yet another sign of the new times.
The year before her high school graduation exams, the headmistress calls her in to her office.
‘Now then, Miss Mielczarek, you are president of the council and you’re a good student. I have received a directive from the authorities to create an education class. There is a lack of teachers in this country, so we need to train new staff. I’d like you to join this class, and then I’ll have an argument to persuade others – when you have joined, the other girls will follow your lead and willingly agree.’
Like it or not, she cannot say no.
She is already in the ZMP, which displeases her mother. ‘Why did you sign up for that?’ she complains. ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ answers the daughter.
Her father, on the other hand, is pleased. Even before the PZPR came into being, he belonged to its wartime predecessor, the PPR, or Polish Worker’s Party. He and his wife were always quarrelling about it, but there was no domestic war in the Mielczarek home as a result.
Alicja’s mother had dreamed of a career in medicine, but before the war she had no chance of achieving it. She tells her daughter: ‘I’d love you to become a doctor.’ And Alicja is convinced that one day she will do just that. When at school the girls are assigned the essay title ‘Who Do You Want to Be?’, she writes: ‘I am going to be a doctor.’
Along with her high school graduation diploma, Alicja receives a state order to work at one of the schools in Szczecin. It looks as if medicine, or any other studies, will forever remain a dream. But she wants to study – very much, at any cost. She goes to see the local superintendent of schools. She is told: ‘There’s nothing we can do, you’ll have to go to the Ministry.’ She goes to Warsaw. There they tell her: ‘You can go to college, but only the kind that prepares you for school teaching.’
So Alicja chooses to study history at Warsaw University. She isn’t obsessed with the subject, but she likes her school history teacher. In Warsaw she lives in a four-person room in the so-called New Dziekanka – a university residence hall on Krakowskie Przedmieście in central Warsaw, near the statue of Adam Mickiewicz. It is attached to the old Dziekanka, which belonged to the art college.
Rysiek is now living with his parents and sister in the two-family Finnish cottage on Pole Mokotowskie (Mokotów Field, a large park in Warsaw); the Kapuścińskis occupy one half of it. At the entrance, several steps lead into a tiny vestibule, with a small toilet and kitchenette with a metal sink to one side, and a living room with an alcove to the other. In the living room there is a sofa bed for the parents, a wardrobe, a table, and a couple of chairs. In the alcove, divided from the room by a curtain, are two iron beds. Rysiek sleeps against one wall, and his sister Basia against the other.
Rysiek’s father has finally returned to work, as a teacher of handicrafts, while their mother works for the time being at the Central Statistical Office. While his parents are at work and his sister is at college, Rysiek brings Alicja to the cottage.
When Teresa Torańska and I question her about these meetings, Alicja Kapuścińska is reluctant to answer.
‘Don’t write about that,’ she says.
‘What mustn’t we write about?’
‘That when they were out, Rysiek and I used to meet at the Finnish cottage.’
‘What’s wrong with that?’
‘I don’t like talking about private matters in public.’
‘Are we asking?’
‘Don’t you think anyone will guess, Teresa?’
‘The Finnish cottage has to be in there, Ala.’
‘With restraint, then, please.’
The Finnish cottage still stands in the same spot. In 1988 Rysiek and Alicja go for a walk to Pole Mokotowskie during the time when the National Library is being built there. They see that of the original fifteen or so cottages, two are still there, transformed into storerooms for workmen. One is the Kapuścińskis’. They peep through the window. The round, black table made by Rysiek’s father still stands in the middle of the room, with papers spread out on it. When Józef moved in the 1970s, he didn’t take it with him, because it wouldn’t fit into his new flat.
Maria Kapuścińska is not thrilled by her son’s relationship with Alicja, especially as a wedding and a child are soon on the way. She thinks they are too young to get married – he is twenty and she is nineteen. Maria dreams of an unusual future for her son, though she is not entirely sure what kind. She is afraid that too early a marriage will obstruct him in his career, whatever that may be. And she bears a grudge against Alicja for falling pregnant – in those days, the girl was always to blame.
Once Alicja starts coming to the Kapuścińskis’ cottage as the official fiancée, Mrs Kapuścińska gives her her son’s socks to darn. Alicja darns, launders and irons Rysiek’s shirts. Under Mrs Kapuścińska’s tutelage, without a word of protest, she learns the duties expected of her beloved Rysieczek’s wife. She is to be meek, industrious and supportive to her husband. Alicja tries to mollify her future mother-in-law and to show her that her son has not made a bad choice. She is grateful to be allowed into the house at all.
At Alicja’s family home in Szczecin, Rysiek quickly makes a good impression. He immediately announces that they are planning to get married, but don’t know when because they do not have a place to live. Alicja asks her mother if she would be surprised if they soon had a child. Her mother is neither surprised nor shocked; she knows what’s going on.
On 6 October 1952, at Ryszard and Alicja’s registry office wedding, besides the witnesses and a few friends, the only close relatives present are Józef Kapuściński and Rysiek’s sister, Basia. Maria Kapuścińska boycotts the ceremony. She invites them to dinner afterwards, but Rysiek wriggles out of it. Of everyone involved, his beloved Maminek is the least willing to accept his marriage. Only when she was dying would Maria Kapuścińska admit to her daughter-in-law: ‘Ala, you have been a daughter to me.’ Alicja reckons this is the highest distinction she could possibly have received from her mother-in-law. After more than twenty years of marriage, she deserved it.
Alicja’s parents did not come to the wedding either. The young couple deliberately decided to tell them about it too late – they sent a telegram the day before the wedding – so there would be no confrontation between the parents. They were afraid that an altercation or an exchange of sour looks on that particular day would affect relations between the families for years to come. After that, there was an appropriate relationship between the two sets of parents.
As a result, when Alicja, in a modest navy blue dress with a white collar, and Rysiek, in the black suit from his high school graduation ceremony (the only suit he had at the time), take their seats before the registrar, several of the most important people in their lives thus far are not present.
The registrar recites the dull official formulae about the family as ‘the basic social cell’, while Rysiek takes the rings from his pocket, nudges Alicja and says: ‘Put it on my finger.’ Later they do not wear the rings. Alicja explains that while working at a hospital she had to keep washing her hands, and the ring got in the way; Rysiek simply loses his.
Soon after the wedding, Alicja takes dean’s leave from college and goes to Szczecin. While waiting for the baby to be born, she works in the library at Szczecin’s Palace of Youth. On 2 May 1953 Alicja’s mother sends her son-in-law a telegram saying: ‘You have
