Today I had to repent my sins to farewell my Great Aunt Stefania. Or so I was told by the bitter priest, as we lingered in the middle of the altar presiding over her coffin. I was also reminded that she was pious, gave money to the church, and generally didn’t move outside of the institution’s good opinion. Through all this naval-gazing, there was not a hint of nostalgia or romance; of the hundreds of revered dinner parties she threw in her gothic mansion. No mention of the fierce intelligence this statuesque, blonde woman possessed; of the real impact she, a Doctor in Radiology, and her husband, a Doctor in something even more impressive, had on their community (outside of the sober Christian values that lay claim to such benevolence). No one understood the secret anxiety I harboured when I was eight, splayed amongst my Leggo-forts in her attic, waiting for the moment she would tear in with a wooden spoon and lament the mess that had befallen her stately home.
It had all been soured when we went to visit her before the service. I was supporting my sobbing grandmother, when some retard in waist-high ADIDAS pants and an Iron Maiden T-shirt burst in on Speed (seriously) and demanded we show our IDs. He was the care-taker, and in Poland, official documents take precedence over tact, romance, life and, obviously, death. Later, the nonchalant pallbearers, perched against the wall and puffing on their cigarettes, assured us, ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be going in a pretty awesome car. A Bentleigh is it, Michal? Yeah, I think so.’
So when some bustling hag, in charge of something, clumsily half-opened the coffin in the middle of the church, assaulting me with a view of late aunt’s waxen hand, I directed all my grievances into a locked gaze with the priest, making him understand that I reviled everything that he stood for . It wasn’t his fault, or that of Catholicism, but it was easy to just blame him. If he picked up, I’m sure he would have appreciated my logic.
And now, my mum, my dad, my uncle and I are all sitting in the annex of the house, surrounded by the thick greenery she nurtured for so long. We’re having a jolly good time. Especially my mum and her brother who are, apparently obliviously, carrying out an animated conversation through a closed window. There is a slightly hysterical undercurrent, as the will is lying nearby, and no one knows what to do with a rambling old house in the middle of nowhere, suddenly now in their possession. Unable to acknowledge the house and its emptiness, we end up breaking the matter into constitutents. Maybe it could be a summer house? Maybe we could lease it? Who needs a fridge? No one wants to think of the tomato plants dying, of the ivy enclosing in on the shutters, or of the clinking and clanking of the pipes that no one will be here to hear.
But for me, closure will come quickly by way of yet another train journey. The locomotive’s arrival on the continent, the world and in literature, was resented for its assault on time and space. I must be arrested in the late nineteenth century, because I quite enjoy the gentle chugging of the Polish regional trains, as they struggle to cover five-hundred kilometres in ten hours. I endure all sorts of minor inconveniences like, sweaty armpits, chain-smoking men with slicked hair, nuns and direct sunlight filtered by greased-streaked windows. Instead, I doze, read Arendt in Polish, and smile gaily at all the commuters being elbowed by fat people. And tomorrow, I’ll do similarly, as I am slowly bundled back to Warsaw. Or as I like to think of it...a drawn out farewell.
