Stanislaw Barszczak, The week of faith’s gift, part2

Beloved readers! This is my life and the image of my growing up in virtue also. The world of professional wrestling has always been bizarre with it’s stunts and superstars. The hype, glitz, and theatrics of wrestle mania, has created a new market for kids as well as adults. There are millions who watch such entertainment with passion, pulling for their favorite wrestler. Professional wrestling has become big money and I suppose a big waste of time. This form of entertainment as most everything else in this nation, has grown darker and more violent. Let us return to the bible. I remember from the bible the scene with David. David also knew he was not fighting a common battle and, therefore, could not use common weapons and armor. This faithful young man who walked in the way of the Lord could not walk in the king’s armor much less fight. Goliath was an extraordinary enemy. Ordinary weapons and armor were not effective. David knew that. After all, Saul had all the armor he wanted and he was still afraid to accept Goliath’s challenge. For David, the weapons of this world were untested and unreliable. He preferred to fight with the weapon he knew would be sufficient to defeat the enemy. That weapon was absolute faith in the covenant-keeping God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David, and yes, even us. He had another weapon as well. That weapon was the glory of God, and David knew God would protect his glory by doing for his people what they clearly could not do for themselves. But let us stop on a text about Jacob now. Probably we have ringside seats to witness the wrestling match of all time. This is no doubt the most unusual wrestling match in history. This event takes place in an open air arena beside the Jabbok River. In one corner stands Jacob, affectionately known as “Big Jake” or “The Schemer.” And in the other corner, of all people is God Himself. What a billing! Jacob versus God! Big jake versus Jehovah! Our text describes the blow by blow account of Jacob’s wrestling match with the omnipotent God. “How foolish,” you say. “Who would want to take on God, one on one, in a wrestling match? How could ‘Big Jake’ ever hope to win?” God has preserved this historical event in the life of Jacob to teach us lessons concerning our own struggles. You see, the truth is, all of us at some point in our journey, have taken on God. We have all stepped into the ring with God, and wrestled with Him about life. Right now as we speak, someone could be struggling with God about some situation, some problem, some difficulty, some injustice, he or she has incurred! It would be good for us to sit down in our ringside seats, and learn the lessons from Jacob’s wrestling match with God.
The commentators said, Jacob’s encounter with God began even before the day of his birth. The account given in Genesis 25:19-26 tells us that Rebekah was disturbed by the wrestling match going on in her belly as she carried the turbulent twins, Jacob and Esau. There in the womb, these two brothers who were destined to become two nations, were duking it out for dominance! Later when they came forth from the womb, Jacob grabbed Esau’s heel as if to pull him back in an effort to be the first born, a position of prominence in the Hebrew family. His parents observing this unusual trait named him, “Jacob.” You see in the ancient Hebrew culture, a person’s name carried with it the very essence and identity of the person. No Hebrew parent chose a name for their baby just because it sounded nice, or was popular, but only because the name fit the child! The name “Jacob” means “supplanter, schemer, cheater; one who grabs from behind.” Jacob was “called for clipping.” Such a person takes things in his own hands, wrestles to get his own way, and the remainder of Jacob’s life up to this main event reveals that Jacob was named properly. He wrestled with his brother Essau to get his birthright, he and his mother formed a tag team as they wrestled with his father to obtain the blessing of the firstborn, he wrestled with his uncle Laban (however uncle Laban gave him a run for his money) over flocks, herds, his daughters, and now he wrestles with God! Jacob is wrestling with God, because he has for a long time been wrestling with life. Everything that had happened, everything that was happening in his life, had been leading to this one critical, crucial encounter. By name and by nature Jacob has for a long time walked the road of his own choosing, the road of self will, selfish goals, the road of his own strength and resources. Now that road leads past the Jabbok River, a name which means “wrestling.” In our text, Jacob places his wives, servants, and company, over across the Jabbok river to the south side, and he estranges himself on the north bank. Completely alone with his doubts, dreams, and fears, Jacob was set for his encounter with God. Now would begin his long night of struggle, and in the agony of his soul, Jacob would wrestle in prayer, and actually, literally, wrestle the pre-incarnate Christ. By mornings light, Jacob would leave a different man with a new name, seeking a new destiny, walking a new road!
What was it that so troubled Jacob? What has brought him to this spiritual crisis in his life as he sits alone at the river gorge? What are the REASONS for his wrestling? One obvious reason is his name and nature. Jacob was growing weary of his wrestling, his struggle with life. Sure, he had some previous encounters with God. The Lord’s blessings had been upon his life despite Jacob’s insistence on singing, “I’ll do it my way!” The truth remained that he had done it his way, and now it was a royal mess! Jacob at the river gorge is a tired, weary, frightened, searching man, a man who is slow to trust God and quick to grab from behind. His name and nature has woven a web of trouble and conflict. What does Jacob have to show for all of his scheming? He has family problems. Jacob had left home with a father who no doubt was disappointed in him and a brother who swore to kill him. He wasn’t exactly popular with his uncle Laban and the in-laws. Now he had two wives who were continually fighting. His family life was a wreck! Sounds much like today, doesn’t it? Families everywhere are fighting and falling apart because they have forsaken God, His house, His Word! Like Jacob, many fathers and husbands turned away from God to follow the god of mammon. A home built upon this world with its philosophy and mind set is like building a house upon the sand. It will stand for a while, but when the wind and waves of trouble come and beat upon it, great is its fall! He was struggling with his destiny, his purpose. He was supposed to be heir to the promise of God first given to his grandfather Abraham and passed down to his father Isaac. At Bethel that promise was reiterated by God to Jacob and Jacob made a vow to God. We remember that vow recorded in Genesis 28:20-21. “And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If or since God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, So that I come again to my father’s house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God.” Without doubt, Jacob struggled with the timing of God’s plan for his life as well as the direction his life had taken. His patience had run thin and perhaps he was perplexed as to where his life was going. One thing was for sure, the Lord had kept His end of the bargain. Jacob was a blessed man. He came to Laban’s house empty, and now he was leaving full. Jacob was on his way to becoming the person who could fit that promise made by God, however Jacob still had the same nature and name. He was not entirely the Jacob who left home twenty years earlier, but he had not yet come to the end of his ways. There were some things in his life he had not set aside. We see this as he prepares to meet Esau. Instead of trusting God, he is referring to Esau as his master and himself as his servant, which is upside down! Instead of trusting God, he is sending wave after wave of presents to Esau in an effort to appease him. Now his life is as uncertain as ever. He is a man without a country. Jacob was rich in the things of this world, but he was not yet rich toward God. Today the average Pole has more than ever before, and yet a sense of hopelessness and despair has never filled the country as it fills it today. We have raised a whole generation without God, values or absolutes, and now we are both seeing and hearing the emptiness within. Most kids have things, but no reason to live. When we walk away from God, we walk away from our purpose for existence! Nothing can fill the heart like Jesus. He is certainly troubled about his future. Soon, the next morning Jacob is to meet up with his profane brother Essau. “BIG JAKE” for sure is no match for big, red headed, hairy, hot-tempered, rough, rugged he-man Essau. “Big jake versus big red.” The mother’s boy who hid out in the tents and loved to cook would be no contest for Essau. The future struck fear into the heart of Jacob. He needed some answers, some assurance as he faced the future and now he sits alone. Alone is a tough place to be when you need help, answers, and assurance. Alone is tough when you are at the top, but on the bottom it is unbearable! But Jacob is alone by his own design. He wanted it “his way” and now that is exactly what he has. There at the river ford, Jacob keeps his solitary, restless watch. Sleep was impossible. His troubled spirit would not let him rest. Jacob is at a crisis in life. Jacob is at a cross road.

