A Treatise on Shelling Beans (25 page)

Did you change jobs often? Never? How is that possible? You liked it so much in one place? What job did you have, if you don’t mind my asking? Did you not want to get ahead? That I don’t understand. Everyone wants to move forward, if only to the next level. For most people that’s the goal in life. So it was all the same to you? I don’t get it. What kind of institution or firm was it? You’re not at liberty to say? I understand. I’m sorry for having asked.

For me, it was never better somewhere else. Not in that sense, because the pay got better and better. Maybe I was driven a bit by the thought that where I was going things would at least be different. But everywhere it was the same. There was drinking just like at the previous site. In the end I turned to drink completely. It was only on the site where I played in the band, and I met that warehouse guy, that I worked till the construction was finished. Though it dragged on forever.

On one site, which one was it again? Actually, it makes no difference. Anyway, there was this one guy that worked there, well, you couldn’t really call it work, he kept the overtime records. We didn’t know the first thing about him. He didn’t even make you curious about who he was. Because what kind of job is that, keeping overtime records. He rarely drank vodka, except when we invited him when it turned out he’d done a good job of recording our overtime.

Then one day two civilians and one military guy showed up in a car and asked him if he was him. He was. They twisted his arms behind his back and handcuffed him. Then they manhandled him into the car and sped off. He
never came back. And we never found out who he was. He kept the overtime records, that was all.

True, we might have wondered, he always went around nicely dressed, coat and tie, pants with a crease in them, always freshly shaven and smelling of cologne. When he greeted women, whether it was the cleaning lady or the head accountant, he’d always kiss their hand. And he always referred to women as the fair sex. The fair sex, gentlemen. With the fair sex. He never got on first name terms with anyone. Maybe if he’d drunk more often with us. But we only invited him because we wanted to thank him for the overtime. Though he knew how to behave. He was our guest, but still he’d always bring a bottle at least.

Oh, I just remembered one other detail. He’d never take a piece of sausage or pickled cucumber from the tray with his fingers, like all of us would do. He’d always use a fork. He’d bring one whenever we invited him over, it would be wrapped in a napkin. If you don’t mind, gentlemen, I’ll use a fork, that’s just my way. And he never ate the sausage with the skin on, he’d always peel it. I sometimes think to myself, maybe if it hadn’t been for that fork. Maybe if he would’ve just used his fingers, like the rest of us, and not peeled the sausage. Sometimes there’ll be a little thing, but it leaves marks like a trail in the snow.

And then there was the warehouse man. I think I mentioned that we were building a glassworks. In the middle of the countryside. The grain was almost ripe, but they weren’t letting people mow it. We even volunteered to help with the mowing, it was a pity to see so much grain go to waste, how much bread would be lost, when there were often shortages of bread. But it was no, because the plan was behind schedule. Construction was supposed to have started the previous year, then it was supposed to have begun in the spring. They were always urging us to get a move on, faster and faster, high days and holidays, extra hours, overtime, working all hours of the night. The cities were waiting for windowpanes, the villages were waiting, factories, schools, hospitals, government offices, as if everything was to be built out of glass. While here they
still hadn’t delivered this thing or supplied that, something was wanting and the work kept getting held up.

So anyway, on that site there was a clerk in the warehouse. He didn’t look like a warehouse keeper, let me tell you. If you’d seen him, you wouldn’t believe that’s what he did. He stooped, he had trouble turning his head on his neck. When he walked it was more like he was shuffling his feet than taking steps. People said it was from the war, from being interrogated. Though apparently he never gave anyone up, never admitted to anything. I don’t know if that was true or not. I never asked him about it, and he didn’t say anything either. In those times people didn’t like to reveal things. Also, his left arm was partially paralyzed, in rainy weather he’d often rub it. He never explained that either, though that particular thing looked like rheumatism. When someone asked him, he’d say it was nothing. His right arm wasn’t all that good either. When he wrote you a chit, he’d press his indelible pencil down with all the strength in his arm to stop it from shaking. The pencil itself was no more than a stub, you could barely see it between his fingers.

He’d always cut a new pencil into four, and use little short ones all the time. Not out of thriftiness. If you have a whole pencil sticking out of your hand, however hard you press down it’s still going to give you away. You could see the shakiness on the chit, even if all he’d written was something like, Screw: one count.

Oh, and also he couldn’t really see out of one eye. To cover it up he’d look at you with the eye that didn’t see properly, and half-close his good eye. Or he’d take turns, first one eye then the other, which hid it even more. And he was a grumbler, he complained all the time. When you went to the warehouse for some item you’d get a virtual inquisition, why do you need it, what’s it for, where’s it for, before he’d scribble the chit and give you the thing. And all the time he’d be going on and on about how we damaged everything he gave us, you could have built a whole other glassworks with the materials we’d spoiled,
plus we were probably pinching stuff. He knew, he knew full well. Maybe not you, kid. But they all steal. They reckon that what they’re stealing isn’t theirs.

On the other hand, there wasn’t the slightest thing wrong with his hearing, let me tell you. Maybe it was because of his hearing that they made him a warehouse keeper. You’d be standing in front of him while he filled out the chit and he’d ask without looking up:

“Why are you creaking like that?”

“What do you mean, creaking? I’m just standing here.”

“You’re creaking, I can hear it.”

Or:

“You have asthma or something?” The guy would be healthy as you like. “Keep drinking and smoking and you’ll run out of breath before you die.”

Or whenever he gave out a part, he’d always have to hold it to his ear. If it was something heavy, he’d bend over it. And he’d say, It’s good, or, I’ll give you another one.

You know, hearing means a lot in a warehouse, maybe even more than sight. The warehouse took up an entire hut, he’d have had to always be walking around and checking up. As it was, he just sat at his desk and he could hear the whole place from one end to the other. He would have heard a mouse, let alone someone trying to remove a window pane at the other end of the warehouse.

No one on the site knew that he’d been a saxophonist. He never let on. He hadn’t actually played in a long while. But sometimes, when you went into the warehouse without warning, it seemed like he’d been wrapped up in listening to something. Because as he used to say, you can hear music even in a rock.

No one would have found out either. But they decided to form a band at the site. A directive had come down from above that if there was more than x number of people working at a given site, and the project was a long-term one, then there ought to be some musical ensemble or a dance troupe or choir, or at least a drama club, since working people needed entertainment. So they started asking around the site about who could play an instrument. I told them
I played the sax. True, I’d not played since school, it had been a few years. And I thought I’d never play again. Though I won’t deny I felt the urge. Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep I’d imagine I was playing. I heard myself play. I could taste the mouthpiece between my lips. Oh yes, every mouthpiece has its own taste. Well, actually the reed. I even felt the fingering, I sensed the keys against my fingertips. I felt the instrument weighing from the strap around my neck, maybe even more than a real saxophone would have weighed. Sometimes I could even see a firehouse full of people, I could see them dancing as I played for them, because I’d never known any other venue than firehouses.

But that was mostly when I couldn’t get to sleep. During the day there was never time to imagine anything. Or you were so exhausted by work that vodka, vodka alone, was the only thing that could give you back the will to live. They were pushing us so hard, often it would be nighttime by the time you got off work, because like I said, the job was behind schedule the whole time, and at those moments only vodka would do the trick.

I didn’t think they’d accept me. But I thought, I’ll give it a go. Because I’d tried everything. I’d tried reading, I’d tried drinking, I’d tried believing in a new and better world, I’d tried falling in love. Maybe that would have been the best option. But to fall in love, you can’t work from morning to night, because after that all you want to do is sleep. You have to go to dances. But to go to dances you need to know how to dance. And me, I couldn’t even dance. No, they never organized dances at our school, and we weren’t allowed to go to dances anywhere else. One time the older kids had gone to one on the sly, they’d gotten into a fight with some local boys, there was a whole investigation, then after that they started checking up on us even in the night, to make sure we were asleep.

