A Little Rupture (Short story)

My new hearing aid has been a great success. Not much to look at, two discreet devices delicately balanced on each ever-twitching ear, often screeching and snared in strands of hair, but boosting my fading senses. The controls are not too challenging, not as baffling as my cellphone or Adobe Premiere Elements 10, though the hardware is fiddly, and needs applying a range of nimble handling skills which I rarely measure up to. So I was very glad that I had a follow-up appointment with the audiologist to help sort out my initial problems with this equipment; a chance to be tutored in the fine details of making the most of this advanced technology, and to lurch beyond just mere hearing to holding an edge over normally hearing people, like a Superhearing Avenger.
The Audiologist is a warm, apparently caring woman. She dressed formally, all black, with startling jewelry, as if risen above her role as transmitter of aid, but still gracious toward me with my more restrained attire. I felt very special when she gushed over comments which I made for her, as required, on the forms that came with the hearing packet. This content goes well beyond the toothpaste and floss assortment you get from the dentist, so there was much to muse upon. She told me I should be a writer.
Things moved fast. The unwieldy blobs of matter, the part that actually inserted into my ears, and which threatened to drag the whole apparatus down each time they popped out, turned out to be an experimental item, with me an early tester, and she was unhesitating in replacing them with what was normally used by people with hearing aids. I complained about the little plastic whiskers that didn’t support the tubes leading to my earholes. She looked closely, and gasped in amazement, “Your ears are backwards, I’ve never seen anything like this, and I’m an audiologist.” She made the necessary adjustment; everything fitted perfectly.
I was ready to leave at this point, edging slightly towards the front of my chair, but she sunk back in hers, the warm friendly smile increasing over her face.
“Let’s check your usage,” she said.
She took my hearing aids, inserted them into receiving hardware, and studied information appearing on a monitor before her.
“Yes,” she said after a long while, “I see you are experimenting. You rarely use the normal mode I set for you. You seem to range from minimum to maximum volume very frequently.”
I felt exposed and tried to explain.
“Sometimes I’m alone, I miss my Tinnitus, other times I meet little people with squeaky, quiet voices…”
“I understand, of course, of course, everyone makes these wild adjustments at first; soon, but believe me, soon you will settle to a narrower range, without going to such extremes. Today, for example, as you were coming down Corrales Road, you turned them down to their lowest setting.”
“Yes, there were road-works, jack-hammers pounding…”
Here I paused, feeling a little unease, and asked, “How do you know I came down Corrales Road?”
“Well, how else would you get here?”
I felt so foolish, caught suspecting that my hearing aid contained a secretly installed GPS+EEG recording device revealing my every move through every moment of each day, every thought.
“Yesterday, you hardly used them at all, but on the two occasions when you did, you had the volume turned on full blast.”
“It’s Paulie, the bird, the Cockatiel, he hates me, he screams and screams when I do the dishes, screams even more when I sweep the floor around his cage, it’s unbearable with the hearing aids.”
“Then there was a knock at the door?”
“Yes, I felt it rather than heard it, like a hunch, a premonition, a bad feeling; I didn’t have my hearing aid in at the time.”
“You felt a slight compression in the air, your remaining senses compensating for your loss of hearing.”
“Right, but I still hoped that this was a false alarm. The house was a mess, the bird was pacing angrily back and forth outside his cage with his wings held the way birds normally do, but now resembling a vexed human with arms folded behind his back. Still, I flung the door open boldly. ”
“Two strangers stood outside.”


 (Version I. This is what happened, I think)

“Yes, missionaries, two of them, clutching sweat softened black books and with glistening black jackets slung over their arms; it was a hot day. They were smiling, standing at attention, feet held closely together. A strong wind swept the landscape that day, but their discretely set hair lay intact. Both stood a distance from the door, not stepping under the cover of the porch roof, one of them glancing anxiously at the sky, his smile more and more strained each time he returned his head to a normal position, but even then his eyes still darted upwards.
I strained to listen in case they spoke, realizing at that moment that my hearing aid was still sitting on the cutting board in the kitchen.”
“Is that where you keep them?” asked the audiologist.
“No. Just then. Sometimes.  Anyway, two men, not identical, but hard to tell apart, preparing to speak.

“The real estate value of your house must be seriously affected by that empty property next door”, one of them said. Or at least I think that was what he said.
“Yes it’s been empty for a long time,” I said.
They looked puzzled.
“The true meaning of climate change can be only be appreciated when you observe the declining bird populations in this neighborhood, while the main thrust of the…”, the other seemed to say, not glancing upwards for a moment as he spoke. I stepped closer to them hoping to hear better and at the same time prevent them from making any further progress toward the door.
“The look of relations bells us hurray is the hay when confectionary heats capture of elected queue, the dust devil triangulating platforms in the sky…”
“Listen, excuse me,” I interrupted, “I don’t hear too well, let me just fetch my hearing aid.”
Rushing, I fumbled longer than usual with the little gadgets. By the time I snapped them into the on position I could hear the discreet clicking of their sleek black shoes inside the house. I rushed back toward the door hoping that my momentum might sweep them out of the house and back on to the porch, but they stood firm, even edging forward and deeper into the house. We shuffled in silence, awkwardly crowded for a short while till I gave ground and waved them, reluctantly, to the sofa.  I brushed the surface that I was inviting them to sit on, observing how clean and neat they appeared, quite unlike anyone who ever visited.
“Bird populations? You mentioned declining bird populations?” I said.
They glanced at each other not quite shrugging, but narrowing, as if each waiting for the other to speak.
“No.” the one further from me spoke. “That is interesting, though. You are missing some birds?”
“Well, yes. I notice some regulars are missing from the feeder.”
“Don’t worry. The changes that are about to happen will make all that seem less important.  We bring you the news of cosmic transmutation, pooled fulfillment of destiny…”
“Pulled?”
“Pooled and apportioned.”
“Huh?”
“You know what I mean.”
“OK. But when you say our, you mean you, you two, or do you mean me also.”
“You need to make that decision. It’s up to you.”
His companion, suddenly inspired, leaned toward me and cleared his throat.
 “There are some very awesome and portentous effects ensuing today, today is a very special day.” he said. “That is why we chose to visit you, to discuss these matters.”
“About the birds?”
“Yes, well, maybe, some birds, one or two, depends.”
As he spoke my hearing aids collected audio data of an unfamiliar commotion: a rasping flutter, a range of frequencies long forgotten now surged down my ear canals.
The bird!” I screamed, very, very loudly, and jumped to my feet. The missionaries drew back into the sofa, their eyes wide with terror, black books pressed against their chests.
“The bird! The Cockatiel! It flew out. You left the fucking door open!  Help me catch it. Come on!” I shouted all this as I ran toward the door, not even looking if they followed.
I burst out and scanned the slope on the other side of the driveway. The missionaries followed, their black jackets cleverly left resting on the sofa arms, but their black books and other arms slightly raised, faces concerned.
“Help me find it. You have to help me catch it. Do you see it?”
They moved in my direction, one making slight trotting gestures and again glancing at the sky, the other hanging back, leaning forward, shading his eyes with his book, squinting at the landscape.
“Where is it. Where is it.” My voice faded to a whining pitch. 
“See it!” hissed the one who fell behind. “On that juniper.”
“That’s a Piñon, OK, let’s go,” said the other. I was amazed to see them slam their black books to the ground, raising wafts of desert sand, at once blown away in a sharp breeze. I was even more amazed to see them sprint up the slope, clearing loose rocks, yuccas, and every kind of cactus and mini chasm on their track to the bird.
“Piñon! Juniper!” I could still hear one of them yell, as he pointed to each species on either side; so at ease were they as they stormed up the steep slope. I was scrambling a whole third of the way behind them when I noticed that, unfortunately, they showed no signs of slowing down as they approached the little tree  where Paulie was resting, exhausted after his long flight in the gusting wind. Their apparent intention was to make a final dash at the tree, perhaps leaping with their last strides. The bird panicked before they were even close, and rose high into the air. I caught up with them and we watched it flutter away from us, dropping lower and lower as he tired, and then, caught by a gust of wind, slam to the ground, out of sight, among distant rocks and bushes.
We were on top of a little mesa level with where the bird fell, but with a deep gulch dividing us from that spot. Knowing the landscape I set off on a good route, urging the missionaries to follow me, but they remained rooted, pointing into the distance.
“Look,” they both said to each other, in chorus.
I looked to where they were pointing. There was a slight cloud of dust on the foothills below us, rising and falling, moving toward us.
“Just a dust devil. Come on, let’s go! It’s miles away,” I shouted.
The dust devil was a wispy smudge of red sand rising up into the air, strengthening slightly as it moved into flat, clear areas, almost vanishing as it tangled in sparse growth. Rounding a low hill, it appeared to be travelling along the dirt road, following its bends like a vehicle. The air around us had been still for a while now; normally earthbound debris, leaves from distant trees, plastic shopping bags, and unidentified floating objects were descending at various speeds to the ground. Sand, blown high a few moments ago, was now settling on the land with a hiss.”
“That’s marvelous.” said the audiologist. “You know, you just don’t know how glad I am that I could help you with your hearing.”
“I was anxious for them to follow me, but they, not responding, turned their attention to the sky.
“That’s it,” said one. “I can see it!”
“I don’t see it…oh yes, oh God, oh my God…” whispered the other.
I stopped and searched the sky to see what they had seen, but saw nothing of significance. The dust devil, strengthened on the clear path given it by the road became erect, darkened in its core, and now advanced with menacing restraint. I felt an early tingle of foreboding and stopped in my tracks to watch the tightening funnel grow taller as it rumbled closer. By now the side gusts were catching me; I turned and shouted a warning to the missionaries.
“Watch out, watch out!...” but I am sure my words were lost in the roar of the wind. They stood where I had last seen them, but now with their arms extended toward me, exited bliss stirring their faces, welcoming me, I could tell, to fulfill my destiny, to rush forward and plunge into a cluster with them. Before I had time to make an incredulous shrug a strong whack of air knocked me of my feet and flung me across a large rock, pinning me to it. In a reflex I reached for my ears to protect my hearing aid from the wind, and realized that I was a moment too late; they were both missing.
The dust devil paused briefly when it reached me, tuned its abysmal shriek to a peak pitch, adjusted its roiling whirl into a black core, and proceeded toward the missionaries.
The wind around me dropped at once, and I peeled off the rock, dropping to the ground. Not knowing, or yet caring, what damage might have occurred to my body, I bravely rose to observe the further developments. The day was at an end, not dark yet, but the slanting light refracting through the airborne sand obscured what lay before me. The dust devil stood over where the missionaries had once stood, they no longer visible. It narrowed at its base, widening rapidly up above, clearly a funnel shape by now, a vast yawn opening up in to the sky. I needn’t have looked. I knew what was going to happen next: the base snapped shut and sprung upwards piercing the widening circle of the expanding funnel’s peak, and both vanished in a shudder of darkness. The sky winced, lit blazingly at its summit, then let its dwindling light ripple down to the horizon.
The air stilled and the darkness grew. Where the missionaries had stood the ground was bare rock, sand and small debris blown away. I didn’t want to approach closely, but from a safe distance I could see two rectangles of clothing, neatly folded: black trousers, white shirts above them, shoes, closely at attention on either side. ”
“OK, but look, I see you still have your hearing aids,” said the audiologist, “how on earth did you find them?”
“Oh, they didn’t really fall out, just got tangled in my hair. It’s a good thing I didn’t have them in when the dust devil stood close by me.”
“And the bird?”
“Well, you know, that is a real mystery. Perhaps it never flew out. The bird flapping sound I heard might have been the crinkling of the pages of one the black books the missionaries were fondling nervously. I’m just not very good yet at gathering audio information. When I returned to the house Paulie was back in his cage, not even glancing at me, but shaking his head slightly, something he normally doesn’t do.”
The audiologist turned back to her monitor.
“That knock on the door…you really didn’t hear it?”
“Oh, perhaps they didn’t even knock, it was very windy that day, I assumed all kinds of sounds were occurring.”
“You walked to the door just in case, just in case you missed someone knocking.”
“That’s true, yes.”


(Version II. More likely)

“Your eyes met a dark truck blocking out the landscape. The UPS man was already leaving; a small package was lying on the porch. You waved to each other as he launched himself down the driveway for the next delivery, the sliding door to his cab remaining open.  He wore shorts and had a great pair of legs, its blond hair shimmering over bronzed skin that smoothly stretched over firm muscle. You glanced at the package, since you were not expecting any delivery that day, and realized at once that he had made a mistake, it was intended for your neighbours, but the truck was already far down the road, its trail of dust long blown away by the wind.”
“Yes, no way I could catch him.”
“But a short walk across the road is no big problem; you decided to make the delivery yourself, and perhaps meet for the first time the two young men who shared the neat and tidy house next door.  You returned to the kitchen for your hearing aids, a spill of coffee had been approaching them dangerously all this time, and set off for your neighbour’s, slightly taken aback by the weight of the box, wondering about its content, but resolved not to enquire, and to make this a pleasant, quick, neighbourly interaction.
They both appeared at the door just as you approached, apparently leaving the house, but delighted to see you.
“The parcel! Is that for us? We almost gave up hope.”
For some reason you clung to the box even as they reached out for it, and stood smiling, as if waiting to be invited inside the house. You all shuffled in awkward silence till one of them motioned toward the house.
“Come in, it’s so hot and windy today.”
Up till now you had only seen them from a distance, as they tended their yard, or entered and emerged from their vehicles, and never heard them speak, merely waving and smiling from a distance. They wore jeans and tee-shirts, but very neat, they looked ironed. Their house was also very neat, which by now you expected. The sofa you were invited to sit on was white, spotless, and you abandoned your first reflex of brushing your butt before sitting, in case debris littered the immaculate grey rug.
There wasn’t much conversation, since they became absorbed in opening their package.
“Yes!” they exclaimed, in chorus. They held black books, gripped firmly in both hands, arms extended, trembling slightly. They turned to me.
“Thank you,” they both said, again in chorus.
You made a modest one shoulder shrug, tipping your head toward the raised one.
“Listen,” this time one of them spoke for both, “We were about to leave.”
“We’re on a mission,” added the other. “Excuse us while we change.”
You rose to leave, but they run up the stairs sending a thumping shudder through the house before you took more than half a step. As you stood you had a chance to pluck a few bits of crud off the sofa while hearing a rustle of clothing hastily coming off and then deliberately being put on. You edged toward the glass topped coffee table where the black books lay, listened carefully for the still continuing rustle of fabric from upstairs...”
“I couldn’t dream of doing that without the hearing aids, “I said.
“…and opened one at random, stooping down to study the small text:
“I know what you have done, and that you are neither cold nor hot. I could wish that you were either cold or hot! But since you are lukewarm, and neither cold or hot, I intend to spit you out of my mouth!  You are wretched, pitiable, poverty stricken, blind, stupid, and deaf.”
You quickly turned to another page:
They came down the stairs as fast as they ran up, this time wearing black suits, white shirts, and sleek black shoes. You had resumed your standing position near the sofa, having brushed with your fingers the deep shag rug that bore your footprints leading to the coffee table and back. You tried to resume the conversation:
“You are on a mission?”
They scurried around the room, picked up their black books, and headed to the door.
“Yes, and we have little time.”
One of them held the door, indicating for you to exit. They followed you out and walked briskly down the driveway, passing by their little hybrid sedan, leaving you standing by the still open door. You struggled against the wind to close it and then followed them slowly. Before they disappeared round a bend in the road they took off their jackets and folded them neatly on their arms. It was a very hot day, despite the wind.
Late that afternoon the air became completely still. Sand lay in ripples, like on a beach after the tide had gone out. You were busy picking up odd pieces of debris that had gathered in yard when you noticed the two young men returning to their house, walking slowly, no black books in their hands, dragging their black jackets behind them in the dust, their heads bowed.”
“It wasn’t just the debris that blew in that was the problem,” I said. “There were things in my yard that belonged there, which had vanished.”
“I guess they were littering other people’s yards,” said the audiologist.
“A fair exchange,” I said. We both laughed.
The audiologist pushed her chair away from the monitor and faced me.
“When are you ever going to fix that rattling porch roof?”
That irritating wave of discomfort swept over me again.
“How do you know my porch roof rattles?”
“Well, you do keep rushing to the door each time the wind blows hard.”


(Version III)

The wind started early, but also ended earlier than it normally does. The ground was still hot from the previous day as the rising sun began to heat the barren surface. Hot dry air started blowing down the east slopes of the Southern Rockies into the face of warm, humid air edging northward from the Gulf of Mexico. More air, sucked from the West, feigned being notice of an advancing storm, promise of thunderstorms and perhaps some rain, even hail at worst: life for weeds and cure for rising dust. In the slanting light streaks of dry red dust glowed as they snaked up valleys, dumped slowly on rising bluffs and rose again in the following gusts. The sky was clear; there was no rain, just the wind.
Herds of tumbleweeds and plastic bags searched for rest against fences and under parked cars, roofs rattled, porch roofs more than most.
The little house at the foot of the mesa had loose panels of corrugated roofing rattling and flapping against each other all that spring. Each time the wind gusted the door would also spring open and a figure would appear on the porch, closing the door carefully behind himself. He would step forward, still in the shade of the porch, glance around the yard, peer down the driveway, linger for a while, and slowly return to the shelter of his home.
Later in the day the wind stopped suddenly, earlier than it normally does, which was a surprise. A short distance from the house hot air near the ground rose quickly though a pocket of cooler, low pressure air above it. The air around it, helpless and not ill-intentioned, drew itself into the rising column and rushed wailing into the bottom of the increasing vortex.
The dust devil, spinning clockwise till now, paused, which is unusual for dust devils, adjusted itself, screamed, began to spin anti-clockwise, and started a journey down the dirt road, rounding its bends just like a vehicle, first with menacing restraint, then gathering speed. 

Roman Sanguszko

Driven by my daughter to do family history research, not a normal condition for me, I have mostly drifted through vaguely remembered anecdotes from my father, some very sparse remaining notes he left, and all those images that I am trying to connect them to. These people seem poised, sometimes smiling, mostly stiff and into some kind of self-image drama that they thought important to share. It is possible that we are alone in the world, now, knowing them, knowing not just only a little bit about them, but even knowing about the existence of  the little niche within a niche that they inhabited. And if they were to be exposed, like the charismatic characters from a late and post Tsarist Masterpiece Classic soap, which they obviously are, it would be very unfair to all their peers from back in sunny Odessa-by-the-(Black)sea, who were often probably equally worthy of attention. But the homes in which these photo albums lay have been deliberately burned by angry mobs, and the memory bearers hacked to death by Cossacks while they were hopefully shopping for stale crumbs in an abandoned market-place without enough kopeks to pay for anything anyway. It strikes me how expressed in their gentle smiles and affected poses was a smug comfort in their slight privilege in a very ordinary world, which, little did they know, was just about to fall to the greatest and most sustained horror on the planet Earth in the history of our species.

In the comments to the photos I sent you a few days ago I begun by mentioning that Maksymilian Gorecki was a central character to events in our family back then and there, but connecting even more threads was a person who affected the lives of millions, and who was soon to die a terrible death, a Prince of royal blood and ancient lineage, Roman Sanguszko. His end, like the end of many things and people that seemed forever, happened in 1917, the time all those smiles faded, when Bloodlands caught and earned its name.

I have read about him in the past, his story even touched Joseph Conrad who, oddly, heard of him while on a rare visit to Odessa, and later wrote a short story with Sanguszko as a character. Odessa was probably the first time the young Conrad saw the sea. He rarely touched on Polish subjects: he wrote mainly about the sea. To me the tale of the prince condenses, explains, and almost caricatures the events of that period. I prefer to not mess with my memory by researching too many sources; distorted views is what history is all about, and my slant holds truths missed by others. This is a Polocentric perspective. It takes for given what is little known and confirms what is often suspected.

The earliest recorded Sanguszko was the older brother of the first Jagiellon dynasty king of Poland, a native of Lithuania; his coat of arms was the coat of arms of Lithuania. This Roman Sanguszko, there were other Sanguszkos with that first name, was related to all the royalty of Europe, held wealth and property greater than that of many countries and led a grand, noble, but mostly very tragic life. His title and property was recognized by the Russians, who at that time occupied that part of Poland. He married the love of his life, an apparently wonderful woman, a royal princess already and the girl next-door to boot, and they led a Camelotish sort of life until she died from complications following childbirth. He decided, in his grief, to spend the rest of his life in chilly cell as a monk, but another insurrection against Russia broke out at that very time, so he joined the Polish ranks instead. After a while he distinguished himself enough to become the commander of an army, fought many battles where his tiny contingent of hardened warriors swept aside vast hordes of savage Russians, as is the Polish custom, but eventually was defeated and taken prisoner.

The attitude to Poland in Russia and in some other countries back then was that since it did not exist, and that its name should not be mentioned, anybody championing its cause was what we would today call a terrorist. Sanguszko was stripped of his titles and property, bound in chains, and made to walk from Poland, across the continent of Eurasia, all the way to Siberia, dragging all that heavy metal. There he was interned in a concentration/labor camp. Since this was so obviously a left-leaning, bleeding heart, liberal abandonment of proper justice, his sentence of hard labor was overturned on appeal by the prosecutors, and he was recruited into the ranks of the Russian army, as a private, and put in the front ranks of forces bringing peace, justice, and prosperity to the confused people of the Caucasus, which the Russians are generously struggling to put in place to this very day. There he was wounded, resulting in the loss of use of one of his legs.  Additionally he fell from his horse at some point and suffered some brain damage causing loss of hearing.

 The administration started losing interest in him. Eventually, mainly because of his deteriorating health, he was dismissed from the army and returned to Wołyń (Vohlynia) and established himself in the palace and property owned by his daughter in Sławuta, which is in the region where our family comes from. Since she owned a vast fortune and property, and loyally allowed him to administer it, he was soon back in business trying to turn the tide of history and make this a better world. Sławuta became an industrial town with textile factories and other industries bringing employment and prosperity to the local, mainly Ukrainian, population. He transformed the countryside into a parkland, collected artwork from around the world and established a vast library to help raise the cultural level of the region. Even the Tsar became aware of his impact on the world, invited him for tea and cookies, and gave him a most impressive portrait of himself to hang over Sanguszko's mantelpiece in the main hall of his Sławuta palace.

The Tsar himself soon found himself in a spot of trouble, what with the Russian Revolution, World War I, and all the milling around that happened at that time. Bolsheviks arrived in Volhynia, as they did in pretty much everywhere else that they cleared the German, White, Interventionist, and Ukrainian forces from. A large army, loose, without much purpose, leadership, or discipline camped out in Sławuta.  I have no idea what their ethnic details were. Most probably they were Russians, descendants of Orthodox Christians and now rabid Communists: the Soviet Army, soon to be the dreaded Red Army. They were not the kind of folks to respect and kowtow to haughty Polish lords, "Polskie Pany" as they were known.

It must have been winter and a cold day. Some soldiers, saws, axes and other gear at hand, were busy chopping down a tree for firewood. A couple of Pany, relatives of Sanguszko himself, rode down the same country lane and caught sight of the incident. One rode up to the savage who was hacking at the precious plant that had been imported from Australia or Argentina at great cost and trouble, and told him to stop at once. The savage sneered, so the Pan struck him with his horsewhip, the customary form of address to sullen and revolting Ukrainian and Russian serfs. However, these were different times already. These serfs were armed, with little red stars on their hats, and they were in no mood to take this kind of shit. One drew a gun and fired at the rider. Both the Pany sensibly drew spurs into their mounts ribs and made a quick exit, heading for the palace.

Too late. The spirit of Revolution spread through the army camp, and a mob of raging soldiers begun to pursue the fleeing horsemen, firing their guns, shouting for support from the other happy campers, roughing up their own officers who were trying to contain them, and gathering more arms from the arsenal which had been breached by them. The palace Cossacks and other servants drew close the gates and, gathered their own arms, and a short siege begun. Soon the walls were breached, and the soldiers begun to run amok on the grounds. Instead of ducking down into the secret passage that would have led him to safety out of the palace grounds, Sanguszko, eighty three years old and limping badly, confronted the soldiers by appearing on the palace terrace. He addressed them, and gently appealed to their reason. They howled with joy at seeing him, stormed the terrace, lifted him on their bayonets, beat him to death.

They had little interest in the artwork or the library, or even the furniture and other hardware of the building, but found it useful as kindling to set the rest of the building on fire. The portrait of the Tsar, alone, was allowed to remain on the wall above the mantelpiece, but it too, obviously, perished in the flames. They gathered all the gold and silver they could lay their hands on, hoping that they could make a deal with the Jews of Sławuta for money, food, and of course alcohol. The Jews accommodated them, but afterwards paid a terrible price for having gathered such a fortune.

The Ukrainians held back at that moment, seeing all their enemies at each other. The remaining Poles either hid, fled, or were banished or killed by whoever remained in control of the area. At this time the area is pretty homogenous ethnically, populated by Ukrainians.

The above is a partial presentation of the makings of Polish Russophobia, anti-Semitism, and contempt for Ukrainians. There are many more tales to support these kinds of positions that many Polish people take. Omitted from this account are the acts of horror committed by Polish people on the other, above mentioned groups (well, aside from the delicate application of the horsewhip, had to mention that).

A Short History of Russia

My daughter has a class connected with issues tangled around Russia. I wrote her some useful comments. As I write more, I shall add it to the end of the text, so it will not appear in the usual forum form, with newest first. This is edited from the original text.
I noted that her class sounds great and that it is an advantage to have a professor who is close to multiple cultures...
...the Russian/Ukrainian of some forsaken cranny of Siberia laying it all out for you. My take on Russia is of the close outsider variety, citizen of the Near Abroad; there was a moment in my childhood when I thought well of Joseph Stalin, I still have a faint memory of how that felt, great moustache, and that twinkle, imagined perhaps.  The Russians, the Soviets, in their fleshy forms, hardly ever appeared; I have memories, or again imaginings perhaps, of high ranking Soviet military at some event, bold, bright red stripes running down the sides of their blue pants, huge curvy hats, their broad breasts glistening with metal and fluttering with ribbon. Conveniently, grey canvass topped trucks, brimming with helmeted types in long heavy flapping overcoats with hobnails and automatic weapons who would pour out into our lives strutting, or perhaps lining up, suddenly, shoulder to shoulder, their fresh young faces all turned one way, a roar of piercing, vibrant voices…maybe not. But, these were our lads, not high-cheek-boned slightly-slanty-eyed Mongolian horde members at all. Sure, their gear looked a little strange to people used to Polish uniforms, wrong shape somehow, hats all weird, eagles missing their crowns, but they shrieked and cursed familiar words, and that was all the comfort we needed.

My take on Russia and her relationship to anyone, the US, Poland, Erehwon, is colored by an image of me, almost wearing the red neck scarf and shiny black capped hat of the Pioneers, but most likely not, and boldly walking in the front ranks of a large crowd in a parade, repeatedly chanting “Long live the friendship of the Polish and the Soviet nations!” though, it did not easily roll of the tongue, not in Polish even. I grasped for one of the vertical standards that held the sign* at the head of the parade, more in fervor than in any calculation to help carry the word. But the hands that held the post already were firmly clasped around it and could be tracked back, through wrist, arms and shoulders to a blazing icon of the revolution, a tractor-driving Socialist-Realist kind of bright blond girl with a Slav abundance of pleats and wearing the red neck scarf, her blouse with the pockets distorted by heroic thrusting breasts bristling with ribbon and medal deposits. She distractedly shot me a glance that sent me reeling back into the crowd, and forever ended my career as a public figure in Communist politics.

*The sign read “Long live the friendship of the Polish and the Soviet people” of course.

***

Despite all the severances and estrangements with places until recently interned inside the USSR, Russia still looks ridiculously large on the map, and it’s been like this for a very long time. I find it hard to imagine what the different parts of all this vastness mean to Russians, and I have known people from different parts. My impression, conditioned by an unfavorable view of the land where the Mishkas rage, that old Polish victim angle, is of a harsh vastness with broken vodka bottles glistening by the sides of rutted dirt roads. Grey walls topped with barbed wire rising out of the snow. On the horizon steam engines pull endless goods wagons crammed with dead dying and still alive exiles from the cozy everyday comforts of their bourgeois lives back west. On population maps there are clusters and clutters in Western parts but, in my imagination, looking east, the Urals and beyond, empty flatness, Northern gloom, frozen mists, sub-Arctic silence, commie blocks on ice. In the foreground Babushka’s small lumpy form topped with headscarf balanced by a bag of potatoes in each hand makes a wobbly retreat, slosh slosh in the melting snow, toward high grey walls; fair amount of graffiti, large broken elements of infrastructure, from far away long ago, lying broken, almost breaking up the monotonous rhythms of the Peoples housing. Most buildings grey but you catch glimpses here and there of moves toward blazing day-glow fluorescent Turquoise hatched with Chartreuse, just here and there. It is strangely warm, the air trembles with methane hissing through pores in not so perma frost. The End had to start somewhere.
Go South enough, and you will get all tangled in the lushness of the Tundra, keep going and you see, in the brief glimpses of summer, flat, grass covered Steppe, on and on and on, till you run into the freakin’ Haymarylayas or whatever lies at the Southern rim, if there is a Southern rim. But it is in either that or another Mordor in that area (but without the infrastructure, FX, and in B/W) that murky types oozed out of their yurts, yawning, scratching, stretching, and blinking in the first light of day. Everyone is wearing great hats and has shiny skin. 
The guy with the best-by-far headgear, but sitting on a stupid looking, small, hairy horse, suddenly appears in the large empty space facing them.
 “I say chaps, are you all” he paused, raised his eyebrows, peered, raised his voice, “ready?!”
(they didn’t really think about it, there was no time, but had they remembered they would have said to themselves: “…ah yes, empire…destroy civilizations, enslave or/and/both slaughter all their inhabitants, think global, eat a lot of Tartar Beefsteak, take things from people at the other end of Eurasia, yes!” they would have said. This would have given them additional motivation and perhaps produced even greater volume in their response, but, as you will note in the next paragraph, they actually did OK)
Without hesitation, though their voices still slightly harsh from sleep, they screamed (I think they repeated the last word he said, in a chorus. They all rode similar looking animals and shared an attitude. When at last they got what they wanted (world conquest), they turned out to be gifted administrators (left everyone to administer themselves, but just raped some of their daughters, took some of their sons for their armies and collected most of their money from them. The latter operation was always troublesome, an as the Tatars/Mongols/and all Others who came for the ride grew themselves the mandatory opulent and decadent ruling class someone trustworthy had to be appointed to do the dirty work. Here comes a spell of Russian History where Russian Historians wince, fume, wiggle, lash out murderously, or sigh in despair at the sniggering Western take: the honor of being the Tatars tax collectors fell on the subject and cute little principality of Moscow. They never looked back from there. Strange that I do. Or do I.)
I feel I need to make up for those people back then. Hug those spirits. They lived in this vast space, but most of them were probably confined for life to a small area, where they led a life of never fulfilled obligations (ever increasing degrees of serfdom) on top of everything else that life can throw at you. One morning at breakfast you glance through a gap in the lace curtains and the Golden Horde is passing by on their way to do their worst further west. Hmm, do they bring an opportunity to retrain from serfdom to slavery; that might perhaps bring chance to travel. Otherwise what, new administration, additional taxes, chickens all gone, WTF! They can’t even bring their own chickens? horseshit everywhere, that’s good for the soil.

t.b.c.

Movie review, early Mexican cinema, guess which movie

I began with an open mind, perhaps just faintly disturbed by some of the detail in the opening scenes: the skipping for instance; it was already easy to notice that she was a large, muscular woman, and that she skipped about her upper-middle-class home in stiletto heels with a jeune fille charm and abandon which suggested that an inevitable lapse to deep tragedy soon lay ahead. The plot moved fast from the start and then begun to accelerate. This makes sense in retrospect, seeing how much ground the story had to cover in its allotted one and a half hours. The telenovelas that this epic no doubt birthed don’t have such cruel and unnecessary restraints, and last without end.

I must admit that the betrayal of Dad took me by surprise. Mum and Dad’s best friend kissing was well staged and sure put an abrupt end to all the skipping. After that, after Dad blew out his silly little brains, after she took off to Chihuahua, after she got molested, abused, betrayed etc., after she launched into her endless and inept song-and-dance extravaganzas there was one more good scene as she walked, deep in thought, all alone, across the edges of the dance floor, smoking a big long cigarette, while a cute little guy sung about someone’s very sweet lips. She was nearly Marlene Dietrich briefly; then she broke a bottle over that bad guy’s head; that too was good. I never made it to the very end, though I lasted a very, very long time. I lurched to my feet during the Ping-Pong sequence, went down to the kitchen and became absorbed in doing the dishes, which turned out to be fulfilling, therapeutic, and, of course, higiénico. My wife filled me in with what happened afterwards.

One of the things that struck me about this film was that this Ninón Sevilla person barely restrained herself from revealing that she was an ante digital, early-sixties-cinema FX monster. There was a scene when she glanced at her Mother-in-Law, turning herself to profile and expressing rage and hatred to the poor sweet little dear next to her, when her eyes and mouth briefly morphed into something inhuman, twisting into forms never before seen in cinema or in life. She held back mostly, but you could see that potential all the time.

The bad guy, the one who introduced her to the Mum/Madam person, was great. I loved his twitchy smirk, and the way he adjusted his jacket.

My wife generously pointed out that the film had a woman’s liberation/feminist sub-text. There she was, a victimized female, savaged by brutal individuals in a self-indulgent patriarchal society, yet unbowed, resourceful, and finally triumphant. Well, I didn’t see the end, but I think that’s how it all turned out.

Landscape

Whereas"Cow" below consisted of one long paragraph, this piece, "Landscape", is not just one paragraph, but also just one long sentence. The flow is interrupted by short interjections in brackets. My intention was to form brackets within brackets, making explanatory or further-developing-a-thought statements, and then tracking back and closing the brackets as I retreated and completed the thoughts.

I first intended this to be the opening to a short story (based on a photograph of Carol throwing stones into the sea, which was lying on my desk as I was writing something completely different. I couldn't stop staring at this picture, and eventually wrote what appears below), now I think that I will use this mode to write something with a different content.

