Our union has endured for fifty-five years, and now we are in our seventies, living happily without regrets, without remorse, without hatred. Our only other love has been the labour of our lands. Working the earth is our passion, our life’s duty. We have grown so many things on our little parcels of land; beetroots, tomatoes, leeks, potatoes. My wife would often take the beets to make me a polish soup called Barszcz. It brought us back to our country; it was a taste of our childhood, a memory of youth. The taste of huge family dinners attended by at least fifty people, when we all knew each other, there in the place where we were born, and grew up, and grew old. Then the taste of wine we drank as we sang, the taste of weddings where we danced on table tops, and funerals where we wept in each other’s arms. There, in Poland, we know what it is to mourn; we know how to lament our dead. Then there was the taste of snow, of frost, of the countryside that remained white for months and the towns that seemed frozen in time. Then there was the taste of our language, that musical tongue we are barely known to utter these days, even amongst ourselves. Still, there wasn’t much money to be made in beetroot. We chose to grow tomatoes instead, thinking they would be something new and pretty to look at. A good tomato is like a still life, shining in your hand like a work of art. They smell of the sun, tomatoes do. My wife would use them to make pies and salads, and my favourite was the stuffed tomatoes. Still, tomatoes can be a bit sad – I always thought they had a taste of sweet water. So we changed again, but we did no better because those leeks, God knows they turned my stomach, they did. My wife tried everything with those leeks, and she was very inventive, she was. She made gratins and fondues and soups. Now, fortunately, we grow potatoes. Ah! My lovely potatoes. Little ugly things they are, that came to us all the way from South America, if you please! I never get tired of them. The French eat over forty kilos to a man every year. Now we live for our spuds: it’s just potatoes, potatoes, potatoes all the long year.
As you’ll recall, we came here from Poland, and made our way to France after the Liberation. The war was a terrible thing, such that you wouldn’t believe it if I told you. So we decided we needed a change of scene, and to pack up our precious memories of Poland and leave the rest behind. We decided never to go back, and to hear no more about it. We’ve been in France twenty years now, and we love this country. Our grandchildren speak the language as well as any of their little amis. They ask us lots of questions about Poland, always talking about their roots. The last time, I tried to tell them about that which we do not speak of, but I had tears in my eyes and the words would not leave my throat, like a leek pie sitting heavy on my stomach. It’s hard to talk about those sorts of things, but one day I suppose I shall have to tell them, because Poland flows ever through my veins, beautiful and terrible like no other. You know, Poland is like a mother to me, a mother who is passed and in her grave. I know she is still beautiful, but no, now she can never be the same again.
Alan Alfredo Geday