Move the Mountains

by Emily Conolan

  So, you work hard – really hard. It’s busy, and hot, and noisy, and repetitive, but the company is good, and you sleep deeply every night as the pay steadily mounts up in your account, week after week. Soon you’ll have been here for a month and you’ll send all you can spare home to Mamma, as you plan to do every month.

  You hurry home after work each night to spend time with the Nowak family. Olenka is twenty years old. She married Edik when she was sixteen, just one year older than you. They met in a displaced persons’ camp in Germany after the war, and Edik was recruited by the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority straight out of the camp.

  Olenka hasn’t seen Poland since she was twelve, and she doesn’t know if any of her family survived the war. When you imagine Olenka’s past, you see a burnt field. ‘No good, no good … war killed all my country,’ she says. ‘I never go back. I never want remember my past. Is finish.’

  Edik is often away on surveying trips, working alone or in small groups, taking measurements for new roads, dams and tunnels. Olenka’s life seems to be one of loneliness and toil: washing and drying Teodor’s nappies, chopping wood, baking bread, boiling water to wash bedding, mending clothes. Her chores seem to go on and on, like a mountain that grows faster than she can climb it. But although she sometimes seems exhausted, she is incredibly tough. You suppose she’s had to be, to survive this far.

  Olenka is thankful for your company, your help with the housework and little Lidia and Teodor, and the small amount of board you pay her each week. By night, you teach Olenka all the English you know, chanting: ‘You are; I am; he is,’ until Teodor wakes close to midnight every night and cries hungrily and she takes him into her bed for the few hours’ sleep she will snatch until she begins again at dawn.

  THE MESS IS full of workers from all over the globe – Germans, Irish, Finns; too many nationalities to count – and no one here seems to care too much who’s from where. ‘We’re all Snowy people now’ is a popular saying. Everyone seems equally determined to throw off their war clothes – the soldier’s uniform, the prisoner’s rags – and don a hard hat and some sturdy boots and get to work on this great, nation-building enterprise.

  But as week follows week, you come to know and recognise the people who traipse in and out for meals, and there are a few in particular who make you wonder about their history. One man, Lauri, always sits alone and never talks to anyone. His face is gaunt and grey, and his eyes seem fixed on a place far away that only he can see or remember. He has a curious habit that makes you think that he must have been very, very hungry once and has never quite recovered. At mealtimes, he takes a full plate of food, walks to the table, and empties it straight onto the tabletop. Then, a moment later, he reappears back in your queue with his empty plate, which you refill. Then he goes back to the table and eats both meals – the one off his plate and the one off the tabletop.

  When you first noticed this pattern, you took care to promise him that there would always be enough food if he came back later. (You’d wanted to give him two plates at the same time, but each worker is only assigned one.) Lauri looked straight through you. Then he went and tipped his food onto the tabletop again.

  It seems like sad, crazy, behaviour – but you guess it’s not so crazy if you’ve starved, or had to eat leaves or rats, as you know some people had to do during the war. You know that there’s probably no amount of food or guarantee of plenty that will ever take away Lauri’s hunger or his fear.

  Mr Ford comes to the mess one evening. He pretends not to notice you when you serve him his meal, and maybe he really has forgotten you and has some other girl to bring him tea on a tray. But he notices Lauri.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he shouts as Lauri tips his food onto the tabletop. Lauri cowers like a rabbit before a dog. ‘That’s disgusting!’

  Your heart begins to hammer. Leave him alone, you big bully, you think.

  ‘Eat off a plate, you swine!’ yells Mr Ford. ‘We’re in Australia now – learn some Australian manners!’

  That’s it! You burst out of the kitchen and stride over to Mr Ford. ‘Why don’t you learn some manners?’ you demand. ‘Like being kind to people who’ve suffered more than you ever have!’

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ he snarls. Then his eyes narrow. ‘Oh, you’re the one who wanted a job in the kitchen rather than my office. How’s that working out for you? Do you enjoy wiping up after slobbering idiots like this one?’ He gestures at Lauri who is still frozen, hugging his plate to his chest.

  ‘Much better than working for a slobbering idiot like you,’ you retort, and watch his face redden. ‘Come on, Lauri,’ you say. Lauri lets you lead him to the kitchen, where you refill his plate, and Mr Ford storms out, threatening to have you sacked.

  ‘Thank you,’ whispers Lauri before he heads back to his table. They’re the only words you’ve ever heard him say. Frank pats him on the shoulder and smiles as Lauri sits and begins eating his first meal from the tabletop. Then another couple of workers, who witnessed the whole thing, sit down at Lauri’s table too, without saying a word, just to keep him company. Lauri never eats alone again.

  You’re now gladder than ever that you didn’t accept the job with Mr Ford. Edik, Olenka’s husband, works for him and the two of them have christened him Pan Spycharka, which is Polish for ‘Mr Bulldozer’.

  ‘Hard man, hard man,’ Edik says, shaking his head. ‘Pan Spycharka doesn’t care his workers happy or not – he just say, Hurry up, you bugger. Like the boss in labour camp.’

  YOU’VE SENT HOME seven months’ worth of pay now. A new year has come and gone, summer and autumn have passed, and you work hard to keep warm as the winter deepens, happy to know that at least you are providing for your family.

  Mamma’s letters to you are full of gratitude and concern. Giulia, Tommaso and Alessandro have enough to eat now, for the first time in years, thanks to the money you’re sending. To keep Mamma happy, you tell her you’re here with Mario, although you don’t mention that you still aren’t talking to him, or that he wrote the letter from Charlie himself. You’ve seen Mario in passing once or twice in the last few months, but you’ve decided you won’t speak to him again unless he apologises to you. You’ve heard he’s a tunneller – the most dangerous, nightmarish and best-paid of all the jobs on the Snowy.

  You also don’t tell Mamma how freezing it is here. In the mornings, the water is frozen in the pipes, and you’ve lined your bed with newspapers for extra insulation. One night in the mess you hear the story of a worker whose feet were so cold that he couldn’t feel the pedals of his jeep through his boots, so he had to drive home with bare feet, only to discover when he got back that his foot had frozen onto the metal pedal and had to be eased away with warm water.

  The snow doesn’t get deep and white in Cooma like it does high in the mountains, but drifts of snow form a muddy, icy slurry around town, and the sky starts to darken by four-thirty in the afternoon.

  One night, you struggle home from work against a vile wind, sleet blowing in your face, to find Olenka on the floor sobbing. It’s nine-thirty at night.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ you gasp. ‘Is it the children?’

  ‘No, it is Edik,’ she chokes. ‘He didn’t come back. He is in danger.’

  You know that Olenka was expecting her husband home for dinner that night – you’d all been looking forward to it.

  ‘That’s bad luck, but it’s probably just the weather,’ you soothe. ‘He’ll be back when the storm dies down.’

  ‘No!’ she moans. Her eyes are red and her hands are shaking. ‘He will die in the cold. He will die alone … never come home to us …’

  ‘Olenka!’ you cry and shake her shoulders. ‘Why are you saying this? I’m sure he’s fine!’

  ‘I just know,’ she says. ‘I am his wife: I can feel it.’

  You look at her tear-stained face, and your stomach sinks. I just know – it’s something Mamma would have said. She always believed in her intuition. Will you b
elieve in Olenka’s?

  Olenka begins to keen, and the sound sends shivers through you. ‘Edik live in the war!’ she sobs quietly. ‘Edik live in the labour camp, Nazis didn’t kill, bomb didn’t kill, but now he will die alone! My babies will forget their father!’

  ‘No, Olenka,’ you tell her. ‘I’m not going to let that happen.’ You don’t know what to believe, but you can’t stand by and watch your friend suffer like this.

  ‘What you do?’ she begs.

  You take a deep breath. You know who’s responsible for Edik. ‘I’m going to find Mr Ford,’ you say. ‘And I’m going to demand he sends out a search party.’

  You march out into the storm and start out across Cooma for Mr Ford’s house on the hill. He’ll dismiss me, you think. He’ll tell me to stop being silly. But I won’t go away. By the time you knock on his door, every nerve in your body is jumping in anticipation of a fight.

  But Mr Ford seems concerned to see you there. ‘Come in,’ he says. ‘You’ll catch your death out there.’

  ‘That’s exactly what Edik Nowak is doing right now!’ you say.

  ‘Edik?’ he says, puzzled. Then he realises the connection. ‘Oh yes, he didn’t come back with the other workers – and, of course, you live with Olenka … Please, come inside.’

  Your belligerence begins to melt as you stand by Mr Ford’s fire.

  ‘It’s totally normal for workers not to come back on schedule,’ he says. ‘I understand Olenka is worried, but sending out a search party now would be unsafe and unnecessary.’

  ‘Exactly where is he?’ you ask, and Mr Ford patiently takes out a map of the area and points out where Edik was working.

  ‘Don’t even think of going tonight,’ he says, as if sensing your thoughts. ‘You’ve just seen for yourself how bad the weather is in Cooma – imagine it on the mountainside. Wait until the morning, and we’ll send out a search party.’

  You sigh. There’s a certain sense to what he’s saying. Then you remember the heart-rending sounds of Olenka’s wails. ‘But Olenka … she’s convinced he’s going to die out there,’ you say.

  ‘Well, she’s lived through the war, so of course she expects the worst,’ replies Mr Ford. ‘And she’s his wife, she loves him, so it’s natural she’s emotional.’ Then he walks out of the room and comes back with a single white pill, which he places in your palm. ‘Here you go,’ he says. ‘It’s one of my sleeping pills. Olenka just needs to rest now – getting hysterical won’t do anyone any good.’

  You look at the pill. ‘She won’t want to be drugged,’ you say uncertainly.

  ‘Look, of course she doesn’t have to take it,’ he replies, ‘but if I were you, I think the kindest thing to do would be to pop it in her tea, give it a good stir, and let her rest really well tonight. She won’t taste it in the tea if you add some milk and sugar. Take the children from her in the morning so she can sleep in. We’ll have Edik back before lunchtime tomorrow. Coming home a day or two late is really nothing to worry about. Happens all the time.’

  ‘All right,’ you say, putting the pill in your pocket.

  You don’t really want to go back out there into the storm, even just to walk home, let alone to search the mountains for Edik. You’re just drying off, and it’s surprisingly pleasant here in Mr Ford’s lounge room. Was I wrong about him? you wonder. He was such a bully to Lauri – but he does seem to want the best for Olenka and Edik.

  As you step out the door, the storm’s violence seems to have increased to an eleven out of ten.

  ‘Are you sure you’ll be all right walking home?’ asks Mr Ford. You nod. ‘About the pill,’ he says, ‘I take one most nights. It’s a very mild sedative – it can’t hurt her. It’s the right thing to do.’

  As you walk, you fiddle with the pill in your pocket. Poor Edik, out in this weather. I guess he has all his camping gear – but what if he’s injured and can’t reach it? Is it really ‘hysterical’ of Olenka to think he might die out there tonight?

  You pause at the crossroads in the middle of town. You care about Edik, of course, but above all, you really have grown to love tough, brave Olenka and her two children. Should you fight your way out into the storm, trying to save Edik’s life but risking your own? Or should you stay with Olenka, reassure her, and use Mr Ford’s little white pill to make sure she gets a good night’s sleep?

  If you try to rescue Edik now, go to scene 23.

  If you stay with Olenka until the morning, go to scene 24.

  You decide that an opportunity to spend time in an engineer’s office is too good to pass up. The office is on the second floor of a brand-new building that still has the gluey smell of freshly laid carpet. There are big, boxy windows with a view over the little town, and the room is filled with the scratching of pencils and the clack of typewriters. The men who work here (and you’re dispirited to notice that, yes, they are all men) speak German, English and French. They talk about vectors and displacement and cubic tonnes.

  Every day, as you walk through the big double doors at the main entrance downstairs, you make believe that you are one of the engineers who work here; that the whole enterprise of the Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Authority depends on you getting your calculations right. You walk into the office with your head held high, but by morning-tea-time you are always scurrying around like a mouse. You have memorised how everyone likes their tea, but no one seems particularly appreciative.