Sometimes we’d have a pretend dance on a Sunday evening, in the rec room. In fall and winter the evenings were long, there were no classes, on Sundays we didn’t go to work. We’d decorate the rec room and put up a poster saying there was a dance. A few kids were chosen to be in the band, the younger ones were made the girls, the older boys were the gentlemen. But what kind of dance
could it be when we didn’t know how to dance – how could we have? Maybe one or two of us knew this or that, but most of us just stepped on each other’s toes. There was constant cursing and name-calling. You so-and-so, you trod on my big toe, you trod on this, on that. You stepped on me with your whole boot, goddammit! The hell with girls like you. The worst words were thrown about. Get off my toes and dance, you son of a b …, and so on. Pardon my language, I’m just repeating what was said.

Though how could you step on their toes when everyone was wearing hobnailed boots? We wore them for dancing too – we didn’t have anything else to change into. We wore them summer and winter. The most you could do was dance barefoot. We tried that, but you got splinters in the soles of your feet because the floorboards were rough and jagged, they were all torn up from the nails in our boots. When someone got an accidental kick on the ankle from one of the boots, it made them howl. They sometimes whopped you if it was the girl who’d kicked them, or if one of the younger ones had kicked an older boy.

And when the band played a faster number, it wasn’t just your dance partner, the whole room stepped on everyone’s feet, people bumped against each other deliberately it seemed, some of them knocked other ones down. At those moments the insults and curses erupted like volcanoes, there were scuffles, sometimes someone even pulled a knife. Plus, can it really be a dance when no one throws their arms around anyone, no one whispers tender words in anyone’s ear? At most one of the gentlemen would say to the girl he was dancing with, hold me tighter, you little shit.

The dances were mostly about the older boys, which is to say the gentlemen, taking it out on us, which is to say the girls. They took it out on us every day anyway, but at the dances they went the whole hog. The teachers? They didn’t do a thing. Once in a while one of them would show up, watch for a bit, then leave. At those times, we’d just happen to be dancing nicely. No one trod on anyone’s toes, you never heard a single cuss word. But the moment the teacher
left, you can imagine what happened. It was total pandemonium, sometimes they even turned off the lights. And what went on when the lights were out, well, it’s best not to say.

Oh yes, of course there was a master of ceremonies. This kid that was one of the oldest ones. It was always him, at every dance. He’d pin a bundle of ribbons on his lapel. He could actually dance a bit. He was a smooth talker, though he also had a mouth on him. But he always took the side of the older boys. He might have been the worst of the lot. He was pleasant, never swore, never called people names, when you stepped on his toe he’d just make you apologize. But before the number was over he’d lead his girl outside, supposedly to go take a walk, and there he did what he liked with her. Often he beat her till she bled. Complain to who? It would have cost you dearly afterwards.

He called circles, baskets, pair by pair, swap partners, and white tango. For the white tango, us girls had to ask the older boys, that is, the gentlemen. As master of ceremonies he decided everything, he’d say, you go with him, you go with so-and-so. If anyone tried to object, he’d grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him across the room, now ask him and bow to him, get on with it before I kick you in the pants. And you could feel his hand gripping the back of your neck.

Let me tell you, for a long time after that I was afraid to dance. I was put off by the idea of dancing, which sort of goes against the nature of the thing, because after all dancing is supposed to attract people. Maybe because all through school it was as if I was the girl, and that makes you look at everything entirely differently, experience it all differently, it’s hard to even trust to the dance. It was only when I began playing in the worksite band that I finally started to like dancing. A band has to know how to dance, not just how to play music for dancing. Especially a saxophonist.

They chose seven of the guys who’d put their names forward. An instructor came, brought instruments, listened to us play. And he said, We’ll practice, we’ll learn to play together and we’ll make a decent band. No, it wasn’t till the next
time that he brought a saxophone, he auditioned me separately. He even asked where I’d learned to play, seeing I was so young. Had I been in a band before? A school band, I told him. It must have been a really good school. You must have had excellent teachers. Yes, I said, one of them in particular was.