Bartek said that although he could understand and even speak a little English, he felt more comfortable speaking in Polish. Of course, I said, Larysa will translate. Jason was photographing continuously—the visuals here were irresistible: cold hard stairwell as foreground; gorgeous mess of an apartment as background; and Bartek, in his filthy sweats, perched on his toolbox, as subject.
I opened the interview—and I say “interview” because at the outset it felt formal, stiff—by reiterating our cover story: “We’re doing a project to understand the building, the history of the building, and to that end we want to know your story, your memories.”
Bartek matter-of-factly sketched his bio. He was born in a nearby town called Czeladź but when he was two years old he moved to Sosnowiec, to this apartment, to live with his grandparents. In the thirty-six-square-meter apartment, he said, lived seven people: his grandparents, his great-grandparents, him, and the sixth and seventh I didn’t catch—perhaps an aunt and uncle.
“How long ago was that?” I asked. I acknowledged it to myself in the moment and I should acknowledge it here: though I was interested in Bartek’s narrative I was also pushing, fishing, for details relevant to my family’s narrative.
“I’m forty-two years old now,” Bartek said, “and I moved here when I was two. So forty years ago.”
“So you’ve been in this apartment essentially your entire life?”
“Tak,” Bartek said, then, in English, “This is my family’s house.” My heart skipped; these were startling words to hear. Bartek didn’t mean anything by it, it wasn’t said defensively or threateningly, he only meant to show off his English; he had no reason to feel threatened or to act defensively—well, he did have a reason but he was unaware he had a reason. I’d been telling myself this was my family’s building, and so it was startling to hear him say, “This is my family’s house”—here was his story intruding on mine, or my story intruding on his—and in that moment I regretted coming here, asking for interviews, meeting and getting to know and becoming attached to people who would be, no matter how generous my outlook, no matter how right-minded my intentions, adversaries. Bartek had no idea and I hated that he had no idea.
If you want to understand this building, Bartek said, you have to know that it is connected intimately with the theater. Most of the apartments had been designated by the Communist government for the cast and crew of Teatr Zagłębia, a renowned provincial playhouse. “The theater lived here,” Bartek said, in English. All the residents were theater people. There were actors, actresses, directors, costumers, secretaries, administrators. Bartek’s grandfather? He was a leading man. Even today, Bartek said, many of the residents are involved with the theater. That woman upstairs who had been so suspicious? Her name was Teresa, and her late husband was an actor. One floor below her lived one of the leading actresses, across the hall from a woman who worked in the theater office. “Many actors used to live in this building,” Bartek said. “On Fridays and on Saturdays, after the premiere, they’d come home and throw huge parties. The whole building was a party. We are strangers but somehow, because of the theater, we are kind of family, even today.”
While we were talking a few residents squeezed by to go up or down the stairs. They were polite but aloof. If they were curious about what was going on, why these three strangers, one with an open notebook and another with a camera, were interviewing their neighbor, they did a good job hiding it.
I asked Bartek (disingenuously? It was getting more and more difficult to tease out my interest in Bartek and his story from my interest in my own) if he’d share any early memories of the building, of those parties, of his neighbors, of his family. He reminisced softly for a bit, nothing very specific, more image than narrative, then, of his own accord, circled back to the story of how he’d come to live with his grandparents. He corrected and expanded what he’d told us before. He didn’t in fact move here when he was two. Rather, it was at that age that he began spending more time with his grandparents than he did with his parents; Bartek didn’t say why, and I didn’t ask. At age six, he said, he decided to move to Sosnowiec for good.
Jason interrupted with instructions for a pose: “Bartek, can you put your hands on your knees?” Bartek put his hands on his knees. “That’s perfect,” Jason said, camera up against his face.
Bartek, as he held the pose, told us that he didn’t see his mother, not once, for the next thirty-five years, even though she lived only four kilometers away. And then one day he got a message on Nasza Klasa, a kind of Polish Facebook, from a brother he had never known existed, inviting him to his wedding, where he met not only the groom but also four other brothers, and saw his mother for the first time in thirty-five years. “We had,” he said, “an impromptu family reunion.”
I asked (what else could I ask?) what that was like.
Bartek said, in his overpronounced English, “It was amazing,” then switched back to Polish. Initially, he said, he was very moved, very touched, maybe even more moved than his brother, who was the one getting married. He had hoped that after the wedding his mother would stay in touch, would restart their relationship, but she never reached out; she died six months later. Bartek saw her only once more, in the hospital, for fifteen minutes.
The conversation—in that natural and unnatural way we move on from difficult
