A Treatise on Shelling Beans (32 page)

One time we came to a biggish lake in the woods. We stopped there for longer than usual. They said the place was untouched by humans, no one would find us there. It was true, you could even tell from the trees, they were falling over from old age. You could pick your fill of mushrooms, blackberries, wild strawberries,
blueberries. And there were birds everywhere you turned, let me tell you. Birds to your heart’s content. Right from daybreak the woods echoed with birdsong. On the lake there were moorhens, ducks, swans. It was the perfect place to rest up after all that walking, catch up on some sleep, lick your wounds, and even forget about the war for a short while. The truth was that I didn’t know if it was still going on or if maybe it was over. No one said anything. We kept trekking about in the woods, avoiding the villages. I remember one time we crossed some railroad tracks, another time we went over a bridge, and one night we spent in a windmill. All I saw was them carrying out full sacks of something and putting them in a wagon. They told me to sit on the sacks. Then they walked alongside, and I rode on the wagon. In the end I fell asleep, and when someone eventually took me down from the sacks we were already back in the woods. Another time we were at some country estate, though only in the grounds. They brought out some food for us, we ate then moved on.

The sister always led me by the hand. Every so often she’d ask if I was tired. Sometimes one of the men would give me a piggyback ride for a bit. In the winter they made dugouts and we lived in them, so the war could have been over by then. At home they always used to talk about how it’d be over by Christmas, or by Easter. Here no one said anything. Not around me, in any case. Whenever they were talking about something and I came by, they’d fall silent. One time they didn’t notice me, it was evening, a bunch of them were sitting by the campfire. The only thing I caught was, Till the final victory. I might have heard more, but I trod on a dry branch and they stopped talking.

Truth be told, I didn’t particularly want it to end. I liked being with them. The sister was like a real sister to me, I grew attached to her, and I couldn’t imagine that we could ever be parted. I could have figured out one thing or another, but I preferred not to. For example, it sometimes happened that a small group of them, or a dozen or more, would all of a sudden grab their guns and head out. They’d come back in the early morning, or the following night, when I was asleep. Where they’d been, I had no idea. How could I ask when I didn’t talk?
We always ate better after one of those trips. There’d be bread and lard, sometimes a bit of meat in the soup. The soup itself would be different, instead of being made from a little of everything as it seemed, we’d have for instance pea soup. When it was pea soup everyone rubbed their hands in anticipation. We also ate better when they caught something in a trap or a snare. They weren’t allowed to hunt with guns. Otherwise, we mostly just ate millet porridge. You know what millet is? No? Well, I’m not going to explain it to you, because ever since then I’ve hated millet porridge. Where they got it from I couldn’t say. Just like I couldn’t say where they went with their guns.

One time, from one of those expeditions they brought me back a tin of acid drops, another time a ball, then once it was a game of checkers, and one of them taught me how to play. Then I would always play with him. Another time a book,
Andersen’s Fairy Tales
. Do you know it? They said that if I started to read, maybe I’d begin to speak as well. Though when they took their guns it wasn’t so they could bring me acid drops or a ball or checkers or a book of fairy tales. I tried to read in my head, because I couldn’t do it with my mouth. I barely got to the end of the page, it was such hard work I’d rather have been shelling beans. Though like I said, I couldn’t stand shelling beans.

I basically couldn’t read, though in school I’d been the best reader. I read pretty well. I liked reading. At home, in the evenings I used to sometimes read aloud to everyone. Jagoda and Leonka were both older than me, Jagoda was two classes ahead of me and Leonka three, but they weren’t as good at reading as I was. The sister noticed one time that I was having trouble.

“Here, I’ll read to you,” she said.

From that time, not every day because she didn’t always have time during the day, and in the evenings we didn’t use lights, but when she could she’d read to me. At least a page or two. Though often her eyes would be closing from exhaustion. Sometimes one or another of the men would listen in, sometimes a few of them. Grown men listening to fairy tales, you can imagine? And partisans into the bargain.

She’d always mark her place in the book with a dry leaf. Later she’d keep the leaf, because she’d say she couldn’t bring herself to throw away such a beautiful leaf. And she’d mark the new place with another leaf. I would find the leaves for her, I’d hunt around for the nicest ones. I often went all over the woods. Then, of the best ones that I’d gathered, we’d choose the nicest one of all.

