Homeland (32 page)
Jozef prompted anxiously, ‘Wladyslaw? What is it?’
‘Nothing.’ The heat had died in Wladyslaw as suddenly as it had come. ‘Nothing at all.’
While speaking of accuracy, I should also point out a couple of salient facts regarding Father’s death. Stefan went to a great deal of trouble to investigate the events surrounding
Father’s murder, and one thing became clear, that there was total chaos at the time. He discovered that there were four, possibly five, illegal militias rampaging around our neighbourhood
with complete impunity. Indeed, the authorities didn’t reckon they had restored law and order until well into December – that is, many weeks after Father’s death. So your talk
of conspiracy and collusion with the authorities has left me baffled and not a little distressed. Can’t we just stick to the facts and grieve for Father as a victim of lawless thugs? Why
make things worse by going into the realms of fiction and wild accusation?
Shaken by a wave of indignation and loss, Wladyslaw turned towards the window for a moment, and stared unseeing at the hut opposite. When he returned to the letter it was with grim
fascination.
There are other matters on which I believe you are mistaken, Wladek, but this is not the time to go into them, except to say that the political difficulties you quote are very real, though I
would suggest they are more on your side than ours. While the original Russian occupation was harsh – I would never pretend otherwise – it’s foolish to carry a sense of
grievance forward indefinitely, if only because it ignores everything that the Russians have done for us since. You didn’t live through the Nazi occupation, Wladek. You can’t
imagine the scale of the death and degradation. Russia fought to free us, and in so doing starved as we starved, died as we died, in their millions and millions. If freedom has had a difficult
birth, it does not make the child any the less precious.
Jozef had moved to the wall and was leaning against it, watching Wladyslaw out of the corner of his eye.
‘It seems I’m guilty of small-mindedness,’ Wladyslaw announced. ‘Of not giving credit where credit is due.’
Now, with Russia’s help we have the prospect of building a better world in which all citizens will enjoy the same privileges and opportunities, the same right to justice under the law.
We fervently believe that this prize can and must be wrested from the ashes of our country, indeed that it is the only prize worth having.
‘The only prize worth having,’ growled Wladyslaw. ‘Such certainty, Jozef. Imagine – no doubts at all!’
I cannot help you decide your future, Wladek, I can only tell you that people who cling to the old ways will find it difficult here, while those who are keen to make a genuine contribution
will feel entirely welcome. Life is hard, I wouldn’t pretend otherwise, but we feel we are aiming for a worthwhile goal.
Yes, I’m a wife now. I work as a medical secretary at the hospital. I also do some voluntary work. Stefan is a lecturer at the university and an active force in the Workers’
Party, which keeps him very busy. I try to help him out as much as I can with typing and so on. We have a tiny apartment in the old town, complete with leaking roof, but we’re happy
here.
I will say goodbye now, and wish you the best in making your choice.
With all my love,
Helenka
Wladyslaw folded the letter slowly and slid it into his pocket. Aware of Jozef’s intense gaze, he murmured, ‘I’ll be off now.’
‘You’re not coming to Alina and Danuta’s?’
‘No. Apologise for me, will you? Tell them I was called back to the farm.’
‘In that case I’ll say goodbye. And . . .’ He mumbled something about thanks.
‘What?’
‘I’m leaving. Remember?’
‘For heaven’s sake, of course you are.’ Looping an arm over Jozef’s shoulder, he embraced him swiftly. ‘Take care, old friend. Watch out for yourself.’
‘Sure.’
‘And if anything should go wrong, you know where to find me.’
Jozef said defiantly, ‘I’ll be all right.’
Watching the thin, nervous figure walk away, it seemed to Wladyslaw that the chances of him being all right were not terribly good.
Wladyslaw lay on his bed smoking while the wind roared around the apple store, drumming at the door and guttering the candle. His leg was throbbing in what seemed like a new
way, in dull rhythmical pulses interspersed with the occasional short sharp dart of pain which leapt all the way up to his hip, as if a sadist were applying a needle to an exposed nerve. He made no
effort to massage his leg or alleviate the pain with exercise, but allowed the throbbing to mark the seconds like the beats of a metronome and the jabs of pain to curb his frenetic thoughts.
On the table beside him lay a letter to Helenka. It had taken three drafts before he had managed to say everything he wanted to say and in the way he wanted to say it, each thought articulated
with fluency, lucidity and passion, nothing left out, nothing overstated, the arguments perfectly balanced and persuasively delivered. It was a masterful letter, and shortly he would burn it.
Having burnt it, he would not write again. One could not argue with a person in possession of the only facts that had any value to her, facts that had been discovered with such selfless dedication
by her paragon of a husband. One could not argue with blind certainty.
With relief he let his mind drift back to the old days. He didn’t need to reach for the photograph above his head to see it clearly, how each member of the family was placed, the way they
were standing and sitting, the expressions on their faces, his parents with a blend of pride and anxiety, Aleks and Enzio solemn and self-conscious, Janina and Krysia vibrant and carefree, and
Helenka sitting at one end, already a little on her dignity in preparation for becoming a doctor, but with a hint of a smile. This was how he would remember her from now on, he decided, in the
garden at Podjaworka with the plum tree casting a lace-like tracery over her pale dress and an echo of old laughter in her eyes.
On the far side of his writing table, beyond the letter, were some of his scribblings from the previous evening, the results of his labours on the customs of England. For the time being it
seemed as if these too were destined to remain unaired. At five thirty that afternoon he had cycled up through the village and, following Stella’s directions, found his way to the gate of a
dark cottage set well back from the road behind a low fence. The place might have been deserted but for a thread of reddish light between the downstairs curtains. With fifteen minutes to spare, he
had strolled up and down the lane until, holding a last match up to his watch, he made his way up the uneven brick path to the door. The woman who answered was an older version of Stella, with blue
eyes now faded, and wavy hair turned the colour of frosted sand, and a voice that was startlingly similar to her daughter’s.
‘You are Wladyslaw,’ she stated simply, before telling him that Stella had been called away unexpectedly. It was something urgent that could not be put off, she explained. Stella
sent her apologies and would try to arrange another time soon. Wladyslaw nodded and smiled his thanks, but for some reason Mrs Mead didn’t seem to think he had understood because she repeated
the message again in slow emphatic tones.
Thanking her again, Wladyslaw rode on to the doctor’s house. There were lights in the living room but he returned the bicycle to the shed and walked away without calling.
The apple store had grown cold; the stove had run out of paraffin. Now a sudden gust of wind rattled the door and blew out the candle. Wladyslaw felt for a match, only to change his mind and
reach for his jacket and boots. He emerged into a raucous wind that whistled in the withy racks and tore at the apple trees, making the branches creak and groan in agony. Bending into the wind, he
walked down to the end of the yard and stood at the gate to the drove-road. All was dark except for the occasional star glimmering through a rip in the racing clouds. Around him the grasses rustled
and shivered, the trees whimpered and thrashed, while rising up from the darkness below, underlying everything, it seemed to him that he could hear the insistent whispering of the wetland, like the
breathing of a giant animal.
A shout, very human, very abrupt, rose above the wind. Looking back, Wladyslaw saw a torch beam playing over the apple store and, half illuminated in its reflection, Billy hammering a fist on
the door. ‘Johnnie? You in there? Wakey-wakey!’
Wladyslaw hurried up the yard. ‘What is the matter, Billy?’
Billy spun round and shone the light straight into his face. ‘There you are! Come on – grab your stuff. Quick march! One, two! Left, right!’
‘What stuff? Where we going?’
‘Look lively! No time to hang about.’ Billy was already moving away down the yard, the torch beam dancing wildly over the ground in front of him.
Wladyslaw pulled on a woollen hat and thick gloves. What else he was meant to grab he had no idea. Billy had been carrying something over his shoulder, a roll of wire, or a bundle of hoops, but
these gave no clue as to what else might be needed. In the end Wladyslaw took a knife, a hook, and a length of rope.
By the time he started off, the wavering beam was already halfway down the drove and going fast. He broke into an uncertain jog, his leg protesting at each jar of the rough surface. As he gained
on the torch beam, he caught above the blustering wind snatches of wild discordant singing, and realised with sinking heart that Billy was drunk.
‘Billy – what the hell!’ he shouted.
‘Come on, or we’ll be too bloody late.’
‘What for?’
‘The tide.’
‘The tide,’ Wladyslaw grumbled loudly as another stab of pain shot up his leg. ‘Sure! What else!’
Approaching the wetland where the darkness was at its deepest, the torch beam vanished suddenly, and Wladyslaw was forced to rely on another rendition of ‘It’s a Pity to Say
Goodnight’ to guide him to the side of the old rhyne and a rough path he had never walked along before. Then the singing petered out, and there was nothing to guide him but the bouncing orb
of Billy’s head against the faint luminosity of the sky and the pollards that loomed up one after the other like cannons targeting the heavens. All around him the wind thrummed and sighed,
and from the far side of the rhyne came the sibilant rustle of the withies.
The rhyne took a loop south, a stand of willows blocked out the sky, and all of a sudden Billy wasn’t there any more.
‘Billy?’ Halting doubtfully, Wladyslaw’s senses reached out into the darkness, straining for a shape, a movement, among the shifting shadows. Calling Billy’s name more
urgently, he edged forward. Suddenly a curse rose from close in front of him. Peering downwards he made out Billy’s form crouching at the water’s edge. A series of grunts and oaths
followed as Billy struggled with the wire contraption. Wladyslaw was just leaning forward for a better look when Billy let out a yelp and started to flail about.
‘Billy, what is—’ The words died in Wladyslaw’s throat as he felt something nudge the side of his boot, and it wasn’t Billy.
‘What the hell?’
But Billy was jabbering to himself, half laughing, half swearing, making no sense at all.
Wladyslaw felt another faint but distinct movement against his foot. ‘Billy, what is—’ Then on a rising note of disbelief, ‘
Milosc Boska!
’
The torch flashed on, the ground sprang into relief, and Wladyslaw flinched with revulsion. The grass was heaving with snakes.
He would have jumped aside, but the snakes were everywhere, slithering rapidly past his feet. ‘What is this things?’ he demanded in a strangled voice.
‘They’re bloody eels, aren’t they?’
Regaining his wits, bending forward a little, Wladyslaw made out gills and fish mouths and black shiny backs and silver bellies. He counted four – five – six of them within the torch
beam, with more coming up behind. They were heading for the old rhyne, where they slipped rapidly over the edge of the bank into the water.
‘Catch ’em if you can!’ Billy cried as he lunged for one. At the third attempt he got a hand over the body of an eel, only for it to leap free with an insouciant flick of its
tail and dive neatly into the water. Billy was laughing so much he kept having to gasp for breath. Then, with Wladyslaw aiming the torch onto the rhyne, he lowered the net-and-hoop contraption into
the soupy water and staked it to the bottom of the ditch. Even before Billy had driven the last stake into the mud, Wladyslaw saw an eel swim into the mouth of the trap.
Billy climbed out and lumbered off into the darkness. Wladyslaw found him sitting against the trunk of a large willow under a vault of shivering branches. Sitting down next to him, Wladyslaw
heard the pop of a stopper and a series of gulps, and then a jar of cider was being pressed into his hand.
‘What do these eels do, Billy? Why do they come this way?’
‘They’re trying to get to the salt water, Johnnie, that’s what, and they reckon the old rhyne’s their best bet. And once they get to the salt then they swim all the way
to the Sargasso Sea, which is . . . dunno ’xactly . . . but bloody miles away. An’ you know what for? For a fuck. Their one and only
ever
. Then they’re dead. Finished. One
leg-over and
that’s it
. Talk about going out with a bang.’ Billy took another swig of cider. ‘But you know what? They’ve got it easy. Don’ have to cope with
talking and yakking. Don’ have to try ’n work out what the hell women are on about. ’Cos one thing’s sure – what they say’s got bugger all to do with what they
mean. I tell you, when it comes to plotting and planning, we’ve got
nothing
on them . . .
nothing
. . .’
An unformed thought had been chasing around the edges of Wladyslaw’s mind. Now it came to him in a rush that Stella had failed to mention her boyfriend not from any oversight or
thoughtlessness but from the belief that Wladyslaw must already know, because the rest of the world knew and couldn’t have failed to tell him.
