A Treatise on Shelling Beans (7 page)

I was just about to let Mr. Robert know when he spoke first, breaking our silence.

“I think I told you in one of my letters that I’m planning to sell this place.”

I swear that in fact he’d never mentioned this. Why on earth had he invited me in that case? As a farewell to the cabin?

“Then I’m going to move. Away from here, away from the city, the whole nine yards. I don’t yet know when. I’m waiting to find a buyer. There is one guy, but he wants to pay in installments. And you know what that’s like. He’ll pay the first installment and the second, then after that he’ll start making excuses. With installments that’s just the way it is, there are always more important things, the payments can wait.”

“Maybe I could buy it?” I said jokingly. I immediately regretted the joke. The words had bypassed my will, my intentions – they’d come out by themselves. Especially that at that very moment I’d meant to say to him: I’m sorry, Mr. Robert, but I have to leave today, this afternoon. I’ve a long drive ahead of me and tomorrow I ought to be at work. I have commitments, you understand.

“You?” He laughed, I didn’t have the impression that he’d taken what I said as a joke. “You?” he repeated with a hint of mockery. “That’s a good one. You live in a different country, miles and miles away. And here you’d have your summer house. How would that look, you’d drop by for a day or two at the most?”

“Sometimes it’s good to visit another country even just for a day or two,” I said, blundering ahead as if to spite myself, to spite him for not having understood that it was a joke.

“And you’d visit often? I don’t think so. All those letters for so many years and I couldn’t get you here. Now you say you’d come often. I don’t think so. Exactly how often?”

“It would depend.”

“On what?”

“The circumstances.”

“What circumstances?”

“All kinds. There’s no predicting circumstances.”

“The thing is, a cabin like this can’t just sit there waiting for circumstances to be right for you. It needs looking after. Aside from the fact that something’s always in need of repair. Plus, crime is getting worse. Not a week goes by without a break-in somewhere. We tried forming a neighborhood watch, but then one person would come, another would forget, for the third person something would come up that night. Best of all would be to hire somebody to mind the place, but they’d have to live here.” Then after pondering for a moment, calmly now, as if finishing his thought: “And you could only come here maybe once a year …”

“Maybe twice,” I said, testing him further, because I couldn’t fathom his resistance.

He looked at me dubiously.

“Even twice. But what for? What for?” His voice rose in irritation.

“The same thing everyone comes here for,” I said. Though I’m not sure I wasn’t testing myself also. “To breath fresh air. Rest up a bit, get away from it all.”

“What on earth are you saying?” He shifted angrily in his seat. “Where is there fresh air these days? There’s no fresh air, no clean water, nothing. And who’s aware of what kind of air they’re breathing anyway? They breathe because their organism tells them they have to. And even if you’re right, does it really do anyone any good to breathe a little fresh air on Saturday or Sunday? Or even for a month or whatever, on their vacation? None of it helps anyone. You think they come here to rest, to get away from it all?” He pulled the glass of
beer abruptly away from his mouth, a little of it splashed onto his shirt. “Don’t you see this place has gotten more crowded than an apartment building? In an apartment building, even if it’s ten stories or more, I don’t have to know anyone. Good morning, good morning, that’s it. And not even with everyone, I don’t have to talk to the downstairs neighbor, or the person upstairs. A week can go by without seeing the guy next door. If the two of you go out and come back at different times you don’t have to see him at all until they carry him out when he’s dead. Whereas here, you have to whether you like it or not. The moment you arrive they’re all over you like ants. They itch, pinch you, bite you. After a week of vacation I no longer know whether I’m me or someone else. I mean, tell me how many different people can fit inside someone till he stops feeling that he’s himself? People, they’re like this glass, you can’t pour more into it than’ll fit. I have a shop in the city, but I know almost the whole city not from there but from here. And if it were only their first and last names, job, address, phone number, that I could handle. I already have a whole drawerful of business cards. So what? They’re just lying there lifeless. I don’t know how many times I’ve copied out my address book to at least weed out the ones that have died. But it keeps getting thicker and thicker all the same. Still, even that would be bearable. But that’s not what I wanted to say. The point is that here I feel like I’m in an ant’s nest, and I mean, who wants to be an ant? They won’t spare you in any way. The most intimate things come spilling from them as if they were going to the bathroom. There’s no worse place than somewhere where everyone has to be together and it’s all during the season. Who’s with who, who’s against who, who’s on top of who, who’s underneath who, who does what for what reason, who’s hiding one thing or another, who’s being given away to who – you hear all different kinds of things. You want illnesses, you got them. So-and-so has one thing, another person has something else, one of them’s had something removed, with another one it’s some other thing, a third person has something else again. Who’s constipated, who has diarrhea, you name it. Even orgasms, you’ll find out. One woman has one every time, another one’s never had one.
They sit or lie there, sighing away. You have no idea how sound travels around the lake. Plus, the cabins are all close to each other, and if it’s a hot day like today all the doors and windows are open, as you see, so it’s not just your neighbors you can hear, it’s everyone. On the shore you hear what’s being said on the water, on the water what they’re saying on the shore, everything can be heard somewhere. You can’t get away from hearing things. You can’t get away from seeing things. However much you want to. It goes into your ears and your eyes of its own volition. And of course no one comes here just to lock themselves away in their cabin. The faintest whisper gets magnified here, the tiniest detail is blown up. Whether you like it or not you have to know every stomach, every belly button, backside, all the veins on their legs, the scars from operations. Your eyes and your ears have nowhere to hide. Even your thoughts become a trash heap for other people’s thoughts. And here you’re considering …”

I didn’t recognize him. He was a completely different person than I’d imagined from his letters. Could something have happened to make him change so dramatically? I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why he was so hell-bent on turning me off this place. He’d been inviting me, luring me even, all those years, and now I was finally there … Aside from anything, he should have realized I was just joking about buying the cabin. But maybe even before, on the way, when we were still in the car, he’d started to suspect that I wasn’t the person he’d imagined from my letters either. And the thing with the cabin merely confirmed it for him.

“And here you are considering …” he repeated, this time as if only to his own thoughts. “Believe me, when I return home I have to get used to myself all over again from the beginning, collect myself, from all the way back in childhood, from my first words, my first thoughts, my first tears, feel once again that it’s me. Here it’s like living on a screen. And what’s a person without secrets, eh? You tell me.” He was practically boiling with anger: “I’m going to sell this place, I swear to God! And move away.”

He poured the rest of the beer from the can into his glass and, gazing at the noisy lake in front of us, he fell silent again. I ought to have spoken, he may even have expected it of me. But nothing came to mind aside from saying that I had to leave that afternoon. I decided, though, that it wasn’t the right moment to bring it up. So I asked him as if casually:

“So where are those graves where you told me the mushrooms grow the best?”

“You want to go mushroom-picking? Not now though, not now.” He jumped up from the table. “Let me fetch another beer. Should I make something to eat? Are you hungry yet? OK, I’ll make something later. I brought some grilled chicken, all we need to do is heat it up.”

A moment later, returning with fresh cans of beer he stopped halfway:

“See over there? I think she’s new. I’ve not seen her here before. I must find out who she is. That one there. See?” He put the cans on the table, opened them, poured for me and for himself. “You know, that’s the only thing keeping me here. If it weren’t for that I’d have sold up long ago.” He took a mouthful of beer and started looking around again, with completely different eyes it seemed – they glittered, they were almost predatory. From time to time he’d glance at me with something between a smile and a mocking twist of the mouth. “That one over there’s not bad either. The one getting into the boat. Her I know. She really likes it, and the things she knows how to do! I’ll show you another one also, she lives close by, two cabins away. Except I don’t think she’s here yet.”

I tell you, I was listening to him but I couldn’t believe this was Mr. Robert. The same Mr. Robert from all those letters and cards and phone calls. I wondered what was true in him, as I compared what he was saying now with what he’d written me all those years. Maybe nothing at all. But I didn’t let it show.

