A Treatise on Shelling Beans (16 page)

In any case, in all that crowded rec room no one knew who Johnny was. We hadn’t an inkling. Unless the clerk knew. Or it came out at the end of the film. After he tried on the umpteenth hat it occurred to me that a hat isn’t such an ordinary thing, though it’s just a covering for your head. The film went on and on, and this guy was choosing and choosing, it couldn’t have been an ordinary thing.

One time they brought this fellow to the school who pulled a rabbit out of a hat. At some point the rabbit ran away and started scurrying all around the rec room, we all chased after it. That time too the room was filled to bursting, we had a heck of a job catching it. It was white as can be, an angora, it was trembling all over it was so afraid, even though it knew how to vanish then appear again, one moment it was in the hat, the next it was gone. Or maybe it was the hat that had this power, such a notion came to me even then.

In the end, the rec room kind of began to take over the job of Mary, who was indifferent to the whole business, and when the man tried on a new hat everyone would jump to their feet and try to persuade him to buy that one, the one he was trying on right now. Then, when he finally decided against that one and asked to see another, they’d yell at the clerk and tell him not to bring the guy any more hats, let him buy that one. That one or none at all.

But the clerk wanted the man to buy at least something, and bowing the whole time, with the same smile he’d bring him another hat. At that moment, as if in retaliation for the disappointment he’d caused the room, the choicest obscenities were heaped on both of them. I’d be embarrassed to repeat them.
It was like they were throwing stones at both of them. You such-and-such, buy the thing or …! And a lot worse. You this and that, stop bringing him hats! He should buy the one he’s got on right now! Kick his ass out of the store! You know what he can do with that mirror! Son of a …! It was like they got themselves all riled up with cursing, because when the man asked to see another hat, their shouts would get even wilder.

The rec room was low, like you’d expect in a hut. The whole place was shaking, walls, windows, ceiling, it felt like it was about to fall apart. The screen hung down from the ceiling and covered about three fourths of the wall, while the projector stood against the opposite wall behind us. The older boys, along with some of the teachers, were sitting on benches along the side walls, while the rest of us were on the floor. The stream of light from the projector passed right over our heads. For some kids the shouting and whistling and curses weren’t enough, they had to also jump up from the floor into the beam of light, waving their arms as if they were trying to knock the hat off the man’s head as he was trying it on, and knock the next one out of the clerk’s hands when he brought it.

I don’t know if you can imagine all this. It was a storm, a tempest, not laughter. The teachers were shouting, Calm down! calm down! It made no impression. Actually, they may already have been afraid. Especially because the older boys sitting among them on the benches had also gotten to their feet, they were standing in the beam of light right by the screen blocking the clerk’s way back to the man.

“Where do you think you’re going?!”

But the clerk would pass right through them like he was walking through mist, give the man the new hat and take back the one that once again he’d decided against. In the end they turned on Mary. You so-and-so, put the magazine down! Tell him to buy the one he’s trying on! Stop crossing your legs! Move it! Kick him on the backside, on the shin, in the balls! I won’t repeat any more of it. At one point it looked like they were going to invade the screen, trash the shop, beat up the clerk and the man, and maybe rip Mary’s furs off, tear off her
dress and take her by force. Especially because there were people who’d been sent to the school for doing exactly that.

The teachers were still trying to calm everyone down. We’ll stop the film! You’re criminals, not children, the lot of you! You’ll all get written up tomorrow! You’ll pay for this! That just set everyone going even more. It was only thanks to the clerk that it didn’t end badly. He was the only one who kept his cool and with the same bow, the same smile kept handing the man one hat after another. But the man, whichever one he put on, he would look in the mirror without a trace of goodwill towards himself. Sometimes it was like he was overcome by doubt about one hat or another. Sometimes he’d study himself more closely in the mirror, as if he himself no longer believed it was him standing at the mirror in a hat. And a several moments it looked like he was finally about to say resignedly, maybe this one.

And who knows why, because in the opinion of the rec room he didn’t look good in that particular one, a view that was expressed in a swelling wave of whistles and shouts and stamping. He looks like a scarecrow! Like a beggar! He looks like …! All this slowly turned into a resounding, No! No! No! But the man wasn’t put off, you even got the feeling he was taunting the room by taking his time choosing a hat. And that he’d buy this one to spite the room, though he didn’t like himself in it that much. He smiled at his own reflection in the mirror, he made different kinds of smiles, from having his lips barely parted to a big grin with a row of perfect white teeth like you only ever see in the movies. I mean, everyone knows what people’s teeth are mostly like. Most people should never smile, never speak even. He pushed the hat back from his forehead, then pulled it forward, assuming a mysterious expression. He tipped the hat to the left, then to the right, like he wanted to look like someone he’d seen in a movie. Or he went right close up to the mirror, almost touching it with the brim of the hat, and looked at himself eye to eye, hat to hat. Or he suddenly stepped back and studied himself full length, from the hat all the way down to his feet. He put a hand in his pants pocket, one then the other in turn, or both
at once, assuming a relaxed posture. Or he straightened his necktie, smoothed his jacket, and stood stiff as a ramrod. One time he seemed visibly disheartened when he looked at his reflection, another time like he’d be prepared to come to terms with this hat and with himself, but he lacked the willpower. At that point he would turn helplessly to Mary where she sat absorbed in her magazine:

“What do you think, Mary? Take a look. Do you like me in this one? It’s not at all bad.” But Mary, even if she raised her eyes, she would just lower them again without a word. And the man would regretfully shake his head. “No, not this one after all.”

At these moments all of us in the rec room shared his sense of regret. You could tell from the creaking of the floorboards and benches, because everyone straightened themselves at the same time. No one whistled or swore or laughed. But it wasn’t ordinary regret. He ought to strangle that bitch, you could hear someone whisper in a bitter voice. I’m sorry, those were everyday expressions at the school, other words couldn’t have conveyed one feeling or another. Just as no words could comprehend why Mary was so uninterested in it all. Was it so hard to say yes, no, especially since it was only a hat?

At times Mary lifted her eyes from her magazine, other times not. And even when she did, it was with an increasing sense of boredom. And she made the room increasingly irate. We were all convinced it was her fault that he couldn’t pick out a hat. Though if you thought about it, what had she done, she was was just sitting quietly reading a magazine. But it was enough for the man to turn to her and say, Take a look, Mary, what do you think, Mary, what about this one, Mary? It was like the room caught a fever. They were starting to express not just their rage, but rage mixed with helplessness, pain, despair even. Against Mary, that’s right. But for what? You tell me. It was the man who was trying on hats and not liking himself in any of them, how was Mary to blame?

He could have realized that in all that trying on of hats he wouldn’t like any of them. And he didn’t. Maybe he wasn’t trying on hats anymore so much as battling with them. But what can a person battle a hat about? About himself, you
say? Still, the hat’s always going to come out the winner. It made no difference whether he took it off his head right away or no, if he kept it on longer, even if he posed in it in front of the mirror. It came out the same. He could have tried on hats through the entire film, he could have tried on hats till kingdom come, it would have made no difference. Trying things on that way only ever ends along with the end of everything.

True, those hats just kept coming and coming. It wasn’t just any old shop. Wherever you looked there were hats. The clerk even kept bringing more and more from the back, always with a new rush of hope that this one or that one would be to sir’s liking. So there were plenty of hats to go before the clerk would lose hope too.

Though maybe the man would have lost hope first. The more so because there were already signs of discouragement on his face, in his gestures, as he gazed at himself in each new hat in the mirror. He would put the hat on and take it off as if casually. He stopped saying thank you or apologizing. He took each new hat from the clerk and gave him back the one he’d just taken off. He seemed to be doing nothing but moving the hats from the clerk’s hands to his head then back from his head into the clerk’s hands, barely even glancing in the mirror. He ought to have stopped trying them on, but he was evidently incapable even of that. Or maybe he’d started to feel sorry for the clerk, who had been fetching all those hats in vain. That’s why he kept trying more and more on.

All at once, with one of the hats that wasn’t particularly either good or bad, when we were already certain he’d take it off and say, not this one, he hesitated. His hands fell to his sides, he went up to the mirror and stood motionless facing his reflection. His face was still too but it conveyed distress, should I take it off, leave it on, take it off, leave it on, take it off, leave it on. The rec room froze. There was a silence so profound it was like everyone’s hearts had stopped beating. As he stood there you could feel the fever rising and rising. Till at one moment it crossed the bounds of expectation and it made no difference whether he took it off or not, since he’d reached the point where it was no longer right either to take
the hat off or leave it on. The only path open to him was to take out a gun and shoot himself through the hat. True, the clerk was already waiting with a new hat, inclining in a half-bow, the same smile on his face, which would suggest that he refused to envisage such a turn of events. But all of us in the rec room demanded exactly that, that he take out a pistol and shoot himself through the hat. Then his final words would be spoken as if to spite Mary:

“Mary, pay the man for the hat.”

He may well have been about to put a gun to the hat when suddenly Mary twittered in an animated voice:

“Listen Johnny, it says here that this season brown felt hats are in for men. Try a brown felt one!”

“I already did.”

“But it says here!”

You might have thought that a shot would ring out at this moment. I thought the same when I tried to imagine how the film might have ended. It would only have been right. You can’t keep trying things on endlessly, even hats. Have you seen that film? Too bad. You could have told me whether he buys a hat or shoots a gun. I never got to see what happened, there was a power outage and the movie stopped. There often used to be outages. Especially in the evenings. And it rarely happened that the power got turned back on again soon. At the earliest after an hour or two. Most of the time, though, when the electricity went off in the evening it didn’t come back till morning.

Oftentimes we’d return from work, barely able to walk, and on top of everything they’d have made us sing on the way, then when we got back there’d be no light. We’d have been breaking rocks for road-building, in the dust and swelter, everyone would be sweaty and thirsty, our hair sticking to our heads, and here there was no light. You couldn’t wash, eat, undress. On top of which, by morning your uniform had to be cleaned, your boots polished, because the next day we had class, and in class you had to look like a student. We didn’t have a change of uniform or boots. They’d only give us new ones when the old uniform or boots
couldn’t be darned or mended anymore. And evening was the only time you had to wash something, sew it, patch it. And here the lights were out.

One time the music teacher gave us a big funerary candle he’d bought for himself. Another time, before Christmas the boys stole a packet of Christmas tree candles from somewhere or other. But we used them all up even before Christmas, because the power went off almost every day. So our little Christmas tree had no candles. Yes, they let us have one. It stood in the rec room. They got it from the woods, it was decorated with something or other, we made our own ornaments and chains and streamers. But without candles it wasn’t a proper Christmas tree.

You like having a Christmas tree? I used to too. But it had to have real candles burning. It didn’t need to have much in the way of decorations, but it had to have lighted candles. It was always us kids that lit them, according to age, except backwards, first me as the youngest, then Leonka, then Jagoda. I couldn’t reach the highest ones so father would lift me up. They were real, of course, they burned with a living flame. They had to be real so the tree would be real too. I was an electrician, but I don’t like electric candles, that’s the truth. These days everyone has electric ones, but in my book those aren’t real candles. Their light has no life in it.

Wigilia – Christmas Eve dinner – always began with lighting the candles on the Christmas tree. Then mother would put a white tablecloth on the table and bring in the different dishes. There were always twelve of them. First we’d share the Christmas wafer, then we’d all sit at the table. Everyone had their own place at Wigilia. And everyone ate carefully so as for goodness’ sake not to spill anything on the tablecloth. Even Granddad only took small spoonfuls so the soup wouldn’t dribble. And he would eat like he never used to, without slurping or smacking his lips. Grandmother even complimented him, couldn’t you eat like that every day?