It was the same when I was writing the letter, I wanted to ask him, shall I say hello to Antek and Stasiek from you? But I didn’t ask, I just wrote, Michał says hello as well.
The next evening I took the letter over to the Kuśmiereks’ next door. Their Rysiek goes to technical school in the town, I thought it’d be good for someone young to read it through. Maybe there are different ways of writing these days, or maybe I’d made some mistakes, even though they’re my brothers I didn’t want them laughing at me.
“Christ be praised.”
“Forever and ever.”
“Is Rysiek in? Listen, Rysiek,” I say, “take at look at this letter. I’m writing to my brothers. Put it right if there’s any mistakes. When I was young they taught us to write different than they do now. I’ll buy you an ice cream one Sunday as a thank-you.”
Kuśmierek was sitting by the kitchen stove. Through this cough that was choking him, because he has asthma, he says:
“What are you talking about, ice cream? Buy him a half-bottle. All he thinks about is vodka and whores.” He got such a bad coughing fit that his wife had to thump him on the back. “Yesterday he comes home from school rolling drunk. He’s lost all his notes and his books. So of course he needs new ones. Plus I have to write him a note to excuse him, say I needed him for the threshing. The little worm only got up a short while ago. The whole night his mother had to sit holding a cabbage compress to his head, he had such a bad headache. You see how his eyes are still all gummed up? He must have drunk a bucketful of water by now. I wish he’d go about his studying the same way. But he’s thick as two short planks, him. It’s a waste of money. The thing is, they say they have to go to school because otherwise you won’t be allowed to hand down your land.” Then all of a sudden it was like the helpless father sounded in Kuśmierek and he shouted hoarsely: “You ever come home drunk again and I’ll show you what’s what, you little shit! I’ll kick you out like a dog!” But he was stopped in his tracks again by his cough.
Rysiek muttered something back to his father, rubbed his eyes, and started reading.
“Read it out loud!” roared Kuśmierek, barely able to catch his breath. “Reading quietly’s no kind of reading.”
Rysiek did what he was told and started to read out loud. He must have been a bit afraid of his father after he’d gotten drunk, because otherwise he wouldn’t have let himself be ordered around like that. But the reading didn’t go too well. He cleared his throat, stammered, stumbled like someone walking across uneven ground. It felt like every word stabbed me, because I thought I’d written it that way. I was about to say to him, here, give it back, I’ll write it again. But I thought to myself, he mustn’t have sobered up yet, so I encouraged him:
“Keep reading, Rysiu, keep reading.”
He even stood under the lightbulb as if the light was too dim. But it was too dim for him there as well. He started complaining about the lightbulb being covered in fly droppings, and was it too much to expect someone to wipe it clean once in a while, he couldn’t do it because he had to study. And that his father needed to stop all that coughing, it was distracting him.
Kuśmierek made a big effort, he even clapped his hand over his mouth. But it didn’t help the reading much, he was still staggering through the words like a drunk. All of a sudden he stopped and, as if he was thinking, he began scratching his head. He thought and thought till in the end I asked him:
“What are you thinking about?”
“Tomb,” he mumbled.
“What about tomb?”
“I think it’s spelled wrong. I think it’s with a u. An open letter, not a closed one.”
“It always used to be written with an o,” I said. “Unless they changed it.”
That worried him a bit. And Kuśmierek, who was about to collapse from holding in his cough so as not to bother Rysiek, straightened up and said in a loud despairing voice:
“See what that damn kid doesn’t know! He’s going to fail his exams again! That’ll be the third time he’s taken the same class! Dear God. Then he comes back home and he’s a know-it-all, dammit! Tells me to sow corn instead of rye. What do you know, you dope, when you can’t even spell tomb! Can you imagine leaving the farm to him. He’d throw it all away in the blink of an eye. All he’d do is lie on his back watching his belly grow. An open letter. Go to the cemetery, do you see anyone in an open tomb? Everything’s covered in earth and stone slabs. The dead are apart forever from the living. That world from this world. Even closest family isn’t allowed to see what happens to someone after they die. Cause just like you have to be alive to know what’s going on here, you have to die to know what’s going on over there. Your time’ll come as well one day, damn you, it comes to everyone. You’ll see how you’d feel in an open tomb. No one would even come visit your grave, cause you’d be rotting, you’d stink like a dead dog. You’d be begging for someone to take a shovel and cover you with earth.” Kuśmierek was so bitter he’d gotten carried away, but all of a sudden his bitterness turned to anger. “And here he is, the little bastard, getting two hundred zlotys a month for his supper, and a hundred for bus money, that’s three hundred! Where are his notes and his books?! And there’s always something else he needs, this thing and that thing! And for what?! For what?!” He wound up in such a coughing fit it was a good while before he got the better of it. His eyes stared ahead like he was gone from the world.
“Jesus and Mary! Józef! Józef!” squealed his wife. I jumped forward as well to save him, though I didn’t exactly know how. Rysiek was yelping also:
“Dad! Dad!”
Luckily Kuśmierek came to and breathed a sigh of relief. Except he looked at us like he didn’t recognize us. That short moment had tired him out as much as if he’d been mowing on a steep slope.
I felt sorry for him. Any father wants the best for his kid.
“Don’t be mad, Józef,” I said. “He’s young, he’s got time.”
“Am I telling him to rush, damn him? I’m telling him to study!”
“There’s nothing you can do. That’s how it is with young folks — they’re in no hurry to study,” I said, because I was feeling sorry for the boy as well. Was it his fault he was bad at school? I just regretted bringing the letter. I told him not to bother reading any more.
“Leave it be, Rysiek. It’s fine as it is. If you change it you might make it worse.” I took the letter back. At this, Kuśmierek took offense as if for Rysiek.
“I mean, who even writes to their own brothers like that. You need to begin, In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. That would remind them right away about their family home. They might even give you something towards that tomb of yours.”
All of a sudden Rysiek started saying it wasn’t fashionable anymore to start letters with God. They’d had a lesson about how to write letters and he knew. It was like Kuśmierek was struck by lightning:
“You little bastard, you’re telling me God isn’t in fashion? That’s what I’m paying for you to learn?!”
But Rysiek had gotten over his fear and he snapped back at his father that he didn’t give a damn about studying. Give him what was his and he’d get married.