Home Is Nearby

by Magdalena McGuire

  The old man opposite me snapped open his suitcase and retrieved some documents. I held my visa in my lap, my palms dampening the paper.

  The lights on the train switched on, searing my vision as the militiaman returned and stuck his boot in the carriage door. He inspected my papers, flicking through them and then directing his gaze at me. My hands started to tremble and I dug my nails into my knees.

  ‘What’s in the bag?’ he said.

  I opened my suitcase and he prodded it with his rifle before digging through the assortment of treasures.

  He picked up a rock and gave me a look of suspicion and scorn. ‘Why are you carrying this junk?’

  ‘I’m an artist.’ I hadn’t known I was going to say that, but the words had come out of my mouth. I am an artist.

  ‘No wonder.’ He turned to the old man opposite me. ‘Next.’

  The old man displayed the contents of his suitcase: some neatly folded clothes and a peach.

  A young woman in our carriage had her hands stuffed in the pockets of her black jacket. She took them out when the militiaman demanded her papers. ‘The bag,’ he said. ‘What’s in it?’

  ‘Clothes. Cheap old things.’ She unzipped it to reveal a folded pair of denim jeans. The girl smiled quickly, too eagerly perhaps. The militiaman wrenched the bag from her and upended it, spilling the contents on the floor. When it was empty he ripped out a layer of vinyl. A fake bottom. He tossed it aside and then pulled out wads of American dollars and waved them at her. ‘Where do you think you’re going with these?’ He shoved her with his rifle. ‘We’ve got some questions for you.’

  The girl gave us a desperate look. Though I wanted to say something, I remained silent. As did everyone else.

  I, Anna Izabela Skowrońska, pledge to cooperate with the People’s Republic, alerting them to any criminal or suspicious activities undertaken by people of my acquaintance …

  The militiaman hauled the girl off the carriage and then the train pulled away, its wheels screeching against tracks of steel.

  Water

  1

  Australia, January 1983

  Before I arrived in this country I didn’t know it was possible to drink air. Even at the peak of summer in Poland, the atmosphere was always thin. Yet when I got off the plane in Brisbane, bleary-eyed and sore-limbed, I didn’t so much step onto the tarmac as plunge into it, a wave of humidity forcing me to gulp for breath. No wonder everyone moved slowly here. It was like living underwater.

  My Polish clothes were souvenirs from another planet. I wrapped my jumpers and coat in newspapers and sealed them in a plastic bag. A woman who worked at the hostel gave me a white blouse and blue skirt made of the lightest cotton. They had belonged to her daughter, who didn’t need them anymore. ‘You know young girls,’ she said, ‘they’re always buying new things.’

  The staff members at the hostel were friendly and my room was comfortable, if plain. It had a pockmarked wooden floor and two single beds separated by a small table shared by my roommate and me. Despite the Brisbane heat we were given blankets for our beds. Their orange and pink flowers lent a sense of optimism to the room.

  This morning, I retrieved my blanket from the floor. I tugged it over the bed and then crept out to the balcony to retrieve my clothes from the washing line, breathing in the river at dawn and the faint smell of rotting fruit that permeated everything here. When I stepped back inside I dressed in the dark so as not to wake my roommate, Rahel. She was a Hungarian girl who pressed teabags against her eyes each morning to relieve the puffiness, and who undid these efforts at night by crying for her family in her sleep. When I first came to the hostel, I would wake to the sound of her moaning Anya, Anya and I thought she was calling my name, until I realised it was Hungarian for Mother, Mother.

  Rahel had also been in Traiskirchen, though I hadn’t met her there. She was granted asylum a few weeks before I arrived at the camp. Despite this, Traiskirchen became part of our shared history. We reminisced about the kitchen lady who gave us extra helpings of white bread rolls and ham, the table tennis Olympics that took place each Friday afternoon and the small living room where everyone gathered to watch reruns of Ein Echter Wiener Geht Nicht Unter, a television show about an Austrian family whose problems offered us relief from our own. I got the sense that Rahel also missed Traiskirchen. Most people in the camp prayed to hear their names called over the loudspeaker (Will such-and-such report to the main office for their interview with immigration). They all wanted to go to America. However, Rahel told me she’d been in no hurry: Traiskirchen was as good a place to live as any. I knew how she felt. When I was in the camp, I could tell myself that any day now, I could go home.

  Exhausted and consumed by grief, I couldn’t bring myself to care what happened next. For me the world was divided into Poland and not-Poland. So I applied for visas to all the countries I could think of and waited to see which, if any, would take me. One of the men in the camp, a nightclub owner from Romania, ran a bookmaking system in the single men’s quarters. He took bets on all of us. A rumour circulated that I – the Polish artist, as they called me – was going to Afghanistan, and he made a profit when it turned out I was going to Australia instead.

  A church sponsored my trip here. They said they could get me into a migrant hostel in Brisbane, but if I wanted to move to Sydney or Melbourne I would have to wait. It was all the same to me.

  Now that I was living in Australia, I grappled to understand the choices and chance events that had brought me here. A country as far away as the moon.

  Rather than listen to Rahel cry in her sleep, I took a walk by the river. As my sandals slapped the concrete I repeated to myself the strange new names I was learning here, so different to the English I was taught at school. Yungaba, the name of the immigration hostel where I was staying, an enormous wooden building that gleamed white against the faultless sky. Jacarandas, the purple and red flowered trees that shaded the hostel garden. Here, where I was walking, was Kangaroo Point. And there, stretching across the river, was Story Bridge.

  I settled on a bench that overlooked the murky water and slapped insects from my legs as a man and a woman in flimsy shorts jogged past, offering me their smiles. I wondered what Father would make of this place, with its insistent cheer, its abundance of heat and light. It was beautiful, there was no doubt about it. But nothing here was mine. I longed to be back in familiar surroundings, where I could say, That was the forest where Father and I used to collect mushrooms. Or, That was the park where Dominik kissed me, his ink-stained fingers linked with mine.

  The space in my chest got smaller. I steadied my breath by focusing on the river, the shimmer of light on the water reminding me of the Odra back home. When I could breathe, I took out my notepad and tried to sketch the scenery around me. The trees that sprang from the sides of the cliffs, setting their roots in rock instead of earth. The horizon of buildings made of steel and glass. My drawings didn’t work. There was too large a gap between what I saw in my head and what transpired on the page. I put my pen down, shook out my hand and tried again.

  By eight o’clock, steam rose from the ground. The morning heat had arrived. Clutching my notebook of awful sketches, I made my way back to the hostel for breakfast, walking through the elegant garden and into the dining room. This was a high-ceilinged space with open windows that let in the breeze. One of the walls was fitted with a corkboard that displayed notices about apartments and jobs. Above it hung a picture of the Queen of Australia, a pretty young woman who was weighed down with diamonds and a blue sash. Her cool gaze rested on the morning bustle. Around her, people toasted bread, clattered dishes and poured milk onto flakes of wheat.

  As I sat down to eat, Rahel joined me at the table. She yawned and then tugged at her blunt fringe. Her eyes, veined with red, betrayed her restless night. Nonetheless she gave me a sardonic smile and said, ‘It’s cold,’ giving an exaggerated shiver. Rahel had decided that she was sick of everyone at the hostel always saying, It’s hot
, it’s hot (‘Why must they say this? It bores me.’). So now she liked to announce that it was cold, that the food here was delicious, and that she’d had a wonderful night’s sleep.

  ‘It is very cold,’ I agreed with her.

  Though Rahel and I had French in common, we spoke in English the way the people at the hostel wanted us to. ‘This is your language now,’ they had said. ‘You need to get as much practice as you can.’ Trusting this was the best way to adjust, I used English most of the day. However, at night I closed my eyes and repeated Polish words. Songs or poems or simply the names of foods: barszcz, zapiekanka, kapusta, gołąbki, the rustle of s’s and z’s taking me on a brisk walk through an autumn forest. I missed the shedding of golden leaves and the dignified branches of the trees.

  ‘Do you think there is real autumn here?’ I asked Rahel as I spread butter on my bread.

  ‘They don’t have,’ Rahel said. She told me she had read that the seasons didn’t exist in Australia, not the way they did back home. As she talked, I dipped a teabag in my cup, jiggling it like a marionette before offering it to Rahel for her eyes. She squeezed out the liquid and placed it on a saucer. Then she nudged me with her spoon. ‘See this lady?’ She tilted her head in the direction of a woman who was sweeping into the dining room.

  Bizarrely, the woman was wearing a fur coat. She gripped the hands of the two children by her sides and then, steadying herself against the communal scrutiny, positioned herself at a table next to mine and Rahel’s. Although my own clothes were light, I was perspiring – just looking at the fur made me uncomfortable. Everyone waited for the woman to realise her mistake. Instead she brushed down a fur sleeve. ‘Go get breakfast,’ she said to the children in Polish. They scurried to the counter, returning with various food items and implements for breakfast. She made them straighten and re-straighten the cutlery before they were allowed to eat.

  In a low voice Rahel said, ‘This lady, she thinks she is an aristocrat … Or maybe she is sick.’ She tapped her head with a forefinger.

  ‘Maybe,’ I said.

  Maybe the coat was important in ways we couldn’t understand. I thought of all the things I’d brought with me to this country, remnants of home. The chisel Father had given me and the stone I’d taken from the cemetery where he and Mother were buried. Though I’d sold the jewellery from Father, I couldn’t bring myself to part with Dominik’s ring. I wore it on my marriage finger, where he’d placed it. As I twisted the gold band, my skin caught on the break. I held up my hand up to rearrange it.

  The woman in the fur coat passed by our table with a glass of water. ‘That’s a nice ring,’ she said in Polish.

  ‘How did Pani know I was Polish?’ I asked.

  ‘The cheekbones.’ The woman stroked her finger along her own cheeks. She placed the water on the table and then clamped her hand beside it. ‘Emerald.’ She pointed to the stone on her ring, much larger than the one on mine. Then she asked, ‘Is Pani’s husband also here?’

  ‘Nie,’ I told her.

  The woman reached for the fur at her throat. She nodded and then picked up her glass and walked away. When she was back at her own table, Rahel looked to me, wanting to know what we had said.

  ‘Nothing,’ I told her, reverting to English. Rahel didn’t press for details. We had an unspoken pact not pry, not to ask questions about the past. This was probably why she’d never brought up the ring. Even so, I could see that it was ridiculous to keep wearing it.

  I pulled it off and dropped it on the table, the gold landing softly on the plastic cloth. Immediately, I missed the weight of it and pushed it onto my middle finger instead.

  2

  After getting a job in a bar, Rahel moved into a proper house in a district called West End. We sat on her verandah, which overlooked the city, drinking our beer cold the way Australians did, and eating the fried lángos she’d prepared. It was late afternoon and the sky was streaked with veins of red. The air smelt of sunshine and storms. A small lizard crawled across the ceiling, its movements staccato-like. Low mumblings came from underneath the verandah and I thought that Rahel’s roommates must be talking among themselves until she told me these were the sounds of bush turkeys. The turkeys were a pest, she said, but apparently the locals didn’t eat them.

  I took another bite of my lángos, a Hungarian bread that I hadn’t tried before today. I liked its sharp taste of garlic and its fresh notes of parsley. It left smudges of sour cream on my fingers and I cleaned them with a pretty napkin embroidered with green thread. As soon as I did so, I realised that Rahel must have brought it with her from Hungary. I wiped the remaining cream on my skirt instead.

  Rahel finished her beer and inspected the label with its curious string of X’s. ‘It’s too weak,’ she said, crinkling her nose in distaste. For once she wasn’t being sarcastic.

  ‘Add some vodka,’ I said.

  Her laugh was like the tumble of church bells and I felt that familiar tug towards home. Memories of the exhibition that Małgorzata and I had held at the Church of Three Saints. The night that Dominik proposed.

  ‘Beer with vodka,’ Rahel said. ‘If you live with me, we will do this.’

  Earlier that afternoon, Rahel told me that one of the Chilean men in her house was moving out and I could have his room if I liked. With my small allowance from the government, I could afford it. But I couldn’t summon any enthusiasm about moving in. It was the same problem I’d had in Traiskirchen: I couldn’t make a new life without burying the one that came before.

  Rahel had felt the same way during the month I lived with her at Yungaba. But now she appeared ready to move on. She had a home of sorts and even, she’d confessed over lángos, an Australian girlfriend called Carla. As she told me this she narrowed her eyes, waiting for my reaction. When I said I was happy for her, she gave an open-mouthed smile, revealing even teeth that were interrupted by two pointed ones on the upper row. These teeth, together with her black hair and compact frame, made her look like a sleek dark cat.

  ‘You will like Carla,’ Rahel said. ‘She is artist, like you.’

  ‘Me?’ I shook my head. ‘Not anymore.’ I picked at the label on my beer, scratching the damp paper. ‘All this is gone.’

  Ever since I was a child, I had made things. I longed to be the way I was before, always learning through my hands. But I didn’t have that now. Art had abandoned me in this country. It was like losing the deepest and most private part of myself – the worst type of exile. Without art, I didn’t know who I was.

  Rahel reached over and rested her palm on my leg. Her skin was very warm. ‘You will be artist again. Carla says –’ At that moment a large white car roared up the hill towards us and took a sharp turn into the driveway. Rahel pulled back from me. ‘Ah, she is arrived.’

  With a slam of the door a slim girl got out and pushed her sunglasses on top of her head, nesting them in her spiked hair. She took the verandah steps two at a time. I watched as she kissed Rahel full on the lips, trying to remember how it felt to be kissed like that. And then, trying not to remember.

  When they pulled apart, Carla wiped her hand on her singlet and reached out to shake mine. Then she flopped onto a beanbag, setting off the rustle of polystyrene balls. ‘So you’re a sculptor, hey? Rahel’s told me about you.’ I strained to decipher her Australian accent, which gave generous emphasis to the vowels and skimped on the consonants. She repositioned herself on the beanbag and said, ‘You should come check out our studio.’

  ‘You have a studio?’ I asked.

  ‘Kind of. There’s a few of us working there, rent’s practically nothing. We’ve got an old warehouse that’s going to be demolished to make way for another high-rise. Till then it’s ours.’

  ‘See?’ Rahel gave me a meaningful look. ‘This will be good for you.’

  ‘I don’t know …’

  There was nothing worse than sitting inert in a studio while other people were absorbed in their work. But then, my attempts to make art on my own had co
me to nothing. Ever since I’d left Poland my days had lacked purpose and shape. I was unmoored. Perhaps this was what I needed.

  My reluctance gave way. ‘All right.’

  This settled, Rahel and Carla started to talk about a party they’d been to the night before. As they swapped stories about people I didn’t know, I drifted away from the conversation, away from the verandah in West End. I slipped to the bathroom and pulled out a folded piece of paper from my pocket. It was a letter that Father had sent me when I first moved to Wrocław. Though I’d memorised it, I took comfort in holding it, in seeing the elegant, evenly spaced letters of his handwriting. My fingertips tracing his words.

  My słoneczko,

  It pleases your old tatuś to hear that things are going so well for you in the big city. Here the chickens stopped laying eggs for nearly two weeks. Or so I thought until I discovered a fox was stealing them. I soon put a stop to that. I shot the old devil and sold the fur to the new manager of the brewery. My guess is he’ll turn it into a coat for that mistress he keeps in the neighbouring town.

  I have filled many jars with honey from our hives. Some of these I traded for a tin of real coffee, which I am saving for you.

  Yesterday I found a tree lying dead in your forest. I hacked off its branches and with help from some of the local boys, carried it home. Perhaps you can do something with it when you come back?

  This is all I can think of to say. I am afraid my tales from the village must be very boring for you.

  With love, Father

  With love, Father P.S. Remember to wear an extra pair of socks on these cold days!

  I looked down at my feet, pale against the brown tiled floor. Oh Tatuś, if only you were still here.

  I wiped my eyes and folded the letter. The sound of laughter floated in from the verandah. I unfolded the letter, smoothed the thin paper and read it once more.