Though if you ask me, geese are harder to mind. Yours get mixed up with other people’s, they’re all white, and afterwards there’s no way of telling which are yours and which aren’t. Not to mention that they often fight till they bleed, they latch onto each other so hard you can’t pull them apart, especially the ganders.
We kept a lot of geese, to have down to stuff quilts, and pillows for Jagoda and Leonka for when they got married. Mother wanted them to have down bedding, and for that you need lots and lots of geese. And you’ll be plucking away for years. It takes a huge amount of down to make a feather quilt, and there’s not that many feathers on a goose.
So I always preferred minding the cows. To make a long story short, I’ll tell you one thing. Mother would sometimes despair over me:
“You were such a good child when you minded the geese.”
The pasture was the road that led directly to adulthood. Whoever graduated from the pasture was no longer a child, even if they were called one. And the sister always treated me like a child. From the first moment of surprise when I emerged from the cellar. Lord, you’re nothing but a child! And so on till the very end. Maybe that’s why it was OK for me to look while she was bathing, whereas she was afraid of letting all the others see? I don’t know, that’s exactly what I don’t get, especially after what happened one night. So I stood there and kept guard to make sure they didn’t peep.
Oh yes, almost all of them. When one of them saw she was going down to the lake, he’d sneak off immediately and follow her at a distance, hide behind a bush or a tree, or even climb a tree if there was one nearby on the shore. Sometimes even the wounded would drag themselves down to the lake. Some of them would back off when they saw me standing guard. But not everyone. A good few of them, it made no difference whether I was standing there or not. Many of them would give me an earful. Or tell me to keep my trap shut and sit tight. One guy, he had binoculars, he’d lie down right next to me, by a bush or under a tree, and it was like I wasn’t even there. When I moved he’d say, Stay still or I’ll shoot you. He was a huge guy, with a nasty look in his eye, as if he didn’t even like himself that much. For a guy like that, shooting someone was like eating a slice of bread. I was terrified of him. So I’d stand there stock still whenever he came to watch.
One time he told me to stand and not say a word, while she had undressed on the shore and it looked like she had no intention of going into the water, she was just enjoying the sun. He lay down, put the binoculars to his eyes and watched and watched. My heart was beating harder than ever before. All of a sudden he smashed his fist against the ground, rested his head on the earth and groaned:
“Dear Christ, dear Christ.” He turned his face upwards. “What I’d give to be between her legs. A guy would know what he was fighting for.” He wiped his eyes from the binoculars. “They’re going to kill us all anyway, what difference would it make to her.” He held the binoculars out towards me. “Wanna look?” I shrugged. “Right, maybe it’s best you don’t.”
As it happened, a few days later there was a muster in the middle of the night, the men formed two lines, it was, count off, they all shouldered arms and marched off. The sister went with them. I stayed back with the wounded and some sentries. The others only came back three days later, around daybreak. They looked like a hounded pack of wolves. Several of them were wounded, two were being carried on stretchers made from branches. And the one I was so afraid of had the sister in his arms. She was dead. He himself had a head wound, his hair was caked with blood, blood was running down inside his collar. He’d refused to let anyone else carry her the whole way. They’d wanted to make another stretcher and carry her on it, but he wouldn’t allow them. Four others had died too, but they’d been left behind. He’d risked heavy rifle fire to retrieve her body. That was when he’d been injured. She’d died dressing the wounds of one of the men who had fallen. It had been pointless. The man had only been able to open his eyes and say, There’s no point, sister. Then he was dead. Who heard it? You ask like you didn’t know there’s always someone who hears. There’s no situation in which there isn’t someone who hears.
You know, she sensed that she was going to die. Or maybe she just didn’t want to live? One time I helped her take the laundry down to the lake. There was a lot of it. As she washed and rinsed the things, I took them and hung them out to dry on the branches. It was one of those days that don’t come along very often. The sky was blue as can be, without the tiniest cloud. The lindens were in bloom, you could smell honey in the air, bees were buzzing, the heat was intensifying, it was the perfect weather for washing and drying. All at once she dropped the clothes, sat down on the shore, pulled her knees up under her chin, put her arms around them, and stared and stared at the lake.
“I really don’t feel like doing the laundry today,” she said. “What I’d most like to do is go lie down on the lake, you know? Just lie there. What do you think, would I sink?”
She jumped to her feet and started to undress.
“I’m going to go bathe. You keep guard. Go stand over there.”
And she leaped into the water. I watched her swimming, and I began to choke with fear that in a moment she’d lie down on the water and stop moving. Luckily she swam for a bit and came back. She got dressed again.
“Now get on with the laundry, sister,” she said, telling herself off. In between giving me items of clothing to hang out, she said: “You know what, you should move in and live with me, would you like to? Goodness, it’s hard to even call it living in these dugouts, these pits.” When I took the next piece of clothing from her to hang it out: “None of them have tried anything with you?” I didn’t know what she meant. “What are you staring at me for? That’s why you’re going to live with me. Too bad I didn’t think of it sooner. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep better too.” I didn’t understand either why she couldn’t sleep.
She brought a litter and made a place for me next to her. She had to squeeze over a bit so there’d be room for me. After picking out all the pine cones and acorns and twigs from the litter, she covered the litter with dry grass. So it’ll be nice and soft for you, she said. Then she laid some old rags on top. Sometimes, on a cooler night she’d ask if I was warm enough and put her coat over the blanket I slept under. But I didn’t sleep that well with her. Even though neither of us snored, or smoked cigarettes, or swore, or shouted in our sleep. She slept as quiet as anything, often I couldn’t hear a thing. It was just that the silence was hard for me to bear. It was the silence itself that woke me up several times a night. I’d jerk awake, listening fearfully to see if she was asleep. If I couldn’t hear her breathing, I’d get up from the bedding and place my ear close to her. And though I’d be reassured that she was sleeping, I often couldn’t get back to sleep myself.
One night, I don’t know why, I woke terrified, I sat up and gently touched her forehead to see if it was warm. She jolted upright, equally scared:
“Oh, it’s you. I had such a fright. Don’t touch me ever when I’m sleeping. Remember, don’t touch me.”
“I just wanted —”
“I know,” she said. “Lie down and go back to sleep.”
There were also times when she would sit up from her bedding and, holding her breath, she would listen to see if I was asleep. When she was sure I was, though in fact I was pretending, she’d take her coat if she hadn’t put it over me and she’d go off somewhere. All kinds of thoughts rattled around in my brain at those times, and I’d wait till she came back. When she did, sometimes I’d pretend to have just woken up.
“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I went to bathe. In the nighttime at least no one watches you,” she explained. “The water’s so warm. It’s a full moon. The lake is even lovelier than during the day.”