Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

I got him up from the bathtub and dried him off. I didn’t have anything to put on him so for the moment I wrapped him in a sheet. Where I could I tied it, in other places I fastened it with safety pins. I managed to find three of them in the drawer of the sewing machine.

“Now I’m going to cut your hair and your beard.”

Turned out I still had the knack. I could cut hair and give a shave just like in the old days. Though there probably weren’t many people remembered I used to do it. Maybe just some of the older guys. But most of the old ones were already dead. Now the young people were the old ones. And after them the next young ones were already waiting to be old in their turn. They were younger and younger when their hair became speckled with gray, their foreheads got bare, and their faces started to sag and get furrows and pits. Though from day to day you couldn’t see old age passing across people. It was like old people had come to the village from somewhere else, while young folks had left and then come back when they were already old. It just sometimes seemed strange to me that they were the same people. But I guess they were.

I had to rest my backside against the table because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to stay in place. His hair was thick and strong, he had that from mother, like me. Because Antek and Stasiek got their hair from father, Stasiek was already almost completely bald, while Antek had bare patches that looked like holes in a thatched roof. I gave him a buzz cut, because his hair was crawling with lice. Then I washed his head.

“All right, now let’s eat.”

From the hospital I’d brought half a packet of tea, a little sugar, half a loaf of bread, a bit of cheese, and two pork chops. Jadzia the auxiliary had given it all to me as a parting gift. She came out into the hallway with me when I went to say goodbye.

“Here, take this.” She thrust a package into my hands. “You’re not going to go buying things at the store right away, but you’ll need to eat when you get home.”

I felt silly, because I’d not told her that much about home and what I did tell her mostly wasn’t truth, the way you talk to a woman, or a dead person. I was even going to tell her they’d probably have dinner waiting for me. I’d let them know I was coming home. But she knew I didn’t have anyone, so who could be waiting for me. Besides, she didn’t let me hesitate very long.

“Just take it. For your own good.” I wanted to kiss her hand, but she hid both of them behind her back. “You can’t go kissing an auxiliary’s hand, Mr. Szymek. You know what, come visit us sometime, if you’re here for the market or something. It was fun being around you. I had a good laugh. Because mostly people just die.”

I didn’t even tell her about Michał. All I said was that I have three brothers, that much I told her, and that all three of them are in the city. Besides, Antek and Stasiek she’d met when they came and visited a week or so after the accident. I’ve no idea how they found out, because I didn’t let them know. They were dressed up to the nines. Spanking new suits, shirts, ties. It actually made me feel good to have brothers like that. But after an hour I’d had enough of them, though we hadn’t seen each other for two years. They barely even asked if one leg or both had been run over, or how long I was going to be in there, then already they started arguing with me, trying to say it was my fault. Because instead of sowing rye and wheat I should have started an orchard, kept bees, or shifted to raising cattle like they’d kept telling me to. That way I wouldn’t have had to hurry before the rain and bring the crop in on a Sunday. Sunday’s for resting. Sitting at home with your wife and kids. Or if the weather’s good, going for a ride in the car, to the woods or down to the river. But I imagined I’d be forever young. This girl wasn’t right for me, that one wasn’t either, and there you have it. Luckily Jadzia came in and I introduced her to them, these are my brothers, Antek and Stasiek, this is Miss Jadzia the auxiliary.

“Mr. Szymek, he’s a trooper,” she said, like she sensed they were quarreling with me. “He’s in all kinds of pain, but he doesn’t breathe a word of complaint. He even likes to joke around.”

It was only then that they stopped. Though Stasiek evidently hadn’t had enough, because when she left he said:

“Or you should marry her. She works in a hospital, she’s used to hard work, she’d be able to help you in the fields as well.”

Dusk was gathering in the windows, it was getting dark in the room. We sat there drinking tea and eating bread and cheese. I’d left the chops for the next day. You could still hear wagons loaded with sheaves creaking on the road. Occasionally someone would shout, giddyup! Other times a horseshoe would scrape against a rock. On someone’s wagon the perch was rubbing against the bodywork. There was a squeak of axles that needed oiling, the rattle of traces against the shaft. I was waiting for him to at least ask:

“So where were you all this time?”

If he was a cat he’d have jumped up into my lap right away and nuzzled me like it hurt him not to be able to say a word in human language. If he’d been a dog he probably would have been straining at his chain, he’d be so pleased to see me back. Everyone that met me at the very least said, oh, you’re back. And here he was, my brother, and he wasn’t saying a thing.

“Did they tell you I was in the hospital?”

He lifted his mug to his lips and opened his eyes so wide they were round as little coins, but you could never have guessed anything from them. You couldn’t tell whether they were looking, thinking, or whether they just wanted to die and not know anything. Also, he was holding the mug in a kind of odd way, with only two fingers round the handle. I even checked to see if I was holding mine the same way. But I was holding it normally, with my whole hand round the middle. With his bread and cheese he broke it into crumbs in the palm of his hand and only then picked it up and ate it, like he was picking seeds out of a sunflower. Actually he’d always eaten differently than other folks. When we had żurek with potatoes in the morning, my spoon would be half potatoes and half soup, I could hardly stuff it in my mouth it was heaped so full. Him, he ate the potatoes and the soup separately, a tiny bit of potatoes and no more than a mouthful of liquid, on top of which he barely moved his jaws. That way he could scarcely eat his fill, and he was doing twice as much work with his hand. You eat so your belly will be full. It’s your belly that gives you strength. And strength lets you work. I sometimes asked him, when you eat like you do, does it taste better, does it make you fuller, or what? Tell me. Surely it isn’t a secret? Not that I wanted to learn how to eat that way, I was fine as I was. But I figured I could learn at least that much from him, because you can learn a lot from how someone eats.

Or when he cut himself a slice of bread, it was so thin you could see through it. And even if he was eating it without anything on it, he’d still always hold it flat on his spread fingers, as if it had slices of sausage on it that he didn’t want to drop. Or when he had an apple, he’d always first cut it into four equal-sized pieces, dig out the pips, peel the skin, and only then eat the pure white quarters. Or even when he drank water, you never heard a sound from his throat like thirsty people usually make.

But maybe over those two years I’d gotten unaccustomed to him. Now it was hard for me to go back to knowing that this old man in a white sheet was my brother Michał. Maybe he’d also forgotten we were brothers. What does that mean anyway, to be brothers? When we were kids I didn’t even like him that much. I preferred playing with other boys. He couldn’t swim, couldn’t shoot a catapult, couldn’t climb trees. When he crossed a stubble field barefoot he’d complain that it prickled. Whereas me and the other boys, we’d have races to see who could make it to the far edge of the field first. We’d even choose stubble that had been cut with a sickle instead of a scythe, because it pricked even more. Or where there were the most thistles growing in among the crops. It was usually on Waliszka’s fields or Boduch’s because their fields were long and thin like sausages. When you ran the length of a field like that your feet were covered in blood, but you wouldn’t dare let it hurt.