True, it was winding. Roads often are. They have to go around one thing or another. A shrine, a pond, a house. They straightened the whole thing out and asphalted it over. They made long rounded curves so it doesn’t really bend at all, you just drive straight. A good many of those curves took up a whole field. Albin Mucha had a field next to the road where he grew buckwheat and serradella, now there’s a curve there. Sometimes on a Sunday he goes out onto the curve and knocks his cane on the blacktop and he shouts, this was my field! They buried it, the sons of bitches! Or he’ll sit by the ditch and make a list of the cars that are driving on his field.
There’s no denying the new road is three times wider than the old one and smooth as a tabletop for driving on. And you can see something of the world on it. Especially on Sundays. Though it’s a pity roads like that don’t have names like rivers. Because for our village, being next to the road is like being next to a river in spate. You stand there watching, and it just keeps on flowing and flowing. It even sort of divided our village into two villages. One on one side, one on the other. Mothers won’t send their children to the store if the store isn’t on their side. Neighbors would rather walk farther to borrow another neighbor’s horse or plow or scythe, just so as not to have to cross the river. When the cow minders take their cows to pasture, some are on one side and some are separate from them on the other side, when they used to all go together. Even at village meetings, the people from each side stick together. Or when two farmers that live opposite each other come out in front of their houses, they don’t go up to smoke and talk together like they used to. Instead, each one smokes on his own side and from his own pack of tobacco. And the way they talk to each other, it’s like they were deaf. Though how much can you say when one of you’s on one bank and the other’s on the other, and there are cars forever driving through your conversation. The little ones you can at least shout over, but the big trucks won’t even let the words out of your mouth.
It was a pity about those acacias as well. It made you want to cry, to see those old trees come toppling down like sticks under the saw. You were born with them and grew up with them, and you thought you’d die with them too.
It happened in the spring, if I remember rightly. It was cold, wet, muddy. There was still snow in the fields in places. They came with their machines and saws and started cutting the trees down. And the people came out and watched — what else were they supposed to do? Old folks, young ones, kids, mothers with babies, the way everyone goes down to the riverbank when the river’s about to flood. Or when there’s a glow on the horizon at night and all you know is there’s a fire somewhere, but it’s too far away to go help. There were a good few tears, a good few people calling on God, a good few wailing babies in their mothers’ arms, because for the kids it was like their world was being cut down before their eyes.
Except that afterwards, when it turned out the trees were going to be sold, everyone miraculously got over it and they all rushed to buy them. There were quarrels and bribes and accusations. Some people kept watch over the trees round the clock for days on end. Some guys sent their daughters out to wiggle their backsides in front of the workmen. Whoever didn’t have a young girl in the family showered them with vodka and sausage and whatever they had. Someone even nailed a picture of a guardian angel on one of the trees to mind it for him. Someone else hung a length of red ticking on another one to mark that it was his. Boleś Walek tied his dog to one because he was planning to make a wardrobe out of it. But in the night someone knocked the animal out and tied it to a telegraph pole instead. Mikus, in turn, he had his boy climb up in a tree and sit there till they cut it down. And they went on like that, competing with each other the whole time.
I admit, I picked a tree out for myself as well. It stood half a mile beyond the village and I figured that before they got to it I’d have time to buy it. So I go there one time, and all that’s left of my tree is a stump. And every tree the entire length of the road is already sold, whether it’s already been cut down or not. They were using mechanical saws. They’d put the blade to the tree, and bzzzz, that was the end of the tree. Then they’d move on to the next one and the next one. And here was I fool enough to think they’d be using a regular saw. All along the road the only thing left was the old willow by the footbridge beyond the church, that no one wanted to buy because the place was haunted. It was so rotten inside it was just one big hole, and the trunk was only what was on the outside. It was amazing the branches at the top still grew back green in the spring.
People said the devil had used to live in it. They said he’d show himself to people, though never in his own form, always disguised, as a stray sheep, a rider on a horse, a hooded monk, as someone looking for a bed for the night or who didn’t know the way. He appeared to Pięta that lived beyond the mill as a bride in a long white veil, and the veil trailed across the whole width of the road. Pięta tried to pass her, because something seemed wrong from the get-go, a bride in the middle of the night, and by the old willow. But he accidentally stepped on the veil, and all at once the veil fell off and she stood there naked as the Lord God made her. And she says to Pięta, now you have to marry me. Come with me, I’ll take you to our wedding. But Pięta’s a smart one, he says, sure, just wait a moment while I go take my ax and finish off my old lady. All right, she says, hurry!
Then my grandfather would tell how when he was a young man he was coming home one night, and here there’s a gentleman in a top hat and overcoat with a cane, walking by the willow. He thought it must be the squire that was having trouble sleeping and he’d come out for a stroll. Though he was a bit surprised he’d chosen such a rough road, like he didn’t have the grounds of his own manor. He might twist his ankle in a pothole or step in some cow dung — for a gentleman that would be embarrassing. So he bowed like you do to a gentleman and he asked him:
“Are you not taking a walk in the grounds, your grace? You need to be careful here, there’s lots of potholes and bumps.”
The other man says to him:
“Oh, it’s you, Pietruszka.”
Grandfather felt like someone had put a slice of honey on his heart, that the squire had recognized him in the dark and remembered his name. Then, when he even took grandfather’s arm and said he’d walk him back to his house, grandfather thought to himself that maybe bad times were coming for the masters.
First he started asking grandfather what was going on in the village, how life was treating everyone, whether there weren’t any complaints. Just some old chat. But they evidently enjoyed talking to each other, because when they reached our house grandfather said that now he’d walk the squire back to the manor. And they chatted and chatted some more. And they walked each other back and forth like that half the night, first him walking grandfather back to his house, then grandfather walking the squire back to the manor. Then, at a certain moment he suddenly turned to grandfather and asked him: