Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

“This is your home,” I said. “Sit down.”

I went to the cattle shed and took the halter from around the cow’s neck. It was too long so I folded it in four. I returned to the house. He was sitting there like I’d told him to, resting his forehead on his hands and staring at his feet. He stank so bad the whole place smelled of Skobel’s manure. I stood at arm’s length from him. I put the right-hand stick aside and leaned on the left one alone, broad and firm, so as not to lose my balance.

“I have to beat you,” I said, and with all my strength I struck him on the back with the folded-up halter. I did it so hard it made me stagger. He didn’t so much as flinch, or look to see who was hitting him or why. All that happened was a cloud of dust went up from him and there was an even stronger smell of manure. I had to straighten myself because the stick had slipped in my hand, then I whacked him again, and again, and one more time. He didn’t react. Though he’d only have had to give me a slight push and I would have gone crashing to the floor. He was still a strapping guy just the same, even though he was underweight, and I was leaning on a single walking stick with a red-raw, swollen hand, and on a pair of exhausted crippled legs, and I had nothing to prop myself up with. Plus, with every blow the halter shook me like a reed in the wind, when for a beating like that you need to be planted foursquare like a table, your feet rooted to the ground, and the ground afraid to shift beneath you. Then you can give a beating. Not just with the halter but with your whole body, with all your pain, your rage. Then you could even make a rock shed tears. Though it would’ve been easier to make a rock cry than him. All of a sudden he took his head from his hands, put his palms on his knees and leaned forward, like he was trying to make his back as broad as possible for the beating. I started beating that back, gathering myself for every blow like I was passing sacks of grain to be put on the wagon. My whole body twisted with each swing. The rage grew within me. It would have been enough for a dozen halters. I felt it around me even, like the room was furious along with me, the whole house, the cattle shed, the barn, the farmyard, the whole village, the land. It was the rage helped me forget that me, a brother, I was beating my own brother. And what was I beating him for? Truth was, I didn’t really know, and I don’t think I ever will. Only he knew. But not the slightest murmur passed his lips. His beaten body didn’t even groan of its own accord, the way bodies do when they’re being beaten. Even a tree, if you hit it it’ll groan, a rock will make a sound. But here, only the halter moaned. The halter was doubled up with pain. If it could have, it probably would have leaped at me and at the very least stayed my hand to stop me beating any more. Or it would have wrapped itself around my neck like a snake and hung me from the ceiling.

I was breathless. I felt like I’d climbed a high mountain on those crippled legs of mine. I felt I was stopping. My arm weakened and the halter was just flopping from my back to his. All at once the stick, which for a long time had been shaking under me like a willow branch, fell out of my hand when I took another swipe. I staggered so bad I would have fallen over if I hadn’t grabbed the side of the table at the last moment. My first reaction was to bend over and pick up the stick. But I was stopped by a terrible pain in my right knee. I broke out in a cold sweat, and something popped in my lower back. Ever so slowly, one hand holding on to the table, the other reaching toward the floor like a rake, I bent over farther and farther. Finally I got ahold of it. Except that when I straightened up, I got dizzy. I barely made it to the bench, and I dropped down exhausted, like I’d just come back from the fields after a whole day bringing in the harvest.

“You’re not to muck out at Skobel’s ever again,” I said.

He sat there with his head drooping on his chest and his hands on his knees, like he hadn’t even noticed I’d stopped beating him. From outside there was a constant creaking of wagons, everyone was bringing in the harvest. By now almost everyone had rubber tires on their wagons, and you couldn’t hear them the way you used to with iron rims. Now you could hear the horses more. They were walking slowly, like they were carrying the wagons on their backs.

I suddenly wished that one of the neighbors would come by, someone from the village. Or a stranger. I had no business with anyone, nor anyone with me. But I wanted someone to come, maybe it would be on his way, or he was coming home from the fields and he heard I was back. Or just like that, because he didn’t have anyone else to visit. Kuś, or Prażuch, they’d have come for sure if they’d still been alive. Because the ones that were dead were the ones you could most rely on. I even started listening to see if I couldn’t hear steps in the passage. Maybe the door handle would rattle. The door would open. Someone would stand at the threshold, they’d say, Christ be praised, or just, good afternoon.

“What are you sitting like that for, like you were perched on a field boundary outside? Have you just come in from the fields, or did someone die?”

“Neither the one nor the other. I was just giving Michał a beating. With this halter, see?”

“A beating? A brother giving a brother a beating? You’re grown up, the both of you. Brothers mostly only fight when they’re young.”

And maybe it was from waiting in vain that it occurred to me to give him a bath. I’ll cut his hair and give him a shave, then someone can come. I got up from the bench. I put the walking sticks in my raw hands. It stung all the way to my elbows. I could barely stay on my feet.

“You stay put,” I said. “I’m going to give you a bath.” I shuffled off to find a bathtub. Luckily they had one at the Pająks’, so I didn’t have to go far. Pająk even brought it to the house for me. He set it in the middle of the room and wedged it in place with laths so it wouldn’t wobble. Then he brought two bucketfuls of water from the spring, filled some pots, and put them on to heat.

“People should help each other in their misfortune. You helped me in my bad hour. Remember the oration you made at our Włodziu’s funeral?”

“How long ago was that, Bronisław. I’m amazed you still remember.”

“Course I remember, I’ll remember till the day I die. The priest said what he had to to be over and done with it. All he was thinking about was how to get back home to the presbytery soon as he could, he was stamping his feet. It made no difference to him whether it was our Włodziu or somebody else. Son of a bitch didn’t even say he’d been blown up by a mine, it looked like he’d just died of typhus or dysentery. Don’t go there, Włodziu, I said to him, the sappers’ll come and clear the mines from our land. But no, off he went. And you, you didn’t care that there was a frost, though it was so cold everyone’s tears froze. You didn’t miss anything out, you said he was a good child, he respected his parents, and he was like a grain of wheat sprouting from the seed, but that he never grew to be a spike. Because it was like someone cut him down deliberately with a willow switch. You hear, mother, I said to my old lady, you hear what kind of son we had? And God took him from us.”

I gathered a few sticks around the yard and lit the stove. The fire took, and right away it was like something came to life in the house. Soon steam started rising from the pots.

“Take your clothes off,” I said. I set a chair between the stove and the bathtub. I leaned with all my weight on the stove. I put one pot first on the chair, then from the chair onto the ground right next to the tub, and only then I leaned over and poured it out. My face covered with condensation from the steam. I added a little cold water from the bucket. “Come on, it’ll get cold. Take your clothes off.”