2

2

Fornol sat comfortably in his deep armchair. A powerful lamp beside him illuminated the room. A fire was crackling in the stove, and the scent of herbal tea, brewed just a moment ago, filled the air. On a table pulled up to the armchair were several open books and Fornol's notebook, which he always carried with him.

Fornol quickly solved the inscription on the tombstone found in the grave. He found several yellowed, old German novels printed in Gothic script on a bookshelf. He wasn't familiar with these letters, so he never picked them up. He'd often considered giving them away or simply moving them to the attic. But now they were useful. They helped him quickly decipher the few cemetery words he'd jotted down in his notebook. He searched the books for short words he had no trouble reading, containing unfamiliar letters from the tombstone. To be sure, he selected a few words whose meaning he was absolutely certain of. This way, he found and deciphered each letter, and then each word, from the tombstone. Of course, the letters on the tombstone were uneven and only roughly matched the shape of the letters in the books, but Fornol had no problem with that. He was certain the inscription read:

"The Sonne wirft

die Flügel dort

und Tote setzt

das Unheil fort.

" "Some innocent children's rhyme, if not for the fact where we found it," he said to himself. Fornol enjoyed all sorts of puzzles, rebuses, and crosswords. "The gray cells can't grow old, or we're finished then," he used to say. Despite his age, he was probably the best chess player in the village, when sober, of course. He solved chess problems from newspapers as adeptly as crosswords. People respected him for his unusual knowledge, often seeking his advice on various matters, confiding their own problems to him. And there were those, more superstitious, who—because of his activities at the cemetery—feared him and steered clear of him. Unfortunately, his other great love was beer, and there were weeks when he devoted most of his free time to this fascination. Even when working at the cemetery, he always quenched his thirst with beer. "Water is for fish"—that was one of his own sayings, one he had for every occasion.

In the yard, Fornol's dog, Miś, barked briefly and casually, a sign that he recognized the visitor. Fornol got up from his armchair and went to the window. In the light of the street lamp standing right next to his gate, he recognized Skowronek's silhouette. The old man went to open the door. Skowronek staggered into the room and began rubbing his frozen hands over the stove.

"I couldn't sit still in the pub," he began to explain, "and Krzysiek took the film to the photographer in Ozimek right after dinner; it won't be ready until the day after tomorrow. We shot the rest at home because I said I wanted it developed right away. And I did. Damn, I'm still thinking about it, that record and the one downstairs." He pulled two cans of beer from his pocket and placed them on the edge of the baking sheet. "Let them warm up, I'm kind of cold."

"Sit down, don't worry about it. You know, I think I read that, I mean, I definitely read that."

"That inscription? Really? I thought we had to wait for the photos, that's why I wanted to get them developed as quickly as possible."

Skowronek got up from his chair and went to the table where the books were. "I knew this wouldn't leave you alone either," he smiled. "Show me something he deduced. "

The old man handed him a piece of paper.

"Translate it to me, it's in German, I'll read it. I understand a few words, but I don't know what it's about." He handed the paper back to Fornoł.

"It looks like a regular nursery rhyme to me, you know, when children play hide-and-seek or hopscotch. Wait, in Polish it would sound something like this:

The sun spreads its wings there and death continues its misfortune. "

They were silent for a moment.

Skowronek snorted lightly under his breath. "It's strange, it's hard to fully grasp

what's going on. The words seem understandable, but the meaning is nonsensical. Would you mind explaining it to me?"

Fornol smiled faintly and bowed his head slightly. "I translated it as best I could. But what does it mean? I can't imagine someone placing a stone with that inscription in a grave, a very strange grave, just for fun."

Skowronek placed a heated can of beer in front of Fornol.

They rearranged the words, changed them to words with related meanings, analyzed each word individually, but they couldn't come up with anything that would help them understand the rhyme.

"This is some nonsense or a joke," the guest finally said. The heat in the apartment had completely dismantled him. He'd had a few beers at the inn beforehand, and these, along with the last one from the heated can, clearly limited his deductions. "Okay, I'll go home now because we won't come up with anything anyway. Write the rhyme on a piece of paper for me, in German and Polish, I'll think about it at home. The funeral is tomorrow at eleven, right?" I'll be at the cemetery a few minutes before eleven. It'll be twelve by the time they get home from church.

He said goodbye and staggered his bike out onto the street. It started raining again. Fornol locked the gate, let the cat in, closed the front door, and sat back down in the armchair. "Yeah, we're not going to figure anything out here; there's simply not enough information," he muttered under his breath. He didn't want to think about it anymore; after a mulled beer, he felt drowsy, and after a quick wash, he went to bed.

He fell asleep instantly. Images from the day blended together, shifted, and overlapped like a kaleidoscope. He picked up the bones; some crumbled into dust, others, as if alive, refused to be touched, fleeing from him across the grave. He tried to stamp on them but couldn't. The grave walls were lined with stone slabs, each with an inscription in a different language. The skylark above urged him with the words: "Read, read, because we don't have time, the funeral procession is already entering the cemetery." And he couldn't read a single sign.

He woke up several times during the night, sweaty and hot. He rolled over and fell asleep immediately. Other images took the place of the previous ones, but everything revolved around yesterday's discovery. Only towards dawn did he fall into a deep sleep and sleep like that until the sun illuminated the room.

