Wheel
The flowers of the counter-revolution all dead, their scent fading with each new moon, I hear fortune at a distance, spinning its wheel. I walk through the streets of the new age among people blinded by things that glitter, afraid to think that one day the gold won't come to them.
My grandfather found a pebble of amber in the sand at Łeba, sat there on the dune cliffs looking at the Baltic Sea, thought of the Prussian knights owning it and all that lay in it, owning the land, the labour of its people. He turned to the girl next to him, his sweetheart, my grandmother, neither of them knowing about the shabby dynasty they'd create, said, "Much good it did them in the end." The knights came again, of course, brought fire and misery, left ruins and ghosts. They didn't know about that, either, though I once heard grandfather say he'd had a dread feeling all along that they'd be back for their pebble. It sat in pride of place in one of those pointless glass cabinets people go in for here, then, throughout the war, was secreted in a cistern, then about grandfather's person. From the Oświęcim death camp he walked a widower's walk through the scarred and smoking country back to Warsaw, a city of broken stones, his pebble intact in his pocket.
"A symbol for him of the land," I asked my father once, "the sea, the nation, the people?"
He said, "How should I know?" and swept a harried hand across his brow. "I can't even finish the crossword."
All the same, when he gave me the stone to keep, he said, "Promise you'll take care of it?" I promised, and he read my mind, said, "I don't know why, but you must never lose it." He had other preoccupations by then, was about to do that widower's walk to the hospital to pester his last nurse. I held the stone, imagined it as the stuff gripping his vital organs, killing him with its riches.
I have no riches, no money in the bank. "And I don't believe capitalism will save us all," I say to anybody who asks me. I have not much hair and old clothes and a chipped front tooth, a smile that will stay with me like grandfather's amber. I have a face from before, young people tell me, made to last in these corner-cutting times.
I was a curious child thrown up by times of lying darkness and the grim mirth of those who sought to better themselves in a system in which all were meant to be equal. I got a life sentence, will never forget the rituals that made me, church and school and party in a country that didn't know what it wanted to be.
Out train windows I see that country, mountains, valleys, rivers, cities, towns, the midget houses built over allotments of fertile land on which nothing grows except the ugliest of vegetables, all fixed in time. I see a lit-up Christ over the engine-turning yards at Katowice, His fingers pointing out cattle-trucks slinking by in painful memory. Near Mława I see a line of trees upended, whose topmost branches will grow into the ground in a parody of roots. Giant churches rise out of the land as if rooted there in imitation of the factories and their cooling towers, their gas-burners that light the traveller's night.
I met the only woman I ever knew on a train-ride made everlasting by the unfathomable logic of communism applied to railways. It was Gliwice to Lublin; she was thin and sick, headscarved, in dowdy coat, battered shoes, looking for something to eat, somebody to love. In Lublin we bought bruised apples and ate them as we walked, made jokes, laughed and choked. Lublin's market streets were muddy underfoot and ruined, spoiled fruit stamped into them, wooden slats from broken boxes, an ugly wind blowing us the stench of dead flowers. We sat on steps, knowing we'd live together and marry, buy a glass-fronted cabinet, have babies; life stretched ahead of us, some of its spaces filled in. I thought I ought to warn her that the women we married died young, instead asked her name, which turned out to be Iza; Izabela, Catholic name, Gypsy name.
Just as Iza was a sweetheart going begging, Gypsy children make historic supplicating gestures, offer the sight of borrowed Gypsy babies; the new era doesn't seem to be doing them much good. Gypsies know that democracy suits them no more than communism ever did, that persecuted people are just as persecuted under climates of smiley liberalism. People say they have shoes really, that they get them back when they bring home gleaming coins. The children see my smile, try to soft-touch me. "You have no heart," one of them said to me once, and I said to her, "I have plenty of heart, but no money."
There are easy livings to be made, I know, but somehow when the free market came to me, I didn't know how to rise to the occasion and make one. Others get rich overnight, if they don't get caught first. "They must have a secret," people say, but the simple matter is that they're dark in the heart with ambition minus talent. I ride the length of this country of ours, see them scattering the new currency behind them, happy to watch, that smile on my face. "I have no gold," I tell the other rail-riders I meet, young Antipoedeans, fresh-faced Scandinavians, haughty Latin girls with matchstick bodies, and at the time in their lives in which our paths cross they're impressed by this, don't know that they will turn into their parents and have babies and buy cars and glass-fronted cabinets. "Let the others have the gold," I say, and they back up their agreement with fists punched in the air.
The Prussians got the gold, but they didn't find every piece of it. Heading for Łeba and the sea, I walk my widower's walk to the station, and am reassured by the glow in the sky of the north. Tomorrow's a prospect like any other, I remind myself, pregnant with disasters, so I take precautions, pull out grandfather's pebble and, slowly, carefully, hold it up to the light.
My grandfather found a pebble of amber in the sand at Łeba, sat there on the dune cliffs looking at the Baltic Sea, thought of the Prussian knights owning it and all that lay in it, owning the land, the labour of its people. He turned to the girl next to him, his sweetheart, my grandmother, neither of them knowing about the shabby dynasty they'd create, said, "Much good it did them in the end." The knights came again, of course, brought fire and misery, left ruins and ghosts. They didn't know about that, either, though I once heard grandfather say he'd had a dread feeling all along that they'd be back for their pebble. It sat in pride of place in one of those pointless glass cabinets people go in for here, then, throughout the war, was secreted in a cistern, then about grandfather's person. From the Oświęcim death camp he walked a widower's walk through the scarred and smoking country back to Warsaw, a city of broken stones, his pebble intact in his pocket.
"A symbol for him of the land," I asked my father once, "the sea, the nation, the people?"
He said, "How should I know?" and swept a harried hand across his brow. "I can't even finish the crossword."
All the same, when he gave me the stone to keep, he said, "Promise you'll take care of it?" I promised, and he read my mind, said, "I don't know why, but you must never lose it." He had other preoccupations by then, was about to do that widower's walk to the hospital to pester his last nurse. I held the stone, imagined it as the stuff gripping his vital organs, killing him with its riches.
I have no riches, no money in the bank. "And I don't believe capitalism will save us all," I say to anybody who asks me. I have not much hair and old clothes and a chipped front tooth, a smile that will stay with me like grandfather's amber. I have a face from before, young people tell me, made to last in these corner-cutting times.
I was a curious child thrown up by times of lying darkness and the grim mirth of those who sought to better themselves in a system in which all were meant to be equal. I got a life sentence, will never forget the rituals that made me, church and school and party in a country that didn't know what it wanted to be.
Out train windows I see that country, mountains, valleys, rivers, cities, towns, the midget houses built over allotments of fertile land on which nothing grows except the ugliest of vegetables, all fixed in time. I see a lit-up Christ over the engine-turning yards at Katowice, His fingers pointing out cattle-trucks slinking by in painful memory. Near Mława I see a line of trees upended, whose topmost branches will grow into the ground in a parody of roots. Giant churches rise out of the land as if rooted there in imitation of the factories and their cooling towers, their gas-burners that light the traveller's night.
I met the only woman I ever knew on a train-ride made everlasting by the unfathomable logic of communism applied to railways. It was Gliwice to Lublin; she was thin and sick, headscarved, in dowdy coat, battered shoes, looking for something to eat, somebody to love. In Lublin we bought bruised apples and ate them as we walked, made jokes, laughed and choked. Lublin's market streets were muddy underfoot and ruined, spoiled fruit stamped into them, wooden slats from broken boxes, an ugly wind blowing us the stench of dead flowers. We sat on steps, knowing we'd live together and marry, buy a glass-fronted cabinet, have babies; life stretched ahead of us, some of its spaces filled in. I thought I ought to warn her that the women we married died young, instead asked her name, which turned out to be Iza; Izabela, Catholic name, Gypsy name.
Just as Iza was a sweetheart going begging, Gypsy children make historic supplicating gestures, offer the sight of borrowed Gypsy babies; the new era doesn't seem to be doing them much good. Gypsies know that democracy suits them no more than communism ever did, that persecuted people are just as persecuted under climates of smiley liberalism. People say they have shoes really, that they get them back when they bring home gleaming coins. The children see my smile, try to soft-touch me. "You have no heart," one of them said to me once, and I said to her, "I have plenty of heart, but no money."
There are easy livings to be made, I know, but somehow when the free market came to me, I didn't know how to rise to the occasion and make one. Others get rich overnight, if they don't get caught first. "They must have a secret," people say, but the simple matter is that they're dark in the heart with ambition minus talent. I ride the length of this country of ours, see them scattering the new currency behind them, happy to watch, that smile on my face. "I have no gold," I tell the other rail-riders I meet, young Antipoedeans, fresh-faced Scandinavians, haughty Latin girls with matchstick bodies, and at the time in their lives in which our paths cross they're impressed by this, don't know that they will turn into their parents and have babies and buy cars and glass-fronted cabinets. "Let the others have the gold," I say, and they back up their agreement with fists punched in the air.
The Prussians got the gold, but they didn't find every piece of it. Heading for Łeba and the sea, I walk my widower's walk to the station, and am reassured by the glow in the sky of the north. Tomorrow's a prospect like any other, I remind myself, pregnant with disasters, so I take precautions, pull out grandfather's pebble and, slowly, carefully, hold it up to the light.
Those Polish trains
Wagon, Birkenau
Another story of mine featuring trains in Poland. I must be a bit obsessed with them. I used the trains a lot when I lived in Poland - they were, and still are, the most comfortable way to get around long distances.
Partly because one job got me on the train about 6.30 in the morning twice a week from Warsaw's Central Station, I was forever meeting old geezers who just liked to bend people's ears - anybody would do. (See Laikonik Express pp90, 100 and 200.) They could be irritating, a bit, depending on my early morning mood, but never meant any harm. Apparently there was some kind of system in place that gave pensioners free rail travel forever, and at any time of the day or week (or have I just imagined that?), and a lot of them took advantage of that.
I was always struck by what must remain in the memories of old people in Poland, those who had lived through and survived the horrors of both the Second World War and the imposition of Soviet-style communism - even Stalin admitted that forcing communism on Poland was like 'putting a saddle on a cow'. I imagined a restless man - it was always men who did the ear-bending - who just travelled on trains, and brought his memories, and his opinions - so here he is in this story.
I had my first 'Polish story', Capital Story, published in Ambit in 1998, and took part in the launch. As Capital Story was too long to read, I took this one along instead, and editor Martin Bax liked it, so published it in the magazine in 1999.
Partly because one job got me on the train about 6.30 in the morning twice a week from Warsaw's Central Station, I was forever meeting old geezers who just liked to bend people's ears - anybody would do. (See Laikonik Express pp90, 100 and 200.) They could be irritating, a bit, depending on my early morning mood, but never meant any harm. Apparently there was some kind of system in place that gave pensioners free rail travel forever, and at any time of the day or week (or have I just imagined that?), and a lot of them took advantage of that.
I was always struck by what must remain in the memories of old people in Poland, those who had lived through and survived the horrors of both the Second World War and the imposition of Soviet-style communism - even Stalin admitted that forcing communism on Poland was like 'putting a saddle on a cow'. I imagined a restless man - it was always men who did the ear-bending - who just travelled on trains, and brought his memories, and his opinions - so here he is in this story.
I had my first 'Polish story', Capital Story, published in Ambit in 1998, and took part in the launch. As Capital Story was too long to read, I took this one along instead, and editor Martin Bax liked it, so published it in the magazine in 1999.