Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

“Is it my fault I had to be strong, father? That’s just how my life was, and maybe those were the times also. You said Jesus was God. But with people, a single moment of weakness can sometimes cost you your whole life, and without salvation. You say I should cry. But life made me forget how to cry, father. Life can make you forget how to do various things, and not teach you anything in return. Course, they say life teaches. But it’s not true. Besides, however much someone wants, he still has to do what he has to do. He’s got it written somewhere in that book of his that he has to be strong, so he has to be. Just like another guy has it written that he has to be bald, or another one that he has to marry a particular person, and he has to, even though she’s a real vixen. That he’s going to be born in this village here, in this house, and not a hundred years earlier or a hundred years later, because from long ago all the way to the end of the world everyone has their assigned time, their place, their life. What’s there to cry over? Crying over yourself is like crying against yourself. People always cry to someone, father. Even when you’re crying over yourself, you’re crying to someone. However deep it is inside you, however secret, it’s always to someone. And me, I don’t even know if there’s anyone inside of me.”

“But God is standing over you, have you ever thought about that?”

“If he is, he sometimes lets himself be forgotten. It may even be wisdom on God’s part that when there’s nothing he can do, he lets himself be forgotten.”

“Now you’re blaspheming, my friend, you’re blaspheming terribly.” He raised his hands as if he wanted to push away from me. He made the sign of the cross. “But may he forgive you in his great mercy.” He hung his head as if he was praying silently. Also, our conversation might have tired him a bit, he was old after all, sometimes he’d fall asleep during confession. All of a sudden he started and gave me a sort of kindly look. “You’re going to stand before him as well one day, what will you say to him then?”

“I won’t say anything. When your lips are dead your words are dead as well, father. Whatever you may or may not have said here on earth, you won’t say it up there. God too, what he had to say to people, he said it all here, on earth. Up there he became a mystery and he keeps his peace.”

“I truly feel sorry for you, my son. But perhaps one day you’ll understand, if only in your final hour, that you too, you were only human. A lost, stray human being like every one of us in this vale of tears. And that strength of yours you keep going on about is nothing but ordinary human weakness that you won’t accept, that you hate so much in yourself.”

“What do you mean?” I was upset, who was he to talk to me that way, even if he was a priest. “Do I not know who I am? I paid a heavy price for that knowledge. It didn’t come for free.”

“Right, my son. Perhaps you hated it within yourself more than others do. Perhaps you were harder on it than others. Perhaps it hurt you more than it hurt other people. But believe me, it’s only thanks to our weakness that we’re connected to other people, that we recognize ourselves in other people, and they recognize themselves in us. And that’s how our human fate is shared. It has room for everyone. In it our humanity is fulfilled. Because we don’t exist outside of our fate. We belong to human fate through weakness, not strength. And it’s in this weakness of ours that God manifests himself in every person, not in their strength. So you too, be forbearing toward it, don’t shield yourself from it, submit to it, because otherwise you’ll have a hard death. And that’s not the same thing as having a hard life. And who knows, you might take months and years to die, the way God sometimes tests people, they’re confined to their bed by some terrible illness, their death has no end. The sight fades in their eyes, their ears stop hearing, their mind stops understanding, and they lose all feeling except pain. How are you going to die then, if you can’t come to terms with yourself, or at the very least understand yourself?”

“Death’ll come somehow or other. Death isn’t anything special, father. People aren’t just living from cradle to grave, they’re also dying from cradle to grave. Dying isn’t something you do just the one time. Who knows, maybe dying takes longer than living. I mean, dying goes on even after you’re dead. You continue to die among the people that are still alive. That one time, maybe it’s only the end of dying. But before a person reaches that end, how many times do they have to die first. The truth is, father, with each person that dies in our life, those of us left behind die a little bit ourselves. The person goes away and they leave us their death, and we have to shoulder it. They just lie there rotting in their grave and they don’t know, they don’t feel that they’re rotting because they don’t know anything or feel anything at all, not even that they left someone behind. And even if there’s no one close to follow them in death, still those further from them die, their neighbors, people they know, even strangers, though the strangers might not even be aware of it. You see, father, it’s enough for us to be surrounded by constant dying for it to shape us. Or say a cow dies, or a horse drops dead, or a hawk gets in among the chicks. Those are our deaths as well. Maybe it’s from those deaths, when too many of them collect inside you, that your own death comes. I sometimes even have the feeling that I come from the dead. I seem to be alive, but it’s like death is just letting me be so I can bury the last ones. And as if that’s to be the end of something ending forever.”

“But what about the next world? Has it ever occurred to you that you’ll have to go on living there? Eternity’s promised to everyone, after all. Whether it’ll be good or bad, that God has to decide.”

“Has anyone ever come back from there, father, so we can believe something’s there? We only die in the one direction, not the opposite one.”

“And what about hell? Are you not afraid of hell?” he exclaimed in a bitter tone.

“What’s hell to me, father, after I’ve been on earth.”

His head drooped, he folded his hands across his stomach and froze like that without a word. I began to regret getting drawn into the discussion. Stach Sobieraj was supposed to give me a hand bringing in the potatoes. In return I was going to lend him my horse the next day. What could I tell him now? That I’d been at the priest’s all this time? What, were you making confession? No. Then what on earth were you up to?

He said in a voice that seemed to emerge from his thoughts:

“I knew you’d come one of these days. If not of your own free will, then because of the tomb. You have no idea how much I was looking forward to this moment. How long is it since I came to this parish. Half a century it’ll be. I can still remember you running around in short pants. Your hair was the color of flax. And I seem to remember that for the longest time you wouldn’t grow.”

“That wasn’t me. Maybe you’re thinking of Michał, father. Michał didn’t grow for a long time.”

“Come on, don’t try to wriggle out of it. I remember I used to make fun of you, so when do you finally plan to start growing, Pietruszka? See, Bąk’s already getting a mustache. And Sobieraj’s going to start chasing after the young ladies any day now. Now what’s the seventh commandment, Pietruszka? Do you know or don’t you? Tell him, Kasiński. Because Kasiński couldn’t contain himself, he knew. That Kasiński, he always knew everything. That’s why he rose so high. I can’t remember if the two of you sat side by side at the same desk or if he was right in front of you. But when it came to picking apples from my orchard, I remember, the two of you went together. Except you never wanted to even repeat after Kasiński. You’d stand there like a post, your eyes on the floor. By the end the whole class was prompting you, but you, it was like you’d set your mind on not knowing. And when Franciszek the sacristan and my dog Flaps caught you in the apple tree, remember? Kasiński got away, and you were left in the tree and you wouldn’t come down. Flaps was barking at you, Franciszek was shouting, get down this minute, you little monkey! In the end I heard the ruckus in the orchard and came out, I pleaded with you, threatened, come down, Pietruszka. Come down or in school I’ll make you recite the ten commandments and the seven deadly sins and the six articles of faith. And you’ll have to stand in the middle of the classroom, not just say them from your seat. Come down. In the end Franciszek had to go get a ladder and bring you down by force. He was so mad he was all set to thrash you then and there, he’d already taken his belt off, but I stopped him: