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.