The Trial of Water

When writing about the river, one must write about time. For reasons Heraclitean, of course, as it no man ever steps in the same river twice. And not just because the river itself is moving and flowing, ever‑changing. The movement involves those stepping in, too.

DEATH TO THE ENEMIES OF THE ODER, said the graffiti that appeared recently by the riverbank in Opole, near a spot frequented by families with children for Sunday walks. Around that time, Plemię Odry was also established – a movement of environmentalists and concerned citizens who petitioned to grant the Oder legal personality. The movement took flight after the recent poisoning of the river made national news. The environmental disaster killed thousands of fish and other animals while the water itself reached a fatal contamination level.

Not far from that first graffiti, there is another, perhaps a signature of sorts: “ODER FANATICS”. Did they mean the river? The poetics of the phrase does, however, bring to mind different contexts. Could the authors have meant the enemies of Odra Opole football club, or the enemies of its fans? But who could be their enemy, then? Wisła Kraków? Warta Poznań? Or maybe it is river‑named clubs that stick together against, say, those named after factories (such as Azoty Kędzierzyn) that sometimes poison the river? It is probably not the case, though, and relationships between clubs do not depend on their names. Some animosities exist “since forever”, while others change from season to season. Whatever the background, the graffiti sounds radical and aggressive. Moreover, it appeared, curiously, at the same time as the activist‑organised March for the Oder took place, where a group of young people walking along the river carried a banner that said “WATER IS US”. Looking at the unhurried and slightly silty current that flows nearby, one doesn’t get the impression of the river itself being either aggressive or radical but, as we know, appearances can be deceptive.

When writing about the river, one must write about time. For reasons Heraclitean, of course, as no man ever steps in the same river twice. And not just because the river itself is moving and flowing, ever‑changing. The movement involves those stepping in, too. Those who step in the river now are not who they were as children.

I remember swimming in the Oder‑adjacent Ulga Canal in the 1970s. A small lido was made there; a great way to spend hot summer days. It was surrounded by gentle grassy slopes with just enough space for a picnic, and the water was shallow. I would splash there with my father as he knew this area well; not a hundred metres over, between the Oder and the artificial Canal – built by German engineers to regulate the river’s water level, constantly supplied with fresh water from the larger body – stood the house in which he had used to live after the family moved here from Lviv. That was when I entered the Oder for the first time. Does such baptism make me a tribe member?

I was told that after my grandparents arrived here by rail transport in 1945, my grandfather would fish in the Oder with his friends from Lychakiv. He would catch crayfish there, too. It was the Oder where my father learned how to swim and then became so good at it he would win one interschool competition after another. Back then, they said, the river was clean, and then it was poisoned. It seems that while the pre‑war German industry failed to kill the crayfish in the Oder, Poland did just that. It was post‑war Poland that poisoned the Oder. Most likely, with some help from Czechia, where the Oder is born.

My grandfather, the one from Lviv, was one of the first people to reconstruct the zoological garden in Opole after the war. Young or recovering from injuries, wild animals would sometimes live in my father’s room. My grandfather was well known in the neighbourhood: by some miracle, he managed to keep a few of his former friends, as if a part of Lychakiv was transported to the Zaodrze district in Opole, the district that would soon gain a reputation for the most dangerous area in town. The local football team was even called Lwowianka, the Lviv Club. Later, my granddad would take my father to watch the Odra Opole games. They both were football fans, and the players they cheered or booed were the boys they knew from their backyards.

Many years later, I saw a short film recorded by a young German couple that went on a honeymoon kayaking trip down the Oder. The black‑and‑white picture has an amateurish look to it, and yet it is more enjoyable than most of today’s promotional folders from the region. The young newlyweds are both wearing black bathing suits. Tanned, blond‑haired bodies, athletic silhouettes, camping over the river, swimming together. They look like two young gods. The eroticism of their youth is enchanting. The towns they pass look gorgeous and majestic. We can see the red‑brick buildings and the towers of the cathedral in Opole, modern bridge spans, floodgates, the steely flashes of weirs, clean sandbanks and shallows, willows leaning over the current, herons and cranes flying away in the distance. The wilderness of nature with the modern steel constructions. There were the signifiers of the civilisational power of the German state, all swastika‑adorned, just like the small red flag that flapped at the stern of the tarpaulin kayak. It takes one a moment to realise the film is part of Reich’s propaganda machine. Those young athletic people, so eager to pose nude at the riverbank, were probably trying to live harmoniously with nature and did truly listen to the whispers of the ancient German river. The mythology spoke to them in the voices of sirens, nymphs, water demons, and runic signs they sought on the riverbank. Soon, a few years would come, some of the most horrifying in the world’s history, when those gods of woods and rivers would set out hunting. The rivers would be full of corpses. The German couple would die or, perhaps, escape far to the West while my grandmother, grandfather, and their three children would arrive to take their place in Opole, expelled from their beloved Lviv (the city with no river; with a river that flows deep underground).

In Polish literature, the Oder only appears after the year 1945. Similarly with painting; I know no Oder‑themed landscapes of Polish artists from before 1945. Of course, some local artists would write about the Oder before, but those works are not part of the Polish cultural canon. How much more there was of the Neman, Dnieper, Cheremosh, Vilnia, or Vistula rivers! In the Polish culture, the Oder is, so to speak, a post‑German river. Its current has been flowing within the confines of the Polish border for just a few decades. In 1946, Poland celebrated Opole’s wedding to the river. The new communist authorities – or, should we say, the new spouse, represented by the infamous President Bierut – threw a ring into the water. Since that time, more and more artists have created their works by and about the Oder. But the river’s phenomenon has little to do with the language used to speak or write about it. Rivers are fascinating because their names rarely ever change, even when new people invade the river basin and settle by its banks, having exterminated or expelled the former inhabitants. Rivers are time; they are continuance. Invaders change, but rivers never do. Invaders might keep on moving or settle and, one day, become the invaded. River names can exist in several forms, but the core remains the same. This is why the phenomenon of the Oder, or Odra, does and will persist, whether described in Czech, German, or Polish. Polish was only used to write down the latest chapter in its biography. And the reference to the ancient Slavic goddess in the name of the European University Viadrina – established in Frankfurt and Słubice – is probably the most formidable bridge that ever spanned its banks.

The Oder is a border river. But even though they have been separating nations and lands for centuries, the rivers remain unruly. They can change their course, and so the borders they signify might not remain as they were. This happens sometimes in the mountains, where the Dunajec moves the Polish border by several gravel‑covered metres this or that way. When we take a look at the Oder’s oxbow lake and contemplate all its former meanders, picturesque dead creeks, and old riverbeds – we will see how much we wanted to establish which way it would eventually run, and convince ourselves that on its bank we are safe. In 1997, when the Oder overflowed its banks in Opole, it just wanted to do what it always did: find a new path for itself, more to the west than before. After the flood, we pushed it back into its old bed. Otherwise, we would have rebuilt the entire city, and transformed it all over once again, like in medieval times – today, the former Old Oder is a net of canals, some of which are still running, while others are dry and overgrown. And we no longer change the shape of our cities just because the river wants it so.

We will never wipe the previous chapters of its biography; such as the fact that Catherine the Great, the famous empress of Russia, “Serenissima”, was born by its banks in Szczecin. This makes Catherine one of the Oder’s “tribe”; perhaps she might even be the board member, even though to the empress herself, her birthplace was never of much importance; it was, in fact, somewhat random – her father, an officer, just happened to be stationed there. Voltaire, whom she reimbursed handsomely for his political articles, called her the “Sémiramis of the North”; she was awarded the Order of the White Eagle in Poland and the Order of the Black Eagle in the Kingdom of Prussia. According to Diderot, she would write her ideas down on her subjects’ skin. Did she often hear the magic word Oder as a child? Could it possibly leave a mark on her memory? After all, she moved to Russia when she was fifteen years old.

The German word Oder is a simple conjunction, meaning or – a great name for a river that is also a border. It’s so easy to imagine standing on a bridge where someone demands we make a choice. This side or that side? This land or that, one language or another – which eagle, black or white? Which civilization, which mindset, which lifestyle? In Poland, Catherine the Great is remembered as the monarch who invaded Poland during the Second Partition. The Partition means splitting into parts, into this‑or‑that. A very radical entweder‑oder situation, as the title of a certain Danishman’s book would be translated.

Today, the border is very clear. After all, the Oder divides the world of Slavic languages that spreads all the way to Kamchatka from the world of Germanic languages that reach Alaska, where both are separated again by the Bering Strait. The Oder and Bering Strait do have one thing in common: they divide rather than connect. Even though the European Union makes borders within its confines almost invisible, the city of Berlin (only 60 kilometres from the river, to the German side) is already set in a different space of different energy, as if the Oder’s two banks belonged to two separate continents. Berlin’s cosmopolitism, despite some clear Polish (and Slavic) aspects to it, seems to be completely uninterested in the neighbour from across the river, as if it was facing only and completely towards the West. To the youth that talks in a multitude of languages around the parks and canals, Poland remains terra incognita (ubi leones). The inhabitants of a westernmost Alaskan town might have a similar amount of knowledge about their Russian neighbours from the other side of the Bering Strait: once upon a time, someone we know went there and now they are back, they always entertain the table with their stories that are just as scary as they are amusing. We think we are all the same, but how different we turn out to be. Either‑or.

In Polish, the word Odra also means measles; as for now, this highly infectious disease has been partially contained across the world, thanks to the vaccine (although, despite the more‑or‑less universal access to vaccines, in 2017 over 300 people around the world did die of measles)[1], even though there is no effective cure for the disease. It is the very same disease that decimated the indigenous communities in both Americas. Semantics don’t seem to be working for the river in either of the languages she brushes past.

During the great flood in 1997, I entered the Oder for the second time, but I was someone else by then. During that time, we also lived near the river, maybe fifty metres from the bank, and we watched the water level change, hour by hour. I remember how panicked everyone was, running around and shouting for everyone to evacuate, because “in a moment, five metres of water will be here!”. Our teacher accommodation was located on the ground floor of a municipal building. I moved all the books to the highest shelves, but without much hope that it would help when the water rushes in. Anxious, I waited for the events to unfold. At night, the building shuddered from loud noises. Enormous trunks of poplar trees that grew right by the riverbank snapped like matches under the current’s impetus. The Oder flooded the other side of the city but ours was spared, although the water stopped a few meters from our doors and pushed into the basement. It was there for some time, and many days later, when I finally went down to check, I fell waist‑deep into the thick white fluffy mould that had grown there since the flood.

Several days later, I made a trip to the devastated part of the city and my former workplace, now submerged. Together with my colleagues, we travelled in a military amphibious vehicle. The water had just receded, revealing the harsh reality. Tarmac had peeled off the streets; its enormous greyish‑brown sheets clung to building walls here and there, streetlamps and road signs twisted into eerie clef‑like forms, cars piled up on a heap like toys, piles of garbage strewn all over. Bodies of animals, caught and left by the current everywhere I looked: on the tree branches, windowsills, and fences. Crosses torn out from the cemetery soil stuck out from the gaping holes where windows used to be. Dunes of stock washed out of the supermarkets loomed here and there. Viscous grey sludge stuck to every surface. The putrid stench. If not for the flies, followed by millions of mosquitoes, I would have thought what we’re looking at is an aftermath of an apocalyptic bomb explosion.

In the rooms where the water had reached, little could be salvaged. Furniture fell apart in our hands like soaked‑through cardboard. Everything was covered in an organic sludge that sometimes almost seemed to pulsate. It looked like the river had retched our entire world out. I felt like it had overflown because it’d had enough, it was beyond full, unable to digest the indigestible. Such as the body of a hippopotamus. Because there was a dead hippopotamus there, brought by the river from the local zoo. Did it drown, or maybe got poisoned? “That night, people heard the cries of the animals when the water reached their cages. In my backyard, among the wreckages of cars, a hippopotamus died in a pool of fetid yellow sludge, while my neighbours saw deer, kangaroos, antelopes, zebras, and buffalo die outside their windows. Zoo workers, aghast and helpless, saw their beloved animals and the entire zoological garden die right in front of their eyes,”[2] said Stanisław Nicieja, one of the witnesses. Were the hippopotamus, deer, and kangaroos the enemies of the Oder? Did anyone see a glint of the river’s wedding ring, once gifted by its infamous fiancé Bolesław Bierut? When writing about the Oder, Długosz said its name comes from the Polish word odzierać – to strip; to deprive – for it strips people, forests, and fields of their spoils and belongings alike.

Great rivers have great energy that can be felt by everyone who lives in their vicinity. I have always imagined the river as an enormous, dangerous snake whose huge body slithers and winds across the land. At nights, when I still lived near its banks, I could feel it flow right next to me, radiating and moving in the dark, its silvery scales wrinkling on its back now and again. I also saw the clouds coming from the west and the rain pelting the roofs on the other side without crossing the river, as if it was a barrier, a true border, an invisible barometric and magnetic shield. Over the riverbank, it was wetter and cooler, the cold more piercing. The river divided the world and time, splitting them in two.

Back then, when I swam in the Oder for the first time, my father threw me into the river. He dropped me from the boat we were on. In his efforts to teach me how to swim as fast as possible, he probably figured that since all other strategies had failed, it was time to introduce the plan of last resort: you learn or you drown. And I drowned. For the good old survival method to work, the child should have experienced this fatherly tactic at least once before; a reconnaissance by fire should have been completed ahead so that the child would subconsciously expect some sort of betrayal. In short – the child shouldn’t fully trust the father, knowing this kind of surprise had happened in the past. The child should have been ready to fight. And I was not. I trusted him completely. Never before had he abandoned me like this, never had he betrayed me or let me down; he’d raised me a crybaby. So why would he suddenly throw me into the depths? I had been at peace. Shocked and disoriented, I was so surprised I had drowned before even realising I was drowning. As you might have already guessed, the outcome was opposite from what my father had hoped to achieve: not only had I not learned to swim that day, I became so wary of the water in the following days that the whole process of learning was extended by years. It might have also affected my – already meagre – interest in physical culture as a whole. It would probably be too much to say it was that moment that made me a poet rather than a professional athlete, an epitome of physical health and endurance. All in all, however, the lesson was completed on a positive note: I DID NOT DROWN completely. I survived and scrambled back to the surface. Maybe because it was not so deep, my farseeing father having picked a spot where I could reach the bottom with my feet? Or maybe because in the end – after a few moments of watching his pathetic crybaby of a son – he helped me? He didn’t let me drown. My father was watching over me. It was only a trial of water. And drown I did not. I was probably not considered an enemy of the Oder, as the Oder itself did not consider me one – most likely, the river is completely indifferent about me. As long as it can, it will flow without us, unmoved by our fears, languages, borders, memory, and time that allows nothing to happen twice.

Translated from the Polish by Aga Zano

***

[1] WHO report, ‘Measles cases spike globally due to gaps in vaccination coverage’, 29 Nov. 2018, https://www.who.int/news/item/29-11-2018-measles-cases-spike-globally-due-to-gaps-in-vaccination-coverage [last accessed: 25 June 2023].

[2] Mateusz Majnusz, ‘Opolskie zoo znalazło się pod wodą: 23 lata od powodzi tysiąclecia’, 10 July 2020, Gazeta Wyborcza Opole, https://opole.wyborcza.pl/opole/7,35086,26117892,opolskie-zoo-znalazlo-sie-pod-woda-23-lata-od-powodzi-tysiaclecia.html [last accessed: 25 June 2023]