Dear Reader
I do hope you enjoy my book. And, if you do, please tell your friends and family about it. Moreover, if you know anyone in the publishing business please let them know I'm looking for a publisher.
Happy reading
Peter McLaren
wapenshaw@hotmail.com
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Introduction
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Introduction
I'm sitting at the kitchen table and I'm going to write a book, this book - the one you're reading now. This is my first book and I've only just remembered that I don't know how to write books. But there can't be much to it can there?
I've been here for half an hour so far, wondering just where to start and I couldn't come up with anything so I asked my wife Alicja. Alicja has an advantage over me in that she's actually read a lot of books and she thinks I should begin with what's outside the windows and why we're here and from there on, she's convinced me, the words will just come and the problem will be knowing where to stop.
So, what's right outside the windows? Outside the window behind me is the farmyard and it's under about 3 feet of snow with two tracks cutting through it, one leading to the barn where we keep the car and the other leading to the gate. Somewhere in a tunnel under the snow is a large dog called Misha. She's a Kaukaski (Caucasian sheepdog) and for the next 2 months she will live in her self constructed igloo - a cold weather dog that’s allergic to central heating.In front of me, as I look out of the other window, is a valley leading down to a frozen stream where a small group of kids are skating and, as I look past them up the hill, there are two houses, almost invisible, clad in the same snow as the fields but their presence given away by the smoke from their chimneys.
There isn't a sound out there and there won't be all day because the tractors have gone inside for the winter and the horses and sleighs have come out. It's pretty too, like something from the pages of a Tolstoy novel, a Christmas card scene but real. It was more pretty to me six weeks ago when all this white stuff first came floating down from the sky like a million tons of Ariel Ultra and filled up my gumboots but now I'm fed up with it because I know it will be around for another eight to ten weeks - I long for some green.
Where am I? My wife Alicja and I live on a farm in a tiny village in north east Poland way up near the borders with Lithuania, Byelorussia and that part of Russia which contains Kalingrad but became separated from Russia proper by some historical event of which I know nothing. It's the coldest part of Poland where the winter temperatures have been known to drop below 30 degrees Celsius and the area is as remote as it's possible to be in Europe.
It's a sparsely populated area of lakes and forests little known to, and seldom visited by Westerners except the odd intrepid bird, bison, butterfly or beaver watcher who ventures this way in search of something rare to tick off in his book and tell his friends about when he returns home. The land is farmed by peasant farmers using traditional practices long forgotten in the West, except for demonstrations at agricultural shows, and it's a most beautiful place in which to live - far from any industry of any kind save for the odd agricultural repair shop.
Why do we live here? Good question, and I'll write another book about the reasons some day but the short answer to it is that we were short of money and could hardly have raked up the deposit for a house in England or Australia, whereas here, we could own a house lock stock and barrel and still have the money to renovate it. The biggest problem with the whole idea though was that we knew there was no work in the area and no safety net of social security to fall back on.
So here's what we decided to do. We'd buy a farm, renovate the house and do B&B for those odd intrepid bird and animal watchers. Simple enough idea, a few floorboards, bit of plastering, throw a few walls up here & there, build a bathroom and advertise. There was one condition which Alicja insisted on from the outset; that I was to tell everyone here that I was a strict teetotaler and never to let anyone in the village see me drinking. Otherwise, she said, you'll have every piss pot in the village turning up at our door wanting to drink with you. She was right!
This is a story of what life is like in a small village in the middle of nowhere stuck in a nineteenth century time warp. It's the story of our first year, the laughs we had, the people we met and the reactions of the villagers, most of whom had never met a foreigner until we came here to live.
Introduction
I'm sitting at the kitchen table and I'm going to write a book, this book - the one you're reading now. This is my first book and I've only just remembered that I don't know how to write books. But there can't be much to it can there?
I've been here for half an hour so far, wondering just where to start and I couldn't come up with anything so I asked my wife Alicja. Alicja has an advantage over me in that she's actually read a lot of books and she thinks I should begin with what's outside the windows and why we're here and from there on, she's convinced me, the words will just come and the problem will be knowing where to stop.
So, what's right outside the windows? Outside the window behind me is the farmyard and it's under about 3 feet of snow with two tracks cutting through it, one leading to the barn where we keep the car and the other leading to the gate. Somewhere in a tunnel under the snow is a large dog called Misha. She's a Kaukaski (Caucasian sheepdog) and for the next 2 months she will live in her self constructed igloo - a cold weather dog that’s allergic to central heating.In front of me, as I look out of the other window, is a valley leading down to a frozen stream where a small group of kids are skating and, as I look past them up the hill, there are two houses, almost invisible, clad in the same snow as the fields but their presence given away by the smoke from their chimneys.
There isn't a sound out there and there won't be all day because the tractors have gone inside for the winter and the horses and sleighs have come out. It's pretty too, like something from the pages of a Tolstoy novel, a Christmas card scene but real. It was more pretty to me six weeks ago when all this white stuff first came floating down from the sky like a million tons of Ariel Ultra and filled up my gumboots but now I'm fed up with it because I know it will be around for another eight to ten weeks - I long for some green.
Where am I? My wife Alicja and I live on a farm in a tiny village in north east Poland way up near the borders with Lithuania, Byelorussia and that part of Russia which contains Kalingrad but became separated from Russia proper by some historical event of which I know nothing. It's the coldest part of Poland where the winter temperatures have been known to drop below 30 degrees Celsius and the area is as remote as it's possible to be in Europe.
It's a sparsely populated area of lakes and forests little known to, and seldom visited by Westerners except the odd intrepid bird, bison, butterfly or beaver watcher who ventures this way in search of something rare to tick off in his book and tell his friends about when he returns home. The land is farmed by peasant farmers using traditional practices long forgotten in the West, except for demonstrations at agricultural shows, and it's a most beautiful place in which to live - far from any industry of any kind save for the odd agricultural repair shop.
Why do we live here? Good question, and I'll write another book about the reasons some day but the short answer to it is that we were short of money and could hardly have raked up the deposit for a house in England or Australia, whereas here, we could own a house lock stock and barrel and still have the money to renovate it. The biggest problem with the whole idea though was that we knew there was no work in the area and no safety net of social security to fall back on.
So here's what we decided to do. We'd buy a farm, renovate the house and do B&B for those odd intrepid bird and animal watchers. Simple enough idea, a few floorboards, bit of plastering, throw a few walls up here & there, build a bathroom and advertise. There was one condition which Alicja insisted on from the outset; that I was to tell everyone here that I was a strict teetotaler and never to let anyone in the village see me drinking. Otherwise, she said, you'll have every piss pot in the village turning up at our door wanting to drink with you. She was right!
This is a story of what life is like in a small village in the middle of nowhere stuck in a nineteenth century time warp. It's the story of our first year, the laughs we had, the people we met and the reactions of the villagers, most of whom had never met a foreigner until we came here to live.
Chapter 1
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 1
We were at a party down in Warsaw when we first announced our intention to leave civilisation behind and go to live in the north east of the country. I was, I suppose, the guest of honour, being English and having spent twenty years in Australia, and I had the suspicion that I hadn't been invited purely because of my good looks and my witty repartee.
No, my face is forgettable and, at that time, I couldn't speak enough of the language to communicate anyway. I was there as the token foreigner to show the other guests what classy circles the hosts moved in - their English not being up to the standard where they could tell that I'm no person to boast about.
"You're doing what?" said our host.
Alicja went over the plan again in Polish for the benefit of all present. She told them that we'd found a farm in a beautiful area with water meadows gently sloping away from the house into a valley with a river at the bottom. That we'd paid a deposit and we were moving in as soon as we'd paid the balance and organised the transport to get our furniture delivered.
Everything went quiet for a while as people refilled their glasses and began to pull up their chairs to where we were sitting and offer their advice. The advice from all quarters was quite clear, frank...well, blunt. – “Don't do it" they said.
The party had hardly started and it never really developed into a party at all, just four hours of friendly advice and education on the ways of Polish villagers up near the Russian border, the mentality of the people we would encounter and heartfelt pleas for us to reconsider. I was impressed by the words of Mateusz, an artist and writer who, five years previously, had spent two years living in Colorado and a further six months living some fifty kilometres away from where we ourselves were now intending to set up house.
-I can tell Peter you that you cannot begin to imagine the mentality of the people up there. I've spent time living in the West and although I don't claim to be able to understand the Western mentality, for me it was easier to adapt to Colorado than it was to adapt to life where you're going - and I'm Polish. Perhaps you don't realise; where you're going to live used to be East Prussia, that territory has only been Polish since World War II
-Does it make a difference?
-Yes, the area was totally de-populated in 1946 and then filled with different ethnic groups from all around Poland.
-Which means?
-Which means that there is no indigenous, deep rooted culture there. Many of your neighbours will have their roots in the Ukraine and Lithuania, and there'll be all sorts of others too - small groups of people who the old communist government wanted to split up to stop them fomenting trouble where they lived before. They just bundled them up and sent them all up to what used to be East Prussia and they took all their old family feuds with them. They're, how shall I put it, culturally less advanced than the rest of Poland. It's the poorest part of the country and poverty eats away at the moral fibre of people. People up there are,... are,....well they're primitive.-
I still couldn't see why any of this should make any difference to Alicja and I. We weren't particularly looking for some deep rooted culture we just loved the area. Everything Matuesz said sounded good to me, just what Alicja and I were looking for after spending most of our working lives in city offices but to tell them why it appealed to us was too much for me to communicate in my limited Polish and now, everybody was waiting for my reply.
-It's too late, we've already signed for the place, paid our deposit and can't get out of the deal and, anyway, we're sure that we're going to like it. We're going to convert the farmhouse into a guest house and we'll live in an apartment which we'll build in the barn-
Again the conversation was broken by a silence, an embarrassed silence, a silence born of the realisation that you just can't explain colour to a blind man, to a man who refuses, is unwilling, to view his own folly from the outside. The conversation, when it resumed, turned to security systems because, we were assured by all, the territory we had chosen to live in was populated almost entirely by thieves, cheats and drunkards; all of whom would conspire with animal cunning to divest us of whatever we possessed.
Mateusz spoke in Polish slowly and clearly for my benefit and left off the grammatical suffixes which so confuse foreigners.
-Peter, if you're going to go through with it you must get yourself a big dog, a female.
-Why a female?
-Because if you have a male, those peasants will bring along a female on heat one night and a male dog won't bark once he gets the smell of the bitch. Then they'll rip you off. Believe me, I know.
-Oh, I see ... yes ... thanks ... good idea.
-Yes, and it gets awfully cold up where you're going, it's called the Polish Siberia and you need a dog which can stay out in minus 30 degree weather. No good having a dog to protect your property if it has to be kept inside at night is it? Go down to the Russian market at the football stadium on Sunday and get one of those big Kaukaskis (Caucasian sheepdogs) the Russkis smuggle in. They grow to an enormous size and become highly territorial.
From off of his bookshelves our host produced a book on dogs and Alicja translated the text on Kaukaskis for me. They sounded particularly vicious. They were, it said, loosely related to the Turkish Kangal, were used in the Armenian mountains to guard sheep and when in pairs would actively hunt wolves. The book also went on to say that Kaukaskis were bred and used by the Czars armies to guard the baggage trains. I thanked him for his advice and worried.
Others at the party told us that at least half the materials we needed to renovate a house wouldn't be available "up there" and we'd have to spend a fortune transporting things from Warsaw.
-Do you think we're doing the right thing?, Alicja asked me on the way home.
I was no longer sure whether we were or not but didn't want to admit it.
-Well, it's too late now, I replied, -but everyone we met up there when we were travelling around looking for a place to live seemed pretty decent to me. Glad we met those people at the party all the same though, they could be right, who knows? Lets go down town tomorrow and look at some kind of alarm system-
We ended up buying an infra red activated security light, two huge door locks and Misha who was only 3 months old and, at that stage, a loveable little bundle of fluff which bore little resemblance to the Baskervellian hound into which she would soon develop.
It was on the first Sunday in June that we finally moved into the house, agreements having been struck between ourselves and the previous owners concerning who was going to look after the crops already in the ground and who was going to get the lions share of the tomatoes in the glass house which I was going to be taking care of. We followed the furniture removals truck up from Warsaw, arriving at around noon and there waiting for us, was the previous owner of the house, Mr Polakowski who informed us that his family had moved out a week ago but he'd been sleeping in the house on the floor in case of thieves.
This wasn't really what we needed to hear at that point but it confirmed what the people at the party in Warsaw had told us - we'd moved into a den of thieves. We walked into the house and Mr Polakowski showed me how to operate the wood burning stove, where the electrical fuse (there was only one) was located and all the things one normally shows a new owner and I noticed that the place was absolutely bare - devoid of anything of value.
I turned towards him with a smile and said that I didn't think he needed to have bothered sleeping in the place for the past week as there was nothing to steal. He looked at me as if I was mad.
-What about the radiators, the central heating furnace, the floorboards?
I didn't understand the last word and asked Alicja to translate.
-What did he say?
-He said floorboards.
-Floorboards! - people steal floorboards?
-That's what he said.
-Christ, what have we done?
Mr Polakowski then tried to sell us the chickens and the cow which he said he'd been holding back for us and expressed surprise when we said we didn't want them.
-What will you do about eggs and milk?
Alicja assured him that we'd manage somehow and he asked if we'd mind hanging onto them for a while until he could sell them. We knew he was moving into Gizycko, the nearest town, and didn't have transport which would allow him to visit his animals so we quickly told him that we didn't know anything about cows and chickens and didn't feel qualified to look after them. He was incredulous, just couldn't believe that there were people at large on the planet who lacked these elementary skills and he went next door to ask the neighbour if he'd take care of them.
Meanwhile the removals men unloaded the truck and disappeared after asking us if we were sure we wanted to stay. Depression was slowly creeping upon us and although I didn't want to admit it to Alicja, I was indeed beginning to think that perhaps we'd done the wrong thing.
Mr Polakowski duly returned and advised us that the neighbour would be over later in the afternoon to milk the cow and feed the chickens.
-Aren't you scared the chickens will get stolen? I asked-
No, he replied, nobody steals animals, animals are recognizable so a thief couldn't keep them at home and they'd be seen if they were transported out of the village to be sold elsewhere. That little puppy of yours though would be worth stealing. If you like you can have my dog until yours grows, just to be on the safe side.
So there we were in a small village in a forgotten part of Europe where I could only understand twenty percent of any conversation likely to come my way and someone had just told me that our front line of defence against thieves was worth stealing. We refused the offer of the dog and Mr Polakowski bade us goodbye and that was the last we saw of him for another three months.
I was depressed and we went inside for a cup of tea but after rummaging through umpteen boxes we couldn't find the electric kettle and as the wood burning stove was cold we unpacked the microwave oven. It was then that we discovered that there were only three power points in the entire house, none of which were located in the kitchen and so I plugged the microwave in where Polokawski's television had been. As we switched it on there was a bang which we traced to the fuse box where old Polakowski had conveniently left 4 spare fuses.
It didn't take long to figure out that the electrical system couldn't cope with the microwave oven, in fact having located the electric kettle, we found that it couldn't even cope with that when all the lights were on. Now it was Alicja's turn to be depressed. I found some wood in the shed, lit the stove and after an hour the water boiled and we sat down to that cup of tea and what we thought would be a nice consoling chat but a man appeared unannounced in our kitchen.
He was a slack trousered peasant farmer of about 35 years with a bent nose and enormous hands and he introduced himself as our neighbour. His name was Vladislav, Vladek for short. He'd come to milk the cow but he was clearly very uneasy and wouldn't look at me. He shuffled his feet, looked up, looked down, from side to side, cocked his head and looked at the dog but just wouldn't aim his eyes in my direction.
In fact he wouldn't look me in the eye for another fortnight although by that time we had developed something of a neighbourly relationship. He told us some weeks later that, apart from the Russians and Lithuanians at the market in town, I was the first foreigner he'd ever met and that he hadn't been sure how to behave. But now he'd come to milk the cow and to offer us the free run of his vegetable garden which he said contained more vegetables than they'd be able to use.
-I've got a little electrical problem, I said. -Do you know where I can find the local electrician?-
He ignored me completely and addressed Alicja telling her that there was no such thing as a local electrician and that every man took care of his own electrical repairs. He added that he probably knew as much as anyone in Bocwinka about things electrical and he'd be pleased to have a look at our problem on Monday but today, Sunday, was the Lord's day and the only work which could be performed was that of caring for animals. The rest of the day was spent unpacking and assembling the bed and a wardrobe and we turned in early.
-What did you think of our neighbour?- asked Alicja as I turned out the light.
-Not much, I wouldn't trust him further than I could throw him.
-Why?
-The guy wouldn't look me in the eyes, I think he's shifty.
-You could be right but maybe he was just shy, embarrassed maybe.
-Well, I said -time will tell I guess, we'll see.
I had no way of knowing, at that stage, how much I would come to rely on Vladek in the coming weeks and, if the old adage "a friend in need is a friend indeed" be true, I've never had a better friend. Vladek was born in Bocwinka and knew everyone and everything within tractor driving distance. His parents were Ukrainian and they were the third family to have been transported to the village in 1946 after the Germans/Prussians had been sent off across the river Oder to Germany.
He'd been running his farm since he was 16 years of age when his father had become unable to work and had taught himself to do everything necessary to keep the place going. In such a remote area all the farmers, of necessity, had to learn to be self sufficient if they were going to be able to survive but Vladek stood head and shoulders above the rest when it came to versatility. Welder, plumber, bricklayer, mechanic, blacksmith and carpenter. Vladek was all of these and a lot more and I could never make out how he had the time to fit all these things in to his week but he did, and he never seemed to hurry.
For us, however, his usefulness lay in his extended family-everybody in the district seemed to be related to Vladek. When we wanted roof tiles he had a brother able to provide them, firewood-an uncle with a forest, car repairs-a brother in law, a haunch of venison-a cousin who was a poacher. It took us months to realise that the words used to describe all these family members (brother, cousin etc) were so loosely applied as to be unfathomable.
Anything gettable could be got whether legal or otherwise but it always came through Vladek and never direct as we were to learn in the months to come.
Chapter 1
We were at a party down in Warsaw when we first announced our intention to leave civilisation behind and go to live in the north east of the country. I was, I suppose, the guest of honour, being English and having spent twenty years in Australia, and I had the suspicion that I hadn't been invited purely because of my good looks and my witty repartee.
No, my face is forgettable and, at that time, I couldn't speak enough of the language to communicate anyway. I was there as the token foreigner to show the other guests what classy circles the hosts moved in - their English not being up to the standard where they could tell that I'm no person to boast about.
"You're doing what?" said our host.
Alicja went over the plan again in Polish for the benefit of all present. She told them that we'd found a farm in a beautiful area with water meadows gently sloping away from the house into a valley with a river at the bottom. That we'd paid a deposit and we were moving in as soon as we'd paid the balance and organised the transport to get our furniture delivered.
Everything went quiet for a while as people refilled their glasses and began to pull up their chairs to where we were sitting and offer their advice. The advice from all quarters was quite clear, frank...well, blunt. – “Don't do it" they said.
The party had hardly started and it never really developed into a party at all, just four hours of friendly advice and education on the ways of Polish villagers up near the Russian border, the mentality of the people we would encounter and heartfelt pleas for us to reconsider. I was impressed by the words of Mateusz, an artist and writer who, five years previously, had spent two years living in Colorado and a further six months living some fifty kilometres away from where we ourselves were now intending to set up house.
-I can tell Peter you that you cannot begin to imagine the mentality of the people up there. I've spent time living in the West and although I don't claim to be able to understand the Western mentality, for me it was easier to adapt to Colorado than it was to adapt to life where you're going - and I'm Polish. Perhaps you don't realise; where you're going to live used to be East Prussia, that territory has only been Polish since World War II
-Does it make a difference?
-Yes, the area was totally de-populated in 1946 and then filled with different ethnic groups from all around Poland.
-Which means?
-Which means that there is no indigenous, deep rooted culture there. Many of your neighbours will have their roots in the Ukraine and Lithuania, and there'll be all sorts of others too - small groups of people who the old communist government wanted to split up to stop them fomenting trouble where they lived before. They just bundled them up and sent them all up to what used to be East Prussia and they took all their old family feuds with them. They're, how shall I put it, culturally less advanced than the rest of Poland. It's the poorest part of the country and poverty eats away at the moral fibre of people. People up there are,... are,....well they're primitive.-
I still couldn't see why any of this should make any difference to Alicja and I. We weren't particularly looking for some deep rooted culture we just loved the area. Everything Matuesz said sounded good to me, just what Alicja and I were looking for after spending most of our working lives in city offices but to tell them why it appealed to us was too much for me to communicate in my limited Polish and now, everybody was waiting for my reply.
-It's too late, we've already signed for the place, paid our deposit and can't get out of the deal and, anyway, we're sure that we're going to like it. We're going to convert the farmhouse into a guest house and we'll live in an apartment which we'll build in the barn-
Again the conversation was broken by a silence, an embarrassed silence, a silence born of the realisation that you just can't explain colour to a blind man, to a man who refuses, is unwilling, to view his own folly from the outside. The conversation, when it resumed, turned to security systems because, we were assured by all, the territory we had chosen to live in was populated almost entirely by thieves, cheats and drunkards; all of whom would conspire with animal cunning to divest us of whatever we possessed.
Mateusz spoke in Polish slowly and clearly for my benefit and left off the grammatical suffixes which so confuse foreigners.
-Peter, if you're going to go through with it you must get yourself a big dog, a female.
-Why a female?
-Because if you have a male, those peasants will bring along a female on heat one night and a male dog won't bark once he gets the smell of the bitch. Then they'll rip you off. Believe me, I know.
-Oh, I see ... yes ... thanks ... good idea.
-Yes, and it gets awfully cold up where you're going, it's called the Polish Siberia and you need a dog which can stay out in minus 30 degree weather. No good having a dog to protect your property if it has to be kept inside at night is it? Go down to the Russian market at the football stadium on Sunday and get one of those big Kaukaskis (Caucasian sheepdogs) the Russkis smuggle in. They grow to an enormous size and become highly territorial.
From off of his bookshelves our host produced a book on dogs and Alicja translated the text on Kaukaskis for me. They sounded particularly vicious. They were, it said, loosely related to the Turkish Kangal, were used in the Armenian mountains to guard sheep and when in pairs would actively hunt wolves. The book also went on to say that Kaukaskis were bred and used by the Czars armies to guard the baggage trains. I thanked him for his advice and worried.
Others at the party told us that at least half the materials we needed to renovate a house wouldn't be available "up there" and we'd have to spend a fortune transporting things from Warsaw.
-Do you think we're doing the right thing?, Alicja asked me on the way home.
I was no longer sure whether we were or not but didn't want to admit it.
