Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

I didn’t recognize him. He was a completely different person than I’d imagined from his letters. Could something have happened to make him change so dramatically? I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why he was so hell-bent on turning me off this place. He’d been inviting me, luring me even, all those years, and now I was finally there … Aside from anything, he should have realized I was just joking about buying the cabin. But maybe even before, on the way, when we were still in the car, he’d started to suspect that I wasn’t the person he’d imagined from my letters either. And the thing with the cabin merely confirmed it for him.

“And here you are considering …” he repeated, this time as if only to his own thoughts. “Believe me, when I return home I have to get used to myself all over again from the beginning, collect myself, from all the way back in childhood, from my first words, my first thoughts, my first tears, feel once again that it’s me. Here it’s like living on a screen. And what’s a person without secrets, eh? You tell me.” He was practically boiling with anger: “I’m going to sell this place, I swear to God! And move away.”

He poured the rest of the beer from the can into his glass and, gazing at the noisy lake in front of us, he fell silent again. I ought to have spoken, he may even have expected it of me. But nothing came to mind aside from saying that I had to leave that afternoon. I decided, though, that it wasn’t the right moment to bring it up. So I asked him as if casually:

“So where are those graves where you told me the mushrooms grow the best?”

“You want to go mushroom-picking? Not now though, not now.” He jumped up from the table. “Let me fetch another beer. Should I make something to eat? Are you hungry yet? OK, I’ll make something later. I brought some grilled chicken, all we need to do is heat it up.”

A moment later, returning with fresh cans of beer he stopped halfway:

“See over there? I think she’s new. I’ve not seen her here before. I must find out who she is. That one there. See?” He put the cans on the table, opened them, poured for me and for himself. “You know, that’s the only thing keeping me here. If it weren’t for that I’d have sold up long ago.” He took a mouthful of beer and started looking around again, with completely different eyes it seemed — they glittered, they were almost predatory. From time to time he’d glance at me with something between a smile and a mocking twist of the mouth. “That one over there’s not bad either. The one getting into the boat. Her I know. She really likes it, and the things she knows how to do! I’ll show you another one also, she lives close by, two cabins away. Except I don’t think she’s here yet.”

I tell you, I was listening to him but I couldn’t believe this was Mr. Robert. The same Mr. Robert from all those letters and cards and phone calls. I wondered what was true in him, as I compared what he was saying now with what he’d written me all those years. Maybe nothing at all. But I didn’t let it show.

“Or that one over there, check her out. The one walking along the shore. She’s even looking our way. That’s the only good thing, with all of these irritations here. Because with a woman like that, here it’s as if you found her in her natural state. And finding a woman in nature isn’t the same as finding her on the street or in a cafe. Ah, nature. It straightens out the most crooked person. What’s she wandering around like that for? Oh, there you go, she’s lying down. She’s going to sunbathe. She can lie in the sun for hours on end. Even at the beginning of summer she’ll look like a black woman. To be honest I don’t really like it when they’re tan like that. Though the tanned ones are a lot easier. They can’t bring themselves to let all the torment of lying in the sun go to waste. And obviously they wouldn’t go through all of that just for the chumps they’re married to. They make those guys go try to lose weight on their boats and canoes. I mean, how long can you put up with one of those oafs? A year, two, then so much for being faithful. It’s a good thing the world has set aside all those superstitions and habits and customs. These days no one can afford to have a longer relationship. Everyone’s chasing after something, reaching for something, being with someone else is like having your legs in chains. You have no desire to talk, but here you have to. There’s nothing left to talk about, but you’ve got to talk. True, there are marriages that last till death. But they’re relics of the past. Before long you’ll be able to visit those kinds of people the way you visit castles and museums and cathedrals. The truth of it is, these days marriage is a corporation. One fails, you start another. Then you do what you can just so as to keep going somehow or other, to make it to the end. This life of ours isn’t worth a damn, I’m telling you. All these dreams and hopes we have.” His eyes suddenly flashed. “See over there. She just arrived. You know, the one from two cabins away. Wait till you see her in her bathing costume. You won’t be able to keep your eyes off her. She sometimes sunbathes topless. Sure, that’s reached Poland also. Why wouldn’t it. In that respect there aren’t any borders, languages, all that nonsense. I’ll have to invite her to go boating one of these days. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity. I mean, we know each other enough to say hello. But something’s holding me back. I’m all set to do it, then I lose my nerve. Maybe to begin with it’d be better just to suggest going berry-picking? The blackberries should be ripe by now. Next Sunday I’ll go check in the woods. Though she might not want to do that, because of the thorns. Too bad there aren’t any more wild strawberries this year. That’s the only thing that keeps me here. I mean you tell me, what do people really get from life? All that effort, the maneuvers, the sleeplessness, the worries, and what do they get? Then you add in the illnesses, other misfortunes, what do they get? Try sitting like that all day long in my shop. With the souvenirs. Ha, ha! I’ll sell the shop as well, the hell with it!”

He took a sip of beer. A moment ago his eyes had been glittering, but all of a sudden it was like they’d lost their color and been extinguished. After a moment of silence, in a voice that was just as colorless and extinguished he said:

“And if you knew what happened here once. Unless you’re the kind of person that can live anywhere.”

“I know, Mr. Robert.” I’d decided to finally tell him. I’d come to the conclusion that it wasn’t right to keep it a secret. Especially since he’d gotten suspicious of how I knew the way here when we were driving.

“How?” A look of consternation came over him. “Not from my letters, surely? I never wrote you about that. Ever.”

“I was born here.”

“What do you mean, here?”

“Here.”

“Here? What do you mean, here?!” I was taken aback by the vehemence with which he was trying to reject my confession. “Unless you weren’t around at that time. No one survived from here. No one.”

“Except that as you see, I survived, so to speak. In one sense it wasn’t just me, but you, and all these people on the lake — we all survived. All of us who are still alive.”

“But back then no one did. No one.” He was almost angry. “You see those hills. We lived over there during the war. Then one day, all of a sudden we heard they were burning whole villages around these parts. My mother grabbed me by the hand, I was a kid then, and we ran to the highest hill. Winnica it was called. There was already a crowd up on top. I couldn’t make out very much aside from the sea of smoke over the trees. But the grownups saw everything. Burning houses, barns, cattle sheds, frantic animals, people being shot at. At one point my mother picked me up, but I still couldn’t see anything beside the smoke. Then she knelt down and told me to do the same, because everyone was kneeling. She told me to cry, because everyone was crying. Except that I felt like laughing. My mother was wearing makeup, and her tears were making dark streaks that rolled down her cheeks. I couldn’t help myself. People turned to look at me, and someone said: