Back in London, how to sum up Poland?
What a Gothic country! It’s a country of dignity and elaborate politeness, of perpetual autumn and rainy potholed streets over which presides some Stalinist monstrosity of other, of wide, unexplained urban spaces; of ubiquitous Polish eagles. Of aching, pathetic innocence and underlying toughness. It’s an erotic country of small female gifts and gestures; of police brutality and corruption. It is proud and noble to make tears well up in your foreign observer’s throat, yet also dependent on what the “West” thinks – yesterday, today and I suspect always.
Of Scandinavian work ethic, Prussian militarism, American religiosity and Balkan backwardness. It’s the smell of sweat, cigarettes, rye bread and vodka; the sound of American accents in business centres.
It’s overwhelmingly white and a long, long way from Brussels or London, London on a Sunday afternoon in Hyde Park where all the roller bladers in many ethnic varieties gather.
It is Janusz walking his little white lapdog under the moonlit naked trees who sniffled a little, voted for Kaczynskis and wanted to go the army to protect his girlfriend. It is Henryk in Cracow punching his palm and saying “I was a security guard in Chicago.” And saying: “I khate Jews.” So did his friends, all in bomber jackets, hunched over Lech beers. Henryk was about 40. This in a country where the Jews are not a nation but a nomination. It was the drive (a secret policeman?) who drove our bus, spooning Zurek soup at a lunch stop saying “the roads are no better than ten years ago.” Where driving at night is like being a member of Bomber Command, over blackout Germany, and the fifth gear is seldom used. It is Marcin, the Danish-speaking diplomat, who says: “Kaczynski is is my boss. We are always inviting foreign journalists.” Who adds: “But I can’t understand why half my friends go to church every Sunday.”
Poland is memories of Pascal’s wager and what came after vodka, which is the Information, and which comes at night. The memory and the flavour, boiled cabbage and dirty snow, umschlag platz and empty offices ringing phones. High ceilings and low toilet pans, and women’s better memories. The deserted spa hotel and the fateful offer of coca-cola. The cross on the hill, the cross on the other hill, and the end.
It is being asked to take your shoes off at Rzeszow Aurport, noted terror target. It is the investment conference.
It is the Lowry paintings, outside Lodz railway station. It is the land of the Easter baskets and proffered sausage. Of the lost millions, though this time to west. You’ve seen it in some old film somewhere. It is one legged men in propaganda films about the lost borderlands, hopping down a village streets, in image as black as a crow, to cheap, potent fiddle music. The young intellectual with his spatulate fingers talking about the election of the bishop of Warsaw.
It is of carpeted hotel bars that look like a German rock star’s lavatory, that are never staffed, that play radio stations that only play radio jingles.
It is the devoted love of Polish boys and girls, docile, enviable Slavic love, of the peeled orange and the shared rucksack. It is the purposeful long distance coach with men who’d better learn English fast. It is the self destruction of success; fomented by twin potato heads in a nation that never seems to laugh, at least at itself.
It is of the second chances that belong to all of us, coming over the bridge, after the road, and seeing Stalin’s gothic super-ego lit like the Empire State building. It is the happiest country; it is the saddest country. And it is better to love than to hate.
