“Fist-say-go n-eye-lep-sh-ish-a-go.”
I was trying to learn how to say happy birthday in Polish. It was for Elly’s mum, even though it wasn’t her birthday. It was her name day. The communist’s may have been defeated but the communal celebrations continued. Name days perplex me because sometimes the day of celebration is months away from your actual birthday and sometimes there are different days on which you can have a party for your name.
Two birthdays or more a year, every ageing woman’s worst nightmare.
I also later learnt that the phrase I was learning translated more into ‘best wishes’ or ‘all the best’ than happy birthday.
I spent all the Friday and the car ride over on the Saturday getting Elly to coach me on that one phrase. I thought it’d be easier to learn the language and now I was going to be eternally connected with the place I had started to pay more attention to it. I wasn’t having a good time but I wasn’t the worst foreigner and at least now I was trying.
We had rented a small green Fiat to go over to her Mum’s. It felt like a shed on wheels and shook when you got any kind of speed up on it. Elly was driving though and this was the car she chose. I had seen the Seat sedan and thought that it looked more comfortable and respectable. Elly didn’t want to show off.
She dressed down for the occasion and made me wear a simple polo shirt and jeans. I kept telling her to calm down, I was fully confident that her family would love me. After all she was some village girl done good.
She wasn’t sure.
I wasn’t catholic.
I was excited about going back to the UK and had arranged some flights for a few weeks later. I had even called up my old football club and booked their social room for the Friday night. I had sent a facebook request to my people in England and told my Mum that there would be a party and an announcement.
She got very tetchy when I told her she’d have to wait to hear what it was like everyone else. I think most other people would have guessed that it wasn’t a welcome home party or I’ve got a promotion party, which only left wedding or pregnant. My friends and family didn’t need a named excuse to have a drink though, as long as it ended in day, there was a reason to drink.
As we left the offices and tower blocks behind and passed through the outlying area which was mainly warehouses and cheap motels Elly said nothing and remained focused. I kept pestering her about Polish and had bought a small book but the hardest thing was the pronunciation. Just like with many languages the key is training your eyes to see familiar letters then letting your brain spit them out in an unfamiliar sounding way. I was also hugely confused by how the endings of the words changed. I read about all the rules but none of that would stick and it all seemed very random. I stuck to learning simple phrases and trying my best with the harsh pronunciations.
We got to a railway crossing where even when no trains were approaching everything was forced to slow down to a trickle as the quality of the road was so poor. A lot of people had commented about the roads but having been in Warsaw and Krakow they didn’t seem bad but as we ventured towards the wilderness I could see why people complained. The three lane super roads that were omnipresent in the capitol had given way to thin strips of concrete. If two cars approached each other, one or both of them had to eat a little dirt or there would be a crash. When we got stuck behind one of the innumerable delivery trucks we had to play Russian roulette or sit patiently. There was no stereo in the car so I decided I should sing for Elly and not being very good I made up a few stupid songs. My favourite tune to make up songs to was Jarabe Tapatío, the Mexican hat dance.
The traffic started to thin out and the fields grew larger. Elly was still nervous and I was still learning how to give my birthday wishes. I didn’t feel nervous at all. I saw this as a challenge to be overcome. If anything the most uncomfortable part of this was going to be sitting down with that oaf Marvin.
Elly didn’t mention him to me and I wasn’t about to say anything to her.
“Who will be there then?” I asked.
“You, me, Mama, Marvin, Baba e J-ad-eck.” She replied.
I had learnt the ‘e’ meant ‘and’ and even though it sounded like ‘e’ it was written as ‘i’.
Every time I heard it in Polish it confused me. Their ‘i’ sounded like English ‘e’
and vice versa. When I was on holiday in Greece I learnt that ‘oui’ was ‘no’ and
‘non’ was ‘yes’, very strange and when drunk it messed with my high school French. I had never seen the point of learning a second language when I lived in England but now I realised that communication, not just pointing at things to get what you wanted in a shop, was essential to understanding. I knew that if I was in England I could use my words to sell myself to her family, here I could only use my actions.
I was about to be become a mime, how the hell do you mime ‘am going to be a good father and look after your daughter’?
I didn’t know either.
We passed a sprawling hotel and a Pepsi and Mintos factory then turned into a field that had porter cabins plonked down in the centre of it. On closer inspection they were closer to chalets but this was home to Elly, her Mum and Marvin. I tried to find something nice to say while I surveyed the surroundings but Elly made her way past some kittens who were playing and up the stairs to a door.
“Don’t touch them.” She warned as I bent down to stroke them.
I didn’t ask why and just skipped up the steps. She took off her shoes outside and I did the same and then we entered without knocking. You never knock at your parent’s house but it felt strange just drifting in. It was a small and dated abode and as you entered there was a kitchen off to the right, a room to the left and then four rooms at the back.
Her Mum was busying herself in the kitchen and when she came out it wasn’t a long lost embrace it was a quick hello, she looked me over, a smile and then back to her cooking. Elly led me off into her bedroom. There was no bed, only a fold down couch which was the style in Poland. Functional and efficient, the businessman in me liked it.
There were lots of wardrobes in her room and most were filled with clothes that didn’t fit her anymore and stacks of books. There was an armchair which I slumped into as she put her things down and lay on the bed. She seemed relieved.
Was that it?
Was that what all the stress was about?
“Come on. We go for walk.” Elly said seeming to desire an escape.
“Maybe we could offer to help her.” I suggested wanting to seem useful.
“No. Come on.”
So we left.
We walked along a thin strip of worn out grass and she showed me the corner shop, it wasn’t on a corner, just another vacant lot. We passed the government building with peeling paintwork and made our way onto a country lane. I could still hear the occasional delivery truck whizzing by but the sound faded as we continued down the winding path, engulfed on one side by apple trees and the other with cherry trees.
I had always liked glacier cherries as a kid and got a rude shock when I bit into a bitter one as an adult but I had grown to like the taste now and when Elly reached through some barbwire and offered me some I didn’t think about pesticides or washing them, I just wolfed them down.
Elly started to get tired so we began our slow return, not really saying anything.
In different circumstances I would have assumed that she was angry at me but I think she was just remembering and taking it all in on her return. When you are away you either romanticize things or vilify them, neither really holding true on your return.
When we got back I could smell the food, I wasn’t sure what it was and I won’t say it smelled delicious. I could hear voices in the room to the left and guessed that we had been joined by some other family members. We popped our heads in, Elly first then me. It was her Grandparents. They gave her a kiss on each cheek and a cuddle then shook my hand. The old man had workers hands but seemed frail now. There were six places around a small table and it was a squeeze settling down. I inadvertently knocked the table and spilt Granddad’s soup, way to make a splash.
All through the meal nobody said much. A comment here, a pass the potatoes there but while we all ate in silence Marvin sulked in his room and when we were nearly finished he stomped in and crumpled into the empty chair. I had brought him a car collectors glossy magazine full of photos of old cars, super cars and crap like that. I thought I’d try to give it another go since me and Elly were linked together forever, me and Marvin would be too.
I waited ‘til after we had finished eating and went to Elly’s room and returned with it. Everyone except Marvin seemed impressed. He threw it down shouted something and stormed out. His Mother followed him out and as he slammed his bedroom door like a drama queen she cackled at him.
“What was all that about?” I asked Elly as her Grandparents watched on.
“He said that you come here and steal his job and take the women, you are an invader like all evil foreigners.”
“Why did your Mum laugh at him like that?”
“She knows how lazy he is and told him that she has organized a job for him next week with an uncle. It will be hard work and then he will be sorry.”
Elly didn’t seem to care and her grandparents really didn’t seem shocked by such childish behaviour from an adult. Elly’s Granny just kept looking at me and half smiling. In a bar I’d have sworn she was coming on to me.
“What do they think about the baby?” I asked.
“I haven’t told them yet.” She said.
I pulled out our little astronaut’s mug-shot and waved it at Elly. She instantly called her Mum back into the room took the snap and showed it around. Her Mum and Gran burst into tears and her Granddad who had been giving me the stink eye pulled me in for a rib busting hug.
“That went well. I told you they’d love me.” I said smugly when we were alone in her bedroom.
“You still have to stay in the other room tonight.”
I laughed it off and cuddled up to her until she fell asleep.
The next day she took me to a local lake which I imagined was where the local kids got all Dawson’s Creek. It was nice and even though every place you’ll ever visit has a special little spot, they all have their own charm. I could also equate the dangers of this place to the quarry lagoon back in Bradford from my childhood.
It is almost a certainty that once the local youths started to experiment with each other’s bodies, they would find a way to drink alcohol. Young sex, drunken antics and a large body of water don’t mix that well after dark. There would have been tragic stories, in the UK that would have meant reefs of flowers for those lost too soon, too tragically. Too stupidly if we are honest but that’s what being young is, once you survive the stupidity we call it maturity or wisdom.
Surviving being stupid, that is the challenge of youth.
What is the challenge of adulthood? Am still figuring all that out.
Marvin jumped into the same lake later that day breaking his ankle and thus preventing him from having to go to work. Maybe he was older than me but he sure as fuck was dumb. He might of meant to do it or not but the result doesn’t consider the intention.
I wasn’t a doctor though and I doubted that he really had broken his ankle, it was more than likely a work shy excuse. He probably sat around with his underage girlfriend, plying her with drink and concocting his story while biding his time until he copped a cheap feel in the ‘romantic’ moonlit setting.
Young love, another idiotic thing we must all survive.