A Treatise on Shelling Beans

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  “It’s golden,” I said. I felt I was trembling.

  “Yes it is,” he said. “An alto. It’s seen a good deal of the world with me.”

  “How much would you want for it?” I finally got up the courage to ask, while in my mind I’d already begun to borrow from everyone I knew on the site, in the offices, in benefits and loans. Where else could I try, where else. My thoughts were racing like a hunting dog, because I was certain all the money I’d be able to borrow would not be enough. He also seemed to be wondering what he should ask:

  “How much? How much? How do you know I want to sell it? Things like this aren’t for sale. Sometimes all that’s left of your whole life is what you didn’t sell.”

  And he said to me that if I wanted, after work or on Sundays I could come by, to his warehouse, and we could play. Or rather I would play, he would listen. It’d be better for me than vodka or cards. Especially as I couldn’t play that much yet, and a saxophone has as many secrets as a person. Some of them he’d show me, others I’d have to discover on my own – not that he was trying to keep anything from me, it’s just that he himself hadn’t managed to unearth them.

  “How much would that cost a month?” I asked.

  “It won’t cost anything. You’ll play and I’ll listen. I can’t play myself, as you can see. I’m barely up to this job. It’s only thanks to good people, a few still exist. I’m not well, I don’t have long.”

  And that was how it began. First he hammered it into me that the saxophone isn’t just a tool for playing music. You won’t get anything out of it by being angry or mad at it, or by sulking. It needs patience and hard work. Conscientious hard work. If you want the saxophone to join with you like a soul with a body, you yourself have to open up to it. If you don’t hide anything from it, it won’t hide anything from you. But at every deceit of yours it’ll dig its heels in and not give an inch. It won’t go any higher or lower, however much you blow your lungs out. Actually, your lungs won’t be enough, you’ll be playing but it will be lifeless. You have to play with your whole self, including your pain, your tears, your laughter, your hopes, your dreams, everything that’s inside you, with your whole life. Because all that is music. The saxophone isn’t the music, you are. But I’d have to try, really try, he kept repeating to me, if I wanted to hear myself in the saxophone. Because only then would it be music.

  I have to tell you, I was even afraid of that thing. What kind of saxophone was it, I wondered. I played the company instrument, that was a saxophone too, but I didn’t feel any of what he was talking about. And to begin with I played much worse on his sax than on the company one. Actually, you couldn’t really call it playing, we mostly just practiced scales. That is, he told me what to do, I practiced. On and on, nothing but scales, up and down the whole range of the saxophone. It made me mad, but what could I do. Then he brought some sheet music and we started doing exercises and short extracts. He never let me play any piece of music in its entirety, I only practiced separate parts over and over, and it wasn’t till later that he let me put the parts together. Also, often he’d make me play one sound till I ran out of breath, then he’d have me repeat it time and time again till he’d say, Good enough.

  I’d go to him after work, and not leave till night had fallen over the site. Afterwards I wouldn’t be able to sleep, I’d be playing things over in my mind, then often I’d dream about them. One time he told me I was holding the mouthpiece wrong, and it was making me blow more than I needed to. My lips weren’t in the right place, I was pressing them too hard to the mouthpiece and air was escaping out the sides of my mouth. We have to change that. Another time it was that I was fingering too heavily, my fingers were too stiff, they needed to be loose, I should only touch the keys with the very tips of my fingers. And my fingertips should be so sensitive that they’d feel a sunbeam if it touched them. Because when I played, I wasn’t supposed to touch the keys, I was supposed to touch the music. Those hands of yours are like turtles, your joints are clumsy. Keep practicing. See here, at the end they need to bend at a right angle. Practice at work as well. Though it was from work that my fingers were that way, because electricians don’t much need to move their hands.

  Sometimes I used to doubt whether he really had been a saxophonist, or whether he just sat in that warehouse of his and out of boredom imagined that he’d played the sax, like he could have imagined that he was anything other than a warehouse keeper. Maybe he did play a bit at one time, hence the saxophone, but all the rest was wishful thinking. Someone like that can put themselves through hell, then try and drag other people into their hell with them.

  He never once took the saxophone in his hands to show me how one thing or another should be played, since I was doing it wrong.

  “I would show you, but how?” he would say. “With one hand? I can barely write chits. As you can see.”

  But in that case, how could he know something was wrong? Not like that, play it again. Oh, he knew, he did. It was only years later that I came to understand.

  I went to him every day for maybe eight months, then I got sick of it. I started coming every other day or so, though he would stay back in the warehouse every evening, waiting for me. Why didn’t you come yesterday, why didn’t you come the day before yesterday. It’s been four days. You haven’t been since last week, and I keep waiting here for you.

  I would explain that there’d been an emergency, that we were having big problems with a repair, it’d be another few days yet. Or that they’d kept us later than usual on the site because of something or other. That the previous week we’d been doing contract work, because we were behind schedule. I made up excuses, and he seemed to understand.

  “Yeah, that’s how things are on a building site. That’s how things are.” He would just ask a while later: “So, is the work back on schedule?”

  “Not exactly,” I’d mumble.

