My godmother, she died young, when I was still in the cradle, I’m not talking about her. But my godfather, in all my life I saw him two times, not counting at my christening. The first time I was almost grown up. A man I didn’t know came to our house one Sunday afternoon, I was getting ready to go to a dance and I hear father and mother saying, oh, it’s Franek! This Franek says hello to them, then he gives me his hand, so I shake it like you do, but mother and father say, this is your godfather, kiss his hand. I didn’t like that, I wasn’t going to kiss some guy’s hand. My godfather says:
“So this is my godson? He’s grown some. He’s a young man already.”
He was from Zbąszyn or Suchowola, I couldn’t even say. Father met him when he was looking for a stove-maker. Our stove was smoking, and for some reason none of the local stove-makers could fix it. They’d come, take the thing apart, put it back together again and it would still smoke. Someone told father there was a guy in Zbąszyn or Suchowola that there wasn’t a stove he couldn’t mend. Father went there and arranged for him to come. Then one day he showed up. He didn’t take it apart or put it back together. He just poked around in it a bit and afterward it drew like no one’s business. When the job was done the two of them were so pleased that they got drunk to celebrate and father asked him to be my godfather, because it was just at the time I was due to be christened.
The second time I met him was during the war, at the market at Płocice. We’d gone there to rub out this one bastard. Before, he’d been a bailiff at the court, then during the war he became a German. Every market day he’d swagger around the market in a German uniform with a gun in his belt, and he’d go up to the women that were selling things and take their eggs, butter, cheeses, chickens, poppy seed. When he was in a good mood he’d pay, at the official rate of course. And everyone knew what the official rate was. A whole chicken was the price of a few eggs. Though most of the time he wasn’t in a good mood and he hardly ever paid for anything, the son of a bitch would even take the basket as well. And if one of the women tried to refuse, he’d just walk all over whatever she was selling and squash it with his boots, all the eggs and cheeses and butter and cream, he’d kick it all around and mess it up, he’d smack the woman around and call her a whore in Polish. When the women came back from market, instead of having a few pennies to pay for salt, thread, kerosene, matches, they’d be crying. We gave him a couple of warnings, he even got a beer mug over the head in a pub, he was hit so hard he was covered in blood. But it didn’t help. He had to be killed.
Three of us went, me, Birchtree, and Sad Man. No, that’s not right, Sad Man was dead by then. It must have been Rowan. Because Rowan liked going and carrying out verdicts. There aren’t any dances these days, he’d say, it’s good we at least get to take out some scumbag once in a while. His eye was straight as a pine tree. Whatever got in his sights — man, bird, hare — it was curtains for it. Except he didn’t like taking orders, and for him there were no ranks or officers.
One time, after this one shoot-out he went missing. The guys went looking for his body, thinking he’d been killed and so he’d need burying. But they didn’t find him. We thought, maybe he’s been captured? But someone surely would have seen it. And it wasn’t like Rowan to get caught. He always carried a bullet in his breast pocket, he’d take it out whenever he had nothing else to do and roll it between his fingers or toss it in the palm of his hand till it got all shiny like gold. He’d laugh and say it was himself he was polishing it up for, just in case, that he wouldn’t let himself be caught. We started to think that maybe he’d been a spy. But Rowan a spy? In the end two men went off on bikes, because he had a wife and three kids and she needed to be told he’d died in action. They found her by the well, drawing water. But before they told her he was dead, just to be on the safe side they asked if she didn’t happen to know where he was. She got all flustered, she couldn’t tell who they were, and she started making stuff up, saying he’d been taken away to do forced labor, or he’d gone off after some hussy and left her with the children and the farm. It was too much for her on her own, she said. She even started to cry.
The guys didn’t know what to say. But they heard someone threshing in the barn. So they asked who it was threshing. She said it was a relative, and she offered them a drink of sour milk in the house. The guys were no fools, they said sure, that would be nice, but first they’d go ask the relative if he knew anything. They open up the barn door, and it’s Rowan doing the threshing.
“So you’re threshing, Rowan?” they say.
“Like you see,” he says.
“We thought you were dead, Rowan,” they say.
“If I was dead I wouldn’t be threshing,” he says.
“It wasn’t nice to run away from the unit like that, Rowan,” they say.
“I didn’t run away,” he says. “I just came to do the threshing for the missus, who else is going to do it for her.”
“Maybe you’re a spy, Rowan,” they say.
“If I was a spy I’d have a farmhand. The farmhand would be threshing, and I’d be informing on you,” he says.
“Get your things, we’re going, Rowan,” they say.
“I’ll get my things when I’m done threshing,” he says. “I’ve got another couple dozen sheaves of wheat to get through. Oh, and these oats for the horse.”
The men reached for their weapons, but Rowan whacked them on the head with the flail. Then he twisted their hands behind their back and took their guns away.
“Tell them I’m alive. And that I’m not a spy. Now go on up to the house, the wife’ll give you a drink of milk. Then get the hell out of here. I’ll come of my own free will, there’s no way you’ll make me.”
We went into the pub to have one drink. Rowan was disguised as a wagon driver, he was carrying a whip and wearing a sheepskin hat. Birchtree had stayed at the market, he was going to let us know when that bastard bailiff showed up. We didn’t want all three of us to be hanging around because it would have drawn attention. Plus, Rowan always had to have a drink when he was going to execute someone. He said it made his hand faster and his aim better, though he might not have been telling us everything. Actually, even when he wasn’t killing he was fond of a tipple, though he didn’t like to drink alone, and he always had to find himself someone that had some kind of problem, so he could act like a priest and find words of comfort for him. Because when you’ve got worries you have to have a drink, and at those times the comfort is surer as well.
That was how it was when Sad Man joined the unit. Rowan took to him like he was his own brother. Sad Man had only just gotten married and he’d had to run off to the woods to fight, and leave his young wife all alone at home. That was why his code name was Sad Man. He was a tall, strapping lad with black wavy hair and thick eyebrows, his wife must have been good-looking too. Some of the men envied him that young wife, though he never spoke about her, but Rowan started in right away comforting him.