Black Madonna
This is how it happens from now, he thinks – he’s on the plane, and she isn't. It’s strange though – strange that it’s J on the seat next to him rather than her. Not that he doesn't want to be traveling with J - completely the opposite in fact; he'd figured J for a good traveling companion pretty much from the first time they'd met - but it will take some getting used to. He notices that he’s picking up some of her quirks though - he feels anxious when the avgas smell comes through the hull as they begins to taxi, but he rationalises it away – it’s a plane after all; what smell would you expect on a fully laden plane? He's never noticed it on any other flight, though.
He loves flying into cities at night. There’s something calming about seeing the halogen green of the street lights below, the cars on the streets, the lives going on down there oblivious to his problems as he closes in from above. Then the bit he loves the most - seeing the runway start below, the wait wait wait bump of the landing, the will they / won't they as the plane tries to throw off all of that built up speed before the end. They can't even spell their own name right J says, and he looks in the direction of J’s finger at the red Warszawa sign towering over the terminal, glowering back at him. They drive through the grey streets to the hotel, the occasional partially lit intersection hinting at the full magnitude of grey beyond the car, and in the room they have the inevitable run through of the cable channels as they deposit the bags, pausing only to laugh at the German music station, and then onto the streets in search of a drink. The Poles drink, he thinks, and so will I - hang the consequences. He has his drugs in the room - they should get him through the worst of it. And hadn't they just seen on TV that Poland has more hospital beds per capita than Britain? One more patient wouldn't change the sums.
Find us a bar, he said, that's your job after all. But block after block pass without success. It's a bit like Prague, he thinks; except for the lack of bars. They head towards the large, well lit building which they later discovered was the Palace of Culture disguised as a 50s high rise, and the search becomes more frantic. How can they not find a bar in Warsaw - the very idea was laughable. Which is why they try to follow the three guys into Quo Vadis, despite them looking more like Russian mafia types than they thought was actually possible. I've got a strange feeling about this one, he says, and J nods. And when the doorman fills the frame in front of them and burbles something in Polish the decision is made for them.
Which is how he ends up in a bar at the Holiday Inn at midnight on a Thursday night, surrounded by mutton as lamb prostitutes touting uninterestedly for business from the overawed conference attendees on their two days a year away from the wife and kids, and waiting for J to bring back the double priced drinks from the bar. Is this all Poland's got to offer us? he thinks. It's Thursday night, J says; it wouldn't be much better at home. Yes it would, he replies; you’re being ridiculous now, as they drink their beers. Then they drink some more, to make sure.
He wakes up wondering if he is sick. You're not, he thinks; stop trying to talk yourself into it. So he lies down for a few minutes, talking himself into not talking himself into being sick, until the (mental) coast is clear enough to go into the bathroom to wash the handful of pills down with the mineral water the hotel leaves for each guest. By the time he'd showered J is awake and, after having a shower and deciding not to start his running programme today, is ready to see what Warsaw has to offer them.
What Warsaw has for them, now that the sun has arrived, is a lighter shade of grey. The old town is what they want, but they have to negotiate block after block of oppressive greyness before turning onto Nowy Swiat, the town's main shopping precinct, and an eventual respite from the grey. Didn't think we were going to make it, J smiles, as they head up the flowerbox-lined street. Eventually they find a far grander hotel than the one they are staying in so that they can pretend to be guests and get a better map of the city - there's is a crude approximation of a few blocks around their hotel, and clearly not up to the task of showing them around the city.
After negotiating a military parade (they parade well, he says. Shame that seems to be the best thing they do, J sniggers) they find a stand selling phone cards which have pictures of the Pope on them (the population of Poland is 98% Catholic, J said later. Explains all the churches then, the reply) for J to call the office (I forgot to annoy someone before I left, J says. You're getting sloppy in your old age, he smirks back). They start walking the streets of the old town, taking a few photos as they wait for the mood of tourism to enter their bodies. It's no good, J says; I can't feel touristy until I get a call to the office out of the way - as we don't want a repeat of last night, go into the tourist information place and find us somewhere to drink.
He squeezes past a large American couple who are loudly proclaiming to no one in particular how the postcards were much better in Paris, and goes over to talk to the bored looking girl on the souvenir counter and asks what is worth seeing in town. She seems (incongruously, considering her job) baffled, and after a short while says that he could consider the Jewish sector (if you really want to...), the university, which they had already unknowingly passed, and maybe the floating palace if they have time. And to drink? he asks. Maybe around the high school? she replies (not since I was actually at high school, J later laughed). Or here at the university, and she marks the location on his next map of the town.
So after lunch and beers, and an introduction to the flexibility of the Polish grasp of time via their waiters relaxed mode of food and beverage delivery, they made a short trip up the old bell tower nearby (the suburbs look like a mid 80s U2 film clip, he notes; it even looks like it's in black and white). Later they do as they were told: they wander through the pale yellow gates of the university and stroll the grounds and the park behind, and he wonders if the large walls were built to keep people out, or to keep the students in. After walking on further they find the entrance to another park which surrounds a palace built over a small stream (amazing how all that concrete can float, J notes. Leave them alone, the reply, they’re Catholic – they like having things to believe in), with a lovely amphitheatre built just down stream. Sitting on a park bench among the roses surrounding the Chopin statue, along with about a hundred locals, it occurs to him that he is starting to get used to the pace of life around here.
It doesn't last though - in the shower after taking the pills the sickness comes and the pills go down the toilet. When he comes out of the bathroom J sees his paleness and fusses, but later leaves to get something to eat, to their mutual pleasure. More pills and a nap, he thinks; that will do it, and when J eventually returns he is merely hot and waiting to cool himself off with a walk. By the time they return to Nowy Swiat he feels well enough to suggest a walk to the University and, they hope, it's nightlife. They walk past the large statue of Copernicus (the first Pole to realised the sun didn't revolve around him, he laughs) and around the corner to the large beer garden they had seen earlier in the day.
The women are gorgeous, J notes. Yes, he replies, and the men are huge. Beers come and go, and they savour the joy of being a foreigner in a foreign land, the weight of expectation off their shoulders for a while. There's always pleasure in sitting and watching a new way of life, of comparing how different people in different places get their joy. The Poles don't seem to have mastered it though - the men merely drink and grunt at each other, the women sip and look around, bored. Come on, J says, we can do better than this. And, accidentally, they do; a student bar downstairs, not too different to that bar all those years ago, filled with young kids, laughter, music, joy. A few more beers - another new Polish one - and they are themselves again. Raging Bull is playing on the television behind the bar – he’s close enough to notice that one voice plays all of the characters on the Polish voiceover, which raises a smile. Reminds me of my old University bar, he says. Mine too, J replies, it must be a prerequisite to have too few tables and chairs, and too many leaflets on the walls. Reminds me of when principles meant protest - whatever happened to protest? It's been opinion polled out of existence, he states; here's to the revolution. The cold beer goes down well.
But life is clearly elsewhere, which leads them to the 11.00 train to Krakow the next morning, and a discussion about the various foibles of the Polish with one of their own, a man large enough to play prop in rugby, who can communicate in Spanish at doctorate level, and who is annoyed with himself when he fails to remember a word in English in the middle of a sentence. His added ability to 'get by' in Russian and German makes them feel like dumb colonials, and yet he is only too pleased to give them all the information they could need. Yes Warsaw is grey and drab - I caught the first train there this morning, went to a meeting and caught the next train home. Krakow is wonderful - you will enjoy it even more after being in Warsaw. Yes there are lots of bars - you will not go thirsty. Yes the women are beautiful. Don't worry about the men - they are stupid, and the women don't like them. I went to university, and lived in Madrid for some years - most Polish men stay in their own town their whole lives. It should be fun tonight, he says and, after J goes back to his book he stares out the window, wondering what she was doing, and hoping the sickness isn't on the way.
Nothing prepares them for Krakow; certainly not the station and its surroundings, which make him want to climb back on board and return to the grey he'd left behind. Nor the streets they follow from the map drawn by their new friend (it's like Covent Garden, J says. With the crowds, without the shops, the reply). But around the corner the square threw itself open ahead of them, the wide open space putting the market building and clock tower into a perspective the buildings around the square don't have. They look at each other and know it isn't worth saying anything. The tourist office in the market books them into the Forum hotel, and they walk down the hill, through the winding lanes to the park, and across the street to the communist modern style building awaiting them.
They head back up into town later, and at the square J suggests a visit to the Basilica, one of the most impressive in Europe. The dark hits them as soon as they walk in, the candles and frankincense smoke (surely the most religious of smells, a present at the birth of Christ himself) creating clouds between them and the midnight blue and the stars of the ceiling high above. There are many hundreds of people in here, some to look at the ikons around them, many more to pray. He sees J cross himself shyly, and pretends not to notice as he takes a seat.
Outside again later, the sky is white as a spotlight and bright enough for their sunglasses as they walk down more cobble stoned laneways, passing or peering into any number of galleries, their owners in the doorways spruiking for passing trade. They enter one small store, and downstairs in a back room he is disturbed by some artwork which looks uncannily like hers, and it’s all he can do to beat a hasty retreat. Eventually they reach the castle at the top of the hill, looking down at the river oozing around the town like a snake, before working through the crowds in the chapel and, downstairs, in the royal tombs. Depressed enough yet? J asks, and they head back down to a café in the park on the western side of town for a beer. As they sit there, enjoying the afternoon sun, a group of kids walk by, their pretend roughhousing betraying their innocence. Were we ever like that? he asks. No, J replies, we spoke English.
They walk through the park later, admiring the way the Poles seemed to have time to enjoy walks like this (don’t they have jobs to go to? J asks. Maybe they’ve found a loophole in the capitalist system, the reply – we should ask them what it is), eventually ending up at the old city wall, which is covered in an extraordinary number of paintings. He likes one right at the top of the wall, and thinks about asking for it, but doesn’t want to go to the trouble of getting it down. The guy’s probably sick of putting it all the way up there every day, J said later; he probably would have given it to you just to avoid putting it back up there again.
They walk around to the university area after a fierce red sunset, and it doesn’t take them long to find a good bar run by a Russian guy they called Boris, who is practicing for the surly Olympics on his Saturday night customers. J is quick to notice a couple of girls at the other end of the bar, and quicker to mention them. They look like Australians, the reply; go and talk to them – you’ll know where you stand pretty quickly. J is talking to them when he comes back from the toilet (he never was very good at taking his pills in public), and he brings drinks with him when they call him over. It’s going well until one of the girls rushes out to the toilets, with the other returning later to say that her friend was ill, and they would have to leave. He doesn’t feel too disappointed.
They go back outside shortly after to eat at one of the huge barbeques set up around the main square. A diet of meat and potatoes – no wonder the guys here are built like they are, J notes. And the proof is all around them. A couple of Spanish girls sit down at their table as they are eating, a United Nations of boys in tow, and start to talk with J after hearing him speak in English. The French boy with them seems pretty unhappy about this, but he has a stereotype to live up to. Come with us to a club this boy’s DJing at, one of the girls says as they finish eating, and the ever expanding group follows the slight figure down one of the small laneways off the square, through a dark doorway, and into the music.
He watches J follow one of the girls and the rest of the group to the DJ booth, leaving him with her friend. You’re very sad, aren’t you, she states, and it all comes out – the illness, her, his story. Maybe it’s the drink, maybe it’s her brown eyes – sometimes fierce, sometimes tender, seemingly so familiar. She nods and yeses to keep the story going, and it all tumbles out onto the table in front of them, over the edge and onto the floor. Her friend checks back, and is sent off for a jug of sangria as she tells hers – similar; no illness. The small Polish boy is DJing and a song comes on, a slow one they both like, and she takes his hands and pulls him up to the dance floor and towards her. They dance politely, his hands on her hips forming fists through nerves. J is on the dance floor with her friend and isn’t nervous, and the rest of the group can only watch uselessly from the booth.
After the club closes they all wander aimlessly around the old town. A cat howls, and the Poles howl along with it until an old lady sticks her head out the window and yells something, and throws a bucket of water out at them – it hits one of the boys and he yells something back as they all laugh. J and the other girl disappear as the horizon becomes lighter. We’re going to see the Black Madonna tomorrow, he says to the girl; you should come along. We’ll meet you at the bus stop if we get up in time, she replied, leaning into him. J and the friend reappear, kissing, and as he watches J for a sign the girl grabs his arm and whispers, sometimes life can be good if you let it, spinning him around and kissing his cheeks before pulling her friend away from J, dragging her back to their hotel. And they go back to theirs, their ears ringing and their mouths smiling.
He has to remember not to be sick in the morning, especially while J is in the bathroom. When he gets in there he chokes down the pills and sits under the shower, the water streaming over his face like a monsoon, until it passes. He watches J eat a full breakfast while he nibbles some dry toast washed down with juice, and they head off to the bus stop. There’s no one else there, which is no surprise given the early hour, and he watches the traffic thin out as they pass through the town, and the landscape washes by as J falls asleep in the minibus. They pass the salt mines, and he thinks about the people who worked and died in what is now a tourist attraction, and later they cross the border, pass into a small town, and stop across the small square from a church. He nudges J awake and gets out to stretch and unfurl.
It’s smaller than the basilica on Krakow – almost claustrophobic – and he has to fight the desire to run back outside. They join the queue of pilgrims, and he stays in place when J leaves to find a toilet, although he doesn’t know why. But when he sees her he knows – that beautiful dark face, her twin scars a shortcut to her soul, her brown eyes staring impassively back, finding his. His eyes water, and he’s glad to have seen her alone. Later he’s sitting in a pew in the back of the church, lost in the chanting going on around him, surrounding him like a blanket, and he watches the flow of people ebbing out, some of them weeping. Eventually J follows, silent and avoiding his eyes, and stays that way for the whole ride back to their hotel.
All he feels, though, is joy, and it stays with him as they go back to Boris’ bar after more barbeque. Boris is trying a happy face for a change, giving them some vodka and apple juice (on house – you should try). Later they try next door in another club, and he watches J try, and fail, to pick up a Polish girl at a table by the wall – she doesn’t speak English, and although her friend who is translating clearly likes him, J looks as though he’s failed. I don’t want to watch J strike out again, he thinks, heads through the crowd and starts moving, dancing, as he stares up into the lights. And, for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t fell sick – he doesn’t even think to realise it. He looks happy – let’s not remind him.
The next morning they have time to kill, after breakfast but before the train, so they find a small bar for a quick beer. When J goes off to find the toilet the Spanish girl comes in and over, and she asks how do you feel? Good, he replies, and smiles as he says it, realising it for the first time. And you should, she smiles back, you just have to remember to, and she kisses him goodbye, her friend pulling her away, one eye on the toilet door, before J returns. What are you smiling about? J asks. I just feel good, he replies, grinning when J calls him a fag. They drain their beers and catch the train back to Warsaw, both of them feeling as though the trip is over, even though they are far from home.
The next morning they are driven through the pale blue dawn to the airport, and when they arrive they wait patiently for the duty free shop to open to give them something to do, even though it’s far too early in the morning to think about buying the cheap Polish vodka there. Boarding comes and goes, and he tries to doze after watching the landscape rush by his window on take off.
The tube from the airport carries them through the drizzle of a London autumn morning, past row after row of identical streets. Looks like summer’s over, J says. Yes, he replies, it looks like it is.
(October 2000)
He loves flying into cities at night. There’s something calming about seeing the halogen green of the street lights below, the cars on the streets, the lives going on down there oblivious to his problems as he closes in from above. Then the bit he loves the most - seeing the runway start below, the wait wait wait bump of the landing, the will they / won't they as the plane tries to throw off all of that built up speed before the end. They can't even spell their own name right J says, and he looks in the direction of J’s finger at the red Warszawa sign towering over the terminal, glowering back at him. They drive through the grey streets to the hotel, the occasional partially lit intersection hinting at the full magnitude of grey beyond the car, and in the room they have the inevitable run through of the cable channels as they deposit the bags, pausing only to laugh at the German music station, and then onto the streets in search of a drink. The Poles drink, he thinks, and so will I - hang the consequences. He has his drugs in the room - they should get him through the worst of it. And hadn't they just seen on TV that Poland has more hospital beds per capita than Britain? One more patient wouldn't change the sums.
Find us a bar, he said, that's your job after all. But block after block pass without success. It's a bit like Prague, he thinks; except for the lack of bars. They head towards the large, well lit building which they later discovered was the Palace of Culture disguised as a 50s high rise, and the search becomes more frantic. How can they not find a bar in Warsaw - the very idea was laughable. Which is why they try to follow the three guys into Quo Vadis, despite them looking more like Russian mafia types than they thought was actually possible. I've got a strange feeling about this one, he says, and J nods. And when the doorman fills the frame in front of them and burbles something in Polish the decision is made for them.
Which is how he ends up in a bar at the Holiday Inn at midnight on a Thursday night, surrounded by mutton as lamb prostitutes touting uninterestedly for business from the overawed conference attendees on their two days a year away from the wife and kids, and waiting for J to bring back the double priced drinks from the bar. Is this all Poland's got to offer us? he thinks. It's Thursday night, J says; it wouldn't be much better at home. Yes it would, he replies; you’re being ridiculous now, as they drink their beers. Then they drink some more, to make sure.
He wakes up wondering if he is sick. You're not, he thinks; stop trying to talk yourself into it. So he lies down for a few minutes, talking himself into not talking himself into being sick, until the (mental) coast is clear enough to go into the bathroom to wash the handful of pills down with the mineral water the hotel leaves for each guest. By the time he'd showered J is awake and, after having a shower and deciding not to start his running programme today, is ready to see what Warsaw has to offer them.
What Warsaw has for them, now that the sun has arrived, is a lighter shade of grey. The old town is what they want, but they have to negotiate block after block of oppressive greyness before turning onto Nowy Swiat, the town's main shopping precinct, and an eventual respite from the grey. Didn't think we were going to make it, J smiles, as they head up the flowerbox-lined street. Eventually they find a far grander hotel than the one they are staying in so that they can pretend to be guests and get a better map of the city - there's is a crude approximation of a few blocks around their hotel, and clearly not up to the task of showing them around the city.
After negotiating a military parade (they parade well, he says. Shame that seems to be the best thing they do, J sniggers) they find a stand selling phone cards which have pictures of the Pope on them (the population of Poland is 98% Catholic, J said later. Explains all the churches then, the reply) for J to call the office (I forgot to annoy someone before I left, J says. You're getting sloppy in your old age, he smirks back). They start walking the streets of the old town, taking a few photos as they wait for the mood of tourism to enter their bodies. It's no good, J says; I can't feel touristy until I get a call to the office out of the way - as we don't want a repeat of last night, go into the tourist information place and find us somewhere to drink.
He squeezes past a large American couple who are loudly proclaiming to no one in particular how the postcards were much better in Paris, and goes over to talk to the bored looking girl on the souvenir counter and asks what is worth seeing in town. She seems (incongruously, considering her job) baffled, and after a short while says that he could consider the Jewish sector (if you really want to...), the university, which they had already unknowingly passed, and maybe the floating palace if they have time. And to drink? he asks. Maybe around the high school? she replies (not since I was actually at high school, J later laughed). Or here at the university, and she marks the location on his next map of the town.
So after lunch and beers, and an introduction to the flexibility of the Polish grasp of time via their waiters relaxed mode of food and beverage delivery, they made a short trip up the old bell tower nearby (the suburbs look like a mid 80s U2 film clip, he notes; it even looks like it's in black and white). Later they do as they were told: they wander through the pale yellow gates of the university and stroll the grounds and the park behind, and he wonders if the large walls were built to keep people out, or to keep the students in. After walking on further they find the entrance to another park which surrounds a palace built over a small stream (amazing how all that concrete can float, J notes. Leave them alone, the reply, they’re Catholic – they like having things to believe in), with a lovely amphitheatre built just down stream. Sitting on a park bench among the roses surrounding the Chopin statue, along with about a hundred locals, it occurs to him that he is starting to get used to the pace of life around here.
It doesn't last though - in the shower after taking the pills the sickness comes and the pills go down the toilet. When he comes out of the bathroom J sees his paleness and fusses, but later leaves to get something to eat, to their mutual pleasure. More pills and a nap, he thinks; that will do it, and when J eventually returns he is merely hot and waiting to cool himself off with a walk. By the time they return to Nowy Swiat he feels well enough to suggest a walk to the University and, they hope, it's nightlife. They walk past the large statue of Copernicus (the first Pole to realised the sun didn't revolve around him, he laughs) and around the corner to the large beer garden they had seen earlier in the day.
The women are gorgeous, J notes. Yes, he replies, and the men are huge. Beers come and go, and they savour the joy of being a foreigner in a foreign land, the weight of expectation off their shoulders for a while. There's always pleasure in sitting and watching a new way of life, of comparing how different people in different places get their joy. The Poles don't seem to have mastered it though - the men merely drink and grunt at each other, the women sip and look around, bored. Come on, J says, we can do better than this. And, accidentally, they do; a student bar downstairs, not too different to that bar all those years ago, filled with young kids, laughter, music, joy. A few more beers - another new Polish one - and they are themselves again. Raging Bull is playing on the television behind the bar – he’s close enough to notice that one voice plays all of the characters on the Polish voiceover, which raises a smile. Reminds me of my old University bar, he says. Mine too, J replies, it must be a prerequisite to have too few tables and chairs, and too many leaflets on the walls. Reminds me of when principles meant protest - whatever happened to protest? It's been opinion polled out of existence, he states; here's to the revolution. The cold beer goes down well.
But life is clearly elsewhere, which leads them to the 11.00 train to Krakow the next morning, and a discussion about the various foibles of the Polish with one of their own, a man large enough to play prop in rugby, who can communicate in Spanish at doctorate level, and who is annoyed with himself when he fails to remember a word in English in the middle of a sentence. His added ability to 'get by' in Russian and German makes them feel like dumb colonials, and yet he is only too pleased to give them all the information they could need. Yes Warsaw is grey and drab - I caught the first train there this morning, went to a meeting and caught the next train home. Krakow is wonderful - you will enjoy it even more after being in Warsaw. Yes there are lots of bars - you will not go thirsty. Yes the women are beautiful. Don't worry about the men - they are stupid, and the women don't like them. I went to university, and lived in Madrid for some years - most Polish men stay in their own town their whole lives. It should be fun tonight, he says and, after J goes back to his book he stares out the window, wondering what she was doing, and hoping the sickness isn't on the way.
Nothing prepares them for Krakow; certainly not the station and its surroundings, which make him want to climb back on board and return to the grey he'd left behind. Nor the streets they follow from the map drawn by their new friend (it's like Covent Garden, J says. With the crowds, without the shops, the reply). But around the corner the square threw itself open ahead of them, the wide open space putting the market building and clock tower into a perspective the buildings around the square don't have. They look at each other and know it isn't worth saying anything. The tourist office in the market books them into the Forum hotel, and they walk down the hill, through the winding lanes to the park, and across the street to the communist modern style building awaiting them.
They head back up into town later, and at the square J suggests a visit to the Basilica, one of the most impressive in Europe. The dark hits them as soon as they walk in, the candles and frankincense smoke (surely the most religious of smells, a present at the birth of Christ himself) creating clouds between them and the midnight blue and the stars of the ceiling high above. There are many hundreds of people in here, some to look at the ikons around them, many more to pray. He sees J cross himself shyly, and pretends not to notice as he takes a seat.
Outside again later, the sky is white as a spotlight and bright enough for their sunglasses as they walk down more cobble stoned laneways, passing or peering into any number of galleries, their owners in the doorways spruiking for passing trade. They enter one small store, and downstairs in a back room he is disturbed by some artwork which looks uncannily like hers, and it’s all he can do to beat a hasty retreat. Eventually they reach the castle at the top of the hill, looking down at the river oozing around the town like a snake, before working through the crowds in the chapel and, downstairs, in the royal tombs. Depressed enough yet? J asks, and they head back down to a café in the park on the western side of town for a beer. As they sit there, enjoying the afternoon sun, a group of kids walk by, their pretend roughhousing betraying their innocence. Were we ever like that? he asks. No, J replies, we spoke English.
They walk through the park later, admiring the way the Poles seemed to have time to enjoy walks like this (don’t they have jobs to go to? J asks. Maybe they’ve found a loophole in the capitalist system, the reply – we should ask them what it is), eventually ending up at the old city wall, which is covered in an extraordinary number of paintings. He likes one right at the top of the wall, and thinks about asking for it, but doesn’t want to go to the trouble of getting it down. The guy’s probably sick of putting it all the way up there every day, J said later; he probably would have given it to you just to avoid putting it back up there again.
They walk around to the university area after a fierce red sunset, and it doesn’t take them long to find a good bar run by a Russian guy they called Boris, who is practicing for the surly Olympics on his Saturday night customers. J is quick to notice a couple of girls at the other end of the bar, and quicker to mention them. They look like Australians, the reply; go and talk to them – you’ll know where you stand pretty quickly. J is talking to them when he comes back from the toilet (he never was very good at taking his pills in public), and he brings drinks with him when they call him over. It’s going well until one of the girls rushes out to the toilets, with the other returning later to say that her friend was ill, and they would have to leave. He doesn’t feel too disappointed.
They go back outside shortly after to eat at one of the huge barbeques set up around the main square. A diet of meat and potatoes – no wonder the guys here are built like they are, J notes. And the proof is all around them. A couple of Spanish girls sit down at their table as they are eating, a United Nations of boys in tow, and start to talk with J after hearing him speak in English. The French boy with them seems pretty unhappy about this, but he has a stereotype to live up to. Come with us to a club this boy’s DJing at, one of the girls says as they finish eating, and the ever expanding group follows the slight figure down one of the small laneways off the square, through a dark doorway, and into the music.
He watches J follow one of the girls and the rest of the group to the DJ booth, leaving him with her friend. You’re very sad, aren’t you, she states, and it all comes out – the illness, her, his story. Maybe it’s the drink, maybe it’s her brown eyes – sometimes fierce, sometimes tender, seemingly so familiar. She nods and yeses to keep the story going, and it all tumbles out onto the table in front of them, over the edge and onto the floor. Her friend checks back, and is sent off for a jug of sangria as she tells hers – similar; no illness. The small Polish boy is DJing and a song comes on, a slow one they both like, and she takes his hands and pulls him up to the dance floor and towards her. They dance politely, his hands on her hips forming fists through nerves. J is on the dance floor with her friend and isn’t nervous, and the rest of the group can only watch uselessly from the booth.
After the club closes they all wander aimlessly around the old town. A cat howls, and the Poles howl along with it until an old lady sticks her head out the window and yells something, and throws a bucket of water out at them – it hits one of the boys and he yells something back as they all laugh. J and the other girl disappear as the horizon becomes lighter. We’re going to see the Black Madonna tomorrow, he says to the girl; you should come along. We’ll meet you at the bus stop if we get up in time, she replied, leaning into him. J and the friend reappear, kissing, and as he watches J for a sign the girl grabs his arm and whispers, sometimes life can be good if you let it, spinning him around and kissing his cheeks before pulling her friend away from J, dragging her back to their hotel. And they go back to theirs, their ears ringing and their mouths smiling.
He has to remember not to be sick in the morning, especially while J is in the bathroom. When he gets in there he chokes down the pills and sits under the shower, the water streaming over his face like a monsoon, until it passes. He watches J eat a full breakfast while he nibbles some dry toast washed down with juice, and they head off to the bus stop. There’s no one else there, which is no surprise given the early hour, and he watches the traffic thin out as they pass through the town, and the landscape washes by as J falls asleep in the minibus. They pass the salt mines, and he thinks about the people who worked and died in what is now a tourist attraction, and later they cross the border, pass into a small town, and stop across the small square from a church. He nudges J awake and gets out to stretch and unfurl.
It’s smaller than the basilica on Krakow – almost claustrophobic – and he has to fight the desire to run back outside. They join the queue of pilgrims, and he stays in place when J leaves to find a toilet, although he doesn’t know why. But when he sees her he knows – that beautiful dark face, her twin scars a shortcut to her soul, her brown eyes staring impassively back, finding his. His eyes water, and he’s glad to have seen her alone. Later he’s sitting in a pew in the back of the church, lost in the chanting going on around him, surrounding him like a blanket, and he watches the flow of people ebbing out, some of them weeping. Eventually J follows, silent and avoiding his eyes, and stays that way for the whole ride back to their hotel.
All he feels, though, is joy, and it stays with him as they go back to Boris’ bar after more barbeque. Boris is trying a happy face for a change, giving them some vodka and apple juice (on house – you should try). Later they try next door in another club, and he watches J try, and fail, to pick up a Polish girl at a table by the wall – she doesn’t speak English, and although her friend who is translating clearly likes him, J looks as though he’s failed. I don’t want to watch J strike out again, he thinks, heads through the crowd and starts moving, dancing, as he stares up into the lights. And, for the first time in a long time, he doesn’t fell sick – he doesn’t even think to realise it. He looks happy – let’s not remind him.
The next morning they have time to kill, after breakfast but before the train, so they find a small bar for a quick beer. When J goes off to find the toilet the Spanish girl comes in and over, and she asks how do you feel? Good, he replies, and smiles as he says it, realising it for the first time. And you should, she smiles back, you just have to remember to, and she kisses him goodbye, her friend pulling her away, one eye on the toilet door, before J returns. What are you smiling about? J asks. I just feel good, he replies, grinning when J calls him a fag. They drain their beers and catch the train back to Warsaw, both of them feeling as though the trip is over, even though they are far from home.
The next morning they are driven through the pale blue dawn to the airport, and when they arrive they wait patiently for the duty free shop to open to give them something to do, even though it’s far too early in the morning to think about buying the cheap Polish vodka there. Boarding comes and goes, and he tries to doze after watching the landscape rush by his window on take off.
The tube from the airport carries them through the drizzle of a London autumn morning, past row after row of identical streets. Looks like summer’s over, J says. Yes, he replies, it looks like it is.
(October 2000)