On top of everything else, recently I’d had a dream about mother. She was kneading dough to make bread, but she had this kneading-trough that was half the size of the entire room, so there was no space for anyone and we were all standing around the walls. Mother was half the age she was when she died. She was in her nightshirt, barefoot, she was so hot the sweat was pouring off her, and she knelt at that trough and kept pushing her hands up to the elbows in the dough. But for some reason the dough wouldn’t knead properly. She kneaded and kneaded, but the water and the flour were still separate.
“Maybe we should all knead together?” I said. “Then it would go quicker.”
“But it’s my punishment,” said mother.
Then father spoke:
“That’s how it is in the next world. Whatever you did down here, you do there as well. I have to go water the horse.” And he went out. Someone was standing by the window with his back to the room, and everyone thought it was Michał, though no one could see his face. We couldn’t tell if he was old or young. He was wearing a brand-new suit and patent leather shoes, and a ratty old hat father used to put on when he was threshing so the chaff wouldn’t get in his hair. And it was only the hat that made it look like Michał. But no one had the courage to ask, is that you, Michał? And he didn’t seem to know either that he was with us, he just kept staring out the window. Then finally mother spoke again:
“Take the hat off, son. Don’t hurt your mother’s heart. See, the bread’s baking.”
Then Antek said in a soft voice:
“Ask him if he likes biscuit, mother. Do you, Michał?” All of a sudden a baby wailed in its cradle. Where had the cradle come from? There hadn’t been any cradle in the room. Mother stood from the kneading-trough and took the baby out of the cradle, and it was like it was Michał when he was tiny, though the figure by the window was still standing there and if it had been Michał he might have turned his head at his own crying. You know your own crying even from long, long ago.
“Oh, the poor little thing’s peed itself,” said mother, and she took a firm breast like a young girl’s from her blouse and put it in the baby’s mouth.
Right then father came back in and said:
“So, it’s Christmas Eve. We’ll need to bring the bread down from the attic. You go get it, Szymek.”
I harnessed the horse and it was, gee up!
With the first wagonload I didn’t even wait that long to get out onto the road from the field. One car came by, a second, a third, then again one, two, three, then there was a longer gap with the next cars quite a ways away. I flicked the whip and we made it up onto the blacktop. True, they honked like mad dogs because I’d gotten in their way, but you can kiss my ass, use your damn brakes, the road is for horses and wagons just the same.
Things didn’t go so well with the second load. The afternoon was getting on, there were more and more cars and the gaps between them were shorter and shorter, and here I had a wagon loaded up with sheaves. With just the one horse it was no easy matter getting out quickly from the field onto the road. The road is higher than the field, and you have to make a sharp left turn. I got down off the wagon, took the horse by the bridle and moved him forward. It was like walking in some deep place. I’d take one step, then it would be, whoa! And the cars would be zooming past, honking their horns and flashing their lights. The horse strained, he was trying to move forward but the wagon pulled him back because the rear wheels were still down in the field. I was holding him back then pulling him forward, I was bathed in sweat. The horse was foaming at the mouth. But in the end we made it across. Though if the road had been clear, in the time I waited I’d have been able to take a whole other load.
So I come up with my third load, and here old Kuś is parked by the road, loaded up with sheaves and waiting. And the cars are speeding by one after another after another, both ways, there’s not a single gap between them. It was like a cloud had opened up and it was raining cars, and there they were pouring down the road.
“What, are they not letting us across?” I asked the old man.
“Sure aren’t.”
“You been waiting here long?”
“Sure have.”
“Did you try to drive out?”
“Sure did.”
“And?”
“Sure didn’t work. I’m still here.”
“You could wait here till you goddam drop dead!”
“Sure could. What can you do?”
“Drive out!”
“Sure, then go.”
“Goddammit! We should just take the shaft out and give them hell!”
“If waiting doesn’t work, you won’t do any good with a shaft either. You’ve got a rosary there, pray awhile and you’ll stop being angry. Always works for me. Whenever I need to get anything done, at the district administration or the co-op, I take my rosary along and say it one bead after another, and however long I have to wait, it’s like I didn’t have to wait at all. How about it?”
“You know where you can put your rosary!”
“Don’t blaspheme or you’ll turn God against us as well. And he’s all we have left.”
I was madder at old Kuś than at the cars. For getting to the road before me. He was sitting there now without a care in the world, up on his sheaves, his whip between his legs, saying his rosary with his hands, and he probably felt like he was sitting on the bench outside his house. And when you’re on your bench outside your house, time lies like a dog at your feet, warming itself in the sun or thinking about the next world. Besides, he was over eighty, his woman had long since died and his sons had gone off to the town, where did he have to hurry back to. Me, on the other hand, I was planning to make another trip after this one, even two more if I managed. Since I’d already given up my Sunday, let there be a good few loads to show for it. And the sky looked more and more like rain. There were twice as many dark clouds over to the west.
After a bit Wicek Marzec came along, his wagon was full also.
“You’re waiting?”
“Yep.”
“Whoa!” He pulled his horse up, the shaft almost poked into my sheaves. “Looks like we’ll be here awhile. Where are all those damn cars going? People don’t even know how to sit on their asses these days. Sunday’s no good for a day of rest anymore, evidently — they’ll have to pick another day.”
“Then there’d have to be another God,” said Kuś, bristling.
“Let there be, if that’s how it has to happen!”
Then Heniek Maszczyk drove up with his Terenia. And he says the same thing:
“You’re waiting?”
“Yep.”
I liked that Terenia. Couldn’t I have been born twenty years later? I felt sorry for her that all that beauty was going to waste in the harvest. When she saw us all waiting there she slipped down off the sheaves.
“Heniek, I’m gonna walk back, the kid needs feeding. There’s no telling how long you’ll be here.” She set off on foot across the fields.
There was no break in the cars. It was one long string of them. Syta and Barański and Franek Jędrys came along and each of them repeated:
“You’re waiting?”
“Yep.” It was like they were saying a greeting, “God bring you fortune,” and we were answering, “God give you thanks.”
In the end there was a line of maybe ten wagons, with Kuś at the front like a lookout.
“Bartłomiej, keep your eyes peeled! The moment you can, whack your horse on the backside and get out there!”
“I am keeping my eyes peeled,” he said, annoyed. “Can’t you see the cars keep coming and coming? Is it my fault they’ve had enough of staying home?” Then a moment later he says in a good-natured way: “Hey there, Szymek! Any idea why those cars are all painted? Green and red and heaven knows what all else? I mean, horses are different colors as well. But horses are born that way. Though one time, you know, thieves stole four horses from the manor and they colored two of them black and two of them chestnut. They went to market and they might even have sold them, they already had buyers. But it began to drizzle. People saw a miracle, a horse changing color. The black ones become duns, the chestnuts turned into grays. On a fair day like today they surely would have sold them. But tomorrow, who knows. Looks like rain. Though in one of them cars it makes no difference whether it’s raining or not, they’re all nice and cozy in there. They’re just riding along seeing the world. Not like when all you’ve seen of the world is when you were in the wars. Or when you went to market. But back then you’d have to wait till your cucumbers grew. You’d pick a whole lot and your woman’d put on her fancy clothes, and you’d be off to Karasin, cause the money was better there. And if you sold what you had you could go to the pub. That Waleria of mine was quite the lady. You’d never catch her drinking plain old vodka. It was always only rum. The Jew knew her, he didn’t even have to ask. Then when she’d had a bit to drink she’d start singing. She had a lovely voice. There were times everything we made on the cucumbers would go. And you know, she could cook cabbage like nobody else. She’d chop up black turnip and garlic and onion, sprinkle on some caraway, then she’d chuck in some lard or bacon fat. Then once it was cooked on the stove, in the wintertime she’d put it out in the frost for the whole night. Next day she’d light the stove and put it in the oven. We’d be eating it the whole week. When she died she said to me, all your clothes are washed and ironed, Bartuś. I even whitewashed the inside walls for you. I was going to cook you up some cabbage as well, but God didn’t let me. You’ll have to do it yourself.”