It had simply been dumb luck, Peter’s birth, and on a day when it didn’t even rain. Something had probably gone wrong. It happens more often than you think. On the day of his birth, when his mother saw the face of the midwife and then of this child. Which was luminous and clearly not from her husband, who was also long gone by then. The very dark-haired, very stupid husband. And Poland, yeah, well, in fact, out in the countryside in Poland, do something when you’re young, when the country’s latent fascism makes you sick, when you already know all there is—the cowardice of the people, the empty shops, the dusty streets, and, first and foremost, the absence of all hope. Do something with a luminous child who barely talks, who never looks anyone in the eye and spends hours staring at the ceiling or having silent conversations with his fingers. Do something if the ten moronic men in the village offer no suitable sexual prospects for you whatsoever. So, England it was. There were already millions of other Poles there, and you rarely heard any complaints. Many of them found on the island something they couldn’t find at home. Work. Money. Change. Interesting foreigners and, with time, perhaps a vacation home back in Poland, which was undeniably scenic. That was enough for a new life. And it was possible—if you weren’t too discerning; and if folks from the East were anything, they were frugal.

Poor folks from the East, it should be specified. Poor people from the East knew how to get by, they were hungry. They were unsentimental. They could fight and weren’t spoiled. Here’s to clichés!

In the village where Peter came from, the place his mother wanted to escape, there was a Sand Street. In Peter’s mind Sand Street was made of muck and would open up at some point and swallow everything, but there were houses on the street that could seem romantic, at least when they were totally surrounded by snow. Old garden fences, broken windows, sagging doors, holes in the flooring. Of the hundred people in the village, almost all were over fifty and looked over seventy. Helplessness incarnate, people who’d never managed to make it to another city or flee to a foreign country. Scraps of meat staggering down the dusty street as soon as their welfare checks arrived to buy a stockpile of alcohol from the kiosk that, alongside alcohol, also sold pickles in dusty jars, and oatmeal. The stuff alcoholics like.