Michal Lapinski Studio
No Sharks Today
What a gorgeous day at the beach it was! We were sitting in a circle in our beach chairs and relaxing. It was getting hot in the midday sun but we did not mind, still refreshed from our swim in the crisply sparkling water. The light refreshing breeze coming from the ocean carried the laughter of children. And the food was arriving, just in time! Karl, ever so practical, had got the barbie going while we swam, and now we didn't have to wait too long to get our teeth into juicy lamb chops and crunchy sausages. The adults — Karl, his wife Maureen, my wife Teresa and myself — already had beer stubbies in their hands, held in obligatory stubby holders that were meant to keep the beer cold. And drinking beer icy cold was, as we quickly learnt, "the Australian way", unlike in England where its standard bitter ale was served at room temperature. An abomination! Not to mention Poland, where you drank beer at any temperature, whenever you were lucky enough to get a hold of a couple of bottles. Our stubby holders, too, as befitted the "new Aussies", were decorated with the Australian flag. We were keen to celebrate our new country in every possible way!
Karl was distributing the food, which was delicious. We were not all that familiar with the barbecue culture but we were quickly becoming fans. The quality of the food and the abundance of products still amazed us, even though we had had some taste of that in London. But that was nothing compared to this — munching on a steak while watching the ocean and sandy beach stretching for miles in front of us.
We called our kids, Ola and Pavel, who were still mucking around in the water — they never seemed to be able to get enough of it. But we managed to lure them with the prospect of food and Cokes, which we fished out of the huge esky. When they saw the bottles, now covered in droplets of condensation, they ran, shaking the water off their slim suntanned bodies and from their hair, peppered with sand. The Coke, just like in the ad, burst from the open bottles; they gulped it, spilling it, laughing and jumping around. Looking at this scene, I thought, "Gosh, this IS it."
But it was not just our kids who were so excited and taking it all in, in big gulps, just like the Coke. All four of us were amazed and lapping it all up — the blazing sun, the beauty and strangeness of the land, the warmth and friendliness of people like Karl.
It was our first summer in Australia. We had arrived at the beginning of January 1984. This Orwellian date, usually associated with the hopelessness of totalitarian oppression, for us meant quite the opposite. We had managed to get away from the darkness and gloom which descended on our place of birth, Poland, after the brutal suppression of the Solidarity movement and the introduction of martial law. We flew towards the sun and freedom, happy to get as far away as possible from the country which had been, yet again, taken over by evil forces. A country which had been our home, and which we now felt we had lost for good.
We arrived on the sunny side of the world indeed. Having suffered the cold of an increasingly wintery London and the stress of the long wait for our visas, we were relieved and amply rewarded. After an excruciatingly long flight, we landed in a completely different and surprising world in which we were welcomed by the fiercely shining sun, strange bird cries and the intriguing spicy smell of gum trees.
Everything looked unfamiliar, but we immediately felt welcome. At the airport, a surprisingly easygoing customs officer greeted us with, "G'day, how are you?" As we were dragging our suitcases toward the exit, we were met by the director of the hospital in which I had been offered a position and sponsorship, the crucial factors in our being able to get migration visas. We were amazed that the director himself had come to pick us up. He was accompanied by a tall, older and balding man with a nice smile who was introduced to us as Karl, and who was also a nurse at the hospital. Karl spoke Polish and therefore had been invited by the thoughtful director to be our chaperone. As it turned out, we immediately hit it off with Karl and became friends.
Karl had come to Australia from the same part of Europe as us. His path had been long and arduous, too, but quite different from ours. We got to know his story only partially, in disconnected pieces; much like our fathers, Teresa's and mine, who had gone through the war, he was not keen to talk about his experiences.
Karl came from Silesia, a region situated between Poland and Germany, which after the First World War was divided between those two countries. Its inhabitants, the Silesians, have their own ethnic identity and speak a dialect that is influenced by German but at its core is Polish. Nazi Germany, in their conquest of Europe, incorporated all of Silesia into the Third Reich and naturalised the Silesians as German citizens. With this allocation, which placed them on Hitler's delusional racial ladder somewhat higher than Poles (fit only to be slaves), and Jews (destined to be destroyed) came some doubtful privileges and the obligation to serve in the army.
That's how Karl, who had a German name (at home went by the Silesian diminutive Karlik) but considered himself definitely a Polish Silesian, found himself conscripted into the Wehrmacht soon after the Nazis defeated Poland in 1939. As far as we could gather, he took part in the German campaigns on the Western front. Later, after the invasion, he used the first available opportunity to surrender to the Allied forces, somewhere in Belgium. Eventually, he ended up in a POW camp in England and was released not long after the war ended. He met and married Maureen and they migrated to Australia as "Ten Pound Poms". They put down roots in Australia, and now had two adult daughters and a lovely granddaughter. They made Australia their home and never wanted to go back.
We finished eating and were having another beer, sipping it slowly, still nicely cold. I looked at Karl and Maureen now sitting in the sun, chatting away, relaxed, happy. They were really nice people. We liked each other's company and spent a lot of time together, notwithstanding the differences in age and background. They were both very helpful to us in a kind and unassuming way. I knew that I could always turn to Karl for advice or practical help. Before we managed to buy a car, without which life in the suburbs was quite complicated, they willingly offered us transport to do the shopping, visit the city or go to the beach.
I was looking dreamily at the vastness of the ocean, at the glittering water reflecting and dispersing the sun's rays. I heard a sound; it was getting louder and a dot I could see against the clear sky grew and eventually became a helicopter. This immediately reminded me of sharks. It was surely a shark spotting chopper, one of those that regularly patrolled the beaches during the summer. Sharks did not appear here very often and no shark attacks had been reported for years, but this precaution was welcome. It made you feel protected against the peril that could emerge from the depths of these pristine waters. We wanted to believe that such a measure would work: a shark could be spotted from a distance in the crystal clear water and the alarm could be raised in time. But we were nonetheless terrified of sharks! We just could not accept that this beautiful blue ocean could hide in its entrails such a deadly menace. It was unbelievable and preposterous!
To dispel my apprehension, I turned to Karl, a reliable source of all sorts of useful information. I asked him: "Karl, tell me, is it possible that a shark would turn up here? And could it come close to the shore?"
Karl reassured me that there wasn't much chance for this. "Sharks are not specifically after people. They just hunt for food wherever they can get it, so they usually don't come to the shallows where there is none, and are more likely, for example, to appear before dusk at the mouth of a creek, where they are likely to find fish."
"So when you are swimming, Alex, you are basically safe", he added, smiling, "but just in case — never be the one who finds himself first in front, away from the shore. Make sure that there is always someone before you, and you'll be alright — gut und sicher!"
We were talking in Polish. Karl's Polish was distinctly Silesian and simple, but pretty good. Sometimes though, when he could not find words in Polish or English, he resorted to using German words. He did so on this occasion, perhaps trying to be emphatically reassuring, but, to my anxious ears, the way he spoke sounded harshly and uncomfortably German.
It threw me off balance. Even though I had become familiar with the sound of a melodic German, and now could even enjoy it, like for example listening to Schubert's Lieder, I could still be affected by the harsher sound of this language. It sometimes triggered off a jolt of fear, dread and hate, reawakening in me perhaps the recollection of the barking orders, "Heraus!" or "Schneller!" that may have been buried somewhere in the depth of my earliest memories.
This time the impression was sudden, unwelcome and unpleasant. I became tense and cold. The sound of the helicopter filled my head in a staccato rhythm and was amplified into a ringing in my ears.
It occurred to me, for the first time and with chilling clarity, that Karl could potentially have been one of the Wehrmacht soldiers sent to Poland during the war. He could have been one of those standing by and guarding a sad cavalcade of people evicted from the burning city after the fall of the Warsaw Uprising in 1944, my mother and myself, a small child, among them. He could have been among the troops that had crushed the Polish resistance and razed the city to the ground, as directed by their Führer. He could have met my father during the fighting! They could have stood on opposite sides of a barricade constructed out of rubble and furniture, shooting at and trying to kill each other. Or, in a different scenario, he could have been that German soldier who shot my father when he led an attack on a Wehrmacht barracks.
I tried to restore my peace of mind and come back to the beautiful world in front of me, but it was a struggle to get rid of those disturbing thoughts and images. Sights and sounds enveloped me in a confusing and scary fog.
Then, as if in opposition to those dark and disturbing associations, it dawned on me that both my father and Karl did get through those terrible times; they survived and managed to conquer the horrors of war. They did not come out unscathed, but they went on living, working and having families. My father was in a way lucky to get wounded in one of the first battles of the uprising and be taken to hospital. Had he kept on fighting, he very likely would have been killed — the death toll among the Polish fighters was horrific. Karl on the other hand was saved by his good instinct and the courage —- yes, courage -— to surrender instead of fighting to the death on the orders of an insane leader.
I looked at Karl. With his nice broad smile, he was explaining something to Teresa in his deep and warm voice. I noted that his accent was not German, not Polish, but distinctly his own. I realised that to exorcise the spectres of "bad Germans" that still may have been haunting me I did not have to manufacture a "good German". Here in front of me was a good man.
I said to myself, "Karlik, you are such a great guy, and I'm so glad that we met. I am so grateful to fate that we can all be here, alive, happy, caressed by the sun."
I was surprised by the tears that came to my eyes. Then, by a strange connection, I recalled the circumstances of my birth which took place in the middle of the Nazi occupation. I was told that it had been delayed as if I had been reticent to venture into the world as it was back then. Eventually, my arrival started with a sense of urgency, so the decision was made to use the nearest medical facility — a small hospital run by Germans. I was born there, with assistance from a German doctor who had to use forceps to cajole me out of my safe and warm pre-existence. So it was very likely that the first language I ever heard was German!
The ringing in my ears completely stopped. The sun was shining even stronger and brighter. The sound of the helicopter was fading away, and the chopper could be seen retreating into the distance, becoming a dot and then disappearing completely. It was quiet. The blue waters of the Southern Ocean were surely safe.
I exclaimed, "There are no sharks — let's go for a swim, everyone! Who'll be first in the water!?" And we all jumped out of our chairs and ran towards the ocean.
I got into the water first and swam far out into the ocean. When I stopped and looked back from the distance, I could see the heads of people swimming closer to the shore, and tiny silhouettes of those on the beach, fading in and out through the dispersion of water and sun rays. I turned and swam back toward the shore.
There were no sharks today.