by Jay Martin
‘You know,’ I said, ‘we’ve got these neighbours at home – in Warsaw I mean – they’re Polish. Seem friendly enough. Young professional couple. We dropped a bottle of wine off when we first moved in there. But I suggested to the woman once that she come round for a cup of tea. And she said, ‘Why would I do that?’ I always thought the problem was that she was Polish. Maybe the problem is that she isn’t Australian.’
‘Those Poles are a strange bunch, though,’ Mark said. ‘They stick to themselves. Have their own shops. All live together.’
Yeah. A strange bunch, those Poles.
Gabby was bustling about her tiny, Polish-sized kitchen, taking a pre-packaged quiche out of the oven. Mark finished off the beer, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and stood up to leave. ‘See ya,’ he said, leaving the empty beer bottle on the bench.
‘See ya,’ I waved goodbye after him.
Gabby arranged the quiche on a plate with some salad. I poured us another glass of wine. We ate our reheated quiches with our fingers, our plates resting on our knees, in a London bedsit, and talked into the night like we were teenagers on a sleepover again.
ZIMA – WINTER
As our first Polish winter tightened its grip on Warsaw, the UN Climate Change Conference came to Poznan, about 300 kilometres west of the capital. Preparing for this had consumed a major part of Tom’s time and energy since he arrived. I was hoping that, once it was over, our lives might start to look normal. Or that we would start working out what our new normal looked like.
Tom’s predecessor had secured hotel rooms for the Australian delegation at a five-star hotel a year earlier. It was a coup; even the medium-sized Polish town had relatively few international standard options, and it was about to play host to several thousand international delegates. We arrived a few days ahead of the Australian team to conduct the inspection. You didn’t have to test the pillows to know they would be fluffy, nor the starched white sheets to know that they would feel cool and crisp. Satisfied with the delegation’s hotel, we headed to ours, a kilometre or so away – the hotel allowance that covered the five-star hotel for the delegation didn’t extend to us. I pulled my beanie and gloves on for the walk, and tightened my jacket around me – my new one, which I’d christened my stage-two coat. My first one, my stage-one coat, had been fine for the trip to London, but not for early winter in Warsaw, where the temperatures no longer made it above zero day or night.
We walked into our lobby to find a switchboard boasting chunky dials and metallic ports that looked like it might have launched the first spaceship. It lit up, showing they were still using it. A clunky elevator struggled up the five storeys to our floor; a corridor with tired carpet led to our room. Opening the door, a tiny space greeted us, just big enough for two narrow beds, with a gap of about a metre between them. I maneuvered our bags in, and burst out laughing.
‘I know, not quite five-star, is it?’ Tom said.
I pointed out the window. Immediately below us was the town cemetery.
‘Shall we head back to the meeting room at the hotel? The nice one, I mean?’ he said.
Getting out of this room was an attractive enough thought. But there were other pressing issues: the first of the delegates were due the next day, and there was a lot to do.
Australia had some thirty delegates flying over, including Climate Change Minister Penny Wong, South Australian Premier Mike Rann, and any number of senior bureaucrats. Tom had written to Canberra to request extra resources. Canberra refused, citing Tom’s non-working spouse, and so now I was part of the team.
Over the coming days, members of the Australian delegation started turning up, each of them hitting the ground working. They’d arrive every morning before I did at the convention centre on the outskirts of town where the conference was being held, and were there long after I left in the evening. As the conference wore on their eyes grew red-rimmed, yet they remained good-natured. They’d chosen people with the right constitutions for this job, that was sure.
Along with other countries, we had a small delegation headquarters in the centre – the ‘del’ – and my job was to do whatever was needed to keep it humming. I struggled through finding security passes and getting more keys cut, explaining to delivery drivers where to find us, and ordering bottled drinking water, printer ink and extra office chairs, all using Polish I’d never tried before. Last thing before I left each night, I would buy food – a chicken, bread, cheese, as well as chocolate and snacks – to keep the team going until they finished, which was often at two or three in the morning.
