by Sue Gee
Afterwards, she and Jerzy walked down past their tent, along the river bank. Flocks of snow-white geese were settling in the bushes for the night; across the broad river the sun had almost disappeared behind trees, behind the tiled rooftops of the town and the cupolas of a medieval monastery. From the campsite, the disco throbbed. They made their way back to the tent, and switched on the battery lamp they’d bought with the tent from a camping shop in the Strand. It hung from a loop in the middle, and cast a bright, cold light; Jerzy bumped his head on it as he undressed, and they could see the dark shapes of moths outside begin to gather round it. Their funds had not run to a double sleeping bag: he had brought the one he used to take to Polish Scouts, circa 1966, and Elizabeth one she’d found in the cupboard under the stairs at her parents’house. They unzipped them and scrambled in; it was already quite cold. They lay in the bright light from the lamp, listening to the disco.
‘Perhaps we should have gone,’ said Elizabeth.
‘I couldn’t face it,’ said Jerzy. ‘We’ll try to find somewhere more secluded after this.’
‘You are the most deeply antisocial person I have ever known.’
‘I did warn you.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘I was thinking about it yesterday, in the park.’
‘Oh?’ He rolled over on to his elbow, and leaned over. ‘And what were you thinking?’
The light above them was cold and flat, casting no shadows. ‘Why don’t we turn that thing off?’ she asked. ‘Or put it down in a corner. Hang on, I’ll do it.’ She reached up and untied it, then stretched to tuck it towards the front, near the flaps, half under the ends of the sleeping bags. The tent was transformed: a warmly lit nest, enclosing them from the noise outside, and the night sky. She moved back towards Jerzy, and they lay with their arms round each other, watching the moths which had beat against the sides begin to flutter away and then bump against the flaps, still struggling to reach the light.
‘My mother and her brother used to go camping,’ Jerzy said suddenly. ‘I can remember her telling us – they were camping by a river near Wilno with their father when the war broke out. And he’d been reading them a story about exile – isn’t that strange? And now … here we are.’ He moved closer, and turned to look at her, their faces almost touching. ‘What were you thinking about, yesterday?’
‘Just – how lonely you still seem to be. I was trying to work out why.’
He frowned. ‘I don’t feel lonely.’
‘Don’t you? Apart, then. Perhaps that’s what I meant.’
‘Am I really so difficult to live with?’
‘Sometimes. You know you are. I can’t stand it when you’re so – unreachable.’
He rested his cheek against hers. ‘You shouldn’t take any notice.’
‘That’s impossible. Anyway – let’s not talk about it any more.’ She rubbed her face against his, and he began to stroke her hair, her eyes.
‘I do love you,’ she whispered. ‘You only have to touch me, and I know that.’
His tongue slid hard between her lips; they clung to each other in their separate sleeping bags, rolling against the sides of the tent. Elizabeth broke away, laughing. ‘Unzip me now.’ Jerzy unzipped her, pulled down his own sleeping bag and rolled on top of her, very warm.
‘Scouts was never like this.’
They woke late, and heard laughter and shouting from the river. When they had dressed and walked down there, they found children swimming in the shallows, boys canoeing past, splashing them. The snow-white geese had come out of the bushes, and were sailing along on the far side, and gathering on a sandbank further upstream. Stocky men in berets fished and smoked; Jerzy took photographs. As they turned to walk back there was a shout from near the tents and they saw a peasant woman in a black headscarf standing up in a large rickety cart, and shaking the reins of her horse. Beside her sat her husband, also wearing a beret; they stopped near a stretch of mown hay, got out and began to rake it into a heap.
‘Dzień dobry,’ said Jerzy as they passed.
The couple nodded, without raising their heads.
They washed in the communal washhouse, divided into men and women by a wall. In the cafeteria, the breakfast menu offered a piece of pig, boiled in water.
‘Or tea,’ said Jerzy.
‘No bread?’
‘It doesn’t say so.’
They ordered tea, and waited. At a nearby table, two teenage boys were eating pig.
‘It’s just boiled bacon,’ said Elizabeth. ‘It looks all right – let’s have some.’
When it arrived, however, it resembled not bacon, but a leg of boiled pork: like the liver, it was delicious. Afterwards, outside, they went to the camp shop, a long dark cabin lined with shelves. A couple of dozen tins of peas and bigos stood on the shelves, and loaves of bread. There was almost nothing else except a choice of mint or honey sweets in boxes on the counter, where the woman was serving wrapped bread in coarse sheets of brown or green paper. They bought a packet of honey sweets and went to pack up the tent. When everything was ready they found that the boot of the hired Fiat, which had closed without difficulty the day before, now had a broken hinge. They tied it with a piece of string, and drove slowly out of the site and on to the road to Czȩstochowa. The monastery there housed the painting of the Black Madonna, the focus of pilgrimages for centuries. The Pope had celebrated mass here.
It was sunny and growing warm. They passed more wayside shrines, and after a while saw a long procession ahead: covered waggons and people on foot. They slowed, and carefully overtook, stopping a few hundred yards further on to get out and watch it from the front. There were perhaps a hundred people singing, men, women and children, the waggons rumbling behind them; many of the men wore sashes or neck scarves, of red and white over working clothes, and one or two had swords tucked into their sashes; the women were in anoraks or cardigans. Someone was playing a pipe: thin music wove itself between the footsteps, the singing and the slow clip-clop of the horses. Jerzy raised his camera as the first people, drew near; they eyed him, some with suspicion, others indifferently, and went on singing.
‘Do you really think we should keep taking photographs?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘It does feel – intrusive.’
‘I know.’ Jerzy clicked again. ‘But after all … this is who we are, now – tourists.’
They stood and watched the procession go by, then got back in the car and slowly overtook again.
‘Is it a particular pilgrimage time?’
‘I don’t think so. Just Sunday. I thought we might try to stay in the convent at Czȩstochowa – I think they let rooms.’
But when they arrived in the town they found it so crowded with people and traffic that they knew at once they would never find a room here. They parked in a side street and walked through the packed streets towards the monastery and cathedral. At the far end of the road leading away from them stood a monolithic Monument of Gratitude to the Soviet Army.
A long procession was moving slowly between throngs of people in the Cathedral courtyard: children carried small shrines with plastic Virgins, or dolls dressed as angels, with feather wings. A brass band loudly brought up the rear. It was early afternoon, and very hot. Elizabeth and Jerzy followed the crowds.
‘You do want to go in?’ she asked him, as they reached the doors, remembering what had started their quarrel in Warsaw.
‘What? Oh, yes. Of course.’
The cathedral was packed. A vast baroque birthday cake, full of sunbursts, pink and white cherubs, painted plaster angels, every available patch of floorspace taken up by peasants and workers, standing and kneeling. The whole interior was lit by the streaming afternoon sun and by thousands of flickering candles; mass was being celebrated, and the chanted responses reverberated round the walls. Airlessness and incense and the smell of burning wax hung like a thick cloak; Elizabeth stood watching a peasant woman in black, a black headscarf knotted under her chin, kneeling and crossing herself, her lips moving in an
endless mutter, her eyes closed, and found her own eyes filling with tears. It was vulgar, it was sentimental; it was impossible not to be moved by it. But after a while, the airlessness began to close in on her; she began to feel faint. I don’t want another Pawiak panic, she thought nervously, and reached for Jerzy’s hand. He was standing still, gazing over the heads of the crowd towards the altar and the priest, whom Elizabeth could hardly see.
‘Jerzy … I don’t feel well …’
‘What?’ He turned to look down at her, irritated, distracted.
‘I’m sorry … Can we go outside?’
They pushed their way out through another door, into the corridors adjoining the cathedral. She leaned against a wall; nuns and tourists walked past. It was cooler here, the walls whitewashed and doors at the far end wide open on to what looked like a market. Jerzy put his arm round her; it felt impatient, more than reassuring.
