People even made the priest lead a procession out into the fields, they thought maybe that would help. But they didn’t get very far. Just beyond Midura’s place, where the road turns toward the fields, Franciszek the sacristan, who was carrying the cross up front, he got stuck in mud almost up to his knees. The banners got bogged down with him. Mrs. Karpiel and Mrs. Matyska ended up in it too, because they were tertiaries and they’d wanted to be in the lead. The priest got stuck, even though Skubida and Denderys had been holding his arms. They had to stand on either side of him and drag him out and carry him over to drier ground, he wouldn’t have been able to get out on his own. As it was, one of his shoes came off in the mud, and one of the women had to fish it out and put it back on his foot. Because Franciszek the sacristan was wearing tall boots, and he’d gone marching on ahead without looking back at the rest of the procession. People called to him, hey, Franciszek, wait up there! But he just kept going, and it was only when the mud reached up over the tops of his boots that he realized he was all on his own. Luckily he had the cross with him, so he leaned on it like a shepherd’s crook and managed to get clear. Though the priest gave him a telling-off once he was on the drier ground, for abusing the cross like that. So that was the end of the procession. They prayed a bit and sang a bit at the edge of the fields, then they went back to the church.
Some of the better-off farmers took holy pictures out onto their land and made a little hut for them like a sentry box. But that did no good either. After all, it couldn’t have happened that the sun shone on some folks’ land while it rained on other people’s, when it rained it rained everywhere. Everyone went out to the fields and gathered what could be gathered in the rain and mud. There wasn’t much, because what hadn’t dried up in the spring had gotten waterlogged in the summer and the start of autumn.
We only picked three wagonloads of potatoes, after we’d planted a big stretch of field. And they were all the size of walnuts. Father came back with the third wagonload and said that was the lot, and grandfather came out, and mother, and us children, and we all cried. Father couldn’t even bring himself to get down off the wagon, he just sat there with the whip and the reins in his hand and watched grandfather crying and fingering the potatoes. All he said in consolation was:
“Well, there’s nothing to be done about it. Whatever the land is like, the potatoes are like that too. And the land is rotten. I just hope it recovers from all this.”
During the threshing, when he took a full sieve and winnowed it there was nothing but chaff, and the grain at the very bottom. He left what he needed for the next sowing, he barely had half a sackful to take to the mill for grinding, and that was the end of the rye. Mother baked bread out of it just the once, she set aside a few measures for an emergency.
The bread from the one baking lasted us a month, month and a half, and it wouldn’t even have been that long except father took some of the loaves while they were still hot and hid them somewhere. Michał and I searched the whole barn, we even jabbed the pitchfork into the hay in the bins, but we couldn’t find it. It had to have been hidden in the barn, but we would have needed to turn the place upside down. Michał wasn’t the person for that. The whole time I had to keep reassuring him that looking for the bread wasn’t a sin. When he stuck the pitchfork in, he’d only just go in with the very tips of the prongs, as if he was afraid that, God forbid, we might actually find the bread. He kept asking me:
“What’ll we do if we find it?”
“Eat it.”
“On our own?”
“Who else are we going to eat it with?”
“Are we not going to give any to father and mother?”
“Take them some, you’ll see what’ll happen. You’ll get a hiding for being so good.”
Then he remembered a story grandfather had told about how once during the uprising the Cossacks had been looking for rebels and they’d made grandfather stick a pitchfork into the hay. And grandfather had hid them himself in that hay. But what could he do, they ordered him to stick his pitchfork in, so he did. All at once he saw blood on the tip of the pitchfork. Right at that moment, pretending he’d stumbled on the sheaves, he rammed the pitchfork into his own foot with all his strength and started screaming to high heaven. The Cossacks all burst out laughing. But they didn’t make him search anymore.
“Idiot,” I said to him, “we’re looking for bread, not rebels. Bread doesn’t bleed.”
But he wouldn’t search any longer.
I even thought about following father out when he went to bring a new loaf. But each time he did, he’d tell mother not to let us out till he came back. Or he’d say he was going down the village to see the blacksmith, or one of the neighbors, and he’d appear afterwards with a loaf under his arm. He’d give the loaf to mother, and she’d padlock it in the chest. Then each day she’d cut one slice each for us in the morning, another in the evening.
Thanks to that, the bread lasted till Saint Blaise’s Day in early February. From then on we only ate potatoes. In the morning it was żurek with potatoes, at midday potato soup or potatoes and milk, in the evening potatoes baked in the ash pan, with salt. The ones from the ash pan were best. We wouldn’t light the lamp, we’d just sit around the stove in the kitchen with the door of the firebox open, and whatever light it gave would light the room. We were eating more salt now so we didn’t have the money for lamp oil, and besides, lamp oil would have been wasted on plain potatoes. True, father had sold the heifer because we didn’t have anything to feed it with, but almost all the money had gone on paying taxes.
Mother would bring the potatoes from the cellar gathered in her apron like eggs. She’d lay them down on the ground at father’s feet. Father would take a burning ember from the firebox so he could see what he was doing, and he’d divide the potatoes into the same number of piles as there were people at home, except for Stasiek, because Stasiek was still at the teat. Then he’d even out the piles, moving bigger and smaller potatoes around, so they were all equal. Then mother would tell him to take two from her pile and give me and Michał an extra one each, because we were still growing. Grandmother said the same, that she didn’t have long to live and it was enough for her to say her prayers before she went to bed, she didn’t need to eat. So he’d rearrange the piles yet again.
Sometimes he’d take so long organizing the piles of potatoes that he’d be covered in smoke from the ember he was using as a light. One time he even singed his eyebrows. Even so, the potatoes would get all mixed together when he put them in the ash pan and covered them with ash. I could never figure out how he knew which one belonged to who when he dug them out again afterward and put them back in the same piles, putting a name to each potato. This is Szymek’s, this is father’s, this’ll be mine, this one’s Michał’s, this is mother’s, Antek’s.