There was only one thing I couldn’t understand: why she hadn’t wanted to admit she was crying. And she was, I could have sworn she was.
At that age, there are a lot of things you maybe don’t understand, but you feel things deeper than if you’d understood them. Plus, you see everything, you see it through and through. Life can’t be concealed from anyone, least of all a child. There’s no curtain you can use to hide it. A child will even see through a curtain. Sometimes I wonder if children aren’t our conscience. Later you see less and less. The world’s no longer willing to be reflected in people’s eyes. Although a child doesn’t even have to look. The world pushes under his eyelids of its own accord. The world is still transparent at that age. Unfortunately, you grow out of it. Today I find it hard to believe I was once a child. I used to graze the cattle, but what proof is that of anything. Before that I minded the geese. Then grandfather took over the geese, and I took the cows from him. And I imagined that we’d just keep swapping like that the whole time. Grandfather would take over the cows from me, and I’d take the geese again. Then he’d mind the geese once more, and I’d mind the cows. And it would always be like that, cows to geese, geese to cows. I was convinced that since grandfather had always been grandfather from the beginning, I’d also always be a child.
Though if you ask me, geese are harder to mind. Yours get mixed up with other people’s, they’re all white, and afterwards there’s no way of telling which are yours and which aren’t. Not to mention that they often fight till they bleed, they latch onto each other so hard you can’t pull them apart, especially the ganders.
We kept a lot of geese, to have down to stuff quilts, and pillows for Jagoda and Leonka for when they got married. Mother wanted them to have down bedding, and for that you need lots and lots of geese. And you’ll be plucking away for years. It takes a huge amount of down to make a feather quilt, and there’s not that many feathers on a goose.
So I always preferred minding the cows. To make a long story short, I’ll tell you one thing. Mother would sometimes despair over me:
“You were such a good child when you minded the geese.”
The pasture was the road that led directly to adulthood. Whoever graduated from the pasture was no longer a child, even if they were called one. And the sister always treated me like a child. From the first moment of surprise when I emerged from the cellar. Lord, you’re nothing but a child! And so on till the very end. Maybe that’s why it was OK for me to look while she was bathing, whereas she was afraid of letting all the others see? I don’t know, that’s exactly what I don’t get, especially after what happened one night. So I stood there and kept guard to make sure they didn’t peep.
Oh yes, almost all of them. When one of them saw she was going down to the lake, he’d sneak off immediately and follow her at a distance, hide behind a bush or a tree, or even climb a tree if there was one nearby on the shore. Sometimes even the wounded would drag themselves down to the lake. Some of them would back off when they saw me standing guard. But not everyone. A good few of them, it made no difference whether I was standing there or not. Many of them would give me an earful. Or tell me to keep my trap shut and sit tight. One guy, he had binoculars, he’d lie down right next to me, by a bush or under a tree, and it was like I wasn’t even there. When I moved he’d say, Stay still or I’ll shoot you. He was a huge guy, with a nasty look in his eye, as if he didn’t even like himself that much. For a guy like that, shooting someone was like eating a slice of bread. I was terrified of him. So I’d stand there stock still whenever he came to watch.
One time he told me to stand and not say a word, while she had undressed on the shore and it looked like she had no intention of going into the water, she was just enjoying the sun. He lay down, put the binoculars to his eyes and watched and watched. My heart was beating harder than ever before. All of a sudden he smashed his fist against the ground, rested his head on the earth and groaned:
“Dear Christ, dear Christ.” He turned his face upwards. “What I’d give to be between her legs. A guy would know what he was fighting for.” He wiped his eyes from the binoculars. “They’re going to kill us all anyway, what difference would it make to her.” He held the binoculars out towards me. “Wanna look?” I shrugged. “Right, maybe it’s best you don’t.”
As it happened, a few days later there was a muster in the middle of the night, the men formed two lines, it was, count off, they all shouldered arms and marched off. The sister went with them. I stayed back with the wounded and some sentries. The others only came back three days later, around daybreak. They looked like a hounded pack of wolves. Several of them were wounded, two were being carried on stretchers made from branches. And the one I was so afraid of had the sister in his arms. She was dead. He himself had a head wound, his hair was caked with blood, blood was running down inside his collar. He’d refused to let anyone else carry her the whole way. They’d wanted to make another stretcher and carry her on it, but he wouldn’t allow them. Four others had died too, but they’d been left behind. He’d risked heavy rifle fire to retrieve her body. That was when he’d been injured. She’d died dressing the wounds of one of the men who had fallen. It had been pointless. The man had only been able to open his eyes and say, There’s no point, sister. Then he was dead. Who heard it? You ask like you didn’t know there’s always someone who hears. There’s no situation in which there isn’t someone who hears.
You know, she sensed that she was going to die. Or maybe she just didn’t want to live? One time I helped her take the laundry down to the lake. There was a lot of it. As she washed and rinsed the things, I took them and hung them out to dry on the branches. It was one of those days that don’t come along very often. The sky was blue as can be, without the tiniest cloud. The lindens were in bloom, you could smell honey in the air, bees were buzzing, the heat was intensifying, it was the perfect weather for washing and drying. All at once she dropped the clothes, sat down on the shore, pulled her knees up under her chin, put her arms around them, and stared and stared at the lake.
“I really don’t feel like doing the laundry today,” she said. “What I’d most like to do is go lie down on the lake, you know? Just lie there. What do you think, would I sink?”
She jumped to her feet and started to undress.
“I’m going to go bathe. You keep guard. Go stand over there.”
And she leaped into the water. I watched her swimming, and I began to choke with fear that in a moment she’d lie down on the water and stop moving. Luckily she swam for a bit and came back. She got dressed again.
“Now get on with the laundry, sister,” she said, telling herself off. In between giving me items of clothing to hang out, she said: “You know what, you should move in and live with me, would you like to? Goodness, it’s hard to even call it living in these dugouts, these pits.” When I took the next piece of clothing from her to hang it out: “None of them have tried anything with you?” I didn’t know what she meant. “What are you staring at me for? That’s why you’re going to live with me. Too bad I didn’t think of it sooner. Maybe I’ll be able to sleep better too.” I didn’t understand either why she couldn’t sleep.
She brought a litter and made a place for me next to her. She had to squeeze over a bit so there’d be room for me. After picking out all the pine cones and acorns and twigs from the litter, she covered the litter with dry grass. So it’ll be nice and soft for you, she said. Then she laid some old rags on top. Sometimes, on a cooler night she’d ask if I was warm enough and put her coat over the blanket I slept under. But I didn’t sleep that well with her. Even though neither of us snored, or smoked cigarettes, or swore, or shouted in our sleep. She slept as quiet as anything, often I couldn’t hear a thing. It was just that the silence was hard for me to bear. It was the silence itself that woke me up several times a night. I’d jerk awake, listening fearfully to see if she was asleep. If I couldn’t hear her breathing, I’d get up from the bedding and place my ear close to her. An
d though I’d be reassured that she was sleeping, I often couldn’t get back to sleep myself.
One night, I don’t know why, I woke terrified, I sat up and gently touched her forehead to see if it was warm. She jolted upright, equally scared:
“Oh, it’s you. I had such a fright. Don’t touch me ever when I’m sleeping. Remember, don’t touch me.”
“I just wanted –”
“I know,” she said. “Lie down and go back to sleep.”
There were also times when she would sit up from her bedding and, holding her breath, she would listen to see if I was asleep. When she was sure I was, though in fact I was pretending, she’d take her coat if she hadn’t put it over me and she’d go off somewhere. All kinds of thoughts rattled around in my brain at those times, and I’d wait till she came back. When she did, sometimes I’d pretend to have just woken up.
“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I went to bathe. In the nighttime at least no one watches you,” she explained. “The water’s so warm. It’s a full moon. The lake is even lovelier than during the day.”
That was how it was every time. So I decided I wouldn’t wake up anymore when she came back. But one time when she returned, and I was pretending to be asleep, she lay down and all of a sudden I heard her crying.
“I know you’re not asleep,” she said. “I can’t take it anymore. It’s so hard for them. But I can’t take it any longer.”
11
Lost yourself in thought there, did you? What were you thinking about, if I may ask? True, there’s a lot to think about. And there doesn’t have to be any particular reason. There’s just lots of things to think about in general. In one country I once saw a sculpture. This man lost in thought. You’ve seen it too? There you go. I stood in front of it and began to wonder. I really wanted to ask what he was thinking about. But how can you ask a sculpture? If a person really decided to think about themselves so hard, they’d probably become a sculpture too. But in that case, tell me, is it only sculptures and paintings and books and music that can think about themselves, while we can’t?
I don’t mean anything in particular. I was just asking you, as if I were asking that sculpture. Of course I know I won’t get an answer either from you or from the sculpture. Sometimes people ask a question without expecting an answer. You have to agree there are questions that are sufficient in themselves. Especially as no answer would satisfy them anyway. And if you ask me, it has nothing to do with what we’re asking about. It’s a matter of who is asking who. Even when we’re asking ourselves, there’s always one who’s asking and one who’s being asked. It only seems like the person doing the asking is the same one giving the answer. If you think about it though, it’s always a different person asking and a different person answering. Or not answering, because maybe for instance they’re lost in thought. Every question selects an appropriate someone inside us. Even the most trivial question chooses a different person. Not just the person who’s supposed to answer it, but also the one who’s supposed to ask it. And with each question both the one and the other will be different people. After all, inside us there’s a child, and an old man, and a young man, and someone who’s going to die, and someone who doubts, and someone who has hope, and someone who no longer has any. And so on, and so forth.
If things were otherwise, no one would ever have to ask themselves anything, or have to answer anything. Yet no one can say of themselves that that’s me, that’s the way I was and the way I’m going to be in the future. No person can draw the boundaries of their self or establish themselves as themselves. That’s why we keep having to ask ourselves questions, first from one self, then from that one, then from another one still, and ask first one person, then another, then a third person, even though none of the questions is going to be answered anyway.
See – we’re sitting here shelling beans, you could say you’re here, I’m here, and between our hands we feel every pod, and every bean that we shell from it. Yet what’s more important still is how you and I imagine one another, how I imagine myself in relation to you, and how you imagine yourself in relation to me. The fact that we can see each other shelling beans doesn’t prove anything. If all we were doing was shelling beans, that wouldn’t be enough to experience the shelling. It’s only our imaginings of one another that fill out the fact that we’re shelling beans. Just like they fill out everything. Honestly, I even think it’s only what’s imagined that’s actually real.
Why does that surprise you? Then I don’t understand why it was me you came to for beans. I mean, you couldn’t have known I grow them. A few, just enough for myself, like I said. So all the more you couldn’t have expected me to have any to sell. And at this time of year who would come and visit me here? At the most someone from the dead. So I couldn’t have expected you either. Besides, I was going to go to bed soon. I would just have done my rounds of the cabins. I usually go to bed about this time. It’s early, because nightfall’s getting earlier these days. Though I read in bed a bit, listen to music, before I fall asleep, or don’t fall asleep, it varies. If I do get to sleep I’ll wake up after an hour or two, read some more, listen to music again, till I drop back off. Then when I wake again I’ll get up and do the rounds. Sometimes, though, there’ll be a night that’s like daytime, I go to bed but I know I won’t fall asleep. On nights like those I get up and repaint some nameplates. It takes me a long time, as you saw, but I hope to get them all done. If I had the hands I used to have, when I played …
Here there was a knock at the door, and I wondered, who could it be? It was you, and you were asking about beans. I’d understand if you’d been asking for directions, how to get out of here, which way to go. Or which cabin is Mr. Robert’s, because you want to stay there, then I would have shown you, it’s that one over there, and told you where the key is. But you must admit, the fact that you wanted to buy beans from me could have made me suspicious. What if I hadn’t had any? Besides, you were convinced I wouldn’t. You didn’t think you’d be at my place long. Don’t deny it. I even wondered, do I have any or not, because maybe this much life would have been enough. It was just that I’d noticed how you remind me of someone. Especially in that overcoat and hat, we must have met before, even if only by chance. Do I have any or not, yes or no, I started scouring my memory. But memory is like a well, the deeper you go, the darker it gets.
Forgive me for asking, but how would you define chance? Why do I ask? Because one time, when I was living abroad I was on my way to rehearsal one afternoon, and I see someone coming toward me who actually looked a little like you, now that I’ve gotten a good look at you. We hadn’t yet crossed, there were still a few yards between us. I might not have noticed him at all, but all of a sudden he tipped his hat and nodded to me. Or maybe I was the first one to nod, because I’d seen him smile at me and raise his hand to his hat to tip it, and I wanted to beat him to it. Besides, it makes no difference whether it was him or me. And like that, him raising his hat over his head, me raising mine, and smiling at one another in the conviction that we knew each other, we passed.
But the moment we crossed, I turned around to look at him and I saw he was staring at me also. Where we’d met and when, I couldn’t recall. Nor could he, because why would he have looked back at me if he’d remembered when and where. I walked on a few steps and turned again. Believe it or not, he had also turned back again. I decided to go up and ask where we knew each other from. At that exact moment he also started towards me, with the same intention as it transpired. We walked up to one another, raised our hats again, but I see he’s a little embarrassed, and I’m disappointed, because we can both see we don’t know one another.
“I’m terribly sorry,” I said. “I don’t believe we know each other.”
“I’m afraid I don’t remember you,” he replied.
“Oh well, just an unfortunate chance. It happens. Once again I’m very sorry.” I raised my hat again and was about to walk away. But he held me back.
“It isn’t chance, my dea
r sir,” he said. “There’s no such thing as chance. After all, what is chance? No more than a justification for what we’re unable to understand. So we shouldn’t part like this. Let’s at least go get coffee. On me. See, we’re even standing outside a cafe. They have good coffee here. I stop by sometimes.”
The coffee was indeed good. But the conversation never took off. Especially at the beginning. I barely said anything, I mean, what was I supposed to talk about with a person I’d mistaken for someone else. So I gazed around the cafe, though there wasn’t much to look at. It was just a regular cafe. Not that big, a dozen or so tables, rather dimly lit. I don’t like dark cafes. The lower half of the walls had dark wood paneling, the top half was wallpapered in dark gold. The tables seemed too bulky for a cafe. The backs of the chairs were almost as high as your head, and the chairs themselves weren’t especially comfortable. The only thing I liked were the wall lamps and the chandelier that hung from the ceiling. Each wall lamp was in the form of two female figures holding candlesticks in their outstretched hands, and there was a candle in each one, as if there were no electricity. Each lamp had women from a different historical period. The chandelier also was not electrified, it was filled with real candles and decorated richly with cut glass in different shapes.
He noticed me looking around the cafe, and began to tell me about it. Hardly anything had changed here since the cafe first opened, he said. He mentioned the year, I don’t remember exactly when it was, but the place was almost two hundred years old. The tables, chairs, lamps, chandelier, paneling, even the wallpaper was the same color and pattern as two centuries ago. And the candles were lit at dusk just the same. This wasn’t only known from descriptions, he said, there were photographs, and a number of paintings of the interior. One artist had gathered all the famous personages who had come here over those two hundred years, as if they’d all come by and taken a table on a single day and at the same time. He mentioned some of them by name, though without telling me what they were famous for. He probably assumed I would know. But at that time none of the names meant anything to me.
A Treatise on Shelling Beans Page 26