A Chip Shop in Poznań, page 20
‘Wesołych Świąt,’ I say. (Merry Christmas.)
‘Tak …’ (Yes …)
I give my speech. I explain that I am Benjamin from England, that I’ve heard of a tradition in Poland to prepare for the unexpected arrival of a stranger on Christmas Eve, and that, well, here I am. She says nothing, checks behind me to see if I am concealing somebody else, then reaches out for the chocolates and says, ‘You’re a bit late, but in you come.’
The children have obviously reported back to the rest of the family in the dining room, because when I’m led through I’m met with seven or eight sceptical expressions. There is an awkward moment – or another awkward moment – when Agnieszka, the lady of the house, realises that despite there being a place setting at the table for the unexpected stranger, there isn’t a chair for them. She asks her daughter to fetch one from her room. When the chair arrives, it is squeezed in next to Przemek, her husband. While this goes on, I do a lap of the table, introducing myself to each family member, half-kissing the maternal grandmother on the lips by accident. When I tap the maternal grandfather on the shoulder to gain his attention, he almost falls off his chair he’s so shocked. A bit hard of hearing, and obviously a keen eater, I don’t think he’d realised there was a stranger in his midst. I try to settle him by patting him on the arm, but this only seems to complicate his discomfort.68 Pleasantries over, I take a seat on the small red plastic chair that has been fetched from Kasia’s bedroom, get stuck into the soup, and generally keep a low profile for a bit, giving Agnieszka an opportunity to justify her actions to her parents and step-parent, who no doubt aren’t used to this sort of modern dinner party. Just as my heart rate has started to normalise, Przemek’s mother, sat next door-but-one to me, leans across and says, ‘Kommst du oft hierher?’69 I smile and nod, hoping the utterance doesn’t call for a response.
Both parents are unfailingly courteous. If not a god, they treat me as if I might know a god. They tell me a bit about themselves. Agnieszka and Przemek met while working at Ernst & Young and now run a herring processing facility. Przemek wants to know about British Christmas traditions. I mention turkey and sprouts and crackers – ‘Crackers? You mean for cheese?’ – and the Queen’s speech, wherein Her Majesty says the previous twelve months were generally overcast with patches of sun and drizzle, and that she’s counting on more of the same for next year. Throughout this, Tadeusz, the grandfather, continues to monitor me coolly, as if I was something to figure out. The children, for their part, are equally ambivalent about my arrival. They had thought, when I rung the bell, that I was Father Christmas arriving with a sack of presents, so straight from the word go I was a complete and utter let-down. The boy is too much into his food, and then too often under the table looking for that food, to bother with. An aloof character, if I’m honest, insofar as a three year old can be. The youngest girl is also something of a lost cause socially speaking, but with good reason: she’s embroiled in an ongoing psychological battle with her mother regarding how much food she must eat before she can get down. The eldest daughter – Natalia – I fancy I can win over. She has a bit of English, which might afford me a way in. Besides, I am sat on her office chair, so we have the experience of sitting on that in common. I ask Natalia what she wants to be when she is bigger. She obviously doesn’t think much of the question, for she puts her spoon down bad-temperedly, folds her arms, then says something moodily to her mother, who gives an exasperated sigh then translates. ‘She says that she can’t possibly say what she wants to do later in life because she doesn’t know who she will marry yet.’ I tell Natalia that she is very wise – bardzo mądra – much wiser than her siblings. She simply shrugs, then throws a dumpling on the floor. I ask her what she enjoys at school. Nothing, she says. I ask what she expects to get for Christmas. Something, she says. I ask if she is enjoying her dinner. I was, she says. I ask if there is a carp in the bathtub. She just rolls her eyes.70 Remembering that my niece, about the same age as Natalia, prefers statements to questions, the weirder the better, I tell her that I ate a lemon last week, a whole one and in one go, and that it still hasn’t come out yet. She holds her head in her hands, shakes it from side to side, then turns to me with a massive grin on her face and asks if I want to see her pet rat.
As far as rats go, Tomek is a good one. Without consultation, and there not being a place setting for him, Tomek is positioned on my lap, where he does a little dance, finally settles, and then wees a little bit. When I share the news that Tomek has weed a little bit everyone seems very pleased about the fact, if not a touch envious. Przemek explains how they came to have a rat as a pet. ‘We reasoned that we already had three disgusting creatures in the house so one more wouldn’t hurt.’ The explanation reminds me of an idea of my friend Gabriella, a Swedish-Pole, who said that Polish parents will playfully threaten to sell their children to the Russians for the slightest misdemeanour, whereas Swedish parents count even the mildest of admonishments – ‘Pardon me, Nils, but would you mind not hiding your vegetables under your reindeer steak?’ – as something like bullying. The Poles don’t love their children any less, she hastened to add, they just have a different style. No matter the style, Polish kids turn out well. For all my complaints and chides, they are a good bunch. Although when it comes to breaking the wafers – another Polish custom – Natalia is unquestionably impolite.71 Instead of snapping off a corner of mine and making a pleasant wish for me, Natalia snatches the whole thing out of my hand, presses it into her gob, and then wishes I had been Father Christmas and not an immigrant.
Over the next hour, I eat my body weight in food. I eat herring, carp, ‘Greek fish’, salmon, two soups, pickled mushrooms, potatoes, pierogi, red cabbage and what is left of the kids’ fish-fingers. I don’t wish to speak ill of the dead, but the carp is perfectly unpleasant – a once in a lifetime experience, if I’m lucky. There is plenty of fat on the fish, which it no doubt put on during its residency in the bathtub, when the children enforced a diet of ice cream and Nutella. Throughout the meal neither of the parents interrogate or scrutinise me. They just let me be, count me as one of the family – which is more of a kindness, I think, than excessive attention. I stay for about an hour and a half – long enough to sample all the dishes, not long enough to overstay my welcome: I’m quite good like that. The family had been astonishingly open and kind, and I didn’t want to trespass any further. I also didn’t want to be offered any more carp.
As I make to leave, the grandfather rises from his chair, fixes me with a strong look, and then shakes my hand boisterously. ‘Nice to meet you,’ he says in English. ‘Please come again.’ I tell him I’ll see him next year, which takes the smile off his face. Agnieszka sees me out. Putting on my coat by the front door, I apologise again for the surprise.
‘It was a lovely one,’ she says. I couldn’t agree more.
Back at Jenny’s house, I am assigned the role of delivering the presents, which is a nice role when you haven’t bought anyone anything. Joanna (sister) loves her chopping board. Jenny gets a thermos and a five-kilo sack of walnuts and a one-way ticket to Luton (from me). Andrzej (sister’s boyfriend) gets hot chocolate. Ania (mother) gets Joni Mitchell and Czesiu (father) gets a – well, for a long time no one is sure. He unravels his present carefully and mindfully, studies the German description, studies the thing itself, studies the description again, then reaches his conclusion. ‘I believe it is a sandwiches maker,’ he says proudly, as if he’d just discovered the God Particle. I am very, very touched and grateful to receive a collection of essays by Ryszard Kapuscinski entitled The Other and some gingerbread biscuits.72
Czesiu’s sandwiches maker (which is actually a pancake maker) gets us talking about unlikely presents we have received in the past. Jenny doesn’t seem to want to play the game: he brings his knees into himself, shifts back against the wall. ‘I know what Jędrzej got that was unlikely …’ says Ania. Jenny gives his mum a cross, pleading look, the type a toddler might give during a dispute over building blocks that have been confiscated because they keep being put in the tumble dryer. ‘One year,’ begins Ania, ‘Czesiu was put in charge of buying the presents for the children.’ Jenny’s face and head slump and sadden. ‘They must have been seven and nine, something like that. Jędrzej was desperate for a remote-control car, but Czesiu bought him an encyclopaedia
of music, and when Jędrzej opened it and realised what it was, and what it wasn’t, he cried and cried and screamed and screamed for days and days, absolutely traumatised!’ Ania starts to laugh and clap; Jenny does not. Twenty years after the traumatic event, he still can’t bear to think about it. In Jenny’s seven-year-old head, never had the gap between expectation and outcome been bigger. I ask Czesiu how he felt knowing he’d traumatised his son.
‘I don’t remember! I forgot about that day as soon as I could!’
It’s time to go to church. Ania gets serious on me. ‘This is not a casual outing, Benjamin. We are not going for a picnic. You are to remember whose house you will be entering. I beg you not to be flippant, and to refuse anything you are offered. If you are offered wine, I want you to refuse. That is not a Shiraz. That is the blood of Christ.’
When we enter the Dominican Church on Independence Street, Ania reminds me to take off my Santa hat. We are a bit late and there is standing room only. I am on my feet for nearly two hours, minus a few minutes when I am on my knees. The kneeling is as much of a problem as the standing. My lack of Polish means that each time the congregation gets to their knees I am the last one standing. Mirek – who met us at the church – thinks I am trying to be blasphemous, to make a point. He grabs my elbow and yanks me down. ‘Don’t misbehave, Benjamin, or you’ll pay for it.’ Sometimes I go to mass at Christmas with my dad, but the service is quite short, it’s in my language, and we always get a seat because the Church of England couldn’t field a cricket team these days. In Poland, the whole thing is a test of faith, to be honest. That said, there is an impressive sense of dignity to it all – the quiet, the reverence, the hymns. As others bow their heads in prayer, I steal sideways glances at tearful grandparents and heedless infants, the latter too young to believe, the former too old not to. I fix my attention on a man nearby whose devotion doesn’t suit him. He is on his own, successfully dressed, finely groomed, a worldly CEO with a vast portfolio of material concerns. I saw him outside earlier, doing business on his phone, turning 10 zloty into 100, water into wine. He didn’t look like a religious man – I would have put money against the fact. And yet in church his attentiveness and solemnity are awesome. It’s as if he knows, or is coming to know, that in the final reckoning all the trappings of his life – money, status, influence – count for nothing. He doesn’t require a hymn sheet. He knows the lyrics. Everybody does.
It’s 2am when we get back to the house. I ask Ania what her favourite part of the day was. ‘I love this,’ she says, indicating with a sweep of her hand the wrapping paper and books and chocolates and socks and Czesiu on the floor and Joanna on Andrzej’s lap and Jenny on his computer trying to figure out where Luton is. ‘I love this mess,’ she says.
68 It is said in Poland that a guest in the house is a god in the house. Well, this guy was obviously an atheist.
69 Do you come here often?
70 Carp is the Polish turkey, and because it tastes best when it’s freshest, the carp is traditionally kept in the bath for a week leading up to Christmas and then knocked on the head the day before it’s due on stage. Jenny – and this does not surprise me – says that he used to get in the bath with the fish, just for kicks.
71 The wafer tradition was new to me. Before it had been explained that I was meant to break off a bit of somebody else’s wafer and then make a wish for them, because the wafer represents the body of Christ, I had tried to use it to scoop up some grated beetroot.
72 I don’t mind saying that it was easier to get through the former than the latter – those biscuits were as hard as nails. I was pleased to read Kapuscinski. I had heard about him – he’s something of a Polish legend. He was a foreign correspondent for various Polish media outlets. He would send long, lyrical, fabulous reports from around the world. The essays I received had to do with his experience and understanding of the Other – the person who is not like us. In short, we ought to look out for them, because we’re of a kind.
31
You were never hungry. So be quiet (Konin)
25 December. I’m met by Anna at Konin station. She has a flower for me.
‘New coat?’ I ask.
‘Old. You never pay attention.’
Nietzsche postulated that our best friends are also our best enemies, because they’ve earned a licence to be honest. Anna doesn’t worry about earning the licence, she grants it to herself from day one. ‘You need to improve your teeth,’ she said in the early days. ‘You look pregnant,’ she said soon after. ‘Shoulders back,’ she said once, and then again and again until I got the message. Another time there was a note left on the kitchen table: ‘You will not find love if your personality continues like this.’ I kept the note as a bookmark.
When we get to Anna’s parents’ house there is a father in the driveway. He’s capped, smoking, moustached, looking very much the sort of man that commanded men in the UB (Communist police service) and then led UN peace-keeping missions in Yugoslavia. His hearing isn’t what it was because he’s heard too much gunfire. Jacek has a warm greeting for Anna, and a polite one for me. The dog is ridiculous – seemingly shrunk in the wash. Anna’s mum takes my coat, stows my bag, then leads me next door to Auntie Danka’s.
At Auntie Danka’s, I’m presented to a throng of relatives floating around a well-loaded table. I smile and do a series of little bows, like a visiting diplomat. Anna’s Auntie Grace – mother of cousins Ola and Dominic, wife of Uncle Wojciech – gets to her feet and says, ‘Well, Benjamin, might I say it is a considerable pleasure to meet you,’ then doesn’t speak to me again.73 I am pampered from the word go. Would I like tea? Would I like coffee? Would I like my coat taken? My feet rubbed? The newspaper translated? The dog put down? Jacek put away? Wine? Water? I count the clocks (at least ten), and then study the portraits of Anna’s great-grandparents, who were forced labourers during the Second World War, among other things. Elsewhere there is a spinning jenny, and mounted daggers and bodkins and various other items of war Jacek took as souvenirs from his peace-keeping jaunts.
We sit down to eat. It is a big spread, at least twelve dishes on the table, some rescued from the night before, most prepared this morning. We are fifteen or so. I’m sat between Anna and her cousin Dominic, who lives in London, where he’s completing a PhD about why gay white men like gay black men. Next to Anna, at the head of the table, is Jacek. I’m well within earshot, well within firing range. It’s a good place to be. I ask about the pickled mushrooms, about what type they are, but no one seems to know. ‘Aristocrat?’ asks Jacek, in my direction. I’m taken aback by the question, and a little worried: it used to be Jacek’s job to seek out aristocrats and relieve them of their airs and graces, and whatever else came to hand.
‘Well, my mother was a nurse and my father a carpenter,’ I start. Dominic stops me in my tracks.
‘Jacek was referring to the mushrooms. They’re called aristocratic mushrooms. That’s the best translation.’
The family have heard something about my antics yesterday. They are interested. Anna relays the story – my rehearsing the introduction, choosing the house, the pet rat urinating on me. Jacek is not in two minds about it. ‘If he looks like an Arab then he has no chance of entrance!’ I am ready to ask Jacek why that would be, why the Arab would struggle, but now he is distracted with his nephew, Marek, who he has in a headlock. ‘This man is 100 per cent Tatar! Look at his hair! And his nose! He is a warrior! He fought at the Battle of Grunwald, this boy!’74
I ask Dominic about being gay in Poland. He tells me about the time he wrote to the Scouts’ National Operations Team (SNOT) to ask if a gay scout would be tolerated. ‘The reply was unambiguous: “Anyone can be a scout! Including poofs!”’ I ask what it was like telling his family he was gay. ‘Everybody was in the living room, or whatever you call it. I was nineteen. I just came out and said it. Dad stopped ironing his trousers, gave it some thought, then said, “Fine by me!” Mum took four or five quick drags on her cigarette then said, “I knew this day would come.” My sister, without looking up from the television, said, “Your life is going to be so difficult from now.” From now? I thought. Are you kidding me? It had been difficult for years. I was the most feminine thirteen-year-old boy in Poland. You don’t get away with stuff like that here.’ And is that why you left Poland? Is that why you moved to Northampton when you were 21? ‘Partly. But my husband was moving to Northampton, so it kind of made sense.’ Husband? ‘Yeah. Didn’t Anna tell you?’
