Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

Actually, when father and mother were alive it was the same thing, whenever one of them would visit it was always in a rush. They’d arrive and spend the night then in the morning they’d be gone. Or even the same day, they’d say hello in the morning and goodbye in the afternoon. One minute they were there, the next they’d vanished. Like the crack of a whip. You didn’t even notice they’d been.

The next day already mother would start missing them again, when will Antek and Stasiek visit, she’d say. She was always worried that something had happened to one of them because they hadn’t been in so long. When father reminded her that Antek or Stasiek had just been the previous Sunday, she still wouldn’t stop worrying.

“That’s true, he was here. But what kind of visit was it. There wasn’t even time for the cheese to be pressed dry, or he could have taken it with him.”

Or when someone in the village asked if Antek or Stasiek had been, you didn’t know whether to say they had or they hadn’t. To say they’d been but they were in a hurry was the same as saying they hadn’t been at all, but they’d be coming, they would.

When they left for the city it was the same — like they were here a moment ago but now they were gone. It was as if they’d just popped down to the village or gone out to the fields and they’d be back soon. Father kept forgetting for the longest time, he was always wanting one of them to give him a hand or do a job for him.

“Maybe Antek could do it … Maybe Stasiek could …”

Then he got used to it, and it was only before going to bed sometimes, he’d be sitting there fit to drop, like an ox that’s been working all day, and out of the blue he’d pipe up:

“It’s been such a long time since they wrote.”

And mother would mention their names more and more often in her prayers.

Antek was the first to leave. He was those few years older than Stasiek, maybe it was his due as the eldest. Stasiek was still a little kid when Antek was already off chasing after the ladies. True, he always was a bit of a hothead. But to leave all of a sudden like that? It’s not right even to die that way. In the morning he was still plowing the potato field by the wood, then in the afternoon Kulawik brought him a letter from the post office. He came back from the fields, opened it, read it, and said:

“I’m going.”

“Going where?” asked father.

“Away.” He was so pleased he actually danced around the room.

“Away, you say?” Father thought he’d misheard.

“Away, that’s right. Away! Away!”

“When’s this?”

“On the five o’clock train tomorrow morning.”

“I won’t even have time to iron your shirt for you!” Mother was in despair.

“What do I need a fresh shirt for? The one I’ve got on will do just fine.”

“You might at least take a bath. I can bring the bathtub and put water on to heat.”

“I’ll take a bath there. Wojtek said in his letter they go to the bathhouse there.”

“But you haven’t even got a decent pair of shoes. And I could make you some new clothes.”

“They’ll give me shoes there, clothes as well.”

“We could sell the heifer, you’d have a bit of money to take with you. I could bake you a cake.”

“What are you talking about, bake him a cake,” said father, though he was more upset than angry. “His train’s at five, didn’t you hear? And the heifer’s still growing. It’ll be another two weeks or so.”

“So he could wait. The world’s not going to run away. Instead of rushing off the minute he gets back from the fields.” The poor thing started to cry.

“And what exactly are you planning to do there?” Father could be tough when he had to be.

“What am I going to be doing? You’ll see!” He waved the letter. “Wojtek says they go to the cinema every day. As for work, they only work eight hours a day, and they get paid for it as well.”

“Perhaps you should go to confession, son,” mother started to beg him through her tears. “When people used to go away they’d always go confess their sins before they left. There might not be anywhere you can go confess when you’re there. Or they won’t let you.”

“They go to the cinema, you say?” said father as if to himself, because he didn’t really know what a cinema was.

The cinema even came to our village soon after that. The day it was supposed to arrive, a crowd of people went out to the edge of the village in the morning and waited for it. Someone even drew in the snow with a stick, “Welcome to our village, Cinema.” People thought it would be a car or at the very least a carriage drawn by two horses. No one believed at first that it was the cinema. Two men on a wagon and some bundles. Plus, the horse was so skinny its ribs stuck out. Instead of a proper seat there was just a sheaf of straw covered with an old cloth. The sides of the wagon were all smeared with something as if they’d been transporting manure. And the wagon driver and the other guy were so drunk they could barely see straight. They tried to nail up a poster on the firehouse but neither of them could even hit the nail on the head, the guys had to do it for them. But almost the whole village came to the cinema, because it was wintertime, there wasn’t much work, and also the watchman had gone around beating his drum to say the cinema was coming. So there were almost as many people outside as in the firehouse, because there wasn’t room inside. People blocked each other’s view, but they stood there anyway. It spoiled it a bit, but they still stood there.

Father went down there as well to see what it was that was taking Antek away from the village. He didn’t say what it had been like, but afterward from time to time he’d burst out:

“It’s because of the cinema, it’s all because of the cinema. Who’s going to do the work around here when you leave? Your mother and I are getting on. Stasiek’s too young to plow or mow. It’ll be another three or four years before he’s ready.”

“What about Szymek?” Antek started up like he’d been stung by a horsefly.

“True,” said father. “But it’s like he’s not here. He’s not drawn to the land and the land’s not drawn to him.”

“The land! The land! I’m sick of that land of yours! Out there I’ll at least learn something! What can I learn from the land?!”

“The land can teach you if you only want to learn from it. But you go, you go. I just hope you won’t come crawling back on your hands and knees.”

And he left, in a huff at father, mother, Stasiek, me.

Though at that time I was away from home. I was in the police and we were going around the villages searching the farms for guns. He slammed the door so hard whitewash came down from the ceiling. Father jumped up and shouted after him:

“Don’t you go slamming doors when it’s not your house anymore!”

I came back a week or so later, soaked to the skin, frozen to the marrow of my bones, covered in mud up to my knees and more exhausted than after the hardest plowing. On top of all that, father greeted me the moment I walked in the house:

“Oh, it’s Mr. Policeman. He’s been chasing so many people he can barely move his legs. We wanted a priest in the family and God gave us a policeman. What did we do to deserve that?”

I didn’t say a word. I stood my rifle in the corner by the door and flopped down on the bench. I didn’t even have the strength to pull the cap off my head. Water was dripping down my face. Mother begged me, come on now, take off your cap, take off your jacket, pull your boots off, but I could feel sleep wrapping around me like a rope, round my body and my eyes and my will. On my back, underneath my shirt I could feel the lice starting to itch from the heat. But I couldn’t even be bothered to reach back and scratch.