The fast road

by Amelia Goodman (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Poland

The tired way in which the house sagged into the dirt suggested that it had seen more than one horizon, though it is widely accepted that houses won't stray far from their original foundations, especially on that bleak road somewhere between Kołobrzeg and Gdańsk. It was almost impossible to imagine that, a hundred and fifty years ago, the same house could have woken up to a glorious sunrise with lush stretches of grass laid out before it like bolts of richly-coloured velvet. A hundred and fifty years ago, that grass would have been dipped in natural gold rather than blighted by the yellow-tinged fatigue of time. Perhaps, from those melancholy windows, a young child sat staring at the same brilliant sunrise and dreamed of the type of happiness that could only be promised by the same suns that bathed the walls of El Dorado in shimmering gold. You could picture the house's stoic silence as time shifted restlessly around it: grass giving way to wheat; trees falling to the earth; industrialisation morphing soft light into searing beams that scorched the unprotected walls and chased away the flowers in summer. Somewhere on that dusty trail of time, the flowers learned to never come back. Instead, in 2016, the carcass of an old car slumbered in the place of nature. It's orange-red bloom of rust, visible even from a distance, could have been called bright in comparison to the dirty monochrome of the walls. It wasn't fanciful to suggest that the house had seen the blitz, survived a war. Watched as tanks clanked down a new strip of autobahn, splitting that golden sunrise into monstrous silhouettes. Grieved for a family as the son left, returning with a new understanding in his eyes that chased away his youth. Cowered as the inky black of night was set on fire in colours too bright, too harsh, to be gold, stinking of damp earth amidst the shrieks and drones and helpless as the beautiful land of promise sank into the waiting arms of the devil, like Atlantis once sank into the sea. Maybe the house was a war hero. Maybe it had more open wounds than it’s scars suggested. Maybe it never forgot its loved ones as it sat, forgotten, in a world of new technology. The new world seethed with that fresh promise old veterans could never hope to grasp - how could they even try whilst trapped in that nursing home somewhere on the fast road north of Gdańsk? Choked in the dust of solitude, observed but uncared for, it was all to easy to imagine the stench of abandon tinged with dead animals. On that day in 2016, the sun wasn’t golden. It was only March, though 'only' implies that there were brighter days ahead. It had snowed in Kołobrzeg, sky barren, grey clouds coasting overhead like the cars on that fast road. The driver didn’t see the house, or spare it more than a glance empty with the lazy dismissiveness with which the Victorian upper class passed street children. These were only thoughts, anyhow. It was difficult to reconstruct the past when the house looked like it had been built the way it stood in the 21st century, destined to its destitution a hundred and fifty years in a hazy future against the new backdrop of self-ruin and a beaten field. In reality, it was impossible to truly believe that such a house was once a home. The next day, in Warsaw, we discovered a city of mixed architecture. The intricacies of a pre-war city wove between the complexes of post-modernism, cranes rising like giants in a city half-finished after the War. That house south of Kołobrzeg had the same harrowing pride, the same secret history laced with resilience and melancholy. Yet, it was evident that no one had ever thought to rebuild that house as it sagged further into the dirt, lost in long-gone glory days somewhere on the fast road between Kołobrzeg and Gdańsk.