The Farmhand

From the cycle “The Limbo Zone”, Story Three

Click. It wasn’t steel striking steel; it was fate itself snapping at the joint, bone grinding into bone without lubrication.

Not a roar. Not an explosion. Not a shot. A click — like a lock snapping shut. A click after which you know: the door will not open. Never.

The body in the doorway lay so deliberately, so theatrically, that it seemed printer’s ink should flow from its wounds instead of blood. An arm was stretched forward—fingers clenched into a fist, as if the man had tried to grasp the air, to seize the moment that existed before the click. The uniform was Polish. Real. The man was not. The man was from a prison; they had dressed him in that uniform six hours ago, and now he lay motionless. From beneath his collar, where his neck was, something warm and dark trickled out — and that something was the only honest thing in the Gleiwitz radio station.

Kazimir looked at his fingernails. Clean, short, they glowed in the half-light like tiny headstones over a life never lived. A worker’s hand. The hand of a man who once kneaded dough, fixed fences, held a child. A hand he did not know and would never know. A hand that was now an exhibit, a piece of evidence, a prop in the play he was—no, not playing — performing.

“Faster,” Mueller said behind him.

His voice was flat, as flat as a ruler. As flat as a column of figures. As flat as a knife’s edge. Kazimir knew that voice. He had heard it before — not here in Gleiwitz, but earlier, earlier, earlier, in that interval between “was” and “became,” where a man ceases to be himself and becomes a tool. A screwdriver. A gun barrel. A finger pressing a trigger.

He tore his eyes away from the hand and walked inside.

Gleiwitz Radio Station. August 31, 1939. Ten in the evening. He was here not as a Pole — though he was a Pole, born in Poznań, raised on a street where they spoke Polish, schooled under a portrait of Piłsudski, a regular at a church where they prayed in Polish. He was here not as an officer — though he was an officer, had taken an oath, had believed, had thought that a uniform was honor and honor was something that could not be sold. He was here as a hand. As a voice. As a function.

The function was being executed.

Three bodies already lay at different points in the building. Mueller called them “containers” — without irony, without loathing, with the same calm one uses to name objects: a chair, a table, a container. One at the entrance. The second in the corridor. The third by the stairs. They were dressed in Polish uniforms. They had Polish documents. They had hands with short-clipped nails. They had bodies that once walked, breathed, ate cabbage, and slept under the same blanket with someone.

He stood before the microphone.

The lamp — dim, yellow — burned on the desk. The microphone —black, round — stood in the center of the table like a chalice in the center of an altar. He looked at the microphone. The microphone looked at him. Between them — nothing. A wire stretching to the transmitter. A wave heading into the ether. A voice that the whole world would hear — or no one — because the world and no one are the same thing when the voice is a lie.

“Sprechen Sie,” Mueller whispered.

He leaned in. His lips touched the mesh. The mesh — cold, metallic— left the taste of iron on his lips. The taste of a coin. The taste of blood. The taste of what he was about to say, which would cost him, them, everyone — and he knew it, and the knowledge did not stop him, because knowledge never stops anyone; knowledge is merely a light that illuminates the path to the abyss but does not close it.

“Tu mówi polskie radio…”

The voice was his. Real. Polish. Without an accent. The voice of a man born in Poznań, raised on a street where children played ball and mothers called them home for dinner in Polish, and for dinner, there was borscht, and the borscht was red, as red as the earth, and that earth was his.

The microphone was the black nipple of an iron mother feeding the world poison. Kazimir pressed his lips to it, and the steel was salty. As he said, “Tu mówi…”, he felt his own childhood bedroom, the smell of lunch, his mother’s voice, and Poznań covered in chestnuts all drain out of him with that Polish word. He wasn’t just reading a text — he was spitting his guts into the air, turning into a hollow shell, a farmhand of the void.

“Attention! This is Gleiwitz! The radio station is in Polish hands!”

Every word was a stone. Every stone was for a foundation. The foundation of a meat grinder. He didn’t shoot—no, he did shoot, he shot the fourth container—but shooting was easier. Shooting is a click. But speaking—that was worse. Because to shoot is to kill one. To speak is to kill everyone who will be killed after, because your voice is the justification, your voice is the pretext, your voice is a decree written not in ink but in the air that entered the microphone and left the speaker. And in that air is your signature, your oath, your motherland, sold for thirty pieces of silver and a German passport.

He finished.

The lamp burned.

The microphone was silent.

Mueller said: “Good.” And nothing more. Because “good” is all one needs to say to a tool after the work is done.

He went out.

The night — an August night, warm — hung over Gleiwitz, and the smell of grass was in the air —sweet, thick, almost intrusive — the smell that lingers at the end of summer when the grass has already decided to die but hasn’t died yet, and so it smells strong, desperate, like the flowers one carries to a cemetery.

He walked along the sidewalk.

And he felt something inside him break.

Not sharply. Not like a bone breaks — with a snap, with pain, with a scream. Quieter. Deeper. Like a foundation breaks—without sound, without cracks; the building simply settles by a millimeter one day, and that millimeter is the point of no return. The building doesn’t know it has settled, because buildings know nothing. And he was already a building, and the foundation had already cracked, and the crack ran down into the darkness, into the part below the ground, below the roots, below everything. He walked along the sidewalk and listened to that silence—the internal, deep, unspoken silence of a man who had ceased to be a Pole and had become no one.

He never spoke another word.

Not one.

…

A ditch. By the roadside. Filthy. He had been lying in it — three days? a week? — he didn’t count. You count when there is a reason. There was no reason.

An old man found him in the morning. Dragged him to the farm—by the legs, head down, the way one drags a sack, or a drowned man to dry him out and see if anything valuable remains in his pockets.

He dragged him. Laid him on a bench. Gave him water. Kazimir drank. He didn’t eat. He lay and stared at the ceiling — wooden, dark, with a crack running from wall to wall like the border he had crossed, and crossed, and crossed again, until he no longer knew where the border was and where he was.

“Who are you?” the old man asked.

Silence.

“A Pole?”

Silence.

“A German?”

Silence.

“A Russian?”

Silence.

The old man looked at him — long and hard, with that peasant gaze that needs no answer because the answer is in the soil, the weather, the cow dung, the wind’s direction, the smell of rain. The old man read him — not by his words, but by his silence. By the way the silence lay upon him — heavy, damp, like a wet blanket. By the way his hands lay — along his body, neither clenched nor open — the hands of a man who has stopped grasping and stopped letting go. The hands of a walking corpse.

“Fine,” the old man said. “Stay. Just work. No need to talk. There’s enough of that as it is.”

He stayed.

The next morning, he discovered he could not speak. Not that he “didn’t want to” — he could not. His throat was closed, the way gates are closed after a funeral — not with a bang, but with that specific click after which you know: no one else will enter. He tried — moved his lips, opened his mouth, pushed air out— but there was no sound. Only breath. Only silence. The very silence he had sought all his life — and found. In Gleiwitz. In a ditch. On a farm.

The old man — Yarema — didn’t notice. Or he did. It didn’t matter.

Kazimir learned the farm.

He learned the well — how to lower the bucket, how to haul the rope, how to drink the water that smelled of iron and depth, a depth with neither bottom nor reflection. He learned the barn — how the pitchfork entered the hay, how the hay rose and flew, heavy and golden — no, not golden, grey and dull — but in the rays of sunset it sometimes seemed golden, and that seemed like a deception, a trick of the eye, a trick of a brain that could not endure the void and began to fabricate beauty, color, gold.

He learned the sitting room — how the table was set, how the plates were arranged, how the glasses stood — three of them, for the two of them, because the third was for — whom?

He never asked. Not because he didn’t want to. Because he knew the answer. The third was for the one who used to be. For Yarema’s wife. For his sons. For someone who sat at this table and drank horilka, and now — does not. For the empty chair. For the void, which is not an absence but a presence — a strong, crushing, undeniable presence of the one who is gone.

He learned the void.

