under the head, the box as resistant as possible to the forces of nature. No, such actions betrayed a dark and uncomprehending faith that the dead endured, a faith in that gruesome, horrifying living existence in the narrow confines of the coffin, apparently preferable, in people’s instinctive opinion, to complete annihilation and union with the earth.
Not knowing the answer himself, he began walking toward the village and the church spire that glistened in the sunlight. Suddenly he glimpsed some movement at the bend in the road and quickly shoved the bread back into his pocket before he realized what he was doing.
The dark blot of the procession appeared around the little hill, where the road curved and ran below a steep clay wall. The people were too far away for him to make out their faces. He could see only the cross swaying at the head, the white spots of the priests’ surplices just behind it, the roof of a truck, and in the background tiny figures moving so slowly that they seemed to be marching in place, rocking with a certain majesty, the motion made almost grotesque by the diminishing effects of distance. It was hard to take this miniature funeral seriously and wait for it with the proper gravity, but it was no easier to go forward to meet it. It looked like a randomly scattered collection of dolls bouncing at the foot of a great clay landslide, from which the wind carried snatches of incomprehensible lamentations. Stefan wanted to get there as quickly as possible, but he dared not move. Instead, taking off his hat, he stood motionless at the edge of the road, the wind now blowing his hair into disarray. An onlooker would have been hard put to tell whether he was a belated participant in the solemnities or just a chance passerby. The walking figures grew in size as they came nearer, and imperceptibly got close enough to erase the peculiar effect the distance had had on Stefan. Now, finally, he was able to make out the old peasant leading the way with the cross, the two priests, the truck from the nearby sawmill inching along behind them, and finally all the scattered members of his family. The discordant singing of the village women droned on endlessly; when the procession was a few dozen paces away, Stefan heard a ringing, first a few uneven sounds, and then a full, strong tolling that echoed with dignity throughout the countryside. When the bell sounded, Stefan thought that the Szymczaks’ little Wicek must have been pulling the cord, only to be supplanted by the more proficient, redheaded Tomek, but he suddenly remembered that “little” Wicek would be a man of his own age by now, and that nothing had been heard of Tomek since his departure for the city. But the battle over the right to ring the bell apparently persisted among the younger generation of Nieczawy.
Life entails situations unforeseen by handbooks of etiquette, situations so difficult and delicate that they require great tact and self-confidence. Lacking these virtues, Stefan had no idea how to go about joining the procession; he stood indecisively with a distinct feeling that he was being watched, which only compounded his confusion. Fortunately, the cortege halted just before the church. One of the priests walked over to the truck and asked the driver a question; the driver nodded, and some peasants Stefan didn’t know climbed out of the truck and began to remove the coffin. There was some confusion during which Stefan managed to slip into the group standing around the truck. He had just noticed the thickset, short-necked figure and graying head of Uncle Ksawery, who was supporting Aunt Aniela, dressed all in black, when a muffled call went out that more people were needed to carry the coffin into the church. Stefan stepped forward, but as always when everyone was watching and some ever so slightly responsible action was required, he made a mess of it and his eagerness produced no more than a nervous stumble in the truck’s direction. In the end the coffin was lifted over the heads of those assembled without his help, and he was left to carry the fur coat that Uncle Anzelm, his father’s oldest brother, had taken off and handed to him at the last moment.
Stefan carried the coat into the church. He was among the last to enter but was deeply convinced that by carrying the enormous bearskin he too was contributing to the ceremony. The bell stuttered to the end of its monotonous song, both priests disappeared for a moment and emerged again when the family had settled into the pews, and the first words of the Latin exequy were pronounced from the altar.
Stefan could have sat down, since there were plenty of seats and his uncle’s fur coat was not exactly light, but he preferred to stand in the depths of the nave bearing his burden which, perhaps just because it was so heavy, seemed to atone for his earlier awkwardness. The coffin lay at the altar and Uncle Anzelm, after lighting the candles around it, walked straight toward Stefan, who felt slightly unnerved by this attention, for he had hoped the darkness at the foot of the pillar where he was standing would preserve his anonymity.
His uncle squeezed his shoulder and whispered under the priest’s melodic voice, “Is your father ill?”
