“I’m telling you, Szymek, you know how to make people laugh. Even more than Błażej or Łukasz. It’s like you had the devil in you. Hee, hee, hee!”
Because girls like it when you make them laugh to begin with. Making someone laugh is like forgiving their sins. Then it’s easier to persuade them to do the rest. You’d meet one or another of them as she was taking dinner to her folks in the fields, you’d keep her company a ways, joke a bit, put your arm around her, and by evening you’d be lying next to her by the river or in the orchard. And she wouldn’t be afraid it was a sin, because when young people sin it’s honest sinning. If you wanted a peek at this or that she’d show you, even let you hold it in your hand like a dove. Or in church at high mass, you’d sidle up to a girl and whisper in her ear:
“Sleep in the barn tonight, Wikcia.”
And no dog would bark at you, the barn door wouldn’t creak, and the ladder to the hayloft would already be in place. And the hay had just been brought from the fields, so it was like the girl had made you a bed in the meadow, and she was bursting with sunlight like a meadow warmed in the sun. And her blood was buzzing inside her so loud it was like you could hear grasshoppers when you laid your head on that meadow.
Or you only had to go down to the river at noon when the girls were taking their bath. They mostly went in naked, only the odd few would keep their blouses on. The river water was so clean it sweetened their bodies, so what did they have to be embarrassed about. The horses were always watered down there and they never once got the mange. The geese and ducks would go down to the water all on their own, they didn’t need to be driven. Fish swam about almost on the surface. And the bottom glistened from all the different pebbles. You could sit on the bank and gaze at the river to your heart’s content, think about how it flowed just like your own life. It was clean as clean can be.
And all the screaming and squealing! You could hear from way off where the girls were bathing. The river only came up to their belly buttons. Not many of them could swim. So they were more splashing about than bathing. They’d splash and stumble and push each other over, and run upstream and downstream, taking the river in their arms, or lie on their backs and daydream and let it carry them. They wouldn’t even notice me standing on the bank, behind a willow tree or a bush, staring at their breasts and bellies and thighs and backsides swirling around in the water. Till one of them would snap out of it and shout:
“Hide, girls! Szymek’s behind that tree!”
“The dirty so-and-so! Has he no shame!”
“The priest’ll never forgive you for this!”
“Like he doesn’t know what girls look like! They look like this — stare all you want!”
“Come on, Szymek, get lost now.”
“Sure, I can go away, but I’m taking Zosia’s things. Come behind the bush, Zosia, I’ll let you have them.”
“Give them back, Szymek! If I tell my mother she’ll have your guts for garters! I’ll never look at you again. And for sure I’ll never dance with you again! Come on, Szymuś, give them back. At least give me my skirt, or I’ll cry.”
“Go to him, Zośka, if he only sees one of us it won’t be such a big sin.”
And Zosia pouts and fumes, but she comes to me. And once she comes behind the bush she’ll go farther.
“Come over here, Zosia, under this alder, and I’ll give you back your clothes. A little bit farther and I’ll give them back to you. Almost there. I’ll give you them over there. In that patch of sunlight. In that shade. Don’t be embarrassed, there’s no need to feel embarrassed in front of me, and the girls are out of sight. You can hear them in the river.”
And Zosia would come closer and closer.
In the winter I’d go where they were plucking feathers and husking beans. They’d all gather, the girls and young men and old folks. The evenings were long, there was nothing else to do, and you could at least hear your fill of ghosts and devils and witches, because back in the day there were all kinds of them in the village, they lived alongside the people and the livestock. Then when it got dark it’d be time to head off back home. And it was common knowledge ghosts and devils and witches only ever went around at night, and that their favorite thing was to go after young women. The ones that lived close by, it wasn’t such a problem for them. The farmer or his wife would come out in front of the house with a lantern and wait till they heard their neighbor’s door creak. But the girls who lived farther off needed to be walked home. And I’d usually choose the one that was most afraid or lived the farthest away. Actually I never had to choose. They knew me, that I’d walk to the ends of the earth in the darkest night, because I didn’t believe in any ghosts or devils or witches, though I liked hearing about how other people had seen them. So either the girl would come up to me herself:
“Say, Szymek, will you walk me back? I won’t be scared if you’re with me.”
Or the farmer’s wife would say:
“Szymek, take Magda back, she lives way over near the woods and she’s frightened to go on her own.”
And since nothing brings people closer together than fear or a long journey, it often happened that the girl would cling to me the moment we set off, squeezing against me, leaning her head on my shoulder, and me with my arm around her. The snow would be creaking underfoot. The road was quiet and deserted, not a living soul to be seen, and after a few steps she’d let herself be kissed. Also, there were more stars in the sky than pears on a pear tree, so we’d stop and look up at the stars. Which one is yours? Because that one there is mine. How do you like that, they’re right next to each other. Then we’d kiss again, like the two stars. And we’d follow the stars all the way to her house. And if her old folks were sound asleep, we’d end up under her quilt.
Though I preferred summer to winter. In the summertime the world is wide open, orchards, meadows, fields, woods, haystacks, sheaves, bushes. You didn’t have to have a house, all you needed was the sky over your head. In the summer the girls’ blood was hotter from being warmed up out in the fields. In the summer you didn’t need to chase around after them, they fell into your arms by themselves. There’d be times you were mowing barley in your own field, and she’d be cutting wheat with a sickle in the next field, and all you had to do was cross from your barley to her wheat.
“Let me give you a hand, Hania.”
Or she’d start it herself:
“Could you help me out, Szymuś? I’ve still got so much to do.”
And in a wheat field you don’t have to worry about talking her into anything. Wheat is like a turned-down bed. The wheat’s hot, the sun’s shining above it. The girl would lie down and you’d take hold of her among the spikes and seeds like you were taking bread from an oven with your bare hands.
It must’ve been the devil tempted me to sow wheat on the other side of the road. I was going to plant potatoes, but Antek Kwiecień came to lend me a spade and we got to talking, what are you sowing, what are you planting, and how it was a waste of that land across the road to plant potatoes. Potatoes you can plant any old where. Over there, that’s the perfect place for wheat. It’s flat as can be, it’ll be no work at all, and this is going to be a good year for wheat. You can tell, the storks aren’t even thinking about flying away yet. Sow wheat. If it grows well you’d have to plant twice as many potatoes to equal it. And I won’t deny it, it did grow well. The stalks were as tall as me, every spike as thick as my finger, and the grains were fat and oily. Everyone that came past would say, that’s some fine wheat you got there, you’ll have grain like gold from that. It was a pleasure to mow. Even the weather helped out, like it was trying to live up to the wheat. It only rained once, and even that was nothing to speak of. I’d already started figuring out how many sacks I’d need once I threshed it, how much I’d leave for myself and how much I’d sell. Antek Kwiecień deserved a drink. I just had to finish bringing it in.