Vodka and Apple Juice

by Jay Martin

  ‘It says “Russia”. ’ I put the car in gear and we drove through the Iron Curtain. Neither phone made a peep.

  Our arrival at the other side of the border caused a great deal more activity. Our passports, visas, car ownership papers, licences and insurance documents were passed around between the six officials on duty, eliciting a mix of interest and confusion. ‘Avstralia?’ I heard one of them exclaim in Russian.

  A lady in a Russian immigration uniform came over. She asked if I spoke Russian. ‘A little,’ I said. Even that was an exaggeration.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she asked in accented Polish.

  ‘Kaliningrad.’ As far as I understood, there was only one major road in this country called Kaliningrad. It went from here to the capital city, which was also called Kaliningrad. So my answer seemed a safe bet. Perhaps she was just checking we hadn’t taken a wrong turn somewhere.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘Tourism,’ I said.

  ‘Turizm?’

  ‘We’re Australian.’

  There was more shuffling of papers and rifling through documents. The border post was deserted except for us. If they weren’t going to let us in, I was hoping the guys on the Polish side hadn’t gone home. I didn’t fancy being stuck in a large field between the EU and Russia on this hot summer’s day.

  Finally the woman came back with two forms, written only in Cyrillic. My Russian extended to reading the word ‘Russia’. It did not extend to filling out what I presumed was a customs form.

  Sensing my plight, the lady started translating. ‘You have …’ she searched for the word in Polish. ‘Medicine … umm … drug?’

  ‘Nie. I mean, nyet.’

  ‘You have …’ she mimed shooting a machine gun. I shook my head again and she ticked no, before ticking all the no boxes. I guess she made a decision that we probably didn’t have any of the other things we were supposed to declare. Or that, since we were travelling on diplomatic passports and thus had immunity from criminal prosecution, it didn’t matter if we did. ‘Signature.’ She pointed at the end. I signed it; once for me, then once forging Tom’s signature. The border official smiled and nodded. I had passed Slavic form filling.

  She stamped parts of them and handed them back. ‘If you get stop police, you show this, this, this,’ she said in basic Polish, holding up each document in a way that made me think she thought this was likely.

  ‘Ponimayu,’ I agreed in Russian. We got back into the car and drove into Russia. I had no real idea what the speed limit was, but I picked something likely and subtracted ten. I didn’t want to rely on the Russian traffic police being as helpful as the immigration officials, nor as mindful of our protected status.

  On the Polish side had been productive agricultural fields. On this one was a no-man’s-land of wild grasses – prime farming land given over to a buffer between the former USSR and the current EU. The houses on the Polish side had been clean and tidy; here they were run-down, the gardens overgrown. Even the stork nests on this side looked more haphazard – the platforms were lopsided, twigs and sticks dangled off the edge. The new highway we’d glimpsed from the border lasted only a kilometre or so, before giving way to a narrow potholed road there was little danger of exceeding any speed limit on. I supposed that made it easier for the listless prostitutes dotted along the way to ply their trade.

  Kaliningrad didn’t just look poor. Kaliningrad looked unloved.

  Less than an hour later we were in the city centre. It was, without a doubt, the ugliest place I’d ever been. Every building seemed to be engaged in a personal vendetta to be more unattractive than its neighbours. Chunks of concrete had fallen out of most of the walls of the bloki that made up the bulk of the city’s architecture. Rust stains oozed from their exposed metal innards. The paving on the roads periodically disintegrated into gaping holes Tom pointed at and I swerved around. The creaks from the suspension made me suspect that our compact German car hadn’t been designed with Kaliningrad in mind.

  So this was the USSR. The faraway enemy I’d been aware of all through my childhood. I hadn’t known much about the Russians. They always won the Olympics. My dad said it was because they cheated. And people there weren’t allowed to go to other countries, I’d heard. I asked my mum once how they stopped them. Had they built a wall around them or something? It seemed unlikely, but how else did you keep people in? Of course I hadn’t heard of Berlin then. I knew they had rubles instead of dollars, and it was cold there. In that youes-es-are place. But any day, they were going to invade, raining their atom bombs down on us. I was pretty sure of that.

  Now that we were here, it seemed odd to have been so afraid of such a run-down, sorry-looking place. The curtain between us and them was more porous than it once had been, and I suspected staffed by more facilitative officials. But on this side, it was obvious that something still separated what was over here from what was over there.

  But there were no exploding nuclear power plants or choking smog, and we wandered through city parks under shady trees, peeked into shopping centres stocked with nylon dresses and plastic shoes, took photos of awful architecture and navigated potholes, all without anyone arresting us. By late afternoon, we’d even made it to the beach – in Kaliningrad’s case, a geographically improbable strip of land called the Curonian Spit, just a couple of hundred metres across in some places, which started in Russia and ended in Lithuania – the border was halfway along.

  We arrived there to find the quintessential Australian summer holiday playing out: kids with sandy feet and wet swimming costumes ran between the trees and tents, flicking each other with beach towels; men and women lounged in camp chairs in the shade, drinking beer or juice. I wound down the window to let the hot sea air in, hit by a pang of nostalgia for sweaty car trips before air-conditioning. All my childhood I’d imagined how different life in Russia was from Australia. It turns out we were all running around campsites with bare feet and salt in our hair.

  We stopped for a late lunch at a wooden shack overlooking the ocean. Tom sat at a table and I went to see what there was. Or rather, I ran through a list of the four or five things I knew how to ask for in Russian with the waitress, and she nodded or shook her head according to whether or not they had it. If we’d had to rely on reading a whole menu, we would have starved. I ordered some salmon and chips plus a beer and a mineral water in some Polish–Australian version of Russian, and waited to see what we got.

  ‘Next time I’m bringing a menu decoder,’ I said to Tom, returning to the table.

  ‘Oh, it’s not that bad,’ he said. Of course, he had brought a menu decoder.

  But today his remark didn’t upset me. Things seemed to have gotten better between us. Good, even. Summer was in full swing. The Ambassador had left for an extended stay in Australia. Gabby’s visit – and pep talk – had buoyed me. We were all booked for two weeks in Croatia and Corfu in August, and excited about the things we planned to do when we got there. We sat at a rickety wooden table, looking out over a sandy beach and calming ocean. A little of the distrust and doubt that had frozen inside me melted in the sizzling Russian sun.

  One thing that hadn’t helped was the visit from the departmental staff counsellor a few weeks earlier. Every diplomat on posting got at least one visit per posting, and officers and their partners were encouraged to discuss any issues. I’d arranged a one-on-one with him in the restaurant of his five-star hotel, hopeful that he might have some advice. I’d been told it was confidential, but the fear that anything I said might end up affecting Tom’s career still constrained me. So I talked in general terms about ‘work pressures’ and ‘long hours’ and the unexpected difficulties I’d had managing the transition from a dual to single-career family. The psychologist looked at me over the top of his glasses. ‘Have you thought about doing some volunteer work or something? It sounds like you need to keep yourself busy.’ He looked around at the hotel lobby and then back at me. ‘It’s not like this is a hard place to live, is i
t?’ I wondered what they would write in my end-of-year diplomatic wife report if I hit him. Somehow I didn’t. But it was clear that Tom and I were on our own.

  The girl from the beachfront kiosk counter brought us our meal – more or less what I’d hoped for. She put it down, smiled, and said something. I smiled and nodded in return.

  ‘What was that?’ Tom asked once she’d left.

  ‘No idea. So, have you seen it yet?’

  ‘What?’

  I pointed to a grey car doing its third lap past us. It had blue Polish diplomatic plates, like our car, the first three numbers of which told you what embassy it belonged to – in this case, Russia. I remembered the code from the day I’d spent sitting in the Russian Embassy carpark, watching Russian diplomatic cars come and go as I’d waited for my turn in the visa queue.

  ‘They obviously didn’t believe two Australian diplomats would really come here for turizm,’ Tom said. Although I didn’t see why not. Australia and Kaliningrad seemed to be rather like-minded on summer holidays.

  The two people in the grey car spent the rest of the day at the beach with us, and later that night we all went to a restaurant converted from an old castle. By coincidence it turned out we were staying in the same hotel, them in the room next door to ours. The second night we upgraded our room to one with air-conditioning, as they did about fifteen minutes later. Perhaps they were hot as well. They didn’t get in our way, and when I went the wrong way down a one-way street nothing happened, so perhaps they were even looking out for us. All in all, I liked to think they had a nice trip to the coast.

