I’d had about twenty chickens. Mrs. Makuła was looking after them for me, and that was a lot of eggs for her, minimum one egg every other day from each chicken. In return she was supposed to water the flowers in the window boxes. There was nothing left of the flowers except dry stalks, and she claimed the chickens had gotten fowl cholera and it happened to be my chickens that all died. She gave me two of hers to replace my twenty, and she promised me a brood hen in the spring.
As for the fence along the road, no more than half of it was left, though there hadn’t been a single post missing before.
I had a chaff-cutter, I’d thought about motorizing it one of these days, but someone had borrowed it. I went around almost all the neighbors near and far, and eventually I found it all the way over by the mill with Przytuła, he even tried to convince me I’d lent it to him myself before I was taken to the hospital. I didn’t have the strength to argue. It might have been true, it might not have, so be it.
My scythe had always hung under the overhang of the barn, now there was no sign of it. The rake had lived next to it, that had disappeared just the same.
I went to Stajuda’s because he’d been the last one to look after my land, all I wanted to know was whether he’d mucked my fields, because the muck stall was completely empty. Sure, he’d gone and mucked the fields and plowed them over, he swore he had. Except his eyes were darting about in this odd way and he didn’t look at me once, he just kept squinting at the walls the whole time. I had to believe him. I mean, I couldn’t go ask the land, tell me, did the bastard muck you or not?
The floor in the house was so covered in mouse droppings it was like walking over spilled buckwheat, scrit scrit scrit. I grabbed a broom and started sweeping. All at once I hear a scratching sound in the pail. I look in, and there’s a mouse. Where did you come from? It made me think, because a bucket for a mouse is like a well for a person. There’s no way to either get in or get out without a ladder. So I had to think it had been born from the water. The water had dried up and the mouse was left behind. I set it free, why should I go blaming a stupid little mouse for everything and killing it.
When I looked at the Our Lady over the bed I saw the glass was broken. There were umpteen empty vodka bottles under the bed. The lightbulb had been removed. It was just as well I’d come back during the day, I managed to go buy a new one. Except that when I screwed it in it turned out there was no light, because there hadn’t been anyone to pay the bill and my electricity had been turned off.
I’d had an alarm clock. Admittedly it was broken, it was stopped on nine o’clock. But at least it showed nine o’clock. You looked at it and you knew you had to do this and do that, go here, drive there, bring such and such, take something down, throw it out, feed the animals, milk them. And everyone has the time inside them anyway, they don’t need a clock to tell them. But someone had found a use even for a broken clock.
Someone else had taken a liking to the calendar, though it was a good few years old. It hung on the wall under the crucifix and I got so used to it being there that I’d been reluctant to throw it out. Plus, once in a while I’d write something on it, maybe someone died, or there was a big hailstorm, or the cow was taken to be covered. Maybe they’d liked the sayings, because there was a different saying for each day. And if someone doesn’t know how to live, a saying like that can often be good advice.
I’d had a bucket I took the food out to the pigs in, that had gone too.
I’d had two stools, only one was left.
What I missed most were my haircutting things. Whoever took them, I cursed him to high heaven. I wished him a lingering death. I’d been counting on maybe beginning to offer haircuts and shaves for the local men, though there was a barber in the village now. Olek żmuda was his name. But they’d come to me as well, if not the young folks then the older ones, and I’d earn a bit of money to help get me started again.
Or my fireman’s helmet, these days you won’t find a helmet like that anymore, all gold, with a crest and a peak and a studded chinstrap. It had hung on a nail in the main room. The bastard who took it couldn’t even wear it, I mean where would he go in it? To a fire? Everyone would stare at him instead of putting out the fire. There aren’t any more parades, and the firemen don’t guard Christ’s tomb at Easter anymore.
Or my prayer book. I got it from mother when she was dying. She had four prayer books, the same as her number of sons. She prayed for each one of us from a different one. From one she prayed for Stasiek, from another for Antek, a third one for Michał, and the one she prayed from for me she’d gotten from her own mother. That was all I had of hers. It was in the drawer in the table. I mean, how can a son of a bitch like that pray from a stolen prayer book? Will God listen to him?
I had a saw used to always be propped up in the hallway. Someone took that as well.
I had a raincoat. It had holes in it, but I’d still always put it on for going out into the fields when it was raining, or taking the animals down to the river to water them. That was gone.
The hoe for weeding, it was almost brand-new, I bought it the spring before my accident, someone even stole the handle.
Then there were all kinds of things I only remembered later.
The basket I always used to take food to be blessed, I didn’t remember till Easter when I’d already boiled the eggs to take them to be blessed.
Or the masher for mashing potatoes up for the pigs. It stood by the door in the passageway, I remember well, twice a day I’d take it and twice a day I’d put it back in its place. And not just for a year or two, but even when mother and father were still alive. Mashers would come and go, but they were always kept in the same place, behind the door in the passageway. But what use was a memory. Sometimes it’s best not to remember at all, because when you remember something it ought to be there.
When I went up into the attic, there’d used to be a sack of feathers hanging from a rod, an old cloak of Michał’s, some other old clothes, half a dozen strings of garlic, a horse-collar, two lengths of rope. Only the rod was left.
I’d had an almost full sack of bolted flour, one and a half hundredweight, yellow as the sun, I didn’t even need to add eggs when I was making noodles. There was no sign of flour or sack.
There’d been two cheeses hanging from a rafter in wicker baskets, I thought they’d be just what was needed when the cow stopped giving milk before it had its calf, but someone had cut the baskets down and left just rag-ends of cord.
Wherever I looked there was something missing. I didn’t want to look anymore. But on the way back from the attic to the main room I noticed the sieve was gone, though there’d always been one hanging on a nail by the ladder. This was gone, that was gone, and two of the rungs of the ladder were broken.
I threw myself on the bed to try and gather my thoughts. Though that’s easier said than done, gathering your thoughts. There are times a man would much rather scatter his thoughts to the four winds. Then turn into a table or a stool. And just be that stool or table till his time came. Because it was like pouring sand from one hand to the other, back and forth, endlessly. You could pour it there and back again all your life, you’d never make it into a whip. And even if you did, who would you use it on? Szymon, Szymon — I thought I heard someone calling me. But I didn’t want to hear who. I stared at the room, or the room stared at me, and there was nothing but a dead reflection in my eyes. And then the cat appeared.