Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

Each time they came to the village, a few of them had died in the meantime. That didn’t stop them drinking and partying. When they drank they’d sometimes fire their guns in the air. The village was in the middle of the woods, far from highways and the railroad, they thought no one would hear. Honestly though, it was kind of fun when they were there. It was like a different place. Not right away. When they first arrived, their faces were always hollow-cheeked and dark. Their eyes were sleepy, bloodshot, every glance they gave seemed like suspicion. When one of them smiled it didn’t look like a human smile. They all had long beards, as if they hadn’t shaved since their last visit. A few of them would have bandages around their heads, in some cases blood was still seeping through. One had an arm in a sling. Another would be limping. Some only had one boot on, the other foot was wrapped in bloody rags. A few of them were being carried. Those were the ones they usually called the doctor for. And let me tell you, they stank to high heaven.

The first thing they did was delouse themselves. Maybe because lice itch even more than dirt. When they bite, they’re more trouble than wounds. We never had lice in our home, mother saw to that. If even one showed up, she’d launder everything at once. Then she’d iron it all with an iron so hot it hissed. Especially along the seams. That was where the lice most liked to hide. We all had to take a bath, wash our hair, comb it with the finest comb. There were special combs for when you had lice. The teeth were so close together there was barely any space between them. On top of that she’d slather us with sabadilla. You don’t know what that is? In those days it was the most effective thing for head lice. There were guys who came selling stuff around the villages, they had buttons, safety pins, snap fasteners, needles, pins, threads. They also sold hair clasps, tape for lining, ribbons to make bows for little girls. What else? All kinds of things. Shoelaces, shoe polish, bunion cream, rooster powders — that was what they called pain medication, but only for headaches. Rooster powders. They had pretty much anything that might come in handy around the house. The housewives would look forward to them coming. People rarely rode into town to market, only when they had more than usual to sell. But sabadilla was always needed. It was almost like holy water.

So the lice would appear the moment the partisans showed up. They hadn’t learned to delouse themselves. Not all of them, some of them must have been shown how to do it by their mothers or grandmothers. Because they’d find them and just throw them away. You’ve never had lice? Let me tell you, if you’ve not had lice you’ve not truly been in this world. One war after another and you’ve never had lice, that’s pretty strange. I’m just saying in general, not about you in particular. In this world you have to have had lice at least once, and you have to know how to get rid of them. Grandfather even wondered how they knew how to fight if they didn’t know how to delouse themselves. He said that the first duty of a soldier is to know how to deal with lice, then with hunger, then with the home he’s left behind. Only then is he fit to kill other soldiers or civilians. Though that didn’t stop grandfather sitting and watching them delouse themselves. He’d even point and say, look, there’s one, there’s another. It was hardly surprising that later he brought the lice home with him.

Then they’d bathe, shave, get a haircut, wash their hair, launder their clothes, dress their wounds, till they became completely unlike the men who had arrived. The ones who’d arrived were old, and these were young men. Some were still children. In many cases it was hard to believe it was the same person. They arrived barely dragging their feet, then afterwards they’d want to dance.

All of a sudden the snow crunched outside the cellar, the door creaked, and a shaft of light fell across the floor. I couldn’t be seen in it, because as I said I was sitting outside on a mound of potatoes. But I heard a girl’s shrill voice:

“Hello? Is anybody there?”

In the first moment I wondered if it could be Jagoda or Leonka. They had girlish voices.

“Hello? Is anybody there?”

It was only then that I knew it wasn’t either of them. They’d probably seen where I’d scooped out snow to drink from beside the door, and figured out there must be someone down in the cellar. She came maybe one step down, her voice got louder, though it was still girlish, it even sounded a little afraid:

“Is anybody there? Say something!”

I didn’t step out, I swear. All at once something happened that couldn’t have been predicted. The pile of potatoes I was sitting on collapsed with a crash, and I came tumbling down with them. No, it wasn’t fate. We’d been taking potatoes again and again from the pile, it was bound to tumble sooner or later. All it would need would be one more potato being taken, and the pile wouldn’t hold together anymore. The only question is, why at that particular moment, not some other time. The bough of a tree breaks off right at the second someone’s passing by. Is that fate? I heard her shout up above me:

“Oh my lord!” She scrambled out and started shouting:

“There’s someone alive in here! There’s someone alive!”

There was nothing I could do, I had to show myself alive. When you hear an almost angelic voice above you, at a moment when it seems the world doesn’t exist, and you don’t exist in it — it’s as if the voice was summoning you and the world to life. What was I supposed to do, shout out that I wasn’t there? I started to clamber towards her, the light flooded my eyes, so the first thing I saw was an armband with a red cross on her sleeve, before I saw the rest of her. She said in a shocked voice:

“Lord, you’re nothing but a child!”

I must say she cut me to the quick with that comment about being a child. I thought, damn girl. And it turned out I was right. She was really young, with such fair hair, though in her army greatcoat and forage cap she might have seemed a lot older than she was. Especially because the coat was much too big for her, the sleeves were rolled right up to here, and the cap would have also been too big if it hadn’t been for her hair. Her voice was the only indication of how old she might be. As you know, appearances can deceive but the voice, never. All the more so in uniform. In uniform the youngest soldier always looks much older than he actually is. Even children — when they’re in uniform it looks like it’d be no problem for them to kill, slaughter, burn. Besides, even aside from the uniform, when you were as young as I was then, even someone who’s just a few years more than you looks virtually old. Later it changes, the years draw closer together, and the closer you are to death the more everything evens out. In particular since death doesn’t choose among us according to age. I wouldn’t say it’s random. Death has its own wisdom.

She was a medic, you could tell from the armband with the red cross. When I came out from the cellar I saw that over her shoulder she was carrying a bag that also had a red cross. The bag was too heavy for her, her shoulder drooped. There was a whole drugstore in there. Actually, it wasn’t just the bag that was too heavy for her. She was the only medic for the whole unit, can you imagine. I never heard her complain, but it was clear that the whole thing was beyond her strength. Constantly she was washing bandages, dressing wounds, handing out pills for aches and pains and fevers, she’d wipe the men’s foreheads, clean away the blood and the dirt — often from head to foot — when one of them was too weak to stand on his own two feet and kept calling her to come here and go there, day and night.