He learned how to sleep in the hayloft — among the mice and spiders, under the rain that hammered the roof all night, until the hay grew damp and heavy, dark like hair after a storm. He learned how to wake before dawn — in the darkness, in the cold, in the silence where you can hear the hay breathe. He learned how to eat in silence — at the table, next to Yarema — and the silence between them was so thick you could cut it, cut it with a knife like you cut lard — in thick, almost obscenely thick slices, white with pink, pink with white.

He learned the silence…

And then they arrived.

…

He saw the car from the barn.

He was standing in the hayloft, working — the pitchfork entering the hay, lifting, the hay flying — and suddenly, through a gap between the boards, he saw it: a “Kübelwagen.” Grey. Dusty. With a hole in the canvas.

He froze.

Three men. In uniform. In black. One senior.

Black.

He recognized the officer instantly — not by his rank, not by his collar tabs, not by the Totenkopf on his cap. By his posture. By the way the senior man sat — upright, head tilted slightly, the tilt of a man accustomed to being obeyed. Accustomed to it the way one is accustomed to breathing: without noticing, without thinking, simply — breathing.

He had seen such men before.

In Gleiwitz. In the corridor. In that building whose name he had burned from his memory, but whose smell remained: the smell of chalk, machine oil, sweat, and beneath the sweat — the smell of a command, that specific, slightly sweet, acrid smell emitted by the skin of a man certain of his own righteousness.

He came down.

He crossed the yard. He stood in the doorway of the parlor.

The man in black sat at the table. Black uniform, officer’s gloves removed and lying next to his plate, neatly, fingers to fingers, like the hands of a man accustomed to everything being in its place. His face was stern, thin, with a jawline that would not yield. His forehead was knowing, lined with wrinkles.

The officer looked at him.

And he looked at the officer.

And in that gaze — short, a mere second — something flickered. Not a recognition of a face. Not a recognition of rank. A recognition of the void. The very same void that stood in place of a name. The very same silence that filled the throat. The very same function. They were both functions. He was Mueller’s function. The other was the Reich’s function. Both were cogs. Both were hands carrying out an order. Both were voices reading a text. Both were fingers pressing a trigger.

The officer looked and saw. Or he saw. Not him. Himself. In him. His own reflection — in a stranger’s face. And he saw — in the officer — himself. As he had been — before the shot. Before the click. Before that night when the lock snapped shut.

He turned away. Returned to the pitchfork.

The pitchfork stood by the wall. Steel. Three-tined. He took it. The cast-iron handle — cold, rough — settled into his palm the way a pistol grip settles: familiar, precise, like a key into a lock.

He returned to the hay.

He worked.

He heard — through the wall, through the stillness, through the silence that lay between him and the world like a gasket between two halves of an engine: Yarema’s voice — low, rusty. The officer’s voice — dry, level. The driver’s voice — quiet. They spoke of the war, the retreat, the roads, the petrol. They spoke — the way machines speak: producing meaning without investing anything in it but fuel.

And then — the horilka.

Four glasses.

For the three of them.

He stood in the corridor, behind the door, and watched — through the crack — the fourth glass. Full. Standing before the empty chair. And the officer — looked at it. And the officer — saw. The same thing he saw: a void that was filled. An absence that was present. A chair where no one sat — and a glass that no one drank.

And the radio.

A voice — female — from nowhere. Spanish? Ladino? A language he did not know. A song he had never heard. A melody — slow, viscous, broken — a melody that carried grief, pure, distilled grief from which everything had been evaporated — names, dates, circumstances — leaving only that which makes something inside you tighten, something for which there is no name, for anatomy knows no organ that aches from another’s singing.

It was death itself singing, trying on a woman’s dress. And he listened.

And it seemed to him — for one moment, for one fraction of a second that can hold only pure, absolute, surgical horror — that they were singing for him. Not to him. Not near him. For him. Like a dirge is sung for the dead. Like a requiem is sung for a sinner. Like a song is sung for the one who stands in the corridor, in the darkness, with a pitchfork in his hands, listening, unable to leave because the voice — it snags, the way a needle snags in fabric, stitch by stitch, and every stitch sews him to the floor, to the wall, to this second, to this moment in which he finally hears.

Llorando. Por tu amor…

The song cut off.

Silence.

The static of the radio.

He stood there.

The horilka stood there. Four glasses. One —full. An empty chair.

…

He got up earlier than usual. Earlier than Yarema. Earlier than the rooster. Earlier than the light.

He took the pitchfork. Went to the barn.

The morning was grey. Fog lay over the field — white, thick, motionless. A fog in which there was nothing — no road, no trees, no farm, no himself. Only whiteness. Only the void. Only the pitchfork in his hands and the hay before his eyes.

He worked.

The pitchfork entered the hay. The hay rose. The hay flew.

He thought.

No. He didn’t think. He counted. As he had counted in Gleiwitz. As he had counted in the ditch. As he had counted all his life, since he realized that counting is the only thing that doesn’t betray you.

One body — the SS officer. Sleeping in the parlor, on the bench, under his greatcoat. Head to the side. Breathing steady. Pitchfork — to the chest. Silently.

The second — the sergeant. By the radio. Sleeping in the car, leaning against the door. Pitchfork—in the back. Between the ribs.

The third — the driver. Next to the sergeant. Later.

Three bodies. And the old man. Yarema. What of him? He doesn’t know. He sleeps. In the morning he will wake. He will find three corpses. He will get used to it.

He counted and counted, and the numbers tallied, and the columns were straight, and the calculation was precise: three bodies, three strikes, three minutes, one pitchfork, and then — the road, to the east, the Reds, forgiveness or not, it didn’t matter — and at some point — between the third and fourth breath, between two heartbeats, between one stitch and another, he realized he would not do it.

Not because he couldn’t.

Not because he was afraid.

Because — what for?

They are fleeing. The Reich has collapsed. The Russians are coming. The uniform is a shroud. The car is a coffin. All roads lead to the same Zone. To the “grey zone.” To that same space — between. Between the living and the dead. Between those you killed and those you didn’t. Between the name you lost and the name you carry.

They are the same.

No. Not the same. Worse. Better. It doesn’t matter. They are part of the same machine. He is part of the same machine. The machine chews. The machine spits out. The machine knows no languages. The machine knows no names. Only functions: a trigger, a sight, a microphone, a steering wheel, a pitchfork.

He stood there.

And the pitchfork stood there.

And the hay waited.

And suddenly it became golden.

Not the way straw becomes golden in the rays of sunset — warm, honeyed, alive. This gold was different. Dazzling. Acidic. Unbearable. Every stalk burned with a small, precise, internal fire — a fire that does not warm but blinds. The hay flew through the air, and the air — burned, and he stood in that fire, and the pitchfork in his hands was golden, and his hands were golden, and he — was golden.

He knew it wasn’t real.

He knew it was his brain. His tired, wounded, scorched brain, weeks of silence, weeks of stillness. And here was the golden hay. The golden air. The golden he.

And in the gold, a face.

His. Own.

The way it was before. Before the shot. Before the click. Before Gleiwitz. Before that night when he ceased to be who he was and became no one. A young officer — twenty-five? twenty-seven? — in a uniform that still smelled of the tailor’s shop, in boots that hadn’t yet rubbed blisters. Standing in a square. Listening to the anthem. Believing. Believing that a uniform is honor. Believing that an order is law. Believing that there is a difference between “I shot” and “they told me to shoot.”

He saw himself.

And the SS officer stood behind him. No — not behind him. Beside him. Beside him — in the golden light, beside him — in this hallucination, in this delirium, in this — recognition. Two men, two mirrors, two reflections — one in the other. And both empty. And both — golden. And both — in nowhere.

The light faded; the gold vanished.

He stood by the barn. In a filthy shirt. With a pitchfork in his hands. The hay —grey. The air — murky. The fog — white. Everything as it was. Everything as always.

The officer stood by the car and looked at him. Black uniform. Black gloves. Black eyes, in which he saw himself.

The officer blinked. Got into the car.

The engine started. The car drove away.

…

He entered the parlor. Yarema was standing by the table. Four glasses. All of them — empty. The officer — had finished his. The sergeant — had finished his. The driver — had finished his. The fourth— empty…

The old man looked at him. At the pitchfork. At his face.