“Or that one over there, check her out. The one walking along the shore. She’s even looking our way. That’s the only good thing, with all of these irritations here. Because with a woman like that, here it’s as if you found her in her natural
state. And finding a woman in nature isn’t the same as finding her on the street or in a cafe. Ah, nature. It straightens out the most crooked person. What’s she wandering around like that for? Oh, there you go, she’s lying down. She’s going to sunbathe. She can lie in the sun for hours on end. Even at the beginning of summer she’ll look like a black woman. To be honest I don’t really like it when they’re tan like that. Though the tanned ones are a lot easier. They can’t bring themselves to let all the torment of lying in the sun go to waste. And obviously they wouldn’t go through all of that just for the chumps they’re married to. They make those guys go try to lose weight on their boats and canoes. I mean, how long can you put up with one of those oafs? A year, two, then so much for being faithful. It’s a good thing the world has set aside all those superstitions and habits and customs. These days no one can afford to have a longer relationship. Everyone’s chasing after something, reaching for something, being with someone else is like having your legs in chains. You have no desire to talk, but here you have to. There’s nothing left to talk about, but you’ve got to talk. True, there are marriages that last till death. But they’re relics of the past. Before long you’ll be able to visit those kinds of people the way you visit castles and museums and cathedrals. The truth of it is, these days marriage is a corporation. One fails, you start another. Then you do what you can just so as to keep going somehow or other, to make it to the end. This life of ours isn’t worth a damn, I’m telling you. All these dreams and hopes we have.” His eyes suddenly flashed. “See over there. She just arrived. You know, the one from two cabins away. Wait till you see her in her bathing costume. You won’t be able to keep your eyes off her. She sometimes sunbathes topless. Sure, that’s reached Poland also. Why wouldn’t it. In that respect there aren’t any borders, languages, all that nonsense. I’ll have to invite her to go boating one of these days. Maybe there’ll be an opportunity. I mean, we know each other enough to say hello. But something’s holding me back. I’m all set to do it, then I lose my nerve. Maybe to begin with it’d be better just to suggest going berry-picking? The blackberries should be ripe by now. Next Sunday I’ll go check in the woods. Though she might not want to do that,
because of the thorns. Too bad there aren’t any more wild strawberries this year. That’s the only thing that keeps me here. I mean you tell me, what do people really get from life? All that effort, the maneuvers, the sleeplessness, the worries, and what do they get? Then you add in the illnesses, other misfortunes, what do they get? Try sitting like that all day long in my shop. With the souvenirs. Ha, ha! I’ll sell the shop as well, the hell with it!”

He took a sip of beer. A moment ago his eyes had been glittering, but all of a sudden it was like they’d lost their color and been extinguished. After a moment of silence, in a voice that was just as colorless and extinguished he said:

“And if you knew what happened here once. Unless you’re the kind of person that can live anywhere.”

“I know, Mr. Robert.” I’d decided to finally tell him. I’d come to the conclusion that it wasn’t right to keep it a secret. Especially since he’d gotten suspicious of how I knew the way here when we were driving.

“How?” A look of consternation came over him. “Not from my letters, surely? I never wrote you about that. Ever.”

“I was born here.”

“What do you mean, here?”

“Here.”

“Here? What do you mean, here?!” I was taken aback by the vehemence with which he was trying to reject my confession. “Unless you weren’t around at that time. No one survived from here. No one.”

“Except that as you see, I survived, so to speak. In one sense it wasn’t just me, but you, and all these people on the lake – we all survived. All of us who are still alive.”

“But back then no one did. No one.” He was almost angry. “You see those hills. We lived over there during the war. Then one day, all of a sudden we heard they were burning whole villages around these parts. My mother grabbed me by the hand, I was a kid then, and we ran to the highest hill. Winnica it was called. There was already a crowd up on top. I couldn’t make out very much
aside from the sea of smoke over the trees. But the grownups saw everything. Burning houses, barns, cattle sheds, frantic animals, people being shot at. At one point my mother picked me up, but I still couldn’t see anything beside the smoke. Then she knelt down and told me to do the same, because everyone was kneeling. She told me to cry, because everyone was crying. Except that I felt like laughing. My mother was wearing makeup, and her tears were making dark streaks that rolled down her cheeks. I couldn’t help myself. People turned to look at me, and someone said: