Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

The musicians had had their supper, and the vodka was playing in their veins. They’d taken off their coats, they were playing in shirtsleeves. Some of them even unbuttoned their shirt down to their belly button, and loosened their belt, and took off their boots because they were pinching. And all for the music. Because it was only now the musicians’ souls would come out. And man, would they play! They couldn’t feel their lips or their hands, they’d play with their gut, like their fathers and their fathers’ fathers before them. They played like they were about to die. Till lightning flashed, and armies marched to war. And a wedding party rode on drunken horses. And flails flailed in barns. And earth fell on a casket. And there wasn’t any shame anymore in feeling up a young lady here and there, you could even put your hand on her backside. And reach under her blouse. And pull her legs to yours. And young ladies would find themselves between your knees of their own accord, like chickens coming home to roost. And they’d fly around the dance floor breathless. They’d forget their fathers, their mothers, their conscience. Even the Lord God’s ten commandments. Because at those dances heaven and hell mixed together. Chest squeezed against chest, belly against belly. They’d giggle and faint their way into such a paradise, you could feel it flowing out of them even through their dresses. And the band would be filled with the devil, he’d have them waving their bows like scythes cutting off nobles’ heads. He’d put a storm wind in the clarinet. He’d set the accordion spinning. And hurl rocks at the drums. And if on top of everything else it was a hot close night outside, there was nothing for it but to let some blood.

By that time it could be over anything at all. Someone would suddenly stagger as if the room had been tipped on its side. And right away there’d be screams and shouts, Jesus and Mary, Staś, Jaś, goddammit, the sons of bitches! Over here, boys! They’re coming for us! And your legs weren’t even done with the last dance. Your girl was stuck on you like bracket fungus on a birch tree. It was like you had to cut her off with a knife. She wouldn’t let go of you and she’d be crying and begging you:

“Szymuś, let’s go outside. Don’t go over there! I’ll do it with you. I want to. Do you hear, Szymuś? I want to. I do! For the love of Christ, they’ll kill you! Szymek!”

But someone nearby is already whacking people on the head with a bench. A couple of swings of his bench and he goes down like his legs have been swept from under him. The crowd heads for the door or jumps out the windows. Someone hits a ceiling lamp with a bottle. And the band is playing louder than ever, it’s not obereks and polkas anymore but a full-blown thunderstorm. They play loud, louder, as loud as they can, to drown out the shouts and squeals and the you sons of bitches.

Then someone tips the room the other way. And back again. You don’t know whether you’re standing up or lying down. The girls are grabbing you by the jacket and the shirttails and the arms and neck, pulling you by the elbow, whimpering, screeching, crying. But what do you care about girls now that the knives are out. Somewhere the emcees’s roaring, stay in your pairs! One pair after another! Now form a circle! All the pairs dance! Then suddenly there’s a groan, and all that’s left of the emcee is his colored ribbon. Someone’s trying to swing a chair. They spin it around once and twice and they’re swallowed up by the crowd. Because chairs are no use when it’s knives up against knives. Blood up against blood.

And the room is rolling down a big slope. There’s clattering and wailing and curses. The sound of breaking glass. There’s only one lamp left hanging from the ceiling. A second one is turned on somewhere. Probably over by the buffet. But someone quickly puts it out with another bottle. Glass flies everywhere. And the room goes back uphill through darkness and dust. All you can hear is panting. And the swish of knives like scythes at harvesttime. Then downhill again. All the way over to near the band. The musicians’ arms are dropping off. Keep playing! Keep playing! Play a march now! The fiddler leads off on the march, when all of a sudden someone bumps into his side. There’s blood on his white shirt. The fiddle comes flying down like it’s dropping from heaven to earth. And the drum stops in midbang because someone else has taken a knife to it like it was an exposed belly. The accordion’s been ripped open. And the clarinet is smashed over the clarinetist’s head. The hell with the band! It all started because of them.

And there’s no more band. There’s not a single pane of glass left in the windows. The buffet’s been turned upside down. The decorations hanging from the ceiling are all in tatters. Your jacket’s in rags. There’d be times you could wring the blood out of your shirt — your own blood and other people’s. Then after the whole thing was over you’d sing all the way home.

One night, after one of those dances some farmers took us back home in their wagons. We were drunk as lords. That time I spent three weeks or so hiding out in the loft over the cattle shed, because there’d been a dead body and the police were poking about the villages looking for the guilty party. But you might as well go looking for the wind in the fields. When you’re having fun like that there is no guilty and innocent. Everyone lashes out left, right, and center, you could stab someone to death and you wouldn’t even know who. Or he’d get stabbed and he wouldn’t know who’d done it. Only the Lord God alone could know who was guilty, not the police.

I had three cuts, one in my side and two on my back. I could only lie on my stomach. Mother made compresses with different herbs. But it wasn’t healing up properly. The knife must have been rusty, because the wounds kept bleeding and bleeding, and mother was all teary:

“Szymuś, son. Think of your mother. One of these days they’ll kill you. I couldn’t take that.”

“They’re not going to kill me, mother. No way. Stop crying. I’m not that easy to kill. Look — I’ve got three holes in me, and did they kill me? You see yourself. And I’ll get even with them. Even if they do kill me, better it be sooner than later. There’s no point clinging to life, mother. Just living from one harvest to the next — what kind of life is that?”

As it happened the harvest was beginning, so at least those cuts got me out of mowing the rye and the barley. And more than half our land was barley and rye. On top of everything, that year there were rains, it rained and rained without stopping. Everything was flattened and mowing it was the hardest thing. One acre of flattened crop took as much work as three regular ones. You couldn’t feel your arms afterwards, your back was agony, your head felt like it was made of stone, and your legs would barely carry you home. What were those three holes in me in comparison.

I often tried to convince father to buy a harvester, because I was sick to death of all that mowing. Was it some punishment from God that the harvest had to be taken in year after year? Couldn’t it have grown some different way, so it didn’t have to be mowed and tied up and transported, then after that threshed and winnowed and driven to the mill, and only then you could have bread? Bread could grow right from the start, you’d go out and collect the loaves straight from the field. They could even be small ones the size of heads of cabbage. Not tiny little seeds that you have to sweat over.

But father wouldn’t agree. We can’t afford it, and besides, the hay stays straight when you mow it, but harvesters mess it up so it isn’t any good either for mending the thatch, or making chaff, or stuffing mattresses. And Antek and Stasiek there, they’re growing up. They wouldn’t have anything to do, they’d have to sit around idle if we had a harvester. And when the crop’s been flattened by the rain, you need to mow it by hand anyway, a harvester’s not up to the job.