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!”

In
the next holiday Paul saw the mysterious island close to Gdynia. “The desire to perform a work which will endure, which will survive him, is the origin of man’s
superiority over all other living creatures here below. It is this which has established his dominion, and this it is which justifies it, over all the world.” When the heat
was too oppressive, the children remained in their rooms. The dazzling sunlight cast bars of light between the shutters. Not a sound in the village, not a soul on the
sidewalk. This silence intensified the tranquility of everything. In the distance, the hammers of some calkers pounded the hull of a ship, and the sultry breeze brought
them an odour of tar. The principal diversion consisted in watching the return of the fishing-smacks. As soon as they passed the beacons, they began to ply to
windward. The sails were lowered to one third of the masts, and with their fore-sails swelled up like balloons they glided over the waves and anchored in the middle
of the harbour. Then they crept up alongside of the dock and the sailors threw the quivering fish over the side of the boat; a line of carts was waiting for them, and
women with white caps sprang forward to receive the baskets and embrace their men-folk. Sometimes they crossed the canal in a boat, and started to hunt for
sea-shells. The outgoing tide exposed star-fish and sea-urchins, and the children tried to catch the flakes of foam which the wind blew away. The sleepy waves
lapping the sand unfurled themselves along the shore that extended as far as the eye could see, but where land began, it was limited by the downs which separated it
from the swamps a large meadow shaped like a hippodrome. For a ten of a half of pass century the housewives of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska had envied Madame
Ryłko her servant my mum. For a whole year she cooked and did the housework, washed, ironed, mended, harnessed the horse, fattened the poultry, made the
butter and remained faithful to her mistress, although the latter was by no means an agreeable person. Madame had married a comely youth without any money, who
died in the beginning of 1939, leaving her with two young children and a number of debts. She sold all her property excepting the farm of Tokarnia and the farm of
Pniaki, the income of which amounted to some tousands zloty; then she left her house in Tokarnia, and moved into a less pretentious one which had belonged to her
ancestors and stood back of the market-place of Kalwaria Zebrzydowska. This house, with its slate-covered roof, was built between a passage-way and a narrow
street that led to the river. The interior was so unevenly graded that it caused people to stumble. A narrow hall separated the kitchen from the parlour, where
Madame Ryłko sat all day in a straw armchair near the window. Eight mahogany chairs stood in a row against the white wainscoting. An old piano, standing beneath
a barometer, was covered with a pyramid of old books and boxes. The whole room smelled musty, as it was on a lower level than the garden. Summer and winter
she wore a dimity kerchief fastened in the back with a pin, a cap which concealed her hair, a red skirt, grey stockings, and an apron with a bib like those worn by
hospital nurses. Her face was thin and her voice shrill. When she was twenty-five, she looked forty. After she had passed fifty, nobody could tell her age; erect and
silent always, she resembled a wooden figure working automatically.

Like every other woman, mum had had an affair of the heart. Her father, who was a mason, was killed by falling from a scaffolding. Then her mother died and her
sisters went their different ways; a farmer took her in, and while she was quite small, let her keep cows in the fields. She was clad in miserable rags, beaten for the
slightest offence and finally dismissed for a theft of thirty zlotych which she did not commit. She took service on another farm where she tended the poultry; and as she
was well thought of by her master, her fellow-workers soon grew jealous. One evening in August, they persuaded her to accompany them to the fair at Pniaki. She
was immediately dazzled by the noise, the lights in the trees, the brightness of the dresses, the laces and gold crosses, and the crowd of people all hopping at the same
time. She was standing modestly at a distance, when presently a young man of well-to-do appearance, who had been leaning on the pole of a wagon and smoking his
pipe, approached her, and asked her for a dance. He treated her to cider and cake, bought her a silk shawl, and then, thinking she had guessed his purpose, offered
to see her home. When they came to the end of a field he threw her down brutally. But she grew frightened and screamed, and he walked off. One evening, on the
road leading to Barwałd Górny, she came upon a wagon loaded with hay, and when she overtook it, she recognized Theodor. He greeted her calmly, and asked her
to forget what had happened between them, as it “was all the fault of the drink.” She did not know what to reply and wished to run away. Presently he began to
speak of the harvest and of the notables of the village; his father had left Izdebnik and bought the farm, so that now they would be neighbours. “Ah!” she exclaimed.
