A Treatise on Shelling Beans

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  Of course, from all those letters over the years I could easily have figured out where the place was, but it never entered my head that it might be here. Thankfully, after a while he stopped writing so frequently. His letters got shorter and his invitations were less eager, I thought our chance acquaintance would eventually dry up. So all the more I’d no reason to wonder if this might be the place. The whole business had come and gone, the way things often happen. And if he’d been playing some kind of game, maybe he’d finally understood that I wasn’t the kind to play along.

  By now our correspondence was limited to cards with best wishes and season’s greetings. He’d sometimes just scribble a few words in tiny handwriting in the margin to ask if he could hope I’d come visit one day. Or, Think about it, time’s passing and more and more plans come to nothing. Soon even the cards stopped coming. What I found worrying, though, was that the phone calls also ceased.

  I started to wonder if something might have happened to him. Perhaps I should at least give him a call? I couldn’t muster up the courage. But whenever my phone rang, I’d pick up in hopes that it might be him. Previously, I’d never felt like answering his letters and cards, it was always an effort to do so; now, whenever the telephone rang I wanted it to be him. I came up with all kinds of explanations for his silence, despite the fact that I barely knew anything about him. For all the effusiveness of his letters there were never any confidences apart from the fact that he had a cabin by a lake in the woods and a souvenir shop in the city. It was as if he’d set firm boundaries on what he could write to me about. And in fact it was the same with me. Though of course I was supposedly the put-upon one in the relationship.

  A year went by, and another. Then out of the blue he wrote me – a long, cordial, enthusiastic letter just like before, filled with the same efforts to entice me out there. You can’t imagine what a wonderful crop of mushrooms we have this year, he wrote. Ceps, birch boletes, chanterelles, slippery Jacks, milk-caps, parasols – you name it. Parasols fried up in butter – makes your mouth water. Better than a veal cutlet any day of the week. Or milk-caps with onion in sour cream – delicious. And the best place to find them is where the graves are. No one picks them there. What are they afraid of? It makes no difference to me whether they’re from around the graves or not. They’re just mushrooms. Who cares what’s in the earth underneath? If you started thinking about that you’d have to stop walking, driving, building houses, you couldn’t even plow or sow, because the whole world till now is down there. We’d have to fly above the earth or move away from it completely. But where to?

  Everyone’s picking, drying, preserving, frying. In the evenings there are mushrooms everywhere. Pints, quarts. You can’t imagine how much fun it is. Did you ever eat pickled wild mushrooms? They’re a real delicacy. There’s a woman here who’s a dab hand at pickling. Though for pickling, tricholomas are the best. And they’d be right in season if you came for a visit. Please let me know. Come try the pickled ones at least. I talked with her, she’ll pickle some for you if you come.

  Where the graves are, that struck me. I picked up the phone impulsively to call him and say, I’m on my way. But I put it down again at once. And almost every day from then on I did the same thing. I’d pick up the phone and put it down again, telling myself I’d call the next day. Though each time something seemed to whisper to me that if I didn’t do it now I never would. But still I’d put it off till the next day. One time I actually dialed his number, waited till the second ring, then hung up. Another time I even heard his voice:

  “Hello? Hello? Goddammit, someone’s having trouble getting through again. The hell with these telephones!”

  I could barely keep from saying, it’s me, Mr. Robert. Then one time I had the day off. I poured myself a glass of brandy and drank it. Then a second, a third. Mr. Robert? It’s me. I’m coming. There was a moment of silence, I thought he must just be taken aback. Then I heard a kind of sigh:

  “Finally. What made you decide?”

  “I couldn’t resist those pickled mushrooms, Mr. Robert. I’ve never had pickled mushrooms.”

  “I just wish you’d have let me know sooner. I don’t know if the woman’ll have enough time to do the pickling. I mean, she has to pick them first. I don’t even know if there are any tricholomas this time of year.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I was only joking. Sooner or later I had to make up my mind, and I did.”

  “I’m glad. I understand. I’ve been inviting you all these years.”

  Yet I didn’t hear in his voice that he was as pleased as I might have expected from all those letters of his, especially the last one.

  I arrived at his home towards evening on the Saturday. Because you don’t know where the place is, he said over the phone. You wouldn’t be able to find it on your own. So Sunday morning we set off together for the lake.

  “This is a nice car. Must have cost a pretty penny. Me, I drive a baby Fiat, as you see.” His little Fiat was parked outside the building. “I just had the bodywork all redone. It was rusting away. And I work like a dog. All day long in the store. I don’t even break for lunch. In this country you can never earn any real money. Even selling souvenirs.” Then, when we got into my car: “I see you have a stereo as well. You’ve got all sorts of things.” He was so taken with the car that it brought on a whole litany of gripes. In fact, he forgot to give me directions for the lake. It was only when we were already in the woods, on the last stretch, that he suddenly snapped out of it:

  “How do you know the way?”

  “From your letters, Mr. Robert. And the map.”

  “You must have looked at an ordinance map, the lake isn’t on the regular road maps. Good thing too.” A note of doubt sounded in his voice: “From my letters? I don’t recall describing the way.”

  “All these years, there were so many letters, Mr. Robert. You can’t remember everything. Me, I tried to learn something from each one of them. It just goes to show how carefully I read them. All the more because for a long time now I’ve wanted to come visit.”

  “It’s true, I wrote endless letters.” He relaxed a little. “You didn’t always reply. You’d write back once to every two or three of my letters. And usually only a few lines. Or just a postcard, thanks, greetings, best wishes. I often used to think you weren’t interested. That it got on your nerves. Though after all …” I could tell he was upset. So I jumped in:

  “The thing is, Mr. Robert, I hate writing letters. I’d much sooner call, or even just come, as you see.” I gave a laugh.

  “You hate it?” He thought for a moment. “But it’s like talking with someone, confiding in them. Except on paper.”

  “That’s exactly it – the paper.”

  “What about the paper?”

  “The letter’s on paper. All we’re doing is leaving unnecessary traces.”

  “In that case why didn’t you let me know I should stop writing to you?”

  “You were the only person who wrote to me from here, Mr. Robert.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “Let’s drop it.”

  “We can drop it.” He didn’t say another word till we reached the lake.

  But in his silence I could sense a growing mistrust. When we arrived, all he said was:

  “Park the car over there.” Whereas he ought to have at least said, Here we are, take a look around. It’s like I said in my letters, just like I said. I didn’t need to make anything up.

  He took our things from the trunk and with a jerk of the head as if to show where his cabin was, he said:

  “Come on.”

  He’d written so much about that cabin of his, yet he didn’t even suggest a tour.

  “Let’s sit out on the deck awhile,” he said. “Should I put the parasol up or do you prefer it like this?” He carried out a little wicker table, two wicker armchairs, two cans of beer and a couple of glasses. “See the logo? I bought these glasses that evening, as a souvenir.”

 
“How about that,” I said.

  “Are you hungry maybe?” he asked. “Fine, then let’s just have a drink. I’ll make something to eat later.”

  Something was clearly bothering him. As we drank our beers he hardly said a word, he just mumbled some triviality or other every so often. As for me, I was overcome by a feeling of helplessness in the face of everything that was happening to me. I couldn’t think of anything worth saying. So we sat there sipping our beers, and the sun rose and rose, as if it meant to reach the top of the sky and then, instead of starting to drop toward the west, it was intending to keep on rising upwards till it disappeared in the distance, breaking the age-old laws. So that even the sun seemed to have changed from those earlier years when it would set every day beyond the hills that could be seen in the distance. Nothing here looked like itself anymore. The smell of sap did still come from the woods, but I somehow couldn’t even believe in the sap. Its scent seemed no more than a faint trace, not as bitter as it should be. Back then it would make your nose wrinkle up and your eyes water, especially when sap was collected from the mature trees. Except that those trees grew only before my eyes, because as I gazed at it all I was looking inside myself. But I wasn’t able to retrieve much from my memory. Not even the old course of the Rutka. Maybe because the new lake dominated everything – earth, sky, woods, memory. All the more so because it resounded, it made a din – it fairly shook from all the shouts and cries and squeals and laughter, as if it was showing me how it was able to change the world. Its shores seemed to push deep into the woods. Or perhaps the woods had retreated before it of their own accord, making room for the sunbathing bodies that kept spilling from the cabins and the incoming cars, or emerging from the water. The water in turn was strewn with boats, canoes, floating mattresses, and with heads, heads in colorful caps, that looked as if they were crawling unhurriedly across the surface in every direction, without rhyme or reason. They would disappear only to pop up again a few yards further on, or rise suddenly above the surface of the water as if they were trying to break loose of their bonds. There were multitudes of them. They reminded me of the water lilies, the ones called white lotuses, when they’d bloom in one of the broad bends of the Rutka. In the midst of all this I felt like a thorn able only to inflict pain, because I was evidently incapable of anything else. I decided to leave that same afternoon.

  I was just about to let Mr. Robert know when he spoke first, breaking our silence.

  “I think I told you in one of my letters that I’m planning to sell this place.”

  I swear that in fact he’d never mentioned this. Why on earth had he invited me in that case? As a farewell to the cabin?

  “Then I’m going to move. Away from here, away from the city, the whole nine yards. I don’t yet know when. I’m waiting to find a buyer. There is one guy, but he wants to pay in installments. And you know what that’s like. He’ll pay the first installment and the second, then after that he’ll start making excuses. With installments that’s just the way it is, there are always more important things, the payments can wait.”

  “Maybe I could buy it?” I said jokingly. I immediately regretted the joke. The words had bypassed my will, my intentions – they’d come out by themselves. Especially that at that very moment I’d meant to say to him: I’m sorry, Mr. Robert, but I have to leave today, this afternoon. I’ve a long drive ahead of me and tomorrow I ought to be at work. I have commitments, you understand.

  “You?” He laughed, I didn’t have the impression that he’d taken what I said as a joke. “You?” he repeated with a hint of mockery. “That’s a good one. You live in a different country, miles and miles away. And here you’d have your summer house. How would that look, you’d drop by for a day or two at the most?”

  “Sometimes it’s good to visit another country even just for a day or two,” I said, blundering ahead as if to spite myself, to spite him for not having understood that it was a joke.

  “And you’d visit often? I don’t think so. All those letters for so many years and I couldn’t get you here. Now you say you’d come often. I don’t think so. Exactly how often?”

  “It would depend.”

  “On what?”

  “The circumstances.”

  “What circumstances?”

  “All kinds. There’s no predicting circumstances.”

  “The thing is, a cabin like this can’t just sit there waiting for circumstances to be right for you. It needs looking after. Aside from the fact that something’s always in need of repair. Plus, crime is getting worse. Not a week goes by without a break-in somewhere. We tried forming a neighborhood watch, but then one person would come, another would forget, for the third person something would come up that night. Best of all would be to hire somebody to mind the place, but they’d have to live here.” Then after pondering for a moment, calmly now, as if finishing his thought: “And you could only come here maybe once a year …”

  “Maybe twice,” I said, testing him further, because I couldn’t fathom his resistance.

  He looked at me dubiously.

  “Even twice. But what for? What for?” His voice rose in irritation.

  “The same thing everyone comes here for,” I said. Though I’m not sure I wasn’t testing myself also. “To breath fresh air. Rest up a bit, get away from it all.”

  “What on earth are you saying?” He shifted angrily in his seat. “Where is there fresh air these days? There’s no fresh air, no clean water, nothing. And who’s aware of what kind of air they’re breathing anyway? They breathe because their organism tells them they have to. And even if you’re right, does it really do anyone any good to breathe a little fresh air on Saturday or Sunday? Or even for a month or whatever, on their vacation? None of it helps anyone. You think they come here to rest, to get away from it all?” He pulled the glass of beer abruptly away from his mouth, a little of it splashed onto his shirt. “Don’t you see this place has gotten more crowded than an apartment building? In an apartment building, even if it’s ten stories or more, I don’t have to know anyone. Good morning, good morning, that’s it. And not even with everyone, I don’t have to talk to the downstairs neighbor, or the person upstairs. A week can go by without seeing the guy next door. If the two of you go out and come back at different times you don’t have to see him at all until they carry him out when he’s dead. Whereas here, you have to whether you like it or not. The moment you arrive they’re all over you like ants. They itch, pinch you, bite you. After a week of vacation I no longer know whether I’m me or someone else. I mean, tell me how many different people can fit inside someone till he stops feeling that he’s himself? People, they’re like this glass, you can’t pour more into it than’ll fit. I have a shop in the city, but I know almost the whole city not from there but from here. And if it were only their first and last names, job, address, phone number, that I could handle. I already have a whole drawerful of business cards. So what? They’re just lying there lifeless. I don’t know how many times I’ve copied out my address book to at least weed out the ones that have died. But it keeps getting thicker and thicker all the same. Still, even that would be bearable. But that’s not what I wanted to say. The point is that here I feel like I’m in an ant’s nest, and I mean, who wants to be an ant? They won’t spare you in any way. The most intimate things come spilling from them as if they were going to the bathroom. There’s no worse place than somewhere where everyone has to be together and it’s all during the season. Who’s with who, who’s against who, who’s on top of who, who’s underneath who, who does what for what reason, who’s hiding one thing or another, who’s being given away to who – you hear all different kinds of things. You want illnesses, you got them. So-and-so has one thing, another person has something else, one of them’s had something removed, with another one it’s some other thing, a third person has something else again. Who’s constipated, who has diarrhea, you name it. Even orgasms, you’ll find out. One woman has one every time, another one’s never had one. T
hey sit or lie there, sighing away. You have no idea how sound travels around the lake. Plus, the cabins are all close to each other, and if it’s a hot day like today all the doors and windows are open, as you see, so it’s not just your neighbors you can hear, it’s everyone. On the shore you hear what’s being said on the water, on the water what they’re saying on the shore, everything can be heard somewhere. You can’t get away from hearing things. You can’t get away from seeing things. However much you want to. It goes into your ears and your eyes of its own volition. And of course no one comes here just to lock themselves away in their cabin. The faintest whisper gets magnified here, the tiniest detail is blown up. Whether you like it or not you have to know every stomach, every belly button, backside, all the veins on their legs, the scars from operations. Your eyes and your ears have nowhere to hide. Even your thoughts become a trash heap for other people’s thoughts. And here you’re considering …”