THE BOTANIST’S TALE

The main hall of Warsaw Central railway station was empty, echoing and cold. Stooping to the barred ticket window, Paweł bought a second-class seat on the afternoon all-stops to Wrocław, due to leave in twenty minutes. Zipping his wallet carefully back into his pocket, he walked out onto the platform, dropped his heavy duffel-bag onto a luggage trolley, and leaned against a post to wait.

The day was sullenly overcast, the asphalt at his feet still patchily damp from last night’s rain. Looking down at the tracks running alongside the platform, Paweł noticed a stalky green weed poking up through the black gravel between the sleepers. Somehow a seed had got to this inhospitable spot, somehow again found a bit of earth under the stones, taken a grip there, and pushed its way up into the light. Despite the soot and oil, the trains coming and going, and the threat of the railwaymen’s boots, it stood, growing, photosynthesizing. It even bore three or four tiny yellow flowers. Life, the urge to live; what an extraordinary thing it was!  

Paweł was returning to Wrocław to begin the second year of his architecture degree. He had completed the first with distinctions and the prize in technical drawing, and his professors had made encouraging remarks about his future career. But he was going back reluctantly and unhappily, because during the summer holiday, he had fallen in love with Agnieszka.

Agnieszka was perhaps three years older than Paweł; he hadn’t asked her exact age. But to him, at nineteen, she was the absolute embodiment of woman. He was mystified when she chose him, at a party at his uncle’s house, to go home with her. Their first night together still seemed to Paweł the most important of his life, when he went from boyhood into manhood, relegating his earlier experiences to adolescent fumbling. Agnieszka’s white skin, her thick, coppery hair, her throaty laugh, the tattoo on her shoulder, her smell, the heat and litheness of her body, all astonished him. He had spent almost every day and night of the holiday with her, and his passion had only increased. Now, to leave her, to lose the touch and scent of her, was physically painful. And while separation itself was bad enough, he feared something worse; that she would forget him.

‘Why do you have to go back to Wrocław?’ she’d asked, lying naked next to him two afternoons ago. ‘Are you bored with me already? We are so good together. Do I have to wait for you a whole year?’ Paweł was terrified that this woman, who had just transformed his life, would be taken from him, that she’d find someone else. She was older than he, she knew people he didn’t know; he certainly couldn’t control her. And she loved sex. How could she be expected to wait a year without that? A visceral jealousy gripped Paweł; his heart beat faster and he clenched his teeth. He could not bear to think of someone else with his Agnieszka. But he couldn’t return until New Year at the earliest, and then only for two weeks. Eaten up with desire and doubt, for days he’d been unable to order his thoughts. Go back to university, continue to work towards his career, or stay with Agnieszka? Even now, standing on the platform, he was completely undecided.

Paweł hadn’t noticed the train arriving, but now it was drawing up to the buffers, a string of faded blue carriages with numbers stencilled in white on their sides. A guard walked along the platform, unlocking the doors. Paweł found an empty six-seat compartment, lugged his bag inside and slid the door firmly shut behind him. He wanted to make the journey undisturbed, in order to think.

The carriages were old Soviet rolling stock, shabby and gloomy, the seats covered in dark-coloured oilcloth, with gummy brown linoleum underfoot. The compartment smelled of soot and stale tobacco, with a reek of disinfectant from the toilet at the end of the corridor. Paweł was reaching his duffel into the overhead rack when the train jerked into movement, making him stagger. He flopped into a window seat and sat staring out through the grimy glass. Switching yards, telegraph poles, fire escapes of shabby hotels and apartments, all the clutter a city packs around a railway station, slid past. Further on came houses, football fields, churches, then factory chimneys, brick walls splashed with graffiti, allotments with rusty sheds. After twenty minutes, the first white birch trunks appeared; they had left the city. The compartment was oppressively dim, and Paweł flicked the light switch experimentally. Surprisingly, it worked, but the small globe above in its wire cage threw only a dull yellow glow that didn’t relieve his spirits.

In films, a man on a long train journey orders his thoughts, develops a plan, while trees and telegraph poles glide smoothly and evenly past his window. But Paweł saw only a distracting flicker of angled birch trunks, punctuated by stunted conifers. Crows circled in the pallid sky. It was cold, and the old carriage rattled and shook. It all seemed a forewarning that he was returning to Wrocław only to dreariness, that he should stay with Agnieszka. Paweł tugged at his wispy blond beard in perplexity.

They slowed to a stop at a small station, Trzebinia, the sign read; he’d never heard of it. A little knot of people had gathered on the platform. Paweł willed newcomers not to enter his compartment. The next stop was an hour away, and left alone for an hour, he would certainly be able to decide what to do. After a minute a whistle blew, the train shuddered and began to pull away. Paweł let out a relieved breath.

He had just resumed staring at the passing landscape when he heard the compartment door slide open. Annoyed at being disturbed after all, he turned to see the intruder. It was an elderly woman, small and sprightly-looking, wearing a grey felt hat and wire-framed glasses. She held a large rectangular leather bag. ‘Good day,’ she said brightly. After staring for a moment, Paweł stood awkwardly and offered to help her with her bag. ‘I can manage, thank you,’ she replied, firmly pushing it into the overhead rack.

Her luggage in place, she sat in the window seat opposite Paweł, looking past him with a faint, distant smile. The train fell into a regular rocking, and Paweł did his best to fall into a coherent line of thought.

His life plan was certainly to become an architect, a successful and respected professional, but he could not dismiss the fear that if he left Agnieszka alone for a year, she would slip through his hands. He felt a physical need for her. And surely, it was wrong to put some craving for future security ahead of love. That was no way to live; you’d end up a stultified bourgeois like his parents, exactly the kind of person Paweł despised. But nevertheless, to forego his degree; what would he do with his life instead?

After a time, his fellow passenger stood and busied herself with her case. Again Paweł offered to assist, but she shook her head, smiling; she had already extracted a greaseproof paper packet of sandwiches. Paweł looked quickly away, but his movement must have been too obvious, because she offered him a sandwich. Paweł at first refused, but after a short struggle – he was already hungry and four hours of the trip remained – he accepted a thick white triangle; egg and cress. After wolfing it down he allowed himself, at her urging, to take another. Even then he was still hungry, but controlled himself sufficiently to refuse any more.

Only as he brushed the crumbs from his coat did he realise he was eating this woman’s food while a complete stranger to her, like a beggar accepting charity. Embarrassed, he stood again, introduced himself, and bowed; he felt one should bow on introduction to ladies of her generation. In return, she told him her name, and that she was going to visit her family in Opole. A nice, old-fashioned woman of some education, perhaps a schoolteacher, Paweł concluded, returning to look out the window.

Field after field of heavy black soil, ploughed into long parallel furrows, rolled by. His thoughts were still circling when the train pulled in to another small station. He heard the door to the next compartment opened and banged shut again, and a murmur of men’s voices.

The further away from Agnieszka the train took him, the more disconsolate Paweł became. He was faced, surely, with two irreconcilable courses, two irreconcilable lives. To abandon either was impossible, but he could not hold on to both. Then, like a ship emerging from fog, a solution appeared to him. He would go to the professors, tell them some tale about illness in his family, ask for a year’s leave; they would surely grant it, with his good marks. Then he could return to Agnieszka and live in bliss. A year was an uncountable wealth of time. And in a year, everything would be clear; either he’d have found another path in life, or he would resume his degree, either way with Agnieszka beside him. This was the perfect solution. He would be back with Agnieszka by the weekend. Paweł felt a clutch of excitement in his stomach.

A burst of laughter came from the next compartment, then louder voices than before; they must be drinking.

The cloud was sitting lower now, and the grey sky was edged with mauve. Fields began to give way to warehouses, each accompanied by a carpark full of neatly-ordered cars. A red star on a factory roof stood out in the gloom. As Paweł stared at it, anxiety seeped back into him. Perhaps it would not be quite so simple; if they wouldn’t give him leave, then what? He massaged his temples with his fingertips.

He looked again at the elderly lady sitting opposite him. It’s been the plot of a hundred films; two strangers meet on a train, they speak candidly because they are strangers, and something decisive, life-changing, emerges. Why couldn’t it work in real life? In fact, was that why this woman had entered the compartment he’d wanted to himself? He took a deep breath.

‘Pani, can I ask you something?’ She smiled. ‘Of course, although I am not sure I will know the answer.’

Paweł began. He spoke about Agnieszka, his studies, his dilemma. He realised he was explaining it more clearly than he had ever expressed it to himself. It must mean, he felt, his confidence growing, that this meeting was meant to be, that he could take this woman’s advice. She listened without interrupting. At the end he asked simply, ‘What do you think I should do?’

Her faint smile returned. ‘My dear young man, how could I possibly tell you what to do? Nobody can say what is best for someone else. And even if I could, you wouldn’t do it anyway, you’d do what you wanted in the here and now. That is how youth is.’ She looked away, out the window at the passing landscape.

So that’s it, nothing, Paweł thought, disappointed and disheartened. But after a moment, turning back to him, she resumed.

‘When I was eighteen, I entered university in Krakow, to study botany. In those days, for a girl from the village it was an enormous step; to leave home, to be amongst strangers, to be at university. And there was a young man there who said he was in love with me. I didn’t know him or where he came from, but he sat next to me in the lecture hall. He had thick black hair, heavy eyebrows and extraordinary deep green eyes. His hands were too big and his voice was perhaps too loud. I was a little scared of him. But he said he had been smitten at first sight, and professed an overpowering love for me.

I was frightened, but I was attracted to him, too, partly because he was so ardent, and partly because of those eyes.

Now I had such a struggle even to get into university, and I loved botany. I wanted nothing in the world more than to get my degree and work as a botanist. And I saw that if I began any kind of involvement with this man, I wouldn’t be able to concentrate on my studies, and the future I’d planned for myself would collapse. All the hard work, everything I’d given up, the nights when I woke before dawn to study, the fear I forced down before each examination, all would be wasted. I told him no. He pleaded with me, but I still said no. It sounds silly, but I moved to another seat in the lecture hall, he followed me, so I moved again, and again he followed me. I had to move three times before he stopped beseeching me.

I won my degree and was appointed to the Gardens in Warsaw as an analytical botanist, and I worked there for forty years, work I loved. I published some important research papers, completed my master’s degree, and when I retired I was second-in-charge. They gave me a farewell party and a certificate signed by the Minister. I even have a plant, a type of sedge, named after me. My life was everything I had hoped it would be.

And now I am seventy years old. And I can tell you, I would throw all my diplomas and publications and certificates on the bonfire to be eighteen again and have one week with that loud young man who said he was in love with me.’ 

Paweł didn’t know how to respond. He was embarrassed by this prim, elderly lady speaking of passion. It had not occurred to him that old people might ever have felt desire.

His companion looked at him contemplatively. ‘But that does not tell you anything,’ she concluded. ‘It is an old woman’s story of regret, that is all.’ She fell silent, and again looked out the window.

The last faint traces of day had vanished while the botanist was telling her tale. Now lights were running past the window, strings of white blobs against a black night sky. The train began to slow. ‘Opole,’ she told him. ‘I get out here.’ This time Paweł was quick enough to get her bag down from the rack, and tug open the compartment door for her. On the platform, under orange arc lamps, passengers were already hurrying toward the exit, pushing through the throng of those waiting to board.

The botanist hesitated, as if to say something more, but after gazing at him for a moment said simply, ‘Goodbye’.

‘Thank you for the sandwiches,’ Paweł managed to blurt out.

She smiled tightly, raised a gloved hand, and walked briskly towards the end of the carriage. Paweł watched until she stepped down from the train, then slumped back into his seat.

The lights outside began to gather speed again. There was silence from the next compartment; the drinkers had got off at Opole, or fallen asleep. Paweł saw his face reflected in the window, suspended between the dull yellow light of the compartment and the blackness outside, but instead of a confident, mature man who had a woman like Agnieszka for a lover, he saw an irresolute, anxious youth. He shielded the glass with his hand and stared out into the passing night.

The meaning of the botanist’s tale was clear. He must go back to Agnieszka, whether he was given leave or not. Life, real life, demanded putting love ahead of dry practicality; that’s what she’d told him. He was surprised he didn’t feel happier, now his dilemma had been resolved.

Puzzled, he sat turning the tale over again. Dimly at first, he began to perceive something else in it. By refusing to be swayed by a pleading of love, she had attained exactly the life she desired, and lived it out happily for forty years; he’d glossed over that part of the tale. Just possibly, the botanist’s story meant the opposite of what he’d assumed, perhaps even the opposite of what she intended. Yes, it was all very well when you were old, with your life’s achievement successfully behind you, to regret not being impetuous and passionate in your youth, to say, ‘Oh, I’d give it all for a week of love.’ But what if she had surrendered to her fellow-student’s declaration of passion, failed her studies, and worked all her life as a clerk or a saleswoman? Bitterness and ashes, surely.

In truth, the botanist’s tale contained a quite different message. It actually told him he couldn’t throw over his life so quixotically; he had to finish his degree. Then he could choose the life he wanted, provide a future for Agnieszka. She’d welcome a well-paid professional as a partner, surely? And if not…. He tried to push aside the thought that in two years, or two months, there might be no Agnieszka, and an even fainter, scratchier thought; just possibly, this Agnieszka was not meant to be his life’s partner.

A cluster of lights, a factory or warehouse, went by. He should have thanked the botanist not for her sandwiches, but for her story, the real meaning of which he’d grasped, even if she had not. As he was congratulating himself on his perceptiveness, another idea crept up on him; could she have intended that all along? Indeed – Paweł nearly choked – was the botanist’s tale even true? Or had she, sure he would not take direct advice from an old woman, given him the answer clothed in a fable, so he’d think he’d discovered it for himself? Maybe the old do know something about life after all, Paweł concluded. He leaned back in his seat, not needing to look out the window any more.