He then added that his parents were looking around for a wife for him, but that he, himself, was not so anxious and preferred to wait for a girl who suited him. She
hung her head. He then asked her whether she had ever thought of marrying. She replied, smilingly, that it was wrong of him to make fun of her. “Oh! no, I am in
earnest,” he said, and put his left arm around her waist while they sauntered along. The air was soft, the stars were bright, and the huge load of hay oscillated in front
of them, drawn by four horses whose ponderous hoofs raised clouds of dust. Without a word from their driver they turned to the right. He kissed her again and she
went home. The following week, Theodor obtained meetings. They met in yards, behind walls or under isolated trees. She was not ignorant, as girls of well-to-do
families are-for the animals had instructed her; but her reason and her instinct of honour kept her from falling. Her resistance exasperated Theodor’s love and so in
order to satisfy it, he offered to marry her. She would not believe him at first, so he made solemn promises. But, in a short time he mentioned a difficulty; the previous
year, his parents had purchased a substitute for him; but any day he might be drafted and the prospect of serving in the army alarmed him greatly. To mum his
cowardice appeared a proof of his love for her, and her devotion to him grew stronger. When she met him, he would torture her with his fears and his entreaties. At
last, he announced that he was going to the prefect himself for information, and would let her know everything on the following Sunday, between eleven o’clock and
midnight. When the time grew near, she ran to meet her lover. But instead of Theodore, one of his friends was at the meeting-place. He informed her that she would
never see her sweetheart again; for, in order to escape the conscription, he had married a rich old woman, Madame Luiza. Yet a human being has to die of thirst
prematurely. The poor girl’s sorrow was frightful. She threw herself on the ground, she cried and called on the Lord, and wandered around desolately until sunrise.
Then she went back to the farm, declared her intention of leaving, and at the end of the month, after she had received her wages, she packed all her belongings in a
handkerchief and started on west of Poland. In front of the inn, she met a woman wearing widow’s weeds, and upon questioning her, learned that she was looking for
a cook. Mum did not know very much, but appeared so willing and so modest in her requirements, that Madame Gwóźdż finally said: “Very well, I will give you a
trial.” And half an hour later Felicite was installed in her house at Siemonia near Będzin. After my birth mum has catched on for work in the firm of PRK at
Ząbkowice. She cleared wagons. I was secretive in my youth. But once day I have seen the wagon-shed was fast crumbling to ruins later during my “second living” at
Ząbkowice. I saw also the fine mills here, that now are as a weak of mind and soul of us, but earlier in the sixties years, I suppose, there were a cause all social a
revolution here. I’m full of blue sky now personally. Though I stand in Olsztyn with first leg, but the other one I’m at Ząbkowice. This eternal conscript for troop it
effects for me and cures wounds. But I desire change all on better, sometimes to wipe, and even break skin on my own. And if it will lose nothing it gains nothing also.
Poland is like a mother. I have forecasted that this country would give me freedom and tranquility. I am looking on Poland, on my country after visit in India last time,
and everything it is fine. I’m looking for the last time at this opening on village of Ząbkowice which is quiet, so full lost brilliance, historic recitement are red bones of
sleeping factory ruin. These places have smell of past and they live future. As if the last silent witnesses of a departed epoch stand the chimneys there. They still signify
other area standing in a blinding sun solitary. Never I will forget train leaving Ząbkowice I may add here. Recently I have had a accidental meeting with Indian man.
For two months I’ve been at India. Now You may imagine an Indian street near academic village at Mumbai, without footpath; this one however, daily sun was
pierced on which by branches of trees. Did not have this street her whole face. It looked about eighth early morning sleepy. Sky as if did not correct this impression.
As I knew opening time on world is very important for hindu always. So, I suppose all anonymous persons that I faced each other in moments of fears and
desperation for always would remain dug in my memory out. I identify them with such streets of India which I had walked after. A world of this person was similar of
mine one, there was world without passports, visas or visiting-cards. Common requirement connected us. It seemed now that I would found chance of escaping on
similar streets in other cities always. So, leaving out on street it’s like an entering bar for joint; everything always or nothing. May I say I have taken touch , smell,
paint of landscape from India. Dark, my school’s collegue and the director of the house of our Archdiocese where I live now, who is going to next far journeys I
would say: nowhere I choose ride. The years after in 1972 George, my uncle went successively to Szczecin, and then with ship to Canary Islands; whenever he
returned from a trip he would bring his wife and my aunt a present. The first time it was a box of shells; the second, a coffee-cup; the third, a big doll of ginger-bread.
He had a good figure, kind eyes, and a little leather cap that sat jauntily on the back of his head. He amused his aunt by telling her stories mingled with nautical
expressions. One Monday, the July, 1975 (he never forgot the date), George announced that he had been engaged on a merchant-vessel and that in two days he
would take the steamer and join his sailer, which was going to start from Gdynia very soon. Perhaps he might be away seven months. The prospect of his departure
filled the aunt Lucy with despair, and in order to bid him farewell, on Wednesday night, she took the train for the four hundred kilometer that separated Gdynia from
Szczecin. When she reached the town, instead of turning to the right, she turned to the left and lost herself in new-yards; she had to retrace her steps; some people
she spoke to advised her to hasten. She walked helplessly around the harbour filled with vessels, and knocked against hawsers. Presently the ground sloped abruptly,
lights flitted to and fro, and she thought all at once that she had gone mad when she saw some horses in the sky. Others, on the edge of the dock, neighed at the sight
of the ocean. A derrick pulled them up in the air, and dumped them into a boat, where passengers were bustling about among barrels of cider, baskets of cheese and
bags of meal; chickens cackled, the captain swore and a cabin-boy rested on the railing, apparently indifferent to his surroundings. The aunt Lucy, who did not
recognize him, kept shouting: “George!” He suddenly raised his eyes, but while she was preparing to rush up to him, they withdrew the gangplank. The packet, towed
by singing women, glided out of the harbour. Her hull squeaked and the heavy waves beat up against her sides. The sail had turned and nobody was visible; and on
the sea, silvered by the light of the moon, the vessel formed a black spot that grew dimmer and dimmer, and finally disappeared. When the aunt Lucy passed the
Gdynia again, she felt as if she must entrust that which was dearest to her to the Lord; and for a long while she prayed, with uplifted eyes. The city was sleeping; some
customs officials were taking the air; and the water kept pouring through the holes of the dam with a deafening roar. The town clock struck two. So George would be
on the ocean for months! His previous trips had not alarmed her. One can come back from England and France; but America, the colonies, the islands, were all lost
in an uncertain region at the very end of the world. From that time on, Lucy thought solely of her husband, my uncle. She was watching television always. On warm
days she feared he would suffer from thirst, and when it stormed, she was afraid he would be struck by lightning. When she harkened to the wind that rattled in the
chimney and dislodged the tiles on the roof, she imagined that he was being buffeted by the same storm, perched on top of a shattered mast, with his whole body
bend backward and covered with sea-foam; or, these were recollections of the engraved geography, he was being devoured by savages, or captured in a forest by
apes, or dying on some lonely coast. She never mentioned her anxieties, however.

III

I remember very well the first communion of the Krutnik’s Magdalen and Christopher at Międzyrzecze Górne near Bielsko-Biała where mum and me we have ridden
on the holiday. After they had made a curtsey at the threshold, they would walk up the aisle between the double lines of chairs, open sister’s pew, sit down and look
around. Girls and boys, the former on the right, the latter on the left-hand side of the church, filled the chairs of the wooden church; the priest stood beside the
reading-desk; on altar the Holy Ghost hovered over the Virgin. The priest first read a condensed lesson of sacred history. The evoked Paradise, the Flood, the
Tower of Babel, the blazing cities, the dying nations, the shattered idols; and out of this they developed a great respect for the Almighty and a great fear of His wrath.
