Peter

I heard this story through the olaid but indirectly. When I got back home, there was still six months to go before I rejoined the History Honours course at Aberdeen. It might have been panic, wondering if I could thread the shuttle again. Before long, I was surrounded with books and markers. The olaid could see there was something desperate there. She asked me more than once about who I’d met in Israel. There were a couple of Airmails from Germany. One from Finland.

There was still money in the bank and the grant came through OK. The olaid told me there was nothing she needed for the house but she’d been happy looking after the wee car for me. She took her old pal from Westview for a spin now and again. Folk didn’t talk to each other the same, in the new houses.

She nagged me to get out of the history books and dig out my fishing tackle. She remembered I was always buried in angling books. Catalogues from Abu, Sweden. When I was young, I’d show her photos of astonishing and exotic pike and perch from Swedish and Finnish lakes. This fish pornography had taken over from Enid Blyton.

I remembered a standing invite, from two other volunteers. This was a couple, into boats and into catching their own supper. They lived on a small island in the Baltic. You took a ferry from Stockholm to Turku, then a bus which would drop you at a road-end. Half a mile walk to a regular ferry. They’d pick me up the other end. She had been born on the island. Her man was an American who had settled in Canada, after getting over the border to dodge the draft. He still couldn’t return to the USA. Everyone had good English.

They were still analysing their own experience in the land we called Israel. How the actual compared with what they’d imagined beforehand. What they now read about the settlers’ determination to hold on to their hard-won gains.

Then there was the perch fishing. Saltwater perch grew to a very good size. You could cast a spinner from just outside the door. I took one that would do for a starter for us all. Two friends from another island were coming for a supper of elk.

That’s how I heard this tale from a Polish artist on a Swedish-speaking Finnish island. (Did you get all that?)

‘Please call me Andrew. I think you might have difficulty with the Polish version of my name.’ Andrew had married a Finnish woman and taught at Turku and Helsinki universities, for years.

He picked happily at the white flakes still holding to the vertical-striped skin, baked in a crust of salt. ‘Very Biblical,’ he said.

He was retired now. He seemed amazed to find we were getting the banter going. ‘Are you laughing to be polite?’ he asked.

‘No, I’m laughing because you’re funny.’

‘No-one in this country finds my stories funny.’

I thought at the time, this was strange. You would think Poland and Finland had strong similarities in their unfortunate histories. Both had been invaded and torn up between feuding empires. You would think there would be some common ground in the darkest breed of bitter irony. Maybe you needed to know the language to savour Finnish humour. But my new friend was completely fluent.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘are you religious?’

‘You know I am. Unless you’ve been asleep for the last hour. I went to the Holy Land to make comparisons. In my last week, there was one man who walked streets out of his way to make sure I found the way to the bus station, when I asked directions. It was like being in Glasgow. He was a Jordanian Christian.’

‘Not a Samaritan?’ the Canadian said.

Andrew continued. ‘I mean religious with a capital R. Easily offended?’

Good. The fish reminded me of something. It’s after the resurrection. Jesus and Peter have got together again. The show is back on the road. But it’s not as good as it was. I think it was Peter who said it first.

‘Lord,’ he said, ‘forgive me for saying this but it’s not as good as it was.’

Jesus said, ‘Peter, you’re an honest man. What can we do about it? Is there anything we can do? Support me.’

‘Well,’ said Peter, ‘that walking on the water thing, that was good. That went down really well with the crowd. Could you do that again?’

But Jesus was nervous. He thought about it. Then he said, ‘We could go out together to the Sea of Galilee when it’s quiet. Have a trial run when there’s no-one watching. Will you help me?’

‘I’m there, Lord. I’m with you.’

So they did go forth together, united, and took possession of a suitable small craft. But Jesus was seriously nervous.

‘Can you remember how we did this?’ he asked.

‘Yes,’ Peter said, ‘it was the starboard side.’

‘Starboard, you’re sure?’

‘Are you ready now, are you looking after me?’

‘I’m with you, Lord.’

So Jesus slowly eased himself over the side of the vessel and sank like a stone. Fortunately he still had all that hair so Peter was able to get a hold and pull him, gasping, back aboard.

When Jesus got his breath back he said, at last, ‘That didn’t go so well.’

‘Have to say, Lord, it could have gone better. It must have been the port side.’

‘Of course I’m sure, it’s the only one left.’

‘Are you ready?’

‘I’m ready.’

Jesus eased himself even more slowly over on the port side and sank down, just like before.

Peter got hold of his hair again and as he pulled him aboard said, ‘Lord, Lord, I know what it is.’

‘What is it?’

‘Lord, You didn’t have those holes in the feet the last time.’

I laughed. My new friend was surprised. He asked again if I was being polite. But if there was any ice intact on this mild June evening, on an island in the Baltic, circa 1978, it was melted now.

The geographies and the complex histories proved convenient for the invaders who came on the rampage, from either east or west. You just blame an atrocity on the other guy. Strange that both of them had a moustache.

It was a long time after the leader with the heavier and wider model shed the mortal, that there was any sign of the Russian state coming close to an admission of responsibility for approximately 20,000 counts of murder in the woods of Katyn.

You could thus argue that the Second World War began and ended in Polish territory. It was inevitable that the German-speaking areas of Czechoslovakia would be overrun by the Nazis. The borderline with Poland was the test of the standpoints and alliances. Polish authorities had no doubts about the invasion to come. That’s why they handed over everything they’d discovered, towards the deciphering of messages encrypted by the German forces’ Enigma machines. They gave their information to both Britain and France.

And sure enough an incident was staged to show an apparent infringement of the territory of the Third Reich. It was another couple of years before I’d see an example of how this was reported to the German public.

It was of course at another reunion of volunteer workers, wondering how the hell they had thought it a good idea to support the efforts of those who mainly denied any rights to the previous occupiers of the land they’d taken over. History implies the use of hindsight as a tool.

Gabriele Richter’s mother was hospitable towards her daughter’s friend. She must have been one of the few Germans who failed to destroy her cherished documentation of the myth of Adolf. Frau Richter’s carefully bound copies of the collected, illustrated instalments of the life and actions of Adolf Hitler told me more than any analysis I’ve ever read. You know the word Führer might suggest a guide or teacher as well as a leader. There’s a lot of children and dogs and smiling but on this occasion even the benevolent Führer has lost his patience with the threats from the Polish people. They were astray and in need of strong leadership. That’s one way of presenting an invasion.

But since I really am preaching now, ladies and gentleman, I exhort you. Go thee now. Go and perform the latter-day action which is known unto the multitude as a google. Do a google on blitzkrieg. I did it to check the spelling.

The term is currently being applied to matters of commerce. That’s worse than the guys in the temple.

‘You have taken the house of my father and turned it into a den of thieves.’

You’ll know me now – the use of language is sacred to me. I’m hearing the whine of these hellish Stukas. Using that fucking word, that fucking way, is criminal.

End of rant within rant. Back to my home island.

In the same way as the First World War did not end for the people of the Hebridean Long Island on the 11th of the 11th of the 11th, 1918, the Second could not end for the Polish people until a leader visited the site of the mass grave. In 1992 a step was made when the Russian administration released documents which proved that Stalin’s Politburo had approved, on the 5th March 1940, the proposal to order the killings.

Vladimir V Putin did not apologise but he did say the following, as reported by the New York Times (Michael Schwirtz, April 7th 2010). The words within quotemarks are still qualified:

‘In this ground lay Soviet citizens, burnt in the fire of the Stalinist repression of the 1930s; Polish officers, shot on secret orders; soldiers of the Red Army, executed by the Nazis.’

But a photograph does indeed show yet another powerful wee guy laying his wreath. I don’t think the government of the United Kingdom has apologised yet for advertising the wreck of Iolaire, for sale to the highest bidder, before all the missing bodies had been recovered. There’s probably a record on file somewhere but I can’t tell you offhand how many pieces of silver they got, for all that bronze and teak.