Wielkanoc

The red-eye from Kraków to Bytów proved a long, dark, cold ride, though hardly epic. The bus was less than adequately heated for its second leg, and this winter has lingered too frostily. We stopped often, in Katowice, Częstochowa, Łódż, Toruń, among half a dozen smaller cities, almost every hour or so to smoke cigarettes and pee. Our entry into Toruń over the Wisła offered the only striking scenery, the city walls and towers, the Stare Miasto, lit up like a stage set or a post-card. Otherwise, we made essentially a night haul through the crumbling and tattooed infrastructure of the as yet unfullyrecovered post-Communist economy. Somewhere about midway, in the scramble to change buses—and my desire not be left in the middle of Poland in the middle of the night—I abandoned my handbook of Polish verbs on the seat, along with a tablet of crib sheets of useful phrases. Kurtka na wacie! Perhaps there are Poles who can make use of them. My cousins here in Sulęczyno confirm that even Poles could use a primer from time to time. As we teach one another our respective languages, they wince and apologize for the challenges of their native tongue, and praise me, unduly, not for achievement, but mostly for trying at all.

It being Holy Week, I’ve spent long hours in church, here in Sulęczyno, Święty Trójca, a church of the “Holy Trinity.” The entire town streams thereunto and packs the place, such that the seating seems profoundly insufficient, and I begin to sense what it means to live in a one church town and a largely one religion country. The “late-comers” arrive and fill the aisles till about mid-church, kind of like during the playoffs, and Agata remarks that attendance seems down this year. While my liturgical Polish is improving, glacially—the glaciers are moving more readily these days—my faith remains about the same, that is to say, appreciative of the myth and the tradition, but not the theology or the institution. If blasphemous, it seems less egregious, at least to me, if you don’t fully understand the surface language, as opposed to understanding completely and not really believing. (Today at table, my cousins related the inverse challenge of living in Polish monotheism. Apparently, on their visit to the United States some years ago—I had not heard this story—missing a particular Mass time and assuming that Masses would be offered more or less on the hour almost every hour, and every church a Catholic church, they walked themselves into a 1:00 p.m. Baptist service, Baptistów. Oh, man.)

Easter dinner, obiad, we spent at the home of one of Krzysztof’s children, u Kasii i Roberta. The meal proceeded perfectly, around a table the entire afternoon and into the evening, except for a brief walk, na spacer. Food, drink, family, talk, non-stop, most of which I did not comprehend, words and phrases, here and there, but the non-comprehension around the table felt profoundly more comfortable than the non-comprehension in church. The vodka and the krupnik, rather a lot really, no doubt had something to do with it, but it was, is, and ever shall be much easier to believe in family than in church. While eating my first dessert, a sweet creation of whipped cream, divinity, and fruit, I happened to turn my spoon in my mouth as I am wont to do, so that it emerged convex up, tongue discreetly sweeping the smooth concavity below. Elżbieta burst into the eurekaeic laughter of theory confirmation. Apparently, this habit is inborn/imprinted among the Borowiczowie. I had thought it was merely a savvy way of keeping one’s moustache clean, which would explain, as well, the phenomenon with regard to Krzysztof. However, Elżbieta reported having observed this gesture on the part of Krzysztof’s sister. I did not ask the obvious, but rather, accepted Elżbieta’s truth, not because it’s been scientifically verified, but because, well, why not? and I love Elżbieta.