A Treatise on Shelling Beans

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  I’m telling you, that’s why it’s harder to understand a dog than a person. Where does all that attachment come from, regardless of whether their person is a decent human being or a swine. Have you ever heard of a dog that willingly abandoned a human? Just like that, up and left, never came back? Or for example if someone attacks us, did you ever hear of a dog that ran away? It could be David against Goliath, he’ll at least grab the guy’s pants leg or bite his ankle. And he’ll rage and bark, never mind that there’s nothing he can do. Or a dog leaving a sick person or abandoning someone that’s dying, did you ever hear of that? You couldn’t have. And it happens that dogs die of grief after their human dies.

  Us, we can’t even sense what’s coming tomorrow. We can’t sense other people. Dogs, they can sense death. At most they might not let on. Like these dogs of mine, they’re lying there quietly, maybe they’re asleep even. But we don’t know what they’ve sensed coming. Well, yes, they have a sense of smell. But it’s not just that. Dogs are more than just smell. What else? I don’t know. If I did, I’d know a lot more in general.

  But all you need to do is compare what happens when a human is hurting and when a dog is hurting. It’s like it’s two different kinds of hurt. The human at the very least is going to complain, sigh, he’s going to groan; the dog just mopes, or at most he’ll stop eating. With a person, the slightest pain can be seen plain as day; with dogs all you see is fortitude. Or take a look in a dog’s eyes, what’s reflected there? Is it the same thing that’s in our human eyes? You can say he’s looking at the same things we are, but does he see them the same? Have you ever thought about it? A human, depending on what he’s looking at, his eyes get wider or narrower, they flicker or they smile. Dogs, their eyes stay still whatever they’re looking at. Or, what do people look like in the eyes of dogs? How about that? Do we look like we do to ourselves when we look in the mirror, say, or when other people see us, or in our own satisfaction or dissatisfaction, in our own memory, our own hopes and fears and despair? What can dogs be thinking about people? What are those dogs of mine thinking about us right now, as they watch us shelling beans? It’s the first time they’ve seen you here in my house, they must be thinking something. See, they’ve woken up. Well, Rex? Well, Paws? The gentleman and I are sitting here talking.

  Or the heart, dogs have hearts after all. You often say about someone that they have a good heart. They say that a person has God in their heart. But when He looks down on it all, would God not rather just go and live in the hearts of dogs? We don’t know, true. But we can guess. Besides, what do we know? We don’t know the most ordinary things. A dog’s hackles will rise and we often don’t know why. He’ll wag his tail and we don’t know why. He’ll whine for no reason, we don’t know why either. See, he couldn’t possibly sense all that he senses through smell alone. He can even sense who’s come here for what purpose.

  You might find what I’m going to say surprising, but sometimes I wouldn’t mind being a dog, at least for a short while. Not permanently, just for a while. Maybe then I’d find out for instance if they dream about me. Everyone would like to know if they’re dreamed about. Not you? I’m sure you would really. How do you know no one ever dreams about you? Maybe it’s just that no one ever told you. All I want to know is what my dogs dream about me.

  The revolt? Oh, I didn’t finish the story. Well, the power went out and the film broke off. Maybe if it hadn’t happened at exactly that moment. Maybe if it hadn’t been that particular hat. And then there was Mary. You remember what set off the Trojan War. Exactly. First there was a huge groan of disappointment when everything went dark. Luckily, just when it seemed that the darkness was about to explode, one of the teachers who’d been watching the film with us called out:

  “Settle down now! We’ll go check, it’s probably just a fuse!”

  One after another they scuttled out of the room. They must have reckoned that if they all go check, it’ll for sure turn out to be a fuse. So all the more we’d remain calm. And in fact, considering how packed the room was, you could say we did stay cool. Actually, they must have been furious as well at that moment. Or they wouldn’t all have left. So we kept a lid on it till they came back. We quieted each other. We told each other off. Take it easy! Simmer down! And we waited hopefully for the expected moment when one of the teachers would appear in the doorway with a shout of triumph:

  “It was a fuse, boys! Just like we said! It’ll be mended in no time!”

  But time went by and no one came. Perhaps if the projectionist hadn’t suddenly spoken, the tension would have been dispelled just through waiting. We might have raised a bit of a ruckus, maybe started singing. But in the silence and darkness his voice sounded like a verdict:

  “What are they talking about? How long does it take to fix a fuse? I’m going to rewind the film and put it away. There’s never once been a time when I was showing a film and the power came back on after an outage.”

  At that moment, the silence exploded so abruptly you’d have thought the whole hut was about to fall apart. There were whistles, shouts, howls, stamping of feet. First the innocent projectionist was the target, as if his words had been the spark to set the silence on fire. The boys at the back of the room jumped on him, pushed him to the ground, pummeled and kicked him. They smashed the projector. They pulled the film from the cans and draped themselves in it like it was streamers. One of them took out a box of matches and was about to burn the film to make some light. Make some light! Thank goodness we put it out in time. You can imagine what would have happened. Then all the windows in the room got smashed. Whatever anyone had at hand, or rather whatever they grabbed in the darkness, they threw that. Stools, benches, musical instruments. I tried to save the instruments. I begged them, shouted, snatched them from their hands:

  “Leave the instruments alone! Leave them alone! What did they ever do to you!”

  Some of them came to their senses, but others only seemed to find release with the instruments. They broke them, smashed them up, tossed them out of the windows. They even wanted to throw the grand piano out, but fortunately it wouldn’t fit through the window. One of them got so mad he climbed up and started stomping on the keyboard.

  I was at the other end of the room when I heard the crash of feet on the keys. I pushed my way over and grabbed the kid by the legs. He put his hands around my neck and started to throttle me. I couldn’t breathe, but I managed to get him off the piano and onto the floor. We didn’t have anything to hit each other with, since he was holding onto me and I was holding him, so we set about biting each other. We bit till we bled. He was a budding pianist. The music teacher often said he had promise.

  Most of the instruments that got thrown out of the window survived in better or worse shape. The ones that remained were generally not so lucky. It was just as well that some were overlooked in the darkness. Especially because rage can darken your sight even more. The next day, if you’d seen the ones that had suffered the most damage it would have broken your heart. But not one teacher showed his face. Though it was precisely because of them that the revolt had gotten so furious.

  Have you ever taken part in a revolt? Not even at school? You’ve never rebelled? Against what? It’s not like there’s any shortage of things. Right from childhood. The fact that they force us to eat when we’re not hungry. With the years, there’s one revolt after another you could start. Against school, because who actually wants to go to school? I don’t mean our school. That’s a whole other story. And just in general, against life, because it’s the way it is, not some other way. Against the world, for being like it is instead of the way it should be. Against God because he exists but he’s not there. Not even against yourself ever?

  Though a revolt doesn’t have to have a reason. In fact, I’m not sure that any revolt actually begins for the reasons we say it does. Not to mention there are revolts where afterwards, we regret having revolted. Except you can’t go back to the way things were before. What can you do, people w
ill never keep still, they’re always seething, in ferment, and even if they have no reason, they’re always going to revolt. They’re a perpetual reason in themselves. They’re going to rebel till the end of time. If you ask me, the world has a good many revolts still to come.

  So our teachers might have been doing the smart thing by leaving us to our own devices. Because eventually we would have had to calm down of our own accord, since it wasn’t a fuse and there was no hope of the power being turned back on right away. It was just that, as often happens, chance intervened. The screen unexpectedly came away from the wall. You’re probably thinking, so what? But at a moment like that, the smallest thing can take on great power. Perhaps it had been carelessly hung. Or it might have come loose from all of our shouting, yelling, smashing everything, because the whole hut was shaking from it all. Everyone rushed up and started trampling on the screen. Like it was its fault for the lights going out. Then one of the boys picked it up from the floor and shouted:

  “Guys, let’s make a noose! Let’s hang someone!”

  Everyone else chimed in:

  “A noose! A noose! Let’s have a hanging!”

  The first boy explained later that his intentions had been good. He wanted to prevent any more instruments being damaged, because we wouldn’t have anything to learn to play on. They would have destroyed all of them. And as for hanging, they’d never have actually hanged anyone, because aside from us there wasn’t anyone left in the school. They started tearing the screen into strips and debating who they should pick. There were various candidates. From among the teachers, it goes without saying, because who else? In cases like that, teachers are always the best bet. Especially ours. But no one could agree on who it should be. They braided the rope as they argued. They were in the dark, so they weren’t doing that great of a job. The rope was plaited like a braid of hair, it was all loose. Besides, the screen wasn’t good material for a rope. It was made of cotton, like a bed sheet or a quilt cover. For rope, hemp is the only thing. Then you can be sure it won’t break.

  When they had to take Uncle Jan down, the rope was hemp and it couldn’t be cut even with a kitchen knife, it was so tightly twined. They kept hacking away at it. In the end father had to take an ax and cut Uncle down along with the branch he was hanging from.

  All of a sudden, one of the boys gave a triumphant shout:

  “Let’s hang the commandant!”

  The whole room whooped:

  “Hurrah! The commandant! The commandant!”

  It was as if only the commandant matched the scale of this revolt. In any case, he seemed the best choice. Above all, it was as if in his person he made it possible for us to cross a further boundary. The revolt, which had seemed about to turn from a disagreement into a fist fight, flared up all over again.

  “Let’s get the commandant! Let’s hang the bastard!”

  Someone sang:

  “The executioners have spilled our blood so long!”

  It goes without saying that by now the rec room was too small for the revolt. We swarmed out the door and through the windows into the parade ground, whether we were for or against hanging the commandant, it was all the same. We marched up to the teachers’ hut where the commandant’s office was. We started chanting:

  “Commandant! Commandant! Come out, commandant!”

  No, the commandant didn’t live at the school. He traveled to work each day. At that time he was nowhere to be found. We knew that, of course. But the revolt had blinded us so we forgot. Of course no one came out. The hut stood in darkness and silence. There wasn’t so much as a glimmer of light in any of the windows. It was like all the teachers were gone too. Maybe they’d run away, every last one of them, when the film stopped. Or they were sitting inside without making a sound.

  We hammered on all of the doors, all of the walls. In the end we smashed all the windows. Nothing. There wasn’t a living soul. Someone brought up the idea of burning the hut down, since there had to be someone in there. There were always at least three teachers on duty at any given time. Someone else said we should burn all the huts, even the ones we lived in. Burn the whole school down. If there was going to be a fire, let there be a fire. We could go up on the hill and watch it all burn. At least that. Nero set Rome on fire the same way. I didn’t know what Rome was, I didn’t know who Nero was. But there were a few kids in the school who knew this and that. Then we’d run away. Good-bye, goddamn school!

  One of them volunteered right away to do the Rome thing, he said he knew where they kept the cans of kerosene, he’d run and fetch them. Someone else said it was better to hang somebody. We had a rope made from the screen, and the film had been the cause of it all. Otherwise why had we bothered to braid it? We set off around the parade ground, attacking all the other huts, smashing windows everywhere in the hope that we’d draw someone out, bring them into the open, because it wasn’t possible we’d been left alone with our revolt. Our rage had reached its peak. It was a huge letdown that nobody was there. Some people started shouting that we should go back to the rec room and get the projectionist, maybe he’d have come round by now.

  Then we heard someone coming. They seemed to be walking heavily, slowly, one step at a time. The square was paved with gravel, and you could hear it crunching louder and louder. Even when the steps paused, the gravel still sounded under the person’s feet, as if they were rocking on it. Can you guess who it was? That’s right, it was him, the music teacher. Who else. Only a drunk could have been so unaware of the danger. We recognized him from far off. We stood there and waited. He was well gone. He took one last step as he loomed out of the darkness, then suddenly staggered. One of the boys darted forward and caught him, otherwise he would probably have fallen.

  “Thank you, thank you,” he mumbled. Though it seemed that it was only with his next step he could actually see us. “Why aren’t you in bed yet, boys?” he asked, half surprised and half not. “Don’t take me as your example. I hardly sleep at all anymore.”

  “This is a revolt!” someone exclaimed.

  “A revolt?” He hiccupped so hard his whole body swayed. “Good for you. I was in a revolt one time myself. You can see where that got me. But maybe you’ll do better out of it. All right, just let me through now. For some reason I feel like going to bed tonight.”

  “It’s a real revolt!” another boy shouted virtually in his ear.

  “We’ve smashed all the windows! Now we’re going to burn the school to the ground! All the huts!” They were yelling over one another across his nodding head, forming an ever tighter circle around him.

  “I believe you that it’s real,” he murmured. “I believe everything nowadays, boys. All right, let me through. I want to sleep, to sleep.”

  Then out of the middle of the crowd there came a shout, though afterwards no one fessed up to it:

  “We should hang him! He’s so drunk he won’t even feel it!”

  Someone else objected. But a third person screamed:

  “A revolt’s a revolt! It’s all the same who we hang! There’s no better or worse choices! Put the noose on him!”

  He’d been so drunk he could barely stand, but he sobered up at once:

  “For what, boys? For what?”

  “We have to. It’s a revolt.” Whoever said it, their voice cracked as they slippd the noose around his neck.

  What do you think about that? I mean, he was the only one of them we actually liked. Of all the teachers. Whether you wanted to learn to play an instrument or not. Actually most boys didn’t, but still all of us really liked him. Maybe it was just that we didn’t know the rules of revolts, and we were bursting with rage. He on the other hand, he must have known, because he treated it like a joke.

  “Hang away, boys, if you must. Just let me have a drink first.” He took out his bottle, from this pocket here. “Be a pity to leave even a little drop.” Though I think the bottle was probably empty, it kind of rang hollow when he lifted it to his lips. “Well, at least I’ll die like a tr
ue artist. At the hands of those dearest to me. That’s something.” At that point he checked the noose, which they’d already tied around his neck. “Are you sure this thing will hold, boys? It doesn’t seem that strong. I’d prefer not to have to come back.”

  We started to lead him along by the rope, looking for a place to hang him. But it turned out there weren’t any protruding beams, or any trees nearby. Everyone racked their brains about where to do it. The music teacher was getting antsy:

  “Well then, boys? I’m ready.”

  At that moment someone ran out in front of the others and kicked his legs from under him. He dropped to the ground, his hat fell off, and the bottle he’d been holding in his hand slid off somewhere.

  “My bottle! My bottle!” he gasped. “Don’t let it get smashed!” Then more calmly, with a touch of resentment, as he struggled to get up: “Too soon, boys. I’m not hanging yet.”

  And what do you make of this, the same boys that tied the noose around his neck hurried forward to help him up. Others looked for the bottle in the darkness. Someone put his hat back on his head, someone brushed off his clothes. The one that had brought him down, the others beat him and kicked him. Then the whole mob together walked him back to the hut where he lived.