  Tom and I did. We even seemed to be like-minded again. Maybe it was the hot beach, reminding us of carefree childhoods. Or maybe Mary had heard my prayer? Maybe things had just turned a corner. Or maybe I just wanted to believe they had?

  ZLOTA JESIEN – GOLDEN AUTUMN

  Tom and I spent two weeks in Croatia and Corfu, sleeping till noon, and spending our waking hours eating grilled vegetables and fish, drinking thick brewed coffee and cheap local wine, and walking on the beach. We had learned a lesson about trying to cram too much into our holidays, and tried to make more time just to relax. Although we’d bussed and ferried through between our two destinations; despite the flight, Tom said he’d much prefer to go overland. In fact, I had gone overland all the way from Warsaw, through the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary, meeting Tom in Split on the Dalmatian coast. I was no longer traversing the region on Google Maps but in real life. We returned fatter, browner, and rested.

  By mid-September, we were waking again most mornings to overcast skies and a chill breeze. The ambassador was back, and Tom was once again spending long days at the office. All too soon, our memories of the Adriatic coast were as faded as our tans.

  At least I had a new friend. Stacey, an American, wrote for the Warsaw Insider like I did, although she did real journalism besides; pieces for US public radio, freelance news stories about current events, as well as guidebooks when funds were low. She was here with her French boyfriend, who worked for an international company, although on local conditions, not expat ones. We’d added each other to our coffee catch-up schedules.

  This morning Stacey and I had a specific goal: she was writing a story on a prison program that was putting inmates to work cleaning up old Jewish cemeteries, and she asked if I would help her with interpreting some interviews. And now it was me that had the car that she needed to get there. I was happy to help out. I had been to the Jewish cemetery in Praga and been shocked at how run-down it was.

  ‘Do you think this is OK to meet prisoners in?’ she said, greeting me at her door. She had on a baggy top, teamed with a loose pair of pants.

  I pointed to my own floppy T-shirt and flowing skirt. I’d had exactly the same thought. I had no idea what to expect. I imagined great, hulking men with tattoos and missing teeth who hadn’t seen a female in years.

  ‘You know you’re lucky to speak Polish,’ Stacey said, once we were driving. ‘I’m limited to who I can find that speaks English. I got the tip on this project from Warsaw’s Chief Rabbi – he’s American.’

  ‘Maybe. It doesn’t mean life here isn’t frustrating, though. I was trying to talk to someone from the Great Orchestra of Christmas Charity for a story – have you heard of it? You know, the red heart-shaped stickers you see everywhere?’

  ‘Oh yeah, I’ve always wondered what they were!’

  ‘Turns out, it’s a big charity here. I thought it might be interesting to write about it. So I emailed some questions to the media spokesperson. A week later I hadn’t heard anything, so I followed up with him. He said he’d got the questions, but they were stupid and he wasn’t going to answer them. So I just ended up asking my cleaner. She told me that it was a really big deal when it started, because it was the first big charity event in Poland. Under communism they hadn’t had charity, it was something they associated with the west, and so when they started their own, it felt like a step towards becoming more capitalist, more developed.’

  ‘So did you have enough to write the story without anything from the organisation?’

  ‘This is the thing. A few days later, he sent me the answers anyway. If they’re going to be helpful in the end, why start off being so belligerent?’

  ‘Who knows. I read about some Polish football fans in Poznan. Their team lost, so they went on a riot in the main town square, and destroyed a fountain. The next day they had a whip round and all chipped in ten zloty to fix it up.’

  Stacey’s Polish might have been limited, but she followed local events more closely and had more Polish friends than any other foreigner I’d met here. Their last Christmas they’d spent just with Polish people, she told me, enjoying the local traditions – down to the carp living out its last few days in the bathtub, without which no Polish Christmas would be complete. My attempts to learn Polish had helped me meet people I wouldn’t have otherwise. But at the same time I was coming to realise the limitations of communicating in a foreign language also acted as a barrier to really getting to know them. Stacey never felt like she had to do things in Polish. She just got on with it in English.