  Sometimes, like today, you linger a while by the engineers’ tables. ‘If we make the gradient a little steeper, we can probably avoid tunnelling through that bedrock, but the mining carts might not be able to get enough traction,’ says Mr Klein (no milk, two sugars) to Mr Ford (milk, no sugar). You make a mental note to look up gradient, bedrock and traction in your English dictionary that night.

  When you get home, you help Olenka with the chores. While she cooks a large pot of soup, you change baby Teodor’s nappy, leave him bare-bummed to try to cure his nappy rash, and put the stinky square of cloth in a bucket to soak. Little Lidia comes outside to watch you split the kindling for the fire and sings you some songs she’s learnt in English. ‘What’s howeye wunda whatchoo are mean?’ she asks, and you try to explain. When you come back inside, Teodor has peed on the floor, Olenka is on her hands and knees cleaning it, and the pot in the kitchen is boiling over. It takes both of you to manage this household, and you honestly wonder why any woman would sign up for this life of servitude.

  Before bedtime, you and Olenka sit down to study together. You look up gradient, bedrock and traction, and Olenka works on memorising irregular verbs, of which English has an unfair amount.

  ‘Why they cannot say runned, swimmed and writed?’ she complains.

  You roll your eyes. ‘They like making life hard for us,’ you tell her. That reminds you to ask Olenka something. ‘Olenka … is this what you wanted for your life? When you were a little girl, did you imagine yourself doing so much housework, from sunrise to sunset? Or did you imagine something … special … for your future?’

  ‘I imagine myself dead,’ she says bluntly, and you look at her in shock.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because for person in Poland like me … there is no future. Every day we are only trying to live one more day, one more day. For everyone, death comes. Very quick death, like my brothers shoot with gun, you are lucky. Slow death, like my father in labour camp, is unlucky. I hope only for quick death. That is special future for me when I was young. Now, my family is start from zero.’

  In some ways, you know what that feels like, to start from zero – but Olenka has lost much more than you. For someone who only dreamt of a quick death when she was your age, she has come a long way.

  ‘I am happy here,’ she tells you. ‘When I meeted – met – Edik in displaced persons’ camp after war, we was sick, starving. Our legs and arms is like sticks. We never finish school. Now, our children is fat and smart. Lidia and Teodor will dream they special future. They grow up Australian.’

&n
bsp; You give Olenka a hug. You still don’t want to be a housewife yourself, but now you understand that her tireless efforts to make a new life here are every bit as impressive as Mr Ford’s dams and bulldozers.

  Olenka and Edik’s pet name for Mr Ford is Pan Spycharka, Polish for ‘Mr Bulldozer’, and it suits him. The weeks turn into months, and one day Olenka is bedridden with the flu but insists that she can look after Teodor for the day if you can take care of Lidia.

  ‘Come on,’ you tell Lidia. ‘We’re going to Pan Spycharka’s office today!’ You’re about to say, You can help me serve the tea, when you realise that you want her to dream much bigger than that. Instead, you give her a pile of graph paper when you arrive, and tell her, ‘You have a very important job to do today, Lidia. All these engineers need to know what the new power station that’s going to make the electricity will look like. Can you draw that?’

  The little curly-haired girl puffs up with pride. ‘Does it got to be a very big building to make ’lectrickity?’ she asks.

  ‘Yes, huge,’ you tell her. ‘Can you draw it?’ She nods importantly and sets to work.

  You go into the kitchenette and cut the sandwiches for morning tea and boil the urn. When you come back, you see that Lidia has taken a roll of tape and joined all the graph paper together to make a sheet about one metre square, on which she is drawing a mighty power station.

  ‘I want to show Pan Spycharka,’ she says, still drawing.

  ‘Remember, his name is Mr Ford,’ you tell her, chuckling on the inside. ‘If you do a really good job, we’ll show him when you’ve finished.’

  After morning tea, Lidia’s grand vision is complete. ‘There’s the water goin’ in, and turnin’ the big wheel,’ she tells you in her funny little Australian accent, ‘and the ’lectrickity goin’ out!’

  ‘That’s pretty much how a hydro power station works, Lidia. Good job!’ you say, impressed.