For a long time, I felt I was part of two irreconcilable stories. Two worlds that could not be brought together. Because, in truth, they could not. The old home was gone, along with the place people spoke of so sparingly, almost in passing. I could not remember that world, it belonged to a time before my own. To me, it was a world from elsewhere, from the past. I could not go there. I could never be there. There were no keepsakes from that place, no furniture, old clothes or religious objects I could touch. There could be none: those who fled could take very little with them. Only a few photographs remained.
But There always hung between us. Back when the older ones, those who could remember, were still alive. Sometimes it surfaced in words that were not quite Polish, words I had long thought of as my own, native to me, part of my family. In songs sung at family gatherings. In memories and jokes about those days, so full of joy, from beneath which the truth slowly began to emerge. The name Dawidki stood for a place: Eden at first, Tartarus soon after.
That There hung between everyone in the town where I was born. The only person without a There of his own was the mad old German who lived in a shed. A relic who had escaped expulsion, whom no one but the children seemed to notice. He would sit quietly with a curved pipe in his mouth and speak to us in German. I soon understood that each of us had a There of our own. Each one different. My school friend Janek’s was Ukrainian. For a long time, I thought ours was Belarusian. But no, it turned out to be Lithuanian.
The time came when, like so many young people, I fled my town. I thought I was leaving of my own free will. For prospects, money, prestige, personal growth. There were plenty of good reasons. Now I am here, and when I look back at my hometown, I cannot find my There in it. The kind of There that draws you back, makes you remember, makes you return. Emptiness. So I reach further back, to the Eden of Dawidki, only to see that it is my ancestors’ There. Their place alone.
Now I am Here. I have built a home, and the locals, who are from here and have no There on their minds, call me a stork.
