by Frank Wynne
‘My father,’ said Winterhaus, ‘vas an official at the Danziger Strassenbahn, that is the electric trams. Tovards the end of the var they made him the director.’
‘And mine,’ said Anusewicz, ‘had Rudzieńszczyzna. Not much land, but a lot of forests, sawmills, a watermill, lakes…’
‘He didn’t go to the var,’ Winterhaus continued, ‘because he vas lame, in the right leg.’
‘Neither did mine,’ explained Anusewicz, ‘because he was too old. But the Soviets took him and he never came back. Never. Then, when the Germans came, they shot Uncle Witold, and I was left alone with my mother.’
‘Und my older brother,’ added Winterhaus, ‘vas killed at Kursk. The Führer sent a letter und a posthumous kreuz.’
‘I was an only child,’ said Anusewicz.
Both gentlemen walked the last stretch of road across the weir in silence. Bernard’s cottage was by the canal, among mouldering willows, burdock leaves and grass that no one had mown. In the yard lay the wreck of an old truck, some rusty sheets of metal, some bricks from a demolished building, and some rolls of wire. The nose of a punt was poking out of a dense clump of nettles; full of holes, it had been taken over by the hens.
‘Don’t say anything,’ Anusewicz warned. ‘I’ll do the talking.’
Barbara was making soup. The children were on holiday, near Kościerzyna, and Benek, so she said, was out driving the taxi. Anusewicz came straight to the point. Did Barbara remember that white cupboard they’d brought them from Wrzeszcz by horse and cart? It was two days after the wedding, when they moved into this ruin and started renovating it.
‘How could I fail to remember?’ laughed Barbara. ‘You boys drank for three days on end – you, Benek and that carter, Bieszke – and I had to feed his old nag and patch the roof because it was pouring. Men,’ she snorted. ‘You lot are never any use.’
Anusewicz waved his hands. Why remind him of those things? The point was the cupboard from the flat on Gołe˛bia Street. This gentleman, Mr Winterhaus, had come from Germany looking for some family documents and photographs. They had to help him, because they were probably hidden in that cupboard…
‘Was ist verloren?’ said Barbara to Mr Winterhaus.
‘Oh, I can speak Polish,’ he replied, bowing and kissing her hand. ‘My grandmother taught me Polish, because she vas a Pole, though her surname vas Kosterke.’
‘Where is that cupboard? Have you still got it somewhere?’ pressed Anusewicz. ‘We’ll take a look and be on our way, it’s no great bother. You see, Barbara, Mr Winterhaus used to live in our flat, what I meant to say is, we live where he used to, and when the Ruskies came he didn’t have time to take everything with him. In that cupboard there were…’
‘…some Tsarist roubles,’ laughed Barbara, ‘a pile of gold. Will you take it with you? There’ll be a bit less mould in the junk heap. It’s there, in the shed by the canal. I’m making dinner – will you have some soup afterwards?’
Anusewicz cleared his throat affirmatively and, leading Winterhaus across the yard, headed for the tin box of a garage that Barbara so generously called the shed. Indeed, it was chock-full of junk. Apart from carpenter’s tools, empty crates, withered boat ribs, car parts, hoes, spades, canvas sacks, bottles and jam jars there were also several broken stools, a chair full of holes, a ripped sofa, a clapped-out moped, a children’s wicker pushchair, some skis, a small cast-iron stove, hooks and lines for catching eels, a radio in an ebonite box, as well as a chipped bidet and an easel.
‘Oh!’ said Winterhaus. ‘This is something!’
‘But where’s the cupboard?’ said Anusewicz, flapping his arms about helplessly. ‘I can’t see it anywhere.’
It took them a while to notice it: a piece of cloth of a sky-blue colour, with a white dove and the inscription ‘PEACE-MIR’. The dove was holding a twig in its beak, though it was hard to tell if it was an olive one, and the whole drawing was ringed by a symbolic laurel wreath.
‘Well,’ said Anusewicz, tearing the banner off the cupboard, ‘we’ve got you at last! Where should it be?’
‘Here, at the bottom,’ said Winterhaus, pointing. ‘Ve’ve got to remove the first layer of the floor. That’s vhat I dreamed. Und that’s vhat my father said.’
They found a chisel and some hammers and rapidly got down to work. Under the first layer of plywood there was a second, then yet another one, and finally to the amazed Anusewicz, and the no less amazed Winterhaus, several rows of narrow compartments appeared, in which the coins lay wrapped in bandages, like the beads on an abacus. Every crack had been stuffed with cotton wool and then filled with putty.
‘Your dad was a pretty good conspirator,’ said Anusewicz, digging out one bundle after another. ‘You could have turned this box upside down and even then nothing would have rattled. Look, look, here are some bigger ones…’
They made space on a carpentry table and laid out the little round parcels one after another. Once they had extracted the last one, Anusewicz patted Winterhaus on the back and added:
‘You start.’
With trembling fingers, Winterhaus unwound the first rag. A silver coin the size of a dollar fell onto the table.
‘Well I never, well I never,’ whispered Anusewicz. The reverse showed Christ in a long robe, holding a royal orb; around him ran the imprecation, “DEFENDE NOS CHRISTE SALVATOR.” On the obverse there were two lions rampant, holding up the emblem of the city, entwined with the inscription, “MONETA NOVA CIVI GEDANENSIS.” Above the animals’ manes there was also a date: 1577.
‘It’s from a time of var,’ stated Winterhaus. ‘Instead of the Polish king they minted it vith the image of Jesus.’
‘War, yes, yes, war,’ said Anusewicz, unwinding the next bit of rag, from which he extracted a small coin, clearly considerably older, because it had a very worn-out face. ‘And what might this one be?’
Winterhaus took off his glasses, used the left lens as a magnifying glass, and said:
‘This is the coin of a Pomeranian duke. You see the griffin? Oh, it says here: “DANCEKE DOMINI ZWANTOPELK.” Take a look.’
Once he had positioned the lens at the right distance, Anusewicz positively whistled in admiration. With his proudly unfurled standard and shield of the House of Griffins, the Kashubian Duke Świe˛topełk was spurring on his horse.
‘In those days,’ he muttered, ‘my ancestors still worshipped sacred serpents.’
But Winterhaus hadn’t heard him. As he undid the next few bundles, onto the table fell jingling groshy, thalers, half thalers, three-groshy coins and ducats, and it looked like silver rain, with a chance piece of gold glittering here and there among them. The Jagiellonians, the Saxons, the Waza Kings and the Griffins, Prussian Commanders and Electors all lay beside each other amicably now, as if they had never been divided by drawn swords, battlefields, customs duties, intrigue, treacherous murders and battleships sunk at the bottom of the bay. There were no duplicates. Only a five-ducat piece with the head of King Władysław and a panorama of the city on the reverse featured in three, non-identical specimens.
‘Schlaflosigkeit’ sighed Winterhaus contentedly, ‘I don’t think I’m going to suffer from it any more.’
‘Oh no, surely not.’ Anusewicz was restoring the cupboard to its former appearance. ‘But how will you export it all? You have to have special permission. Are there any documents confirming ownership? Because if not, you might have a problem.’
‘Oh, I hadn’t thought about that at all. You know? The main thing is, I’ve checked up on my dream. Now I know my father vasn’t a madman.’
‘You’re not going to give them to a museum, are you?’
‘A museum? Vhy not? The Tramdriver Vinterhaus Collection – it could be very famous.’
This gentle dispute would probably have rambled on, if the agitated Bernard hadn’t come crashing into the tin hut as if pursued by fire.
‘Oh, wow.’ He let out a long whistle. ‘What fine documents you’ve found in my cupboard. And
she believed you were looking for some photographs, the stupid woman.’ He tapped his forehead. ‘I knew you were up to something in here, so I dash down, and there you have it – there’s something going on behind my back. I’m Benek,’ he offered Winterhaus his hand. ‘Taxicab at your service.’
‘Vinterhaus,’ said Winterhaus.
‘Now don’t go over the top,’ said Anusewicz, trying to appease his brother-in-law. ‘That cupboard wasn’t mine or yours.’
Bernard couldn’t tear his eyes from the coins. He picked them up, inspected them and moved them from place to place.
‘Really? In that case, whose was it? As Mr Winterhaus didn’t take it with him, first it belonged to the Jew, then that chap from Poznań, and then you. And you gave it to me. Simple, eh? Clear as day. There should be a finder’s reward, surely. I don’t want anyone to lose. What do you think, her Winterhaus?’