  “Your work might be, but getting yourself back on schedule won’t be so easy,” he’d say, a note of reproach in his voice.

  Then one time, though I’d only skipped a single day, he said:

  “Evidently I was mistaken.”

  That stung, and I was on the verge of saying I wouldn’t be coming anymore when he spoke again:

  “There’ll come a moment when you won’t be able to play and work on a building site at the same time. Not just yet, but at some point you’re going to have to make a choice. For now, just drop out of the band. At least let them stop ruining you.”

  “What do you mean, drop out?” He’d actually made me jump.

  He leaped up and started clumping around the warehouse. I’d never seen him so worked up.

  “In that case, play all you want with them. Some people can’t see further than the tip of their nose. Play all you want. You all love the applause, that’s the fact of it, whoever’s doing the applauding and why. Plus you get overtime.”

  That really needled me. I told you they gave us two hours of overtime each day. But that wasn’t why I was in the band. That wasn’t why I’d put in more effort than almost any other kid when I was in school. That wasn’t why I’d saved up for a saxophone, taking food out of my own mouth. He’d really touched a nerve. And I stopped going to him at all. I thought to myself, how long do I have to listen to him saying, Not like that, not like that. You’re not doing it right, not doing it right. Play it again, play it again. If he’d at least have praised me just one time. And on top of everything else he wants me to drop out of the band.

  I left without a word, but let me tell you, I was clenching my fists so hard my hands bled. For several days nothing went right at work. I burned a transformer – myself, an electrician. He wants me to drop out of the band, kept running through my head. Drop out of the band. When that band was my only hope. Not to mention that we were more and more successful. Not long before, we’d been shifted half time to the band, we only worked half time on the site. Plus, in a few weeks we were supposed to play at a masked ball for some bigwigs. They chose us
over who knew how many other bands. We all thought it was something to be proud of. Not just for the band but the whole site, management, and all that.

  In preparation for our appearance the management got us new suits, dark, with a pinstripe, new shirts and ties, they even thought about having us wear bow ties, opinions were divided. This time everyone got black shoes, black socks, and a handkerchief. We heard they’d wanted to buy us matching overcoats as well, since it was autumn, but they ran out of funds. You have no idea how much we were looking forward to that ball. We were counting down the days. The night before they were going to pick us up I barely slept at all.

  It was a Saturday. They sent a truck covered with a tarpaulin, but with benches along the sides. When we got in they told us not to look out from under the tarpaulin. In fact there were holes in it, but since we’d been told not to look, no one even dared so much as to peep through the holes. Besides, there were two soldiers sitting at the back watching us the whole time. They’d lowered the tarpaulin the moment we set off, and it was like riding in a dark box.

  They told us it would take about two hours. It couldn’t have been all that far, but the road went up hill and down dale, we bounced in our seats, the benches kept sliding into the middle of the truck, and we had to keep a tight grip on our instruments. So when we got there it was already completely dark. I don’t know what kind of building it was. It was a big sprawling place, and it was in the woods, maybe a park. You couldn’t see any more. Besides, after we got out of the truck they didn’t let us look around. They hurried us to a kind of corridor in the left-hand wing, then from the corridor into a small hall. Here one of the soldiers who’d brought us reported to another soldier with two stars on his epaulette that the band had arrived and was ready to play. The second soldier told us to take off our overcoats and hats and hang them on pegs. I had a beret instead of a hat. I’d intended to buy a hat, and in fact I did. With those first wages, like I said, on the first building site I’d worked on after the electrification of the villages. But now I was working on maybe my fourth site, and I wore a beret.

  We took off our hats and coats like he asked. Right away two civilians came through from the next room, one of them carrying a list. The one with the list checked our ID cards and marked them off on the list. The other guy went over to our hats and coats and he started feeling them, looking inside every hat, squeezing my beret in his hands. Then they patted us down to check we didn’t have anything. Exactly what I don’t know, they didn’t say. But the clarinetist had a pocket knife, a regular pocket knife. You know what a pocket knife looks like. It’s not a real knife, you can fit the whole thing in the palm of your hand. Two folding blades, one longer, one shorter, a folding corkscrew, a can opener, maybe a nail file, though I don’t recall whether pocket knives had nail files back then. They told him to leave the pocket knife, that he’d get it back after the ball.

  Then my heart nearly stopped, because one of the civilians asked the other:

  “Was there supposed to be a saxophone?”

  The other one immediately went through into the next room. He stayed there for a really long time, or so it seemed to me. True, when it’s fear measuring time instead of a clock, even a moment can drag on forever. He came back and nodded, but I didn’t feel the slightest relief, I was bathed in sweat. They examined all the instruments closely. They shook the violin to see if anything rattled inside it, tapped on the drums to make sure the sound was clean, looked into the bell of my saxophone. Then they asked if we’d brought a list of the tunes we were going to play. Of course we had, since beforehand they’d required us to bring a list. We gave it to them. Had we brought the music to go with the tunes? Did any of it have words? We hadn’t been told that anyone would be singing, so we were taken aback. They explained that that wasn’t what they meant. Of course we had the music with us, though we knew by heart all the pieces we played regularly. We always had the sheet music with us anyway, since it looks more serious when a band plays from sheet music.

  They spent more time on the sheet music than on anything else. One of them went through it all, then handed it over to another guy. The other guy, it looked like he knew music because he studied each page in turn, and from his eyes you could tell he was reading everything from top to bottom. He even took out two or three pages and held them between his fingers, after which he went into the next room again and stayed there for a long while. This time it really was long. We thought there must be something they didn’t like, though we’d only chosen tunes that we’d played before at all kinds of parties and functions.

  Finally he came back. He handed the music over. He said, It’s fine. It turned out he hadn’t held on to any of the tunes. But when we checked to make sure he hadn’t put things in the wrong order, we saw that at the top of every page there was a handwritten note saying, Approved, and an illegible signature.

  The soldier with the stars said, Let’s go. He led us down one corridor then another one, to the ballroom. At the doors he told us to wait, while he went in first. I don’t know why. Perhaps he had to report to someone that the band was at the doors. They were reporting to each other at every step. You couldn’t move unless one of them reported to another one that you were there.

  When we’d been getting in the truck to go there, one of the soldiers that later sat in the back to watch over us had first made us line up, after which he reported to another soldier sitting in the cab next to the driver that the band was ready for departure. Only after that did he drop the tailgate and tell us to climb in.

  The one that had gone into the ballroom came out again and arranged us in a line according to our instruments, violin, viola, clarinet, trumpet, trombone, percussion, and me, saxophone. I didn’t know if it was because I was the youngest, or because of the saxophone.

  We were supposed to play something as we entered, then only after that make our way to the place for the band. Imagine walking into a huge, brightly lit room, there are streamers, balloons, but you don’t see any people, there’s nothing but masks. Someone called out:

  “Bravo, the band is here!”

  There were a few more bravos, and someone added a double one:

  “Bravo! Bravo!”

  It came out that we were late. Though not through any fault of our own, of course. Let me tell you, I didn’t know what to think of it all. Here the people who were supposed to be enjoying themselves were waiting for us, while the other guys were checking us over like they didn’t give a hoot about the first lot. I thought to myself, could it be that the second ones are more important than the first ones? It was because of the second ones we were late, they’d kept us back for such a long time. Maybe that was why they weren’t wearing masks, while the first lot had masks on.

  The ball was nothing special. It wouldn’t have been any different from a regular dance if it hadn’t been for the masks. Some people were dancing, others were going through to an adjoining room where there must have been food and drink. We couldn’t actually see, there was a civilian standing by the door and he closed it every time someone went through. But when they came back, virtually every one of them was unsteady on their legs. They alternately danced and went out. Whether they kept their masks on to eat and drink, that I couldn’t tell you. They didn’t even let us through there for supper. They took us to a different room where again they reported that we’d come for supper, seven count. And they brought seven portions.

  It was the first time I’d seen a party with masks. I couldn’t get over it. Plus, all the masks were the same, like they’d all been given one, the men and the women alike. They covered their faces from forehead to chin, with holes for eyes and nose and mouth, as if instead of faces they only had those holes.

  Later on, abroad, I played at many a masked ball, but there everyone’s mask was different. Even in a mask each person was trying to stand out. Not to mention that every mask glittered with various colors, silver and gold. And there were all kinds of shapes, stars, moons, hearts. Some were so narr
ow they only covered the eyes, others revealed the eyes and nose and mouth while the whole of the rest of the face was hidden. Also, everyone’s costume was different. Here everyone was dressed the same, or in any case the differences were small. And all the masks were black.

  I wondered how they could dance in those masks. You couldn’t smile at the other person, or show surprise, or make a face, through the holes. Maybe they could talk, but when a voice came through a hole like that you couldn’t even tell whose voice it might be. And when you’re dancing, your faces are next to each other.

  Maybe that was why they went out more and more often to the room where the food and drink was. And they were increasingly wobbly when they came back. Some of them were staggering even. At times there were barely two or three pairs on the dance floor, most of them were eating and drinking in the other room. More and more noise came from there, while we played for the two or three pairs. There were moments when no one at all was dancing, but we kept on playing.

  During one of the last breaks, I think it was, I went to the bathroom. I heard someone in the next stall. It wouldn’t have been at all unusual, except that I heard what sounded like someone talking to someone else. I listened closely, whoever it was was speaking indistinctly, mumbling, I figured they must be well oiled. I was only surprised that the other person wasn’t saying anything. The partitions of the stalls didn’t reach the ground, so I bent down and got an even bigger shock, because I only saw one pair of shoes. Not patent leather shoes, just regular lace-ups.

  “So, are we going to build a new and better world, what do you think?”

  Who on earth was he talking to? True, sometimes you might say to yourself, What do you think. You’re right, people like to talk with themselves more than with anyone else. If you ask me, even when you’re talking with someone else, when it comes down to it you’re really talking with yourself.

  In any case, I could barely breathe from curiosity. Especially because he was talking about a new and better world, something I believed in too. All at once he raised his voice, he almost shouted: