by Jay Martin
I took off another tag. ‘Place tag on top’ it read, like all the others. In pencil, someone had added: ‘Come the revolution, all tags will be free’. It must have been one of the former diplomats. One of the ones who’d lived in the old apartments in Saska Kepa. Perhaps the one who had visited the spoon-swallowing prisoner. Someone in the grip of their own third Polish winter, perhaps. Or one of their spouses, like me, brought in to cull and shred. I imagined them, one day, writing this, filing it, never imagining anyone would see it again. I took the tag and pinned it to the noticeboard in Tom’s office. A down payment on a revolution.
The shredder went hungry as I reached the boxes containing the 1989 Solidarity movement reporting and the first post-communist elections in 1990. I was too enthralled not to read every page. The rise of Solidarność, the shipyard strikes, and then the predictions of Tom’s predecessors about what this new era for Poland might look like. This snapshot of a relationship between two countries – written, I sensed, by Australians who fervently wanted it to work. It had only survived this far because no one had bothered to file anything for decades. I took the tag off the file, pulled the metal pin out, and put the first of the thin pages, with their boxy typewriter print, to the shredder blades.
What was I thinking? I pulled it back, and threaded the pin back through the pages. I put the file and a dozen others like it in a separate box, got out the manual, and looked for a reference I thought I’d seen. ‘RTA/NA’ I wrote on the box in heavy black pen, before sealing it and logging it for dispatch with the embassy’s front desk. Return To Australia / National Archives. Someone in Canberra would receive it, catalogue it, and store it somewhere in our vast national memory. Perhaps no one else would ever know it was there. But I would. And that mattered. Some of what we do does matter.
When I was done, I took a last look through the records management procedures, to make sure I’d finished everything. At the back was a memo, detailing the process to get new files. They were all supposed to be approved by Canberra ahead of time, while dispatches to the national archives required prior written permission.
The phone rang. The airfreight company, confirming Bardzo had departed for Australian quarantine. I heaved a sigh of relief. Despite all the planning, ten days ago I’d found myself sitting in the vet’s waiting room, re-reading the quarantine form, a cold dread seeping into me. One of the vaccinations on the list was missing. I would have to start from the beginning again. What was going to be worse: trying to get someone to handle the crazy process for us, or telling Tom that I’d messed up? Neither option was appealing, and by the time it was my turn to see the vet, I was nearly in tears. I held out the pet passport and documents we’d sweated over together and explained the problem. Oh Jesus Maria, how could I have been so stupid?
He checked the forms. ‘Ah, I see. This one here, it is a combined vaccination, so it has these other two in it as well,’ he said.
I took a deep breath. ‘Oh, chicken, thank you,’ I said, using a commonly used substitute for a swear word in Polish that seemed particularly apt here.
‘What else is left? Just the final physical and flea treatment, yes?’ the vet said. He gave me some medications with instructions, filled in the remaining dates in Bardzo’s passport – including those for the following week – and stamped it. Bardzo was ready for transport, more than a week ahead of schedule. I could barely contain my astonishment, not to mention relief, that after this near katastrofa it had all come together. ‘Look, madam, I understand what the authorities are worried about,’ the vet said. ‘But the only time this cat ever goes outside is to come here. There is no possible way he has any of the things that would be of concern. He is not a threat to the environment. It is silly for you to be worrying about this when you have other things to do.’ With that, he sent me on my way.
If there was one thing I’d learned from Poland, it was this: When the rules are stupid, the best thing to do is just ignore them.
I filed my unauthorised files – mentally – under ‘someone else’s problem’, logged off the system, and and went to help Tom pack up for the day. We had a Pilates class to get to.
***
There was just one place that I had to visit before I left Poland: the railway hotel Dee had mentioned. No way was I leaving Poland when she had been somewhere I hadn’t.
We, I mean. There was just one place left we had to visit. From now on, Poland was going to be something we would do together. Better late than never.
We took off north-west on a bright May day, sharing the driving. By mid-afternoon we’d reached the town of Bialowieza, the jumping off point to the national park of the same name that straddled part of the eastern border between Poland and Belorussia, and the only untouched piece of land in Europe. The town was little more than a collection of wooden two-roomed houses along an empty street. Most were solid and proud, the smoke curling from their chimneys settling in the paddocks and throwing everything into soft focus. A few were abandoned, their roofs sagging like swaybacked horses. We were so close to the border – or where the border had landed this time round, anyway – that our phones switched themselves to Minsk time, an hour closer to Moscow. Although since it was the same time in Warsaw as it was in Madrid, that brought the phones in line with the sun. Poland had chosen a time zone based on geo-political aspiration rather than geographical longitude.
Just as Dee had said, one of the hotels in town had been converted from a disused train station. Our bedroom for the night had once been the station’s old water tank. Now, one floor of it was decked out in crimson wall paper, matching velvet drapes, and a wrought iron bed with crisp white linen, while a second floor was given over entirely to a cast iron bath. Fresh towels on the bed were wrapped in a gold bow, as though they were a present – no need to ask a grumpy babcia for her own towel here.
We gave the bath a leisurely try-out before strolling along the grassed-over railway tracks towards the restaurant, for dinner. A gentle waiter showed us photos of the transformation. So perfectly carried out, it was hard to imagine the doors we came in through were not the very ones kings and czars would have opened in search of a hearty meal after a hard day’s shooting, the samovar in the corner not the same one that may have warmed their tea. Yet this quaint, cozy dining room had once been a train station public toilet. I guess whoever restored it knew a Pole.
The waiter returned with an exquisite soup of borowiki and maślaki, followed by potato pancakes with caviar – placki in Polish but blini here, after the Russian. Yet when he came and checked on us part way through, I had to admit there was a problem. Both he and Tom looked concerned. Even Tom had absorbed enough Polish to register a potential issue.
‘You see, I know only two or three words for “delicious” in Polish and none of them are sufficient for how this meal tastes.’
Wyśmienicie, he suggested. I didn’t know the word, but the wy- prefix was equivalent to ex- in English. As in ex-ceed, excellent, ex-ceptional.
‘Yes, perfect, thank you,’ I said.
Tom and I drank white wine from crystal glasses, delivered to us on a silver platter.
‘Na my,’ Tom said. His attempt at toasting to us was hopelessly ungrammatical, but I knew what he was getting at.
‘Na my,’ I repeated.
When I’d searched online for the hotel – googling every combination of ‘Bialowieza’, ‘train station’ and ‘hotel’, nothing had come up. Shannon’s guidebook suggested the Best Western as ‘the place to stay’ in town. I’d had to get the name and contact details off Dee. Apartamenty Carskie, it was called. The Czars’ Apartments. As far as the outside world was concerned, this place may as well not have existed. How tragic. As tragic as it would have been to not have experienced it together.
When the alarm woke us in our haven the next morning before dawn, it wasn’t to photograph ministers of state or deal with demanding delegations, but to be among the animals and birds of the forest as they roused themselves from the night’s repose. We
set out along the forest’s pristine trails with two student botanists from Spain, a Czech entomologist and Xenon, our guide, a retired teacher and amateur ornithologist. Our little gang curled through thick, verdant woodlands, the mossy ground helping us sneak up on boar, woodpeckers and hedgehogs, while the speckled sun illuminated more shades of green than I knew existed.
Xenon spoke perfect English, but seemed happy to have me to chat to in Polish. ‘You know, I grew up here, and when I was eleven I discovered a passion for birds,’ he said. ‘Since then, that’s all I’ve been interested in. When I was fifteen, my parents sent me to learn English with a pre-war baron. All I wanted to know was the names of the different birds!’
Tom and I held hands as we walked, and Xenon and I chatted. ‘Do you want me to translate?’ I asked Tom. He shook his head. I squeezed his hand and left him to his forest.
