Salki

by Wojciech Nowicki

  “You have to kill time somehow,” C. would later tell me, when his angry days of scrambled eggs on bacon were gone. When calm, he would eat oatmeal, talk about benign subjects, and drink his beer with everybody else. He used to say that oatmeal is good for everything, that it’s almost like a medicine. “Five minutes!” he would scream from the stove back at the table, giving me instructions to last a lifetime. “You’re supposed to cook it for five minutes and stir in one direction, just like I do! That’s how my father taught me and he was right, even though he was a rotten alcoholic.” (And I would just mumble back that I don’t like oatmeal.)

  S. from Belarus, whom we called “Rusky” to make things easier, secretly hated the Swede, his fits of anger, even his eating habits. I would see Rusky making himself powdered soup, half a packet for dinner, and then hatefully glaring at C. over his barely dissolved bowl of soup. After a week he discovered canned beans in tomato sauce at the store. He would eat half of the can, and directly from the can too, to make the whole process quicker. One Saturday, he fired up two cutlets, one for Saturday and one for Sunday, and he ate them with köttbullars, meatballs he bought at the supermarket. And then he finally spoke from above his meal of meat. He explained that he spent all day in his room because he was writing a novel with a fountain pen, which was the only way to produce true high literature. It was going to be a lampoon on modern-day Belarus. He was hoping to finish the volume on Grodno, one hundred fifty essays. It was a big volume because the city deserved big things.

  C., the one with scrambled eggs on rage, calmly groomed his literary work—a seed, as he liked to call it. Sometimes he got mad and turned to devouring bacon because he didn’t know if the seed would survive. He ate out of frustration and insecurity. Every morning he added a couple dozen words, four or five lines, he had it all figured out, precisely, and the group of efficient writers laughed every time he admitted to it. They would drink wine out of a box, eat chips, and ask: “How many? Four, five pages? Well, not too much, not too much.” And he would respond: “Me, ladies and gentleman, I’m not as talented as you are, I make up for it with persistance.” (Only on the rage days would he write page upon page, from early morning and late into the night, pissed off and with faith in his powers; the next morning he would cross everything out and be back to eating oatmeal).

  Everyone laughed at Rusky, too. It was hard not to laugh at the fountain pen and his little eastern tics, like when he would eat chocolate and wash it down with wine because chocolate on its own was too bitter for him. And the rest of us, in fits of class, would abandon beer for the sake of boxed wine and, encouraged by said wine, say things like: “This Rusky, he’s weird, right?” And so Rusky would be silent days on end. He was afraid of people because he lacked the language. He also lacked trust toward foreign foods. He didn’t drink because it was too expensive. F., a rising author, felt bad for him. He was working on his debut, an expose on Sweden seen through the world of advertising. That’s what he said. He also only ate ready-made meals, but was disapproving of Rusky’s food, of course. F. would buy the more expensive meatballs, or soups that came not powered, but in a box, decent ones that would say “Italian Soup” or “Spanish Soup” on the front. It all came from the same Swedish food factory. He would also buy a block of Danish cheese. “It’s excellent,” he would exclaim, “and lasts for a long time.”

  There was another C., a German woman with a Polish-sounding last name. She spent entire days in the forests. And the forests of Gotland are peculiar, midget sized. That’s because there’s bedrock right beneath the grass. And black sheep graze on that grass, and it all looks like a dark fairytale. C. would sit among the trees with her laptop. She was writing a play about the Holocaust, a drama for kindergarteners. The house and the town were audaciously beautiful, so she would go into the forest because it was weird there, a little hostile, and she could better get into the mood. She would come back in the evenings and eat the most regular foods: potatoes, sausage, onions, mushrooms (there were mushrooms in those forests), and a lot of beer. She ate just like she would eat at home, in the Mecklenburg countryside. She would gladly join us at the table, especially if P. was there, also German, and who was writing a novel for adolescent girls and ate the same things as C. P. had started writing a book at one point, hoping it would become great literature. But his publisher told him it wouldn’t sell. “It would be better,” the publisher had said, “to redo it. It’ll resonate with the teenagers.” P. took his advice.

  One and only K. didn’t see anything, didn’t stare into anybody’s plate or business, and remained transparent himself. His presence was announced by the dry crack of his door resounding twice a day, at lunch and dinner. K. was just starting on his latest book, he couldn’t remember himself which number it was, his thirteenth or fifteenth, and so he was focused and in a different world. On the first day he brought back a huge bag of frozen food from the co-op to last him the entire stay. Each box contained two black trays, and each tray had three sections: potatoes, meat, and vegetables. He also had boxed soups. I don’t think he paid attention to their flavors. He reminded me of B., a Hungarian translator of Proust, whom I met one time in France in a similar house. Like him, she divided every day into portions of frozen food because she didn’t want to waste time. She ate spam for breakfast and Carrefour’s frozen foods for dinner. Other than that, she took her nourishment from Proust. She tried to convince everyone that one of the volumes of his works needed to be retranslated, even though none of us could speak Hungarian and it was hard to confirm or oppose her views. And in the moments of darkness, after she had little wine, she would tell us how she was alone, living in a block of flats with trash piling up beneath her windows. That’s how her country was and that’s why she was hiding in Proust.

  The Finnish guy ate robotically in front of his computer. He was blind to the world outside and deaf to the sounds coming from the kitchen. The Greeks were cooking German food and were ready to fight about it and Z., another Finnish guy who wrote in English, would talk about himself in an Indian accent and cook pasta. His Indian girlfriend would bring condiments to the table. “One thing I miss sometimes when I’m in India,” Z. who had lived there for the past twenty years would tell us, “is our European food. Of course, I love Indian food regardless.” He would say that and examine every strand of pasta. At the same time he would ask A.: “I cooked it for twenty minutes, you think that’s enough?” And A.—the Indian woman—would set ketchup and mustard on the table and tell him “Cook it some more, you never know.” That was how they ate, some overcooked pasta with ketchup and mustard. “Where I’m from in India,” A. would state, although there was no sign of India in her voice, “we don’t have pasta like this.” “But,” Z. would add, “this particular one is a little tasteless. I don’t know why.”

  Leon would come back to the island in those days. We would pick up wine in Systembolaget and then go to the co-op to get some food. Leon would tell me his life stories as we walked the aisles of the store, tell me about his arrests, interments, and his Swedish adventures. We bought potatoes and onions, tomatoes, salad, some herring. We would get some liverwurst and butter—all you need for good living. He would try to seduce a girl at the fish stand, would give me a meaningful wink and ask her some stupid questions, just so she would keep talking. And Leon would listen, enchanted, because she spoke with an islander’s accent, differently than others. She talked about salmon, whether or not a piece was too lean, or maybe he’d prefer a different piece, more from the middle, and Leon would hesitate. Maybe he would prefer the other one, or maybe not, and she would start talking again. And so we talked about food wherever we went. I was curious what people ate there, and Leon was simply hungry and wanted to listen to people. We would sit over a plate of surströmming, lean Baltic herring, not like those fat ones from the Atlantic, and significantly smaller too. We would pair it with mashed potatoes. Questions would start back at the house. “Are you frying herring? The canned kind? What’s that s
mell? Nutmeg with potatoes?” So Leon and I would ask if they’d like some. “If that’s no trouble,” they’d be coy. And they ate and were surprised, thinking it must be some Ukrainian dish, Eastern for sure.

  C., the guy who ate the rage-scrambled eggs and oatmeal and would bang the frying pan around on bad days, was in a phase of starting his rants with Plato and ending them with Marx. He’d eat our surströmming and say “Ah, you see, my dear friends . . .” and he’d go on mumbling. He liked food, but he resented himself for that weakness, so he had to take penance in the form of a lecture. Even the Indian woman tried some herring because she wanted to be European, she was frustrated by this Mother India of hers. Only the cheese was beyond her limits because to people from India, cheese is simply rotten food. Rusky would disappear immediately when people gathered, or when Leon would start his concert stories, or when the drinking, smoking, and shouting really began. It always went the same way. The Greeks would be the first to pull out their cigarettes, and the rest of our bunch—these meatballs, frozen foods, and boxed soups—would shyly take out their own shameful smokes, tucked away somewhere secretly. They would reach out for food so alien to them and for their reserves of cheap wine. They tried to forget quickly that nulla dies sine linea and that there’s work waiting for them in their rooms. That in the morning it will all start over again.

  “Miserable is the writer’s plate,” I thought to myself while we were getting wild and the stories started to flow, “half empty and chipped at the edges.” But it’s not because they’re poor. They skimp on time and have no curiosity left. They were like my dead aunts, or their husbands—uneducated people who made sure their flowerbeds had perfect lines, their fences newly painted, and their cucumbers watered. They were people who never travelled because they were afraid of trains, of everything, terrified at the prospect of leaving because they knew burglars would come as soon as they’re gone. They preferred their apartments over the rest of the world, although I have to say in their defense that they had some good reasons. And so my companions on the island tended only to the flowerbeds of their literature. They were so different from their ancestors, their Balzacs and Pepyses. As if they weren’t from a different era, but from a different world.

  In Chantilly, France we saw that parts of the forest were fenced in. Just like in Poland people would fence in a private property or an old communist State Agricultural Farm. Back then, nobody thought of fencing in forests because forests were nobody’s property. We were walking around Chantilly and there were women dressed just like the mythical Amazons in the movie, running by us up and down the path. We were wearing some flashy clothes from a store that we were impressed by back then. We probably looked like a bunch of fragile glasshouse flowers and a little out of place, too. We would walk from one fence to the next, disgusted with the stiffness of the wire that made the forest seem far too domesticated, almost agricultural. Finally, we’d had enough. And on top of that there were horses. Only later did I learn they train them in that forest. How was I supposed to know that? We had to trek through the mud to escape the horses, in our new designer outfits straight from the store, bought at a nice discount. They were so heavily marked down even we could buy them, as could other poor citizens of Paris, often of African descent. We ran into the bushes to save our fancy clothes, even if they were a little tacky.

  We were from the outside, from behind real barriers. We watched those delicate fences and with an air of border connoisseurs, especially borders impossible to cross, we would laugh at those fences in the middle of the forest put up by people fearing someone will take their wild berries, or take a leak. Poland’s rotten forests have been open since forever, and “stealing” from the forest never counted as stealing. The forest belongs to nobody, there were no designated gateways and you could always just walk. As long as you kept it reasonable. As long as you didn’t shoot a deer, or didn’t take out foxes by the dozen, or cut down Christmas trees to fill up an the entire wagon. One tree is fine; one for yourself will do, but trees for trade was too much. There was freedom to our forests and we were able to compare them only here in Chantilly. During the summer holidays when I was a child we would go through the forest, taking a longer route, to stop by the lake where my grandpa used to oversee his little huts. We would go there to take a swim, and there was nothing much there, only the forest, dirt, and some hills. And on our way back we would always find some berries or mushrooms. We would find parasol mushrooms alongside the trail, so we were set for dinner. Or there’d be an abundance of saffron milk caps that would be our meal for the day. We would lay down on the thick blanket of berries, all smeared and dirty, watching the sky, the jays flying around with their parrot-like feathers flying, or we’d stop at the little bridge to stare into the water and watch pond skaters or water measurers, I can’t remember which. That was how we, little maggots in bright YSL outfits, understood the forest and its freedom back in those days.

  I don’t think we talked about Fritz Karl Watel, also known as François Vatel, back then. But he was the person responsible for a famous three-day banquet that took place in that forest. A partial failure of the celebration was the cause of his subsequent suicide on April 24th, 1671, on the second morning of the party. But despite the king’s expressed grief, as mentioned in a letter to the daughter of one Mrs. Sévigné, “the next day’s dinner was very good and the desert was served. After supper there were walks, games, and hunting. The smell of daffodils was everywhere. Everything was splendid . . .” We saw the castle from outside, from afar. But it was enough to pay for the trip out there from Paris. The entry fee was too much, so we were left with the forest and a lot of walking despite all the inconveniences. It felt much more familiar, even though it was lined by fences left and right. We were walking among the trees, we were different than when we left Poland for the first time, crossing the border by bus, but still not like what we were supposed to become upon our return: accustomed to fences that establish obvious boundaries. The fence spoke about private property rights and that was it. But we were still dreaming about the forests of Ardennes, the unchartered woods, freedom, and Chantilly, but without those fences or a highway passing right through it. We were on a paved road that turned left, making a grand arch, behind the bus station. We were walking and I remember thinking: “Ozimska Street, the beauty of cobblestones shining in the sun.” I was thinking about the widest, most amazing streets covered with setts that I knew. I used to remember a lot of them because, back then, a lot of streets used to be like that. Not anymore. The old stone has died. And back there in Chantilly there was an amazing curve of the road, shiny and long, and at its end was a castle with an enormous library that I never saw because I was cheap, and preferred to go for a walk in the park and in the forest. That was free at least. I preferred to go for coffee in a nearby bistro. And castles? “Castles,” I thought, “I’ve seen a lot of castles in my life already.”

  Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin

  I was lying in my Swedish bed, a short and narrow one, and around me the sea was roaring as if the ferries were about to snap free from their moorings and tip onto their sides; as if rushed by the waves, they were going to enter the roadstead, sail off into open water, and then sink.

  Now I think about this, while sitting on my enormous bed, also made in Sweden, looking like a pirate. Currently one-eyed, with a swollen face and stiches in my head, having been beaten up by life and those stories that I keep ripping out from inside of me with such difficulty. And the floor around me rocks like an ocean. It is in this bed of mine, in St. Wojciech’s boat, and in its safe harbor—that’s where I found shelter and where I preach.

  I sailed away from my harbor, snapped from my moorings, and left my homes behind me, because when I leave them I establish new, temporary kingdoms, and that’s the truth I discover with greater confidence, even though when I began my story I had no clue. I go in circles among the swarms of my people, of my places. It’s easier for me that way. I’m like those Turks in exile, rac
ing through Europe and through the world; Turks who, no matter where they live and what documents they carry, remain Turks, and Germany will remain their European homeland forever. And it was Germany that brought them here first, and who cares if it was only meant for a little while. They acted like the Gastarbeiters of all nations of all times before, like the Italians in America, or the Chinese and the Puerto Ricans. They did what the Portuguese did, or the Poles, the Ukrainians, the Greeks, the Croats, the Bosnians, and the Albanians. They did what so many before them have done—they simply stayed. They took what was offered—a low paying job. They toiled through steam rooms and factories, sending home the little they earned; money that turned into fortunes back home. They saved everything they could, living in rotten conditions, but when the time of their official stay ended, they didn’t take the opportunity to go back. They didn’t listen to threats, calm at first and later much more forceful, both explicit and insinuated. They simply disappeared or stopped communicating with the world. I travel like they did and my home, all of my homes, both current and past, are with me. I travel, like a snail with multiple shells; soft flesh and on top: tumor after tumor after tumor.

  During that Gotland night, I was like one of those difficult cases from the Holy Ghost hospital, like one of those finally sent to Kulparkowo without a chance for salvation, or one of those tragic catatonics who fell in too deep for anyone to spot them from the surface. Boring nightmares torment me just like they tormented the others. I look inside my head, but I see very little. In the dark hole where I find myself with ghosts from Kulparkowo I can hear only moans, reminders of murders and lashings, exiles and misfortunes. This is my family’s history, and I’ve kept in me against all odds. If it has any bright moments, then they shine through from a distant past, from a long time ago and from far away, from something that didn’t exist for ages and is unknown to me. I go and I carry bright and dark moments, assembled like cobblestones, salki filled wall to wall, nyże full of long-forgotten staples, attics filled to the brim with a questionable wealth of lumber. At nights, and particularly during that very night in Gotland, everything came back—that which was long forgotten recalled itself, people, their smells, the clinking of a teaspoon in a cup, conversations, rather mute lips engaged in speech; mute because the sound evaporated a long time ago. Only the sense of words remained like dried up sediment. There are shreds scattered all over my salki, scraps of my escapes and travels; I don’t know myself what to call them. But neither the beginning nor the end survived, neither the cause nor effect. My entire family lives in there. Who cares if a few people are missing, if their portraits are incomplete, if sometimes a head is unaccounted for, or a body. Their grievances and longings exist and constituted their essence. Every atom in their bodies was saturated with sorrow.