Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

“Leave him alone, you and your chickens!” Father had had enough. “On and on about them! Like there was nothing in the world except for chickens. I wish that damn polecat would just eat the rest of them. Or the sickness would kill them all.”

At that point mother started crying again. But father must have needed her tears as well. Because he went off on her right away. What are you crying for, you silly woman? What are you crying for?

“It wouldn’t be so bad if you had something to cry about. But what is there to cry over? Did someone hurt you? No, they didn’t. So what is it? You’ve gotten so much into the habit of crying, your tears come whether you’ve a reason to cry or no. So then why? You’ll cry yourself out, then something’ll come along that you really need to cry your heart out over and you won’t be able to. What will you do, cry with dry eyes? With dry eyes you can’t even laugh, let alone cry. Crying’s like money, you need to keep some back for a rainy day. Because a person doesn’t have too much crying in them, that’s a fact. And what they have is all there is. If a person cried like you, with or without a good reason, they’d run out of tears a quarter way through their life, when they need them their whole life through. When the bailiff came you cried just the same, you thought it would do some good. But all he wanted was your sewing machine, the bandit, he didn’t give a tinker’s damn about your tears. So what are they for? He was dead and you cried, now he’s alive and you’re crying. Those tears aren’t worth a thing. That’s what eyelids are for, you squeeze them shut and your tears go back inside. Because otherwise you’d have to cry every time you looked at the sun. Every time the wind blew in your eyes. Or whenever someone poked you in the backside with an awl. Cut it out, for goodness’ sake! You’ve already cried your eyes out, all that’s left are little slits. Then afterwards it’ll be, come thread this needle for me because I can’t see. How can you see when the eye of the needle’s way smaller than a tear. Just so you know, I’m not threading any needles for you, you can do it yourself, go blind.”

He was all riled up, he went to the bed and tugged at mother’s quilt.

“Give it a rest. The polecats’ll kill more chickens. That’s what polecats do. The brown one will be just as good of a brood hen as the speckled one. I don’t know why you think hens are so clever. How smart do you need to be to lay eggs. Sparrows do it, crows do it, everything does it. God told them to lay eggs so they do. Let them so much as try on their own. The only thing they’re smart for is wheat grain. Go throw your tears down for them and see if they come running. For wheat grain they’d come. Though both things are like seeds. I’ll turn down the lamp, maybe that’ll make you stop. Tears like light. It makes them shine. If you must cry, cry in the dark. If we leave the light on now there’ll be no kerosene left for when the cow’s calving, you’ll have cried it all away. Or someone’ll see the light from the road and come running to ask what happened here. What could have happened? Nothing’s happened. Szymek’s back, is all. It’s not the first time. How often did he come back from being with some young girl. From dances. In the early morning. Drunk, sometimes beat up. Mother’s warming him up some dumplings from dinner. And she’s crying because she happened to have just dreamed he was never coming back. But who believes in dreams in wartime, only one in a thousand comes true, and it’s always the dream you didn’t have. If you have to cry, you should cry yourself out in your dreams. Not now, waking up and then crying. Tell me, what are you crying for?”

He must have gotten cold, he was wearing nothing but his long johns and nightshirt. He was barefoot because he’d gotten straight out of bed to let me in, the night was a chilly one and the earth floor was cold. He tugged at the quilt mother was lying under.

“Come on, get up and heat him up those dumplings if you’re going to.”

The moment she got up, he slipped back into bed in the warm place she’d left. He asked her:

“Did I say my prayers this evening?”

“You never say them if I don’t remind you.”

“It must have been yesterday then.” He covered himself with the quilt, even putting his head under.

He couldn’t stand it when mother cried. And when nothing would work to make her stop, he’d do all sorts of strange things. He’d hammer on a pail with the masher, or open and close the door, clatter the pans in the kitchen, or stamp his feet on the floor. Or he’d take the broom and pretend it was a rifle and he’d drill himself, calling out orders to himself the whole time like he was the colonel of a regiment. He’d shout so loud the windows rang. Another time he’d march back and forth across the room with his broom-rifle on his shoulder singing army songs that he knew from long ago, and since he didn’t remember all the words he’d hum and whistle and wheeze the other parts, because he didn’t even have the voice for it. And if that didn’t do the trick either, he’d pretend to cry along with mother, but much louder and more painfully than her. There were times he’d curl up and hide his face in his hands, he’d keep shaking his head and he’d start calling, Lord Jesus, my Lord Jesus, sometimes he’d even shed real tears.

We’d sometimes laugh so hard at father it made our bellies hurt. Though with me it didn’t take much, I’d laugh at anything at all. It was like a pair of invisible hands were tickling me under the arms, and even if no one was in the mood to laugh, I’d burst out laughing out of the blue and for no reason. We could be sitting at the table and eating, there was nothing but the clink of spoons and the sounds of eating, and that would set me off. We could be kneeling at our beds in the evening repeating our prayers aloud after mother. Or even when father was sharpening his razor and had me hold the other end of the strop.

The laughter would first of all start pricking me with needles, then all of a sudden it would spread like fire though a haystack and there was nothing I could do to stop it, however much I might have squeezed my eyes and my mouth shut and held it inside with all my will. I could have scraped my fists against my cheeks and pulled at my hair and hunched over till my head was between my knees, the laughter would still bubble up and boil up and I’d curl over laughing. Then when father started in on me, saying, what are you laughing at, you twit, I’d laugh even more. And then, when he’d sometimes give me a whack across the head, then everything in me would be howling with laughter, my head, my belly, my legs, my arms. Worst of all was when it happened at a mealtime, because father would stop eating and wait furiously till I stopped, but I’d laugh so much I almost fell to pieces.

“Come on, eat up while it’s still hot,” mother would say to calm him down. “He’ll laugh his fill and then he’ll stop. Everyone has to go through their own foolishness. Did you never laugh when you were his age? He’s still a child.”

But often she didn’t succeed in calming him, and when his fury got too much for him he’d jump up and grab me by the scruff of the neck and throw me out of the house, go do your laughing outside, damn you!

But I never got my fill of laughter as much as when father would make fun of mother crying. At those times he allowed us to laugh as well, he even encouraged us, go on, you keep laughing, maybe she’ll stop. So we all laughed. Even Michał laughed, though he’d been a gloomy kid ever since he was little and he rarely laughed. Because of that I didn’t like sharing a bed with him, because I could never have any fun with him before we went to sleep. He always either had a headache or a stomachache, or he’d tell me to stop because we’d tear the quilt, that we’d already said our prayers and God might get angry with us. When I tickled him it would sometimes make him cry. Even mother would say to him: