BLACKBERRYJAM
- Gabriele Strohschen
| Janek's blowing hair seemed to be in a contest with the wild flickering of the candles. It wasn't easy for me to concentrate on reading. Although Jacob and Janek sat quietly next to me at the garden table and the evening Michigan sun was fading, it was Janek's hair which fascinated and distracted me. Janek lives with Wuzia, his 85 year-old mother, in Watervliet, Michigan. His father, Jurek Kokot, and his family emigrated to the USA in 1950. After six years of prison camp and four years in Germany, the former polish officer sought a new life. He began one with his wife Wuzia in Chicago. Janek, the youngest of five children, wasn't born until 1952, and Wuzia calls him John these days. Just shortly before retirement, Jurek built the little farm in Watervliet with its 50 acres of softly rolling land, not unlike that of the distant Posen. Jurek died without enjoying the fruits of his labor for more than three years. This evening, I saw his energy in every blueberry bush and hazelnut tree, in every lily and in the three sheds, which slowly stepped back into the dusk around us. Jacob and I come occasionally to the farm. For us, it is a little excursion into the country. For Janek, it is a connection with Chicago. And tonight, after we had grilled again and hid our smuggled wine in old coffee cups from Wuzia's insults, we sat with mosquitoes and swallows in front of the aging house at the garden table. Janek barely survives Watervliet, a sleepy little town in the southwest of Michigan, by savoring his wine. Once in a while, he smokes his herb, planted and dried in the barn particularly for this purpose. "You and that herb of yours", Jacob will complain often and Wuzia's steelblue eyes send awe inspiring looks into Janek's dreamy face. Just a little while ago, while Jacob and I picked blueberries, Janek sat protected from Wuzia with us in the field and smoked. We were giddy with the wonderful feeling of running about the field at dusk like little children, collecting fresh blueberries, undisturbed by police sirens and screeching car tires. The strong blue of the ripe berries and the soft pink of the yet unripe berries, the New Jersey kind which grow on six-foot high bushes, simulated the purplish red of an evening sky. And when I pressed my eyes together a bit, I saw such a sky. Jacob's dog, Saucepan, raced between our legs, a city dog in search of field mice. Janek grew visibly exuberant, even though he watched us under the calming influence of his pipe as we managed to get only every fourth berry into the containers... it is difficult for a city dweller to pick berries without tasting them. Janek is a talented painter. He has the penetrating look of an artist, this particular gift to observe more than the forms around him. Each time when Janek looks at me, I think he is sketching me. And in such moments, I look at him more closely. Like right now at the garden table. Janek has long, brown hair, which frame a wrinkled, deeply tanned face. It looks to me as though someone has drawn an entire world of human experiences on his face, and his hair is like a used frame bought for pennies at a second hand store. Among the wrinkles and furrows and pock scars, which normally make a human face look ugly, lie native mountains and valleys, farewell tears and happy laughs, and sometimes I can also recognize a resignation of human archloneliness. Still, Janek's eyes don't speak of things passed, but of a simple affirmation of the moment. His hair was messed up, as if he had just gotten up, still yawning. Yet, the three of us had already spent the whole day with one another until we ended up reading here at the garden table. More correctly stated, I read poems to the two of them, which Jacob had fished triumphantly from under the backseat of my car, were I had carelessly tossed them again. "Come on, JJ, they're not important. You've heard them all anyway. Look, all this around us is much more beautiful. Put another log on the fire and let's sing, ok?", I had called out to him. "Girl, Janek would be glad if you read him some of your poems. He can get mosquito bites all by himself tomorrow night!", Jacob had joked in return. And so I sat and read excerpts of my writing in the candle light, while feeling Janek's tangled hair next to me, and thinking about the day. Immediately after arriving, we sat with coffee and blueberry cake under the gnarly willow tree. Wuzia was in the kitchen and was putting up blackberryjam. As usual, an animated discussion ensued. Jacob always has something to lecture about; we can't spent a day together without him elaborating on his far-fetching treatises. As a young man, Jacob had been active in unions and local politics in Chicago. Hailing from the Eastcoast, the "great state of" Maine as we had all learned to say around him, and with a liberal education at the so-called left universities of the time, he had made a name for himself in Chicago. He had organized the reluctant black population on the West Side of Chicago in the Alinski tradition of community organizing in various campaigns. Today, after a divorce which had taken the wind out of his sails, he writes poems. And he repairs broken rain gutters and renovates bathrooms as a handy man. Only occasionally, his enthusiasm and charisma shine through in one of his speeches. And the good Jacob turns into the feisty newcomer from the East Coast for a few minutes, who has something to prove in a City which has been run over by a political machine for decades. Today, the discussion focused on the development of government in the US and then switched to Clinton's affairs. I laid lazily in the chaise. Within but a few minutes, however, we looked up dates and searched through old history books. You still cannot discuss anything with Jacob without also needing to challenge him. He loves nothing more than to prove this fact or that date! And Jurek Kokot hat left an incredible collection of history books in the old farm house in Watervliet. The discussion ceased immediately, however, the minute I suggested we drive over to Lake Michigan. I assume, the two bachelors also preferred the thought of ogling beauties at the beach than to discuss history under the old willow tree. Janek sat in the backseat with Jacob's dog. I gave my car keys to Jacob. I had driven enough for the day. Southwest Michigan may be one of the softest landscapes I know, at least during the summer. With those two men and the fuzzy dog in the car, I rolled along slightly inclining country roads; all imaginable hues of greens reeled past me, and the wind carried the smells of ripening fruits and warm earth to me. I also sensed the faint sweat of the migrant workers who come up from Mexico for poorly paid share cropping work. I left that last thought under the willow tree, and anticipated the dunes on the beach. The dunes in Michigan are crowded with tall plants which rise house-high above the beaches. Today, the dunes nearly radiated, their pale yellow sand seemed to have absorbed the sun rays. Under my naked feet, the sand felt like a familiar lover with whom one cuddles gently anymore. We had spread a blanket on the sand which prompted Saucepan to immediately burrow upon it after he escaped completely soaked from the lake. Jacob had pushed him in Lake Michigan and Saucepan punished all of us with his rolling around. Then he laid with his snout in my sand covered lap and looked, what seemed deeply, with his black button eyes into mine. Janek and I went swimming. We were able to swim out fifty yards and then let the waves carry us back. "Janek, what might it be like to be ship wrecked and float about like this in the ocean for days?", I asked and swallowed water, because I hadn't seen the big wave. "Oh no, I rather think about a deserted island, coconuts, a woman beside me, and my painting supplies. I could live with that!", laughed Janek and threw himself into the waves. "Right! And where would you plant your herb. And who would bring you wine?" With that I, too, dove under and let the lake water wash away all further thoughts.
I was embraced. Embraced by the warm water, embraced by the warmth of the |
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