Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

True, he was the best student of the four of us brothers. One time he even got a book as a prize for being the best in the school. They wrote on the book, For Michał Pietruszka for outstanding achievement and exemplary behavior, with gratitude also to his parents. It was because of the parents being mentioned that father often let him off working in the fields. When we went to church he’d give us one coin to give for the collection from the four of us, except Michał was the one who had to put it on the plate. When mother was carving up the chicken of a Sunday, father would supposedly make sure everyone got the same amount, but it would always turn out Michał had less, and father would tell her to at least give him the neck or the stomach as well. Michał could read his book late into the night and it was never a waste of oil. It was another matter that I didn’t like books. You had to read whatever they told you to at school, but that was all. I could never figure out why people read at all, it seemed a waste of time. Father would explain to me:

“You little monster, it’s so you can at least praise God with your reading.”

So one time I told him that when I grew up I wasn’t going to believe in God. Then I ran out of the house. I didn’t actually know what it meant to believe or not believe, I was just trying to needle him. The moment I stopped attending school, my books were thrown in the corner and I started going to dances. After the first dance father gave me a hiding. The same after the second one. After the third I grabbed a pitchfork, come on, father, just you try. That time he beat me with a chain off the wagon. I was covered in welts, mother had to dress them.

“What did you do this to him for?” she said tearfully. “Beating your own child like that, dear God in heaven!”

“He’s no child. He’s a bandit! He’ll throw you out of your own house in your old age.”

But Michał read. The years passed and he kept on reading. Then one day a distant cousin of mother’s came from the city, a tailor he was. Mother begged him to take Michał on, and he agreed. Let him at least learn tailoring, because what could he do here at home. Antek was already minding the cows, Stasiek looked after the geese. And there wasn’t so much land they couldn’t work it without him. Tailoring was a good trade, you’re sitting down, you have a roof over your head, and you can make your own clothes. There wasn’t any tailor in the village, so if he learned how to do it he could come back and be the tailor here. We could set up a room for him, maybe even buy a new sewing machine. For the moment he could use the one we already had.

“You won’t regret it, cousin. He’s a good boy, and he’ll be a good tailor. He doesn’t have a yen to go wandering every which way like the other boys. All he does is read books. We’ll make it up to you, in flour or with a chicken.”

“You know, being a priest would’ve been even better,” father said to back her up. “We were planning for him to be a priest. But we can’t afford it. Like you see, we still have three of them left at home. There won’t be enough land to go around. That way, we’d have one less mouth to feed.”

So off he went to mother’s cousin to learn to be a tailor. He was there three years or so. Every other Sunday, sometimes even every one, he’d come home. And for each harvest or potato digging. He’d always bring mother at the very least a reel of thread, some needles, cigarettes for father, candy for Antek and Stasiek, a bottle of beer for me. Except he got really close mouthed. He wouldn’t say anything about what things were like for him there, good or bad, whether they fed him properly, how the cousin’s wife treated him. Father would ask:

“So do you know how to make pants yet?”

He’d never give you a straight answer yes or no. He’d just shrug and you couldn’t tell if he knew or not.

“Being a tailor evidently takes as much learning as being a priest,” father would have to say in answer to his own question.

Each time he went back, mother would give him whatever she could so he wouldn’t arrive back at her cousin’s empty-handed. Flour, kasha, peas, a slab of bacon, some cheese, sometimes a chicken. And eggs, every one we had she kept for when Michał would come. Us, we ate any old stuff, boiled noodles on their own, kasha with milk, because everything else was for the cousin. Once I caught a jackrabbit in a snare, that went to the cousin as well. Oh, he’ll be so pleased. We’d never dried our plums before, but now we did, so we’d have something to send to the cousin. We’d had that cousin up to here. Stasiek was little and he didn’t yet understand anything, one day he asked if mother’s cousin was a dragon, since he needed to eat so much. Even father would let out a sigh every now and then and say, a priest would have been better. But mother would just say, quiet now, hush, she’d calm us down. Sometimes you need to take the food out of your own mouth, when Michał is done learning he’ll make clothes for Stasiek, and Antek, and Szymuś, and for you too, father.

Then one Sunday he came and said he wasn’t at the cousin’s anymore, that he was working in the factory now, and mother didn’t need to get anything ready because he wouldn’t be taking anything from us anymore. It made us sad, because all that flour, kasha, peas, eggs, cheeses, everything had gone for nothing. Father just said:

“I thought we’d maybe buy some drill and you’d make me a new suit. But obviously it’s God’s will. This suit’s still fine.”

From that moment on he came less and less. Once a month, once every two months, for Christmas, Easter, harvest. Though he had problems mowing. He’d jerk the scythe and move forward too quickly, and he’d take such big swings you’d think he was trying to cut down a whole acre at one go. He ended up jamming the scythe into the ground a couple times, it got blunted a bit, then after one swath he was as tired as if he’d mowed the entire field. Though the fact was he’d never been that good a mower. When could he have learned? They’d been going on about him becoming a priest from when he was tiny, and a priest has a farmhand, he doesn’t need to do his own mowing. Though if you ask me, I don’t think he’d have made much of a priest either. To be a priest you need to have a calling, you need the gift of the gab. Anew sermon each Sunday, plus for every wedding, every funeral. And all those people you have to remind in the confessional, don’t sin, don’t sin, God is watching you. God died for our sins. It’ll all be reckoned up on Judgment Day. Where could he find the talking for all that?

Also, if you’re a priest you need to believe in life after death. But here, one Sunday there were a few of the neighbors round, and father and mother, and they’d gotten to talking about life after death, one of them had seen one thing, another one something else. Michał was getting ready for the train, he was fastening his suitcase, he was running late and as if out of spite his case wouldn’t shut. All of a sudden he exclaims, there’s no life after death! All there is is what’s here, that’s what you have to believe in! The neighbors’ jaws dropped, mother and father went red as beetroots. Michał just grabbed the suitcase, even though it wasn’t properly closed, he charged through the door, and only from the hallway he threw out:

“Goodbye.”

I had to go with him whether I liked it or no, because I’d agreed to walk him to the station. But he didn’t utter a word to me the entire way. Though the fact was we were walking as fast as our legs would carry us, because the train had already whistled on the far side of the woods. It was only at the station, when we were quickly saying our goodbyes, that he muttered: