Tailor of Inverness, The (3 page)

I don’t think it was a suspension bridge. Perhaps these strange feelings were also due to the relief of leaving the DDR behind and the happy fact that we were about to enter Poland. My father became cheerful and relaxed, even in the knowledge that we still had to negotiate the Polish border post. Here, his halting, basic German was replaced with his mother tongue. We were scrutinised by the Poles. A couple of times, we even had the car searched, but it didn’t seem to matter so much. My father cheerfully conversed with the Polish border officials and usually there was some laughter. They recognised him as an exiled soldier and were usually disposed to leniency, even friendliness towards him. They were amused by his Polish, with its Galician accent and old-fashioned turns of phrase.

On my last childhood crossing at the Oder, in 1974, there was a slightly longer delay than normal. A neighbour of my uncle’s (so I was told) had requested that my father bring him some porn magazines from the West. My father had agreed, much to my mother’s disgust. They didn’t have porn in Communist Poland, at least not openly, it was banned. My father hadn’t bothered with concealment, they were on the shelf behind the rear passenger seat and duly picked up with much guffawing by the border guards. They took them into their office for a thorough examination, which took about twenty minutes, before they were returned. My mother was silent, but her embarrassment was obvious. My father joked with the guards as they handed the magazines back.

I was bemused, sympathetic to my mother’s view that the magazines were degrading but also to the idea that my father was striking a little blow for free speech, albeit a sleazy one.

We entered Poland. As we left the border behind, we looked forward to reaching our destination, just 250 kilometres to the south, but it was slow going.

No longer on the autobahn, the road surface deteriorated. My father had to be alert for pot-holes and subsidence as the
light began to fade. We drove through settlements: Cybinka, Krosno Odrzanskie, Dabie, Kosierz, Bogaczow, Silesian villages which had been German before the war. Many of the buildings we passed bore the scars of the war, peppered with bullet holes, sometimes missing chunks of masonry. The road surface alternated between cobbles and asphalt, with numerous bumpy traverses of railway lines. We passed the odd car and truck, and farmers returning home from the fields on their long horse-drawn carts. People in the villages would stop and gaze at us, fascinated by our exotic car, our strangeness. We would gaze back as we passed, conscious of our difference. Dad had fixed a little Union Jack to the extended aerial on the bonnet, which seemed to emphasise this. Asserting our Britishness in this way seemed to provide us with a little more security too.

Zary, Zagan, Wegliniec. There was a large garrison of the Soviet Army at Zagan. We passed long barrack blocks in the night, the yellow light of low-watt bulbs seeping through thin curtains in blank square window frames, glimpsed sentries lighting cigarettes. I was aware even then that all the East German and Polish military personnel and installations which we had seen on our journey were subservient to this power, Soviet power. With this knowledge, these banal blocks became giant concrete boots always threatening to crush the Polish countryside.

In the surrounding forests lay the sites of a former network of Nazi prisoner-of-war camps, one of which, Stalag Luft III, was the scene of an escape by eighty allied prisoners in March 1944. This escape, led by the British Major Roger Bushell, became the subject of the 1960s film ‘The Great Escape’. Of the eighty, all but three were caught. Fifty were executed by firing squad. There were much larger camps at Zagan than Stalag Luft III, which held over 10,000. In 1942, Stalag VIIIE held over 100,000, mainly Soviet prisoners. These prisoners received extremely harsh treatment. Starvation, epidemics,
beating and ill treatment took a heavy toll of lives. After its victory, the Red Army used the camps to hold German P.O.W.s and repatriated Polish soldiers, most of whom would
eventually
be sent to labour camps in the Soviet Union.

We didn’t see much more of the Soviet or Polish Armies on our Polish holidays until 1967. Uncle Adam’s home in Lesna was only a few kilometres from the Czech border. During that holiday, we often encountered Soviet military vehicles, and even tanks on the country roads around Lesna. In
retrospect
, it seems that this activity was taking place in preparation for what came in summer 1968, the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Warsaw Pact forces led by the Soviets. Although the reforming leader of the Prague Spring, Alexander Dubcek, didn’t become First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia until January 1968, Moscow’s armies were ready to remove him and his government long before then. We were oblivious to all that in 1967. We were simply curious, intimidated tourists on a family visit.

Czerwona Woda and Luban Slask. The roads grew dark and quiet as we approached. Road signs were usually small and infrequent and more than once, we’d miss them or spot them too late, so that Dad would have to reverse the car to check we were on the right track. Excitement was high as we entered Luban, the small town only 12 kilometres from Lesna. The road and the railway line criss-crossed each other I think eight times on those 12 kilometres, so we had to take them slowly.

These were the last obstacles on our journey, after the form-filling of months before for the Polish and East German Embassies, the booking of ferries, the three-day drive, the punctures and mechanical breakdowns, the negotiation of the Iron Curtain. These steel railway lines on the road, not level crossings, but lines which usually simply sat on the road surface, perhaps with little ramps on either side of each track
in an effort to ease the stress on a vehicle’s suspension, were irritating reminders that we were there on sufferance. Miniature rigid steel barriers poking us from below, telling us ‘OK, so you’re nearly there, but it hasn’t been easy for you and it’s going to stay that way. Don’t forget us. We’re not far away.’

I think even in my childish mind it wasn’t difficult to reach an understanding of how easily paranoia can be induced. Steel railway lines, the Iron Curtain, barbed wire, gun turrets. It seemed as if Communism’s rulers had produced a
shape-changing
metallic monster to control us. But we had our own little metallic monster to protect us, our red Vauxhall Cresta, our capitalist V-sign. Up yours, Brezhnev, look at us! We never felt quite so gung-ho then as we travelled inside the Iron Curtain, but the sight of us and our relative wealth probably had that effect on some. We were quiet, respectful and curious, and sometimes I felt a little guilty to have come from a luckier part of the world.

And then we were there, Lesna.

We trundled along the long straight Ulica Baworowo into the village, turning left at the little pink-painted bar into a narrow driveway which led to three houses set back from the road. The middle house was Uncle Adam’s, a neat, solid, two-storeyed pre-war German-built dwelling. The lights were on and they were standing in the drive as if they’d been waiting there all day: Adam, his wife Aniela, and their children, Jurek and Ula. In spite of stiff bodies, we sprang from the car to be greeted. My father immediately hugged Adam, laughing and crying, and they planted three kisses on each other’s cheeks, left, right, left. We followed suit, struggling with our Scottish reserve and our lack of Polish, while my father, after a 14-hour drive, found a new energy, full of animation and good humour, chatting away and translating for us as we were led into the living room where a great spread awaited us: soup,
placki
, cold meats,
kielbasa
, salads, bread,
kompot
, tea and vodka.

Adam was shorter and stockier than my father. He was barrel-chested, with thick, brown wavy hair which infringed over his shirt collar at the back, Teddy Boy sideburns, and a square, open face, big working hands and a twinkle in his blue eyes. He had an infectious sense of humour, which he
used constantly during our stays, always happy times for him and us. He was a good-time guy, a bit of a tearaway in his youth and five years younger than my father. Fourteen years old when the war broke out, he had remained in Gnilowody with his parents until the Germans occupied it in 1941. He was taken 500 miles east by them to work as a forced labourer in a Silesian quarry, not far from Lesna. He worked there until the Soviet liberation of 1945.

When he realised, a few months after the war had finished, that the ground he was standing on was no longer German, but Polish, and that returning to Gnilowody wasn’t an option, he occupied an empty flat, a former German home. He met and married Aniela, herself a former forced labourer. Jurek was born and they needed a bigger house. Adam learned of the house on Ulica Baworowo which was occupied by a couple of Soviet officers. One night, the officers were drinking and playing cards in the house when Adam burst in like a madman, wielding an axe. The officers fled. He had been there ever since. That’s the story I was told. I expect the truth was less dramatic, but you never know.

Aniela ran a neat general store in the town square. It wasn’t hers, of course. All shops belonged to the state. She was a dark-haired, dark-eyed woman, kind and conscientious, sober and watchful. She drank very little and cooked wonderful Polish food. She never mastered any English beyond yes, no and thank you, but then neither did my mother with Polish. She often persisted with the daft idea that if you say something loudly enough in English, it will be understood. ‘In Scotland, we drink tea with milk. IN SCOTLAND, WE DRINK TEA WITH MILK! WITH MILK! MILK! Matt, tell them what milk is.’ At least she kept trying. She must have experienced a great deal of frustration at her inability to communicate and her reliance on my father as a translator. There was never any question about coming though. I’m sure she understood how
important these visits were for him, and for us, so she always supported him and although she sometimes complained about the extent of my father’s generosity, she recognised that it would always be necessary for a significant proportion of the family’s income to be spent on the biennial Polish trip and on Adam’s family and on the brothers’ mother, Zofia.

Zofia was the grandmother I never met. A fairytale figure in a thatched cottage in a fertile land. A farmer’s wife surrounded by ducks, geese and hens, haystacks and horses. A weatherbeaten
Babcha
in a scarf, staring out at us with a defiant look from the only picture I’d ever seen of her, taken during the ‘60s, I guess. She looked strong, determined and worn. She called silently from a beautiful, inaccessible place. The old country, the former Polish lands in the east, in eastern Galicia, lost to the Soviets when they invaded in September 1939, only 17 days after the German invasion from the west, now in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. If we were inside the Iron Curtain, there was an even thicker Iron Curtain beyond, at the eastern Polish border, impenetrable, protecting the monolithic power, the Soviet Union.

Zofia had survived the Soviet invasion, the German onslaught and the Soviets’ vengeful reconquering of her land. And she was still there in Gnilowdy when I was a boy, but barely present in our consciousness, barely mentioned. Spectral, yet alive, red-blooded, living in the real world. Feeding her hens, meeting her neighbours, going to her church, picking her apples. In that frightening, fairytale place, so green and yet so grey. I recall no letters from her. I don’t think they were allowed. As a child, I didn’t understand how I could have a living, breathing grandmother who I would never meet. I didn’t try to understand. As a child, I simply accepted that this was the way things were. She was on the other side of the border. We weren’t allowed to go there.

One or two letters did come from Ukraine. They were sent
by my father’s cousin, Bogdan Baldys. I understand now that Bogdan would only have been allowed the privilege of sending a letter to the West because he was a Communist official, a party member. I think the letter or letters arrived around the time of Zofia’s death, in 1971. Beyond news of her illness and death, my father didn’t tell us anything about their contents. They were exotic to us, words written with the Cyrillic alphabet. We were told it was Russian. It might have been Ukrainian, Bogdan’s native tongue, but then Ukrainian may have been suppressed and disapproved of. If so, Bogdan would have written in Russian. I didn’t even know there
was
a Ukrainian language until I went there in 2003. My father certainly never told us, even though he could speak it. He always described it as ‘Russian’. I only began to understand all this in the light of the new history I would learn in my middle age.

I also learned in later life that my father sent money regularly to Adam, which he would then send on to Zofia, via Moscow. The Soviet system made small concessions to compassion, often only if it was advantageous, as in this case, where my father’s hard currency would enter the coffers of the Communist banking system while providing a little stimulus to a local economy. So Zofia was more comfortable than most of her neighbours in Gnilowody, but money would never compensate for the complete inaccessibility of her sons. Adam was
eventually
granted a visa to visit Zofia when she became ill, and again when she died, to attend her funeral. Every detail of his journey, including precise train and bus times, exactly where he would be staying, who he would be visiting and when these visits would take place had to be submitted prior to the granting of his visa. He was kept under surveillance the whole time he was in Ukraine.

Adam worked as a foreman in a local textile factory. He had never risen higher because he refused to join the Party,
which would have encouraged the spooks to keep an eye on him in Ukraine. He had succeeded in teaching himself quite a sophisticated level of conversational English by listening to the CIA-funded Radio Free Europe, a subversive act. While Adam was interested in listening to a Western perspective on the world’s news and political developments, his priority was to learn English from RFE. He was happy to bring up his family, have fun with his friends and tend his large garden and his bees. He had around twenty hives and produced a substantial quantity of honey every year, most of which he sold or bartered. This kind of free-market activity was much more common in the country than in the cities. Country folk produced more by themselves and were under less surveillance.

Like most apiarists, Adam had developed an immunity to bee stings. We hadn’t, so it was unfortunate when, during my first visit, in 1961 at the age of two, I took against the bees and started kicking away at their hives. The bees didn’t like that, so they attacked. I was rescued by my mother and my sister. I’m told they received far more stings than I did.

Adam had also supplemented his income by engaging in a smuggling operation across the Czech border. I don’t know the extent of his activities, but I do remember being shown a suitcase in his attic once. I think Jurek must have taken us up there. He claimed it was full of banknotes, his father’s smuggling profits. I don’t know if it really was full of banknotes. If Adam was secretly rich, he couldn’t spend his money in large amounts as it would attract suspicion. How could a factory foreman have so much money? But his was the first house in the neighbourhood to have a modern bathroom installed, with a bath and a flushing toilet. This was in the early ‘70s. Prior to that, we used an outside toilet, a cubicle next to the henhouse with a wooden platform seat above a hole in the ground. I always approached a visit there as a test, to see how long I could hold my breath.

Later in the ’70s, Adam and Aniela bought a car for Ula, a rare luxury for Polish families. It was a 600cc Polski Fiat 126, the most common private car on Polish roads during that period. The Polish government, under Edward Gierek, wanted to gain popular support by increasing consumption, pumping money into the economy and making more consumer durables available following the austerity of the ‘50s and ‘60s. It revived a pre-war licensing agreement with Fiat and built a new car plant to produce the 126. What was a city runabout in the West became a family car in Poland, for those lucky enough to own one. Sometimes we would see these tiny cars packed with four, five or even six family members, with luggage piled on a roof rack, off on their holidays, just like us.

Adam, Aniela, Mateusz, Ula, my sister Angela and Jurek, Lesna 1959