French classes at the House of Scientists

There was not much to do in the evenings, so when we learned that the center employees could sign up for French classes, we didn't think twice about it. However, the beginning of the course coincided with a trip to Poland, and we missed the first couple of meetings. When we finally reported to the class, we sensed that we were not welcome there. The teacher did everything in her power to discourage us from remaining: she said it might be difficult for us to catch up with the rest of students, and that the textbook was out-of-print. We told her not to worry and that we'd manage all right. The room was full of Russian scientists and engineers, and we were hoping to make friends with at least some of them.

            In fact, meeting people was the real reason for our attending this course. But when we next came to the class, there were only five students. I felt so disappointed. One nice thing happened though: an older Russian mathematician, lent us the textbook, saying that he owned two. To show him how much we appreciated his friendly gesture, we brought him something unobtainable in Russia: a bottle of French wine and a French record. To my great  surprise, he did not want to accept the gifts. Only after long persuasion did he take the wine and the record, but he absolutely refused to visit us at home; so much for making friends with the Russians.

             The teacher somehow came to terms with the fact that we were attending the class. It soon became apparent that although her pronunciation was incomparably better than mine, I understood more words in French than she did. The only trouble was that I did not always know them in Russian; this made for was a lot of guessing and laughing. The class turned out to be a fun one for our small group.

            And we did, finally, make friends: a young engineer named Lusha, who lived close to us, did not mind walking home together. She came to us for dinner and invited us to her home. Once I asked her why she thought so many people had dropped the class. “It happened because of you” she said. “You mean, they don't like Poles?” I queried. To my relief, I learnt that it had nothing to do with our nationality; the reason was much simpler: the scientists worked on classified projects, and were not allowed to have any contact with foreigners. So when we showed up and insisted on attending the class, they were told - by the local security service agent - to drop it. Others could talk to us, but they had to be careful not to get too friendly. I mused over it all and thought to myself that the inherent Russian distrust of foreigners took really extreme forms.

Eploring around the city of Dubna

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*Lusha did not elaborate by whom. It was generally understood that all people in Dubna were under close surveillance.

                 Obninsk

I'm acting like a celebrity here. What was I thinking? Anyway, Marina is on my left.

Long time ago, when I was working at the Institute of Nuclear Research in Poland, I was sent by pure accident to a conference in Obninsk, Russia. (For those who don't know it, the first nuclear power plant in the world for the large-scale production of electricity opened in Obninsk in 1954.) This conference was only for Russians, obvieusly my absent-minded boss did not read the small letters. The scientists in Obninsk were very surprised when I arrived, but they let me participate in the conference which lasted the whole week. The first sessions started with a welcome "Comrades and Ms. Monika". Then one of a young women, a mathematician named Marina, requested that the session start with "Comrades, Ms. Monika and Ms. Marina". Soon everybody wanted to be called a Mr. or a Ms.  instead of a Comrade. Finally, the political commissar, the so-called politruk, who never smiled and who - I suspected - was there mainly because of me, became really concerned. This looked like a counter-revolution to him, pure and simple.  He had to act. So he took those witty physicists and mathematicians aside and had serious conversation with them. Then the sessions were continued as if nothing had happened.They started as before - with "Comrades and Ms. Monika". 

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From Wikipedia:
The history of Obninsk began in 1945 when the First Research Institute Laboratory "V", which later became known as IPPE was founded. On June 27, 1954, in Obninsk started operations of the world's first nuclear power plant to generate electricity for a power grid. The city was built next to the plant in order to support it. Scientists, engineers, construction workers, teachers and other professionals moved to Obninsk from all over the Soviet Union. Town status was granted to Obninsk on June 24, 1956. The name of the city is taken from Obninskoye, the train station in Moscow-Bryansk railroad, built in Tsarist times.

             Prague

Here is another conference story. This time it really is an international meeting and it takes place in a nuclear research center about 10 km from Prague. The participants are from Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Cuba and last but not least, from Poland - I from Swierk and two men from Wroclaw. The Cubans are terribly late; they finally arrive in an embassy limousine adorned with funny little flags; it turns out that one of them is a big director of the Cuban nuclear power plant, and the other is - a minister of education. I find it weird; this is a working conference after all, the participants here are to present the results of calculations carried out at their centers.

            The conference is chaired by a Russian (of course) whom I immediately dislike. He has steel grey eyes, and his face reveals no emotion: today's Putin. We all have to speak Russian (of course), with the exception of the Hungarians, who pretend not to understand this language - they brought a translator with them. Everyone in turn presents their results, which were obtained with the use of a Russian computer code adapted to the particular needs of the participating groups. The results differ slightly one from another which is acceptable as the input data are not the same. So far so good. Then comes the turn of the Poles from Wrocław; they did not use the Russian code for their calculations - they wrote their own code. "Putin" says their results are completely off and asks them to repeat the calculations. The Poles insist that their results are correct, unlike all the other results presented. "Putin" ends the session.

            During the break the Cubans, then the others as well, approach the Poles to compare the input data and the method of calculation. They all want to repeat their calculations using the Polish code. I'm amazed, and am proud of my countrymen. I'm proud that they did not bend to the will of the Russian chairman. The Cubans whisper that they're throwing a little party downstairs - will we come?

            When we meet I sense that the Russian chairman was not invited. The group is smaller. We spontaneously switch to  English - to the satisfaction of the Hungarians. The two Cubans, the minister and the director somehow got hold of a guitar, and while we drink the iconic Czech liqueur "Becherovka"which tastes of herbs, the Cubans play and sing beautifully in Spanish. I'm amused how reactor physics mixes well with "Guantanamera". Suddenly the door opens… it's "Putin". "I heard singing", he says faintly and tries to smile. He knows he is not welcome, especially since we deliberately keep talking in English. He joins the conversation - he does speak English. After a few drinks, he tells the Poles that there might be - I cannot believe my ears - an error in the Russian code. He is going to investigate it when he gets home.  I dislike him less now. 

            The next day the Cubans and the Russian are gone, and the rest of us walk around Prague. What a beautiful city! We pass Zlatá ulička, the Golden Lane - Franz Kafka lived here. In the afternoon we are almost caught up in a demonstration. (It's early fall 1989, the eve of the Velvet Revolution.) Young people, fleeing from the police, shout something. I grab somebody's arm: "Tell me what you shout!" - "Masaryk!" he/she says (Why "Masaryk"? - I wonder. Why not "Dubcek" or "Havel"? ). In the evening we go to a pub. It's not just any pub, it's the U Fleku. The U Fleku brewery is the only brewery in Central Europe which has been brewing beer for 500 straight years. The customers, men and women, sit at long wooden tables and benches. They drink beer in big pitchers and sing Czech folk songs. And oh! how they sing. Unlike my countrymen, the Czechs know all the lyrics, have beautiful, trained voices, and sing in key. I wish I could stop the time: "Then to the moment might I say, linger awhile. . .so fair thou art” (from Goethe's Faust). 

Scenes from Andalusía, Spain, November 1981

Scene 1. We're on the road from Seville to Córdoba. It's siesta time; I'm driving, and my Dad is taking a nap on the back seat. At this time of day, the roads in Spain are completely deserted. Suddenly, I see a car in the rearview mirror - it appeared out of nowhere. I slow down, letting the car pass. Two men inside are smiling and gesturing to me.  After few minutes they slow down, letting me pass. We play like this for some time, back and forth. They gesture to me to pull over. I'm not going to comply, and frankly, I'm tired of their company. But they are not going to give up: they start honking. They become really loud which finally wakes my Dad. 'What the heck', he says and sits up. Young Spaniards, clearly surprised, leave the scene pretty fast.

Scene 2.  One of the goals of this trip was to visit La Mancha and to see the famous windmills which Don Quixote took for giants. The windmills are white and built on bare sunlit hills. I take pictures of them, then we head to El Toboso, the hometown (more of a village, really) of the famed Dulcinea. There is a church, and in front of it a marketplace with stalls offering used clothes. The town includes La Casa de Dulcinea and the Cervantes Museum.  Dulcinea's house displays typical farm tools, cheese-making apparatus, seventeenth-century furniture, large vats where wine would have been stored, and has a large oil press in the courtyard. In the Cervantes Museum one can see copies of his masterpiece in a huge range of languages. It holds over 400 copies of "Don Quixote" from all over the world, signed by the leaders from the time they were collected, such as Franco and Mussolini. Hitler sent a signed copy of "Songs of the Nibelungen". The museum seems proud of those artifacts; to me, they are ominous.

Scene 3. We get to Madrid during the celebrations of the sixth anniversary of Franco's death. On the weekend following November 20^th, Madrid goes crazy: the streets are full of people dressed in dark blue shirts and black pants (men, women, even kids), extending their hands in a Nazi salute. There are hundreds of posters with swastikas, numerous stands where young neo-fascists are selling “Mein Kamp”', and fascist paraphernalia. Young people are driving erratically, waving flags, shouting, honking, saluting. The streets don't seem safe to us, especially after some neo-fascists snatched my camera from me and almost beat me up because I'm taking pictures. We find an asylum in a coffee bar where people turn out to be normally dressed - what a relief! They all look very sad. When we tell the barista what has just happened to us, he says we'd better hide in a nearby movie theater for the rest of the day.

Scene 4. When the unbelievable celebrations are finally over (on Monday morning one cannot see even a trace of what was going on in this city over the weekend), we're going to see the famous 'Guernica'. The monumental painting arrived in Madrid only two months earlier, in time to celebrate the centenary of Picasso's birth on October 24. There are huge long lines outside the museum.  The police are checking our purses and backpacks thoroughly.  The masterpiece is displayed behind bomb- and bullet-proof glass. In the front of the huge glass case there are commandos with machine guns in hand, facing the public. I find their presence disturbing, but on the other hand, they add specific drama to the painting.

Agnes

When I think of Agnes I think of our childhood. Various scenes from our childhood scroll before my eyes. In all those scenes Agnes is a happy girl. She is very positive. She is smiling. I don't think she ever cried in my presence or laughed out loud. She was well-behaved.  I don't remember her in any other way. 

In my memories, Agnes is a smart and serious girl. She intimidated me. Just before John and I started school, she was teaching us reading, writing and counting. I think she wanted us to be ahead of other kids. One day she announced that she'd give us a dictation next time she saw us. I had no idea what a 'dictation' was, so I felt rather scared. I meant to ask my mother, but I forgot the name of this thing that Agnes was going to do to us. I don't think I slept that night. I was so afraid that I'd fail and disappoint my first teacher.

As a child, Agnes was a very brave and very rational girl. Once John and I were told at school that the next day we'd go to the clinic for X-rays. We were wondering if it would hurt.  "Don't worry - Agnes told us - I guarantee you it won't hurt, but it may sting a bit".

Even as a child, Agnes was very mature, a responsible and caring person. She had a very good heart. For example: we were living in a small town surrounded by villages. People in those days (the late nineteen-fifties) were really poor, workers and farmers alike. Many children in our school, especially those from villages, were malnourished. And naturally they did not do very well at school. Agnes volunteered to tutor one particularly unfortunate girl. This girl would come to their house every day after school, have dinner with Agnes and John, then she would study and do her homework with Agnes. Thanks to Agnes she passed to the next grade, and later graduated from that school.

I was John's playmate. Agnes was older and played with her friends. But I watched her closely and imitated her to some extent. For instance, I read the same books, I also tutored poor kids. One can say that Agnes was my first role model. 

When we grew older, we went to different schools and we saw each other less often. (We did not live in the same little town anymore.) Agnes became a beautiful young woman. She was very stylish too. I remember her wearing a fashionable turban made from a headscarf, high heels and heavy make-up. (This fashion, turbans and 'Egyptian' make-up, set in after the film "Pharaoh" in the late nineteen-sixties.) At the same time she was an 'above and beyond' student. 

Agnes was unique. Almost too good to be true. I've never met anyone even remotely similar to Agnes. She was the proverbial pearl.

Agnieszka died on August 4, 2012. Suddenly, unexpectedly. She was only 62 years old.

    I have known Her almost all my life, although I do not recall our first encounter. We were both at the age, when one does not record events for a long time, if at all. When we met again, I was five and half years old. I don't recall this meeting either, but I do remember many of the later scenes from our happy childhood together. I remember, for example, the theater on the porch of their house. One day we presented "The Trojan War" based on Agnieszka's brief, handed to us orally, scenario and with Her "starring" as the beautiful Helen. (Jaś played the role of Parys, and I was the jealous Menelaus, while understanding almost nothing of the story.) Agnieszka was a little older than me, but much more mature, and I watched her closely, the way a younger sister watches her elder sister. I suppose I imitated her to some extend. Certainly, I read the same books. 

There was only one tiny bookstore in our small town. I see vaguely three stairs leading to the dim interior, a serious looking woman behind the high counter, and I remember distinctly the smell this place - the mysterious and exciting smell of new books. And the purpose of our visit. In the early sixties they started to reprint "Mary Poppins" in Poland.  The book was translated between the wars by Irena Tuwim who changed the protagonist’s name to "Agnieszka". That winter day -  was it our Agnieszka's birthday? - we visited the bookstore to find out if "Agnieszka comes back" had already been delivered to our town. Why do I remember this scene so vividly? Did I record it in my memory because of the two Agnieszkas? Or maybe I was deeply impressed that Agnieszka knew about a book about which I had no idea? In the lives of children that we were at that time everything is just beginning and nothing definitely ends. Also, in the stories we read. And although Mary Poppins abruptly left, disappeared from Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane, which filled the Banks children and us, the young readers, with deep sadness, we all shared the same hope that the magical nanny will return in the next book, because in the farewell letter she wrote "Au revoir ", not "Adieu".

   More than a half century have passed since our memorable visit to the tiny bookstore. My peers and I came to the stage of life in which hardly anything starts anymore, but many things end. People we have loved suddenly leave, disappear from our life. And they do not come back like the heroine of P. L. Travers books. 

This story will not have a sequel. Adieu, Agnieszka.

Zmarła Agnieszka. Nagle. Niespodziewanie. Mając tylko 62 lata. 

    Nie pamiętam naszego poznania. Zdarzyło się ono, gdy obie byłyśmy w wieku, kiedy jeszcze niczego nie zapamiętuje się, w każdym razie na długo. Drugi raz zetknęłyśmy się ze sobą, gdy Agnieszka miała sześć i pół roku, ja - pięć. Tego spotkania oczywiście też nie pamiętam, za to w mojej pamięci utrwaliło się wiele scen z późniejszych wspólnych zabaw, wizyt.  Zapamiętałam, na przykład, teatr na werandzie, w którym przedstawialiśmy "Wojnę trojańską" według przekazanego nam ustnie i skrótowo scenariusza Agnieszki i z nią w roli pięknej Heleny. (Jaś grał Parysa, ja - nic z tej historii nie rozumiejąc - zazdrosnego Menelaosa.) Agnieszka była niewiele starsza ode mnie, za to znacznie bardziej dojrzała, więc obserwowałam ją bacznie, trochę tak, jak młodsza siostra obserwuje starszą. Być może ją naśladowałam. Z pewnością czytałam książki, które ona czytała. W naszym miasteczku istniał zaledwie jeden sklepik sprzedający książki. Mgliście pamiętam schodki, wnętrze, panią za wysoką ladą,  ale wydaje mi się, że wyraźnie pamiętam zapach tam panujący - ów tajemniczy zapach nowych książek. Z jakiegoś niejasnego powodu utrwaliła mi się w pamięci wizyta z Agnieszką w tym sklepiku. I powód tej wizyty. We wczesnych latach sześćdziesiątych zaczęto wznawiać w Polsce książki o Mary Poppins, noszącej  nadane jej jeszcze przed wojną, przez Irenę Tuwim, imię Agnieszka. Tamtego zimowego dnia - czy były to urodziny Agnieszki? - odwiedziłyśmy sklepik, żeby się dowiedzieć, czy przyszła już  książka "Agnieszka wraca". Czemu zapamiętałam tę scenę i to tak dokładnie - czy dlatego, że Agnieszka i Agnieszka? Czy może zrobił na mnie wrażenie fakt, że Agnieszka wiedziała coś o książce, o której istnieniu ja nie miałam pojęcia? W życiu dzieci, jakimi wtedy byliśmy, wszystko się dopiero zaczyna i jeszcze nic definitywnie nie kończy. Również w książkach, które czytają. Agnieszka-Mary Poppins, owszem, odchodziła, znikała, co napawało dzieci Banks głębokim smutkiem, który my, czytelnicy, z nimi dzieliliśmy, ale i one, i my źyliśmy nadzieją, że ona wróci w następnym tomie, bo w pożegnalnym liście napisała "Au revoir", zamiast "Adieu".
   Od czasu zapamiętanej przeze mnie wizyty w sklepiku z książkami upłynęło więcej niż pół wieku. Wraz ze swymi rówieśnikami doszłam do etapu życia, w którym prawie nic już się nie zaczyna, za to wiele spraw definitywnie się kończy. Odchodzą bliskie nam osoby. Niestety nie tak, jak książkowa Agnieszka - by powrócić w następnym tomie. Ta historia nie będzie mieć dalszego ciągu. Adieu, Agnieszko.