-Well, it's too late now, I replied, -but everyone we met up there when we were travelling around looking for a place to live seemed pretty decent to me. Glad we met those people at the party all the same though, they could be right, who knows? Lets go down town tomorrow and look at some kind of alarm system-
We ended up buying an infra red activated security light, two huge door locks and Misha who was only 3 months old and, at that stage, a loveable little bundle of fluff which bore little resemblance to the Baskervellian hound into which she would soon develop.
It was on the first Sunday in June that we finally moved into the house, agreements having been struck between ourselves and the previous owners concerning who was going to look after the crops already in the ground and who was going to get the lions share of the tomatoes in the glass house which I was going to be taking care of. We followed the furniture removals truck up from Warsaw, arriving at around noon and there waiting for us, was the previous owner of the house, Mr Polakowski who informed us that his family had moved out a week ago but he'd been sleeping in the house on the floor in case of thieves.
This wasn't really what we needed to hear at that point but it confirmed what the people at the party in Warsaw had told us - we'd moved into a den of thieves. We walked into the house and Mr Polakowski showed me how to operate the wood burning stove, where the electrical fuse (there was only one) was located and all the things one normally shows a new owner and I noticed that the place was absolutely bare - devoid of anything of value.
I turned towards him with a smile and said that I didn't think he needed to have bothered sleeping in the place for the past week as there was nothing to steal. He looked at me as if I was mad.
-What about the radiators, the central heating furnace, the floorboards?
I didn't understand the last word and asked Alicja to translate.
-What did he say?
-He said floorboards.
-Floorboards! - people steal floorboards?
-That's what he said.
-Christ, what have we done?
Mr Polakowski then tried to sell us the chickens and the cow which he said he'd been holding back for us and expressed surprise when we said we didn't want them.
-What will you do about eggs and milk?
Alicja assured him that we'd manage somehow and he asked if we'd mind hanging onto them for a while until he could sell them. We knew he was moving into Gizycko, the nearest town, and didn't have transport which would allow him to visit his animals so we quickly told him that we didn't know anything about cows and chickens and didn't feel qualified to look after them. He was incredulous, just couldn't believe that there were people at large on the planet who lacked these elementary skills and he went next door to ask the neighbour if he'd take care of them.
Meanwhile the removals men unloaded the truck and disappeared after asking us if we were sure we wanted to stay. Depression was slowly creeping upon us and although I didn't want to admit it to Alicja, I was indeed beginning to think that perhaps we'd done the wrong thing.
Mr Polakowski duly returned and advised us that the neighbour would be over later in the afternoon to milk the cow and feed the chickens.
-Aren't you scared the chickens will get stolen? I asked-
No, he replied, nobody steals animals, animals are recognizable so a thief couldn't keep them at home and they'd be seen if they were transported out of the village to be sold elsewhere. That little puppy of yours though would be worth stealing. If you like you can have my dog until yours grows, just to be on the safe side.
So there we were in a small village in a forgotten part of Europe where I could only understand twenty percent of any conversation likely to come my way and someone had just told me that our front line of defence against thieves was worth stealing. We refused the offer of the dog and Mr Polakowski bade us goodbye and that was the last we saw of him for another three months.
I was depressed and we went inside for a cup of tea but after rummaging through umpteen boxes we couldn't find the electric kettle and as the wood burning stove was cold we unpacked the microwave oven. It was then that we discovered that there were only three power points in the entire house, none of which were located in the kitchen and so I plugged the microwave in where Polokawski's television had been. As we switched it on there was a bang which we traced to the fuse box where old Polakowski had conveniently left 4 spare fuses.
It didn't take long to figure out that the electrical system couldn't cope with the microwave oven, in fact having located the electric kettle, we found that it couldn't even cope with that when all the lights were on. Now it was Alicja's turn to be depressed. I found some wood in the shed, lit the stove and after an hour the water boiled and we sat down to that cup of tea and what we thought would be a nice consoling chat but a man appeared unannounced in our kitchen.
He was a slack trousered peasant farmer of about 35 years with a bent nose and enormous hands and he introduced himself as our neighbour. His name was Vladislav, Vladek for short. He'd come to milk the cow but he was clearly very uneasy and wouldn't look at me. He shuffled his feet, looked up, looked down, from side to side, cocked his head and looked at the dog but just wouldn't aim his eyes in my direction.
In fact he wouldn't look me in the eye for another fortnight although by that time we had developed something of a neighbourly relationship. He told us some weeks later that, apart from the Russians and Lithuanians at the market in town, I was the first foreigner he'd ever met and that he hadn't been sure how to behave. But now he'd come to milk the cow and to offer us the free run of his vegetable garden which he said contained more vegetables than they'd be able to use.
-I've got a little electrical problem, I said. -Do you know where I can find the local electrician?-
He ignored me completely and addressed Alicja telling her that there was no such thing as a local electrician and that every man took care of his own electrical repairs. He added that he probably knew as much as anyone in Bocwinka about things electrical and he'd be pleased to have a look at our problem on Monday but today, Sunday, was the Lord's day and the only work which could be performed was that of caring for animals. The rest of the day was spent unpacking and assembling the bed and a wardrobe and we turned in early.
-What did you think of our neighbour?- asked Alicja as I turned out the light.
-Not much, I wouldn't trust him further than I could throw him.
-Why?
-The guy wouldn't look me in the eyes, I think he's shifty.
-You could be right but maybe he was just shy, embarrassed maybe.
-Well, I said -time will tell I guess, we'll see.
I had no way of knowing, at that stage, how much I would come to rely on Vladek in the coming weeks and, if the old adage "a friend in need is a friend indeed" be true, I've never had a better friend. Vladek was born in Bocwinka and knew everyone and everything within tractor driving distance. His parents were Ukrainian and they were the third family to have been transported to the village in 1946 after the Germans/Prussians had been sent off across the river Oder to Germany.
He'd been running his farm since he was 16 years of age when his father had become unable to work and had taught himself to do everything necessary to keep the place going. In such a remote area all the farmers, of necessity, had to learn to be self sufficient if they were going to be able to survive but Vladek stood head and shoulders above the rest when it came to versatility. Welder, plumber, bricklayer, mechanic, blacksmith and carpenter. Vladek was all of these and a lot more and I could never make out how he had the time to fit all these things in to his week but he did, and he never seemed to hurry.
For us, however, his usefulness lay in his extended family-everybody in the district seemed to be related to Vladek. When we wanted roof tiles he had a brother able to provide them, firewood-an uncle with a forest, car repairs-a brother in law, a haunch of venison-a cousin who was a poacher. It took us months to realise that the words used to describe all these family members (brother, cousin etc) were so loosely applied as to be unfathomable.
Anything gettable could be got whether legal or otherwise but it always came through Vladek and never direct as we were to learn in the months to come.
Chapter 2
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter Two
It was Monday, our first full day in a new place and I was woken up at six o'clock by the bellowing of a cow, cocks crowing, people shouting and the twittering of birds in the bushes outside the bedroom window. It was a much noisier awakening than a regular week-day at our flat in Warsaw where I was so used to the trams and the distant rumble of the traffic that I no longer heard any of it.
I pulled back the blanket which had served the night as a temporary curtain and peered sleepy eyed out of the bedroom window, keen to see what the valley looked like first thing in the morning. A thin line of mist hung over the river, the sun was shining and a woman, who I presumed was Vladek's wife, was milking a cow by hand straight into a bucket in the field only twenty metres from our bedroom window. A buzzard or some such bird of prey was circling overhead waiting, I learned later in the day, to steal one of Vladek's ducklings.
A pair of storks were strutting through the water meadows thrusting their long red beaks, every now and then, into the damp grass. And I was sure that I'd found it, found the perfect place in which to spend a life and there was nothing I could think of to add to the scene, nothing could make it more appealing to me. I stood there for a full five minutes taking it all in, the black currant bushes in the garden, the sour cherry trees the crooked fence posts the sheer naturalness of it all.
I heard a clunk followed closely by swearing. I looked to the right. Vladek had joined his wife in the milking and the clunk had been the noise of a cow kicking over one of the buckets.
I recognised the swearing. Swear words, for some reason, are the words one remembers first and easiest when learning a new language although this time there were a few words which I knew just had to be swearing but which I'd never heard before.
Funny isn't it, how swearing the World over seems to be connected with things sexual? I mean, I'm sure that farmers in Peru, when they're loading llamas, victualling vicunas or adorning alpacas don't shout -get off my foot you elbow - no, it's always the naughty bits.
The threats of intended bestiality and the shouts concerning the cow's likeness to various parts of the anatomy woke Alicja who, relieved upon finding that Vladek was fully clothed and his outburst was directed to one of his cows, reminded me that before she could get breakfast, I'd have to light the stove.
The stove soon warmed up and I was standing in my underpants and slippers filling the kettle when I heard the outside door open and without a word the post lady walked straight into the kitchen, handed me a letter addressed to the previous owner and asked if I'd like to buy a copy of the local newspaper.
She was quite unperturbed to see me standing in my underpants and was busily thumbing through the rest of the letters in her satchel as she talked. That was the second person who'd walked straight into the house without announcing their presence and I wondered how we should go about teaching Misha to bark and act nasty.
Vladek came over a little after breakfast to look at our electrical problem and informed us that we didn't have one.
-All the houses are the same in Bocwinka, he said -they were all wired in the 1950s to the same pattern, the state paid for it and we didn't get any choice in the matter. I suppose you've got lots of electrical things have you?
We told him that yes, we had a few odds & ends, but nothing which consumed over two kilowatts, although with everything on at once it could possibly amount to perhaps ten.
-Ten, ten kilowatts? The wiring in these houses won't stand two kilowatts let alone ten.
-Oh, what do you do then, when you have everything on at once?
-We don't have to do anything. Our total consumption with the TV & all the lights only comes to about a kilowatt and a half. There's a family down the road who have an electric water heater though, but they turn everything off when they switch it on. If you want to use ten kilowatts you'll have to re wire the whole house starting at the pole out in the road.
It was slowly dawning on us that things in Bocwinka were perhaps a little further behind the times than we'd imagined and I changed the subject.
There had never been, and still isn't, any rubbish collection service in the village and the previous owner had been dumping his rubbish all over the back yard for upwards of 30 years so I asked Vladek if he knew if there was anyone in the village who wanted work.
-What kind of work?
-Rubbish removal to begin with. I need to hire a truck and get someone to go over the garden and pick up all these old buckets, bicycle tyres and what have you and then get them taken to the tip.
-Tip, what tip?
-Isn't there a rubbish tip somewhere. A big hole in the ground where people take their rubbish to be dumped.
-Oh, I see what you mean. Well, there's one close to town but that's all of twenty kilometres from here. We never go into town except on the bus, none of our tractors are registered for the road you see.
I paused to think. No rubbish tip, the house would have to be rewired, people just walk straight into your house without knocking, the area was full of thieves who'd even rip your floorboards up and they all drive about in un-registered tractors. Not shaping up to be a good day. But our neighbour seemed pretty normal to me, this Vladek, and I hoped he wasn't the only seemingly normal person in the village as we strolled outside to have a look at the rubbish in the garden.
-OK, don't worry about this lot, he said -we'll organise something.
-Any other problems?
-Yes, while you're here do you think you could help me move that old uh, that old thing over there, it's in the way of the door?
It was a sort of old copper which I guessed was used for cooking pig swill and he walked over to it, lifted one end and put it down again. Next he looked me up and down and judging me to be far too weak to lift the other end said -we'll organise something for that too.
With that he said goodbye and left. We had no idea who the "we" he'd referred to was going to be - -perhaps he means his family, said Alicja.
It was time for me to get to work and the priority was the security light we'd bought with us from Warsaw and the two, heavy duty door locks. I located the box with "security light & cable" written on it in black Texta colour and began to fix the sensor to the wall. It had only been twenty minutes since Vladek left us and suddenly there was a roar as a tractor and trailer came bouncing up the drive piloted by some "Nigel Manselski" drive-alike character with two front teeth missing.
It stopped in the yard and the driver, who introduced himself as Zenek, jumped down and asked where all the rubbish was. He was standing in it but I thought that perhaps he didn't regard it as rubbish and so resolved to be careful in my reply. I was about to answer when another tractor and trailer pulled up, this time with three men in the back, and this in turn was followed by a horse and cart driven by Vladek who, as our neighbour, knew where all the prime rubbish was in our garden. He began telling the tractor drivers where he wanted the trailers and what kind of rubbish he wanted in each - metal objects in one trailer, anything wooden in another, bricks, tiles and rubble in a third.
This done he asked Zenek -where's the battery?
-Jurek's bringing it later.
-OK, stop the engines.
This was a peculiar little conversation but as the month wore on I found out that there were only three tractor batteries in the whole village and eleven tractors at some time or another, shared them. The farmers who didn't end up with one of the batteries the previous night started their tractors in the mornings by means of transformers from the house electricity supply and each tractor owner had a slope in the garden to jump start his machine.
Vladek brought the five men over to where Alicja and I were standing and introduced them. They were all uneasy and again, like Vladek, wouldn't look me in the face. First was Zenek, the man with the missing teeth who'd already introduced himself. Zenek, like Vladek, was the son of Ukrainian parents and his was Polish difficult even for Alicja to understand. About the same age as Vladek he was tall and thin with blonde curly hair and a face ravaged by what must have been an almost terminal case of childhood acne or something blunt toothed and very hungry.
In quick succession I shook hands with Andrzej, Marek, Ivan and Bogdan, all self employed farmers or smallholders and all would become firm friends as the weeks went by. Between them they supplied us, sometimes unwittingly, with more laughs than any team of TV script writers could possibly dream up. Of course, at this meeting they had all come along to see what this foreigner and his sophisticated city wife were like and before the day was out all their friends and relations turned up on one pretext or another to have a look at us too. But now the six men set to, clearing up our yard and I went back to my security light.
Following the instructions to the letter I was well into the job after an hour or so and by that time Jurek had turned up with the battery. The trailers were full up and Ivan & Marek drove off somewhere to dump the contents. The remaining men drifted across to where I was working and Zenek asked what I was doing. I didn't really want to get into this conversation because I knew it would take more explaining than my limited Polish could cope with so I just said that it was a light. Vladek looked the wiring over & declared that I'd need to put a switch in the circuit somewhere.
-No, it comes on automatically, I said.
-What do you mean automatically? said Zenek
-I've seen this sort of thing before,said Andrzej -there's a little beam going between two points and the light comes on when you break it. The Germans use them in car parks.
-No, I said -it's actually infra red and it senses your body heat.
Blank stares followed and I could see that I was expected to explain further.
-Well, lets see. You know your blood is hot? Well, the light can sense the heat in your blood and it turns a micro switch on and the light works.
-What if you've got a coat on?, said Zenek.
-It will sense the heat in your face & hands, I said.
-What if you wear gloves and a balaclava?, said Andrzej.
It could still find the heat from your breath & anyway the heat would come through your coat, I replied.
-What about a tractor then?, said Vladek.
-Don't be stupid, said Zenek -a tractor's got no blood.
-No, I said but the engine would be hot, it doesn't have to be blood - just heat
There then followed a barrage of animals. Cow, horse, dog, cat, bird etc.
-If you had a tractor & trailer & you backed up to the gate it wouldn't come on would it?, asked Andrzej.
It would as soon as you came far enough for it to sense the engine heat, I replied.
All this time Bogdan had said nothing but now he fixed me with a stare and said -Crocodile!!
I looked at him for an instant wondering if he attached any importance to what he'd just said or whether he'd just chosen a crocodile at random. But Andrzej looked at him and told him he was stupid.
-Your head's full of pig shit, he said.
-Why?, asked Bogdan.
-Crocodiles, what whoring crocodiles?
-A crocodile wouldn't make that thing light up.
-Why?
-Crocodiles have cold blood.
-What cold blood?
-Cold blood - they're like frogs.
-Crocodiles aren't anything like frogs.
-Yes they are, said Bogdan -they're reptiles. All reptiles have cold blood. Animals and birds have fur and feathers to keep them warm but reptiles have cold blood. They have to sit in the sun to get their blood warm.
Andrzej was out of his depth, it was all too scientific for him and so he loaded the problem onto me.
-What about that then - what he says?
-Yes that maybe true, I said -but the likelihood of a crocodile breaking into a house to steal anything here in Bocwinka I would have thought was minimal.
-Oh, is that what it's for then, said Vladek -it lights up when burglars come through the gate?
-Yes, that's the idea.
-Oh you should have saved your money. Nobody steals things from houses here. There's only 30 houses in the whole of Bocwinka and we're in and out of each others homes all the time, we don't even knock before we go in. If you steal anything from a house here you can't use it because everyone would be able to see it the minute they walked in the door.
This conversation had taken place with me standing on a ladder and looking down at the lads but now I happened to glance through the window in front of me and there stood Alicja laughing so hard that tears were streaming down her cheeks. I mentioned that old Polakowski had slept in the house after his family had left because he was worried about theft adding that, from what they were now telling me, it seemed unnecessary.
-No, they said, -an empty house is considered fair game and a lot of things get stolen from farmyards at night but nobody would steal anything from inside an inhabited house - no thief would stoop to that.
This news didn't exactly set my mind at ease but things certainly sounded a little better than what I'd heard at the party in Warsaw and so I asked exactly what kind of things were stolen at night and how often did these things happened.
-Somebody tried to steal one of Vladek's tractor tyres one night and if it hadn't been for the dogs barking it would have gone, said Andrzej.
-When did this happen?, I asked.
-Last October or November.
-But that was seven months ago?
-Yes, but a milk churn was stolen in the village only a couple of weeks ago and that'll never turn up.
-But surely anybody would be able to recognise his own milk churn in another man's yard wouldn't he?, I asked.
-Yes, but the thief was probably from another village or, if he was from Bocwinka, he'd have sold it in another village to buy vodka.
A little further gentle probing revealed that, apart from cattle rustling and poaching, the area was practically devoid of theft but it was always a topic of conversation. In the following ten months there were no other thefts in the village apart from our own garden hose which had been laying in our field and visible from the road for 6 weeks. I found the mention of cattle rustling exciting though, and asked about it.
-Cattle rustling?, I said, -Mr Polakowski told me yesterday that people didn't steal animals because they're recognisable.
-Ah, well, said Zenek, -it's not exactly cattle rustling and when it happens the animal isn't recognisable.
-How come?
-They kill the animal in the field and strip the flesh from it. The next morning there's only the skeleton left.
-Shit, who does this sort of thing, I asked.
-We don't know but we think it's Russians and Lithuanians from across the border. The police must think it too because they'll never go out to a village if it's reported. They wait until the next day.
-Why the next day?
-The police are scared of them, they all carry guns.
-Tell me, I said, -do you believe it's true that Russians walk across the border and steal your cows like this?
-One thing’s for sure, said Vladek. -It only happens in the border areas and since the old system fell, the borders aren't patrolled - anybody can walk through them. There's no fence even, just posts in the ground.
I was glad Alicja was indoors and couldn't hear what was being said. I was gladder still that we didn't take Mr Polakowski's cow off his hands. For the moment we'd exhausted the subject of itinerant Russian slaughter men roaming the fields at night and there was a lull in the conversation.
-Do you watch Neighbours? asked Andrzej
-What? the TV serial?
-Yeah.
-No.
-Oh.
The tractors came back after a while and the men worked hard all day, taking countless trailer loads out of the gate but still making little impression on the overall scene, and they refused the tea & coffee Alicja offered them. Around midday Vladek's wife Eva came to introduce herself. A very cheerful person. She was loud, crude and a total stranger to deodorant - but cheerful. She was about the same age as Vladek, mid thirties, with straight blonde hair and she put her hand to her mouth every time she smiled to hide the fact that one of her front teeth was missing.
There seemed to me to be a shortage of teeth in Bocwinka because half of the guys working in the garden had lost one or more of their teeth. We were wondering how much to pay all these workers and Alicja asked Eva how much the going rate was for a days labour. “A bottle”, was the reply. By this we presumed that she meant the price of a bottle of vodka but there are something like fifty different brands of vodka in the shops and the prices varied widely.
-What sort of price though? Alicja asked.
-Oh, the stuff they sell at the village shop will do for them. It's the cheapest stuff you can buy, just go down there and buy them a bottle each.
-Don't you think I should ask them if they'd prefer the money?
-No, they don't want money - they want vodka. If you give them the money they'll have to go down to the shop and buy the stuff themselves.
I was managing to follow this conversation and asked Eva -what if a man has only done half a days work, you can't give him half a bottle of vodka can you?
-No, she said -they don't sell half bottles in the village shop, you give him the cost of a half bottle or don't give him anything until he's done another half days work - then give him a bottle.
This was something new to me and I asked if it would be normal to give somebody, say, ten bottles for a big job but she told us that two was the normal limit and anything over that was usually paid in cash.
-Their wives will tolerate a bottle a day but if a man came home with ten, his wife would want to know why there wasn't any money for the house, she replied.
This was our first introduction to the "vodka economy" and Bocwinka, like all other Polish villages ran on it. We became quite used to being told "a half" or "a quarter" in answer to the question "what do we owe you?" That evening Alicja presented the men with a bottle of vodka each which they all accepted bar Vladek and sat down to drink it straight away. Bogdan was the only man who didn't finish his bottle and apart from Marek, who needed help to get out of the gate, they all wandered off home to do their evening milking looking only slightly the worse for wear.
I couldn't believe what I'd just witnessed, men drinking a whole bottle of vodka in the space of twenty minutes and walking away looking relatively normal. I ran upstairs to watch them from the attic window to see if it was a show of bravado after which they'd all fall over. It wasn't. A couple of them staggered a little but they certainly weren't swaying around and they all disappeared into their respective houses. I went out into the yard again to look at the labels on the bottles which they'd left behind - it was 40% proof!
Over the coming weeks we got to know Vladek and Eva well. Vladek was the most helpful person either of us had ever come across and without him our house renovation project would have taken at least another four months to complete and we would have spent a lot more money than we did. He knew where to buy things cheaply, how to bribe people to get things done quickly and he worked like a slave for us and would never accept payment. Many times he would co-opt friends and relations to put in a days work without payment or send them off somewhere to buy some otherwise unobtainable item like gate hinges or door handles. One afternoon he told Alicja that he'd like a little chat with us and so she invited him and Eva over for dinner that evening. The little chat was about what we intended to do with our land. We'd been thinking about it ourselves as there were a lot of thistles and other weeds beginning to appear and, as we were to be running a guest house, we wanted the land surrounding us to look well maintained.
Now, at dinner, Vladek asked if he could rent a few acres from us and knowing he couldn't possibly afford to do this I proposed that he use the land for the next twelve months, rent free, in return for all the help he'd given us. Both he and Eva were touched by what they mistook for generosity on our part and agreed to keep us in eggs, milk, potatoes and the odd chicken or piece of pork when they slaughtered an animal. We hadn't told anyone at this stage that we intended to accommodate foreign tourists in the house but now we told them because we wanted them to see why we needed to keep our fields and water meadows looking up to scratch. They were flabbergasted at the thought that any sane tourist would want to visit the area.
-Peter, said Vladek. -Can't you find anything else to do? You'll never get tourists to come here, there's nothing here for them - no hamburgers or dances or anything like that. Look, I've never had a holiday in my life so I don't know what these people need but from what I've seen on TV, Bocwinka isn't like any of those places where people go on holiday. I tried to explain that there was a new breed of tourist - the eco tourist - who would like to see what Bocwinka and the area had to offer but it was beyond his comprehension. I explained that a certain type of tourist would like to see the bison in the forest and the storks and cranes, wildflowers, the clean lakes. There were also people, I said, who'd like to see his farm or just walk around Bocwinka, maybe go for a ride in his horse and cart but to no avail - Vladek had grown up with all these things and could see no value in them.
-Alicja, he said. -You explain to him. He's the only foreigner that's visited Bocwinka since I was born except for the odd person who's lost his way and one old German who was born here and comes back every year. You'll never get a single guest.
-You don't need the money anyway do you? he asked.
It was time to acquaint our neighbours with the facts regarding our financial situation.
-Vladek, I said, -when this house is finally finished we will have spent all our money, we don't have any other income and there's no work in the area. Yes, we need the money.
-Oh, we all thought you were rich - you come from the West and we naturally presumed you were rich.
We again emphasized that all our money would be spent renovating the house and that after this we would be poorer than him if the business didn't come. They were clearly worried about us and made the suggestion that we take up farming saying that they could fix us up with a horse and we could borrow ploughs and other necessary equipment from around the village.
It took quite some time to convince them that we were definitely going ahead with our project but in the end they accepted it and said they'd help us in any way they could. Our dinners had gone cold with all this talking and I would normally have put them in the microwave but Vladek and Eva hadn't seen the microwave as yet and after telling them how broke we were, I didn't want to show it off so we carried on with our cold dinners.
Alicja asked if they'd like a cup of tea. They said "yes" and I put the kettle on. It hadn't occurred to me that they may not have seen an electric kettle before and Eva asked if this thing was indeed an electric kettle as she'd seen them being used on TV. Vladek looked at it for a while and asked if I wasn't worried about the thought of water and electricity being in such close proximity to each other. I was at a loss to be able to think of any other appliance to compare it with which they might have already used, such as a steam iron or electric hot water service because I knew that they were unlikely to have any of these things in their house. I was in the middle of explaining that we'd had this electric kettle for five years and there had never been a problem with it, that it was double insulated and so forth, when it came to the boil and turned itself off.
-What's happened to it now, asked Eva.
-It's turned itself off.
-Why?
-Because it's already boiled and this saves electricity and stops it from burning dry.
Vladek was intrigued, examined it and declared that he thought he knew how it worked - he probably did too because although he'd had no exposure to a lot of modern day things he's smart & logical when he's not drunk. The next night when Alicja was in their house collecting our milk another villager was visiting them and Eva told him that we had this very clever kettle that was electric & turned itself off.
-It's even better than that gas stove of Domagalski's. You can put it on and watch TV and you don't have to worry that it'll burn dry, she said.
Alicja came home and related this to me and said that she thought an electric kettle would make a nice present for them because Vladek was still helping us almost every day and still refused take any money in return for his efforts. We were in town a couple of weeks later and in a shop window we saw an electric kettle made in Poland under licence from an English company so we bought it and duly presented it to them but a month later they asked if we could take it back to the shop for them because it had stopped working.
We exchanged the kettle with no questions asked and gave it back to our neighbours only to find that the same thing happened again about six weeks later. I cursed Polish products telling Alicja that "they can't even make things under license without messing them up" and back we went to the shop. The shopkeeper was very apologetic and said that he'd sold over 20 of these kettles and we were the first people who had complained and wasn't it a shame that it had happened to us twice? Then, rubbing the handle, he said "what's this sticky stuff around the switch?" I said I didn't know and he remarked that the other one had this sticky stuff on it too.
But we were in luck because the previous kettle had been repaired and he handed it over to take back with us. We dropped in at Vladek's on the way home and gave Eva the kettle. -Oh good, she said -he's been missing his hard boiled eggs. As the story unfolded we heard how Eva had been sticking down the switch of the kettle with adhesive tape and cooking in it, amongst other things, hard boiled eggs for Vladek's packed lunch when he was working in the fields. She went on to say that she used it for making soups too but ended with - no good for buckwheat though, it burns onto that thing in the bottom.
Chapter Two
It was Monday, our first full day in a new place and I was woken up at six o'clock by the bellowing of a cow, cocks crowing, people shouting and the twittering of birds in the bushes outside the bedroom window. It was a much noisier awakening than a regular week-day at our flat in Warsaw where I was so used to the trams and the distant rumble of the traffic that I no longer heard any of it.
I pulled back the blanket which had served the night as a temporary curtain and peered sleepy eyed out of the bedroom window, keen to see what the valley looked like first thing in the morning. A thin line of mist hung over the river, the sun was shining and a woman, who I presumed was Vladek's wife, was milking a cow by hand straight into a bucket in the field only twenty metres from our bedroom window. A buzzard or some such bird of prey was circling overhead waiting, I learned later in the day, to steal one of Vladek's ducklings.
A pair of storks were strutting through the water meadows thrusting their long red beaks, every now and then, into the damp grass. And I was sure that I'd found it, found the perfect place in which to spend a life and there was nothing I could think of to add to the scene, nothing could make it more appealing to me. I stood there for a full five minutes taking it all in, the black currant bushes in the garden, the sour cherry trees the crooked fence posts the sheer naturalness of it all.
I heard a clunk followed closely by swearing. I looked to the right. Vladek had joined his wife in the milking and the clunk had been the noise of a cow kicking over one of the buckets.
I recognised the swearing. Swear words, for some reason, are the words one remembers first and easiest when learning a new language although this time there were a few words which I knew just had to be swearing but which I'd never heard before.
Funny isn't it, how swearing the World over seems to be connected with things sexual? I mean, I'm sure that farmers in Peru, when they're loading llamas, victualling vicunas or adorning alpacas don't shout -get off my foot you elbow - no, it's always the naughty bits.
The threats of intended bestiality and the shouts concerning the cow's likeness to various parts of the anatomy woke Alicja who, relieved upon finding that Vladek was fully clothed and his outburst was directed to one of his cows, reminded me that before she could get breakfast, I'd have to light the stove.
The stove soon warmed up and I was standing in my underpants and slippers filling the kettle when I heard the outside door open and without a word the post lady walked straight into the kitchen, handed me a letter addressed to the previous owner and asked if I'd like to buy a copy of the local newspaper.
She was quite unperturbed to see me standing in my underpants and was busily thumbing through the rest of the letters in her satchel as she talked. That was the second person who'd walked straight into the house without announcing their presence and I wondered how we should go about teaching Misha to bark and act nasty.
Vladek came over a little after breakfast to look at our electrical problem and informed us that we didn't have one.
-All the houses are the same in Bocwinka, he said -they were all wired in the 1950s to the same pattern, the state paid for it and we didn't get any choice in the matter. I suppose you've got lots of electrical things have you?
We told him that yes, we had a few odds & ends, but nothing which consumed over two kilowatts, although with everything on at once it could possibly amount to perhaps ten.
-Ten, ten kilowatts? The wiring in these houses won't stand two kilowatts let alone ten.
-Oh, what do you do then, when you have everything on at once?
