Either way, my hands are better now. You saw when you came in how I was repainting those nameplates. And that’s no easy task. If your hand shakes, the brush shakes with it. Plus, the paints these days are much better quality, they’re harder to erase. Then you have to paint over the same letters, and often they’ve rubbed off, gotten rusty, you can’t see them clearly. You might get people mixed up. I can shell beans as well, like you see. It’s just that I can’t play the sax anymore. For the sax you need fingers like butterflies. They need to feel not just that they’re touching such and such a sound, but how deeply. This finger, see, it’s a little swollen, and on my left hand I can’t bend these two. They ache in the wet weather. But it’s a lot better than it used to be. I can do almost anything. Make repairs, chop wood, drive the car when I have errands or it needs the mechanic.
There was a time, though, when I couldn’t so much as lift a cup of coffee or tea, can you imagine it? Almost all my fingers were too stiff. And when you can’t bend your fingers, how are you supposed to play the saxophone? Here you’re blowing into the mouthpiece, and down there your fingers are afraid of the keys. No more playing. It’s out of the question. There you were, playing away, and now there’s just despair. Your whole life, and nothing left but despair. You beg your fingers, press them down, try to force them to bend, but it’s like they’re dead. You don’t mind if they hurt all they want, they can hurt so much it’s unbearable, they can throb and sting and burn, but let them bend. You can’t imagine what it’s like. All the hopes, desires, the suffering, all without meaning anymore. How can anyone come to terms with that?
Wait a moment, I’d never have expected you to say what you just said. I must have you confused with someone else. But I still have to figure out when and where we met. Something’s not quite right here. I’d never have thought. If it were someone else … No, not at all, I understood you perfectly. I even think that who knows, you could be right. After all, that is one way out. Though now it no longer holds any meaning. Because the worst thing is when there’s none at all. Yes, it’s a way out. Though it’s no longer of any importance. Maybe if it had happened back then.
The thing is, though, when something happens gradually, to begin with you don’t notice it. Then you make light of it, then after that you reassure yourself that maybe things aren’t so bad. Especially because other people also cheer you up by saying that some other person was in the same boat, or even worse, and in the end they were fine.
I came back one winter from a ski trip in the mountains and my hands started to feel strangely tired. And this finger here began to ache. Not the other fingers, the other ones just became kind of sluggish. I thought it was because of the skiing. That my hands had been overstrained by all the ski poles and ski lifts, the climbing, the falls. I was a pretty good skier. But I’d go for two or three weeks only, and not every year, and I was out of practice. It was hardly surprising it should make itself felt afterwards. But some time later my other fingers started hurting too, and getting stiff. When I was playing it would happen that I didn’t press the key down on time, or I pressed it in the wrong way. That’s not good, I thought to myself. I went to the doctor. He examined one hand, examined the other, bent my fingers this way and that, pinched them in different places and asked if it hurt.
“It does.”
“I’m sorry to say, but it’s rheumatism,” he said. “And advanced. You’ll need to get tests done. We’ll take a look, and at that point we can think about treatment. But you’ll have to spend some time at a sanatorium. Twice a year would be best.”
“But will I be able to play, doctor?” I asked.
“What do you play?”
“The saxophone.”
He gave me a sympathetic look.
“For the moment just think about your hands. Especially as it could spread further. You never know with rheumatism. Rheumatism’s one of those illnesses …”
But I was no longer listening to him describing what kind of illness it was, I was wondering how I could exist without playing. At the end of the visit he tried to cheer me up by saying that it was hard to make any predictions without tests, so perhaps I’d still be able to play. If I followed his instructions, of course.
The results of the tests weren’t particularly good, so I did what he told me to do, especially as he’d left me some room for hope. Aside from taking the medication he urged me to be patient, to keep my spirits up. And to go to a sanatorium. I subjected myself to all kinds of procedures, massages, baths. I tried to do it all as conscientiously as I could. But how effective could it be when all you’re thinking about is the fact that you’re no longer playing, and may never play again. If your thoughts are going one way and your treatment the other, you’re not going to see any effects. I even avoided getting to know anyone there, it was good morning, good morning, nothing beyond that. I never went anywhere except on walks. The only thing I did was before or after a walk, I’d sometimes stop in at a cafe for coffee or tea. Other than that I didn’t go anyplace. Not to concerts, though there were some pretty good orchestras that played there, opera singers and popular singers, often really fine ones. The spa park was large so there were plenty of places to walk. There were avenues and paths, you could easily turn off if someone was coming towards you and you wanted to avoid them. There were benches everywhere, sometimes I’d sit down, but even if someone else so much as sat down at the other end of the bench I’d walk away at once. I didn’t feel good around people. Truth be told, I didn’t feel good around myself.
It was only when the squirrels would scamper up to me for nuts that I’d forget about myself for a moment. I always carried a bag of hazelnuts. It was like they knew. The moment I sat down they’d come hopping. Can you imagine? Why were the squirrels so trusting with people? You think people in a sanatorium are different? If that’s the case, everyone should be sent to a sanatorium. Except that even there it happened that someone for example left a dog behind. There were quite a few dogs like that, wandering in search of their owner.
Not at that sanatorium but at another one a long time before – I don’t recall if I told you about my beginnings abroad? Well, so back then, at one sanatorium I picked a spot on the main avenue, put a basket next to me on the ground, and started to play. As people passed by they threw money into the basket. Sometimes they’d sit on the nearby benches to listen. Occasionally someone would request a particular tune, those kinds of people generally gave more. It wasn’t easy to begin with, not at all. But I had good luck.
One time one of the convalescents, a guy on crutches, took a seat by me on a bench. He listened and listened, then he got up and threw a bill into my basket. Then he asked me to play something else for him, then something else again, then he asked me to move the basket closer, because it was hard for him to bend down, and he tossed in an even bigger banknote. From that time on he came almost every day. He’d sit down, listen, request this or that, then ask me to pass him the basket, and throw in a banknote.
At some point he told me to come sit by him and he started asking me where I’d learned to play, whether I had any qualifications. No, I didn’t lie to him. I told him the whole truth, that I’d gone to such and such a school, then that I’d been taught by the warehouse keeper on the building site, and of course that I’d played in the works band. He nodded, but I had the impression he didn’t really believe me. I still didn’t know the language properly, I could barely express myself, but he seemed to understand everything.
Some time later he asked me again to sit by him. He didn’t ask me any questions, he just started complaining that the sanatoria weren’t doing much good, and it was looking like he might end up in a wheelchair. He’d been a dancer, he loved dancing. Now he owned a club. He gave the name, said where it was, and he asked if I wouldn’t be interested in playing in the band at his club. He was leaving, he’d come to say goodbye. He left me the exact address, gave me money for the ticket, and we agreed when I should come. And that was how it all began.
One year I was traveling to the sanatorium, the train pulled up at some small station, and a moment later a woman appeared in the doorway. Normally it made no difference to me who sat in my compartment, but she riveted my attention from the first. I jumped up to help her put her suitcase on the shelf, though at that time, with those hands of mine that had no strength in them, I might not have managed. I myself had to get other people to help me. Luckily someone closer to the door beat me to it. She was more or less middle-aged, though as you know, that age is the hardest to pin down. She was dressed smartly and with good taste. She radiated a mature beauty that was beginning to wane. Or the impression may have come from an intensity of being that suffused her beauty and drew out its depths. Faces, even young ones, that are merely good-looking are only so on the outside as it were, till the intensity of being reveals that extra something in them. But that wasn’t what took possession of me, though it wouldn’t have been surprising if it had been that alone. The thing was, the longer I looked at her, surreptitiously of course, the more certain I was that we’d met once before. But where and when – I racked my brains. It even occurred to me that she might have been the woman in the black veil covered in tiny knots of lace like little flies, as we were standing around the pile of dry potato stalks in the dream. I spent the whole of the rest of the journey trying to remember.
She got off at the same station as me. On the platform I nodded goodbye, investing the gesture with all of my feeling of regret that we’d probably never meet again. I doubt she read it that way. She nodded back without the faintest smile. So I was all the more certain that was the last time I’d see her.
Then one day, would you believe it, I was sitting on a bench in the park smoking a cigarette, I look up and all of a sudden I see her coming towards me. She was dressed differently, more the way you do at a sanatorium, more casually, but with equally good taste. I recognized her from far off. She’d been constantly in my thoughts since the time we’d shared a compartment on the train. Often, in between procedures I found myself wondering where we could have met and when, that I should know her at once like that. She came up to the bench I was sitting on. She didn’t so much as smile to show she remembered me. She simply asked if she could sit down, because she felt like a cigarette, and she saw I was smoking.
“No one else is smoking on any of the other benches,” she said. After she finished her cigarette, as she was about to leave she said: “Thank you.”
That was all. Again I tried to figure out where I knew her from. Because by now I had no doubt it had been a long, long time before the train. In the park, in the sunshine you could see a lot more clearly, you could see as if from the most distant time. But how long ago it could have been, I strained to recall. I smoked one cigarette after another. One by one, as if looking through a photo album I went through all the women I’d ever known, but I didn’t find her. Perhaps she’d been much younger then, perhaps she’d changed a lot. Yet that intensity of being must have marked her beauty even back then, because that must have been how I remembered her.
A few days later, after my walk I stopped by a cafe. I was sitting there drinking my coffee and reading a newspaper when something made me glance up. The cafe was packed, all the tables were taken, and here I see her coming into the place the way she’d come into the compartment in the train. She took a few steps, looking around for a free table. Without thinking I followed her gaze, but it didn’t seem as if any table would be available for a while. It didn’t occur to me to invite her to sit at my table. I was probably afraid she’d say no, since on the bench in the park she hadn’t seen fit to even smile, let alone ask if we hadn’t once shared a train compartment. That’s right, I remember you, she could have said. I buried myself in my newspaper again. All at once I heard her voice right next to me:
“Would you mind if I sat at your table? All the other seats are taken. One might free up soon, so it won’t be for long.”
“You’re welcome to,” I said, perhaps a little too stiffly. It was just that I resented the fact that back then, on the bench, she hadn’t recognized me as the person she’d shared a compartment with. Now it would have been easier to start a conversation. Yet I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything to talk about with her, while it would have been wrong to continue reading my paper. As you know, though, women have a preternatural gift for seeing through things, even when you hide it deep down. Before sitting she hesitated and asked:
“Or perhaps you’re expecting someone? If that’s the case …”
“You’re welcome to sit,” I repeated, much more warmly this time. And in the way of the few words one has to utter at such moments, and which as it happened she’d already put in my mouth, once she took her seat I added half-jokingly: “Though the truth is, we may always be expecting someone, even if we’re not always fully aware of it.”
She was visibly embarrassed.
“Oh, I’m terribly sorry.” She was all set to jump up again.
“Please, sit here,” I said to stop her. “I was just talking in generalities.”
“In that case, I’ll have some cake and be going,” she said. “Sometimes I can’t help myself, though I shouldn’t,” she added apologetically.
In order to set her completely at ease, I said:
“In any case please don’t pay any attention to what I said, because you might not enjoy the cake, and I wouldn’t want that to be my doing. I was just talking.”
“That’s how I took it,” she said.
She still seemed uneasy, though. It showed in the nervous way she looked for the waitress, who a moment ago had disappeared into the back.
“Don’t worry, she’ll be out any minute.”
“I’m not worried,” she replied abruptly. “Why would I be …”
I had the feeling I’d touched a nerve, though I’d only meant to talk about the waitress. It may have been in an effort to make up for my faux pas, or for some other reason, that I said:
“Though we can never be sure in any situation that chance isn’t making use of us.”
“What do you mean, chance?” she asked with a start.
“For example, the fact that when you came into the cafe there weren’t any free places. Thanks to which, we’re sitting together at the same table.”
“Chance?” she repeated, as if pondering.
“Years ago, another man and I nodded to each other on the street by mistake, he took me for someone he knew and I did the same, but it turned out we didn’t know one another. I apologized to him, saying it had just been by chance. But he disagreed, and invited me to have a coffee with him.”
“Can it be that cafes turn chance into destiny? Is that what you mean?” Her tone was bantering.
“It’s possible,” I replied, giving my own voice a hint of irony, though I had no intention of being ironic. “It all depends on what we take things to be. So why should we not take it that you came here because I was expecting you.”
“Really?” She feigned surprise, but a certain wariness had appeared in her eyes.
“Would that be so impossible? So much against common sense? All the more since we actually already know one another.”
“Really?” Her eyes widened. I thought she’d burst out laughing. Yet instead she quieted down a little, as if she were
thinking about it. “You must have me confused with someone else,” she said after a moment. “I don’t remember you at all.”
“Surely you must. We traveled together in the same train, in the same compartment. You got on, wait a moment, what station was that …”
“That can’t be. I came here by car.”
“By car?” I wasn’t exactly surprised so much as troubled. “But you were sitting opposite me, in the seat next to the door. You had a large black suitcase. I was going to help you put it up on the shelf, but somebody else got there first.”
“I’m sorry. I never travel by train. I can’t stand trains. Coming here by train would have been too much for me. That hopeless space rushing past outside the window. Besides, I have unpleasant associations with trains.”
She had shaken my confidence a little. Yet I didn’t believe her. I sensed that she recognized me, that she was sure it was me. Perhaps she was only playing a game, the rules of which I didn’t know. Or protecting herself from something. What, though?
“But you remember that a few days ago I was sitting on a bench in the park smoking a cigarette. You came up and asked if you could join me because you also felt like smoking.”
She burst out laughing:
“I don’t smoke! Never did. You really do have me mixed up with someone else.”
“What? You mean you don’t remember?” I refused to give up. “You said that no one else on any of the benches was smoking. As you left you thanked me.”
“Perhaps after all you’d be so kind as to ask the waitress to come over,” she said with a hint of impatience. “I’d like to have my cake, then take myself off your hands.”
A Treatise on Shelling Beans Page 40