A Treatise on Shelling Beans (46 page)

I’d been sleeping already, she’d woken me up. Evidently I’d not been deep asleep – sleeping with one eye open, as the expression goes. Because I’d not been
at all sure she’d wake me. When it came time for me to go to work she might have fallen asleep. So I was kind of asleep, but alert.

“Here, let me see how your heart is.” She put her hand on my heart. Who wouldn’t have woken up then. “It’s a bit impatient, like it’s in a hurry. Now you put your hand on mine.” She took my hand and placed it on her breast. A rock would have woken up at that. “Can you feel how much is gathered there? But do you know if a woman can die that way too? Though how could you know. The world isn’t fair to women. Take your hand away.” She removed my hand herself. “Like I said, not today. It’s too late and you need to get some sleep. It’s best to begin when the night begins, and not even think about the fact that you have to get up the next day. As if the night was going to go on and on, and day would never come. Also, bodies have to lie beside each other for a longer time before … They have to get used to each other, get comfortable with each other. Because they’re full of fear. You don’t think mine is? Let me tell you, it’s got more fear in it than yours. After those soldiers, after those drunken husbands I’m afraid every time. I thought I’d never be a woman again. I didn’t even want to be. I thought I’d just embroider, read, sing, cry a little from time to time. I want to buy a wireless, did I tell you? I put my name down for one at the store. They’re going to let me know when they get some in. I’ll be able to sit and listen. But you’re only human. I was still in the mourning period for my second. I was still in black, and here I started to feel things gathering in my heart again. I went to church, I could see the men looking at me, not just the older ones, men that are younger than me as well. There I was praying, and I could feel them undressing me with their eyes. I was all embarrassed, it was a church after all, God was watching. But still it felt good. There was this baker, I get my bread from him every day, somehow I’d never noticed him in the bakery before, but here I see he’s singing and he keeps sending me these looks that give me goose bumps. I feel my heart pounding. Forgive me, Lord, but you’re the one who gave me my body. Actually, I looked good in black. Everyone said I should always only
wear mourning clothes. I even had a mass said for that drunkard of mine. Let him have it. He left me this house, among other things. He didn’t drink all of it away. Perhaps I shouldn’t read books, what do you think? I sometimes read and read, and I start thinking to myself, if only my life … Because even when somebody else’s life is sadder than yours, you sometimes would like to swap with them. Goodness, it’s beating so hard. It’s like it was about to give out too. Are you still awake? You could check to see if I’m only imagining it. It’s like it wanted to jump directly to the next night, or come to you right now. But not today, no. The night’s almost over. You need to get a little sleep. If we did it in a hurry, you might even be put off me. I often thought you must be awake with all that snoring. But I somehow never dared ask if you might want to sleep in the kitchen. I was suffering along with you, because they woke me up too. For some reason you can’t hear them now – listen. The moment you moved in here I knew you’d never been with a woman. You kissed my hand, remember? It touched my heart to think that someone so innocent still existed in the world. So the first time mustn’t be rushed. When it’s the first time, everything afterwards is like that first time. Except for death. After death there are no memories. But while life goes on, you might remember me badly. Then you’d remember all the other women badly too. Because it would be bad with all the other ones. You might start to drink, and things would go on being bad for you. They’d be bad within yourself. Your whole life things would be bad for you. You’d lose your desire, and it would be bad for you. And it would be my fault. So for the sake of your whole life it’s worth holding out for one night. You won’t regret it. I’ll make it up to you. Look, it’s getting brighter. Go to sleep.”

I think in the end I must have really fallen asleep, because I suddenly felt her shaking me:

“You need to get up. You’ll be late for work. Get up. What a sleepyhead.”

I was most surprised of all when she said:

“You snore just the same. But it’s nice to listen to you. Things have gathered
in you as well, I can see. When can that have happened? Mother of God, when can that have happened?”

