A Treatise on Shelling Beans

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  He’d always cut a new pencil into four, and use little short ones all the time. Not out of thriftiness. If you have a whole pencil sticking out of your hand, however hard you press down it’s still going to give you away. You could see the shakiness on the chit, even if all he’d written was something like, Screw: one count.

  Oh, and also he couldn’t really see out of one eye. To cover it up he’d look at you with the eye that didn’t see properly, and half-close his good eye. Or he’d take turns, first one eye then the other, which hid it even more. And he was a grumbler, he complained all the time. When you went to the warehouse for some item you’d get a virtual inquisition, why do you need it, what’s it for, where’s it for, before he’d scribble the chit and give you the thing. And all the time he’d be going on and on about how we damaged everything he gave us, you could have built a whole other glassworks with the materials we’d spoiled, plus we were probably pinching stuff. He knew, he knew full well. Maybe not you, kid. But they all steal. They reckon that what they’re stealing isn’t theirs.

  On the other hand, there wasn’t the slightest thing wrong with his hearing, let me tell you. Maybe it was because of his hearing that they made him a warehouse keeper. You’d be standing in front of him while he filled out the chit and he’d ask without looking up:

  “Why are you creaking like that?”

  “What do you mean, creaking? I’m just standing here.”

  “You’re creaking, I can hear it.”

  Or:

  “You have asthma or something?” The guy would be healthy as you like. “Keep drinking and smoking and you’ll run out of breath before you die.”

  Or whenever he gave out a part, he’d always have to hold it to his ear. If it was something heavy, he’d bend over it. And he’d say, It’s good, or, I’ll give you another one.

  You know, hearing means a lot in a warehouse, maybe even more than sight. The warehouse took up an entire hut, he’d have had to always be walking around and checking up. As it was, he just sat at his desk and he could hear the whole place from one end to the other. He would have heard a mouse, let alone someone trying to remove a window pane at the other end of the warehouse.

  No one on the site knew that he’d been a saxophonist. He never let on. He hadn’t actually played in a long while. But sometimes, when you went into the warehouse without warning, it seemed like he’d been wrapped up in listening to something. Because as he used to say, you can hear music even in a rock.

  No one would have found out either. But they decided to form a band at the site. A directive had come down from above that if there was more than x number of people working at a given site, and the project was a long-term one, then there ought to be some musical ensemble or a dance troupe or choir, or at least a drama club, since working people needed entertainment. So they started asking around the site about who could play an instrument. I told them I played the sax. True, I’d not played since school, it had been a few years. And I thought I’d never play again. Though I won’t deny I felt the urge. Sometimes, when I couldn’t sleep I’d imagine I was playing. I heard myself play. I could taste the mouthpiece between my lips. Oh yes, every mouthpiece has its own taste. Well, actually the reed. I even felt the fingering, I sensed the keys against my fingertips. I felt the instrument weighing from the strap around my neck, maybe even more than a real saxophone would have weighed. Sometimes I could even see a firehouse full of people, I could see them dancing as I played for them, because I’d never known any other venue than firehouses.

  But that was mostly when I couldn’t get to sleep. During the day there was never time to imagine anything. Or you were so exhausted by work that vodka, vodka alone, was the only thing that could give you back the will to live. They were pushing us so hard, often it would be nighttime by the time you got off work, because like I said, the job was behind schedule the whole time, and at those moments only vodka would do the trick.

  I didn’t think they’d accept me. But I thought, I’ll give it a go. Because I’d tried everything. I’d tried reading, I’d tried drinking, I’d tried believing in a new and better world, I’d tried falling in love. Maybe that would have been the best option. But to fall in love, you can’t work from morning to night, because after that all you want to do is sleep. You have to go to dances. But to go to dances you need to know how to dance. And me, I couldn’t even dance. No, they never organized dances at our school, and we weren’t allowed to go to dances anywhere else. One time the older kids had gone to one on the sly, they’d gotten into a fight with some local boys, there was a whole investigation, then after that they started checking up on us even in the night, to make sure we were asleep.

  Sometimes we’d have a pretend dance on a Sunday evening, in the rec room. In fall and winter the evenings were long, there were no classes, on Sundays we didn’t go to work. We’d decorate the rec room and put up a poster saying there was a dance. A few kids were chosen to be in the band, the younger ones were made the girls, the older boys were the gentlemen. But what kind of dance could it be when we didn’t know how to dance – how could we have? Maybe one or two of us knew this or that, but most of us just stepped on each other’s toes. There was constant cursing and name-calling. You so-and-so, you trod on my big toe, you trod on this, on that. You stepped on me with your whole boot, goddammit! The hell with girls like you. The worst words were thrown about. Get off my toes and dance, you son of a b …, and so on. Pardon my language, I’m just repeating what was said.

