I’m happy to share with you some excerpts from my books. The first selection comes from the volume ‚Baltic Stories. Precarious Things’, which contains notes from time-travel journeys back to childhood in the 1980s, when we were all small and fragile in the face of the sea, the winter, and history. The second piece is a short story titled ‚Nyja’ from my latest book ‚The North Sea and other stories’. I am very grateful to Anne Crowley for her patient and caring proofreading of all the texts. I hope you’ll find something here that speaks to you.
Anna Aschenbach
from BALTIC STORIES (2020)
4.
As dusk settled, we all gathered on the porch: the grown-ups would carry chairs from the kitchen, while we wrapped ourselves in blankets and sat on the whitewashed steps. Grandma brought us cups brimming with blueberries. We all watched as the sky darkened over the forest. The sea was humming gravely, urging the earth to fall silent. The grown-ups spoke in hushed voices, leaning close to one another, pulling their chairs close. Occasionally, the old fisherman from the little blue house on the cliff would visit us. His hands were worn and rough, one bearing a long scar. He would rest briefly on our steps and tell us his fishing tales, stories that made the skin tingle. Beyond the porch, the world filled with crowds of shadows, blue flickering lights, wandering devils. Out of the waves, sunken cities and enchanted bells emerged; boys found golden coins buried in the earth, and girls roamed the world searching for amber necklaces, unaware they wore them around their necks all along. The fisherman saw all this with his own eyes. Once, on the deck of his small fishing boat, the Virgin Mary appeared and calmed the storm. It was warm and safe beneath the blanket; my eyes slowly closed as the fisherman’s stories quietly drifted into my sleep. We were a tiny lighthouse on the edge of the world, a speck of light against the boundless night rolling in from the forest. Darkness crept up beneath our porch, curling just under the lowest step, but I knew it would come no further. I fell asleep with my head full of amber and underwater songs, my lips stained black from the berries.
6.
That day, on the way to the beach, I was given a tin ring. I immediately showed it to the sea: I stretched out my hand beyond the shoreline and walked forward, turning my palm every which way, the water reflecting silver in the polished face. I wore a swimsuit that Grandma had sewn for me the night before: she had stitched together a white ribbed undershirt with a pair of pale shorts. It was soft and smelled of soap. Beneath the neckline, Grandma had sewn on three red buttons.
We were building a castle. The sea loved this game. I scooped wet sand into my bucket and shaped defensive walls and towers, while the waves arranged themselves into clear arcs around my feet. Only when the roofs were covered with pine needles, and the turrets and bridges studded with pebbles, would the sea rise somewhere in the distance, take a breath, and move toward us. I felt it coming; I stepped back a few paces and watched as the dark gray water swallowed the castle walls. Pine needles and pebbles vanished into the abyss, and we grabbed our little shovels and sieves, rescuing whatever we could. The sea waited patiently, like a well-behaved dog, never disturbing us before the castle was complete.
But that day, Dad showed us how to dig a moat around the castle. I plunged my hands into the sand, gathering handfuls. The sand slipped beneath my nails and stuck to my skin. Sometimes broken shells or seagull feathers rattled in the lumps. We dug deeper and wider until the moat closed in a ring around the castle. Dad carved a narrow channel leading straight to the sea. The sea knew nothing of this; it rose, as always, swelled, and began to flow toward us, but when it reached the shoreline, it sensed that its path had been laid out by another’s will. With disbelief, it slipped into the shallow channel, then into the wide, smooth hollow of the moat. The water circled the castle but no longer had the strength to return to the depths and slowly sank into the sand.
I felt sad, so very sad that we had tricked the sea! I twisted the ring on my finger and looked at the castle that had survived, and at the mournful waves. The wind pressed my hair to my forehead. For a very long moment, nothing happened. Then the sea rose again, a towering wave, rushing to the shore faster than ever before. It flooded the channel and the moat pouring in with great force until the walls cracked and slid away in heavy slabs. Everything was as it had been before—we ran with buckets along the shore, and the sun sank lower, turning our hair a fiery red. It glimmered like a spark in my tin ring as we walked back home along the beach.
The sea would murmur of castles we would build for a long time to come: muddy balustrades, intricate pine-needle tiles, stone mosaics that would crumble in an instant. It whispered with care, so I wouldn’t forget that such is the order of things.
8.
There always came a day when it would call to us, and then we had to go—no matter if the wind carried sharp grains of sand just above the beach’s surface, and the water darkened, gathering into dense folds. Mom would smear dermosan on our cheeks, then gather our hair into white scarves and tie them high in a knot that from afar looked like a sail wrapped around a mast. In her bag, she packed drożdżówki—warm, fragrant yeast buns; we could eat them only halfway along the way, by the stones.
We ran barefoot through the forest in cotton shirts on a path strewn with pine needles and cones, and yellow butterflies. We sensed the trembling, living forest as it listened to the murmur of the sea and it slowly held itself back and diminished so that when we reached the shore, only the pale sand remained beneath our feet.
We set off east from Jastrzębia Góra, along the shimmering quay, the wind gently bending the pines to show us the way. Before us lay a land of carefree days, beyond time and waking, a world of sunny summer adventure. We ran amid the cries of seagulls and scattered shells, while the silvery water made sure our footprints vanished immediately, filling them to the brim, erasing them from memory.
We passed groups of children and their castles, moats, and drawbridges, buckets brimming with treasures. Girls slipped seagull feathers into their braids, and boys stuck muddy shorts on sticks and planted them on fortress roofs like victorious flags. One could leap onto slippery branches that the sea had cast ashore, guessing their story by the lines of knots and cracks. The wind threw handfuls of sand at us. We kept running forward, catching the air in open hands, squinting to keep too much sun from flooding our eyes.
The stones marked the end of our sandy journey. We sat on the damp boulders, clutching the sticky edge of a yeast bun through its paper napkin, holding tight so it wouldn’t slip away. We had to gather strength to enter the forest—over roots, rotting steps, uncertain ground. In the shade of trees, caves opened up; an underground world lurked just beneath the moss’s surface. It was better to be silent, to walk quickly and not look back, staring only at the glimmers of leaves above, far away.
When the lighthouse began to glow red, we started running again, straight into its embrace, into the round windows and the thin railings of terraces—straight into its great solitude. We recognized its wooden door and winding stairs right away, jumped onto the steps, bare feet striking the boards, knowing that it remembered us too, that it had waited. We spoke all at once, shouting over each other: we told it how the sea struck the shore in bright arcs, and how amber held ancient worlds within that could fit in the palm of a hand; and it told us that the light must burn without end, even if only one boat remained on the water, and the stairs were narrow and steep, so we would all learn that uphill, we must always walk alone.
Each year, the path grows shorter, but otherwise, nothing changes: sandcastles have bridges made of sticks and stones; the road to the lighthouse is narrow and steep, and from its highest window, the Hel Peninsula looks exactly as on the school map; in the evening, one has to catch frogs in the street and carry them to safety; the sun sets differently every day, but the water remains warm; swans fly by in pairs; on cloudy days, the lights of ships remind us of distant worlds that, despite the passing years, have not drawn even a mile closer.
from PRECARIOUS THINGS (2020)
CRAYFISH
I have such a love that I can wander wherever I please, in all directions, through every loop of time. I watch him from afar. When he gets lost, I take him with me. Today we are by the Zegrzyński Lake, sitting right on the shore, on fresh grass, with the sweet taste of ptyś* lingering on our tongues. The water is dark and smooth, soft seaweeds tickle our feet. Nearby stands a blue bucket. You can lean over it, you can dip your hand inside. At the bottom of the bucket lie three large mussels and two crayfish. We just pulled them from the lake; our clothes are wet and stained with mud, but we don’t think about that—we are watching the boats. They barely move in this windless dream. We are waiting to see which one will reach the pier first.
Fragments of words drift across the water’s surface, someone’s laughter, the cheerful melody of a summer radio show. We peer into the bucket: the crayfish have hard shells, they are slippery and smell of the deep bottom. The mussels breathe. We slip our fingernails into the seams of their shells; the lids snap open. Those who are afraid touch their bodies with thin sticks, but we stroke them with a finger: they open, grasp it, and try to suck it inside. We laugh and toss them back into the water, right at the shore, watching them sink to the bottom.
At the bottom, you can see clouds, treetops, our childhood faces. Later we get on our bikes, hang the bucket on the handlebars, and ride along the embankment, just moving forward, without a destination, with blades of grass tangled in our hair.
* Ptyś was an orange-and-apple flavoured soft drink that we loved in the 80s.
PATTERNS
Our room had tall windows, behind which clouds drifted by. Grandma sewed curtains so the sun wouldn’t wake us too early, and so our shadows wouldn’t slip out onto the street when, in the evening, we had to light the lamp. They had wooden trains which crossed endless tracts of sandy land with little red trees growing between the tracks.
On the sleeves of Mom’s corduroy dress, matches lined up in little bundles, one after the other—you could trace them with your hand like stairs, and when you jumped over the last match, you were already in Mom’s arms, already grabbing the edge of her collar. On the plates, deep blue apples intertwined with birds, hiding one beneath the other on the branches of an old tree.
On the wall, paper dolls held hands of little clowns, tilting once to the right, then to the left, their paper hats slipping sideways. Above the table, laden camels wandered by, carrying red and green crates on turns. The patterns so desperately wanted to teach our pupils and fingertips, and our calm hearts! They wanted to teach us about themselves.
They stretch onward, through time and space: meeting — parting, home — escape, love — loneliness, alternating and repeating their eternal rhythm with tireless persistence. I know it by heart now. And I know that when I reach the edge of sadness, relief will come again: like a shaft of light after a dark, suffocating night.
THE RAIN
On Corpus Christi Thursday, we walked down Mickiewicz Street, carrying baskets full of fresh flowers, while the wind lifted our white dresses like sails of tiny boats. Daisies adorned our hair. Mighty trees and their shadows bent over us, forming a thick green avenue. On the ground lay chestnut petals, white and pink, and the lightest fluff of poplars. Our sturdy heels clicked against the pavement slabs.
The procession started from the square in front of the church. Sister Halina would line us up in two rows and kept placing her finger to her lips. We watched as clouds gathered in the distance above the park. They would bend into grey folds and hung motionless, brushing the treetops. This was how it was every year. They waited until we joined the procession, until the bells rang, and we set off down the street, scattering long floral carpets on the dark asphalt.
Wooden figures of saints, satin banners, and pennants flowed out of the church gates. Women carried embroidered pillows bearing rosaries, scapulars, and strands of old pearls. At the end came the canopy: a heavy golden canopy, above which rose a cloud of incense smoke and choral singing of a holy and mighty God.
The procession detached itself from the church walls and turned into Feliński Street. We counted our steps in whispers so as not to lose the rhythm. When it was our turn, we stepped into the middle of the line, grabbed handfuls of petals from the wide basket, turned back toward the canopy, bowed to the royal coffer hiding Jesus, and scattered flowers at his feet. Then we fell back into the procession, hands folded in prayer.
About halfway along, just past the bend, the wind picked up. Petals began to lift from the basket, and hair flew into our eyes. Ribbons straightened around painted sculptures like narrow flags. The canopy tilted dangerously to one side, the loudspeaker crackled. It was hard to turn around without breaking the rhythm, but even without looking, we knew the clouds had already broken away from the park and were approaching. It was getting darker.
Altar boys held their robes tight, women placed open palms on their pleated skirts, Sister Halina watched the sky anxiously and loudly counted our steps. The first drops appeared on the dark asphalt, bringing with them the scent of rain. Some had umbrellas, others wore capes or transparent hoods fastened under their chins. Whispers and nudges began. Someone stumbled, someone dropped a ribbon. No one knew how long to pretend nothing was happening. We waited for the first rumble of thunder.
It came from afar but carried a strong gust of wind, suddenly lifting braids, robes, and ribbons. Tiny drops instantly grew into a downpour — a sign to hitch up dresses, slip off shoes, and run.
We ran toward Wilson Square, stopping now and then under balconies or eaves to catch our breath. Water poured from gutters in rushing streams, flowing along curbs we had to leap over. We were soaked from head to toe, laughing loudly because the storm had begun, and it was safe to shout. An elderly lady running beside us laughed the loudest. „Christ the Lord,” she repeated, clutching a handbag in one hand and a piece of newspaper on her festively styled hair in the other.
We jumped through puddles; dark water seeped from loosened pavement slabs, soaking our calves. And if anyone wanted to cry, they could — the rain would wash everything away from their face anyway. It gathered petals and ribbons from the streets. Roses, peonies, jasmine flowed along the roadway like an ancient sacred river.
BOATS
Summer began in the morning chill, under the sun, among pine cones and blueberries. Dad would bring big chunks of bark from the forest, sitting with us on the porch, on the stump of an old pine, on the wooden steps. We watched intently as he pulled a pocketknife from his pocket, opened the longest blade, and began to carve a boat from the rotten wood. The hull barely emerged when, in the distance, the water began to hum: the Baltic Sea, the Vistula, the Narew, the Zegrzyński Lake. It called the little boat from the moment it sensed the spark of its existence.
Dad carved elongated shapes, then slipped a smooth stick into a slit, and we tore a page from a notebook to hang as a sail. Inside, we placed flowers and ran to the shore, following the voice of the boat that wanted to join the water’s songs.
The most beautiful moment was when the boat began to float on a wave. It drifted away from us, and around it appeared fish and crayfish, pearl shells, and green hair of vodniks. Saying farewell to it, we learned to send our dreams out into the world. That’s how summer began, and that’s how it will always begin.
Boats sail, brushing against reeds, soft swan down; dragonflies and butterflies rest on them. Sometimes the wind blows too hard, the boat tips over and sinks.
“What now, Dad?”
“We’ll see, maybe someday it will come out on some foreign shore and continue on.”
We sit by the river, clouds drifting above us, and our dreams wander somewhere over unknown lands — bright, simple, unsinkable.
THE RING
The wind tangled in our hair as we dashed out of the house straight into the dew, the spiderwebs, the remnants of summer dreams. Paths unfurled into thousands of stories, and we threw ourselves into them, lost and wandering until the next bend. We bent twigs and sticks, tying strings or ribbons to their ends so they curved into Indian bows. Slinging them over our shoulders, we ran on. Shelters, boats, crowns — we made them all together, but rings were a girl’s affair.
We plucked wide blades of grass, gripping them firmly at the base and pulling with a sharp tug — otherwise, our fingers would slip upward, and the sharp green edge would leave long scratches on our skin. We tied the grass around our fingers, slipped the heads of daisies or tiny clover leaves beneath. Lifting our hands to the sun, we watched the light filter through the pink gaps between our fingers: the rings became then ancient jewels of mysterious power.
We never saw the grass wither, the flowers fade: the rings slipped off during play, unraveled in water, in the trees, tangled in our clothes. They fell unnoticed to the ground, and we ran on. No dry stems, no photographs, no old promises remained. Sometimes, I still feel a faint touch of emptiness on my finger — a touch that smells like grass.
THE SWING
The swing was a piece of wood tied with a rope at both ends. It hung from a slanting branch of the walnut tree, just as the snowdrops were pushing up from the ground, and clusters of nut flowers weighed down in the spring sunlight like gold. We would run down to the garden, grab the taut ropes, and sit on the narrow plank; the swing didn’t like to hang still—it immediately began to move back and forth, faster and faster, higher and higher. Though the tips of our rain boots touched the damp earth, though we brushed over dry branches, though we shouted loudly into the cold air, nothing could stop its fierce hunger for space.
