Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

“What do you mean, almost?!”

“I just have one more spade length to go. I thought it would go quick as anything. The topsoil’s fine, but lower down it’s clay. I could’ve dug three pits in ordinary soil in the time it’s taken to dig this one. You chose a bad place. It’ll be damp there in the clay. Give me at least enough for a beer. I’m cruel tired.”

“Where did you get so tired?”

“Where do you think? Working on your tomb.”

I knew he was cheating me, but here you go, that’s for a beer, just don’t show your face again till the job’s done. And so he didn’t. Almost a full month passed. I thought to myself, I ought to at least go over to the cemetery and see how much he has left to go, maybe I could even finish it myself. I go over there, and my tomb hasn’t even been started. Not even a single spade length. There’s just the outline. I was furious. You lying bastard, you this, you that, I cursed him up and down and swore I’d get even with him. There I was giving you a half-bottle, giving you money for another, and for beer, and on top of everything you had the gall to make up stories about roots and clay!

For a whole week I went looking for him around the village, but it was like he’d moved away for good. Sometimes someone had seen him, but word must have gotten out that I was on the warpath and I was threatening to knock his block off soon as I found him, so he might have been hiding and sleeping during the day then coming out at night like a damn bat. Or maybe it wasn’t me chasing him, but he was the one following me. There was a reason they called him the Postman. As for me, all that hobbling about on my walking sticks and my injured legs, to the pub, to the shrine and back, I’d soon had enough.

I needed to get started on doing the digging myself, because I could have spent another week looking for him and it would have been a waste of time. I never got my spade or my ax back either. I had to borrow a spade off Stach Sobieraj. Luckily I didn’t find any roots or clay.

I was digging virtually with my arms alone, helping myself a bit with my stomach, because whenever I tried to push on the spade with my foot I got a pain that felt like it was coming up from deep in the earth. Though I often had to use my foot, because my arms weren’t enough on their own, and my stomach was sore as anything from helping my arms. I was drenched in sweat, I saw darkness in front of my eyes, I could barely stand, but I had to keep on digging, because who else was going to do it, even half a spade length was good. And I went on like that day after day, like I was struggling with a huge mountain I had to level to the ground as some kind of punishment.

Many days I didn’t even have the strength to walk back home. I’d go down to the road in front of the cemetery, sit by the roadside and wait to see if someone would be driving their wagon from the fields and could give me a ride part of the way. If no one came along I rested a bit, grabbed my walking sticks, put my spade on my back like a rifle, because I’d made a special cord for it like a rifle strap, and off I’d hobble. Some people even joked, they said, what’s this, are you coming home from the wars?

Sometimes I’d had enough of that tomb. The hell with it, I thought to myself, what have I done to deserve having to slave away like this, will someone finally tell me? Father and mother were long since in the ground, my brothers can get buried wherever they like. I’ll put Michał in an ordinary grave, in the earth, and me, when I die, at most the district administration will bury me. They owe me at least that much for all the years I worked there. I went on digging. I swore at the Postman, I cursed God, I cursed myself. And I kept on digging.

At times I regretted not having gone to my grave long ago, because I’d already dug a grave for myself one time, when the Germans took us into the woods to shoot us and ordered us to dig. I’d have been at peace now, I’d be nothing but dust and I wouldn’t have to dig a second time. I’d be lying there and I wouldn’t know a thing, I wouldn’t feel anything, think anything, I wouldn’t be worried about anything. And on the memorial it would say, Szymon Pietruszka, Aged 23, that’s how old I was back then. These days not many folks remember the war, but if you just go to that place you’ll see there’s a nice memorial, it’s clean and tidy and there’s fresh flowers in a jar, who knows who brings them but they’re always there, whether it’s harvesttime or no, mowing, potato digging, spring, summer, fall, whatever happens to be in bloom. Then on All Souls’ there’s also a wreath with ribbons and lit candles, and always a few people standing at the memorial and crying. Who’s going to cry for you when you’re gone?

When they were building the memorial people even came to me from the Borowice district administration, because the bastards had taken us all the way out to the Borowice woods. Three of them there were, the head of the council, at that time he was called chairman, the district secretary, and another guy. They had briefcases and they were all dressed up in suits and ties, even though it was an ordinary weekday, a Tuesday. I’d just come in from mowing the meadow, I was fit to drop, hot, filthy, I was sitting on the bench in my undershirt and Antek’s old pants that came halfway up my shins and had holes in the knees. I’d taken my boots off and propped my feet on them. But when they asked, are you Szymon Pietruszka, I wasn’t going to deny who I was. Szymon Pietruszka. I was taken aback, because I mean, what could people from Borowice want with me? It’s a ways away. I didn’t even know any girls from over there. To begin with, all they said was they’re from the district administration in Borowice, and they started smiling in this dopey way. Have a seat, I said.

“Would you have some glasses?” one of them said.

“Glasses? What for?”

The one who’d asked about the glasses turned to one of the other ones and said:

“Give it here, Zenek.” The guy called Zenek started opening the briefcases, out of one of them he took a quart-sized bottle of vodka and a loop of sausage, out of another one another quart and several dozen hard-boiled eggs, then out of the third another quart and half a loaf of country bread.

It was only then they said they’d come because they were putting up a memorial to us in the woods, at the place where we got shot, and they’d heard that one person got away, me, and they’d prefer it if everyone died and no one escaped. Because if one person escaped you’d have to write more about him than about the ones that were buried there. But otherwise no one escaped, this many men were brought there, this many men were shot. See, it’s all on the memorial. From here to there, all squared away. To say no one, it was like a bell ringing clearly. To say someone escaped was like he’d knocked off a piece of the cross. Or at least spoiled something.

“But I’m alive. What does that mean?”

Had I dug a grave? I had. For myself? For myself. They even shot at me, I’d been wounded, right? So it was like I’d half died as it was. If the bullet had been just a bit more on target I’d be completely dead. Besides, years later who was going to remember that I’d escaped. Only the ones buried there would be remembered, because every last one of them would have their name written on the memorial. I’d be there as well. What was the harm in agreeing?

“So let’s drink. Your health!”

But people see me, they know me, how would it look — here I am walking about alive, and over there I’m lying buried. Who knows, maybe it would’ve been better if I’d been killed with all the others back then. But I escaped, I can’t go around claiming I died with them.