If you look closely enough you’ll see that even diseases have their own diseases, and those diseases have diseases of their own. Everything in this world is up against everything else, and it’ll be more and more that way. So grow flax, because flax at least pays. Quickly even. What about sparrows? Don’t be stupid, in the country you can’t get by without sparrows. Put up a scarecrow, put up a couple of them, one in each corner of the field. It’s no big deal to nail a couple of poles together and dress them in some old pants, jacket, shirt, hat. Everyone has old clothes lying around that are good for nothing. You save them up over the years because it’s always a pity to throw them out.
With flax the straw and the grain both pay. With rye and wheat only the grain pays. Look around the village. You can tell right away who grows flax. Or go to high mass on Sunday. Paper money comes fluttering down into the collection tray like feathers from angels’ wings. When there’s a rattle of coins once in a while, people look round as if you’d done something wrong. When I was in the hospital, from spring to fall there were two guys here painting the church. One of them got drunk and fell off the scaffolding. But the other one kept on painting. Now the ceiling is blue as the sky. On the walls there’s a new stations of the cross. Before, Jesus’s head was in a crown of thorns, but now you can just see one of his eyes. When people are better off, the Lord God does better too. And that new bell in the church tower, where did that come from? From flax, my friend. When it rings you can hear it up hill and down dale. Folks come from all around to buy salt and oil and matches, and they say they can hear it ringing everywhere: Ding-dong, ding-dong.
But then if everyone grew flax, who would grow rye and wheat, what would they make bread out of? Though I often think to myself, I’ve got ten acres, maybe I could plant at least one acre of flax? It’d bring in a few pennies if there was a good year for flax. And maybe I’d finish that tomb, because it’s gotten embarrassing. It looks like a bunker, with no statue, no cross. There was a guy made a cross for Malinowski’s tomb. He offered to do one for me. But I didn’t care for it. It looked like a fence post, without a Lord Jesus. What kind of cross is that? Though I can’t say I think much of the more expensive ones either in our cemetery. Sometimes I drop by there to take a look and see if one of them might be good for my tomb, but they’re just getting fancier and fancier.
The Kowaliks’ cross you can see way before you even get to the cemetery. It’s almost on a level with the trees. It looks like a tree that’s been snapped in a gale, like two unstripped tree trunks nailed together. It even has knots from sawn-off branches like on a real tree, and bark that’s cracked with age. And it’s all carved in stone. The Lord Jesus is no great size, but his crown of thorns is like a crow’s nest. When you stand underneath it it’s like standing at a gallows, and you have to tip your head way back like you were looking at a hung man. What does it have to be so high for? You can’t look at death high up like that for long. Your neck goes stiff. Looking up is something you can only do to check the weather or when the storks are flying away. Death draws you downward. With your head craned up it’s hard to cry even. The tears get stuck in your throat when it’s stretching up, and they trickle down into your stomach instead of into your eyes.
One time the Germans hung someone from the village on a high cross like that. When you looked up at him from below he seemed to be laughing at it all. But when they took him down and he was lying at our feet you could see his face was twisted and his tongue was poking out. You could imagine he’d choked on some word that had gotten stuck in his throat when he was trying to shout it out. Though in those times, at moments like that people usually shouted out something short, mostly the same kind of thing. In the time between the trigger being pulled and the bullet entering your body.
If he hadn’t run away into the fields but in the opposite direction, toward the river, he might have gotten away. The river’s no great depth or width, it’s just a river, like you find in any village. When you water your horse its muzzle almost touches the bottom. Old buckets stick out from the surface with mint growing in them. When the women go down to rinse their laundry they wade out into the middle and the water barely comes up to their knees. There are willow trees and bushes along the banks. And he was closer to the river than to that cross. Though maybe they happened to chase him in the direction of the cross, and you run away in whatever direction you’re being chased in. Or perhaps he thought the cross was the edge of the wood.
They shot him, but he somehow managed to crawl to the cross. He put his arms around it with all his strength. Afterward his fingernails were full of splinters and the skin on his arms was scraped all the way up to the elbows because they couldn’t get him to let go however much they tried. They had to break his fingers. And he was already almost dead when they hung him on an arm of the cross. Later there was no way to get him down and they had to cut down the cross.
Or Barański’s daughter. She hadn’t even turned three, but Barański had a tomb built for her that made it look as if the Barańskis had been burying their people there since time immemorial. On that tomb, as well as the Lord Jesus being gigantic, the stone was kind of gray, or covered in something, so he looked a hundred years old. And how old was he actually? Thirty-three. And he could have walked into any cottage without having to bow his head at the lintel. I’m not exactly on the short side myself — as a young man I was the tallest in the village. When there was a dance at one of the villages farther away there’d sometimes be somebody taller. In the resistance, in our whole unit there were only two or three men taller than me, though every one of us was straight as an oak. If we’d been lined up in double rank, Lord Jesus would have been somewhere in the middle. I even said to Barański, for a little child like that an angel would be better. But he wouldn’t listen. Angels can intercede but they can’t save you.
He’s standing as if he was on a hilltop, his hands folded on his chest, his head lowered, thinking. There’s a lot for him to be thinking about. God or man, it comes to everyone. Even a three-year-old child. You could think and think what might have become of her. Barański used to brag that she would’ve been a doctor. But can you boast about the dead? Better just say a prayer for them. Barański always was a blowhard. One time he bought a horse and he claimed it was only four years old. You could tell from looking at its teeth it was at least twice that. She might have become a seamstress. Or like the other women, she would have gotten married, and she and her man would have worked the land till they died.
Or take Partyka. On his tomb he put up a Jesus carrying his cross to Golgotha. His shoulders are as wide as three Partykas, and each foot is the size of three human feet. On top of that the end of the cross reaches over above the Ciepielas’ tomb next door, and Partyka and Ciepiela always get into a fight on All Souls’. When Lord Jesus is so big, you don’t get the feeling that he’s suffering even when he’s carrying his cross to Golgotha. Even if you wanted to help him, what can you do with your little strength next to his. God ought to be like a person, so you can see that whatever’s painful for people is painful for him as well. So you can be troubled when he’s troubled. And feel sorry for him the way you’d feel sorry for yourself. And understand when there’s nothing he can do, just like a person. And even switch jobs with him awhile. Give me your cross, I’ll carry it for you, and you do some of my thinking for me.