‘Veil, qvite, qvite, I do not know your law. I think Mister Bernard should receive something. Mister Anusevicz too. Though on the other hand I think this is a complete collection. Do you understand me, gentlemen? I think here there are alles the coins minted in Danzig – in Gdansk,’ he corrected himself, ‘from Duke Świe˛topełk to the Free City. I propose offering you three thousand marks to share, gut?’
‘Three thousand marks? In the commie era that was real money,’ said Bernard, turning a Saxon Elector’s ducat in his hand, ‘but nowadays? Nowadays you couldn’t buy a new car for that.’
‘What is it that makes you Kashubians even more rapacious than vultures?’ Anusewicz let loose. ‘Come on, Benek, where’s our sense of honour? Where’s our sense of honour?’
‘You lay off the Kashubians! Just look at him, barefoot Antek from beyond the River Bug. A noble gesture, eh? The nobles drained Poland dry long ago, and now the sun shines out of their arses. Fancied themselves as “brothers and gentlemen”, ha ha ha!’
‘Yes? Yes?’ Anusewicz jumped up, gobbling like a turkeycock. ‘And who sided with the Germans? Who murdered Leszek the White?’
‘Someone vas murdered?’ asked Winterhaus, shifting nervously from foot to foot. ‘That is politics, do not qvarrel, do not qvarrel.’
But the brothers-in-law weren’t listening to their guest any more, just to their own hot blood. Bernard could put up with a lot aimed at himself and his compatriots, but never the idea of ascribing the murder of the Polish Prince Leszek to the Kashubian Duke Świe˛topełk. Whereas Anusewicz could turn a deaf ear to the remarks about barefoot Antek and a noble gesture, but never to such a base insinuation that the nobles, the brothers and gentlemen, had drunk away the old Poland. And so it began. First with a shove, which led to an exchange of blows.
When Barbara came into the shed, she saw her husband and Anusewicz on the floor, locked together in a wrestling clinch. Clutching his head in both hands, Winterhaus was running around the brothers-in-law repeating:
‘Alles in Ordnung! Alles in Ordnung! Vhy this Lärm. Vhy this Krawall? I vill give four thousand marks. Four und a half thousand!’
But that didn’t help at all, nor did Barbara’s shouts and pushes. The fight was no longer about the money, but about which would come out on top – the Kashubian hotheadedness or the Borderlands quick temper? Which heraldic emblem – the winged Griffin of Pomerania or the mounted Chaser of Pahonia? And it’s impossible to say where it would have ended if not for Barbara. Her practical, female reason prompted a simple, effective solution. She ran out of the shed for a moment and came back armed with a rubber garden hose. A jet of cold water soon made the brothers-in-law stop fighting. They spluttered as they wiped their faces, where there wasn’t a trace of satisfaction to be seen.
‘In five minutes I’m going to serve the dinner, and I don’t want to hear a word about this,’ said the arbitrator, pointing at the coins.
And so the first spoonfuls of beetroot soup went down their throats in total silence. The only sound to creep onto the veranda and interrupt the clatter of cutlery and discreet slurping was the whistling of swallows, as they flitted between the eaves of the house and the canal. Mr Winterhaus glanced at Anusewicz’s black eye and Bernard’s torn shirt, then again at the spreading maple, in whose shade a swaggering cockerel was preening his magnificent feathers.
‘Ja,’ he said at last, downing a glass of plain vodka, ‘my father vas a strange man. That tram,’ he mused, ‘the night tram that vas blown up by a bomb…’
‘Was it a barricade tram?’ asked Anusewicz. ‘I saw some of those the year after the war, buried in rubble.’
The eel fricassee served before the main course delayed Mr Winterhaus’ answer a bit, though in fact it wasn’t an answer, but a story that he only interrupted to dig out bones, clink glasses and make lip-smacking noises.
That night before the attack, when the Russian artillery were cleaning the barrels of their cannon and calculating their trajectories, Direktor Winterhaus made his way to the tram depot and roamed around the empty halls, immobile points and switched-off lamps; and when he came upon the last tramcar that had not been militarised, he hopped aboard, raised the bow collector and set off for the city, remembering the old days when he was still an ordinary tram driver. First he travelled the No 3 route, then the No 5, and next the 7, halting at all the stops and calling out their names; and he drove like that from Friedenschloss to Weichselbahnhof, from Broesen to Ohra and Emaus, changing the points himself at the sidings and punching the tickets; and the Schupo and SS night patrols saluted him, because the prudent Direktor Winterhaus had put a picture of the Führer in the front window of the tram between two oil lamps, like in a Catholic church, so they thought it was a propaganda run to keep up the fighting spirit, which was highly recommended, which was sorely needed, as there were already deserters and defeatists hanging from the hundred-year-old boughs along Grosse Allee, with signs on their chests reading: ‘I refused to die for the Führer and the Fatherland’, and their shoes rapped against the tramcar windows like drops of March rain or sleet; and like this Direktor Winterhaus’s tram flashed down the defiles between buildings, past parks and along the city avenues, right up to the moment when the ground shook and the first shells hit the Lower Town and Granary Island, right up to the moment when great tongues of flame began to consume the red Gothic of the Hanseatic League; and that was when Direktor Winterhaus threw the picture of the Führer in the mud, blew out the oil lamps and hung a white sheet on the tramcar, but it wasn’t much help, because the tramlines had already been torn up, ripped apart by grenades, and he couldn’t go any further, so he jumped off the tram and ran for home; and just then a shell exploded behind him, and the last civilian tram in the city of Danzig flew into thousands of tiny pieces of glass, metal and wood, and Direktor Winterhaus stopped, shocked by this sudden transformation, and realised that this was the absolute end of his tramcar career, which he had started as an assistant mechanic, and the absolute end of this city, which would never be what it had been again.
‘Beautiful,’ sighed Anusewicz. ‘The shoes of the hanged defeatists peeking in the windows, and that white sheet.’
‘I can’t see anything beautiful in that,’ cut in Bernard, getting down to some chops, like everyone else. ‘They got it up the arse because they deserved it. But that was too little. Too little. They should have all been sent to Siberia as Stalin wanted.’
‘It is very cold there,’ said Winterhaus.
This matter-of-fact comment prompted general merriment at the table. They joked about the Russians and Siberia for a good while, and once the vodka and puddings were finished, Bernard tapped the homemade wine, and amid the buzzing of flies and the chirping of cicadas, the warm afternoon by the canal took on its full bucolic splendour.
To this day no one knows who hit upon the idea of the boating escapade. Was it Anusewicz, who was thinking back to the boats on Saint John’s Eve at Rudzieńszczyzna? Or Bernard, who had fished in Kashubia since childhood? Or maybe Mr Winterhaus, whose memory prompted some rather vague images of stone sluices, drawbridges and c
anals as the landscape of this part of the city? In any case, it came out of nowhere. As she bustled around the table, Barbara suddenly noticed that the three gentlemen, who shortly before were dozing in their cane armchairs, had disappeared from the veranda. Their voices, loud and cheerful, were now coming from the water’s edge. She ran over there and saw Bernard and Anusewicz dragging a rubber dinghy out of the shed.
‘You must be mad!’ she cried. ‘Going fishing in that state? There’s no question of it.’
But her female spirit, wanting to curb the spirit of the restless men once again that day, had to give way, because a boyish spirit craving variety and adventure had jointly entered the three gentlemen.
‘What fishing?’ growled Bernard. ‘We just want a bit of a ride, to cool off.’
‘Yes, yes,’ added Anusewicz. ‘The view of the city from this side is unusual.’
Finally, once the army dinghy had been inflated and Bernard had fixed an outboard motor to the stern, the gentlemen got on board. Barbara managed to hand them a thermos of coffee and some shortbread from the jetty, just in case. For a while the engine refused to fire up, and the dinghy spun around its own axis.
‘What a bloody load of crap,’ Bernard ranted. ‘I haven’t used it since last year.’
But this obstacle gave way too. After the umpteenth tug at the rope, the air was rent apart by a dreadful roar, and then amid a cloud of petrol fumes and a whirring noise the dinghy moved forward majestically, cutting across a green curtain of duckweed. Leaning out over the semicircular prow, Anusewicz commanded:
‘Go right, Bernard, right I say, there are some bits of old stakes in the middle.’
Bernard nodded agreeably, but his brother-in-law’s warnings didn’t unduly bother him. He knew every bit of sunken scrap metal and every dangerous tree root on these waters. It wasn’t for nothing that he’d fished for eels here, in every legitimate and illegitimate way. Finally, once they had sailed along the river to the sluice, as he gazed at the bastions covered in reeds, grass and burdock, Mr Winterhaus said: