A Treatise on Shelling Beans

9

Did you just arrive in this world? Because everything surprises you. Yes it does. I’m not pinning anything on you. I’m just listening to what you say. I can even see that your hands are surprised by the beans. You could never shave with a straight razor. A straight razor needs a cool hand, one that’s indifferent to whatever’s going on inside you. Or someone would say something you weren’t expecting, and you’d cut yourself right away. You ever shaved with a straight razor? Never? You probably use an electric razor. You don’t shave at all? How is that possible? See, now it’s my turn to be surprised. But that’s something a person can still be surprised at. You don’t have any stubble, it’s true. I can see your face is smooth. Unless these days there’s some other way of dealing with beards. In that case you probably don’t even know what a straight razor is. I have one here, in the drawer. Somewhere I have a brush as well, and shaving cream, and aftershave lotion. I could give you a shave. It doesn’t matter that you don’t grow a beard, you’d still see how nice it is to shave with a straight razor. You can only learn that when it’s your own face. You’re scared? Of what? I don’t understand.

No, I don’t shave with a straight razor anymore. I couldn’t do it, not with these hands. But I did for many years, before I got the rheumatism. It’s really not that hard. I taught myself. When I was little I always used to watch my father shaving, and my grandfather, and Uncle Jan. Uncle Jan was always the most careful. He’d always shave twice. He’d shave, then soap up again and shave a second time. He used to say he had an angular face, and so to make sure he got all the hollows and bumps properly, he’d shave two times. His hands shook by that time, but he always used a straight razor. He’d sometimes cut himself, the blood would run down his face, especially under his Adam’s apple, but he’d always do it twice. And he shaved every morning. But when he decided to hang himself the next day, he shaved the previous evening. I remember like it was yesterday. No one thought twice about it, though he never shaved in the evening. That time too he cut himself and he had to stop the blood with alum.

It wasn’t because the razor was blunt, he sharpened it before every shave. First on a whetstone, then on a strop. After he sharpened it he’d check the blade. If it wasn’t good enough, he’d sharpen it some more. Do you know the best way to check if a razor’s sharp enough? You pull a hair out of your head, hold it between two fingers like this, and split it with the razor blade.

Hang on, I’ll get the razor and show you. It’s a good one, Swedish steel. The best ones were always Swedish. I brought it back from abroad. I keep it as a reminder that I used to shave with a straight razor, that my hands were that good. From time to time I take it out and run it over the strop, so it’s sharp. You need to choose the right razor for your face, that way you get the best shave. A hard beard likes soft steel, and vice versa. Plus, you need to know your own face. That way you don’t cut yourself. And the best way to get to know your face is by shaving with a straight razor. You’re never closer to your own face than when you shave that way. Believe me. With an electric razor you’re shaving, but you’re thinking about something else. You can’t do that with a straight razor. Even if you cut yourself and bleed, you know it’s your own face. You feel it more than when you just see it in the mirror.

Look here. I pull a hair from my head. Then I hold it up in the air, best of all against the light, and I draw the razor across it. Not quickly. Gently. If it’s too quick even a blunt razor will tug the hair away. But it won’t cut it. That was always how people checked. Now pull a hair out of your own head. We’ll try it with one of yours, you’ll see. What, you don’t want to give up a hair? It’s just one hair. Think how many come out when you brush your hair in the morning. How many fall out when you wash it. One hair won’t even hurt. If you’ll let me, I’ll pull one out. You’re even afraid of me pulling a single hair from your head? I don’t get it at all. You don’t trust me? Yet you came to get beans from me!

Me, I started shaving when I was still at school. Once in a while. My chin was only just starting to get covered with fluff. But since the older boys were already shaving, us younger kids wanted to be the same as them. We shaved each other with a razor we borrowed from the custodian. At a price, you understand. Every Saturday we had to sweep out his yard and the sidewalk in front of his house, and clear the snow in winter. I only bought my own razor when I went to work on a building site. When I was working on the electrification of the villages I still used to borrow one from the guys I roomed with. I was saving up for a saxophone, I didn’t want to spend money on a razor.

As it happened, there was this blacksmith in the next village that made razors out of tank bearings. You can’t imagine what those razors were like. The only thing that might have come close were the Swedish steel ones, and even that I’m not so sure of. In the fields there were still all these smashed-up tanks from the war, he’d remove the bearings and make razors out of them. They were a bit unwieldy, true, the handles were awkward to hold, they were thick, made of elm wood or acacia, but the blade took your beard off all by itself. I bought two, I used one of them and kept the other in reserve, then later I gave it as a gift to the warehouse keeper who taught me the saxophone. He wouldn’t take any money for the lessons, like I said, so I thought I’d at least give him a razor. He tried to give it back when I stopped going to him.

No, from that time on, even when I needed some item from the warehouse I’d ask one of the other electricians to go get it for me. I don’t remember how long that went on. Then one day I was passing the warehouse, he must have seen me through the window and he started knocking on the pane, but I pretended not to hear. I thought to myself, he probably wants to tell me again how bad the band is. A week before it had been Women’s Day. There was a celebration, and we performed in the musical part of the evening. He came, I saw him there, he sat right in the back. There were speeches, flowers and chocolates and stockings for the women. Construction was still going on, the plans were way behind, but they always had various celebrations in the course of the year. Though Women’s Day was the most enjoyable.

I’d already passed the warehouse, but he called after me. He was standing in the doorway shouting:

“Are you pretending not to hear? And you say you want to be a saxophone player! Come back here!”

I turned around and went up to him.

“What do you want?”

“I’ll buy that saxophone back from you.”

“What saxophone?” I didn’t follow, I didn’t have any saxophone. He hadn’t told me to save up, so I didn’t. The one I played on in the band belonged to the company. And his, the one he taught me on in the evenings, was with him.

“The one that used to be mine,” he says.

“It’s still yours,” I say. “And you still have it.”

“I have it, but it’s yours,” he says.

“What do you mean, mine?” I still didn’t know what he was talking about.

“It’s yours. I gave it to you. I meant to tell you a long time ago, but I never got around to it. Now I’d like to buy it back from you. Take this as a down payment.” He stuck a wad of banknotes in my palm. I pulled my hand away but he caught hold of it, pushed the money into it and closed my fingers over it. “Here.”

Let me tell you, it was like the will went out of my hand, the blood went out of it. I stood there not knowing what to do, what to say. One banknote fell out, he leaned down and picked it up.

“Don’t lose this. Count it, make sure it’s all there. There ought to be …”

I didn’t even hear how much. I could only feel my heart pounding. There was a tightness in my throat.

“I’ll pay the rest bit by bit. Every month on pay day. Don’t worry, you’ll get it all down to the last penny. The amount it’s worth. I don’t expect any concessions. I’m not trying to pull one over on you. I never cheated anyone in my life. The amount it’s worth. And it’s worth quite a bundle. Every month on pay day. If you don’t believe me, make sure you’re standing behind me every month in the line for the cashier. I’ll give it to you right away, the moment I get my wages. Every month. I can’t give a lot each time, I don’t earn that much, as you know, I need to be able to live. But each month. They won’t close the site down, a job like this’ll take a long while yet, I’ll have time to pay off the whole thing. Even if they finish earlier, the warehouse will still be here. They can’t get by without a warehouse. They promised they’d let me keep my job till I retire. But even if I don’t finish paying it by then, don’t worry about that either. I’ve thought it all through. You can write me to say where you are and I’ll send you the money, every month. I’ll even pay for a money transfer, so you’re not out. I thought about taking a loan from payroll, but I’d prefer monthly payments, if that’s OK with you. I don’t like paying off one debt by taking on another. Then you have two debts to fret about. And there’s nothing worse than getting tied up in debts. Life’s a debt as it is, even if you don’t owe anything to anyone and you haven’t borrowed anything from anybody.”

It goes without saying that I didn’t take his money. How could I have? He was going to buy his own saxophone back from me? He died about a year and a half after that. Construction was still going on. Someone went to get something from the warehouse, he wrote them a chit and all he needed to do was sign it, when his head tipped forward. And that was that. But he didn’t drop the pencil, can you imagine. As if he’d meant to sign off on his own death, one death, check.

A signature is an important thing, let me tell you. Especially when you sign off on your own death. Why shouldn’t a person sign for his own death? You sign for all kinds of trivial things all your life. Whether you need to or not. Most of the time it’s not even needed. Imagine counting up all the times someone’s signed their name in the course of their life. As if they kept having to vouch for the fact that it really is them, not someone else in their place. As if there even could be anyone taking your place, say, or mine. So why shouldn’t he have signed off on his own death? It was his, after all. If you ask me, death shouldn’t have stopped his hand. Death itself should have needed him to sign.

You say that people are born without signing to say they want to be born. That’s understandable. There are very few people who’d want it, if it depended on their signature. Death is a different matter entirely. You should at least be free in the face of death. In any case, what difference would it have made to wait a short moment. What was a moment like that for death. You’re talking as if I were only referring to appearances. Let me tell you that even if that were so, appearances shouldn’t be scorned. When the truth turns against us, thank goodness there are still appearances. There are times when after a whole life, appearances are the only record of a person’s life.

For that year and a half I took lessons from him. It was as if one day we were practicing together, then the next day he died. I tried much harder than before. Almost every day, if only they didn’t keep us back at the site, right after work I’d quickly wash, change, eat something or not, and go to him. He’d always be waiting for me, sometimes dozing with his head resting on the desk. But the moment I walked in he’d start up.

“Oh, it’s you. I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come today, and every day counts.”

He took a piece of chalk and drew a circle on the floor that I had to stand inside when I played. He made another one for himself, at a suitable distance, in which he sat on a chair.

“I measured it out, this is the best distance for sound quality. I’ll be able to hear you best from here. This warehouse is no concert hall. Or club. I get consignments of piping, sheet metal, wiring, tires, all kinds of stuff. Every time the sound changes.”

He brought more sheet music this time. And he made me a stand for the music. When I arrived the stand would already be waiting in my circle with the music lying open on it.

“Let’s begin with what you have in front of you there,” he would say, to stop me from changing the order of the sheets. Then he’d put his chair in his circle, and have me take my place in mine. “Stand up straight though. Not like in that band of yours, where you all slouch.”

He always had to run down the band. I guessed it must be his new way of weaning me off them. He did it kind of casually, in a mild way, because he’d stopped telling me to quit the band.

Often my legs would be shaking under me, after all I’d been working on my feet all day long on the site, but he never let me sit down even for a minute. There was another chair in the warehouse, when he was writing out a chit he’d offer you a seat. But whenever I came for my lesson, the other chair would always be put aside at the far end of the warehouse.

“You need to be on your feet,” he’d repeat. “When you’re standing your diaphragm works better, you take more air into your lungs. Breathing is really important with the saxophone. You, your breathing is too shallow, and so you’re not blowing the instrument properly. Plus, a saxophonist has to have strong legs, a strong back, the whole spine has to be strong, then it’s easier to play. When you end up having to play all night because the party’s still going on, you won’t have to say your legs hurt.”

And let me tell you, my legs never feel tired. Sometimes here I have to walk and walk. Especially now, in the off-season. Like I said, during the day I’m obliged to make three rounds of all the cabins on both sides of the lake. And at least one in the night. When I walk around I know I’m really keeping a good eye on the place.

Excuse me, I have to get a drink of water, my throat’s dry. When you shell beans there’s always dust, that’s why. Would you like a drink too? It’s good water, from my well. No, it was here already. I just had it deepened and cleaned out. I had a pump put in, and they piped it up to my place. See, all I need to do is turn on the tap. Perhaps you’ll try some after all? Here, you’re welcome. It’s good, right? Spring water. They tapped into a spring. Let me tell you, nothing quenches your thirst like this stuff. Even when I’m drinking coffee or tea, I have to have a glass of water to go with it.

When they were going to sink the well, father brought in a dowser. I don’t know where he found him, he brought him back in the wagon. The guy searched and searched, his rod kept getting pulled down toward the ground, but he wasn’t satisfied. Finally he said that he’d felt the cold, they should sink the shaft here.

Lots of people from the cabins come and get water from me. They can’t say enough about it, It’s so good, it’s so good. Whoever went around praising water back in the day, you tell me that. The most you might say is that it was hard or soft. Spring water’s always hard. For washing hair or bathing we’d collect rainwater. The animals were watered in the Rutka. Laundry was done in the Rutka too. River water is soft. When they’re leaving for home, they bring canisters here so they’ll at least have water to make coffee or tea. A few canisters each. A line forms at the well and I have to go out and keep order so no one pushes in, and everyone gets an equal amount. Because some people even take it as a gift for their neighbors in the city. What are things coming to, giving water as a gift. Regular water. Would you ever have thought something like that would happen with water? Let me tell you, that’s the clearest measure of what’s wrong with the world. At times I have to limit them to two or three canisters each, the well isn’t bottomless. If the pump starts sucking up dirt it has to be cleaned afterwards. Then it takes at least twenty-four hours for the spring to fill up again.

You have to admit it’s good water. Another glass maybe? I’ll join you. Here where I’m standing there were always buckets of water, and on the wall over them was an embroidered motto that read, “Good water means good health.” More or less where you’re sitting, that was where he sat in his circle, and where I’m standing, that’s where I stood in mine. Let me tell you, I wasn’t convinced by those circles, I thought it was just some nonsense of his, and one day I told him so.

“Maybe we could try without the circles. People are making fun of me on the site. What do circles have to do with playing music?”

“They matter. One day you’ll figure out why,” he said. “Just keep standing there. Get used to it. You think you’ll have more space? Life isn’t lived sideways, it’s lived going down deeper. Likewise, you don’t play sideways, you play deep.”

He’d say that if I’d played the accordion I could have sat down, or the cello, a few other instruments. But not the saxophone. The sax was played from the legs, all the way up above the head. In that way the air flows into the instrument by itself, you don’t have to blow so much. You don’t have to puff your cheeks out and tense your jaw. You, you’re still all tense. You need to make the shape of the sounds with your lips, pass your tongue over them. Then the saxophone will become as tender as pain. Between you and it there ought to be pain. Otherwise you’ll remain strangers to one another. It’s a saxophone. But who are you?

You know, he became a lot gentler. He didn’t correct me so often, he listened more. At times I finished and he seemed to still be listening. It was only as I was leaving that he’d sometimes say I needed to improve this or that, work on one thing or another.

It’s also true that I was trying like never before. I was filled with a kind of doggedness, a hunger for playing. He’d say, That’s enough for today, and I’d ask him to listen to just one more thing or another, I’ll play it differently, just listen. He’d close his one good eye, you might have thought he was sleeping. Then suddenly he opened it wide:

“Play that again, I missed something the first time.”

Sometimes the watchmen would come in and tell us to wrap it up, because the warehouse couldn’t be open so long. They had to put the seals on. As it was they were turning a blind eye. When I left it would be nighttime, the site was so quiet I could scarcely believe it was the same place as during the day.

Each Sunday he’d give me the saxophone so I could practice when I got back from Mass. No, he never asked if I’d been. He only asked, So, did you manage to practice? At the rooming house I never could. From morning they’d be playing cards and drinking vodka there. Even when someone went to church, they’d come home and immediately go back to their vodka and cards.

When the weather was good I’d go into the fields or on the meadow. On Sundays no one was out in the fields, and on the meadows at most there were cows. Empty fields aren’t a good place to play. You play, but it’s like your music melts away. The meadows were a bit better. In the meadows I’d go out among the cows. And let me tell you, the saxophone took on a sound that it never did afterwards in other places, not just the warehouse, but in any night club, not even in a concert hall. You won’t believe it, but the cows would stop tearing up the grass, they’d lift their heads, stand still, and listen.

I tried playing in various locations to see how the sound changed depending on where I was. I don’t know how it would be here on the lake, in the woods, or when the Rutka still came through this way, in the village when there was still a village here. I really learned a lot from that. Same saxophone, same mouthpiece, same reed, and of course I was the same, but each place was different from other places. For example when I stood by a river, it was different where the current ran fast than where it flowed slowly.

It was worse when it rained, or in wintertime. What was I to do then? I’d go to the building site and stand under the roof of an open shelter. The watchmen would let me in. I’d slip one or another of them something from time to time. Once the construction had a roof things were a little easier. I’d go into one of the shops. Though in winter, especially when there was a severe frost, you couldn’t practice for long. I had these gloves where I’d cut off the fingertips, down to about here, so only the ends of my fingers would show. But I still had to breathe on them every so often, because they’d go numb.

I don’t know where that determination of mine came from. I’m not going to claim that I knew he was going to die soon. Maybe the saxophone had moved something in me, the fact that it was mine. And without needing to scrimp and save, without having to go to huge lengths. One day he said to me:

“I often thought to myself, why am I keeping the saxophone? I don’t play, it just sits there in its case. I’ve got a grandson, but he’s in the slammer. When he comes out he’s only going to sell it for a song when I die. He’s your age. Go on, go stand in your circle.”

I went and stood where he told me to. He sat in his circle. His eyes were closed, he was listening to me play. All of a sudden one eye opened, the blind one. I could have sworn he could see me with that eye. It even glinted, and I stopped playing.

“Come to Mass with me on Sunday, ask the priest. The church is empty most of the week, maybe he’ll let you practice there. The truth is, this warehouse is useless. You really should have a proper space. What else is there around here? The firehouse? That’s even worse.”

He died, the construction was finished, I moved to another site then another one after that. We were building a cable factory, I remember. One day I went to the store to get a loaf of bread, and I heard someone talking about a ruined church in the neighborhood, it had been like that since the war. They held their services in a hut somewhere else. After the war they’d taken prefab panels from camps and barracks that were being torn down, and in the areas with a lot of war damage they used them to put up apartment buildings, barns, cattle sheds, government offices, community centers, schools. They’d built the church building out of those kinds of panels. It stood at one end of the village, while the ruined church was at the other end.

One day I went to have a look, and on the off chance I took my saxophone in its case. The place wasn’t completely ruined, that is, not to its foundations. But the war had left its mark. The steeple was gone. Half the roof was missing. The other half was riddled with bullet holes. There were big gaps in the walls. Not a single window had survived, though once there must have been stained glass windows, you could still see the remains of colored glass at the edges. The main doors had been torn off. A bomb must have hit the organ loft. You went in over rubble, with bits of the smashed organ poking out from among the debris. I accidentally stepped on something and it let out a moan that gave me quite a scare. But there wasn’t any way in except through the rubble. There wasn’t a single pew, no sign of confessionals, and where the main altar and side altars had been there were just empty spaces. On the floor were the remains of campfires. Soldiers must have burned the pews and confessionals and altars to cook food or keep warm. The walls looked like they’d been shot up by machine gun fire, the figures of the saints were all smashed. Here there was part of a head, over there an elbow or a foot in a funny-looking sandal. I picked up a hand, it was missing the thumb right here. I started to look around, see if I couldn’t find it someplace. I found another hand, it had all its fingers and it was clutching part of a rosary. But it turned out not to be a match for the first hand, even though one was a left hand and the other a right. I won’t say any more about the other fragments, I’m sure you can imagine. You had to watch where you stepped. In a word, there was debris and wreckage everywhere. On top of that, the rain had been pouring in for all those years since the war, snow had blown in, there’d been hard frosts, and there was no indication that anyone had tried to protect the place from further ruin.

The only thing still in any kind of shape were the Stations of the Cross. Though they were shot up and blackened, some of them had lost almost all their paint, so you couldn’t tell if Christ was carrying his cross or if the cross was moving along on its own. That and the pulpit. It was mighty strange that that survived, let me tell you. It was also peppered with bullet holes. But there wasn’t even one step missing. Yes, it was made of wood. Maybe they made speeches from there to keep the soldiers’ spirits up. Or maybe there’d been some anniversary. Holidays are celebrated just the same during wartime.

I went into the pulpit. I had no intention of playing, the ruins had really depressed me. I only wanted to look down on it all from up there. I’d never been in a pulpit before. When I was a child I always thought that from the pulpit the priest could see everything in people’s heads. Even if someone had a lot of hair, or if the women had winter headscarves on, he could still see everything. So during the sermon I’d hide behind father or mother so he wouldn’t tell me off in front of the whole congregation, saying, See, over there, in that little blond head evil is already lurking, and remember that evil grows as a person grows, brothers and sisters. Because every sermon was always about evil. He’d often call out the first and last names of some man or woman in that regard.

So now it was me standing in the pulpit, looking down from above on the devastation. And after a moment, it was as if some voice whispered to me to start playing. Maybe it was even the ruins themselves. I opened the case, took out my saxophone, put the mouthpiece between my lips. Though I still wasn’t sure. Then all at once my saxophone seemed to start playing on its own. It played and played, and I only seemed to be listening to what my playing sounded like amid the destruction. At that point I see someone making his way across the rubble. Disheveled gray hair, a walking stick raised and being waved in my direction. He was shouting something and straining as if he was trying to rise into flight. But his right leg wouldn’t let him, at every step he sank down on it so low it looked like he’d collapse before he reached me. I had the impression of someone rising up out of the debris. Gasping and sweating, he finally hobbled up to the pulpit and as if with his last breath he shouted:

“Get down from there! Stop making all that noise! Get down, do you hear?” He went under the pulpit and started hammering on it from below with his cane. “Get down! Get down!”

I kept on playing. He came out from underneath, stood still, tipped his head back to look at me, and seemed to start listening. He was evidently unable to keep his head in that position, because he put both hands on his cane and rested his chin on them. He stood motionless and listened. At a certain moment he looked up again.

“What’s that tube you’ve got there?” he asked. “The thing you’re playing?”

“It’s a saxophone.”

“Never heard of it. Do you think God would like it? He used to always listen to the organ. But the organ’s lying under the rubble, like you see. If you gave me a hand we could fish it out. I can’t manage on my own. I’m too old. And when I put my cane aside I can’t keep on my feet. I was the organist here my whole life. That was one fine organ! Over there in the hut they don’t need me. They don’t even have a harmonium. So I stayed here. God stayed with me. He wouldn’t go someplace where they don’t have music.”

He walked up to the debris and tapped on it with his cane.

“See, you hear that? Come down and clear away this piece of wall for me, it’ll be easier to hear.”

“What will be easier to hear?”

“You don’t get it. I sometimes come here, I sit in the ruins and listen. There, you hear that? If you’d only move this piece of wall. Come down. You’re young, you’ll be able to do it.”

I went there almost every Sunday and helped him dig out the organ. That’s to say, he sat by me and I did the digging. Every now and then he’d stand and try to pick some piece up, but the moment he leaned over he’d lose his balance. In the end I told him to stay put, I’d do the clearing myself. He hardly said a word, didn’t ask any questions, maybe he was listening. Because when I moved some bigger piece of rubble he would always repeat:

“Now you can hear more clearly. Dig over there now.”

One day I’d been digging and digging till I’d uncovered the keyboard. I sat down, tired, and he said:

“We’re close now. Listen.”

I swear I couldn’t hear a thing. I asked:

“Close to what?”

“God,” he said, “Close to God. God is music, only after that is He the Almighty.”

One Sunday I came as usual, looked around, I couldn’t see him. He would always be there before me, sitting in the ruins and waiting. The next Sunday I didn’t see him either. Or the next. I cleared away the whole organ. As you can imagine, it was nothing but wreckage. I gathered up the tiniest parts. But he never came back. Maybe he’d had the good fortune to die before I dug out the organ. Because if he’d seen it …