We’d finished lunch and we were just sitting around the table, me and father were smoking while mother washed the dishes. It was Sunday. All of a sudden a black limousine pulls up outside the window. Mother took fright. Who are they coming to see? It was us. Jesus and Mary, it’s Michał! Lord in heaven, Michał! Son! We thought something had happened to you! We didn’t hear a word from you all these years. Then there was the war. So many people died, and now after the war they’re still dying. So you’re here! He was looking very smart, he wore an overcoat and a hat, leather gloves, a cherry-red scarf, the driver of the limousine followed him in with two suitcases. Father’s voice trembled – Michał? Tears were rolling down mother’s face. The cases were so heavy the driver staggered as he crossed the threshold, then he put them down in the middle of the room. But Michał told the man to go wait for him in the car, because they had to be heading back before long.
A whole swarm of kids gathered around the limousine like flies on shit, they touched it, patted it, stared through the windows. The driver just sat there stony-faced. In the end father went out and shooed them away:
“Stand back there. Stop patting it, it’s not a cow. You’ll scratch it if you’re not careful.”
Older people stopped to look as well, wondering who’d come to visit the Pietruszkas. No one would believe it was Michał. It was only when father sent Stasiek out to tell people it was him. No one in the village had ever seen a car like that. Before the war the squire had a limousine, but it was only half the size of this one and it had an open roof, this one was all closed in and it had windows like a house. One time the bishop came for a confirmation in a limousine, but it couldn’t have held a candle to this one, even though it was all decorated and the bishop was in his purple.
The first thing Michał did was put his arms around mother and hold her for a long time, don’t cry, mama, come on now, don’t cry. Us he kissed just twice, once on each cheek. Then right away he started opening the cases. He’d brought all kinds of things for mother and father, though us brothers got our share as well. Me, I had socks, a tie, a scarf, some shaving soap. Mother got some material for a dress, a headscarf, needles and thread, cinnamon and pepper. Father, tobacco and cigarette papers and some winter gloves. Antek got a penknife with two blades and a corkscrew, Stasiek a mouth organ, and both of them got a shirt. Plus there were other things.
He said he was sorry to only come for a short visit, but he promised the next time he’d stay longer, maybe he’d even come for the harvest, because he’d not had a scythe in his hands all these years and he felt like doing some mowing, he wondered if he’d still know how. Today he’d just come by to see how we were all doing, how we’d gotten through the war. Since the end of the war he’d kept meaning to come see us, but something more important always got in the way. He’d not even had any time off till now, but he’d be back, for sure he’d be back.
There were some dumplings and broth left over from dinner, mother wanted to heat it up for him, but he said no, he wasn’t hungry, and besides they’d had something to eat on the way. He only drank some milk, because
mother had just done the afternoon milking and it was still warm. He knocked a whole mugful back in one, it must have been more than a pint, and he actually gave a sigh and said it’d been a long time since he’d drunk real milk like that, straight from the cow. He even seemed to be made sad by the milk, because he fell to thinking for a moment. Mother said maybe he’d like some more, or she could pour some off into a bottle and he could drink it on the way back.
He laughed, as if about the bottle, though there wasn’t really anything funny about it. When he was apprenticed to a tailor and he’d come home every Sunday, mother always put milk in a bottle and he took it with him. But right away he hugged mother and kissed her on the forehead as if to say sorry for having laughed like that.
I found it hard to get used to the idea that this was Michał. Maybe it was because he’d dropped by so unexpectedly, plus he was about to leave again right away. It was another thing that it had been donkey’s years since I’d last seen him, just before the war. That time too he came out of the blue, because it wasn’t a Sunday like usual but the middle of the week, a Wednesday or Thursday. That time he’d been kind of bitter or sad. Father and mother both asked him, what’s up, son? Tell us. But it was like he’d lost his tongue, he just sat there thinking and thinking, and it was only when he was leaving that he said there was going to be a war and not to worry about him if he didn’t visit. Then later, after the war had started already, he came by wanting to see me because he had some important business, but he’d never gotten around to telling me what it had been.
I even thought about asking what he’d wanted from me that time during the war. Course, the war was over and there was no sense in going back to it. Still, it would give us something to talk about. But he looked at his watch, got up, and said it was time for him to go. All I said was:
“I thought we’d have a chance to talk, and here you are rushing off.”
“We will talk one day,” he said. “I’ll visit for longer. Maybe I’ll even come stay when I’ve got some leave. We’ll see.”
That time during the war we’d missed each other. I was in the woods with the resistance, though he must have been doing something as well, because he’d come and gone at night. He waited almost a week to see if I’d show up. He wouldn’t sleep in the house, instead he stayed in the barn, he dug himself a hole in the hay. He didn’t go outside at all, they brought him food to the barn at dusk each day. If anything happened, father or mother or Antek was supposed to go out into the yard and call the dog loudly three times – Burek! Burek! Burek! This was his first visit since then. After so many years you forget someone, even your own brother.
Though when you’re a brother, it’s for your whole life. And whatever happens to brothers, you can’t change the fact that they’re brothers. Of all my brothers he was the closest to me, closer than Antek or Stasiek. We’d gotten into all kinds of scrapes together when we were kids, we’d slept in the same bed. And I always defended him whenever anyone tried to hurt him, even if it was me against everyone else. Because even though he was three years older than me, I was a better fighter. That balanced things out. Sometimes I’d actually feel older than him, because I was tougher too.
He hadn’t changed that much in appearance. Only his eyes had gotten kind of sharper, so it was hard to look straight into them, it was like he was cutting you down with them, while before his eyes had been gentle and blue. But everyone’s eyes changed in the war, with some folks out of fear, others from lack of sleep, most from crying. On top of that those eyes of his darted to and fro like mice being chased. He wasn’t even able to keep them on mother for long, though mother herself couldn’t get enough of looking at him. She kept saying, Michał, Michał. Just the one time he got some warmth in his eyes, when a couple of chicks came out from under the brood hen in the basket. He even picked one of them up, but he put it down again
right away as if it had scalded his hand. At another moment he lost himself in thought staring at the Last Supper, like he was remembering how he was supposed to become a priest.
I found him strange, sort of in a shell. If I hadn’t known it was him, my brother Michał, I might not have felt it was my brother. I might have thought he was some distant cousin on father’s side or mother’s that we’d never met before but we’d just heard there was such a person, though no one knew what he did in the world, only that he existed. And here he’d shown up one Sunday afternoon unannounced, like a bolt out of the blue, and no one knew what to say, and he wouldn’t even have anything to eat, if he’d eaten something it might have brought him closer to us. But he’d barely come in when he was hurrying off again, like the wind had blown him here by chance.
So there was no time to ask him what his job was, what he’d been up to, how things were going for him. You couldn’t just ask him straight out when you hadn’t known the first thing about him all those years. It was better to keep on not knowing anything. And the truth is, it’s not right to barge into someone else’s life right from the get-go, even if it is your own brother and son. I mean, who knows if you won’t touch on something painful? Or even if it’s still the same brother and son? To begin with you’d need to sit down quietly and stay there at least till the sun sets outside the window, to get used to that big gap of years. It’d be like taking a plow to land that’s not been plowed in a long time. After that you might figure out where to begin, and begin from the beginning, the way God began the world.
The only thing father asked was whether there’d be collective farms here. But he didn’t even answer that question, because the moment he was done unpacking the suitcases and handing out his presents, right away he started asking questions about what was going on with us here, and he asked and asked the whole time till he left. We couldn’t get a word in edgewise. It was like he was thirsting to know everything. Like he hadn’t come at all to see us
after being away all those years, but that he was trying to grab as much as he could from us and take it with him. He hardly sat in one place for a moment, he kept standing up and pacing around, and there wasn’t a single thing he wasn’t interested in. He kept pulling things out of his memory like he was taking them out of a sack, anything he remembered, and he kept asking and asking. Sometimes he didn’t even wait for the end of the answer before he asked his next question.
As for whether we were all well, mother, father, us brothers, only mother managed to tell him that the stabbing pains in her chest were getting worse. He nodded, then right away he asked how many acres we’d gotten in the land reform, which office we’d dealt with, whether anyone had tried to scare us into not taking it, then after that how things had been here during the war, who had died then, how our cattle sheds had burned down and whether we were planning to build new ones, whether they’d be wooden or brick, whether we’d roof them in thatch like before or put up a tiled roof, how many cows we had, two or more, whether we had a calf, whether we were planning to save it and rear it, whether we had the same horse or a different one, whether they were thinking of bringing electricity to the village, why the lampshade was so sooty, whether we used kerosene in the lamps or some other poor quality stuff, whether Franciszek the sacristan was still alive, whether the priest was the same or a different one and did he mix God and politics in his sermons, which farmers carried the baldachin over him on Corpus Christi these days, why it was still the same rich ones, whether the winter had been hard this year and had there been a lot of snow, whether the river had burst its banks in the spring and who we took water from when the spring flooded, whether we weren’t thinking about digging a well, how the orchard was, whether that old
masztan
plum tree was still standing behind the barn, what had happened to it, whether father had planted any new seedlings, whether old Spodzieja was still mending shoes, so who’d taken over after he died, and the dog, was it still Burek, so what was this one
called, Strudel, he laughed, Strudel, Strudel, and why had we given it such an odd name, whether mother kept a lot of chickens and geese, whether she had any trouble with polecats or hawks, or maybe with the neighbors, whether that old willow was still standing by the river, whether the blue tits still nested in it, where the girls and the young men went swimming these days, was it still down by Błach’s place, was the water deep, what had happened to the tin crucifix with the broken arm that had always stood on the table, where we’d gotten such a fancy table, why there was nothing in our windows when there’d always been lots of flowers on the windowsill, whether we’d planted garlic this year, whether it had been a good year for garlic, and for onions, cabbage, carrots, beets, and that mother must have whitewashed the house recently because it smelled of lime, whether her cheese pierogies were still as good fried up with sour cream, did we do our threshing with a treadmill or still in the old way with a flail, whether old Mrs. Waliszka was still alive and did her son Mietek still drink the way he used to, whether the storks still came and nested on our barn, why father was wheezing like that, did he have to smoke so much, whether mother still baked bread or did we eat store-bought, had there been mines in our fields, whether our crop had been good this year, then he asked about each one separately, how was the rye, how was the wheat, how was the barley, how were the oats, where they were grown and how much there’d been of them, and why we didn’t plant millet, whether people had stopped eating it in porridge, and what had happened to the steps that the stones were just lying there, whether I was still in the fire brigade and whether we had a motor pump, whether we had the same old fire engine, where they held dances nowadays, was it still in the firehouse, did people still have fights the way they used to or was there less of that now, and which grade was Stasiek in, was he a good student, did he have the books and notebooks he needed, whether there were partridges in the fields, or hares, or foxes, why the door to the hallway creaked so loud that when he was coming in he thought it was trying to stop him, who the
mayor was now and whether we’d gotten our fair share of rationed goods, whether father wasn’t thinking of keeping bees, a couple of hives at least, if he did that him and his wife would come for honey. You’re married? He just nodded and right away he asked how Stefka Magiera was, whether she’d gotten married and who to, was she happy, was she still so good-looking, who had gone to high school from the village, who’d moved away and who was new, whether Mrs. Kasperek that used to teach Polish was still alive, who taught arithmetic now, who taught singing, whether there were still so many crows in the poplar trees up behind the mill, whether the boys still used to climb up there to knock down their nests, and who was best at it, because it used to be Szymek, and why were the tiles on the stove bulging out like that, were we still arguing with the Prażuchs over the field boundary, how had it happened that we’d stopped, but he wouldn’t listen to the answers, he just kept asking more and more questions, did people still go sledging on Pociej’s hill in the winter, did Pociej not chase them off, did the carol singers still go around into the New Year, who played Herod, and the devil, and who played death, and was the place by the willow tree at the footbridge still haunted, or maybe the devil had gone by now, whether Michał’s godfather Skubida was still alive, so why was he killed, and his godmother Mrs. Kaliszyn, and did the swallows still nest under our eaves, how many nests were there, whether we joined forces with other people during the harvest or if we just brought in our own crop, why we wouldn’t buy a clock, why mother was so thin, why father had gone so gray, why Antek, why Stasiek, why me, why this and that and the other, why, why, why?