by Sue Gee
Hampstead village was brightly lit; they walked up the hill past the restaurants and boutiques and through the side streets to the house behind the church. Bare trees tossed in the wind on the heath.
‘Come upstairs,’ said Jerzy, and they went up to his room, and and switched on the electric fire, shivering.
‘How have we survived a whole winter like this?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘I survived three others before you arrived,’ said Jerzy. ‘I can’t imagine how. Come here. Come here.’
They switched off the lamp and kissed, clinging to each other, then undressing quickly in the burning light of the fire. Jerzy lit a candle, and put it on the floor by the bed; they huddled under the bedclothes, kissing and stroking each other until they were warm.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you.’
They made love at last with aching slowness.
An evening in mid-October, cold and wet. Anna hurried up the street under her umbrella, stepping aside to avoid being splashed by a passing car. She was tired; she could feel the beginning of a cold. She was supposed to be going to supper tomorrow with Jerzy and Elizabeth, who had rented a flat in Gospel Oak, near Elizabeth’s studio. She thought she might have to put it off: it was too much on a weekday, though she enjoyed seeing them.
‘Anna! Anna!’
She looked up and saw Babcia waving from their window, open despite the rain. Unheard of for Babcia to lean out and call like that into the street: had something happened to Dziadek? She began to run, stopped outside their house and called up: ‘What is it? Are you all right?’
‘The Pope!’ Babcia called down, but a car drove past, and Anna couldn’t hear what she said next and wasn’t even sure she’d heard correctly. She unlocked the front door, shook and furled her umbrella and hurried up the stairs. Above, she heard the door open, and Babcia call down again: ‘The Pope! He is Polish!’
‘What?’
As she climbed the last flight she could hear the grandparents’ radio and the six o’clock news. Then she had reached the top, and saw Babcia and Dziadek standing in their doorway, with tears in their eyes.
‘He is from Kraków,’ Dziadek said. ‘A Polish Pope …’
‘I don’t believe it,’ said Anna, but she felt a great wave of happiness and excitement rush through her. ‘Come in,’ she said quickly, and unlocked her own door and ran to the sitting room. She switched on the television, and a light, and they stood watching film from Kraków and Warsaw, and the picture of a man with a strong, quiet, smiling face flash on to the screen. Babcia burst into tears, and then the telephone rang. Anna went to answer it, as the television abruptly switched to the next item.
‘Hello? Ewa? … yes, yes, we’ve just heard. Isn’t it wonderful?
… Yes, do come over. And will you ring Jerzy? All right … see you in a little while …’
She hung up, and went back to the sitting room, just as the phone in the grandparents’flat began to ring.
‘The whole world is on the telephone,’ said Dziadek, and he went out to answer it, smiling, moving like a man of forty.
9. Poland, 1979
Jerzy and Elizabeth were sharing the couchette compartment from Hook of Holland to Warsaw with four Poles: a middle-aged husband and wife, who looked like farmers; a thin single man in his sixties with a bulbous nose and red, sweating face; and a grandmother who sat surrounded by a heap of bulging plastic bags. Elizabeth watched Jerzy helping to heave their companions’suitcases on to the luggage rack, and gestured to the old woman.
‘Shall we … your bags …’
She shook her head. ‘Thank you … I keep them.’
‘What about this?’ Jerzy asked in Polish, indicating a worn cardboard suitcase by her feet.
‘Yes, yes, that, please …’
He swung it up to the rack, and looked around. ‘Anything else, anyone?’
The man on his own said something Elizabeth couldn’t understand, and Jerzy laughed. He sat down, opposite her; she shifted on the plastic seat and looked at her watch.
‘We’ll be moving in a minute.’
‘How about something to eat?’
She opened her shoulder bag, brought out sandwiches and Thermos. The single man watched, got up again and reached to the luggage rack, snapping open a plastic suitcase. Looking up, Elizabeth saw he had a hole in his throat, a clean, round, unmistakable hole. A tracheotomy? A bullet wound? She kicked Jerzy gently across the narrow space between the seats, but as he raised an eyebrow the man turned round, and she felt embarrassed, and shook her head. ‘Never mind.’
The man waved a bottle of vodka at them, and a glass.
‘Aha,’ said Jerzy. ‘That’s more like it.’
He poured a shot and raised the glass, grinning.
‘Na zdrowie.’
‘Na zdrowie, said everyone.
There was a shunting and clanging and the carriage jerked. Then the door to the corridor was slid open with a bang and their courier beamed at them from behind Edna Everage spectacles.
‘You all have everything? Tickets, passports, your badges? We are about to leave. Ah – I see the celebrations have begun already.’ They all laughed. Pani Maria was enormous, kindly, had marshalled them all at Victoria Station, Dover, disembarking. She cast a glance at the old lady, then at Jerzy and Elizabeth. ‘You will take care of little Babcia?’
‘Oh, yes.’
‘Very good. If there is anything you need, I am in carriage D.’ She banged the door across again, and moved heavily along the corridor. The train began to move.
There was a general shifting and settling in the carriage.
‘Happy?’ Jerzy asked Elizabeth.
‘Very. And you?’
He nodded, and she thought: he looks more relaxed than he has for months – perhaps than I’ve ever seen him.
The train gathered speed, and she sat looking out of the window, as they moved through towns and villages, past trees just turning yellow, through, a flat landscape under a grey late afternoon sky. It was five o’clock; they had left Victoria at nine, oversleeping and almost missing the train after having supper with the family the night before and staying up late to finish packing. In Jerzy’s case was an empty jam jar.
‘What are you taking that for?’ Elizabeth asked, as he brought it back from the kitchen, washed and dried, and slipped it in between two pairs of jeans.
‘Polish earth,’ he said, putting a sweater on top. ‘Dziadek asked me to bring him some. He was half-joking, but …’
Through the window, Elizabeth saw two white swans, slowly moving across a dyke covered in thick green algae. It was growing dusky, lights appearing in the towns. Ahead the factory chimneys of Rotterdam sent thick smoke drifting into the sky and she could see the darkening outlines of cranes and ships. Then the lights in the carriage flicked on, and it became difficult to see anything outside. She turned to watch Jerzy, talking animatedly in Polish. She had been to evening classes last winter, but still found it very difficult, could understand more than she could speak, but understood only the basics. What was he talking about now? She made out passport, and border, and there were roars of laughter. In her corner, the Babcia was falling asleep, still in her headscarf, her Tesco’s and Arnotts’Food Store bags beginning to slide a little towards the floor.
‘She’s going to visit her son in Poznań,’ said Jerzy. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Tired. How are we all going to sleep?’
‘With enormous difficulty, I should think. Shall we have something to eat now?’
The farmer and his wife, who she discovered lived in Bradford, were unwrapping mounds of sandwiches, and a long sausage. The man on his own eyed them, and took another swig of vodka.
‘Hasn’t he brought any food?’ Elizabeth asked under her breath.
Jerzy shrugged. ‘We could give him something …’
‘Go on, then.’
But the man shook his head. ‘Nie, me, dziękuję …’ He got up, slid back the door and we
nt out, swaying down the corridor.
‘And where does he live?’ asked Elizabeth, munching a cheese sandwich.
‘In a hostel in Ealing. He comes back quite often – this is his seventh or eighth trip.’
‘Oh.’
Two weeks before they left, Ewa had had a birthday party, a small gathering in her flat for family and friends. Among the friends was a girl with a Polish mother and English father, born and brought up in north London. Hanna used to work in the same translation agency as Ewa, and was married to an Englishman. She and Elizabeth had spent some time talking; her attitude towards many of the older-generation Poles was brisk.
‘Absurd, this business of not going back. They could have got British passports and be going every year, if they wanted – why not? And the way some of the grandparents have never learned English, closeting themselves away …’ She frowned. ‘My grandmother still wants me to go to mass – I try not to think about all that, now.’
She couldn’t have been more different from Ewa. Elizabeth had wondered if Ewa minded that she was going to Poland: it did feel somehow inappropriate, that Jerzy’s first visit should be with her, and not his sister.
‘No, I don’t mind,’ Ewa had said last night, at supper. ‘I don’t think I’ll ever go, I don’t think I want to.’
‘Why?’
‘You know why – because it would be supporting the regime.’
‘Do you think that’s what we’re doing?’ Jerzy asked. ‘Shouldn’t we be going?’
Ewa shrugged. ‘You go. Of course you must go if you want to. I just wish I could see Wiktoria.’
‘So do I,’ said Anna. ‘I hope you can manage all the parcels, Jerzy. They won’t weigh you down too much?’
‘No, Mama. Anyway, it’s only until we get to Warsaw.’
Elizabeth looked up at the luggage rack. They’d hardly been able to shut his suitcase this morning – it was filled with the things Wiktoria had written to ask for: chocolate, shampoo, writing paper, toilet rolls, soap powder. They would stay with her for a little while, then hire a car and travel as much as they could, taking a tent. It had taken them almost a year to save for the trip, helped at the last minute by Elizabeth selling a painting and Jerzy four photographs, in his first exhibition, small but well received, in a new gallery.
‘Passeporte!’ The door slammed open; a German border guard inspected them, their documents. ‘Bitte … danke schön.’
The carriage windows were black, now, the countryside invisible except for occasional lights. They drank coffee from the Thermos, and stretched. The farmer and his wife were standing up, prising open their suitcases again, passing spongebags. In her corner, the Babcia was snoring lightly, headscarf askew.
‘Is she going to share a couchette with Bullet Hole?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘I hope not. I’m going to the loo – coming?’
They went out together, found the corridor crowded, and pushed through to the toilet, queuing for almost twenty minutes before they could each get in, pee, and have a wash. It smelt, and was running out of toilet paper. Swaying, Elizabeth remembered the rolls in Jerzy’s case – oh well. Tomorrow morning.
When they got back to their carriage they found the couchettes already down, thin sheets and coarse grey blankets folded at the ends. The Babcia, awake now, was sitting bolt upright on hers at the bottom, the farmer and his wife on the second and third bunks. Jerzy and Elizabeth clambered up, on the opposite side, he to the third, she to the middle, and held hands for a moment, whispering.
‘I love you.’
‘I love you. Goodnight.’
Elizabeth dropped her hand, turned over, listened to everyone trying to settle, to pretend the others weren’t there.
The carriage lights dimmed, the train moved faster and faster. Just as they were drifting into sleep, the door slid open and Bullet Hole stumbled in, muttering. Elizabeth raised her head, and saw him stand for a moment, blinking at them all; then he felt his way to the bunk beneath hers, sat down and pulled off his shoes and was almost instantly asleep, snoring loudly.
She pulled her pillow over her head, and after a while fell asleep too, the sound and movement of the train deep within her.
‘Passeporte! Passeporte, bitte!’
It felt only moments before they were shouted awake again, the door of the carriage banged back as loudly as if it were broad daylight, and they crossed into East Germany. Then, in the small hours, into West Berlin, and the door banged open again. Then again: East Berlin. Peering through a grey half-light, Elizabeth saw two Russian soldiers, in guardboxes, silhouetted. Then the train jerked forwards and they were moving on; she drifted back into an uncomfortable doze, her head throbbing. And then again, one last demand for passports, and by early morning they had crossed the border into Poland.
Sunflowers nodded from cottage gardens, from the wild borders of fields where rounded haystacks rested like cows in the sun. There were silver birches all along the track; grey wooden carts moved slowly through the hayfields, the horse driven by a man or boy; women and children in kerchiefs gathered the hay into stooks. White geese flapped along winding roads; stacks of sawn wood stood in yards. The train passed through a forest, then endless maize fields.
‘There’s a stork!’
At Poznań station, Babcia and Bullet Hole got off. He was going to visit his sick brother; they watched him weave his way towards the exit. The little Babcia stood on the platform, waiting for her son. She looked up and down. People came and went.
