I stuck just the very edge between my teeth and bit down not hard at all, but all of a sudden there was a snapping sound like something had broken, and a piece came off that was half the size of my hand. I was terrified. My first thought was to get the heck out of there. But where to? I felt like I was choking. I’d have knelt down in front of that dried-up slice of bread and begged it to let itself be put back together. I could sense someone already hurrying up the ladder. Someone was coming from behind the chimney and stretching out their arms to grab me. The front door slammed. I seemed to hear voices, father and mother and grandfather and grandmother, calling, Szymek, what have you done! Szymek, for the love of God! Szymek!!
And all at once, like I was trying to eat up the great guilt inside of me, I started biting on the broken-off piece. It crunched in my mouth so loud you could hear it across the entire attic. It felt like it could be heard downstairs, in the yard, in the whole village. People were coming running from all over to see what was happening at the Pietruszkas’. It prickled against my tongue and my gums and on the roof of my mouth. But I bit down like mad, in a rush, as if I was worried I’d run out of time. Because of that I didn’t taste the bread at all, all I could feel was my mouth being scratched inside, it was like I had a wound inside my mouth.
Then I ate the rest of the bread as well, because I didn’t know what else to do with it. At that point something strange happened, my fear suddenly passed and I felt something like bliss coming over me. I could even have gotten up and gone back down, except I didn’t feel like it. Quiet and calm came back to the attic, and after a moment I was overcome with sleep. I dreamed of our fields, cracked with dryness, overgrown with weeds, horsetail and wheatgrass and pigweed, while right next door, on other people’s land there were handsome crops of rye, barley, wheat. But none of it made me sad at all, even father, who was walking across our fields and calling in a tearful voice, how wretched I am, and how wretched you are, land!
I was woken by scuffles and shouts. Father was standing over me. He was furious, in a rage, like he’d lost his reason. He was waving his arms and screaming:
“You monster! You animal!” And other names. “Dear God, hold me back or I’ll kill him, I’ll kill him like a dog! I wish you’d died before you were ever born! What are we going to do now? The land’ll never forgive us! Get up!!”
I still had the sweetness of sleep and the bread inside me, I threw myself at father’s feet and started yelping:
“I couldn’t stop myself, daddy! I must have the devil in me! Take me to the church, I’ll lie down with my arms spread the whole day! Maybe the devil will go out of me!”
“I’ll devil you! Get up!” He kicked me in the stomach so hard I folded in two. Then without warning, as if he’d been overcome by an even greater attack of fury, he grabbed me by the waist and lugged me down the ladder like a sack of flour. Without putting me down he carried me all the way across the yard to the barn wall. He set me down and ordered me to stand there, while he started feverishly looking for something on the ground.
Mother came out of the house and said:
“What’s he done that’s so terrible?”
Father was marching back and forth digging in the hay with his boots, muttering to himself, he seemed to have gone mad. Finally his shoe hit something that made a clinking sound, he bent over and pulled out the dog’s chain. We’d set the dog free halfway through the winter so it could feed itself, we didn’t have anything to give it.
Mother asked again from the doorstep:
“What has he done that’s so terrible?”
But he probably didn’t hear her, he was busy untangling the chain. He pushed the barn door open furiously, grabbed me by the arm, and yanked me inside, though I didn’t resist. He pushed the door to behind us, gave it a couple of kicks because it wouldn’t close properly. He was shaking like he had a fever, it even made the chain rattle in his hand. He put the chain around my neck.
“I’m going to hang you, you animal,” he muttered. “I don’t care if God won’t forgive me. You and I’ll go to hell together. But I’m going to hang you.”
He was fiddling with the chain around my neck, and the chain was jingling like bells on a horse. I even had the impression father was putting bells on me like he was getting me ready for a sleigh ride, not for death. And maybe it was because of that that I wasn’t afraid at all. I had an ache in the pit of my stomach, but it wasn’t from fear of dying, it was probably from the bread. Because I didn’t yet know what it meant to die. I’d seen dead bodies, of course. All kinds. People that had died of old age, of illness, who’d drowned or been hung. There was even one, Paluch his name was, he’d been bringing in his crop, he’d slipped off the sheaves and a wagon wheel had run him over. He was already dead, but he was holding on to the wheel so hard they couldn’t pry his fingers off. Or Kurzeja the miller, he got dragged into the belts at the mill, he didn’t look either like he’d been killed or that he’d died naturally. Or another time Sylwester Sójka killed his brother, Bolesław Sójka, with a flail, in a fight over property. It looked like it had been an accident, that they’d been doing the threshing together and they’d either been standing too close together, or their flails had been too long. He even cried over his brother’s body, he was shouting, get up, Bolesław, come back to life, brother! Like he was calling him to get back to the threshing. You felt that the other guy would just wipe his eyes and stand up, because who wouldn’t react when their brother was calling. Or Kułaga beat his old lady up so bad she ran out of the house onto the road completely naked, then she dropped down dead in the road. Actually it was hard to say exactly what had really happened, because some people said she’d dropped dead, others that she was a tramp. Or Rżysko, one time he was at the pub and he drank so much he never got up from his drinking. A drunken dead body looks like it’s just drunk. The Jew was pulling his beard out because no one would pay for what the man had drunk. He’d even owed him from before, he was going to settle up with him that day. But they went through his pockets and he didn’t have a red cent on him. Or my school friend Jędrek Guzek, when I saw him in his coffin he was dead and all, but he was dressed in a brand-new suit with brand-new shoes and a new shirt, and his hair was cut and combed, I’d never once seen him like that when he was alive. I even thought to myself, seems like it’s not such a bad thing to die. He’d made a bet for a penknife with Jaś Kułaj that without using a strap he could climb all the way up the highest poplar tree over on the far side of the dike behind the mill. He’d almost made it to the top when he fell. We took him to his mother so she could put him to bed, because there was something wrong with him. She cussed us out, called us the worst names. It was only later she started wailing, Jędrek, Jędrusieniu!
I could go on and on. But I’d never yet seen what it was to die on your own. I might not know even today. Though when it comes to the dead my memory is good. I could even write them all down in a list in order, starting with Wróbel, when I was three years old and mother took me with her, saying, let’s go say goodbye to Wróbel, because he’s dying. I was a little afraid because I thought death would be sitting at Wróbel’s side. I’d never seen death, except with the Christmas carol singers of course, but that was always one of the young guys dressed up. We went in. Mrs. Wróbel was stirring something on the stove. Their Józef was sitting on a bench by the window mending some reins, and in the corner of the room, high on white pillows, was Wróbel’s head with his big mustache spreading like the branches of a tree. We went up to the bed, mother crossed herself and knelt and told me to kneel down as well. Then the mustache on the pillow moved, and a scrawny hand reached out from under the quilt and rested a moment on my head. Then we got up, and mother asked: