Wieslaw Mysliwski - A Treatise on Shelling Beans

If I’d known you were coming I’d have made sure to have cream. I’d have been prepared. Too bad you didn’t let me know in advance. You called? And what, there was no dial tone? Don’t be offended, but I’ll tell you honestly that it’s a good job you didn’t get through, because over the phone I’d have told you I don’t have any beans. I’d have thought someone was pulling my leg. Or that they were mending my phone and checking to see if it works. Even if you’d introduced yourself, over the phone I wouldn’t have believed you. I’d have thought you were pretending to be someone else. This way, at least when I see you I can be sure of one thing — that we must have met once before. Though where and when? We couldn’t have just gone through life like that and never have met.

Maybe we should light candles after all? I could bring in the candlesticks. We’ve been shelling beans so long, we could have gotten to know each other well. The more so because I’m almost certain that once before … And when two people meet after they’ve not seen each other in a long time, it ought to be a special occasion, don’t you think?

I’m sure you’ll agree with me when I say that up to more or less halfway through life we know more and more people, so many that it’s sometimes hard to remember them all, then in the second half there start to be fewer, till at the end you’re the only person you know. It’s not only that we outlive everyone else. Rather, it’s life’s way of indicating how much is already behind us, and how much still lies ahead. Almost all of it is behind, there’s just a little bit still to go. So when someone like you comes by, if only to buy beans, and in addition they seem to have been an old acquaintance, it only seems right to at least light a candle. At those moments any person you’ve known stands for all the people you’ve known.

If I still played, I’d play something to mark the occasion. But what can you do. It goes without saying that I’m tempted. I often am. Sometimes I even take the sax out of its case, hang it around my neck, put the mouthpiece in my mouth, place my hands around the body. But I don’t have the courage to run my fingers over the keys. For shelling beans my hands will more or less do, as you see. And for other jobs. But repainting those nameplates is torment. The saxophone is out of the question. My fingers start to feel stiff right away. I’m even afraid to blow into the mouthpiece. But I hear myself. You might not believe me — I don’t play, but I hear myself playing. And those dogs of mine hear me too. I see them lying there all ears. Their skin is calm, neither of them so much as twitches, their muzzles are stretched out, but their ears are sticking up like they don’t want to miss a note. I don’t just imagine it, I play. They hear it, I hear it. I play with my mouth, my breath, with these hands that I’m afraid to place on the keys, with my whole being. Would I not recognize my own playing? I’ve listened to myself so often, my soul has listened, how could I not recognize that it’s me?

And imagine this, it’s only now, after I haven’t played in years, that I’ve come to understand what kind of instrument the saxophone is. With that kind of playing, when only you can hear yourself, you hear more than the music alone. It’s as if you cross some boundary within yourself. Perhaps it’s the same with every instrument, but I played the saxophone and that’s all I can speak about. You supposedly know what it’s capable of, what it’s good for and what it isn’t, you know all of its parts, like you know your own hands, eyes, mouth, nose, you know which part is connected to which. But it turns out you knew almost nothing. It’s only after you stop playing …

When I was picking out a new mouthpiece I’d try endless ones, the clerk would keep bringing them to me, before I found one that satisfied me. So you might think you know everything. Once in one of the stores I even heard someone say, We get people from all kinds of bands, but I’ve never known anybody to be so picky. Though two identical mouthpieces, made from ebonite let’s say, they’ll each sound different. Not because they’re ebonite. They could be brass, silver, gilt. Identical mouthpieces, but the sound is different. And there’s no knowing what causes it. It’s the same with reeds, they have to be made of the right bamboo. But how can you say what the right bamboo is? What does it even mean to say it’s the right kind? Well, it can mean anything. What soil it grew in, what kind of year it was where it grew, whether it had too little sun, too much rain, or vice versa. Whether it was harvested properly, dried evenly on both sides. And above all whether it’s soft or hard. All of that comes out later in the sound. Even the hands of the people that made the reed are probably reflected in its sound. So every reed, I’d rub it down myself afterwards till I felt the sound was the fullest it could possibly be. Because let me tell you, the reed and the mouthpiece are the most important parts of a saxophone. Of course, every part is important, the neck, the keys, especially whether the pads are tight-fitting, the bell, each of them has its role, the cork around the mouthpiece is crucial, also what’s called the tenon that holds the reed so it vibrates along its whole length.

But the mouthpiece and the reed are the most critical of all. Not just because they turn your breath into music. It’s like they open up all the life that’s inside you, all the memory, even the parts that aren’t remembered, every single hope that’s in you, your grudges against people, against the world, even against God.

So you think I’d have had a chance? It’s just that saxophones are rare in the kinds of bands you’re talking about. If I’d not been restricted to only playing dance music … Or if I’d studied somewhere, gotten a piece of paper that said I could play. You know how it is. You even have to have a piece of paper to say you were born. Without it even that would be impossible. You have to have one that says you died, or you wouldn’t be able to die. That’s how the world is, I don’t need to explain it to you. We both live in it. You don’t doubt that part, do you? I mean look, we’re sitting here shelling beans, so we exist. Someone already said something along those lines, true. But that isn’t enough. Everyone’s existence has to be confirmed by something. Or someone. But while we’re shelling beans we don’t need any confirmation.

That wasn’t what I meant to say. I meant to say that existence itself is no proof of anything. Existence brings us nothing but doubts. Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m speaking in general, not about you or me. I don’t know you, after all. I may guess at this or that, but I don’t know you. We’re just shelling beans, no more. But at some point we’ll finish, you’ll drive away, and what then? I won’t remember you, and all the more you won’t remember me. What can I say, I never was the kind of person worth remembering. An electrician who played dance music. Even if you’d come to one of the clubs where I used to play, you’d likely not have thought twice about some guy in the band on the sax.

Forgive me, I don’t mean to oblige you to say anything. For politeness’ sake you might feel you have to pretend, yes, it goes without saying, how on earth would you forget, you have no doubt whatsoever, whether it was here or there, of course, here, there, absolutely, that’s right, at such-and-such a time. Here or there, at this or that time. For what?

True, sometimes when you meet someone years later and no trace remains of who they were, you have to pretend that they’re the same person as before. Or even if there is a faint vestige, what of it, when you rack your brains and you still can’t remember any such person even existing. And moments like that, sure, you have to make as if you remember them. I sometimes wonder if anyone would have existed if we didn’t pretend. If it would even be possible to have existed. Besides, what is memory if not the pretense that you remember. Though it’s our only witness to having existed. We depend on memory the way a forest depends on trees, a river on its banks. More — if you ask me, we’re created by memory. Not just us, the whole world.