Wartime lies - Louis Begley [60]
Stefa and the boys liked to listen to me, especially after I learned to avoid talking about things that bothered them by being strange instead of amusing. The uprising in Warsaw interested them—I disregarded Tania’s orders and talked about it; they knew about guns and about fighting between the Germans and the partisans. There were partisans in the forest. Once, during the previous summer, German soldiers tried to get the partisans there but failed and afterward went through the village looking for any who might be hiding with the peasants. But none were found, so the Germans just took away all the sausages and bacon they saw, and the partisans were still in the forest. Sometimes they came out at night and raided the village, also to get food. Stefa said they could be worse than the Germans: they were after women as well as food.
I liked to listen to their stories about Piasowe. According to them, only Komar, the rich peasant who sold vodka at the entrance of the village, could read a little and, some people said, knew how to count better than any town person. Nobody in Piasowe had been to school; W. was too far. The idea of going to school instead of working in the fields or with the animals made them giggle. The priest came to Piasowe from W. every few weeks to baptize, marry and celebrate Mass. He had given them Communion.
They talked about Kula and Kulowa. I knew, of course, that Kula’s son Tadek was the butcher for all of Piasowe and the adjoining villages, in addition to helping his father with the land. They said Kula was afraid of Tadek, although he was himself very strong. When Tadek was drunk, he beat his parents, especially Kulowa. Once he knocked out Kula’s teeth. They fought because Kula would not divide his land so Tadek could marry. They advised me to stay out of Tadek’s way. He would leave Tania alone: it didn’t matter that she now worked as Kula’s servant; she was still a schoolteacher. The Kula daughter, Masia, they all liked, as did Tania and I. This gay and round-faced girl used to take Kula’s cows to pasture until Kula got Stefa to help out. Masia too wanted to get married, and Kula wouldn’t hear of it and whipped her every time she talked to him about it. He preferred to keep her at home, so she would work, and he didn’t want to give her a dowry. Still, Stefa’s brother, Jurek, really wanted to marry her, and Jurek put it into her in Kula’s barn every Sunday and whenever else they had a chance, to get Masia pregnant. Then Kula would have to give them permission. Tadek liked to watch. They did it in a corner so that Tadek and some of his friends could climb to the hayloft from the outside and see everything. Kula and Kulowa were probably the only two people in Piasowe who didn’t know what was going on.
Stefa said it was no wonder Kula had hired Tania when we arrived: Kula had so much land that getting in the potatoes and beets on time was too much even for the four Kulas. Somebody had to do the rest of the work, taking the cows to pasture, milking, feeding the poultry and the pigs. Now Kula might begin to ask himself whether, with Tania doing so much of the work in the house, Masia wouldn’t get lazy and run after Jurek even more. I was another matter; having Masia instead of me go out with the cows was a waste, and he didn’t like paying Stefa’s father to have her do it.
I would tell these things to Tania when we lay down for the night on our straw mattress and began listening to Kula and Kulowa snore in the next room, like peasants sawing logs, and Masia’s gentler and more regular noise. Tania said she had already