“Hey, quiet down at the front there! We can’t hear ourselves sing! You ought to be ashamed of yourselves!”
One guy with a pockmarked face lifted up his walking stick and started pushing his way forward shouting:
“Get out of here! Get out! Damn nuisances! Witches!”
Other folks got mad with him in turn, asking him what he was doing pushing through like that. The way to God was the same whether you were at the front or the back. The important thing was to have a pure soul.
“Jesus and Mary!” someone yelled. “Goddammit! Are you blind?!”
“Stop cussing!” people told them off. “We took an oath there wouldn’t be any bad language!”
I took advantage of the commotion and made my way back to mother.
“Where were you?” she asked me sharply.
But right at that moment, in an attempt to calm the procession down the organist started singing:
“Sing out, our lips, and tell the Virgin’s praise!..”
The rest of the hymn followed from the crowd:
“Sing of her glory to the end of days!..” Mother joined in too.
I took an apple from inside my shirt and started eating. I ate four of them or more before the hymn ended. I was just finishing the last one when mother asked:
“Where did you get that?”
“From the orchard. We passed by an orchard, didn’t you see, mama?”
“Throw it away,” she snapped.
“It’s ripe, mama!” I said almost in a shout. “Do you want a bite?”
“I said throw it away. And where’s your rosary?”
It turned out the rosary had ended up on my back when I’d run from the orchard to get away from Azor. Or maybe I’d twisted it back there when I was sticking apples under my shirt.
“You should be embarrassed,” she said, all upset, though she was talking in a whisper. “You’re on a pilgrimage to repent your sins, and here you go stealing. He’s a punishment from God, this boy. Are you ever going to mend your ways?”
Luckily Duda and his daughter were walking right behind us. Duda was as quarrelsome as the worst old woman, in the breaks between hymns he was forever arguing with someone, even his own daughter if there wasn’t anyone else. She was an old maid and ugly as sin, but she was a real angel. It rarely did her any good though. Duda started grumbling again now:
“This isn’t the right way. I’m telling you, we’ve been on the wrong road the whole time. This isn’t the road. It’s nothing but dust, and there’s sight nor sound of the highway.”
No one wanted to get into it with Duda about the road, because it wasn’t the first time he’d said it. Besides, there was nothing but women around, the men were all closer to the back where they could at least have a bit of a natter. The women, even when they weren’t singing they were whispering prayers or saying them in their heads, or counting their rosaries that they wore wrapped around their hands. But one of them couldn’t take any more of Duda’s griping and she said the priest was leading the pilgrimage, not Duda, and the priest knew which way was right and which way was wrong better than him. He wasn’t going to get us lost, after all. Duda should cut it out or go take his own route if this one was the wrong one. But it didn’t do any good, she just spurred Duda into attacking her and the priest as well, he said he’s just a boy, not a priest, he’s still wet behind the ears, all he knows is book learning. Her he went after for defending the priest, she was a young’un just like him, she was probably always hanging around the presbytery trying to get in his pants. How was a priest any better than a regular guy? The woman went red, she lowered her head and started quickly saying her rosary. The other women lost themselves in prayer the same, because none of them felt like tangling with Duda. Mother was the only one that told him off:
“Shame on you, Duda. There’s a child present.” This was meant to refer to me. She hugged my head to her side, forgetting about the apples.
Duda carried on bellyaching about the road, saying it was the wrong way.
“Whether it’s the wrong one or the right one, it’s leading us to God, daddy.” His daughter Weronka tried to cheer him up. “Why don’t you think about what you’re going to ask him when we get there? Or would you like some bread and cheese?”
We stopped for the night in some village and we were already lying on hay in a barn when mother remembered about the stolen apples. Had I thrown them away? But she wasn’t mad.
“It’s just that my throat is dry,” she said.
I still had four. I pulled one out of my shirt and pressed it into her hand in the dark.
“Here, mama,” I said. “It was such a big orchard, the wind’ll blow down more than this, or they’ll fall on their own.”
She took the apple, but it was like her hand was lifeless.
“It’s a sin, Szymek,” she said.
“Then let it be my sin,” I said. “You can eat it, mama.” To encourage her I took out another apple and started crunching away loudly. But I didn’t hear her eating. Though maybe she just ate real quiet, or after I’d fallen asleep.
It was black as pitch in there, but you could hear absolutely everything, even from the farthest corners of the barn, who was doing what. Some people were eating, others were rubbing their aching feet, others still were saying their prayers, and some were already snoring. It was only the young folks that evidently weren’t tired from the journey, and they were messing around like there was no tomorrow, every other minute you could hear a squeal from one of the girls accompanied by guffaws from the guys. In the end someone couldn’t take it any longer and they shouted from the threshing floor down below:
“Get to sleep, damn you! Or if you have to fool around, go outside!”
Silence filled the darkness for a moment, then things slowly started up again. Close to us some people took out a bottle of vodka, because as well as the smell, they were given away by the sound of the bottle as they pulled it from their lips. You could even tell if it was a man or a woman drinking. From time to time there was a gulping sound when someone must have taken too big a swig, or maybe their throat was sore from singing and the drink wouldn’t go down smoothly.
For the longest time I couldn’t get to sleep. The hay was prickly, and folks were snoring on every side. I could never have imagined that people snored in such different ways, even when they were all together in one big group. Some of them were quiet as anything, like they were just whistling a little under their breath to show what a good sleep they were having. Some were a little noisier, but it was still just as if they were spitting out the last remnants of their singing in their sleep. With others it came from the lungs, but it was still bearable. Worst of all were the old men, it was like they were struggling through a thicket of blackthorn and juniper and haw, or they were crossing pastureland and getting deeper and deeper into mud. At times one of them would make a cracking sound like he’d just torn down the trunk of a willow tree, then sat on the trunk and he was gasping. Though it could also have been a woman. On the pilgrimage there were women built like men, women like stoves, like barrels, sacks, drums, not just the skinny quarrelsome ones, or the spitfires or the painted young things. Some people in the corner nearby started giggling in a funny way, as if they were trying to be as quiet as they could, almost secretly, but you could tell they felt like laughing so loud the whole barn would hear them, maybe even the whole world. I thought they must be tickling each other, probably under the arms, because when you’re tickled under your arms you want to laugh so bad you feel like jumping out of your skin.