So there was no time to ask him what his job was, what he’d been up to, how things were going for him. You couldn’t just ask him straight out when you hadn’t known the first thing about him all those years. It was better to keep on not knowing anything. And the truth is, it’s not right to barge into someone else’s life right from the get-go, even if it is your own brother and son. I mean, who knows if you won’t touch on something painful? Or even if it’s still the same brother and son? To begin with you’d need to sit down quietly and stay there at least till the sun sets outside the window, to get used to that big gap of years. It’d be like taking a plow to land that’s not been plowed in a long time. After that you might figure out where to begin, and begin from the beginning, the way God began the world.
The only thing father asked was whether there’d be collective farms here. But he didn’t even answer that question, because the moment he was done unpacking the suitcases and handing out his presents, right away he started asking questions about what was going on with us here, and he asked and asked the whole time till he left. We couldn’t get a word in edgewise. It was like he was thirsting to know everything. Like he hadn’t come at all to see us after being away all those years, but that he was trying to grab as much as he could from us and take it with him. He hardly sat in one place for a moment, he kept standing up and pacing around, and there wasn’t a single thing he wasn’t interested in. He kept pulling things out of his memory like he was taking them out of a sack, anything he remembered, and he kept asking and asking. Sometimes he didn’t even wait for the end of the answer before he asked his next question.
As for whether we were all well, mother, father, us brothers, only mother managed to tell him that the stabbing pains in her chest were getting worse. He nodded, then right away he asked how many acres we’d gotten in the land reform, which office we’d dealt with, whether anyone had tried to scare us into not taking it, then after that how things had been here during the war, who had died then, how our cattle sheds had burned down and whether we were planning to build new ones, whether they’d be wooden or brick, whether we’d roof them in thatch like before or put up a tiled roof, how many cows we had, two or more, whether we had a calf, whether we were planning to save it and rear it, whether we had the same horse or a different one, whether they were thinking of bringing electricity to the village, why the lampshade was so sooty, whether we used kerosene in the lamps or some other poor quality stuff, whether Franciszek the sacristan was still alive, whether the priest was the same or a different one and did he mix God and politics in his sermons, which farmers carried the baldachin over him on Corpus Christi these days, why it was still the same rich ones, whether the winter had been hard this year and had there been a lot of snow, whether the river had burst its banks in the spring and who we took water from when the spring flooded, whether we weren’t thinking about digging a well, how the orchard was, whether that old masztan plum tree was still standing behind the barn, what had happened to it, whether father had planted any new seedlings, whether old Spodzieja was still mending shoes, so who’d taken over after he died, and the dog, was it still Burek, so what was this one called, Strudel, he laughed, Strudel, Strudel, and why had we given it such an odd name, whether mother kept a lot of chickens and geese, whether she had any trouble with polecats or hawks, or maybe with the neighbors, whether that old willow was still standing by the river, whether the blue tits still nested in it, where the girls and the young men went swimming these days, was it still down by Błach’s place, was the water deep, what had happened to the tin crucifix with the broken arm that had always stood on the table, where we’d gotten such a fancy table, why there was nothing in our windows when there’d always been lots of flowers on the windowsill, whether we’d planted garlic this year, whether it had been a good year for garlic, and for onions, cabbage, carrots, beets, and that mother must have whitewashed the house recently because it smelled of lime, whether her cheese pierogies were still as good fried up with sour cream, did we do our threshing with a treadmill or still in the old way with a flail, whether old Mrs. Waliszka was still alive and did her son Mietek still drink the way he used to, whether the storks still came and nested on our barn, why father was wheezing like that, did he have to smoke so much, whether mother still baked bread or did we eat store-bought, had there been mines in our fields, whether our crop had been good this year, then he asked about each one separately, how was the rye, how was the wheat, how was the barley, how were the oats, where they were grown and how much there’d been of them, and why we didn’t plant millet, whether people had stopped eating it in porridge, and what had happened to the steps that the stones were just lying there, whether I was still in the fire brigade and whether we had a motor pump, whether we had the same old fire engine, where they held dances nowadays, was it still in the firehouse, did people still have fights the way they used to or was there less of that now, and which grade was Stasiek in, was he a good student, did he have the books and notebooks he needed, whether there were partridges in the fields, or hares, or foxes, why the door to the hallway creaked so loud that when he was coming in he thought it was trying to stop him, who the mayor was now and whether we’d gotten our fair share of rationed goods, whether father wasn’t thinking of keeping bees, a couple of hives at least, if he did that him and his wife would come for honey. You’re married? He just nodded and right away he asked how Stefka Magiera was, whether she’d gotten married and who to, was she happy, was she still so good-looking, who had gone to high school from the village, who’d moved away and who was new, whether Mrs. Kasperek that used to teach Polish was still alive, who taught arithmetic now, who taught singing, whether there were still so many crows in the poplar trees up behind the mill, whether the boys still used to climb up there to knock down their nests, and who was best at it, because it used to be Szymek, and why were the tiles on the stove bulging out like that, were we still arguing with the Prażuchs over the field boundary, how had it happened that we’d stopped, but he wouldn’t listen to the answers, he just kept asking more and more questions, did people still go sledging on Pociej’s hill in the winter, did Pociej not chase them off, did the carol singers still go around into the New Year, who played Herod, and the devil, and who played death, and was the place by the willow tree at the footbridge still haunted, or maybe the devil had gone by now, whether Michał’s godfather Skubida was still alive, so why was he killed, and his godmother Mrs. Kaliszyn, and did the swallows still nest under our eaves, how many nests were there, whether we joined forces with other people during the harvest or if we just brought in our own crop, why we wouldn’t buy a clock, why mother was so thin, why father had gone so gray, why Antek, why Stasiek, why me, why this and that and the other, why, why, why?
In the end father couldn’t take it anymore and he interrupted all the questions:
“We’ve told you everything, what else do you want from us?”
Mother pleaded with him:
“You might at least sit down and tell us what’s going on with you.”
It was like he suddenly woke up. He looked at his watch and said it was time, he had to be going. Right away he shook my hand, because I was sitting closest to him, then father’s, Antek’s, Stasiek’s. He only said goodbye with a handshake, like we’d see each other again tomorrow, the day after at the latest, or like he was just someone we knew, not our brother and our son. Plus, while he was shaking hands he was looking somewhere else like he wasn’t thinking about saying goodbye at all, but about God only knows what. It was only when he finally said goodbye to mother, and the poor old thing started crying again, he took her head in his hands, looked in her eyes and said: