She gave me no hope. I wondered if I shouldn’t turn the whole thing into a joke, say, I’m sorry, I was just kidding. Sometimes I like to see how someone will react in certain situations. But there was no doubt in my mind that it was her. I beckoned the waitress, who had just reappeared. She came up to the table.
“We’d like to see what cakes you have.”
She returned a moment later with a tray of cakes. As she held it in front of us, I asked:
“Which one would you like?”
Her eyes filled with an almost childlike delight at the sight of the cakes.
“Which do you recommend?”
I suggested the one that I usually took.
“You won’t hold it against me if I pick a different one?”
And she did. So I asked for the same one she selected. At that point she seemed to get it, a moment of musing flashed in her eyes. She smiled, though her smile seemed artificial. With a similarly artificial nonchalance, as she ate her cake with relish, she said casually:
“I’m so grateful you let me sit at your table. I had such a craving for cake today.”
“And that particular kind,” I added.
“How did you know? You couldn’t know, since you suggested a different one.”
“Out of contrariness,” I said. “Just like out of contrariness you refuse to remember that we shared a train compartment, that you sat down next to me on a bench in the park to have a cigarette. And wherever else we might have met before, you’d deny it, I know. Even if I told you you’d appeared to me in a dream, you’d deny that too, you’d say it wasn’t possible.”
“Now that, that’s possible, though it’s corny.”
“But how is it possible, since you claim we’ve never met before?”
“Maybe that’s the only way you could have remembered me.” She looked at me with a fixed gaze, as if the life had suddenly gone out of her eyes. For a moment we stared at one another in this way, till her smile began to return.
“You know, I think that today of all days I’ll allow myself another cake.” She signaled to the waitress. When the latter came back with the tray of cakes, she first had me choose. Then she asked for the same kind that I picked. “You see what a pig I’m being?” she said. “I really shouldn’t. I never let myself have more than one … It’s all because of you. You’re awful. If only I’d known …” She glared at me in a mock sulk, and I saw something like a hint of alarm in her eyes. But she immediately said: “Whenever I can’t resist something, I always regret it later. I’ll have to punish myself for the second cake.”
“Punish yourself? What will your punishment be?”
“I haven’t decided yet. I’ll think of something. Oh, I know. If I come here again I’ll just order tea or coffee, I won’t have any cake at all. I’ll teach myself a lesson so I remember in the future.” She began almost savoring her self-imposed punishment. “Or no, I won’t have tea or coffee either. I’ll have them bring me a glass of water. Or I’ll be even harsher. I’ll order a cake, but I won’t eat it. I’ll leave it. Or two cakes. Yes, that’s it, two cakes, as if I were expecting someone else. And since the other person won’t come, I’ll leave both cakes uneaten.” She started to laugh, as if the punishment she was going to inflict on herself amused her greatly. “I mean, you yourself said a moment ago that we’re always expecting someone, we just don’t always know it. This way I’ll at least know. Two cakes, and I’ll leave both of them.”
I was on the point of telling her that she shouldn’t punish herself at all, what was one extra cake, it wasn’t going to hurt her. She was slim. When she came into the cafe and was standing there looking for a free table, it even struck me that she looked like an Easter palm branch. But I realized she might not know what an Easter palm branch is, and I asked if she wouldn’t like some tea or coffee, apologizing for not having thought of it before.
“No, no thank you,” she said, still laughing. “It’d spoil the taste of the cake. I never drink tea or coffee with cake, not ever.” Laughing all the time, she reached for a paper napkin. As she did so, the sleeve of her blouse pulled back and under the hem of her cuff, above the wrist, about here or a bit higher, I caught a glimpse of numbers written on her skin as if in ink or indelible pencil. It lasted a split second. She snatched a napkin from the stand on the table and pulled down her sleeve before she put the napkin to her lips.
I ought not to have noticed it, because you shouldn’t notice everything, especially a man looking at a woman. Even in themselves people don’t always like everything. There are many things we’d like to change in ourselves. We’re at odds with many things in ourselves. We’d like to improve things in ourselves, as we would in others. But since that isn’t possible, you must admit that at least it’s less troublesome when we don’t notice it. But she evidently saw that I’d noticed, and felt obliged to say:
“Oh, that’s from when I was just a child.” She was embarrassed, or perhaps unsettled, because her eyes turned away to look around the cafe. Only after a moment did she return to her cake, taking a tiny piece on the tip of her spoon. “You know what I used to dream of most often as a child?” she said, holding the spoon at her mouth. “Of one day eating my fill of cake.”
I laughed. It must have seemed insincere, because no shadow of a smile appeared on her face.
“I never imagined that when my dream could come true, I’d have to deny myself the pleasure.” Once again her eyes drifted away to the cafe, she stared at something or other, and when she went back to eating her cake, or rather picking at it, her gaze seemed buried in her plate. All at once she livened up and, clearly looking for a fight, she declared: “I have to say the first cake, the one I chose, was better.”
We began to argue about which was the better cake, the one she’d selected or my one. And you know what it means to argue about cake. It was like we were debating something of the utmost importance. Like it was ourselves we were submitting to a test, not just some cake. In this way we got onto the topic of the best cake we’d ever eaten in our lives. It was mostly her who remembered which cake and when and where, and each one was the most delicious. Even though the previous one had been the most delicious, the next one was even better, and the one after that was so delicious it canceled out all the preceding ones. I even tried to picture her as the child whose dream was being fulfilled, because she was thoroughly engrossed in remembering all those best cakes.
Myself, I didn’t really have much to recall as far as cake was concerned. At any rate I couldn’t have said which was the best one I ever ate. In response to all those best cakes of hers, I said that at Eastertime my grandmother used to make a babka that to this day I could taste in my mouth. Though I couldn’t say if it was actually the best cake I’d ever had. That didn’t matter. Sometimes I buy a babka for Easter, in one cake shop then in another for comparison, but so far I’ve never found one that tasted the same as my grandmother’s. Not to mention that babkas from the store go dry after two or three days, whereas the ones my grandmother baked could sit there for months, then when you cut it it would still be moist with butter. Plus, they were so plump. Have you ever had a babka like that? Then you’ve missed out on one of the best things there is. You should have come at Eastertime. Or right after, or even a few days later. We used to take the babka up to the attic and leave it there. We wouldn’t eat more than a slice each a day. You could have tried it.
When I was married my wife decided to find a recipe for babka like that, because at Easter she was sick of hearing about how my grandmother baked babkas and all that. She even wrote to some well-known pastry chef. He actually sent her a recipe and she made it, but it wasn’t the same. Grandmother would usually make a dozen or more babkas at a time. The kneading trough would be brimming with dough. She’d fill the earthenware baking dishes about half full, then when the cakes rose, they virtually bubbled. They looked like mushrooms. We’d usually each have a piece for afternoon tea. Grandmother would divide it up so it lasted as long as possib
le. Thanks to that, it felt like Easter went on and on.
No, she hadn’t had Eastertime babka. She asked me to tell her about it. But how can you tell someone about babka. You can describe the shape, say that it had notches in it from the earthenware dishes it was baked in, that it was broader at the top and narrower at the bottom. But none of that amounts to anything. It’s the taste that matters, not the shape. And how can you describe a taste? You tell me. Any taste. Let’s say, something sweet. What does sweet mean? There can be a million kinds of sweetness. As many kinds as there are people. One person puts a spoonful of sugar in their coffee and it’s already sweet enough for them, someone else needs two or three spoonfuls for it to be sweet. During the war for example there was no sugar, so people would boil up a syrup out of sugar beets, you’d have been disgusted if you’d tried it, but everyone found it sweet like before the war. There’s sweet and sweet, no two sweetnesses are alike. Sweet today, sweet once upon a time, sweet here or there – each one is a different kind of sweetness.
So I told her it was made of flour and eggs and cream, because that was all I knew, the rest my grandmother took with her to the grave. She may have taken the whole mystery of those babkas with her. All that remained was the fact that they melted in your mouth.
She grew sad when I told her that. To cheer her up I said that all the cakes she’d told me about were for sure the best. I asked if she’d like to have one more. I’d give her a free pass. She smiled through her sadness and said the only thing she would have been tempted by would be a piece of the Eastertime babka. In that case, perhaps she’d have a glass of wine, I asked. She said yes at once. As we were drinking our wine, lifting the glass to our lips over and again, she gave me a look as if she finally remembered me. For myself, I no longer had any doubts that it was her. I don’t mean from the train, or the park bench, or anywhere in particular. By then, none of that was of any significance.
You probably think that you have to meet a person first to be able to remember them later. Have you ever thought that sometimes it’s the opposite? So you think it all depends on the memory, yes? In other words, first something has to happen, and then, even if it’s years later, memory can bring it all back? If you ask me, though, there are things that it’s best for memory not to meddle with. I agree with you that in the cases you’re talking about, that’s how it is. But we don’t always need help from our memory. There are times when our greater need is to forget. It’d be hard to live perpetually in thrall to memory. So sometimes we have to mislead it, trick it, run away from it. I mean, when it comes down to it we don’t even need to remember the fact that we’re here on this earth. Despite what you think, not everything has to happen according to how it’s organized by memory.
Why was it that when she came into the cafe and looked around for a free place, I was certain that even if someone had vacated a table at that moment, she still would have come up to mine and asked:
“Would you mind if I sat at your table? All the other seats are taken.”
“You’re welcome to,” I would have said, as I actually did say.
And the rest you know. I’m not hiding anything. Why would I? I’ve not brought happiness to women. I don’t know a whole lot more than that. Besides, you can read a book, watch a film and it’d be the same. It’s always the same. There aren’t any words that would make it different. Yes, if you ask me, everything depends on words. Words determine things, events, thoughts, imaginings, dreams, everything that’s hidden deepest inside a person. If the words are second-rate the person is second-rate, and the world, even God is second-rate.
If I tell you that I loved her, it still won’t tell you anything, because it doesn’t tell me anything. Today I only know as much as I knew back then. Or rather, it’d be better to say that I don’t know now just as much as I didn’t know then. Because what does it mean to love? Please, tell me if you know. And since I loved her like I loved no one else on earth, why didn’t we know how to be with one another? Actually, to say I loved her isn’t enough. I sometimes felt that she was the one who had finally given me life. As if it wasn’t that she was made from my rib but that I was made from her rib, the opposite of how it is in the Bible. When I’m dying I’ll see her coming into the cafe, looking around for a free table, then coming up to mine and asking:
“Would you mind …?”
“You’re welcome to.”
She sits down, but we don’t feel like talking anymore. Not even about cakes. Not because we’ve said everything already to each other, since we’ve hardly said anything. We’d have needed an eternity to say everything to one another, not just the short moment we’ve lived through. I don’t know, maybe by now we’re afraid of words, even words about cake. Maybe there are no more words for us. And without words there’s no telling what any of the cakes were like, and all the more which one was the best.
We weren’t good together the way you might have expected. But we were even worse without each other. We split up, came back together, split up again, came back together again. Each time we swore we’d never part. After which it was the same thing. Then when we got back together, every time it was like we were back in the cafe that first day.
I can’t remember if I told you that one time I happened to go back to the same sanatorium, and after taking a walk one day I dropped by the cafe. I was sitting there drinking my coffee and reading the newspaper. At a certain moment I look up over the paper and I see her coming in. By then we’d separated for good. There were free tables, but she came up to me and asked:
“Would you mind …?”
“You’re welcome to.”
“Oh no, your hands don’t look good.”
“How’s your heart?”
And once again we decided never to part. But soon we did. Tell me, was that love? If you ask me, love is an unsatisfied hunger for existence. Whereas the two of us had been hurt by existence. Neither of us was young anymore. She was a few years younger than me, it’s true, but it was a long time since she’d been young. I often had to ask her not to be ashamed of her body. She’d always look over anxiously to check I wasn’t watching when she undressed. It was always:
“Turn the light off.”
“Why?”
“Please, turn it off.”
“But why?”
“Don’t you get it?”
I didn’t get it. She probably never suspected that as I watched her undressing I had the feeling I was being enriched by all her hurt, all her pain, by the way time was passing her by. I’d lived through a great deal myself, but it wasn’t as important to me as what she had been marked by. No, it wasn’t that I felt sympathy for her. Besides, does love require sympathy? What I’m trying to say is that I experienced her existence as my own existence. You ask what that means? It’s like you desire to take the entire burden of someone else’s existence upon yourself. As if you wished to relieve that person entirely of the necessity of existing. As if you wanted to die in their place too, so they wouldn’t have to experience their own dying. That’s something different than sympathy the way it’s usually understood. At the very possibility of such a thing, even if I was only imagining it, I felt a renewed desire for life. You say that isn’t possible. It’s possible that it isn’t possible. But in that case, what should be the measure of love? If you and I understand the same thing by this word that has no meaning? In accordance with what do we supposedly experience it? The appetites of the flesh? The flesh has its limits, and they’re reached much, much sooner than death.
Do you know if she’s still alive? Did I take you by surprise? Who on earth else other than you could tell me? I thought I’d at least learn that much from you. Because if I knew she was no longer alive, I’d not want to live anymore either.
Sometimes I think to myself that maybe if I could still have played. Or perhaps I was afraid to involve her in my life. Or I no longer had the strength to take on that love on top of everything else. You have no idea what it means to love when you’re not young anymo
re. It’s the hardest challenge. When you’re young, ceasing to exist doesn’t seem so terrifying. But you see, me, I always lived on the boundary between existing and not existing. Even when I seemed to be there, it was like I was only passing through, only there for a short while, visiting someone, though I don’t know who, because I have no one.
You think that’s why I came back here? But this isn’t my place either. So what if you came to buy beans? You could have gone anywhere, and not necessarily for beans. If you hadn’t found me you’d always have found someone. What difference does it make? For you none at all, I don’t think. I’m not mixing you up with someone else. Though for a long time I kept thinking about where and when it had been. At one point, right at the beginning, I even wondered if you might be him. Oh, no one. It just occurred to me. But no. If you’d been him, you wouldn’t have come to me for beans. How would you have known that someone like me exists.
What time is it? Ah, I have to be getting along. I’ve got to make my rounds of the cabins. Like I told you, I always go around at least once every night, often twice when I can’t sleep. See, the dogs are awake too. What is it, Rex? Eh, Paws? Sit! You’ve already sniffed the gentleman. No, they’re not hungry. They ate earlier in the evening. Maybe they had a dream. I’ll leave them with you. Don’t be afraid of them. Just keep shelling the beans.
A Treatise on Shelling Beans Page 41