Wieslaw Mysliwski: Stone Upon Stone

But grandmother was just as much of a hothead as grandfather. Without waiting for him to write again like he promised he would, she left mother and mother’s brother Sylwester — the one that died later of dysentery — with her sister, even though they were both still small, and off she went to join grandfather over in America. People advised her against it, they said it was halfway around the world, that it was farther away than where the sun goes down, and people over there walk on their heads. Someone from Podleśna had come back from there and he was all upside down, he slept during the day and got up at night, and the dogs wouldn’t stop barking at him. He plowed in the night and mowed in the night, and one time he even went to market in the night. He didn’t sell anything or buy anything there and he never came back to his house. Eventually he washed up on the bank of the river. But grandmother ignored all the advice and the warnings.

People said afterwards that God punished grandmother for abandoning her children and chasing off after her man. Because when she was already on the sea a huge storm blew up. The sky was full of thick clouds, and it went as dark as the darkest night. The gale howled like a pack of starving wolves. Lightning cracked the sky in two over and over. And there were thunderbolts the like of which no one had ever seen, that smashed holes in the sea all the way to the bottom. And the waves crashed over the ship with all their might. People were pulling their hair out, calling on God and Our Lady and all the saints, and strangers were saying goodbye to strangers. There was a priest on the ship, and some folk rushed to him to make their confession, but others just jumped into the sea. Grandmother knelt down and started shouting out, “Łukasz, Łukasz, I swore to Lord Jesus on His Passion just like you wrote me to! I never went with that pig of an overseer, or with anyone! You’re the only one, Łukasz! If I could count the tears I’ve cried! If the priest could only pass on the holy secrets I told him at confession! Don’t believe my brother Felek! He’s a bad man even though he’s my brother! All he did was keep asking if you’d sent him any dollars! And saying that if you didn’t send him money he’d write to you and tell you things so you wouldn’t want anything to do with me. The key to the house is over the lintel on top of the door, if you ever want to go back! I left the children with my sister Agata, she’ll be good to them. I gave her a cow and all the chickens and some bed linen. If you say you’re their father they’ll know you. I wanted to tell you all this when I got there, but I’m not going to make it, Łukasz. God doesn’t want it. So I’m at least sending these words to you through Him, so you’ll know.” At that very moment a wave the size of a building hit the ship and the ship broke in two and sank, and grandmother with it. They say she always was a giddy one and that she liked to enjoy life. She never missed a church fair, or a wedding, or a christening, and she’d dance three nights in a row. And in the end she never even got her own grave, but instead she was eaten by the fishes.

Though if you ask me, eternity’s the same whether you’re eaten by worms in your grave or fishes in the sea. When the Day of Judgment comes, the folk in their graves and the ones from the sea will have to rise up just the same. And it’s a lot less trouble in the sea than when you have to build a tomb.

My grandmother on my father’s side, Paulina, died when I was still a kid, and I don’t remember her that well. Her husband, Grandfather Kacper, outlived her by a good few years, but what kind of life did he have. When he had to go to the outhouse, mother would send me out to keep an eye on him.

“You go, Szymuś honey, I’ve got pots on the boil here. Take grandpa behind the barn. If he wanders out onto the road again it’ll be embarrassing. And pull up a couple of parsnips for me.”

It’s hard to believe grandfather was supposedly the first person in the village to think up a hoop on the handle of a scythe. He either thought it up or saw it somewhere, people said different things. Some folks reckoned he must have seen it on his way back from the war. Someplace the people mowed with hoops on their scythes, and so when he got back he started mowing like that with his own scythe. I mean, what was there to think up. A length of oak rod, two holes in the grip, anyone could have thought of it. Besides, there are some things that nobody has to think up because they’re just there. A horsewhip for instance. It’s there and you crack it when the horse won’t pull. It must have come with the horse. Or the roof on a house, wheels on a cart, soles on boots.

Grandfather was supposed to have also started the fire brigade. Before, when someone’s place was on fire people would just run up each with their own bucket of water and when they’d emptied it onto the fire they thought they’d done all they could to help. The women would start their wailing, Lord Jesus, Lord Jesus! And the men would take out their tobacco and light up. Here something’s on fire, and they’re all sitting around wondering if it was God’s will or if someone set it deliberately. Because if it was God’s will there was no point trying to put it out. Though the fact was, there weren’t any pumps in the farmyards and you had to go down to the river to fetch water. And the houses were made of wood, with thatched straw roofs. One time half the village went up in flames, including our place.

Also, grandfather had gotten papers to say he had a right to some land, because he’d given refuge to a group of insurgents in the uprising. He didn’t remember how much land it was, but he said it was a whole lot. He could have been lord of the manor. Except that he buried the papers somewhere and he couldn’t for the life of him remember where. It was hardly surprising, for more than fifty years there’d been no need to show them to anyone or even admit he had them. You could be sent to Siberia at the drop of a hat, so the papers could just have gone and lost themselves somewhere. On top of everything else, that was the time half the village burned down, so it wasn’t just people’s memory that got muddled up, but even their land, and now the papers were gone, because they’d been buried when the land was arranged differently.

Father would beg grandfather by all that was holy to remember, because it was already going around that Poland was going to be reborn. There’d be an end of servitude, obviously people would be grabbing land, and whoever grabbed it first, it would be theirs for good. They even tried to remember together. They’d get up at the crack of dawn, say a prayer, then father would lead grandfather around the farmyard and they’d go step by step, ever so slowly, staring at the ground, and at each step father would say, maybe here? They’d pause, grandfather would think and think and think, father’s eyes would start to light up with hope, but mostly grandfather would say, no, not here. Though sometimes, as if he’d gotten some kind of inspiration, he’d say, you know what, we should dig here. And father would dig. He’d dig a hole, then fill it in afterward. Later he’d get mad at grandfather, and start going on at him about how the devil must have clogged up his memory, that grandfather was a freeloader, because he never forgot how to eat, and if he hadn’t drunk so much back then his memory would be fine now, that he remembered all sorts of things he didn’t need to. What a song and dance there was about grandfather’s memory. Some days my mother even defended grandfather, saying what was father getting so hot under the collar about, we didn’t have that land before and we didn’t need it now to keep us healthy. Perhaps God didn’t want grandfather to remember, and there was no point getting angry at God, because God knew what he was doing. And grandfather was all timid, his bad memory weighed on him like some great wrongdoing, he was afraid to even look father in the eye. It was only when father reached for his tobacco pouch, which was a sign he was through being angry, that grandfather’s words also got their courage back: