“Jesus!” He swayed for a moment with his hand to his eye as if he didn’t know whether to fall or not. I helped him out with a pretty gentle blow under the elbow and he dropped down at my knees, moaning: “My eye! I can’t see! My eye! You fucking bastard!”
I wondered whether I should keep fighting, most of all I’d have liked to stomp him into the ground. I just pulled his hand away from his eye and I
said, Look at me with that bloody eye of yours, you son of a bitch, I want you to remember this. He thought I was fixing to keep at him and he burst into tears:
“Don’t hit me anymore! Leave me alone! We’re from the same village!”
Except that while Jędrek was begging for me to spare him, Bolek had recovered and was coming at me from the side with a knife. I might not even have seen it, but there was a sudden flash, as if the sun had glanced off the gold cross on the church steeple. Plus, a well-wisher in the crowd warned me at the last moment:
“He’s got a knife!”
It was too late for me to knock the knife out of his hand because he was already swiping it at me. But I managed to dodge, and I gave him an almighty kick between the legs. He folded in two, and the knife flew out of his hand like a little sparrow. I lifted his limp body from the ground. With my left hand I held him up by his lapels, and with my right I started hitting him as payback for the knife, slowly, with pauses, because I could barely keep on my feet myself. Though maybe I only thought I was hitting him because of the knife, and really it was for that damned field boundary that had been plowed over so many times. I pulled him up every time he started slipping back down, and I kept hitting him. He came round and passed out again in turns, as if he didn’t even feel he was being hit. I was running out of strength, but I still had so much rage in me it probably wouldn’t have been satisfied even if I’d killed him. In the end blood welled up out of his mouth.
“Let him go. He’s had enough,” some angel said to me from the side. And I let him go.
He dropped like a lump of earth, but my legs buckled as well and I almost fell down with him. For a moment I stood there like a drunk, afraid to take even a single step, it was like someone was striking sparks in my eyes. Then I heard the angel’s voice again:
“Come sit here, young falcon.”
I turned my head, and right by me I saw a stall, and the owner sitting behind it. She was a plump old woman, her face was all pitted with the smallpox, but the angelic voice was hers. She gave a kind of strange smile, as if two different smiles were competing on her face, maybe it was because of the smallpox, or maybe I was just seeing double. I suddenly remembered I was supposed to get the rye milled with Zośka. I looked around, but there was no sign of her.
“Don’t waste your time looking for her,” said the stall owner in her angelic voice. “She squealed and squealed, then off she ran. That’s young women today for you. Come over here and rest up.” She put a stool out for me in front of the stall. She even took her headscarf off and laid it down on the stool. “Szymek’s your name? I heard her calling you that. Nice name. Pull your jacket off and I’ll sew the buttons back on, they’ve all gotten ripped off.”
She came out from behind the stall and removed my jacket. She took it to the neighboring stalls, and a moment later she came back with a handful of buttons.
“Here. These’ll look even nicer than the old ones.”
She squeezed back behind the stall and started sewing. As I watched her worn, swollen hands at work, she picked a string of pretzels from a pile in her stall and tossed them into my lap.
“Here, have something to eat, young falcon. You’ve been working hard. That you have. There’s still strength in this country. They can’t put us down so easily. It was only the first one you didn’t do enough to, the wagon wheel was what finished him off. That last one, he’ll have had enough for the rest of his life. It was quite a show. People were running away like they were being blown in the wind. A couple of the stall owners even closed up shop. They must have had something on their conscience, they still had merchandise and they could have done business till evening. Today there’s no more selling to be done. But it was worth coming. There’ll be something to
remember. Cause usually fairs come and fairs go, they’re alike as peas in a pod, what’s there to remember? How many pretzels you sold? Selling on its own, that doesn’t make a church fair. A real church fair is either when the bishop comes, or there’s a fight. Back in the day there was more fighting. One year in Radzików, on Saint Vincent’s Day, they started scrapping right after morning mass and they went on all through high mass, they were still at it after it ended. People were beginning to gather for the evening service and the fight was still going on. One of them fell on my stall, he had a knife wound from ear to ear and he spilled blood all over my pretzels. I had to go through each bunch one by one and wipe all the blood off. Half of them I had to throw away. And it had all started from nothing. First one guy with another guy. Then there was no telling who was fighting who, they were all scrapping together. You couldn’t even tell which side was against which, all the sides got mixed up. It was just one big free-for-all. The priest came out with holy water and a sprinkler, the organist came, the verger brought a cross, and they started ringing the church bell. But they only got as far as the edge of the tangle, they couldn’t go a step farther. The organist sang for a bit, the priest sprayed them with holy water, and off they went. And the boys just kept on fighting. Here.” She threw me another string of pretzels. “Eat. I’m not going to sell them today anyway. That way I won’t have to cart them all back home. Look – with this one a piece of the cloth’s been torn out as well. But I’ll patch it up for you. With the dark color and it being next to the button, it won’t show. That suit’s good on you. But you’d look even better in brown. With a light blue shirt, and a spotted necktie. You needn’t have any regrets with that young lady of yours. It’s just as well she ran off, she wasn’t meant for you. All she did was cling to your coattails instead of cheering you on. With a girl you have to feel like she’s part of you, then you can get hitched. That one, she just stood there squealing. If it were me, I’d have at least bitten one of them on the hand or kicked him in the leg. She wouldn’t have been any kind of wife or housekeeper for you, nor a mother to your
children. You could tell from how she walked she wasn’t the one for you. And she’d have been a downright quarrelsome one. After the first baby you’d have had a real shrew at home, then in the years to come she’d be an absolute she-devil. All you’d be thinking about was where you could go so as not to have to be at home. God wouldn’t call you to him yet, because God only calls people when they get old, so you’d either have to find another woman or turn to drink. Sometimes the pub can help, but that’s no good in the long term either. It often happens the road from the pub leads straight to the noose. Though truth be told, with a young falcon like you no woman’s going to last long, however rich or good-looking she might be. She can lock the doors and the windows, close the chimney vent, tie him up with a rosary even, he’ll still get away. And all those things he swore before God, it’ll be like he spat them out, all his oaths will come undone. Because he’s not made for the happiness of one woman, but to bring unhappiness to many. Besides, why should you be in any hurry to wed. Marriage isn’t so sweet. Enjoy yourself while you feel like it. Because as long as you’re enjoying yourself, death’s going to stay far off too. I’ve lived through all sorts of things and I know. I’ve had three husbands. Life was good and bad with them, though with each one of them it was different. But I recall more raising them like children three times over, than them marrying me three times. It was lucky I had my pretzel stall, I’d barely buried one and the next was wanting a wedding. They flocked to me, that they did, like it was easier to die at my side. But after three of them I said to myself, enough. What am I, a graveyard? I’ve got my pretzels, I’ll go sell them here and there, I’ll be content if the guys fight over me once in a while. Because fight they did back when, young falcon, they’d fight till the ground ran red with blood, like the earth itself was bleeding. They fought with knives, iron bars. Whatever came to hand. One time, one of them smashed the other over the head with a figure of the Virgin Mary. The one that got the Virgin Mary over the head, he was my first. I would have preferred the other guy, but I felt sorry for the first one. He sold saints, I had
my pretzels and our stalls were always next to each other. But he didn’t live long. The second one I got from a fight as well. He made this huge ruckus at a Saint Sabina’s Day fair in Wojciechów, and at some point it just popped out of my mouth, you’ll be mine. And he was. Till a policeman shot him. He went for the policeman when he was being taken to jail. The third one, he stopped for a moment right there in front of the stall, where you are now, and he said, I’ll buy all these pretzels, and twice as many more again, but you have to be mine. I was. Except he could never get over the fact I’d had two men before him, and he’d get drunk every day. And whenever he was drunk he’d grab an ax and start in with, Throw them out, throw them out, you bitch, or I’ll cut you up as well as them. And he drank worse and worse. Till I came back from a fair one day and I see my third one dangling from a rafter. From that time on I never wanted them to marry me.” She tossed me another bunch of pretzels from the pile. “Dig in, they’re made from good flour. And there I was thinking nothing was going to happen. High mass was already over, and there was nothing but people asking, How much a bunch, how much a bunch. And they were all so polite, they were more like nuns in disguise than young men. I’m not complaining, I did decent business, but I was thinking it wouldn’t be a good fair. Did you not have a knife? You should have used a knife if he went for you with one. The Lord would have forgiven you, he could see it was one against three. But you shouldn’t have kicked him between the legs. You can smash people up any which way, but you have to respect between the legs, young falcon. However much of a bandit the other guy is, what’s between the legs is sacred. It’s like you were kicking God himself, who gave birth to all of us and told us to give birth to others. Even him, though he’s God, he didn’t have any other way of coming into the world. He supposedly came from the Holy Ghost, but what could the Holy Ghost have done without the Virgin? What’s between your legs is life, it’s death, all sorrows and joys, from it one man is good and another bad, one is one way and one the other. It gives us treachery and wars, kings and
do-nothings and saints. All that was and all that will be comes from there, young falcon. And do you know where dreams lie? Between your legs. It’s from there that they come out to you at night so you can dream them. Whatever’s between your legs is in your heart and your head too. Because what’s there stands above it, the way eternity stands over a split second. Without his head a man is nothing but a fool, and without his heart he’s a stone. But kill what’s between his legs and it’s like you drove him out of paradise all over again. After that he’s got no interest in either sin or salvation. Once in a while a nightingale’ll appear in his throat and sing. But it’s like it was singing about how he was driven out.”
I must have eaten a dozen strings of pretzels, but she wouldn’t take a penny from me. She just wanted me to promise I’d come to the Assumption Fair in Milejów. I promised. As for the Prażuchs, since that day it was like they’d gone underground. Though once in a while someone would tell me they’d been making threats, because everyone in our village heard about the fight. Apparently they even needed to get a doctor out for Bolek. The old man supposedly said I’d have to pay for the doctor. But soon after that I joined the resistance and stopped giving a damn about the Prażuchs. I thought I was done with them, that at most the field boundary would get plowed back over after the war.
But one time I went to pay my folks a visit in the night. The journey went well. It was quiet and deserted, there wasn’t a soul about, the houses were all asleep and not even any dogs barked. It was kind of like in the old days, when I’d often be coming back home from some young lady at that hour. You almost felt like asking the sky, So where’s this war I hear about?
I was almost halfway through the village, I just had to pass Dereń’s place and Maszczyk’s and it was our house. Then all at once, out of the darkness, from only a few yards away I heard in German: “
Halt!
” And a flashlight gets shined in my eyes. Without a second thought I dodged sideways into Oryszka’s yard, I knew every lane around here. There were shots and a
clatter of boots. I vaulted the fence into Niezgódka’s farm. Niezgódka’s dog started woofing furiously. Behind me, again I heard: “
Halt, halt!
” More shots rang out. From Niezgódka’s I ran behind Kwiecień’s barn. Luckily Kwiecień’s dog didn’t have time to wake up, or maybe it was just too lazy, in any case it never even barked. Then I crossed Gawil’s farm and took the hollow behind the firehouse to Barański’s. I thought about maybe climbing into Barański’s wagon house and waiting things out there. Barański’s place was set back a bit from the road and he was well off, maybe they wouldn’t go looking for me there. Plus there was a German lieutenant that had been seeing Irka Barańska, maybe he still was. Except I forgot that the Barańskis had a devil of a dog. The moment I squeezed between the lilac and jasmine around the edge of their place, the dog starts up like a fury and comes at me from way the other end of the yard. On top of that it was dragging its chain over some wire, and the wire and the chain made a barking noise along with the dog, like they were mad too. Over on the road, right away there was the stomp of boots.
Halt! Halt!
And a burst of gunfire from the orchards in the other direction.
Things weren’t looking good. I decided to try and make it down to the river, it wasn’t far and maybe I could beat them to it. I crept around the backs of the fenced yards to Siudak’s smithy. I squatted there for a moment, listening whether I couldn’t hear any suspicious noises, then I snuck over to the other side of the road. I slipped into the passage between żmuda’s place and Gabryś’s. Then I followed the edge of the pond through the alder thicket and came out behind Zdun’s barn. I thought I was safe already, because from Zdun’s place the river is just across a meadow, and over the river there’s a slope then woodland, and they could kiss my ass. I even sat down a moment to catch my breath. Then all of a sudden there’s a rustling in the bushes, I reach for my pistol, and this tiny little mongrel pops out like a sprite and starts sniffing at me. I felt all warm inside, I thought to myself there’s dogs and dogs. So I tried to stroke him, and the damn thing bites me on the hand
and starts yapping. So that’s the kind of dog you are, you little bastard! I kicked him away, he gave a yelp and barked even louder. I thought, there’s nothing for it, I’ll try and be nice. I wanted to appeal to his doggy logic, make him calm down: