Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

And so Zuzia kept growing bigger, and following everyone around. She got heavier and heavier. She wasn’t allowed in the house anymore, so she’d lie down outside the door and just stay there. When someone went out to shoo her away, she’d have a hard time clambering to her feet. One time father got mad and said:

“If we can’t slaughter her, we should at least sell her.”

He went into town and came back with a broker. Brokering was mostly done by the Jews. If you had a pig or a cow, or geese, or just goose down, you’d give it to a broker and he’d find a buyer. He came into the farmyard, and Zuzia happened to be lying outside the house. She picked herself up, went up to him, lifted her snout, and for a moment they just looked at each other. Then she lay down at his feet. And get this, the broker, who surely had no interest in pigs aside from their meat and their back fat, scratched his head and said:

“You brought me here to see a pig, but I can’t say if she’s a pig or not. What she is, I can’t tell. She might look like a pig, but I really couldn’t say. Oy, I don’t know.”

He wouldn’t even feel her to check how her back fat and hams were. And you should know that that’s what any broker would start from. Before they gave a price they’d always feel the animal for a long time, and they’d always grumble:

“It’s got no more back fat than the width of my finger here. And as for the hams, you can see yourselves that my finger goes in like I won’t say in what. It’s not at all firm. What have you been feeding it? Starving it, more like. What kind of price is a butcher going to give for a starved pig? Not a penny more. And if he won’t give any more, there won’t be anything in it for me either. I’m not interested in making big money, I just want my cut.”

But this broker wouldn’t even feel her.

“She’s not meant to be turned into back fat or ham. She’s lying here at my feet, for goodness’ sake. Maybe she thinks badly of me, what then?”

It seemed like this was just his way of starting negotiations at the lowest price. Father kept asking him, swearing she was no different from any other pig, she ate the same things, and how long was she going to go following people about, she was too big for that. In the end the man had no choice but to start checking her over. The main thing is to feel for the thickness of the back fat. See, like here on my thigh. You have to spread your hand and feel with each finger separately, then make a final check with your thumb. A good broker can tell you precisely whether the pig has two, two and a half, three fingers. And in the same way, how firm the hams are.

“She has back fat, hams. Everything’s fine there,” he said. “But she wants to live. And you all should pray she keeps wanting to for as long as possible. It may be some kind of sign, but to know that you’d need a rebbe. I’m just a broker.”

Let me tell you, to this day I can’t understand it. What had Zuzia ever done to him? He emptied his whole magazine into her. You don’t think the father told his son about that? Why wouldn’t he? I don’t know either, though I can guess. But I had no intention of asking him the next time we met. In fact, we didn’t meet a second time. Or ever again. I often used to go by the cafe, even at the same time we’d run into each other that day. I’d at least look in on my way to a morning rehearsal. Sometimes I’d sit down, order a coffee, have some cake. I’d ask the waitress when it was the same one who’d served us that time. She knew him, you recall she’d smiled at him a different way than a waitress usually smiles. She remembered us meeting, she vaguely remembered me, but him she remembered well. She’d never mistake him for anyone else, she told me, but he hadn’t come back once since then.

I couldn’t stop thinking about that photograph he’d mentioned, and I would have asked him about it. I kept wondering where the point could have been that the picture was taken from. It still bothers me today sometimes. True, I’ve never seen the picture. But you can think about it even without the picture. Let’s say someone took a picture of us as we’re shelling beans. We’re sitting here opposite each other like we are now, but in the picture we’re both shown full face. Your face seems to be looking at the photographer, and mine also, but at the same time we’re facing one another. The distance between him and me was no more than between me and you right now. I could see the muzzle of his gun like I can see your eyes now. So where could that point have been? Where do you think it could have been — here? Where could the photographer have been standing? There was very little space, no more than in this room. And here there’s no war, the dogs are asleep, and we’re sitting here talking and shelling beans. It ought to be a lot easier, don’t you think?

Shall we go outside maybe? It’s nighttime, but I could turn on the light in front of the cabin. I’d show you where it was. The cellar’s caved in, it’s overgrown with nettles and scrub. The door’s gone, it rotted away, but the door frame is still there, it’s made of oak and oak lasts. I might be able to squeeze through it, but if not we can still make believe. I could kneel down and you could stand in front of me. You’d just need to take some kind of stick. Well, you have to be taking aim at me with something. The way children play at guns. You say it’s not something we should be imagining, even if we were children. Then who should imagine it? I mean, no one’s going to take our place. No one can live for someone else, and no one’s capable of imagining things on behalf of another person. No method should be rejected if it might lead us to ourselves. Maybe if we were in the place where it happened it’d be easier to find the point where we’d be closest. You wouldn’t have to look for me all over the world. You wouldn’t have to come to me for beans. We wouldn’t have to wonder where and when. All the more so because as you see, we’re gradually getting to the end of the beans. Though there’s still a pod down by your foot. There’s another one over there, and one there. And another one right here, you see it? If you root around you’re bound to find more.

Maybe you’d like more beans? I’ve set some aside for myself, but I could bring two or three more bundles. You came by car, a little more won’t make any difference. Surely you won’t be leaving just yet. Why go driving at night? If I were you I’d wait till morning. We can have some tea or coffee later. Are you in a rush? The next time you come I might not be here any longer. If you hadn’t come by for beans I don’t know if you’d even have found me this time. Why not? Can a person ever be certain where and when he is in the world? You say, he’s always here and now. Except that that doesn’t mean anything. You might say that these days there are no boundaries, that what it’s like here is what it’s like everywhere. If you ask me, every world is past, every person is past, because there’s only past time. Now, here, those are only words, each of them immaterial, like all the words we were speaking about. Now I couldn’t even tell you what world this is. Or whether it exists at all. Perhaps we only imagine it exists. For you that probably makes no difference, because since you came to me for beans …

Perhaps you could buy a cabin here? What for? Oh, I don’t know. I just thought you might be looking for a place. You wouldn’t have to come every weekend. I’d even advise against it. Or spend all of your vacations here. One or two visits a year would be quite enough. And best of all at these kinds of time, in the off-season. I’d mind your place like I do all the others. You wouldn’t have to worry about a thing.

A few of the cabins are up for sale. Twenty-two, thirty-one, and I think forty-six or forty-seven, I don’t recall. There may well be others, I’d have to check. Oh yes, a lot of people have sold their cabins since I’ve been here. Recently there’s not been much interest in buying. Once in a while someone comes through, takes a good long look around, and doesn’t know if he wants to buy or if he’s just looking. To begin with people would often drop by, they’d leave their address and phone number with me in case anyone happened to be selling a cabin. No one’s building any new ones anymore either. Though it’s a decent place, as you can see — there’s the lake, the woods, the air’s good.