Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

The sister always led me by the hand. Every so often she’d ask if I was tired. Sometimes one of the men would give me a piggyback ride for a bit. In the winter they made dugouts and we lived in them, so the war could have been over by then. At home they always used to talk about how it’d be over by Christmas, or by Easter. Here no one said anything. Not around me, in any case. Whenever they were talking about something and I came by, they’d fall silent. One time they didn’t notice me, it was evening, a bunch of them were sitting by the campfire. The only thing I caught was, Till the final victory. I might have heard more, but I trod on a dry branch and they stopped talking.

Truth be told, I didn’t particularly want it to end. I liked being with them. The sister was like a real sister to me, I grew attached to her, and I couldn’t imagine that we could ever be parted. I could have figured out one thing or another, but I preferred not to. For example, it sometimes happened that a small group of them, or a dozen or more, would all of a sudden grab their guns and head out. They’d come back in the early morning, or the following night, when I was asleep. Where they’d been, I had no idea. How could I ask when I didn’t talk? We always ate better after one of those trips. There’d be bread and lard, sometimes a bit of meat in the soup. The soup itself would be different, instead of being made from a little of everything as it seemed, we’d have for instance pea soup. When it was pea soup everyone rubbed their hands in anticipation. We also ate better when they caught something in a trap or a snare. They weren’t allowed to hunt with guns. Otherwise, we mostly just ate millet porridge. You know what millet is? No? Well, I’m not going to explain it to you, because ever since then I’ve hated millet porridge. Where they got it from I couldn’t say. Just like I couldn’t say where they went with their guns.

One time, from one of those expeditions they brought me back a tin of acid drops, another time a ball, then once it was a game of checkers, and one of them taught me how to play. Then I would always play with him. Another time a book, Andersen’s Fairy Tales . Do you know it? They said that if I started to read, maybe I’d begin to speak as well. Though when they took their guns it wasn’t so they could bring me acid drops or a ball or checkers or a book of fairy tales. I tried to read in my head, because I couldn’t do it with my mouth. I barely got to the end of the page, it was such hard work I’d rather have been shelling beans. Though like I said, I couldn’t stand shelling beans.

I basically couldn’t read, though in school I’d been the best reader. I read pretty well. I liked reading. At home, in the evenings I used to sometimes read aloud to everyone. Jagoda and Leonka were both older than me, Jagoda was two classes ahead of me and Leonka three, but they weren’t as good at reading as I was. The sister noticed one time that I was having trouble.

“Here, I’ll read to you,” she said.

From that time, not every day because she didn’t always have time during the day, and in the evenings we didn’t use lights, but when she could she’d read to me. At least a page or two. Though often her eyes would be closing from exhaustion. Sometimes one or another of the men would listen in, sometimes a few of them. Grown men listening to fairy tales, you can imagine? And partisans into the bargain.

She’d always mark her place in the book with a dry leaf. Later she’d keep the leaf, because she’d say she couldn’t bring herself to throw away such a beautiful leaf. And she’d mark the new place with another leaf. I would find the leaves for her, I’d hunt around for the nicest ones. I often went all over the woods. Then, of the best ones that I’d gathered, we’d choose the nicest one of all.

“Shall we use this one?”

I’d always want to use the one she picked.

“Where do you find such lovely leaves?” she’d ask admiringly each time.

Let me tell you, to hear that admiration of hers I would have climbed up into the trees, not just looked around on the ground underneath them. There were oaks, beeches, maples, elms, sycamores, all kinds of trees. She virtually filled the book with leaves. We only had a few tales left to read, but she didn’t manage to finish the book. Later I’ll show you the book. I have it in the living room. Don’t worry, I’m not going to read to you. The ones that are unread, let them stay that way. No, the copy with the leaves got lost. This one I bought myself.

I went to get some sheet music one time, and the store also carried books. I’d already bought the music, and I was just browsing idly among the books. All at once I see Andersen’s Fairy Tales . My heart pounded. I paid, brought it home and put it on my bedside table. I was living alone, my wife had left me not long before. I’d always read at bedtime. Whether or not I was tired, I always had to read a page or two at least. Even after just one page I’d feel myself calming down and everything resuming its place, then after five or ten more pages my eyes would start to let me know they were about to close. I didn’t need sleeping pills. But the remaining tales, the ones she didn’t manage to read, somehow I could never bring myself to read them either.

These days I supposedly have much more time, now that the season’s over. I don’t need to sleep because I don’t have to be fresh in the morning. But still I’ve never turned to those fairy tales. I do read, just not so much anymore. Nowadays not even books can make me fall asleep. Besides, I have the sense that books can no longer help me understand the things I’d like to understand here at the end.

When I was working on the electrification of the villages, in one house where we were installing the wiring I saw Andersen’s Fairy Tales lying on a windowsill. I asked the owner if I could borrow it. He said:

“You can have it. We don’t need it. It belonged to our boy. He got killed. Stepped on a mine.”

I took it back to our lodgings, four of us were rooming together, and I meant to read a bit in bed that evening. One of the other guys whose bed was next to mine noticed the book and started to laugh.

“What, are you reading fairy tales?”

Another guy piped up from another bed:

“What you need is a girl. One that’s the right shape here and here, got some flesh on her.”

I was embarrassed, I pulled my suitcase out from under my bed and stuffed the book beneath my shirt and socks and other things, right at the bottom. Then I started work at the building site, but I never reached for my suitcase to take the book out and read it. In the end I gave it to one of the guys to give to his son. He was going home one Sunday and he was worried that he didn’t have a present for his kid. I asked:

“How old is he?” I took out the Fairy Tales . “Give him this. It’s just right for his age. I was the same age.”

But why was the sister not shy in front of me? I don’t know. Maybe because I didn’t speak? Or for some other reason?

One time I was on guard to make sure no one was watching her, I was standing with my back to the lake and she was undressing on the shore. Suddenly she called out:

“Turn around! Do I make you feel uncomfortable? Come over here! When was the last time you bathed?” I didn’t know how to tell her it hadn’t been that long. “I bet it’s been ages,” she said. “All of you here like being dirty. Take your clothes off. You can wash with me.” I stood there rooted to the spot. “What are you staring at me for? Haven’t you had your fill of looking yet?” I averted my eyes. “Don’t just stand there, get undressed. Come on, I’ll help you.” Left to myself I don’t think I could have so much as unfastened a single button on my shirt. “Lift your head up. Give me your arm. Raise your foot. Have a good look, look all you like. At your age what do you know? You haven’t even got any hairs down there. So it can already get stiff? Still, you’ve got time. Though the rest of us might not be alive by then. Not me in any case, that’s for sure. Come on, hop in the water with me.”