AFTER HAMBURG 1974

A MAN AND HIS TOUR OF EUROPE IN 1974

We'd left Hamburg
and got back into the minivan;
Dalya beside me,
the others in their usual place.

I opened the Gulag book
by Solzhenitsyn;
it was a depressing book
but I read on.

It's about the labour camps
in Russia isn't it?
Dalya said.

Yes between
1918 and 1956,
I said.

Why read it
if it's depressing?
she said.

I want to know
the truth,
I said.

Truth about what?
she said.

What happened in Russia
during that time,
and the camps,
and why so many people
went there and died there,
I said.

The Polish woman
and her daughter
said nothing,
but looked at the book
I had in my hands.

I remembered
the woman
had said that some
of her relations
were in the area
occupied by the Russians
in the war,
and the others
in the part run
by Germans,
and both suffered
and some died
or disappeared.

I wondered what
she thought
about the book,
and if any of her relations
ended up in a camp
on either side.

I said nothing,
but read on
page after page,
with Dalya's thigh
close to mine
warm and tender.

I recalled
the other night
in her tent
making love to her.