Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

I like Christmas better. It’s always in the same place. You don’t have to check. Besides which, the year is finishing, and there never was a year you’d want to keep. And I love carols. Way back, when we’d all sing carols together at home, the walls would ring. Then when you went down to the village to hear them singing in other houses, you felt like the Star of Bethlehem that appeared over the stable was about to come to earth. Here there was singing, there there was singing, there was singing at all the neighbors’ and at the edge of the village, and even far, far beyond.

These days too, when Christmas Eve comes along I like to sing a little. Because carols you can sing on your own and it sometimes still seems that everyone’s singing along like in the old days. The one I like best is “God is born.” I still have some of my old voice, and when I take a good deep breath I can make the walls ring like before. The neighbors stop their own singing to listen to me. Quiet there, Szymek’s singing. On a frosty night they can hear me all the way at the end of the village. Even Michał’s all ears when I sing, like he wants it to go on forever.

Sometimes I try and persuade him, if you want I’ll teach you and then the two of us can sing together. Say after me, God is born. First the words, then later the tune. They’re not hard. God is God, obviously. Is born, you know that too. I was born, you were born. A dog is born, a cat, a foal, a calf. Anything that wants to live has to be born. Remember, in the spring we had chicks, they were born as well, except from eggs. We used to sing this one every Christmas. We’d sit around the table, it was a different table back then, me, you, father, mother, and Antek, Stasiek would be in mother’s arms. When mother was serving the food she’d always give him to you to hold, because he didn’t cry when you had him. One time he peed in your lap. God is born, that’s all there is to sing, don’t be afraid.

Though when I was a young man I liked Easter too. In the fire brigade we’d always stand watch over Christ’s tomb on Good Friday. In our uniforms with all the straps, with our axes at our side, we’d compete whose uniform shone the brightest. The whole week leading up to it we spent polishing our helmets and boots. A helmet like that, the best way to clean it properly was first with ash, then spit, then cloth, and it would shine like a monstrance, when you wore it you looked like Saint George, or maybe another saint, I forget which one used to wear a helmet. For the boots the best thing was a mixture of soot and sour cream, then rabbit skin to give them a shine. Though beforehand you had to go all over the place to try and borrow boots from someone. Because none of the young men had tall boots, only the farmers had them, and then only the better-off ones. Four of us stood watch so we needed eight pairs for the changing of the guard, plus everyone had feet of different sizes, sometimes we had to go all the way to other villages looking for boots, and they were rarely a good fit for everyone. You often had to stand there in boots that were too small for you. They’d pinch and chafe, your legs would go numb up to your knees, and on top of that people would come to look at the tomb, so they’d be looking at us as well, and afterward there was no end of gossip in the village, so-and-so was standing crooked, so-and-so was rocking from side to side, so-and-so was blinking like you wouldn’t believe. But when it came to me they always said, he was standing straight as an arrow.

Then Easter Monday would come around and Dyngus Day, and we’d go from house to house from the early morning wherever there was a good-looking girl. We’d splash the parents a bit first, because you had to, then you’d throw more water over the daughter, though not too much, so you wouldn’t get it on the walls after they’d been freshly whitewashed. Because if her folks got mad they might not invite you in for something to eat and drink. It was only later, once we’d gone around to a dozen or so houses and we were on the tipsy side, then we’d go all out. We’d toss whole potfuls, whole bucketfuls over them. Any woman that was on her way to church or from church, whether she was single or married, none of them was safe. Some of them we’d lure all the way to the well. Some of us would keep her there, others would draw the water, the girl would scream and we’d all have a good laugh.

One time Zośka Niezgódka managed to get away from us and ran off towards the river. Unluckily for her we caught up with her by the bank. She cried and pleaded with us, she said she had a new dress on, that she had new pumps, a new blouse, everything was new, because her aunt had just sent it from America, and she’d be afraid to go back home if it got wet. So we took all her clothes off. But she cried and begged even more, when she struggled her boobs jumped up and down, and down below she had red hair. Stand still, Zośka, or your maidenhead’ll break and then none of us’ll want to marry you. We grabbed her by the arms and legs and flung her in the river.

We’d always bless a whole kopa of eggs, five dozen of them. We’d color half of them red by boiling them in onion skins, the other half green with young rye. And it was always me that took them to be blessed, I never trusted anyone else to do the job properly. I’d squeeze through to the front when the priest got started so the most number of drops from the sprinkler would fall on my eggs, because farther back the priest just waved the thing and hardly any drops made it that far. I still did it even after I grew up. It was only during the war, after I joined the resistance, that Antek started going, and after him Stasiek. But they didn’t keep it up for long. First one of them moved away then the other, and once again it became my job to go get the eggs blessed, because what kind of Easter would it be without blessed eggs. I could go without cake, I could go without sausage, but there had to be blessed eggs. When you eat one of those blessed eggs, even if you’ve got nothing to be happy about, it’s always hallelujah.

It was only those two years I spent in the hospital that I didn’t get my eggs blessed. But when I came home, the first Easter I boiled a whole kopa just like before. Though I didn’t have any of my own, I had to buy stamped ones from the co-op, because my chickens weren’t laying yet. Besides, I only had two chickens anyway, and a rooster. I’d just got the brood hen sitting on new ones, they hadn’t even hatched yet. I colored them all red with onion skins, because I didn’t feel up to tramping out to the fields for new rye, not on those lame legs of mine. I barely made it to the church. And I left home plenty early, if my legs had been healthy I could’ve gotten there and back again five times over. I thought I’d plop myself down in the pew and have a bit of a rest before the priest started the blessing, but I almost arrived too late, the priest was already going around doing the blessing. Fortunately he’d started from the side altar, and there was a whole crowd of people, in a lot of places they were having to stand, because our parish serves five villages, so before he got to my pew I’d already found a place between Mrs. Sekuła and some woman I didn’t know.

Except that when I leaned over to untie the scarf, because the basket was wrapped in mother’s old headscarf, the walking stick fell from my hand and crashed to the ground so loud it was like a thunderclap in the church. The noise went all the way up to the ceiling. Even the organ gave a groan in the choir stalls. Right away every head turned in my direction and frowned. The priest stopped the sprinkler in midair and followed where everyone was looking. I got all embarrassed, and for a moment I regretted wanting to get the eggs blessed. Why couldn’t I have waited till next Easter, maybe I’d be walking better by then.