Cold Sea Stories Read online

  First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Comma Press

  www.commapress.co.uk

  Copyright © remains with the author and translator 2012

  This collection copyright © Comma Press 2012

  All rights reserved.

  First published in Kraków as Opowiečci chłodnego morza by Wydawnictwo Znak, 2008.

  The moral rights of Paweł Huelle to be identified as the Author of this Work, and of Antonia Lloyd-Jones to be identified as the Translator of this Work, have been asserted in accordance with the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This collection is entirely a work of fiction. The characters and incidents portrayed in it are entirely the work of the author’s imagination. The opinions of the author are not those of the publisher.

  The publisher gratefully acknowledges assistance from the Arts Council England.

  This translation has been funded by the Polish Book Institute ©POLAND Translation Program.

  Contents

  Mimesis

  The Bicycle Express

  Depka and Rzepka

  Öland

  Doctor Cheng

  The Fifteen Glasses of Gendarme Polanke

  Abulafia

  The Flight into Egypt

  Franz Carl Weber

  Ukiel

  First Summer

  Afterword: An Interview with Paweł Huelle by Antonia Lloyd-Jones

  About the Author

  Recommended Read

  Mimesis

  I

  SHE LOVED THIS road. The moss that covered the dunes was as soft as a carpet. Pine trees shot skywards on either side, and tall grass whispered in between them. Whenever the sun was hot for more than a few days, there was a strong scent of juniper in this spot, as heavy as pitch. Large and small bushes of it, some with fantastically twisted manes, grew everywhere here, like elves suspended in motion. Entirely different from over there, by the river, where the path kept sinking into a peat bog or muddy clay, and swarms of mosquitoes rose from the alder and osier leaves. And although it was much further to the sea across the dunes, year after year she took this route. Sometimes she came upon a roe deer. Then she would stop for a while, until the animal turned its moist eyes on her, and quickly vanished into the forest. Whereas the wild rabbits and squirrels entirely ignored her, as if they had never known any harm from man. She never ran into Willman here either. Not like by the river, where he used to graze his cattle. There he would bar her way on the narrow path and always recite the same silly little poem:

  Springtime, winter, autumn, summer...

  How’s the lassie going to answer?

  Then he would produce a pine cone, a pebble or a wilted flower from the pocket of his patched-up trousers, and shove his gift under her nose on an outstretched palm. She had to smile at him, take the present and nod, which meant: ‘Oh, what a lovely day it is, Mr Willman’, and then he would let her pass, so close to him that she could smell the odour of his sweat and his nasty, sour breath. One time he handed her a little mole. The creature was dead. Horrified, she had run off through a hazel copse, all the way to the marshes.

  But she wasn’t thinking about Willman now. The forest ended at the edge of the shifting dunes, and from behind the rise she could hear the monotonous roar. This sound always made her feel happy: she quickened her pace, and from the top of the dune, where she could see the sea, she let herself race downwards. Once on the beach, where the waves were licking her feet, she took off her sandals and then, with a quick, decisive movement, her grey dress. Although the water was still cool, she swam for a long time – to the sandbank and back again, as ever.

  By the time she emerged onto the shore, the sun was quite high in the sky. In a few minutes her long, loose hair was dry. With her gaze fixed on the horizon, she sat still on the sand. Far away, above the mouth of the river, cormorants were circling. The summer was beginning. But just as last year, not a single boat had sailed out to sea. Nor had a single plough appeared that spring on the polder between the canals. And yet she felt safe here. She had never found any trace of a human presence on the beach. And it was a long time since any horse and cart had come down the road to the village.

  Maybe that was why the noise she heard behind her frightened her so much? There was a distinct sound of sand grains crunching, coming ever nearer. She stood up, and turning round abruptly, she caught sight of his tall figure. Only a little later, when he stopped a few paces in front of her, did she remember to shield her breasts. When she screamed, he smiled, pointed at her dress and covered his face with both hands, while muttering a strange, incomprehensible sentence. She ran along the shore, splashing her feet in the water. She was out of breath. She fell onto the cold, wet sand. The stranger was approaching, holding her sandals. She wanted to run away again, and leaped to her feet, but just then he blocked her way and said something that she partly understood: if she didn’t help him, death would finally find him here or somewhere else; it would catch up with him and take him to a dreadful place.

  His speech was not like the language of the people from the city. He had a foreign accent, he twisted words, and some of the phrases he used were totally impossible for her to understand. But he no longer inspired fear in her. She made signs to show him that she had been deprived of the gift of speech. She told him to follow her at a safe distance. Not once did she look round behind her. Only next to the van Dorns’ house, which was at the edge of the village, right at the foot of the dunes and the cemetery, did she stop for a moment to check he hadn’t lost her. He was standing hidden behind a pine trunk, afraid to come out onto the road. She turned and showed him that all the houses were empty, even the one next to the chapel, where Willman had spent the winter. He couldn’t, or wouldn’t understand this. He cried that she should give him away at once, for he had no more strength to go on running, and preferred to die here, under the tree, than in the middle of the village, reviled and set upon by dogs. She wasn’t able to explain to him that there weren’t any dogs here any more. And that as long as no lorries appeared, they were safe.

  He sat down, leaning against the pine trunk. He had a beautiful, dusky face. She saw tears rolling down his cheeks from under his closed eyelids. His lips kept on whispering the same sentence, in the language that was nothing like the speech of the people from the city. It was strangely soft and sibilant, and inspired trust. She guessed it was a prayer. When he opened his eyes, she made signs to tell him to wait for her patiently. He followed her small, rapid footsteps, but didn’t even get up from the grass. He watched her disappear around the bend, sending up small white clouds of dust on the sandy road.

  A chevron of cranes cut across the pure blue sky. Far above the meadows, a hawk was calling. No one appeared on the bend or in the yard of the nearest house. But once the sun had started to vanish behind the dunes he saw her, coming back towards him. In the first instant he didn’t recognise her: she was wearing a long, plain dress, her hair was tied back and covered with a linen cap, and on her feet instead of sandals she had some funny, high-laced boots.

  First she laid a small white tablecloth on the grass. Then she took some fritters from her basket, a smoked fish and a bottle of juice. As he ate, ravenously and clumsily, without paying her the least bit of attention, she furtively watched him. He collected every crumb, even off the ground, and sucked them all up. Then he drank. Finally he said something about a hen: it was flying with blood-stained feathers, high, higher and higher. She showed on her fingers that she only had three hens, and that she wouldn’t kill any of them, because in winter there wouldn’t be any fish, or even fritters.

  But no, that wasn’t what he meant. Somewhere in the neighbourhood he had crept up to a fisherman’s cottage and hunted down a hen. But he’d been
afraid to light a fire, and the raw meat he had eaten had poisoned his stomach. He had lain in a hollow, covered by fern leaves. At dawn, probably on the third day, he had heard the distinct roar of the sea. He didn’t want to die in a pit stinking of excrement, bitten by flies and spiders. He had set off across the moss, soft as a carpet, all the way to the last dune, and there, from the top, he had seen her, just as she was emerging from the water.

  The talking exhausted him. He leaned back against the pine trunk again and stared ahead of him, at an indeterminate point. She put the tablecloth and the bottle into the basket again. ‘Follow me,’ she indicated.

  But he was afraid the people whose hen he had stolen were sure to recognise him as the thief. She tried to explain to him that the fisherman’s cottage was far away, not in this village. And it looked completely unlike their houses here, built using the axes of the Lord’s carpenter, according to the rules in the Book. But how was she to convince him? He didn’t even glance at the drawing she sketched with a stick in the sand.

  Sated and distracted, heaven knows what he was thinking about. She threw a pine cone at him. Then he looked at her with eyes dark as coals, which soon, following the way she was pointing, turned towards the orange sphere of the sun. He understood that gesture. Tomorrow, when the sun rose on the far side of the forest, she would come here again, alone.

  After the warm day, the air was settling in invisible layers. Low down, just above the ground, it drew in the cold and the damp. Higher up, a warmer breath of wind was distilling the essences of herbs and grass. Above all hovered the resinous scent of pines, carried from the sea on the evening breeze. By the van Dorns’ house, over which the storks were circling their nest, she felt a touch of anxiety. She thought she had seen the stranger’s face before, in the city. Could she be mistaken? And hadn’t Harmensoon been right, when, in his fiery sermons preceding the breaking of bread, he had spoken of corruption, sin and death, which always came from the cities? Just like the lorries, and the people who carried guns.

  II

  There hadn’t been any candles left for ages. And the stocks of oil she had collected from the houses had to be kept for winter. Meanwhile, although darkness had fallen, the appropriate number of verses had to be read aloud. Otherwise the day would not have its blessing, and as such would come to nothing. In fact it would only be a minor sin, but it was characteristic of sins that once committed, they liked to repeat themselves. If only her father were standing beside her, they wouldn’t have had to light the lamp. He knew the Book almost by heart and could recite the prophets from any point at random. But where was he now? Carefully she lit the wick and read a passage from Isaiah, the one about hidden treasures and secret hiding places. Then, to avoid wasting oil, she snuffed out the lamp and went to bed. But sleep refused to come, even though the day had been ended as it should. An owl was hooting at the Helkes’ house. A mouse was scratching in the wardrobe. A light gust of wind came flying in from the sea and set the branches in the orchard swaying.

  On that day, four years ago, her father had woken her early, before sunrise. They had boarded the van Dorns’ boat, where they sat between barrels of butter and boxes of woven cloth. The journey had taken a long time: first along a canal, then down a river, until at last they had sailed out onto the sea. She remembered the large, grey sail, which tautened in the wind; she remembered the salty taste on her lips and the strange, dark-red colour of the bricks that everything in the city seemed to be made of: houses, warehouses, granaries and churches. The boat was moored at the quay, and Mr van Dorn was to spend the night on it, while she, her father and Rachela went to the house of a woman related to Harmensoon, who received them hospitably. She and Rachela had slept in one room. Next morning her father had taken them to a market, where she had found everything amazing: an electric tram came speeding along the street, there were automobiles hooting like mad, and the people didn’t walk, but ran in all directions, as if they hadn’t any time. At the quay, where dozens of other boats had appeared by now, van Dorn and her father had been busy selling their goods. She and Rachela could wander off a short way, but they weren’t allowed to talk to anyone – man or woman. She remembered that moment well: by a stall, where an old Kashubian woman was touting flounders, someone had touched her arm, and suddenly she heard a warm, familiar voice: ‘Is it you?’

  ‘My God, is that how my sister looks now?’ She was shocked. What would she tell her father? And what if Rachela had seen them?

  But Rachela had vanished into the crowd, her father was helping van Dorn, and her sister, her older sister Hanna, was leading her by the arm, showering her with questions, every few moments kissing her on the cheek and hugging her. She didn’t even look back as they entered a narrow, cobbled alleyway, with horse-drawn carts rumbling along it. Then at some point the sisters had turned into a courtyard and, behind a chestnut tree, next to a cast-iron pump, they had gone through a gate, and up a staircase creaking with age, to the first floor.

  Once in the flat, she had told Hanna about their father’s anger and distress: summoned by Harmensoon, he had stood in the middle of the chapel, and for everyone to hear him, had repeated after the elder the words of expulsion. The women in the gallery had covered their faces, the men had tugged at their hat rims, and then such total silence had fallen that you could hear the wax dripping onto the floor and the moths circling close to the ceiling. It was dreadful. After the service her father hadn’t slept all night, and in the morning, at breakfast, he had said: ‘I only have one daughter now.’

  No one was even allowed to mention Hanna; thoroughly dishonoured, her name had to be forgotten in all the churches, for ever and ever. But she often thought about her. Why had she run away to the city? Was she so very unhappy with them? Was it true that the man with whom she was living in sin was the devil incarnate, like all Lutherans and Catholics? Wasn’t she afraid of the day when the Lord would come? For what she had done He might not resurrect her body, and her soul – damned for centuries – would wander in darkness and never know peace.

  But Hanna wasn’t afraid of anything, least of all Harmensoon’s curses. She said how very happy she was here, where there were so many interesting things going on. Ludwig took her to the cinema, to dances and on outings, and the sin they spoke of was pure lies: she had adopted his faith, let herself be christened and they had been married in church. According to common sense, God was not a Mennonite, a Catholic, a Lutheran, a Methodist or an Orthodox tsar. According to common sense, the rubbish the elders taught in the chapel was nothing but fear of the world, which was changing, which was miraculously racing like mad into an unknown future.

  She should have blocked her ears or run out into the street, she should have warned her sister what dangerous things she was saying, but she hadn’t done that. Hanna looked beautiful, and even the colour on her lips couldn’t change that. And at the same time she could be so loving and so funny. She seated her at the mirror, sat down beside her, took off her cap and let her try on some hats. Then they went out to the city, visited shops, travelled by tram, and in the small garden of a café right by the sea, where the men and women were dressed in white, they drank lemonade.

  ‘Is it a sinful life,’ said Hanna, smiling at her sister, ‘to do what gives you pleasure? You should try it too! You people are still living in the Middle Ages there!’

  Luckily, it hadn’t gone further than words. She hadn’t let herself be talked into going to the cinema. She hadn’t glanced at a single man. And when they went home and Ludwig appeared, she had greeted him as custom demanded: with her head bowed low and her gaze dropped. If her father had seen her at that moment, maybe things would have turned out differently? Maybe his anger wouldn’t have been quite so great? But her father had arrived much later on, when the gramophone was playing tangos and foxtrots, when Ludwig and Hanna were whirling around the room, and there was an odour of cigars and Rhenish wine in the air.

  ‘These people have taken away my daughter,’ he said to the polic
eman. ‘Please start official proceedings!’

  The policeman was distressed. He stood in the doorway, turning his peaked cap in his hands, and clearly didn’t want to step into the blind alley of domestic affairs.

  ‘Is anyone detaining her?’ said Ludwig, drawing up a chair for her father. ‘It’s just a visit to her sister, isn’t it?’

  But her brother-in-law’s question hung in the air like an unnecessary flourish, and so it had remained in her memory for ever after, as had the image of the chair, sitting in the middle of the room and filling that long moment of silence with a sense of patent and utter redundancy.

  The van Dorns’ boat had sailed long ago, and so they had walked to the Vistula Station, down a street that crossed a drawbridge. If only her father had tried to say – without avoiding words of anger – how very upset he was. But he had remained silent throughout the entire journey, and even when they had sat down in an empty carriage on the last train, which trailed across fields flat as a tabletop in the darkness, occasionally jumping a weir or a canal via a narrow little bridge, even when they were sitting so close to each other, staring into the gloom that stretched beyond the window of the puffing, narrow-gauge railway train, not a single word was said. She remembered the lamp swaying on the last carriage as it moved away from the empty little station. And the long sandy road they had walked for several kilometres to reach home.