ying 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 plowing. Though between you and me, for some reason I can’t get used to it. Everyone says they like it, but me, every time I look at it that soil causes me pain. It’s like it was under attack. There are times I can actually hear it groaning and moaning, but the tractor’s louder and when the driver steps on the gas he drowns out the noise. Try sitting for years under a picture like that.” All of a sudden he grabbed the bottle, poured out another one for himself and for me, clinked his glass against mine and downed it in one, like he’d already forgotten you’re supposed to sip it. “We’ve had quite a talk.” He looked at his watch. “It’s good to talk like that once in a while.” He snatched a sheet of paper from a pile and started writing something. “You sure fifteen’s enough? I’ll give you seventeen just in case. Here.” He handed me the paper. “Just be sure and tell Borek to take it from what’s set aside for the creamery. Those are my instructions. And don’t die on us just yet. Ha, ha!” He laughed and stood up. I rose too, though it’s not so easy to get up from a chair when you have walking sticks. But he didn’t come out from behind the desk till I was on my feet. Then he walked me to the door and slapped me on the back. “One more thing,” he said, like he’d just remembered now. “It’s too bad I canned you back then. Maybe you didn’t drink that much after all.”