I wasn’t as young as I used to be and I wouldn’t just go running after a pair of beautiful eyes. But the girls weren’t as silly as before the war either. Not many of them went for you because of how much land you had. What kind of happiness was land? You work like a dog all the livelong day, day in, day out, and happiness only comes in the next life. And even that wasn’t a sure thing. These days, people were taken at face value. So they preferred to dress well rather than parade their virtue. On top of that you kept hearing how people were having their land taken away from them, and what use was virtue with shared land?
I gave out so many pairs of stockings that if one girl had gotten all of them she’d have been able to wear them for the rest of her life, and not just on Sundays. And she’d always be seen in a fresh pair. I sometimes spent my entire salary on those stockings when the trader woman came by. All I had left was cigarette money. It was another matter that the pay was lousy and if I hadn’t had meals at home I couldn’t have managed on that income. But of all the pairs I gave out, only one let me down.
During the time I was still giving weddings they hired this one girl from Łanów. Łanów is a village about two and a half miles from ours. It’s on the other side of the woods, but it still belongs to the żabczyce administration. She worked in the tax department. Małgorzata was her name. To begin with I didn’t pay much attention to her. Obviously we saw each other almost every day, because in the offices you couldn’t help it, there was only one entrance and one hallway and everyone arrived at the same time and left at the same time. But I’d pass her just like one office worker passing another. Good morning. Good morning. Nothing more. She seemed somehow unapproachable. Any of the other girls, you could pat them on the backside or pinch them or rub up against them in the hallway and you knew they wouldn’t take offense. With her, though, you’d be afraid she’d slap you. Maybe because she’d graduated from junior high. Back then, finishing junior high meant more than going to college today. There’s a few folks from the village studying at college now, and what of it? They won’t even take their cap off to an older person, they expect them to be the one to say hello first, because they’re educated. Only one of them, Jasiu Kułag, he’s nice and polite, he always stops and offers you his hand and asks how things are. He’ll be a decent guy.
I admit I liked the look of her, plus she always dressed nicely, she always had a fresh blouse and dress and jacket. Plus, on rainy days she’d bring a little umbrella, she was the only girl in the offices that had one. That was probably how the rumor got started that she was living with the chairman, because how could she afford everything. They’d just changed from having mayors to having chairmen. Mayor Rożek was followed for a short time by Mayor Guz, then after him was the first chairman, a guy by the name of Maślanka. He wasn’t from our village but his wife was, Józia Stajuda. No one knew where he was from. Whenever anyone asked him what he’d done in the war he’d squirm like an eel. They sent him from the county for us to elect as chairman.
I found it hard to believe she’d be living with Maślanka. She didn’t look like that kind of girl. And I can say of myself that I know people, life’s taught me who to trust and who not to. In the resistance I didn’t trust a soul, and that mattered more than having a good eye or cold blood or a heart of stone. It might have been because of that that I survived. Because truth be told, you can only ever trust the dead. And not all of them, because with some folks even their death has something bogus about it.
Though on the other hand, why should I have trusted her. I didn’t even know her, and there’s always a bit of truth in gossip. Maybe she just knew how to cover her tracks. She wouldn’t have been the first one to set her sights on the chairman. He was the chairman, after all, and he could always make life difficult for you if you weren’t careful. What else could they have seen in him? Pudgy little guy, always sweating up a storm. But he knew how to turn on the charm. When he’d do his rounds of the offices in the morning he’d always have a nice word for each of them, smile at one, kiss the hand of another, stroke another one’s hair like a father. And he wore this big ring with a red stone, supposedly it was a keepsake from his father, he’d flash it in front of every girl. Except that when someone came from the county administration he’d slip it off and hide it in his drawer. Some people said it wasn’t anything to do with his father, that Maślanka had been a hog trader during the war and done well for himself. Whatever the truth was, after a guy like Rożek, whose every second word was “fuck,” because with him what was in his head was on his tongue, the new fellow was almost like a squire. So she could have been one of those that gave in to temptation.
I thought to myself, give it a try, what do I have to lose. If that’s what she’s like it won’t be hard. If he can do it so can I. We’ll see who’s better, chairman or no. When I put my Sunday suit on, you could never look as good, however many suits you were wearing. And you should see me in my officer’s boots. Have you ever even worn officer’s boots? You’d look like a bucket on a stool. Me, they said I could have served in the uhlans. Maybe I would have if things had worked out differently. So what if he was chairman. If the farmers had voted for you the way they used to choose the mayor, you’d have been village policeman at most. As for the ring, I used to wear one myself, and it was a whole lot bigger than yours, it had a stone like a twenty-pound carp. And it didn’t come from selling hogs, I got it from my father and his father before him, it’s been in the family for generations. You loser.
I got shot in the thigh during an attack on a mail train in Lipienniki. They drove me by cart to the manor, they said that was the safest place for me. They put me right under the roof in the attic, so I’d be hard to find if anyone came searching. I wouldn’t have minded spending the rest of my life in a place like that. Their attic was bigger than our whole house. There was a carpet covering the entire floor, a chandelier hanging from the ceiling, elk and stag antlers on the walls. A whole family could have slept on the couch I was lying on. Plus I had a window right by my bed with a view of the grounds, so I could hear birds chirping close by from morning to night. It was like there was no war at all.
If anything happened, the story was that I was a cousin of the owners and I was sick with the consumption. Why not, I could be their cousin. I’d already been a chimney sweep when we had to carry out a death sentence on the mayor of Niegolewo. And a monk when I had to get out of the town and there were roadblocks everywhere. One time I was even transported as a dead man in a coffin, they were pretending to be taking me back to my parish to be buried in my own cemetery. Being the cousin of the owners of the manor was a piece of cake. Especially when all I had to do was lie there with only my face and hands outside the sheets. My face was fine, in fact it was a bit scrawny so it even looked right for the consumption. In addition they gave me a pair of glasses so if need be I could put them on and read a book. Except they made everything blurred, because even today I’ve got eyes like a hawk. I never opened the book once, though it lay right there the whole time on the nightstand. Right away a maid came in with water and soap and a towel, and to begin with she soaked my fingers for a long time, then she trimmed the quick around all my nails till they bled. I asked her why she was doing it. She said the mistress had told her to. Then she trimmed my nails so short they were almost even with my fingertips, and when I tried to scratch myself all it did was tickle. And on this finger, the middle one, they put a big gold ring with a huge stone like I said, big as a twenty-pound carp. With the ring on, my hand felt like it wasn’t mine anymore, I was afraid to move it so I just kept it stiff on the quilt. They put one of the master’s nightshirts on me and for the first night I barely slept a wink. How can you sleep in something that’s more like a priest’s surplice than a shirt? It had lace and frills, and there was so much material two people could have fit inside it. On the nightstand they put the master’s gold watch. To my darling Maurycy, with love, Julia, it said on the cover.