by Jay Martin
I decided to call Hannah and invite her for a coffee.
LATO – SUMMER
Summer was in full swing, and an invite to the US Fourth of July arrived. It was addressed not to the Ambassador this time, or even Tom ‘and spouse’, but to Tom and me personally. Because it wasn’t our support for their wars, our close economic ties, or even our ‘special relationship’ as non-EU countries in an EU environment that had gotten us the invite. It was just that like-minded arms dealer Alex had a say in the invite list and thought we’d like to come.
The US ambassador’s residence driveway was clogged with cars with flags on their bonnets and blue diplomatic plates, disgorging diplomats and ‘miscellaneous others’ alike. I still wasn’t sure which camp I belonged in – if either. In this, it was typical of most of the events I’d been to so far. The gauntlet of metal detectors staffed by black men with earpieces, however, was new. We submitted to a bag search, an ID check, and were finally cleared for access to the food.
We had amassed quite a collection of national days over the course of our first year. Thailand had flown in a team of Bangkok’s best chefs to prepare a Thai feast. The UK had featured not only fish and chips and Pimm’s and lemonade, but two chocolate fountains. Austria had just been schnitzel and long speeches, although at least it had been held in a private art gallery in a historical building usually off limits to the public.
The US of A, though, was not to be outdone. We were met just through the gate by khaki-shirted Alex and Starbucks. I didn’t know which to be more excited about. I hadn’t seen Alex in a while. But they’d got a Starbucks van into a country where there was no Starbucks! God bless America. I gave Alex three quick kisses and left him talking with Tom about diplomatic things while I headed for the reassuring green circle.
With a caramel iced frappuccino grande (with whip) safely in hand, I did an initial circuit. The American ambassador’s residence was set on about a hectare of land, sloping down to the pool and tennis courts at the rear. Today, it was like a fairground. Table after table groaned under the weight of their offerings: a pasta buffet, ribs and steak table, burger and hot dog stands, sushi corner, popcorn and fairy floss machines, a waffle bar (with chocolate sauce, ice cream and sprinkle topping options), a Bols Vodka promotional stand staffed by blonde women with improbable breasts in low-cut sailor outfits. All of it free for the taking. A part of me wondered if you could actually eat the trees and the chairs. Now I regretted the grande frappucino. It was going to take me time to finish before I could start consuming other things.
I stood in a corner, sipping my iced drink.
‘Well hello!’ It was Dee, the New Zealander from book club, gourmet hot dog in one hand and stack of serviettes in the other. Before I knew it she was on me, planting a kiss somewhere behind my ear.
‘How have you been?’ she barely paused for breath – let alone an answer – before she launched into a re-cap of her own last few weeks – trips with her husband to Paris, Brussels and Stockholm, and a birthday trip to Venice. ‘But I could not believe it, do you know what he got me for my birthday?’
Apart from the weekend in Venice?
‘A Boleslawiec platter!’
Boleslawiec was the distinctive Polish pottery with geometric blue and white designs, named after the town it was produced in. It was at once delicate and tough. I didn’t know if Poles bought it, but expats were crazy about the stuff. Must stock up before we leave, I thought.
‘Honestly! Reeks of desperation shopping. Don’t you think?’ She took a delicate bite of her hot dog.
‘I’ve been doing a bit of travel myself.’ I told her a bit about a recent crazy trip Tom and I had done, trying to cover off Helsinki, Tallinn, Madrid and Seville in Tom’s early summer two-week break. I’d read him the best bits of the Polish Foreign Minister’s book while we drove a hire car through the olive groves of Andalusia. Multi-tasking even on vacation. Both of us admitted, afterwards, that we probably needed to balance all the things we wanted to see against the realities of what time permitted. ‘And Anthea and I went to visit Lodz, where that Wajda film we watched at book club was set.’
‘Lodz. Really.’ She said it Lodz, as it was spelled in English. Not Woodzh, as it was pronounced in Polish, and as I had said it. She polished off the last of her hot dog and wiped a tiny smear of ketchup from the corner of her lip.
