On Travelling Alone after a Marriage Ends

July 2011

On a train to Krakow.  Ironically in this compartment of six seats, mine is the only one getting direct sunlight for the entire 3 hour trip from Warsaw.  Others, including my daughter, are resting comfortably, chatting, napping, reading.  I on the other hand have beads of perspiration racing down my face, uniting at the base of my throat to trickle down between my breasts.  My hair is wet.  My clothes are damp.  Even as I curse my choice of seat and indulge in a bit of self-pity, I am mindful of the cattle cars filed with Jews making this same trip to Auschwitz 70 years ago.  Heat. Panic. Fear. Blackness.  I am chastened by the thought of their misery.

The conductor has taken our tickets after making a sour face.  He tells me in Polish that my tickets are for a cheaper train and that I ought not to be on this higher-priced train.  I know this already having asked several people on the platform if this was the right train to board…but I plead ignorance.  The four strangers in my compartment rise to my defense, arguing on my behalf.  I have no idea what they are saying, but I thank them.  One of them motions to me to put away my money.  The conductor walks away with my ticket and does not return. 

 My daughter sleeps across from me,  her lips parted as she breathes.  She is so startling beautiful that I can hardly believe she is mine.  We pass a cyclist and a field of lavender. One of my compartment-mates sees that I am covered in perspiration and rises to pull the shade down a few inches.  I am grateful and I smile. On my left hand, I am wearing the beautiful amber ring I bought a few days ago in Gdansk- famous for its amber.  My ring has five amber stones in the shape of a cross. I do not wear it on my wedding finger- bare now for over a year, but on my middle finger.  By my right hand are the 214 zlotys I have ready to pay the conductor should he come back in a rage- the difference between the 86 I paid for my tickets and the 300 I ought to have paid to be on this train.

The scenery outside the window is more interesting  than on the first part of the journey, a little house, a little church, a cemetery, a plough abandoned in a field of long rows of something green that I do not recognize. My daughter is awake now and looking less resentful about the chaos of the earlier part of our day.  Last evening I toured Warsaw while she stayed behind at the hotel.  We were a little group of 13: 6 Israelis, 4 Aussies, 2 Muslims from I don’t know where ( who abandoned the guided walking tour when we ended up in an Old Market tavern drinking beer), and me – the only one without a partner.  I try not to focus on that but it is difficult.  The sights are so heart-stoppingly beautiful and so achingly sad that I long for someone to turn to, someone whose hand I can grasp as we take it all in together:  the glorious park, the statue of Chopin surrounded by garden after garden, filled with roses.  The guide tells us that on Sunday afternoons, there are free Chopin concerts in this park, and that just prior to the 2 grand pianos being brought to the foot of the statue, the roses are watered by sprinklers, so that the scent of the roses hangs over the park and the audience.  I ache to experiences this, but it is Tuesday, and I will be in France by the time Sunday rolls around.  I was not raised with classical music.  I do not know a single Chopin piece, but this park, this statue, these roses and the tale of Chopin’s request to have his heart returned to his beloved Warsaw (his body lies in Paris)…all of these things compel me to seek out his music later…when I am back at the hotel and on my laptop.  I resolve to find a concerto online and listen while inhaling the imaginary scent of roses.

The reconstruction of the Old Town left me breathless. Buildings destroyed by Nazi bombs were reconstructed brick by brick, using drawings and paintings from before the war.  “It’s not a new Old Town we were trying to re-build”, the guide tells us.  It was the very same Old Town we were trying to recapture.”  The guide is young, barely 25 I am sure, but he speaks as though he was there, consulting with the bricklayers and the artisans.  It is a pretense we allow him, because he is charming and good at his job.

I loved the onion domes, the palaces, the parks, the bridges.  I loved the peacock strutting in front of the king’s summer palace whose foundation is filled with cylinder shaped holes, drilled by the Nazis – to be filled with dynamite upon their retreat.  I dreaded the time in the Old Market tavern drinking Polish beer.  I knew I’d be the odd person out.  The others were in pairs. I heard myself laughing too loudly, trying too hard to be friendly with the Aussies so I wouldn’t have to stare at my place mat.  That’s when the ache in my breast bone settles in for the night.

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