Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

All of a sudden, far away down the road there’s a cloud of dust and three horses, and on the horses three riders. Who the heck could be riding to the village on a Sunday? They looked like they were in military uniform. They ride up to the inn, rein in their horses, and we see it’s a captain, a lieutenant, and a young lady. The captain just looks like a captain, the lieutenant the same, but the young lady takes my breath away. She’s wearing riding breeches and tall boots and spurs, a kind of black skull cap with a peak, she’s got a riding crop in her hand. She looks like an angel in riding clothes. The captain speaks up from the saddle:

“So then, boys! I see there’ll be no shortage of fellows ready to fight for their country if need be! Is there anything to drink in this inn of yours?”

“Sure there is!” The guys livened up, they were talking over each other. “Beer! Kvass! Lemonade!”

I had my eyes glued on the angel, I was staring at her like she was a picture. You’d meet good-looking girls in the village too from time to time, but I’d never seen a beauty like her ever before. Or was it just because of what she was wearing and the fact she was on horseback? In any case I must have been looking real hard, because the angel looked back at me and smiled. Then she slipped down off her horse light as can be, like a cat jumping down from the stove corner. The captain and the lieutenant dismounted as well.

“Mind our horses then, boys, while we go get a drink.”

The guys all rushed forward to hold the horses. Holding horses like those ones meant something. But wait up! I pushed them all aside. They gave them to me to hold.

“Out of my way, all of you, or you’ll be seeing stars!”

I gathered all three sets of reins together and wrapped them around my hand. The three riders went into the inn. After a short while they came out again. The captain mounted up first.

“Thank you, young man!”

The lieutenant followed. Then the angel put her foot in the stirrup. Whether she wasn’t lifting her other leg strongly enough or what, she tried once and twice, but it seemed the saddle was too high for her. And she looks at me. So I grab her under the backside with my right hand, my left still holding the reins, and I hoist her up into the saddle. And then, as if of its own accord my hand ran down her thigh and her boot to the spur, and at the spur I squeezed her foot. She closed her eyes for a second, then she smiled, though kind of sadly. At that moment someone lashed me on the head with a riding crop. The angel exclaimed:

“Oh!”

I turned around. It was the lieutenant.

“Save your hands for your pitchfork, you peasant!” he hissed furiously. “Here, so you don’t feel wronged.” He threw a coin down at my feet. I gave his horse a mighty whack on the rump that made him jump in the saddle. Then they rode away.

The guys ran forward to pick up the coin. I was going to head home — I couldn’t drink with that kind of money. It would have been like selling your soul to the devil. But they grabbed me and forced me into the pub. And before I knew it there was a glass in front of me and it was, down the hatch, because it’s thanks to you. Pity he didn’t hit you twice and give us more. Then, when we’d had a few drinks we started a fight and smashed the place up. Benches, tables, beer mugs, glasses, whatever came to hand got used. One of them picked up a barrel of beer, and when he slammed it down on the floor we all got covered in foam. The Jew hid under the bar shouting:

“Police! Police!”

Every window in there got shattered. The door came off its hinges. And I broke a bottle over my best friend Ignaś Magdziarz’s head so hard he fell to his knees and wept:

“Why, Szymuś? Why?”

I didn’t know why either, and I wept with him, because he looked like someone had dipped his head in a bucket of pig’s blood.

“I don’t know, Ignaś. I don’t know. Maybe if you’d gone for me I wouldn’t have gone for you. Someone had to go for someone. Don’t cry. Next time we go to a dance you can smash me over the head with a bottle. I won’t say a word. I’ll even buy you a drink afterwards.”

But we were young. When we were enjoying ourselves we did it with all our might, with all our soul, as if we were going to be gone from the world the next day. And I had youth enough for two inside, it was bubbling out of me. There was no right or wrong moment, if there was a chance to have fun you did. There were times when inside you didn’t feel like doing anything at all, but outside you were having a ball, drinking and dancing like nobody’s business. Inside you’d be sad, but you could cheer up the saddest person. And the young ladies thought I was the best fun of all the guys in the village.

“I’m telling you, Szymek, you know how to make people laugh. Even more than Błażej or Łukasz. It’s like you had the devil in you. Hee, hee, hee!”

Because girls like it when you make them laugh to begin with. Making someone laugh is like forgiving their sins. Then it’s easier to persuade them to do the rest. You’d meet one or another of them as she was taking dinner to her folks in the fields, you’d keep her company a ways, joke a bit, put your arm around her, and by evening you’d be lying next to her by the river or in the orchard. And she wouldn’t be afraid it was a sin, because when young people sin it’s honest sinning. If you wanted a peek at this or that she’d show you, even let you hold it in your hand like a dove. Or in church at high mass, you’d sidle up to a girl and whisper in her ear:

“Sleep in the barn tonight, Wikcia.”

And no dog would bark at you, the barn door wouldn’t creak, and the ladder to the hayloft would already be in place. And the hay had just been brought from the fields, so it was like the girl had made you a bed in the meadow, and she was bursting with sunlight like a meadow warmed in the sun. And her blood was buzzing inside her so loud it was like you could hear grasshoppers when you laid your head on that meadow.

Or you only had to go down to the river at noon when the girls were taking their bath. They mostly went in naked, only the odd few would keep their blouses on. The river water was so clean it sweetened their bodies, so what did they have to be embarrassed about. The horses were always watered down there and they never once got the mange. The geese and ducks would go down to the water all on their own, they didn’t need to be driven. Fish swam about almost on the surface. And the bottom glistened from all the different pebbles. You could sit on the bank and gaze at the river to your heart’s content, think about how it flowed just like your own life. It was clean as clean can be.

And all the screaming and squealing! You could hear from way off where the girls were bathing. The river only came up to their belly buttons. Not many of them could swim. So they were more splashing about than bathing. They’d splash and stumble and push each other over, and run upstream and downstream, taking the river in their arms, or lie on their backs and daydream and let it carry them. They wouldn’t even notice me standing on the bank, behind a willow tree or a bush, staring at their breasts and bellies and thighs and backsides swirling around in the water. Till one of them would snap out of it and shout:

“Hide, girls! Szymek’s behind that tree!”

“The dirty so-and-so! Has he no shame!”

“The priest’ll never forgive you for this!”

“Like he doesn’t know what girls look like! They look like this — stare all you want!”

“Come on, Szymek, get lost now.”

“Sure, I can go away, but I’m taking Zosia’s things. Come behind the bush, Zosia, I’ll let you have them.”

“Give them back, Szymek! If I tell my mother she’ll have your guts for garters! I’ll never look at you again. And for sure I’ll never dance with you again! Come on, Szymuś, give them back. At least give me my skirt, or I’ll cry.”