I stopped off at a pub on the way back home to Krakow after two missed connections. It was empty apart from one man, who was wearing tattered cargo shorts and a green vest, sitting at the bar and chatting non-stop to the barwoman. I considered leaving, then settled on pretending I didn’t know any English apart from the words ‘beer’ and ‘thank you.’ I walked up to the bar and said: beer, thank you.
The man looked across at me and said: your English is excellent. Thank you, I said. He eyed up my rucksack. So where are you from then? he asked. I’m from Oslo. Ah, he said, I visited Oslo many times, I used to work in Norway, I was there on an oil rig…sorry, I misspoke, I’ve just come from Oslo, but really I’m from Bucharest. Really, he said, my first wife was from Bucharest, she was a handful, we met one afternoon at a cafe in Timisoara, where she was handing out placards to the comrades marching towards the cathedral…no, sorry, I said Budapest. Ah, he said, my chiropractor, a guy who really has a way with women, and men too I believe, is from Budapest…
Oh really, I said, so is mine! I pulled out a picture from my wallet. It was a blurry photograph of my father sitting on a wooden beam in a carpenter’s workshop, the year before I was born. He looked as if his contact lenses had fallen out, or that he was just about to realise he was a ghost.
The man fell silent. He coughed a little, he seemed a bit choked up. Unbelievable, he muttered, unbelievable…
He rummaged around in his pocket, and then handed me a creased photograph of his own. It was of a baby dressed in a sailor’s costume, sitting on a dusty kitchen floor, leaning against a fridge.
The man took a sip of my beer, which had just arrived. After a couple more phlegmy coughs, he said:
I remember your birth like it was yesterday. You wouldn’t stop bawling in that horrid backroom they hurried us into in Krakow University Hospital. Please, your mother shouted, more painkillers, more! I was of no use whatsoever. I ducked out and went to the pub with the chiropractor, who paid for all our drinks. We toasted to your good health, your mother’s too, and to the mad-eyed nurse who was on the runaround on that ghastly ward from dawn till dusk. Apart from that, if I remember correctly, we didn’t say a word to each other all night.
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