Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

If you ask me, though, the truth lay elsewhere. There was a girl. She worked in the cafeteria. No, nothing of that sort. I told you he kept away from girls. He liked her, the feeling was mutual. He was gentle, polite, not like the rest of us. The most he did was when she’d bring the soup or the main course, he’d admire her braided hair, say how beautiful it was, how you hardly ever saw hair like that anymore. It was true, her braid was as thick as my wrist here. And it reached all the way down past her waist at the back. Everyone would tug at it as she brought their food.

Not me. For some reason I was too shy. Besides, I’d only recently come to work on the site. When she put my soup or main course in front of me I didn’t even look at her, I only ever saw her from a distance. The other guys had known her for a long time. She’d gotten used to having her braid pulled. I won’t lie, I liked the look of her from the start. And she knew it right away. One time she leaned over to my ear and whispered, You should tug on my braid too, see what it feels like. I didn’t. But I decided that even without that, she’d still be mine. When the right moment came I’d tell her. For the while I didn’t let anything show. I never even said to her, You look nice today Miss Basia, or Basieńka — Barbara was her name. Though everyone said that to her every day. When she brought me my plate I’d say, Thank you. That was it. Other guys, they wouldn’t have been able to eat if they hadn’t pulled at her braid or at least said, You look nice today Miss Basia, or Basieńka.

Sometimes she’d spill the soup because someone tugged at her braid before she’d had time to put the bowl down. Plus, some of them had hands twice the size of yours or mine, rugged and strong. She’d even break a plate at times trying to free herself from a hand like that. A good few plates or bowls got broken because of that braid of hers. Same when she was clearing the empty plates away.

One day she was carrying plates with the main course on a tray, six plates if I remember correctly, when someone grabbed her braid, even though she wasn’t going to his table, she was just passing by. The tray wobbled in her hands and all the plates crashed to the floor. They were going to fire her on the spot. Luckily the guy did the right thing and paid for all the plates and all the food. After that the men were more careful, they only tugged at her braid once she’d put the plates on the table, otherwise every last plate would have gotten broken, and not through any fault of hers. Unless you could blame the braid. If you ask me, girls or women who work in cafeterias, especially on building sites like that, they shouldn’t be too good-looking. Nice, polite, of course, but not too good looking.

Sometimes she’d wear her braid up on her head in a bun. Maybe it was for self-protection, because how else can you protect yourself when you’ve got the kind of braid that just begs to be grabbed and held for at least a moment. Or perhaps she wanted to look nicer, who can tell. Though in my book she had no need to look nicer. Without the braid, though, she looked quite different, she became kind of unapproachable, haughty. When she put the bowl or the plate in front of you, she seemed to be doing you a favor. I didn’t like the bun. I thought to myself, when she’s my wife I’ll tell her I prefer the braid. With the braid, when it swung back and forth behind her back she looked, I don’t know how to put it, like she’d only just risen into the world.

You’re smiling … my imagination’s a bit old-fashioned, right? But that was how I felt back then. Though if you think about it, don’t you reckon we continue to imagine things the way people have imagined them? However much the world changes. However different we are. Or maybe we just pretend to be different so we can keep up with the world. While in our innermost longings we’re all still the same, we just hide it from ourselves and the rest of the world.

Besides, tell me yourself, can anyone imagine nicer hair on a girl than a braid? Naturally, for a braid like that you need a mass of hair, and not the thin kind. You need hair that’s a gift, as they used to say in my childhood. Here, on the lake, in the season, when people come on a Saturday or Sunday or on vacation, you sometimes see nice hair. But it’s best not to look too closely. It’s all dyed, and often colors that you never see in real hair. Real hair has a different color on each person, have you ever noticed that? In addition to which, their hair looks like it’s been all puffed up by hairdressers, with all those conditioners and shampoos and gels. Often their heads look like bunches of flowers. And the whole bunch could fit in your hand if you plucked it from their head.

In general, something wrong is going on with people’s hair. Maybe it’s a sign that something bad is starting to happen in the world? Despite what you might think, more often than not the beginning is hard to spot. It’s rare for anything to start with big things or big events. It’s usually from something little, often something insignificant, like people’s hair for example. But have you noticed that more and more young men are bald? And they’re getting younger and younger. When I was their age everyone had a shock of hair.

When you only look at people’s hair, or for example only at their bare feet, for instance here at the lake, or only at their hands, their eyes, their mouths, their eyebrows, you see them altogether differently than when you look at them as a whole. It gives you all kinds of insights. It gives you lots to think about.

It was that braid of hers that was the start of what came next. Though no one suspected it could be the braid. A braid is just a braid. It was tempting to grab it and feel it, that was all. Though let me tell you, when it sometimes accidentally brushed against my face as she was clearing plates from the table, it gave me goose bumps, as if death had brushed against me. Though I couldn’t have imagined her with any other hair.

Actually, there was something odd about her in general. When they took hold of her braid she’d always blush, when she should have been accustomed to it by then. She’d served so many meals, there’d been so many lunches since the building site was set up, she ought to have gotten used to it. But she blushed even when someone just looked her in the eye when she was bringing the plates. She’d blush whenever someone said, You look nice today, Miss Basia, or Basieńka. She always looked nice, but they’d say that to her. I mean, there just aren’t that many words you can use when you want to say something nice to a girl, especially in a cafeteria, when she’s giving you your soup or your main course or clearing the dishes away.

It’s another matter that as far as words are concerned, something has happened between men and women, don’t you think? Someone here said to me once that words are unnecessary, that they’re dying out. It’s obvious what a man is, what a woman is, what do you need words for. True or false ones, wise or unwise, elegant or clumsy, either way they all lead without exception to the same thing. So what are they for?

True, on the building sites things weren’t that great either when it came to words. You used them as much as was needed on the construction. And you can imagine what kinds of words they were mostly. One job followed another, so you just dropped by the cafeteria to quickly eat your lunch and then hurry back to work. You were dirty and sweaty, you didn’t even wash your hands sometimes. Plus, while you were eating there were other men waiting for your place the moment you were done. Where could you be expected to learn other words? You look nice today, Miss Basia, or Basieńka, that was all some of them could manage. And those were the ones we reckoned knew how to talk. It was much simpler to just grab hold of her braid.