‘Yes, it was OK. Probably wouldn’t put it in the top ten places to visit in Poland,’ I said.
‘Well, it’s not like there are nine others!’ She swabbed each finger with the serviettes in her hands. ‘You wouldn’t mind, would you?’ she handed me a ball of saucy napkins.
‘Not at all.’ I even meant it, since it gave me an excuse to walk away from her, and towards Victoria who I could see on the other side of the swimming pool, loaded up with barbecue ribs. Some temporary work contracts had been taking her back and forth to London over the past few months and I hadn’t seen her in a while.
‘How’s the permanent job hunting going?’ I asked, after we’d swapped pleasantries and commented on each other’s culinary haul.
‘Actually, good!’ A smile appeared on her face.
‘You found something? Tell me!’
‘It’s looks like a really good position, it’s exactly in my field, and it pays well.’
‘That’s great!’
‘Yeah, and I’ll still be able to come back most weekends!’ Victoria said.
‘Wait – you mean it’s not in Warsaw?’
‘God no, it’s in London.’ There was a pause in the conversation. ‘Oh come on, there’s nothing going on here.’
‘Well, that’s great news. I’m happy for you.’ I tried to make it convincing. She made an excuse about getting some more food. Although her plate was full.
Maybe I should get a job. Maybe I should want to get a job. What was I going to spend the next two years doing – ‘keeping myself busy’ with yoga and book club, and writing a few articles for a local magazine? Gabby had been reassuring, but what if this was my life from now on? Fast-forward twenty years, was I going to end up like all the IWG women, introducing myself by where the government had sent my husband – and his wife?
London from book club (Berlin, Geneva, maybe Russia?) and someone I presumed was her insurance industry husband wafted past. She stopped and introduced me. ‘Jay from my book club, her husband is with the embassy.’ He yawned with his eyes. Oh dear. I’d bored someone in insurance. This might be a new low. ‘She writes for the Warsaw Insider,’ she added. He asked if I was a journalist by trade, and I gave him a précis of my background, standing a little taller as I did. ‘We’ve been looking for a communications person at the firm,’ he said. ‘Give my secretary a call if you’re interested.’ He handed me a card before excusing himself. His wife nodded and followed him. As good expat wives do.
‘Grande frappuccino?’ Alex appeared and pointed to my drink. I nodded. He held out what what looked like a mango frappuccino for me to taste.
I took a sip. ‘Vodka?’
He indicated towards the Bols girls. ‘I’m not supposed to drink on duty. But they’ll help you out if you ask them nicely.’
‘I’m sure,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the invite. Very impressive.’ I swept one hand around the grounds. In my other, maybe, a ticket back to the world of work?
‘No problem. The US taxpayer thanks you for your support over the years.’
‘Although that’s not why we’re here, is it?’
‘You’re here to experience the plenty and prosperity we can all have if you would all just adopt the kind of laissez-faire economic and democratic political systems we’d like you to. What do you think?’
‘In truth, I’m a bit disappointed. The Brits had chocolate fountains,’ I said.
‘They’re in the lounge room,’ he said.
Of course. Where else would you put a chocolate fountain.
Even though people’s plates were piled high, none of the lines at the tables were moving. People
were emptying their plates even as they were standing in line filling them. As though the capacity of their stomachs was as unlimited as their desires. A television crew roamed by. Was this news? I guess the prosperity message had to be spread far and wide.
‘Mr Ambassador,’ Alex called out to another passer-by. ‘I’d like you to meet Jay Martin. She and her husband, Tom Armstrong, are with the Australian Embassy. Jay, this is the American ambassador to Poland.’
I held out my hand and he took it, pumping it just the right number of times, with just the right pressure, and dropping it at just the right moment.
I thanked him for the invite and tried to think of something to say to the US ambassador to Poland that would demonstrate my interest in foreign affairs and knowledge of current issues. Preferably something intelligent, witty and charmingly self-deprecating, all at once.
The ambassador got in first. ‘My tie has baby elephants on it.’ He held it up, so I could see it for myself.
‘Yes, Mr Ambassador. It does,’ I said.
‘It’s been lovely to meet you. Now, if you’ll excuse me.’ The ambassador pivoted on his heel and walked away.
‘If asked, I will deny that ever happened,’ Alex said.
‘Deny what happened?’ I smiled.
‘Hey,’ I continued, ‘I found out a bit more about my family tree, you know.’ I outlined some of the people I’d tracked down with the help of the websites he’d directed me to. A grandfather from Wales, a few great-grandparents from England and Germany. ‘I’m a bit disappointed. I was hoping for something more exotic,’ I said. ‘I noticed, though, that once they got to Australia, they were all married and had children and died in these tiny places that are just dots on the map now. And so I looked up the places, and at the time they’d all come, every single place they’d gone was a mining town having a gold rush. I’m solely descended from people who risked everything to come to another country in search of their fortune.’
‘The story of the new world,’ he said.
One of the cleaners pushed two giant rubbish bins past me. They were full of plates of discarded food. No matter how hard people had tried, they just weren’t that hungry. Or maybe they’d just seen something else they would rather have, and thrown what they had away to start on a fresh plate of food they didn’t really need either.
It was only when the band fell silent that I noticed one had been playing. Tom appeared from somewhere out of the crowd and stood by me. A woman came on stage, and subjected her voice to the US anthem. Her home of the braaaaaaaave was overtaken by clapping, cheering and wolf whistles from the crowd. She held her arms up, and gave several bows.
I looked at the empty plastic coffee container in my hand. Enjoy your beverage! it told me. Grammatically, the imperative case. Enjoyment was an order.
Two blonde girls took to the stage and, without any obvious signal, commenced the Polish national anthem.
‘Jeszcze Polska nie zginęła, kiedy my żyjemy, they sang, sweetly and cleanly. They finished and walked off to dignified applause.
‘It says a lot when your national anthem starts, “Poland’s not dead yet”, ’ I said to Tom and Alex.
‘Is that really what it says?’ Tom asked.
‘ “Poland has not yet died, so long as we’re alive. What the foreign power has taken from us, we will seize back with the sword”, ’ I said, translating the first few lines for them. ‘I mean, think about ours: “Australians all let us rejoice, for we are young and free. We’ve golden soil and wealth for toil, our home is girt by sea”. ’
‘Girt by sea?’ said Alex.
‘No one knows what that means. And its one reference to anything a bit like effort actually makes no sense. Like they just needed a word that rhymed with soil. Let’s face it, if you had to paraphrase the Australian national anthem, it would go something like “It’s pretty nice here, how about we have a barbecue”. ’
‘Speaking of which, I wouldn’t mind something more to eat!’ Alex said, pointing to the cornucopia around us.
‘After that grande caramel frappuccino, I’m not really that hungry,’ I said.
‘What’s hunger got to do with it?’ Alex said.
We headed for the food, just as a red, white and blue fireworks display exploded above us.
***
The precious Polish summer was in full swing. Finally! And Warsaw was intent on squeezing every last drop of pleasure out of it. Red and pink geraniums appeared on balconies, randy teenagers on park benches. And, pop-up stalls – kioski – selling only lukewarm beer in plastic cups and hot chips sprang up on piazzas and in parks, like wildflowers in a desert after the rains.
I was off to meet my new language exchange friends. I hadn’t – as predicted – discovered any talent for salsa dancing in the course of writing the article for the Insider, but I had come across some people who used one of the schools for a language exchange group and I had started going along to the get-togethers. Who turned up varied from week to week, but a core of regulars was forming. Among them were Tomek, a mild and thoughtful forty year old Pole who said he wanted to learn English, but seemed happy enough to sit and listen as a cast of miscellaneous nationalities mangled Polish. He’d never studied English at school, which came as a genuine surprise to me. I had the native speaker’s secret suspicion that everyone you met did, actually, speak English, and any that weren’t were just choosing not to. The Polish generation gap was encapsulated in the difference between him and Natalia, a dynamic young Pole with an easy smile in her mid-twenties who switched between English, German and Russian with less effort than changing gears in a car. It was Elena, a dark Russian who had been sent to manage the Warsaw office of her company, who also didn’t speak English, who I found the most difficult to understand. But Tomek told me that she would just throw in Russian words when she didn’t know a Polish word and even he didn’t understand her half the time.
The venue moved around, but we were meeting today at a bar that had sprung up in the central courtyard of a pre-war apartment building. Its makeshift tables and chairs stopped just shy of a statue of Mary, blue cloak over her bowed head and fresh flowers at her base. Another small group had settled near us, at a table by the wall, chattering away in Portuguese. I wondered what had brought them to Poland.
Elena patted me on the arm to get my attention. ‘So, tell me, do you really have Aboriginal people in Australia? Do they live in caves?’ People in Central Europe were far more interested in Aboriginal people than I’d expected.
‘Yes, we have Aboriginal people. No, they don’t live in caves,’ I told her.
‘But aren’t they really … otstalyi … not very developed?’
‘No, but there’s a lot of racism against Aboriginal people in Australia.’
Elena looked confused. ‘You have racism in Australia?’
I asked her why on earth she would think we wouldn’t have racism.
‘We think racism is just something otstalyi countries have – like Russia. Not countries like Australia.’
Perhaps she thought my questions were equally naïve – like when I responded by asking if there was discrimination against Russians in Poland. Tomek and Elena just laughed.
‘No, Russians are Slavs. Like us. All the same,’ Tomek said.
‘And what are Slavs like then?’ I asked.
‘Well,’ Elena said, ‘there was a Polish woman one day coming back to Poland from Belarus on the train. The babcia got to the Belarusian border, and showed her visa to the pogranijchnik. But her visa had expired the day before. But she was trying to leave, so she didn’t think it was important. But the pogranijchnik said the babcia had to go back to Minsk and pay a shtraf. So, she started to yell at him. And then all the other women in train, they also started to yell at him. And so finally the pogranijchnik, he gave up.’ She mimed his reaction, throwing his hands up in the air. ‘Slavs know the rules. But if the rules are stupid, you can just ignore them.’ I felt sorry for the poor pogranijchnik.
‘S
o if that’s being Slavic, what is to be Anglo-Saxon?’ Elena didn’t say anything. I wondered if she didn’t have an opinion or if she was just too polite to tell me what it was. Although neither seemed like very Slavic traits.
‘I think being very pragmatic,’ Tomek said after thinking for a moment.
‘But from story you tell you can say Slavic people also are very pragmatic.’
‘Polish people are pragmatic … differently,’ Tomek finally said. ‘Anglo-Saxons, they send their children away to boarding school and never see them. And if the children call up and say they’re lonely, they say, “Toughen up, my son”. ’ He sat up stiffly. It was the first English he’d used all afternoon.
So it seemed we couldn’t learn other languages and we didn’t love our children. But at least we didn’t have corruption or racism.
A stooped babcia turned into the courtyard. She shuffled over to the Portuguese group, stopping right in front of them. They moved their chairs to make room for her. She shuffled through, and they closed up the hole again after her.
Natalia was full of talk of her plans for later in the summer – which mainly revolved around going to Greece with her boyfriend, Maciej, who was teaching windsurfing there this year.
‘And what are you going to do with yourself?’ I asked her.
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe do some bar work. Learn Greek.’ Being Polish, she could probably manage classical and modern without leaving the bar.
‘Do you want another beer?’ Tomek asked me. ‘My shout,’ he added in English, his chest puffing up. It was one of the few phrases I’d managed to teach him.
‘Maybe a glass of wine?’
He went to the bar, and the tiny old lady reappeared, from the corridor leading towards her apartment this time, heading back for the street. She shuffled once again towards the Portuguese and pulled up in front of them. Once again, their wooden chairs scraped along the paving so she could pass. It would be a detour of two or three metres for her to avoid having to disturb the group every time.
