“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:
“I’ll be off, then, Lord, because otherwise I’ll start pondering like you, when you and I aren’t equal. I’ll just leave you this empty bottle, maybe it’ll come in handy if someone brings you flowers.”
I set off, though I wasn’t entirely sure where to. It suddenly occurred to me that maybe Kaśka was still in the store. I hadn’t been to see her for a long time. I’d just drop in there once in a while for cigarettes, though I preferred to buy them at the pub. When I had to go buy other things, I would just be going to the store, not to see her. One time she even asked me, are you ever gonna come see me again? Swing by sometime. Swing by, you won’t regret it. Maybe you could come today, I could stay late.
I stood in front of the door, it was locked up already. I called out, Kaśka, open up! Open up, you hear? Bitch isn’t there. She was supposed to stay late. I got so mad I started hammering on the door with my fists and kicking it. Open up! But on the other side it was quiet as the grave. I was all set to plop down in front and wait for her till morning, when I heard her voice from the other side of the door, she was all in a huff:
“Who’s there?”
“It’s me, Szymek. Open up!”
She gave me an angry welcome:
“Could you not find a worse time to come? The bastards are doing an inventory starting tomorrow. And here I’ve got half a sack of sugar too much and I’ve no idea where it came from. My mind’s on other things, I don’t have time for fun and games today.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“Never mind what I want. Get yourself inside, since you’re here already.” She turned the key in the lock behind me and slid the bolt shut. “You look for him the whole year and he’s nowhere in sight. Where did you get so drunk?” She took a strong hold of me under the arms and led me through into the storeroom. The light was on there. She sat me on a sack of sugar or salt. She exclaimed: