“Come on, don’t cry, mama. I’ll come again, for sure I will. Maybe I’ll even bring her. You have to meet her.”
And after that we didn’t hear from him again.
A year or so later mother sent him a letter, but he didn’t write back. She sent another one and he still didn’t reply. She was going to write again after a bit, but father got mad and said there was no point in writing all those letters, that he should answer the other ones first. Or maybe he was up to his ears in work, and she was just distracting him with all those letters of hers. When there’s work, everyone knows it needs doing. Even here, when harvesttime comes you don’t have time to so much as scratch your backside. Maybe it’s his harvesttime. When it’s over he’ll come visit without writing a letter even. He was gone all those years and he came back then. It’s not long till Christmas, he’s sure to come for Christmas, maybe both of them, I mean he said they’d both come. Mother, you’d better start thinking about what cakes to bake. Letters won’t do him any good, you can’t make the days pass any faster with letters, let alone hurrying up harvesttime.
But father turned out to be mistaken, Michał never came either that Christmas or the next. Mother kept writing, though in secret now. One day I went into the barn to tear off some hay for the horse and I saw her kneeling at a stool by the back doors, at the far end of the threshing floor. Her glasses were perched on her nose and she was writing something. She was startled and she slipped the hand with the pen under her apron. It took her a moment to look up.
“Oh, it’s you,” she said relieved. “I came here to pray. It’s hard to concentrate in the house, here’s it’s nice and quiet.”
“Couldn’t you go into the orchard? It’s just as quiet out there, and there’s more light,” I said, staring at her and at the same time at the inkwell, that she hadn’t managed to hide.
“There’s plenty of light in here from the holes in the walls,” she answered.
Another time I was going up to the attic to fetch something, I put my head through the trapdoor opening, and here I see mother sitting by a crack of light from the ridgepole with the chopping board on her lap, writing. I climbed back down as quietly as I could, making sure not to step on the creaky rung. It was the same after she was confined to bed, I’d often find her writing those letters, leaning over the stool with the medicines on it that stood by the bed. I’d try not to see, or leave right away pretending I’d just remembered something I had to do. Though I don’t know who took her letters to the post office. Antek and Stasiek had left home by then. The other people who came to the house, I couldn’t see her trusting any of them with her letters. Maybe it was father? He’d been opposed to her writing at one time, so perhaps now he was embarrassed to be seen with them and he mailed them when I was out. Because ever since it was just the two of them and me at home, he stuck to mother like a little child. He would have spent all his time sitting by her bedside telling her stories from the old days. Sometimes he didn’t even tell stories, he just sat there like he was half asleep. Time was, he’d be the one chasing everyone out to work. Now mother had to keep reminding him about the jobs that needed done. Even the most everyday things. That he had to water the cows, or cut chaff, or lay down straw in the cattle barn, or even give the dog its dinner.
“Come on, get on with it,” she’d often pester him.
But he’d just sit there waving her words away like pesky flies.
“What are you worried about? They’ll get their water, the chaff’ll get cut, the straw will get put down, the dog’ll get its dinner. You just stay where you are, you’re sick.” And he’d go on sitting there.
Harvesttime would be right around the corner and he’d sit there like winter was coming.
“The rye must be ripe already,” mother would remind him. “You might go take a look, see if it’s time to mow.”
“No way it’s ripe yet. Last year at this time it was still green. When you’re stuck in bed you think things are ripe already. But time in the fields is different from human time.”
When he finally had to get up and go, because she wouldn’t give him any peace, he was angry, he’d mutter something under his breath. Sometimes, out of irritation he’d grab the cat where it was curled up by the stove and chuck it outside.
“Go catch mice, damn you, instead of lying about indoors.”
Or he’d clang the empty buckets because there wasn’t any water and he was thirsty. One time he even kicked the door because the damn thing was creaking like it was ill.
Mother was finding it harder and harder to leave her bed. She’d only get up to cook something from time to time or to throw down some grain for the chickens when father forgot. When she did the laundry, she had to pull a stool up to the tub and wash the clothes sitting down. Father would heat the water, fill the tub then empty it afterwards, go down to the river to rinse the washing, and hang it out in the yard or up in the attic. It was only when Antek or Stasiek visited that she’d get better for the time they were here. She’d kill a chicken, cook up some broth, make dumplings, wash their dirty things that they brought with them. But after they left she’d get even sicker, and for a week or longer she wouldn’t even get out of bed. Her heart hurt more and more.
“Death’s on its way for me, you can tell,” she’d complain to father.
Father would reassure her that if death was coming it would come for him first, and he didn’t feel it coming yet. He gave her a rosary and told her to pray, that that would soon make her feel better. He’d take the prayer book as well and sit by her, but he wasn’t so good at reading and he’d sometimes ask her for help.
“Read what it says here, this part. I can’t see it properly.”
And mother would read:
‘ “Conceived without the stain of original sin …” ’
“That’s how you write ‘conceived’?” he’d say surprised.
She’d often get annoyed with him for interrupting her the whole time, she’d tell him to pray from memory, because what kind of praying was it when he didn’t know what was written there. He explained that when he prayed from memory the prayers got muddled up with his other thoughts and God got lost in the thoughts, and after that he couldn’t find him. He didn’t take offense when she got angry, and actually she wasn’t really that angry. Maybe they just grumbled at each other like that instead of sighing and complaining about being left alone. Or they had no need to talk any differently, because what was there to talk about, they’d already told each other everything there was to tell. Also, why use the same words when hundreds of thousands of them have already been spoken all through their life, and life had turned against the words anyway?
Sometimes I felt sorry for them. But I rarely went straight back home after work. I’d usually go out, either drinking or with girls. I’d often not get back till midnight, when they were long asleep. Many a time I’d just be going to bed in the morning as they were getting up. After you’ve been drinking, when you come back home you sometimes have trouble finding the door. And a drunk man, as well as being drunk, he’s a stranger even to his own kith and kin. They’d talk to me but my head would be humming, buzzing, I’d barely hear what they were saying. Or I’d have to remind myself who they were, that they were my father and mother, and that it was me they were telling off. Mother, like you’d expect, she’d be sighing and pleading with me, but at least quietly: