The Graveyard (6 page)

“I’m in a hurry,” Franciszek said. He glanced at the proprietor’s unshaven face, and realized only then that this was how he too must look. “What do I owe you?” he shouted.

“Three-forty.”

He paid and walked out.

“Hey, mister.”

He turned around. The proprietor was waving to him with a mysterious expression. His stare was so compelling that Franciszek walked up to him, spellbound.

“I’ll have coffee this afternoon …”

Once again he ran in his unbuttoned overcoat through the wet, muddy streets. He stopped suddenly. “And me?” he
thought. “My name is Franciszek—” He heard the furious screech of brakes behind him, and jumped aside.

“What are you waiting for?” the driver screamed, “For applause?”

“For socialism,” someone said on the sidewalk. The crowd roared with delight; Franciszek turned a bright red, and was about to answer something when he heard a familiar voice: “So you don’t like it here? Come on, speak up: what is it you don’t like?” He turned around: it was the same young sergeant who had picked him up the night before, and he was already reaching out for identification papers. Franciszek hunched his head between his shoulders and ran on in the direction of the tram stop, where a crowd of people were already lined up ahead of him in the rain.

HE TURNED IN AT HIS FACTORY, AND ENTERED THE
porter’s lodge. He thrust his card into the time clock, and it registered his tardiness. The mustachioed old porter walked up to him and, showing his yellowed teeth in a friendly smile, said, “The tramcar?”

“What tramcar?”

“You couldn’t get on the tramcar?”

“Why do you ask?”

“You’re late, Comrade Kowalski.” He sighed, and spread his hands. “I’ll have to keep your card,” he added sadly.

Franciszek handed him his card. “Too bad.”

He wanted to go, but the porter stopped him. “The best excuse you can give,” he said in a dramatic whisper, “is the tramcar.” He winked a brown eye; in the maze of white wrinkles it looked like a little star. “That can never be checked,” he whispered; “the cars are always in such a mess …”

Franciszek muttered something unintelligible and went out. He walked along a blackened wall of bricks covered with posters showing the faces of smiling Stakhanovites; of peasants, men and women, with sheaves of grain; of schoolboys and soldiers; of diversionists and traitorous priests; of kulaks and saboteurs. They stared straight at his tired, unshaven face as though to ask, “Well, what now, my friend?” He had to
close his eyes. Opening them, he saw before him a picture of an American soldier piercing a Korean child with his bayonet. The soldier looked like an orang-outang, and the child like a smaller species of monkey. He recoiled with a shudder, and almost groping his way reached the locker room. There he quickly put on a greasy gray apron, then went to the office of the party organization—it was situated in a barracks specially built by volunteer workers. He stopped before a door bearing a sign; once again he passed his hand over his unshaven face, smoothed his thinning hair, and, as though in an effort to master his weakness, knocked briskly.

“Come in,” a voice boomed.

Franciszek walked in. A corpulent man with a friendly face rose from his seat behind the desk. He had the clay-colored complexion of those who never get enough to eat, live in stuffy rooms, and breathe large amounts of stale smoke. His cheeks were pendulous and his eyes red from constant lack of sleep; most of the people entrusted with looking after the souls of others have such faces. He held out his hand—it was heavy and hairy, but it squeezed Franciszek’s warmly and cordially. “Take a seat,” he said. After Franciszek sat down, he asked, “Well, what’s the good word?”

“Good word?” Franciszek echoed. For a second he took the question to be ironical; then he looked at the secretary’s tired, kindly face, and suddenly the nightmare he had been through seemed to him unreal—more than that, ridiculous. “But the whole thing is absurd,” he thought. He sighed with relief: “Now at last I can have a sensible talk.” He smiled for the first time in many hours. “I’ve had a little trouble,” he said. “It was like this—”

There was a knock at the door. The secretary motioned to Franciszek to stop. “Just a minute … Come in.”

A young boy, with a childlike face and charming bristling hair, walked in. Seeing Franciszek, he stood shifting his weight from foot to foot, as though about to withdraw.

“Come here, Blizniaczek,” the First Secretary said cordially, and his heavy hand performed a circular motion. “Come closer; what the hell, sit down …” He pushed a chair over to the boy and gave him a friendly look. “What’s the matter? Do they teach you to behave like a little girl in the Young Communist League, or what? Sit down; speak up, openly, like one of us, a workingman …”

The Young Communist Blizniaczek sat down. He glanced quickly at Franciszek, then stared at the tips of his shoes with great concentration. There was a long silence. Behind the walls the grinding machines hummed monotonously, like telegraph wires, a single protracted note.

“What is it, damn it?” the secretary asked at last. He smacked the table with the flat of his hand. “Are you going to open your mouth, or aren’t you?”

“I’d like to talk to you privately,” Blizniaczek stammered out.

The secretary shook his head. “This is an old comrade,” he said solemnly. “You can say anything in his presence.”

Blizniaczek looked at Franciszek with his blue eyes, shook his unruly hair, and said distinctly: “I want to report that Baniewicz and Majewska … well … you know what.”

The secretary froze. A quick shudder passed over his face. He bent forward. “It’s not true,” he said hoarsely.

“It is.”

The secretary banged his fist on the table so that everything shook. “Impossible.”

Blizniaczek looked up at him with his clear blue eyes. “I am sure of it.”

“How do you know?”

“I saw them.”

“But … Majewska has a husband and child.”

Blizniaczek smiled triumphantly: “That’s just it,” he said. “That’s just it.”

“You saw them?”

“Yes. They have no apartment, that’s why … Yesterday, after work, in the warehouse—I saw it with my own eyes.”

“Did they say anything?”

“Yes. I mean, Majewska told Baniewicz that she didn’t love her husband but couldn’t divorce him because he had a bad case of TB, and that someone has to look after him. And Baniewicz said that he had no apartment. And he said he didn’t like the whole situation.”

“So he doesn’t like it?” To Franciszek the secretary’s voice sounded like an echo.

“No.”

The secretary rubbed his balding head and licked his lips. He had slumped forward; he looked like a man robbed of his most sacred belief. “A thing like that,” he said, and his ringing bass sounded like an old man’s whisper. “In the warehouse, after work … And what did you do after work, Blizniaczek?”

“I conducted an informal talk,” he said. “The subject was ‘Love in the Life of the Soviet Man.’ I was substituting for Plaskota; he substituted for me the other day, and he talked on ‘The Forest in the Life of the Young Communist.’ ”

“In the warehouse, after work,” the secretary repeated, not believing his own ears. “Baniewicz, our comrade …” Once again he banged his fist on the table. Franciszek and Blizniaczek jumped up. “Here, on factory grounds!” he roared. He jumped up from behind his desk, and rushed around to Blizniaczek, holding out his hand. “Thank you in the name of the
organization,” he said, shaking his hand vigorously. “Poland will never forget what you’ve done for her. Goodbye.”

Blizniaczek rose and walked in measured steps to the door. There he stopped for a moment, raising his left fist. “Where have I seen this before?” Franciszek thought suddenly. “Where have I seen it?”

Blizniaczek closed the door behind him, and walked down the corridor, his heels tapping. The secretary sat motionless for a while, his eyes vacant, unseeing. Then he turned to Franciszek; he remained silent. At last his eyes brightened again. “You see,” he said in a tired voice, “here I sit behind my desk; everything seems to be all right; but wherever you look—the enemy is vigilant …” He drummed on the glass plate with his clumsy fingers. “We must be vigilant,” he said. “We must be constantly on our guard, Franciszek. Our people are inexperienced: they deviate; they succumb to whispering campaigns; it’s easy to break them down … Take Baniewicz. We sent him to the miners as an agitator—he did a good job. We sent him as our delegate to the scrap-collection campaign—he did well there too. He was top man in the clean-up Warsaw campaign; he even got a certificate. In our amateur theatricals he works like a fiend: he dances, sings, acts—some even say he has a good deal of talent. To look at him you’d say he was pure gold. And now, all of a sudden—plop!”

Once again he buried his face in his hands. His mouth drooped pitiably. “I shouldn’t bother him at such a moment,” Franciszek thought. But he swallowed hard, and said: “Listen, I’m late for work—I was out all morning. What I want to tell you won’t take five minutes. Yesterday, as I was going home from the meeting, I met an old friend of mine from the underground, a wonderful fellow. He was deputy commander
of our unit; now he’s executive manager of a big construction project in the provinces somewhere.” He paused, and sighed heavily. “That’s all it was—an unexpected meeting, two old friends … We went to a bar to talk about old times, and—there’s no point hiding it—I drank a bit. Then we separated—”

Someone knocked at the door, and Franciszek stopped.

“Come in,” said the secretary.

The door opened slightly; a man looked in, and, seeing that the secretary was not alone, was about to withdraw, but the secretary repeated, “Come in, come in.”

A short man with a splendid shock of gray hair and nervous hands entered the room.

“I’m listening, Citizen Jarzebowski,” the secretary said. “Make yourself at home, sit down.”

The newcomer sat down, folding his nervous hands on his knees. His hair shone in the artificial light of the bulb.

“Well, what’s on your mind, Citizen Jarzebowski?” the secretary asked. He glanced at Franciszek and tapped his forehead with his hand. “But of course you don’t know each other, that’s true. Our new head bookkeeper, Citizen Jarzebowski; Comrade Kowalski, assistant technical director. Citizen Jarzebowski is new here,” he explained to Franciszek. “He’s a nonparty activist. He is going to conduct a glee club as part of our social program.”

“Yes, yes,” Jarzebowski said eagerly, smiling at Franciszek. “Perhaps you’d like to join us?”

“What?”

“Would you do us the favor of joining our club and singing with us?”

“Me?” asked Franciszek, surprised.

“Why of course, what’s so strange about that?” Jarzebowski said in a slightly offended tone. “What part would
you like to sing? Baritone? Tenor? I suppose a baritone; you don’t look like a bass—no offense meant. We’re having our first rehearsal today after work—we’re going to sing ‘The March of the Enthusiasts.’ How does it strike you?”

“I might at that if I can fit it in,” Franciszek stammered.

Jarzebowski inclined his gray head with dignity. “I shall await your kind answer,” he said.

The secretary said: “Well, what’s on your mind, Citizen Jarzebowski? Speak up, come to the point; talk like one of us, a workingman.”

“My dear sir,” Jarzebowski stammered, turning red with pleasure, “this is a great honor—I mean, your kind expression, ‘like one of us’—but you see, my dear sir,” here he lowered his eyes with embarrassment, “unfortunately I am not with you because of my convictions; but, if I may say so, you will be good enough to understand, I hope—I am—I was—a landowner. I mean I have been a progressive since I was a boy, rather Left Wing, but …” He spread his arms in a magnificent gesture.

“Come now,” the secretary said, “what are you trying to say?”

Jarzebowski cracked his knuckles—his nervous hands seemed to have a life of their own. “The fact is,” he said dejectedly, “the fact is, I have nothing good to report. Please try to understand, this is not an easy thing for me to say; it’s terribly unpleasant—please, understand me, dear sir, my situation is very, very delicate—but the duty of a Pole, a Left Winger …”

“Speak up; don’t be afraid.”

“A parcel,” Jarzebowski blurted out.

“What parcel?”

“Malinowska, in the Bookkeeping Department. I mean,
my department,” Jarzebowski added modestly, once again accompanying his words with a magnificent toss of his mane.

“Well, go on, what’s next?”

“You’ve been good enough, if I may say so, to hit the nail on the head. That’s just it: what next?”

“I don’t understand.”

Jarzebowski pounded his chest. “It’s my fault, dear sir, my fault. Apparently I haven’t been able to express myself clearly enough. Malinowska, of the Bookkeeping Department, received a parcel.”

“Where from?”

Jarzebowski stood on his toes, raising his hands, as though addressing legions of witnesses. “That’s the whole point,” he said in a metallic voice. “A parcel from the West.”

“From—the—We-e-est?”

“From the West. What’s more, she makes no secret of it. She told me herself. She even treated me to a cigarette, which I have taken the liberty of bringing here …” He reached into the upper pocket of his waistcoat, drew out a cigarette, and set it down in front of the secretary. “Please—here it is.”

They stared at each other for a moment with piercing eyes. The secretary let out a whistle. “So that’s how it is.”

“Yes, indeed.”

They remained silent. The clock on the wall ticked maddeningly. Somewhere in the factory a powerful engine was being tested at full speed; it stopped, only to start up again with an ear-splitting roar.

“A parcel,” the secretary said pensively. Carefully, with the tips of his fingers, he picked up the cigarette and examined it from all sides; he turned it this way and that, sniffed it, and at last put it down, shaking his head. “A cigarette,” he said; “the devil knows what that can lead to. That’s how it always
begins: parcels, cigarettes, nylons, a few trinkets, and then it turns out …”