The

old man rode his bike to the cemetery gate and from the street he spotted Skowronek among the graves. But not where they had been digging yesterday, but on the opposite side. "He's at his donkey's, his grave has caved in on one side," Fornol thought. "We'll have to fill in about three wheelbarrows full of earth."

He parked his bike far enough away from the dug grave so as not to get in the way and walked over to Skowronek.

"I saw it last week, the coffin's down, we have to fill it in." He patted Skowronek on the shoulder in greeting—she had held out for a long time.

"Hi, I was just looking at it. We'll do it after Sunday, right?

" "No problem, Paweł." So, how was our little hole yesterday?

"I don't know, I haven't looked there yet, I just arrived." Skowronek glanced back at his ancestor's grave and followed Fornol toward the cemetery chapel.

"We still have beer from yesterday, I'm thirsty like a dog," he said quietly to the old man. "Karol, I read that little poem of ours to my old lady yesterday, she knows it!"

"What? Don't tell me." Fornol stood between two tombstones and turned around.

"Really. She knew it," Skowronek repeated. "They used to play with poems like that as children.

" "How old is your old lady, exactly? Ninety? Maybe she only knows a similar rhyme, and you think it's the same thing.

" "She'll be ninety-one this year." No! She repeated it to me, exactly as you wrote it, in German. I wanted to know how she knew this, so she told me this story about a hex*, who supposedly abused people a long time ago, or even murdered them. People got furious and buried the hex in the forest. Alive.

"Is that what the hex told you? How much beer did you drink yesterday? Admit it. Maybe you and the hex had something else too?

" "Leave me alone, you'll learn shit from me next time." Skowronek walked around Fornol and quickly headed toward the chapel.

The old man suddenly realized he'd gone too far. "Wait, Paweł, I was joking, what have you become so thin-skinned? Spass muss sein."

Skowronek opened the chapel and a moment later emerged with two shovels in his hands. His jacket pockets were hanging from the weight of beer cans. He handed one to Fornol. They drank almost simultaneously. "I'll see more," the man muttered, belching like a bull in a pasture.

"There were only these two, that's all.

" "I have four more in my bag," Fornol reassured him.

Everyone grabbed their shovels and headed for today's burial site.

They stood on the planks of the platform and looked down almost simultaneously. Disbelief and terror replaced the smug smiles on their faces, which had been there moments before.

"A bolt from the blue" was probably the right word for something as unexpected as what they now saw.

The grave floor was dug up, the slab halves smashed into fine rubble, and the hole where the bones lay was empty.

"That's impossible! What the fuck is this? Who was here? Did you tell someone in the pub yesterday about what we found?" Fornol exploded toward Skowronek.

He moved away from the hole a little. "Are you crazy? Who do you think I am? I only read a poem, but I didn't tell her where I got it. Maybe you said something to someone along the way."

They looked at each other suspiciously, mentally blaming each other. Finally, Fornol calmed down enough to think clearly. He began examining the tracks in the sand around the grave, but found nothing out of the ordinary. The rain washed everything away.

"I don't understand, Paweł. It was all beautifully covered with sand at the bottom of the hole. No one could have guessed, looking from above, that something was lying there. We were alone here the whole time. Only the two of us knew about the whole thing. I'm sure of myself, Paweł, I don't know how to put it, but it seems to me that you told someone something.

Just don't get upset." Fornol saw his companion's reaction. He threw the shovel into the sand, walked over to the cemetery fence, and, leaning his arms against it, looked into the forest. The old man continued to examine the bottom of the grave.

But why did they smash that slab? Only it could possibly constitute some historical attraction worthy of the whole operation for the thief. But then why did he smash it? And to pieces at that. Nothing in his calculations added up; everything was illogical.

He fetched a ladder from the chapel and climbed it into the grave. He buried stones in the hole where the bones had been, leveled the bottom of the grave, and emerged.

"Paweł, it could have been those Satanists, you know, the kind who perform black masses on graves."

Fornol tried to smooth things over, began to believe Skowronek that it wasn't his fault, and quickly searched for some theory to placate his companion. "They're always interested in human bones.

The priest warned me once that they like to wander around cemeteries looking for human remains." He walked up to Skowronek and handed him a beer. He clinked his can against his, and they began to drink. He suddenly began to believe in the theory about Satanists, which he had just spontaneously conceived; it seemed to him at that moment the only decent and somewhat logical explanation for the whole situation.

The funeral took place at the scheduled time. They quickly filled and formed the grave. Then they quietly drank two beers each and, taking their time, discussed the events again. They didn't come up with anything new, but they concluded that now they could, or even should, go to the parish priest and tell him exactly what they had experienced over the past two days. The priest, a learned man, would look at the matter from a higher vantage point and always come up with something new. It didn't escape their notice that he would most likely scold them for not informing him earlier, but they were essentially indifferent to this.

The danger of being ordered to dig a new grave, or of someone coming to see their discovery, receded almost indefinitely. Firstly, someone else was already buried at the site of the discovery, and that was sacred; no one had the right to disturb the deceased without official permission. Secondly, the reason for their concern no longer existed; the bones were likely gone forever, and the slab was reduced to dust.

"We'll meet in front of the rectory at four. He has Mass at five, so he'll probably be home," Fornol agreed.