Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

Did I mistake your meaning? We must be talking about two different things. We’re talking about the same thing? In that case why did you appear only now? Why not back then? There were other opportunities too. I wouldn’t have had to pretend all this time. It’s true that our whole life we have to pretend in order to live. There isn’t a moment when we’re not pretending. We even pretend to ourselves. In the end, though, there comes a moment when we don’t feel like pretending anymore. We grow tired of ourselves. Not of the world, not of other people, but of ourselves. It’s just I didn’t think the moment had yet come.

I’m taking you for someone else? I don’t think so. To begin with maybe I did. You came asking for beans, so one or another of them could have come asking for beans too, who knows who could’ve come. So I was justified in suspecting that we’d met before. Why wouldn’t you be wearing an overcoat and hat? It’s fall, the weather’s chilly already. There’ll be frosts before you know it. And at this time of year, in the off-season, who else could come, all the more so just like that, as if they were paying a formal visit? Once every so often the forest ranger stops by. Or someone from the dam comes on an inspection, they may or may not drop in. Or the mailman brings me a letter with money from Mr. Robert on the first of the month, he steps in but then a moment later he’s gone. The last time he was here he said he probably wouldn’t be coming anymore because his bike’s broken, I’ll have to go to the post office myself. Other than that, I don’t think there’s anyone.

People from the cabins? Yes, they do come. But not everyone will pop in and say hello. Besides, they don’t appear that often, they know everything’s fine here. I’m not talking about the ones who bring someone here. Those ones, of course they don’t come and visit me. Quite the opposite. They try and make sure I don’t see anything or hear anything when one or another of them is here. They usually arrive in the late evening. They think I’m already asleep because my lights are off. But me, I see and hear everything, it’s just that, as I told you, I don’t stick my nose into that kind of business. But I hear the car. When it’s quiet like it is now, the slightest murmur carries all the way across the lake. When an owl hoots, and there’s no wind, it’s like a shot going off in the woods. When the wild boars come out of the woods you can hear the earth move under their feet. Plus, the dogs rush to the door right away, and I have to go out to see who’s here. I don’t get too close, just near enough to check who it is and which cabin, but so they don’t see me. It goes without saying I don’t take the dogs. When they go into their cabin I come back home. Everyone has to walk from the parking lot to their cabin, and that’s enough for me to see what I need to. I stopped allowing them to drive up to their cabins. You can imagine what that would look like. Tracks everywhere. Plus, as you saw, most of the cabins are on a slope. What if the cars started to slide down into the lake? Who would be responsible? Me, because I’m the one that takes care of everything here.

There’s only one angler who comes for a week or two at this time of year. For some reason he hasn’t been yet, but he may still show. Let’s just hope winter doesn’t set in too early, because he wouldn’t be able to get his fishing in. Though he avoids me too. I don’t know why. He bought a cabin from another guy, way down at the end there, right by the shore. He doesn’t leave his keys with me, so I don’t go in. During the season you won’t see him here, his cabin’s locked up, he only comes here to fish round about now. But I couldn’t say if he catches anything. He gets in his boat in the early morning and rows out onto the lake, sometimes to one end, sometimes the other. At the far end you can barely get to the shore, it’s overgrown with reeds, alders, blackthorn. He disappears into the reed beds and spends all day there from dawn till dusk, in his boat. In the evening he doesn’t turn on his light, I don’t know if he goes to bed right away. I never even know if he’s back from his fishing. And I mean I’m not going to go over there and ask him if he’s caught anything. If he hasn’t it’s all the worse to ask. All I can say is, I’ve never seen any catch.

Maybe he doesn’t fish? But in that case, why would he spend all day in his boat? He even stays in it when it’s raining. He wraps himself up in his raincoat, pulls the hood up over his head and sits like that in his boat, in the rain. He has a fishing pole. Sometimes he fishes out in the middle of the lake, so I’ve seen it. It sticks up out of the boat like a regular pole. From time to time he pulls it out of the water, adjusts something on the hook, then casts it back. It must be a fishing pole. But I’ve never ever seen a fish thrashing about on it when he takes it out of the water. Of course there are fish in the lake. There were fish in the Rutka, why wouldn’t there be fish in the lake? Different ones, but they’re there.

If he fished from the shore I’d go up and at least ask, Are they biting today? Or look to see if his float ever moves. It’s true, anglers don’t like it when you check their floats. It’s like looking at a card player’s hand. But he always fishes from his boat. Sometimes, when he’s opposite my windows I at least go out and sit on the shore. You can’t talk from there. Not even to ask if the fish are biting, you’d have to shout, and I wouldn’t want to scare the fish away.

I don’t know. All I know is that he’s an angler. I don’t even know if he sees me when I’m sitting on the shore and he’s out in the middle of the lake in his boat. Though I see him. What can I say, it doesn’t have to work both ways, that since you see others they see you. That’s how it is with everything. It’s another matter that an angler has to keep an eye on their float the whole time, because if a fish starts to bite …

There are times the lake covers over with mist, especially around now, in the fall, and he disappears into the mist, so sometimes I call out to him:

“Hello, are you there?” I even walk along the shore calling: “Are you there? Are you there?”

He’s never answered me. One time, just so as to hear his voice I went over there even before dawn, before he’d headed out, and I kind of told him off for not pulling his boat up onto the shore, there’d been a wind the night before and the chain of his boat was rattling so loud I hadn’t gotten a wink all night. He’d probably been asleep and hadn’t heard it. He said:

“I’m sorry.”

That was it.

You know what, as I listen to you, your voice is sort of like his. I still have a good ear. At least that much is left from playing music. I won’t argue about it. But I must have heard your voice once before. Say something more. Anything. It’s strange, we’re sitting here shelling beans, I’m listening and listening to you, but it’s only now that I’ve noticed.

I always thought I’d recognize anyone from their voice. Not their face, faces change. Most often the face ends up looking nothing like itself. You’re never sure if it’s the same person when you look at their face. But when you hear their voice, even if it’s someone from a forgotten memory you remember them. Also the face can be dressed up in all kinds of expressions, masks, grimaces. You can’t do that with the voice. It’s as though the voice were independent of the person. I can even tell over the telephone, it’s like I hear all the levels of the voice, from the highest level down to the breathing, to silence. Of course — silence is a voice. And it’s words. Though words that have lost faith in themselves, you might say. Over the phone a person speaks with his whole self. Maybe if I’d heard your voice over the phone it would have been easier for me to remember.