“Michał or Szymuś,” said mother, “God grant it’ll be one of them.”
“I’m telling you, it’ll be Szymuś,” grandfather insisted. “Maybe he could serve right here, in our parish. I won’t live to see the day. But you could move to the presbytery. It’d be heaven there. The orchard alone must be four acres. And you’ve got the church right there.”
“What exactly were you thinking about?” Father didn’t let all that about the priest distract him from asking me more questions.
“I was thinking …” I tripped over my tongue, because I wasn’t entirely sure what I’d been thinking.
“What was he thinking about?” Grandfather came to my rescue. “He was thinking about Jesus, he already said. He’s hanging on the cross right up there, you only need to look, there’s nothing else to think about.”
I looked up at the cross in panic, and it was like something opened up inside of me.
“I was thinking,” I said, “about how he suffered for us and how he died on the cross.”
“He truly did suffer, that’s for sure,” mother put in from by the stove. “But people are the same as they always were.”
“Maybe they’d have been even worse,” grandfather suggested.
“Even worse?” Mother shuddered.
“Think about it, what if everyone was like that no-good Marchewka. Could you stand that? Think about all the chickens he’s stolen from you.”
“What else?” Father wouldn’t give it up.
“What else?” Grandfather bridled because he thought father was on at him. “He cut down those willows on your pasture. And he gave you an earful for good measure. Is that not enough for you?”
“I’m not asking you, father, I’m asking him.”
“Szymek? What on earth’s he done to you?”
“Not what he’s done, what he’s thinking about. Out with it.” It was like he was driving a horse uphill with a whip.
I got this sinking feeling in my belly. Out with what? On top of everything else it was lashing down outside, so there was no chance father would leave the house, a dog wouldn’t want to go out in that. He could keep grilling me all afternoon. I rooted around desperately among my thoughts, but my thoughts were like mice, they kept running away. All of a sudden grandfather got up, took a step toward the middle of the room, and sighed:
“When you’re old, taking a single step is like walking to Calvary.”
At that very moment it came to me.
“I was thinking,” I quoted from memory, “about how when Jesus was carrying his cross to Calvary and he fell, there was a farmer walking by on his way back from the fields, and he helped him carry it.”
“Not a farmer, Simon of Cyrene. What’s that damn priest been teaching you!” father said, getting all testy.
“I said so right from the beginning,” grandfather agreed with father. “The moment he first came here I said, he’s supposed to be a priest? He’s got a face like a little girl. He can’t even grow a beard, he’s just got fuzz here and there. How could he know anything. He doesn’t know the first thing about Jesus, just like he doesn’t know the first thing about people.”
“People are one thing, Jesus is another,” mother objected.
“What do you mean, another thing?” grandfather said, bridling in turn. “Was Jesus not a person? It was only after he died he became God.”
“Of course he was, he even let himself be crucified because he couldn’t take it anymore.”
“It wasn’t that he couldn’t take it anymore, he wanted to redeem people.”
“And in return they gave him something bitter to drink, and stabbed him in the side, am I right? I’d never have saved those villains. I’d have sent them to hell, let them roast down there, let them howl like wolves! Let them tear their hair out and shout for God’s mercy! Let them weep and weep till the darkness covers them over!” Mother was like a wasp with those villains, she wouldn’t leave them alone and she probably would have gone on longer if father hadn’t roared:
“What else?!”
My heart missed a beat. Luckily mother was still filled with anger at the villains that killed Jesus, and at that moment she started taking it out on father like he was one of them:
“Leave the boy alone, will you! He’s told you almost the whole gospel and all you can say is, what else, what else! Show me another child that knows that much. They can’t even tell you the ten commandments.”
Something came to me again.
“I was thinking, daddy, that he was proclaiming the ten commandments,” I threw out breathlessly, like I was trying to get this piece of good news out before mother.
But father bristled like a turkey-cock.
“Who?”
“You know, the Lord … God,” I said, though less surely, because I sensed something bad in his voice.
“Which one?” he asked with a frown.
“There’s only one Lord God, father. That’s what the priest told us. And there’s only one hanging on the wall there.”
“But in three persons! In three persons, you little twit!” He was shaking with anger.
I was all set to burst into tears. But something told me father wasn’t entirely on solid ground with Jesus. I pretended to be upset that someone had gotten it all muddled up, and I asked hesitantly:
“What do you mean, daddy, that there’s only one but in three?”
“Because it’s in three persons!” His chin twitched. “The Son of God! The Holy Ghost! And God the Father!”
“So which one of them is God?”
“They all are!”
“How can all of them be when there’s three of them, not one?”
“There’s only one!!” he roared. He grabbed a piece of kindling from the floor and chucked it at me, but I dodged and it hit Michał. Michał burst out crying and mother shouted:
“Have you gone mad?”
Even grandfather, though he didn’t like getting on father’s bad side, mumbled to himself:
“That’s not how you explain it. That’s not how you explain it.”
Father was so furious he grabbed the slop bucket with such a jerk that it splashed on his pants, and he charged out to take it to the cow.
Then there came a year that was worse than any other. First of all, during the entire spring not a drop of rain fell, then the whole summer it wouldn’t stop raining, and it kept up almost till autumn. The river, even though it had been just a little stream, it burst its banks, it grew to be the size of ten rivers and it kept on swelling. People were fretting, what’s going to happen, what’s going to happen? And the roosters went on crowing to show it wasn’t going to let up any time soon. Some folks spent whole days just standing at their windows staring out to see if they couldn’t spot at least a tiny bit of blue sky to give them hope. Other people were expecting the end of the world, they thought there was going to be another flood like the one in Noah’s time. They’d even gather at Sójka’s place in the evening and read the Bible aloud to see if it was the same or not. At the church there was one special service after another. And anywhere there was a cross or a chapel or a wayside shrine, people would gather to pray or sing or at the very least cry together, instead of everyone on their own in their own house. As for confession and communion, there were lines like never before. Kruk the unbeliever even let himself be converted, because his old lady and his daughters kept on and on at him about how it was all because of him. He had five daughters, three of them were already old maids but two were still marriageable. Though why would God want to punish the whole world on account of Kruk. Afterwards the guy regretted it, because he still got no peace at home just like before, and outside the rains went on and on.