“Shall we use this one?”

I’d always want to use the one she picked.

“Where do you find such lovely leaves?” she’d ask admiringly each time.

Let me tell you, to hear that admiration of hers I would have climbed up into the trees, not just looked around on the ground underneath them. There were oaks, beeches, maples, elms, sycamores, all kinds of trees. She virtually filled the book with leaves. We only had a few tales left to read, but she didn’t manage to finish the book. Later I’ll show you the book. I have it in the living room. Don’t worry, I’m not going to read to you. The ones that are unread, let them stay that way. No, the copy with the leaves got lost. This one I bought myself.

I went to get some sheet music one time, and the store also carried books. I’d already bought the music, and I was just browsing idly among the books. All at once I see
Andersen’s Fairy Tales
. My heart pounded. I paid, brought it home and put it on my bedside table. I was living alone, my wife had left me not long before. I’d always read at bedtime. Whether or not I was tired, I always had to read a page or two at least. Even after just one page I’d feel myself calming down and everything resuming its place, then after five or ten more pages my eyes would start to let me know they were about to close. I didn’t need sleeping pills. But the remaining tales, the ones she didn’t manage to read, somehow I could never bring myself to read them either.

These days I supposedly have much more time, now that the season’s over. I don’t need to sleep because I don’t have to be fresh in the morning. But still I’ve never turned to those fairy tales. I do read, just not so much anymore. Nowadays not even books can make me fall asleep. Besides, I have the sense that books can no longer help me understand the things I’d like to understand here at the end.

When I was working on the electrification of the villages, in one house where we were installing the wiring I saw
Andersen’s Fairy Tales
lying on a windowsill. I asked the owner if I could borrow it. He said:

“You can have it. We don’t need it. It belonged to our boy. He got killed. Stepped on a mine.”

I took it back to our lodgings, four of us were rooming together, and I meant to read a bit in bed that evening. One of the other guys whose bed was next to mine noticed the book and started to laugh.

“What, are you reading fairy tales?”

Another guy piped up from another bed:

“What you need is a girl. One that’s the right shape here and here, got some flesh on her.”

I was embarrassed, I pulled my suitcase out from under my bed and stuffed the book beneath my shirt and socks and other things, right at the bottom. Then I started work at the building site, but I never reached for my suitcase to take the book out and read it. In the end I gave it to one of the guys to give to his son. He was going home one Sunday and he was worried that he didn’t have a present for his kid. I asked:

“How old is he?” I took out the
Fairy Tales
. “Give him this. It’s just right for his age. I was the same age.”

But why was the sister not shy in front of me? I don’t know. Maybe because I didn’t speak? Or for some other reason?

One time I was on guard to make sure no one was watching her, I was standing with my back to the lake and she was undressing on the shore. Suddenly she called out:

“Turn around! Do I make you feel uncomfortable? Come over here! When was the last time you bathed?” I didn’t know how to tell her it hadn’t been that long. “I bet it’s been ages,” she said. “All of you here like being dirty. Take your clothes off. You can wash with me.” I stood there rooted to the spot. “What are you staring at me for? Haven’t you had your fill of looking yet?” I averted my eyes. “Don’t just stand there, get undressed. Come on, I’ll help you.” Left to
myself I don’t think I could have so much as unfastened a single button on my shirt. “Lift your head up. Give me your arm. Raise your foot. Have a good look, look all you like. At your age what do you know? You haven’t even got any hairs down there. So it can already get stiff? Still, you’ve got time. Though the rest of us might not be alive by then. Not me in any case, that’s for sure. Come on, hop in the water with me.”

She leaped in. Like a colorful blur, that’s how I remember her. All the colors were in her. I’ve never found her since in any painting. I don’t remember her face anymore, but I can still see the blur of her body.

“Come on, jump in!” she repeated, emerging from the water. “Let’s swim to the other side! Don’t be afraid, I’ll be right by you!”

I wasn’t afraid, I was a pretty good swimmer. I’d swum many times in the Rutka, downstream, or against the current. She swam by me, and when we got near the other side she asked:

“Are you tired? Let’s climb out and sit awhile.”

We got there, sat on the shore and gazed out.

