stuff and you can know everything, but not know how to live. Because life, so to speak, isn’t just living. Like you’re just there, and life goes on regardless. Better or worse, uphill or downhill, it just keeps going. You’re born, you’ll die, and that’s life. If it wants to knock us over it will, if it wants to set us up it’ll do that too, it can cast us down or raise us up. And we just do what it wants, because either way we’re alive. It’s the wind and we’re a feather in the wind. Oh no. No, no, friend. That’s not it. That’s all crap. Life is an occupation like any other. Who knows, it could be the hardest occupation of all. Because like, a doctor or an engineer, how much do they have to study? Or even a professor? Five years, ten, let it even be twenty. They give him his diploma, now he knows what he’s doing. But life, how long do you have to learn it? There’s no set number of years. And no diplomas. You can be a prophet with a long white beard and still not know how to live. Because it all depends on the person, whether they have the gift or not. Some folks would never learn even if they lived twice over. For some, eternity wouldn’t be enough time. A dumbass is a dumbass. Though it goes without saying that I don’t believe in eternity. It’s just an expression, just a measure. Like people saying the sun rises, when everyone knows it doesn’t rise, it’s just the earth turning. Habit of speech. If it wasn’t for habits like that, our steps would be longer, believe me. And we wouldn’t be walking in the dark. I mean we’re not blind, but sometimes we act like we were. Like we were walking along a milky way, when we need to be walking on the earth. We need to know how to walk. And of course something has to light the way. Because no one’s got a candle inside them. Life has its twists and turns, its gullies, its cliffs, its whirlpools, its fine weather, all those things. Plus, as they say, it flows. Except some people think it keeps flowing in the same direction. Because that’s supposedly how rivers flow. Time flows like that. And everything that flows, flows that way. But that’s applesauce, friend. Because one moment it flows one way, the next it flows in a whole other direction, it even flows against itself, across itself, every which way. It’s half like a whirlpool, half like mist,
half like space. It doesn’t have any fixed direction. When you don’t know how to live, you take a step and you’re a drowned man. Me, I could swim in it with my eyes shut. When it comes to numbers, I’m not disputing there are people better than me, I’ve never minded about that. But when it comes to life, they’re all useless. Because with life, when you have to you need to move cautiously, but when the road is clear you gotta charge ahead. And before you hear what you need, you have to listen hard. When you see something, don’t hurry up till you can see clearly what it is. But don’t think things are always that way. This isn’t like blackjack or poker where there’s a fixed way to play. There are times when no one’s said a word yet but you have to have heard them. You can’t see someone, but you have to have seen them already. Because if you don’t see them, they’ll see you. And you need to know what might hurt you and when. And when you need to be healthy as a horse, however much you may be in pain. Though there’s no point getting excited about good health. Obviously anyone who’s constantly on the march here, there, and everywhere can’t be completely healthy. I have a heart. I don’t know if it’s in good shape or not. But it works. If it needs to hurt it will, if it doesn’t it won’t. A hundred doctors could examine it and each of them’d say something different. It’s just a heart. True, it’s the director’s heart. And sure, the district is big. But it’s no more than a fingernail on the body of the district. In any case I’ll tell you one thing, you have to know when to die as well. You, you’ve chosen the wrong time. Under the occupation, for instance, that was a good time. A historical moment, you might say. People died for a reason, even if a tree just fell on you. Or right after the war, that wasn’t bad either. So long as you were on the right side, of course. But today, have you really given it enough thought? Sit on your backside and don’t be in such a hurry. You wouldn’t even have anyone to leave the farm to. The government would have to take it, which is to say the district administration. And all these farms that folks hand over in return for a pension, I don’t know what to do with them. We’d have to arrange a funeral for you at our expense as well. You
have brothers, of course, but they’re in the city, they might come back or they might not. And since you used to work here it’s only fair. At least get you a wreath. But where’s the money supposed to come from? The librarian’s on my case about how people are reading less and less, because the books are all old, and here we have youngsters growing up. I don’t have money for that either. I even have to borrow gas money from the arts budget. Do you think there are times I don’t howl inside? Damn right I do. Sometimes I go out into the fields and stare at the crops, it makes me go all soft inside. I could just sit there on the field boundary and listen to the larks singing. But I say to myself, where’s your consciousness, eh, Mr. Director? You’re supposed to be building a new life but you haven’t uprooted the old one from inside yourself. Keep sitting there and you won’t have a reason to get up again. Or there was a picture here in the offices, remember, in Rożek’s time. A peasant plowing with oxen. I had to change it, because anyone who came to visit would just gawk at the picture. So I had a local guy paint me another picture, he charged ten thousand. See, now it’s a tractor doing the plowing. Though between you and me, for some reason I can’t get used to it. Everyone says they like it, but me, every time I look at it that soil causes me pain. It’s like it was under attack. There are times I can actually hear it groaning and moaning, but the tractor’s louder and when the driver steps on the gas he drowns out the noise. Try sitting for years under a picture like that.” All of a sudden he grabbed the bottle, poured out another one for himself and for me, clinked his glass against mine and downed it in one, like he’d already forgotten you’re supposed to sip it. “We’ve had quite a talk.” He looked at his watch. “It’s good to talk like that once in a while.” He snatched a sheet of paper from a pile and started writing something. “You sure fifteen’s enough? I’ll give you seventeen just in case. Here.” He handed me the paper. “Just be sure and tell Borek to take it from what’s set aside for the creamery. Those are my instructions. And don’t die on us just yet. Ha, ha!” He laughed and stood up. I rose too, though it’s not so easy to get up from a chair when you
have walking sticks. But he didn’t come out from behind the desk till I was on my feet. Then he walked me to the door and slapped me on the back. “One more thing,” he said, like he’d just remembered now. “It’s too bad I canned you back then. Maybe you didn’t drink that much after all.”
I didn’t say anything – what was the sense after all those years. I knew why he’d fired me. Besides, it was good it happened that way, I had to go anyway. How long was that job supposed to drag on? I mean, there was nothing keeping me there. Małgorzata had long left for the town, she was working in the county offices. I heard she’d gotten married, but maybe it was just a rumor? A year or so before mother died she’d come by our place to visit.
This nicely dressed lady in a suit and hat and with a handbag came to the house. She was pretty and a little sad. It was her. I was lying drunk in the other room. When mother heard she was asking for me she had her take a seat. And of course, being mother she says:
“Well, he’s sort of here and sort of not, young lady. He’s drunk in the other room, sleeping. Even if we woke him you wouldn’t be able to talk to him. He only just got back. It’s like this almost every day. I keep praying to God.” The poor thing started crying. “Who are you, if I might ask?”
“A friend. We used to work in the district administration together.” Her eyes got wet too. She took a handkerchief out of her handbag and made like she was wiping her nose. “I work in the town now.”
“I don’t think he ever mentioned you. But when he sobers up I’ll tell him you were here. What’s your name now?”
“Małgorzata. He’ll know.”
“You’re so pretty, and I can see you’re a good person. Come again sometime, maybe he won’t be drunk. He doesn’t always drink.”
I even thought I heard her voice through the door with mother’s voice as they were talking. But I was sure it was a dream. There was no point getting up for a dream. She never came again. Maybe that was finally the end.
Though I’d thought it was the end that time I walked her back home after
the dance and tried to kiss her and she ran away. What did I want with a girl that goes to a dance with you then won’t even let herself be kissed. When the next dance came I asked Irka Ziętek from the administrative offices. She didn’t run away. And she had a drink. And ate a whole plateful of sandwiches. She kept sighing about how good the vodka made her feel, how good. During the dancing she stuck to me like glue. And it had only just started to get dark when we took a stroll. She was the one dragged me out, come on, let’s go take a walk, I don’t feel like dancing anymore. I feel like doing something else. Hee, hee!
Then a while later there was a dance in Bartoszyce and I even took two girls, both of them from highways. She didn’t mean anything to me by then. We’d pass in the hallway like people that barely know each other. Good morning. Good morning. Like before. And truth to tell, it’s a pity things didn’t stay that way.
But one time, the workday was coming to an end, you could already hear the goodbyes in the next room, all of a sudden there’s a knock at my door, come in, and it’s her. She seemed a bit on edge as she entered. I’m not bothering you? Not at all. And she asks me if I could stay a little longer and help her, she has an urgent job she needs to turn in the next day and she can’t handle it on her own. She asked her girlfriends but none of them can do it. I could see right away it wasn’t a matter of helping her, she wanted to make the other thing right. Why did you put up a fight at the dance, you silly woman? I can stay behind. Why not. I often stay when someone needs help.
We were recording tax receipts, me on one side of the desk, her on the other. I arranged them in alphabetical order, each letter in a separate pile. She checked every receipt against a list to make sure the payments agreed with the invoices. Everyone had left the building already. It was starting to get dark. It was the end of September. She turned a lamp on. Then we had to transfer the payment amounts from the receipts to separate entries on a form. Serial number, family name, given name, village, acreage, land quality, to be paid, paid, installment amount, still to pay. Mrs. Kopeć, the
caretaker, dusted quickly, emptied the ashtrays, swept the floor, then said goodbye and she left too. Then the amounts on the forms had to be added up to check they matched the receipts. Evening came. It got dark around us. When you glanced up at the room, nothing looked like it usually did. The desks, that during the day they pushed their way into the room so you could barely squeeze through, now they just stood there quietly like the coffins of dead clerks. The cupboards, that not long ago had just been cupboards, now they looked like old willow trees that someone had cut the tops off of. There was only us in the light of the desk lamp, we looked like we were inside a brightly lit sphere. Though just like two office workers working on receipts. Nothing more. But if someone had seen us through the window they could have gone telling people we were cuddling, because we were sitting right up close to each other and there was no one else in the building. Of course, from time to time one of us would say something, me or her, but only what was needed for the job.
“Could you pin those receipts together, Mr. Szymon.”
“Is it Wojciech Jagła or Jagło?”
“Ten acres, class two land, do you have one like that?”
“How much do you make it, Miss Małgorzata? Mine comes out to such and such.”
“This doesn’t match up. We need to check it again.”
At times a sadness passed across her face, but it was sadness from the receipts. The best medicine for that kind of sadness is an abacus. Immediately she started rattling away like a machine gun.
It was eight, maybe a little after. We were still deep in receipts. If only she’d once given me a warmer look, or if she’d gotten flustered when I glanced at her. Nothing. It was even like she was chiding me for those glances, she’d tell me to check something or other, write it down, add it up a second time. In the end I started to think about getting out my watch and saying, look, it’s eight, nine, to finally make her lift her eyes from the receipts. Then I’d say:
“Let’s take a bit of a break.”
And she might reply:
“Maybe I’ll make tea. Will you have some?”
I wouldn’t have minded some tea. I started discreetly feeling my pockets for my watch. It was the same one I sold later to pay for the tomb. A silver one, on a chain. I got it off the Germans in a battle. Though truth be told, the men found it on a dead officer. It had slipped out of his pocket like it was trying to get away from the body, except the chain held it in place. It wasn’t much of a battle. It only lasted half an hour or so, like it was all about the watch. On our side Highlander was wounded, on the other side they all died. Actually there wasn’t really anything to fight about. Someone had told us there was a motorcycle and car with Germans coming down the road. We didn’t even know where they were going or what for. Though for sure they weren’t driving that way just for fun. We made an ambush in a gully that was overgrown on both sides with hazel and hawthorn and juniper. We blocked off the road in front and behind, we waited till they got close, then we let them have it from every side. There were a few bodies, a few guns, the watch, and that was the end of the battle. These days a watch doesn’t mean a thing, every other person has one on their wrist, but back then it was still something, plus a silver one to boot. And the thing worked tip-top right till the end. I never once had to get it repaired. Whenever I checked it against the sun it always showed the same time. In the village, at twelve noon the sun’s always right over Martyka’s chimney, and the watch always showed twelve noon. It came in handiest when I worked in the district administration. As if the officer that let himself get killed by us back then knew that one day I’d be a government worker.