Prelude
by Edouard Karnicki
Summer after summer we would stay out late, playing in the sand-dunes deep into the evening. We almost convinced ourselves that those long warm days in the Baltic would never end but end they did eventually - reluctantly - giving way to cooler weather. Our childhood holidays, which always coincided with these lingering, magical days would themselves eventually - reluctantly - end too: giving way to the years of formal schooling and then the hustle and bustle of making our way in life.
Pawel, my cousin, Wanda my sister and me. That was our gang. Pawel had been orphaned at the age of five and my parents raised him uncomplainingly. “Poor Pawel”, they used to say. Poor Pawel indeed. Wanda would come with us. Not yet beautiful, but long legged, gawky and always thoughtful. I saw Pawel watching her. When she disappeared down the far side, leaving strangely enlarged series of footprints in the dry sand, he stood for a while gazing silently after her. Poor Pawel.
The light in that northern latitude had a delicate purity as if it had been etiolated by the warm drawn out days. I knew little of the torpid, over ripe sun of the tropics, where the lack of any variation across the seasons seemed to imbue the light with a fierce intensity, or so I childishly imagined. All I had to go on was pictures in a childrens' encyclopaedia, views of an African coast, fringed with thick palm trees.
The coast near Danzig where we played was my childhood kingdom. I loved its dunes, its sudden stands of pine bent gracefully away from the sea by prevailing winds and its pungent, gnarled juniper. I mapped it lovingly with Indian ink on thick paper, tracing the hills and complex inlets, noting how their shapes changed when a surge was driven in from the North. I drew continuous lines to indicate the shoreline and dotted ones to show where dunes started to rise from the beach. I wrote keys and fashioned my own stamps to authenticate the accuracy of my charts. I marked where birds nested and the tracks of wolves which came down to the shore at night. I printed, in tiny capitals, the different sorts of vegetation that could be found; fescue grass, reeds, samphire. This childhood landscape that I recorded for myself in elegant monochrome is still more vivid to me than the many exotic and vivid places I have visited since. It has permeated my consciousness like some half-remembered dream.
Sometimes we headed inland, following a mossy track out of the dunes into flat marshy fields behind. I always used to turn round at the same point on this walk to check that the sea was out of sight. It gave me a strange pleasure to be parted from the grey, calm waters I loved because I knew how soon I would see them again. Not like the time each autumn when, the weather having already broken, we left my parents’ chalet at the end of the holidays. The sense of melancholy was palpable as we took our last glimpse of the sea and the sands for another year. Pawel would be tearful, associating in a strange way this annual departure with his childhood loss. Poor Pawel. It was so different from our spring time arrival. As we approached the coast my father used to call out, “Five zloty for the first person to see the sea!” There was a sort of joy in this.
We walked inland to visit a deserted village and found abandoned wooden houses, interior walls exposed to the elements, chimneys choked with storks' nests. I remember standing in a roofless house and looking up to see a chevron of migrating cranes cut across the clear blue sky. Hawks circled above the nearby meadows. There was a tiny church with thick walls, its roof still sound. Inside, piles of Bibles and musty hymn books, the smell of mildew. A wooden panel on the wall housed the numbered cards of the hymns to be sung. A set of these was still in place and legible. 12, 41, 64, 80:STAROZYTNY (ancient).
Underfoot in the village, things were less picturesque. Rotten floorboards gave way to damp cellars. Piles of rubbish were being transmuted into compost by ants and flies. But we loved the place, its mystery and its menace. I asked my father about it and why it was deserted. He seemed non-committal, evasive. Eventually he spoke of a community of heretic Christians being expelled by zealous Catholics. Apparently you could still see some of them in worn home-made clothes and wide brimmed hats selling wooden carvings of Biblical scenes in Konigsberg. Father advised us not to go back to the village. We did of course, again and again.
One time we took a turning down a street we had not explored and came across a house that looked as if it might have been owned by one of the wealthier members of the community. The steps to the veranda and front door were blocked by thistles so we climbed in through a ground floor window at the side. Its elegant architrave was covered in ivy as if placed there by an interior designer.
Then we saw him. An old man working on a vegetable patch by the house. He had a dusky face and a gap toothed smile which put us at ease. He did not seem surprised to see us in the slightest.
“Children!” His voice was sibilant, mellifluous.
“I've been expecting you . . . come, come . . . this is my potager . . . the house protects it from winter storms. I can produce enough vegetables to eat all year round and I know how to fish and where to collect gulls’ eggs . . .”
He pulled three radishes and gave them to us. They were crunchy and fiery to the taste.
“Now that you’re here, we can begin . . .”
So started one of the strangest episodes in our childhood. He took up a trowel in one hand, threw it in the air, and caught in his other hand - as a potato. He smiled. We laughed. Then he took an egg in one hand, threw it in the air and caught in his other hand - as a fish. It was amusing for us children, the sort of tricks someone might do at a party.
“Come back tomorrow and I'll show you some more . . .”
“What is your name?”
“Call me Waldemar, Waldemar Filtro de Reszke[1].”
Everyday we returned and everyday he showed us new tricks. Each one more dramatic than the last - a handful of earth became a bunch of flowers, a harmonica, a spade, and so he progressed in his tricks well beyond the conventions of party magic and beyond our comprehension of what was happening. But we kept on returning, not just because it was fascinating but because we knew Waldemar was completely unthreatening. He was in way spiritual, or he seemed to be.
One morning we pitched up and he told us it was time for us to try. He gave me the rag he used to clean his tools.
“Now Edouard, think, and then let it happen, but don’t try. Throw!” He gave a little flourish.
I did what he said and caught in my other hand – as a red pepper.
“Bravo!” said Waldemar. “Wanda, your turn”.
He gave her a small handful of cold ashes. She threw them up into the air where they seemed to disperse. Opening her other hand she found a large and expensive cigar. We were beginning to get the picture.
What do you call it, this . . . thing?” Pawel asked.
“Reconditioning . . . It happens in nature all the time but in a different time-scale so we don’t really notice. We humans could make reconditioning work for us, it could be the basis of our economy, our life.”
One morning we found Waldemar had brought an old Polish army lorry to the house. Effortlessly he threw it up into the air where it described a slow parabola. At the apex of its climb it released four brightly coloured parachutes, and back down to the ground floated four wheelbarrows ready for action. We ooh-ed and we aah-ed as if at a fireworks display. When we headed back for the chalet Waldemar turned to us:
“Use what you have learned children. Use it. Use it well.”
I noticed that his eyes were full of tears and I did not understand why.
Next morning I did. He was gone. He had left a note:
TO THE CHILDREN: IT'S CALLED RECONDITIONING. THE THING. AU REVOIR LES ENFANTS
We picked vegetables he had left and returned home, sad in a charming sort of way.
So that is the origin of our whole J&K endeavour, taught us by a man we did not know in a village we could not fathom. I can only thank Waldemar for his kindness and wisdom.
“I wonder what became of him,” said Wanda as we drove home from the seaside that autumn.
[1] No relation of Jan Mieczyslaw Reszke known as Jean de Reszke 1850-1925. Major opera star of late 19th century. Premiered lead in l’Africaine by Giacomo Meyerbeer at Royal Opera House Covent Garden 4 June 1888, 36 days before the birth of Giorgio de Chirico in the port of Volos, Greece.
