Chapter XXIV

The year 2004 did not begin with a great reconciliation or a sudden transformation. The autumn scene in which Małgorzata and Paweł had wept at the news of the pregnancy remained fixed in Piotr's memory. It could not be undone or dismissed as meaningless. The pregnancy itself continued, indifferent to the adults' fear, anger, and disappointment. With each passing week it became more visible, while the child, initially received by its mother as a threat to the fragile order of the household, slowly ceased to be an abstract piece of news.

Everyday life accomplished what conversation had failed to do. Małgorzata went to work, returned from her shifts, cared for the children, and watched her body change. Preparations for the birth were not ceremonial. They grew out of the simplest things: doctors' appointments, examinations, setting aside the clothes that would be needed, and increasingly frequent questions about how the family would cope after the baby arrived. As the days passed, her resistance weakened. It did not immediately become enthusiasm, but the child was steadily taking its rightful place in the mother's thoughts.

On January 18, Małgorzata's name day was celebrated. Relatives from both sides sat around the table, the children moved among the adults, and an ordinary family gathering offered a brief respite from questions about the future. At moments like these, the Koryckis still looked like a family that had endured many disputes yet remained capable of coming together over cake, coffee, and conversation. Five days later, something far more important occurred.

On January 23, Piotr and Małgorzata saw their child for the first time on an ultrasound scan. The image was dark, grainy, and almost indecipherable to an untrained eye. It did not resemble the kind of photograph that would later be placed in a family album. Yet among the gray patches was their child. What had been mourned in the autumn as a misfortune now had its own shape, movement, and heartbeat.

Piotr looked at the printout with deep emotion. To him, the moment demanded an immediate name. The child was ceasing to be an impersonal "it." It was coming into a home where Paweł, Rozalka, and Tomisław were waiting, and so it should also have a name.

— Gosia, perhaps it is time we gave our child a name? — he asked after the examination.

The question began a dispute that lasted for many weeks. Piotr was not insisting on one particular name chosen long ago. He did, however, set one condition: he wanted it to be Polish and Slavic, rooted in a language older than passing fashions. At first Małgorzata rejected the idea outright. They returned to the subject many times, sometimes calmly, sometimes impatiently, as though the choice of a few syllables were to decide far more than how they would address their son.

In the end they agreed on the name Krzesisław. In everyday life he would be called Krzyś. The name was rare, unmistakably Slavic, and consistent with what Piotr had wanted. Małgorzata accepted it after prolonged resistance, but once the decision had been made, they did not revisit it. Their youngest son was named long before he was born.

On the same day that the parents first watched Krzyś on the ultrasound screen, news reached them of Great-Grandmother Zofia's death. They had managed to visit her the year before. Now it was said that she had been alone at home, had tripped, and fallen. She was found dead in the bathroom. Family accounts offered no certainty about what her final moments had been like. What remained was the sudden juxtaposition of two images: the indistinct beginning of a life and the end of the life of a woman who belonged to the family's oldest generation.

The funeral took place on April 3 at the cemetery in Łomna. Zofia's children—Wanda, Adam, and Teresa—stood beside her coffin. To the younger generations she already belonged to a distant world; to them she remained their mother. The family gathered once again, this time not around a birthday table but in a silence that required no explanation. Death closed one of the oldest chapters while another was developing beneath Małgorzata's heart.

Between the January examination and the April funeral, life followed its ordinary rhythm. There were Piotr's and Paweł's birthdays, family visits, cake, candles, and photographs in which the adults looked as though they were able, for a while, to set aside everything that divided them. The pregnancy advanced with the calendar. Małgorzata spoke of the child by name more and more often. The single word "Krzyś" made the future familiar more effectively than the longest reassurances.

Easter fell on April 11. The family gathered around the table on Słowackiego Street, and the following day Piotr and Małgorzata sat together for another holiday meal. This was no longer the Easter of the previous year, marked by Marianna's struggle to become mistress of someone else's home. This time the weight had shifted elsewhere. Among the decorated eggs, cakes, and family photographs was someone who could not yet be seated at the table. Krzyś remained unseen, but everyone knew that within a few weeks he would be among them.

Spring brought several peaceful days that would later remain in memory chiefly because of photographs. Piotr walked through the neighborhood with Rozalka and Tomisław. The children ran ahead, came back, took their father by the hands, and stopped beneath flowering trees. Małgorzata, increasingly heavy with pregnancy, continued to attend family gatherings. On May 17 she was present at Jadwiga's birthday, and on May 23 at the celebration of the first anniversary of Cezary's First Holy Communion. Two days later, the family looked entirely different.

On May 24, 2004, Krzesisław Korycki was born at Czerniakowski Hospital in Warsaw. He was the youngest child of Piotr and Małgorzata. As with the births of their other children, both parents were present in the same hospital where the others had entered the world. Familiar corridors and procedures did not make the birth ordinary. Every child comes into the world for the first time, no matter how often the parents have passed through the same doors before. This time Piotr was not the first to embrace his son. Immediately after the birth, the midwife brought the baby close to his mother. The father was plainly jealous.

Piotr took his son into his arms a moment later, still in the delivery room. The tiny body almost disappeared inside the white swaddling blanket. Krzyś slept, woke, clenched his fists, and drank from a bottle, unaware of the disputes that had preceded his birth. Małgorzata no longer looked at him as a threat. In the first hospital photographs there was no trace of the rejection of the previous autumn. There was a mother bending over her newborn and a father holding his youngest son with the caution of a man who knew how fragile life could be.

The older children were waiting for him in Legionowo. Rozalka visited her mother and brother in the hospital, and after Krzyś came home at the end of May, she wanted to peer in at him, touch his tiny hands, and check whether he was asleep. Tomisław watched the new brother with a mixture of curiosity and caution. Paweł, already a teenager, held him and pushed the stroller. In an instant they all became older—not because another year had passed, but because someone completely dependent on them had appeared.

Once again, the apartment rearranged itself around an infant. The stroller stood in the entryway, diapers and blankets appeared on chairs, and the rhythm of the day began to be determined by sleep, feeding, and crying. Krzyś passed from one pair of arms to another. Jadwiga held him, Urszula bent over him, Ewa Walczuk came to visit, and friends and relatives stopped by. The youngest needed no declarations from anyone. His mere presence drew people toward him and, for a time, brought order to the circle around him.

The birth of a son did not stop the lives of the older children. Rozalka received roller skates, Tomisław ran beside her, and Piotr combined walks with the infant with caring for the other two. On June 2, he was walking with the stroller, Rozalka, and Tomisław while a group of children and their teacher marched behind them. An ordinary day in the neighborhood was becoming part of the family's history.

On Corpus Christi, everyone joined the procession. In mid-June Małgorzata took Krzyś to Janów Podlaski, where she introduced him to the family and visited Wanda Bujan and Teresa Juchimiuk. The child who had once been a source of fear became the reason for visits and the focused attention of several generations.

During those same days, Adam Sulikowski, chosen as the godfather, was completing his high school graduation examinations. For Piotr and Małgorzata, Krzyś was the fourth child being raised under their roof and at the same time an entirely new responsibility.

The baptism took place on June 20 at the Church of Saint John Cantius in Legionowo. The sacrament was administered by Father Marcin Hołuj, Piotr's former seminary classmate. The godparents were Adam Sulikowski and Agnieszka Miareczka, née Figura, a granddaughter of Helena Pawelska. Relatives from both sides, friends, and acquaintances attended, among them Stanisław Stachnik with his wife and daughter. Piotr knew him from Wieliszew, from the period when Stachnik had campaigned as a candidate for mayor of the municipality.

Piotr carried his son through the church dressed in white. Krzyś slept in his arms as though the ceremony, the voices, and the movement of the congregation had nothing to do with him. After Mass, everyone gathered for a group photograph. Beside the parents and godparents stood grandparents, aunts, uncles, and children. The photograph could not contain all the bonds, grievances, and histories connecting those people. It preserved only the moment in which the youngest was received into the Church and presented to the family community as Krzesisław.

After the baptism, life quickly returned to its daily course. In June, Rozalka performed at Elementary School No. 1 during the end-of-year ceremony. She sang with the other children beneath decorations made of enormous paper flowers while the adults watched from the room. At home her infant brother was waiting, and outside lay a summer that would divide the family into several smaller paths.

In July, Piotr set out with Rozalka on a walking pilgrimage from Suwałki to Vilnius. The girl walked among adults with an identification tag around her neck and a small pack, rested on the grass during stops, and spent the nights with Polish families on the Lithuanian side of the border. The route led through Krzywe, Kalesninkai, Eišiškės, and Šalčininkai. Each day's rhythm was set by the next miles, prayer, a shared meal, and the search for a place to spend the night.

For Rozalka this was not a tourist excursion. She had to keep pace with people older than herself, endure fatigue, and accept the hospitality of strangers. Piotr did not separate education from experiences of this kind. He wanted his daughter to discover the world not only through textbooks and a classroom desk, but also through the road, effort, prayer, and encounters with Poles living beyond the country's borders. In Šalčininkai she was photographed with the family that gave them lodging. To their hosts she was one of the pilgrims; to her father, a child learning that community could exist far from one's own home.

On July 24, the pilgrimage reached Vilnius. At the border, Rozalka, carrying the Polish banner, stood beside the sign for the Fourteenth Suwałki–Vilnius Walking Pilgrimage, while Piotr carried the Lithuanian flag. Later she stood before the Gate of Dawn, beneath the image of the Mother of Mercy toward which the entire group had been traveling for many days. After the journey ended, she sat on the stones near Gediminas Tower. She was tired, but she had reached the destination.

The following day they visited Teresa Bartoszewicz in Vilnius. Around the table, the pilgrimage was already turning into a story: photographs, blistered feet, and the knowledge that father and daughter had walked together along a road that could not be shortened. At the same time, Paweł traveled to the Czech Republic. The older children were increasingly following paths of their own.

After their return, summer became ordinary again. There was a trip to Nieporęt, visits to Janów, Cezary's birthday, and gatherings around the table on Słowackiego Street. Krzyś grew, watched the faces bending over him for longer periods, and gradually ceased to resemble the helpless newborn in the May photographs. In Jadwiga's arms he already sat more securely, following the movements of the people around him.

The year 2004 was also the year in which Elementary School No. 1 in Legionowo began to occupy a permanent place in Rozalka's life. The family album preserved both the June performance and the September opening of the school year. She was enrolled in the kindergarten class. Formally she attended school, but in practice Piotr used many opportunities to keep her at home.

This did not result from disregard for education. Piotr believed that children should remain under their parents' direct upbringing for as long as possible and that the influence of state institutions should be limited during the first years of development. He believed the home should have time to shape a child's basic concepts, instincts, and hierarchy of values before the school did so. Any minor illness, family journey, or opportunity for a shared activity therefore became an argument for keeping his daughter out of class that day.

Rozalka was not, however, left to herself. At home she completed exercises, practiced writing, and studied under her father's supervision. Piotr did not oppose knowledge; he opposed giving the school most of a child's time and decisive influence over her upbringing too early. A lesson at the family table, a conversation during a pilgrimage, or a shared trip to visit relatives could, in his view, be worth more than another day in a classroom. This was a consequence of his convictions, not casual neglect.

In 2004 the Koryckis moved once again. They remained on Sowińskiego Street, but this time they relocated to a ground-floor apartment and—as on the previous occasion—gained more space. Officially it was classified as an M5, but an enclosed area that had once formed part of the stairwell had been incorporated into the apartment. In practice, it therefore had the layout of an M6: four bedrooms, a large living room, a kitchen, a bathroom, and a separate toilet. The new building stood immediately beside Elementary School No. 3 and not far from the municipal bus terminal, from which buses departed for Warsaw.

By autumn, the new apartment on Sowińskiego Street was living simultaneously to the rhythm of an infant and the obligations of the older children. Rozalka bent over her notebooks, Tomisław sought out his own games, Paweł increasingly ventured beyond the family circle, and Krzyś watched them all from the lap of his mother, father, or grandmother. The four children inhabited four different worlds, yet they still returned beneath the same roof.

The birth of the youngest did not repair every fracture between the adults. It did not cancel disputes over authority in the home, loyalty to extended families, or different understandings of the marital "we." It did, however, bring something that could not be reduced to yet another conflict. Krzyś was welcomed, baptized, carried in people's arms, and introduced to relatives. The child whose coming had been mourned before his birth became one of the central points of family life.

In photographs from that year, the youngest son is almost always in someone's arms: his father's, his mother's, his grandmother's, his brother's, an aunt's, or his godfather's. People who were not always able to live together in harmony bent over the child. At the time, the value of those moments required no explanation. It was enough that Krzyś was with them and that the home could still hold everyone.