The tin mug happened to be on the table and I rinsed it out.
“You use the mug. I can drink from the bottle. Tomorrow we’ll drink from glasses.” I poured him out the bigger amount and left the smaller half for myself. “Here’s to your health, because you came back, you didn’t forget us.”
I was just lifting the bottle to my mouth when father jumped up and covered the mug with his hand.
“Are you trying to get him drunk on top of everything, you damn godless animal? Drunken idiot, can’t you see him?”
“Of course I can see him! He’s my brother!” I slammed the bottle down on the table so hard the vodka splashed out of the neck. “Tell him you’re my brother, Michał.” I grabbed his head in both hands and jerked it up. He looked at me with eyes that saw almost nothing, had no life in them. “You’re my brother. Always were, always will be.”
At that moment mother got out of bed and asked him:
“Say something, Michał. Tell me, where does it hurt?”
“Where it hurts him is his business,” I snapped at mother, though she hadn’t done anything wrong. “He’s here, he’s back, that’s all that matters.”
“Well since he came back he’s been sitting there not saying a word.” Father got up from his chair and set off toward the water buckets, then when he got halfway he turned and went toward mother, then he turned back again, like he was cutting across a field but didn’t really know where he was going. “She looked after him for a bit. But what could she do. Said he’d be better off here. We keep asking him, Michał, Michał, but it’s like talking to a brick wall. Will you not tell your own mother and father? Even trees tell each other, any living thing will. A man’ll talk to the earth beneath his feet if he’s got no one else to talk to. You can’t live and not talk.”
“Have a drink, father.” I pushed the mug of vodka into the hands he was holding out helplessly in front of him, like he wanted to lay them down somewhere, ease his troubles at least that much. “He doesn’t need to talk. We can talk to him.”
Mother died not long afterwards. Not from her illness so much as out of worry, because she kept crying and crying and saying, Michał, son, what’s wrong? After she passed away father got sick too. Often he didn’t hear what you said to him, like all his attention was focused on listening to the next world where mother had gone. So now everything was on my shoulders. He and Michał did nothing at all. They just sat there, one of them on a stool by the stove, the other one on the bench, waiting for me to come back from work.
I even thought about quitting, because it was getting too much for me. Right after mother died I still got some help from the women that lived nearby. One of them would cook for us from time to time, another one would clean the house, another one would do the laundry, and a fourth one would at least come and offer her sympathy. But as mother’s death faded into the past, they stopped coming too. On the other hand I was reluctant to give up my job, because those few zlotys I brought in on the first of every month came in handy, you could always buy salt or sugar or a piece of sausage.
Then one day soon after Easter an inspector from the county came, and Chairman Maślanka showed him around the offices. This is highways, this is taxation, this is insurance, quotas, Mierzwa, Antos, Winiarski, Miss Krysia, Miss Jadzia. And I happened to be eating blessed eggs. In our offices we’d somehow gotten into the habit of always having a midmorning snack, Mrs. Kopeć, the caretaker, would even make tea and sell it for a zloty a glass. When I had something I could bring from home I did, so as to not be worse than the others. I mean, it wasn’t for being hungry, I could stand being hungry, I could go without food for three days straight. When they came in I’d set the eggs out on the table on a piece of newspaper and I was peeling them, one of them was colored red and the other one green.
“What’s this, you’re eating blessed eggs, Pietruszka?” said Maślanka, half asking, half making fun of me, and the guy from the county smiled awkwardly.
“That’s right.” I went on peeling them.
“So what, blessed ones are better than ordinary hen’s eggs?” says Maślanka.
“I think they’re better. If someone else disagrees they don’t have to eat them.”
“I see! You must have blessed a whole lot of them if you don’t have time to eat them all at home and you have to bring them to work?”
“A kopa.”
“The thing is, the district administration isn’t a church, Pietruszka!” he snapped like an angry dog.
“Right, but I’m not blessing them, I’m eating them.”
He didn’t say anything else, but I had the feeling he wasn’t going to let me off lightly with those blessed eggs, and in front of the county inspector as well. I must have really made him mad, because he started bugging other people about eating. Antos was having bread and cheese. Bread and cheese doesn’t have anything to do with God, except for saying, give us this day our daily bread, but believers and nonbelievers eat bread just the same. But he tore Antos off a strip, he said he had so many slices of bread he’d be eating for an hour, and the regulations specified fifteen minutes for the break.
A couple of days later he called me into his office, and though we’d been on first-name terms for a long time, he said:
“You drink too much, Pietruszka. It has to stop.”
I was so mad, if I’d had something at hand I would have smashed his skull open. But all there was on his desk was an inkpot and a blotter, that wouldn’t have been any good.
“Don’t you Pietruszka me, you little squirt. The name’s Szymek, in case you’d forgotten. And if I drink, it’s on my own time. Don’t think I don’t know what’s gotten your back up. It’s not my drinking. Like you don’t drink? I can’t remember how many times I’ve seen you under the table. You’re full of yourself because you’re the chairman. What did you do in the occupation? Shit your pants is what.”
A week later I lost my job. And it wasn’t because of the drinking like he was trying to make me believe, because at that time I was already drinking less. In reality it was those blessed eggs that had scared him. He might even have liked the taste of them just like me, except that him, he’d hide under his blanket to peel them, and on top of that he’d send his kid out in front of the house to look out, pretend he was playing when actually he was making sure no one was coming. Then all of a sudden he sees a government worker in a government office eating blessed eggs like it was the most natural thing in the world, and it felt to him like they were hand grenades, not eggs. Besides, he wasn’t just afraid of blessed eggs. He was afraid of everything. And God forbid you ever said in front of him, Dear God! He’d turn red as a beetroot and if he could he would’ve stuck the words right back down your throat.
“Save expressions like that for when you’re at home, after work! This is the district administration! We need to keep superstition out of here!” But people say those things without thinking, they’re just sighing. It’s easier to change the words you use or your thoughts than those kind of expressions. But that’s the sort of person he was.
When I started having a tomb built, all those years later, and I needed fifteen hundredweight of cement, he was still chairman, though his title had been changed to director. That was how much Chmiel had figured we’d need. And another two hundredweight on top, it might come in useful, we could at least make a couple steps so you wouldn’t have to jump down with the casket. I could have bought cement off someone under the counter, and if it was for something else I might have done, but not for a tomb. First I went to the co-op. They had cement, but you needed an allocation order from the district administration. I went there. You could get an allocation order, but you had to sign an application. I signed it.