“He’s got one foot in the grave already, goddammit, he smells death everywhere.”
“You say they’re going to kill us? Why would they do that? Why?”
“If they were going to kill us they wouldn’t have bothered taking you. You dying doesn’t mean shit to them. It’d be a waste of a bullet. Death’ll take you without any help from them.”
Strąk hunched over like he’d been swallowed up by the earth. He might even have regretted saying what he said about being killed, it came out like it was about everyone dying, when he was likely just talking about himself.
“But what if they are taking us to our deaths? What if they are? Maybe they’re going to have us dig our own graves, that’s what the spades are for? Lord!”
“In that case they’d have taken someone to fill the graves in afterwards. I mean, we couldn’t do it ourselves. But they didn’t.”
“That can’t be it. There’s probably a dike burst somewhere, we had bad rains recently, it could have burst.”
“Hey, hear that? Quiet there. Sounds like there’s another truck behind us. I’m not just hearing things. My hearing’s still good, even if I am getting on.”
“What if there is, they’re not gonna wait back in the village are they?”
“It’s either the wind flapping the tarpaulin, or there’s a mill somewhere close by.”
“Do something, Lord. Make the axle break or whatever.”
“A broken axle won’t help you. One time my axle broke, I was taking rye to the mill, and instead of the miller I needed a blacksmith. A miracle’d be better.”
“Sure, you just order us a miracle.”
“There was a miracle over in Leoncin in the last war, but they didn’t take us in trucks back then.”
“I was supposed to go plow tomorrow, Stanuch and me were gonna team up our horses. You know, up by the hill.”
“One time, this Gypsy fortune-teller told me I’d live a long life. Wish I knew where the bitch is now.”
“Mind your language there, what if we are going to die?”
“What are you going to do about it? Run away? You can’t run away. Besides, we have to die sometime.”
“Dear God, the wife’ll be left on her own with four kids! Though what does God care?”
“I didn’t even say anything about what they should do at home if I don’t come back.”
“You’ll go back, why wouldn’t you. Błażek Oko came back from the war after twenty years, though no one ever thought he would. He was old and bald and his woman had gone to her grave, but he came back. And don’t people come back from over the sea?”
“The storks came back this year, though I was all set to knock the nest off, what good is an empty nest to anyone.”
“The moment we get back, I swear to God I’m gonna get legless. I’m gonna drink for three days. The hell with the horse and the cows and pigs and the land. There’ll be no farmer for three days. I’ll spend three days in bed with the missus, what do I care. We’ve got six kids, we’ll have a seventh, what do I care.”
“Hail Mary, full of grace …”
“Stop it, they’re looking at us. Let them think we’re not afraid of dying.”
“But we are afraid, Bolesław, we are. Though if it has to be, it has to be.”
“If you ask me, they’re going to have us plant trees. Oleś the woodsman, he paid one grosz per pine sapling before the war. I wonder if there’ll be a lot of soldiers.”
“I hope to God it’s trees.”
“I’m telling you, lads, it’s trees. I know trees. Can you hear the branches against the tarpaulin?”
“Listen, with lupin, is it better to plow it in while it’s still in bloom or wait till afterwards?”
“It’s better to make your confession.”
“Without a priest?”
“Each of us to himself.”
“How can you confess to everything on your own? Without a grille, without anything? Are the sins supposed to confess to each other? How will we know if they’re forgiven?”
Suddenly we all swung forward like grain in a meadow and the truck pulled up. The four soldiers that had been guarding us quickly stood and rolled back the tarpaulin, then they jumped down, opened the tailgate, and all at once they’re yelling, get down, get down, hurry! Schnell, schnell!
To begin with we couldn’t see anything, the light blinded us like we’d just crawled out of a hole in the ground. I thought to myself that that might be what the light eternal looks like, except after that you can’t see anything ever again. But right away we made out some woods, and Garus from Borzęcin recognized it was the Borowice woods because it was where he used to pick mushrooms.
Everyone got to their feet and there was a commotion in the truck like there was suddenly twice as many of us, but no one was in any hurry to climb out, they made like they didn’t know if they should take the spades or not. On the way we might not have known, but now it was pretty obvious. I grabbed the nearest one and jumped to the ground. If I held back I’d attract their attention and they’d think I was up to something. Actually I was. I’d been thinking about escaping the whole journey, except there hadn’t been any way to do it. But here I decided I had to. Even if I failed, either way it was death, and if I was running away I might not feel the bullets in me, maybe death would come right away.
It was a smallish clearing. The woods were dense round about. Oaks, beeches, spruce. Juniper and hazel too. The grass was like a carpet, and it was covered with heather. You could have sat yourself down, got some fresh air, listened to the birds or just watched the trees swaying in the wind. And if you happened to have a girl with you, it wouldn’t be a forest clearing anymore but a little piece of heaven. You could imagine you were the first people. But we’d come there to die.
“You should’ve seen the agaric used to grow here, Lord those were some mushrooms.” Garus had gotten out after me, he was full of regret for life. “And over there, among the oaks, there was boletus, ceps. There were so many you could have cut them down with a scythe, because hardly anyone knew about this place.” He even started looking around for mushrooms, but a soldier thumped him in the back with his rifle butt and pushed him into the middle of the clearing.
They formed a wall around us and the same officer that had been screaming on the table outside the district administration started shouting again and waving his arms at the men that were still getting out of the truck. Schnell! Schnell! The younger guys jumped down without needing to be told, it was only the older ones that were left. For them, getting down off the bed of the truck was like jumping from the hayloft to the threshing floor. Plus there was nothing for them to hold on to or lean on, so it was no surprise they were afraid to climb down. Though why should they be in a rush? To go to their deaths? It wasn’t even right to hurry to your own death.
In the end they all managed to get down somehow or other, only Strąk was left. He stood there at the tailgate, leaning on his stick and looking helplessly from us to the ground and back again, like he was standing on the edge of a cliff. He realized no one was eager to help him and he shouted:
“Come give me a hand.”
Guz stepped forward but a soldier stuck the muzzle of his gun in his belly and made him go back to his place. At that exact moment the officer shouted, schiessen! The soldier nearest the truck fired his machine gun at Strąk like he was shooting at a tree. Strąk dropped his stick but kept standing there. It was only a second later his body fell too and hit the ground with a thud.
Right after that they started pushing us with their guns toward the middle of the clearing. They marked out a pit about twelve yards long and two wide and ordered us to dig. Some on one side, some on the other, which meant we’d be falling in with our heads toward each other.