Anyway, I never finished the story about the train. So the train was on its way, I was on it, and the hat was on the opposite shelf so I could keep an eye on it. It wasn’t there anymore? Oh that’s right, he’d moved it to the shelf on my side. At some station the train stopped again, no one got on, someone peeked into the compartment, saw it was filled to bursting, and slammed the door so hard the snorer opened his eyes. He lifted his head from the headrest, looked around at everyone to see whether it was the same people, checked that his bags were there, then nodded toward the window and said:

“Oh, we’re at this station already.”

So it looked like he might not be sleepy anymore. But the moment the train set off again his eyes began to droop, though he seemed in two minds about whether or not to go back to sleep. It was only when the train sped up and began rocking that his head fell back against the headrest as if of its own accord, his mouth opened, and the noise that came out was exactly like the sound of a distant wagon with ironclad wheels rumbling over frozen ground.

At a certain moment his head slipped down from the headrest to the shoulder of his left-hand neighbor. The neighbor allowed the head to remain on his shoulder without protest, but still, as the train crossed a switch and the whole compartment shook, he moved from that neighbor’s shoulder to the shoulder of the woman sitting to his right, without interrupting his sleep. The woman accepted his head on her shoulder just the same. Yet the train, which was rocking like a cradle, must have sent him into such a deep sleep that his head slid from her shoulder to her chest. Her breasts were each almost the size of his head. It wasn’t only that they were large, they seemed to be separate, independent of the rest of her body. There are women that seem to have been created exclusively for the purpose of carrying their own breasts. You might even have had the impression it was her breasts that were rocking the train, especially when it
crossed a switch. What harm could it have done, then, for him to sleep his fill there? The woman, though, took as big of a breath as she could, breathed out, took another deep breath, breathed out. She was probably thinking that from the rising and falling of her chest his head would wake up. But he was evidently sound asleep, and so she suddenly exclaimed as if she’d been startled:

“Excuse me, what do you think you’re doing?”

He must have heard. He didn’t actually open his eyes and his mouth remained open, but with the force of his sleep alone he moved his head from her breasts to the headrest. And that was when it started. Not right away. To begin with it was like he was short of breath. His eyes were still closed, but his mouth opened even wider, though not the slightest sound came from it. You’d genuinely have thought he was dead. People in the compartment started looking at him and at each other, but no one dared say anything. In the end somebody finally got up the courage to half-whisper, as if they were trying to ward off their own unease:

“Someone sleeps like that, they must be making up for many a sleepless night.”

Then someone else dared to say:

“He was in the resistance, you heard. You don’t join the resistance to get a decent sleep.”

A third person was even more emboldened by the previous speaker’s words:

“His hat got shot up by machine gun fire. He must have been a brave one.”

To her own misfortune the woman whose chest he’d tried to sleep on also spoke up:

“My man, when he gets drunk he sleeps like that.”

Someone retorted indignantly:

“This man’s sober, you can see that. He’s just tired, tired from so many nights without sleep, years maybe.”

The compartment fell silent. It was like everyone’s mouth was stopped up. For the longest time all you could hear was the train, and the man’s ever louder
snoring. We passed one station, another, and finally someone spoke, obviously trying to kick over the traces of the previous conversation:

“If he’s so exhausted it’s no surprise that wherever he closes his eyes he sleeps like the dead.”

“Who isn’t exhausted these days?” The speaker was bristling. “Who is not exhausted? No one wants their life to be in vain. Those three sacks up there are mine, and I’m not as strong as I used to be.”

Someone else swore:

“Exhausted, for fuck’s sake!”

They started arguing about who was more exhausted than who.

“Take me, for instance –” someone was settling in to tell a longer story, when all at once a gurgling noise came from the sleeping man’s throat. Luckily the train hit a switch that shook it, and the gurgling sound broke off. But not for long. When the car resumed its rocking rhythm, a great sigh came from his mouth as if from the depths of his soul. After which, still sleeping, he settled his head more firmly against the headrest and began to make a sound that was half-whistle, half-wheeze. The sound contained a distant murmur that grew with almost every breath he took, and became ever faster, closer, louder. It felt like the train, that up till now had been crawling, gathered speed each time he breathed. After a dozen or so breaths, it seemed to be hurtling along, that it had even stopped clattering over the rails and was virtually leaping across the switches, as if we were headed directly for some waterfall from which any minute now we’d plunge into the abyss.

I was gripped by panic, I felt actual pain in my chest. Please believe me when I say I never heard snoring like that before or after in my life.

The roaring waterfall we were approaching was making my head explode, it was pressing down on my chest, my legs began to twitch and I couldn’t control them. I felt that along with his snoring, something deep inside my own existence was also being released. Maybe everyone in the compartment felt it, because no one had the guts to nudge him or to say, You’re snoring.

I pressed against the window, hoping that help might come from that direction. And thank goodness, after a short period of torment the train pulled in to my station. Without waiting for it to come to a complete stop, I pushed open the door and jumped out.

The dispatcher was standing close by on the platform, and he tore me off a strip. “You there! What’s the rush? If you break an arm or a leg the railroad’ll be liable! Do you even have a ticket? Come here, let me see your ticket!”

I walked over, still shaken up by the snoring. I reached into my pocket, but I couldn’t find my ticket.

“What did I tell you!” the dispatcher exclaimed almost triumphantly. “No ticket, and he jumps out of the train before it reaches the station.”

I rummaged around in my other pockets. In the meantime the dispatcher gave the signal for the train to depart, and when I finally found my ticket it was already gathering speed. “I’ve got it,” I said. “Here.”

“Let’s see if it’s valid.” He waved to someone in the departing train.

Without thinking I followed the direction of his waving hand; someone was waving back at him from a window of the train. All at once my heart leaped into my throat. My hat was on the train! Dear God! The last car was just passing. I rushed after it as fast as my legs could carry me. I managed to catch hold of the handrail on the very last door, but the train accelerated and I lost my grip. I still kept running, carried not so much by my legs as by despair that my hat was leaving with the train. Again I caught up with the last car and again I stretched out my hand, trying to grab the handrail, and again I seemed to have gotten ahold of it, all I needed to do was jump from the platform onto the step. But the train jolted forward again and I was thrown back onto the platform. Still I ran, till the last car was a long way off and getting farther and farther.

I was breathless, my legs shook under me, but I ran back toward the dispatcher. He was still on the platform. He may have been kept there by curiosity as to whether I’d make it back on the train. But he’d probably guessed what would happen, because he greeted me scoldingly:

“I bet you had a ticket to here and you were planning to continue on for free, eh?”

“No, I left my hat on the train,” I gasped.

“What kind of hat?”

“A brown felt one. Please stop the train.”

“Stop the train? You must be mad!” He turned around and set off toward the station building.

I blocked his path.

“Please stop it.”

“Out of my way!” He tugged his cap tighter over his head and tried to push me aside.

I grabbed him by the lapels and shook him till he went as red as his service cap.

“Stop the train! Stop the train!” I shouted in his face.

“Let go of me!” he bellowed, trying to twist free from my grip. “Let go, goddammit! This is assault! You over there!” he shouted in the direction of a railroad worker with a long hammer who was tapping the rails. “Call the men! This lunatic won’t let go of me!”

But before the other man could clamber up onto the platform, several railroad workers came running out of the station building.

“Don’t let him go! Keep hold of him!” they were shouting.

“He’s the one holding me!” the dispatcher yelled back furiously. “Son of a bitch won’t let go!” he exclaimed to the men running up, as if out of hurt pride. “Just won’t let go!”

One of the men grabbed my hands and tried to release my grip on the dispatcher’s jacket. It did no good, it was like I was holding him with claws.

“Damn but he’s strong. Little squirt like that.”

The guy with the long hammer put in:

“One whack with this and he’ll let go. Shall I?” He started to swing the hammer.

“Hang on,” growled the dispatcher, still furious. “He’ll let go himself. He’ll calm down and let go. He left his hat.”

“Where?” asked one of the men.