Except that it didn’t feel right to be taking out my watch and saying, oh look, it’s eight, or nine. She might have gotten embarrassed and started apologizing:
“Oh, I’m really sorry for keeping you so long, Mr. Szymon. But you’ve
been a big help. Thank you. Please go now if you’re in a hurry, I’ll stay behind. I have to finish today.”
There was still a big pile of receipts between us that needed going through. All I did was, whenever she’d lean over more than usual I’d pretend I was lost in thought and I’d secretly stare at her hair. It was like a field of grain, much brighter by the light of the lamp than during the day, I felt as if I was standing at the edge of a wheat field. She must have been tired already. A couple of times she asked, how much is such and such times such and such again? Another time she got annoyed at the receipts because they weren’t written clearly. But they’d been like that from the beginning. Then she shifted the lamp over, saying it was too dark.
I was copying out a receipt from a Jan Bielak, village of Zarzecze, three thousand five hundred and eighty-two zlotys. Second installment. With her head bowed over the desk, she said quietly:
“Kiss me, Mr. Szymon.”
I put down my pen. I thought she was making fun of me. Just in case, I answered as if I was joking as well:
“Maybe I’m not worthy of kissing you, Miss Małgorzata?”
“Please,” she said even more quietly.
So I stood up, raised her head from the desk and I kissed her, but like I’d kiss a sister. Because I was more unnerved by her having asked for it than if I’d kissed her by force, but of my own free will. And I didn’t enjoy it at all.
Anyway, she jumped up right away.
“It’s late,” she said in a kind of artificial voice, as if to show that nothing had happened. “We’ve been sitting over these receipts for hours. I didn’t think it would take all that long.”
“I’ll walk you home, Małgosia,” I said.
“No thanks, I’ll go on my own. I’ll be fine. I’ve often walked back at this hour. What’s there to be afraid of? That bit by the woods isn’t very nice, but I’ll be all right. The moon’s bright tonight. Then right after that is the
village, the dogs’ll be barking. No. Another time, when you feel like it. But please, Szymek, not today.”
She’s an odd one, I thought. She tells me to kiss her then she won’t let me walk her home. Try understanding any of that. Go home on your own, be my guest! Except what kind of young man lets a young lady walk home on her own in the night. But go anyway! If something scares you in the woods you’ll regret it. In the woods there are graves from the first war. Didn’t old Pociej used to tell how one night he was coming back that way after walking a girl home, and all at once there’s a soldier with a bullet hole in his head standing in his way saying:
“Stop this hole up for me, it’s been all these years and it keeps bleeding.”
Pociej never went back to that girl. He married someone else, from our village, from across the road.
I met her the next day in the hallway, she was coming from the other end. I stopped and gave her a big smile and said good morning. She nodded and smiled back. But she quickly went into one of the other offices, and I felt I’d been slapped in the face. Maybe those receipts yesterday had just put her in a funny mood, I thought, all those names, villages, acreages, installments, amounts, that was why she told me to kiss her. And today she’d had a good night’s sleep and forgotten all about it. There was evidently no point in me worrying my head over it.
A few days passed, it happened to be a Tuesday and it was looking like rain. I leave the building and she’s standing out there in front, seemingly looking at the sky to see if it’s going to rain or not. The clouds are dark and swirly like they often are in the fall. I stopped next to her and I started looking at the clouds as well. All of a sudden, high up a wind appeared and began blowing the clouds and scattering them, driving them from the sky.
“You know, I think the rain’ll hold off,” I said.
She looked at me at first a little surprised to see me standing right by her. A moment later she gave me this nice smile.
“Then maybe today you’ll walk me home, Szymek? If you feel like it.”
She opened her umbrella and held it over the two of us. “Even if it rains we’ll be fine.”
“You can fold it up again,” I said. “See, the wind’s already blown the clouds away.”
And luckily it didn’t rain, because a little umbrella like that wouldn’t have had a chance of protecting us. Even if we’d held close to each other our backs would still have gotten wet. Besides, who was supposed to make the first move? I didn’t even have the courage to take her by the arm, and she didn’t seem willing either. We probably would’ve ended up getting soaked, and the umbrella would have been folded up between us.
We walked the whole way like distant acquaintances that just happen to have met and be going the same way. As for talking, we pretty much talked about nothing at all, about the office, about the fall, she told me a bit about her girlfriends from school, and her teachers, and I told her about being in the resistance, though only the cheerier parts. And before we knew it we’d reached her house. Her mother was just lighting the lamp, because a glow like a will-o’-the-wisp started dancing about in the window, then the window lit up a moment later.
I said they had a nice house. It had a brick foundation, with an asbestic tile roof, wide windows, and a verandah. It looked like it was recently built. I said I was planning to build a house as well, except I didn’t yet know when. First I needed to get ahold of the materials, then have someone make a plan for me, then hire masons, and these days there weren’t any good masons except maybe in other nearby villages. After that there didn’t seem to be anything else to talk about so I shook her hand.
“Good night, then. See you tomorrow at work.”
“Good night,” she said, but there was a quaver in her voice.
I’d gone maybe a dozen yards or so, in any case I’d passed the end of their fence and reached the edge of the field, when all of a sudden I heard behind me:
“Wait.” She trotted up to me. “Aren’t you going to kiss me goodbye?”
I had an urge to throw my arms around her and hold her close, and be held close, and maybe more, not to look at anything else at all, maybe even just pull her into the field that was there, just beyond the edge, because who was she, was she any different from the others, she was the same flesh and blood, I was the stupid one. But something held me back, no. No, Szymek, like it was her voice, but it was mine. If I’d at least been drinking, but no, I was stone-cold sober. I even regretted not going with Winiarski when he tried to drag me out for a drink at lunchtime. I kissed her goodbye, and I said again:
“Good night then.”
Then two days later I walked her home again, and again, and then every day, and this went on for maybe three weeks. And each time it was the same:
“Good night then.”
“Good night.”
Sometimes she wanted me to kiss her, sometimes not. It was like there was a big bush growing between us that stopped us reaching each other. Though truth be told, I only had one thing on my mind. What she was thinking about, God alone knows. Maybe the same thing, though girls sometimes have strange ways of thinking. Here they put on all kinds of performances, and inside they’re like a little trembling rabbit. Here they seem like they’re going to live forever, and inside they only have a moment. Here there’s a single drop, inside there’s the ocean. Here there’s a rose, inside there’s a pitcher. In any case, with any other girl, after I’d walked her home that many times she’d have been mine long ago. And more than once. Apart from anything the road led by the woods, and the woods worked in my favor as well. The fall was well advanced, it was dark earlier and earlier, and it got so it’d almost be dusk already when we left work. By the time we reached her place it was nighttime. All the windows of the houses were lit up. And you could barely hear a human voice anywhere. Nothing but the occasional wagon
that was late getting home. And the dogs would be barking the way they do in the night, in long howls.
I was surprised at myself for still being prepared to walk her home. After all, it was two and a half miles. Two and a half one way, two and a half back, five in all. If I’d only had a reason. But it was all just so I could say good night. Good night. And sometimes a good-night kiss. Kissing’s fine for a beginning. Or when you’re engaged to each other and you know that sooner or later you’ll be together. But the only time we were together was from work to outside her house, from work to outside her house, and that could get boring. I never even took her arm because I thought she’d push my hand away and say, no, Szymek. Till one time she asked of her own accord:
“Maybe you could take my arm?” But then right away she added: “I’ve got new shoes on and they’re a bit uncomfortable to walk in.”
What was I supposed to do. I decided I’d walk her home a couple more times and call it quits. She wasn’t the only fish in the sea. Even just at work there were plenty of girls that you’d only need to walk back home once or twice, girls from our village or other villages, girls that didn’t even need to be walked home.
But that couple of times stretched out longer and longer, and I couldn’t decide how many more times it ought to be. Even when we hadn’t made any arrangement, at five to four I’d be looking out the window to make sure I didn’t miss her, or I’d leave early and wait for her on the way, by the footbridge outside the church. Then once again we’d walk those two and a half miles from work to her house, step by step.
I figured it might be easier to put an end to it all in the spring. In the spring I’d have to plow and sow and there wouldn’t be as much time for walking her home. Once and twice I’d not do it, I’d say I have to work in the fields, and maybe things’d finish of their own accord. Father was already going on about how the larks had arrived, the swallows had arrived, something or other had arrived. He started checking the plowshare, making sure it didn’t
need hammering out. Then he brought in some grain on a sieve and sorted through it under the lamp, figuring out which seeds were alive and which ones were dead, which ones would sprout and which wouldn’t.
“Would you like to come in?” she said one day when we were standing outside her house. I was a bit taken aback, but I said yes. Why not?
Her father and mother were at home. They gave me a warm welcome, like they’d known me a long time. Her father even told her off for not being hospitable, she was their daughter, she should have invited me in long ago, we’ve been walking back together all this time, they can see from the window. He also knew that I was “Eagle.” He took out a bottle and told Małgosia’s mother to cut some bread and sausage. When we were already sitting, drinking and eating, he said to Małgosia:
“Listen, girl, do you know who Eagle was? Under the occupation he was the most famous of all of them. There was Tartar, Wheelwright. But they were amateurs compared to Eagle. One time Sokołowski the miller got robbed in the night, then in church someone recognized his daughter’s fur coat on Gajowczyk’s woman from the Colony. And Gajowczyk was in Wheelwright’s unit. Who had it been? Their neighbors. But Eagle, he was the scourge of God. Am I right, sir?”
“I guess.”
“Then here’s to your health. You’re a hero. Another thing I like about you is that you don’t go around with your nose in the air like some of them that either carried a gun through the war or they didn’t, but now you’d think they shot every German there was, single-handed. So you work in the district administration now?”
“That’s right.”
“With our Małgośka?”
“Yes, except we’re in different departments.”
“So the country at least showed its gratitude by giving you a government job.”
We talked the whole evening, even into the night a bit. Whenever I started getting up to go it was, sit down, it’s early yet. It’d be a sin to meet a fellow like you and not properly listen to him. Though actually I was the one doing the listening, while he talked about me. Here Eagle disarmed so-and-so, there he led an attack, here he set up an ambush, there he was surrounded but he got away. He just confirmed every once in a while that that was how it had been. That’s how it was, sir, am I right? And though in some cases it was completely different, I just nodded, because the way he told it was truer than it actually was.
“Your health then.”
Małgorzata and her mother were more bustling around the room than listening. Her mother would just sigh from time to time:
“Oh my Lord, the things you went through.”
Małgorzata didn’t say a word. I got the feeling she was mad at her father for talking so much, I don’t think it could have been on my account.
At one moment her father got up, reached into the dresser, and brought out another bottle, this time of homemade honey vodka, because they kept bees. And when we finished it he insisted he had to drive me home, because how would it look for someone like me to go home from their house on foot. He stuck his cap on his head and set off to harness the horse, but he tripped over the stoop and Małgorzata and her mother eventually managed to convince him not to go. Because me he wouldn’t listen to at all. He even hammered his fist on the table and said I had no say in the matter. It was his horse, his wagon, his idea. I was his guest. And not just any guest. He wouldn’t have driven any old guest back home.
Małgorzata was embarrassed about her father getting drunk. But I took a liking to him. He was a straightforward guy, he said what was on his mind, and you could tell he was a good man. Her mother seemed a decent woman as well. A few days later I visited them again. Because since that time Małgorzata asked me in every day. Though I had the impression she didn’t
always want me to agree, just it was the right thing to ask. I didn’t want to cause problems so I’d say, maybe not today, but inside I’d be hoping she would insist, please, do come in. But she’d say, as you wish. Or at most, my father would like it.
But one time I’d bought a bottle and I said, I have some time, I’ll come in. It wasn’t supposed to mean anything, it was just that I wanted to repay their hospitality. Because whenever I visited, the mother would always ask, maybe you’d like something to eat? And she’d slice some bread and bacon, make scrambled eggs. The father would bring a pot of honey from their larder, sometimes it was linden honey, sometimes heather, or acacia, or honeydew honey, and I’d satisfy my sweet tooth, and listen to him talking about bees, how they’re smart creatures, a whole lot smarter than humans, though humans think they’re the smart ones. He even encouraged me to do it myself, and I started planning to keep bees. A couple of hives to begin with.