Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

“Heavens almighty! Who gave you all those wounds, Mr. Szymek?”

“Different people, Miss Jadzia, some of it was at dances, some was in the resistance.”

“And you survived all of them? Lord have mercy!” And she asked me to tell about one of the scars at least.

“Then you decide which one, Miss Jadzia,” I said playfully. She chose the scar on my shoulder, a small one though it had gotten bigger over the years. And so I had to tell her how it got there.

I was spending the winter in hiding at the house of a guy I knew in Jemielnica. The village was a long way from any main road. To the south there were woods. And it was no ordinary winter either, there was snow everywhere and you could only travel by sleigh. The animals came out of the woods right up to the house. You’d step outside and there’d be a deer poking about in the yard, a hare hopping around, and partridges flying in like snow suddenly falling from the roof. What was there to be afraid of? I even moved my bed from the attic to the main room. Then one night, bang! bang! they start hammering on the door and shouting, open up! And before anyone could even open the door they smashed it in with their rifle butts. They virtually took me from my bed — I just had enough time to put my pants on when they started knocking me in the back and on the head with those rifle butts, and it was, forward march! Like they were in some kind of big hurry.

They’d come in two sleighs. But three of them stayed back to escort me on foot, while the rest went ahead in the sleighs. They didn’t even let me put my boots on — for them I was probably already a corpse. So they pushed me along barefoot in pants and shirt, following the tracks made by the sleighs.

The snow stuck to my feet, and from time to time I tried to rub one foot against the other. But right away one of them would thump me in the back. Though they kept hitting me the whole time anyway, probably to warm themselves up in the cold. Or they may have felt even colder than me, because every couple of yards one of them would bat his arms against his sides. They were wearing greatcoats and boots and balaclavas under their helmets, and gloves, but if you’re not used to it, you’ll be cold even if it’s not that cold. Plus they had their hands on metal the whole time, and metal is even colder than the ground.

To begin with I walked as if I was on burning coals, and I felt I wouldn’t make it very far. I wanted to get beyond the village, at that point I was planning to jump them, let them kill me where I chose for it to happen, not them, especially since there was no telling where that might be. Besides, why go farther when it was all leading to the same thing. But once we got outside the village I started feeling sorry that it was about to happen right now, and I thought, I’ll keep going a little ways farther at least. Why should I worry about my feet, they’re going to be dead either way, and it would be good to go on even a little bit. The sleighs with the other men were farther and farther away, it looked like they were sinking into the snow, and in a minute they’d be out of sight. The guys behind kept prodding me for walking too slowly.

Eventually, to make me forget I was walking on snow I started imagining to myself that I was walking over stubble. Stubble pricks and hurts just as bad, but at least your feet are warm. Though if you know what you’re doing, walking on stubble is no big deal. All you have to do is shuffle your feet along instead of picking them up. If you do that you can move as fast as you like, and you can run away when you’re being chased. And so I felt less and less that I was walking on snow, and more and more I could feel the stubble under my feet, I could feel the earth warm from the sun and dusty dry. I could even hear the chink of a whetstone against a scythe blade. The heat from the crop stuck in my chest. For a moment, way up overhead I heard a lark. But one of the bastards behind me must have heard it as well because he fired a shot over my head and the lark stopped singing.

My throat started to feel dry, as if from the baking heat from the grain and the earth, and I stooped down to take a handful of snow. At that moment one of them whacked me as hard as he could on the side of the head. I went sprawling and I thought about not getting up. I even wanted them to finish me off. But with them it’s never that easy. They don’t like it when someone chooses his own death. They have to take him to where they’ve decided he’s going to die. Even if it’s the same death. They started yapping like wolves, beating me and kicking me, and I got up. But it was harder and harder for me to walk. My ankles were aching. Every step felt like I was treading on a nail. So I started to imagine the grain must be full of thistles, and it was because of the thistles that it hurt so much walking through the stubble. Or maybe it’d been cut with sickles. Stubble that’s been cut with sickles feels like it’s packed with nails. Then I imagined my father was calling me from the far end of the field to bring him his whetstone, and I was on my way to him. Or that my cows had wandered onto the squire’s land and they were eating his beets, and I was hurrying towards them across the stubble, heart in mouth, as fast as I could, to shoo them out of there. At a time like that, who’d be thinking about whether their feet hurt when you can barely breathe, you’re so afraid that any minute now the squire’s steward is going to confiscate the cows before you get there. Or that I was racing the other boys across the stubble field, seeing who’d make it to the field boundary first. I won.

Those sons of bitches probably thought I was exhausted, because how could they have known that the whole way I’d been walking on stubble, at the height of summer, the height of the harvest, since they were leading me over snow. In the end they evidently got real cold themselves, because they started clapping their hands and blowing on them, and stamping their feet. On the left-hand side, right by the track there was a slope overgrown with juniper bushes, and at the bottom there was a deep twisting ravine. But they were so convinced I wouldn’t go an inch farther without being beaten that one of them even dug out a bottle and they all took a swig. They must have been telling dirty stories as well, because all of a sudden they all hooted with laughter as if on command. One of them opened his fly and took a leak. Right at that moment I ran for the slope. Before the first shots sounded I was rolling down through the junipers. Then I dropped like a sack into the ravine. For them it was too steep to chase me. They just stood there shooting. But only one bullet got me, right here in the shoulder. The rest hit the snow, the junipers, the trees. I didn’t even feel anything at the time, only later, when I was already safe.

From that moment on, Jadzia started giving me special treatment with the meals. She’d bring me a bigger piece of meat for dinner, or more potatoes, or a second bowl of soup. Whenever she came onto the ward she’d always ask if I was hungry or thirsty, or if I’d run out of cigarettes, she could go buy me some. A few times she even got me a pack with her own money. Every so often she’d come onto the ward seemingly for no special reason, and while she was there she’d straighten my blanket, because it’s gone and fallen on the floor, Mr. Szymek. She’d plump my pillow, because you’ll get a headache, Mr. Szymek, from lying on a pillow that’s all squashed up like that. And she’d always slip something to eat under the pillow.

“Just make sure you eat it during the night, when everyone else is asleep, Mr. Szymek,” she’d whisper, as if to the pillow. “And watch out for that guy by the window, because he sleeps with one eye open.”

Or when she was bending down for the urinal under the bed, she’d murmur in my ear: