‘To further US–Polish understanding,’ he said without a flicker of self-mockery. ‘Maybe you’d consider writing an endorsement to go on the jacket?’
The three ‘Right hipsters’ – as they called themselves with only half a smile – seemed at ease in their new skin, relaxed after another day’s battle with pesky bogeymen. No mention was made of the independent journalists and programme makers who’d lost their jobs to make way for them, fired on the pretext of ‘violating the interests of the nation’. No responsibility would be taken for the disaster that they were bringing on the country.
Over battered calamares, our conversation turned from politics to books, football (deputy controller Mateusz supported Lechia Gdańsk) and – inevitably – Smolensk. I told them that the film’s producer, Maciej Pawlicki – who I’d met earlier that day – had said that the crash was ‘the most important event in modern Polish history, for better or for worse’.
Janek nodded in agreement. ‘In fact there are two tragedies: the crash itself and its treatment by the Left,’ he said.
‘Absolutely correct,’ confirmed Mateusz. ‘It wasn’t the accident that changed me but the opposition’s disrespect of its victims.’
He went on to explain that, within weeks of the tragedy, an opposition marcher had carried a banner through central Warsaw declaring: ‘One duck down, one more to go.’ (The root of the name Kaczyński is kaczka, the Polish word for duck.)
I pointed out that I’d heard the same story but could find no proof of it, apart from a rash of offensive memes online.
‘It convinced me,’ replied Mateusz.
‘But it could be fake news.’
‘If it’s not true, it should be,’ said the American.
All three of them truly believed that the Smolensk crash had been orchestrated – or at least abetted – on Moscow’s orders, either by planting a bomb on the aircraft or by air-traffic controllers misleading the pilot.
‘There is no doubt that the Kremlin wanted to be rid of the president because he was anti-Russian,’ said Janek, pouring out the last of the wine. ‘They created a fog within a fog.’
Quick-fire arguments then unfolded on destroyed and corrupted evidence as well as sealed coffins and the aircraft’s black boxes. Once again I had no time to confirm or contest their facts, and no one was able to explain to me why the government hadn’t released the recording of the last mobile phone call between the twins. I felt mobbed, overwhelmed by so much detail and so many rumours that, come the end of evening, I returned to fundamentals.
‘Do you fear Poland becoming a one-party state?’ I asked them.
‘The real question is, do we need an opposition?’ replied the American, almost impressive in his complete sincerity. ‘There are such diverse opinions in the PiS.’
‘And what about the party’s tolerance of the far right?’ I said, thinking of Kryśka and the Independence Day march.
‘Our strength keeps them out of power.’
‘As in Berlin in 1933?’
As we spoke I began to imagine a time – a society – without any agreed or verifiable forms of the truth. I asked if they knew that Tomáš Masaryk, the first president of independent Czechoslovakia, had likened democracy to a discussion, with the warning that ‘a real discussion is possible only if people trust each other and if they try fairly to find the truth’. I don’t think they bothered to listen to me. Certainly, I wasn’t going to change them, no matter what I said. I bought neither their vision of ‘licensed’ journalists nor an agenda set by ‘the people’ (meaning their people). I felt an unbearable sorrow.
We finished the octopus and sparred with exaggerated civility over the remaining gambas. I took a last mouthful of the Gruaud Larose. Janek called for the bill then turned to me to say, ‘Next time you are in Poland, let me know if there’s anything you want. Anything at all.’
I didn’t pay for the meal. In fact, no one seemed to pay for it. The ‘Right hipsters’ chatted to the owner of the wine bar and clapped him on the back. Janek the network boss then headed to a vodka bar to meet his girlfriend. Deputy-controller Mateusz threw on his bomber jacket and went off to a football match. The American gave me his business card (with a parliament address) and offered again to look at my manuscript. When I declined, he advised me not to use their real names in the text, adding for dramatic effect: ‘This meeting never happened.’
I walked back to my hotel alone, looking over my shoulder, in no doubt that the devil drinks vintage Bordeaux.
30
Dementia
I woke to peals of bells, ringing from St Mary’s gothic tower, tinkling above the ochre-domed Royal Chapel, chiming in St Katherine’s fifty-bell carillon. The Old Town Hall clock beat out the patriots’ anthem as Adam and Eve tolled the hour on the basilica’s fifteenth-century astronomical timepiece. I didn’t need my alarm.
I was back on the Baltic, a thin sea drizzle washing across the mullion window, softening my view of slender steeples and red-brick city walls. My room under the eaves was small, the bed large. I planned to take a few days to wander Gdańsk’s Royal Way, to linger over coffee at the old port, to avoid argument.
My morning started well enough, over an idle breakfast of scrambled eggs, fried kielbasa sausage and potato cakes. My hosts were an elderly couple, retired teachers who rented out a spare room to augment their pensions. He refilled my coffee cup as she came in from the small back garden to arrange another vase of fresh flowers on the table.
‘Thank you,’ I said. Already there were four bunches set out before me.
Her husband said ‘That’s enough now, kotku,’ but she seemed not to hear him and turned back into the drizzle.
‘I grow them and she picks them,’ he sighed. ‘Then she forgets what she’s done. It goes right out of her head.’
I watched with a strange fascination as the woman pinched off the last of the morning’s fresh blooms, arranging them carefully in her hand. Her movements reminded me of an animal following its daily routine. When she had finished not a single flower was left in their pocket-sized garden.
‘Oh, did I do these?’ said the woman when she returned indoors and saw the vases. ‘Why is my hair wet?’ she asked her husband. When she noticed me she said, ‘Who are you? Who do you belong to?’
Her husband explained that I was a guest and that I was travelling alone.
‘Then I must get you some flowers,’ she said and went outdoors.
‘Sometimes she even forgets my name,’ he told me as if to share his pain. ‘She lays out bread and cheese for our son, saying he’ll want a snack when he comes home after his shift.’ He paused then added, ‘Our son moved to Australia twenty-five years ago.’ The man looked out of the window at his wife, now picking leaves. ‘What do we have if we don’t have memories?’ he asked.
Gdańsk, once the largest and wealthiest city of Poland, revealed itself in faux medieval lanes, fake princely gates and flagstone squares ringed by gabled merchant’s houses reminiscent of Amsterdam. Its Renaissance doorways were capped with marriage stones and lintels carved with knights and sea serpents. Its salty air echoed with seagull cries and the rattle of wheeled suitcases on cobbles. Its restored Upland Gate had been embellished with three heraldic crests: Russian angel, Prussian unicorn and the lions of Gdańsk. Across the centuries, armies and occupiers had ebbed and flowed through the city, as they had all around the Baltic. Pomerelian dukes, Hanseatic traders and Nazi Gauleiter had all left their mark, until the Red Army washed them all away. Its ruined centre was rebuilt after the war, including St Mary’s, one of the largest brick churches in the world. I climbed its massive tower, past its bells ‘Gratia Dei’ and ‘Ave Maria’, to gaze down on a picture-perfect cityscape of ersatz Flemish courtyards and Italianate facades, and caught sight of the real Gdańsk.