“The lake’s even more beautiful from this side,” she said. “It would be beautiful to die in it.” She lost herself in thought, then a moment later she said: “Look at me. Don’t turn your eyes away. I want you to remember me. Will you remember me? Tell me you will. You’ll survive for certain. Because us–” She broke off. I looked at her. I thought I was seeing things, but no, tears were streaming down her cheeks. “I’m not crying,” she said, though I hadn’t said anything. “My face is wet from the water, that’s all. Yours is too. I could just as well say you’re crying.”

But I actually was crying. Not on the outside. I felt somehow as if the tears were flowing inside of me, on the other side of my eyes. Have you ever known tears like that? For me, it was only that once. And for the first time since she’d found me in the cellar, I felt words in my mouth.

“Sister …,” I said. I got stuck. Then: “I’ll …” Then: “always …”

She didn’t let me finish. She burst out in joy:

“You’re talking! You’re talking!” She wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Let’s swim back! We’ll tell everyone you’re talking!”

What was I trying to say then? I don’t recall. Perhaps it wasn’t anything important. But for me those had been the most important words of my whole life that I’d wanted to say but hadn’t said. If you sat down and thought about it, how many unspoken words like that must have disappeared forever? And they may have been more important than all the ones that were spoken. Don’t you think?

There was only one thing I couldn’t understand: why she hadn’t wanted to admit she was crying. And she was, I could have sworn she was.

At that age, there are a lot of things you maybe don’t understand, but you feel things deeper than if you’d understood them. Plus, you see everything, you see it through and through. Life can’t be concealed from anyone, least of all a child. There’s no curtain you can use to hide it. A child will even see through a curtain. Sometimes I wonder if children aren’t our conscience. Later you see less and less. The world’s no longer willing to be reflected in people’s eyes. Although a child doesn’t even have to look. The world pushes under his eyelids of its own accord. The world is still transparent at that age. Unfortunately, you grow out of it. Today I find it hard to believe I was once a child. I used to graze the cattle, but what proof is that of anything. Before that I minded the geese. Then grandfather took over the geese, and I took the cows from him. And I imagined that we’d just keep swapping like that the whole time. Grandfather would take over the cows from me, and I’d take the geese again. Then he’d mind the geese once more, and I’d mind the cows. And it would always be like that, cows to geese, geese to cows. I was convinced that since grandfather had always been grandfather from the beginning, I’d also always be a child.

Though if you ask me, geese are harder to mind. Yours get mixed up with other people’s, they’re all white, and afterwards there’s no way of telling which are yours and which aren’t. Not to mention that they often fight till they bleed, they latch onto each other so hard you can’t pull them apart, especially the ganders.

We kept a lot of geese, to have down to stuff quilts, and pillows for Jagoda and
Leonka for when they got married. Mother wanted them to have down bedding, and for that you need lots and lots of geese. And you’ll be plucking away for years. It takes a huge amount of down to make a feather quilt, and there’s not that many feathers on a goose.

So I always preferred minding the cows. To make a long story short, I’ll tell you one thing. Mother would sometimes despair over me:

“You were such a good child when you minded the geese.”

The pasture was the road that led directly to adulthood. Whoever graduated from the pasture was no longer a child, even if they were called one. And the sister always treated me like a child. From the first moment of surprise when I emerged from the cellar. Lord, you’re nothing but a child! And so on till the very end. Maybe that’s why it was OK for me to look while she was bathing, whereas she was afraid of letting all the others see? I don’t know, that’s exactly what I don’t get, especially after what happened one night. So I stood there and kept guard to make sure they didn’t peep.

Oh yes, almost all of them. When one of them saw she was going down to the lake, he’d sneak off immediately and follow her at a distance, hide behind a bush or a tree, or even climb a tree if there was one nearby on the shore. Sometimes even the wounded would drag themselves down to the lake. Some of them would back off when they saw me standing guard. But not everyone. A good few of them, it made no difference whether I was standing there or not. Many of them would give me an earful. Or tell me to keep my trap shut and sit tight. One guy, he had binoculars, he’d lie down right next to me, by a bush or under a tree, and it was like I wasn’t even there. When I moved he’d say, Stay still or I’ll shoot you. He was a huge guy, with a nasty look in his eye, as if he didn’t even like himself that much. For a guy like that, shooting someone was like eating a slice of bread. I was terrified of him. So I’d stand there stock still whenever he came to watch.