Except these days it’s all rubber wheels. They’re trying to convince me to switch to rubber wheels. It’d be less work for the horse and you can carry a lot more on your wagon. Or at least reshoe him and put rubber linings on his horseshoes, because the asphalt is sharp. At harvesttime the farmers can carry four layers of sheaves in one go on rubber wheels. Before, even two horses together wouldn’t have been able to draw that much, now one of them can on its own. You sail down the road. Some of them barely have any land at all and they still have rubber wheels. Or the old folks, you’d think all they’d want would be to pray for a peaceful next life, and here they are swapping out their wooden wheels for rubber ones. Karpiel’s going to be headed for the next world too before long, and there won’t be any more wheelwrights. There’ll only be mechanics left. Then who’s going to even change a felloe for you when it goes bad? Who’ll turn a hub? And out of what? Back in the day there were acacia trees and you had the material. But back in the day there was the road as well.
True, it was winding. Roads often are. They have to go around one thing or another. A shrine, a pond, a house. They straightened the whole thing out and asphalted it over. They made long rounded curves so it doesn’t really bend at all, you just drive straight. A good many of those curves took up a whole field. Albin Mucha had a field next to the road where he grew buckwheat and serradella, now there’s a curve there. Sometimes on a Sunday he goes out onto the curve and knocks his cane on the blacktop and he shouts, this was my field! They buried it, the sons of bitches! Or he’ll sit by the ditch and make a list of the cars that are driving on his field.
There’s no denying the new road is three times wider than the old one and smooth as a tabletop for driving on. And you can see something of the world on it. Especially on Sundays. Though it’s a pity roads like that don’t have names like rivers. Because for our village, being next to the road is like
being next to a river in spate. You stand there watching, and it just keeps on flowing and flowing. It even sort of divided our village into two villages. One on one side, one on the other. Mothers won’t send their children to the store if the store isn’t on their side. Neighbors would rather walk farther to borrow another neighbor’s horse or plow or scythe, just so as not to have to cross the river. When the cow minders take their cows to pasture, some are on one side and some are separate from them on the other side, when they used to all go together. Even at village meetings, the people from each side stick together. Or when two farmers that live opposite each other come out in front of their houses, they don’t go up to smoke and talk together like they used to. Instead, each one smokes on his own side and from his own pack of tobacco. And the way they talk to each other, it’s like they were deaf. Though how much can you say when one of you’s on one bank and the other’s on the other, and there are cars forever driving through your conversation. The little ones you can at least shout over, but the big trucks won’t even let the words out of your mouth.
It was a pity about those acacias as well. It made you want to cry, to see those old trees come toppling down like sticks under the saw. You were born with them and grew up with them, and you thought you’d die with them too.
It happened in the spring, if I remember rightly. It was cold, wet, muddy. There was still snow in the fields in places. They came with their machines and saws and started cutting the trees down. And the people came out and watched – what else were they supposed to do? Old folks, young ones, kids, mothers with babies, the way everyone goes down to the riverbank when the river’s about to flood. Or when there’s a glow on the horizon at night and all you know is there’s a fire somewhere, but it’s too far away to go help. There were a good few tears, a good few people calling on God, a good few wailing babies in their mothers’ arms, because for the kids it was like their world was being cut down before their eyes.
Except that afterwards, when it turned out the trees were going to be sold, everyone miraculously got over it and they all rushed to buy them. There were quarrels and bribes and accusations. Some people kept watch over the trees round the clock for days on end. Some guys sent their daughters out to wiggle their backsides in front of the workmen. Whoever didn’t have a young girl in the family showered them with vodka and sausage and whatever they had. Someone even nailed a picture of a guardian angel on one of the trees to mind it for him. Someone else hung a length of red ticking on another one to mark that it was his. Boleś Walek tied his dog to one because he was planning to make a wardrobe out of it. But in the night someone knocked the animal out and tied it to a telegraph pole instead. Mikus, in turn, he had his boy climb up in a tree and sit there till they cut it down. And they went on like that, competing with each other the whole time.
I admit, I picked a tree out for myself as well. It stood half a mile beyond the village and I figured that before they got to it I’d have time to buy it. So I go there one time, and all that’s left of my tree is a stump. And every tree the entire length of the road is already sold, whether it’s already been cut down or not. They were using mechanical saws. They’d put the blade to the tree, and
bzzzz
, that was the end of the tree. Then they’d move on to the next one and the next one. And here was I fool enough to think they’d be using a regular saw. All along the road the only thing left was the old willow by the footbridge beyond the church, that no one wanted to buy because the place was haunted. It was so rotten inside it was just one big hole, and the trunk was only what was on the outside. It was amazing the branches at the top still grew back green in the spring.
People said the devil had used to live in it. They said he’d show himself to people, though never in his own form, always disguised, as a stray sheep, a rider on a horse, a hooded monk, as someone looking for a bed for the night or who didn’t know the way. He appeared to Pięta that lived beyond the mill as a bride in a long white veil, and the veil trailed across the whole width of
the road. Pięta tried to pass her, because something seemed wrong from the get-go, a bride in the middle of the night, and by the old willow. But he accidentally stepped on the veil, and all at once the veil fell off and she stood there naked as the Lord God made her. And she says to Pięta, now you have to marry me. Come with me, I’ll take you to our wedding. But Pięta’s a smart one, he says, sure, just wait a moment while I go take my ax and finish off my old lady. All right, she says, hurry!
Then my grandfather would tell how when he was a young man he was coming home one night, and here there’s a gentleman in a top hat and overcoat with a cane, walking by the willow. He thought it must be the squire that was having trouble sleeping and he’d come out for a stroll. Though he was a bit surprised he’d chosen such a rough road, like he didn’t have the grounds of his own manor. He might twist his ankle in a pothole or step in some cow dung – for a gentleman that would be embarrassing. So he bowed like you do to a gentleman and he asked him:
“Are you not taking a walk in the grounds, your grace? You need to be careful here, there’s lots of potholes and bumps.”
The other man says to him:
“Oh, it’s you, Pietruszka.”
Grandfather felt like someone had put a slice of honey on his heart, that the squire had recognized him in the dark and remembered his name. Then, when he even took grandfather’s arm and said he’d walk him back to his house, grandfather thought to himself that maybe bad times were coming for the masters.
First he started asking grandfather what was going on in the village, how life was treating everyone, whether there weren’t any complaints. Just some old chat. But they evidently enjoyed talking to each other, because when they reached our house grandfather said that now he’d walk the squire back to the manor. And they chatted and chatted some more. And they walked each other back and forth like that half the night, first him walking grandfather
back to his house, then grandfather walking the squire back to the manor. Then, at a certain moment he suddenly turned to grandfather and asked him:
“Have people never thought about attacking the rich folks’ houses?”
Grandfather realized right away, so that’s what this is about, you old son of a gun, and he said:
“What for?”
“You know, to burn and steal and kill!”
“Not at all, the village people are God-fearing, they’re quiet, hardworking. We live fine with the rich folk.”
“How’s that?” said the squire, his hackles rising. “Don’t you want to be the masters?”
“Being peasants is good too,” said grandfather cleverly. “That’s how things were set up, evidently it’s for the best.” So the other man gets even more upset, and starts banging his cane on the road and saying people ought to attack the manors. That the rich folk have done them so much wrong, and they’re still at it. And he starts going on about what they could burn, how much blood could be spilled, how much weeping there’d be, it’d be like the whole world was crashing down, not just the rich folks’ houses. Grandfather’s legs began to shake and he crossed himself out of fear. At that moment the wind blew up and knocked the other man’s top hat off, and grandfather saw he had horns on his head.
“Let me go, Satan!” he shouted, and all of a sudden no one was holding his arm anymore.
But was I going to be scared of a devil? I bought the willow. I put it down by the barn, and it’s been lying there ever since. Because truth be told, it’s no good either for chopping up for firewood, or for making something out of. Though at least I have the willow, after I missed out on an acacia. I can’t say I’ve seen the dog bristling at it or the cat giving it a wide berth. The chickens like it the best, they roost on it all the time. If there’s a devil in there let him
come out and we’ll square up. Later on I tried to buy an acacia off Józef Winiarczyk, I offered him double the price. He’d bought six of them and I said to him, what do you need so many for. I could have used it to have a new wagon made. Or if not a wagon then a new table. Actually I need a table even more. The one I have now I got way back when the front came through and it’s barely standing. You can’t put anything heavy on it or lean on it. If you move it, it creaks and sways like it was in the wind. Not long ago I had to put a new leg on it. The dog rubbed against the old one and it fell off. Before that I had to replace the middle board. I put a bowl of cabbage on it and the next thing I know it’s crashing to the ground. I sawed off a piece of an old sideboard from the wagon. It was rotten as well but I didn’t have anything else. When I hammered in the nails they went in like it was butter. The leg I made out of the plum tree that had stood there dead for a good few years, I just hadn’t had time to dig it up. It doesn’t match the other three legs, but at least the table’s standing. I mean, how can plumwood match when the other three are carved oak. Each one’s got a sort of wreath around it at the top, while at the bottom they’re slim as horses’ fetlocks and they have these funny paws that stand on the floor.
Right after the front passed through and I was doing a bit of work as a barber, when a bunch of farmers would gather together here on a Sunday they’d always argue about those legs. There were even bets about whether they were lions’ feet or if they were some other monster. No one managed to figure it out, but we got through a good few bottles while we were trying. And it wasn’t just about the legs but also who’d sat at the table, what they’d eaten and drunk. There were times they got so excited when they were guessing that it turned into a feast. You’d hear nothing but laughter and shouts and cheers. Even popping corks and clinking glasses. The table would be groaning under the weight of the food. And they’d keep bringing more and more dishes. The smells would make your head spin. Till finally one of them would come to his senses and say:
“Come on, get on with shaving us, Szymek. All those bastards are stuffing themselves, and we’re walking around like Moses with these beards.”
But back then the table still had all four legs, and there was this sort of bindweed twirled across the top. There was a drawer with a gilt handle. It was a good place to keep your pliers and hammer, screws, nails, shaving equipment, receipts, mother’s old rosaries, because she had four of them. One of them was even from the pilgrimage my mother took me on one time when I was a kid.
But when I came home from the hospital the drawer had disappeared. Someone must have taken a liking to it. From that time on there was a hole in the table, like it had no soul. Also, the top had long lost its shine, and it was covered with woodworm holes that looked like freckles on a freckly face. What can I say, a person’s time comes and so does a table’s.
I found it the day after I came back from the resistance. Father had told me to go check whether our fields weren’t mined, because spring was coming and we’d have to plow and sow. Though really it was nowhere near springtime, there was still snow on the ground. Not far from our land I was just poking around and I saw something lying on manor property in the unmown rye, under a sprinkling of snow. A body? No, it was a tabletop. So I started to look for the legs. I found one straightaway close by, then two others way over by the woods. Then the fourth one turned up in a ruined potato clamp when I was looking for shoes for Stasiek. The drawer I spotted around Easter at our neighbor’s. He was feeding the pigs out of it.
“Karol,” I say, “I think that drawer might fit my table. You could take my trough. It makes no difference to the pigs what they eat out of, and we could share a bottle together.”
“Sure, why not,” he says. “But if you give me the trough so the pigs’ll have something to eat out of, what’ll you give me for the drawer?”
“What do you mean? I just told you.”
“Sure you did. But what’ll you give me?”
“You’ll take my trough and we’ll have a bottle together.”
“We can have a bottle together. But you’ll have to throw in a half-bushel of rye. Your folks managed to gather it in before the front came through, on my field they dug trenches. And for the handle you can lend me your horse for plowing for a day or two. It’s no ordinary handle. It’s a bit dirty, but if you clean it up with ash it’ll shine. You could make a nice door handle out of it. And never mind that I found it on my land. Or how many mines there were. My kid spent a week getting rid of them. Day after day we were terrified he’d get blown up. Bolek, the Szczerbas’ kid, was clearing mines over there, and that was the end of him. There wasn’t a body left even. An arm here, a leg there. That way you get your drawer practically for free.”