Max by Alex Miller

Author:Alex Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 2020-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

FRAGMENT 13

Two beautiful cows

IN THE COOL MORNING, we took the train from Wrocław to Bolesławiec through the peaceful countryside of Silesia, a brief stop at Legnica on the way. Wreaths of mist lay along the grooves of the landscape, arable fields and a few head of cattle. The impression of Lower Silesia I’d retained from Max’s stories was of a dark wintry industrial landscape populated by hungry factory workers longing for a socialist revolution which would liberate them from poverty and the cruel oppression of their masters. The landscape we travelled through was of another order altogether. Lower Silesia was peaceful, rural countryside, a place of sunlit fields in lovely springtime, the days innocent of turmoil, the cattle so content they were half asleep and could barely rouse themselves to turn their heads and look at us as we went by. I didn’t see even the ruined remains of what might have been in Max’s time a factory from the industrial age.

I was leaving Wrocław with the powerful impression of a deep silence hanging over the landscape, a profound sense of absence, of something missing that I had not felt when we first arrived. An image of Olek was in my mind, walking alone along the broad empty night street of his town, a solitary figure, his kippah firmly in place, his persistence a quiet act of heroism.

~

Dorota and Jacek, old friends already, were waiting for us on the platform at Bolesławiec. As Jacek drove us along narrow country roads and up steep hills into the Karkonosze mountain range, accompanied by Dorota’s running commentary, I gazed out the window of the car in a kind of daze. According to the names of the towns and villages, we were in a Slavic country, yet the architecture of castles and farms and the general layout of villages was German. Silesia, or that part of it we visited with Dorota and Jacek, reminded me of Thuringia in central Germany, where we had walked in the beech forest—the German name of which, Buchenwald, reminded me of the death camp of the same name. The language here, though, was Polish, as were the lavish displays of cakes. The Poles evidently love cake! In fact, during the whole of our time in Wrocław, the only person we met who spoke German was our landlord—the returnee, as he styled himself, a German believing he could justly claim a place in Wrocław. And he may have been right about this. I don’t know. People will believe what they wish to believe. The truth rarely has anything to do with the necessity of belief.

When I began to write up my notes after we got home, I soon found I hadn’t made enough detailed observations of Silesia to write about it with conviction. I wrote to Dorota and asked for her memories of the two days we’d spent together. She replied the following day:

On Saturday we picked you up from the station in Bolesławiec and probably went straight to the pottery shop, from where we drove to Castle Kliczków, north of Bolesławiec.

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