Stone Upon Stone by Wiesław Myśliwski Read Free Book Online Page A

they were always on the run from something. From what, though? Sometimes you look at them up there, and it’s as if they’re a blade of grass making the eye of the sky water. Other times, seems they feel hemmed in by the world and they’re bouncing about like they’re trapped in a cage between the sky and the earth. Like they’re losing their senses from all that flying. They keep chasing, chasing. Chasing what? Because even when they fly ever so low over the house they make such sharp turns that they almost cut your eye, it’s like they don’t want you to even remember them at all. If it wasn’t for the fact that they’re half black you’d be forgiven for thinking itwas the sun glinting up in the sky. It’s only when they’re high up that they get a bit calmer. Though even then they’re nowhere near as calm as storks, or doves. There are times the whole world is broiling, the heat’s so sleepy even the dogs are too tired to bark, they just doze in their doghouses. Even the chickens move over to the shade and put their heads under their wings. There’s not so much as a leaf moving. The flies can’t be bothered to bite. There’s nothing but the swallows trembling high up in the air or plunging down close to the ground. You wonder how they have the energy, what they’re doing it for. Then the next day there’s either a storm or there isn’t. Because swallows know no peace.
    People have one swallow’s nest, maybe two, but under my roof there must be ten of them. We got so used to each other that even in the hospital they’d wake up with me. It would usually start with a noise that sounded like a drop of dew falling on something soft. That was the first hungry nestling waking up. I’d open my eyes and look out the window. Dawn through the window looks like an empty tin pail. After the first drop there’d come a second, though this time it was like it hit the pail, it was hungrier. After that a third, a fourth, a tenth, each one hungrier than the last. Then the dawn would start to grow brighter. At first it was like someone was rinsing out the dark blue of the pail. Then after a bit someone else would bring milk in the pail from the milking and put it in the middle of the room. Right away the beds would start creaking. Someone would say something. Someone would give a sigh to God. Someone missing a leg or an arm would turn over on his other side and the whole ward would turn with them. After that you couldn’t sleep any longer.
    It might even have been one of those dawns when I got the idea of maybe having a tomb built, so everyone would have a place they could be buried in. Because your thoughts after you’ve been asleep are like swallows at dawn. And in the hospital wanted and unwanted thoughts come to you alike. Even thoughts that would never have occurred to a healthy person.Because healthy people only think on this side of the world. When you try and think on the other side, your thoughts slip like they were on glass. Because if you’re going over there you need to go body and soul with your thoughts. For good.
    It’s not surprising really. You’re lying there confined to your bed, you’ve got more time than there are flies on shit and you don’t know what to do with it. You don’t feel like sleeping any more, how much can a person sleep anyway. There’s nothing to talk about either, because it’s always about the same thing. An hour seems as long as a day, a day as long as a month, a month as long as a year. I doubt you’d have so much time even in eternity. And that kind of empty time is worse than the sickness itself. On top of that, you’ve got twelve beds on the ward. And in each one of them there’s either an amputated leg or a crushed arm, someone run over by a tractor, someone that broke their back, or someone else with a pipe in their Adam’s apple making this whistling sound, here someone’s had half their stomach cut out, next to them someone’s head is wrapped in bandages,