Wieslaw Mysliwski: Stone Upon Stone

I was tougher, I’d scratch and for a while it would go away. But he was a town kid and he’d probably never had to deal with lice before. He’d start scratching his head and all you could hear was scrit, scrit, scrit , like someone was planing a casket nearby.

“Cut it out,” I’d say, because I was starting to hurt from his skin. But he’d just keep on, scrit, scrit, scrit .

“Cut it out for chrissakes, you hear?”

And he’d just be scrit, scrit, scrit . He was going to scratch himself to death, or give us away. At one moment I got so mad I pulled my gun on him.

“If you don’t cut it out I’ll shoot you, I swear to God I will.”

“Fire away. Makes no difference to me whether I die from a bullet or from lice.”

That same day, in the late afternoon, the old man that had pointed the way to the cemetery came to visit. How he figured out which tomb we were in I couldn’t say. First we heard this light tapping on the cover. Our hearts stopped and I grabbed the other guy’s arms in case he felt the need to scratch himself. Then all of a sudden there’s this banging noise, and when you’re in a tomb it sounds like you’re inside a drum.

“Hey there, say something. I know you’re in there. It’s me.” I moved the cover aside a bit and I saw it was the old man from outside the house. He was kneeling with his hands together as though he was praying.

“Because of you I gotta kneel at the Siewierskis’ tomb, and they’re a right bunch of good-for-nothings. One of those bastards in there with you stole my heifer, the crook. But what can I do. I brought you some moonshine and some bread and lard. You ought to eat something.”

“God bless you,” I said. “How are things in the village?”

“Not good. There’s going to be hangings. They gathered all the men outside the firehouse and picked out ten of them that haven’t provided a levy like they were supposed to. The carpenters are building a gallows. When they’re gone I’ll let you know.”

The moonshine was strong — not at all watered down. We each tried a mouthful to begin with. He was going to refuse, said he didn’t drink, but I made him. Then we took another mouthful. It was supposed to just warm us up and help with the lice, because when you’ve got vodka in your system they don’t bite so bad. But would that work from two mouthfuls only? Your blood has to be properly drunk, so there’s not a single drop left sober. And if you could measure it, two mouthfuls wouldn’t even be enough to get your finger tipsy. So we had another drink. In addition, we didn’t want to waste the food, because who knew if the old man would come back again. So we drank without eating, like we were drinking to the dead, on empty bellies. He started saying no, he couldn’t drink any more, that it stank of beetroot.

“Drink,” I said. “You see, the lice aren’t biting. If you were sober you’d already be scratching away.”

So we drank, him a mouthful, me a mouthful, and so on in turns till the bottle was empty. Nothing was biting, nothing was itching, and the tomb seemed less cramped. You even felt you could have stood up and stretched. In the end we fell asleep.

Except that when we woke up, then the lice really started in. Once he got to scratching himself I thought I’d lose it. I gave him some of the bread and lard. He ate it with one hand and with the other he just went on scratching. Plus he started whining about whether there wasn’t a little drop of hooch left. There wasn’t. I could’ve used a drink myself. I felt sorry for him. I was itching like hell myself, but you could tell it was worse for him. In the end I pulled my belt out.

“Give me your hands, I’ll tie them.”

He started begging me not to do it because he’d itch even more. True, I thought.

“Then get a goddam grip!”

“I can’t though, it itches so bad.”

“Then eat sunflower seeds.”

“Sunflower seeds? Where would I find sunflower seeds?”

“Don’t ask questions, just get on with it.”

“I would, but how can I do it without a sunflower?”

“It’s easy. It’s so dark in here you can’t see a thing anyway. Just imagine you’ve got a big sunflower dial on your lap and you’re picking out the seeds. You’re putting the seeds in your mouth and biting out the insides. Don’t you remember? You found the sunflower at the edge of the village outside that one house. The one that was painted blue, with the pots drying on the fence and the cat sunning itself by the wall and chickens pecking in the dust. You slipped into the yard and tried to twist off the head of a sunflower but it wouldn’t come off. Then this girl came out of the house and said, I’ll get a knife. And she did. Take that big one, she said. Or you can take all of them if you want. And she kept smiling at you. What about that one, see, it’s got nice big seeds. You got it there? Just don’t spit the husks out on me.”

“It’s good and ripe, did you try it?”

“Sure it’s ripe. It’s fall, this time of year everything’s ripe.”

“You want to pick some seeds with me?”

“I’m not the one the lice are bothering.”

So he picked away. He’d only scratch himself once in a while, the rest of the time he picked seeds. You could hear them crack in his mouth and then he’d spit out the husks. I was already thinking he’d forget about the lice. Even I was itching less, though I wasn’t picking sunflower seeds. Then all at once he ups and says:

“At the edge of the village, outside that blue house? That was where they were growing?”

“Keep picking,” I said. “Why’ve you stopped?”

“I’m going out to get more. Maybe they’re still there.” And he starts getting up to go.

“Where are you off to? Sit the hell down, you’re fine here.”

“I’ll bring some more and you can have some.”

“What are you, nuts? The Germans are out there.”

“So what? You heard the old man — they already chose the ones they’re gonna hang. Maybe they already hung them.”

“They’ll kill you,” I said, trying to stop him. “There weren’t any sunflowers there. I was making it up. The sunflowers were in a different village.”

“You weren’t making it up. I remember them. And I remember the girl. She brought me a knife. She told me to take the one with the big seeds. And I did. But now I’m out of seeds.”

I buried him in the same cemetery, in the bare earth, without a casket or a funeral. I patted down the mound of earth, made him a cross. I took the wreath from the tomb we’d been hiding in, from the Siewierskis — if they were bastards they could do without a wreath — and I played him a tune on my mouth organ, because I always had my mouth organ with me. Honeybee, you damn fool. You should’ve stuck to picking sunflower seeds.

That was mostly how we buried people in the resistance, wherever they fell. Without a casket, in the bare ground. For the cross you’d cut down a birch branch. You wouldn’t even strip the bark off, just fasten two pieces together with a bit of wire or a strip of leather and you had a cross. And you didn’t leave any information, no first name or last name. The person just lay there and they didn’t know who they were. Anyone who stopped by on their way wouldn’t know either. The Lord God himself might not have known. Though every one of them had some kind of name. Grzęda, Sowa, Smardz, Krakowiak, Malinowski, Buda, Gruszka, Mikus, Niecałek, Barcik, Tamtyrynda, Wrzosek, Maj, Szumigaj, Jamroz, Kudła, Wróbel, Karpiel, Guz, Mucha, Warzocha, Czerwonka, Bąk, Zyga, Kozieja, Donda, Zając, Lis, Gałęza, Kołodziej, Jan, Józef, Jędrzej, Jakub, Mikołaj, Marcin, Mateusz. There wouldn’t have been enough room in the calendar of saints. And all of them had to deny their own names and rot like carrion.