by Jay Martin
‘My mother was a doctor, and my father a communist. It’s hard to believe in God.’
I returned my borrowed sign of faith as we left, and the five of us made our way to a café over a rickety piazza. The waitress came, and we ordered more coffee.
‘Dziękuję,’ I thanked the waitress in Polish out of habit.
‘Dziękuję,’ she said.
‘Lera, why does she know Polish?’ I asked, when the waitress had left.
‘We are in Lviv.’ I wondered if I should inform her of the border change some fifty years earlier. Or if such things were mere trifles in this part of the world. Using correct Polish grammar, you didn’t say you were going ‘over to’ the Ukraine, like you did with a foreign country, you said ‘on’ the Ukraine, the preposition you used for a region of Poland.
We finished our coffees and Lera and Maryshka went back to pick up the car. Another set of passing girls fluttered their eyelids at Sean.
‘Yes, it’s hard to miss them,’ Sean said, as if reading my mind. ‘I’ve found them waiting outside shops to hand me cards with their numbers on them.’
‘So they’re not only unusually scantily clad but unusually forward!’ I said.
‘And even better looking than Polish girls – which is no mean feat,’ Stacey added.
‘I agree – but you’d never see Polish girls dress like this, would you?’ I said. Polish girls were physically stunning – there was no two ways about that – but even in nightclubs and bars you’d never see them dressed like this. The babcias would never allow it.
‘Maybe Polish girls just don’t need the visas anymore,’ Stacey said.
Maryshka and Lera’s car pulled over and we all piled in. Maryshka turned to face us. ‘Now we are going to see the cemetery.’
Of course we were. You couldn’t have tourism in Central Europe without death.
‘And then the beer museum,’ said Lera.
‘Can you get beer there?’ I asked.
‘Of course! That’s the point!’ Lera replied.
Ukraine. A country of little middle ground.
***
I fetched Tom a cup of coffee from the breakfast buffet. It was Sunday morning, and we were in a Bialystok hotel. Although not by choice. He was wanted at some kind of conference that was starting today. Another extended week of mingling – aka work – for him. He added three sugars and drank half the cup in one go, before spreading some egg and mayonnaise over some toast. We always went for one of the egg options at hotel breakfasts in Poland. It was either that or pickled herring. I couldn’t stomach that at the best of times. And first thing in the morning was not the best of times.
‘Are you going to come today?’ he asked.
‘I guess, for a bit,’ I said. Sitting near each other at some event neither of us wanted to be at was the closest we got to meaningful interaction these days. It was a wonder we still had anything much to say to each other. Or maybe it wasn’t a surprise that, more and more, it felt like we didn’t.
We trudged across Bialystok to the conference centre. It looked much like anywhere else in Poland. A couple of parks, a bit of a palace, and lot of concrete bloki. Drab and sodden at this time of year. But I was trying to see it with fresh eyes. So, there was a palace, that was interesting. The darkened skies were dramatic. I didn’t have to deal with ministers or staff – yay for that. I would have a quick look at whatever this was about, and then go and find a newspaper and a café.
Inside, the venue hummed with conference preparations. Tom went to find out what was going on, while I checked out the seating. It looked like the main auditorium would hold a couple of hundred. I was about to settle in by the exit when Tom appeared with one of the organisers.
‘Ah, Mrs Armstrong, lovely to meet you. Please, come this way.’ The young man led us to the very front row, where pieces of paper with our names and ‘Embassy of Australia’ on them marked our allocated places. There went any chance of a surreptitious escape.
I took my seat and cast my eye along the other countries in our row. Next to me I had Peru. I switched them with France. The last thing I felt like doing was making small talk with the new ambassador from Lima. I knew the French wouldn’t make any effort to engage with me.
I flicked through the conference program. The theme of the conference was the lost city of Bialystok. I gathered that around a quarter of the residents of Bialystok before the war had been Jewish. By the time the war had ended, there were virtually none left. The idea was to bring back people who had been here or been associated with this place, to tell what it has been like. I wondered what kind of person would be interested in such a thing. I also wished I’d had the foresight to at least find out if there was a branch of my favourite chain, Coffee Heaven, here and, if there was, to visit it. Caffeine withdrawal was setting in behind my temples.
By the time the organisers had taken to the stage to open the conference, most of the seats were full. The French Embassy trounced in. You could tell them by the pastel sweaters. We never had much to do with anyone from the French Embassy. We were not like-minded enough on fashion to get invited to their parties.
The organisers gave an introductory speech, thanking those who had been responsible for putting together the conference. Slides flashed up the names of key important people. Including Mr and Mrs Tom Armstrong, Australian Embassy, Warsaw. I sank into my seat, embarrassed to be among those acknowledged when I’d done nothing.
The keynote speaker, a man by the name of Dr Samuel Pisar, took to the stage and started his address.
‘Szanowni Państwo,’ he started. I looked over at Tom and wondered how long it was going to be before he was napping again, since it seemed we were now facing another speech in Polish.
‘Unfortunately,’ Dr Pisar continued in a soft American accent, ‘that is all I am able to say to you in Polish today. I grew up here in Bialystok, and lived here until I was ten, with my parents, my three brothers and two sisters. Of all of my family, and all of my class at school, I am the only one who survived the war.’
Dr Pisar proceeded to tell the story of his life, beginning here in this town. Of the outbreak of war, surviving three concentration camps, and later scrounging a living by packaging up used coffee grounds to re-sell to American troops. After a relative in France took him in, he moved between Australia, the US and France, studying at the most prestigious institutions of each, and being awarded the highest distinctions each country had to give for his international human rights work. This included the Order of Australia, our highest civil honor. The US congress had gone one better, passing a special act of parliament just to grant him citizenship.
He was the first in a line of people, once of this place, who got up to tell its stories. They had come from all over the world for the occasion – Israel, the US, the UK, Germany, and Australia. They drew a picture of the city that had once been here – a Polish city of such diversity that an earlier inhabitant was inspired to create the international language of Esperanto as a way of facilitating communication between its different members. Caught up in a time that meant hundreds of its people could be herded into a synagogue, locked in, and incinerated – an atrocity witnessed firsthand by some of those now here. A city that many of these people, along with their children and grandchildren, would have been living in today but for events that spread them to Tel Aviv, Baltimore and Melbourne, but that now existed only in their memories.
I sat, riveted, for nearly four hours. It was only when the program wound up that I realised how long it had been since breakfast. Tom and I were on our way out to look for pierogi or pizza when the young man who’d shown us to our seats reappeared, and invited us to the VIP lunch. We accepted, not thinking too much of it. I would have agreed to anything involving food at that point.
He took us to a room at the rear of the building where everyone who had spoken that morning was sitting. Dr Pisar, three other former Bialystok residents now living in Israel, an Australian academic, as well as the local mayor, the he
ad of the regional government, and the chancellor of a local university. We took our assigned places in the two remaining empty seats.
I moved to one side to allow the waiter to place a starched napkin over my lap. ‘White,’ I responded to the kind of wine I’d prefer. My preference filled a small, crystal glass.
I took a few sips. There was one bread roll left on the table in the centre. Tom struck up a conversation in broken English with the mayor, who was sitting on Tom’s right hand side. On my left sat the visitors from Israel. I tried making conversation with the lady closest to me, asking if she spoke Polish or English. She took the last remaining bun and turned away from me, not giving away if we shared any common languages.
I sipped my wine and chided myself for being miffed that I’d been pipped to the last bread roll by a holocaust survivor.
Over three courses I listened to Tom’s conversation with illustrious people and ate, doing both as inconspicuously as possible. There seemed to have been some mistake. Like the introductory speeches, when my name had slipped onto the thank-you list, I had now wandered into this VIP room, and they were indulging me by feeding me. I had never been awarded an Order of Australia, survived a concentration camp or had an act of parliament passed to grant me citizenship.
‘And what do you think of the conference?’ a chancellor leaned over a mayor to ask me.
‘Oh, yes, very interesting. Thank you so much for the invitation.’ I gave a polite answer and took another sip of my wine.
‘In what way have you found it to be interesting?’ His English seemed to be slightly better than the mayor’s.
Silence descended as the whole table waited for my answer. At least they gave you some training before they sent you off to be a diplomat. They didn’t give you any before you started as a spouse. They bloody should have.
‘Well,’ I said, hoping it wasn’t too obvious that I was stalling while I tried to think of something suitable to say, ‘as you may know, there is a piece of the old Warsaw Ghetto wall on Smolna Street, some ten metres across. These days it is the boundary between the courtyard of a primary school and an apartment block. School children file past it every morning.’ The Warsaw Ghetto, a district of the city surrounded by a high wall that people like these had been forced from their houses and rounded into, before it was emptied as, one by one, they were carted away to be killed. To me, of course, it was a hypothetical historical construct. Some of these people had been imprisoned there. It felt ridiculous that I would be trying to tell them anything about it. ‘This little piece of Warsaw’s structure and shape is there because of that history – even though you don’t know that just by looking at it. There is a plaque there to tell you, though, in case we forget. So I was thinking, Bialystok today is what it is, not just because of the people who live here now, but all of the people who have ever lived here. You have all affected the city’s structure and shape – like that wall, you have left a mark, even though it’s not something you can see. You are not just Bialystok’s past, but part of its present – and its future. But you can’t put a plaque on that. So this conference is instead of that plaque.’
Dr Pisar spoke. ‘You know, I have never seen it that way before. You have given me something to think about.’ There were murmurs of agreement from the Israeli holocaust survivors, who evidently did speak English.
For once it wasn’t a lack of language but of courage that stopped me from saying, ‘That is very kind of you. But I assure you, it is you who has given something to me.’
I had no right to complain about my life. None at all.
The next morning, Tom was meeting the mayor again, who’d wanted to discuss Australia–Bialystok relations, apparently. Or perhaps wine with kangaroos. I wandered through concrete apartment blocks, looking for any obvious must-sees, while I waited for the meeting to finish. A large church appeared into view. I flicked through my guidebook, to see what it had to say about it. The church didn’t seem to be marked on the map, or mentioned anywhere in the text. It might only have been a church. But it was far and away the most obvious landmark in town.
The book did mention a specialist chocolate shop, though, and its dozens of different types of hot chocolates and specialty drinks. That sounded more like my thing. I followed the directions to the Town Square, bearing the name of Kosciuszko. Koz-ee-yos-ko, as we called it, Kosh-chush-ko as I now said. I wondered if I’d insist on its Polish pronunciation once I was home again.
There, on the square, stood Bialystok’s acclaimed specialist chocolateria. Otherwise known as a Wedel, one of a chain common all over Poland. Had the person who wrote this book ever been to Poland? I went inside to place my usual order – mocha with mint. On the way, I chucked the guidebook in a convenient bin. I wondered what had taken me so long.
***
Kazakhstan was behind us, Belarus was to the left, Indonesia to the right, and the Philippines in front. Trying to find any obvious order to the placement of the diplomatic envoys to the November Independence Day remembrance ceremony was taking my mind off – to some degree at least – the cold.
Why I’d thought that my stage-two coat would suffice on a day like today I had no idea. Tom only had his stage-one coat – a light trench. We’d known it would be an outdoor ceremony. It was minus four or five, but the wind required full-length down, a hood, and definitely two beanies. Stage three. Sadly, we had no stage-three clothing. Tom and I still sometimes suffered from dressing for the weather we wanted it to be, not the weather it was. This Sunday morning, we were suffering.
The rifles clacked in unison as the soldiers took up a slightly different pose. A pause, then the rifle butts smacked into the ground as one.
Donald Tusk, the Prime Minister of Poland, was speaking. His voice poured from the speakers around us, echoing over the concrete of the parade square. ‘Agreement is constructive,’ it intoned. I’d watched him many times on TV, as the babcias of Poland laid complaint after complaint at his feet – their living conditions, the failures of his and every other government, probably the fact that their children never visited them. His approach seemed to be to listen respectfully without engaging. Even the Prime Minister knew better than to try and argue with a Polish babcia.
Now, conflict diffusing skills were needed more than ever. Following the plane crash, conspiracy theories were breeding like bacteria in a Petri dish. The official explanation for the crash – that a senior member of the Polish armed forces had ordered the pilot to land despite unsafe, foggy conditions – was drowned out by the alternatives: It was a political assassination by the Russians. It was a plot to keep the Poles away from the Katyn memorial service, itself a sensitive Russian–Polish issue. Some even blamed the Masons. If it had been the US, alien life forms probably would have been included in those accused of being at fault. But Poland had enough terrestrial enemies.
‘Agreement is constructive,’ the Prime Minister reiterated, trying to convince his nation.
Good luck with that one.
Cannon fire erupted, as lists of battles fought and brigades lost over the years were recited. There was a lot of cannon fire. Between each round, the assembled troops would call out. ‘Cześć ich pamięci!’
‘What do they keep shouting?’ Tom asked me under his breath.
‘Honour to their memory.’
One of the Philippine delegation leaned in towards Tom.
‘Honour their memory,’ I heard Tom say.
The Philippino turned and whispered something to his neighbour. I wondered what the diplomat on the end would hear. The vast majority of the diplomatic corps didn’t speak more than rudimentary Polish, and some of them a good deal less. They were probably happy to at least understand something as the army shouted, cannons exploded, and their feet froze. The ‘diplomatic corpse’, I’d heard someone mispronounce it once. It was a slip that seemed in danger of coming true if the cold didn’t abate or the list of battles that Poland had lost didn’t end soon. I hoped our taxpaying public thought this was a good u
se of their money: for us to be standing out in the cold on a Sunday morning, listening to a speech we didn’t understand, in the name of building ties with a country most of us couldn’t find on a map.
Our reward was lunch at the Presidential Palace with the PM and the new Polish President, Bronislaw Komorowski, who’d been elected after the Smolensk disaster. Not just us, of course; all of the diplomats and dignitaries who’d spent the morning standing in the cold were also invited, so there were several hundred there. But that several hundred did include both of Poland’s leaders, and both of us. Meaning my Facebook update: Lunch with the President and the Prime Minister of Poland, was accurate. I took a few selfies with them in the background as I walked in as proof.
Paul and Shannon were standing by a window, under a crystal chandelier. We made a beeline for them, through a herd of dignitaries grazing on smoked salmon. We’d been at their place again last night, eating takeaway Indian and playing Wii bowling. Canadians could teach you a lot about indoor fun. I perused Shannon’s plate to see what looked good. Although I’d have to wait until the feeling returned to my fingers to be able to grip a plate myself. I should take not just indoor entertainment but outdoor dressing tips from Shannon and Paul.
‘Jay!’ I heard over my shoulder.
Did that woman have some kind of tracking device? I braced myself for this test in being more positive.
‘You would not believe the trouble we’re having with the renovations to the residence.’ Dee started talking before I’d fully turned to face her. Trying to avoid the conversation was probably useless. I decided to use the time to restore blood flow to my extremities. ‘We are having to eat out every night at the moment, because the dust is coming in to the kitchen – it’s not like the cook can use it, there would be dust in everything – and can you believe it …’
