My throat started to feel dry, as if from the baking heat from the grain and the earth, and I stooped down to take a handful of snow. At that moment one of them whacked me as hard as he could on the side of the head. I went sprawling and I thought about not getting up. I even wanted them to finish me off. But with them it’s never that easy. They don’t like it when someone chooses his own death. They have to take him to where they’ve decided he’s going to die. Even if it’s the same death. They started yapping like wolves, beating me and kicking me, and I got up. But it was harder and harder for me to walk. My ankles were aching. Every step felt like I was treading on a nail. So I started to imagine the grain must be full of thistles, and it was because of the thistles that it hurt so much walking through the stubble. Or maybe it’d been cut with sickles. Stubble that’s been cut with sickles feels like it’s packed with nails. Then I imagined my father was calling me from the far end of the field to bring him his whetstone, and I was on my way to him. Or that my cows had wandered onto the squire’s land and they were eating his beets, and I was hurrying towards them across the stubble, heart in mouth, as fast as I could, to shoo them out of there. At a time like that, who’d be thinking about whether their feet hurt when you can barely breathe, you’re so afraid that any minute now the squire’s steward is going to confiscate the cows before you get there. Or that I was racing the other boys across the stubble field, seeing who’d make it to the field boundary first. I won.
Those sons of bitches probably thought I was exhausted, because how could they have known that the whole way I’d been walking on stubble, at the height of summer, the height of the harvest, since they were leading me over snow. In the end they evidently got real cold themselves, because they started clapping their hands and blowing on them, and stamping their feet. On the left-hand side, right by the track there was a slope overgrown with juniper bushes, and at the bottom there was a deep twisting ravine. But they were so convinced I wouldn’t go an inch farther without being beaten that one of them even dug out a bottle and they all took a swig. They must have been telling dirty stories as well, because all of a sudden they all hooted with laughter as if on command. One of them opened his fly and took a leak. Right at that moment I ran for the slope. Before the first shots sounded I was rolling down through the junipers. Then I dropped like a sack into the ravine. For them it was too steep to chase me. They just stood there shooting. But only one bullet got me, right here in the shoulder. The rest hit the snow, the junipers, the trees. I didn’t even feel anything at the time, only later, when I was already safe.
From that moment on, Jadzia started giving me special treatment with the meals. She’d bring me a bigger piece of meat for dinner, or more potatoes, or a second bowl of soup. Whenever she came onto the ward she’d always ask if I was hungry or thirsty, or if I’d run out of cigarettes, she could go buy me some. A few times she even got me a pack with her own money. Every so often she’d come onto the ward seemingly for no special reason, and while she was there she’d straighten my blanket, because it’s gone and fallen on the floor, Mr. Szymek. She’d plump my pillow, because you’ll get a headache, Mr. Szymek, from lying on a pillow that’s all squashed up like that. And she’d always slip something to eat under the pillow.
“Just make sure you eat it during the night, when everyone else is asleep, Mr. Szymek,” she’d whisper, as if to the pillow. “And watch out for that guy by the window, because he sleeps with one eye open.”
Or when she was bending down for the urinal under the bed, she’d murmur in my ear:
“Tomorrow it’s chops for dinner. You’ll have one on the outside like everyone else, but there’ll be another one hidden under the potatoes. Just don’t pull it out or people will see. The old guy in the corner has eyes like a hawk. He lost his leg but there’s nothing wrong with his eyesight. He watches everyone else’s plates while he’s eating his own dinner. But it won’t do him any good. And you, Mr. Szymek, you need to live so you need to eat. I’ll bake a plum cake for Sunday because my sister’s coming, and I’ll bring you some too.”
One time she brought me an orange. It was the first time in my life I’d eaten an orange. Those wounds of mine came in useful after all.
V. Mother
They happened to be looking for someone to run wedding ceremonies at the district administration. In theory the district secretary was supposed to do weddings, but since the end of the war no more than three or four couples had gotten married in the registry office, mostly people still had a church wedding. Though legally a registry office marriage was just as valid as a church one, and you could be just as happy or unhappy after a civil wedding as a church one. Also, when you had a registry office wedding it was easier to get a horse through UNRRA, or building materials, or grain for sowing. And you could get divorced, the next day even, if things didn’t work out. Not like in the church, where that was an end of it, because what God hath joined together let no man put asunder, so you have to stay with some awful bitch for the rest of your life. Quite a few of them lived exactly like that, cat and dog, they’d fight, have running feuds, when one of them pulled left the other would pull right, but they’d have to keep on living together all the way till one of them died before the other. Though if you ask me, a life like that is actually against God and God ought to break it up. I mean, it can happen that the wrong two people end up together, no one can know ahead of time who’s meant for who, because destinies get mixed up as well, destinies are like days, you should only say they’re good after the sun’s gone down. That was another reason people preferred registry office weddings.
The first ones to have a civil wedding, right after the front passed through, were Florek Denderys and Bronka Makuła. The district administration gave them a better wedding than a lot of rich folk get, even the ones that have a church wedding. They put a flag on the administration building, they decorated the walls with fir branches, they laid down a carpet a good ten yards long leading up to the entrance, and over the doorway they hung a sign in cutout letters saying: The District Administration Congratulates the Happy Couple. On top of that they were awarded several thousand zlotys. Florek was given a length of material for a suit. Bronka got cloth for a dress, she got a horse, a cow, and baby clothes, because there was one on the way, and an alarm clock to wake them up for work if they ever overslept. Except they had to leave for the West soon after, because people in the village wouldn’t leave them alone, they kept calling Bronka a whore and saying the kid was a bastard, though it hadn’t yet been born. So after them, for a long time there weren’t any takers for a registry office wedding.
The mayor or the district secretary even visited anyone that they heard was getting married and tried to persuade them to do it at the registry office, they’d say that at the registry office you didn’t need to announce the banns, you didn’t need bridesmaids and veils, you just write it in the registry book and that’s that. Also, it was easier to get a horse, building materials, everything was easier. In the church the priest charged the earth. True, wedding vows were supposed to be before God. But has anyone ever seen God? Only in a picture. How can you be sure it’s him? Even before the war there were a few unbelievers in the village. Kruk for instance, he’d never taken confession in his life till his old lady and his daughters made him. And at the manor houses there was always a strike going on somewhere or other. Mostly at harvesttime, or sometimes during the potato lifting. Wicek Chrząszcz from over in Poddębice even did six months in prison for agitation, because he got drunk at the harvest festival and threatened the village elder he’d get hung from a tree the moment justice would arrive. But now it had arrived, what next? The folk from the county offices came asking how many couples had tied the knot at the district administration. And the answer was, none. What do you mean, none? Aren’t people getting married in your district? Well, sure they are, but everyone’s doing it at the church. So then, this district of yours is going to have to pony up if people there are refusing to understand the new times. The taxes’ll get upped, or they’ll maybe stop supplying coal. There’s always something you can stop giving.