Vodka and Apple Juice

by Jay Martin

  He told me about the mine he’d visited near the town, with some Australian coal company executives. They’d gone down to the coal seam, to the huge machines with the giant teeth that grind it out of the earth and the rickety ladders over conveyer belts that suck it back up to the surface. ‘We were only down there a few hours and I’m still coughing up all this black crap out of my lungs. Imagine working down there your whole life.’ The wine seemed to be working.

  ‘So is Australia buying the mine?’

  ‘Nah, nothing’s changed there since communist days. They reckon they’d have to sack a good proportion of the workforce and I don’t think they’re up to taking on the Polish mining union.’

  ‘So you got a taste of Polish communism today, too!’

  ‘Me? I’m in bloody communist Poland every day. Unlike you.’

  ‘Oh, when you log onto your Australian computer system and speak English all day and have staff to fix everything for you?’ I couldn’t help it. His earlier jibe had stung.

  ‘Doing a bit of shopping and watching a film, that’s being in communist Poland, is it? You have no idea what I have to put up with all day.’

  ‘I know it’s not getting yelled at all day for not knowing that of course you get sausages at the pharmacy.’

  ‘You’re being ridiculous. You don’t buy sausages at the pharmacy.’

  ‘Like you’d have any idea! It’s pretty stressful for me here, dealing with everything –’

  ‘What’s stressful about your life? You’re not the one who’s been down a bloody mine all day!’

  ‘You haven’t been hacking coal out with a pick! You’ve been on a bloody tour!’ I banged my fist on the table.

  Tom slammed his fork down, pushed his chair back, sloshed the last of the wine from the bottle into his glass, and threw himself on the couch. He switched the TV on. Polish current affairs. ‘Fuck,’ he said. He switched to the computer game channel before throwing the TV remote back down. The battery cover flew off.

  I went into the bedroom. It was as far away as I could get from him in this luxurious Polish apartment. From the sounds emanating from the lounge room, a lot of things were being shot until they were very, very dead. Very the cat jumped up on the bed next to me. I reached out and stroked him. A cat with a ridiculous name was more in tune with my emotions than Tom these days.

  This wasn’t how I planned our future. It wasn’t the kind of relationship I’d ever wanted to be in. If anything, it was the future I’d tried to flee. Yet now here I was, somehow, living it. And I felt exactly like I’d imagined I would. Trapped, and resentful for it.

  There was a lot about my life here that I enjoyed. Book club. Writing for the Warsaw Insider. Yoga. Spending time with Shannon and Julie. Having the time, money and freedom to travel. As I ran through the list, I realised that there wasn’t much on it that involved Tom. I wondered if he felt the same. We could still have fun together. But it depended on what kind of day he’d had, which I never knew until he walked in the door. And any time I tried to tell him about any of the problems I was having, he turned off. Or worse. He never would have reacted to me the way he just had in Australia. We never would have reacted that way to each other.

  Bardzo sniffed my fingers. His whiskers tickled. Like Charlie’s had. Charlie, the puppy we’d given up to strangers we’d found on a bulletin board. In the normal world, pets were a part of your family. In the diplomatic one you borrowed them for a while and palmed them off when they got inconvenient.

  Should we leave Poland? Should we give up? Admit this adventure hadn’t worked out? It wasn’t the first time the thought had crossed my mind. I hated how I had started feeling sometimes here. I hated how Tom and I had started treating each other. I was worried about Tom. About his health – physical and mental. The things we’d found so fun at first had become a chore. The things I still enjoyed he seemed to resent me for. And we didn’t seem able to talk about any of it.

  But if we left, we’d have no income, nowhere to live, and have to pay tens of thousands of dollars back, because we hadn’t completed the posting. And there would go Tom’s career, the one he’d taken such a gamble on. We had more than another year to go. Was it really that bad? We could stick it out, couldn’t we?

  It had all snuck up on us, somehow. Like boiling a frog – if you do it slowly, bit by bit, you don’t realise. And now here we were. Marooned in Siberia. Boiled like frogs.

  The killing in the lounge room subsided. I went back out. The TV was off. Tom was lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling. I sat down. Near him, although not touching.

  ‘You know,’ I said, ‘this Polish girl at book club was saying how everyone knew communism was stupid. Even at the time. But they also thought it would be forever. That it would never end. But it did.’

  There was a pause. ‘There’s North Korea.’

  ‘Yes, there’s North Korea.’ We were quiet again.

  ‘I brought you something from Katowice.’ Tom indicated towards his brief case, on the floor by the couch where it had fallen.

  I opened it and pulled out a paper bag near the top. Underneath it there were a dozen packets of tablets. Aspirin, Ibuprofen. Some prescription, by the look of it. Was that valium? Tears filled my eyes. I held up the paper bag. He nodded.

  I opened the bag, pausing to wipe my eyes with my sleeve. I took out a white porcelain shape, the size of a breakfast bowl, and turned it over in my hand a few times.

  ‘It’s a lemon juicer in the shape of the Katowice town hall,’ he said. Both of us started laughing. Me through tears.

  ‘Of course it is.’ I lay down, resting my head on Tom’s chest. He reached into his pocket and handed me a tissue. I bunched it up against my nose, and he rubbed my back. I listened to the poom-poom, poom-poom of his heart.

  How long until it would no longer be this way? Were we Berlin? Or Pyongyang?

  ‘Hey, guess what?’ Tom said. ‘We bought a car!’

  I pulled my head up to look at him.

  ‘You bought a car?’

  He described the grey Volkswagen Golf he’d got wind of from a departing American diplomat, how the seller had wanted six thousand dollars but settled for five and a half, how he’d organised the insurance, diplomatic plates and papers, and how he was picking it up on the weekend.

  ‘I thought we weren’t going to buy a car,’ I said.

  I saw him harden instantly. His eyes, his face, his whole body. Just like in Berlin, when our inability to find the right exit had been thrown at me. When he’d thumped himself down on the bench and dared me to leave. ‘I changed my mind.’

  I shifted away from him on the couch. ‘You didn’t think, maybe, of talking to me about it?’

  He closed his eyes. ‘I feel so pressured here all the time. We never have enough time to do anything. I thought this might help.’ He opened his eyes and looked at me. ‘I thought you might support me. That you might even like it. To do your shopping and things.’

  My shopping and things. So that was his version of what I did all day.

  ‘You should have asked me.’ It wasn’t that I really cared if we did or didn’t have a car. But I cared about not being consulted on a major financial decision, one that went back on a decision we had made together. I cared about that very much.

  He jolted himself upright. ‘So I need to ask you now before I do anything, do I?’

  ‘Because you earn the money so I don’t get any say anymore, is that it?’

  ‘When has that ever been the case?’

  I stood up. ‘I never get any appreciation from you for anything I do!’ I yelled at him.

  His body jerked as though he’d been kicked. He stood up, and walked to the door, grabbing his coat on the way.

  ‘And when do I ever get any appreciation for anything I do? From anyone?’ He slammed the door as he walked out.

  ***

  It wasn’t long after pulling into the station at Czestochowa that I saw the thing that had drawn me to this town – the thing
that drew several million pilgrims to this place every year: the Jasna Gora, or Bright Mountain, Monastery, looming on a hill at the edge of town. It was home to the Black Madonna, a painting of the Virgin Mary, her face slashed by church robbers several hundred years ago. Despite the efforts of the best restorers, no one had been able to repair it. Whenever they tried, the gashes reappeared across her cheek. Millions visited her every year, praying for miracles and thanking her for answering their prayers. It was traditional – if you could – to walk here, a trip that took about ten days from Warsaw. I hoped she wouldn’t mind that I’d just caught a train for three hours.

  I followed the wide boulevard that led towards her, passing through an ocean of souvenir stalls. They sold one thing: Black Madonnas. Hanging from plastic charms on strings of rosary beads, gazing serenely from postcards. She offered prayers for safe trips from car stickers, and looked out from behind laminated coating on wallet-sized cards. Her enduring scars, reproduced on ballpoint pens, cushions, patches, rugs. I walked up and down the aisles; her face watched me from a million angles.

  A lady stopped me, asking me for directions. I could spot another Australian a mile away. But for some reason, no one here saw me as foreign.

  ‘Sorry, I’m not from here.’ I gave my standard reply without thinking. She bustled away, probably having no idea just how not from here I was.

  I made my way inside the monastery. It had a number of churches and chapels, with ornate details in gold and white, delicate paintings on every surface. Jesus’ suffering, his serene face as he hung on the cross, immortalised in colourful plaster. Saints and apostles captured in stained glass.

  It was all so different from the churches I’d grown up with: 1970s designs in clean wood and brick, built before interest in such things had all but died out in Australia. And with it, the money to build new monuments to intangibles like faith.

  As a child, when I’d been told to pray, I’d whispered my thoughts to a kindly old man sitting on a cloud. With no starter kit of images to work from, I’d had to come up with something from my own imagination. I hadn’t thought in a long time about what my God might look like. As long as it had been since I had been in a church, and since anyone had told me to pray.

  The Black Madonna chapel was lined with crutches. I had no way of understanding what they meant. Was each crutch a person she had actually helped to walk? Or were they symbols of general miracles and granting of wishes? It just seemed there were a lot of crutches, and I didn’t know that many people who were lame.

  There were perhaps fifty pilgrims here today, a mix of men, women and children. I was glad I hadn’t come on a traditional feast day; even that number made the chapel crowded. I made my way towards the front, trying not to draw attention to the fact that I had taken up a prime position. I hadn’t walked for days to get here, after all. I kept my gaze away, so no one could catch my eye. Surely they had twigged that I was an imposter.

  A trumpet blared from somewhere unseen. Then another. A choreography of priests and nuns filed in, in uniforms of purple, green and gold. Above them, centre stage, was a sheet of silver. Behind it, I assumed, was the Painting.

  A hymn started. I didn’t catch all the words, but I understood the refrain. Pray for us. Pray for us? But who were they asking to pray for us? Wasn’t it us praying to her?

  The silver sheet started to rise up. The hymn of the pilgrims washed over me. Pray for us, they sang. The sheet of silver rose. Her robe appeared. Her hand. Her baby’s arm. My camera clicked off a few shots. Her baby’s face. Her chin. Her face. Scarred, blighted. The wound that wouldn’t heal. Mary, pray for us. She caught my eye. Her gaze, both serene and piercing. I stopped taking photos. I wanted to capture this moment in my mind. Not on an ephemeral film.

  I glanced back, behind me. At the rows and rows of pilgrims. The hymn had finished, but their lips silently repeated its pleas, as their fingers flew over wooden rosary beads. Many of them had tears pouring down their faces. No one was looking at me. They were transfixed by her eyes.

  I turned back. To those eyes, filled with love and devotion. The Black Madonna, with her child. I’d been wrong that faith was intangible. I could see it all around me. I could feel it inside.

  I withdrew, skirting the crowd and making my way to the back of the hall, where pilgrims kneeled on the black-and-white squares of the church floor. I dropped down on my own bended knees. If I moved too much, the cold, hard stone hurt. So I tried to stay still.

  I closed my eyes. I hadn’t done this in a while. How do I pray? I asked Mary.

  It was two nights ago that Tom had stormed out. Eventually I’d gone to bed, although not to sleep. I’d lain awake, waiting for him. Midnight. One am. Two am. He’d come home at five.

  Mary, I don’t know what do to. I don’t know how to help him.

  I’d pretended to be asleep when he came in. I didn’t think he would have noticed either way. Tears fell from my closed eyes, rolled down my cheeks. The next day, he wouldn’t tell me where he’d been. He said he couldn’t remember. We’d settled into a wordless, uneasy truce since. Or was it a cold war? Both of us waiting for the other to say something that neither of us ever said, to make a move neither of us did.

  Mary, I don’t know how this works. But I need help to get us through this. I don’t know how to do it. Are you there? If you’re listening, if you can hear, please help me. Please do something. I bent my head, clasped my hands, and wept.

  After a time, I unclasped my hands, and moved them up, down and across my chest like I’d seen others do. I didn’t know how to do it properly, I’d never been taught. I hoped it was good enough.

  I eased myself up. My knees hurt from being bent under me. I rubbed them until they felt OK. Until I could walk again.

  I wiped the tears from my face. I knew there wasn’t anything anyone could do. But I felt so alone here some days. It was nice just to feel like you had someone to talk to. Someone on your side. Watching over you. Praying for you.

  No. I’m not from here. Not this town, not this country, not this culture, not this religion, not this custom of carrying laminated religious icons in your purse, not this tradition of walking for days to pray for miracles and give thanks if your prayers are heard.

  But today, I was here. Just another pilgrim, asking for a miracle.

  ***

  Tom had scored a work trip to Prague, somewhere we’d both been looking forward to seeing. He emailed me his itinerary and asked if I wanted to come. I hit reply and said that I would. Although I wouldn’t go with him on his flight, I’d take a few days going overland by train instead and meet him there. We wouldn’t have gone together, anyway – he’d be in business class as it was an international flight, despite the trip lasting just an hour. Once upon a time, I knew Tom would have far preferred spending days on a train with me to business class canapés. I wondered how he felt now.

  I made my way across the border to the town of Olomouc, where I happened on a cheap hostel run by some errant Australians, and then Brno where I visited some desiccated monks in the Capuchin Crypt. It was April, and an early warm breeze blew me westward, buoying my spirits.

  By the time I arrived in Prague the breeze had vanished, and the city was mired in drizzly single digits again. Despite that, I flung open the double-glazed windows to get a better view of the famous Charles Bridge outside: we were almost close enough to touch it! Layered tourists strolled along it, pausing to take photos of its statues: stallions rearing up, a man trapped in a nest of vipers. Prague’s castle looked down over all of it.

  Last time I’d been near this country was when I’d been travelling after high school. Czechoslovakia – as it was then – had meant as little to me as Slovenia or Ukraine – or Poland, for that matter. A family friend in Austria had brought me to her grandparents’ house in the country, on the edge of what I understood was the Iron Curtain. Gun towers and a barbed wire fence marked the edge of the free world. ‘Better move away now,’ my local friend had warned. Men
with machine guns watched to see if we might stray too close. Now, cross that border and all that happened was a mobile phone company told you your calls would be more expensive.

  After breakfast in the hotel restaurant, Tom and I went our respective ways: him to meet defence ministers, and me sightseeing. We would meet up again later.

  The sodden semi-drizzle seeping through my coat didn’t detract in the slightest from Prague. Not for me nor, it seemed, for the hordes of American tourists around me, marvelling at the Old Town Square in nasal superlatives. Its mess of row houses disappeared in every direction off cobblestoned lanes, unexpected courtyards surprising you at every turn. Like Warsaw’s or Krakow’s, but more extensive – and never bombed during the war. I surrendered to the maze for a while, happy to wander the streets dodging souvenir sellers and excited Americans alike.

  Tom and I met up after our respective activities, and took a stroll through Prague’s Old Town together.

  ‘What were you talking to the ministers about?’

  ‘Missile defence.’

  ‘Central Europeans are asking Australia about deterring foreign invaders? Don’t they have more experience at it than us?’

  ‘They wanted to know what a developed western economy thought they should do.’

  ‘Don’t they have someone they can ask with expertise in military strategy or … something?’

  ‘There’s just me.’ There were new wrinkles at the corners of his eyes.

  ‘You do realise that one day you’re going to be back in Australia with some job in accounts or passports and you’re going to look back on the days when you would waltz off to meet all these people and wish you’d appreciated it more,’ I said.

  ‘One day? I wish I had the time and energy to appreciate it more now!’

  We followed a procession of white sneakers to the Old Town Hall.

  ‘Hey you, change money? You buy souvenirs? You eat in my restaurant? Very good restaurant,’ touts called out after us. ‘Where you from? America?’