żurek and potatoes and sleeping on a sheet of canvas. Because you can’t bring yourself to use up anything you have. Anything except yourself. If the land produces, you’ll take what it gives. If it doesn’t, you won’t. And you won’t say a bad word against it, in case it punishes you even worse the next year. At most you’ll have a mass said for it or you’ll put up a shrine, a shrine to the holy earth, so it’ll take care of you. You, Szymon Pietruszka. Except these days the earth doesn’t believe anymore either. It needs superphosphates, lime, nitrolime, saltpeter, not superstitions. And you might say it’s not even as attached to people as it used to be. If the farmer’s bad at what he does the land’ll just abandon him and move on to the next one and the next one after that, whoever can calculate better. The peasant soul doesn’t like to calculate, it only likes to suffer. But why should you suffer when calculating is better for you. It’s gotten used to it, suffering is its lot. And for the peasant soul the land is nothing but suffering either. And that’s bad for the land. The land has to produce things, my friend. The world wants more and more food. Mountains of food. Bigger and bigger mountains. And the land has to provide it. It has to! Even if it spills its guts trying. And the peasant soul can go rest in the museum for all the centuries of work it’s done. It deserves it. Let it remind people they used to be peasants. Young people can go take a look, or tourists. Tourism, I’m telling you, that’s happening all over the world. More and more people are traveling all over the place and back again. Pretty soon everyone’ll be traveling. Even old folks won’t want to stay at home. You’ll go knocking, and the place’ll be empty. It’s like people discovered that the world goes around, so they have to go around the world as well. Hardly anyone’s capable of just sitting on their ass. Back in the day, someone went traveling it was either out of hardship or because they were going for a soldier. These days everyone wants to be a tourist, like there was nothing else they could be. Think of everything that’s needed, all the trains, boats, airplanes, roads, hotels, stations, and of course all the sights. And the sights have to be there whether they exist or not. We thought about maybe turning the Bąks’ place into a traditional cottage. It’d be perfect for it — it’s got no soleplates, it has a thatched roof and tiny little windows like knots in trees. Bąk could be the farmer, and his missus would be the farmer’s wife. We’d make them traditional costumes, we could round up some wooden spoons and dishes and what-have-you, they’d be paid. We’d put up signs, traditional cottage half a mile. But they won’t agree, they want us to build them a proper house in return. They’d just go to the cottage during working hours. What else can tourists go see in a village? You can’t show them rye growing, or wheat. It’s just growing there, let it grow. Or cows being milked. Or calves putting on a pound and a half to two pounds daily. All they’d say would be, why are their eyes so sad? What kind of eyes are they supposed to have! They eat all they want, they don’t care what they see or what they don’t. People are no different, when they’ve eaten their fill they can’t see much, on the outside they might even look happy. But if you really want to see their happiness, look in their bellies. With calves it’s the same, their happiness isn’t in their eyes. Or maybe they’ve just seen the people that are gonna eat them, and that’s why they’re sad. The thing is, that would never occur to those folks, they just go on about sad eyes. Damn philosophers. Try sticking a plate of meat in front of them, see if they complain about its eyes then. A peasant soul’d be just about right for them, they could get all sentimental over it as much as they wanted. And it would be a sight that had to do with class. Harmless, you might say. The burden of the ages. A thing to itself. As for you, friend, I mean good grief, you were a policeman but you still don’t have the consciousness. I mean, you’re not that old. Older people than you have started over. Take Boleń for example, going on seventy and he’s building a farm. Maryka’s planting flax, Janiszewski’s switching to cauliflower. You’ll have plenty of time to build your tomb! The job won’t go away. Besides, maybe soon they’ll stop burying people in tombs. They’ll cremate them instead. That way you’d save your money. The land, there’s less and less of it, not more and more. It’s not such a problem when it’s used for factories. But for cemeteries? There’s more and more people. And everyone has to die sooner or later. Just think how much land you’d need if everyone was buried. And in walled tombs on top of that. The dead would take up all the land there was. Then where would we go — the moon? Besides, let me tell you, death isn’t what it used to be either. You’re here and then you’re gone. There’s a hundred others jockeying to take your place. They even occupy the memory of you. Back when, friend, when you died there was a hole left in the village, like in the road. But in those times, you might say death was attached to people. Everyone lived their whole life in one place, so the death of one person was kind of like the death of all of them. These days everyone’s in motion, so death moves around as well. And moving around is like being in the front lines. They’re attacking you left and right, and all you can do is keep pushing forward. People die of no one knows what, no one knows when, no one knows if it can still be called death. You don’t even need to fall ill, there can be no reason at all. You get tired and bam, you’re gone. Before, when you got tired you sat down on a field boundary, you took a breather and went on living. I’m telling you, the way we die you can’t see we’re dead after we’re gone. Sometimes you can’t even tell if someone’s dead or they’re still alive. And dying doesn’t give you anything at all. It’s only life that can still give you something. So live while you can. It won’t be long. Few more years at the most, then maybe you won’t need that tomb. They’ll just slide you in the oven and all that’ll be left is a heap of ashes. And it won’t cost you a penny. The district’ll cover it. You worked here for a good few years, you deserve it. The whole of you will fit in a clay jar. Would you rather get eaten by worms? That way’s disgusting, friend. Even when a fly lands on you you brush it away. Down there there’s masses of them. You’ve plowed, you know how much there is in the earth. They’ll be tucking into you like you were shit, pardon my French, and you won’t even be able to scratch yourself. Because how do you know you won’t feel anything? Maybe death lasts a long time, not just a moment? Maybe it has no end? But what’s left after fire? Fire is clean as can be. Cleaner than air or water. Even cleaner than conscience. You’d be the first in the village. The first in the whole district. Though I dunno why I’m saying all this to you. I know you’re not going to agree. That peasant soul of yours mewling inside you, it won’t allow it. And they don’t do cremations here yet. Though you have to be able to see the future today already. Otherwise you’ll go astray. Or go backwards. And what then? Start out all over again? That’s not gonna happen, friend. I know life. You have to when you’ve worked with it as long as I have. At different stages. Here, there. And it’s always been like a soldier in the trenches, so to speak. When it comes to life, I can say I’m something of an expert. I could run rings around a good few folks that are higher up than me. So what if I’m still here in the district administration. Do I have it bad here? If I fall, at least I won’t fall far. And there’s always those seven acres of mine. I’ve got my own potatoes, my own tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots. I’m telling you, I know life better than almost anyone. And not from any school. The kind of life they write about in those schools, it’s suckered all kinds of people. Ground them up like a machine. Forgotten they ever existed. But me, I’m still here, like you see. Sure, in school they teach you your multiplication tables, you need that, like they say. But they don’t teach you life. You can fill your head with all sorts of stuff and you can know everything, but not know how to live. Because life, so to speak, isn’t just living. Like you’re just there, and life goes on regardless. Better or worse, uphill or downhill, it just keeps going. You’re born, you’ll die, and that’s life. If it wants to knock us over it will, if it wants to set us up it’ll do that too, it can cast us down or raise us up. And we just do what it wants, because either way we’re alive. It’s the wind and we’re a feather in the wind. Oh no. No, no, friend. That’s not it. That’s all crap. Life is an occupation like any other. Who knows, it could be the hardest occupation of all. Because like, a doctor or an engineer, how much do they have to study? Or even a professor? Five years, ten, let it even be twenty. They give him his diploma, now he knows what he’s doing. But life, how long do you have to learn it? There’s no set number of years. And no diplomas. You can be a prophet with a long white beard and still not know how to live. Because it all depends on the person, whether they have the gift or not. Some folks would never learn even if they lived twice over. For some, eternity wouldn’t be enough time. A dumbass is a dumbass. Though it goes without saying that I don’t believe in eternity. It’s just an expression, just a measure. Like people saying the sun rises, when everyone knows it doesn’t rise, it’s just the earth turning. Habit of speech. If it wasn’t for habits like that, our steps would be longer, believe me. And we wouldn’t be walking in the dark. I mean we’re not blind, but sometimes we act like we were. Like we were walking along a milky way, when we need to be walking on the earth. We need to know how to walk. And of course something has to light the way. Because no one’s got a candle inside them. Life has its twists and turns, its gullies, its cliffs, its whirlpools, its fine weather, all those things. Plus, as they say, it flows. Except some people think it keeps flowing in the same direction. Because that’s supposedly how rivers flow. Time flows like that. And everything that flows, flows that way. But that’s applesauce, friend. Because one moment it flows one way, the next it flows in a whole other direction, it even flows against itself, across itself, every which way. It’s half like a whirlpool, half like mist, half like space. It doesn’t have any fixed direction. When you don’t know how to live, you take a step and you’re a drowned man. Me, I could swim in it with my eyes shut. When it comes to numbers, I’m not disputing there are people better than me, I’ve never minded about that. But when it comes to life, they’re all useless. Because with life, when you have to you need to move cautiously, but when the road is clear you gotta charge ahead. And before you hear what you need, you have to listen hard. When you see something, don’t hurry up till you can see clearly what it is. But don’t think things are always that way. This isn’t like blackjack or poker where there’s a fixed way to play. There are times when no one’s said a word yet but you have to have heard them. You can’t see someone, but you have to have seen them already. Because if you don’t see them, they’ll see you. And you need to know what might hurt you and when. And when you need to be healthy as a horse, however much you may be in pain. Though there’s no point getting excited about good health. Obviously anyone who’s constantly on the march here, there, and everywhere can’t be completely healthy. I have a heart. I don’t know if it’s in good shape or not. But it works. If it needs to hurt it will, if it doesn’t it won’t. A hundred doctors could examine it and each of them’d say something different. It’s just a heart. True, it’s the director’s heart. And sure, the district is big. But it’s no more than a fingernail on the body of the district. In any case I’ll tell you one thing, you have to know when to die as well. You, you’ve chosen the wrong time. Under the occupation, for instance, that was a good time. A historical moment, you might say. People died for a reason, even if a tree just fell on you. Or right after the war, that wasn’t bad either. So long as you were on the right side, of course. But today, have you really given it enough thought? Sit on your backside and don’t be in such a hurry. You wouldn’t even have anyone to leave the farm to. The government would have to take it, which is to say the district administration. And all these farms that folks hand over in return for a pension, I don’t know what to do with them. We’d have to arrange a funeral for you at our expense as well. You have brothers, of course, but they’re in the city, they might come back or they might not. And since you used to work here it’s only fair. At least get you a wreath. But where’s the money supposed to come from? The librarian’s on my case about how people are reading less and less, because the books are all old, and here we have youngsters growing up. I don’t have money for that either. I even have to borrow gas money from the arts budget. Do you think there are times I don’t howl inside? Damn right I do. Sometimes I go out into the fields and stare at the crops, it makes me go all soft inside. I could just sit there on the field boundary and listen to the larks singing. But I say to myself, where’s your consciousness, eh, Mr. Director? You’re supposed to be building a new life but you haven’t uprooted the old one from inside yourself. Keep sitting there and you won’t have a reason to get up again. Or there was a picture here in the offices, remember, in Rożek’s time. A peasant plowing with oxen. I had to change it, because anyone who came to visit would just gawk at the picture. So I had a local guy paint me another picture, he charged ten thousand. See, now it’s a tractor doing the plowin