It wasn’t only the language that complicated all these requests. It was that we were in Poland. And Poland didn’t always work how it seemed it should. One morning Tom asked me to pick up some tea towels on my way in. I nodded and rolled over. I was still in bed, glad my alarm wasn’t going off until seven – another hour.
Once the stores were open, I started looking, checking the shopping centre and the kitchenware section of the supermarket, to no avail. Next I tried souvenir shops, in the hope of finding some kind of kitsch I love Poland merchandise. At each step my Polish attempts at describing what I wanted were met at best with confusion, and at worst with the look of people dealing with a madwoman. ‘Me want … for to clean … the cup, bowl, spoon … to make dry …’ Not only was it not evident that anyone understood what I wanted, it wasn’t apparent that any Polish person had ever wanted to make dry the spoon. I finally located some in an out-of-the-way craft store, which had a few under the counter. The assistant and I made the exchange, both casting furtive glances about, and I dashed back to the del. When Tom asked me to get some plastic envelopes for the laminating machine, I just laughed. I didn’t even know what they were called in English and now I had to find them in Polish.
One upside was that I got to see a lot of Poznan. Its local shopping centre was modern and impressive – a factory conversion that had had a major exposed brick and plate glass renovation, leaving a few floors of modern shops inside. The guidebook raved about the spectacular beauty of the market square. I suspected that the person who wrote that hadn’t seen it in December. Although, once the Christmas markets set up, their vats of hunter’s stew, stuffed pierogi drowning in pork fat and cabbage, and barbecued kiełbasa sausage attracting crowds of rugged-up families, my view changed, and I snuck out for a salty fix of ocypek – sheep cheese grilled over embers and served with cranberry sauce – whenever I could. The Fourth International Ice Sculpture Festival taking place in the square – one of the activities you could do in below zero temperatures – was a bonus. I left notices about such goings on in the del office, in case anyone had any time for sightseeing. They didn’t.
Neither did Tom, who was out by six in the morning and came to bed long after I did. A couple of times I’d had to shake him awake on a chair in the office. I kept my head down and did whatever I could. Including making a dash to a dozen shops in search of ground Lavazza coffee for Minister Wong, whose minders required that her preferred Italian blend be on hand. I changed one of the team’s fifty dollar notes into zloty from my own pocket when half a dozen money changers refused to believe the piece of yellow plastic was real money.
At the conference centre itself, thousands of people scurried from meeting to meeting with files and briefcases full of documents, agendas and meeting notes, all in an aircraft hangar-sized space warmed to twenty-four degrees. The Australian press coverage was full of accusations that the most effective outcome the conference could negotiate for climate change was no more climate change conferences. It was hard not to see their point.
As the conference reached its crescendo, I started to fall over famous people. US Senator John Kerry, who had been defeated for the presidency by George W Bush, passed me in the corridor, a phalanx of minders with earpieces flowing along behind him like a wake after a ship. I slipped into a roomful of people to hear former US vice-president and Nobel Peace Prize recipient Al Gore, speak. Watching the bank of simultaneous interpreter
s turning his words into foreign sounds as he spoke them was as mesmerising as his impassioned plea for the environment.
My one direct interaction with Penny Wong involved an instruction that I interrupt a meeting she hadn’t wanted to have so she could get out early.
‘Ten minutes max or it’s your job,’ she said, a smile playing on her lips. ‘Got it?’
‘Ten minutes max or it’s my job, Minister,’ I repeated, deciding not to complicate things by telling her I didn’t have one anyway, and handing her a coffee. A fruitless search for Lavazza had led to me substituting Illy. I never confessed, and she never mentioned it.
Back at the hotel, Tom gave me yet another briefing. Yes, I would make sure I arrived at the airport in plenty of time to meet the final official – a former ambassador, now a top climate-change negotiator, brought in to close the deal. Yes, I’d see if she needed to change money. Yes, I would take her as far as her room. I knew Tom needed me to do these things, but I didn’t like how many times he felt he needed to check I could do them. Darkening circles under his eyes stopped me from saying anything.
The day she was due, I planted myself in the airport arrivals hall, ‘Australia’ sign in hand. There had been no need. I spotted her as soon as she walked off the plane. As I helped her with her bags and led her to the bankomat, I tried to deduce exactly what it was about her that had marked her as Australian. A combination of the freckled skin from a childhood spent under the sun, and comfortable shoes, perhaps. Like the Poles in London, you could just see we came from somewhere else.
‘Polish zloty – pronounced zwot-eh in Polish,’ I said, preempting the question about what currency the ATM had spat out, as I led her to the driver and car waiting in the VIP area. We zipped through grey, wet streets to the hotel. As we went, I answered her questions about Poland: the major political parties and the differences between them (including PiS, an acronym for the Law and Justice party that sounded like ‘peace’ or ‘piss’ in English, depending on your political inclination); the impact of the global financial downturn here; what the del office and centre were like.
I apologised for Poznan’s depressing exterior. ‘It’s unfortunate that you’re not seeing it at its best,’ I said. I had no idea if Poznan looked better with a blue sky and an extra twenty degrees but I gave it the benefit of the doubt.
We reached the hotel, I handed her the room card, having prearranged check-in, and led her to her room along the route I’d practised. An ambassador – even a former one – couldn’t be delayed by the time it would take to work out whether to turn left or right out of a lift.
I stood back while she opened the door to the modern wood-grain finish, plump doona and fluffy towels and waited to receive her gratitude.
She turned to me. ‘This won’t do,’ she said.
Was she about to put her hand on my shoulder and say, ‘Sorry, just kidding, it’s great’? She wasn’t, and she didn’t. I looked around to try to see what wouldn’t do.
‘I can’t sleep in a single bed.’ I looked at the beds. Two neat, twin beds. Soft, inviting, yes. But double, no.
Every bed in this hotel had been booked a year ago. Every bed in this city was booked. Some of the delegation were sharing rooms. The New Zealanders were staying in a different town.
I swapped hushed whispers with the porter who’d arrived with her luggage, as though my charge could understand. ‘This lady, she want one big bed, no two small bed.’
‘The porter suggests we could put them together?’ I said, relaying his suggestion.
‘Do you think I’m being unreasonable?’ Her eyes bore into me. I willed my mouth to stay shut. After a moment’s further stand-off she waved a limp hand towards the offending sleeping apparatus, and disappeared into the bathroom. The porter and I moved the beds together.
‘Is there anything else, Ambassador?’ Once an ambassador, always an ambassador. There was no answer, and I retreated, handing the porter a note out of my wallet.
Spending this time around the delegation had reminded me of what it was like to work. The sense of purpose, feeling useful, being part of a team. And celebrating with your team once the job was done – that bit was happening in two nights when it would all be over and we were going out for dinner and what I suspected would be a very late night. I had been invited, although I felt like a fraud. These guys had worked so hard. All I’d done was buy some chickens and disappoint a former ambassador. And while part of me missed the sense of purpose and importance, I didn’t miss the pressure, the headaches, and ministers (in this case ambassadors) who I seemed to constantly disappoint. I remembered them very well. This was still Tom’s life. Could I really go back to it?
I was watching a movie on the laptop in my single bed when Tom appeared that night. ‘Can you do something for me tomorrow?’ he asked. He hadn’t shaved. It aged him.
I steeled myself for the next challenge.
‘Can you move our things into the other hotel?’ he said.
It took a moment to register. ‘You mean …’
‘There’s a spare room. We’ve got it for the last three nights.’
I beamed. ‘Of course!’
‘How’d it go with the ambassador?’ Tom asked.
‘Oh, that. Yeah, fine.’
***
With Poznan finally behind us, I was hoping Tom would give me a hand with organising Christmas. But he was so spent after it, I didn’t even bother asking and decided to just do it myself. When things did, finally, settle down, we would have to have a talk about the division of domestic work. I was happy to do most of it. Almost all of it, even. But not all of it.
In the meantime I got on with Christmas, laying the table with some of the Christmas decorations we’d brought from home: a runner embroidered with red and green mistletoe, and paper napkins with Santa Claus and dancing reindeer, while the biggest fir tree I’d been able to lug back from the seller I’d found outside the Palace stood in the corner of our apartment, boasting snow-frosted baubles and twinkling red and green lights. None of the ‘Relocation Supports’ had told us to pack Christmas decorations, but I was glad I had. Unlike in Australia, Polish houses didn’t get decorated at Christmas with tinsel, baubles and gold stars. At least, that’s what I deduced from the fact these things weren’t available at any of the shops I went to. It might have been slightly ridiculous to have brought snowy reindeer from Australia to Poland, but it wouldn’t have been as Christmassy – to me – if I hadn’t.
I put a CD into our new Playstation, hooked up to our new forty-six inch TV. Both had arrived at the apartment one evening, much to my surprise. ‘My reward to myself for Poznan,’ Tom had said. Personally I hadn’t thought there was anything wrong with the TV we had – certainly not enough to have warranted the amount I found out he’d spent when I saw the credit card statement. Maybe I’d mention that when life settled down, too.
‘So, I met Alex at a meeting of “like-mindeds”,’ Tom was telling me about one of the guests who was due shortly for our Christmas Eve drinks.
‘The “like-mindeds”? Is that a band?’
‘It’s what we all call people from countries with similar policies on things. Weapons of mass destruction. Economic policy. UN sanctions.’
A roast chicken and vegetables crackled away in the oven – another thing that said Christmas to me. I needed reminding, with the zero temperatures and wan light outside nothing like the Christmases I knew. I took another sip of my wine and topped up Tom’s. It was an Australian label we’d never drink at home. There were thousands of varieties of Australian wine, but in Poland you could only buy three. The criteria for selection seemed to be that they had a kangaroo on the label.
‘Alex is a military attaché at the American Embassy. He sells hardware to the Polish government,’ Tom said.
‘Like hammers and nails?’
‘Like tanks and fighter jets.’
‘So he’s an arms dealer.’
‘When it’s legal, it’s called being a military att
aché.’
There was a knock at my door, and before I knew it a like-minded arms dealer was kissing me three times. I added his food contribution – a giant smoked salmon, apparently very Polish Christmas fare – to the table.
Tom had mentioned that Alex was single. On the short side and – if tonight’s clothing choice was anything to go by – with a penchant for comfortable slacks and open neck shirts in matching khaki, I could see why. But his sense of humour – delivered in a slow American drawl – made an immediate good impression. By the time I’d sat down again, he had already launched into a story about a trip he’d taken to Plock, ending with him having to hitchhike home in a Fiat 126, with a nun, a buxom blonde and some chickens.
‘Plock? I’ve never heard of it. What’s there?’ I said. I don’t think it was in the guidebook top ten.
‘There’s an old archives. I’ve been looking up some family history.’
‘So you obviously speak some Polish?’ I asked. I hoped my tone conveyed that that was something that would impress me.
‘Yeah. The first year in a new country we spend doing visa interviews. And somehow, after you’ve heard a year’s worth of versions of why someone wants to come to the United States, you have the basic vocabulary you need to function in a country.’
Maybe I needed to do something like that to improve my Polish. ‘I’m trying to learn Polish, too. It’s harder than I thought,’ I said. ‘The first few times I had to ask for coffee, or where the supermarket was, or could I have twenty grams of cheese, it was hard. But I worked out after a while that in the course of a normal day, you only really have to say variations of about ten things, and I know all of those now. It’s hard to progress.’
