A Treatise on Shelling Beans

by Wieslaw Mysliwski

  “This man’s sober, you can see that. He’s just tired, tired from so many nights without sleep, years maybe.”

  The compartment fell silent. It was like everyone’s mouth was stopped up. For the longest time all you could hear was the train, and the man’s ever louder snoring. We passed one station, another, and finally someone spoke, obviously trying to kick over the traces of the previous conversation:

  “If he’s so exhausted it’s no surprise that wherever he closes his eyes he sleeps like the dead.”

  “Who isn’t exhausted these days?” The speaker was bristling. “Who is not exhausted? No one wants their life to be in vain. Those three sacks up there are mine, and I’m not as strong as I used to be.”

  Someone else swore:

  “Exhausted, for fuck’s sake!”

  They started arguing about who was more exhausted than who.

  “Take me, for instance –” someone was settling in to tell a longer story, when all at once a gurgling noise came from the sleeping man’s throat. Luckily the train hit a switch that shook it, and the gurgling sound broke off. But not for long. When the car resumed its rocking rhythm, a great sigh came from his mouth as if from the depths of his soul. After which, still sleeping, he settled his head more firmly against the headrest and began to make a sound that was half-whistle, half-wheeze. The sound contained a distant murmur that grew with almost every breath he took, and became ever faster, closer, louder. It felt like the train, that up till now had been crawling, gathered speed each time he breathed. After a dozen or so breaths, it seemed to be hurtling along, that it had even stopped clattering over the rails and was virtually leaping across the switches, as if we were headed directly for some waterfall from which any minute now we’d plunge into the abyss.

  I was gripped by panic, I felt actual pain in my chest. Please believe me when I say I never heard snoring like that before or after in my life.

  The roaring waterfall we were approaching was making my head explode, it was pressing down on my chest, my legs began to twitch and I couldn’t control them. I felt that along with his snoring, something deep inside my own existence was also being released. Maybe everyone in the compartment felt it, because no one had the guts to nudge him or to say, You’re snoring.

  I pressed against the window, hoping that help might come from that direction. And thank goodness, after a short period of torment the train pulled in to my station. Without waiting for it to come to a complete stop, I pushed open the door and jumped out.

  The dispatcher was standing close by on the platform, and he tore me off a strip. “You there! What’s the rush? If you break an arm or a leg the railroad’ll be liable! Do you even have a ticket? Come here, let me see your ticket!”

  I walked over, still shaken up by the snoring. I reached into my pocket, but I couldn’t find my ticket.

  “What did I tell you!” the dispatcher exclaimed almost triumphantly. “No ticket, and he jumps out of the train before it reaches the station.”

  I rummaged around in my other pockets. In the meantime the dispatcher gave the signal for the train to depart, and when I finally found my ticket it was already gathering speed. “I’ve got it,” I said. “Here.”

  “Let’s see if it’s valid.” He waved to someone in the departing train.

  Without thinking I followed the direction of his waving hand; someone was waving back at him from a window of the train. All at once my heart leaped into my throat. My hat was on the train! Dear God! The last car was just passing. I rushed after it as fast as my legs could carry me. I managed to catch hold of the handrail on the very last door, but the train accelerated and I lost my grip. I still kept running, carried not so much by my legs as by despair that my hat was leaving with the train. Again I caught up with the last car and again I stretched out my hand, trying to grab the handrail, and again I seemed to have gotten ahold of it, all I needed to do was jump from the platform onto the step. But the train jolted forward again and I was thrown back onto the platform. Still I ran, till the last car was a long way off and getting farther and farther.

  I was breathless, my legs shook under me, but I ran back toward the dispatcher. He was still on the platform. He may have been kept there by curiosity as to whether I’d make it back on the train. But he’d probably guessed what would happen, because he greeted me scoldingly:

  “I bet you had a ticket to here and you were planning to continue on for free, eh?”

  “No, I left my hat on the train,” I gasped.

  “What kind of hat?”

  “A brown felt one. Please stop the train.”

  “Stop the train? You must be mad!” He turned around and set off toward the station building.

  I blocked his path.

  “Please stop it.”

  “Out of my way!” He tugged his cap tighter over his head and tried to push me aside.

  I grabbed him by the lapels and shook him till he went as red as his service cap.

  “Stop the train! Stop the train!” I shouted in his face.

  “Let go of me!” he bellowed, trying to twist free from my grip. “Let go, goddammit! This is assault! You over there!” he shouted in the direction of a railroad worker with a long hammer who was tapping the rails. “Call the men! This lunatic won’t let go of me!”

  But before the other man could clamber up onto the platform, several railroad workers came running out of the station building.

  “Don’t let him go! Keep hold of him!” they were shouting.

  “He’s the one holding me!” the dispatcher yelled back furiously. “Son of a bitch won’t let go!” he exclaimed to the men running up, as if out of hurt pride. “Just won’t let go!”

  One of the men grabbed my hands and tried to release my grip on the dispatcher’s jacket. It did no good, it was like I was holding him with claws.

  “Damn but he’s strong. Little squirt like that.”

  The guy with the long hammer put in:

  “One whack with this and he’ll let go. Shall I?” He started to swing the hammer.

  “Hang on,” growled the dispatcher, still furious. “He’ll let go himself. He’ll calm down and let go. He left his hat.”

  “Where?” asked one of the men.

  “In the compartment,” replied the dispatcher. “He wanted me to stop the train.”

  They all exploded in laughter, while my hands dropped from his uniform by themselves.

  “Stopping a train is like stopping the earth turning,” one of them said as his laughter died away.

  “He couldn’t have stopped it anyway,” added the worker with the hammer, peering after the disappearing train. “It had already passed the flagman’s hut.”

  They all burst out laughing again. The laughter carried across the platform, it felt like it was drifting far above me.

  “Where’s his head?”

  “Maybe he left his head there as well.”

  They laughed as if nothing as entertaining as this had ever happened on the railroad, except for crashes.

  One of them must have felt sorry for me and said:

  “Maybe we should call ahead? They could tell the conductor to go look through the cars.”

  The dispatcher retorted as he straightened his uniform:

  “How’s he supposed to make his way through the crowd? They’re not even checking tickets on that train.”

  15

  Did it start from the dream or from the laughter? No, it’s no big deal, I just wonder about it sometimes. I see that surprises you. I’m not surprised you’re surprised, because I’m surprised myself – what was it for? Especially as I don’t even know what it was that supposedly started. I’m not looking for a beginning. Besides, does anything like a beginning ever actually exist? Even the fact that a person is born doesn’t mean that that’s their beginning. If anything had a beginning, it might continue in the right order. But nothing seems willing to go in the right order. One day won’t march after another in an orderly fashion, one keeps pushing in f
ront of the other. Same with the weeks, the months, the years – they don’t follow each other one by one in single file, they charge at you in extended file as they say in the army.

  No, I’m not a military man. When I was of an age to do my military service, my workplace got me out of it. The fact that I was an electrician wasn’t enough of a reason. In those days I played in the company band, like I told you. I was the only saxophonist who’d come forward. They would have brought someone else in from another building site, but they’d never come across anyone that played the sax on those sites either.

  The thing is, though, that when I sometimes try and make sense of my life, and who doesn’t do that … Obviously I don’t mean my whole life, but this or that part, it goes without saying that no one is capable of grasping their entire life, even the most meager one. Not to mention that it’s always debatable whether any life is a whole. Each one is more or less broken into pieces, and often the pieces are scattered. A life like that can’t be gathered back together, and even if it could, what whole would you make out of it? It isn’t a teacup, or even some larger container. Perhaps it can be imagined as a whole after you die. But then, who’s going to be around to do that? Each person is the only one that can imagine himself to himself. Not in all things, you’re right. But as much as you can. There is no other truth.

  Besides, am I really wondering about this life of mine? Why would I do that? It won’t serve any purpose, nothing will be reversed or changed. If anything, it’s life that wonders about me, I don’t feel any such need. Why wouldn’t life wonder about a person living it? It doesn’t even need our consent. Just like with dreams. You dream things even if you’d prefer not to. Sometimes you have dreams you simply don’t want to have, though they’re your own dreams. Also, you have no influence over whether someone else dreams about you. How is life different from that?

  What was the dream? How can I tell you briefly … I really don’t know. It’s not important. And even though I dreamed it much, much later, it sort of opened up the memory of that laughter, it singled it out from a series of many different events, and sent other, often more important ones toward oblivion. That much would be understandable. It’s just that at the same time it was as if the laughter led to the dream I had decades later. To other things too, but for sure to that dream. Why don’t you think a mutual influence like that is possible? I mean, I did say it isn’t me wondering about my life, so it isn’t me who’s establishing a two-way symbiosis between one thing and another. It may simply establish itself. The more so because that often happens at the least appropriate moment, for instance when I’m walking through the woods looking for wild strawberries underfoot, or taking the dogs’ bowl out with their dinner. Or sitting by the window staring at the lake. There’s a swarm of people on this side, on the far shore, boats, kayaks, floating mattresses, heads in the water, like the water lilies and lotuses that used to grow in the bends of the river … That’s right, I told you about that already. Shouts, squeals, laughter. So all my attention is concentrated on the wild strawberries, or on the dogs, or making sure no one’s in trouble out in the water, no one’s calling for help. You have to admit those are not the best moments for someone to be wondering about something else. And yet …

  But I’m sorry – I interrupted you. Please, do go on. You think so? No, you can never go back to the same place. The truth is, that place doesn’t exist anymore, going back there isn’t even possible. Why not? Because if you ask me, places die once they’ve been left.

  It only seems that they long for us. You shouldn’t believe that. When I was living abroad, when I’d go for a walk in the woods it would be a foreign woods, with foreign trees, foreign bushes, trails, foreign birds, but I’d always feel like I was walking through these woods, along these trails, passing these trees, hearing these birds. So I stopped going for walks in the woods there. When a person’s gone, it’s no longer the same place. A person’s only place is inside themselves. Regardless of whether they’re here, there, wherever. Now or at any time. Everything that’s on the outside is only illusion, circumstance, chance, misunderstanding. A person is their own place, especially the last place.

  Did I mistake your meaning? We must be talking about two different things. We’re talking about the same thing? In that case why did you appear only now? Why not back then? There were other opportunities too. I wouldn’t have had to pretend all this time. It’s true that our whole life we have to pretend in order to live. There isn’t a moment when we’re not pretending. We even pretend to ourselves. In the end, though, there comes a moment when we don’t feel like pretending anymore. We grow tired of ourselves. Not of the world, not of other people, but of ourselves. It’s just I didn’t think the moment had yet come.

  I’m taking you for someone else? I don’t think so. To begin with maybe I did. You came asking for beans, so one or another of them could have come asking for beans too, who knows who could’ve come. So I was justified in suspecting that we’d met before. Why wouldn’t you be wearing an overcoat and hat? It’s fall, the weather’s chilly already. There’ll be frosts before you know it. And at this time of year, in the off-season, who else could come, all the more so just like that, as if they were paying a formal visit? Once every so often the forest ranger stops by. Or someone from the dam comes on an inspection, they may or may not drop in. Or the mailman brings me a letter with money from Mr. Robert on the first of the month, he steps in but then a moment later he’s gone. The last time he was here he said he probably wouldn’t be coming anymore because his bike’s broken, I’ll have to go to the post office myself. Other than that, I don’t think there’s anyone.

  People from the cabins? Yes, they do come. But not everyone will pop in and say hello. Besides, they don’t appear that often, they know everything’s fine here. I’m not talking about the ones who bring someone here. Those ones, of course they don’t come and visit me. Quite the opposite. They try and make sure I don’t see anything or hear anything when one or another of them is here. They usually arrive in the late evening. They think I’m already asleep because my lights are off. But me, I see and hear everything, it’s just that, as I told you, I don’t stick my nose into that kind of business. But I hear the car. When it’s quiet like it is now, the slightest murmur carries all the way across the lake. When an owl hoots, and there’s no wind, it’s like a shot going off in the woods. When the wild boars come out of the woods you can hear the earth move under their feet. Plus, the dogs rush to the door right away, and I have to go out to see who’s here. I don’t get too close, just near enough to check who it is and which cabin, but so they don’t see me. It goes without saying I don’t take the dogs. When they go into their cabin I come back home. Everyone has to walk from the parking lot to their cabin, and that’s enough for me to see what I need to. I stopped allowing them to drive up to their cabins. You can imagine what that would look like. Tracks everywhere. Plus, as you saw, most of the cabins are on a slope. What if the cars started to slide down into the lake? Who would be responsible? Me, because I’m the one that takes care of everything here.

  There’s only one angler who comes for a week or two at this time of year. For some reason he hasn’t been yet, but he may still show. Let’s just hope winter doesn’t set in too early, because he wouldn’t be able to get his fishing in. Though he avoids me too. I don’t know why. He bought a cabin from another guy, way down at the end there, right by the shore. He doesn’t leave his keys with me, so I don’t go in. During the season you won’t see him here, his cabin’s locked up, he only comes here to fish round about now. But I couldn’t say if he catches anything. He gets in his boat in the early morning and rows out onto the lake, sometimes to one end, sometimes the other. At the far end you can barely get to the shore, it’s overgrown with reeds, alders, blackthorn. He disappears into the reed beds and spends all day there from dawn till dusk, in his boat. In the evening he doesn’t turn on his light, I don’t know if he goes to bed right away. I never even know if he�
�s back from his fishing. And I mean I’m not going to go over there and ask him if he’s caught anything. If he hasn’t it’s all the worse to ask. All I can say is, I’ve never seen any catch.

  Maybe he doesn’t fish? But in that case, why would he spend all day in his boat? He even stays in it when it’s raining. He wraps himself up in his raincoat, pulls the hood up over his head and sits like that in his boat, in the rain. He has a fishing pole. Sometimes he fishes out in the middle of the lake, so I’ve seen it. It sticks up out of the boat like a regular pole. From time to time he pulls it out of the water, adjusts something on the hook, then casts it back. It must be a fishing pole. But I’ve never ever seen a fish thrashing about on it when he takes it out of the water. Of course there are fish in the lake. There were fish in the Rutka, why wouldn’t there be fish in the lake? Different ones, but they’re there.

  If he fished from the shore I’d go up and at least ask, Are they biting today? Or look to see if his float ever moves. It’s true, anglers don’t like it when you check their floats. It’s like looking at a card player’s hand. But he always fishes from his boat. Sometimes, when he’s opposite my windows I at least go out and sit on the shore. You can’t talk from there. Not even to ask if the fish are biting, you’d have to shout, and I wouldn’t want to scare the fish away.

  I don’t know. All I know is that he’s an angler. I don’t even know if he sees me when I’m sitting on the shore and he’s out in the middle of the lake in his boat. Though I see him. What can I say, it doesn’t have to work both ways, that since you see others they see you. That’s how it is with everything. It’s another matter that an angler has to keep an eye on their float the whole time, because if a fish starts to bite …

  There are times the lake covers over with mist, especially around now, in the fall, and he disappears into the mist, so sometimes I call out to him:

  “Hello, are you there?” I even walk along the shore calling: “Are you there? Are you there?”