‘Better now?’
‘Yes, I think so. I wouldn’t mind a drink.’
‘There might be something outside.’
The walls of the corridor were lined with blown-up black and white photographs of the Pope’s visit: blessing the crowds, blessing small children and cripples, kneeling to pray. Elizabeth, recovering, noticed one in particular, and tapped Jerzy’s shoulder.
‘Look.’
The Pope held a priest in his arms: the man, perhaps in his forties, leaned against him, his eyes closed, his face filled with exhausted and complete relief. No photograph Jerzy had ever taken, no photograph Elizabeth had ever seen had so moved her. The image of exhaustion said clearly: I have come home. They stood looking at it for several minutes, hearing footsteps and voices in the stone corridor go past them, the swish of the robes of nuns and other priests.
‘I shall never feel like that,’ said Jerzy.
Elizabeth looked up at him. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You know what I mean.’ His foot tapped the floor. ‘I’m lost. Not just “apart” as you call it. Lost, God help me.’ He turned away from the photograph and walked quickly down the corridor towards the open doors. Elizabeth followed, pale spots dancing in front of her eyes.
Outside, the sun was dazzling. The path all along the cathedral was lined with stalls: brightly varnished, violently coloured postcard pictures in ornate plastic frames – Christ crucified; the Madonna and Child; Our Lady of Czestochowa; the Black Madonna. There were plastic rosaries, plastic bunches and garlands of flowers – emerald, vermillion, orange and yellow, shocking pink; toy trumpets, shrines, angels; ice cream stalls. Elizabeth saw Jerzy striding past it all and away from her, not stopping to notice if she were following, and she felt a wave of anger.
‘Jerzy?’
She ran after him, feeling the sun beat down. There were ice cream sellers, but nothing, it seemed, to drink.
‘Jerzy!’ She caught up with him, took his arm. He shook her off.
‘Leave me alone.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous. How can I?’
‘Leave me alone!’
He broke away, almost running down the slope towards the town, leaving her crying with fury and frustration. She thought, as she walked blindly past the stallholders, of how less than twenty-four hours ago she had said she found it hard when Jerzy was unreachable, the gentleness with which he had told her to take no notice. She thought of them making love in the tent, passionate, sure of each other, and of the irritation in his face a few minutes ago, when she’d told him she felt unwell. And she thought, reaching the town, and seeing him ahead of her under the trees, striding past parked cars: if we were married, it would always be like this.
‘You don’t understand.’
‘How can I understand if you don’t talk to me?’
‘How can I talk to you, when I know you can’t possibly understand? How can you? You’re English, you’re nice and safe –’
‘You sound just like Ewa.’
‘So? Perhaps I am just like Ewa.’
‘I hate you when you’re like this.’
‘Go on, then, hate me – I can’t help it.’
After that, Elizabeth stared out of the car window at the darkening countryside; distant factory chimneys rose into the sky. Please don’t let him make us camp out here.
In Czȩstochowa, they had found their car and in the main street found a café where they sat in angry silence, sipping something called Cola, very sweet and neither still nor fizzy. It took them quite a long time to get out of the town, and they had driven off without discussion about where they were going to stay the night.
Jerzy tapped the guidebook above the dashboard. ‘Have a look.’
Elizabeth reached for it, flicked through the pages. There was nothing about a campsite anywhere near. ‘There’s a hotel in a town called Zawierce,’ she said. ‘About forty kilometres from Czȩstochowa. It says it’s a tourist hotel. What do you think?’
He shrugged. ‘We can have a look.’
The landscape grew darker; here, too, geese were settling for the night. Elizabeth felt empty, as well as unhappy, and realized they had had nothing to eat since breakfast.
‘I’m hungry.’
‘You’re always hungry. You ate half a pig at breakfast.’
I’m going to leave him, she thought. The minute we get back to England.
Half an hour later they arrived in Zawierce. There were almost no street lights, so it took them some time to find the tourist hotel, a large plain building of two or three storeys which looked like part of a school, or a sports centre.
The reception area was lit by uncertain neon; behind a much varnished tongue-and-groove plywood counter a woman who looked like a gym teacher flicked through a large black register.
‘Proszę?’
Jerzy put down their case, and asked for a double room. While they waited for the key, Elizabeth looked at a long strip of mirror hung on the wall beside the counter. There was something not quite right about it; she moved closer, and saw that it was made not of silvered glass but some kind of plastic. Faint wavy lines ran all across, and her reflection was blurry and indistinct, as if she were in front of a fairground mirror.
‘Coming?’ asked Jerzy beside her.
‘Yes – look.’
He looked, saw his own distorted reflection, and shrugged. ‘What do you expect?’
She followed him up stone stairs smelling of disinfectant. On the second floor Jerzy unlocked the door to a small square room and switched on the light. That, too, was neon. Two single beds with shiny blue covers stood on either side of a varnished table with a plastic glass and a tin ashtray; on the opposite wall was a large, varnished wardrobe. There was more yellow-varnished tongue-and-groove plywood along the wall behind the beds, and a low plastic chair at the window, which was hung with shiny blue curtains.
Elizabeth sat down on one of the beds and felt her heart sink.
To be in this drab, shoddy room with a man who would not talk …
He had put down the case and was by the wardrobe, reading a typed list.
‘An inventory of the contents of this room,’ he read aloud. ‘It includes a smok. Do you know what a smok is?’
‘No.’
‘A dragon.’
They looked at each other, and very cautiously smiled.
‘I haven’t seen him yet,’ said Elizabeth.
‘Nor me.’ He came over and sat next to her. ‘Do you forgive me?’
‘No. Not unless you talk to me. I can’t just switch on and off like a light bulb.’
Jerzy sighed. ‘Are you still hungry?’
‘Very.’
‘Let’s go and find something to eat, then, and talk there.’
They walked back into the main street over cracked pavements, past a lit-up window filled with identical lamps with red plastic lampshades. The chimneys of several factories loomed above the rooftops; an enormous painted slogan on a wall was just readable in the light from the restaurant.
‘Translation?’
‘The Programme of the Party is t
he Programme of the People.’
They went into the restaurant. An empty glass-fronted counter stood at the far end; one or two men on their own sat smoking at small tables. The waiter shook his head at them; he and Jerzy exchanged a few words.
‘Closed?’ asked Elizabeth.
‘Yes – there’s nothing left.’
‘It’s not even nine …’
‘I know. He says there’s a place near the station.’
They walked through almost empty streets to the station. A café advertising ‘Rarities’had its door open; inside, through a haze of cigarette smoke, they saw men in dusty blue overalls queuing at a counter. They went inside, made their way through crowded metal tables to the counter and waited in the queue. At the head, a stony-faced waitress in a brown apron was slapping ladles of stew on to thick white plates; she looked as though she had been doing it for ever. When they reached her, Jerzy turned to Elizabeth.
‘Bigos or goulash.’
‘I’m past caring. Goulash.’
The waitress banged the ladle twice, pushed the plates at them, turned and banged two open bottles of Cola on to the counter, and a plate with two hard-looking rolls.
They paid, and found a table. Elizabeth looked at her plate: five or six gobbets of meat sat in a thick, yellowish sauce. She dabbed at the sauce with a weightless fork and tasted. It was stone cold. Hunger and the day’s accumulation of misery welled up in her: she put down the fork and burst into tears.
‘Hey – please – not here.’ Jerzy was flushed with embarrassment. ‘Calm down …’
‘Oh, shut up!’ Elizabeth shouted, and got up, scraping back her chair. Around them, the workmen at the tables sat and smoked; one or two turned round to look at them, without much interest.
‘Elizabeth – please …’
