It was a Thursday, and on Saturday he went to the priest to have him give last rites, because he’d decided that he’d die on Sunday afternoon, and he didn’t want the priest to have to trek all the way to the other end of the village just for his death. Actually he could have managed fine without the priest. For a long time already he’d had an oak casket, a black suit, elastic-sided boots, a shirt and tie, all set. In the morning he saw to the livestock, fed the dog and the cat, swept out the house, swatted the flies, poured the sour milk into a muslin sack to make cheese. Then he took a bath, shaved, dressed, and called Strugała to come light a funerary candle for him. His last words were:
“Staś, my will is under the picture of Jesus. Everything’s written there, who’s to get what, and when the cheese stops dripping you can have it.”
And in that way my farm was left to the mercy of fate. Because even with my closest neighbors, if any of them did any work there it was only in their own interest, so they could take as much as possible for themselves. When I came back the place looked like a battleground. I didn’t know where to turn first. The main shaft of the wagon’s chassis was cracked, and the side panels had been stolen. All that was left of the dog was its kennel, even its chain must have come in handy for someone else. When I went into the barn, the mows were almost empty, though there was no shortage of sparrows. It sounded like I was standing under the sluice-gate of a mill and water was pouring down on me from above — the noise was deafening. They’d run so wild they weren’t even that afraid of me. Only the ones on the threshing floor rose up, though to the last moment they weren’t sure whether they needed to be scared of me or not. I threw one of my walking sticks at them, but you’re never going to hit a sparrow, they just flew up under the roof. And my walking stick bounced off the boards and into a mow, and I had to clamber over the partition to fetch it. I was so furious I tipped my head back and started cursing them and calling them names, you damn this and that! But they couldn’t even hear me. You’d have needed the trumpets of Jericho to be heard over that racket. Besides, sparrow talk is different from people talk, and they wouldn’t have understood anyway. You just wait, you little buggers!
I hurried out to look for my whip. But try finding your whip when you’ve been gone two years. I went to the neighbor’s.
“Franek, lend me a whip, will you.”
“You in a hurry to get out into the fields? You only just got back from the hospital.”
“It’s not for going to the fields, it’s for the sparrows.”
“What the heck use is a whip, with sparrows?”
I bolted the door, stood in the middle of the threshing floor, and leaning on a walking stick with one arm, with the other I started waving the whip and cracking it way up to the rafters, shouting, “boo! boo!” at the top of my voice. There was a swirling confusion of birds. It was like a sudden whirlwind was blowing them out of the mows, out from under the thatched roof, who knows where from, so they all gathered in a huge swarm that was frantic with fear, with the beating of thousands of little wings. Sometimes when a storm wind blows through the orchard the leaves on the trees make the same sound. They weren’t sparrows, they were a gale, a blizzard. The entire barn was shaking. And I kept going “boo! boo!” and cracking the whip. The birds were thrashing about, flying this way and that, up above, down below, I even had to duck because they were flying around me as well. They moved toward the door, but the door was bolted, then up toward the sky, but there there was the roof, then against the walls. In fact the walls had fist-sized holes in them, because the barn was a good old age, plus it had been hit by shrapnel in the war, and even a pigeon could have squeezed through those holes, never mind a sparrow. But the sparrows were so confused that one sparrow was a flock of sparrows, and a flock of sparrows can’t get through a hole for one sparrow. You could actually smell overheated feathers in the air, like the stink of chaff when the wind is in the grain. But it wasn’t chaff, how could it have been chaff? It was the fear of the sparrows that stank like chaff, as they rose up in a swarm to try and escape their sparrowy death.
My walking stick fell out of my hand, but it was like a miracle had happened, my legs stood on their own. I didn’t even feel any pain, because I didn’t feel I had legs at all. I just hobbled this way and that around the threshing floor, and, boo! boo! My throat was as dry as a well in a drought and my arm was about to fall off from waving the whip. But the birds up by the roof were evidently also getting tired, because they started looking for somewhere they could perch even for a second. They weren’t that frightened anymore, either by the whip or by my shouting. I am not giving in to you, I said to myself, not if it kills me. I grabbed the flail that was standing in the corner by one of the mows, and I started smashing it against the threshing floor, the doors, the partitions, the pillars. This set the storm in motion again. They weren’t flying in a single dense cloud anymore, but in little groups, in tatters, birds on their own. They flapped about every which way, even bumping into each other. They didn’t look like sparrows so much as sparrow dust, sparrow fear, sparrow death, fluttering around the barn. And in that dust, that fear, that death, they crashed against the walls and rafters and beams and came tumbling down to the ground like rotten apples falling off a tree. At moments it was like someone had shaken the trunk of the barn, and there was an absolute hail. Though the others kept trying to get away, maybe they thought they’d already made it out of the barn to freedom, that they’d managed to pass through the walls and the roof like sparrow ghosts and they were soaring through the air farther and farther away from my flail. Because in a state of panic like that, even sparrows can think goodness knows what. A couple of them even fell on me, but what’s a sparrow, even a dead one. Just a little bundle of feathers. Besides, I was in a rage, and I’d gotten so carried away with the flail that even if rocks had fallen on me they would’ve felt like sparrows.
I began to run out of strength, the flail got out of control and I hit myself on the head with the swingle. At that exact moment it felt like someone had kicked my legs from under me, and I had to grab hold of a pillar so I wouldn’t fall over. I dragged myself to a sack of bran and plumped down on it, exhausted and gasping like a dog that’s been rushing around. The sparrows were still flying all over the place and killing themselves up above, though the cloud wasn’t so dense now, it was like the last drops of rain. And even after they’d stopped flying, every so often one of them would still rise into the air then thump down into a mow or onto the threshing floor.
My rage was through and I was even starting to feel bad about what I’d done. I mean, what had the sparrows done to me. But how could I help it if the sparrows had been on the receiving end? I could just as easily have turned the house upside down or taken an ax and cut down the orchard. Because I’d obviously needed to do something to come to terms with myself. What was I now? It wasn’t enough that I had to learn to walk from scratch, I also had to learn how to live all over again. Yet how could I live when everything here was in ruins. One of the cows was at least calving, but with the other one you felt bad even milking her. When you pulled her teats she twisted her head around to see why you were tormenting her. And she gave no more than a cupful of milk in the morning and the same in the evening. As for the horse, if I hadn’t known he was mine I’d never have recognized him. His ribs were poking through his skin. He only stood when I took him by the halter. And even when he was only harnessed to an empty wagon he staggered like he was about to collapse. He’d need to be fattened up on oats for at least a week to get his strength back a bit. But where was I supposed to get oats from when the bins were gaping empty. He had to eat chaff, and from borrowed straw at that. And on top of everything, the harvest had begun.