Stanislaw Barszczak; The week of faith’s gift, part1

I had a friend, his name Adam Teper. Now say. I was the very spit of him from a boy. But I have never been known of my father. My father, his name was Edward Chodzicki. Mum often had spoken about me: his son, she affirmed, he had resembled him amazingly from his earliest babyhood. I saw him the first and the last time for many years. Father had learned at university in Cracow. I would say, father had been one of those foresters that pursue their calling within sight of land. One of the many children of a bankrupt farmer, he had been apprenticed hurriedly to a ground, and had remained in a forest all his adult life. It must have been a hard one at first: he had never taken to it; his affection turned to the land, with its innumerable houses, with its quiet lives gathered round its firesides. Many foresters feel and profess a rational dislike for the forest, but his was a profound and emotional animosity, as if the love of the stabler element had been bred into him through many generations. His lady, miss Chodzicka heard all these things. In front of their cottage at Pniaki near Kalwaria Zebrzydowska grew an under-sized ash; and on summer afternoons she would bring out a chair on the grass-plot and sit down with her sewing. Father, in his canvas suit, leaned on a spade. He dug every day in his front plot. He turned it over and over several times every year, but was not going to plant anything. For a moment he seemed to her ready to go out of his mind, for in his ordinary state she thought him more sane than people gave him credit for. When father got excited in
his talk she would steady him by a pretence of belief, laughing a little to salve her conscience. “Don’t alarm yourself, my dear,” he said a little cunningly: “the sea can’t keep him. He does not belong to it. None of us Chodzickis ever did belong to it. Look at me; I didn’t get drowned. Moreover, he isn’t a sailor at all; and if he is not a sailor he’s bound to come back. There’s nothing to prevent him coming back. . . .” She never tried again, for fear the man should go out of his mind on the spot. He depended on her. She seemed the only sensible person in the town; and he would congratulate himself frankly before her face on having secured such a levelheaded wife for his son. She humoured him in silence, listening patiently by the fence; crocheting with downcast eyes. Blushes came with difficulty on her dead-white complexion, under the negligently twisted opulence of coloured hair. She had a full figure; a tired, unrefreshed face. When Mr Chodzicki vaunted the necessity and propriety of a home and the delights of one’s own fireside, she smiled a little, with her lips only. Her home delights had been confined to the nursing of her father during the ten best years of her life. He had come just in time to spoil their sport. He was entertained by the idea, scornful of the baffled plot. But all his life he had been full of indulgence for all sorts of women’s tricks… . It’s my chum who saw the paper and told me, this very morning… “You didn’t understand me!” she exclaimed, impatiently. The clear streak of light under the clouds died out in the west. Again he stooped slightly to hear better; and the deep night buried everything of the whispering woman and the attentive man, except the familiar contiguity of their faces, with its air of secrecy and caress. Her hands moved up in the dark nervously. “And it might have been true. It was true. It has come. Here it is. This is the to-morrow we have been waiting for him.”(for his son?) But this time I’ve a chum waiting for me in Cracow…Mr Chodzicki gate squeaked, and the shadow of the son moved on, then stopped with another deep laugh in the throat, like the father’s, only soft and gentle, thrilling to the woman’s heart, awakening to her ears. “He isn’t frisky–is he? I would be afraid to lay hold of him. The chaps are always telling me I don’t know my own strength.” For all their intimacy, which had lasted some years now, they had never talked without a fence or a railing between them. Usually they crossed the road at once; the cottages stood in the fields, two hundred yards away from the end of the forest’ path and for a long, long time they would remain in view, ascending imperceptibly the flight of wooden steps that led to the top of the forest. It ran on from east to west, on which no train had ever rolled within memory of man. Groups of sturdy people would emerge upon the sky, walk along for a bit, and sink without haste, and looking up from the end of the street, the people of the town would recognise the two Chodzickis by the creeping slowness of their gait. Mr Chodzicki, pottering aimlessly about his cottages, would raise his head to see how they got on in their promenade. Now I remember from my childhood something else. I did not read the handbook from school. I did not can read. I read after mum something. The weariness of such a life got worse as you got older. At this time I met Mr Stanislaw Gęgotek. He lived with us in the house close to church at Ząbkowice. I wouldn’t say it if I had seen him chasing me upstairs with a hard leather strap inside our house. It have been helped me. I began read fluently. I haven’t forgotten it in fifty years. We lived with a strange man at Ząbkowice. His name was Wladyslaw Nanuś. He grudged every penny he had to spend on his maintenance, and when he left house to make his purchases his bearing changed as soon as he got into the street. Away from the sanction of church, he played piano after holy mass. He felt himself exposed without defence. He brushed the walls with his shoulder. He mistrusted the queerness of the people; yet, by then, even the town children had left off calling after him, and the people served him without a word. The slightest allusion to his clothing had the power to puzzle and frighten especially, as if it were something utterly unwarranted and incomprehensible. In the autumn, the driving rain drummed on his sailcloth suit saturated almost to his house. When the weather was too bad, he retreated under the tiny porch,and, standing close against the door, looked at church, which was in the middle of the yard. When it froze hard, he was disconsolate. For that reason I think in the house of mother at Ząbkowice, Związku Orła Białego street 36 I had the rabbit-hutches later, there was just the thing I would be proud of. I had invited mother to an inspection of her house always. No human eye was to behold our housekeeping till Mother had her first look. In fact, nobody had ever been inside cottage; she did his own housework, and she guarded her son’s privilege so jealously that the small objects of domestic use (e.g. glass) she bought sometimes in the town were smuggled rapidly across the front factory under her canvas coat. And, if not too tired with her drudgery, or worried beyond endurance by her son, she would laugh at him with a blush, and say: “That’s all right, son; I am not impatient.
This past day I have been studying the life of Jacob. I read about how at his birth he was holding the heel of his brother Esau. I read about his dealings with his brother and his conspiracy with his mother Rebekah to steal Isaac’s blessing to Esau. I followed Jacob as he went to his uncle Laban’s home and as he worked twenty years to gain his wives and children. I remembered my week’s journey to Paris in January 2008. I currently find Jacob headed home and facing a confrontation with his brother, Esau, after twenty years. Jacob is afraid. He reaches out, he asks God for help, and he seeks to make some kind of restitution. But in all of these things, Jacob is still resisting. He is still holding back, relying largely upon himself. For days the two battle it out, until Jacob realizes he’s been grappling with an angel of God. The description of Jacob’s ladder appears in the Book of Genesis (28:11–19): Jacob left Beersheba, and went toward Haran. He came to the place and stayed there that night, because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones of the place, he put it under his head and lay down in that place to sleep. And he dreamed that there was a ladder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven; and behold, the angels of God were ascending and descending on it! And behold, the Lord stood above it [or “beside him”] and said, “I am the Lord, the God of Abraham your father and the God of Isaac; the land on which you lie I will give to you and to your descendants; and your descendants shall be like the dust of the earth, and you shall spread abroad to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south; and by you and your descendants shall all the families of the earth bless themselves. Behold, I am with you and will keep you wherever you go, and will bring you back to this land; for I will not leave you until I have done that of which I have spoken to you.” Then Jacob awoke from his sleep and said, “Surely the Lord is in this place; and I did not know it.” And he was afraid, and said, “This is none other than the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.” Afterwards, Jacob names the place, “Bethel” (literally, “House of God”). The description of Jacob’s battle with God appears in the Book of Genesis (32:21-32): JACOB WRESTLES WITH GOD “So went the present over before him: and himself lodged that night in the company. And he rose up that night, and took his two wives, and his two womenservants, and his eleven sons, and passed over the ford Jabbok. And he took them, and sent them over the brook, and sent over that he had. And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day. And when he saw that he prevailed not against him, he touched the hollow of his thigh; and the hollow of Jacob’s thigh was out of joint, as he wrestled with him. And he said, Let me go, for the day breaketh. And he said, I will not let thee go, except thou bless me. And he said unto him, What is thy name? And he said, Jacob. And he said, Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel: for as a prince hast thou power with God and with men, and hast prevailed. And Jacob asked him, and said, Tell me, I pray thee, thy name. And he said, Wherefore is it that thou dost ask after my name? And he blessed him there. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel: for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. And as he passed over Penuel the sun rose upon him, and he halted upon his thigh. Therefore the children of Israel eat not of the sinew which shrank, which is upon the hollow of the thigh, unto this day: because he touched the hollow of Jacob’s thigh in the sinew that shrank.”

Stanislaw Barszczak; To save character of a grace….

In years 1995-2004 as I just mentioned I lived in the mum’s house at Zabkowice. I had a chapel and all to be the priest there. Once I returned home too late. From a rail station I made it down Wapienna Street, walked down behind the crosing, turned south down Związku Orła Białego to 36. I walked up the neighbor’s driveway, found the berry bush, crawled over it, through the open screen and into my bedroom. I undressed and went to bed. In that moment it was louder and uglier. I slept anyhow. As usual it has approached Helena me. “It’s thirty minutes late,” she said. I woke up suddenly. It was 21:30 a.m. I stood outside the door and listened. There were only mum and “grandmother” Helen in my house. Grandmother Helen couldn’t get enough of that. At that time I’d had the French lessons on my own and it had been Maeterlinck, Maurice Maeterlinck. I opened the door. Helen went over and lifted the needle from the record. Then he announced to my mother, “When Mr. Barszczak arrives we always know that it is 21:30 a.m. Mr. Barszczak is always on time. The only problem being that it is the wrong time.” She paused, glancing at the faces around. Then he looked at me. I turned around, walked out, closed the door behind me. I walked down the hallway, still hearing her going at it in there. In that night someone has knocked on the window…The next morning mum was already there by the time. I found the house after a journey of yesterday evening to Częstochowa completely new. Her friends were in the breakfast nook. I was introduced. There was Bożena, there was Bogdan, there was Zbyszek, there was Adam, there was Helena, there was Lucy, there was Regina and finally there was Antoni. They all sat around a large breakfast table. John had a legitimate job somewhere, he and Anton were the only ones employed. Regina was Anton’s wife. When we were introduced Regina had looked right at me and smiled. They were all young, thin, and puffed at rolled cigarettes. “Anton told us about you,” Zbyszek said. “He says you’re a writer.” “I’ve got a typewriter,” I remarked. “You gonna write about us?” asked Anton. The kitchen was very bright. The radio was on. Bożena was inside. He was very, very dignified. I saw, her eyes brightened, and the corners of her wide mouth curved slightly as the next item was showcased. Oh, Johnny, oh Johnny, how you can love! somebody sang. There was no way I could lose that mum’s day. I couldn’t drink.. Anton had a tiny shot glass of his own. As we raised ours and drank them, he raised his and drank. Everybody thought it was funny. I didn’t think it was so funny for a baby to drink but I didn’t say anything. Anton poured another round. “You read my short story, Stan?” Anton asked. “Yeah.” “How’d you like it?” “It was good. You’re ready now. All you need is some luck.”. The second round was no problem, we all got it down, including Regina. She shifted slightly, smiled first at Bogdan – a distinguished man hovering comfortably somewhere near forty. Anton looked at me. “Just get your next drink down.” Anton poured them all around. He skipped Bogdan in the highchair, though, which I appreciated. All right, we raised them, we all got that round down. The next round was poured. Just as it was the door banged open and a large goodlooking kid of around 22 came running into the room. “Shit, Stan,” he said, “hide me! I just am be seeking!” “My car’s in the garage,” I said. “Get down on the floor in the back seat and stay there!” We drank up. The next round was poured. A new bottle appeared. Suddenly somebody has sung; ”it was on the 2nd floor on my Street, I used to get drunk and throw the radio through the window while it was playing, and, of course, it would break the glass in the window and the radio would sit there on the roof still playing and I’d tell my woman, “Ah, what a marvelous radio!” We were still all hanging in there except Regina. It was going to take plenty of whiskey to do us in. Regina pulled open some upper cupboard doors. I could see bottles and bottles of whiskey lined up, all the same brand. It looked like the loot from a truck hijack and it probably was. I felt honored to be drinking with such an active part of the population of Ząbkowice. Anton kept pouring the rounds and we kept drinking them down. The kitchen was blue in cigarette smoke. As I said I dropped out first. Bogdan was the next to drop out. He just shook his head, no more, no more, and all you could see was his hand waving “no” in the blue smoke. Zbyszek was the next. Anton was next. He just jumped up and ran to the crapper and puked. Listening to him. Zbyszek got the same idea and leaped up and puked in the sink. “I usually drink until the sun comes up,” Anton said. Zbyszek still opened a bottle. He poured a new round. There was no answer. We heard him fall through the door, down the steps and into the bushes. We left him there. “I’ve never seen anybody take Zbyszek yet,” said Anton. Regina had just put Anton to bed. She wore the single strand of antique pearls her grandmother had given her for her twenty-first birthday, and an expression of polite interest. It’s seemed she thought now of it as her father’s boardroom look. She walked back into the kitchen. “Jesus, there are dead bodies all over the place.” I pretended it was easy. I grabbed the shot glass and belted it down. Helena just stared at me. We sat and waited. Her eyes were closed, she was down in there, and out. We walked back to the table. The week had gone. I returned home too late again. walked out the back door. I found a back alley and took a left. I walked along and I saw a green sedan. I staggered a bit as I approached it. I grabbed the rear door handle to steady myself. The god-damned door was unlocked and it swung open, knocking me sideways. I fell hard, skinning my left elbow on the pavement. There was a full moon outside. I was tired. I felt as if I couldn’t get up. I had to get up. I rose, fell against the half-open door, grabbed at it, held it. Then I had the inside handle and was steadying myself. I got myself into the back seat and then I just sat there. I sat there for some time. Then I started to puke. It really came. It came and it came, it covered the rear floorboard. I sat for a while. Then I managed to get out of the car. I didn’t feel as dizzy. I took out my handkerchief and wiped the vomit off my pant legs and off of my shoes as best I could. I closed the car door and walked on down the alley. I had to find the another streetcar. I would find it…The next day they went to my house, the teenagers of my second youth. I opened the door of a bedroom and came out on the steps, bending to avoid bumping my head. I went back toward the steps as they appeared hurrying up from left-rear. Gregory is twenty, he is sturdily built, but seems almost puny compared to his fellows. He has a common Irish face, its expression sullen, or slyly cunning, or primly self-righteous. He never forgets that he is a good Catholic, faithful to all the observances, and so is one of the élite of Almighty God in a world of damned sinners. In brief, Gregory is an extremely irritating youth to have around. Gregory wears dirty overalls, a sweet-stained brown shirt. He isn’t alone here. And it was like being in a cage. They stood around snickering and laughing. They stood around me, I saw their frames and faces only. Because they were taunting me I thought they would have hit me with somehow. It was unfair. “What do you want? I asked. You wonna know who kicked the ball to your garden? I didn’t answer. “You”-somebody said. Gregory was a round fat boy, really nicer than most, but he was one of them. I began walking toward Gregory. He stood there. When I got close he swung. I almost didn’t feel it. I hit him behind his left ear and when he grabbed his ear I hit him in the stomach. He fell to the ground. He stayed down. “Get up and fight him, Gregory,” somebody said. The fellow lifted Gregory up and pushed him toward me. I punched Gregory in the mouth and he grabbed his mouth with both hands. “Ok,” somebody said, “I’ll take his place.” The boys cheered. I decided to run, I didn’t want to die. But nobody came up. Nobody gave a question; ”What’s going on there?” “Is that right, boys?” It was something strange on my life. I still would say another story. There would be a football game today. David was worse than I was. With his crossed eyes, he couldn’t even see the colleague. I needed lots of practice. I had never played with the kids in the neighborhood. I didn’t know how to catch a colleague or how to hit one. But I wanted to. I liked it. David was afraid of the ball, I wasn’t. I swung hard, I swung harder than anybody but I could never hit the ball. I always struck out. Once I fouled a hall off. That felt good. Another time I drew a walk. When I got to first, the first baseman said: “That’s the only way you’ll ever get here.” I stood and looked at him. He was chewing gum and he had long black hairs coming out of his nostrils. His hair was thick with vaseline. He wore a perpetual sneer “What are you looking at?” he asked me. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t used to conversation. David and I were not accepted. It was because of David that I wasn’t wanted. As I walked off I saw David playing third game. His blue and yellow stokings had fallen down around his feet. Why had he chosen me? I was a marked man. That afternoon I quickly left lawn and walked home alone without David. I didn’t want to watch him beaten again by our classmates or by his mother. I didn’t want to listen to his sad violin. But the next day at lunch time, when he sat down next to me I ate his potato chips. My day came. “Let’s put him on the regular team.” Football season was worse. We played touch football. When the runner came through I grabbed him by the shirt collar and threw him on the ground. When he started to get up, I kicked him. He could have killed me if he’d wanted to. He was our leader. Whatever he said, that was it. He told me. “You don’t understand the rules. No more football for you.” I bet I’ve read everything you read. Don’t think, I haven’t. Resuscitating the body and the soul- look for it…how to enjoy it…to describe something…Premeditated talk-Only Human heart in conflict with itself is worth the agony and the sweat You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers- I became a mentor. Then I was moved into volleyball. I played volleyball with David and the others. All I needed was a little practice. Volleyball I was shameful. Girls played volleyball. After a while I wouldn’t play. I got up while the sun sprung around. The sky moved closer and flattened it all.

There were wonderful years of a growing in glory in my life. Being an alumnus of Major Seminary of Częstochowa’ diocese, Cracow, I am immensely happy to pen down these nostalgic reminiscences about my beloved Alma Mater enough. I recall with pride that I belonged to the solidarity’s batch of theology students, which was a bunch of excellent budding flowers from the southern dioceses and from different corners of Poland. I went to seminary in September 1980 during a time of a third year of the Polish Pope’s pontificate. Those six formative years in my life at Cracow shaped me intellectually, emotionally, physically and spiritually. When I turn back the pages of my personal history, I am convinced of the indebtedness to Cracow’ seminary for grooming me to what I am today. The 3 Bernardyńska street it was the place where we experienced the promptings of the Holy Spirit. The bygone days at Cracow near Wawel, the national monument with the tombs of Polish Kings, were so unforgettable that I hoard up the sweet memories of those times with much gratitude and sincere earnestness. During our time (1980-86), Seminary was in its budding stage with maximum facilities, but we happily lived together under the able guidance of the first Rector of Seminary, Rev.Fr. Dr Zenon Uchnast and the second one, Rev.Fr. Dr John Związek, and theirs wonderful teams on the staff. Cracow’ Major Seminary stood out to have been one of the leading seminaries in South Poland which equips the students to become worthy and capable instruments of the Lord to work in his vineyard, particularly in the challenging mission areas of Central and South Poland, I think, the credit of the same must go to the initial team of educators who set the sings in their proper gambit and the subsequent motion. I recall with delight that as Cracow’ student, I wrote an article in the seminarian issue of “Opinie” titled: “The meeting of professor Hashimoto”(1983). As a young seminarian, with my limited knowledge and inadequate understanding, I tried to state that religious life is relevant. Today, almost after the lapsing of almost thirty years since I wrote that, and also after twenty four years of living as a religious priest, with much more conviction, I reaffirm the same with an addition that it is we who make it relevant in the fast progressing modern world. I’ve heard about The last few years of our Professor, of Rev. Fr. Dr Stanislaw Grzybek’ life were difficult ones. Following periods of hospitalization, he returned home-Seminary in the hope of finding peace and enjoyment in his twilight years. I am sure that Cracow’ Seminary plays a great role to arm also the inmates to be relevant today. Let me this write up with a thought: Life is a big challenge. Very often our attitude determines the approach. The attitude can be biased, tainted with doubt or anxiety, clothed in suspicion, choked with hate or anger, imbued with greed or fired with lust. May the inmates of Cracow’ Major Seminary imbibe from the Holy Spirit an attitude tempered with understanding, consideration, and concern for others. This is my humble prayer. One of the greatest values of life lies in our ability to get along with people around. To work with them we need to believe and trust them to a great extent. When we believe in God, we automatically seek to serve Him. When we serve human beings we serve God. Therefore, our faith needs to become a living dynamic faith- faith in action. Only this type of life will lead to the fulfillment in priestly life. ”When wealth is lost, nothing is lost; when health is lost, something is lost; when character is lost, all is lost!” I wish and pray that God’s saving love may radiate through the hearts of all who pass out of Cracow’ Major Seminary and the holy Spirit may guide the activities of all the Major Seminarians and protect them from all dangers of the world; thus enabling them to become the true disciple following the very foot path of Jesus Christ. Though, this Major Seminary at Cracow it may be for ever of ours.

We’d met each other with mum until Wednesday, on June 6, 1979 after lunch. There was a red-letter day. I wrote down in the pocketbook, mother rose to greet me; she wanted that her wishes were granted. “I long for a waiting you would have stand shoulder to shoulder in the presence of a pope or bishop,” mother said also. I felt a heart-rending crying. I seemed to be telling the truth to myself; that I would be firmly convinced of being in a future the most holy Father. Until the tenth business day of the month following the month in which the Polish Pope had visited his country I went with mum to Przemyśl and Hucisko Nienadowskie. I bought Slowacki’s “Mindowe” and Lessing’s “Soldier’s lot”. On July 15, 1979 I’ve been in Sanctuary of Jodłowka. Those were the days. Now it’s all over. I turned in my essay on the next Monday. On Tuesday Mr Professor Mikolajtis faced the class. “I’ve read all your essays about our distinguished Pope’s visit to Częstochowa. I was there. Some of you, I noticed, could not attend for one reason or another. For those of you who could not attend, I would like to read this essay written by one of you.” I’ve heard one’s maiden name of me. The class was terribly silent. I was the most unpopular member of the class by far. It was like a knife slicing through all their hearts. “This is very creative,” said Mr Professor Mikolajtis, and he began to read my essay. The words sounded good to me. Everybody was listening. My words filled the room, from blackboard to blackboard, they hit the ceiling and bounced off, they covered Mr Professor Mikolajtis’s shoes and piled up on the floor. Some of the prettiest buddies in the class began to sneak glances at me. All the tough colleagues were pissed. Their essays hadn’t been worth shit. I drank in my words like a thirsty man. I even began to believe them. I saw John sitting there like I’d punched him in the arm. I stretched out my legs and leaned back. All too soon it was over. “Upon this grand note,” said Mr Professor Mikolajtis, “I hereby dismiss the class…” They got up and began packing out. “Not you, Stan,” said Mr Professor Mikolajtis. I sat in my chair and Mr Professor stood there looking at me. Then he said, “Stan, were you there?” I sat there trying to think of an answer. I couldn’t. I said, “No, I wasn’t there.” He smiled. “That makes it all the more remarkable.” “Yes, Mr Professor,” I mentioned. “You can leave, Stan.” I got up and walked out. I began my long walk home. So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me. I looked around. John and his buddy were not following me. So, things were looking up. Then there were the holiday. During my duty I only met one student at seminary that I liked, Robert Valentino. He wanted to be a writer. “I’m going to learn everything there is to learn about writing.” “Sounds like work,” I said. “I’m going to do it.” Valentino was powerfully built, with big shoulders and arms. “I had a childhood disease,” he told me. “I had to lay in bed one time for a year squeezing two tennis balls, one in each hand. Just from doing that, I got to be like this.” He had a job as a messenger boy at night and was putting himself through our seminary. “How’d you get your job?” “I’m only interested in writing.” We were sitting in an alcove overlooking the lawn. Two colleagues were staring at me. Then one of them spoke. “Hey,” he asked me, “do you mind if I ask you something?” “Go ahead.” “Well, you used to be a sissy in grammar school, I remember you. And now you’re a tough colleague. What happened?” We hopped down from the alcove. Classes were over. Valentino wanted to put his books in his locker. He handed me five or six sheets of paper. “Here read this. It’s a short story.” We walked down to my locker. “These are different people,” he said suddenly. He began writing on a piece of paper. “Listen, Valentino, what do these people do?” “Drink,” said Valentino. I put the slip into my pocket…That night after dinner I read Valentino’s short story. It was good and I was jealous. It was about riding his bike at night and then delivering a telegram to a beautiful woman. The writing was objective and clear, there was a gentle decency about it. After that mum had gotten me a typewriter and I had tried some short stories. Not that that was so bad but the stories seemed to beg, they didn’t have their own vitality. My stories were darker than Valentino’s, stranger, but they didn’t work. Well, one or two of them had worked, for me, but it was more or less as if they had fallen into place instead of being guided there. Valentino was clearly better. Maybe I’d try painting. I waited until my mother was asleep. Time is up this story. Lucy was the only woman at that time in my life. There was my aunt. I had just passed a maturity’s exam. Once when my colleagues and I we were introduced my aunt she had looked right at me and smiled. The colleagues were all young, and puffed at rolled cigarettes. Though, in aunt’s room it’s fallen into conversation. “Valentino told us about you,” said John. “He says you’re a writer.” “I’ve got a typewriter,” I responded to that. “You gonna write about us?” asked John.

Stanislaw Barszczak; The long-awaited day… (there is the first tale of my own that I has been written in June, 1979 titled “I do not like of Monday”; the heroes of my story were colleagues from Seminary) One day my beloved Mr Professor Mikolajtis gave us an assignment. “ Holy Father, the Polish Pope John Paul II, is going to visit Częstochowa this Monday to pray and speak on the Monastery of Jasna Góra. I want all of you to go hear our holy Father. And I want you to write an essay about the experience and about what you think of Pope Charles Wojtyla’s speech.” Monday? There was no way I could miss it. However, I had read the literature on seminary’s library of second floor. Still on Saturday of a recent week I met mum at Ząbkowice. There was no way I couldn’t tell my mother that I had to go see the Pope Wojtyla. At this time almost every month I got a seeing with mum. I remember I had full naturally curly black hairs. There was a long-awaited day off, it’s expected time to arrive. Yet it’s still fresh in my memory. I awakened up in advance that day. I never didn’t begin new day in one’s life so well-rested. With every passing day there was a splendour sun. It was one of those days when everything goes well. I had even heard that the people of city Częstochowa would have been afraid they wouldn’t be able to find room for all the guests. There was an epochal and a happy occasion, unique, one of a kind, I could tell I might have watched Polish Pope without any problem. However today It’s seems me as if I didn’t go to the faithfull people inside there. That Tuesday I took some paper and sat down to write about how I had seen the Pope. His open car, trailing flowing streamers. The fields adjoin seminary’s garden enclosed with wire netting. There is the place, the spot where it happened. “Stand back from a wire netting, please!” The shouts of people who are taking appropriate care of the Pope resounded in the street near a cathedral. Suddenly a moving point of bright light out of the northwest which, seemed to integrate more and more. “It’s flying from the northwest;” “Johny, there would be for a moment;”. On June 4, 1979 at 9,45 hour as the faithful we welcome holy Father warmly with open arms. I’m watching the cardinal Wyszyński, primate of Poland, who was present here. The helicopter with a distinguished guest it landed up now. “He’d stick at sidewalk with Cardinal Wyszyński in the direction of black mercedes;” a seminarist shouted. “There is primate of Poland Stephan cardinal Wyszyński;” a grandma sitting on the lawn she sighed. “You see, Pope is just being appeared on the open car;” a man with the index finger pointed at him, who was sitting on a roof of house in the corner of a streets of Armia Ludowa and Mielczarski. ”Oh, the people are blocking me’s view;” a cameraman has rebuked somebody for that. “Pope is now on alley of “the most holy virgin Mary;” in the centre of city, a crowd had shouted, who went to Sanctuary of Jasna Góra. The crowd scattered in all directions. My heart has been filled with joy. It was most interesting. Then I reached the battlefield in front of convent. The Pope’s car had entered the arena of the thick walls of the Monastery. One car, full of secret service agents, went ahead and two cars followed close behind. The agents were brave men with guns to protect our Pope. There had never been anything like it before. It was the Pope. It was him. In the white gown he waved. We cheered. A band played. Seagulls circled overhead as if they too knew it was the Pope. It’s seemed there were skywriting airplanes too. They wrote words in the sky like “Prosperity is just around the corner.” The Pope stood up in his car, and just as he did the clouds parted and the light from the sun fell across his face. Then the cars stopped and our great Pope, surrounded by secret service agents, walked to the speaker’s platform close to altar. As he stood behind the microphone a bird flew down from the sky and landed on the speaker’s platform near him. The Pope waved to the bird and laughed and we all laughed with him. Then he began to speak and the people listened. I couldn’t quite hear the speech because I was sitting too near a group of faithfull who had made a lot of noise, but I think I heard him say that the problems in Poland were not serious, and that at home everything would going to be all right, we shouldn’t worry, all we had to do was to believe in Christian Poland and an intercession of the holy Mary from Jasna Góra. There would be enough jobs for everybody. There would be enough dentists with enough teeth to pull, enough fires and enough firemen to put them out. Mills and factories would open again. Our friends in America would pay their debts. Soon we would all sleep peacefully, our stomachs and our hearts full. God and our great country would surround us with love and protect us from evil, from the socialists, awaken us from our national nightmare, forever…The Pope listened to the applause, waved, then went back to his car, got in, and was driven off followed by carloads of secret service agents as the sun began to sink, the afternoon turning into evening, red and gold and wonderful. We had seen and heard Pope John Paul II. During the Polish Pope’s speeches I have been shivering with the purpose of Polish People’s Republic. Though, I realized it was as if I have been sailing under the Polish flag in luminous future. We’d met each other with mum until Wednesday, on June 6, 1979 after lunch. There was a red-letter day. I wrote down in the pocketbook, mother rose to greet me; she wanted that her wishes were granted. “I long for a waiting you would have stand shoulder to shoulder in the presence of a pope or bishop,” mother said also. I felt a heart-rending crying. I seemed to be telling the truth to myself; that I would be firmly convinced of being in a future the most holy Father. Until the tenth business day of the month following the month in which the Polish Pope had visited his country I went with mum to Przemyśl and Hucisko Nienadowskie. I bought Slowacki’s “Mindowe” and Lessing’s “Soldier’s lot”. On July 15, 1979 I’ve been in Sanctuary of Jodłowka. Those were the days. Now it’s all over. I turned in my essay on the next Monday. On Tuesday Mr Professor Mikolajtis faced the class. “I’ve read all your essays about our distinguished Pope’s visit to Częstochowa. I was there. Some of you, I noticed, could not attend for one reason or another. For those of you who could not attend, I would like to read this essay written by one of you.” I’ve heard one’s maiden name of me. The class was terribly silent. I was the most unpopular member of the class by far. It was like a knife slicing through all their hearts. “This is very creative,” said Mr Professor Mikolajtis, and he began to read my essay. The words sounded good to me. Everybody was listening. My words filled the room, from blackboard to blackboard, they hit the ceiling and bounced off, they covered Mr Professor Mikolajtis’s shoes and piled up on the floor. Some of the prettiest buddies in the class began to sneak glances at me. All the tough colleagues were pissed. Their essays hadn’t been worth shit. I drank in my words like a thirsty man. I even began to believe them. I saw John sitting there like I’d punched him in the arm. I stretched out my legs and leaned back. All too soon it was over. “Upon this grand note,” said Mr Professor Mikolajtis, “I hereby dismiss the class…” They got up and began packing out. “Not you, Stan,” said Mr Professor Mikolajtis. I sat in my chair and Mr Professor stood there looking at me. Then he said, “Stan, were you there?” I sat there trying to think of an answer. I couldn’t. I said, “No, I wasn’t there.” He smiled. “That makes it all the more remarkable.” “Yes, Mr Professor,” I mentioned. “You can leave, Stan.” I got up and walked out. I began my long walk home. So, that’s what they wanted: lies. Beautiful lies. That’s what they needed. People were fools. It was going to be easy for me. I looked around. John and his buddy were not following me. So, things were looking up. Then there were the holiday. During my duty I only met one student at seminary that I liked, Robert Valentino. He wanted to be a writer. “I’m going to learn everything there is to learn about writing.” “Sounds like work,” I said. “I’m going to do it.” Valentino was powerfully built, with big shoulders and arms. “I had a childhood disease,” he told me. “I had to lay in bed one time for a year squeezing two tennis balls, one in each hand. Just from doing that, I got to be like this.” He had a job as a messenger boy at night and was putting himself through our seminary. “How’d you get your job?” “I’m only interested in writing.” We were sitting in an alcove overlooking the lawn. Two colleagues were staring at me. Then one of them spoke. “Hey,” he asked me, “do you mind if I ask you something?” “Go ahead.” “Well, you used to be a sissy in grammar school, I remember you. And now you’re a tough colleague. What happened?” We hopped down from the alcove. Classes were over. Valentino wanted to put his books in his locker. He handed me five or six sheets of paper. “Here read this. It’s a short story.” We walked down to my locker. “These are different people,” he said suddenly. He began writing on a piece of paper. “Listen, Valentino, what do these people do?” “Drink,” said Valentino. I put the slip into my pocket…That night after dinner I read Valentino’s short story. It was good and I was jealous. It was about riding his bike at night and then delivering a telegram to a beautiful woman. The writing was objective and clear, there was a gentle decency about it. After that mum had gotten me a t Stanislaw Barszczak; The long-awaited day… (there is the first tale of my own that I has been written in June, 1979 titled “I do not like of Monday”; the heroes of my story are colleagues from Seminary) One day my beloved Mr Professor Mikolaitis gave us an assignment. “ Holy Father, the Polish Pope John Paul II, is going to visit Częstochowa this Monday to pray and speak on the Monastery of Jasna Góra. I want all of you to go hear our holy Father. And I want you to write an essay about the experience and about what you think of Pope Charles Wojtyla’s speech.” Monday? There was no way I could miss it. However, I had read the literature on seminary’s library of second floor. Still on Saturday of a recent week I met mum at Ząbkowice. There was no way I couldn’t tell my mother that I had to go see the Pope Wojtyla. At this time almost every month I got a seeing with mum. I remember I had full naturally curly hair black hairs. There was a long-awaited day off, it’s expected time to arrive. Yet it’s still fresh in my memory. I awakened up in advance that day. I never didn’t begin new day in one’s life so well-rested. With every passing day there was a splendour sun. It was one of those days when everything goes well. I had even heard that the people of city Częstochowa would have been afraid they wouldn’t be able to find room for all the guests. There was an epochal and a happy occasion, unique, one of a kind, I could tell I might have watched Polish Pope without any problem. However today It’s seems me as if I didn’t go to the faithfull people inside there. That Tuesday I took some paper and sat down to write about how I had seen the Pope. His open car, trailing flowing streamers. The fields adjoin seminary’s garden enclosed with wire netting. There is the place, the spot where it happened. “Stand back from a wire netting, please!” The shouts of people who are taking appropriate care of the Pope resounded in the street near a cathedral. Suddenly a moving point of bright light out of the northwest which, seemed to integrate more and more. “It’s flying from the northwest;” “Johny, there would be for a moment;”. On June 4, 1979 at 9,45 hour as the faithful we welcome holy Father warmly with open arms. I’m watching the cardinal Wyszyński, primate of Poland, who was present here. The helicopter with a distinguished guest it landed up now. “He’d stick at sidewalk with Cardinal Wyszyński in the direction of black mercedes;” a seminarist shouted. “There is primate of Poland Stephan cardinal Wyszyński;” a grandma sitting on the lawn she sighed. “You see, Pope is just being appeared on the open car;” a man with the index finger pointed at him, who was sitting on a roof of house in the corner of a streets of Armia Ludowa and Mielczarski. ”Oh, the people are blocking me’s view;” a cameraman has rebuked somebody for that. “Pope is now on alley of “the most holy virgin Mary;” in the centre of city, a crowd had shouted, who went to Sanctuary of Jasna Góra. The crowd scattered in all directions. My heart has been filled with joy. It was most interesting. Then I reached the battlefield in front of convent. The Pope’s car had entered the arena of the thick walls of the Monastery. One car, full of secret service agents, went ahead and two cars followed close behind. The agents were brave men with guns to protect our Pope. There had never been anything like it before. It was the Pope. It was him. In the white gown he waved. We cheered. A band played. Seagulls circled overhead as if they too knew it was the Pope. It’s seemed there were skywriting airplanes too. They wrote words in the sky like “Prosperity is just around the corner.” The Pope stood up in his car, and just as he did the clouds parted and the light from the sun fell across his face. Then the cars stopped and our great Pope, surrounded by secret service agents, walked to the speaker’s platform close to altar. As he stood behind the microphone a bird flew down from the sky and landed on the speaker’s platform near him. The Pope waved to the bird and laughed and we all laughed with him. Then he began to speak and the people listened. I couldn’t quite hear the speech because I was sitting too near a group of faithfull who had made a lot of noise, but I think I heard him say that the problems in Poland were not serious, and that at home everything would going to be all right, we shouldn’t worry, all we had to do was to believe in Christian Poland and an intercession of the holy Mary from Jasna Góra. There would be enough jobs for everybody. There would be enough dentists with enough teeth to pull, enough fires and enough firemen to put them out. Mills and factories would open again. Our friends in America would pay their debts. Soon we would all sleep peacefully, our stomachs and our hearts full. God and our great country would surround us with love and protect us from evil, from the socialists, awaken us from our national nightmare, forever…The Pope listened to the applause, waved, then went back to his car, got in, and was driven off followed by carloads of secret service agents as the sun began to sink, the afternoon turning into evening, red and gold and wonderful. We had seen and heard Pope John Paul II. During the Polish Pope’s speeches I have been shivering with the purpose of Polish People’s Republic. Though, I realized it was as if I have been sailing under the Polish flag in luminous future.

Stanisław Barszczak; Jeszcze nie powstajemy z martwych—- Żyć naszą Kwarezimą, wielkim postem… Nie było takiej okazji, by powiedzieć coś wam moi drodzy. Jedni mówią „Bóg nie żyje. Lecz tylko wizjonerzy dostrzegają grozę tego wydarzenia: opuściła nas wiara, nie będzie już religii.” Inni: „Bóg, który nie chce przychodzić w aurze triumfu, bywa Bogiem niezauważonym, jak szmer łagodnego powiewu”… Ludzie relatywizują religię zbyt wcześnie, jeszcze zanim osiągną jej cel, czyli Boga. Utrata religii może zatem doprowadzić do aż tak skrajnych postaw, jak fakt Jerozolimy bez Świątyni. Nie w religii zatem rzecz, ale w obecności Boga. Ktoś z ludzi powiedział: „Nie tylko trzeba bronić religii i wiary, ale dać ludziom Boga, który jednak później musi się On wycofać, żeby mogło powstać coś, co nie jest Nim. On zatem umiera, żeby motyl, góra, woda i atom węgla mogły zaistnieć. Wszystko w nas jest ciałem. Bóg umiera zatem tam, gdzie jest człowiek.” Żyć naszą Wielkim Postem, to przebiegać i to każdego dnia w wierze i w próbach etapy Abrahama ku Ziemi Obiecanej, etapy Ludu Wybranego na pustyni, etapy Apostołów w ich codziennej bliskości z Synem Boga, człowieka przy nich. Na słowo Boga z krzaka, który pali się nie wypalając się na popiół Mojżesz odpowiada: ”Kimże ja jestem, żeby iść na spotkanie Faraona?” Pan daje wyproszoną przez nas odpowiedź wiary: ”Będę z tobą.” Jesteśmy grzesznikami… Czytamy w Ewangelii o tym, jak zwaliła się wieża w Siloe. Być może i my popełniliśmy grzech. Ale teraz z Jezusem rozpoznajemy tę prawdę… Co więcej mamy odczytać wiarę ojców, jej delikatność, czułość, wymaganie. Bogu trzeba czynu Mojżesza(action). Podróż przez pustynię, wejście na Górę Synaj, były to typowe zdarzenia w dziejach ludzi, to przydarzało się nam, przychodziło na nas już jako samych. Tutaj mógłbym powiedzieć coś takiego: nawet jeśli nigdy nie dostałem szansy ja całe życie czyniłem coś, teraz natomiast to realizuję, jakby wchodzę w realność. Powiedziałbym Bóg zatem pragnął mojego czynu, mojej młodości… Inaczej mówiąc mógłbym zwrócić się do was Drodzy Czytelnicy teraz: Nie sądźcie, macie jeszcze czyny pokuty, czyli młodość ludzkości… A jest to czyn skierowujący nas w przeciwnym kierunku do obecnego działania… Właśnie czyny młodości otwierają nas na pokutę. Wejście w realność świata niech nie będzie obejściem pokuty. Każdemu dany jest czas wzrostu. Pokuta ma pomóc lepiej odczytać moją wiarę dla innych. Bóg odpowiada Mojżeszowi: „Nie zbliżaj się” (n’approche pas), on nie może widzieć- jeszcze nie! To pokolenie może zaledwie rozumieć, słyszeć, mówić i odpowiadać… Na pustyni mamy dialog zaufania, słowo Boga: „Ja jestem tym, który jest”, niejako ja jestem w każdej generacji do waszej dyspozycji. Bóg jest Wieczną teraźniejszością i działającym zarazem(agissant), to jest dla nas stale przykład: relacja Boga z ludźmi, która zrealizuje się jeszcze bardziej i w pełni, w osobie Jezusa, totalnie i w pełni człowieka, totalnie w pełni Boga. Wszystko dla owocu przyszłości… Musimy to zrozumieć, aby w pełni się nawrócić. Ktoś powiedział: Śmierć Boga w sposób szczególny dokonuje się jednak w Jezusie. Tutaj Bóg umniejsza się do końca, porzuca samego siebie i zostawia człowiekowi tyle miejsca, że jest on całkowicie sam. Na krzyżu umierają razem Bóg i człowiek. Mam krzyż, zatem mogę świadomie umierać. Tutaj mamy niewyobrażalny dar życia, który wypływa z tajemnicy tej właśnie śmierci… W tej to rozpaczy po Jezusie rodzi się życie… Bóg przychodzi tylko przez śmierć teraz… nie tyle ożywa, co powstaje z martwych… Będziemy już zawsze pili i jedli. Choć ja jeszcze biję się w piersi, iż jakbym nie pił krwi… Boga. Tak jest, jeszcze jesteśmy jakby sobą, i nie dajemy Boga ludzkości trzeciego tysiąclecia innym. My głosimy śmierć, wyznajemy zmartwychwstanie i oczekujemy powtórnego przyjścia. I właśnie Bóg jest, On im pośle jeszcze proroków, którzy przypomną o śmierci swojego Boga… Musi być wysoki współczynnik oczekujących na zmartwychwstanie…. Ale oczekiwanie się dokonuje w …śmierci Boga… Ewangelista zauważa tymczasem, iż Apostołowie ani razu nie wyznali wiary w Zmartwychwstałego! Dzisiaj Dzień Kobiet! Które również nie wyznały wiary w Zmartwychwstałego. To nic. Tym bardziej, nie poniżam kobiety- to prawda- choć mnie nie dopuszcza do mego głosu w sali konferencyjnej bezpośrednio po niej. A kobiety debatują wszędzie. One to widzą obecnie, iż robimy zawód Europie i jej muzułmanom przez lekceważącą postawę względem nich. Zatem życząc im dzisiaj zdrowia, Kobietom świata, nie śmiem zarazem dopuścić myśli, że to właśnie zaraz po mnie pani wystąpi w kapeluszu, z czarną opaską, ponieważ Jezus, On w nas jeszcze nie powstał z martwych.

Stanislaw Barszczak; Yet we do not emerge from dead —-
You should live for a Lent always (Quaresima). It was not such occasion to say you something about that. One say; „God doesn’t live. But the visionaries only are seeing a grimness of this event : the faith has left us, it will not be religion already. ” Other say too; „God, who doesn’t want to come in a situation of triumph, he takes place God unnoticed (unremarked), as a tender breath ” …The people take a relativistic view of religion too earlier before they will achieve their purpose or God. Therefore that loss of religion can cause the ultra postures, like a fact there is Jerusalem without the Temple. There is no a thing on a religion, but in the presence of God. Somebody said, “it is necessary to defend religion and the faith , but give God to the people. However, he must recede later in order to emerge something, what it is no God. Therefore, God dies in order to come into being a butterfly , mountain, atom of carbon and so on. But now everything is a body. Therefore, God dies where person was. “
To live our Lent, it means to grow up in a faith and in the attempts at any day and to cross in ones the all Abraham’s periods to go towards Promised Land, the periods of the Chosen people on the desert, periods of apostles in their daily proximities with son of God, and a person also. In a word of God from bush, that is incinerating not burning out on ash, the Moses answers; “ who I am , that I would go on a meeting with Pharaoh?” God gives us demanding answer of faith; ” I will be with you always”. We were committing offenders , a tower of Siloe have been pulled down, we were sinned. But now with Jesus we are learning that truth. So, we ought to identify the faith of our fathers, her delicacy, her affection and her demand. The Moses’ action is necessary for God. There were typical events in history of the people, a roaming after desert and so on, still there it came on us ourselves.
For example, for a entire life till today I’ve made something always, now I realize that, and I’m entering to a reality. Though, God has desired my action, my youth. So, you don’t judge, but you have the actions of penances yet, there is as youth of mankind, an special action directed oppositely something to our daily state. The actions of youth are opening us on penance. Then our entering in a reality of world it will not be getting as going a penance around. Time of growth is given to everybody. The penance it may help to read my faith for other better. God to Moses said; “don’t approach you ”(n’approche pas). He cannot see yet. This generation can understand, hear, say and answer merely. We have a dialog of reliance, confidence on the desert. There is a word of God; “I am who I am ”. So to say, I am in each generation permanently. God is eternal present and acting (agissant), there is an example for us at any occasion, a relation of God with people, which will be realized, and it will be accomplished completely in a person of Jesus, totally and completely person, totally and completely God. We must apprehend it like a fruit of future, everything that in order to convert completely. However, somebody said;” A death of God it is performed to particular manner in Jesus ”. Here God is diminished to the end, he is being quited himself, and he had leaved so many places for a man, that he was himself alone now. On a cross they die together, God and a man.
I have a cross, though I can have dead consciously. There is an unimaginable gift of life here, that emerge from this secret of death. In this desperation after Jesus the life is born … God not only is alive in this birth, but he rises up from dead always … We already are eating and drink. ” Though I scramble in a breast yet , as if I still did not drink of a blood of God. So, we are as self for us yet , and we do not give God of mankind of third millennium to others. We announce death , we profess resurrection and we expect returning, incoming of God. And God, he will send the prophets in order they remind of death of god. High ratio must be expecting on resurrection. Evangelist Mark notice that apostles had expressed no faith in Resurrected Jesus at any occasion. The Day of the women today! Probably they had expressed no faith in Resurrected also. It’s nothing. Then, I do not humiliate woman, as I said, though she doesn’t admit me to a voice in boardroom … From other part as if I made a disappointment of Europe of today and of the muslims for the reason of a disregarding them. You know. Now I wish all women health, and at the same time I do not admit a thought today, that the lady will take a stand in a hat exactly, with black band, while Jesus, he wouldn’t have been emerged from dead in us yet.

Stanislaw Barszczak, In the house we are peer to all brothers
Many years before her death, my mother gave me an occasion to see in our detached house hand writings and notebooks. There were some books on a wardrobe there. But this doesn’t have to substitute all my albums with photos, which I carry with me always. I am inspecting some photos now. So, nobody else is there at the birch’s forest. I am in children’s wheelchair. For my part I’m staring straight ahead, undaunted, at the camera. I’m holding a plastic stick in my hand. My sisters-in-law, Stanislawa was eighteen and Janina sixteen years old; they stand beside wheelchair. Who took this, and where and when, I have no clue. And how could I have looked so happy? And why did I keep just that one photo? The whole thing is a total mystery. I must have been three or four. Did we ever really get along that well? I have no memory of ever going to the forest with my family at our village. No memory of going anywhere with them. No matter, though-there is no way. I want to allude here, I don’t have any photos of my father. I suppose my father had thrown them all away. Next I remember I was eight I was going to the school at Ząbkowice. The teachers’ announcements were straightforward and succinct. When the announcements were finished, Miss M. Kawalec or director T. Warkocz pressed a button on the side of the desk, like a doorbell, there was a ringing throughout the schoolhouse, and we all shuffled off to class. In ancient history, we were making presentations on different topics, and I was one of the pupil in school presenting that day. From a library book, I had copied pictures of the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Baths of Diocletian. The night before, I’d stood in front of the mirror in house practicing what I’d say, but then miss Irena Z. had come in, and I’d pretended I had a friend outside and left. The next day I was thirteen, as I remember, right before me was the teacher Z. Bednarek. She had set a podium in the front of the classroom, and me stood behind it, clutching index cards. “It is a tribute to the genius of Roman architects,” I began, “that many of the buildings they designed more than two thousand years ago still exist today for modern peoples to visit and enjoy.” My heart lurched. The genius of Roman architects and the learning of Russian language were my topic in this time. Miss W. Nowak learned us of Russian language. But miss teacher T. Januszek learned us mathematics. Then the big red-brick church from Ząbkowice had pleased me and its priests. I’ve served close to altar in this church. There were beautiful the holy masses with my participation on Sundays here. In that year there will be a hundredth anniversary of my church.
Afterwards I am in the school at Częstochowa. It was my fourth week at the school, I am liked. After three years I see my colleague from a village, now rewerend father at Radomsko and me on the photo. Dear father, I am trying to stay alive and work too hard at it. That’s what’s turning my brains. This working hard defeats its own end. At what point should I start over? Let me go back a ways and try once more. How you can treat someone like this whom you lived with so long. Let me out of my trouble. Let me out of my thoughts, and let me do something better with myself. For all the time I have wasted I am very sorry. Let me out of this clutch and into a different life. For I am all balled up. Have mercy. On the second photo all the students dress neatly, have nice straight teeth, and are boring as hell. However, I want to say something new. Naturally I have zero friends there. I’ve built a wall around me, never letting anybody inside and trying not to venture outside myself. Who could like somebody like that? They all keep an eye on me, from a distance. They might hate me, or even be afraid of me, but I’m just glad they didn’t bother me. Because I had tons of things to take care of, including spending a lot of my free time devouring books in the school library. The world is a huge space, but the space that will take me in-and it wouldn’t have to be very big-is nowhere to be found. You seek a voice, but what do you get? Silence. So, I remembered from the school library, that I was informed in an eternal sunny April day about death of philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre there. In this time I always paid close attention to what was said in class, though… The classroom was always crowded. Everyone talked. Growing boys need parental authority and a home. So John being in his mind the title of the species, Zenon the freedom of the person. But Jack was his inescapable self. And somebody has said: But you’ve got to remember this: you’re running away from home. You probably won’t have any chance to go to school anymore, so like it or not you’d better absorb whatever you can while you’ve got the chance. Become like a sheet of blotting paper and soak it all in. Later on you can figure out what to keep and what to unload. I knew professor of polish language there, his name Joseph Mikolajtis. I did what he said, like I almost always do. My brain like a sponge, I focused on every word said in class and let it all sink in, figured out what it meant, and committed everything to memory. Thanks to this, I barely had to study outside of class. My muscles were getting hard as steel, even as I grew more withdrawn and quiet. I tried hard to keep my emotions from showing so that no one-classmates and teachers alike-had a clue what I was thinking. Soon I’d be launched into the rough adult world, and I knew I’d have to be tougher than anybody if I wanted to survive. In this period of my life my eyes in the mirror are cold as a lizard’s, my expression fixed and unreadable. I can’t remember the last time I laughed or even showed a hint of a smile to other people. Even to myself. I’m not trying to imply I can keep up this silent, isolated facade all the time. Sometimes the wall I’ve erected around me comes crumbling down. I gaze carefully at my face in the mirror again. Genes I’d gotten from my father and mother-not that I have any recollection of what she looked like-created this face. I can do my best to not let any emotions show, keep my eyes from revealing anything, bulk up my muscles, but there’s not much I can do about my looks. I’m stuck with my father’s long, thick eyebrows and the deep lines between them. There’s no way to erase the DNA the father passed down to me. There’s an omen contained in that. A mechanism buried inside of me. In this time I loathed him.
The many street noises came back after a little while from the caves of the sky. Crossing the tide of Częstochowa city traffic, I saw suddenly Father Rector of G. Ślęzak. Then I was saying to myself, The reason professor Mikolajtis lectures me is that somebody has lectured him, and the reason for this text is that he wants to give me good advice, how to follow professor J. Krzyżanowski. Everybody seems to know something. Even pupil like me. Many people know what to do, but how many can do it? On the first Alley it was still bright afternoon and the gassy air was almost motionless under the leaden spokes of sunlight. And sawdust footprints lay about the doorways of book shops and fruit stores. And the great, great crowd, the inexhaustible current of hundreds of every race and kind pouring out, pressing round, of every age, of every genius, possessors of every human secret, antique and future, in every face the refinement of one particular motive or essence– I labor, I spend, I strive, I design, I love, I cling, I uphold, I give way, I envy, I long, scam, I die, I hide, I want. Faster, much faster than any man could make the tally. The sidewalks were wider than any causeway; the street itself was immense, and it quaked and gleamed and it seemed to me to throb at the last limit of endurance. Now still another memory. It was a slow Sunday afternoon Mr Adalbert Kwiecinski, my friend loved. He stood at an open window and looked across the park. The broad, level lawn was dotted with mature trees: a spruce, a pair of mighty oaks, several chestnuts, and a willow like a head of girlish curls. The sun was high and the trees cast dark, cool shadows. The birds were silent, but a hum of contented bees came from the flowering creeper beside the window. The house was still, too. The sons had the afternoon off. The only weekend guests was Mr Marcel. Mr Adalbert had gone for a walk, Miss Leocadia his wife was lying down, and the children were out of sight. Mr Adalbert was comfortable: he had worn a frock coat to church, of course, and in an hour or two he would put on his white tie and tails for dinner, but in the meantime he was at ease in a tweed suit and a soft-collared shirt. Now, he thought, if only Leocadia will play the piano tonight, it will have been a perfect day. He turned to his wife. ‘Will you play, after dinner?’ Leocadia smiled. ‘If you like.’ Mr Adalbert heard a noise and turned back to the window. At the far end of the drive, a quarter of a mile away, a motor car appeared. Mr Adalbert felt a twinge of irritation, like the sly stab of pain in his right leg before a rainstorm. Why should a car annoy me? he thought. He was not against motor cars – he owned a Lanchester and used it regularly to travel to and from Dąbrowa Górnicza Górnicza – although in the summer they were a terrible nuisance to the village, sending up clouds of dust from the unpaved road as they roared through. He was thinking of putting down a couple of hundred meter along the street. But the motor car turned into the gravel forecourt and came to a noisy, shuddering halt opposite the south door. Exhaust fumes drifted in at the window, and Mr Adalbert held his breath. The driver got out, wearing helmet, goggles and a heavy motoring coat, and opened the door for the passenger. A short man in a black coat and a black felt hat stepped down from the car. Mr Adalbert recognized Mr Marcel, the brave man, and his heart sank: the peaceful summer afternoon was over.
My life thus far has surpassed splendidly the ambitions of boyhood and youth. In the second half of our dwindling century, during trips with to Western Europe, I knew several new friends. So, once day I switch off the light and leave the bathroom. A heavy, damp stillness lies over the house. The whispers of people who don’t exist, the breath of the dead. I look around, standing stock-still, and take a deep breath. The clock shows three p.m., the two hands cold and distant. They’re pretending to be noncommittal, but I know they’re not on my side. It’s nearly time for me to say good-bye. I pick up my backpack and slip it over my shoulders. I’ve carried it any number of times, but now it feels so much heavier. Stasio, I decide. That’s where I’ll go. There’s no particular reason it has to be alone again, only that studying the map. In the Mars 1992 I leave from Poland for the first time, not for United States but only to see a world of Europe. I pick up the ticket I’d reserved at the counter and climb aboard the night bus. Nobody pays me any attention, asks how old I am, or gives me a second look. The bus driver mechanically checks my ticket. Only a third of the seats are taken. Most passengers are traveling alone, like me, and the bus is strangely silent. It’s a long trip to Monaco and Nice, many hours according to the own schedule, and I’ll be arriving early in the morning there. But I don’t mind. Still, for fifteen days I had delayed my trip to the world. I wanted to start out with the blessings of mother, but they were never given. I didn’t quarreled with brothers from Monastery. And then, when I was best aware of the risks and knew a hundred reasons against going and had made himself sick with fear, I left cloister. This was typical of me. After much thought and hesitation and debate I invariably took the course I had rejected innumerable times. Ten such decisions made up the history of my life to that day. But I had been eager for life to start. The Priory was merely another delay. I often thought that I might write prior of Hubert a letter to say how sorry I was. Later after my return to Poland I had told my prior from Monastery, “Anton says I owe it to myself to go.” How ashamed I was now of this lie! I had begged Anton not to give me up. I had said, “Can’t you help me out? It would kill me to go back to Monastery now.” When I reached the Nice via Zebrzydowice, Vienna, Genua, I learned a lot about the life of the church there. Whatever mysterious profession I practiced in this time? Hypnotism? Perhaps I could put people in a trance while I talked to them. What a rare, peculiar bird I was, with those pointed shoulders, that bare head, and those brown, soft, deadly, heavy eyes. Now I’ve got plenty of time. The bus pulls out of the station at eight, and I push my seat back. I wake up every once in a while, and gaze out through the window at the highway rushing by. A new light rushes up close and in an instant fades off behind us. I check my watch and see it’s past midnight. Then I close the curtain and fall back asleep.

Stanislaw Barszczak; Jacquot of one’s dreams

/At several historic dates and known surnames everything here generally it is invented/

I

I was born in 1961, in Tarnowskie Góry in the Silesian region, in Poland; I would say in Paris. The parents are foreigners there. My father was a gentle, easy-going
person, a Swiss citizen, of mixed French and Austrian descent, with a dash of the Danube in his veins. I am going to pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue
picture-postcards. He owned a luxurious hotel on the Riviera. His father and two grandfathers had sold wine, jewels and silk, respectively. At thirty he married an
English girl, daughter of Jerome Green, the alpinist, experts in obscure subjects-paleoontology, respectively. Somebody told me later that he had been in love with my
woman, and that he had lightheartedly taken advantage of it one rainy day and forgotten it by the time the weather cleared. I have heard many years later something
about father, who was a professor of agriculture in Cracow; the following week I learned of Monsieur’ -my father’s death in a house of family Odrobina. He was
going for bus, and heart has gotten out. There were rumours of suicide. Madame Odrobina looked over her accounts and soon discovered his numerous
embezzlements. Sales of wood which had been concealed from her, false receipts, etc. Furthermore, he had an illegitimate child, and entertained a friendship for “a
person in Kalwaria.” My very photogenic mother died in a hospital at Olkusz when I was forty four; reconciled with fate, in fine days of sole son believing. These
base actions affected his very much. In May, 2005, she developed a pain in her chest; her tongue looked as if it were coated with smoke, and the leeches they
applied did not relieve her oppression; and on the ninth evening she died, being eighty-five years old. People thought that she was younger, because her hair, which
she wore in bands framing her pale face, was brown. Few friends regretted her loss. Tthe sun of my infancy in order that fact had not set: surely, you know those
redolent remnants of day suspended, with the midges, about some hedge in bloom or suddenly entered and traversed by the rambler, at the bottom of a hill, in the
summer dusk; a furry warmth, golden midges they remain. I was extremely fond of her, despite the rigidity of some of her rules. Perhaps she wanted to make of me,
in the fullness of time, a better widower than my father. Mum was, like the actress, of mixed parentage: half-English, half-Dutch, in her case; the slight structure of
body. I see mum in such general terms as: honey-colored skin, thin arms, brown bobbed hair, long lashes, big bright mouth; and with open eyes, on the dark innerside
of her eyelids, absolutely optical replica of a beloved face, a little ghost in natural colors; with big ears, sole fault. I remember her features today as the same distinctly
as I did a few years ago Let me therefore primly limit myself, in describing mum, to saying she was a lovely girl. We were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in
love with each other. Mum, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Mum. She was fine in the morning. She was Stefcia for workers in the factory. But close
to my face she was always the great mum. She had been in a princedom of a resort town of Świnoujście by the sea with me. About as many years before mum was
born as my age’s angel- seraph.

I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea and smiling faces. Around me the splendid Church
revolved as a kind of private universe, a whitewashed cosmos within the blue greater one that blazed outside. From the aproned pot-scrubber to the flanneled
potentate, everybody liked me, everybody petted me. Elderly American ladies leaning on their canes listed toward me like towers of Pisa. Ruined princesses who
could not pay my father, bought me expensive bonbons. The only definite sexual events that I can remember as having occurred before my thirteenth birthday were: a
solemn, decorous and purely theoretical talk about pubertal surprises in our house close to church with an Russian kid, the son of a celebrated motion-picture actress
whom he seldom saw in the three-dimensional world; and some interesting reactions on the part of my organism to certain photographs. Nobody in a delightful
manner gave me some information I needed about sex; this was just before sending me, in the autumn of 1976, to a lycée in Częstochowa (where I were to spend
three winters) I tried to alleviate sexual inducements in bathroom but alas I had nobody to complain to, nobody to consult. At this time I met professor Joseph
Mikolajtis, who taught me for the reason of literature to swim and dive in it and water-ski, read to me Mickiewicz, Slowacki, Krasiński and Norwid’s poetry and I
adored and respected him and felt glad for him whenever I overheard the servants discuss his various lady-friends-teachers, beautiful and kind beings who made
much of me and cooed and shed precious thoughts over my cheerful fatherlessness. So and the same way for the first time personally I read Les Miserables at
college. I attended an school a few miles from home, and there I played football, and got excellent marks, and was on perfect terms with schoolmates and teachers
alike. Among some treasures I lost during the wanderings of my adult years, there was a meeting with the aunt Lucy’s the parents at Świętochlowice; then observing
of prospects with spanish beaches at our friends at Dąbrowa Górnicza-Golonóg. I might have pass around in a minute some lovely, glossy-blue picture-postcards.
My writing would be nothing with saddest of funny stories or the funniest of sad stories. So, the aunt Lucy had azure eyes; she knew poetry. In 1979,1980 I learned
city of Szczecin with her, hotels in dizzying variations (some magical, some funny, some both), rundown suburbia, summer camps, book clubs, theatre, cinemas,
rivers, seas of soft drinks, tourist traps, kitsch decorations, magazine ads, prescription drug abuse, faithful friends.Today I think her husband, the uncle George, a
great traveler in perfumes, spent most of his time on the sea, in Africa also, where eventually he founded a firm and acquired a bit of real estate. But never it has said
these us.

I was thirty years old. I run away still through these miserable memories, and keep asking myself, was it then, in the glitter of that remote summer, that the rift in my life
began; or was my excessive desire for that life only the first evidence of an inherent singularity? When I try to analyze my own cravings, motives, actions and so forth,
I surrender to a sort of retrospective imagination which feeds the analytic faculty with boundless alternatives and which causes each visualized route to fork and
re-fork without end in the maddeningly complex prospect of my past. I am convinced, however, that in a certain magic and fateful way the faith of my adult life began
with mum. She has been for me all, luck of life. We had successful trysts. One night, she managed to deceive the vicious vigilance of the neighbors and familiars. In a
slender-leaved garden or better orchard at the back of a villa we found a perch on the ruins of a low stone wall. Through the darkness and the tender trees we could
see the arabesques of lighted windows which, touched up by the colored inks of sensitive memory, appear to me now like playing cards. A cluster of stars palely
glowed above us, between the silhouettes of long thin leaves; that vibrant sky seemed as naked as she was under her light frock. I saw her face in the sky, strangely
distinct, as if it emitted a faint radiance of its own. She sat a little higher than I, and whenever in her solitary ecstasy.I was led to kiss her face and small head would
bend with a sleepy, soft, drooping movement. I kissed her as usual, I proceed always to same manner with a generosity that was ready to offer her everything, my
heart, my throat, my entrails, at our separation, as if there was last case, I wanted to leave nothing on later. A sudden commotion in a nearby bush. There was
probably a prowling cat. He has interrupted a ministry in domestic chapel; mum used to call during the holy mass always. One day, soon after her disappearance, an
attack of abominable nausea forced me to pull up on the ghost of an old mountain road that now accompanied, now traversed a brand new highway, with its
population of asters bathing in the detached warmth of a pale-blue afternoon in late summer. After coughing myself inside out I rested a while on a boulder and then
thinking the sweet air might do me good, walked a little way toward a low stone parapet on the precipice side of the highway. Small grasshoppers spurted out of the
withered roadside weeds. A very light cloud was opening its arms and moving toward a slightly more substantial one belonging to another, more sluggish,
heavenlogged system. As I approached the friendly abyss, I grew aware of a melodious unity of sounds rising like vapor from a small mining town that lay at my feet,
in a fold of the valley. One could make out the geometry of the streets between blocks of red and gray roofs, and green puffs of trees, and a serpentine stream,
glittered roads crisscrossing the crazy quilt of dark and pale fields, and behind it all, great timbered mountains. But even brighter than those quietly rejoicing colors –
for there are colors and shades that seem to enjoy themselves in good company – both brighter and dreamier to the ear than they were to the eye, was that vapory
vibration of accumulated sounds that never ceased for a moment. And soon I realized that all these sounds were of one nature, that no other sounds but these came
from the streets of the transparent town, with the mum at home and me away. At that moment what I heard was but the melody of children at play, nothing but that,
and so limpid was the air that within this vapor of blended voices, majestic and minute, remote and magically near, frank and divinely enigmatic, one could hear now
and then, as if released, an almost articulate spurt of vivid laughter, or the crack of a bat, or the clatter of a toy wagon, but it was all really too far for the eye to
distinguish any movement in the lightly etched streets. I stood listening to that musical vibration from my lofty slope, to those flashes of separate cries with a kind of
demure murmur for background, and then I knew that the hopelessly poignant thing was not mum’s absence from my side, but the absence of her voice from that
concord.

II

In 1951 mother went from Przemyśl to Cracow, and then to Kalwaria Zebrzydowska. At first she lived in a constant anxiety that was caused by “the style of the
household” and the memory of “Monsieur” that hovered over everything. In the neighbourhood of her new house there were Paul, John and Elizabeth, the one aged
eleven, the second seven and the last barely four, seemed made of some precious material; mum carried them pig-a-back, and was greatly mortified when Madame
Ryłko, “a husband of father”, forbade her to kiss them every other minute. But in spite of all this, mum was happy. The comfort of her new surroundings had
obliterated her sadness. Every Thursday, the friends of family of Ryłko dropped in for a game of cards, and it was also mum’s duty to prepare the table and heat the
foot-warmers. They arrived at exactly eight o’clock and departed before eleven. Every Saturday morning, the dealer in second-hand goods, who lived under the
alley-way, spread out his wares on the sidewalk. Then the city of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska would be filled with a buzzing of voices in which the neighing of horses, the
bleating of lambs, the grunting of pigs, could be distinguished, mingled with the sharp sound of wheels on the cobble- stones. About twelve o’clock, when the market
was in full swing, there appeared at the front door a tall, middle-aged peasant, with a hooked nose and a cap on the back of his head; it was Bogdan, the farmer of
Pniaki. Shortly afterwards came Robert, the farmer of Barwałd, short, rotund and ruddy, wearing a grey jacket and spurred boots. Both men brought their landlady
either chickens or cheese. Mum would invariably thwart their ruses and they held her in great respect. At various times, Madame Ryłko received a visit from the Mr
Piętka, one of her uncles, who was ruined and lived at Pniaki on the remainder of his estates. He always came at dinner-time and brought an ugly poodle with him,
whose paws soiled their furniture. In spite of his efforts to appear a man of breeding (he even went so far as to raise his hat every time he said “My deceased father”),
his habits got the better of him, and he would fill his glass a little too often and relate broad stories. Mum would show him out very politely and say: “You have had
enough for this time, Monsieur Piętka! Hoping to see you again!” and would close the door. Then she opened it gladly for Monsieur Chwiałkowski, a retired lawyer.
His bald head and white cravat, the ruffling of his shirt, his flowing brown coat, the manner in which he took snuff, his whole person, in fact, produced in her the kind
of awe which we feel when we see extraordinary persons. As he managed Madame’s estates, he spent hours with her in Monsieur’s study; he was in constant fear of
being compromised, had a great regard for the magistracy and some pretensions to learning. In order to facilitate the children’s studies, he presented them with an
engraved geography which represented various scenes of the world; cannibals with feather head-dresses, a gorilla kidnapping a young girl, Arabs in the desert, a
whale being harpooned, etc Paul explained the pictures to my mum. And, in fact, this was her only literary education. The children’s studies were under the direction
of a poor devil employed at the town-hall, who sharpened his pocket-knife on his boots and was famous for his penmanship. When the weather was fine, they went
to Pniaki to my father. His house was built in the centre of the forest’s yard. Mum would take slices of cold meat from the lunch basket and they would sit down and
eat in a room next to the dairy. This room was all that remained of a cottage that had been torn down. The dilapidated wall-paper trembled in the drafts. Madame
Ryłko, overwhelmed by recollections, would hang her head, while the children were afraid to open their mouths. Then, “Why don’t you go and play?” their mother
would say; and they would scamper off. Paul would go to the old barn, catch birds, throw stones into the pond, or pound the trunks of the trees with a stick till they
resounded like drums. John would feed the rabbits, and Elizabeth would run to pick the wild flowers in the fields, and her flying legs would disclose her little
embroidered pantalettes. One autumn evening, they struck out for home through the meadows. The new moon illumined part of the sky and a mist hovered like a veil
over the sinuosities of the river. Oxen, lying in the pastures, gazed mildly at the passing persons. In the third field, however, several of them got up and surrounded
them. “Don’t be afraid,” cried mum; and murmuring a sort of lament she passed her hand over the back of the nearest ox; he turned away and the others followed. But
when they came to the next pasture, they heard frightful bellowing. It was a bull which was hidden from them by the fog. He advanced towards the two women, and
Madame Ryłko prepared to flee for her life. “No, no! not so fast,” warned mum. Still they hurried on, for they could hear the noisy breathing of the bull behind them.
His hoofs pounded the grass like hammers, and presently he began to gallop! Mum turned around and threw patches of grass in his eyes. He hung his head, shook his
horns and bellowed with fury. Madame Ryłko and the children, huddled at the end of the field, were trying to jump over the ditch. Mum continued to back before the
bull, blinding him with dirt, while she shouted to them to make haste. Madame Ryłko finally slid into the ditch, after shoving first Elizabeth, John and then Paul into it,
and though she stumbled several times she managed, by dint of courage, to climb the other side of it. The bull had driven mum up against a fence; the foam from his
muzzle flew in her face and in another minute he would have disembowelled her. She had just time to slip between two bars and the huge animal, thwarted, paused.
John occupied her thoughts solely, for the shock he had sustained gave him a nervous affection, and the physician, M. Poupart, prescribed the salt-water bathing at
Kobierzyn. In those days, Kobierzyn was not greatly patronised. Madame Ryłko gathered information, consulted Chwiałkowski, and made preparations as if they
were going on an extended trip. The road was so bad that it took two hours to cover the eight miles. The two horses sank knee-deep into the mud and stumbled into
ditches; sometimes they had to jump over them. In certain places, Kryczek’s mare stopped abruptly. He waited patiently till she started again, and talked of the
people whose estates bordered the road, adding his own moral reflections to the outline of their histories. Thus, when they were passing through Tokarnia, and came
to some windows draped with nasturtiums, he shrugged his shoulders and said: “There’s a woman, Madame Pyrkoszowa, who, instead of taking a young man” mum
could not catch what followed; the horses began to trot, the donkey to gallop, and they turned into a lane; then a gate swung open, two farm- hands appeared and
they all dismounted at the very threshold of the great house. Mother Lipardowski, when she caught sight of her mistress, was lavish with joyful demonstrations. She
got up a lunch which comprised a leg of mutton, tripe, sausages, a chicken fricassee, sweet cider, a fruit tart and some preserved prunes; then to all this the good
woman added polite remarks about Madame Ryłko, who appeared to be in better health, Mademoiselle Elizabeth, who had grown to be “superb,” and Paul, who
had become singularly sturdy; she spoke also of their deceased grandparents, whom the Kryczeks had known, for they had been in the service of the family for
several generations. Like its owners, the hospital at Kobierzyn had an ancient appearance. The beams of the ceiling were mouldy, the walls black with smoke and the
windows grey with dust. The oak sideboard was filled with all sorts of utensils, plates, pitchers, tin bowls, wolf-traps. Elizabeth laughed when she saw a huge syringe.
There was not a tree in the yard that did not have mushrooms growing around its foot, or a bunch of mistletoe hanging in its branches. Several of the trees had been
blown down, but they had started to grow in the middle and all were laden with quantities of apples. The thatched roofs, which were of unequal thickness, looked like
brown velvet and could resist the fiercest gales. For years, this occurrence was a topic of conversation in Kalwaria Zebrzydowska. But John took no credit to herself,
and probably never knew that he had been heroic.

Paul went on the holidays to sea’s village of Niechorze near Kołobrzeg, and the sea there looked like a grey spot in the distance. During the first few days, John felt
stronger, owing to the change of air and the action of the sea-baths. He took them in her little chemise, as he had no bathing suit, and afterwards his nurse dressed him
in the cabin of a customs officer, which was used for that purpose by other bathers. In the afternoon, they would take the direction and go to the Trzęsacz, near
Rewal. The path led at first through undulating grounds, and thence to a plateau, where pastures and tilled fields alternated. At the edge of the road, mingling with the
brambles, grew holly bushes, and here and there stood large dead trees whose branches traced zigzags upon the blue sky. Ordinarily, they rested in a field facing the
sea, with Trzęsacz on their left, and Niechorze on their right. The sea glittered brightly in the sun and was as smooth as a mirror, and so calm that they could scarcely
distinguish its murmur; sparrows chirped joyfully and the immense canopy of heaven spread over it all. You like the sea, Paul? Yes; I love it- Pau said! “The sea is
everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on
all sides. The sea is only the embodiment of a supernatural and wonderful existence. It is nothing but love and emotion; it is the ‘Living Infinite,’ as one of your poets
has said. In fact, Professor, Nature manifests herself in it by her three kingdoms–mineral, vegetable, and animal. The sea is the vast reservoir of Nature. The globe
began with sea, so to speak; and who knows if it will not end with it? In it is supreme tranquillity. The sea does not belong to despots. Upon its surface men can still
exercise unjust laws, fight, tear one another to pieces, and be carried away with terrestrial horrors. But at thirty feet below its level, their reign ceases, their influence is
quenched, and their power disappears. Ah! sir, live-live in the bosom of the waters! There only is independence! There I recognize no masters! There I am free!”