“Would you have some glasses?” one of them said.
“Glasses? What for?”
The one who’d asked about the glasses turned to one of the other ones and said:
“Give it here, Zenek.” The guy called Zenek started opening the briefcases, out of one of them he took a quart-sized bottle of vodka and a loop of sausage, out of another one another quart and several dozen hard-boiled eggs, then out of the third another quart and half a loaf of country bread.
It was only then they said they’d come because they were putting up a memorial to us in the woods, at the place where we got shot, and they’d heard that one person got away, me, and they’d prefer it if everyone died and no one escaped. Because if one person escaped you’d have to write more about him than about the ones that were buried there. But otherwise no one escaped, this many men were brought there, this many men were shot. See, it’s all on the memorial. From here to there, all squared away. To say no one, it was like a bell ringing clearly. To say someone escaped was like he’d knocked off a piece of the cross. Or at least spoiled something.
“But I’m alive. What does that mean?”
Had I dug a grave? I had. For myself? For myself. They even shot at me, I’d been wounded, right? So it was like I’d half died as it was. If the bullet had been just a bit more on target I’d be completely dead. Besides, years later who was going to remember that I’d escaped. Only the ones buried there would be remembered, because every last one of them would have their name written on the memorial. I’d be there as well. What was the harm in agreeing?
“So let’s drink. Your health!”
But people see me, they know me, how would it look — here I am walking about alive, and over there I’m lying buried. Who knows, maybe it would’ve been better if I’d been killed with all the others back then. But I escaped, I can’t go around claiming I died with them.
What difference did it make to me? I wasn’t going to live forever either way, everyone has to die sooner or later, so eventually things’ll even out. Memorials aren’t built for the present. Now the people that remember are still alive. But they’ll die as well one of these days, and after that the memorials will have to do the remembering on their own. And memorials don’t like it when someone stands out. What did I care? The people that were killed and buried there, it’d be easier for them as well if one more joined them. And that way it’d be everyone. No one escaped. Your health!
“Here, have some sausage. It’s homemade, not shop-bought. The bread as well. You know, what does it mean that one guy got away? Did anyone see it? No one did. The ones that saw it are six feet under. He could have escaped or not escaped. Maybe people just said he did. People say all kinds of things. Did anyone ever escape from a hellish situation like that? But folks like it when at least one person always escapes, and even if he didn’t, they like to say he did. How could he have escaped? They brought them there, surrounded them, every one of them had a machine gun, plus they had dogs.”
“There weren’t any dogs,” I said.
“So what if there weren’t. There could have been. Besides, if death is staring you in the face it’s death you see, fear, even if they’d had dogs you wouldn’t have seen them. One time they came to Bolechów for this one guy, they had dogs and every one of them was trained like the devil, you couldn’t take a single step. Even if he’d run away the dogs wouldn’t have let him get far. They weren’t village mongrels. And with a gunshot wound on top of that? He wouldn’t have gotten more than a few yards. And those devils, once they smell human blood they’ll bite you to death. Being killed by bullets is better than being killed by dogs. So then, are we good?”
They got me so muddled I didn’t know whether I’d died or not. On top of that the vodka came over you in such a sweet way that you could have died and you wouldn’t have known it. And I would have felt foolish drinking and eating with them and then saying no. But then all of a sudden mother called from the kitchen:
“Get away with you now, stop leading him into temptation. He doesn’t need to be on a memorial, he’s at home, thank the Lord. I cried my fill for him back then, why should I have to do more crying?” She turned to father to back her up: “You say something as well, father!”
But father had been drinking with us all the while and eating sausage and eggs, it would have been hard for him to be against it, and you could tell his head was muddled up pretty good as well, because all he said was:
“So how’s the weather over in Borowice?”
“What kind of father are you!” Mother was so mad she clanged her ladle against the pot. “Here they are trying to convince your son that he was killed, and all you can do is ask about the weather!”
At this point, scared of getting in mother’s bad books, he mumbled reluctantly:
“The thing is, if he thinks he was killed he won’t feel like working. And there’s no end of work around here. Harvesttime is coming. This year we planted three acres of rye alone. Then there’ll be the potato digging. That’s a big job as well. You came at the wrong time. You should have come after the harvest and the potato digging. In the winter would have been better.”
Twenty-five of us they shot back then. They’d ordered a meeting on the square in front of the district offices. No one knew what they were capable of yet, they’d only been there a year, so the farmers all came in like it was market day, from our village, from others. Besides, there wasn’t anything to be afraid of, just like always the local policeman had gone around with a drum announcing there was going to be a meeting, so at most we figured they were after meat and milk and cereals, what else could they want from farmers. Father was going to attend, but at the last minute he changed his mind and said, you go, because he might pick some clover for the animals. Or maybe take a nap, the whole previous night he’d had a stomachache, probably from the black pudding the day before.
There was already a crowd on the square in front of the building. An officer was standing on a table they’d carried out from inside, making a speech. Actually he was screaming, jumping up and down on the table and waving his right arm around, his left hand was tucked into his belt and it wasn’t moving, like it didn’t belong with the other one. Right next to him on the table there was a civilian that was supposedly translating, though the officer didn’t give him much of a chance to translate. It looked like he missed about half of what the other guy was shouting about, because the other guy just kept on shouting and shouting. And he was having trouble with the translation, he stammered and stuttered and he was talking so quietly, like he was just telling someone in the next room. Maybe he was afraid, or he wasn’t allowed to talk as loud as the officer. So I didn’t even hear most of it, especially because the farmers were also muttering among themselves: