. My back started hurting first. In that place where the vertebrae are embedded in the pelvis, as if at their base. For some reason, this area of the human body was called the sacrum. This pain would forever accompany me in the future whenever I stood or walked too long. It challenged my belief in the axiom of man as an upright animal. I guessed that if I had remained in a more animalistic position, the unpleasant pain, which after an hour transformed into painful muscle stiffness, would not have appeared at all. I stood before my father, in the crush, I could feel his hands folded in prayer just above the aching area of my back. I might have reached his shoulders then, and all the aunts would have told me how tall I was. None of them said I was fat—that was what my friends at school said. Somehow, I didn't care much what my friends at school said.
I stood in the crush and gloom of a church that the postcards available at Ruch kiosks described as an example of modern architecture. To me, it was simply a very ugly church, resembling a granary rather than a house of God. It was light years away from the soaring Gothic edifices or the magnificent dignity of Romanesque churches. But even that didn't matter to me at the time. Besides, I wasn't familiar with beautiful churches back then, and I didn't understand the connection between architecture and faith. But I was already beginning to suspect that standing in church, enduring backache, the stuffiness, and the crowds, might have little to do with faith. But it was a faint premonition, and rather insignificant given the overall atmosphere surrounding the approaching Easter. At home, from morning until late at night, my mother was busy in the kitchen—chopping, cooking, simmering, seasoning, baking. Everything gleamed with cleanliness, and my childhood mind was filled with anticipation. I didn't really know what for, but it was a pleasant feeling, and I willingly gave in to it. Holy Week brought respite from my school friends, who noticed—unlike my aunts—that I was overweight. It also brought a new order—a festive sense of order. The day then slowly flowed toward evening services. Naturally, I went with my father.
It was dark and cold that day. The holidays fell in March, and this year March was still more wintry than spring-like. The Church was full – the government was popular and materialistic, and the people, as usual, clung to the faith of their forefathers with a truly peasant stubbornness, though perhaps thoughtlessly. It was Friday, the day on which the Romans nailed – as they did every year – Christ to the cross. They condemn the incarnate God, a man so good that he only once became angry, to one of the most cruel deaths ever devised by man. The cross – an executioner's instrument that became a religious symbol. This monstrous duality – seemingly hidden – persisted somewhere in the subconscious in the form of the superstition that children should not be given crosses on chains, but only medallions depicting the Virgin Mary. As if to prolong the age of innocence for children, to shield them from the cruel truth of the death of their God. But such were not the motivations behind this behavior. These could be called humanist, but reality grinned with superstition. "Don't give her a cross for First Communion! She has time to carry a cross; it's too early now!" my aunt, my father's older sister, would say to her daughter, whose child was receiving First Communion for the first time. So, the cross worn around a child's neck was supposed to be some kind of anti-amulet, a challenge to fate, or even an encouragement for fate to deal unceremoniously with the culprit. I wonder what Orthodoxy would say?
Yet it was so obvious: Christ died for humanity. Bad soldiers nailed Him to the cross. I remember my grandmother watching some Italian film from the series "The Life of Jesus." I remember how moved she was and how she railed against those who nailed the fair-haired young man to the cross. I'm sure my grandmother would have loved Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."
Why did he die? I don't know, I never asked. And then, at a meeting with Father Józef Tischner, I heard from the philosopher's lips: "He didn't have to die, there didn't have to be suffering..." How many faces of faith there are. But then, on Good Friday, I was still far from these observations. My back ached, and I could smell the sharp perfume of the redheaded woman whose coiffed head was right in front of my nose. If it weren't for Christian love, especially obligatory in a holy place, I would have hated her for her hairstyle and for that smell, which almost made me nauseous. Yet all of this—the backache, the stuffiness, and the smell of her cheap deodorant—I wanted to endure it bravely, because what was it, after all, compared to the death of the Innocent on the cross? Now that I think about it, I think Father Tischner wasn't entirely right—Christ had to die. Not only to atone for our sins—I still don't quite understand why the God-Man was killed for my stupidity and evil thoughts. And it angers me a little that, without asking if I wanted this burnt offering, I was burdened with the sacrifice of life—not just a human life, but a divine life at that. And if that weren't enough, the burden is past, so there's nothing I can do about it—even if I live exemplarily until the end of my days, this Galilean will be nailed to the cross every year. And he will suffer just as he did then under the sun of Palestine. But perhaps He had to die for another reason as well? Perhaps He had to die so that the incarnation could be complete? Perhaps Father Tischner didn't take this into account? Because the God-Man, just as He was born of a woman, had to die like every human being—in suffering and loneliness. Perhaps this is precisely why this terrible ordeal with suffering and then crucifixion—to show God incarnate in man, a tortured body that dominates the mind, that fills the mind with echoes of suffering? "Eli lama sabachthani?!" – the cry of a man abandoned by God... And if he had to die like a man, perhaps he also lived like a man? Perhaps Scorsese was right in portraying Christ as subject to the most human desires? But these issues didn't enter my mind then either, although it seems that a few years earlier the authorities had reached an agreement with the Episcopate not to release "The Last Temptation of Christ" in Polish cinemas.
I stood in the granary-like church in Sochaczew, right in front of my father, hearing his singing—perhaps not pure, but very sincere—and inhaling the awful smell of deodorant used by the worshipper in front of me. It all took too long. It was too stuffy, too dark, and too uncomfortable. I wanted to go home and soak up the pre-Christmas atmosphere. But for now, I had to endure the veneration of the cross. This was to be the last part of the ceremony. Perhaps the most depressing. The mournful tones of the organ and the wailing of a choir composed of people with little understanding of singing completed the atmosphere of mourning. Add to this the dimness of the church and the crowd, which had skillfully formed into two lines that snaked along the entire nave, transforming behind the last pews into a jostling crowd thick with the smell and warmth of human bodies. The talent for queuing was as common back then as the ability to survive in a crowd pressing for something good. It didn't matter whether that good was oranges from a local shop or contact with the sacred—a kiss placed on the feet of the Crucified. The bodies of the faithful transformed into living battering rams: widely spaced feet ensured the ram's stability and mobility, which ensured rapid passage from the crowd to the queue in the main nave. All this was done to reach one of the two enormous crucifixes held by pink-faced altar boys. This was precisely what the adoration of the cross was all about. After pushing through the crowd and trudging along in a long line, one found oneself face to face with the five-foot-tall cross, to which one had to approach and kiss the lower half of the crucified body. It wasn't clear to me what one should kiss: feet, knees, calves, or perhaps the nails in the feet, or the dark red trickle of blood wrapped around the ankles? It wasn't the first time I'd participated in such a ritual, but I still didn't understand its meaning. It was probably about paying homage. I never asked my father about it. We never talked about matters of faith. We'd always gone to church together. My father and I, driving through the village in our grass-green Fiat 125p, or walking through the streets of Sochaczew with a crowd of fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, all similarly clad in—as my father used to say—church shoes. We'd always gone to church together, but we never talked about God. God simply was. But then, on Good Friday in the granary church, with another inhale of cheap perfume, with the trampling of a shoe by the heavy heel of a faithful person, with a momentary loss of balance and the necessity of leaning on the arm of a slender brunette who smiled with humiliating forbearance, I grew angry at the One who had imposed himself on humanity with his bloody sacrifice and now demanded that we kiss his plaster images covered in gold paint every year. No, I wasn't thinking about humiliation: after all, the faithful are there to kiss the feet of gods.But doing so in such a demonstrative manner in a public place began to look suspicious to my childish mind. Next to the altar boys stood lectors in ankle-length albs. Each held a white cloth, which he used to wipe the Savior's feet after each kiss. So the moment of intimacy with the deity was further limited by this assistant and his handkerchief, which removed the trace of the servile homage immediately after it was rendered.
I glanced to the side, suddenly filled with anxiety. The cleaning lady from my school was pushing past me, singing. She was a powerful woman, very much like one of my many aunts, the ones who didn't notice my fatness, which was obvious to my classmates. The cleaning ladies at our school wielded considerable power. If we'd known Greek mythology back then, we probably would have called them Cerberus. They fulfilled a similar role: they stood in the narrow doorway leading from the hall to the school corridor, armed with a broom handle and perhaps a floor cloth. Their job was to check whether a student had changed shoes for the school's junior monsters. Proper footwear was the first and most essential requirement for admission to school. All future knowledge acquired in this institution thus became dependent on the condition of footwear, and the guardian of this criterion was a woman equipped with a phenomenal ability to tear herself apart in the hallway and possessing incredible skill with a combat rag, often landing on the backs of unruly students who, contrary to the arrangements and rules, were so brazen in their pursuit of learning that they ignored the janitor's office and forced their way through her gate in inappropriate footwear. Instead of being chased, they received a painful blow to the back or, naturally, to the lower regions of the body. Now this most courageous woman, performing her duties, unceremoniously pushed her way in and took her place ahead of me in the queue, the source of which we had just reached. Her broad back was level with my nose—she was a head taller than me and half as wide, and it was I they called "fat"... It took me a moment to realize what that meant. If she's standing in front of me, it means she'll kiss the Savior before me, and that means I'll kiss her right behind her... it's almost as if I kissed her herself, a thought flashed through my mind. I wanted to look at my father, to find hope in him, but my gaze landed on the brunette I'd brushed against a few minutes earlier. She was standing in the line next to me, a few people ahead of me. Her head was bowed, her hands folded, not on her stomach like most of the faithful, but crossed over her chest. A feeling of shame gripped me, the source of which I couldn't pinpoint. The thought flashed through my mind that I'd rather be standing behind her. I was also ashamed of this thought, as the image of the suffering of the God-Man approached. I leaned out of the throbbing queue to watch the rite. People were slowly approaching the altar boys. Then the same sequence took place very quickly: the worshipper kneeling, a quick movement of the head in a gesture of prostration and a quick kiss, wherever it hit – on the knees, calves, feet, then getting up and leaving, a short and careless movement of the cloth wiping God's feet, soiled by human lips.
I saw the brunette woman perform the same ritual: she approached, slowly, very slowly, kneeling, tilting her head slightly, lifting her chin, pursing her lips in a way that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, and kissing the Savior's feet. Then she quickly stood up and disappeared into the crowd on the other side of the pews. The line moved forward, the organ played terribly sadly, I couldn't breathe, longing to be outside on the cool March evening. The cleaning woman's back suddenly vanished from my sight. She was already kneeling, kissing the Savior. I tried to see where, to what place. But then the altar boy's hand moved quickly. I hesitated for a moment. I felt Father nudge me forward slightly. I took a bigger step. The entire church fell silent. I no longer heard the organ or the singing, my back no longer ached, or smelled the awful smell of cheap perfume from the Ruch kiosk. I knelt before the crucifix. The altar boy looked at me blankly. He's silent, waiting with the entire church for what I'll do. I'm kneeling badly, I'm kneeling terribly. Too far from the cross! I can't get up and kneel again, I have to reach out. I feel sweat beading my forehead and trickling down my back. Everyone holds their breath, looking at me. So instead of kissing on my knees, I rise and, hunched over, smothered by my own awkwardness in kneeling, yet simultaneously overwhelmed by the Majesty of the Crucified One, hunched over and actually still kneeling, I, this wretched human being who has no idea what happened two thousand years ago in Palestine, under the hot midday sun, humbly bring my face close to the plaster, or perhaps plastic, legs of God. I have the body of Christ before me. His knees are at the level of my nose, his emaciated calves, sculptured with taut muscles at the level of his mouth. I feel the disapproval of the crowd behind me, my father's shame at being so clumsy. My back, exhausted from two hours of standing and now suddenly forced into a new shape, burns like a living flame. I don't open my mouth for a kiss. I open it wide, animalistically pucker my lips, revealing sharp fangs, and bite the Savior's calf. I clench my jaw. Warm blood flows down my throat, my teeth sink into the succulent flesh. The bush roars all around, teeming with creatures fighting for survival. Food ensures survival. One must eat to live. Eating isn't easy—it takes a lot of effort to catch up with a sick doe abandoned by the herd, to drive off the wolf and jackal competition, to bring something back to the cave for the rest of the group... It seems to me that at this point I should be dying for sacrilege, that the altar boy will now kidnap me and carry me to the priest. I tear myself away from God's calf. My teeth and jaw ache. I glance at your calf again. Nothing has happened to it. The altar boy, his expression unchanged, works with his cloth. I turn from the altar and follow the crowd toward the exit. My father follows me. But now I feel even more alone.
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