6
Now this was a true rebellion. We’d rebelled before, of course. How can you be young and not rebel? Especially in a school like ours. There were any number of reasons for defiance. It could be all sorts of things. The food, because the food was lousy. Or to protest the punishments. For instance, when one of us was missing a button on his uniform, the whole team would have to stand at attention half the day. One time they made us clear snow without gloves, also as a punishment. It was bitterly cold at the time.
They weren’t big revolts. Once we came back from work in the late afternoon and the power was out. Not for the first time. So we decided we’d not go to class, or to shop, we wouldn’t do anything connected with work. We all gathered in the rec room and sat there. They didn’t give us lunch, they didn’t give us supper, and in the morning, when we failed to appear for muster, they didn’t give us breakfast either. They reckoned they’d defeat us with hunger. Except that each of us was thoroughly familiar with hunger. You might say there was nothing we’d had as much practice with as hunger. A good few of us had survived the war because hunger had bound us to life. Hunger showed you were still alive. Hunger woke you up, hunger put you to sleep. Hunger held you, consoled you, caressed you. Often hunger was your only refuge, because like I said, we were all from who knows where.
It lasted three days. The teachers came and tried to talk us out of it, they argued, threatened that it would end badly. The commandant himself came by. He was festooned with medals, he wore a Sam Browne belt, he only ever dressed like that on special occasions. He even started calmly, in a paternal way you might say, telling us we had to understand. He didn’t blame us. He knew what it meant not to have electricity. They, that is, the teachers, also had to go without. Him too, even though he was the commandant. But we needed to realize that we were all still licking our wounds after the war. We of all people should know that. There was still very little power being produced, while the needs were colossal. Factories had to be set in motion, steelworks, mines, hospitals, schools. Our school for example. He gave us a long list. How much electricity was needed for cities, not just for the houses but for the streets as well. Soon the villages would need it as well, because they’d already begun the electrification that was finally going to end the age-old inequality between city and country. We ourselves were being trained with that in mind, after all. We’d be electricians by the time we left school. Had we not been given a challenge to be proud of? Future electricians, rise to your feet! No one stood up. That sort of cooled his enthusiasm. But he cleared his throat and went on. It was a thrilling task. One to suit our young hearts, our youthful zeal. He got so carried away the medals bounced on his chest. He was a fine speaker, that I’ll give him. We had to understand and we had to understand, he said, the country still couldn’t afford to give to each according to his needs. But in time, gradually, through hard work and vigor and patience, we’d get there. And through studying, studying was the key to strength. And it would depend above all on us young people as to who would finally win the peaceful war that was now being waged. Though he, the commandant of the school, he could already guarantee that we would be the winners.
We understood less and less of what he was saying. That there was some new war going on, even a peaceful one – that was beyond our ken. In any case no one had heard about it. After that he went back to saying, we had to understand, we had to understand. And we had to stop repaying the school with ingratitude. The school had taken us under its wing, looked after us, taken the place of home and family, made it possible for us to grow up …
All of a sudden he was interrupted by a whistle from someone or other, then all of us together, as if we’d planned it, we started shouting:
“We don’t want to grow up! We don’t want to! We don’t want to! We want them to stop cutting off our electricity!”
He froze as if he was paralyzed. But not for long. Raising his voice to drown out our shouts, he began to yell:
“Who are the ringleaders? Who are the ringleaders? The rest of you will be let off! I want to know who the ringleaders are!”
This brought even louder whistles and shouts and stamping of feet. He gave as good as he got. He tossed his head and waved his arms. His face was red as a beetroot. It looked like blood was about to come bursting from his eyes and nose and mouth.
“All of you, on your feet! Ten-shun! On the parade ground, now! We’ll sort you out. We know how to handle you! You’re trash! Criminals! We know what you have on your conscience, every one of you! We have a file on everyone! Robbery! Arson! Rape! Murder! We know everything. And we’ll use it! We’ll send you where you should have been sent to begin with! Rebellion cannot be tolerated! People who do that don’t deserve school, they need to be sentenced and put behind bars! Otherwise we’ll never clean this country of tainted blood! Youth is no excuse! Enemies need to be destroyed whatever age they are! Destroyed, destroyed without mercy! The sooner the better!”
“Best of all in the cradle!” shouted one of the boys, his hands formed into a trumpet.
The rec room burst out laughing. He was struck dumb. His eyes seemed to fall still. And calmly, but with energy, like an order he barked:
“Who said that? On your feet this instant! Show you’ve got the guts! Well, I’m waiting!”
Everything went quiet, it was like the laughter had been cut off with a knife. He took out his watch and held it in his hand.
“Well? You’ve got ten seconds. If you don’t come forward …”
We all stepped forward, the whole room as one. His eyes scanned us furiously.
“I see.” Then he roared: “Just you wait!” He virtually ran from the room.
So we waited, expecting the worst. We didn’t know what it might be, since it’s always hard to conceive of the worst. We imagined various eventualities. In the end we came to the conclusion there was no point in waiting. We’d run away. The whole school would run away. The very next night. We agreed on which hut would go first and which would go last. The first was to leave before midnight. Then after that, the other huts at one-hour intervals. By the afternoon we’d end the revolt and go back to our huts, the teachers would relax and be sound asleep, and then we’d run away.
But that morning the music teacher paid an unexpected visit to the rec room. He was a little tipsy already. He pulled out his bottle, took a swig, and asked:
“Anyone want a drink?” Then he said: “They sent me to talk you out of it, boys. But I don’t know how. I couldn’t talk myself out of anything. I thought I might write a song for you. Every rebellion is remembered in song. But I’m not in the right frame of mind for it today. Forgive me. So what’s to be done here? What’s to be done? You can’t just sit around like this. If I wrote something you could sing a little. How about that? Or maybe we could have an orchestra practice? I ought to have done it long ago. That was the pedagogical task I was given from the beginning. Come on, let’s do it.”
He pulled out his bottle and took another swig. Then he had us take up our instruments.
“Stand over there with them, boys.” He pointed to the end of the room.
Each of us grabbed the first instrument that came to hand, because we thought it was some kind of game. We’d never had orchestra practice before. He would just tell us from time to time that that was why he’d been sent here. Plus, with him drunk what kind of practice could it be. One of the boys asked him if we could take the broken instruments as well. He probably thought the teacher would say no, get mad. But he nodded yes. Everyone laughed, and some of the boys made a point of choosing a broken instrument.
I picked up the saxophone, but to my surprise he stopped me.
“Not the saxophone. There’s no saxophone in this score. Back then the saxophone didn’t exist, son. Take a violin.”
There was only one violin left. It had no strings and the neck was cracked. There was no bow.
“This is the only one there is,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he sa
id. “Stand at the back behind the other ones.”
He started arranging us. Violins here, violas there, here the woodwind, there the brass, cellos on this side, behind them the double basses, and so on. We started to laugh again. By now we’d been occupying the rec room for three days, we thought he was trying to amuse us, to prevent us from getting bored. But he was far from laughter. He was serious as never before.
“Don’t laugh, boys,” he said. “Today is my day too.”
It seemed he was done with arranging us, but he still wasn’t content, he told one boy to move over there, another to come here, a third one to scoot to the side a bit, a fourth to step back a little. It was as if he still didn’t quite trust himself not to have overlooked something. All of us were standing the way he’d organized us, but he still had one boy give his violin to someone else, pick up the other boy’s horn and take his place. Another boy he had swap his bassoon for somebody else’s trombone, a third one had to hand over his flute and join the cellos, while one of the cellists moved to the double basses. The whole time he was unsatisfied. As if it was us who didn’t match our instruments. Or perhaps we spoiled his recollection of some other orchestra.
It was a big orchestra. We filled almost a third of the rec room. And like I said, the place took up an entire hut. The group of boys that hadn’t found a place in the orchestra was much smaller, they were standing at the other end of the room.
He must have felt tired from arranging us all, because he sat down on a bench.
“Forgive me, boys, it’s just for a moment. I need a breather.” He drank from his bottle, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, gave a couple of deep sighs, then stood in front of us again. “Don’t laugh now. Be serious. Each of you, hold your instrument as if you were playing it. But don’t try to actually play. Please don’t actually try to play.”
He evidently decided he wasn’t drunk enough yet, because he pulled out his bottle and took another mouthful. Then he handed the bottle to the closest boy, who seemed like the first violinist.
“Put it over there. All right, pay attention now boys.”
He spread his arms and froze. He stood for a moment in this position. Then he raised his hands over his head. At this point one of the boys in the orchestra laughed again.
“For the love of God, don’t laugh. I’m asking you. It’s the anniversary today. I’ll explain later. All right, attention now, one more time.”
No, he never told us what anniversary it was. But no one laughed anymore. In the meantime he spread his arms again and stood there for a long time, as if he could neither lower them nor raise them higher. He inclined his head slightly and narrowed his eyes. We were sure he’d fall over, because he’d been pretty well gone when he came in, and since then he’d tipped the bottle back a good few times. But for a drunk guy he was quite steady. He stood there. Again someone in the orchestra gave a quiet laugh. This time, though, he seemed not to notice. He stayed in the same pose, arms wide, leaning forward, his eyes half closed. At one moment he whispered in a voice that I may have been the only one to hear:
“It’s like you weren’t alive, boys. Forgive me. You don’t have mouths or hands, just instruments.”
His arms shot upwards. Then he flung them as far apart as he could, jerking his body and making him stumble. The hair on his head flopped back and forth. He was no longer restraining his arms. He was utterly engrossed in what we were supposedly playing for him, and he arranged it with his arms. Later on I saw various different orchestras, but I never saw a conductor like him. It’s another matter that when you see something for the first time in your life, even the most ordinary things seem extraordinary. Even a tiny thing like a ladybug, so all the more so a conductor. Though maybe that sort of seeing is the only real kind? A music teacher, in a school like that, and a drunk to boot, yet here he was like a bird trying to fly into the air on his own arms. Back then we might not even have known the word conductor. In any case I didn’t. In the village bands I’d seen up till then, one guy would tap his foot, another would give the key, then they’d just play without a leader.
Those arms of his stretched out so far that the whole orchestra craned their necks to see. Then they curved, made circles and zigzags, sliced from left to right, right to left, from top to bottom, diagonally. It was a theater of arms. I saw a performance like that one time in another country. Nothing but arms, yet they showed everything there is here below. You know, if someone were to watch our arms here as we’re shelling beans, what might they imagine, do you think? There you go. It was the same with him. Because of course we couldn’t hear any music. The only music was his arms. But the fact that we couldn’t hear anything was neither here nor there. He heard for sure. He only needed us so he could hear what he wished to hear.
At times he would draw his arms in towards his chest, and at the same moment it was as if he liberated them from the bondage of his drunken body, tossing them far from himself. At other times I had the impression that his arms were circling over his head. Above him, in front of him, closer, further away, flying off, coming back, and all he was doing was following their movements with his ears. Perhaps that was how it actually was, who knows. Because as the orchestra, we were simply standing the way he’d arranged us. The violinists were holding their violins tucked under their chins, with the bows on the strings, the flautists had their flutes at their mouths, and we were all poised with those instruments of ours as if under a spell. As if he’d cast a spell on us with his arms. No, no one laughed anymore. Even the boys who weren’t in the orchestra, and who had retreated all the way to the far end of the room.
I forgot to mention that when he rose up on tiptoe, as if he was stretching himself along with his arms, it made him look tall, though he was only of average height. He stood on his toes like a taut string, his hands fluttering somewhere overhead. After which he would come down from his excitement onto his heels, bend his knees, and with his outstretched hands he’d seem to be lifting the music up from the floor. Or maybe he was begging it to lift him up. It’s hard to say when you don’t understand much and you can’t hear a thing. Or he’d fling one arm above his head and keep it there stiff and straight, while the other one described a broad semicircle in front of him, his fingers wiggling as if he was searching for something in the music.
We were worried that his drunken body would pull him backward or that he’d crash forward onto us, because with someone tilting to and fro like that and rising up, even if they’d been sober they may well not have stayed on their feet.
At one moment, as he rose once again on his toes he suddenly staggered. He would have fallen, but luckily one of the boys standing close by jumped forward and caught him. He slipped to the floor in the boy’s arms. We helped him up and laid him on a bench. He was white as a sheet, bathed in perspiration, you couldn’t even tell if he was still breathing. Someone wanted to go get the commandant. Someone else said we should call an ambulance. All at once he gave a crooked smile under half-closed eyes.
“It’s nothing, boys, it’ll pass,” he whispered. “I’ve had too much to drink for that kind of music. If only you’d heard what you were playing, boys. If only you’d heard. Sometimes, boys, it’s worth being alive.”
And you know what, you won’t believe it but we stopped wanting to run away.
A few days later we were told to assemble on the parade ground. We see a truck parked there. Next to it is the commandant with the teachers. He’s a changed man, self-satisfied, smiling, almost fatherly again.
“Come here, come here. See what they’ve brought us. Lamps. Kerosene lamps, it’s true. But you can’t look into the future the whole time. Once in a while it’s good to look backwards also. You might find something that’ll come in handy today. Come on now, carry them in.” He turned to the driver: “Did you bring kerosene too? How many cans? Good.”
There weren’t even so many lamps that it was worth summoning the whole school. Each dormitory got one. There were four for the rec room. And o
ne for each of the teachers. Nothing special, just regular lamps. In some of them the glass was loose. But at least we had something to give light when the power went out. You could wash and eat and go to bed like normal people. Make a repair even, sew something on or darn it. Even if it’s second-rate light, people still need it. In any case, we never revolted again about the light.
But this time it was different. We weren’t protesting about the light. It was about the film that had broken off. And at a crucial moment. You have to admit you couldn’t make up anything so cruel. Did he buy a hat or not? Or did he shoot himself? Plus, there was that Mary. That it was all about a hat? What if it was about her cheating on him, what difference would it make? It can be about a hat. I’ve worn hats all my life, still do, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve several of them, I brought them from abroad. Some of them I wear on ordinary days, some are for Sundays and holidays. One of them I always wear when I go into the woods.
That one is the dogs’ favorite. When I put it on they jump up and down and nuzzle up to me, their eyes laugh, they know right away we’re going to the woods. Why are you so surprised that their eyes laugh? What don’t you get? What is there to get here? If you had a dog there’d be a good few things you’d understand. You’d even be forced to admit that dogs are doing us a service by living with us in this world. And people should return the favor somehow. Not just by feeding them and giving them a roof over their head. In that case, tell me if you think people can get as attached to dogs as dogs are to people. I doubt it. I mean, it’s just not the same kind of attachment. If you ask me, dogs have a lot of advantages over people. For instance, dogs don’t wage war, and they don’t break laws, because they don’t have any need to write them down, they carry them inside themselves. You often hear about how people treat dogs. They throw them out of cars. They take them and dump them in some remote place, leave them when they go on vacation, or to the sanatorium. I used to see lost dogs like that when I spent time in a sanatorium. They’d stick to whoever came along in the hopes that in them they’d find their person. Or like my Rex, they tie them to a tree in the woods.
A Treatise on Shelling Beans Page 14