This beach edged out into what felt like an inland sea, it might have even been a lake (it never occurred to me to taste it), and rightly felt like the edge of land, a tip of firm matter dissipating into the cold dark liquid that lay with only its endless surface visible, stretching to the horizon with no features, no ships, no distant land, no islands gripping a deep bottom, not even a horizon in sight (so humid, or polluted, or just hopelessly fuzzy was each day) not allowing for any clear division between the water and the overcast sky, and not that it mattered of course, since I neither had nor cared to have any kind of  boat or other type of floating device to travel upon this bland endlessness nor any desire to test vague suspicions I had of what perhaps lay beyond the slightly suggested curvature of the earth knowing well enough that behind me, in the gradually rising land surface was so much disturbing complexity that I nearly welcomed the tiresome deprivation testing my senses without any illusion that it would become therapeutic, but also knowing full well that my mind needed this moment of pause, a punctuation in the steady stream of incidents, to grasp the meaning of some of the features that lay in the landscape behind my back and to turn into a moment to turn on my heel and take a step back and up the beach without too much drama or false expectation, first continuing my motion with lowered head, rising it gradually knowing and forming what I would confront, but always, always stupidly hoping for startling magic to transform the familiar substance of my being (though I knew well, of course, that it was magic enough to have it be as it is (it was a comfort to deeply be aware of this (and try as I would, I could not stop being a fool for comfort) in a fleeting sort of way, since this depth of awareness now felt like holding my breath in the cold, dark water that I was climbing away from) while not having a clear idea of what I would prefer in its place), which I felt was bestowed upon me by not me.

One paragraph about a cow

So I'm doodling along the high stretch just past the Valle Caldera a few hundred feet before the road dips down to the Dill's. I noticed the cows before; each day I passed I caught glimpses of bulky creatures being bovine on each side of the road, but brazen and defiant on the wrong side of the fence. Light was already fading when I left Los Alamos; as I stylishly swept past the last curve out of the volcano it was pitch dark, no moon, but my headlights caught something unfamiliar, vehicle-like, lurking by the gate to the visitor center. I wisely slammed on my breaks to assume an innocent cruising speed well below 70 mph. I watched closely in my mirror to see if the vehicle would turn on its frightening lights and pursue me; and yes, indeed, it appeared to slowly start drifting towards the road. When I returned my gaze to the view before me (I had to, I was driving), there she was: the cow! She stood motionless, oddly white looking, luckily on the other side of the road. My first thoughts were "general", philosophical. Do I stop and shoo her? I'm not a cowboy, not any kind of a herder even of single animals. Besides, any vehicle equipped with headlights would see her, just the way I did, and swerve around the beast, perhaps colliding head-on with the troopers pursuing me, but then that's none of my business, is it. Still, it occurred to me that I am the only person in the world aware of this potential disaster and likely death of cows and people. As I entered the long curve ahead of me there, of course, appeared a car traveling at a high speed in the opposite lane. I let go of the gas, assumed rapid flashing of lights and hooting. I started breaking and watched the scene behind me, focused again on the mirror. There seemed to be no cops chasing me, but the car showed no signs of slowing, and then, naturally, the white cow sparkled briefly, a screech of tires, wham! the rear lights of the car zigzagged in the darkness. I stopped, turned around, and zoomed back to the site of the accident. The cow lay motionless on the road, its eyes open, tongue drooping on to the asphalt, still breathing, heavily. The car was stopped further down, tipped on the edge of the shoulder, headlights still on, engine running. The vehicle, which I had assumed to be police was slowly approaching from the other side and stopped on the opposite of the road from me. We both turned on our flashers. I got out first. The cow-killing car door opened and a very old lady slowly oozed out, both hands clutching just below her throat. I walked toward her "You OK?" "Are you hurt?" She flapped one hand, and whimpered and squeaked to suggest that she was unhurt. We both walked over to the cow and stood over it solemnly. I made a few analytical comments like "I don't think she's going to make it." The car on the other side stood motionless, doors closed, tinted windows rolled up. I fiddled with my phone, couldn't get a signal. The old lady seemed deeply shocked and distressed, so I slowly started to guide her away from the animal. As we were part way to her car the doors of the mystery vehicle swung open violently and two large, bulky figures wearing desert fatigues (wrong zone) leapt out. They seemed heavily equipped around their waists (armed?) and carried powerful flashlights which they swept around the scene, including into our faces, for sustained spells. They made harsh, battlefield sounds to each other, but I couldn’t make out what they were saying. They were more Mr. Hulot, or even Chief Inspector Clousesau, than any type of Delta Force or Navy Seals; when one bent over the cow to examine it expertly, he fell on to it and had to scramble and push at its belly in horror to regain his balance, his flashlight angled at his own face and blinding him until he stood up. I busied myself for a while picking up bits of the old lady’s car and throwing them to the side of the road. As I drifted past where the cow lay I became aware that the pitch dark deepened and somewhat roiled, if you pardon the term, by the far side of the road. The warrior blokes noticed this also, at the same moment. They turned their flashlights at the advancing blackness and revealed a massive bull slowly turning towards them (“Oh, look, another cow,” said one). There were more black shapes behind the creature, presumably the front ranks of a herd. The soldiers appeared unafraid (boldly shouting: “Shoo! Shoo! Off with you, go away!”) and walked toward the animals waving their flashlights. But they walked more and more slowly as the bull lowered his head and begun to scrape the ground with his horny hoofs like they do in corrida de torros footage, or even more so, in Warner Bros cartoons. The two finally stopped, lowered their flashlights and made slow arching sweeps with their legs, letting the bull know that they were just kidding with the “shoo” stuff and would soon be on their way back to their vehicle, which amazingly is what they did, scooting back into their cab, vaguely shouting words like “radio!”, we’ll get it!”, “wait there!”. The bull resumed his advance until he stood over the cow in the middle of the road. It appeared that she was still alive. She pulled in her tongue and raised her liquid eyes up to him. He snorted, his face really close to her now. They were both caught in the headlights of our vehicles, spot lit, and took advantage of this opportunity to enact a most gripping drama as we all paused and gazed at them agape: the soldiers’ radios dangling in their limp hands, I held an orange turn signal from the old lady’s car, while she still clutched with both hands below her throat. The cow raised her head until she was gazing straight into the bull’s steaming nostrils. He took a step back and snorted again. She made several attempts to shift herself onto her belly; finally when she did, she pulled her front legs back under herself and begun to raise herself onto her knees. He took a step back again. Then another. She swayed back and forth, not enough to lose her balance, but enough to lead to a release of a violent scramble of knees and hoofs which miraculously levitated her until she stood, firmly planted, astride the double yellow line. The bull turned and walked away. She first swayed again, then lurched slightly until her shifting weight translated down to her hoofs into a step. Then another. Then she began to walk, slowly following the bull off the road. She fitted right in to the deep darkness, which wobbled a few times here and there, and gradually dissolved into ordinary pitch black.

The Light

Darkness fell. Our interrogators were late that evening. Perhaps they had car trouble or perhaps they had matters of greater importance to attend to. They were both young, anonymous looking. We were never quite sure if they were the same people who came to arrest my father a few months ago; they wore the same kind of clothes and had a similar air about them.
The night of my father’s arrest was one of those rare late summer evenings when the heat was almost oppressive, especially inside the house; he went outside to finesse some details in the garden, though the sky was already quite dark, just a faint glow left over from the sunset. A car pulled up and we heard a brief conversation outside. He came into the kitchen where my mother was preparing the evening meal.
“I need to run down to the police station," he said, "some of my students got into serious trouble, they need my help.”
I remember that he paused briefly, as if to add something. He was wearing a light cotton shirt and sandals without socks, the clothes that were to last him through the next winter. My mother looked up distractedly, but they exchanged no words. That was the last time I saw him for many years. I was six years old.
Back in the early 1950’s there were not many cars in Gdańsk. When a car pulled up outside a house, it became the cause of attention and speculation in the neighborhood. Lights went out and lace curtains swayed as people came closer to their windows. That evening, as we awaited our interrogators, we sensed the anxious tension in the street, as we and our neighbors listened for the distant sound of the approaching engine, the rumbling of rubber on cobblestones, the slamming car doors, the footsteps, knock, knock.
It had been a great day, so far. The parcel from the West had finally arrived, opened by customs, but apparently not much tampered with. Inside were four large cans of Nescafe, some bars of dark chocolate Toblerone, and an assortment of exotic products whose taste or purpose we would never know. We had been hungry all that week; our supplies had run out again. A neighbor would bring us soup once a day and a boy from the bakery would bring us some bread, but it was never enough.
My mother rewrapped the packet to make it look less conspicuous; we jumped into our coats and set off for the market, the postman barely out of sight. It was normally a half an hour’s walk, but this time we took the side streets, and lingered at street crossings, as if to savor the moment.
The market was a difficult place to approach since the area was often the scene of police and army operations. They advanced to the square from all directions, blocking all the exits with their trucks. The soldiers would spill out of the canopied backs, heavy flapping coats, machine guns, hobnails crunching on stone.
The people in the square would quickly withdraw into the central market hall, where they dissolved, disappeared, became absorbed into the fabric of the site. My mother and I would sit down inside the stall of the old market-woman who received our goods, as if we were family, or helpers, or just part of the stall. The woman, meanwhile, would reach down, pull back a stone slab on the floor, drop the Nescafe and other goods down into a hole and pull back the slab, looking bored, indifferent, slightly depressed. The soldiers cruised through the aisles bearing much the same expression. No emotion, no action, crunch, crunch, crunch, hobnails on stone.
This day there were no soldiers. The woman received the goods as if she was expecting them. She held out a wad of money, which my mother did not count, but deftly slid into her pocket. They never spoke, but this time the woman motioned. She pointed at my mother’s pocket.
“That’s not enough,” she said,” I have no more today.”
She reached down below the counter and pulled up a very large bottle of cognac.
“This is too much.” Then she added,” But it’s for you.”
“Thank you, thank you very much. “My mother squirmed, smiling too much, and revealing her strange English accent. The woman did not look surprised. She knew all along.
The interrogators finally arrived, and made no comment about their lateness. They headed straight for the kitchen table, where they were used to sitting, but waited politely until invited to sit down.
“May I take your coats,” my mother asked. It was hot in the kitchen. The hot-water radiator under the windowsill was too hot to touch and the large tiled oven was stoked up, it’s cooking rings almost red hot from the coals beneath. They both wore expensive black camel-hair coats, but baggy navy blue suits beneath, white shirts buttoned up to the throat, but without ties, and sandals with thick socks.
“No, no thank you.”
“Would you like some tea?” she asked.
“No, no, no thank you.” they both mumbled as they shuffled through some papers, which were as usual beginning to cover the entire table surface.
“Oh, do have some tea,” my mother persisted. She knew Polish custom, “it’s fresh. I just got it.”
“No, no thank you.”
After a while, they accepted.
“Biscuits? I just made them,” she lied. She bought them.
“No, no thank you.”