“They’ve left,” he said. Quietly. The way a man speaks who knows the other already knows. “You didn’t kill them.”

Not a question. A statement. A fact. Like the fact of rain. Like the fact of winter. Like the fact of an empty glass and an empty chair.

“You could have,” Yarema added. “But you didn’t.”

The other remained silent.

The old man took the horilka. Poured — into two glasses. One — for himself. The other — before the spot where the farmhand stood. Not before the chair. Simply before him. A glass on the table. Next to the empty ones. Next to the void.

“We are all in the same field now,” Yarema said. “Those who sowed, those who reaped, those who just stood there. The earth is one.”

His voice was low, rusty, unlubricated by conversation. The voice of a well-sweep. The voice of the earth.

The other took the glass. The horilka was murky, yellow, bitter. He knew the bitterness wasn’t from the horilka. The bitterness was from the gold that had been and had vanished. The bitterness was from the face that had been his and had become no one’s. The bitterness was from the pitchfork that had been in his hands and had entered no one.

He drank.

Set it down.

Yarema watched. The old man’s gaze — that same roadside, ditch-side gaze — the gaze that reads not by words but by silence. By the way the silence stood — heavy, damp, unspoken.

“Will you stay?” he asked.

The man stood in the doorway. The morning behind him. Cold, dewy, with that crystal sharpness that comes at the end of September when summer has died but autumn hasn’t yet decided what to be. Behind him — the parlor, the table, four glasses, the old man. Before him — the yard, the barn, the apple tree, the road. The road to the east. To the west. To the Zone. To the “grey zone.” To nowhere.

He nodded.

He stayed.

Because there was nowhere to go. Because all roads lead to nowhere. Because he was the same. Like everyone else.

Yarema took the glass — the fourth one, the one that had stood before the empty chair — and put it away in the cupboard. Closed the door. Clicked the lock.

The fourth was no more.

Three remained. His. Yarema’s. And the empty one.

He looked at it.

“Kazimir,” Yarema said.

He froze.

The old man had never called him by his name. Never. He was the farmhand. The mute. The man without a name. The man who came from the ditch. The man who worked, ate, slept — and kept silent. And the old man had kept silent. And the silence between them had been a contract, a gasket, that stillness that stands between two walls and lets through neither sound, nor light, nor truth.

“Kazimir,” Yarema repeated, and in his voice — in that low, rusty, unlubricated voice—there was something that hadn’t been there before. Not forgiveness. Not condemnation. Something third. Something for which there is no word: recognition? humility? acceptance? All of those together. All of those — in one name.

Kazimir.

An old Polish name. A name he had burned — along with his uniform, along with his shoulder boards, along with the eagle on his cap, along with his oath, along with the microphone, along with the shot. A name he had buried. In the stillness. In the silence. In the ditch.

And now the old man had pulled it out. Out of the ditch. Out of the stillness. Out of the silence. He simply named it. As one names an object that was lying around and was picked up. As one names a child who was lost and was found.

“Kazimir,” Yarema said for the third time. “Sit. Drink.”

He sat.

The old man sat too.

They drank.

The horilka was murky, yellow, bitter. The same as yesterday. The same as tomorrow. The same as always. Horilka that you cut — the way you cut lard, the way you cut time, the way you cut life — in thick, almost obscenely thick slices, white with pink, pink with white.

Between them, the table. On the table — three glasses. His. Yarema’s. And the empty one.

The fourth was in the cupboard. The lock clicked — the fourth was no more.

But the empty one remained.

It stood on the table between the two full ones — and it was fuller than both, because the void holds more than any content. It holds everyone. Yarema’s wife. His sons. The Poles who were sold. The Germans who bought. The Russians who are coming. Those he shot in Gleiwitz. Those he didn’t kill — here, today, in the morning, in the hayloft, with a pitchfork in his hands, in the golden light that wasn’t there.

He looked at the empty glass.

And the glass looked at him.

And between them was everything.

← The Limbo Zone. Prologue