by Sue Gee
‘Dear Countrymen, Brother Peasants,
‘A great thing has happened to Polish agriculture … we have signed an agreement at Bydgoszcz that says that by 10 May we will have a peasants’trade union in Poland.
‘Our country is in a critical situation. It is important to know who was responsible for it, but it is also even more important to be aware who will lift us out of this grave situation. It will be the peasants, of course. Until recently they were the most neglected of all. In our fatherland, we peasants in company with the combined might of the workers and of the whole nation must play the key role … We … have the bread in our hands, and must feed the nation …
‘The union must organize the grass roots, take control of everything that is happening in the villages, the parish authorities, rural cooperatives, banks, local councils, agricultural circles, dairies. We cannot allow the countryside to witness any more falsehood, cheating, lying or denunciations.
‘We must concern ourselves above all with village children; next winter they should not stand waiting at the bus stop in the frost and cold, like the condemned awaiting their sentence …’
‘Proszę Pani … Excuse me?’
Ewa jumped, and put down the magazine. A young fellow in overalls was standing in front of her, blocking the sun. His hair was grey with dust, but he had a nice face, a kind and intelligent face. Also, a heavy Polish accent.
‘Excuse me,’ he said again, and nodded towards the magazine, and the Solidarność logo on the front page. ‘You read about Poland?’
‘Yes,’ said Ewa. She looked up at him, feeling rather awkward down here in the deck chair, but not feeling able to get up, and stand beside him. The sun was very bright, and when he moved she had to screw up her eyes. ‘Are you from Poland?’
He nodded. ‘From Warszawa – from Warsaw.’ He squatted down beside her. ‘Forgive me – you speak Polish?’
‘Yes,’ said Ewa. ‘I am Polish.’
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Your voice …’ He meant her accent.
‘I was born in this country.’
‘Ah.’
There was a pause. He pulled out a packet of Marlborough cigarettes from the top pocket of his overalls and held it out.
‘You smoke?’ he asked in Polish.
‘Too much,’ said Ewa, in Polish, and took one. He leaned towards her, and lit it with a lighter which flickered a little, and smelt of butane. Ewa coughed. He lit one for himself, and closed the packet, tapping the lid. ‘American cigarettes, Polish lighter,’ he said, and grinned, wryly.
Ewa smiled back. ‘How long have you been over here?’
‘A few weeks, only.’ He looked down at his overalls, and grinned again. ‘I am helping to rebuild this magnificent country.’
‘Legally?’ asked Ewa before she could stop herself, and he frowned.
‘It’s all right,’ she said quickly. ‘I was joking. You can trust me.’ And felt the hated blush creep into her face again.
He drew on his cigarette. ‘I think it’s the oldest trick in the world, isn’t it, to be trapped by a pretty girl?’
Ewa shrugged, and studied the magazine, her cheeks burning. Was this fellow trying to pick her up? She supposed he was. And was she just going to sit here blushing? She should get rid of him, or hold a proper conversation. Surely, at thirty years old, she was capable of that?
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I am disturbing you.’
He made to get up, and she said, ‘No. No, it’s all right.’ She raised her head and he looked at her quizzically, then at the magazine.
‘It’s about Solidarity, about Bydgoszcz? What is this paper, exactly?’
Ewa read him the brief editorial, translating as she went. He nodded. ‘It’s good. I didn’t know there was such a paper.’
‘No,’ said Ewa, ‘neither did I. I bought it just this morning.’
‘Did you?’ He smiled at her. ‘How strange. May I?’ He took it from her, leafed through the pages. He pointed to the photographs of Wałęsa and Gwiazda. ‘Last time I saw these guys was on television, telling us the general strike was off. You heard about that?’
‘Of course. Everyone here was on tenterhooks. You would have been on strike?’
‘Of course. Of course.’
‘Weren’t you all afraid of what might happen?’
He spread his hands, still squatting, then sat down on the grass. ‘We were too angry to be afraid. There’s an expression, rather melodramatic – you know it? “Better to die on our feet than live on our knees.” That’s rather how we felt.’
‘I know it,’ said Ewa. ‘It was used in the war, wasn’t it? My mother told me.’
‘She was in Poland during the war?’
‘In Warsaw, yes.’
‘And your father? Were they in the Uprising?’
‘Yes. I don’t think my father’s ever got over it.’ She told him that lightly, as if, she realized, she didn’t have to worry about whether he’d understand.
He nodded slowly. ‘My parents, too. But they went back, of course. I was born there.’
The sun was high in the sky, and it was very hot. On the path between the stretches of dry grass people were strolling slowly towards the lake. At the same moment, Stefan said: ‘May I ask your name?’ and Ewa looked at her watch, and said: ‘I must be getting back to work.’ They smiled at each other.
‘Ewa,’ she said. ‘And … yours?’
He stubbed out his cigarette on the grass and got up. ‘Stefan.’ He hesitated. ‘You work near here?’
‘Not far.’ Ewa bent down and put out her own cigarette. She put the magazine in her bag, and got up, taking her jacket off the back of the deck chair. He saw the Solidarność badge, and shook his head, laughing.
‘What?’ asked Ewa, then saw what he was looking, at.
‘It just makes me feel good,’ he said simply, and made, as if automatically, to help her on with the jacket, then hesitated again.
‘Thank you,’ said Ewa, ‘but it’s too hot, don’t you think?’
‘Of course.’
They began to walk down the long path towards the gates. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Where are you working?’
‘In a little road off Baker Street. We are renovating a house, four of us. There is another Pole there now. The guy who employs us is English, he’s okay. Not like the Pole I met on my first day.’
‘Oh?’
He told her about Kubiak, the pound an hour and the children of communists. Ewa shook her head. ‘I wonder how many of my parents’generation think like that.’
They had reached the gates, and came out on to the Edgware Road. ‘I came here after that interview,’ said Stefan. ‘But I didn’t have such pleasant company, then.’ He stopped, and looked at her. Ewa blushed, and looked away.
‘Well – I have to go now.’
‘Of course. Me, too. I don’t want to get the sack in my first job.’
‘No, no, you mustn’t. Well – goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’ He held out his hand, she gave him hers, and he lifted it very quickly and brushed it with his lips. Then grinned. ‘Even the sons of communists have the traditional Polish manners.’ He released her hand. ‘Perhaps you find such things rather old-fashioned?’
‘No – I –’ Ewa couldn’t think. ‘I must go now, excuse me.’ She turned away, stood waiting for the traffic lights to change, and hurried across the road, walking fast in the shade as she approached her street. Footsteps came running up behind her.
‘Ewa!’
She turned round quickly, saw him running up towards her. And felt suddenly happy. ‘Yes?’
‘Forgive me –’ He stood in front of her, suddenly awkward, and rubbed his face. ‘I – is it perhaps possible to see you again?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I should like to.’
‘Good, good.’ He rubbed his face again, streaking the builder’s dirt with sweat. ‘Well – what shall we …’
‘Perhaps we could meet again after work?’ Ewa real
ized that she wasn’t blushing. ‘What about …’ She pointed to a pub just ahead of them, on the other side of the road. Hanging baskets of geraniums, lobelia and mignonette swung gently above the door. ‘In there? What time do you finish work?’
‘I can be there at six.’
‘Fine. I’ll see you at six, then.’
‘Yes.’ He looked down at her again, and said: ‘You are not a builder.’
She laughed. ‘No.’
‘I don’t know what work you do. Let me guess. You are – a teacher?’
‘Do you see any schools round here? No, I’m not.’ She pulled a face. ‘Do I look like a teacher?’
‘No, but – you have a clever face.’
‘Do I?’ The blush was returning.
‘You are a journalist?’
‘No, never. I’m a translator.’
‘A translator. Ah.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘That could be useful.’
Ewa felt suddenly apprehensive, a feeling much more familiar than happiness. ‘I must go,’ she said.
‘Of course. Until six, then.’
‘Until six.’ She did not give him her hand again, but walked quickly away, bumping into a man in a suit and blushing again, not looking back to see if Stefan were watching, but almost running until she was in her own street again, and by the safety of the open double doors leading into her office building. Inside, it was cool; there was a Ladies’on the ground floor, and she went in and splashed her face with water. She dried it on the towel, and brushed her hair, looking in the mirror beneath the strip of neon, and seeing her face as a stranger might see it: pale, dark-eyed, possibly an interesting face, she would grant herself that, but in no way revealing anything of who, ashamed, she felt herself to be: uncertain, uneasy, somehow set apart.
This is how Jerzy used to feel, she thought: that he didn’t belong anywhere, with anyone. She went out and waited for a moment by the lift, then felt too impatient, and climbed the stairs. At her desk, she sat looking out through the open window at the street below. The breeze stirred the papers on her desk, held down by a paperweight Jerzy and Elizabeth had brought back with them from Poland two years ago. She remembered, suddenly, something Jerzy had said to her long before then, when they were walking through the cemetery after the Katyń memorial service. ‘You have your own life, you can go home as your own person.’ It had been she trying to comfort him, then, laughing off what seemed to be the success she had made of her life after that terrible, long-ago summer. And now? He had Elizabeth.
‘Ewa? Are you all right?’
She turned quickly from the window, and saw Patricia watching her. ‘You’re rather pale – have you got a headache?’
‘No, no, I’m fine. Sorry. It must have been the sun in the park.’
She bent her head to the paper on the import of Polish bottled fruit, not seeing it. The sun in the park – a nice phrase, it sounded like the title of a love story. She thought: But I have no place in a real love story, and then, angrily: This is stupid self-pity, this is the twentieth century. What happened to me was something that happens to hundreds of girls. You think for a little while that your heart is broken, then you recover, and rejoin the human race; you don’t let it scar you for the rest of your life. But she thought of meeting Stefan in a few hours’ time, and felt stinging tears of humiliation at the awkward, diffident woman she still was. She brushed them away, covertly. I can’t help it, she thought. I can’t help it if people aren’t supposed to be scarred. That seems to have been what happened to me.
He was waiting at a table in a corner of the pub, and as soon as she saw him she felt better. The doors were open on to the street, so that the bar was filled with early evening sunlight, and the glasses and polished table tops gleamed. Stefan had a pint glass beside him; he was bent over the evening paper, frowning and smoking, still in his overalls but he’d obviously washed, and run a comb through the dusty hair. For a moment, as she stepped inside, Ewa recalled that other pub, where she had waited for Leo with such pitiful longing; then she pushed the memory away and walked over to Stefan, who was waiting for her, and who somehow looked already familiar, a friend.
‘Dzień dobry.’
He almost jumped, putting down the paper quickly, and getting to his feet. ‘Dzień dobry. I’m sorry – I didn’t see you come in.’
‘It’s all right.’
They stood there, not quite knowing what to say next. Stefan gestured to the table. ‘Please – sit down. May I get you a drink?’
‘I should be buying one for you,’ said Ewa.
‘No, no. What would you like?’
‘I’ll just have a white wine and Perrier, please.’ She laughed at his puzzled expression. ‘It’s a mineral water! I don’t drink very much. And I’ll buy you the next.’ Was that a bit presumptuous? They might have run out of conversation after one drink. She sat down, putting her briefcase under the table, and watched him go up to the bar and ask, in awkward English, for her drink.
‘White wine and – and –’ He turned round and raised an eyebrow, asking quickly in Polish: ‘And what?’
‘Perrier,’ she said, and he pulled an enormously exaggerated face, a foreigner at sea amidst outlandish local customs, and she laughed, feeling again the rush of happiness.
He came back, put her glass down in front of her, and pulled back his chair.
‘Thank you. Sorry if it was a problem.’ She raised the glass. ‘Na zdrowie.’
‘Na zdrowie.’
She saw a couple at the next table look at them for a moment, curious, clearly wondering what language they were speaking. Ewa used Polish at work all the time, but hardly ever in public, only if she were out with one of the family, and she realized that perhaps she had always, without questioning, thought of it as a private, even secret language, used to keep others out.
Stefan was offering her a cigarette.
‘No, you have one of mine this time.’ She felt in her jacket pocket, and took out a packet of Camel.
‘Aha! The Camel. He is everywhere in Warsaw.’
‘Is he? Here.’ She held out the pack.
‘But very expensive. Thank you.’ He took one, but did not light it, waiting until she had hers, and offering the lighter again. ‘Is the Camel your favourite?’
Ewa inhaled, and shrugged. ‘Cigarettes are disgusting. I wish I could give it up.’
‘I don’t. It’s been my only pleasure here – well, so far.’ He looked at her with an unmistakable twinkle, and she went scarlet.
‘I – have you smoked long?’ she asked, idiotically.
‘All my life,’ he said gravely. ‘And you?’
‘No. I mean, I don’t know. About ten years, I think.’
‘Ah.’
They fell into what seemed to Ewa, looking at the table, to be a silence full of floundering embarrassment. When she felt the blush fade, and looked up, she saw Stefan studying the paper again.
‘I can hardly understand a word,’ he said, as if there had been no awkwardness at all. ‘I must go to classes, I suppose. Or perhaps you could help me a little?’
‘Um – yes, perhaps.’
‘I speak Polish at work, too,’ he said, ‘now this guy Wojtek has come. I should speak nothing but English.’
‘My grandparents speak nothing but Polish,’ said Ewa.
‘Still?’
‘Still. After thirty-five years. My grandmother can barely do the shopping.’
He shook his head. ‘Fantastic. And who else is there in your family?’
‘My parents and my brother. He’s called Jerzy, and he lives with an English woman.’
‘They are not married?’
‘No. I don’t know why, I’m sure they’ll stay together.’
‘And you?’
‘I’m not married, no.’ She looked away, taking another sip of her drink. ‘I’m – not really interested in all that.’
‘All what? You’re not interested in marriage?’
‘Or – any of it.’ Her cheeks were
burning; the thought of her quiet attic flat, and solitude, was like a long cool swimming pool, there to step into, and recover, and drown if she wanted to.
‘That is rather unusual,’ Stefan said lightly. ‘Ewa?’
‘Yes?’ She looked at him, cheeks still burning, daring him to ask another question.
‘Forgive me,’ he said slowly. ‘I have upset you. It wasn’t my intention.’
‘Of course it wasn’t.’ She had embarrassed him, made him feel he had blundered, and he was so nice, so funny. Was she going to spend the rest of her life in this dreadful, intense, neurotic way, barely able to hold a conversation with a man without making a fool of herself? Did she have to pay like this for one, ridiculous mistake? She shook her head again, blindly. ‘I’m sorry. I’m afraid I’m a rather peculiar person.’ And tried to laugh, as if people who had just met had conversations like this all the time.
He drew on his cigarette, watching her. ‘I think perhaps you were once very badly hurt?’
It must be written all over her. ‘Please – can we not talk like this any more?’
‘Of course. May I get you another drink?’
‘No. No thanks.’ She stubbed out her cigarette clumsily. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m fine,’ said Stefan. ‘I’m fine. Now – can you translate some of this for me? Please?’ He pointed to the columns beneath a photograph of a man being hustled into a car with a blanket over his head. ‘If I were in Poland, I should say he was being guarded by Solidarity from the militia.’
