We’d always bless a whole kopa of eggs, five dozen of them. We’d color half of them red by boiling them in onion skins, the other half green with young rye. And it was always me that took them to be blessed, I never trusted anyone else to do the job properly. I’d squeeze through to the front when the priest got started so the most number of drops from the sprinkler would fall on my eggs, because farther back the priest just waved the thing and hardly any drops made it that far. I still did it even after I grew up. It was only during the war, after I joined the resistance, that Antek started going, and after him Stasiek. But they didn’t keep it up for long. First one of them moved away then the other, and once again it became my job to go get the eggs blessed, because what kind of Easter would it be without blessed eggs. I could go without cake, I could go without sausage, but there had to be blessed eggs. When you eat one of those blessed eggs, even if you’ve got nothing to be happy about, it’s always hallelujah.
It was only those two years I spent in the hospital that I didn’t get my eggs blessed. But when I came home, the first Easter I boiled a whole kopa just like before. Though I didn’t have any of my own, I had to buy stamped ones from the co-op, because my chickens weren’t laying yet. Besides, I only had two chickens anyway, and a rooster. I’d just got the brood hen sitting on new ones, they hadn’t even hatched yet. I colored them all red with onion skins, because I didn’t feel up to tramping out to the fields for new rye, not on those lame legs of mine. I barely made it to the church. And I left home plenty early, if my legs had been healthy I could’ve gotten there and back again five times over. I thought I’d plop myself down in the pew and have a bit of a rest before the priest started the blessing, but I almost arrived too late, the priest was already going around doing the blessing. Fortunately he’d started from the side altar, and there was a whole crowd of people, in a lot of places they were having to stand, because our parish serves five villages, so before he got to my pew I’d already found a place between Mrs. Sekuła and some woman I didn’t know.
Except that when I leaned over to untie the scarf, because the basket was wrapped in mother’s old headscarf, the walking stick fell from my hand and crashed to the ground so loud it was like a thunderclap in the church. The noise went all the way up to the ceiling. Even the organ gave a groan in the choir stalls. Right away every head turned in my direction and frowned. The priest stopped the sprinkler in midair and followed where everyone was looking. I got all embarrassed, and for a moment I regretted wanting to get the eggs blessed. Why couldn’t I have waited till next Easter, maybe I’d be walking better by then.
As if that wasn’t enough, I couldn’t loosen the scarf, because I’d tied the ends firmly so it wouldn’t come undone on the way, and the priest was almost there. Plus I needed to kneel. How could I kneel when one leg was completely stiff and the other could barely bend either? All my efforts came to nothing, because the priest hurried by like a storm. And though Mrs. Sekuła helped me, and the other woman too, we didn’t manage to get the scarf off in time, and I only got a few drops of holy water on my hands, none of it fell on the eggs and they didn’t get blessed. So they didn’t taste the way they should. They tasted like you’d just gotten them from the hen and boiled them and you were eating them. Though at least I didn’t have to regret not having gone. There’d been worse times and I’d always gone, my legs weren’t that much of an excuse.
When I worked in the district administration, the fact was I was a government worker, and the times weren’t right for blessing eggs. Still, when Holy Saturday came around I’d leave work during the day, I’d say I have to go get my eggs blessed. I didn’t hide it. And even when I got transferred to the quotas department it was the same, I’d say I need to go get my eggs blessed. Though the quotas department wouldn’t employ just anyone, they were always holding meetings to get us to collect more and more. You often had to be hard as nails with folks. They hadn’t even harvested their crop yet, it was still standing in the fields, and here we were sending all kinds of deadlines, provide your quota, provide your quota, anyone who doesn’t is in deep trouble. But it all came from the higher-ups. Someone up there was setting the deadlines. It must have been someone that thought he was more important than the land. But only God is more important than the land, for anyone that believes in him. If you don’t believe in God, then the land is the most important of all. And you can’t hurry it either with deadlines or with whips. If you got mad at it for not obeying you it would just say, kiss my ass. But what could we do?
There were times my hand went numb from writing, because we’d write and write, directives, reminders, fines. My eyes would be red as a rabbit’s. I’d get up in the morning and I could barely see. Mother would ask me, why on earth are your eyes so red. Why? From writing. Father would say, sure it’s from writing. If that was the case no one would go to school, because there all they do is write. There wouldn’t be any priests or professors. It’s from drinking. Yesterday he barely made it over the threshold, then right away he crashed down on his bed like a hog. You were asleep, you didn’t see it. You just keep drinking. At work they even told me I should go see the doctor, maybe he could give me eyeglasses. Some people at work had glasses. Sąsiadek did, and this one guy in the insurance department, I think someone in highways did, the local policeman used to sometimes put them on as well when he got a written order to go somewhere and he couldn’t read where. And three of the women clerks wore glasses, but I didn’t like the looks of any of them. I tried Sąsiadek’s on one time, I actually looked pretty good, but it was like staring through fog.
Some people thought I’d taken the easy way out, but what was easy about it? After you’d dealt with them, people would come and curse me and the government to high heaven. At times my office would be bursting at the seams with all the papers I had to send out. And there was as much again stacked in the hallway or even outside. They’d bring in the letters they’d been sent and put them on my desk and say, you go and mow, and harvest, and thresh, you go collect it all. A good few of the women would point to their ass and tell me where I could stick my papers. All I could do was throw my hands up and keep repeating, it’s not me, it’s not my decision. Then whose is it? You’re all the damn same, the lot of you!
Of course, sometimes I’d help people out. One guy, I’d move his deadline back a bit, another I’d reduce his quota by a couple hundred pounds, with someone else I’d at least advise them how to write an appeal and where to send it. Then people would want to thank me somehow. How does one farmer say thank you to another? He invites him for vodka. Vodka isn’t a bribe. It isn’t that one person gives and the other one takes, no — both of them drink. So I got to drinking quite a bit. Actually, in a job like that you can’t not drink. Plus people think anything can be arranged with vodka, more than through God. And you never can tell. Sometimes it helps to have a drink, and sometimes even praying doesn’t help. But if you want to live among people, you have to drink. Because then they accept you as one of them. And that means something.
In addition, the pub was virtually just over the road from the district offices, all you had to do was cross the road. And everyone knows gratitude isn’t something you measure out, you do this much for me and I’ll do this much for you, so it rarely ended with just a single bottle. Because gratitude isn’t in the pocket, it’s in the soul. And I don’t care how much of a schemer a man is, after a bottle his soul has to come out. And at that point it’s the soul that’s standing the drinks, the soul that’s paying, and moving from one soul to another is just like entering someone’s house.