stomach. He said that in the last war he’d eaten some bad herring and ever since then he needed to squat like that whenever he ate too much, or he ate greasy food. But it wasn’t anything he couldn’t live with.

And you didn’t need to keep an eye on Chmiel, he’d check everything himself and remember about everything. When I bought cement it wasn’t enough that I had it, he had to come and see what kind it was. Actually he pissed me off, because it was like he was looking for problems. First he wet his finger, stuck it in the cement, and put it on his tongue. Then he took a handful from the sack, poured a thin stream of it onto his hand, and blew to see how light it was. Then he took another handful on the palm of his hand, spat on it, and rubbed and rubbed. And if he’d at least smiled. But no, his face was crooked as a dog’s tail the whole time.

“What are you even checking it for, Chmiel? It’s all written on the sack.”

“Sure, be a fool and believe what’s written. Then later on the roof of your tomb’ll collapse. You won’t feel a thing, but me, they’ll say I’m a lousy craftsman.”

Besides, if you go to the cemetery you can tell just by looking which tombs are Chmiel’s. Each one of them is solid as a boulder. While the Woźniaks’, scratch them with your fingernail and they start to crumble, because they never put in as much cement as they should. On some of them there are whole cornerstones broken. On some the sides have started to cave in. Or the top plate’s cracked, and rainwater gets in and drips on the deceased.

On All Souls’ Day you don’t see it, because the tombs all look the same. The whole cemetery’s decorated, flowers and wreaths and candles, and crowds of people, so all you can see is mourning. But on a regular day, when the next All Souls’ is far off and the last one’s even further, and the cemetery’s like a tract of fallow land that hasn’t been plowed in a long, long time — at a time like that every crack comes to the surface, every chip is like an unbandaged wound, and each tomb is different from the next like each person is different from the next one, and all together they’re like people that are dog-tired and they’re taking their rest, and none of them has the strength to be embarrassed. The menfolk scratch themselves, the women spread their legs and you could even sneak a look, it’s just you don’t feel like it.

Before the war Chmiel built a tomb for the schoolteacher’s daughter, Basia was her name, she used to sit in the front row at school. She was pretty as a picture and because of her, one or other of the boys was always getting distracted during class and being sent to sit in the corner. In sixth grade she suddenly went away and she was gone the whole year. Then when she came back she didn’t come to school anymore, but instead she sat around in the shade the whole time. It would be summer, bright sun, and she’d be in the shade by the wall or under a tree, with a little umbrella. She got paler and paler, and her eyes were bigger and bigger, those eyes of hers that were blue as cornflowers.

I wasn’t that good in Polish, and our bitch had just had puppies. So I took one round for her.