So I headed for the fields one day thinking I might find him some boots. People said there were bodies everywhere. So there had to be boots also. There was no point being squeamish. Is a dead person any worse than a living one? At one time he was alive as well, and now he’s dead, just like the people that are alive now are also going to be dead in their turn. Though it’s a bit rude taking things off a dead body, you can’t ask them is it all right if I take your boots, since you don’t need them yourself. But if they were only going to rot away, it’d be better if Stasiek wore them to school, and if the dead guy knew he might even be glad someone else was still using his boots.
There was a good number of them, Russkies as well as Germans. But none of them had boots on. I plodded around the entire day, and I only found one with his boots still on. I was all set to congratulate myself, I even said “zdravstvuytye” to him, because he was Russian. But when I got closer I saw there were holes in the soles and the heel on the left boot was completely missing. On top of that, he was barely older than our Stasiek. He lay face upward, his mouth open, as if some word had frozen in it, maybe “mama.” I pulled his blanket out from behind his back and covered him up so at least the wind wouldn’t blow in his face.
Some of them were lying in piles of two or three, like they’d been clinging to each other for warmth. Some looked as if they’d only fallen asleep, as if they’d gotten tired of the war the way you get tired at harvesttime, and they’d slipped their boots off to ease their feet. Everyone knows that war is worst of all on the legs and feet. Many a time, from the waist up you’d be raring to fight but your feet wouldn’t budge. You’d be shouting hurrah, but your legs had no life in them. And many a time the war would be won not so much by bullets as by feet. Because war and feet are like half sisters.
When I was at war we didn’t do a whole lot of fighting. Instead, we just walked and walked, and if we went in the wrong direction we’d walked in vain. And you didn’t even hope for the end of the war so much as for a chance to take your boots off, even for a moment, and cool your feet in a stream.
The bodies that still had socks or footcloths maybe didn’t feel the cold so much. But the ones with completely bare feet, it hurt to even look at them. One time I was made to walk across snow barefoot and I know how painful it is. You could read from those bare feet like from a book. They were swollen from the frost, cracked till they bled, and rubbed sore from marching and from the boots. They were blue and dead. Though living feet also, you could read all sorts of sufferings from them, even more than from a person’s eyes, their face, or their words or their tears.
With some bodies the snow had covered their legs and all you could see were toes poking out of a snowdrift. Other ones were lying on their bellies with their bare heels jabbing at the sky. Or they’d be sticking out of the snow from the waist up, or from their belly button or their private parts, while their legs would be growing deep down in the snow like the roots of their body.
I found one under a sloe bush. He was some kind of officer — his epaulettes were all decorated with gold braid — so he ought to have had decent boots as well. Except his legs had been blown off at the knees, and it wasn’t even right to wish I could have had those boots, even though they’d probably been made of chamois leather, with stiffeners and pointed toes. All I did was pick a few sloes from over his head, because sloes taste best when they’re frozen.
Another one I found, I thought he was still alive. He was sitting outside a potato clamp leaning against his pack, his rifle in his lap, helmet on and playing his harmonica. I even thought I recognized the tune. But when I leaned over him I saw the harmonica was covered in dried blood, like he’d been blowing blood instead of air. He didn’t have any boots on either. Though if he had, I still wouldn’t have taken them. How could I do that — there he was playing the harmonica, and I come along and take his boots instead of listening? I used to play myself and I know, when you’re playing you get so carried away, someone could even steal your body and you wouldn’t notice, because at moments like that you’re pure spirit. There were times I could barely straighten my back from work but the moment I came home from the fields, instead of flopping down and sleeping, I’d go out in front of the house and play. Often the lights would go out in the village and the dogs would be chasing bitches, and I’d just play on and on.
The snow was trampled down everywhere and there was a path to each corpse. You could tell a lot of people had been there before me, like mushroom pickers in the woods, from all the local villages.
I even met a guy I knew from Łoziny. Łoziny is two and a half miles from our village and the front passed through there as well just as bad as here, and he’d come all the way from there.
“A decent greatcoat’s what I’m mostly after,” he said. “But everything’s all cut up from the shrapnel, either that or it’s German.”
“You haven’t seen any boots, have you?” I asked.
“Boots? You’re wearing boots. Nice tall ones too.”
“It’s not for me, it’s for my brother. He hasn’t got any shoes to wear for school.”
“You’re a bit late for that.” He pulled out a bottle of moonshine. “Here, take a swig — you’re blue with cold. If you’re gonna go looking around here you need vodka. First off, you could freeze to death, and second, you might dream of these poor guys afterwards. Right when the front moved on, then there were boots. You could pick any kind you wanted, find a pair that fit. Wide ones, narrow ones, lace-ups, tall boots, ones with buckles. Black, yellow. Hobnailed or with rubber soles. There were even some fancy ones like yours. But now they’ve all been taken. You might still find some, but you’d have to go off the beaten track. And a shovel would be a good idea, ’cause some of them are buried up to their neck and you have to dig down to get to their boots. You need to get a move on though, because when the weather eases off they’ll be burying the bodies. The village chairmen have announced it already. Maybe if you went up by the woods there’d still be some with their boots on. Thing is, though, there are mines up there. You might end up losing a leg or an arm instead of finding boots. Or even lose your life for a pair of boots, after you’ve made it through the war. Here, have another drink.”
There was nothing for it, I lent Stasiek my officer’s boots, because I mean he couldn’t not go to school. School was like first communion. Everyone went. People who’d only finished second or third grade. People who’d never even started school before. People that couldn’t read or write, bachelors, married guys, folks with kids. He looked like a stork in those boots, they almost came up over his knees. But who was interested in whether your boots were too big or too small, the important thing was they were in one piece. To begin with he walked around like he was on stilts, he even fell over a couple of times, but then he got used to them, he started walking in long strides without really bending his knees, and he looked pretty good, even though it’s not that easy to walk in tall boots when they’re the wrong size. I mean real officer’s boots, of course. Because people say officer’s boots whenever their shoes have any kind of uppers at all. Or any boots that an officer’s wearing. But real officer’s boots you can tell not from the uppers, not even from someone’s rank. Real officer’s boots have to be made of chamois, the toe caps and straps and stiffeners need to be leather that’s hard as metal, and the boot has to be the exact same shape as your leg. And not just around the foot, but at the instep, the ankle, the calf, everywhere, like it was your own skin. You might have been walking around like you had two left feet your whole life, the Lord God himself might have decided that’s how you’re supposed to walk, but the moment you put on officer’s boots it’s like you’d been given new legs. Because it’s not just that you’re wearing footwear that goes all the way from your toes to your knees, also the straps hold your heel like it was in a vise, and the stiffeners do the same for your calves, and you have to walk the way the boots tell you to.