A Treatise on Shelling Beans

6

Now this was a true rebellion. We’d rebelled before, of course. How can you be young and not rebel? Especially in a school like ours. There were any number of reasons for defiance. It could be all sorts of things. The food, because the food was lousy. Or to protest the punishments. For instance, when one of us was missing a button on his uniform, the whole team would have to stand at attention half the day. One time they made us clear snow without gloves, also as a punishment. It was bitterly cold at the time.

They weren’t big revolts. Once we came back from work in the late afternoon and the power was out. Not for the first time. So we decided we’d not go to class, or to shop, we wouldn’t do anything connected with work. We all gathered in the rec room and sat there. They didn’t give us lunch, they didn’t give us supper, and in the morning, when we failed to appear for muster, they didn’t give us breakfast either. They reckoned they’d defeat us with hunger. Except that each of us was thoroughly familiar with hunger. You might say there was nothing we’d had as much practice with as hunger. A good few of us had survived the war because hunger had bound us to life. Hunger showed you were still alive. Hunger woke you up, hunger put you to sleep. Hunger held you, consoled you, caressed you. Often hunger was your only refuge, because like I said, we were all from who knows where.

It lasted three days. The teachers came and tried to talk us out of it, they argued, threatened that it would end badly. The commandant himself came by. He was festooned with medals, he wore a Sam Browne belt, he only ever dressed like that on special occasions. He even started calmly, in a paternal way you might say, telling us we had to understand. He didn’t blame us. He knew what it meant not to have electricity. They, that is, the teachers, also had to go without. Him too, even though he was the commandant. But we needed to realize that we were all still licking our wounds after the war. We of all people should know that. There was still very little power being produced, while the needs were colossal. Factories had to be set in motion, steelworks, mines, hospitals, schools. Our school for example. He gave us a long list. How much electricity was needed for cities, not just for the houses but for the streets as well. Soon the villages would need it as well, because they’d already begun the electrification that was finally going to end the age-old inequality between city and country. We ourselves were being trained with that in mind, after all. We’d be electricians by the time we left school. Had we not been given a challenge to be proud of? Future electricians, rise to your feet! No one stood up. That sort of cooled his enthusiasm. But he cleared his throat and went on. It was a thrilling task. One to suit our young hearts, our youthful zeal. He got so carried away the medals bounced on his chest. He was a fine speaker, that I’ll give him. We had to understand and we had to understand, he said, the country still couldn’t afford to give to each according to his needs. But in time, gradually, through hard work and vigor and patience, we’d get there. And through studying, studying was the key to strength. And it would depend above all on us young people as to who would finally win the peaceful war that was now being waged. Though he, the commandant of the school, he could already guarantee that we would be the winners.

We understood less and less of what he was saying. That there was some new war going on, even a peaceful one — that was beyond our ken. In any case no one had heard about it. After that he went back to saying, we had to understand, we had to understand. And we had to stop repaying the school with ingratitude. The school had taken us under its wing, looked after us, taken the place of home and family, made it possible for us to grow up …

All of a sudden he was interrupted by a whistle from someone or other, then all of us together, as if we’d planned it, we started shouting:

“We don’t want to grow up! We don’t want to! We don’t want to! We want them to stop cutting off our electricity!”

He froze as if he was paralyzed. But not for long. Raising his voice to drown out our shouts, he began to yell:

“Who are the ringleaders? Who are the ringleaders? The rest of you will be let off! I want to know who the ringleaders are!”

This brought even louder whistles and shouts and stamping of feet. He gave as good as he got. He tossed his head and waved his arms. His face was red as a beetroot. It looked like blood was about to come bursting from his eyes and nose and mouth.

“All of you, on your feet! Ten-shun! On the parade ground, now! We’ll sort you out. We know how to handle you! You’re trash! Criminals! We know what you have on your conscience, every one of you! We have a file on everyone! Robbery! Arson! Rape! Murder! We know everything. And we’ll use it! We’ll send you where you should have been sent to begin with! Rebellion cannot be tolerated! People who do that don’t deserve school, they need to be sentenced and put behind bars! Otherwise we’ll never clean this country of tainted blood! Youth is no excuse! Enemies need to be destroyed whatever age they are! Destroyed, destroyed without mercy! The sooner the better!”

“Best of all in the cradle!” shouted one of the boys, his hands formed into a trumpet.

The rec room burst out laughing. He was struck dumb. His eyes seemed to fall still. And calmly, but with energy, like an order he barked:

“Who said that? On your feet this instant! Show you’ve got the guts! Well, I’m waiting!”

Everything went quiet, it was like the laughter had been cut off with a knife. He took out his watch and held it in his hand.

“Well? You’ve got ten seconds. If you don’t come forward …”

We all stepped forward, the whole room as one. His eyes scanned us furiously.

“I see.” Then he roared: “Just you wait!” He virtually ran from the room.

So we waited, expecting the worst. We didn’t know what it might be, since it’s always hard to conceive of the worst. We imagined various eventualities. In the end we came to the conclusion there was no point in waiting. We’d run away. The whole school would run away. The very next night. We agreed on which hut would go first and which would go last. The first was to leave before midnight. Then after that, the other huts at one-hour intervals. By the afternoon we’d end the revolt and go back to our huts, the teachers would relax and be sound asleep, and then we’d run away.

But that morning the music teacher paid an unexpected visit to the rec room. He was a little tipsy already. He pulled out his bottle, took a swig, and asked:

“Anyone want a drink?” Then he said: “They sent me to talk you out of it, boys. But I don’t know how. I couldn’t talk myself out of anything. I thought I might write a song for you. Every rebellion is remembered in song. But I’m not in the right frame of mind for it today. Forgive me. So what’s to be done here? What’s to be done? You can’t just sit around like this. If I wrote something you could sing a little. How about that? Or maybe we could have an orchestra practice? I ought to have done it long ago. That was the pedagogical task I was given from the beginning. Come on, let’s do it.”

He pulled out his bottle and took another swig. Then he had us take up our instruments.

“Stand over there with them, boys.” He pointed to the end of the room.

Each of us grabbed the first instrument that came to hand, because we thought it was some kind of game. We’d never had orchestra practice before. He would just tell us from time to time that that was why he’d been sent here. Plus, with him drunk what kind of practice could it be. One of the boys asked him if we could take the broken instruments as well. He probably thought the teacher would say no, get mad. But he nodded yes. Everyone laughed, and some of the boys made a point of choosing a broken instrument.

I picked up the saxophone, but to my surprise he stopped me.

“Not the saxophone. There’s no saxophone in this score. Back then the saxophone didn’t exist, son. Take a violin.”

There was only one violin left. It had no strings and the neck was cracked. There was no bow.

“This is the only one there is,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “Stand at the back behind the other ones.”

He started arranging us. Violins here, violas there, here the woodwind, there the brass, cellos on this side, behind them the double basses, and so on. We started to laugh again. By now we’d been occupying the rec room for three days, we thought he was trying to amuse us, to prevent us from getting bored. But he was far from laughter. He was serious as never before.

“Don’t laugh, boys,” he said. “Today is my day too.”

It seemed he was done with arranging us, but he still wasn’t content, he told one boy to move over there, another to come here, a third one to scoot to the side a bit, a fourth to step back a little. It was as if he still didn’t quite trust himself not to have overlooked something. All of us were standing the way he’d organized us, but he still had one boy give his violin to someone else, pick up the other boy’s horn and take his place. Another boy he had swap his bassoon for somebody else’s trombone, a third one had to hand over his flute and join the cellos, while one of the cellists moved to the double basses. The whole time he was unsatisfied. As if it was us who didn’t match our instruments. Or perhaps we spoiled his recollection of some other orchestra.

It was a big orchestra. We filled almost a third of the rec room. And like I said, the place took up an entire hut. The group of boys that hadn’t found a place in the orchestra was much smaller, they were standing at the other end of the room.

He must have felt tired from arranging us all, because he sat down on a bench.

“Forgive me, boys, it’s just for a moment. I need a breather.” He drank from his bottle, wiped his forehead with his handkerchief, gave a couple of deep sighs, then stood in front of us again. “Don’t laugh now. Be serious. Each of you, hold your instrument as if you were playing it. But don’t try to actually play. Please don’t actually try to play.”

He evidently decided he wasn’t drunk enough yet, because he pulled out his bottle and took another mouthful. Then he handed the bottle to the closest boy, who seemed like the first violinist.

“Put it over there. All right, pay attention now boys.”

He spread his arms and froze. He stood for a moment in this position. Then he raised his hands over his head. At this point one of the boys in the orchestra laughed again.

“For the love of God, don’t laugh. I’m asking you. It’s the anniversary today. I’ll explain later. All right, attention now, one more time.”

No, he never told us what anniversary it was. But no one laughed anymore. In the meantime he spread his arms again and stood there for a long time, as if he could neither lower them nor raise them higher. He inclined his head slightly and narrowed his eyes. We were sure he’d fall over, because he’d been pretty well gone when he came in, and since then he’d tipped the bottle back a good few times. But for a drunk guy he was quite steady. He stood there. Again someone in the orchestra gave a quiet laugh. This time, though, he seemed not to notice. He stayed in the same pose, arms wide, leaning forward, his eyes half closed. At one moment he whispered in a voice that I may have been the only one to hear:

“It’s like you weren’t alive, boys. Forgive me. You don’t have mouths or hands, just instruments.”

His arms shot upwards. Then he flung them as far apart as he could, jerking his body and making him stumble. The hair on his head flopped back and forth. He was no longer restraining his arms. He was utterly engrossed in what we were supposedly playing for him, and he arranged it with his arms. Later on I saw various different orchestras, but I never saw a conductor like him. It’s another matter that when you see something for the first time in your life, even the most ordinary things seem extraordinary. Even a tiny thing like a ladybug, so all the more so a conductor. Though maybe that sort of seeing is the only real kind? A music teacher, in a school like that, and a drunk to boot, yet here he was like a bird trying to fly into the air on his own arms. Back then we might not even have known the word conductor. In any case I didn’t. In the village bands I’d seen up till then, one guy would tap his foot, another would give the key, then they’d just play without a leader.

Those arms of his stretched out so far that the whole orchestra craned their necks to see. Then they curved, made circles and zigzags, sliced from left to right, right to left, from top to bottom, diagonally. It was a theater of arms. I saw a performance like that one time in another country. Nothing but arms, yet they showed everything there is here below. You know, if someone were to watch our arms here as we’re shelling beans, what might they imagine, do you think? There you go. It was the same with him. Because of course we couldn’t hear any music. The only music was his arms. But the fact that we couldn’t hear anything was neither here nor there. He heard for sure. He only needed us so he could hear what he wished to hear.

At times he would draw his arms in towards his chest, and at the same moment it was as if he liberated them from the bondage of his drunken body, tossing them far from himself. At other times I had the impression that his arms were circling over his head. Above him, in front of him, closer, further away, flying off, coming back, and all he was doing was following their movements with his ears. Perhaps that was how it actually was, who knows. Because as the orchestra, we were simply standing the way he’d arranged us. The violinists were holding their violins tucked under their chins, with the bows on the strings, the flautists had their flutes at their mouths, and we were all poised with those instruments of ours as if under a spell. As if he’d cast a spell on us with his arms. No, no one laughed anymore. Even the boys who weren’t in the orchestra, and who had retreated all the way to the far end of the room.

I forgot to mention that when he rose up on tiptoe, as if he was stretching himself along with his arms, it made him look tall, though he was only of average height. He stood on his toes like a taut string, his hands fluttering somewhere overhead. After which he would come down from his excitement onto his heels, bend his knees, and with his outstretched hands he’d seem to be lifting the music up from the floor. Or maybe he was begging it to lift him up. It’s hard to say when you don’t understand much and you can’t hear a thing. Or he’d fling one arm above his head and keep it there stiff and straight, while the other one described a broad semicircle in front of him, his fingers wiggling as if he was searching for something in the music.

We were worried that his drunken body would pull him backward or that he’d crash forward onto us, because with someone tilting to and fro like that and rising up, even if they’d been sober they may well not have stayed on their feet.

At one moment, as he rose once again on his toes he suddenly staggered. He would have fallen, but luckily one of the boys standing close by jumped forward and caught him. He slipped to the floor in the boy’s arms. We helped him up and laid him on a bench. He was white as a sheet, bathed in perspiration, you couldn’t even tell if he was still breathing. Someone wanted to go get the commandant. Someone else said we should call an ambulance. All at once he gave a crooked smile under half-closed eyes.

“It’s nothing, boys, it’ll pass,” he whispered. “I’ve had too much to drink for that kind of music. If only you’d heard what you were playing, boys. If only you’d heard. Sometimes, boys, it’s worth being alive.”

And you know what, you won’t believe it but we stopped wanting to run away.

A few days later we were told to assemble on the parade ground. We see a truck parked there. Next to it is the commandant with the teachers. He’s a changed man, self-satisfied, smiling, almost fatherly again.

“Come here, come here. See what they’ve brought us. Lamps. Kerosene lamps, it’s true. But you can’t look into the future the whole time. Once in a while it’s good to look backwards also. You might find something that’ll come in handy today. Come on now, carry them in.” He turned to the driver: “Did you bring kerosene too? How many cans? Good.”

There weren’t even so many lamps that it was worth summoning the whole school. Each dormitory got one. There were four for the rec room. And one for each of the teachers. Nothing special, just regular lamps. In some of them the glass was loose. But at least we had something to give light when the power went out. You could wash and eat and go to bed like normal people. Make a repair even, sew something on or darn it. Even if it’s second-rate light, people still need it. In any case, we never revolted again about the light.

But this time it was different. We weren’t protesting about the light. It was about the film that had broken off. And at a crucial moment. You have to admit you couldn’t make up anything so cruel. Did he buy a hat or not? Or did he shoot himself? Plus, there was that Mary. That it was all about a hat? What if it was about her cheating on him, what difference would it make? It can be about a hat. I’ve worn hats all my life, still do, I know what I’m talking about. I’ve several of them, I brought them from abroad. Some of them I wear on ordinary days, some are for Sundays and holidays. One of them I always wear when I go into the woods.

That one is the dogs’ favorite. When I put it on they jump up and down and nuzzle up to me, their eyes laugh, they know right away we’re going to the woods. Why are you so surprised that their eyes laugh? What don’t you get? What is there to get here? If you had a dog there’d be a good few things you’d understand. You’d even be forced to admit that dogs are doing us a service by living with us in this world. And people should return the favor somehow. Not just by feeding them and giving them a roof over their head. In that case, tell me if you think people can get as attached to dogs as dogs are to people. I doubt it. I mean, it’s just not the same kind of attachment. If you ask me, dogs have a lot of advantages over people. For instance, dogs don’t wage war, and they don’t break laws, because they don’t have any need to write them down, they carry them inside themselves. You often hear about how people treat dogs. They throw them out of cars. They take them and dump them in some remote place, leave them when they go on vacation, or to the sanatorium. I used to see lost dogs like that when I spent time in a sanatorium. They’d stick to whoever came along in the hopes that in them they’d find their person. Or like my Rex, they tie them to a tree in the woods.

I’m telling you, that’s why it’s harder to understand a dog than a person. Where does all that attachment come from, regardless of whether their person is a decent human being or a swine. Have you ever heard of a dog that willingly abandoned a human? Just like that, up and left, never came back? Or for example if someone attacks us, did you ever hear of a dog that ran away? It could be David against Goliath, he’ll at least grab the guy’s pants leg or bite his ankle. And he’ll rage and bark, never mind that there’s nothing he can do. Or a dog leaving a sick person or abandoning someone that’s dying, did you ever hear of that? You couldn’t have. And it happens that dogs die of grief after their human dies.

Us, we can’t even sense what’s coming tomorrow. We can’t sense other people. Dogs, they can sense death. At most they might not let on. Like these dogs of mine, they’re lying there quietly, maybe they’re asleep even. But we don’t know what they’ve sensed coming. Well, yes, they have a sense of smell. But it’s not just that. Dogs are more than just smell. What else? I don’t know. If I did, I’d know a lot more in general.

But all you need to do is compare what happens when a human is hurting and when a dog is hurting. It’s like it’s two different kinds of hurt. The human at the very least is going to complain, sigh, he’s going to groan; the dog just mopes, or at most he’ll stop eating. With a person, the slightest pain can be seen plain as day; with dogs all you see is fortitude. Or take a look in a dog’s eyes, what’s reflected there? Is it the same thing that’s in our human eyes? You can say he’s looking at the same things we are, but does he see them the same? Have you ever thought about it? A human, depending on what he’s looking at, his eyes get wider or narrower, they flicker or they smile. Dogs, their eyes stay still whatever they’re looking at. Or, what do people look like in the eyes of dogs? How about that? Do we look like we do to ourselves when we look in the mirror, say, or when other people see us, or in our own satisfaction or dissatisfaction, in our own memory, our own hopes and fears and despair? What can dogs be thinking about people? What are those dogs of mine thinking about us right now, as they watch us shelling beans? It’s the first time they’ve seen you here in my house, they must be thinking something. See, they’ve woken up. Well, Rex? Well, Paws? The gentleman and I are sitting here talking.

Or the heart, dogs have hearts after all. You often say about someone that they have a good heart. They say that a person has God in their heart. But when He looks down on it all, would God not rather just go and live in the hearts of dogs? We don’t know, true. But we can guess. Besides, what do we know? We don’t know the most ordinary things. A dog’s hackles will rise and we often don’t know why. He’ll wag his tail and we don’t know why. He’ll whine for no reason, we don’t know why either. See, he couldn’t possibly sense all that he senses through smell alone. He can even sense who’s come here for what purpose.

You might find what I’m going to say surprising, but sometimes I wouldn’t mind being a dog, at least for a short while. Not permanently, just for a while. Maybe then I’d find out for instance if they dream about me. Everyone would like to know if they’re dreamed about. Not you? I’m sure you would really. How do you know no one ever dreams about you? Maybe it’s just that no one ever told you. All I want to know is what my dogs dream about me.

The revolt? Oh, I didn’t finish the story. Well, the power went out and the film broke off. Maybe if it hadn’t happened at exactly that moment. Maybe if it hadn’t been that particular hat. And then there was Mary. You remember what set off the Trojan War. Exactly. First there was a huge groan of disappointment when everything went dark. Luckily, just when it seemed that the darkness was about to explode, one of the teachers who’d been watching the film with us called out:

“Settle down now! We’ll go check, it’s probably just a fuse!”

One after another they scuttled out of the room. They must have reckoned that if they all go check, it’ll for sure turn out to be a fuse. So all the more we’d remain calm. And in fact, considering how packed the room was, you could say we did stay cool. Actually, they must have been furious as well at that moment. Or they wouldn’t all have left. So we kept a lid on it till they came back. We quieted each other. We told each other off. Take it easy! Simmer down! And we waited hopefully for the expected moment when one of the teachers would appear in the doorway with a shout of triumph:

“It was a fuse, boys! Just like we said! It’ll be mended in no time!”

But time went by and no one came. Perhaps if the projectionist hadn’t suddenly spoken, the tension would have been dispelled just through waiting. We might have raised a bit of a ruckus, maybe started singing. But in the silence and darkness his voice sounded like a verdict:

“What are they talking about? How long does it take to fix a fuse? I’m going to rewind the film and put it away. There’s never once been a time when I was showing a film and the power came back on after an outage.”

At that moment, the silence exploded so abruptly you’d have thought the whole hut was about to fall apart. There were whistles, shouts, howls, stamping of feet. First the innocent projectionist was the target, as if his words had been the spark to set the silence on fire. The boys at the back of the room jumped on him, pushed him to the ground, pummeled and kicked him. They smashed the projector. They pulled the film from the cans and draped themselves in it like it was streamers. One of them took out a box of matches and was about to burn the film to make some light. Make some light! Thank goodness we put it out in time. You can imagine what would have happened. Then all the windows in the room got smashed. Whatever anyone had at hand, or rather whatever they grabbed in the darkness, they threw that. Stools, benches, musical instruments. I tried to save the instruments. I begged them, shouted, snatched them from their hands:

“Leave the instruments alone! Leave them alone! What did they ever do to you!”

Some of them came to their senses, but others only seemed to find release with the instruments. They broke them, smashed them up, tossed them out of the windows. They even wanted to throw the grand piano out, but fortunately it wouldn’t fit through the window. One of them got so mad he climbed up and started stomping on the keyboard.

I was at the other end of the room when I heard the crash of feet on the keys. I pushed my way over and grabbed the kid by the legs. He put his hands around my neck and started to throttle me. I couldn’t breathe, but I managed to get him off the piano and onto the floor. We didn’t have anything to hit each other with, since he was holding onto me and I was holding him, so we set about biting each other. We bit till we bled. He was a budding pianist. The music teacher often said he had promise.

Most of the instruments that got thrown out of the window survived in better or worse shape. The ones that remained were generally not so lucky. It was just as well that some were overlooked in the darkness. Especially because rage can darken your sight even more. The next day, if you’d seen the ones that had suffered the most damage it would have broken your heart. But not one teacher showed his face. Though it was precisely because of them that the revolt had gotten so furious.

Have you ever taken part in a revolt? Not even at school? You’ve never rebelled? Against what? It’s not like there’s any shortage of things. Right from childhood. The fact that they force us to eat when we’re not hungry. With the years, there’s one revolt after another you could start. Against school, because who actually wants to go to school? I don’t mean our school. That’s a whole other story. And just in general, against life, because it’s the way it is, not some other way. Against the world, for being like it is instead of the way it should be. Against God because he exists but he’s not there. Not even against yourself ever?

Though a revolt doesn’t have to have a reason. In fact, I’m not sure that any revolt actually begins for the reasons we say it does. Not to mention there are revolts where afterwards, we regret having revolted. Except you can’t go back to the way things were before. What can you do, people will never keep still, they’re always seething, in ferment, and even if they have no reason, they’re always going to revolt. They’re a perpetual reason in themselves. They’re going to rebel till the end of time. If you ask me, the world has a good many revolts still to come.

So our teachers might have been doing the smart thing by leaving us to our own devices. Because eventually we would have had to calm down of our own accord, since it wasn’t a fuse and there was no hope of the power being turned back on right away. It was just that, as often happens, chance intervened. The screen unexpectedly came away from the wall. You’re probably thinking, so what? But at a moment like that, the smallest thing can take on great power. Perhaps it had been carelessly hung. Or it might have come loose from all of our shouting, yelling, smashing everything, because the whole hut was shaking from it all. Everyone rushed up and started trampling on the screen. Like it was its fault for the lights going out. Then one of the boys picked it up from the floor and shouted:

“Guys, let’s make a noose! Let’s hang someone!”

Everyone else chimed in:

“A noose! A noose! Let’s have a hanging!”

The first boy explained later that his intentions had been good. He wanted to prevent any more instruments being damaged, because we wouldn’t have anything to learn to play on. They would have destroyed all of them. And as for hanging, they’d never have actually hanged anyone, because aside from us there wasn’t anyone left in the school. They started tearing the screen into strips and debating who they should pick. There were various candidates. From among the teachers, it goes without saying, because who else? In cases like that, teachers are always the best bet. Especially ours. But no one could agree on who it should be. They braided the rope as they argued. They were in the dark, so they weren’t doing that great of a job. The rope was plaited like a braid of hair, it was all loose. Besides, the screen wasn’t good material for a rope. It was made of cotton, like a bed sheet or a quilt cover. For rope, hemp is the only thing. Then you can be sure it won’t break.

When they had to take Uncle Jan down, the rope was hemp and it couldn’t be cut even with a kitchen knife, it was so tightly twined. They kept hacking away at it. In the end father had to take an ax and cut Uncle down along with the branch he was hanging from.

All of a sudden, one of the boys gave a triumphant shout:

“Let’s hang the commandant!”

The whole room whooped:

“Hurrah! The commandant! The commandant!”

It was as if only the commandant matched the scale of this revolt. In any case, he seemed the best choice. Above all, it was as if in his person he made it possible for us to cross a further boundary. The revolt, which had seemed about to turn from a disagreement into a fist fight, flared up all over again.

“Let’s get the commandant! Let’s hang the bastard!”

Someone sang:

“The executioners have spilled our blood so long!”

It goes without saying that by now the rec room was too small for the revolt. We swarmed out the door and through the windows into the parade ground, whether we were for or against hanging the commandant, it was all the same. We marched up to the teachers’ hut where the commandant’s office was. We started chanting:

“Commandant! Commandant! Come out, commandant!”

No, the commandant didn’t live at the school. He traveled to work each day. At that time he was nowhere to be found. We knew that, of course. But the revolt had blinded us so we forgot. Of course no one came out. The hut stood in darkness and silence. There wasn’t so much as a glimmer of light in any of the windows. It was like all the teachers were gone too. Maybe they’d run away, every last one of them, when the film stopped. Or they were sitting inside without making a sound.

We hammered on all of the doors, all of the walls. In the end we smashed all the windows. Nothing. There wasn’t a living soul. Someone brought up the idea of burning the hut down, since there had to be someone in there. There were always at least three teachers on duty at any given time. Someone else said we should burn all the huts, even the ones we lived in. Burn the whole school down. If there was going to be a fire, let there be a fire. We could go up on the hill and watch it all burn. At least that. Nero set Rome on fire the same way. I didn’t know what Rome was, I didn’t know who Nero was. But there were a few kids in the school who knew this and that. Then we’d run away. Good-bye, goddamn school!

One of them volunteered right away to do the Rome thing, he said he knew where they kept the cans of kerosene, he’d run and fetch them. Someone else said it was better to hang somebody. We had a rope made from the screen, and the film had been the cause of it all. Otherwise why had we bothered to braid it? We set off around the parade ground, attacking all the other huts, smashing windows everywhere in the hope that we’d draw someone out, bring them into the open, because it wasn’t possible we’d been left alone with our revolt. Our rage had reached its peak. It was a huge letdown that nobody was there. Some people started shouting that we should go back to the rec room and get the projectionist, maybe he’d have come round by now.

Then we heard someone coming. They seemed to be walking heavily, slowly, one step at a time. The square was paved with gravel, and you could hear it crunching louder and louder. Even when the steps paused, the gravel still sounded under the person’s feet, as if they were rocking on it. Can you guess who it was? That’s right, it was him, the music teacher. Who else. Only a drunk could have been so unaware of the danger. We recognized him from far off. We stood there and waited. He was well gone. He took one last step as he loomed out of the darkness, then suddenly staggered. One of the boys darted forward and caught him, otherwise he would probably have fallen.

“Thank you, thank you,” he mumbled. Though it seemed that it was only with his next step he could actually see us. “Why aren’t you in bed yet, boys?” he asked, half surprised and half not. “Don’t take me as your example. I hardly sleep at all anymore.”

“This is a revolt!” someone exclaimed.

“A revolt?” He hiccupped so hard his whole body swayed. “Good for you. I was in a revolt one time myself. You can see where that got me. But maybe you’ll do better out of it. All right, just let me through now. For some reason I feel like going to bed tonight.”

“It’s a real revolt!” another boy shouted virtually in his ear.

“We’ve smashed all the windows! Now we’re going to burn the school to the ground! All the huts!” They were yelling over one another across his nodding head, forming an ever tighter circle around him.

“I believe you that it’s real,” he murmured. “I believe everything nowadays, boys. All right, let me through. I want to sleep, to sleep.”

Then out of the middle of the crowd there came a shout, though afterwards no one fessed up to it:

“We should hang him! He’s so drunk he won’t even feel it!”

Someone else objected. But a third person screamed:

“A revolt’s a revolt! It’s all the same who we hang! There’s no better or worse choices! Put the noose on him!”

He’d been so drunk he could barely stand, but he sobered up at once:

“For what, boys? For what?”

“We have to. It’s a revolt.” Whoever said it, their voice cracked as they slippd the noose around his neck.

What do you think about that? I mean, he was the only one of them we actually liked. Of all the teachers. Whether you wanted to learn to play an instrument or not. Actually most boys didn’t, but still all of us really liked him. Maybe it was just that we didn’t know the rules of revolts, and we were bursting with rage. He on the other hand, he must have known, because he treated it like a joke.

“Hang away, boys, if you must. Just let me have a drink first.” He took out his bottle, from this pocket here. “Be a pity to leave even a little drop.” Though I think the bottle was probably empty, it kind of rang hollow when he lifted it to his lips. “Well, at least I’ll die like a true artist. At the hands of those dearest to me. That’s something.” At that point he checked the noose, which they’d already tied around his neck. “Are you sure this thing will hold, boys? It doesn’t seem that strong. I’d prefer not to have to come back.”

We started to lead him along by the rope, looking for a place to hang him. But it turned out there weren’t any protruding beams, or any trees nearby. Everyone racked their brains about where to do it. The music teacher was getting antsy:

“Well then, boys? I’m ready.”

At that moment someone ran out in front of the others and kicked his legs from under him. He dropped to the ground, his hat fell off, and the bottle he’d been holding in his hand slid off somewhere.

“My bottle! My bottle!” he gasped. “Don’t let it get smashed!” Then more calmly, with a touch of resentment, as he struggled to get up: “Too soon, boys. I’m not hanging yet.”

And what do you make of this, the same boys that tied the noose around his neck hurried forward to help him up. Others looked for the bottle in the darkness. Someone put his hat back on his head, someone brushed off his clothes. The one that had brought him down, the others beat him and kicked him. Then the whole mob together walked him back to the hut where he lived.

“Too bad, boys,” he said in farewell. “I’d finally have been done with it all. Find me my bottle tomorrow. Right now I want to sleep.”

And that was the end of the revolt. No, they didn’t show the film again. Besides, who would have wanted to watch it now? The power came on the next day, as usual. There were no musters, reports, speeches. All they did was make us clean up. They had us bring in the instruments that had been thrown out of the windows. Lessons and shop and work were all put on hold. We got breakfast and lunch and dinner as before, not reduced portions. Right away glaziers came in and started putting in new windows, starting with the rec room. Then the insurance people came to assess the damage. So it seemed like our revolt had been insured. Nor could you tell from the teachers that there’d been any kind of rebellion. They even got more lenient. In any case none of them raised his voice or frowned. The commandant responded to our bows, which came as a shock, because up till then he’d hardly ever nodded back when you bowed to him. Mostly he didn’t notice you. Unless something he didn’t like caught his eye, in which case he could even slap you in the face. In front of everyone else, to make it worse.

Our biggest surprise, though, was the music teacher. Not the fact that he was going around sober. It was that when he was sober he was a completely different person, quite unlike himself you might say. Lost in thought, older, and he rarely showed himself. No, we never did find his bottle, though we did what he asked and scoured the entire parade ground the following morning. That was the strangest thing of all, it was like the bottle had vanished into thin air. I’d understand if there’d been grass or bushes, but the whole square was covered with gravel. There was nothing on it but gravel and huts. We even wanted to buy him a new one, because it wasn’t just an ordinary bottle, these days flat bottles like that are everywhere, but back then there were only round ones. Where he got it from I couldn’t say. I think he went looking for it himself as well, because he’d sometimes come out in the morning and walk around the parade ground.

Otherwise, nothing happened. One time only, once the windows had been fixed in the rec room they had us all assemble there. There was the commandant, the teachers, and us. They told us to think about our revolt, about whether it had been worth it. Whether we’d have it easier without the school. No one said anything about the film. The whole affair was pretty short. The only other thing they said was that until order was restored, until the damage had been repaired, they were giving us some free days to think about everything. We were being punished by being made to think, as one of the boys put it.

So, whereas to begin with we’d reckoned that things wouldn’t end there and it was only the calm before the storm, eventually we stopped suspecting anything, since they’d told us to reflect on it all. Some of the boys even began to regret we’d not at least burned down the teachers’ hut.

Maybe a week passed, maybe less, in any case we still had free days, and here there was a muster at the crack of dawn. Not a normal one, but like something unusual had happened. We ran out onto the parade ground and there were three military jeeps. You know, cross-country vehicles. They had us fall into line two deep, and told us we’d be questioned after breakfast.

They sent us off to eat. They must have been eating also, because they waited a long time. The sun was already well up in the sky when they began calling us in to the rec room for questioning. Not in alphabetical order, not according to age, not team by team or room by room. At random. There had to be some principle at work, but we couldn’t figure out what it was. It wasn’t even who had shouted the most during the revolt, who had been the loudest or the most involved. Nor was it who had been the first to suggest we should make a noose and hang someone. Though everyone knew who that had been. They started with one of the boys who happened to have fallen sick after the revolt and had had a fever.

They were seated at a table, a handful of civilians, a few military, and our commandant at the end. The table stood by the far wall of the room. It was a long one, made of several tables pushed together and covered with a red cloth. There were two vases with flowers, and everyone had glasses of tea in front of them. It even looked nice, they smiled at us in a friendly way, not just the civilians but the army guys as well. They asked us their questions politely, no one raised his voice, it was like they’d just come by to chat with us.

What did they ask us? Most of all about the teachers, as if the main thing was whether they treated us well. For example, do we often ask the teachers questions, and how they answer. What do they say when the power goes out. Or what do they say when the food is worse than usual. Do we ask them about that. That question none of us could understand, since the food was always worse than usual. They must have known that. But they didn’t ask anyone what we actually ate. If they had, they might have learned that a great deal depends on food. It’s not always about a film. The film, it was the first time they’d shown it. Whereas we ate every day. Things depend on food, and on what you eat it from and with what, on the plates, spoons, knives, forks. Us, we always ate from beat-up old mess kits. We’d been told the army had donated them to the school. But no one believed it. There were rumors they’d been gathered from dead soldiers at the front. So you could imagine that you’re sitting there eating from a mess plate, and next to you is the dead guy whose plate it was. Even if you had a nice pork chop on the plate, do you think you’re going to enjoy it? Heck no, we never got pork chops. If there was any meat, at most it’d be a piece of liver or spleen, or very rarely heart or kidneys. All the time it was kasha, potatoes, potatoes, kasha. Pearl barley it was. To this day I can’t stand it. The soup was usually watery. Often the boys would just dip their spoons in it, then flick it over each other, they were so mad. They’d start at one table, and pretty soon the whole cafeteria would be splashing soup over one another. Little thing like soup, but it could have led to a revolt. The spoons and forks were made of cheap aluminum, they’d get bent and you’d keep having to straighten them. Not to mention that most of the forks were missing a prong, sometimes two. And there weren’t enough knives to go around, when there was something to cut up, of course. Luckily they weren’t needed that often. And they really didn’t know about all that?

With the teachers, it was like they were trying to analyze them in detail. But there wasn’t much we could tell them, because in our eyes all the teachers were alike. Besides, what was the point of dwelling on the teachers when it was all about the film breaking off when the power went out? Some of the boys did their best to tell them about the man in the film, and about Mary. That he kept trying on hat after hat. But they interrupted as if that was of no interest to them. At one moment apparently one of the military guys even smiled, though it wasn’t me being questioned at the time. In my opinion, first they should have watched the film, and only then questioned us. And it should have been stopped in the same place it was for us. Maybe then they would have understood how a revolt can break out. You don’t think they’d get it? You reckon they’d think it had to be more than the film? Or that they wouldn’t understand how it could all be about the hat? I have to disagree with you there.

In any case, they wouldn’t listen to anything about the film. And as far as the revolt itself was concerned, they asked us for instance what we shouted, they told us to tell them if not the exact words, because we might not remember, then at least the gist of what was said. They also asked each of us what each boy did during the revolt. As if each person could be doing something different in the middle of a revolt. A revolt means everyone does everything together, and no one’s aware of what they’re doing individually. One person shouts, and everyone thinks they’re the one who shouted. Or like one person’s at the front of the crowd, but everyone will think they were at the front. It’s like in a war, one man dies and all the others think they’ve died as well. If someone is alive it’s only because there has to be someone who remembers that the others died. Running away is the only thing you do on your own.

Maybe they got something out of us after all. You know how things are in that kind of questioning. You don’t want to say something, yet you don’t even realize you’ve already said it. You have nothing to confess to, but between the lines you confess all the same. In general, in questioning what they ask is more important than what you answer. The questions contain the answers they’re looking for. Your guilt is already in the questions, even if you don’t feel guilty. Whether you say you don’t remember, or whether you say nothing, you confess. Especially with silence, because that way all you’re doing is confirming your guilt. Inside you is enough guilt for every possible question. Even those that no one has ever asked, and maybe no one ever will. Because what is a person if not a question about guilt? The only good thing is that at least he rarely demands an answer of himself. It’s just as well, because he wouldn’t be able to give it.

On top of everything we were afraid they’d arrest us all, so we could have accidentally given various things away. They asked us for example about the ringleaders, as one of the army guys called them. He explained right away that that meant the ones who had led us, who had been the most eager, who had shouted the loudest and the most, that we should give their names. Each of us gave a different name, so maybe it turned out we were all ringleaders, because they didn’t arrest any of us.

But the matter couldn’t end there. And it didn’t. You know who they arrested? That’s right, the music teacher, who’d done nothing wrong whatsoever. Maybe someone had let slip that we were going to hang him. That was enough for them. That was enough of a clue. Because no other clue led to anyone else. True, later on word went around that he’d been under an obligation to inform them about anything that happened in the school. And he’d failed in that obligation. But you know what it means to say “word went around,” so none of us believed it. How could it have been him, the music teacher. A guy who was almost always drunk, aside from anything. What could he have seen or heard when he was drunk. His eyes were permanently misted over, his ears must have been filled with other sounds. The sounds might have been in his eyes too, because often he didn’t know which way he was going. There were times he couldn’t find his own room. He needed to be led there. You had to take the key from his pocket, open the door for him. Help him off with his hat and coat and shoes. Lie him down on the bed. Who knows, we might have been no more to him than sounds he kept trying to put together in a way that made sense, and when he couldn’t it wasn’t his fault but ours.

Would you have believed it? There you go. But that’s what people said. And the worst of it was that no one knew anything, no one said anything, but the rumor went around as if the information had come into being of its own accord. Where does such a thing come from, can you tell me that? Maybe there’s something like the spontaneous generation of words, what do you reckon?

When we heard they were taking him away we ran to the rec room, grabbed whatever instruments we could, whether or not they were working, and we stood on the parade ground the way he’d arranged us that time as an orchestra, in any case more or less like that, it didn’t really matter. The ones who didn’t have instruments also gathered around us, because the whole school turned out. When they led him out, we all took up our instruments as if we were about to start playing. But we didn’t play, we just stood there.

He was walking with his head down, he didn’t even look at us. They put him in the back seat of the car, one guy on one side of him, another guy on the other. They were just about to set off when he jerked forward and shouted:

“Long live music, boys!”