“Does it hurt?” I heard her whisper.
“What?”
“The first time.”
“Everything hurts the first time.” Because I was still seeing our death.
The harvest came a little earlier than usual that year. It was another matter that it had been dry for a long time, there hadn’t been a drop of rain. Mother and father barely knew me. Mother thought God had answered her prayers, father reckoned I’d finally wised up, because everyone has to wise up in the end. I hammered out the blade of the scythe, cleaned out the mows in the barn, put new racks on the wagon. I went out to the field and
brought back a handful of spikes, father crushed them on the palm of his hand, blew on them, studied them, put one grain between his teeth and bit it, bit another, and he reckoned we should wait another three or four days, but I said we should start right away.
We were among the first in the village to harvest our rye, people thought something must have happened, maybe my brothers had come to help? Małgorzata’s folks got her to help in the harvest as well, because there are no indulgences for getting out of the harvest, just like there aren’t any for mortal sins. So we didn’t see much of each other during that time. It was only when I’d finished storing the rye in the barn that I walked her home again one day, but I didn’t go in. She seemed odd to me, she wasn’t saying much and she wouldn’t look at me. I thought maybe she was just overworked, maybe a bit embarrassed too, because I found it hard to look her in the eye as well, I mostly looked at the sky or to the side, I just stole glances at her when she was looking the other way. Because with eyes it’s often the way that it’s easier to say a bitter word than look someone straight in the eye.
She complained a bit that her arms were all pricked from the harvesting, she had to wear a long-sleeved blouse, her back ached. But when we were saying our goodbyes in front of her house, she threw her arms around me even though it was still light out and her mother could have been standing in the window.
“Oh Szymek,” she sighed. But she often sighed like that. I said:
“Soon as the harvest’s done, Małgosia.”
Then I mowed the barley and brought it in, then the wheat, though there was only a couple of acres of that. Then right away I began the plowing. As I was plowing the last part, behind Przykopa’s place, the storks were gathering in the meadows getting ready to fly away. They’re strange birds. They clattered their bills for the longest time, then they all walked off in different directions and started preening, then they picked out one of their own kind
and went for it with their bills. I ran at them with my whip, because they were going to peck it to death. But before I reached them they took off and flew farther away down the meadow, including the one they’d been attacking. Then they finished it off. Afterwards Bida found it dead when he was grazing his cows.
All I needed to do now was harrow and I could get on with the sowing. But it was dry, the earth was all clumpy, I thought I’d wait a few days and see if it rained. So at work I arranged with Małgosia that I’d walk her home. We walked slowly, dragging our feet, we even held hands and we looked each other in the eye this time, and she talked willingly, and laughed, she was the way she always used to be. But as we were saying goodbye outside her house, it was only then she seemed to remember she had something to tell me, and almost in a hurry she started explaining that she’d be gone for two, maybe three weeks, because she was taking some leave from tomorrow, she had to go visit her cousin, she’d gotten a list from her and the cousin was begging her to go and stay. She didn’t tell me sooner because we hadn’t seen each other, and she’d only gotten the letter the day before yesterday. The cousin was only a distant relative, the daughter of her father’s cousin, and Małgosia’s mother was her godmother, but they were as close as sisters, and they hadn’t seen each other in three years. Before she got married she’d come to stay with them in the country every summer. Then her husband had gone off with another woman and left her with two small children, plus the younger one, Januszek, had been born with a crooked head and he was having an operation, so she had to go.
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.
“Let me have a quart,” I said.
At first he didn’t speak, he just kept putting sticks in the stove, then after a moment he said:
“Where am I supposed to get that from?”
“Come on, I’m not here to spy on you.”
“Go to the pub. It’s still open. I don’t sell vodka anymore. I work on the railroad now.”
“Give him it, Jędruś,” his old lady spoke up. “Don’t you see he’s all wet? He can’t go to the pub looking like that. Don’t you remember that milk can? You have to help people.”
Marcinek gave his woman an angry look.
“Don’t you know how to feed a baby, dammit? All he does is scream and scream, it’s more than a man can bear!” He went on feeding the fire.
“You got a bottle?” he said gruffly.
“No.”
“Then what? You want me to pour it in your cap? You don’t even have a cap.”
But he got up and left the room. The baby started screaming again in its mother’s lap.
“Hush now, hush, you’ll get some dill leaves, just suck a little longer.” She took her other breast out of her blouse. “Maybe there’ll be more in this one.” The baby tried it but started up again. “Little thing like this doesn’t even know he’s alive, but he’s already done more than his fair share of crying. Are you not going to get married, Szymuś? It’s high time, life on your own’s no picnic.”
Marcinek came back with a quart bottle under his shirt. He’d filled it right up to the top.
“Though I don’t have anything to stop it with,” he said. “Unless I make a cork out of paper.”
“There’s no need,” I said.
“Why don’t you wait awhile,” said the wife. “Potato soup’s almost ready. You could have something to eat.”
“Why would he want potato soup,” Marcinek interrupted her. “His folks are probably waiting for him at home, they’ll have sausage.”
I took my first drink right outside the door. Then a second at the gate. On the other side of the road, at the crossroads there’s the shrine, and I collapsed on the steps under the Lord Jesus. The rain not only didn’t let up, it fell harder and harder, or maybe that was just how it appeared in the darkness, because in the darkness all sorts of things seem to happen that you wouldn’t see with your eyes in the daylight. So I sat there in the rain taking swigs from the bottle, and I even started feeling good. I talked a bit to Jesus, who was sitting above me under his little roof, his chin resting on his hands, pondering. And he talked to me. And so we talked to each other, till I’d finished the bottle and there was nothing left to talk about anymore. I said: