A Treatise on Shelling Beans (39 page)

But he hadn’t realized how deep the pit was. He was in up to his chest already, and his feet still hadn’t touched the bottom. At that moment he began asking us,
begging us, to save him, afterwards he’d do anything we wanted. What would we have him do? Whatever anyone of that age and at that school could come up with. I won’t even tell you what. Another boy and I broke one of the support struts with the idea of handing it to him. The older ones wouldn’t let us. Hold on a minute! Stop! Let it come up to his neck first! Then his chin. Let him eat the stuff, the little bastard. They were even making fun of him. You thought you could save yourself in shit. In the end he sank down to his forehead and we had to drag him out by the hair. That was what the game was like.

Supposedly it was just flipping a matchbox to see if it would land upright, scratchboard, or flat. And whoever came last, well, you might say it was a part of themselves that they lost. There wasn’t anyone who didn’t experience being last. That may have been why the limits of losing became blurred. When one of the older boys lost, us younger ones were no better. We’d make him do things that I don’t even want to think about.

Then why did we play? Well, who starts playing a game with the idea that he’s going to lose? Plus, in our game only one person lost, the one who came last. In any other game one person wins and everyone else loses. In this one, everyone wins except a single person. Tell me yourself, can you think of a more easy-going game? Or simpler? Exactly. Upright, scratchboard, flat.

Maybe we could take a little break from shelling, I could show you? I should have matches here somewhere. Here we are, the box is full even. You know, I actually sometimes play by myself. I take a box of matches, it has to be full, forty-eight matches, at least that’s how many there used to be in a box back then, I sit down right here at the table, and I flip the box. Upright, scratchboard, flat. I don’t keep score, what for? I’m not playing for anything. What could I play for, especially against myself? Unless you’d like to play for something. Then please say. At our age we can hardly play for the things we played for at school. Oh, I don’t know. You’re the guest here, you choose. I’m fine with anything.

Yes, the box is full. I don’t use matches. I buy them sometimes just so I can play. I have lighters. Besides, it’s all electric here. I am an electrician, after all.
The stove is electric too. Come sit at the table. Maybe you sit over there, I’ll be here. Or would you prefer the other way around? See, this is how you place the box, it shouldn’t be sticking out from the tabletop any more or it’ll fall off. And you flip it up like this, with this finger, though you have to bend it a little.

Please, you go first. Look at that, your first time and you get it upright. That would have been ten points according to the way we played in school. My turn now. See, mine landed on the flat side. I’m not as nimble with my fingers as I used to be. Once the rheumatism gets hold of you it won’t let go. Though it’s much better now than it used to be, like I told you. It doesn’t hurt much at all when I’m shelling beans. The finger that I’m flipping the matchbox up with, you see how crooked it is? No, it’ll never go back to the way it was. I’d need an operation. At this point it’s not worth it. Your turn. Upright again. How about that! I see it’s sucked you in. And you were wondering why we kept playing. Every game pulls a person in, otherwise no one would play it. There, I got the flat side again. Maybe you’ll want to keep score after all. Even when you don’t play for anything, it can turn out that in fact you were playing for something, you just didn’t know what it was. Especially after you’ve won. You’ll remember? OK. I didn’t want you to be mad at me later that you won and yet we weren’t playing for anything. Upright again! You must have played before. I don’t believe you. I can tell, if only from the way you flip the box up. It makes a half turn in the air, but it always lands upright. You just won’t fess up.

There was this one kid in school, I remember that almost every time he got it upright. No one would play with him. You knew right from the start that he’d never come last. You must admit there’s no way you can play with someone like that. You have to have equal amounts of hope and fear even in something like the matchbox game.

You wouldn’t want to have been in a school like that? I understand. It’s just that it didn’t depend on whether you wanted to be there or not. Your turn. Upright again. Now me. And again, there you go. At school I was far from being the worst. Quite the opposite. It was another matter that I’d practice almost
every evening I stayed behind in the rec room. I’d often take a break from practicing the sax or some other instrument and flip the matchbox at least a bit. Yes, I spent time in the rec room almost every evening. Mostly late when no one else was there. Though sometimes the music teacher would come by. I never minded that he was drunk. He’d sit down and I knew he was listening to me play. Again you got it upright. You should drop everything and just play the matchbox game. If you played for money you could make a fortune.

How did I end up in that school? You remember how the sister died, I told you about that. Soon afterwards I fell ill. I had a high fever, they gave me some pills, I sweated, but the moment the fever dropped it would come back again. I got all pale and skinny. I could pull myself out of bed, but I didn’t have the strength to walk. The unit, though, had to move from the lake because they were beginning to be encircled. They took turns at carrying me, handing me from one to another for a time. We walked all night and all day, with short breaks. That is, I was carried. By evening they were out of the woods, they were planning to go into another woods, then all of a sudden they noticed a forester’s cottage. They waited till it got completely dark. A light came on in one window. Two of them went to check. It turned out that the only person in the place was the forester’s wife. They took me to her and left me in her care. She wrung her hands over me and said:

“Mother of God, if I’d only known you were so sick. Your forehead is burning up, you’re all on fire. But don’t die on me, I only just buried my man.”

Feverish as I was, she bathed me in a tub, lamenting all the while:

“You’re so skinny! Mother of God, skin and bone. Well, I’ll just have to fatten you up, but get out of the tub now.”

After that she cupped me. Then she rubbed me from head to foot with something that stung.

“Goodness, those cups left such dark marks. So dark,” she kept repeating as she worked the stuff into my skin. “I’ve never seen such dark marks. I’d leech you, but I don’t have any leeches.” She gave me something to drink. I remember
it was awfully bitter. “Drink up, it’ll do you good.” Then she wrapped me in an eiderdown.

Apparently I slept three nights and two days. She roused me now and then just to give me more of the bitter drink. I finally woke up completely devoid of strength, I couldn’t even bring my hand out from under the eiderdown. But the fever was gone.

“I killed a chicken for you,” she said, as if she was welcoming me into the world, “so you can have some broth. After a sickness like that, broth is the best thing.” But she wouldn’t allow me out of bed. “You just lie there, you need to stay put awhile. I’m not going to let you get up just yet.” She fed me in bed, putting one spoonful after another into my mouth. A little broth, some noodles, a tiny piece of meat. “Come on, have some more, just a bit. One more spoonful at least. You have to put on some weight, otherwise you won’t get your strength back. You’re so skinny, mother of God but you’re skinny.”

She pulled the eiderdown back and looked at me. I was too weak even to be embarrassed. She was still young, as I remember her today. I just thought she was on the plump side. She might have been good-looking, I don’t remember. Her face was rather bland, her eyes were sad but kind. She had black hair, she used to let it down when she brushed it and it would cover her up completely. Her breasts were so full they’d sometimes spill over the top of her nightgown when she was getting out of bed.

She had no children, and the forester had died not long before. The Germans had been hunting partisans, it was sunrise, and he had run out of the cottage to chase off some wild boars that were rooting around in the potato patch. They thought someone was trying to escape from the place and there were shots. She ran out after him and found him lying dead right outside the cottage, at the edge of the field. She often wept for him. She’d be peeling potatoes or making dough for noodles and suddenly she’d burst into tears. I’d comfort her as best I could:

“Don’t cry, ma’am. Maybe he’s in heaven now and he can see you crying.”

“How did you get so wise?” And she’d stop. “Will you have something to eat?
I’ll go see if the chickens have laid, I could make you some scrambled eggs. You need to eat. And dinner won’t be for a long while.” She’d keep telling me I was putting on weight before her eyes. “You know, you look better already. Much better, thank the Lord. Do you want something to eat?” That was the constant refrain: “At least have a slice of bread and butter. Maybe with some cheese? The butter’s homemade, the cheese too.”

She had two cows. I’d already gotten my strength back and I’d graze the cows on the pasture by the woods. Often it wouldn’t yet be sundown and she’d come bring me either a slice of bread and butter with cheese, or two or three hard-boiled eggs.

“It’s still aways to dinner. You must be hungry. Have this …” Sometimes she’d sit with me awhile. She’d watch me eating and keep saying: “Eat, eat. You’ve filled out even since yesterday.”

One time we were already in our beds, her in hers and me in mine, when I heard her crying. Very quietly, but ever since I was little my hearing has been good, I thought she was maybe having a bad dream. I raised my head and listened intently. I could hear she was weeping.

“Are you crying, ma’am?” I asked. “Why?”

“It’s nothing. There’s no point telling you. It’d be different if you were older. Go back to sleep.”

Winter came. She was still plying me with food, and as for me, I was helping with everything, whether she asked me to or not. She’d often say God had sent me to her, because how could she have managed on her own after he was gone. Meaning the forester. His hat lay on the dresser in the main room. It was sort of green, with a narrow brim, there was a cord twisted around it and tied in a figure-of-eight at the side. I might not have paid any attention to it, but one time she took it from the dresser, cleaned it with a brush, and hung it on a nail over their wedding photograph.

“It should go here,” she said. “Don’t ever touch it. It’s a sacred thing.”

As you know, though, sacred things are more tempting even than sin. One
day she left to go to the store in the village. I took down the hat and studied the wedding photo. She wasn’t much older than in the picture. The forester just looked like a forester. I thought to myself, he’s dead, she’s at the store, who’s going to see if I try on the hat? So I did.

There was also one room that she kept locked up. She put the key behind a picture of Our Lady with the Infant Christ. But since she locked the room, that meant she didn’t want me to go in there. And I didn’t. But once she left the key in the door and didn’t turn it. I felt an itch, and I peeked in. All I could see was a bulging bed covered with a patterned bedspread. Next to the bed was a cradle and a large wall mirror. I knew about the mirror. Whenever she washed her hair she’d tell me to do this or that, keep an eye on something, while she was brushing her hair in front of the mirror. And she’d go into that room, lock herself in and brush her hair for the longest time.

I looked into the mirror and let me tell you, in that first moment I had a fright when I realized it was me. It was like I was seeing myself for the first time. Like it was only now I was able to see that I existed. At home I never looked in the mirror, who looks at themselves at that age? When I was leaving for school in the morning, mother would always check me over, come here and I’ll comb your hair, because otherwise I wouldn’t even touch it. I couldn’t tear myself away from that mirror, I couldn’t believe it was me. Maybe because I was wearing the forester’s hat, which fell down over my ears. Or maybe because I’d always imagined I was a lot older than the unexpected reflection in the mirror. A ruddy, chubby, well-fed face. I ran my hand over my cheek and I couldn’t even feel a slight fuzz, but the boy in the mirror also ran his hand over his cheek, and I had the impression that he could already feel a fuzz. I stood and stood there, still unsure whether I should believe it was me. Especially because I didn’t like the way I looked. The only thing I liked was the forester’s hat. It even occurred to me to wonder, what if I were a forester?

I didn’t notice that in the meantime the forester’s wife had come back and was fuming. She burst into the room asking how I’d found the key. Snatching
the hat off my head, she started saying that she was feeding me, looking after me, and here I was so ungrateful, so ungrateful, so this, that, and the other, going on till she made herself breathless. I’d never seen her like that before, gasping, her breasts heaving. Finally she sat down, exhausted, and cooled off a little.

“See what you’ve gone and done. I was thinking now that the war’s over … But now …”

I didn’t understand what she meant, but at least I learned that the war was already over.

Sometimes, especially when rain was in the air, you could hear a train rumbling and whistling a long long way off. Or if you put your ear to the ground, the rumbling sound would pass through it like electricity. Once I asked her:

“Where’s that train?”

“Over there.” She pointed.

“But where’s the station?”

“It’s that way. But it’s a long way away.”

Winter passed, spring, summer came along. One day I told her I was going to the woods to look for wild strawberries, and set off to find the station. I just went, with no particular intention in mind, just to see if maybe a train would come along. As I remember it today, I must have walked a good few miles. It was only a small station, but there were quite a lot of people waiting. I asked a railwayman when the train was due.