Due to the combination of snow and rain, with the beginning of December, the city transformed into one solid architectonical barrier. Even before the winter officially began, ice and snow had mounted barricades as hard and solid as rocks in place of uneven curbs, adding whimsical patterns to the geometry of the city. We decided to visit only the places which boast underground parking lots. This put us on friendly terms with local malls.
Luckily, our part of town is blessed with several of them built in close enough proximity to serve the inhabitants of fifteen floor high, multi-entranced, inhospitable high-rises built in the nineteen seventies. Tiny neighborhood stores set up like rows of match boxes hunker down, but their clientele of today consists mostly of retirees.
The malls are something else. The moment I allow myself to be carried to the first floor by the escalator, I enter a safe space filled with lights, synthetic music, designer stores, and overall kindness. No sign of global crisis remains where shops are filled with fantastic goods and customers, eager to grab them all day long. The mall surrounded by the ice fields looks like the Titanic where people love to dress up in the hours proceeding catastrophe.
Pani Krystyna, our cleaning lady, arrives on Thursdays after ten. We can afford her and the mall shopping, as well as a flat with a dishwasher and underground parking courtesy of Lilly-Marie’s Fulbright.
Normally we should be at the university on Thursday mornings, but our school break began only the day before Christmas Eve and continued into the week preceding the New Year. We have an extra Thursday off in accordance with the law passed by our government last year, and that’s Three Kings Day on January 6th.
Lilly-Marie is put off by our holiday schedule. For a person raised in the US, the season of celebration begins in the second week of December, with enough time for shopping, visiting friends, eating out, listening to The Messiah at church, seeing a Nutcracker performance in the city, or going to an evening of Italian madrigals at the museum. As a student, Lilly-Marie used to leave for her Christmas break around December 8th, which gave her enough time to succumb to the joys of family visits, cookie baking, eggnog tasting, and overall holiday preparation.
Our Polish students, however, are kept in classrooms until they barely have time to pack, as if having them return home early, so they’d be useful running errands for their mothers, would infringe on the secularism of the university amidst the deluge of equally strict piety.
But then once the holidays begin, they drag on. And why not? With the ice age creeping over parking spaces in the city, we could just as well fall into a winter slumber.
With pani Krystyna already in the kitchen, we take advantage of the free morning to call an art center in London. We had called them once before the New Year, but they were on vacation, and the woman on the emergency line suggested we try back after January 4th. They are back now, all refreshed with New Year’s resolutions. The young man who answers the phone and takes down Lilly-Marie’s name wouldn’t guess in a hundred years that we are not on the same schedule.
We end the call, and pani Krystyna has something to tell us.
“I heard you were planning to go to the mall. Don’t be surprised if you find it closed.”
“Closed? Why?”
“Because the government just passed this law curbing all social activities on holidays, starting this year. Three Kings is the first holiday of the year, so no one really knows how it is going to be.”
“We don’t have to shop,” I say because we mostly planned on getting out of pani Krystyna’s way. “Wouldn’t a cafe be open?”
“Perhaps it would,” she says with doubt in her voice.
“But why not?” I’m puzzled. “Aren’t cafes part of holiday entertainment?”
“I think small stores and family businesses may be open around town, but that’s all.”
I look at Lilly-Marie who is all dressed up to go, then back at pani Krystyna.
“The law doesn’t forbid these places to stay open,” she says. “But it forbids anyone to employ other people, so they wouldn’t be deprived of their right to have a holiday.”
We put our coats on and, as we take the elevator, I abbreviate in English what pani Krystyna said to Lilly-Marie: “The government wants to make sure that businesses respect their workers’ rights to a day off.”
“What about their workers’ right to have money?” she asks.
“I think the government would answer that values are more important than money.”
“Isn’t money a value?”
“The government would say that moral values are worth more than money.”
“And that’s from the people who don’t mind partaking of the EU grants?”
We leave the parking lot and drive through the gate into the street where single cars dart here and there, between barricades of ice. It’s ok that there is no traffic, I say to myself. It’s only 11 o’clock in the morning on a day free of work.
I turn into the closest mall, notice randomly parked cars in the underground lot, and find parking right by the door.
“It looks open,” I say.
But when I push the entrance door, they don’t yield. With the light left on inside, the entrance to the mall looks eerie, as if a mysterious weapon swept out all its inhabitants.
“What do we do now?” Lilly-Marie asks.
I take us back to the car.
“Unrepentant schopaholics don’t give up,” I say. “Let’s visit another mall.”
She laughs. “This is what Becky Bloomwood would do. She wouldn’t give up.”
I maneuver to the exit among the sparse collection of cars.
“So these cars kind of live here,” I say. “People from the neighborhood must prefer to park in the mall's garage. Better than in the street with ice and snow.”
“And it’s free.” Lilly-Marie adds.
We pass an abandoned gas station, as we turn into the street. I get a creepy feeling of waking up in a Stephen King's novel.
“Not a soul there.”
At the intersection, I notice an approaching tram with relief.
“So city transit works today.”
A bus passes by.
“Ha! And what about the police,” I wonder. “The police don’t give their people the right to have holidays, either.”
“Call and talk to them about it,” Lilly-Marie says. “Hi guys, are you working today?”
We drive into Alpha Center, two blocks further down – our favorite mall. I glide into the parking garage where a few cars can’t help but stir my hope.
We approach the entrance door and it yields this time; we step onto the escalator enveloped by music and light. On the upper level all stores are closed. We pass them to step onto another escalator which brings us yet another floor up, to the restaurant level. But the restaurants, like stores, have a deserted look of places occupied not long ago, whose inhabitants fell victim to a mysterious disease.
“We could crash on their armchairs if we really want to,” I say. “We could get a tab bear from their counter.”
But instead we discover another escalator to the top floor whose existence we’ve never guessed until now. There are people here, some of them behind counters.
“That’s movie theater!” I say. “It’s open! And they have a café.”
We come closer.
“What do they have?” Lilly-Marie’s eyes are wide open.
“Pepsi… Popcorn… Coffee…”
A young man looks at us kindly from the behind the counter, and I ask him if we can get a latte.
“Yes,” he says, “but only in paper cups. If you want coffee in glasses, why don’t you go over there.” He motions us to the right.
Another cranberry-black counter hides behind the columns. At the table, we ogle the menu: fancy coffees and ice-cream deserts.
“Well, the government will have to note this omission,” Lilly-Marie says, “and make sure to close down movie theaters as well by next year.”
For now, we are pleased with our amaretto and cardamon lattes, Perrier water, a martini glass of decadent ice cream and a box of popcorn. As soon as we start on it, more people come up the escalator with relieved and complacent looks on their faces, and soon all tables are taken. Kids are running around and shouting out their favorite flavors. Adults smile at each other and engage in leisurely chatter.
“I feel like I’m in Berkeley,” Lilly-Marie says. “Doesn’t this place remind you of Berkeley?”
We are on the top floor of the mall. A snow-covered flat roof with mysterious tin constructions, which must be ventilators, shows through the window. But inside the atmosphere continues to be warm and friendly.
“That’s because people are happy to be together,” I say. “They appreciate what they have more than usual.”
A family with kids sits on the tall bar stools because all tables are already taken.
“What’s the name of this place?” Lilly-Marie asks.
“Helios, just like the movie theater.” Ands then it dawns on me. “Helios is the pagan sun god.” So that’s the key to the mystery. “They are pagan; they are open.”
We spend a Berkeley afternoon in Helios; we drink lattes, eat ice-cream and write.
I text to pani Krystyna: I believe we’ve trespassed the law by employing you. I’ve already texted most of our abbreviated journey to her, so she knows we’ve found our hideout in Helios.
We can live with trespassing the law once a year, she texts back.
“You know what I think?” I tell Lilly-Marie once we are back home, where the sink and the floors are as pristine as if we’ve never lived here. “In the States we start the Christmas celebration early, so in a way all holidays blend together.”
“Oh yes, there is Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa, and Christmas, and they say, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Merry Chrismas…”
“But here, with Christmas pushed so far into January, there is no way Christians and Jews could ever celebrate together.”
Lilly-Marie stops with her glass of leftover champaign in hand to consider this. “Do you think they do it on purpose?”
“Oh no, at least not consciously. This government maintains strong ties with Israel and pumps tons of money into funding the Jewish Museum in Warsaw.” My mind seems to be processing at top, champagne-accelerated speed. “Still, the end result of this new holiday is that Hannukah and Christmas will never blend.”
Half an hour later, it takes facebook to make me burst out laughing. “We are going to Elton tomorrow.”
Elton is not a person but a friendly queer club in Sopot; it’s owner, Pavko, reminds me of a pirate due to his unruly black hair and a penchant for sparkling black rings.
“Why so?” Lilly-Marie raises her eyebrows.
“Pavko has an event called Three Queens.”
Whenever he decides to shave his beard, Pavko likes to perform in sequined dresses and high heels.
“Ok, I guess we’ve got to go.”
I forget for a moment that Elton would have to move into the mall for us to do this because the streets all around it, together with their parking places, turned into an ice palace, for the snow queens to play in.
Photo © Beata Sosnowska
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