We all settled down to our snack, there was even some cheese. The interrogators pulled out cigarettes.
“American or English?” one of them asked.
“Oh, how lovely!” my mother broke into English. She checked herself at once and continued in Polish, “I’ll try the English, please.”
They set into chain-smoking.
One of the interrogators rose from his chair and started pacing about the kitchen glancing at the counters, looking into drawers, and peering into closets the way he always did.
“Is that a radio?” he asked, pointing at the radio.
“Yes.”
“Which stations do you listen to?”
“I like to listen to music.”
“Radio Free Europe? BBC?”
“No.”
“You don’t listen to Radio Free Europe? Everyone listens to Radio Free Europe.”
“I don’t. It’s always jammed.”
“How do you know it’s always jammed if you don’t listen to it?”
“People tell me.”
“You know a lot of people?”
“No.”
The second interrogator separated a piece of paper from the heap and handed it to my mother together with a pencil.
“Please write down the names of people whom you visit and who visit you.”
“People don’t visit anymore. People are afraid to visit.”
There was a short silence. Suddenly, my mother seemed close to tears.
“People are afraid,” she whispered. Still, she took the paper and pencil, which was being offered, and held them limply. She was a young and attractive woman in those days, and seeing her rising emotion focused the interrogators attention sharply.
There was a loud crashing sound outside the house. We all rose from our chairs in alarm and listened in silence. We heard a high-pitched, piercing voice let loose a volley of coarse and violent swearing. There was some shuffling and rattling and then a loud and prolonged banging on the door. The interrogators drew back against the kitchen walls, looking frightened, their hands slowly dipping deeper and deeper into their camel-hair coat pockets. My mother, her head down, still whispering, said,
“That’ll be Trixie.”
The banging intensified, and since the front door had not been locked, Trixie burst into the hallway. She continued swearing, in Polish, English, and some Russian which she had picked up, as she explained in many words that her bike had fallen over outside our front door, breaking her headlight, twisting a pedal, and injuring Eddie, who was still outside, nursing his wounds. She was a small, wiry person with thin but muscular calves and biceps, her face decorated with mascara, lipstick, rouge, and layers of powder, which subsided in some sections, falling with claps on surrounding surfaces, revealing the underlying vivid coloration.
“It’s his fault! Fuckin’ son of a bitch doesn’t even know how to get off a bike.”
She paused, glanced at the two men, and sniffed the air.
“Ah, English cigarettes? Oh, sorry, didn’t know you had guests.”
Any possible introductions were interrupted by Eddie limping into the room. He also was tiny, and wore a shiny, iridescent dark blue suit ripped on one leg, bow tie, sported a very thin, sharp moustache, and heavily pomaded combed back hair.
“Oh Eddie,” said my mother, “are you all right?”
He didn’t reply, since he at once became aware of the two interrogators who remained with their backs pressed against the kitchen walls. Eddie had sharp instincts; one quick glance reveled to him who these people were.
“Kamiński Edward, I am”, he clicked his heels slightly as he stood before the first of them. The man mumbled faintly: “Zając, Jan.” He carefully withdrew one hand from his coat pocket and they shook hands. Eddie repeated the same words and gestures with the second man. “Nowak, Marcin.” Their heels twitched without clicking. Only then did he finally turn to my mother. “Yes, yes, my dear Irene, some iodine, and plasters if you have any. “
Trixie shuffled inside a large bag, which she had brought in with her. She pulled out two liter bottles of 140% proof spirits and gently laid them on the on the piece of paper on the table, on either side of the pencil, which my mother had not yet used to write down the names of her friends. She fixed her glittering eyes, which were even darker than the mascara which surrounded them, on one of the interrogators.
“A toast?” she asked.
Eddie quickly interrupted, “To Comrade Bierut, and…and…all the members of the Central Committee, “and glared at Trixie intensely.
“Why are you staring at me like that, you stupid, fuckin’ wanker, I‘m going to cut your balls off after what you did out there. You could have broken these bottles.”
One of the interrogators cleared his throat and, recovering somewhat, said,
“Please speak in Polish.”
Trixie spun around and faced him.
“Have a drink.”
“No, no thank you. “
“Go on, I’ll make a nice mix for you, what do you like? Hey Irene! Got any fruit juice? I know what Poles like. Go on have a drink!”
“No, no, we can’t, we’re on duty, can’t drink.”
“Go on, just to warm you up, what kind of Pole are you? come on, sit down, just one, won’t do any harm, here, here’s your glass, go on, please, please, go on. “
“No, no thank you,” he kept repeating, but it was gradually becoming apparent that he actually was going to have a drink and was now merely going through the last stages of Polish formality and delaying a final shrug of the shoulders with a brief “Oh, all right, just one.”
It seemed that he spoke for both of them. My mother returned to the kitchen with Eddie’s iodine and plasters, and then found juices for Trixie to mix drinks with. Trixie busied herself energetically.
“Bierut! Bierut! And Marshall Rokossowski! Long live Polish Soviet friendship!” bellowed Eddie. The interrogators looked embarrassed, but knocked down their glasses in one gulp with the same practiced gesture as everyone else.
“Long live. Long live,” mumbled Trixie, as she poured the next drinks. My mother produced a platter of salted herring with chopped onion, floating in a little puddle of oil, and another with some sliced and buttered rye bread. Eddie laid out plates.