‘Where is he?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘Drunk in a bar on the other side of Poznań, I expect.’
The train began to move again; they craned their necks. As they pulled out of the station, she was still standing there, suitcase and Arnotts’Food Store bags at her feet, quite alone on the platform.
Jerzy began translating the names of the stations they passed through, as they sat drinking milkless tea from glasses fetched earlier from the end of the corridor: in a cubbyhole with a kettle, a man in cap and shirtsleeves was supplying the whole carriage, perhaps the whole train.
‘Stumps … This is Rome … These are the Seasons … In the Manner of a Wolf … Hawks’Nest … Scalders.’
‘Scalders?’
‘I think that’s what it means.’
‘And what does that mean?’ asked Elizabeth. ‘Look.’
They gazed at enormous red lettering on the white walls outside
UMACNIAMY SOCJALISTYCZNĄ PRAWOZ·A˛DNOŚC´!
‘Let us Strengthen Socialist Justice!’ said Jerzy.
The farmer roared.
There were similar appeals on a number of other walls. Inside the carriage, the main topic of conversation was currency exchange. Two hours from Warsaw the sky darkened; by mid-afternoon, as the train pulled into the station, it was drizzling and chilly. Pani Maria stumped along the platform in a transparent plastic mac, glasses steaming, seeing off her passengers.
‘Do widzenia, do widzenia … Enjoy yourselves.’ She looked at Jerzy and Elizabeth.
‘You have somewhere to stay?’
‘Yes, thanks,’ said Jerzy, ‘We’re just having a breather.’
‘Ah. You want a lift?’
They looked at each other.
‘All right – thank you.’
She led them into the station car park, where a man in very military uniform stood waiting by a Polish Fiat. There seemed to be no other make of car there.
‘My colleague,’ said Pani Maria, and they realized that although he looked like a major, or perhaps a police officer, he was another travel agent. ‘Please – get in. Where are you going?’
Jerzy gave them Wiktoria’s address, and they drove out through the – damp streets. Trams moved down the centre; tower blocks and skyscrapers rose above shop façades; Fiat taxis hooted. There were people queuing at kiosks, coming in and out of the shops, but Elizabeth’s first impression was of space, and few people.
They stopped in a quiet, tree-lined street some way from
the centre. From the front seat, Pani Maria turned round, and asked Jerzy something in Polish. He nodded, and withdrew his wallet. The military man snapped open a black plastic briefcase; they saw wads of złoty notes. More words were exchanged, in low voices, and then Jerzy passed over a small sheaf of dollars and was given what looked like a million złotys. The black plastic briefcase snapped shut; they drove on. The whole transaction had taken less than a minute.
Elizabeth envisaged military police, waiting for them as the train to London stopped abruptly, on the track outside Warsaw. She saw herself, weeping, as Jerzy, despite his British passport, was taken away; imagined pleading in consulates, embassies, returning to England without him, telling the family. Worse: even now they were about to be arrested, the driver not a travel agent at all, but a member of the military police, and Pani Maria a decoy, paid to trap Western tourists. In a few moments the car would stop, they would slowly turn from the front seat, look at them coldly. ‘Passports, please.’
The car drew to a halt. Elizabeth’s stomach lurched.
‘This must be it,’ said Jerzy.
‘What?’ She grabbed his hand.
‘Wiktoria’s … are you all right?’
She nodded, feeling sick.
‘Is it his driving?’
‘No, nothing, tell you later.’
They clambered out, pulling their luggage, and shook hands with Pani Maria, who beamed.
‘Very good – I shall see you in three weeks, yes? On the platform. Enjoy yourselves.’ She slammed the door, and the car sped away. Elizabeth clutched at Jerzy’s hand.
‘Hey – what’s the matter?’
‘I thought … I thought …’ She explained, feeling ridiculous.
‘Honestly.’ He hugged her. ‘People do it every day, all the time. We’ll probably be stopped in the street tomorrow.’
‘But are you sure it’s safe?’
‘Not if you do it outside a police station, I suppose, but otherwise.’
‘How do you know?’
