Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

Father suddenly felt silly, he hung his head and sat there, half thinking about something, half just staring at the floor.

“Maybe I should go feed the dog?” he said after a bit.

“He just ate!” said mother, still annoyed.

So he took his tobacco from his pocket and started rolling a cigarette, and when he’d wet the paper he said:

“I’m not asking anything of him. I’m just giving him advice. He was never interested in the land, and here he’s got fifty acres coming his way. Fifty acres, do you know how much that is? It’s like if you took Socha’s land, Maszczyk’s, Dereń’s, and Sobieraj’s, and ours, and joined them all together. Five farms, and one farmer to run them. Who else is going to give him advice? Besides, do you think he’ll listen? He’ll do whatever he wants. He knows better than his mother and father. You say one thing, he does the opposite. You want the best, but he doesn’t give a hoot what you have to say. Or he’ll take the whole lot and let it all go to waste, and go off drinking and gallivanting. What does he care about the land. He never did what he was told even when he was small. Besides, let him do whatever he wants. We’re going to be dead either way,” he said angrily, as if we’d been quarreling.

But I hadn’t said a word. I’d just been sitting there listening to his advice. I even regretted telling him they had so many acres. Where did I come up with that number? No one in our village had that much land. I should have said eight or ten tops, and leave out the brother with the consumption. Or there could have been a brother, but maybe a cripple that had to be looked after for the rest of his life. Mother would still have said what she said, but the most he’d have said would be:

“The Wronas have got that much. And they want you for their daughter as well. That way you could stay here in the village, you wouldn’t have to move all the way out to Łanów. A person should die where they were born. They’ll never get as used to a different place. Jagna’s a hardworking girl. And they’ll probably give her a cow, cause they have two.”

I didn’t think he’d believe they had so much land.

“That many acres,” he’d say, “you’d have heard about it. Winiarski in Boleszyce, he has thirty-five and everyone knows him. And he was a councilman before the war. The priest and the squire would always be visiting him. At the harvest festival it was always Winiarski made the speech. He sent his son to study to be a doctor, and his daughter was a schoolteacher. Those people wouldn’t want anything to do with you if they had so much land. The drink’s making you imagine things. Keep drinking and you’ll end up like Pietrek Jamrozek. He calls his own mother a whore when she won’t give him vodka money. And his hands shake like leaves in the wind. The priest is always on at him from the pulpit. They take him away but then they bring him back and he starts drinking again.”

But maybe it wasn’t so much that he believed me as that he believed himself. And when he asked me how many acres they had, he only wanted me to agree with what he was saying. And I did, I said fifty acres, let him have that many if that’s what he wants, let him at last have his fill of land, let him get dizzy from it at least once. I got carried away. I wanted to needle him, but the way it came out it seemed like God had finally answered his prayers.

In the end, though, he must have realized it was all made up, because from that time on he never once brought up those fifty acres. And he never asked once if I was getting married. Nor even if we were still seeing each other. Besides, it looked like he was starting to get a bit confused in the head, and after mother died he stopped talking almost completely, he’d only say something every once in a while. He didn’t even worry about our fields anymore, what did he care about me getting married. There was just one time, when I’d stopped working at the administration, I came back from mowing and I was sitting there exhausted on the bench, and suddenly he asked:

“Is it harvesttime already?”

“Sure is.”

“Are the children old enough to help yet? You should bring them one day. I’d forgotten they’re my grandchildren.”

And just like the time before, I had to nod and agree with him:

“Yes, I’ll bring them.”

People keep asking me, when are you finally going to get that tomb finished? You might at least roof it with tar paper, keep the water out. Well I would have finished it, I’d have finished it long ago, if that was all I had to worry about. But as if I didn’t have enough on my plate already, here one of my pigs went and died. She was getting up close to her weight, she would have been a good three thirty, three fifty pounds. I figured, when I sold her I could get some more work done on the tomb. The walls have been up for a long time now, the partitions were ready even, all it needed was a roof and push comes to shove, people could be buried in it even if it was unfinished.

Chmiel was patient, waiting for when we’d start again, though he was getting old and bent over. Just one time he sent his old lady over to say his aches and pains were getting worse and worse, and by the way how were things with that tomb of mine, because he’d like to finish what he began. When I met him from time to time in the village he’d just nod back and walk on, or at the most he’d ask: so when? But like he wasn’t asking about my tomb, just in general. He was content with any old excuse, it’s because of this or that, Chmiel, though mostly it was, once I’m done fattening the pig. Everyone knows a pig’s the fastest way to make a bit of money. So long as it doesn’t get sick, you wait your eight months then it’s off to the purchasing center. Fatten her up then, fast as you can, he’d say, cause you might run out of time. The fact was, whenever I did fatten a pig there were always more urgent things that needed paying. First it was taxes, next it was quilt covers, then winter clothes for Michał, one thing or another, or I had to order a supply of coal, and the tomb could wait, luckily no one was dying. Besides, I didn’t rear that many pigs, one or two, as the chance came along. Because if you want to fatten a pig you need a woman at home, a guy on his own can’t handle it. Though sometimes I thought about taking out a loan, building a pig shed for a hundred or so pigs and starting to raise them for money like some folks do around here. If it’s not pigs it’s something else, but only for money. Take Ciamciaga for instance, the man can’t add three plus three but he started keeping sheep. No one had sheep in the village before. There were sheep once, but it was at the manor before the war. He even learned how to shear them. The first time he did it the poor creature was so cut up it looked like wolves had been at it. But now he shears, his old lady spins, his daughters knit sweaters, and everyone wears sweaters made of Ciamciaga’s wool. Or Franek Kukla, he started an orchard and now he sells apples by the cartload. He’s got apple trees all in long rows like cows in a big cattle barn. Plus each row is a different kind of apple. All the rows are straight and neat, all the trees are the same height. They’re all as clean as if he combed them every day. I think they even all have the same number of branches, because where there used to be more, you can see they’ve been sawn off. And on each one it’s like there’s nothing but apples growing, no leaves, no branches, no trunk, no earth even. Except it’s kind of quiet in his orchard, you don’t hear bees buzzing or birds chirping, it’s nothing but apple trees as far as the eye can see. I said to him one time:

“So you’ve got your orchard. But it’s kind of sad in there.”