He lost himself in thought again. The sun was climbing into the sky and getting hotter and hotter. The cool of night was gone from the crop and it was warming up too. A stork flew across the sky.
“Oh look, a stork,” I said for the sake of saying something.
“Who’s going to do the work around here,” he said, “before Antek and Stasiek grow up? Four sons and no help. I mean, we might at least finish the harvest, there’s a whole lot still needs doing. Maybe it’s not our war, this one?”
“Whose war could it be?”
“What do we have to fight about? We plow and plant and mow, are we in anyone’s way? War won’t change the world. People’ll just go off and kill each other, then afterwards it’ll be the same as it was before. And as usual it’ll be us country folks that do most of the dying. And nobody will even remember that we fought, or why. Because when country folks die they don’t leave monuments and books behind, only tears. They rot in the land, and even the land doesn’t remember them. If the land was going to remember everyone it would have to stop giving birth to new life. But the land’s job is to give birth.”
“Maybe that’s what the war is about, father, so the land can give birth. If that’s what it’s about then it is our war.”
“The land gives birth, war or no war. Only God can stop it giving birth.”
“Even Romcia the thief is going,” I said. “He ran over to make confession first thing this morning. Now he’s drinking at the pub. He says, I’m drinking my own tears, pal, no one can stop me doing that. But at night he’s gonna go rob someone one last time. He says he couldn’t go killing people if he was all holy.”
I thought father would get worried about Romcia and say:
“Maybe it’ll be us he robs? You should’ve sounded him out a bit more.”
But he didn’t pay any attention, he just said:
“What if you get killed? My hands and your mother’s, that’s not enough for all this land!” He threw his arms open wide like we had fields all the way to the horizon, when there was barely one acre where we were.
“Morning!” someone called from the road. It was Ginger Walek with his scythe over his shoulder. “Father and son together, a sight for sore eyes! Your rye’s looking good.”
“God bless you.”
“I won’t get killed. I won’t, father. Romcia’s more likely to get killed. He says it’s going to be his last thieving, after that he’s going straight.”
Father calmed down a bit, he lowered his eyes from the fields and looked at his feet. He plucked an ear of rye, crushed it against his hand, blew away the chaff, and stared at the glittering grain as if he was telling the future in his mind, even numbers for good luck, odd numbers for bad.
“Even if they don’t kill you, who knows how long this war could last. The other one went on four years.”
“That was when we had a tsar, this one’ll be shorter. We’ll win and we’ll come back. There’s a whole ton of men going, from our village, from others. Back then, who wanted to fight for the tsar. He was foreign, no one cared one way or the other about him.”
“Foreign he might have been, but you could draw lots and have a chance of staying home. If you were well off you could even pay for someone else to go in your place. And if some guy was really stubborn about it, even the draw couldn’t make him go. Before the Cossacks came for him he’d already be hanging from a tree. He was damned by the church but at least he got to stay among his own. Though those kind of men, they weren’t in any hurry either to go to war or to do much of anything else. Or they’d put their leg under the wheel of a wagon and let it run them over, and afterwards, even though they limped, they were limping on their own land, not all around the world. Or they’d put their eye out, because the army wouldn’t take a one-eyed man. When you’re at home you can see just as well with one eye as with two. Besides, what’s to see, you know everything by heart, you can find anything you need in the darkest night. There’s that saying, blind as a bat, but bats find their way around just fine. You can sleep just as well with one eye as two, you can cry just the same. Back then people obeyed their parents more than you all do these days. Or you just needed to lose your trigger finger. You’d cut it off and they’d not take you. You’d dress it with bread mixed with cobwebs, it would hurt a bit, then you’d say you lost it in the chaff-cutter when you were cutting chaff for the horses. There’s many a farmer missing a finger to this day, and they never went to war, they just cut it off in the chaff-cutter. What’s one finger out of ten. A tailor needs it to hold his needle and thread. A rich man, cause he has to keep counting his money. A priest when he has to point at sinners from the pulpit. But when you work the land you use your whole arm, up to the elbow, not just your fingers. One more or less, what’s important is to want to work.”
I remember one time, I’d not yet properly learned to mow, we were mowing rye, father was in front and I was behind him, and I deliberately hit the scythe against a rock and it broke the whole thing. But he didn’t even get mad at me. He just looked at the notch in the blade and said:
“You’ve not quite got the trick. But one or two more harvests and you’ll be there. I had trouble too at the beginning.”
And it was always like that, even when I’d gotten the hang of it and we’d both be mowing, him in front and me behind, it was like he was always watching over me to make sure I didn’t lose patience during the harvest.
“You don’t have to cut a whole swath in a single swing! If you lived the way you’re mowing you’d run out of steam halfway through your life. And you’d lose the will to work even sooner. Slow down a bit, we’re just getting started.”
Because with me the first swath was always angry, like I was getting my own back. I’d often send the earth flying from under the scythe. And it’d be as wide as I could swing my arms. And though I was strong as a horse in those days, by the second swath the anger and spite had gone, by the third my eyes were filled with sweat, and by the next one I had to stop for a moment and sharpen up the blade with the whetstone so I could catch my breath. Because you can’t keep mowing for long out of anger and spite. To mow well you have to start like you were in the middle of a swath and finish as if you were just beginning. That was how father mowed. He wasn’t a big man, and when it was a good year and the rye or the wheat had grown well it was as tall as him, but when he mowed it was like the field was moving him along of its own accord, evenly, step by step. And he’d finish the whole field like that, step by step, evenly. And whole harvests the same way. It looked like it wasn’t him swinging the scythe through the rye or the wheat, the scythe itself was moving his shoulders back and forth, and he was only letting it.
Even now, when I’m mowing I sometimes feel that I’m following behind him. And I even compare myself, whether I’m mowing like he did when he was alive. Is the field moving me along the same way, evenly, step after step. Is the scythe swinging my arms back and forth, and I’m just allowing it to. But I don’t think I’ll ever match him. You have to be a born mower to mow like him. I don’t know if Michał or Antek or Stasiek would have matched him either, though they were better sons than me. But it’s hard to say what would have been.
Michał was the smartest of the four of us and he was supposed to go into the priesthood, he left the village before he’d done a whole lot of mowing. Though before the war he’d come home almost every harvesttime to help out. Except that father usually wouldn’t let him mow, instead he’d have him do the raking or sweep up the loose ears. Leave it be, Michał, what’s the point in you mowing, you’ll only get blisters on your hands. Szymek, he’s another matter, he’s built like a cart horse. He could mow with one arm if he felt like it. So Michał never even had a chance to learn to mow properly.