Cold Sea Stories

by Pawel Huelle

  One night he had a dream about Sophie by the seaside, in which all he did was tell her about what he had been reading. Quite a long time went by before he realised he wasn’t talking to her in English and that she couldn’t understand a thing, but when they shifted into their common language, she disappeared, and at that point he awoke. As he couldn’t get back to sleep, he got up, went into the kitchen, put the kettle on, and with a sweater thrown over his pyjamas, went out onto the balcony. The sun was not yet peeping out above the hill and the crest of the woods, but it was already light. Amid falling trails of mist two roe deer were nibbling the grass in the middle of the valley. He fetched his camera from the living room, adjusted the zoom and released the shutter. The animals raised their snouts and went bounding into the woods. There was a man coming down the path leading from the old oak trees, pulling a two-wheel cart loaded with a hefty package covered in tarpaulin. He could have peeked at him through the zoom lens, but as this man had scared the animals away, he stirred nothing but irritation. Half an hour later, as he was trotting along his usual route, he was sorry he hadn’t done it. The man he had seen from the balcony was now spreading out some large canvas sheets in the middle of the meadow. It looked quite like a hang-glider, or maybe a balloon being unfolded, but it was impossible to check, as he didn’t want to seem like an intruder by stopping and staring in the man’s direction.

  After all, there was nothing quite so extraordinary about it.

  But that afternoon, when he came back from the seaside, he changed his mind. There at the centre of the meadow stood a capacious oval tent, the kind seen in old-fashioned prints of Turkish military camps. In front of the tent, on a small colourful rug sat a Chinese man. Later, when he discreetly aimed his lens at him from the balcony, the Chinese man distinctly smiled and waved a hand. At that he withdrew inside. Yet he searched the Internet and the newspapers in vain for advertisements or information. Nowhere could he find anything announcing a miracle-worker, a folk performer or an Asian doctor who was going to pitch his tent in a suburban meadow, in a conservation area within a park. That evening, on his way out to the pub, he glanced across at the valley. The tent was standing in its place, but its owner had vanished. There were some children running around, and a dog barking outside the wind-stirred entrance flap. That night, when he came home from the city, the tent stood out like a grey stain against the black backdrop of the woods. But in the morning the meadow was empty again. He made a slight detour from the route of his run to look for traces of it. They were irrefutable: a hole left by the tentpole, an area of grass trampled flat, and some smaller holes made by the tent pegs. ‘But that’s impossible,’ he thought, ‘quite idiotic!’

  He thought he ought to leave this place, but at the very thought of a journey he felt utterly despondent. He wrote a diplomatic e-mail to Dr Esterhagen, asking if he would like to take up a conversation on some completely new topics, but the analyst didn’t answer. Luckily, towards the end of November there was heavy snowfall, and a new occupation distracted him. He bought some cross-country skis and, with a map and a thermos of hot tea in his backpack, he set off on long daily outings, identifying the old routes of his suburban hikes among the forest tracks and clearings. He was particularly fond of the places that gave a clear view of the city and the bay. This was just how he wanted to spend the approaching Christmas Eve: a couple of hours on a ski run, come home, have supper, and then head off to Midnight Mass. Besides, it was better than being alone in that apartment, where everything reminded him of Sophie. But then came a sudden thaw, and there was no question of skiing. When he looked out at the meadow that morning, not a single patch of snow was covering the tawny-grey grass. Rain was drizzling out of heavy, low-drifting clouds. But in the very same spot as before, the same tent had been pitched. Calmly, as if he were just off to the corner shop, he put on his hooded jacket and boots and left the house.

  ‘Is there anyone there?’ he asked, standing outside the loosely laced-up entrance. ‘Should I speak in English?’

  ‘No, I can speak in any language,’ he heard someone say. ‘Please come into the vestibule.’

  Inside an extremely cramped space a small spirit lamp was burning. His host’s face looked unfamiliar, though it may have been the same man he had seen through the lens.

  ‘So you are Doctor Cheng? Did you place an announcement in the newspaper?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why are you looking for me? What do you want from me? Why are you hounding me?’

  ‘I want you to believe.’

  ‘In what? Trading in dreams? Predictions? It’s nonsense.’

  ‘I do not sell dreams, I merely offer them. Do you remember your hexagram, in which the element of fire warned against climbing?’

  ‘That still doesn’t prove a thing.’

  ‘I am tired. I have little time. If you want to try, say yes.’

  ‘Try what?’

  ‘A dream is not a daydream. Or a reflection. It is the other side of your shirt.’

  ‘But what am I supposed to believe in?’

  ‘In what you will see.’

  ‘All right. So what do I have to do?’

  Doctor Cheng gently moved him half a pace aside and put out the lamp. Suddenly he raised the inner tent flap. It looked just as if inside, beyond an invisible threshold, there was a very different space. He saw a mountain stream, a footbridge, and some distant peaks. If it was an illusion, it was perfect. The stream was thundering over the rocks, and he could feel a fine mist of water spraying his face. Clean air filled his lungs. The doctor gave him a small push forwards, and suddenly he found himself inside the scene that seconds earlier he had been watching. Some people were calling to him from the other side of the footbridge, and soon after he recognised them as his parents. His mother was signalling to him, and his father was smiling, as ever. He crossed to their side of the bridge; they shook hands and chatted. He understood that in a while they would want to move onwards, but without him. They had backpacks and suitable boots, but he didn’t have any. Now he realised how he had got here, but he looked around in vain: neither the meadow outside his new home nor even the tent he had entered were anywhere in sight. His mother and father were already far away; he could see their tiny figures on a rocky path, waving goodbye to him. He bathed his face in cold stream water, and then he caught sight of the inner tent flap closing in front of him.

  ‘Beautiful,’ he said to Doctor Cheng, ‘but it’s just a trick. I saw them, I touched them, but they aren’t alive. You cannot resurrect them.’

  ‘If you know something, speak of it. If you do not know, do not speak. That is the principle. And indeed you do not know what they desire.’

  The doctor lit the lamp again, and put it out again.

  This time he was in Chinatown, in the spot where Sophie had died. But it was she who was leaning over him, not he over her. He could see her tears and her lips rapidly uttering the words of a prayer that he couldn’t hear. An excruciating pain in the region of his sternum was making any kind of movement or response impossible. Finally, once the spasm had abated, in total darkness he felt her hand on his face and heard her whisper – better me, better me than him, me, not him, O God, O God...

  ‘What is the point of your mission?’ he asked, when he found himself back in the vestibule again. ‘What is it meant to prove?’

  ‘I really have very little time now. Others are waiting. Sometimes it is better to break free of one’s thoughts and accept reality. If you had come the first time, you would have learned far more. Do not seek me here, or anywhere else. You can only meet me once.’

  As he said this, Doctor Cheng drew aside the outer flap of the vestibule and pushed him out of the tent. He must have spent a long time inside it, because the meadow was now in darkness and a lot of snow had fallen. Evidently, on leaving the house, he hadn’t flicked the light switch, because he could see bright light shining in his windows. He walked towards it, with the feeling that everything that had happened really
had occurred. Just like that Christmas Eve when he and his father had stopped outside the Chinese cottage. And suddenly he remembered the name from that book: Pai Chi Wo – he kept shouting at the top of his voice, overjoyed, until people on their way to Midnight Mass started anxiously looking round at him. Then he ran fast, not realising that a crack of blinding light, ever brighter, going deep into the earth, was engulfing him.

  The Fifteen Glasses of Gendarme Polanke

  IN THE YEAR 1909 or 1910 golden dust was falling on the Wilderness, slowly and idly, heralding a severe winter. Gendarme Polanke was riding his horse across the fields, but before he noticed the strange woman, he was thinking back to yesterday’s visit to the chief official, the Landrat. This matter could brook no delay. Squire Gulgowski, ‘that damned Pole’, had been riding about the local villages ever since he arrived from Danzig, distributing some sort of news-sheets and leaflets to the peasants, as well as the landowners (of whom there were not in fact many hereabouts). Polanke did not actually know the nature of these publications, for each person interrogated on this circumstance had held his tongue and shrugged his shoulders, but there could be no doubt it was a political matter, which he, Polanke, must immediately report to the Landrat. All the more, since the police station at Wiele was not trustworthy. Corporal Szulc took no notice of any reports at all. It was a known fact that instead of demonstrating a spirit of vigilance, Corporal Szulc held intense carousals every night, in which Kosterke the butcher and Blum the shopkeeper also took part. If only Polanke had access to a search warrant and several men to help. Meanwhile ‘that moustachioed Pole’ had set the dogs on him. But he, Polanke, had not failed to notice the plaque above the threshold, which was not there before, saying: ‘No entry for German cockroaches or any other vermin.’ That was what was written there. In Polish. If only the Landrat would wish to give it his consideration... Polanke gave a deep sigh. He adjusted his helmet and took in the reins. That was when he noticed the strange woman. He could tell at once that she was not local, and immediately spurred on his horse to cut across her path at the roadside crucifix, from where a path led off to Herr Knitter’s cottage. It did not take long.

  ‘Where are you going?’ he asked in German. But the woman did not take the slightest notice of him. ‘Can’t you hear what I’m saying to you?’ shouted Polanke, blocking her way. ‘Are you deaf?’ But at once he regretted his words and his insistence. The stranger stopped half a pace in front of the horse and looked up, staring at Polanke. In her eyes there was something that prompted instant anxiety. The gendarme did not know how to define it, but somewhere in the small of his back he felt an unpleasant tingling. ‘Only witches look at you like that,’ he thought, ‘or criminals.’ But he didn’t say that, of course, because the moment was dragging on unbearably and her gaze, not his, demanded a response. There they stood facing each other, she in shabby rags, he in his shiny helmet with the black eagle, she with a bundle tied on a stick of pine, he with his Mannlicher rifle slung over his shoulder; the golden dust continued to fall on the Wilderness, heavy rain clouds were drawing in from over the Water, and high overhead they could hear the cry of a hawk. Today it is hard to say who spoke first. But the main thing is that the words that followed – for they did say something to each other – were uttered in a harsh, grating language which Polanke did in fact know, but found repulsive: the dialect of fishermen and shepherds. He burst out laughing when she said she was looking for work and a place to stay. The work was out there, in the north and in the west, in the cities or at the houses of the vulgar rich, but not here, where not even potatoes could flourish in the sandy soil and where the only thing not in short supply was stones.

  ‘Admit what you have stolen at once,’ he said, leaning out of the saddle. But she answered that she hadn’t stolen anything. ‘In that case you’ve run away from your husband,’ he said even louder. She replied that she had never had a husband. At this point Gendarme Polanke adjusted the strap under his chin, sat up straight and delivered a speech – about the fact that wherever the imperial authority reached, no crime would ever escape justice. And as he, Polanke, was the natural extension of that authority in the local area, all vagrants and suspicious types who appeared in the Wilderness, in Zabrody or by the Lake should be on their guard. The gendarme turned his horse towards the Zabrody inn and without a word of farewell, without even looking at the stranger, rode away. Meanwhile the woman set off in the opposite direction. A few moments later she was standing at that point on the plateau where the view opens onto the thatched roofs of Zabrody, hidden among the hills, and further, as far as the eye can see, to the great Water cut across by the contours of islands and the woods on its borders. Here she halted beside a field - stone marking the way. She sat down and extracted a piece of dry bread from her bundle. Now she was tearing at it with her teeth, steadily working her jaw to chew it up. There was no more golden dust in the air, because the sun had dropped low behind the woods. As Gendarme Polanke approached the inn, the woman finished eating. She gathered all the crumbs from her skirt, scooped them out of her cupped hand with her tongue and set off straight ahead, along the road to Zabrody. And she surely would have found room in an abandoned barn or a fishing shed right on the Lake, or maybe she would even have been offered a warmer corner to sleep in at one of the cottages, if not for the sudden wind that fell on the Wilderness from all directions, driving in clouds heavy with rain and cold. She had to shelter anywhere she could, and at the edge of the scrubland it was not easy. She ran on, until at a turn in the road she came upon a thick clump of broom. She hesitated, wondering whether to flee further, but then the wind, raising twigs and leaves into the air, almost knocked her off her feet, so she crawled into the tangle of roots. As she tucked her head into her arms to hide from the lashing rain, Gendarme Polanke was knocking back his first glass of anise. In the dark chamber of the inn, empty and lit by a tallow candle, Gasiński the publican was leaning over his guest, telling him how two days ago Mr Samp and Mr Skórzewski had been coming home this way along the road to Juszki. They had been to the moustachioed Pole’s place in Wdzydze, but not for a name-day party or a family celebration. They had stopped a while at the inn, to give the horses a rest, had each drunk a glass of vodka and chatted in hushed voices, over there in the corner. Only a few words had reached the publican’s ears, rather odd and devious ones; oh no, it wasn’t a conversation about business – these words did not concern leasing, taxes, buying or selling. Then the gentlemen had parted and each gone his own way. Polanke downed the second glass of anise. Yes, he would very much like to know what sort of words they were. But Gasiński did not remember them well, so the gendarme drank a third glass and remembered the strange woman on the Wilderness. At the very thought of the look in her eyes, a shudder ran through his body. No, she had not come through this way, or at any rate she had not called at the pub. Gasiński laughed and shook his head. He didn’t give credit to beggars and tramps – he’d have sent a woman like that to the four winds, and that was that. What could she be looking for here?

  ‘That’s no ordinary beggar,’ said Polanke after a pause for thought. ‘Vagabonds don’t have that sort of look in their eyes.’ After the fourth and fifth glasses, which the gendarme downed in quick succession, he tried his best to explain to the publican what that look was like. But he said nothing specific. If that woman had stared at him for longer, she could certainly have driven him to an attack of fury. A look like that deserves a smack across the face, or to be locked up in jail. For not only does it go against imperial power, it is also an affront to the entire order established by the Creator. Gasiński sighed understandingly. He guessed the woman had said something offensive. Yet in any case he did not ask for details, he merely poured the next glass of liquor. Before Polanke had managed to tip it down his throat, there in the doorway, dripping wet, stood the bearded Hersz, a travelling salesman. Usually, if night caught up with him on his way to Zabrody, he stayed here and set off at first light across the Wilderness. Today h
e wanted to go further. If Gasiński had any business in Zabrody or Wiele, where Hersz would be heading the next morning, let him say quickly, for time was short. Although Gasiński had no business for the people of Zabrody or those of Wiele, he did wish to invite Hersz in; he poured the Jew a drink and encouraged him to stay, especially in weather like this. Why put your wagon and your goods at risk? No more than three weeks ago some robbers had attacked Czapiewski as he was coming back to Wieprznica from the city. They had taken all his money and his watch. Hersz nodded. Water was dripping from the brim of his felt hat and from matted wisps of his hair. He agreed that Gasiński was right – it was dangerous to travel at night in such a bad storm. On the other hand, if it were God’s will, not a hair would fall from his head. But then if it were His will, the horse would bolt in broad daylight and Hersz would break his neck in the nearest ditch. It was all predestined, up there on high.