A Treatise on Shelling Beans

3

Haven’t we met before? But where and when? As I look at you, your face seems somehow familiar. Actually, I thought so the moment you walked in. Though maybe you just look like someone I must have met at some time. I don’t know who it could have been. If I could remember who it was I might also remember when and where. I mean, it can happen that people resemble one another, that one person can sometimes be mistaken for someone else. Especially if you were close with someone then you never see them again, you want to meet up with them again even in a stranger. Though when it comes down to it, what difference does it make whether someone looks like somebody else. As the years pass we resemble our own selves less and less. Even our memory isn’t always willing to remember us the way we once were. Let alone when it comes to other people.

I often experience that here as well. I know everyone, I have it all written down, who lives in which cabin, but at the beginning of the season when they start arriving, with some of them I have to remind myself all over again whether or not they’re the same people. I sometimes wonder, can a human face have changed so very much from one season to the next? True, there are faces that seem in general to escape your memory. With a face like that, you can look at it every day, then it’s enough not to see it till the next season and you can’t say anymore whether it’s new or whether you’ve seen it before. But there are also faces that you barely catch a glimpse of, and already they’re fixed forever in your memory.

Oftentimes I’ve been walking down some crowded city street, a throng of people, you’re constantly bumping into someone or other, and I might be seeing nothing at all, none of the buildings, advertisements, shop windows, cars, and people’s faces are just flashing by for a brief second, then suddenly amid all those glimpses there’s one face, why this particular one I couldn’t say, but it bores into my memory and remains there for good. Actually I carry inside me an infinite number of those faces that were conceived in those short flashes, as it were. I don’t know whose they are, I don’t know where or when, I don’t know anything about them. But they live in me. Their thoughts, their expressions, their paleness, their sorrows, grimaces, bitternesses — it all lives in me, fixed as if in a photograph. Except that these aren’t regular photographs where once someone’s captured, they stay that way forever. Then years later they themselves may not even recognize that it’s them. And even if they know it’s them, they’re not able to believe it. No — in the photographs taken by my memory, even from a passing glance, over the years all those faces develop wrinkles and furrows, their eyelids begin to droop. So if someone used to have big wide eyes, for example, now they’re narrowed to slits. Someone else would smile and show a row of even white teeth, now all they have left is their open mouth. Frankly, they ought not to smile any more. Or a beautiful woman, it was her beauty that struck me in the flash of seeing her face, and now you wouldn’t want to meet her. I’ve known a number of beautiful women and let me tell you, whenever my memory brings back their image to me, I wonder whether beautiful women shouldn’t die before their time.

But who on earth am I, what right do I have to them, to these faces that happen to be fixed in my memory and are with me as if my life were their life too? I feel as if those faces have left their stamp on me inside. I try to put them out of my mind, without success. I sometimes even have the impression that they themselves are asking me not to forget them. I tell you, it’s not easy living with so many faces inside yourself, not knowing anything about them.

Though occasionally the opposite also happens. For example, I’ll have been traveling by train, sitting opposite someone, and as often happens on a train, we couldn’t help talking a bit with one another, and I can remember the day and date and the time the train departed, what its arrival time was, he got out and I continued on and I even thought about him later, but I couldn’t recall his face. So you and I may have traveled one time in the same train, in the same compartment, we could have talked, I could have thought about you afterwards, and now for some reason I can’t recall your face aside from the fact that it seems familiar. Maybe we were on a plane together, or a ship. So you don’t remember me either?

No, I don’t mind. You had no reason to pay any attention to me. Why would you? Memory has no obligation of reciprocity, you didn’t have to notice me. Me, I try and remember this and that if only to maintain order, to try and keep everything neat and tidy. Maybe that’ll help me find myself also. Order isn’t only what you suppress, it’s what you allow. No, it isn’t that alone. That may not even be it at all. Sometimes I have the impression that it’s something like the flip side of life, where everything has its place and its time, things proceed not just according to their own wishes, and nothing can go beyond the limits imposed by order. I don’t know if you’ll agree with me on this, but it’s order that turns our life into fate. Not to mention that we’re merely specks in the order of the world. That’s why the world is so incomprehensible to us — because we’re nothing more than specks within it. Without order people wouldn’t be able to put up with themselves. The world wouldn’t be able to put up with itself. Even God, would he be God without order? Though people are the strangest beings in the world, who knows if they aren’t even stranger than God. And they refuse to understand that it’s better for them to know their place, their time, their limits. I mean, the fact that we’re born and we die, that’s already a sort of order imposed on us.

I’ll be honest with you, even here I wouldn’t have taken on the job of minding the place if they hadn’t agreed it would stop being the way it was up till then, when anything went. Minding the cabins, that also requires giving something up so as to have something else. I said, fine, I’ll do it, but I have to be able to impose order here. Never mind that we’re in nature. Ever since people left nature behind, in doing that they agreed to a different kind of order. If they still lived in nature, nature would do the minding. But since it’s going to be me …

I began by marking out the paths, because people were walking any way their feet took them. They trampled the grass not just in front of the cabins, everywhere you looked it was all trodden down. I had them provide spades, and string to do the laying out. The pegs I made myself. I sketched out where all the paths would be, made a plan for each side of the lake. And can you imagine, they even started objecting to the paths, they said I was restricting their freedom. It made me mad and I said, do they want me to look after the place, yes or no? If so, then we need to get to work. I’m restricting their freedom, can you believe that? And they’re not restricting my freedom? Any reciprocal arrangement is a restriction. Not to mention that I didn’t come here to look after their cabins. I have my nameplates, that’s more than enough for me. Who knows if it isn’t actually too much, because there’s always too much work for one person. I could easily just live my own life, so long as I have my dogs. Besides, I don’t have long to go now. In my spare moments I could go walking in the woods, read, listen to music. That’s right, I brought some books. Not too many, but any of them can be reread, you can do that as often as you like. I always liked reading if I only had the time.

Back when I was working on building sites, whenever the site had a library I’d always borrow books. I had to read at least a few pages before I fell asleep. It depended on how tired I was. But even when I was exhausted I had to, otherwise I couldn’t get to sleep. Even when I was drunk I had to. I’d read even if I didn’t understand what I was reading. Actually, you don’t have to understand right away. You can live any amount of life and you don’t understand that either. I brought a lot of things, TV, radio, cassette player, video, lots of records. It’s all through there in the living room.

I wouldn’t have to know all the people here, know who’s who, which cabin they’re from. But now I do, though I don’t need them for anything. I have to remember who and where and when, who gave what to who and all that. I have to give everyone’s cabin the once-over after each season. I have to do this and that and the other, but I wouldn’t have to do any of it, because I don’t have to do anything at all anymore. They go mushrooming then they ask me to come check whether any of the mushrooms they’ve picked are poisonous. And I have to go, because what would happen if they got poisoned?

I’m restricting their freedom. Like anyone knows what that even means. Or they come to me with all sorts of problems and complaints, and I have to hear them out. It goes without saying that they tattle on each other as well. You can’t have all these cabins and all these people without someone telling on someone else. Sometimes I feel like a priest in the confessional. Except that priests teach you how to forget. They forgive your sins and forget them. But I don’t forgive anything, and I can’t forget either. So who’s restricting whose freedom, tell me that.

Freedom. You could say the word itself conceals its own negation. In the same way that despair lurks in the most beautiful illusion. Because if you understand it as freedom from all constraints, then that includes freedom from yourself. After all, people are their own most troublesome constraints. They can be unbearable to themselves. Some of them are too much for themselves. Uncle Jan for instance, the first example that comes to mind. Nothing in particular happened to make him do what he did. What might have happened, in any case what they suspected him of, maybe he could have endured it somehow or other. People have put up with worse. Did he hang himself because he was free? Or because it was the only way he could get free of himself? I’ll tell you one thing, free people are unpredictable. Not just to other folks. Above all to themselves.

When I think about it sometimes, I come to the conclusion that freedom is just a word, like lots of similar words. They don’t mean what they’re supposed to mean, because that isn’t possible. They aim too high and end up becoming illusions. Which is hardly surprising, since life is just one long series of illusions. We’re guided by illusions, motivated by illusions. Illusions drive us forward, hold us back, determine our goals. We’re born out of illusions, and death is just a transition from one illusion into another.

After all, there are words like that that don’t have any fixed meaning. Words that can adapt to any of our desires, our dreams, our longings, our thoughts. You might say they’re immaterial, words drifting in a universe of other words — that they’re words searching for their own meaning, or to put it more precisely, for their own idea. For example eternity, nothingness. Who knows if freedom isn’t one of those words. Yet you have to beware of words like that, because they can assume any meaning, any idea. Depending on how ready we are to yield to them, and what we intend to use them for. In my view not even nature is free.

To tell you the truth, it’s only the children that keep me here, otherwise I’d have given up this minding business long ago. Yes, I like children. Children may be the only thing I still like. Myself? Why do you ask that? I’ve no reason to like myself. When they bring their children here, the kids come running to me of their own accord. And whatever they want, I always do it, show them things, explain things. I dig up worms so they can go fishing, put them on their hooks, teach them how to tell one kind of fish from another. Teach them to swim. If they break something I mend it without a word. Sometimes I take a larger or smaller group of them to the woods. With their parents’ consent, of course. We learn about the trees, how to tell an oak from a beech, a larch from a spruce. We pick blueberries, wild strawberries, blackberries, or we collect pine cones or acorns. Learn how to tell poisonous mushrooms from edible ones. Sometimes I give them little quizzes so they’ll remember things better. When we see a bird I explain to them what kind of bird it is and how not to confuse it with other kinds. If we find a nest I’ll tell them what sort of bird lives in it, and what kinds of nests other birds build. Then when they get tired we sit down and I tell them stories. What about? No, not about what once happened here, not that. And I never lead them to where the graves are. They might stop being children, because being a child has nothing to do with how old you are.

I don’t have any children of my own. I was married, but I don’t have any children. That was why my wife and I split up, because she wanted to have children. I liked my friends’ children, though. Whenever I visited I’d always bring them some gift. It pleased me to see how it pleased them. I liked to play with them. But the thought that one of them could be mine would fill me with anxiety. It’s the same now, whenever I think that one of the children here could be mine …

With adults I know at least that nothing much links me to them anymore. And nothing needs to, aside from the fact that here for example, I look after their cabins and insist on order. Not for its own sake, or even because order makes the looking after easier. No. It’s that when there’s order around you, it’s easier to find order in yourself. When they make a fuss, I can always threaten to stop minding their cabins. I demanded a lights-out time in all the cabins. After all, they come here to rest, it ought to be quiet. Do you think they all got it right away? Not a bit of it. Some of the cabins, they’d deliberately leave their lights on all night long. They only began to catch on when I refused to look after certain cabins. Unless someone had a nameday or some other special occasion, then I’d let them have an extra hour or two, but not all night. I marked out firepits for bonfires, at a distance from the cabins and the woods, close to the water. I’ve nothing against people grilling sausages, but only up to such and such a time. Then the regulations say they have to douse the fire. I go around and check.

For instance, the cabins didn’t have numbers. When someone new came they’d get lost. Or come to me and ask which cabin belonged to so-and-so. I’d have to take them there, because they wouldn’t find it even if I gave them directions. I’d even make mistakes myself about who lived in which cabin. You saw for yourself, a lot of the cabins look the same. And in fact pretty much first thing I decided to number all the cabins. Having numbers would make things much easier. You’d think I’d have been given a round of applause. Not on your life. It was nothing but an uphill struggle. To start with, everyone wanted the lowest possible number. Then someone hit on the idea of numbering the cabins in the order they were built. With that kind of arrangement no one would ever have been able to find any cabin. Number one would be over by the woods, say, then number two would be on the far side of the lake. Plus, they’d never be able to agree on whose cabin was built first or second or tenth, because at the beginning the same company put up all the cabins. And not one after another, but depending on who greased the right palms or knew someone in the firm. Then they started discussing which side of the lake the numbering should start from. And they couldn’t agree on that either, because the people on this side wanted the numbers to begin here, then to continue on the far side. While the folks over there wanted the opposite.

What would you have done in my place? I wanted them to decide it among themselves, because I reckoned that if they didn’t reach an understanding on their own, there’d never be agreement. They’d always be bothered by the numbering, that they didn’t live at the number they wanted to live at. Besides, they were their cabins, their numbers. I just said I’d buy the paint, cut out some stencils and paint the numbers on. It almost drove me nuts. I said to them, do you want me to paint the numbers on? Because someone has to. Then in that case they’ll begin here and end here. And both sides of the lake together, not separately.

Do you think that was an end of it? No such luck. When it came down to it, no one wanted to have number thirteen because that’s unlucky. Except what kind of order is it when one number’s missing? Someone could come and be looking for number thirteen. Nothing I could do, I had them draw straws, and it came out that now number thirteen is between number twenty-six and number twenty-seven. But so be it, I guess no order can be perfect.

Another thing, they’d throw their trash out wherever they wanted, they mostly chucked it into the woods. When you went walking there it was an offense to the woods. At one time the woods didn’t even have any sticks left. I made them bring trash bags for their trash, then take the bags back to the city to dispose of. Cities are beyond saving anyway. If I ever find even a beer can or a soda bottle or anything, the dogs will sniff out who dropped it, and bring it back to their doorstep.

Then sunbathing, they can’t just go sunbathing right away or for as long as they want, there’s a warning on the signboards to say they have to do it gradually, and bald people have to wear a cap. One time it happened that someone figured he’d get a full tan on the first day, and we ended up having to call an ambulance.

I made two signboards. I put up two posts, one on each side of the lake, fixed the signboards on the posts, then each season I write what they can and can’t do on the boards. Whenever anyone arrives for the first time they have to read what’s written there, because every season there’s someone new, and also I change some of the wording to make it clearer, so later no one can claim it’s ambiguous.

Would you like to see the signboards? They’re propped up through there, in the hallway. That’s right, I take them down in the off-season. Maybe you could suggest something to add. There’s never any end to order. All right, maybe another time, if you come during the season. You’ll see for yourself then. I’m thinking of making two more. Actually, there really should be one in front of every cabin. Or even better, everyone should carry a sign like that on their back. That way they couldn’t claim they didn’t have time to read it.

Why do I do it? Let me ask you, do you know people? I get the impression you sort of don’t. Would you be able to turn a blind eye to all these things? And what, just let it all happen? That that’s how people are made? Then why were they made at all? They didn’t have to be. It’s easy enough to imagine a world without people. Why not? You say that in such a case the world would have no imagination? Perhaps our imagination is our misfortune, and by the same token it’s the misfortune of the world? Maybe I’m not as strong as you. I can’t say, I don’t know you. But here at least, in this place, it can’t be so. I could be indifferent to all this if I weren’t looking after it. But once I took the job on, even though I didn’t have to, it became an entirely different matter.

For instance, since last season they’re not allowed to take children out into the deep water. They’re not my kids, but I couldn’t stand to see some father or mother taking a child into deep water to teach them to swim. Don’t be scared, don’t be scared. That’s not how to stop a kid from being afraid. One time a little one nearly drowned. The father accidentally swallowed a mouthful of water, and he let go of the child. Before anyone could have swum out there it would have been all over. Luckily Rex and Paws jumped in and pulled it out.

