To begin with I thought I was dreaming. But it didn’t take long for me to get used to it, and then I regretted I’d have to go back to the woods. It wasn’t going to be easy after I’d been lying there like the owners’ cousin, having my food brought to me in bed. Having a gunshot wound would have been one thing, but it had to be the consumption. What kind of illness was that? Franek Marciniak had the consumption before the war. He’d eat slices of bread spread twice as thick again with butter, and he drank endless amounts of dog lard and ate eggs and cream, they took the food from their own mouths so he could have it, and the young Marciniaks would say they wanted to have the consumption too. Because he looked like a doughnut in butter.
I’d occasionally think I could actually be one of the owners’ cousins, why not. For instance that Maurycy from the inscription on the watch. Though who had Julia been? Because neither the master nor his wife were Maurycy or Julia. Sometimes I imagined their life one way, sometimes another, but it was always a happy one. They wouldn’t have given each other a gold watch if they hadn’t been happy. And though they were probably long dead and in the ground, their happiness was still there, ticking inside the watch. When you listened carefully you could hear it clear as day, like far-off bells ringing over them in a dewy morning. I even wondered if time didn’t move forward but instead turned in circles like the hands of the watch, and everything was still in the same place.
From all that lying I put on weight and they started worrying that I didn’t look like I had the consumption anymore. Perhaps it’d be better if I was ill with something else. Except that nothing scared people off so much as the consumption, only typhus was better. But if they’d said it was typhus then word might get around and they’d come and take everyone to the hospital, and lock up the manor. On the other hand, I was looking more and more like I was their cousin. The maid, to begin with she treated me like I was just more work for her, when she brought my dinner she’d snap: “Dinner.” Now, she’d say:
“Here’s your dinner, your grace. Here’s your breakfast. Here’s your afternoon tea, see how tasty it is today. You’re looking better, your grace. For supper it’ll be butter rolls, tea, ham, cottage cheese, and plum tart.”
I had the feeling she was staring at me more and more. Till I started thinking, maybe I am her grace, I ought to check. So one day when she was putting the breakfast tray down on the bedside table, I put my hand under her dress and moved it up her thigh all the way to the top, and the only thing that happened was the plates rattled on the tray.
“Oh!” she sighed in a squeaky little voice like a baby bird. “You’re a quick one, your grace. Let me at least put the tray down.” And like a little chick going out onto a branch for the first time and shaking because it doesn’t know how to fly, she bent down over that hand of mine.
When I went back to the woods after that, for a while I lost the will to fight. I just kept thinking over and over, when it comes down to it, what’s the point of fighting? Wouldn’t it be better to just lie there in an attic like that? It was only when I got thinner from not eating so much that I started to feel like fighting again.
To begin with, one day I gave her a bolder nod than usual and instead of just good morning I also said Miss Małgorzata. Good morning, Miss Małgorzata. Then a few days later I added:
“You’re looking nice today, Miss Małgorzata.”
“Thank you,” she said. “Nice of you to say so, Mr. Szymon.” And though she was always so serious and she seemed to look down on everyone, you could tell I’d embarrassed her.
Some time later, it happened to be raining that day, the two of us stopped in the porchway to at least wait out the worst of it, because it was cats and dogs, and we got to chatting the way you do in the rain, that it’s been like this for a week already, that if it keeps up all the crops’ll rot. Since it wasn’t easing up we kept talking, and I invited her to come by sometime and watch me give a wedding.
Not long after that, Wojtek Lis married Kryśka Sobieska. As usual, almost every woman in the place gathered to see it, and quite a few of the men, including the district secretary. And the window that opened onto the courtyard was so crammed with heads it looked like they were all growing from a single body. I didn’t think she’d come. Then suddenly I saw her standing with the others in the half-open door, and my heart began to thump. I invited everyone to come inside, let Wojtek and Kryśka at least have a crowd of strangers at their wedding, since their parents weren’t there, or any of their relatives. Actually I liked Wojtek, though he was a good few years younger than me, and Kryśka was in about her sixth month, she had a belly big as a drum, and she was a bit embarrassed. But I said to her:
“Don’t be ashamed, Kryśka, you’ve got a person inside you, not a wild animal.”
And I gave such a speech that almost everyone was in tears. The girls were one thing, but even some of the guys looked like they’d been staring into a bright light for too long. Kryśka cried, Wojtek cried. The people in the window cried. Though I wasn’t saying anything sad. I talked about happiness. That you need to look for happiness inside yourself, not around you. That no one will give it to you if you don’t give it to yourself. That happiness is often close as close can be, maybe in the simple room where you spend your whole life, but people go looking for it in all kinds of strange places. That some people search for it in fame and riches, but not everyone can afford fame and riches, while happiness is like water and everyone’s thirsty. That often there’s more of it in a single good word than in an entire long life. Kryśka’s folks had disowned her and thrown her out of the house. Wojtek didn’t have a father and his mother had died a year before. That a person could be famous and rich but not be happy.
I told them about a certain king who lacked for nothing, but who never had any dreams. Because of this he was afraid to go to sleep, because when he got into bed it was like he was lying down in his coffin. Though his bed was made of solid gold and he had a quilt of the finest down, and down pillows too. The greatest doctors on earth were brought in, they cast all kinds of spells on him, gave him different herbs to drink, they poulticed him with flowers and scents, they played music for him without cease and six naked women danced for him, but he didn’t dream of so much as a daisy in the meadow. Nothing. Every royal night was an empty hole. He prostrated himself, he wore sackcloth, he even took off his golden crown set with diamonds and put on a crown of blackthorn. And he prayed endlessly, to different gods. Because some people advised him to pray to one god because that god was a king himself and he was more merciful than the others, while for another god faith was a great dream, and he might be granted some of that for one night at least. He built churches and almshouses, he washed the feet of the poor, anyone could walk into his palace as if it was his own cottage, and no one ever left empty-handed. In the end he grew thin as a lath and his brother started making secret preparations to take his place, because through all this time the kingdom had been shrinking like a fist. Just like one farmer will start plowing over another farmer’s land, his neighbors were doing the same, plowing over his kingdom from every side, and not just in the spring and fall but all the time. He got sicker and sicker, his servants caught him talking to himself and laughing, shouting, threatening himself with his fist and stamping his foot. He thought about throwing himself off a cliff, because what kind of life was it when you didn’t have any dreams, even if you were the king. It was like he was only half living, he lived in the day but he died at night. Imagine dying like that for years and years, when even dying once is so hard.