Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

Sometimes you’d just hang a forage cap on the cross, if the man had one. And it was, Sleep beneath the earth and dew, May you dream of Poland true. But not many of them had a forage cap. They mostly had caps with peaks, berets, ski caps. There were a few hats, a handful of four-cornered army caps, and once in a while someone would have a sheepskin hat or a fur hat. Some of them had hats that you didn’t even know what to call them, because they were whatever they’d brought from home or had come by during their soldiering. Mikus and Łukasik even had balaclavas like mothers make their children wear in the winter, with earflaps and a strap buttoned under the chin. But those two weren’t even sixteen, we’d found them sleeping in the woods in a clump of juniper, because the Germans had burned their village and killed their fathers and their mothers, they were the only ones from the whole village that had managed to escape. And if you didn’t have anything else you just wore a plain goddam cap. You just had to give it a good wash first, not to clean it so much as get rid of all the bad thoughts from the cap that might have taken root in the dirt. And you pinned a little eagle on the front, and under the eagle a tiny strip from a white-and-red flag.

To judge by the caps you might have thought we were a bunch of riffraff and pansies, not an army. A rabble that was only good for digging ditches, or building dikes, or beating game when the masters go hunting, not an army. But inside each man there was a devil, and each one of them had a heart of stone. They forgot about God and they forgot how to cry. And even when we were burying one of our own, no one shed a tear. It was just, Ten-shun! Because sometimes tears make bigger holes than bullets. No one dared so much as let their stomach rumble, even if they hadn’t had a bite to eat in three days and were hungrier than during Lent. Or even swallow loud. Or even sniff. And no one was allowed to whisper amen. I’d just look at everyone’s eyes to make sure none of them were wet. Because in my command, attention didn’t just mean feet together and hands at your buttocks. It meant attention in your mind, and standing up straight in your soul. Everything was at attention. I had a voice like a bell, I sang bass in the church choir and sometimes the priest even had to ask me to sing quieter, our church isn’t that big, you don’t want the Lord God to go deaf, do you? Remember you’re singing right in his ear. He doesn’t like it to be too loud, he even prefers it when someone’s feeling the hymn more than singing it, just like he prefers humbler people over greater people. So when I called Ten-shun! even a hunchback would have straightened up. But then, in the resistance my name was “Eagle,” and the difference between attention and at ease was the same as the difference between life and death. People might find it hard to believe that one word could have so much power. But it did. Like the power of fate when it settles on someone. Like the power of hell and heaven together. At attention a person can do anything, however much he doesn’t want to, or it’s beyond his strength. Like they say, he could knock over mountains and turn back rivers. At attention the heart beats slower and the mind thinks straighter. Who knows, maybe at attention you could even die without regrets. I sometimes wonder how so much power can fit in a single word like that. Whoever thought up that word must have known life through and through. Because there are times when you have no other choice than to say to your own self, attention!

If I died they were forbidden the same to shed a tear, they had to just stand at attention. At most someone could play a song for me on the mouth organ. “Stone upon stone, on stone a stone.” Because if I had to choose only one tune to take with me to the next world, that would be the one. Of all the tunes in all my life.

Sometimes I regret it didn’t happen that way. I’d have had it all over and done with, I wouldn’t have had to struggle with everything like I do now. Like with the tomb for instance. On top of that the district administration folks are always telling me how much grain I have to sell them, how many potatoes, how much beet, how much of this, how much of that, and every year it’s more and more. I’ll sell however much grows. A bitch won’t pup ten times a year, she’ll do it twice at the most. Likewise the earth’ll only give birth to what it can. And from you it’ll only buy the same shit. Though when I die you’ll take my land away anyway, it’s not like I have anyone to leave it to. You’ll be able to sell it and buy ten times as much. But while I’m alive it’s my land, and it’s just as well I feel like working it, because otherwise it’d be standing fallow. Yet you won’t get those folks to understand. They’ve never worked the land in all their lives, though they know all about it because they went to school. But you can only learn about the land from the land itself, not from any books.

For years they went on at me to get rid of the thatch on my house and put up tiles or tar paper, because there was an ordinance against thatched roofs. But it’s in perfectly good shape, it’s not leaking or anything. They say it’s an eyesore. If you ask me, though, that thatched roof of mine is handsomer than any amount of tile or tar paper or even sheet-metal roofing. Besides which, I’ve got the attic. Come take a look, goddammit, you’ve probably all forgotten what an attic looks like. Where are you going to find an attic like that under tiles and tar paper and sheeting? Those aren’t attics, they’re boxes. Crates. When it’s hot they’re hot as hellfire itself, and when it’s cold, up there it’s even colder. In my attic it’s warm in winter and cool in summer. Grain, flour, onions, garlic — it can all be kept up there without going moldy or without freezing. You can dry cheeses there, or hang clothes up to air. Or just go take a nap, when you’ve been working like a dog or you’ve had enough of everything it’s cozier than downstairs, there aren’t as many flies and it’s as if the thatch keeps the rest of the world at bay. What the heck have you got against thatched roofs? You know, you’d be better off building a road to the mill, because in springtime a pair of horses isn’t strong enough to pull a wagon out of the mud that’s there. Or find a blacksmith for the village, so people don’t have to go all the way to Boleszyce to get their horse shod. There’s not going to be an ordinance against horses any time soon. Have you heard the sound of rain on thatch? You won’t ever hear that sound under tiles or tar paper or metal sheeting — those make it sound like gravel falling from the sky. Under thatch it sounds like pure white grains of semolina pattering down. You can lie there forever listening to the rain making that sound. And if you need to gather your thoughts, you won’t find a better place to do it than under thatch. Not in the fields, not in the orchard, not by the river or in the church.

Also, I’ve got swallows under the eaves. When the little ones hatch they start chirping for food right from first light, and I wake up with them. There’s fewer and fewer swallows in our village, ever since people started getting rid of their thatched roofs. Because swallows won’t just build their nests again when you change your roof. They won’t take to any old roof. For instance they can’t stand tar paper, metal sheeting the same. With the metal sheeting, when it’s hot the heat makes their nests all sticky, while tar paper stinks. Storks, now, they’re more likely to get used to a different roof, so long as you mount an old wagon wheel up there for them or a handful of sticks woven together. Doves can be lured back too, you just need to put down some grain for them. Not to mention sparrows — to them it’s all the same what kind of roof you have, as long as they’ve got food to eat. But swallows, even if they’ve lived under the same roof as humans for years, they’re constantly afraid. The fear of God, human fear, trembling like aspen leaves. And they’re forever in flight. Forever on the wing. Close by one minute, way far away the next. Up high and down low. One minute skimming the ground, the next up a height. Like they were always on the run from something. From what, though? Sometimes you look at them up there, and it’s as if they’re a blade of grass making the eye of the sky water. Other times, seems they feel hemmed in by the world and they’re bouncing about like they’re trapped in a cage between the sky and the earth. Like they’re losing their senses from all that flying. They keep chasing, chasing. Chasing what? Because even when they fly ever so low over the house they make such sharp turns that they almost cut your eye, it’s like they don’t want you to even remember them at all. If it wasn’t for the fact that they’re half black you’d be forgiven for thinking it was the sun glinting up in the sky. It’s only when they’re high up that they get a bit calmer. Though even then they’re nowhere near as calm as storks, or doves. There are times the whole world is broiling, the heat’s so sleepy even the dogs are too tired to bark, they just doze in their doghouses. Even the chickens move over to the shade and put their heads under their wings. There’s not so much as a leaf moving. The flies can’t be bothered to bite. There’s nothing but the swallows trembling high up in the air or plunging down close to the ground. You wonder how they have the energy, what they’re doing it for. Then the next day there’s either a storm or there isn’t. Because swallows know no peace.