I’ve stopped allowing adults just the same, if they’re not good swimmers. I was even thinking of requiring everyone to get a swimming certificate. How else can you know if someone really can swim when they say they can. I mean, I can’t stand in front of everyone and check. Maybe one day I’ll organize races and everyone can show whether they’re a good swimmer or not. You can’t mess around with water. Water, fire, destiny.

But there’s one thing I haven’t been able to do anything about. I haven’t been able to stop them having fights and beating up on their wives. I say wives, it makes no difference whether it’s their wife or not. There are guys that bring a different woman here every season. But I know my boundaries. There’s others have someone different with them every weekend. Last time it was an older woman, this time he’s with someone much younger. You can’t help seeing. Some of them even swap women among the cabins. You can’t help noticing that one of them was staying in one cabin and now she’s in a different one, then two or three weeks later she’s in one of the very furthest ones. I don’t pry. It’d never even occur to me to ask one guy or another, So is this your new wife? And I won’t listen when other people come and complain about these wives or whatever they are.

One time they came to tell me that in one of the cabins, forgive me for not saying which one, the man was always beating his wife or non-wife. It was always in the middle of the night. And that I should do something about it. But what was I supposed to do? I can’t just go there and say, stop beating her. I don’t even have the right to say, your wife or your non-wife, whichever it is. Myself, I’d never strike a woman. But how can you explain it to a type like that? What am I to him? I just take care of the place, I let myself be hired. Or if I wanted to write it on the signboards, what am I supposed to write? Beating of wives and non-wives prohibited? There are things that don’t belong on signboards.

Then one night I was woken by a shout. Or maybe I wasn’t asleep? I jumped out of bed and ran outside, the dogs followed. I couldn’t see lights on in any of the cabins. It was quiet as it usually is around here. Maybe I dreamed it, I thought to myself. I sometimes dream something that wakes me up. Even from a deeper sleep. Afterwards I find it hard to believe that I only dreamed it. Like what? I won’t tell you, dreams can’t be told. When they’re told, they stop being a dream. It’s like you wanted to tell about God. Would God still exist? Besides, can anything actually be told? Things told are just things told, nothing more. Usually they have little in common with what was or is or will be. They live their own lives. And they don’t settle down for good, but instead they keep on moving, growing, getting further and further away from what was or is or will be. Though who knows, maybe in that way they draw closer to the truth?

Try and reach down deep, try if you can to touch the world with the very first thought, that’s still untainted by anything. You’ll admit then that it’s what’s told that establishes what was or is or will be, not the other way around; that it fills it out, determines whether it’s bound for oblivion or resurrection. And what is told is the only possible eternity. We live in what is told. The world is what is told. That’s why it’s harder and harder to live. And perhaps only our dreams determine who we are. Perhaps only our dreams are ours.

To be honest, mostly I don’t dream that much. Less and less. Plus, when I wake up I don’t remember anything. In general I sleep badly. Often I’ll be dead beat, but when I go to bed I can’t get to sleep. Then if I do, I can’t tell if I’m sleeping or not, whether I’m sleeping in a waking state or dreaming of being awake. This doctor that has one of the cabins gave me some foreign sleeping pills, he told me they’d for sure send me to sleep. He sometimes comes and gives me a checkup, listens to me with his stethoscope, checks my blood pressure. I tell him, what for, doc? I don’t need to live so very long. What I’ve already lived is enough. Let’s say I take a pill, and I’m sound asleep, and during that time something happens in one of the cabins. If I take a pill the dogs might not even be able to wake me up, and they can’t go off and help all on their own. They can’t even open the door, I always keep it locked. I’ve never taken sleeping pills, and I’m not going to start now.

How long have I had trouble sleeping? As long as I can remember. Except it’s getting worse and worse. Who knows, it could be that death is already getting me used to not sleeping. They say the closer you get to it, the more you sleep. But with me it’s evidently the opposite. I’ll die when I stop wanting to sleep at all. Maybe I’ll see Death. I’ll ask him, why didn’t you come for me back then? That way it would all have been over long ago.

So as you can see, I don’t even have time to dream. Besides, my dogs protect me from having dreams. I don’t know if they don’t like it when I have a dream, or whether they don’t want dreams to add to my difficulties. Whenever I start having a dream they come up right away and start licking my hands and my face, tugging the blanket off of me, or yelping as if someone was breaking into one of the cabins. Then when they finally manage to wake me up they jump for joy that they’ve woken me. Something tells me they know about my dreams. Because I sometimes dream something that makes it really hard to even get up afterwards. It’s like I’m still wandering about inside the dream, helpless, I can’t tell whether it’s me or someone in my place. Everything around seems to still be the dream.

In the middle of the night I’ll take the dogs and go check up on the cabins, and I have the feeling I’m walking in the dream. The air is like now, in autumn, it’s sharp, it pinches your cheeks, or even more in winter, and I can’t be certain that I’ve woken up, or if I’m only dreaming the lake and the cabins and my dogs trotting beside me. And to tell you the whole truth, sometimes I’m not even certain it’s my own dream. No, you didn’t mishear. I’m not sure if it’s my dream, or if someone else is dreaming me. Who? I don’t know. If I did …

I remember my grandmother used to say that you don’t always dream your own dreams. For instance you can dream the dreams of the dead, that they didn’t manage to dream in their lifetime. Or the dreams of people who haven’t yet come into the world. Not to mention that according to my grandmother dreams can sometimes pass from person to person, house to house, village to village, town to town and so on. Sometimes they can even get lost. One person in some house was supposed to have a particular dream, but actually someone else had it. Someone in the village was supposed to have a dream, but it ended up being dreamed by someone in the town. Someone in this country, but it was dreamed by someone in a distant place. So it’s quite possible I’m having someone else’s lost dreams, and that’s why the dogs sense it right away and wake me up when I’m having that kind of dream.

I should tell you too that my grandmother was known to be an expert on dreams. There wasn’t a dream whose meaning she couldn’t explain. Not just in the family. Neighbors came from near and far, from both sides of the Rutka. They came from other villages. Old folks, young ones. Unmarried women, wives, Doubting Thomases. They’d seen the world, but they came when one of them had had a dream that was too much for them. And grandmother would explain everybody’s dreams. When she explained them, every dream became clear as waking life, as if it were simply something the person had lived through but overlooked. She’d have them provide some small detail, because people don’t pay enough attention to details. And that detail would sometimes alter the meaning of the dream from one thing to another, from good to better or from bad to not so bad at all. Or even that the dream was meant to have been dreamed by somebody else, because one detail was from someone else’s life.

Every day over breakfast we’d each have to tell her what we’d dreamed about. And it couldn’t be that no one had dreamed anything. To sleep through the night and not have any dreams? The only exception was grandfather, who never had any dreams. It’s hard to believe, right? Even us children, we always dreamed something. Though according to grandmother our dreams didn’t count yet, because we still got our dreams from our mother or father. She’d say that you only grow into your own dreams through suffering.

You can’t imagine how many dreams she knew. When we were shelling beans she’d tell one dream after another, as if she was pulling them out of the husks. Dreams that belonged to the living. Dreams dreamed by the dead. The dreams of kings, princes, bishops. I remember one time she told about a king who dreamed that a pearl fell out of his crown. No, she didn’t say if he’d actually come to her for an explanation of what the dream meant. But I believed he had, and that he’d brought her the pearl in the palm of his hand. Aside from me, I don’t know if anyone else believed it. Grandfather did for sure, because he believed every story grandmother told. Though it made no difference whether anyone believed it or not. When you’re listening, especially during bean-shelling, you don’t have to believe in what you’re listening to. It’s enough that you’re listening. For me in any case, my heart would stop when grandmother would begin, saying, one time a king had a dream, a prince had a dream, one night a bishop had a dream …

Everyone would be enthralled, whether or not they believed it all. It would go so quiet that if it hadn’t been fall or winter, you could have heard a fly buzzing. Mother and father, Jagoda, Leonka, even Uncle Jan, who didn’t believe in anything anymore. Not to mention grandfather, who would be so intent on listening he’d stop shelling beans. Though the others too, the husks would hang loose in their hands, and the beans would fall much less often onto the canvas sheet. Though father didn’t like kings, he used to blame all kinds of misfortunes on kings, so when grandmother started telling about a king he’d sometimes interrupt her:

“What country was he from? You know, the king. A king can’t be from just anywhere. Ordinary people can, they have to live wherever they find themselves. But not a king. Where there’s a king there has to be a kingdom. If there’s no kingdom, even dreams wouldn’t want him as king.”

Though for the dream it made no difference what country the king was from, and it would often upset Uncle Jan, who was sort of brought back to life from the bean-shelling:

“It’s all nonsense, mother. Dreams are nonsense and waking is nonsense. And kings, they were gotten rid of long ago, how could their dreams still be around.” After which he’d get up and go drink some water.

Mother, on the other hand, she’d always defend grandmother loyally. For mother no dream was dreamed in vain, whatever it’s meaning was, and people should know what it meant. Because it was worse not to know than to know the worst. So grandfather, who believed that all dreams came from God, would praise grandmother’s wisdom all the more:

“All those learned folks and ministers and priests, while she never studied at all and yet look what she knows.”

And every morning, as we were eating our ?urek soup with potatoes, amid the slurping and the clatter of spoons against the tin bowls, when grandmother would ask who had had what dreams and would try to explain them all, grandfather would be so filled with admiration at how clever grandmother was that he’d pause with his spoonful of soup or potatoes halfway to his mouth. At times the soup would spill on the table, or a potato would fall off the spoon, and grandmother would tell him off:

“Don’t make such a mess.”

But he’d have to give words to his admiration:

“How about that. You wouldn’t even know what you’d dreamed about if she hadn’t explained it for you. Dreams really are a second life once they’re explained to you. But for that you need to be smart, sharp as nails. Smart enough to take you into the next world and beyond.”