‘The forest is here only by a series of accidents,’ Xenon continued. ‘It was the hunting ground of Polish kings and Russian czars for centuries, and was protected so it would remain stocked with animals. Local villagers caught poaching here were shot.’ Xenon stopped. ‘Madam, your Nicrophorus pterostichus.’ He pointed to a nondescript mound covered in lichens causing the Czech to bound over for a closer look. We crossed boggy patches on trees that lay where they’d fallen, before stepping back onto the dirt trails covered in decaying leaves.
‘My friend was one of those responsible for getting Bialowieza protected,’ Xenon continued. ‘In nineteen twenty-five, he had been a young passionate scientist. The government had been meeting all day with scientists and loggers, trying to decide the future of this forest. The loggers wanted rights to harvest here and the government was considering it. It was late at night, and my friend pushed back his chair, and stormed out of the room. The government understood that if this brilliant young man was willing to risk his career for this, it must be worth it. So they agreed to protect it, and the first Polish national park came into being. Gentlemen!’ he called to the Spaniards. ‘This is the Picea abies you were after.’ The Spaniards snapped photos from all sides. He turned back to me. ‘So you see, the first time round Bialowieza was preserved by enforcing private rights to the exclusion of public rights. And the second, the other way around.’ Whatever your particular proclivity – bugs, birds, social history – Bialowieza had something to offer. He must have recounted these stories hundreds of times, but he retained the passion of someone sharing them for the first time.
I tried to imagine the whole of Europe looking just like this – everything I’d seen, everywhere I’d been, once covered only in this kind of forest. But it was hard to see past the few trees in my immediate vicinity.
‘Is your family from this area of Poland?’ I asked Xenon. ‘My family has always lived by this park – sometimes that’s been Belarussia, Ukraine, Poland. Wherever this park has been, that’s the country we’ve lived in. I think that’s why I like this place. After a day of being in my forest, I realise papers or documents or borders don’t matter. All you have is how you feel.’
Maybe this is what narodowość was. When borders and countries were so changeable, perhaps it was a good thing to carry your nationality inside you.
‘But you know,’ he said, ‘I have a brother in Chicago, and I went to visit him. I love Tom Jones, and he was playing in Las Vegas, so we got front row seats to see him. And you know, where ladies often throw their …’ he cleared his throat, ‘undergarments? Well, I threw my tie on stage. I am a man, but I can appreciate the beauty of a male voice. And do you know, Tom Jones stopped the show. ‘Who are you?’ he asked me. ‘I am Xenon, ornithologist from Poland,’ I said. ‘“In thirty years, no one ever did this before,” he said, and he played rest of the show to me. And after the show, everyone wanted to meet me. I was as famous as Tom Jones!’ I laughed and looked at Tom. I’d tell him that one later. Maybe over the sturgeon we had our eye on for our dinner that night.
The six of us stopped for a break near a wooden shelter. A Spaniard reached out to catch a leaf that fell from the sky. A Czech entomologist swatted a mosquito. Xenon hummed to himself. Each experiencing the forest in our own ways. This accident of history. Just like the one where someone in Canberra had slotted Tom’s name into an empty space in an organisational chart, under the word Warsaw, and I’d ended up returning to this place some of my ancestors had never left.
Tom and I sat down on a mossy bench, breathing cool, oxygen-rich air, dappled sun on our faces, thighs comfortably touching.
It felt so peaceful. But it wasn’t peaceful because of how it was. It was peaceful because of how I was.
Three years ago, I couldn’t wait to leave Canberra. All I could think of was how much more interesting my life would be in Warsaw. I’d learned since, it isn’t living in interesting places and doing interesting things that makes you happy. Heck, it doesn’t even make you interesting.
Now I could see that living an interesting life has nothing to do with where you are, what you’re doing, or the people you meet. It comes from making a choice, every day, to be interested in where you are, what you’re doing, and the people you meet. And if you make an effort to fill your life with people and things that make you want to be where you are, you wouldn’t really need to be anywhere else.
I leaned into Tom. ‘Co cię nie zabije, to cię wzmocni’.
He cocked his head.
‘What does not kill you makes you stronger. Want me to tell you why the cię is in the accusative, not the negative genitive?’
‘I think we both know I’m never going to learn Polish.’
But if I was going to write a Polish textbook, I would call it Polish: It’s really more an attitude than a language. And if you looked at it like that, then I think Tom and I did both learn Polish. In our own ways.
‘I don’t want to go back to Canberra,’ I said.
‘I think we’re both ready to leave.’
‘I agree.’
‘So …’
‘Perth.’ I named the sunny west-coast town we’d left more than a decade earlier, in search of the better career opportunities on the east coast.
‘Perth? What we would we do there?’
‘Spend time with your parents while they’re still around. See if our old friends still like us. Have fish and chips on the beach.’ A few of the things that had been kicking around in my mind.
‘For a job, I mean.’
‘Do you care?’
‘No.’
‘Me neither.’
Tom closed his eyes. His breathing slowed. ‘Listen.’
‘I don’t hear anything?’ I whispered.
Tom nodded.
LATO – SUMMER
It was the first of July, and we had just a few days left in Warsaw. That afternoon, our Polish neighbour had taken us for a joy flight in his light aircraft. The husband of the couple we’d shared an apartment wall with for three years, and barely exchanged a word with in all that time, had a four-seater plane; he wouldn’t come in for a cup of tea, but finding out we were leaving, he insisted on taking us up in it for a last look at our home.
I’d said goodbye to Pani Henryka. I gave her a jar of jam I’d made from the bright red truskawki I’d bought at the tram stop. ‘Did you use shshshshsh or just sugar,’ she’d asked. I asked her about the word I didn’t know.
‘Pektyna’, she said.
‘No pektyna, just sugar,’ I’d said. Her approving nod suggested she might have held out a sliver of hope for me as a wife after all.
Tom and I had had an early goodbye dinner in town with Natalia, Elena, Tomek and Klaus. We ate blueberry pierogi, turning our tongues purple. Either that, or it was the demands of the three languages we nattered away to each other in.
Now Tom and I were hurrying through town to our farewell party, tightening our scarves around our necks and two beanies over our ears. Summer was technically in full swing but Central Europe hadn’t got the memo – it couldn’t have been more than eight degrees. A solid stage-two coat night. I
t wasn’t stopping the young couples huddling on the benches, nor the babcias walking rugged-up babies in prams. Nor was it stopping us – although we did pause to watch fireworks explode over Stalin’s Wedding Cake, celebrating the latest step in this country’s journey: As of midnight, Poland had started its six-month term as rotating head of the EU. Amazing to think that the country had gone from communism to the head of unified Europe in just twenty-one years.
We arrived at our destination, a tiny hole-in-the-wall bar, steamy with the smell of pig trotters in aspic, raw herring, pork sausage, and cigarette smoke. Stricter bans on smoking in public places had come into effect across the EU some six months earlier, but they were haphazardly enforced in Poland. And somehow, after the proposed EU legislation had been debated by the Polish Parliament, it had ended up becoming legal to smoke in hospitals and childcare centres across the country. That’s what happened when you tried to tell some Poles that they couldn’t do something.
We disrobed at the tiny cloakroom to the side, leaving our layers with an old man who probably thought his work would be done for the year by now, and joined our friends in a tight circle in the corner: Alex who’d got us invited to the fourth of July and paved my way to finding my Polish heritage, along with his new girlfriend Magda. Shannon and Paul, the Canadians who we’d shared so many trials and successes over so much takeaway Indian with. Stacey, of Ukrainian road trips and interviewing prisoners. Some were missing: Julie and Bluey, already on their way to Lisbon; and Piotr and Hannah, now on a posting in Washington, DC. We’d managed to route our trip home to include stopovers to both cities, despite them being in the opposite direction to Australia from Warsaw. The Department had approved it anyway. There were advantages to being posted somewhere that no one in Canberra could locate on a map.