  Though how could you step on their toes when everyone was wearing hobnailed boots? We wore them for dancing too – we didn’t have anything else to change into. We wore them summer and winter. The most you could do was dance barefoot. We tried that, but you got splinters in the soles of your feet because the floorboards were rough and jagged, they were all torn up from the nails in our boots. When someone got an accidental kick on the ankle from one of the boots, it made them howl. They sometimes whopped you if it was the girl who’d kicked them, or if one of the younger ones had kicked an older boy.

  And when the band played a faster number, it wasn’t just your dance partner, the whole room stepped on everyone’s feet, people bumped against each other deliberately it seemed, some of them knocked other ones down. At those moments the insults and curses erupted like volcanoes, there were scuffles, sometimes someone even pulled a knife. Plus, can it really be a dance when no one throws their arms around anyone, no one whispers tender words in anyone’s ear? At most one of the gentlemen would say to the girl he was dancing with, hold me tighter, you little shit.

  The dances were mostly about the older boys, which is to say the gentlemen, taking it out on us, which is to say the girls. They took it out on us every day anyway, but at the dances they went the whole hog. The teachers? They didn’t do a thing. Once in a while one of them would show up, watch for a bit, then leave. At those times, we’d just happen to be dancing nicely. No one trod on anyone’s toes, you never heard a single cuss word. But the moment the teacher left, you can imagine what happened. It was total pandemonium, sometimes they even turned off the lights. And what went on when the lights were out, well, it’s best not to say.

  Oh yes, of course there was a master of ceremonies. This kid that was one of the oldest ones. It was always him, at every dance. He’d pin a bundle of ribbons on his lapel. He could actually dance a bit. He was a smooth talker, though he also had a mouth on him. But he always took the side of the older boys. He might have been the worst of the lot. He was pleasant, never swore, never called people names, when you stepped on his toe he’d just make you apologize. But before the number was over he’d lead his girl outside, supposedly to go take a walk, and there he did what he liked with her. Often he beat her till she bled. Complain to who? It would have cost you dearly afterwards.

  He called circles, baskets, pair by pair, swap partners, and white tango. For the white tango, us girls had to ask the older boys, that is, the gentlemen. As master of ceremonies he decided everythin
g, he’d say, you go with him, you go with so-and-so. If anyone tried to object, he’d grab him by the scruff of the neck and drag him across the room, now ask him and bow to him, get on with it before I kick you in the pants. And you could feel his hand gripping the back of your neck.

  Let me tell you, for a long time after that I was afraid to dance. I was put off by the idea of dancing, which sort of goes against the nature of the thing, because after all dancing is supposed to attract people. Maybe because all through school it was as if I was the girl, and that makes you look at everything entirely differently, experience it all differently, it’s hard to even trust to the dance. It was only when I began playing in the worksite band that I finally started to like dancing. A band has to know how to dance, not just how to play music for dancing. Especially a saxophonist.

  They chose seven of the guys who’d put their names forward. An instructor came, brought instruments, listened to us play. And he said, We’ll practice, we’ll learn to play together and we’ll make a decent band. No, it wasn’t till the next time that he brought a saxophone, he auditioned me separately. He even asked where I’d learned to play, seeing I was so young. Had I been in a band before? A school band, I told him. It must have been a really good school. You must have had excellent teachers. Yes, I said, one of them in particular was.

  On each instrument they painted an identification number to show it was official property. Just like they had on all the desks, office machines, telephones, equipment, towels, everything that was company property. Each of us had to sign a list to say we’d been given such and such an instrument to use, and that we’d be responsible for it. They also bought us company outfits so we’d all look the same: gray suits, white nylon shirts, neck-ties all the same color and the same pattern. The outfits were kept in a closet in the social department, we had to sign them out whenever we had a show. The only things of our own we had were our shoes and socks.

  After that, for several months the instructor came and we rehearsed with him two, sometimes three times a week. After work, it goes without saying, because they only let us off overtime. And so we wouldn’t lose out, they added two extra hours each day for the rehearsal. To tell the truth, after a couple of rehearsals we didn’t really need the instructor, each of us knew more than he did. There was a cement mason, a welder, a tile layer, a crane operator, an office worker, and another electrician, and aside from me they’d all played before in various bands. One had been in a military band, another one had played at a spa resort, one had been a street musician during the war, or before the war. One of them had studied for a time at a conservatory, one was an organist, and one of them had a father who played fiddle at the opera, and his father had taught him to play even better than him, he said.

  They chose me because I was the only one who’d come forward as a saxophonist. You know, in those days the sax wasn’t a regular instrument. You didn’t often see one in a band. Elsewhere in the world sure, but not here, not in company bands, especially from a building site. Though it was precisely the saxophone that made us so successful. Those guys have a saxophone – it gave us an advantage over other bands. Pretty soon we started getting invited to play here and there, on other sites, factories, army units. And not just for dances, but other things too, we were asked to perform at celebrations, anniversaries, holiday events.

  Let me tell you, our band often did more for the site than management. So you don’t think I’m just saying that, one time we did a special event at a cement works. Maybe you know how things were with cement in those days. With everything else too, it’s true. But on a building site, without cement you couldn’t do a thing. You’d sometimes have to beg for every ton of it, organize parties for the cement works management or their workers’ board, remember the name days of this or that person, which people were important and who made the decisions, bring gifts. Or send telegrams, call. And when nothing helped, who to call higher up, though that was always the least help of all. The site would grind to a halt and stay that way.

  They asked me to perform solo on the saxophone especially for the wife of the director of the works, because it happened to be her name day or maybe birthday that day. And they announced that I’d play solo for her, the rest of the band was only going to do backup. I didn’t want to do it, I told them I’d never appeared solo before. But then I thought to myself, when it comes down to it it’s a challenge. She was sitting in the front row, next to the director, she was a decent-looking woman, a brunette I remember. I started playing, I saw she was beaming, so I went all the way. I finished my solo, and the place was dead, there wasn’t even the faintest applause. It was only when she jumped to her feet in the front row and started clapping without looking around that the whole room burst into applause, some of them clapping even louder than her. After that there weren’t any more problems with cement. At most the delivery would be a day or two late. And the whole band got bonuses.

  That was later, after he and I had gone our separate ways. You know, the warehouse keeper. It happened because there was a performance at our site, it was some holiday or other, a few people got medals, a bunch of certificates were handed out. The next day I went by the warehouse for some item, and as he was writing out the chit he said in a kind of hurt voice:

  “You were all over the map. You’ll never be a real band. You don’t play well together, you’re not that good.”

  It got to me, because who was he to say things like that. Some warehouse keeper. The room had rung with applause, it was even louder than after the director’s speech, everyone congratulated us, people kept shaking my hand, and here was this warehouse guy. I thought, I’ll just get the part I need and I’ll say something to him as I’m leaving. But all of a sudden he softened up.

  “You, you have something. But with the saxophone, don’t go getting any ideas. You’ll be wasted in a band like that. They’ll clap for you, sure they will, because who ever heard a saxophone out here in the countryside.”

  I did a double take. Where had he heard a saxophone? It was then he let on that he’d been a saxophonist, he’d played for many years before the war, and in lots of different bands. I was dumbfounded, because on the surface you wouldn’t have given ten cents for the guy, as the saying goes. I forgot that I’d come for the part, and honestly, to this day I can’t remember what it was. I just wondered, should I believe him or not?

  Words didn’t come easily to him, you could see he had to force them out. Two or three of them, then a break, with big gaps in between, as if he had trouble joining them together. Or maybe that was just my own impression, because I couldn’t get over the idea that the chit was being signed not by some warehouse keeper but by a saxophonist. From what he said, he’d played every kind of sax, though most often an alto. Then when he started listing the places he’d performed, I have to say I thought I was dreaming. Vienna, Berlin, Prague, Budapest, and those were just the capitals, he’d worked in all kinds of other cities. He’d traveled in any number of countries. He started naming the venues he’d played, and I thought he must be making them up. The Paradise, the Eldorado, the Scheherezade, the Arcadia, the Eden, the Hades, the Imperial. I wanted to ask him what all the names meant, but I was too shy. Because he might think, And you want to be a sax player? Oh yes, he also performed on a passenger ship sailing to America. I stopped wondering whether he was telling me the truth or not, because the very fact that the saxophone can take you all over the world like that was making me think differently about it.

  Once again I got the idea of maybe beginning to put money aside from my wages on the first of the month, or at least a part of what I spent on vodka. I couldn’t play a company saxophone for the rest of my life, after all. And what if I moved to another site and there was no band there? One day I was back in the warehouse to pick up something or other, and as he leaned over the chit he asked:

  “Do you have your own sax?”

  “No, just the company one. I saved for one once, but then the currency change happened. I wa
s thinking about starting to save up again.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. He finished writing the chit, and didn’t utter another word.

  I thought, probably he reckons there’s no point, because there might be another change of currency. And a currency change is like death, you always end up not having enough time. He must know life.

  A couple of weeks went by, then one day I was passing the warehouse when he shuffles out and calls me:

  “Come over here!”

  “I don’t have time now. I’ll swing by later.” I really was in a hurry.

  “No, now. Later’s usually too late.”

  “Is it something urgent?” I could see there was a case lying on his desk.

  “Look inside,” he said.

  I opened the case, my heart pounding, and I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  “A saxophone,” I said, though it was like I still didn’t quite believe it.

  “A saxophone,” he said. “I went home Sunday and brought it back. Why should it go to waste?”