Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

My mother would send me to the store for something. I’d go into the store, try and close the door behind me, and Zuzia would be blocking the doorway. The store lady would shout at me, what did I think I was doing bringing a pig into the store. Get out! How do you like that! That boy! People would be laughing, and I’d get all embarrassed. Often I’d not buy what I was sent for. And no threats or pleas did any good. Go home Zuzia, go on, go now. Go home, because this or that or the other. While Zuzia, she’d just raise that little snout of hers and look at you kind of reproachfully. Or when I went mushroom picking, there was no way to explain to her that she couldn’t pick mushrooms herself. She didn’t know mushrooms, and besides, what would happen if, God forbid, she should get lost in the woods? You had to pick her up and carry her back to the pig shed.

Though that at least was doable till she got too heavy. After she’d grown some there was no way she could be carried. You’re not going to pick up a pig that weighs, say, over a hundred pounds, and she was getting heavier by the week. When you locked her in the shed she always found a way of getting out. When you took food in to her she’d slip past your legs and be out in the farmyard. Plus, from spring to fall the sheds were left open during the day so the animals could have some fresh air, especially when the weather was hot. She spent entire days roaming around the yard.

You’d close a gate behind you when you were going somewhere, but still she’d appear. She didn’t need to go through the gate, there was always a hole in the fence somewhere or other. She made the holes herself. Father would fill them in, and she’d just make another one right away. Though of course, did you ever see a fence without holes? That’s just how it is with fences.

One time mother was certain that father had plugged all the holes. She was on her way to May devotions at church. She closed the gate behind her and latched it. May devotions were usually held at a roadside shrine that had been made in a hollow oak tree near the woods. People said it was the oldest oak around, that it remembered everyone who had ever lived in those parts. It didn’t die because it contained the shrine, any other oak tree of that age would have fallen down long ago. There was a host of women gathered around the tree, it was mostly women that took part in May devotions. They sang and sang. All at once my mother feels something wriggling about by her skirt, she looks down. It’s Zuzia. She had to pick her up, and the rest of the service she sang with Zuzia in her arms. Zuzia was still little then.

There was a guy from town that was courting the neighbors’ daughter. Actually, I repainted her nameplate just recently. He’d always come on Sundays and they’d go for a walk together in the afternoon. He had a camera, and when they went walking he’d always have the camera around his neck. Of course, back then cameras weren’t as common as they are today. A young man with a camera, well, no young man that only had land could measure up to him.

One Sunday Zuzia had been following me and I was carrying her back to put her in the shed, when the two of them happened to be walking by. The neighbors’ daughter burst out laughing, and the guy asked me to stop a moment. Everyone came out of our house, because the neighbors’ daughter was in such fits of laughter. So he lined everybody up in front of the house, he had mother hold Zuzia in her arms and he took a picture of the whole family like that. One Sunday soon afterwards he brought us the photograph. We were all there, father, grandfather, grandmother, Jagoda, Leonka, me, Uncle Jan, and in front was mother with Zuzia in her arms like a baby.

Perhaps he’d wanted to make a humorous picture. But it was the only photograph with all of us in it. No, I don’t have it anymore, but I remember it well. Though I have to say that whenever I think of it, I don’t find it remotely funny that there’s a pig in it. I’m even kind of grateful to Zuzia. Because it was thanks to her that we had our only family photo. So what if it’s only in my memory? While everyone thinks a pig like that is just for fattening up and slaughtering. Really, how are we so different from her? Are we smarter? Better? Not to mention that animals have just as much right to the world, since they’re in it. The world belongs to them too. Noah didn’t take just humans into his ark. And have you noticed that in their old age animals start to resemble old people? While they’re young and humans are young the similarities might not be so easy to see. But in old age they become just as decrepit as people. They get sick just the same, and from the same illnesses. And maybe the reason they don’t speak and don’t complain is that words wouldn’t bring them any relief anyway, just as words don’t bring relief to humans even though they can speak and complain. And if you ask me, they’re afraid of death just like humans are. How do I know?

Pardon me for asking, but how old are you? It’s hard to tell from looking at you. I couldn’t say, really I couldn’t. When you came in I thought you must be about my age. Perhaps because you were wearing an overcoat and hat. Whereas now you seem a lot younger. Or maybe older? I really don’t know. Sometimes a person looks like they’re no age at all. Perhaps you’re one of those that time hasn’t touched. Am I right? In other words, I was not mistaken. Well, too bad, it’s coming to all of us sooner or later. Besides, I might have suspected it. The moment you said you’d come to buy beans, I might have suspected it.

Though let me tell you, years don’t matter much either. Do you know how long a pig like that can live? Eight, ten years maximum, provided of course people let her live out the full time. But they don’t. So it must have cost her a huge effort to get herself from the shed to the potato cellar. It wasn’t far, but at her age … She barely ever got up, didn’t eat much at all. I’d take her boiled milk with bran, because from me she’d still accept a little food. Though even I had to plead with her, coax her. Come on, Zuzia, eat, you need to eat, if you don’t eat you’ll die. Only then would she deign to stick her snout in the trough and have a little.

It was hard to see her in her old age. You couldn’t believe that at one time you’d carried her back home. Everyone would be saying her name. Zuzia. Zuzia, Zuzunia. The day virtually began with Zuzia. How’s Zuzia, Zuzia this, Zuzia that. And Zuzia herself would cling to everyone, not to mention following everyone around. At times she was a nuisance, we hoped she’d change when she got a little older. But she grew up and she didn’t change. She just made bigger and bigger holes in the fence. And still, when one of us was going somewhere Zuzia would follow behind. And not just our family, she got so comfortable with people that whenever anyone was walking past our house she’d make her way out onto the road and follow them. At times someone would get all upset and come running to say, Take that wretched Zuzia, that’s how they’d talk about her when they were mad, because they’d be walking along and Zuzia would be right behind. Whoever saw such a spoiled pig. You should slaughter her, it’s high time, actually she’s probably already over-fattened.

But at home, no one said a word about slaughtering Zuzia. Though you couldn’t help but see she’d already grown to her destiny. After that, she even outgrew destiny. And everyone knows what a pig’s destiny is. One time father said something, Christmas was approaching, he said maybe we could slaughter her. At that everyone lowered their eyes, father felt uncomfortable and added:

“Just an idea.”

Grandfather put in:

“There could be a war, it’s best to leave her be.”