Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

And another thing, I liked to greet people with my hat. That was a true pleasure for me. The fact is, there’s no fuller way of greeting a person than by tipping your hat. And you can’t imagine how I enjoyed it when a gust of wind would try and lift the hat off my head. I’d experience almost a sense of oneness with it as I held it by the brim. More, it felt like I was staying in place by holding on to the hat, often with both hands. Even if it was a howling gale, I knew I couldn’t let it snatch my hat away.

Yes, I’ve had lots of hats through the course of my life, in all sorts of different colors, styles, various kinds and makes. I never scrimped on buying hats. Or regretted the time it took. I could spend hours in shops and department stores, trying things on till I finally found the right one. But I never wore any of them very long. I didn’t just change them when the fashion changed. And I never threw any away. Life had taught me that everything comes full circle, the way the Earth does. Fashion’s no different. What was unfashionable would later become the in thing.

That’s true. But I never cared whether the fashion was for hats or for other kinds of headwear. Besides, it’s never been the case that hats are completely out of fashion. Even these days you see women and men in hats. Hats may be the only thing left that testifies to stability in the world. Wouldn’t you say so? Think how many things have disappeared and how many new ones have come along, but hats have stuck around.

My whole apartment was littered with hats. There was no more room for them in the closet. They lay on the bookshelves, on the books themselves, on the chest of drawers, on the windowsills, everywhere. I had this antique cast iron coat stand in the hallway which had spreading hooks like antlers at the top, ending in brass knobs. It was festooned with hats.

Yes, I made good money. Not right away, of course. Generally speaking dance bands pay well. Depending on the establishment, naturally. As you know, not that many people like classical music, but everyone dances. And I’ll tell you something else, dancing isn’t just dancing like you might expect. It’s only in the dance that you can truly see who’s who. Not in conversation, in dance. Not at a dinner table. Not on the street. Not even at war. In dance. If I hadn’t played dance music I wouldn’t have gotten to understand people so well.

I often wore a hat when I played in one band or another. For a saxophonist it’s the right thing. There’s even a certain style to it. The rest of the band would be bare-headed, I was the only one in a hat. Though sometimes the entire band wore hats. I forget which band it was, but we had a poster with all of us wearing hats. So it was at that time I had the dream about the brown felt hat that I’d only had on my head in the store when I tried it on. How can you explain that? No, it was definitely the brown felt one, it slipped down over my ears the same way.

From far off you could tell it was too big. Because as I was walking along it was like at the same time I was watching myself walking, from some undefined point. That happens in dreams. Though not only there. It was visibly rocking on my head with every step I took across the uneven meadows. When you’re watching yourself like that, and you’re also aware of it, you see it even more vividly than you feel it on your head. I was wearing an overcoat like yours. Underneath I had on a suit, and I think a necktie, though I don’t remember the color or pattern. Besides, it was hidden under a scarf that also looked like yours. Whereas my shoes were tied together by the shoelaces and slung over my shoulder, and I was barefoot. Why barefoot? That’s what I can’t explain. I was doing well for myself, after all. My pant legs were rolled up past my ankles, but that didn’t seem to be enough, when I looked down I saw my pants were wet from the dew all the way up to the knees. The grass was tall, it hadn’t been mown in a long while. Also, there was a mist so dense that I would see myself then vanish again, I even lost the sense of whether it was me crossing the meadows, passing through the mist. It was only the hat that showed me it couldn’t be anyone else. Especially since I could feel a biting cold on my bare feet, as if the grass was just thawing after a night frost.

I was walking rather briskly, though I wasn’t in a hurry to get anywhere. The mist kept blurring the image, the painful awareness that it was me was still beyond me. If such a feeling is even possible. I seemed more like a hint of myself, as I watched from that unidentified point and saw myself moving through the mist, across the meadow. It was only the hat that was visible to me, perhaps because it was the brown felt one and it was too big. I had the moist cold taste of the mist in my mouth, I felt I was permeated with it.

At a certain moment I paused, wiped the mist off my forehead with my handkerchief, then I leaned down to roll my pant legs further up, and that exact second the hat fell off my head. I started looking for it in the grass and at that point I might have woken up, because without my hat I felt like I had one foot in the waking world. That would have been best for me, I wouldn’t have had to keep on walking through the mist, across the meadows, I wouldn’t have had to remember the dream after I woke up. It was just a dream, just meadows, just mist, they weren’t worth bringing into my waking life.

All of a sudden the sun peeked out, because up till then it had been hidden behind the mist. The mist covered a wide area, but it also extended high into the air. There are mists like that. It was then I saw my hat, a few feet away in the grass. And next to the hat was the muzzle of a cow, as if it was sniffing at the hat. I reached down, carefully took the hat from under the cow’s muzzle, then the whole cow emerged from the mist. At the same instant other cows began to appear on all sides, as if from the wall of mist. The sun was thinning out the mist almost as I watched, the meadows stretched into the distance and more and more cows had come, like someone had driven them out of the mist toward me. Some of them were raising their heads and staring, evidently startled by my presence. Some came closer till I could see their large mute eyes.

I was overcome by fear of them. I hurried away, and kept glancing back to see if they were following me. Though cows are the gentlest creatures under the sun. Of all creatures that exist, including humans. I used to graze them, I know. They weren’t moving, they were standing there watching, as if they couldn’t understand why I was running away from them. I tripped over a molehill and almost fell. I thought that maybe my grandfather was waiting for the mole with a spade. But no. It was because I’d looked around yet again to see if the cows were following me.

Glancing back constantly, I came upon a small group of women standing around a pile of dried potato stalks. You know what potato stalks are, right? The plants that are left after you dig up the potatoes. You make a bonfire of the dried stalks, you bake potatoes in it, there’s always smoke everywhere. When you’re driving in the fall, but earlier than now, you can see plumes of smoke from the fires rising here and there in the fields.

More and more piles of stalks appeared as the mist cleared. At each pile there was an identical group of women, all dressed in black. I was about to tip my hat and apologize for the interruption when one of the women turned to me with her finger on her lips, indicating that I should be quiet. It only lasted a split second, but I noticed a boundless sorrow in her expression. She was wearing a black hat with a huge brim; her eyes were big and dark, and her sorrow pierced me.

The women made room and another of them, who also wore a black hat though with a somewhat narrower brim, beckoned me to stand amongst them. I thought that they must want to light the bonfire, but they didn’t have matches. Potato stalks, fall, meadows, cows, mist — everything pointed to this. Perhaps they were even planning to bake potatoes? I reached into my pocket for matches, but the woman standing closest to me stopped my arm and gave me a reproachful look.