“Fish like to swim!” screamed Trixie, and everyone gulped down the next round.
Eddie turned to the interrogator sitting next to him.
“Mr. Nowak, that’s a very nice car you have out there. That’s your car, am I right?”
“Yes, it is nice.”
“Simca, if I’m correct. Don’t see too many Simcas in the Polish People's Republic. Much nicer than a Fiat.”
“We use it for official business. It’s important that we have reliable transportation. And yes, Mr. Kamiński, it is a very good thing that you be aware that we are indeed on official business. We are building socialism, you know, but we get subverted by enemies of the people. It is important that we know who these enemies of the people are.”
Everyone became silent. Even Trixie, who was pouring the third round, stopped and looked at Nowak in puzzlement.
“You think Irene is an enemy of the people?”
“No Mrs. Kamińska, we don‘t think.” He paused, as if he regretted that last statement, but then continued.
“We are here to find out. You see, she is associated with people who are proven to be very dangerous elements.”
Trixie glanced over to me. I was sitting quietly on the window ledge at the other end of the room, my fruit juice and salt herring as yet untouched. I had witnessed many parties in my time. This one seemed to be proceeding along the normal lines, with the alcohol not yet taking any noticeable effect, but the group appeared to be searching for a theme, something to plunge in to. I knew that I could be of no help, but also that this enemy of the people thing was the wrong way to go.
“You think Ricky is an enemy of the people?” asked Trixie.
Nowak looked interested.
“Who’s Ricky?”
She made a dramatic, slow, sweeping gesture, and pointed at me. I cringed slightly; my name wasn‘t really Ricky. That was what the English women called me. Trixie resumed pouring the drinks, but no one reached for their glasses this time. No one bellowed a toast. The silence was horrible. The interrogators glanced at one another, as if they had psychically communicated, and made a devastating decision.
There was a knock on the door. My mother leaned back in her chair with a gasp of despair.
“Oh, it’s all right Irene. That’ll be Margaret. I told her I’d be here. I’ll get it,” said Trixie. She ran out in to the hallway. My mother buried her face in her hands.
Nowak and Zając again exchanged serious glances. It was clear that they needed either to break up this situation, or see how it developed. It appeared that they chose the latter.
From the hallway we heard Trixie‘s voice: “Margaret, Margaret, come in. We’re having a few drinks, some nice people here, oh and Joe, you’re here too, how nice.”
Trixie and Margaret came tumbling in, but Joe lingered behind, hanging his jacket very slowly on the hangers in the hallway. Joe, or Józef, was one of my favorite characters at parties. He was one of the few friends of my parents, who paid any uncondescending attention to me, and he was always completely drunk, well, he was until he had a lot to drink, and then he gradually became the only sober person in the room. We often teamed up late in the evening, taking off people’s shoes and covering them in blankets if they were too far gone to make their way home.
Margaret was fleshy and mincing, with cleavages and dimples, blond hair, a clutter of bracelets, powerfully perfumed and with a rasping smokers voice. Her clothes were low-cut or high-cut, wherever inappropriate, and she lunged at men, smothering and frightening them. The interrogators did look alarmed at once. She gave them a quick, sidelong glance, and immediately identified them as her natural pray.
She spoke to Trixie, but since everyone in the room was silent, she addressed everyone,
“Tad, will be along in a moment, he’ll pick us up.”
“Tad has a car?” gasped Trixie.
“Yes, it’s French.”
Joe finally appeared at the kitchen door, but instead of entering, leaned his elbow against the doorframe and buried his face in the crotch of his arm. He uttered a loud groan. Joe was an actor, a regular cast member at the Teatr Wybrzeże, at one time a star, but his alcoholism made him an uneven performer, and recently he found himself relegated to a series of minor roles.
He began to sob, his face still buried, but soon individual words began to emerge from the choking sounds, things like: “I didn’t know what love was until I met you” and “It didn’t have to end like this.” We would generally make the generous assumption that he was rehearsing a role, and that saved us from having to console him or interfere with his grief.
“Margaret, before you go, a quick one, eh? one for the road?” Trixie put another couple of glasses on the table, Joe pushed himself away from the doorframe and advanced toward the kitchen table, his handsome face streaked with tears. He was slightly unshaven, wore casual clothes, and walked with a limp, which we always assumed was an affectation, though he insisted it was caused by stray shrapnel during the last onslaught at Monte Casino. The interrogators moved closer to one another and became engaged in friendly conversation while trying not to look at Margaret. My mother sat silently, smiling politely whenever she felt anyone’s attention on her. I finished all my herring and juice, and begun to lose interest in the gathering.
There was a knocking on the door.
“I’ll get it,” said Margaret, “that’ll be Tad.”
“Oh, you’re leaving?” asked my mother, but I could not tell if with relief or apprehension.
“Yes, we’ll all fit in the car, don’t you think Trixie?” Her eyes searched the room to get everyone’s consent, but Eddie and Joe had retreated into a corner with the decanter, and were pouring themselves another drink. Then her full, lush lips pursed into a smile and her eyelids rose slowly like a stage curtain as she languidly turned her gaze to the interrogators. They almost rose from their seats, then both reached for a packet of cigarettes, their hands fumbling and grasping each other’s.
“I’ll get the door,” she said, directly to them. They both nodded and exchanged rapid glances. Trixie stood right next to her, looking up at her face, sparkling, and nearly giggling. Margaret started for the door, but took the first few steps backwards, very slowly, then turned and resumed at a normal pace without looking back.
We heard her voice from the hallway: “Tad, Kitty, you both came, how lovely, come in, we’re just having one for the road, will you join us?”
“Just for a moment, we can’t stay,” answered a resonant male voice.
Tad, or Tadeusz, was also an actor, but of a different caliber than Joe. At that time he was just beginning his film career, playing mainly World War Two People’s Army heroes, partisans, or sometimes romantic bricklayers, Leaders of Work, but was already well known and very popular. In later years the changing political climate allowed him to widen his range, he became very good, almost an icon of the Polish cinema; he even worked in the West, though never in Hollywood.
Kitty came in first, a mousy woman, wearing her usual cardigan and wooly stockings. Tad was a giant man; he ducked with actorial exaggeration as he entered the room and cast his aura over the gathering as he slowly straightened up. It was always stunning to have this man anywhere near you, let alone in your kitchen. The interrogators were clearly fans, and they edged shyly towards him to be introduced. Trixie leaned over her bag and pulled out another couple of bottles. “There goes my week’s supply,” she sighed, and winked at my mother. My mother smiled faintly, she was starting to look drunk.
Tad, like Eddie, also had a sharp eye, and quickly identified Zając and Nowak for what they were. To make the social encounter more comfortable he spoke in the tones, and adopted some of the gestures, of the fearless partisan bent on mowing down row upon row of Nazis foolishly emerging from their trenches or, gently leaning down to the interrogators upturned faces, with some of the charm and charisma of the bricklayer wooing the girl from the tank factory.
Joe slammed down his once again empty glass and, a little sobered up by now, walked toward Tad’s group, an ugly scowl on his face. He crouched behind a chair, an air-machine gun in his hands aimed at Tad, and spluttered angry German threats through his clenched teeth. Tad raised his head defiantly, spread his legs bent slightly at the knees, and raised his own air-weapon. They both made loud machine gun-fire noises as they showered volley after volley at each other. . With a loud guttural scream Joe rose from his crouch and rushed at Tad, but Tad caught him with a hail of bullets. Joe flew up in the air, fell to the ground, and lay there writhing in his death throes.
“Death to Fascists! Death to imperialism! Long live the victorious People’s Army! People’s Army…” shouted Zając and Nowak, slowly quieting as Joe rose from the floor.
Feeling an opportunity to further their ideological cause, Nowak raised his filled glass and quieted the room.
“Ladies and gentlemen, a toast. A toast to English wives!”
“English wives!” echoed Zając. “We should have English wives too.”
“Yes,” continued Nowak, “we must reach out to the proletariat of England, of the West, and help them shake off their shackles, free themselves of the blood sucking exploitative classes and reactionary forces. Proletariat of the world unite!”
This brought the loudest cheer of the evening, and everyone downed the round.
People mingled. Interactions were becoming based on previously undiscovered attractions between the most unlikely partners. Kitty, who normally despised Trixie and Margaret for their vulgarity and brazenness, was now laughing at Trixie’s foul jokes, and encouraging Margaret to separate Zając and Nowak from Tad and confront them in a tight corner of the kitchen.
Margaret did not need much encouragement. She pinned Zając against the hot water radiator, thoughtfully removing real and imaginary hair from his blue suit jacket. He was pressing himself against the hot metal despite the terrible pain, trying to avoid crotch contact and reveal the physiological changes that were occurring in that part of his anatomy.
Eddie was trying to get Tad’s attention, Tad was now consoling my mother, but loosing track of what he was saying, Kitty and Trixie were shrieking together in the middle of the room, Joe was quite sober again and observing Margaret’s operation with approval, Nowak, abandoned by everyone, was pouring himself drink after drink, breathing more and more heavily between each shot.
I chose this moment to walk out of the room, unnoticed, taking a plateful of cold cuts, more herring, and some bread, all of which had strangely grown in extent during the evening and was staining and disfiguring the documents which the interrogators had left lying on the table. The heat and cigarette smoke were intense in the kitchen and it was a relief to be out of there. The hallway was a large square space with doors which led to all the other rooms in the house. The one room which I never entered lately was my father’s study. The interrogators would spend a lot of time in there, with the door closed, and later emerge with piles of documents, and various other objects. The one thing which neither they nor anyone else ever touched was my father’s desk lamp, which stayed lit during all those months since his arrest. Until that moment. It didn’t just go out, it exploded, like a portent, an urgent and ominous signal from elsewhere. I could hear the shards of glass gently landing about the darkened room. I glanced back towards the kitchen, but no one else had noticed. I put my plate on the floor, at where I stood, and crept towards the study door. I had to search for the overhead light switch; I had never used it before. The room looked unfamiliar, disheveled, with all the drawers and cabinet doors left open; many familiar objects were missing. I stood by the door, gazing in, but didn’t go in any deeper. After a while I turned out the light, and also the hallway light for some reason, and wandered over to my bedroom, forgetting my snack, which still stood on the floor where I had set it. I was too tired to search for any toys or books and just lay down on the bed fully clothed.
I listened to the sounds from the kitchen. Clearly, everyone was getting very drunk. I could even hear my mother’s voice; she had been silent and subdued until then. At some point she produced the cognac which the market woman had given her; there were loud exclamations of approval, and much comment about the interrogators search-skills, since they had failed to notice it in a very obvious place.
Welcome drowsiness began to descend upon me. The sounds from the kitchen took the effect of a soothing lullaby, rising and falling in a steadily fading rhythm.
At a moment I realized that I was no longer alone
“You need to get undressed,” my mother’s voice was soft, as she seated herself on the edge of my bed. I lay still for a while, then sat up, rose slowly, and changed into my pajamas. After I lay down again, my mother tucked me in.
“Isn’t Eddie funny?” she asked, laughing lightly. I hadn’t noticed Eddie much during the evening, but to please her, I said “Yes, he is. He was hissing when he put on the iodine.”
“You were very good all evening. Next time I’ll ask Trixie to bring Lynn and Sonya with them. I know you don’t like them, but at least you’ll have someone to play with.”
Next time? I felt a little uncomfortable about this becoming a regular venue, but the thought of spending an evening with Lynn and Sonya filled me with even greater dread. Trixie’s daughters were cruel, and did terrible things to me.
We heard voices in the hallway. There was shuffling and bumping into furniture in the dark. Margaret, her voice even hoarser than normal from all the chain smoking that evening, was saying, “Here, let me help you with that, OK, I got it,” while Nowak, the person with her, took a loud, deep breath which rose above the din in the kitchen. My mother got up quickly and closed the bedroom door. She wove an uneven path back to my bedside, now hiccupping, but did not sit down beside me. She looked anxious.
“I’ll read you a book,” she said. Another hiccup. “You like the one about the goat?” I hated the story about the goat. The goat was mean and cruel, like Trixie’s daughters, and the boy it betrayed was stupid.
“Yes, I like it. Read that to me.”
She sat down again, her breath smelled strongly of alcohol and tobacco, and her hiccupping interrupted every phrase. After a while I turned over and pretended to fall asleep, but she continued reading, perhaps to drown out the ever increasing groaning and creaking sounds coming from the hallway.
Abruptly, the creaking stopped and new voices sounded in the hallway. It was Joe and Eddie.
Joe was saying, “What a night. What a night.”
“Where’s the light switch?” asked Eddie, “can you find the light switch?”
Then there were more voices.
“What’s happening out here? What’s everyone doing in the dark?”
Shuffling and bumping; nobody could find the light switch.
My mother rose slowly from my bed and walked toward the door, but just rested her hand on the door handle without opening it.
Now it seemed that the whole party had moved out into the hallway; voices expressed concern about how dark it was. There was a scream, a very loud thump, crash, more screaming, this time numerous voices. My mother flung open the bedroom door, and at that moment someone found the light switch, and briefly, a silence descended upon the whole house. I abandoned any further pretense of being asleep and run to the door to survey the scene.
It was a strange sight. Some people were standing over Zając, who was lying, quite still, in the center, while Margaret and Nowak were slowly rising from a bench, their clothes very disheveled. Nowak rose to his feet, his blue suit trousers appeared to be slowly dropping to the ground. Before he regained upright posture he swooned, his head tipped backward and his eyeballs rolled up and out of sight, his legs tangled briefly, and he crashed to the ground next to his companion. Everyone gasped.
Joe spread his arms, and said, “Step back”. He leaned over the two bodies and gently slapped their faces with the palm of his hand. They showed no signs of life.
“Out cold,” he said.
“How did this happen? What happened?” asked my mother.
Joe glanced around the room.
“Look,” he said, “some idiot left his herring and cold cuts in the middle of the floor. Zając must have slipped on them.”
I drew back against the door frame of my room.
Kitty seemed very upset.
“What shall we do? What shall we do? “she kept repeating.
Joe took Tad by the elbow, and they withdrew toward the kitchen door, conferring. Eddie leaned over the bodies and begun administering improvised first aid, mostly nudging and shaking them. Margaret went into the kitchen and reappeared with a glass of water.
“No, no,” Kitty reproached her, “you’ll mess up the parquet”.
Tad returned to the center of the room, leaving Joe, who stood up against the wall rubbing his bristly chin, and then gazing at his fingernails.
Tad said, “I’ll take them.”
“Take them? Take them where?” my mother almost shouted. She appeared to be asserting herself in her own home and laying claim to the two prostrate bodies.
Tad repeated, “I’ll take them.”
“You don’t know where they live, do you?”
“Don’t worry, I have a car.”
This last argument appeared to be most convincing, and everyone except my mother went back to the kitchen to collect their belongings. Joe came back with the interrogators’ camel-hair coats, checking their pockets and slipping objects into his own.
Eddie turned to Margaret: “Shame this. I was beginning to enjoy their company.” Margaret narrowed her eyes at him.
The three men picked up the bodies together, although Tad could have managed alone, carried them, one at a time, to Tad’s car, and laid them on the back seat.

“Oh, look, “Eddie exclaimed, “this is amazing. Never thought I’d see a thing like this. It’s another Simca. These are such nice cars. How did you get a hold of this, if you don’t mind me asking.”
“It is a nice car,” replied Tad.
Everyone filed back in to the house to say good bye to us. My mother stood behind me in the middle of the hallway, with her hands on my shoulders. There was some kissing, ruffling of my hair, “Let’s do it again, soon” from Joe, last one to leave, as he closed the door behind him.
The next morning, there was a broken bike still lying in front of our front door, and a Simca parked by our gate. Eddie and Trixie must have picked up the bike a couple of days later, while we were gone, but the Simca stayed.
No one visited us for quite a while after that night, but early one morning, about a week later, we heard a knocking on the door. When my mother answered, she found herself faced with two men in shiny iridescent dark blue suits, sporting very thin, sharp moustaches, heavily pomaded combed back hair, and sunglasses.
“Good morning, good morning, Madame,” they both said. “That is a very nice car, that Simca you have out there,” one continued.
“Oh no, that isn’t my car,” my mother replied.
“We are very interested in that car.”
“But I told you, it isn’t my car.”
They stood, gazing at her for a while.
“We can pay cash.”
“It’s not my car.”
They spread their hands and shook their heads to show disappointment, turned, and went away. A few days later the Simca disappeared.

Let Ponglish be Ponglisz

I am, no doubt, one of the original speakers and inventors of Ponglish, a new language nestled within Polish, fondly snuffling and nibbling through the rich pickings and wonders of English. As a child, brought up in post war Gdańsk, with an English mother and a Polish father, I had little recourse but to become a successor to the likes of Doktoro Zamenhof and develop this new, and by now, universal language. Both my parents were bi-lingual in Polish and English, but perversely chose to ignore their linguistic skills and addressed each other in their native languages. I chose to stand astride the two (languages) and develop a vocabulary and grammatical structures, which met the needs for communicating in that troubled situation. To my mother’s annoyance, I absolutely refused to ever speak in utter English. It was either Ponglish or Polish.

Even at that time, under Stalin’s strict rule, English was already heavily intruding into Polish. We naturally absorbed and digested łikendy, pikniki, dżentelmeni, futbol, sandwicze, and their like, whereas Polish made no impact on English. So my decision to ladle Ponglish onto a Polish base was sound and, as it turned out in its subsequent development, correct. However, there is a couple of recent deviations in Ponglish, which I did not anticipate, and do not approve of. Polish emigrants to the UK have developed an idiomatic English, based on Polish expressions. Mix that with colloquial Polish carrying a heavy admixture of oddly pronounced English words and you have a language which I might have some difficulty understanding. I can see how this pidgin arose out of a need to be somewhat almost understood by English people, but I find it a troubling and distracting deviation. Give me any day the good old correct, and thankfully more common, Polish grammar with a lathering of adapted English words, plus a discreet twist of borrowed idiom, added for gentle comic effect.

It is going to take heroic and sustained effort to support the continued growth and development of this infant cultural wonder. Whereas Spanglish is well developed, and has the support of well established communities both in the USA and in Latin America, Ponglish is based in the ephemeral new Polish communities in the UK. Still, Polish youth in Poland itself has taken upon itself to surge forth with yet another newly available arena for developing Ponglish: the World Wide Web. Here not only do verbal and grammatical hybrid forms take firm root, but also adaptations in spelling are allowed to thrive. IMHO’s, LOL’s and WTF’s are already adding deeper meaning to internauts pronouncements, ale łał, look at the new vistas this opens up.

Dżizes Krajst! soł tyle tajmzów już było, kiedy Polska snaczowała klęskę z dżozów zwycięstwa. Bieżcie serca, tym razem nie pozwolimy temu slipnąć przez nasze palce. Nie po to emigrowaliśmy do UKa by drinkowac z frendami w hammersmithskis pubach czy flatach na slamzach, i bezmyślnie szopowac na ich hajstritach, i gromadźic hipsy kaszu, i miec sex z ptakami, i placić ich głupie taksy. My po to w tym plejsie by nalernować się properowych kastomzów; no i stworzyć Ponglisz, of kors. Łelkom nowy lók dla fołod lóking Polski. Let Ponglish bi Ponglisz!