“What’s the dog ever done to you?”
“Where’s Michał?”
“What are you all upset about? You’re supposed to say, Christ be praised, when you go visiting someone. He’s in the cattle shed, he’s mucking out.”
I hurried into the shed and I saw Michał, my brother, barefoot, up to his ankles in manure, working a pitchfork like he was Skobel’s farmhand. He was skin and bones. His beard reached his chest, his hair was all the way down his back. I barely recognized the brand-new dark blue suit with white stripes that I’d bought him the Easter before I went into the hospital. Thirty-five hundred zlotys it cost me. And it looked like he was wearing the same cherry-red tie with white dots I’d gotten him at the same time, since he had something tied around his neck. But I was just guessing, because he was covered in filth from head to foot like some animal.
“Michał! It’s me, Szymek!”
He looked in my direction, but only as if to say, who’s blocking the light in the doorway there, then he lowered his eyes again and dug the pitchfork back into the manure.
“You bastard, Skobel! How you could let him do the mucking out? A guy like him!”
“Keep your shirt on. You think this is the old days? Not anymore, things are different now. Was I supposed to feed him for free? Wasn’t for me, he’d have starved to death. Everyone else is only good for feeling sorry. But looking after him, feeding him, all of a sudden they don’t feel so sorry anymore. Let God look after him. One time I found him here in the orchard, he’s eating green plums.”
“So in return for a bowlful of food you make him your farm boy! You’re a piece of work! And him, do you know who he was?”
“Everyone knows. Like people don’t talk? But they forget when someone’s down on their luck.”
“People don’t know squat!”
“People know everything!”
“Michał!” I snatched the pitchfork from his hands. “Home now! Come on, on the double! You miserable shit, Skobel, I’d like to give you a taste of this!” I jammed the pitchfork in the ground inches from his feet, it made him blanch. I pushed Michał out ahead of me.
He walked in front obediently, with me barely limping along behind. Maybe he thought another farmer was taking him to a new job. He never asked questions about who and where, you could lead him anyplace. They could have led him to his death and he never would have even asked, why? It was like there was nothing inside him except the fact that he was walking. I was seething with anger. It was like someone had taken a big stick and stirred me up inside all the way to the bottom, like a pot filled with bubbling kasha. I felt I needed to do something to make him understand that I was back, that I was his brother, that I was taking him home and no Skobel or Macała or anyone else would ever take him again to tie up sheaves or cut beet tops or muck out the cattle shed.
“Hurry up.” I prodded him in the back with one of my sticks, though I couldn’t go any faster myself. My legs were fit to drop off, my hands were wet and stinging from blisters that had burst.
We came into the house.
“This is your home,” I said. “Sit down.”
I went to the cattle shed and took the halter from around the cow’s neck. It was too long so I folded it in four. I returned to the house. He was sitting there like I’d told him to, resting his forehead on his hands and staring at his feet. He stank so bad the whole place smelled of Skobel’s manure. I stood at arm’s length from him. I put the right-hand stick aside and leaned on the left one alone, broad and firm, so as not to lose my balance.
“I have to beat you,” I said, and with all my strength I struck him on the back with the folded-up halter. I did it so hard it made me stagger. He didn’t so much as flinch, or look to see who was hitting him or why. All that happened was a cloud of dust went up from him and there was an even stronger smell of manure. I had to straighten myself because the stick had slipped in my hand, then I whacked him again, and again, and one more time. He didn’t react. Though he’d only have had to give me a slight push and I would have gone crashing to the floor. He was still a strapping guy just the same, even though he was underweight, and I was leaning on a single walking stick with a red-raw, swollen hand, and on a pair of exhausted crippled legs, and I had nothing to prop myself up with. Plus, with every blow the halter shook me like a reed in the wind, when for a beating like that you need to be planted foursquare like a table, your feet rooted to the ground, and the ground afraid to shift beneath you. Then you can give a beating. Not just with the halter but with your whole body, with all your pain, your rage. Then you could even make a rock shed tears. Though it would’ve been easier to make a rock cry than him. All of a sudden he took his head from his hands, put his palms on his knees and leaned forward, like he was trying to make his back as broad as possible for the beating. I started beating that back, gathering myself for every blow like I was passing sacks of grain to be put on the wagon. My whole body twisted with each swing. The rage grew within me. It would have been enough for a dozen halters. I felt it around me even, like the room was furious along with me, the whole house, the cattle shed, the barn, the farmyard, the whole village, the land. It was the rage helped me forget that me, a brother, I was beating my own brother. And what was I beating him for? Truth was, I didn’t really know, and I don’t think I ever will. Only he knew. But not the slightest murmur passed his lips. His beaten body didn’t even groan of its own accord, the way bodies do when they’re being beaten. Even a tree, if you hit it it’ll groan, a rock will make a sound. But here, only the halter moaned. The halter was doubled up with pain. If it could have, it probably would have leaped at me and at the very least stayed my hand to stop me beating any more. Or it would have wrapped itself around my neck like a snake and hung me from the ceiling.
I was breathless. I felt like I’d climbed a high mountain on those crippled legs of mine. I felt I was stopping. My arm weakened and the halter was just flopping from my back to his. All at once the stick, which for a long time had been shaking under me like a willow branch, fell out of my hand when I took another swipe. I staggered so bad I would have fallen over if I hadn’t grabbed the side of the table at the last moment. My first reaction was to bend over and pick up the stick. But I was stopped by a terrible pain in my right knee. I broke out in a cold sweat, and something popped in my lower back. Ever so slowly, one hand holding on to the table, the other reaching toward the floor like a rake, I bent over farther and farther. Finally I got ahold of it. Except that when I straightened up, I got dizzy. I barely made it to the bench, and I dropped down exhausted, like I’d just come back from the fields after a whole day bringing in the harvest.
“You’re not to muck out at Skobel’s ever again,” I said.
He sat there with his head drooping on his chest and his hands on his knees, like he hadn’t even noticed I’d stopped beating him. From outside there was a constant creaking of wagons, everyone was bringing in the harvest. By now almost everyone had rubber tires on their wagons, and you couldn’t hear them the way you used to with iron rims. Now you could hear the horses more. They were walking slowly, like they were carrying the wagons on their backs.
I suddenly wished that one of the neighbors would come by, someone from the village. Or a stranger. I had no business with anyone, nor anyone with me. But I wanted someone to come, maybe it would be on his way, or he was coming home from the fields and he heard I was back. Or just like that, because he didn’t have anyone else to visit. Kuś, or Prażuch, they’d have come for sure if they’d still been alive. Because the ones that were dead were the ones you could most rely on. I even started listening to see if I couldn’t hear steps in the passage. Maybe the door handle would rattle. The door would open. Someone would stand at the threshold, they’d say, Christ be praised, or just, good afternoon.