“Clear off, you little imp. You think you can serve the Lord God when you don’t have the patience for a starling?”
And it wouldn’t do any good to cry or say sorry, or that you’d get a hiding from your parents. Franciszek could be stern as they come. Though really he was a good person. When I was learning to be an altar boy we mostly spent our time just scraping wax off the candlesticks. Whenever anyone asked what saecula saeculorum or Dominus vobiscum meant, he’d claim it was a divine mystery.
“You need to know when to turn the page in the missal, and when you’re supposed to pour the water and the wine into the chalice, and when you have to ring the bells. The rest, you just need to be able to mumble along.”
There were times people would come to mass and it would be so stuffy in the church it was like a holy cattle shed, because there was no one there to air the place out. The priest himself would have to fetch the long pole and open the windows, because Franciszek was out trapping starlings. Or folks would start to arrive for the service and the church door would be locked, because Franciszek had been out after starlings since early morning and wasn’t back yet. Or mass was already supposed to have begun, the church is full, the priest’s in his chasuble and he keeps popping his head out of the vestry to see if the candles are lit, but here the candles aren’t lit and the altar’s not prepared either, the organist is playing on and on, and Franciszek’s nowhere to be seen.
Sometimes one of the parishioners who could remember his altar boy duties would throw on a surplice and carry in the missal behind the priest. Franciszek wouldn’t turn up till the priest was raising the chalice. He’d be all flushed still from the starlings. His gray hair would be full of grass, and his shoes and pants wet and muddy from the dew. It wouldn’t have been so bad if he’d been embarrassed and knelt down quietly. Nothing of the kind — he’d plonk himself down on his knees so loud it would echo all round the church. And the guy that was taking his place, he’d push him aside and be all angry he was in the way. And he’d shout out et cum spiritu Tuo or at the very least amen like he’d been kneeling in front of the altar the whole time.
But it wasn’t anything to be surprised at. Starlings are best caught in the morning, especially on a Sunday, when they’re hungry from the night and everything’s quiet out in the fields. And from the hillside by the woods it was a good mile and a half to the church, Franciszek was getting on and it might only have been those starlings that were keeping him among the living. Or maybe the Lord God had said to him, trap some starlings before you die, Franciszek. And so the priest went easy on Franciszek too, and he never told him off. He’d even ask him when Franciszek was helping him off with his chasuble in the vestry after mass:
“So how was it with the starlings today, Franciszek? Do we have any more at the cemetery?”
Besides, Franciszek was too old to do any heavy jobs around the church. Trapping starlings on the hill up by the woods and bringing them down to the cemetery — that was all he could handle.
One time he brought a nest of blue tits with the young birds still in it and he put it in a tree in the cemetery. Adult birds would probably have flown away, but the young ones grew up and stayed there. Then someone brought him a squirrel from the woods and he let that loose among the graves as well. Someone else brought a woodpecker. Someone brought a blackbird. Someone a dove. And gradually life came back to the cemetery.
II. The Road
There was a road ran through our village. It wasn’t the best of roads, like most roads that go through a village. It had bumps and potholes. In spring and fall there was mud, in the summertime it was dusty. But it did okay for people. Every now and then they’d level it out here and there, fill it in with gravel, and you could drive on it just fine. You took it to get to market in town, or to other villages around here, and whether you were going off to war or headed for the outside world, the road would lead you there just the same.
As well as the road being for everyone, each person had a bit of it that was their own, depending on where their farmyard was. And before every Sunday or holiday in the summer they’d sweep it, in the fall they’d scrape the mud off it, in the winter they’d clear the snow and put down ash so nobody would slip and fall in front of their house. On Whitsun it’d be spread with stalks of sweet flag. The sweet flag would crunch underfoot when you were on your way to church, it smelled like in the woods, and people said it was the road that had that smell. And almost everyone had a bench or a big rock by the roadside. They could go out and sit there of an evening, chat with the neighbors, have a smoke, or just stare up at the dark sky over them. Ask God about this or that. And see nothing but the lights of the fireflies.
People, cows, geese — they’d all walk down the middle of the road, there was no left or right side. You could leave your horse and wagon by the side of the road and go to the pub for an orange soda or a beer, or sometimes even a half-bottle of vodka. You’d have your drink and your horse would just stand there. Or if you were on your way back from the fields with your crop and someone was coming from the opposite direction, you’d stop the wagons next to each other, like standing shoulder to shoulder, and no one would honk their horn to say you were blocking the road. And you’d take the same road on your final journey, because there wasn’t any other. Except the women would hurry out of their houses and shoo their chickens and geese into their farmyard. The farmers would keep the dogs in their kennels to stop them from barking. Wagons would pull over to the side. Mowers would take the scythe off their shoulder. Mothers would bring their babies out in front of the houses. And even drunks would take their cap off and sober up a bit.
On both sides there were acacia trees. When you walked down the road and they were in bloom, the smell would almost choke you. At night you’d have to close your windows or you’d wake up in the morning with a headache. When the farmers smoked on their benches or rocks in the evening, it was like the acacia was smoking. Watchdogs would lose their sense of smell and just lie there outside their kennels. If you had a young lady with you under one of those acacias in bloom you didn’t even have to do much talking. Today there’s maybe three or four of those trees left in the village. They cut them down when they were building the new road. Time was, acacias were planted for their wood that was used in making wagons. If you had an acacia, you’d have a wagon. Well, maybe not the shaft or the sides. For the shaft the best thing was young oak, and one-inch pine planking for the sides. But you’d have the perch, the bench, the tapers, the clouts, the futchel, the bolster, the weight, the singletree, the stanchions, the reach, and of course the wheels. For wheels there was no better wood than acacia. Even oak ones couldn’t match them. They were too hard, they were prone to crack. And the wheels are the most important part of a wagon.
Except these days it’s all rubber wheels. They’re trying to convince me to switch to rubber wheels. It’d be less work for the horse and you can carry a lot more on your wagon. Or at least reshoe him and put rubber linings on his horseshoes, because the asphalt is sharp. At harvesttime the farmers can carry four layers of sheaves in one go on rubber wheels. Before, even two horses together wouldn’t have been able to draw that much, now one of them can on its own. You sail down the road. Some of them barely have any land at all and they still have rubber wheels. Or the old folks, you’d think all they’d want would be to pray for a peaceful next life, and here they are swapping out their wooden wheels for rubber ones. Karpiel’s going to be headed for the next world too before long, and there won’t be any more wheelwrights. There’ll only be mechanics left. Then who’s going to even change a felloe for you when it goes bad? Who’ll turn a hub? And out of what? Back in the day there were acacia trees and you had the material. But back in the day there was the road as well.