He never could forgive himself for not having dreams. When he fell asleep it was like he’d died. Then when he woke up it was like he was rising from the dead. But between the falling asleep and the rising from the dead there was a big gap. If he’d ever felt like counting up all those gaps, it would come out that a third of his life he wasn’t in the world. He couldn’t even dream anything from wartime, though he’d been through four wars in his life. He fought in one of them, got wounded, he had this huge gash from a bayonet in his stomach. But he was fine. Maybe if the bayonet wound had hurt, but it hadn’t hurt him a bit, quite the opposite, he’d felt such a surge of strength that he killed the guy that stuck the bayonet in his belly, and the guy’s two buddies as well.

When it came to wars, grandfather was just as much an expert on them as grandmother was on dreams. No one was his equal about wars. Wars were the milestones that prevented him from getting lost in his memory, in the world. He stuck to wars like they were familiar paths, whatever he happened to be talking about. When someone else would tell a story, grandfather always asked which war it happened after or before. Grandfather’s memory was made up of wars instead of calendars or saints’ days. Wars were more important than the seasons, above wars there was only God. According to grandfather, time moved from one war to the next. And in the same way, wars marked out space much more accurately than maps. Everything that happened, happened where there was a war. And everything happened after the last one, before the last one, after the one before it, before the one before it, or before the one even before that. He even remembered that war. He remembered that his father, which is to say my great-grandfather, had fought in it, and he’d been wounded, though in the head, not in the belly. And from great-grandfather’s memory he also remembered an earlier war that great-grandfather remembered from the memory of his own father, that is, grandfather’s grandfather, and it had a particular name, and that was even before the other one, when neither me nor any of you were in the world, he’d say.

You’d have gotten lost in all those wars if you’d listened to grandfather. He was so meek and helpless in it all. You’d never have imagined he could have been a soldier. All the more that he could have killed someone. He couldn’t kill a chicken. He’d put its head on the chopping block, lift the ax and just stand there till someone came out of the house and took the ax from him and brought it down on the chicken’s neck. Or he’d grumble about the moles that were digging up the meadow. The damn things wouldn’t stop burrowing, pretty soon there wouldn’t be a meadow anymore, just endless molehills. He’d go out with a spade, stand over one of the molehills, and even though he knew perfectly well that the mole was frisking about inside, he’d always say that something held him back from driving the blade of the spade into the molehill. Supposedly he was waiting till the mole was sure it was safe, so it’d come closer to the surface. He’d be holding his breath, standing stock still, poised to sink the spade in, and he’d tell himself, now, do it now, but something would hold him back. He would have hit it for sure, the mole was already poking its little snout outside, he would have sliced its head off without any problem, the blade was sharp as a razor, he’d sharpened it specially beforehand. But something stopped him. Evidently the thing that stayed his hand was stronger than he was.

I heard that one time the mole actually came out of the molehill and the two of them just stood there, grandfather and the mole, looking at each other. And grandfather got this feeling as if it weren’t a mole he was about to kill. And he said:

“Live on, you’re one of God’s creations. The meadow’ll survive somehow or other.”

Grandfather never even got into fights at dances when he was young, though there were fights, there were all kinds of fights, sometimes the whole dance would be fighting among themselves. He never even fought over grandmother, though she was constantly being whisked away to dance. He’d just sit on a bench while grandmother danced. He preferred to just watch her dancing with someone else, rather than fighting over her. No, he was a big man, strong as an ox, when he was young he must have been a strapping guy. It was just that, like I said, he was meek and helpless, as if his own strength made him weak.

“Ah, she’d dance and dance, you wouldn’t have known her,” he would remember proudly. “When it came to the oberek, she’d fly through the air. When I looked at her feet, they wouldn’t even be touching the floor. Why should I have been angry? She’d dance her fill, and I knew she’d be mine anyway.”

When they got married, grandfather had already been called up to serve in the war. He didn’t want the marriage, who knew if he’d come back, he said. But grandmother said that a wife waiting for a husband was different than an engaged woman waiting for her fiancé. And she led grandfather to the altar. Now she was his wife he’d know how to go to war. They’d have a different kind of joy when he came back, because he had to come back. She might curse God if he didn’t come back.

And so to stop grandmother having to curse God, grandfather had such a rush of strength when he felt the bayonet in his belly that he killed the man who stuck it in him, along with the guy’s two comrades. He remembered them like it was yesterday. The one that stuck him was a skinny guy, short, looked like he was all greatcoat from his neck to the ground, with nothing but a helmet on top. Like he had sleeves instead of arms, and it was the sleeves that stuck the bayonet in grandfather’s belly. And he did it right at the moment when grandfather had opened his mouth to say, Let’s not kill each other. I have to go back home. And you have to go back home. But he had to kill him. Not even with a bayonet, not with a bullet, but with the great strength he felt inside himself instead of pain. He grabbed hold of the other guy under his helmet and pushed him to the ground. He did the same with his two pals. They even went down on their knees to ask for mercy, but he couldn’t stop the strength within him. He grabbed one under the helmet and brought him down, then he did the same with the other one. It was only after he’d killed them that the strength left him. He sat down by the bodies and cried. It was only then that he felt the pain in his belly from the bayonet wound.

But even they wouldn’t appear to grandfather in dreams. He’d tell grandmother to explain to him how it was, what it meant. If wars mark off people’s lives, they ought to mark off their dreams as well. Had he stopped being a person? Let her explain it to him. But grandmother would usually just lose patience with grandfather:

“Explain what? What do you want me to explain? First you have to have dreams.”

Though to tell you the truth, I suspect she must have known the meaning of a gap in the night like that. Perhaps she simply didn’t want to make grandfather worry, because she always looked for something comforting in a dream, even if it was a frightening one. With all those dreams she carried inside her, she couldn’t have not known. So grandfather held it against her. But he also held it against God for not granting him the grace of dreams, when other people are given great grace. Could it be that He was angry with him for the three men he’d killed? He was God, surely He knew that in wars people kill each other. He ought to understand. So many wars had passed through the world since He created it, and He hadn’t stopped a single one with His almighty powers, so why would grandfather’s one war and those three killed men be of any importance? Plus, if He ruled the world then He also ruled wars, and grandfather wouldn’t have killed without His having willed it. Why was he being punished?

During the bean-shelling, when he started talking about wars it never ended till we ran out of beans. One time, I remember, he told about how he’d met a philosopher. No, it wasn’t one of the three men he killed. If it had been one of those, he wouldn’t have known he’d killed a philosopher. When you kill someone, no one introduces themselves. Especially when it’s one extended line against another, one bayonet against another. And in that war most of the killing was done by bayonet. They’d all jump out from the trenches and rush at each other with a Hurrah! Then they’d go back to their trenches, and between the trenches there’d be a growing mountain of bodies. At times the war would stand in one place for weeks on end, so when they weren’t killing each other they’d often even get to know one another. That I can’t tell you. You’d have to have asked grandfather. I was a child when I heard all this. And children believe everything. Why would I not have believed it. You’ve never lived through a war? You’re lucky, though I also feel sorry for you. In wartime all kinds of things can happen. War mixes things up, levels them out. Farmers or philosophers, they’re all good for dying. So anyone can meet anyone. Where else could a farmer meet a philosopher?

So when they weren’t fighting, especially at night, because obviously you can’t fight with bayonets at night, and there were days on end when they didn’t fight because there were no orders, the men from the two lots of trenches would go out and meet up with each other. They’d sit around among all those bayoneted bodies, share their tobacco and vodka, swap various things, sometimes play cards. Why not? Blackjack, for example, you can play that in the dark. All you need is to take a drag on your cigarette, the tip lights up and you can see your cards. Other times they’d sing songs, sometimes the men on both sides would sing in the same language.

So anyway one time, this was also at night, it was raining on and off, everyone was squatting under their waterproof capes in their trenches. All of a sudden grandfather sees someone leave the enemy trench, stand among the bodies and turn his face up to the sky, as if he was trying to gather all the rain on his face. So grandfather went out there, and turned his face upward into the rain the same way. The other guy asked if grandfather maybe wanted something to eat. Grandfather’s belly was rumbling, because they’d even run out of hard tack. So the other man went back to his trench and brought a can. They sat down together, opened the can, and set about eating. With the same bayonets they’d been sticking each other with, of course.

Grandfather was too shy to ask who he was eating with. Besides, what difference did it make? All that mattered was that the other guy had brought the can. And since he was also in uniform, though it was an enemy uniform, there’s no way grandfather could have known he was eating with a philosopher. So they sat there eating, leaning towards each other to shelter the can from the rain. The other man didn’t say anything. As for grandfather, it was true he liked to talk, though mostly about wars, like I said. But how could he talk about war since they were actually at the war, and they were sitting and eating amid the bodies of men who’d been killed. They did take the casualties away, but only the wounded ones, the dead weren’t cleared till the front moved.

So grandfather started singing the praises of the canned food, he said it was really tasty, and not just because his belly had been growling, but in general he liked to say nice things about everything. The day, the night, life, people, God. That’s the kind of person he was. So the other man told grandfather to finish off the whole of the rest of the can. Out of gratitude grandfather got to talking about himself. That he’d left a young wife behind at home. That he hoped to go back to her. That he had three cows, two horses, this many acres, some meadow-land, some woodland. That he sowed and plowed, day after day. And in the fall and winter they mostly shelled beans, because they planted enough of them so there’d be sufficient for the shelling all fall and winter. They’d all sit down, the lamp would be lit, they’d be shelling beans and telling stories. When he got back he’d tell stories about the war, and about how the two of them had eaten a can of food together.

The other man said he envied grandfather. True, he didn’t know how to shell beans, but he’d rather shell beans than do what he did for a living, especially as it didn’t serve any purpose for people. So grandfather asked him what he did. The other man introduced himself to grandfather, saying he was a philosopher. He gave his name. Grandfather repeated the name to himself all through the war, so as not to forget it when he got home. He wanted to at least repay the man with his memory, for the can of food he’d shared. Unfortunately though, he forgot. Who do you say that was? Are you sure? Did you know him? It’s too bad grandfather’s no longer with us, you could have reminded him.

In any case, grandfather could talk forever about wars. And especially during bean-shelling, it was like his memory opened up completely. I don’t know if it was the wars that had that power, or whether it was the beans that could open any memory right to the bottom. You actually had the impression that war and beans got along together.

You know, I sometimes wonder whether grandfather really did kill those three men. Maybe he just imagined he’d killed them, hoping that because of that at least they’d appear to him in dreams. It could have been his way of doing something about the fact that he never had dreams. Like I said, in everything he nearly always turned to wars for support. Even when he wanted to offer comfort to himself or other people. He’d always bring up something from one of the wars. Not necessarily the one he’d been in. Sometimes it was another one, a more recent one or an older one, one when he hadn’t yet been born.

One time when we were grazing the cows on the meadow, I heard the other boys whispering that Uncle Jan wasn’t grandfather’s son, because he’d been born too soon after grandfather got back from the war. Though I never noticed grandfather treating his two sons differently in any way. And Uncle Jan never gave any indication he didn’t feel like grandfather’s son either. When he hung himself, it affected grandfather more than anyone.

“How was he not my son, how?” he kept repeating. Then another time he said: “No one can even imagine their son might hang himself. It’s too bad I had that burst of strength back then and didn’t let those three guys stick their bayonets in me. Three bayonets, I wouldn’t have had to live to see this. Oh, son, son. If you’d at least died in wartime it wouldn’t be so sad.”

Who knows how it actually was. Grandfather’s gone, grandmother’s gone, Uncle Jan’s gone. At times it seems to me that everyone’s gone. Maybe I’ve gone too? I sometimes try and figure out whether I’m here or not. Except you can’t be a witness to yourself. Someone else has to testify on your behalf. People are too easy on themselves. When they can, they protect themselves from themselves. They dodge and twist, anything so they don’t have to go further, deeper, to where they have something hidden. Everyone wants to appear to themselves the way they look in their wedding picture. Neatly combed and shaved, in a suit and tie, well-fed and smiling, looking like a decent guy. And as young as possible, of course. And they believe that’s them. Though if they really took an honest look …

Every wedding photo is a happy one, as you know. Heads close, shoulder to shoulder, like two poppy seeds that found each other in a tub. If you believed in destiny you might think this was a photograph of destiny. But what happens afterwards, that you won’t see in any photograph. The camera doesn’t exist that can do that job, or the photographer. Maybe one day there will be one, who knows. But so far, all wedding photos are always happy. Think how many happy pictures there are like that hanging in people’s homes. Though honestly, I sometimes wonder if happiness can only ever be found in a wedding picture.

There was a wedding photograph in that guy’s cabin too. Oh, I never finished the story. So when I got woken in the night by that shout, I decided to go see what was up. It was a dark night, the stars were hidden behind clouds. It was so quiet that my own steps sounded like I don’t know how many pairs of feet walking. I could even hear the dogs’ footsteps. I went between the cabins, put my ear to various walls, stuck my head in where there was an open window. But everyone was sound asleep, some of them I could hear snoring. I was starting to think I must have dreamed it. Then all of sudden the dogs start pulling me. What is it? But I let them lead me. And by one of the cabins I see a white body. A woman. Naked as the day she was born. I lean down, there’s no sign of life. When I shine my flashlight on her face I see it’s all bloody.

I picked her up and brought her back to my place. I laid her down through there in the living room and cleaned her up. She had so many bruises that even today, telling you about it makes me mad. I wrapped her in a blanket and held her, because she was shivering all over. I made tea for her but she couldn’t drink, her lips were too swollen. I had to feed her the tea on a little spoon, propping her head up with my other hand because she couldn’t hold it up by herself. When she opened her eyes she looked semi-conscious. She started to talk, I leaned over her but the only thing I could make out was a frightened whisper:

“Who are you?”

“Get some sleep,” I said. “Sleep’ll do you good.”

But I don’t think she slept, because I kept being woken by a sobbing sound through the wall. Or maybe I was just dreaming she was crying through there, and the dream kept waking me up. Early in the morning I went to get her clothes from the guy whose cabin I found her by. To begin with he denied it, swore blind it was nothing to do with him. No way. I mean, I’d often seen his wife. She hadn’t come with him this time because she wasn’t feeling well. Here, that’s our wedding picture, you recognize her, right? He had no idea who the other woman was. Plus he took a sleeping pill last night, he hadn’t even heard any shouting. Must have been one of the other cabins, you must be mistaken. I found her outside your cabin, I say. Then someone must have dumped her there out of spite. You ought to know the people that come here, what they get up to, he says, you’re the one keeping an eye on it all.

If it hadn’t been for the dogs he’d have kept denying it. But the dogs dragged some women’s clothes from under the bed, underwear, blouse, skirt, house slippers. And can you imagine, he wasn’t at all shamefaced about it. All he did was laugh.

“Come on, buddy, what kind of world are you living in? Don’t be so old-fashioned. If you feel so sorry for her you can have her. I was going to get someone else anyway.”

He tried to offer me a beer. The dogs had their hackles up, I had to quiet them down, easy Paws, easy Rex. They were only waiting for me to give them a sign.

“Maybe I am old-fashioned,” I said. “But if anything like this ever happens again I’ll burn this place down. And you’ll never know who did it because you’ll be inside.”

“Keep your nose out of things that aren’t your business, mister!” he said, getting angry.

“Everything’s my business,” I said evenly.

“We pay you to keep an eye on things!”

“Exactly.”