  The final turnoff was about forty-five minutes from where we’d started. It was a typical Polish town on the outskirts of Warsaw. Concrete bloki, ugly power poles. Even though today was warm in the sun, the streets were largely deserted, except for the odd babcia on a bicycle. And the leaves had already started to turn. They knew what was ahead. As did I.

  We drove slowly towards the address we had, not quite sure what we’d find. We parked facing the road, in case we needed to make a quick getaway.

  Inside the cemetery gates, a dozen young men were clipping grass and bushes that had been left to their own devices for decades. Others were down on their knees, scrubbing mosses and swastikas off headstones ravaged by Mother Nature and human nature alike.

  I found the project coordinator and, after some brief introductions, she brought over the two prisoners who had agreed to talk to us about the project. As soon as they left the cemetery grounds they took off their hats, and wiped their brows. They stood before us, caps clasped respectfully in front of them. Eighteen or nineteen years old, handsome and healthy.

  ‘Good afternoon, gentlemen,’ I greeted them, using the formal Polish. Polish differentiated between adults you didn’t know, who you used a formal language with, and people you did know, children, or subordinates, who you could be more informal with. Neither Agnieszka had covered etiquette in addressing prisoners, so I stuck with respectful.

  ‘Good afternoon, madams,’ they replied, nodding at each of us in turn. Their heads bent down, they had to look up to meet our eyes.

  I interpreted for them all as best I could, as the woman told us about the program’s origins – a match between the tiny Jewish community left in Poland who wanted help to restore their cemeteries and prisoners with an ability to undertake community work. There had been a program of education and training about Jewish history and culture before the pris
oners were allowed to come and work in the cemeteries.

  On Stacey’s behalf, I asked one of the prisoners what kinds of things they’d learned in the educational program.

  ‘We learned about Jewish history and culture, and about the history of anti-Semitism in Poland,’ one said. He talked so softly that I had to lean in to hear.

  ‘Yes, the level of anti-Semitism in Poland is quite high,’ the other boy said, ‘but Jewish and Polish histories and traditions are very connected. So it’s good to know more about those things. A lot of Polish history is also Jewish history.’

  ‘And we learned other things, too,’ the first boy said, ‘about how to behave in a Jewish cemetery. Like you should cover your head.’ They held up the hats in their hands.

  ‘I didn’t know that. Thank you for telling us,’ I said.

  Their heads remained bowed.

  ‘See that train station at the end of the road?’ the supervisor pointed. ‘That’s where the Jewish people from this area were taken from. They were rounded up and put on trains that left from there and taken straight to the gas chambers of Treblinka.’

  A train station couldn’t just be a train station in Poland. It had to be a place where miserable, inhuman events had occurred. Scratch the surface and the burden of this country’s history was always there. Even on a bright early autumn day.

  We said our thank yous and goodbyes and got back into the car.

  ‘Even Polish prisoners are intelligent and thoughtful. What is with that?’ Stacey voiced my own thoughts. I got no sense that they were just saying those things because of the supervisor standing there.

  ‘Hey Stacey, while we were there, I was thinking about something. The Brodno Jewish Cemetery. The one in Praga. Do you know it?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘It’s not that far from you, actually. On the thirty-two tram. Anyway, it’s … what’s a word to describe it? I don’t know. Sometimes I feel like I don’t have the right vocabulary for Poland.’ I described for her what I’d seen when I’d been there. The overgrown grasses, rusted iron fence around the outside, many of the bars looking like they were coming loose. The small guardhouse at the entrance, its door ripped out, with broken windows. Smashed bottles, rubbish and piles of old clothes were strewn around. After a few hundred metres, the silver birches and tangled undergrowth – pretences of a normal park – gave way to piles of headstones, ripped up and stacked together. Like a giant game of dominoes, after all the blocks had fallen. Most were broken from having been thrown on top of others. Moss grew in the shadows left by the inscribed names. I’d read that Jewish headstones were routinely used by the Nazis as paving materials – ground up for mortar, laid down for roads. These ones had been piled up to be taken away, but the war had ended before they could be used. They’d sat there, in those piles, ever since. And in the middle of them all were the coals of campfires, surrounded by broken beer and vodka bottles. For me, it was the ultimate evidence of the holocaust: that of all the thousands of descendants of these people who should have been demanding this be righted, there weren’t any left to do so.