We soared above the garden, over sleeping shrubs, over faint grass, over the green bench and birdhouses. We were like sparrows—free and light. Time wrapped around our legs, shed our boots, slid sandals and shoes onto our feet, then tickled our bare toes with blades of thick grass.
Apples, plums, blushing quinces, and later walnuts and swirling leaves fell under the swing. Threads of Indian summer tangled itself in our hair.
Then a morning would come when the whole garden awoke powdered with frost, like grandmother’s cake. Then Dad would untie the swing, roll the ropes into neat balls, and tuck the plank into a canvas bag. We carried it down to the cellar to rest, to wait warmly for the next year.
In winter, when I went down to the cellar for walnuts, I sometimes parted the edges of the bag and slipped my hand inside to stroke the lonely swing. It answered me in its sleep with a gentle creak.
TO GRANDMA
We jumped off the train onto the narrow edge of the platform, passed the old brick station, and ran to you along gravel paths, broken sidewalks, and over the crooked bridge spanning the pond, which dozed nestled in a green blanket of duckweed. You were waiting for us at the window, parting the sheer curtains, and we jumped over the fence boards and climbed onto the windowsill, laughing loudly, and kissing your white hair. On the wide stove stood pots painted with geese. The pots smelled of broth, potatoes, and jam. You hugged us tightly, asked about the apple tree in front of the house, about the neighbors’ cat, about our dreams. Thick steam rose above the plates; we twirled it on our spoons, unaware that we would never find this scent anywhere else in the world. Later, we pulled out tin boxes from the cupboard and emptied wooden buttons, gilded threads, scraps of lace, and other fairy-tale treasures onto the table, from which you conjured our dresses. Tired Parisian ballerinas watched us from the walls, along with the eyes of distant great-grandfathers.
I’m going to you again, but the train keeps losing its way, bringing me to a place I don’t recognize. There’s no quiet pond behind the station, no telephone by the post office door, no tiny bakery, nor the house where your cupboard stood; nothing is left, someone trampled the paths, demolished the walls, buried our old years under the ground. There is only an old map stretched under my eyelids and a bright moment of awakening, halfway between sleep and waking, before the train arrives at the station.
RUM CAKE
It was my favorite cake, and Grandma baked it for my birthday. The recipe was difficult; it required courage, a gentle heart, and sleepless nights. First, you had to bake seven delicate crusts, each separately, browning them golden in the oven and letting them rest. Then you cooked a custard from eggs that had spent the night in a clay bowl, from butter churned in a glass bottle, and from carefully sifted flour. The sugar had to come from a metal tin, from the creaky cupboard, and the rum from a tiny bottle with a brown cap. When everything was ready, you took a painted plate—the largest one, from the very bottom of the cupboard—and layered the crusts with the cream, stacking them into a tall rum tower. The last crust was crushed and sprinkled over the cake. Then you needed a table with a white tablecloth and round napkins, which had to be embroidered beforehand with tiny flowers and leaves. Wooden chairs around the table, behind them whitewashed walls, down-filled quilts folded on the bed and wrapped in a blanket. And a small window vent, fastened with a hook—you had to close it just enough so only the cat could get in, while all the rest stayed behind the glass: dark fears, bad thoughts, devilish tangles, and other unnecessary things. Then the cake was ready. You could cut it with a fork into long strips, tell made-up stories, and laugh at them until tears came to your eyes.
TREMBLING
We stood on the steps in front of the Bekon butcher shop. More and more people were gathering at the bus stop, but the bus didn’t arrive. We were coming back from the Delikatesy grocery store, with bread and golden bagels visible through the woven shopping bag. Others held their own groceries or kept their hands in their pockets. One man was leaning against a tree, taking drags on a cigarette, grimacing, and exhaling smoke through his teeth. Everyone knew—everyone except me: I only felt the trembling beneath my feet. I thought we had stopped on the steps to check if they were trembling too. I looked at my shoes: they seemed still, but underneath, in the soles, something was pounding, as if something underground was bubbling and trying to break through to the surface. The vibrations grew stronger and clearer. Then, around the corner, the first tank appeared. It was gray, and everything around turned gray too, because no driver was visible, and it felt as if these heavy, slow machines didn’t need people, and they didn’t need the daylight. They came one after another, circling Wilson Square until they closed into a ring. People stood on the sidewalks—in hats, coats, with shopping bags and baskets—standing still and watching. No one spoke; everyone waited to see what would happen. The ring rotated around the square, finally opening and flowing down into one of the streets; stretching long between streetlights as it disappeared. The man continued exhaling smoke through his teeth. Soon the bus arrived, but we walked on passing by the Glass House, whose barred windows hung temptingly; you could reach the first one standing on the sidewalk, the second required standing on tiptoes, and to reach the third, you had to jump. I managed it on the first try. I adjusted my glove, grabbed the ear of the bread bag, and we kept walking
NIGHT
It was February from old photographs with thin white borders that Dad developed in the basement; February of heavy snows, gray sofix boots arduously obtained from the shop on Potocka Street. February of rosy cheeks. We sat in the kitchen in the evening: Mom spread out wet hats and gloves on the stove to dry; we cut out crisp cookies with cutters, and Grandma sprinkled them with sugar and slid them onto the baking sheet. The night hung outside the window like a dark curtain, devoid of moon and stars. In the windowpane, only the yellow lamp above the table and our bright faces were reflected. The next day we were supposed to go to a carnival ball at our cousins’. Our first ball. We received a long invitation, on which the oldest cousin had drawn Zorro in a mask and black cape. The cookies smelled of butter, and tiny colorful circles punched out of paper – our own confetti – lay in paper bags. Above the desk, hanging on a thin ribbon, a wide earring sparkled, a gilded hoop; I wore it to every school party, tied my hair in a bun, layered four long skirts one over another, and wrapped a floral scarf around my waist. Everyone got used to that Gypsy outfit, “Shall I tell your fortune, sir, shall I tell your fortune?” I repeated, pretending I could read palms. But at the cousins’ ball, I wanted to be someone else, someone new: my words spilled around the kitchen, grown-ups looked at me, and in that gaze there was poverty, helplessness, and a squeezed heart. “Maybe we could make a streamer?” Dad asked, and pulled long strips of paper from a box. We glued narrow rolls from cardboard and wound leftover Christmas chains onto them. When I went to bed, I smelled of dough and glue all over and fell asleep in that scent, in the warmth of the stove, under the soft quilt of childhood.
