by Pawel Huelle
ALJ: Where did the idea for ‘Abulafia’ come from, apart from reflecting your interest in the history of the region surrounding Gdańsk?
PH: It’s odd, but I don’t really know why I wrote it – it just came into my mind one day, as a combination of various themes. The Junkers were the Pomeranian, German gentry, and von Kotwitz would have been a typical surname for a Junker. I used the same name for a character in my novel Castorp, set in the same era. ‘Abulafia’ is about how a person goes to the very edge of existence, in search of something that is ill-defined: the utopian dream of the language of the Garden of Eden, spoken by all mankind before the Tower of Babel.
ALJ: What gave you the idea for ‘The Flight into Egypt’? Why did you choose to write about refugees from Chechnya?
PH: A few years after the first war in Chechnya (which happened in the mid-1990s) I saw a photograph of a beautiful Chechen woman, taken on the border between Poland and Russia, and I found it very moving. She looked like the Virgin Mary in an icon; she had a look of great suffering but also of pride. It was in all the main daily papers. She must have been very young, nineteen or twenty, and she was waiting to be let into Poland as a refugee. It made an impression on me, and triggered the idea for this story. I talked to some Poles who were working with Chechens and knew about the refugee camps, so that aspect of the story is true – it is based on the real fate of the Chechens, who have suffered a genocide, all the worse for the fact that the world has turned a blind eye to it.
ALJ: ‘Franz Carl Weber’ seems to combine realism with fantasy – which elements are taken from life and which are pure invention?
PH: It is to some extent autobiographical, in that my father really did bring a Swiss railway set home for me and my brother from abroad. For children growing up in austere, communist Poland, it was like having our own helicopter, or a flying carpet – a beautiful gift like a memory of a world that no longer existed. In the mid-1990s I went to Zurich for a literary event, and I found the toy shop, Franz Carl Weber, which is still there. I went inside and saw all the toys in the world, except for electric railways, because things have changed now.
ALJ: I know Lake Ukiel is a real place, about 130 kilometres south east from Gdańsk, in the Mazurian lakelands. But it seems a strange name for a Polish lake.
PH: Yes, it is near Olsztyń, and still appears on the maps with its Polish name, Lake Krzywe (‘krzywe’ means ‘crooked’), as well as the name Lake Ukiel – meaning ‘elbow’ in the language of the original natives of this region, the Old Prussians, or Baltic Prussians, who were wiped out by the Crusaders and disappeared as a race. They were northern Europe’s equivalent of the North American Indians, and all that is left of them are a few place names. They feature quite strongly in early Polish history. In 997 Poland’s patron saint, St Wojciech, was sent by King Bolesław I to convert the Old Prussians, who killed and (according to one version) ate him.
ALJ: You return to some of the themes of ‘Mimesis’ in ‘First Summer’, where the Bible found by the main character is clearly meant to be the one hidden by Harmensoon, the Mennonite preacher in ‘Mimesis’. What was your thinking here?
PH: I wrote ‘Mimesis’ much earlier than the other stories, and ‘First Summer’ last of all, so together the two stories have a circular structure. When the hero of ‘First Summer’ finds the Bible, he closes a circle that began in ‘Mimesis’. That book can never be as important to today’s modern civilisation as it was in the past. Once it was what mattered most to earlier generations, but things have changed, and it no longer has the same significance.
About the Author
Paweł Huelle spent his early writing career as an employee of the Solidarity Movement’s press office in the late 1980s. He subsequently achieved great critical success (both domestically and in translation) as a writer of novels, short stories and essays, and has been honoured with numerous awards. His first novel, Who Was David Weiser? (1987, published in English by Bloomsbury, 1990) was described by critics in Poland as ‘the book of the decade’, ‘a masterpiece’ and ‘a literary triumph’ and elicited comparisons to Günter Grass and Bruno Schulz; subsequently it has been widely translated, and was shortlisted for the inaugural Independent Foreign Fiction Prize. Huelle followed this with Moving House and Other Stories (1991, Bloomsbury 1994), First Love and Other Stories (1996), and then three novels, Mercedes Benz (2001), Castorp (2004) and The Last Supper (2007). The novels were published in English translation by Serpent’s Tale (2005, 2007 and 2008 respectively), with Mercedes Benz and Castorp both shortlisted for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
Recommended Read
Fog Island
Mehmet Zaman Saçlioglu
from Elsewhere: Stories from Small Town Europe
THE TRAIN WAS moving fast. Only two of us remained in the compartment as the others got off at the previous station. My travelling companion, a slim, light brown haired man in his thirties, a little younger than I, took off his shoes and stretched out to sleep on the seat opposite. I was considering doing the same but hesitated, as there were only fifteen or twenty minutes left before my stop.
I moved next to the window and pressed my nose against the glass as if hoping to see something through the pitch dark. No moon, no stars, no lights to be seen out there. My eyelids became heavy, lulled by the constant rattling and swaying of the train. Just as I closed my eyes I noticed that the train sounds had changed and the shaking stopped. The train was slowing down. Soon it came to a halt. Outside, there was nothing to be seen. I entered the aisle and peered out but still nothing. This was no ordinary darkness.
I pulled down the window and detected there was movement outside. This strange darkness – like a curious child who sticks his finger into every hole he can reach – flowed through the window, twisting, winding, becoming white. Then I realised we were in the midst of a dense fog. For a moment a light shone through the moving mist. I was never aware that this last train of the day made such a stop. I closed the window to those foggy fingers. As I was about to return to my compartment, the door to the car at the other end of the aisle opened and the conductor entered ringing a small bell:
‘Breakdown! We’ll be here for an hour. Please do not get off the train, the fog is very thick....’
As he passed by me I asked the conductor the name of this place.
‘Second Island station,’ he said.
I said I’d never heard of it before.
‘This is a very small station,’ he said. ‘Not every train stops here.’
My travelling companion also awoke and was putting on his shoes. He approached me with sleepy eyes, touched my arm and cocked his head as if to ask what was happening. A questioning sound came from his mouth. I realized that he was mute, and it occurred to me that he might also be deaf.
‘Breakdown,’ I said slowly so he could read my lips.
I was not mistaken. My travelling companion was both mute and deaf – but we found a way of communicating. His face lightened up as he noticed the fog. He opened the window, stretched out his arm and waved it in the fog while uttering joyous sounds. Then he turned to me and made a sign with his hand for me to follow him outside. His finger pointing to the outside, he opened the door, then grasping the iron handle, stepped down. He was emitting little screams and laughing. As he reached the ground he let go, turned around and extended his hands toward me.
To read the rest of this story, purchase Elsewhere: Stories from Small Town Europe here.