Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski Page B

spent a penny. Anyone who wanted tosee, it cost them a half-bottle of vodka. If you wanted to see it with the blade open, it was a half-bottle and a beer. And to handle it, a half-bottle, a beer, and something to eat. And if some wise guy pretended to want to know what time it was, you told him it’d be eternity when he found out, and he preferred to stand you a half-bottle as well.
    Four strings of garlic that knife cost me. I bought it off this guy that went around the villages selling needles, thread, safety pins, head-lice lotion, various stuff. They called him Eye of the Needle, because he could talk all day about the eye of the needle, who’d passed through it and who hadn’t. Afterward mother went on and on about how someone had stolen some of her garlic from the attic. I told her to count again, that maybe she’d made a mistake. But each time she counted she was missing those four strings. It was only when she was dying and I wasn’t young anymore, and it had been so long ago that those four strings had shrunk to four heads of garlic, as you might say, that I confessed it had been me. By then the knife was long gone as well, missing or maybe stolen. There was no shortage of folks that had their eye on it. A good few tried to buy it off me. But at that time I wouldn’t have sold it for all the tea in China. I could have gotten ten strings of garlic for it, or a hundredweight of rye, a necktie or a pair of gaiters. One of them even offered his watch. No one had a knife like that in those parts. They usually fought with regular bread knives, sometimes a butcher’s knife, most often with penknives.
    But a penknife, at the most it’s only any good for killing frogs or whittling a pipe while you’re minding the cows. You can’t even cut tobacco with it. Its blade is weak as a willow leaf and the handle’s like a twig. When you’re up against someone in a leather jacket, what use is a penknife, it won’t even cut through the leather. Also, every dick in the village carried a penknife since they were knee-high to a grasshopper. You could buy one at any church fair or win it at one of the stalls with a fishing pole or an air gun. But as for taking it to a dance, you’d be better off with your bare hands.
    So then, after you’d been to the buffet you went and danced. To begin with you were nice and polite. You’d take a young lady that was free and sitting on one of the benches or standing with her girlfriend. You’d bow to her and kiss her hand. And you wouldn’t hold her too tight, because what you’d had to drink was only enough for first courage. Besides, it was still light out. The sun was only just setting, it was shining straight in through the windows. And all the old women were sitting like crows on the benches around the edge of the barn with their eyes burrowing into all the couples like woodworms. There were small kids all over the place like it was a nursery. The band hadn’t had their supper yet and they were only playing slow numbers. All the dancers were still following the emcee’s instructions. In pairs, form a circle, one pair to the left, one to the right, make a basket, girls in the middle, girls choose their partner! And the firefighters in their golden helmets would still be sober as judges, standing there by the door like it was the entrance to Christ’s tomb, making sure no one drank too much. And if anyone did get drunk and went looking for a fight they’d haul his ass out the door. So a young lady could easily tell you you were a pig.
    It wasn’t till later. Once the sun went down and the ceiling lamps were lit. When the old women round the edge of the room went off for the evening milking, and the mothers took their kids and put them to bed. When the first dew broke out on the foreheads of the band, and the party really started to get going. Then, sure, you could drag a young lady to the buffet. And at the buffet it would be a first and a second and a third and, what’s your