At night snow fell, owners came out of their houses and moved it aside with wooden shovels. The wide edges of the shovels scraped against the sidewalk. That sound penetrated the room through frost-white windows and announced the coming morning, in times when there were no alarms because time did not flow, it only circled among toys, books scattered on the floor, and plates painted with little roosters. The hours loudly struck by the kitchen pendulum clock were only distant signals from a world unknown to us yet, the world of adults. I opened my eyes: on the chair by the bed there was a dress on a hanger. It was sewn simply from the lining of an old coat, black, shiny, and long down to the very floor. Stars were sewn onto the dress—stars Grandma had cut out from napkins. That night and morning survived inside a glass ball of time and they sometimes permeate my winter dreams: Grandma sitting bent over the kitchen table, coloring napkins with a wax crayon, cutting out stars, threading a needle, tying a knot in the thread. I reached out and touched the dress: it was smooth, light, radiant. In the evening, I walked to the ball through deep snow, my loose hair mixing with its blackness; the little stars got wet and curled into balls, but I was still the truest Night—enchanted, proud, full of secrets. The gilded earring swayed in my ear like the moon.
FROST
When the frost came and climbed up the window into our room, the world turned a soft gray, and it hushed, so we could better hear the creaking of the snow. Then Dad would go down to the cellar and take the skates out of the boxes. We had to try on every pair, because summer and the sea made our feet grow a little differently each time. Later, we ran to Kępa Potocka, untied our scarves from our necks and tossed them wherever, so we could have freedom and space, and not stick to the wet icicles growing on the wool just under our noses. We put on our skates and climbed down the steep bank onto the ice. The ice creaked like paper scratched by a pencil. How wonderful it was to glide on such whiteness! We sped along the little canal, above us bent bridges passed by, weeping willows, and leafless maple branches. The whole world was sprinkled with sugar, crunching like meringue under a silver fork. Our cheeks were rosy, and our pupils shone with bright light. When we got tired, we sat on the ice and pushed aside the wrinkled folds of snow. We pressed our faces against the frosted glass: peering into underwater worlds. Underneath, our sunk autumn ship rocked gently, into a dense forest of seaweed. Sometimes we heard knocking from below the frozen lid; then we took off our gloves and placed our bare hands on the cold surface, to call the underwater creatures and give them some warmth. But we could see nothing except their long hair trailing down into the threshold of darkness. We lay on the frozen canal, covered with snow, while peace hovered above us in a white puff of breath.
from THE NORTH SEA AND OTHER STORIES (2024)
NYJA
My great-grandmother’s mother bore the royal name Adelajda. We know it well. It is engraved on round medallions that each of us, across generations, receives on the day of birth: on one side, the sorrowful faces of saintly patrons under convex glass, and on the other, the name of our great-great-grandmother. In earlier times, it was written in ink on a small piece of paper and glued with egg yolk to the flat side of the pendant; now, the engraver takes care of it. The letters last longer, they do not wear off so easily, but whenever I visited my aunt, I would always open the tin box where the medallions of my grandparents and various relatives I had never met, were kept. The bottom of the box was lined with a handkerchief so they wouldn’t clink against the metal, so their glass would not break. I took them out one by one and unfolded the notes, yellowed with age. They were fragile like autumn leaves, so I touched them gently, slowly, never opening them completely. I peered into the paper folds. It’s hard to believe they had survived so long, so many journeys, wars, and other misfortunes. But even harder to believe is what my great-great-grandmother Adelajda went through.
Back then, she was a very young girl. She was beginning to learn embroidery so she could join the older women of the village and embroider dresses and kontusz with them—the wooden coach arrived once a month to collect them. As a child, she loved watching flowers, suns, and Turkish birds flow from under the needles. She would sit in a corner and trace the patterns with her finger on her knee, and when she grew older, she transferred them onto stones she collected by the river. She dipped sticks in honey or syrup, rubbed them with charcoal, grass, or beetroot slices, and painted on the smooth surface what the women embroidered on cloth. So when she finally sat with them on the broad benches around the stove, she learned remarkably fast, knowing all the shapes by heart. Yet her mother worried for her, for the girl was fragile. Her skin was pale and almost translucent, as if she did not fully belong to this world. It was enough for the wind to pick up over the road she walked from town, or for dew to seep into her clogs at dawn, and she would start coughing, her eyes would water, her forehead would burn. She had to be covered with quilts and fed broth for ten days or more before she could walk and speak like others again.
It happened one autumn morning that Adelajda wrapped herself in a cloak and went down to the river to collect stones for her pictures. Mist hung over the orchards, stretching in a thick ribbon across the fields, over the slanting willows, all the way to the very riverbank. It felt strange and uneasy to walk alone through such lonely spaces, but it didn’t last long—soon she was standing at the edge of the water. The river flowed in great silence; the world had not yet awakened from its deep sleep. She began to stroll along the shore, bent over, searching for large stones—those that could hold a wider landscape. She wanted to paint the view from the window behind which the birch gleamed golden and rustled with dry leaves. In the hallway, in a clay cup, lay dried yarrow flowers: she had thought to glue their petals onto a stone, so the tree would look real.
Suddenly, something splashed deep in the river. She turned quickly, terrified. She feared fishermen, whose eyes glinted, but feared even more the strzygi—cunning, malicious spirits that haunted the river’s edge at the meeting of day and night. But she saw neither fisherman nor strzyga. In the distance, on the far bank, in dense reeds, a boat swayed. It stood still, unmoving. Someone sat in it: a figure cloaked in dark, hood drawn over their eyes. The fog was so thick that Adelajda wasn’t even sure if the boat was real or just an illusion—it might have been an oak branch sticking out, or a wild animal coming to drink. She bent again over the wet sand, brushing aside leaves and frozen grasses until she found the rounded edge of a large stone. She pulled it from the earth and straightened up, satisfied. She turned to step onto the path home, and then she noticed the boat moving closer. The dark figure pushed it from the riverbed with a long, dark oar.
‘Nyja!’ she cried, frightened, lost her balance, and slipped into the icy river. She sprang up immediately, grabbed a root reaching into the water, and with great effort pulled herself onto the bank. Her skirt and cloak and hair were all heavy with water, but terror drove her straight ahead, without looking back, without checking which way the boat faced or if it still existed. She ran home, barely able to breathe through her mouth, bursting into the room, where her mother grabbed her head and began to wail loudly. Women from neighboring huts hurried over, staring in surprise at the wet patches on the wooden floor, at the tangled braids, and the dirty stone clenched in her hand.
‘Mother, Nyja is sailing down the river,’ Adelajda said in a weak, broken voice.
At the sound of those words, the women began covering their mouths and eyes in terror, and her mother collapsed in despair onto the floor. It was exactly like in the children’s rhyme:
Nyja leans over the dark oar,
Over the dark oar Nyja leans.
The women rushed in panic to the windows, starting to adorn them with glass beads, wrapping them with evergreen branches. On the doorstep and beneath the windows, they placed lanterns and small pots filled with wax. Her mother pressed her hand to Adelajda’s forehead and cheeks: they were already burning, her eyes filling with unhealthy tears. She pulled a down-filled quilt from the chest, stripped the trembling girl of her wet clothes, wrapped her in a thick blanket, and pressed it with open hands to soak the water from her hair and dry her pale skin. She laid her in bed, covered her up to the chin, tucked the quilt’s corners beneath a high pillow. She lit the stove. Her hands trembled, but on her face, fierceness outshone fear.
‘Sleep, Adelajda, sleep peacefully. Nyja will not come here—I will not allow it.’
So she fell asleep, and throughout the next day, from dawn till dusk, she lay in warmth, looking out the window with sickly eyes at the mist still drifting by. The birch gleamed golden and shimmered with tiny leaves, as if the sun were shining over the village. The following morning, she felt a moment’s relief. She asked her mother for a spoonful of flour, a beaten egg, and some yarrow petals waiting in the hallway. She mixed the flour with a little egg, picked up a riverside stone from the floor, and molded a tall birch trunk upon it. Later, when she had more strength, she dipped yellow petals in the egg and glued them one by one around the trunk until they formed a sprawling tree. She held the stone in her outstretched hand, looking now at the birch, now at her likeness of it, and smiled softly—to herself and to life—for she had two windows to look through.
But the next day her condition worsened. The healer came with a pouch of herbs, whispering for a long time, laying her hands on Adelajda’s forehead, stomach, and feet, shaking and nodding her head in turns. Her mother stayed by the bedside all day and all night, rising only to tend the fire or relight one of the candles guarding the doors and windows if it went out.
‘You’re the only one I have,’ she repeated, stroking her daughter’s hair and shoulder.
The night finally passed, but morning brought no relief. Adelajda breathed slowly and laboriously, barely opening her eyes. Thick drops ran down her face onto the heated bedding—no one could tell if it was sweat or tears. Her mother caught them with her thumb and wiped them on her apron. She saw the girl slowly fading away.
In the afternoon, others gathered by her bedside: her father came, then cousins, and the embroiderers after finishing their work. They said their goodbyes, sitting in the half-light and softly telling old stories. Adelajda heard them, for a faint smile sometimes appeared on her face. Then, in the middle of the night, her heart began to slow, and she passed away silently, without a word or gesture, signalling the end of her suffering with a single breath.
Her loved ones wept, for Adelajda had been a good girl—humble and full of respect. They loved her dearly.
The custom was to wait three days and three nights before the burial ceremony: the soul needed time for a peaceful crossing into the beyond. They brought autumn flowers and branches and arranged them around the pale body, deciding who would watch and recite prayers at which times. One woman brought an old, worn coin, taken from some secret hiding place, and slipped it into the girl’s cold hand. But her mother rushed to the bed, snatched the coin, and threw it to the floor.
‘We will not pay them!’ she shouted. ‘They should be the ones paying us for taking her!’
‘But she has to give something for the passage,’ the woman began, picking up the coin.
‘She will pay nothing!’ the mother was intransigent. ‘At worst, they will leave her on the shore.’
‘She’ll wander there for all eternity, poor thing!’
‘I don’t want to hear that,’ the mother covered her ears with her hands. After a moment, she approached the bed, opened her daughter’s hand, and placed a stone with a birch picture inside it. ‘If she must take something with her, let her take her stone, so it reminds her of home.’
Meanwhile, Adelajda stood at the edge of a narrow valley. Before her, stretched a straight road leading down to the river. She no longer felt the cold. She looked at herself. She wore a light dress embroidered with blue birds. It had been her great dream—to find such a shade of blue somewhere—then she could paint the sky, the river’s waves, and forget-me-nots. Something pressed in her hand: the stone with the last picture. She set off forward.
It was just as the old song said: in the valley, along the road, sat dozens, hundreds, thousands of men and women in Slavic garments. How beautiful those wreaths and caps, aprons and vests must have looked in the sunlight! Though she had come to die on a misty day, the choir was still more beautiful than anything she had ever seen in life. They sent her off to the afterlife with a longing, many-voiced song in an ancient language she now understood clearly. She walked through the green valley, hardly able to believe such a crowd had gathered there just for her.
The choir watched her until she reached the very riverbank, the bank she had known since childhood. She stood at the water’s edge and began searching for stones, when once again she heard the splash of water and the strike of an oar.
“I’m standing there in my lovely dress with blue birds, and a boat comes to shore,” Adelajda later recounted. “In it, Nyja wears a dark cloak, hood pulled over the eyes, driving the oar into the mud by the bank and reaching out to me to get in. I feel ashamed—so much is being done for me, but I have no way to repay it, I’m unprepared.
‘I have nothing to pay with,’ I answer helplessly. ‘They didn’t give me a coin.’
‘Then I can’t take you,’ Nyja says. ‘You will wander the shore until the end of the world.’
Fear sweeps over me. There is no escape from this loneliness! But then I remember the stone and say,
‘I don’t have a coin, but I have something precious to pay you with.’
‘What’s that?’ Nyja asks.
‘A stone through which you can see the tree outside my window,’ I explain.
Nyja takes the stone from me, raises it high to the eyes hidden by the hood, then nods.
‘Get in,’ Nyja says.
Nyja pushes off the shore with the dark oar, and we set out on the journey across the river. The water spreads wide; the Vistula looks like a lake. The waves are low and long, flowing from beneath the oar and forming silvery rings. In the distance, I can see the opposite bank, which looks just like ours, equally shrouded in mist. I glance back, looking at the leaning willow, the oak grove, the smoke rising from village chimneys. Then I look again at the far shore: there too, willows, oaks, and autumn chimneys. If I didn’t know I was leaving home behind, I wouldn’t be able to say which bank was real. Nyja rows with solemn dignity, always keeping the same rhythm.
‘Nyja, how do you tell which way you’re rowing?’ I ask.
‘I carry souls only one way,’ comes the reply. ‘The other way my boat is empty.’”
Meanwhile, in the village, a line of loved ones passed through the room where Adelajda lay. Some sat briefly at the edge of the bed; others bowed from afar and quickly left. In a corner stood her two closest friends and a long-haired boy who loved her more than anyone in the world. He was crying now, but quietly, so no one would see. He couldn’t come to terms with this sudden emptiness, with the cold. The days and years ahead, a whole life dreamed, had shattered to pieces.
“Father stands in the corner watching mother, who looks as if she’s sleeping, her face gentle, lit by some otherworldly light,” my great-grandmother told her children when they packed their belongings before the great escape. “He looks at her, and sees the stone clenched in her hand. And he thinks to himself how much he wishes he could keep at least that stone for himself, to look at and hold whenever he misses her.”
“Grandma Adelajda sits in the boat, resting her elbow on her knee, chin supported by her hand,” my grandmother later told my mother on a ship tossed by stormy waves. “She watches silently as the boat moves across the water. Nyja sometimes turns toward the stone lying on the wooden bench. Nyja says nothing for a long time, then finally speaks:
‘Tell me again, what is that stone?’
And Grandma Adelajda jumps for joy at the chance to tell a story about her home.
‘It’s a birch,’ she says quickly but clearly, unsure how much Nyja knows about the world. ‘When I look out the window, I see a tree with a white trunk. In autumn, its leaves turn gold, they look as if the sun is lighting them up. Behind the birch stands a fence, beyond it runs a road that leads through willows and fields to the forest, and later to the river.’
Nyja leans over the picture but sees nothing but the tree.
‘I don’t see the road,’ Nyja says sadly.
‘You don’t see it because it’s not here; I can’t see it from the window either, but I know it’s there and where it leads, so the birch is enough for me — the rest I carry here,’ she says, pointing to her heart.
Nyja pauses rowing for a moment, then holds the oar with one hand and reaches for the stone with the other, and lifts it up to eye level.
‘Beautiful golden leaves,’ says Nyja.
‘That’s how they are in autumn,’ Grandma Adelajda continues. ‘In winter they fall, and in spring they grow green again, tiny, as if they were flower petals.’
‘Beautiful golden leaves,’ Nyja repeats.’”
At that very moment, the mourners left Adelajda’s hut, the friends returned to their homes, and the great-great-grandfather was left alone in the dark room. He tiptoed to his beloved’s bed, looked around to see if anyone was watching, and gently unfolded her pale fingers clenched around the stone. Some of the petals had stuck to her skin. The birch trunk made of sticky flour crumbled a little. He grabbed the stone and slipped it into his sleeve.
“Suddenly the stone slips from Nyja’s hand and falls into the water,” my mother told me when we sat in the bunker and I first asked her about the story of the medallion. “Nyja pulls in the oar, lays it across the boat, and leans over, trying to see something in the murky water. Adelajda wants to help, but the river is dark and opaque, there’s no way to tell if the bottom is near or far. It seems like something gleamed in the depths. Maybe birch leaves? Somewhere in the abyss, right beneath the boat’s hull. Nyja reaches for the oar again, pushes the boat lightly, and turns it so it’s easier to reach the bottom.
‘That must be our stone!’ Adelajda calls out. ‘Try to touch it with the oar.’
Nyja lowers the oar as deep as possible, even dipping hands in the water, but the bottom remains out of reach.
‘Maybe I’ll dive for it? I can swim,’ Adelajda offers, but Nyja doesn’t like the idea.
‘No need,’ is the answer. ‘I will find it someday.’
‘Beautiful golden leaves,’ adds Nyja after a moment, then sits again, holding the oar, looking ahead and behind, unsure which way to go. Both riverbanks look the same, indistinguishable. Mist rises over the water, blurring the outlines of everything. Adelajda sees Nyja’s confusion but says nothing. They sway silently in the middle of the river. Nyja doesn’t know what to do and can’t hide the trembling hands.
‘Nyja, don’t worry,’ Adelajda finally speaks. ‘You know we’ll reach wherever fate sends me.’
Nyja nods and begins to push the boat forward with the dark oar. They no longer speak. Adelajda lies down on the wooden bench, gazing at the clouds drifting across the gray sky, and falls asleep.
Nyja wakes her:
‘We’re at the shore.’
Adelajda jumps out of the boat and grabs Nyja by the sleeve.
‘Thank you, Nyja, wherever I am.’
She runs along the path into the forest and now knows she has come home. From afar, she sees the willows, the village, and the mourning crowd around her hut. She turns to Nyja and calls out:
‘When we meet again, I’ll show you everything—the fence, the road, the willows, the seasons!’
She jumps joyfully and runs toward home, feeling neither cold nor fatigue, only the great, childlike joy of the wind touching her cheeks. She squeezes through the crowd of women in black, bursts into the room, lies down on the bed, closes her eyes for a moment, then opens them—and everyone sees that she has returned from the world of the dead, and a cry of happiness rises above the hut”.
Great-great-grandmother Adelajda lived nearly a hundred years, bore five daughters, and later cradled grandchildren and great-grandchildren in her arms. Whenever someone said she had tricked Nyja, she would get angry and forbid such talk. All her life, as long as her eyesight allowed, she collected river stones and painted gardens and the whole village on them, at every time of day and year, so she could tell Nyja exactly what human life looked like.
On her deathbed, before her last breath, she said to her tearful family:
‘Don’t worry, maybe I’ll come back soon’—and laughed at them—‘And if I don’t, I promise I’ll sit in that boat and tell stories, and I won’t move until you live your lives—and I’m determined to make them as long as possible. We’ll wait for all of you, your children, and their descendants. You can be at peace; Nyja will agree—we’ll all fit in that boat.’
And she died. They waited three days and three nights, but she did not return. They buried her with a chain of painted stones, which she is probably showing Nyja now. Here grows a pine tree where a woodpecker with a crimson cap sits; here is the fence made of wooden stakes, summer finds hollyhocks climbing it, and in autumn, children hang clusters of rowan berries on it. Smoke over the cottage forms animal shapes and mixes with the mist coming from the fields. We carry firewood from the forest, and threads of Indian summer tangle in our hair. This is an old story—the places no longer exist, but neither Nyja nor great-great-grandmother knows this.
I have no one left to give the medallion to—I am the last. The boat slowly fills up, but I know there is room for everyone; after all, we were promised. They wait for me on the shore.
The doctor strokes my hand every time I repeat the story to him.
‘A beautiful legend, Adelajda,’ he says, pouring golden drops into a glass. They dissolve in the water like golden birch leaves. My hands tremble with age, but sometimes I raise the glass before me, look at it, then at the hospital window, and stroke the medallion’s opaque glass.
Zeszyty 