It wasn’t surprising really. To be surrounded like her for so many years by misery and pain and death and moaning, and it was constantly, clean up shit and piss, tidy the place, change the beds, take this out, bring this in — after all that you’d learn to laugh at anything. Plus, everyone was always trying to marry her, old, young, widows, married men, though all of them had half a foot in the next world. A good few couldn’t even stand up on their own, or turn over in bed by themselves, they were armless, legless, they shat their pants, their faces were all crooked, they ached everywhere. But the moment Jadzia came on the ward, every one of them was all set to marry her. Some of them would have married her one day and died the next. And she never turned anyone down, she never said no, she just laughed.
Often one of them would set about marrying her in a way he’d never have done with his own wife, because she’d have knocked his block off. But Jadzia the orderly let anyone try to marry her as much as they wanted, and she laughed with each one the way she would have done with her own man. She was never sad, never angry. It was just that when one of them would try to arrange a wedding with her, she’d ask:
“How am I going to get to the church? Are you planning to take me in a regular wagon with the boards all dirty with manure? Cause I’m not going unless it’s in a carriage drawn by four white horses.”
One guy would promise she’d be a fine lady when she lived with him.
“Then you’ll have to become a fine gentleman first.”
One of them would swear she’d never lack for caviar in his house.
“Caviar maybe not, but I’d lack for everything else.”
One tried to tempt her by saying he had gold rubles buried under a mow in his barn, and when he got back home he’d dig them up and they’d all be hers.
“Best go home first and dig them up, your kids might have gotten there first.”
Another one kept pestering her about getting together in the morning when everyone was still asleep.
“In the morning there’s no moonlight and your breath smells.”
One guy sighed and said that if the Lord let him get well even just for a moment from being with her, he’d buy a new bell for the church.
“Then buy the bell first so I can hear it ringing.”
Someone else boasted that though he was old, if he went with her he’d get his youth back.
“You should get your youth back first, because afterwards it might be too late and we’d both be embarrassed.”
One of them asked if he could at least feel her breast.
“What good would that do you? You’re not a baby anymore, you won’t get any milk from it.”
Another one complained he wanted her so bad it hurt, but he couldn’t move arm or leg.
“So you see yourself. No moving, no loving.”
Another guy would grin at her when she was putting a urinal in place for him, though he couldn’t ever go.
“You need to take a piss first, cause otherwise later it could be a problem.”
When one of them was dying she’d sit by him and say to him:
“You were supposed to marry me, and here you are dying. I laughed just because, but I would have gone with you even in a regular wagon with dirty boards.”
Maybe that’s why she never took a husband, because they were forever marrying her and then dying, and it was like she was constantly being made a widow. I laughed myself a good many times that if it wasn’t for my legs, or if I’d met Miss Jadzia earlier, she would have had to be my wife. I’m no spendthrift, Miss Jadzia was a sensible woman too, we’d have made a good couple. But nothing was lost, when I got home I’d come visit her one day, bring her a chicken, some eggs, cheese, and we’d talk it through. The house would have a housekeeper, I’d have a wife, because my brothers had been on at me about getting married. There was no point even talking about it right now with these legs, who knew if I’d ever walk again, and Miss Jadzia wouldn’t have been able to carry me, even though she had strong arms.
One time at the very beginning, when she was changing my sheets she saw the scars on my body and she was horrified:
“Heavens almighty! Who gave you all those wounds, Mr. Szymek?”
“Different people, Miss Jadzia, some of it was at dances, some was in the resistance.”
“And you survived all of them? Lord have mercy!” And she asked me to tell about one of the scars at least.
“Then you decide which one, Miss Jadzia,” I said playfully. She chose the scar on my shoulder, a small one though it had gotten bigger over the years. And so I had to tell her how it got there.
I was spending the winter in hiding at the house of a guy I knew in Jemielnica. The village was a long way from any main road. To the south there were woods. And it was no ordinary winter either, there was snow everywhere and you could only travel by sleigh. The animals came out of the woods right up to the house. You’d step outside and there’d be a deer poking about in the yard, a hare hopping around, and partridges flying in like snow suddenly falling from the roof. What was there to be afraid of? I even moved my bed from the attic to the main room. Then one night, bang! bang! they start hammering on the door and shouting, open up! And before anyone could even open the door they smashed it in with their rifle butts. They virtually took me from my bed — I just had enough time to put my pants on when they started knocking me in the back and on the head with those rifle butts, and it was, forward march! Like they were in some kind of big hurry.
They’d come in two sleighs. But three of them stayed back to escort me on foot, while the rest went ahead in the sleighs. They didn’t even let me put my boots on — for them I was probably already a corpse. So they pushed me along barefoot in pants and shirt, following the tracks made by the sleighs.
The snow stuck to my feet, and from time to time I tried to rub one foot against the other. But right away one of them would thump me in the back. Though they kept hitting me the whole time anyway, probably to warm themselves up in the cold. Or they may have felt even colder than me, because every couple of yards one of them would bat his arms against his sides. They were wearing greatcoats and boots and balaclavas under their helmets, and gloves, but if you’re not used to it, you’ll be cold even if it’s not that cold. Plus they had their hands on metal the whole time, and metal is even colder than the ground.
To begin with I walked as if I was on burning coals, and I felt I wouldn’t make it very far. I wanted to get beyond the village, at that point I was planning to jump them, let them kill me where I chose for it to happen, not them, especially since there was no telling where that might be. Besides, why go farther when it was all leading to the same thing. But once we got outside the village I started feeling sorry that it was about to happen right now, and I thought, I’ll keep going a little ways farther at least. Why should I worry about my feet, they’re going to be dead either way, and it would be good to go on even a little bit. The sleighs with the other men were farther and farther away, it looked like they were sinking into the snow, and in a minute they’d be out of sight. The guys behind kept prodding me for walking too slowly.
Eventually, to make me forget I was walking on snow I started imagining to myself that I was walking over stubble. Stubble pricks and hurts just as bad, but at least your feet are warm. Though if you know what you’re doing, walking on stubble is no big deal. All you have to do is shuffle your feet along instead of picking them up. If you do that you can move as fast as you like, and you can run away when you’re being chased. And so I felt less and less that I was walking on snow, and more and more I could feel the stubble under my feet, I could feel the earth warm from the sun and dusty dry. I could even hear the chink of a whetstone against a scythe blade. The heat from the crop stuck in my chest. For a moment, way up overhead I heard a lark. But one of the bastards behind me must have heard it as well because he fired a shot over my head and the lark stopped singing.