Lessons in Eating Soup
Melanie Grabowski
Copyright Melanie Grabowski 2014
Cover image, Lonely Swing, is Copyright 2009 Looseends and made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic licence. The image has been resized from the original and text has been added.
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I am a refugee in an attic. Milky light spills in through a small window. I squat beside it on a footstool, keeping watch on the street below. I spy on the soldiers in stiff green uniforms, wearing rifles like handbags. They loiter, smoke tobacco, and smile at young ladies coming home from mass. Some of the women smile in return. But most, like Mama, look down at the cobbles and hurry on, past the Babcias sweeping their steps. Soon Mama will walk into our hall and see the crate next to the cellar; then she will come looking for me. The clothes of ten families are pegged between crumbling walls like the ragged sails of a deserted ship. Hanging amongst them is a flag of the brightest colours; my jumper, a souvenir of the World Cup ’82. It came from Spain, from my Tata, when he was a refugee in an attic just like me. When it arrived it swallowed me like one of his hugs. Now I want to wear it every day before the hug shrinks and I can no longer feel it.
‘Krystyna! Krystyna!’
I press my face to the glass. Mrs Kowalska is jiggling across the street.
‘Krystyna … your husband … he is calling!’
Mrs Kowalska’s flat is the only one in the street with a telephone. When my Tata calls from Australia, she is like a siren going berserk. I scuttle underneath the washing until I can stand at the door and I race down the three flights of steps. At the bottom I run into Mrs Kowalska, bent over herself, hands on knees, catching her breath. Mama is already striding across the street towards the grey block opposite ours.
‘Mama! Can I come?’
‘No Michal. Stay here.’ She waves her arm, does not even look at me. I kick a stone into the road; I want to talk to my Tata.
‘Go on Michal, go inside and wash for supper.’ Mrs Kowalska ushers me into our entrance hall. I look back at all the heads perched on window sills, eyes like birds, watching everything.
The hall in our block is concrete, dented and chipped and falling apart, the same as all the others. The steps to the upper floors are curved and smooth in the centre after a hundred years of heavy feet. The men stumble in at curfew and piss on them, singing loud and cursing louder, and the stench can never be washed away. The women come out attacking it with buckets of soapy water and scrubbing brushes, down on their tired hands and knees. I do not know why; it will only be pissed on again.
Babcia looms over the stove tasting the rosół. She screws up her face and throws in more pinches of dill and salt. Sundays is always rosół. It is like art. It takes hours to cook; if it boils, forget it. On Sundays in Poland, chicken soup is as important as breath.
‘Where have you been Michal? The potatoes are waiting.’
I think of the tunnels and doors and the damp of the cellar, with its tiny light bulb suspended like a deflated yellow balloon. My stomach plummets.
‘Can somebody else take them down?’
‘Who else? This is a job for a man! And do you see another man here?’ Babcia swipes her hand across the back of my head. I am not quick enough. She never misses. ‘Now wash up. Supper is ready.’ Everyone knows my Babcia is a sour old goat, but her soup is the best in the block, and for that she has many friends.
‘Here, proszę. Take this to your sister.’ Babcia pushes a bowl into my hands. Emilja waits at the table. I lower the soup carefully in front of her but some of it sloshes over; a spreading yellow stain appears on the Sunday cloth. My sister purses her lips and frowns at me, curls bouncing, hands on hips; the little princesska.
The door opens; Mama is back. She takes the bowl from Babcia and joins us.
‘Everything okay Krystyna?’
‘Tak. Yes. Everything is okay.’
‘Good. Sit. Let’s eat. I don’t stand at the stove all day for the fun.’ Babcia is like wind, swishing between kitchen top and table with cutlery and sauces and salt and pepper. She spies the stain. The wind stops. ‘Who did this?’
Emilja points to me, with a smirk only I can see.
‘Not only lazy but clumsy too? What is the matter, huh?’ Babcia shakes her head at me, tut-tut.
‘Mama, leave him alone.’
‘Agh, Krystyna.’ Babcia waves her hand in the air. ‘You are too soft.’
‘How is Tata? What did he say?’ I ask.
‘He is well. He has work. And a room. I have the address; you can write him a letter.’ She smiles at us. She works hard for that smile. It does not last long on her face.
‘When will we see him Mama?’
‘I don’t know Emilja. We still wait.’ My sister sighs and droops. I narrow my eyes at Mama.
‘Did he ask about us?’
‘Of course. Doesn’t he always?’
‘Why can’t we speak to him?’
‘There is not enough time.’ Mama picks up her spoon and points it at me. ‘Take the sulk from your face Michal. He sends his love. And he said for you to be careful at the lake.’
‘There is no ice yet.’
‘Be careful anyway.’ Mama ends the conversation with a mouthful of soup.
‘Babcia, what will you do when we go to live with Tata?’ Emilja asks.
‘Ha! What will I do? I will eat my supper in peace! Do not worry about me, kochanie, sweetheart.’ Babcia pats my sister’s hand. ‘Now. Eat.’
After that there is nothing, only the tick of the clock, spoons against china, and a symphony of slurps from the four of us.
Later, when the sitting room has turned into beds, I keep watch at the window. Above the rynek, the moon hangs heavy like a forgotten bauble on a Christmas tree, falling onto the church. The shard of white light it sends through the curtains lands on Mama’s eyes.
‘What are you doing Michal?’
‘Just looking.’
‘At what?’
Outside the air rumbles. On the far side of the rynek, in between prisms of dark grey, there are glimpses of tanks, crawling through streets like giant insects. Then, out of the quiet comes a song. It is the same song my Tata used to sing with Vodka in his hand. The voice stumbles from the shadows and trips on a kerb. Two soldiers appear, boots pounding like heartbeats against the cobbles.
‘Old Man! Is that you again?’ The drunken singer is dragged to his feet. The soldier’s laughter is drowned out by a passing coach. It is the one returning from Germany, empty as always. It takes Tata’s on daytrips, and does not bring them back.
‘Come to sleep Michal. It is late.’ Mama lifts the covers. I climb into bed beside my sister; Mama’s hand rests on my back. The night is cold. The sky whispers of coming snow. Between shadows I see Mama’s plait lying like a rope across her pillow. From behind the brown curtain Babcia is speaking her dreams, and slowly I fall into mine.
After breakfast I wait by the lake for Ania. The old bunker crouches like a concrete monster behind the frail brown bones of trees. I was right about the snow. I catch flakes on my tongue and in my hands but they do not last. The bank is littered with pebbles. I kick around for a flat one and skim it across the water. Something heavy thumps me in the back. I turn to see Ania.
‘Why do you still wear that silly jumper? It is too small.’
‘It is not silly. I like it.’ I pick up the cone and throw it back; i
t misses and rolls to rest in between the roots of an oak.
‘I found something.’ Ania grins and digs in her pocket. She pulls out a handful of sweets.
‘Kruwka!’ I take one and rip off the yellow wrapping. The fudge melts on my tongue like the snow. ‘My Tata called yesterday.’
‘So?’
‘Soon we will go.’
‘You have been saying that for two years. You will never go.’
‘Stop it!’
Ania shrugs, and shoves another kruwka into her mouth. ‘You won’t like it you know, in Australia.’
‘Why not?’
‘Everything is different.’
‘What is different?’
‘It never snows.’
‘What about winter?’
‘Not even then.’ Ania chooses a stone from the ground and sends it skipping over the water. ‘And at Christmas, it is hot. Can you imagine that Michy?’
I try, and shake my head.
‘There are sharks too.’
‘So what? I cannot swim.’
Ania looks at me and her face softens. She offers me another sweet. ‘But in the shops, the shelves are always full. You can even buy chocolate. And soup.’
‘Soup?’ I slip on the bank and my stone plops like a lemon into the water.
‘Yes. In tins. It is so thick it sticks to your spoon like mud!’
I screw up my nose. ‘How do you know so much?’
‘My cousin. He sends letters.’ Ania climbs up onto the branch that dips towards the water like a broken arm. She watches me flunk my last stone. ‘Know any English Michy?’
I shrug and shake my head.