Then, when they had listened to the Passion, they asked themselves. Why had they crucified Him who loved little children, nourished the people, made the blind see,
and who, out of humility, had wished to be born among the poor, in a stable? As for the dogma, she could not understand it and did not even try. The priest
discoursed, the children recited, and they went to sleep, only to awaken with a start when they were leaving the church and their wooden shoes clattered on the stone
pavement. In this way, they learned her catechism, her religious education having been neglected in her youth; and thenceforth she imitated all mum’s religious
practices, fasted when they did, and went to confession. At the Corpus-Christi Day they both decorated an altar. They fussed about the shoes, the rosary, the book
and the gloves. With what nervousness mum helped the family dress the children! During the entire ceremony, they felt anguished. Monsieur Budniak hid part of the
choir from view, but directly in front of her, the flock of maidens, wearing white wreaths over their lowered veils, formed a snow-white field, then I recognized “my
kids” by the slenderness of their necks and their devout attitudes. The bell tinkled. All the heads bent and there was a silence. Then, at the peals of the organ the
singers and the worshippers struck up the Agnes Dei; the boys’ procession began; behind them came the girls. With clasped hands, they advanced step by step to the
lighted altar, knelt at the first step, received one by one the Host, and returned to their seats in the same order. When Magdalen ‘s turn came, I leaned forward to
watch her, and through that imagination which springs from true affection, I at once became the child, whose face and dress became mine, whose heart beat in my
bosom, and when Magdalen opened her mouth and closed her lids, I did likewise and came very near fainting. The following day, I presented herself early at the
church so as to receive communion from the cure. I took it with the proper feeling, but did not experience the same delight as on the previous day. Mum had
remembered the Corpus-Christi Day in her life for a long time yet. At this time she lived at Ząbkowice behind the church. Miss Łojanowa have been dying in mum’s
arms. So, the time for the altars in the street drew near. The grass exhaled an odour of summer; flies buzzed in the air, the sun shone on the river and warmed the
slated roof. Mum had returned to Miss Łojanowa and was peacefully falling asleep. The ringing of bells woke her; the people were coming out of church. mum’s
delirium subsided. By thinking of the procession, she was able to see it as if she had taken part in it. All the school- children, the singers and the firemen walked on the
sidewalks, while in the middle of the street came first the custodian of the church with his halberd, then the beadle with a large cross, the teacher in charge of the boys
and a sister escorting the little girls; three of the smallest ones, with curly heads, threw rose leaves into the air; the deacon with outstretched arms conducted the music;
and two incense-bearers turned with each step they took toward the Holy Sacrament, which was carried by the priest, attired in his handsome chasuble and walking
under a canopy of red velvet supported by four men. A crowd of people followed, jammed between the walls of the houses hung with white sheets; at last the
procession arrived at the foot of the hill. A cold sweat broke out on mum’s forehead. Somebody wiped it away with a cloth, saying inwardly that some day she would
have to go through the same thing herself. The murmur of the crowd grew louder, was very distinct for a moment and then died away. A volley of musketry shook the
window-panes. It was the postilions saluting the Sacrament. Miss Łojanowa rolled her eyes, and said as loudly as she could. “Is he all right?” Her death agony began.
A rattle that grew more and more rapid shook her body. Froth appeared at the corners of her mouth, and her whole frame trembled. In a little while could be heard
the music of the bass horns, the clear voices of the children and the men’s deeper notes. At intervals all was still, and their shoes sounded like a herd of cattle passing
over the grass. The clergy appeared in the yard. Mum climbed on a chair to reach the bull’s-eye, and in this manner could see the altar. It was covered with a lace
cloth and draped with green wreaths. In the middle stood a little frame containing relics; at the corners were two little orange-trees, and all along the edge were silver
candlesticks, porcelain vases containing sun-flowers, lilies, peonies, and tufts of hydrangeas. This mount of bright colours descended diagonally from the first floor to
the carpet that covered the sidewalk. Rare objects arrested one’s eye. A golden sugar-bowl was crowned with violets, earrings set with stones were displayed on
green moss, and two Chinese screens with their bright landscapes were near by. The singers, the canopy-bearers and the children lined up against the sides of the
yard. Slowly the priest ascended the steps and placed his shining sun on the lace cloth. Everybody knelt. There was deep silence; and the censers slipping on their
chains were swung high in the air. A blue vapour rose in my room-mum said. Miss Łojanowa opened her nostrils and inhaled with a mystic sensuousness; then she
closed her lids. Her lips smiled. The beats of her heart grew fainter and fainter, and vaguer, like a fountain giving out, like an echo dying away;–and when she exhaled
her last breath, she thought she saw in the half-opened heavens a great saint Michel hovering above her head. As I mentioned already the priest Kończyk assisted me
in the choice of a college. The one at Częstochowa was considered the best. So I was sent away and bravely said good-bye to them all, for I was glad to go to live in
a house where I would have boy companions. In the eightieth years of the twenty century I knew of saint Joseph Sebastian Pelczar Sister named Ireneusha. While a
student at Cracow in the 1980s I attended several of professor Joseph Tischner’s lectures and went on to make a direct allusion to his philosophy in my book titled
‘Flowers of liberty’. In 1991 mum’s ill organ shot her, and thereafter she walked to the church with a limp. When she went home near the railway, on the left, grew
larger and larger as she advanced, and, with all its houses of unequal height, seemed to spread out before her in a sort of giddy confusion. Then she had found a help
one of church’s sisters, and presently Miss Kwieciński made her appearance, holding an infant in her arms, another child by the hand, while on her left was a little
cabin-boy with his hands in his pockets and his cap on his ear. But at the end of fifteen minutes, I bade her go home. Mum developed a great fondness for the family
of Kwieciński; she bought them a stove, some shirts and a blanket; it was evident that they liked her. In the period of years 1986-2000 mother’s friend, Helena
served in my immediate family as a kind of unpaid governess and housekeeper. She said she knew she would die soon after millenium 2000, and did. Her generosity

at the end of her life annoyed me a little. I recall the scent of some kind of toilet powder – I believe she stole it from her mother’s Spanish maid – a sweetish, lowly,
musky perfume. It mingled with her own biscuity odor, and my senses were suddenly filled to the brim. My Godfather died in a freak accident (picnic, lightning) when
I was thirty nine, and, save for a pocket of warmth in the darkest past, nothing of his subsists within the hollows and dells of memory.

In the beginning of my priesthood miss Bożena would come on Sunday to us, after church, but not only; with ruddy cheeks and bared chest, bringing with her the
scent of the country. Zbyszek her husband would came a little later. I would set the table and they would sit down opposite me, and eat their dinner; she ate as little
as possible, herself, to avoid any extra expense, but would stuff him so with food that he would finally go to sleep. At the first stroke of vespers, I would wake myself
up, brush my trousers, wear my cassock and walk to church with mum, leaning on her arm with pride. Mum would come always to the wooden house of ours to get
something out of her, either a package of brown sugar, or soap, or butter, and sometimes even money. Bożena took my clothes to mend, and I accepted the task
gladly, because it meant another visit from them. In order to have some distraction, she asked leave to receive the visits of a son’s her daughter Damian. At that time I
was capricious, and mum was maternal, a fact which seemed to produce a sort of embarrassment in our relations. As I just mentioned since 2002 I live in Olsztyn
near Częstochowa. I have one a view always here. There was a silence. Some women passed through the yard with a basket of wet clothes, and met the director’s
of our house a car. And I thought it about time for me to take leave. But now I write still and make general orders before enter interference in new period of life
definetely. On the same statement of a will Tolstoi gave liberty of a paisants, and Thomas Jefferson gave liberty to all slaves. I’m giving the liberty liberty all heroes of
my books , who so faithfully served me during my writer’s working. Hundredth anniversary of a consecration of church at Ząbkowice will be in September that year.
Then there was September 1910. The sowings, the harvests, the wine-presses, all those familiar things which the Scriptures mention, have been formed a part of a life
of our ancestors; the word of God sanctified them; and they had loved the lambs with increased tenderness for the sake of the Lamb, and the doves because of the
Holy Ghost. They had found it hard, “however, to think of the latter as a person, for was it not a bird, a flame, and sometimes only a breath? Perhaps it is its light that
at night hovers over swamps, its breath that propels the clouds, its voice that renders church-bells harmonious.” They have been worshipping devoutly, while enjoying
the coolness and the stillness of the church. We have take over with piety them heritage, continue the work of reconciling of person with God.