Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

Yes, I have a telephone, through in the living room there, except it’s not working. I never reported the problem because I don’t really need it. Who would I speak to? I’ve no one to call. If someone has something they need to talk to me about they can come visit me here. You say I ought to have a cell phone. What for? Oh, I see what cell phones are good for, here in the season. Everyone’s got their cell phone stuck to their ear. Hardly anyone talks to anyone else the way we’re doing now, they’re all on their phones. Does that bring people closer together, do you think? People are more and more out of touch with one another. If it wasn’t for those few months in fall and winter when peace and quiet come back, I don’t know if I could bear it.

I sometimes wonder even whether next season I should add a sentence to the posted regulations: Cell phones are to be turned off or left in the cabins. Like in church, or the theater or the symphony. It’s no different here than in those places. Peace and quiet can be a church, a theater, a symphony hall just the same. Only peace and quiet, because I don’t know anything else that could be. You have no idea of its power. To just listen intently — in the off-season of course — to the sky, the lake, the early morning, the sunset, the night when there’s a full moon, to go into the woods and listen to all the trees and bushes and plants, to lie down in the moss. Or if you listen to the ants. Lean down to the anthill, carefully of course so they don’t get all over you, it’s like you’d found yourself in outer space and you were listening to the universe. Why do people feel they have to fly to other places?

Sometimes I think to myself that if someone were ever able to record silence, that that would be real music. Me? Come off it. On the saxophone? Music like that isn’t the same thing as a saxophone. Sometimes I regret not having chosen a different instrument. The violin, for instance, like that teacher at school was pushing. But I picked the sax. That was how it began, and that was how it remained. Plus, I played in dance bands, as you know. Not to mention that it’s all moot now, because I don’t play anymore.

Though let me tell you, I do wonder if I’d have played at all if I hadn’t found myself in that works band. Maybe I wouldn’t have gone any further than what I did at school. I don’t know if things would have been better or worse for me, but at least I wouldn’t have experienced what it’s like when you can’t play any longer.

What can I say, I was young. When you’re young, how can you know what’s going to be better or worse for you? And not right away, but in some distant future. No one gives it a second thought, there’s nothing to think about. Not to mention that back then, young people were all the rage. They always are, you say. Perhaps, but not exactly in the same way. Back then, nothing could happen without young people. At every meeting, congress, celebration there had to be some youngster on the committee. Same with any deputation, it always had to include at least one young person. And one woman. About young people they’d say that they have their future ahead of them, that they would be the ones to build a new and better world, that everything was in their hands. True, everyone always talks like that, then the young folks grow old and leave the same world they inherited to the next lot of people. Yes indeed, the world isn’t as easy to change as we think.

I sometimes even ask myself whether it wasn’t for the same reason they decided it would be good to have someone young in the band. Because truth be told, I wasn’t that good in those days. Also, I didn’t think of myself as being young. I believed in a new and better world, because the old one, as you’ll be the first to admit, it was nothing but shambles from the war. And it was only after the war that we found out what the war had actually meant, what a huge defeat it had been not just for human beings but for God. It seemed humans would never pick themselves up again, that they’d gone too far, while God had failed to prove his existence. I didn’t need to understand anything. I myself was an example of it all.

I can tell that you disagree with me about something. Then why aren’t you speaking up? Say what you want to say. Please, I’m listening. No, no. I wasn’t the only one who thought the time for God had passed. Perhaps I didn’t quite think like that, but I wasn’t able to pray any more. The only thing that happened was that sometimes, when no one could see me, I’d burst into tears for no reason. So I was ready to believe in anything, so long as I could believe in something. And what’s better to believe in than a new and better world? Especially because later, when I started working on building sites, each site was like a little part of that belief. Things got built, after all, you won’t deny that. There were delays, it took a long time, often the work was done shoddily, there were shortages of materials, of this and that, stuff got stolen. But things got built.

Anyway, I’m not going to argue with you. You’re my guest, let it be that you’re right. It doesn’t make much difference to me anymore. Wait a minute though, have I maybe seen a photograph of you before? And actually from those times, when we were young. You don’t come out on photographs? How is that possible? Not even as a shadow? Or at the very least as a trace of light wherever you were standing or sitting? Not even that? There’s nothing at all? Then I really don’t get it. In that case the dogs … Whereas they’re sleeping like babies. As you can see. Oh, they’ve woken up now. What is it, Rex? What is it, Paws? Were you having a dream? The gentleman and I have been shelling beans. Go back to sleep, go on. I’ll wake you up when it’s time.

I do have one picture. But I don’t remember if you’re in it. I’ll show you later. What is it of? I mentioned that dream. I did, I really did. You were surprised I have nothing better to think about. It was when I was still living abroad. I rarely dreamed. Still don’t, as it happens. When I was playing, I’d often get home in the middle of the night, I’d be so exhausted I wouldn’t have the strength to dream. And even if I did dream something, when I woke up in the morning I’d never remember it. Then one night I had a dream, and it was like my dream was being projected on a screen. I don’t really remember, but I think it may still have been going on when I suddenly jerked upright and sat on the edge of the bed. I admit I wasn’t sleeping alone, and she woke up too. She was concerned, she asked me what was wrong.

“I had a dream,” I said.

“Tell me about it,” she said.

But what was I supposed to tell her when I wasn’t even sure whether I was dreaming I was sitting on the edge of the bed, and the dream was my waking life, or vice versa.

“You weren’t in it, in any case,” I said to reassure her. “Go back to sleep, it’s the middle of the night.”

“Were there other women?”

“Yes.”

“You men always dream of other women.” She fell asleep again right away.

I stayed on the edge of the bed, wrestling with my thoughts, trying to figure out if it had been my dream. And wondering if I could believe it was someone else’s.

It was autumn, like now, I was walking through meadows, wearing a hat. You won’t believe it, but it was the brown felt hat I’d left on the train. So many years had gone by since then, I could have sworn I’d forgotten all about it. No, quite the opposite, after that I always wore hats. My whole life I’ve worn hats. I couldn’t imagine wearing anything else on my head. I even had a kind of respect for hats. Someone wearing a hat usually aroused my curiosity, in any case more so than with any other kind of headwear. Not to mention women. The women I best remember are the ones who wore hats. Myself, I always felt best in a hat. It was like I was someone else, someone beyond myself, someone for whom everything else fell into the background. Not that I was proud that way. Not at all. I was afraid to live. I felt like I’d only just emerged from a shell, and I still found everything painful. For a long time I was afraid to live. You’ll find this hard to believe, but wearing a hat actually helped a lot. I began looking people in the eye, and not accepting things at face value. When I wore a hat, memory would somehow torment me less.