Wieslaw Mysliwski - Stone Upon Stone

I was a bit angry, she could have told me on the way at least instead of waiting till we were outside her house. We’d have sat down somewhere and said our goodbyes properly, not just any old how. Though I had no doubts it was all true. Everyone has cousins they sometimes don’t even know, they don’t remember them, they don’t know they exist, then all of a sudden they show up like ghosts from the underworld. She must have felt I was mad, because she clung to me and asked me not to hold it against her. She had to go. She even had tears in her eyes.

“I’m going to miss you,” she said. “Believe me.”

My anger passed, but I was a little sad, as if she was leaving for the next world, not to stay with her cousin for a couple of weeks.

“Go then,” I said. “But come back quickly.”

“It’ll be no time,” she said.

“Of course it will,” I said. “Maybe I’ll take some leave too. I could fix the roof on the barn. I never have time to get to it.”

“Will you think of me? Think of me. Please. It’ll make it easier for me.”

It rained, I harrowed and sowed, I fixed the barn roof and the time passed like the crack of a whip. I wanted to walk her home the first day she was back, but she said she was in a hurry because her mother was baking bread and she had to get home quickly to help. The next day she left work early and I didn’t see her. This went on for a few days, if it wasn’t one thing it was another, forgive me, I’m sorry, I’m in a hurry, I have to be back earlier than usual, I have an errand to run. Till one day, as we passed each other in the hallway I said:

“You’ve changed since you came back, Małgosia.”

“Why would I have changed? You’re imagining it.” She disappeared into her office.

I wasn’t going to force myself on her. Though various thoughts started rattling around in my head. But one day I leave work and I see she’s walking slowly in front of me, eventually she stops and smiles that sad smile of hers and asks if I’m mad at her. Me, mad at you, of course not. Then could I walk her home maybe? And, like nothing had happened, she starts telling me how she and her cousin hadn’t been able to get their fill of talking, every day they’d gone to the cinema, to visit her friends, on walks, sometimes to a café, but she didn’t like the taste of coffee, she preferred tea, and most of all she liked some of the cakes, she even said the name of them but it was something strange. She could have eaten four at once, except apparently they make you fat. But I haven’t gotten fat, right? She gave me a flirtatious look.

“What about Januszek?” I asked.

“Januszek?” She seemed flustered. “You know, it turned out he was too small, so he didn’t have the operation after all.”

And again I believed her. If that’s what she said, that’s how it must have been.

Some time passed, I’d almost forgotten about her leave and I was even thinking it was time to ask her seriously if she’d be my wife. I mean, how long would we be walking from work to her house, over and again? She was still young, but I was getting on for a bachelor. I decided that at Christmas I’d have a talk with her, and before then I’d think everything through. Because strange to say, up till then we’d never talked about what was going to happen with the two of us in the future, it was like we were unsure of each other the whole time or we were hiding something from each other.

It was November, gray and cold and windy, put your arm around me, she said. We happened to be by the woods when at one moment she slipped out from under my arm and stood still and said:

“Szymek, I have to tell you after all.”

“So tell me.” I was sure it wasn’t anything important, I didn’t sense anything from her tone of voice.

“I was pregnant,” she said.

My heart started pounding so hard it almost jumped out of my chest. But I stayed calm, like I was just a bit surprised, and I asked her:

“What do you mean, was ?”

“Because I’m not anymore. That time, when I took time off, I went to a doctor. That was why I went away.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

It was as if the woods that were rustling all around us started to fall on me. Rage flooded through me. I didn’t know what was happening. Maybe that’s what it’s like to die a sudden and unexpected death.

“You whore!” I howled, and somewhere deep inside, tears began to choke me. Maybe I had to be furious to keep myself from crying.

“Szymek, forgive me!” She cowered, put her hands together like she was praying. “I was sure you wouldn’t want it!”

“You’re no different from all the other whores! Whores I can have as many as I want, as many as these trees! You, I wanted you to be the mother of my children!” I grabbed her by the hair and twisted my hand, she sank to her knees.

“Forgive me!” she sobbed.

I started hitting her in the face, on the head, wherever the blows fell. Inside myself I no longer felt rage, only tears like a flooding river, and it was the tears that hated her like nothing else in the world. I dragged her across the grass by the hair like a tree branch.

“Forgive me,” she begged. “Forgive me or kill me.”

I left her like that, weeping and beaten on the ground, and I set off walking quickly as if I was escaping, faster and faster.

“Szymek!” I heard her calling in despair. “Come back! We can still have children! As many as you want! I didn’t know! I was afraid! Come back! Szymek!!”

It was nearly night and a drizzle had started by the time I reached the village. The first house was Skowron’s cottage, crooked with age. It had a thatched roof and no soleplates. I dropped onto a rock by the wall to try and pull myself together. Skowron came out. He wasn’t even surprised to see me there. He looked at the sky:

“Well, it’s finally started. It’s gonna be raining a week or more, you can tell. Come inside or you’ll get wet.”

“No, I’ll be off in a minute, I just sat down for a moment. You wouldn’t have a glass of something, would you, Skowron?”

“There was a bit left over from Easter, but my old lady rubbed my back with it one time. It’s been aching like the blazes, evidently from the rain.”

I had the impression there were swallows chattering in the empty nests under the eaves, though how could there have been swallows at that time of year. I must have been imagining it. I was imagining all sorts of things that seemed to exist and not exist at the same time. The rain, the village, even Skowron standing on the stoop. The rain had set in for good, but I couldn’t feel it falling on me, I couldn’t feel anything at all. All I wanted to do was get drunk. But for that I’d have had to get up off the rock outside Skowron’s place and go somewhere. That’s easier said than done when you don’t know where to go. I didn’t want to be in the pub. The pub was good for drowning your everyday sorrows, when a hog dies, or hail flattens your crop, or you lose a court case and you need to tell someone about it. But here, if God himself had sat by me I wouldn’t have said anything to him. At most it would have been, it’s raining, Lord. But he’d know that already.

I remembered that Marcinek used to sometimes have vodka. Back when I was in the police I even searched his house. I didn’t find anything, but there was an old milk can in the pantry. What’s that, I asked. Kerosene, he says. I smelled it, pure moonshine. But let it be kerosene. You have to get along with folks.

Marcinek was sitting by the stove in his long johns and shirt putting kindling in the firebox. His missus was feeding the baby, but it might have been sick, because it was screaming to high heaven and she had to force her nipple into its mouth. The three other kids were already in bed all in a row, propped against the wall, and they all seemed sleepy though they weren’t actually asleep, because when I came in they all looked at me with blue blue eyes. This wasn’t Marcinek’s whole family. His eldest, Waldek, worked in Lasów minding cows for Jarociński, and the next one down, Hubert, had been taken in by his grandmother. But they all had strange names like that: Rafał, Olgierd, Konrad, Grażyna.