Selected Polish Tales | Page 5

smoked a pipe, but when his eyes closed and his head fell too far forward, he righted himself and rested his right elbow on his left fist. He puffed out the grey smoke and dozed alternately, spitting now and then into the middle of the room or shifting his hands. When the pipestem began to twitter like a young sparrow, he knocked the bowl a few times against the bench, emptied the ashes, and poked his finger down. Yawning, he got up and laid the pipe on the shelf.
He glanced under his brows at Magda and shrugged his shoulders. The liveliness of the girl who skipped about while she was washing her dishes, roused a contemptuous compassion in him. He knew well what it felt like to have no desire for skipping about, and how great the weight of a man's head, hands, and feet can be when he has been hard at work.
He put on his thick hobnailed boots and a stiff sukmana,[1] fastened a hard strap round his waist, and put on his high sheepskin cap. The heaviness in his limbs increased, and it came into his mind that it would be more suitable to be buried in a bundle of straw after a huge bowl of peeled barley-soup and another of cheese dumplings, than to go to work. But he put this thought aside, and went out slowly into the yard. In his snuff-coloured sukmana and black cap he looked like the stem of a pine, burnt at the top.
[Footnote 1: Sukmana, a long linen coat, often elaborately embroidered.]
The barn door was open, and by sheer perversity some bundles of straw were peeping out, luring Slimak to a doze. But he turned away his head and looked at one of the hills where he had sown oats that morning. He fancied the yellow grain in the furrows was looking frightened, as if trying in vain to hide from the sparrows that were picking it up.
'You will eat me up altogether,' Slimak muttered. With heavy steps he approached the shed, took out the two harrows, and led the chestnuts out of the stable; one was yawning and the other moved his lips, looking at Slimak and blinking his eyes, as if he thought: 'Would you not prefer to doze and not to drag us up the hill? Didn't we do enough work for you yesterday?' Slimak nodded, as if in answer, and drove off.
Seen from below, the thick-set man and the horses with heads hanging down, seemed to harrow the blue sky, moving a few hundred paces backward and forward. As often as they reached the edge of the sown field, a flight of sparrows rose up, twittering angrily, and flew over them like a cloud, then settled at the other end, shrieking continually in astonishment that earth should be poured on to such lovely grain.
'Silly fool! Silly fool! What a silly fool!' they cried.
'Bah!' murmured Slimak, cracking his whip at them, 'if I listened to you idlers, you and I would both starve under the fence. The beggars are playing the deuce here!'
Certainly Slimak got little encouragement in his labour. Not only that the sparrows noisily criticized his work, and the chestnuts scornfully whisked their tails under his nose, but the harrows also objected, and resisted at every little stone or clod of earth. The tired horses continually stumbled, and when Slimak cried 'Woa, my lads!' and they went on, the harrows again resisted and pulled them back. When the worried harrows moved on for a bit, stones got into the horses' feet or under his own shoes, or choked up, and even broke the teeth of the harrows. Even the ungrateful earth offered resistance.
'You are worse than a pig!' the man said angrily. 'If I took to scratching a pig's back with a horsecomb, it would lie down quietly and grunt with gratitude. But you are always bristling, as if I did you an injury!'
The sun took up the affronted earth's cause, and threw a great sheaf of light across the ashen-coloured field, where dark and yellow patches were visible.
'Look at that black patch,' said the sun, 'the hill was all black like that when your father sowed wheat on it. And now look at the yellow patch where the stony ground comes out from under the mould and will soon possess all your land.'
'But that is not my fault,' said Slimak.
'Not your fault?' whispered the earth; 'you yourself eat three times a day, but how often do you feed me? It is much if it is once in eight years. And then you think you give me a great deal, but a dog would starve on such fare. You know that you always grudge me the manure, shame on you!'
The penitent peasant hung his head.
'And