The train from Warsawa Centralna first crosses the Vistula river through Praga district and then swings south past the village suburbs of Swider and Srodborow, slowly moving across the flat plain of Mazovia that surrounds the capital. ‘Not the most attractive of landscapes’ is how many guide books describe it. A few hours later, on the other side of the Kampinoska forest, after dark we arrive in Lublin. A city of over 350,000 inhabitants, centuries old, site of the Union of Poland and Lithuania in 1569, which many contemporary observers cite as the medieval model of the contemporary European Economic Union, proposing as it did a ‘cooperation based on respecting the identity of those peoples and nations and preserving their ethic, cultural and religious features.’
The pungent smell in the air outside the station comes from the beet factory nearby. Further along the road is the Polmos vodka factory, which we will visit. We stay in a block of flats near the Avenue of the Legionnaires, not far from the Catholic University. These blocks are four or five stories tall, constructed during the post-war communist building programmes, laid out in rectangles with large inner courtyards, an oasis of flowers and trees, with a playground and sandpit. This is a typical family flat of the time, two rooms, with a kitchen and small bathroom. Personal social space was limited in Soviet times. It seems rather cosy now. The floors are parquet, the walls are plain, decorated with small reproductions of popular pastoral and romantic paintings. The kitchen overlooks the inner courtyard and outside the window is a chestnut tree, planted by her Grandfather and her Father, some fifty years ago. Imagine what it is like to be in one place for such a long time, and see something grow, she says. We are so transient and fluid now, moving on, dissatisfied, restless.
The living room (which also doubles as bedroom) looks out onto the road and newer higher curvaceous apartment blocks. There is a small balcony, usually bedecked with flower pots. Here Grandmother grew parsley in the summer and in winter she moved the plants into the warmth of the kitchen. Here Grandfather came home from work in the car factory. Here there used to be an orchard, now built upon, an orchard of yellow fruit the name of which she cannot say in English, too bitter to eat from the tree but which made good jam. Grandmother used to say, “Let’s go visit the drunkards…” because this is where you would find people drinking all day long. And here her Aunt would take her for secret ice creams, because Grandmother said ice cream gave her a sore throat. It is the funeral of this Aunt today, an actress of some note who visited the capitals of Europe. Tears are shed, memories are shared. She is not forgotten.
This Aunt is buried in the wooded cemetery on Ulica Lipowa. Here is also the resting place of both her Grandmother and Father. The names of her Grandfather and her Mother and their birth dates are already inscribed on the tomb, awaiting final reckoning. The cemetery offers a particular historical portrait. Some gravestones have Cyrillic lettering dating from Tsarist times and there is an Orthodox section with a Byzantine chapel undergoing restoration (as are many parts of the graveyard). There are wartime graves from the First World War, of unknown Polish and Austrian soldiers, and Polish and Russian soldiers from 1939-45. I notice that many of the Russian ‘liberators’ were not so young, many on their late thirties and early forties. To one side is a section of plain headstones, those of Party members who wanted an atheist burial. There is a modern shopping centre by the graveyard, the air conditioning units breaking our contemplative silence.
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