Today’s Translation Tuesday Feature “Beanstalk” is taken from Samosiejki (Self-Sowing, Wydawnictwo Literackie, 2021), an eco-critical short story collection by the emerging Polish author Dominika Słowik. Compared to the other stories within the same collection, translator Jess Jensen Mitchell says this particular piece “has an especially light comic touch as it riffs on bodily sensations, capitalism, and the whims of a quirky midlife woman-turned-plant. It is an ASMR for the soul, an ode to joys vegetable, animal, and mineral.” Need we say more? Read on!
On Thursday, a beanstalk started growing out of my nose.
On Saturday, it reached halfway up my forehead.
On Sunday, I was overcome with the desire to dip my feet in a cool tub of water.
On Tuesday, the first leaves appeared.
On Wednesday, without realizing what I was doing, I ran out into the rain, turned my face to the sky, and just stood there like that with my mouth agape for a good fifteen minutes.
Then I remembered how I got an F in my third year of grade school because I didn’t hand in my environmental science project. I was supposed to grow a bean sprout on a piece of moistened gauze. As luck would have it, the bean disappeared. We blamed our dog at the time, because I couldn’t have stealthily inhaled a seed, right?
I did a brief round of soul-searching. Of course I could have. I never liked my environmental science teacher.
It explained a lot. Whenever I got sick, only one of my nostrils would leak. If I started to run, I’d lose my breath immediately. I had an excellent tolerance for unpleasant smells and I was always picking my nose—despite forty-odd years on this planet, I never kicked the habit.
And although I never trusted my luck, my surprise soon turned to joy: something good was finally happening to me.
How could I forget the childhood tale of the magic beanstalk? I knew great riches would soon be mine. As far as I remembered, that’s how that story ended.
In fact, I felt rich already, so I decided to stop holding back.
The bank gave me a loan immediately, at the door—the beanstalk was already big enough that I couldn’t get past the entryway. The growing plant was signed on as a guarantor. The loan assistant assured me that the bank’s rules and regulations would allow it, then quickly passed me the papers that needed to be signed. We shook hands. She seemed just about as happy as I was. What a nice lady! To really take joy from someone else’s good fortune like that. I wouldn’t be able to do it.
From that moment onwards, I bought everything I’d ever dreamed of. And my dreams were always somewhat… atypical. It came as no surprise that the town paper soon wrote an article about me and the beanstalk. Even the local news station shot a ten-minute documentary about us.
Admirers—male and female—began to appear; as it turns out, people are turned on by strange things.
Much to their disappointment, it soon became apparent that I’m wind- and self-pollinating, and, as if that weren’t enough, I’m an angiosperm, too. Still, they kept sending me letters. I got so much mail I could only read the headers.
Luckily, my family was pretty accepting, even though they told me not to mention beanstalk at get-togethers “because you know why.” All the same, we had a lovely time at my uncle’s name day celebration. It was a bit chilly—beanstalk had grown so big that the window had to be kept wide open—but my relatives just pretended that they were feeling terribly overheated, anyway. My aunt and uncle were very pleased.
*
It turned out that it was the bank sending me all those letters. The beanstalk was growing more and more verdant. I worried it would start trailing downwards, but luckily, it kept climbing upwards and sprouting new leaves. Shortly thereafter, I lost sight of the tip. We were now feeling terribly dry. I’d spend my days in the bathtub.
Warts popped up all over my body. I’d been expecting that—that much I do remember from school.
The letters from the bank were getting less polite.
Then, the first buds appeared. Then flowers. Blossoming: you know the drill. It’s tiring. But the pollinating! That was a real delight. The sun shone warm on the balcony and I’d just pollinate, pollinate, pollinate away.
Unfortunately, I soon got itchy all over. At first I thought it was from the fertilizer I’d been using on us. It was a very strange feeling. In the middle of the night, I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I ran to the bathroom.
I strained, I pushed…I couldn’t believe my eyes. We’d grown beans! I felt moved. They were full, round, and lush.
The bank must’ve found out somehow, because they stopped sending me letters and started knocking at the door. I didn’t open.
One day, just after breakfast, we felt an unpleasant vibration, as if something very large was creeping up the outer walls—luckily, we noticed it just in time. The financial advisor had managed to get one foot on a window ledge and was clambering onto the balcony. At the last second, I fended him off with a rake (I’d started keeping garden tools in the house to keep things somewhat tidy).
Well, the bank seemed to understand the ways of the beanstalk like no other. If you think about it, there was nothing unusual about it—their climbing up the ranks and all.
From that moment on, our problems compounded. Our bills grew. The money ran out. My landlord wasn’t happy, since the neighbours kept finding things to complain about. He threatened to take part of my security deposit for “engendering bother and annoyance.”
“Miss, the advert very clearly stated, ‘no children, no animals.’”
“It’s not an animal, though!”
“It’s very close.”
I must admit, he had a point.
By now, beanstalk had grown very tall. It seemed like I, too, was both here—down in the studio flat, and there—up overhead. That experience opened me up to travel. I read once that octopi think with every part of their bodies. I could now understand a bit better what that meant. Sometimes, as I was soaking in the bathtub, I imagined that a bean was growing all over the town, especially the bank, squeezing it so hard that everything crumbled and collapsed in on itself, like a paper house.
I had absolutely no idea where I began and where I ended—it wasn’t a new feeling, but at least it all made sense now. Beanstalk wasn’t just growing up anymore, but also down, through my insides. The doctor warned me about that, as if it were a bad thing…
In spite of it all, I started sleeping with my legs up, just for my own peace of mind; I’d always been afraid to put down roots.
The bank had stopped sending letters to me, but mail addressed to “Dear Mr. Beanstalk,” began to appear. And those letters were getting terser by the day. The last one didn’t even have an envelope. It was a tiny little piece of paper slid under the door.
The next day, the financial advisor came to our house. This time he came the normal way, using the stairs. He’d brought the police. They looked ready to smash some heads. We didn’t open up, obviously, but it seemed they weren’t going anywhere. They stood their ground, spewing filth about percentages, revaluation, inflation, consolidation and extensive farming, and, even worse things, like patents, exchange rates, and overvaluation. The financial officer wanted me to let them in. He threatened to can me.
I was mortified.
“You are now property of the bank, miss! I’m telling you, make yourself available for immediate collection!” He waved a scrap of paper.
I watched them, but I could barely see anything because the financial officer was a spitter and he’d gunked up the peep hole. I wasn’t able to read much.
“Do I have to drag you out by your nose?”
Enraged, he finally slipped a piece of paper under the door. I wrote a response and slipped his little letter right back. He turned beet red as he read our reply:
Yes.
They were getting ready to break down the door. It was only then that I noticed a large pair of pruning shears in the advisor’s bag. The door was almost off its hinges. They kicked at it furiously. The police grabbed the financial advisor and bashed him into the door like a battering ram. The wall surrounding the door frame cracked. He must’ve had an unusually hard head.
I knew what we ought to do.
I ran out to the balcony and barricaded the door with rakes. I glanced at the stem growing from my nose. Recently, the base had started to turn to wood— a wonderful sensation. I grabbed it tight with both hands and hopped off the tile. I climbed higher and higher, trying my best not to damage any leaves.
We were already very high up when the financial advisor and police finally broke open the balcony door. Teeny-tiny, they looked up at the sky, shielding their eyes with their hands. I gave them the middle finger. I guess they had bad eyesight, because they waved back at me. Just in case, I stuck out my tongue.
The quality of life up here is excellent. There’s more sunlight, a good level of moisture. Old beans burst, new stalks come in. We’re considering whether to go back or move on. We’re not sure yet; everything looks different from up close.
Translated from the Polish by Jess Jensen Mitchell
Dominika Słowik is a celebrated novelist and short story writer. She published her first novel, Atlas Doppelganger, to great acclaim in 2015 and her second novel, Zimowla, won the prestigious Polityka Passport in 2019. Her first short story collection, Samosiejki. was released in 2021. In 2024, she published her third novel, Rybie oko, an audacious coming-of-age tale set against the backdrop of Poland’s transition to free market democracy. She lives in Kraków.
Jess Jensen Mitchell researches and translates Polish literature. She is a PhD student at Harvard, writing a dissertation on Upper Silesia. Her translation of the “scandalous woman” Irena Krzywicka was featured in the Penguin Book of Polish Short Stories, and her first book-length translation—of Jerzy Pilch’s irrepressibly stylish and bawdy novel Spis cudzołożnic— will come out next year with Open Letter Books. She an alumna of the Emerging Translator Mentorship in Polish, Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference, and BCLT.
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