Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

He laughed:

“Ha, ha! What do I need a happy orchard for. All it has to do is make me money.”

Maybe that’s how things ought to be. Sometimes I’ve even seen myself going into that pig shed for a hundred pigs, inside it’s white from all the animals and the only thing you can see is the rise and fall of fat bellies. And it’s all mine. But I soon get over it. What do I need all that money for. I’m not planning to build anything. I don’t have anyone to leave it to. So one or two pigs is enough. Pigs take work. You sometimes don’t have time to cook your own dinner, you’ll grab a slice of bread with milk or with a piece of sausage, but a pig has to have two meals a day. I might not even have reared the one or two, but someone’s sow in the village would have piglets and they’d say, do you want one? Take it. They’re a healthy size, they’ll fatten up nicely. Or when I rode to market, coming home with an empty wagon seemed wrong somehow, so I’d ride back with a young pig at least.

One time Felek Midura convinced me to take one, he didn’t even want the money right away but later, whenever I had it. Or we’d figure something out, I’d lend him my horse for plowing in the spring, because it was difficult for him with one horse on that hillside of his. Or I could pay him back in hay in the winter, since I had a meadow and he’d sold his. Or if not in hay then in potatoes. Come on, take one, they’ve got little short snouts and tiny ears, they’ll be good eaters — even now I can barely pull them off the teat. So I took one.

But it had some kind of sickness in it. It ate enough for two piglets but it didn’t get any fatter. A whole year I fed it and it never grew bigger than a cat. A pig like that is the worst, you don’t have the heart to kill it but keeping on rearing it is a waste of time. Besides, what was the point of slaughtering it, you could hold the thing in your hands like a baby, why even bother. After a year I got used to having it around. I called him Squeals — the name just came to me. I kept saying to him, stop squealing, stop squealing, so he became Squeals. Besides, I’d started to feel he needed a name, I couldn’t just keep calling to him, come and get it, especially as the eating didn’t do any good. If I’d had more of them they wouldn’t have needed names. But when there was only one, and there he was all alone between the horse and the cows, he had to be called something. Oftentimes I used to sit myself down in the shed and watch him feed. And however angry I was that he wasn’t growing, I forgave him, because just watching him eat so healthily was a pleasure. Though one time I got so mad I grabbed him up away from the trough and hauled him over to Midura’s.

“Here, take your crappy pig back, damn you. You knew, that’s why you didn’t want any money. Yours are all fattened up and sold, look at this one.”

But the next morning I step outside and I see my Squeals running around the farmyard and grubbing about for food. It touched my heart.

“Squeals!” I called, and there he was trotting towards me at full tilt. It made me think. He was just a piglet, but he was capable of getting attached to someone. There had to be some intelligence there. Though it could also have been that Midura dropped him in my yard in the night to make it look like the pig had gotten attached to me. But I didn’t take him to Midura a second time. Just so he’d come back or be brought back yet again? Luckily I’d not gotten around to thinking what I’d do with the money once he was fattened up, so it wasn’t such a big disappointment. Because the one that died, ever since it was small that one had been meant to pay for the roof on the tomb. The moment I brought it back from market I put it in the shed, poured food in its trough, and said:

“Eat up and get big, you’re going to pay for the roof.”

Every time I fed it I repeated to myself that it was for the roof, that I needed to make sure it didn’t go on something more urgent this time. And it was like it understood, because you could almost watch it getting fatter. Though for my part I never scrimped on the potatoes or the coarse-ground flour. And the whey was all for the pig. When there wasn’t any whey I’d even give it milk. Sometimes I’d go pick nettles to fill it up even more.

Eight months hadn’t gone by and it was ready to be taken down to the purchasing center. But I decided to hold on to it a bit longer, it ate like the devil and every day was a gain, every pound meant more money. Besides, a pig has to be at least three twenty, three forty, mother always reared them that big, it’s only then that it’s a real pig. After it’s slaughtered there’s less waste, with one that’s not been properly fattened a good third of it can go to waste. Plus, when you take a big pig like that down to the center everyone wants to guess how much it weighs, everyone pats its back to see what kind of bacon it’s going to give, sometimes the guys even get into an argument about whether it’ll be three fingers or four. It makes your heart swell to think you’ve reared a pig like that.

It was almost there. I even stopped Chmiel of my own accord at the co-op one day:

“Not long now, Chmiel. In two, three weeks I’m driving that pig down to the center and we’re on for the roof.”

“You do that, make sure you’re not too late.”

Then one day I go in the shed and I see there’s hardly anything eaten from the trough, and my pig’s lying there like it’s sleepy. I prodded it with my foot, come on, get up. It did, but it was kind of sluggish. I grabbed it by the tail and it didn’t jerk or squeal. I pulled the trough closer and shoved its head in it, eat now. But it was like it didn’t have the strength to open its mouth. I thought, maybe it’s eaten a rat. Often when a pig eats a rat it can’t eat anything else for a bit. Except that if it had eaten a rat it’d be thirsty, rats burn like fire. But when I brought it some whey it didn’t even look up. I ran to the vet, but when he came all he could do was tell me to slaughter it and bury it.

The next day they came and sprayed my whole shed with something smelly. I had to take my cows and calf and horse and put them in the barn. Because when you went in there it made your eyes water. Even any of the chickens that got close to the cattle shed, their eyes watered too. And the dog, I thought he’d go mad. He sneezed and gagged, he foamed at the mouth and he clung to my feet so much I couldn’t get rid of him. Have a bark and you’ll get over it, I said, go on, bark like you were barking at a thief.

I even had a railroad rail ready to use for the ceiling, all I needed to do was go grease the right palm and drive up in my wagon. Because obviously you don’t buy rails like that in the ordinary way, you need a special opportunity. And opportunities don’t stand there waiting for you, you have to go after them yourself. I needed three lengths of about ten feet each. I went all over the place asking around, with no luck at all. Then one day I’m walking along the tracks and I see they’re switching out the old rails for new. I started talking with the workers, were those old rails so used up they weren’t any good anymore, or were they changing the railroad? No they weren’t, but there was going to be an express train on this route. What’s going to happen to the old rails? They’ll be sent for scrap. Well, I’d buy one of those, I could use it for the roof in the tomb I’m having built. It could be cut into three pieces and there’d still be some left over. They didn’t know about that, I should go talk to the stationmaster. I go to the stationmaster, I know him well, of course, and I say:

“Listen, Władysław, sell me one of those rails they’re changing out, I need it for the tomb I’m having built. I hear the express train’s coming through here. It can be the most worn-down one.”