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I
I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons, I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror—the wide brown land for me!
Dorothea Mackellar, 1904
1
2nd January 1983
Melbourne, Australia
The kettle whistles as the water passes its boiling point, and my wife is pouring ourherbatatea.One of the many everyday habits that bring peace and contentment to our lives.We like our traditions; the routine of the mundane is something too many take for granted.
She sets down the tea tray on the table between us and sits beside me on the small brushed-steel chair with the bird-print cushion.I watch her every move with interest.How did we find each other?How can love last the way it does?These questions will never have an answer other than fate or divine destiny, I suppose.But can we believe in those things now, in spite of all we’ve been through?Rather, perhaps destiny is proved true because of it.
We sit side by side and sip our tea.She talks about the garden and the hive of native bees she bought at the market to help pollinate her blooming flowers.I nod and interject with thoughts every now and then, but my mind is elsewhere.I’m poring back through the past.The memories slap into me unbidden, like the flap of gull wings in the air when I’m carrying butcher’s paper filled with hot chips across the beach, my feet slipping in the scalding sand.
I close my eyes.
“Jan, you’re crying,” she says in Polish.
My eyes blink open, and I raise a hand to my wet cheeks.
I want to tell her it’s nothing.Not to worry, just a speck in my eye.But she knows.I can’t hide these things from her.
Instead, I reach for her hand and squeeze it, unable to speak.
“We don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” she says gently.
I shake my head and swallow down the lump in my throat.“No, I want to.”I reply in Polish too.I’ve never been very good with languages.She’s much better than me, so we still use our native tongue when we’re alone together.
“It’s important,Doniosly,” she adds with an encouraging nod.
“I know.I don’t think about the past often enough, that’s all.Mama doesn’t talk about it either.But perhaps she should.Perhaps we all should.”
“When it’s pushed down so deep, it hits you here,” she says, her eyes brimming.Uderzenie.She taps her chest softly with two fingertips.
I squeeze her hand again, then reach for my tea and take a sip.“We’ll go.It will be good.Good for Mama and the boys.Good for our friends, to help them see.”
“They don’t know,” she agrees.“They don’t understand.”
“No,” I say.And it’s all that needs to be said.
They can’t possibly understand.They weren’t there, with us.They were here, in this distant land, so far away from it all.They think they know, but they don’t.They want to understand, but they can’t.They still think people are good, like naïve children who’ve never had to face the truth.They are blind.
Evil lurks in human hearts.One can often find goodness in a heart too.But which heart is which?How can anyone determine which of their friends will turn them in with a kiss on the cheek for a few silver coins, and which will give his life to save them?
I’ve lived in this place since 1958, and yet I sometimes still feel like an alien.That’s what they called us when we first came here all those years ago.We were resident aliens.We couldn’t speak the language—we didn’t understand anyone around us.The culture was foreign, the people polite and welcoming, but unknowable to us.We were traumatised and exhausted and didn’t fit in or feel at home for such a long time.But we were happy all the same.Happy because we were finally free and safe.
We’ve raised our family here.I’ve built businesses too, businesses that have thrived and given me the opportunity to get to know the people who live around us in ways I wouldn’t have otherwise.We’ve been protected, loved and happy here.But lately, Poland has been drawing me back in.
My thoughts turn more often these days to the land of my birth, the people I used to know but whom I left behind in the rush and hurry of getting away.People who were so precious to me then, but now are gone.Their voices no more than a whisper in the deep recesses of my mind.
