It turned out some people already knew how to play a little on one instrument or another. But most of them had never touched a musical instrument in their lives. Me for example, all I’d known was uncle’s harmonica. But when the music teacher showed up a short while later, he said right away that he’d make us into a band. Apparently that was the pedagogical task the school had assigned him. Fortunately he soon seemed to forget about it.
In general he didn’t make much of an effort. It was another thing that I don’t know if anyone at all could have made a band out of the ragbag of kids there were at that school. Most of the time he went around half cut, there were days he could barely stand upright. Sometimes he’d fall asleep in class. Or whenever he picked up an instrument to show us how it was played, he’d play and play, often till the end of the lesson.
We also had practice with him in the evenings in the rec room, depending on whether he showed up more or less drunk. If it was more, he’d get all sentimental about one broken instrument or another, ask how someone could have hurt it like that. Barbaric was what it was. An instrument like that suffered the way a person does. Every bullet hole, every snapped string, every chipped neck, was a wound. According to him some of the instruments had ended up in the school by mistake, they ought to have been in a museum.
But it may have been that they were brought from a museum, that they needed to be moved somewhere and it happened to be to our school. I’m sure you remember, back then everything was transported here and there and everywhere, back and forth. Not just instruments. Machinery, animals, people. Furniture, bedding, pots and pans. Sometimes we’d go down to the station and there’d be one goods train after another standing there, each one of them stuffed with all kinds of belongings. You rarely saw a passenger train, just freight trains one after another. Maybe it’s like that after every war, that everything goes back to its place, even though the war alters places too, swaps them around, while some places there’s no point looking for even, they don’t exist anymore.
One time a truck arrived and brought a harp, a harpsichord and a viola da gamba. We didn’t know what they were and we asked him, but he started crying. The harp was missing half its strings, the harpsichord only had a few keys left, and the viola da gamba looked like someone had used it for target practice. From that moment on we took a liking to him. Him alone of all the teachers. Even though like I said, usually he was tipsy or straight up drunk.
He always carried a kind of flat bottle. Here in his breast pocket. It never bothered him that he was the teacher, he’d pull it out and take a swig in front of us.
“Sorry boys, I just have to.”
All the teachers behaved like they were military, and they treated us like recruits. Aside from him they all wore uniforms without stars but with epaulettes and crossed military straps. Word had it they even carried pistols in their pockets. The students also had uniforms that were a sort of black or dark blue color, and they wore hobnailed boots, side caps, and on the side caps metal insignia with a kind of rising sun in a semicircle of rays. Which, as was explained to us in homeroom, was meant to symbolize a better new world that was rising. And that that new world was ahead of us. We just had to learn to have faith, unbreakable faith. And it was for learning faith that we were here in school.
Aside from that, we learned trades. Bricklayer, plasterer, joiner, roofer, metalworker, millworker, welder, mechanic, electrician, a few others. Everyone could choose what trade they wanted to learn. Though not entirely. In the end it came down to how many places the school had for one trade or another.
We lived in barracks, and we were divided into teams. Each team had a team leader, the oldest and strongest boy, and above him every team had its own homeroom teacher.
To begin with I learned the trumpet a bit and for a year I played reveille in the morning. After reveille we’d get washed and have breakfast – black ersatz coffee, bread and jam. Then it was assembly on the parade ground, standing in line two deep, roll call, orders. Usually a couple of kids getting reported for some wrongdoing. Then off to class, each team to a different room, or to shop. And twice a week we’d be marched off to do physical labor, carrying shovels and pickaxes, singing.
What labor did we do? There was no lack of work to be done. Especially because for several months the front had been situated in the area where the school was. We filled in bunkers and trenches and bomb craters, some of them you can’t imagine how huge. You’ve seen that kind of thing? There you go. We patched roads, at least roughly, so cars could drive there. Or we broke rocks to build more roads. We demolished ruined buildings that were in danger of collapsing. Or bridges over rivers if they were beyond being repaired. We fixed embankments that had been crushed by tanks or dug up to allow trucks and artillery through. The way it always is after a war. Come rain or shine, because as they told us, we needed to be toughened up. In winter too, it goes without saying. We cleared snow from the roads and the railroad tracks.
As far as lessons were concerned, some of the boys had attended underground school during the war. Some had even completed seventh grade. But most couldn’t either read or write. Some, even if they’d been able to once, they’d forgotten because of the war. War can make you forget lots of things, not just reading and writing. You can forget yourself. And that’s what had happened to them. They didn’t know where they were from, what they were called, where they were born, when. They were all just this postwar hodgepodge, like I said, with no homes, no fathers, mothers, and a good few with unclean consciences. Plus we were all different ages, older, younger, including some really young children. Though truth be told, no one was a child anymore. You couldn’t be a child however much you longed for your childhood.
