And on the other side, every Sunday the priest would rage against those registry office weddings from the pulpit, he’d say they were godless, threaten folks with hellfire and eternal damnation. And anyone that was thinking of getting married at the registry office, he’d tell them, don’t you dare, otherwise you’ll get expelled from the church, and the Lord God would expel them from humankind. The worst part was that he poked fun at the district administration all he could, he said it was no house of God, that ever since the district administration has been there it was the place you go to pay taxes, and that wedding vows are a sacrament, not taxes, one of the seven holy sacraments, that they were established by God, not by earthly powers, because earthly powers come from Satan. And a good many pig sheds are cleaner than at the district administration, they haven’t had their walls whitewashed since before the war, and when you go in there the floor’s so dirty your shoes stick to it, and the officials there do nothing but smoke cigarettes and chase around after the secretaries. So then, young man and young lady, try going and swearing to be true to each other in that Sodom and Gomorrah. What will a vow like that really be worth?
It might have been because of what the priest was saying that they prepared a separate room in the administration building, they whitewashed the walls, decorated it with flowers, cleaned the floor, put in a new desk and chairs, laid a carpet, and started looking for an official whose only job would be to give those weddings. Though some people said an order had come down from above.
I ran into Rożek one time when I was transporting cabbage home from our patch. He was mayor in those days. He asks me:
“How would you feel about working at the district administration? You could be the one to give weddings. You’d hardly have any work, because no one wants to get married at the registry office. You’d get a regular salary. And you were already in the police once, you’d be one of ours.”
I thought to myself, why not, I’d rather sit behind a desk than cart cabbage. I wasn’t sure I believed in God either, so what did I care about the priest trying to scare people. And at least I’d be able to wear decent clothes, because all my clothes were starting to get ragged. When there was a dance I didn’t have anything to wear. Not to mention I had no money to buy drinks, or sometimes even for admission. My officer’s boots were still in okay shape, but not many people wore officer’s boots anymore. The war was further and further away, and now everyone wore shoes and suits, and the fashion was for pants as wide as skirts and coats big as sacks, as if people were getting as much freedom as they could after the war. Me in my britches and officer’s boots, I was like something from a different world. To the point that after I left the police I started wondering what to do with myself. Because father spent every penny he had on building new cattle sheds, and even when he gave me money for cigarettes he’d always complain, you smoke like a chimney.
I’d left the police because I was supposed to become the commanding officer, but instead they chose this snot-faced kid that hadn’t even been in the resistance, he’d just finished school. Plus he thought he could fix the world’s problems in the space of a week. But it’s easier to create a world in a week than fix it. Especially a world that’s been through a war. And instead of carrying on looking for guns, because people were still shooting at each other, or at least guarding the freight trains carrying cement that would stand in the sidings till half their load had been thieved, he went after Franek Gwiżdż for brewing moonshine, and he had his whole farm searched from top to bottom. After that Gwiżdż says to me, you son of a bitch, you came here drinking all the time, did I ever take a red cent from you, I’d even stick a bottle in your pocket for the road because I thought you were one of us. You just wait and see if you ever get vodka from me again, cause I’m still gonna make it, there’s not a fucking thing you can do to stop me. The Germans could kiss my ass, and you can too. Luckily he hid it all underground somewhere so all we found were the traces of a fire pit in the elder bushes behind the barn. But he explained that by saying he sometimes boiled potatoes for the pigs back there when it was too windy in the yard. So there I was, neither here nor there, actually nowhere, with nothing but work in the fields from dawn till dusk.
I even thought about maybe taking up haircutting again. True, there was a barber in the village now, Jaskóła’s brother-in-law. He’d moved here not long ago from the city because things hadn’t gone so well for him there, and he opened a place in Niezgódka’s outbuilding. Though before the war, when he married Kryśka Jaskóła, he was supposed to become a captain of horse in the uhlans. But no one brought that up. All sorts of changes happened to people through those years, what did it matter if a captain of horse became a barber. Though the farmers complained that he had a hand like a butcher, he’d put it on your head and it was like he was resting it on the block, you had to hold your neck firmly so he wouldn’t break it. On top of that he was a tight-lipped son of a gun. He’d often not say a single word the whole time he was cutting your hair. What kind of barber is that? You don’t go to the barber just to get your hair cut or get a shave, you go to sit and have a chat and listen to stories.
There were supposed to be buses that would start serving some of the villages and I thought about perhaps getting a job as a bus conductor. The work’s not too tough, you ride around and sell tickets, and people get on and get off, people you know, people you don’t, but the whole time you’re among people. And among people life’s always more enjoyable, especially if there’s a fair and the bus is packed, you can have a joke, shout at folks, when there are people all sorts of things can happen. What can happen in the fields? A hare runs past, a lark starts singing, clouds come and it’ll begin to rain?
Though on the quiet, most of all I was counting on Michał, that maybe he’d come visit finally, and he could give me some advice or maybe find me a job where he was. Because to tell the truth, I wasn’t that fired up about being either a barber or a conductor. With both of those jobs I’d still have to work on the land every spare moment after work. And instead of making my life easier, I’d be worn out. Besides, at that time Stasiek was still at home and he was meant for the land. But for some reason Michał never came or got in touch, though he’d promised he would the last time he was home. He was even going to come stop for a while. He was going to take some leave. Because the last time, he only just swung by for a moment. How long had he stayed? Less than half a day.