“Yes, Uncle. He had an attack yesterday.”
“Those stones again?” asked Uncle Anzelm in a piercing whisper, trying to take the fur from Stefan.
But Stefan did not want to let go and mumbled, “No, please don’t, I’ll…”
“Come on, give me the fur, you fool, it’s cold as hell in here,” his uncle said with good humor, but too loudly. Anzelm took the fur, threw it over his shoulders, and walked to the pew where the widow sat, leaving Stefan embarrassed; the young man could feel himself turning red.
This incident, trivial as it was, ruined his whole stay in the church. He recovered only when he spotted Uncle Ksawery sitting at the far comer of the last pew. He took comfort in imagining how out of place Ksawery must have felt, an atheist so militant he tried to convert each new parish priest. Uncle Ksawery was an old bachelor, hot- tempered and outspoken, an enthusiastic subscriber to Boy’s library of French classics, a proponent of birth control, and the only doctor in a twelve-kilometer radius to boot. The Kielce relatives had long tried to evict him from the old house, battling for years in the township and district courts, but Ksawery had won every round, cheating them so cunningly—as they put it—that they finally gave up. Now he sat with his big hands resting heavily on the rail, separated from his conquered relatives by a pew.
The organ’s deep voice sounded, and Stefan shuddered as he recalled the humble saintliness that had fired his soul as a small boy; he had always held organ music in deep respect. The exequies unfolded properly. One of the priests lighted incense in a small censer and circled the coffin, surrounding it with a cloud of fragrant though acrid smoke. Stefan looked for the widow. She was sitting in the second pew, bent, patient, strangely indifferent to the words of the priest who, in florid Latin, kept singing the last name of the deceased, which was also her last name, repeating it with exultation and insistence. But he was not addressing any of the living, only Providence, requesting, begging, almost commanding Its benevolence toward that which was no more.
The organ fell silent, and again it was necessary to shoulder the coffin that now rested on the catafalque before the altar, but this time Stefan did not even try to help. Everyone stood up and, clearing their throats, prepared for the way ahead. When the gently swaying coffin left the shadowed nave and reached the church steps, there was some jostling—the elongated, heavy box pitched forward threateningly, but a forest of upraised hands rebalanced it and it emerged into the afternoon sun with no more than a brisk bobbing, as if excited by the close call.
Just then a foolish and macabre thought ran through Stefan’s mind: it must indeed be Uncle Leszek in there, because he had always loved practical jokes, especially on solemn occasions. Stefan quickly squelched the idea, or rather recast it in terms of healthy reason: it was absurd, that wasn’t his uncle in the coffin but only the remains of his person, remains so embarrassing and troublesome that their removal from the domain of the living required the devising and staging of this whole interminable, intricate, and rather unconvincing ceremony.
He followed the coffin with the others, heading for the open cemetery gate. There were about twenty people in the procession; without the coffin they would have made a strange impression, because they wore clothes somewhere between dress appropriate for a long journey (almost all of them had traveled to Nieczawy from far away) and evening wear, predominately black. Most of the men wore Ugh riding boots and some of the women were in high laced shoes like boots, trimmed with fur. Someone Stefan could not recognize from behind was wearing an army coat with no insignia, as if the patches had been ripped off; that coat, which held Stefan’s eye for a long moment, was the only reminder of the September Campaign. No, he thought, not really—there was also the absence of people who would have been there under different circumstances, like Uncle Antoni and Cousin Piotr, both of whom were in German prison camps.
The singing—or rather wailing—of the village women was an endless repetition of “Give him eternal rest, O Lord, and everlasting light.” It bothered Stefan only for a moment, then he ceased to be aware of it. The strung-out procession bunched up at the cemetery gate, then followed the upraised coffin in a black line between the graves. Prayers began again over the open grave. Stefan found this a bit excessive, and thought that if he were a believer, he would wonder whether the being to whom they were addressed might not regard such endlessly renewed pleas as importunate.
Someone tugged at his sleeve before he could finish formulating this last thought. He turned and saw the wide, hawk-nosed face of Uncle Anzelm in his fur collar, who asked, again too loudly, “Have you had anything to eat
