Vodka and Apple Juice by Jay Martin

Author:Jay Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fremantle Press
Published: 2018-09-04T16:00:00+00:00

ZIMA – WINTER

Between Christmas and the new year, Tom and I got away for a week in the Swiss Alps. Basing ourselves in a mountain retreat not far from Lac Leman, we skied each morning into France for a snack of hot chocolat and crèpes, and skied back into Switzerland for mulled wine and fondue. My excitement at crossing a border on a train was nothing compared to this! The slopes were better than anything we’d ever experienced, too, but they were unremarkable to the locals and we had them virtually to ourselves. It was certainly more relaxing than last Christmas, spent dealing with Poznan and Tom’s parents. Or, for that matter, our mid-summer’s dash over the continent.

We returned to Warsaw to find that winter had seized the city with even greater enthusiasm than last year. Temperatures were parked in the mid-twenties. Minus, that is, and that was the maximums. So when Agnieszka (the benevolent’s) parents Witek (the second) and Magda invited us to visit their home just north of Warsaw near the Lomianki forest, it was a struggle to rustle up the enthusiasm to leave the house. Especially when we were told to rug up, which seemed to indicate that we would be doing something outside, which seemed ill-advised.

They greeted us at their door, and we divested ourselves of several kilos of wool and down before entering their home. I accepted Magda’s offer of coffee, although I passed on the homemade cherry liqueur. Ten in the morning was a bit early for me to engage with something that was forty percent alcohol. Although Witek’s ninety-seven-year-old mother appeared, greeted everyone, and downed hers in one.

I didn’t resist, though, when Magda passed around a plate of makowiec, a poppy-seed cake.

‘Foreigners don’t eat our makowiec, Magda,’ Witek’s mother said.

I assured her I loved the Polish cake. The older lady looked skeptical.

Witek’s job with a Polish chemical company had taken them out of Poland for most of the 1980s, and their house was filled with paintings, rugs, ceramics and knickknacks from their time away, spent in places like Yugoslavia, Italy and Austria. They showed us a handful of them, telling us the story behind each; where they’d bought it, what it meant to them. Nothing borrowed from Artbank here.

Now they lived in this cottage by a forest, filled with mementos from a life spent all over the world, their children and grandchildren just down the street – except for one in Australia, should they want to go on a holiday. Although doing so was no mean feat due to the stringent Australian visa requirements for Poles – Agnieszka had told us about the process they’d had to endure to get permission to visit her in Australia, revolving around proving they weren’t planning to stay. Seeing their life here, the fear on Australia’s part seemed ridiculous.

‘Did you read the paper today?’ Witek’s mother asked all of us, as we sat around a large kitchen table, before she launched into a commentary on some recent political events.

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