So we weren’t entirely a school, we were part school, part youthful army. We were held accountable the way you are in the army, and for the slightest offense we’d have to run to some tree way the hell off somewhere, often carrying weights. Or wade into water up to our neck, in full uniform and boots. Or do x number of pushups. Or if it was something worse, lockup with nothing but bread and water. You’d have to report to the teachers, and you didn’t say please sir to them like in school, instead you addressed them as citizen teacher, and the commandant was citizen commandant. So we didn’t exactly feel like school students. Not many people even wanted to be promoted from one class to another. Though getting promoted didn’t make much difference. The people in charge reduced us all to the same level, they probably thought the war had set all of us back to the beginning, so they taught us from the beginning.
Maybe they were right to, because if you’d visited one of our lessons and heard us stammering out answers, or seen the scrawl in our notebooks, I don’t know if you could have told who’d had how many years of schooling versus who was just starting. For instance, for several lessons we practiced writing our signatures, because we even made mistakes writing our own names. Besides, reading and writing wasn’t the most important thing there.
For a trade, I picked welding. I don’t know where I got the idea. I’d never seen anyone welding. I’d only seen iron being forged in a smithy. And once I heard the blacksmith say to someone that he couldn’t help with a particular repair, that it would need to be welded. But after a year it turned out there weren’t enough welding torches to go around. Plus, the ones they did have kept breaking down. Not to mention that you’d often have to wait forever for a delivery of oxygen cylinders.
So they put me in with the electricians. The school could train any number of electricians, since the electrification of the villages was beginning. Just like when I picked welding I had no idea how welding was done, I also had no idea what electricity was. How could I have? The only light I knew was the sun and oil lamps. Though Uncle Jan had told us that in some cities they even lit the street lamps with electricity. And that in the houses, it was everywhere. When we asked what electricity was, he said it shines much brighter than an oil lamp. You don’t need to add oil, or clean the glass, or trim the wick. The
re’s a switch on the wall, you turn it and the light comes on.
Why did they put me with the electricians and not the bricklayers or the joiners, for instance? Well, when I picked welding I had to pass a test that involved climbing a pole. Because welders often have to work high up. They needed to check whether I could handle heights, or if I’d get dizzy. There was a pole on the playground, with the bark stripped off, it was all slippery from those tests. I shinned up it all the way to the top. I might have gone even higher, but they started shouting from below:
“Come down! There’s nothing above the pole! You’re done! Come down!”
Because what was a pole like that for me? I used to climb every tree in the woods. The highest poplars along the Rutka. And let me tell you, poplars are the hardest trees to climb. Especially if it’s a tall thin one. I’d pull myself up with my arms alone, brace my bare feet against the trunk, without any belt. And since electrician training depended on passing that test, as electricians even more than welders work high up, they decided I could just as well be an electrician as a welder.
Electrician or welder, it was all the same to me. The only thing keeping me in that school was the chance of learning the saxophone. Otherwise I would have run away like others did. Sometimes they’d catch them and make them come back to school, other times they vanished without a trace. Me, they wouldn’t have caught me, I knew where I’d need to go.
Almost every evening I went down to the rec room and practiced. We’d come back for example from a whole day filling in trenches, we’d be fit to drop, our eyelids drooping with sleep, sometimes the other boys would collapse on their beds even without washing or eating, but I’d go to the rec room and practice. My hands would be numb from using the shovel, my lips were cracked from thirst, but I had to practice at least a bit. Once in a while the music teacher would come by. He’d sit and listen, taking swigs from that bottle of his. From time to time he’d correct something I was doing, make a suggestion, or offer an excuse, say that if only he weren’t drunk. And since the more swigs he took the drunker he got, he’d end up just mumbling after every sip:
“You’re a stubborn one, that you are. But music likes the stubborn ones. It may even repay you for it one day. But don’t give up. Never give up. It doesn’t always repay people, but maybe with you it will. Maybe you’ll know that happiness. Sometimes it sucks you in to the point that you lose yourself, you lose the will to live. But maybe you’ll be lucky. Don’t give up. And it’d be good if one of these days you found a better teacher. One who’s not a drunk. A real teacher. Forgive me, son, I just have to. I hope it never happens to you.”
He’d sometimes even fall asleep with the bottle in his hand. I’d take it from him and slip it back in the pocket where he always kept it. He’d wake, smile, then go back to sleep. I’d tell him to wake up and go to his room. He lived in the teacher’s block. I’d shake him. Or tell him the commandant was coming, so as to scare him into getting up. But he was only afraid of the commandant when he was sober. When he was drunk, even if I managed to wake him by mentioning the commandant, he’d only spit out some cuss word, mumbling as if I’d made him mad. You know where that peasant can put it, son. Sorry.
And he’d go back to sleep. What worked better was the trumpet, or best of all the flute. The flute seemed to reach deepest into his drunkenness. So if the trumpet didn’t do the job I’d put it down, pick up the flute and play it right by his ear. Not too loud, of course. After a moment he’d put his pinky finger in his ear and wiggle it, something evidently itched. Then, though his eyes were still closed, a smile would appear on his lips, when it was the flute that is. With the trumpet he’d make a face. Then he’d open one eye and give me a warm look for a moment. Then the other eye, though that one was usually indifferent and ponderous. Sometimes he’d wag his finger at me, but in a well-meaning way.
“You are a stubborn one.” Especially because his finger, trembling along with his drunken hand, wasn’t exactly threatening. “Don’t give up. Don’t give up.”
And he’d reach into his pocket for the bottle. Often there’d be nothing left in it, but still he’d tip it back and get a last drop.
“You see, son,” he’d say, sighing heavily as if at the empty bottle. “You see, I’ve gone to the dogs. But you, don’t you give up.”
But in order for him to let me take him back to his room, I’d first have to sit him, drunk as he was, in front of the piano. He would say he just had to play a few bars, then we could go. But it was never just a few bars. There were times he played and played. Despite being drunk, you wouldn’t have credited it. The strangest thing was that his hands sobered up completely, you had the feeling they were stroking the keys.
His hands were slim like yours, with long fingers. When I watch you shelling the beans it’s like I’m watching his hands on the keyboard. Come on, you must have done this before. You’re already better at it than I am. My hands are stiff. You wouldn’t have gotten so good so quickly if you hadn’t ever done it before. We haven’t shelled that much yet, but already you’re doing such a good job I can’t believe it. Maybe you just forgot? When you haven’t done something in years you can forget it, even shelling beans. You can forget anything. But it doesn’t take much to remember again. I’d forgotten too. That’s why I planted beans, so I could remember once more. Though like I said, I’m not even that fond of beans. I can take them or leave them.
Do you play the piano? No, I was just asking. I can still see those hands of his as he sat drunk at the piano. It was like he himself was intoxicated, then there were his hands living a life of their own on the keyboard, sober as can be. He may have been a great musician, who can know. The fact that he was playing in that pseudo-school of ours was another matter. How many people are there that are in the wrong place? No, he didn’t just play the piano. He could play any instrument he picked up. Violin, flute, cello, French horn, anything. Of course, only if he wasn’t too inebriated. For me he recommended I concentrate on the violin. He didn’t like the saxophone.
“With the saxophone, the most you’ll do is play in a dance band. The violin on the other hand, that can take you far, son. You were born to play the violin. I know what I’m talking about.”
One time I led him back to his room when he was drunk, I had one arm around his waist holding him up, and I put my head under his arm so his whole weight was leaning on me. He was muttering something into my ear. What I caught of it was:
“The violin, the violin, son. The violin appeals to your heart. The violin appeals to your soul. You’re a good kid. You’ll be dearer to God with the violin.”
“I don’t know if God would agree to listen to me play,” I said without thinking.
“Don’t say that.” He stopped me with the entire inertia of his drunken body. “Don’t think that. If He listens to anything, it’s only the violin. The violin is a divine instrument. He doesn’t listen to words anymore, it’s beyond Him. There are too many of them. And too many languages. Eternity wouldn’t be long enough to listen to all the languages of the world. But the violin is in one language. The violin contains the sounds of all languages, all worlds, this world and the next, life and death. Words are beyond Him, however all-powerful He is.”
I don’t know, maybe it was helpful advice. But I chose the saxophone. Course, you might ask what help a drunk could be when he couldn’t help himself. It may have been that it was against God I chose the sax, since His favorite is the violin. The fact was, God owed me. And him, whenever he’d had a skinful he’d always go on about God.
One time, in front of a full rec room he talked about how building a new world should start not from bricklaying and plastering, or welding or glazing, but from music. And if God had started from music, no new world would even be needed. Someone informed on him to the commandant. The commandant called him in, apparently there was a scene and he threatened the music teacher that if he didn’t quit talking about God he’d be sent back where he came from. He was lucky he’d been drunk
when he said what he said. Of course they knew he drank. But they had no way of finding another music teacher. He was the only one who’d agreed to work at the school. That was the kind of school it was. They said the instruments had been confiscated from various oppressors, parasites, tyrants, all kinds of bad guys.
I didn’t understand who they were referring to. We were told this by our homeroom teacher. Now the instruments were for us, who were the future of a new and better world. Actually, I found it hard to understand anything back then. I was afraid of everything, people, things, words. Whenever I had to talk I’d get stuck on every word. Often I couldn’t even get past the first one. The simplest word would hurt, and each one would feel like it wasn’t mine.
When everyone in the dormitory had already fallen asleep, I’d put my head under the blanket and quiz myself in a whisper about this or that word, as if I was learning them from scratch, taming them, getting them used to being mine. Once in a while some boy in a nearby bed would wake up, tug at my blanket and ask:
“Hey, what are you talking to yourself for?”
“Hey, wake up, I think you’re having a nightmare. You were talking in your sleep.”
Sometimes boys in the other beds would wake, they’d wake others up, and one bed after another they’d laugh, make fun of me for talking to myself.
Why did I do it in bed, under the blanket? I couldn’t say. Maybe words need warmth when they’re being reborn. Because when I landed in that school I was virtually mute. I could already talk a bit, but not much, and all in a jumble. When someone asked me a question, I couldn’t give them an answer even if I knew what I was supposed to say. It was only thanks to starting to play music that I gradually got my speech back, and along with it the feeling that I was alive. In any case I stopped stuttering so badly, and I held onto more and more words, and I was less and less afraid of them.
A Treatise on Shelling Beans Page 10