A Day of Small Beginnings (55 page)

The farmer squinted and glanced rapidly back and forth between his two visitors. “Good day. Good day.” His voice was hoarse,
and the words, in Polish, whistled between his missing teeth.

“Good day,” they said.

Marek began to speak. Ellen understood only a word or two of what he was saying and nothing of what Głwacki said in response.
Without a translator, she began to feel frustrated as a deaf person. But she was afraid to interrupt, lest her English compromise
the goodwill Marek was clearly trying to establish. She wondered if he had yet asked about Freidl’s stone.

Marek pointed at the barn and seemed to ask a question as he took a few tentative steps toward it. Głowacki’s dogs began barking
again. Ellen held his arm like a child, her fingers stiff with anxiety.

“Tak. Tak.” Głwacki nodded warily.

Marek advanced slowly toward the barn. Głwacki walked with him, apparently reassured by the younger man’s steady manner and
his easygoing voice. At last they reached the structure’s open wooden door, where they stopped. A breeze blew the fetid smell
of unmucked stalls toward them.

Ellen, with only her sense of sight and smell to guide her, began to search for some sign of Freidl’s gravestone. Along the
right side of the barn, a rough sty of stones and wooden posts had been built. Four pigs snuffled in the muddy enclosure.

Głwacki now seemed to be talking about the barn. Marek kept repeating “I understand” in Polish. This was all she could make
out. She noticed that Marek seemed to be using the pauses in his conversation with Głwacki to look around. Then she spotted
a rectangular stone that had been partially lodged under the right corner footing of the barn. The rest of the stone jutted
into the pig’s sty and was coated with slop.

Marek saw it too. “What’s this?” he asked. The three of them stared at the stone, as if they expected it to speak.

With the toe of his shoe, Marek gently knocked some of the dirt off the exposed part of the stone.

Głwacki let loose a flurry of words.

It seemed to Ellen that he was trying to explain something about the stone’s purpose as he pointed to various parts of the
barn. She stared at the stone, obviously a gravestone, and felt sick.

“I understand,” Marek said.

The sun slipped behind clouds, throwing them into shadow. Głwacki looked down at the stone and seemed to smile. “
Czy wy jeste
cie
ydami?
” he asked.

Marek didn’t respond.

Głwacki repeated the question.

Marek looked at Ellen. “We must offer him money,” he said in a measured voice. “Do you have fifty dollars?”

“Yes. What did he just say?”

“He wants to know if we are Jews. Do not say anything to him.”

Ellen felt as if someone had just grabbed her by the hair. The sting ran from her scalp down her back like an electric current.

Marek spoke quietly to Głwacki, apparently trying to force the man’s attention away from Ellen, who now seemed to interest
him.

She evaded his inquisitive looks by peering into the barn. The slats of the outer walls were set so widely apart that long
shafts of the now-gray daylight exposed the interior space, including a treacherous-looking hayloft.

Marek turned to her. “He says the stone is valuable to him because it is the right size to hold up the footings. I think the
writing is on the other side, facing down. We must offer him more money. Do you have one hundred?”

She nodded, knowing the insult wasn’t Marek’s. The whole situation had become absurd to her, with Głwacki standing there,
thinking he was entitled to restitution for a stolen gravestone. “Can’t you threaten to report him?”

“America
ska?”
Głwacki indicated Ellen.

Marek nodded perfunctorily. He turned to her and, without expression, told her, “I cannot threaten him. We are strangers here.
He says it was here, on his property, so he used it. If we return the stone to the cemetery and he steals it back, who will
stop him? You must think of Rafael.”

Her dilemma made Ellen feel light-headed. Justice, the kind her father had taught her to believe in, required that this matter
be heard in court. It demanded that she refuse to pay. But such justice would not serve Rafael or Freidl with either the necessary
immediacy or in the long term. She smiled at Głwacki. “If a troll has to be paid so we can cross this bridge, I’m going to
pay him. May he rot in hell,” she said sweetly.

Głwacki said a few more words to Marek but agreed to take the hundred dollars.

Ellen continued to smile, in the hope that denying the existence of any ill will between them would continue to move the transaction
along more quickly.

Głwacki offered Marek a spade and dragged out a weathered piece of floorboard from the barn. With the spade, Marek began
to slowly dig around the adjoining stones and dirt so that he could maneuver the gravestone free of the barn’s weight.

Ellen noticed Marek tense at what Głwacki said to him next. She grabbed the stone at its mucky end and steadied it while
Marek did his work.

Głwacki picked up a broken ax handle near his feet and gave it to Marek, apparently with the suggestion that it be used to
keep the space wedged open after the gravestone was removed.

Once the handle was in place, Ellen began to ease the stone out by rocking it from side to side. But the weight of the barn
exacted a toll, and with each scraping sound, she imagined the letters and images on the other side were being defaced. That
she would be responsible for ruining Freidl’s stone brought tears to her eyes. She brushed them away with the back of her
hand, not wanting Głwacki to see her cry. It would not have mattered. He was standing a few feet away, in the reemerged sunlight,
wholly immersed in cutting down the floorboard he meant to use in the stone’s place.

It took at least ten minutes before they had the stone dislodged. It came free with a heavy
thump,
revealing that straw and a piece of wood, not stone, had lain directly beneath it, insulating the face from the violence
Ellen had thought she had done to it. “All right!” she shouted.

Marek picked it up and brushed off the bits of rotted wood that clung to both sides. The stone was a few inches in depth and
about two and a half feet high. Their rescue almost complete, Ellen peeked nervously at the underside to see if this was indeed
Freidl’s stone. But the stone was so encrusted with dirt, the engravings could not be seen. Perhaps Głwacki had stolen more
than one gravestone, she worried. Yet this ragged, broken-off end was so similar in size and shape to the one she had seen
in her father’s study, she felt almost sure it was Freidl’s.

With Marek’s help, Głwacki shoved the replacement board into place. He had become rather talkative. The pulsing of Marek’s
jaw indicated to Ellen that he was not pleased with what the old man was saying, although he offered noncommittal interjections
and nodded agreeably. She almost panicked when Głwacki grabbed a dry rag from the barn floor and took the sty-soggy end of
the stone from Marek. When he merely wrapped it in the rag and handed it back, she exhaled sharply with relief.

Marek pulled the package to his chest and told Ellen that she should pay Głwacki. Without wiping her hands, she counted out
the hundred dollars. “Money touched with shit,” she said pleasantly, and handed him the cash, which he pocketed efficiently.

“Good day,” they each said politely. Ellen eyed the distance to the Fiat, planning a clean extrication from the situation.

Głwacki tipped his cap; his odd smile returned.

All the way to the Fiat, Ellen’s heart beat violently.

Marek opened the trunk and laid the stone in a nest he fashioned from sheets of newspapers and scraps of cloth.

Głwacki stood at the door of his barn and watched them drive away.

When they were out of sight of the farm, Ellen turned to Marek. “What was he saying?”

Marek shifted his hands on the wheel and tightened his grip. Like hers, they were unnaturally red and covered with cuts from
the digging and scraping.

“He said he had people coming around before, asking for Jewish gravestones. Some of them offered him money. Not enough money,
he said. Some wanted just to take pictures. I knew he was saying this because he wanted me to make him an offer. He had his
price. He wanted one hundred American dollars. He knew you are a Jewish girl. He knew you had this money. He said I bargain
like a Jew.”

“How did you explain why you wanted the stone?”

“I said I was a student of local history and I heard he had one of the gravestones from the old Jewish cemetery. I said I
like to collect these things.” Marek shrugged. “That must have been why Głwacki decided to tell me a story about the war.
The Jews had all the gold, he said. The Poles had only dirt. Two Jews came and offered him their gold. He said he didn’t take
it. It was too dangerous to hide Jews. He had a wife and children. But they hid in his barn anyway, and he let them stay above,
in the hayloft. It was winter and very cold.”

Ellen thought of the widely set slats and how the snow must have blown in.

“He was saying this as if it was shameful to him, to hide Jews. Then four days later, the Nazis came. He had to give them
up. He had no choice. He said, ‘A Jew wasn’t worth a fly on a pig’s ass.’”

Ellen blanched.

“He said their names, the two Jews. He knew them from town.” Marek bit his lip. “I think there was more he did not tell me.
He talks in a circle. He makes excuses, even though I did not accuse him.” He wiped his cheek with his sleeve and glanced
nervously at Ellen. “He said he found the stone on his property. This must be a lie. How could it come here? Rafael said he
took it from the town, remember?”

“Yes.”

“He said it keeps away the ghosts. The two Jews, I suppose. I asked him, then why sell now? I didn’t understand his answer.
Something like if the stone goes to Jews, he has protection anyway, I think.” He shrugged. “But it is more possible he only
wanted more money, that he was looking for the highest price, for his hundred dollars American.”

Marek glanced furtively at Ellen, as if he was afraid she thought he had betrayed her by letting Głwacki get his price.

Sensing this, she said, “Don’t worry about Głwacki. We got the stone. That’s all that matters.”

He nodded, but he still looked upset. “We must stop and clean the stone. We cannot bring it to Rafael so dirty,” he said.

Ellen agreed. “And we better get the pig stuff off our own hands too.”

They stopped beside a well. A breeze blew back Marek’s long hair as he got out of the Fiat. Ellen met him at the back of the
car. They stood beside each other, looking at their reflections in the rear window. “I’m sorry about what I said before, at
Rafael’s house,” she said.

“Yes. I am sorry also,” he whispered.

“This was so incredibly generous of you.”

He looked at the ground, embarrassed. “
Generous
is not a good word for any of this,” he said. “This taking of a person’s memory and throwing it in pig’s dirt. I think the
whole town must know he has this gravestone.” He seemed so shaken that she put her arms around him.