-We don't have to do anything. Our total consumption with the TV & all the lights only comes to about a kilowatt and a half. There's a family down the road who have an electric water heater though, but they turn everything off when they switch it on. If you want to use ten kilowatts you'll have to re wire the whole house starting at the pole out in the road.
It was slowly dawning on us that things in Bocwinka were perhaps a little further behind the times than we'd imagined and I changed the subject.
There had never been, and still isn't, any rubbish collection service in the village and the previous owner had been dumping his rubbish all over the back yard for upwards of 30 years so I asked Vladek if he knew if there was anyone in the village who wanted work.
-What kind of work?
-Rubbish removal to begin with. I need to hire a truck and get someone to go over the garden and pick up all these old buckets, bicycle tyres and what have you and then get them taken to the tip.
-Tip, what tip?
-Isn't there a rubbish tip somewhere. A big hole in the ground where people take their rubbish to be dumped.
-Oh, I see what you mean. Well, there's one close to town but that's all of twenty kilometres from here. We never go into town except on the bus, none of our tractors are registered for the road you see.
I paused to think. No rubbish tip, the house would have to be rewired, people just walk straight into your house without knocking, the area was full of thieves who'd even rip your floorboards up and they all drive about in un-registered tractors. Not shaping up to be a good day. But our neighbour seemed pretty normal to me, this Vladek, and I hoped he wasn't the only seemingly normal person in the village as we strolled outside to have a look at the rubbish in the garden.
-OK, don't worry about this lot, he said -we'll organise something.
-Any other problems?
-Yes, while you're here do you think you could help me move that old uh, that old thing over there, it's in the way of the door?
It was a sort of old copper which I guessed was used for cooking pig swill and he walked over to it, lifted one end and put it down again. Next he looked me up and down and judging me to be far too weak to lift the other end said -we'll organise something for that too.
With that he said goodbye and left. We had no idea who the "we" he'd referred to was going to be - -perhaps he means his family, said Alicja.
It was time for me to get to work and the priority was the security light we'd bought with us from Warsaw and the two, heavy duty door locks. I located the box with "security light & cable" written on it in black Texta colour and began to fix the sensor to the wall. It had only been twenty minutes since Vladek left us and suddenly there was a roar as a tractor and trailer came bouncing up the drive piloted by some "Nigel Manselski" drive-alike character with two front teeth missing.
It stopped in the yard and the driver, who introduced himself as Zenek, jumped down and asked where all the rubbish was. He was standing in it but I thought that perhaps he didn't regard it as rubbish and so resolved to be careful in my reply. I was about to answer when another tractor and trailer pulled up, this time with three men in the back, and this in turn was followed by a horse and cart driven by Vladek who, as our neighbour, knew where all the prime rubbish was in our garden. He began telling the tractor drivers where he wanted the trailers and what kind of rubbish he wanted in each - metal objects in one trailer, anything wooden in another, bricks, tiles and rubble in a third.
This done he asked Zenek -where's the battery?
-Jurek's bringing it later.
-OK, stop the engines.
This was a peculiar little conversation but as the month wore on I found out that there were only three tractor batteries in the whole village and eleven tractors at some time or another, shared them. The farmers who didn't end up with one of the batteries the previous night started their tractors in the mornings by means of transformers from the house electricity supply and each tractor owner had a slope in the garden to jump start his machine.
Vladek brought the five men over to where Alicja and I were standing and introduced them. They were all uneasy and again, like Vladek, wouldn't look me in the face. First was Zenek, the man with the missing teeth who'd already introduced himself. Zenek, like Vladek, was the son of Ukrainian parents and his was Polish difficult even for Alicja to understand. About the same age as Vladek he was tall and thin with blonde curly hair and a face ravaged by what must have been an almost terminal case of childhood acne or something blunt toothed and very hungry.
In quick succession I shook hands with Andrzej, Marek, Ivan and Bogdan, all self employed farmers or smallholders and all would become firm friends as the weeks went by. Between them they supplied us, sometimes unwittingly, with more laughs than any team of TV script writers could possibly dream up. Of course, at this meeting they had all come along to see what this foreigner and his sophisticated city wife were like and before the day was out all their friends and relations turned up on one pretext or another to have a look at us too. But now the six men set to, clearing up our yard and I went back to my security light.
Following the instructions to the letter I was well into the job after an hour or so and by that time Jurek had turned up with the battery. The trailers were full up and Ivan & Marek drove off somewhere to dump the contents. The remaining men drifted across to where I was working and Zenek asked what I was doing. I didn't really want to get into this conversation because I knew it would take more explaining than my limited Polish could cope with so I just said that it was a light. Vladek looked the wiring over & declared that I'd need to put a switch in the circuit somewhere.
-No, it comes on automatically, I said.
-What do you mean automatically? said Zenek
-I've seen this sort of thing before,said Andrzej -there's a little beam going between two points and the light comes on when you break it. The Germans use them in car parks.
-No, I said -it's actually infra red and it senses your body heat.
Blank stares followed and I could see that I was expected to explain further.
-Well, lets see. You know your blood is hot? Well, the light can sense the heat in your blood and it turns a micro switch on and the light works.
-What if you've got a coat on?, said Zenek.
-It will sense the heat in your face & hands, I said.
-What if you wear gloves and a balaclava?, said Andrzej.
It could still find the heat from your breath & anyway the heat would come through your coat, I replied.
-What about a tractor then?, said Vladek.
-Don't be stupid, said Zenek -a tractor's got no blood.
-No, I said but the engine would be hot, it doesn't have to be blood - just heat
There then followed a barrage of animals. Cow, horse, dog, cat, bird etc.
-If you had a tractor & trailer & you backed up to the gate it wouldn't come on would it?, asked Andrzej.
It would as soon as you came far enough for it to sense the engine heat, I replied.
All this time Bogdan had said nothing but now he fixed me with a stare and said -Crocodile!!
I looked at him for an instant wondering if he attached any importance to what he'd just said or whether he'd just chosen a crocodile at random. But Andrzej looked at him and told him he was stupid.
-Your head's full of pig shit, he said.
-Why?, asked Bogdan.
-Crocodiles, what whoring crocodiles?
-A crocodile wouldn't make that thing light up.
-Why?
-Crocodiles have cold blood.
-What cold blood?
-Cold blood - they're like frogs.
-Crocodiles aren't anything like frogs.
-Yes they are, said Bogdan -they're reptiles. All reptiles have cold blood. Animals and birds have fur and feathers to keep them warm but reptiles have cold blood. They have to sit in the sun to get their blood warm.
Andrzej was out of his depth, it was all too scientific for him and so he loaded the problem onto me.
-What about that then - what he says?
-Yes that maybe true, I said -but the likelihood of a crocodile breaking into a house to steal anything here in Bocwinka I would have thought was minimal.
-Oh, is that what it's for then, said Vladek -it lights up when burglars come through the gate?
-Yes, that's the idea.
-Oh you should have saved your money. Nobody steals things from houses here. There's only 30 houses in the whole of Bocwinka and we're in and out of each others homes all the time, we don't even knock before we go in. If you steal anything from a house here you can't use it because everyone would be able to see it the minute they walked in the door.
This conversation had taken place with me standing on a ladder and looking down at the lads but now I happened to glance through the window in front of me and there stood Alicja laughing so hard that tears were streaming down her cheeks. I mentioned that old Polakowski had slept in the house after his family had left because he was worried about theft adding that, from what they were now telling me, it seemed unnecessary.
-No, they said, -an empty house is considered fair game and a lot of things get stolen from farmyards at night but nobody would steal anything from inside an inhabited house - no thief would stoop to that.
This news didn't exactly set my mind at ease but things certainly sounded a little better than what I'd heard at the party in Warsaw and so I asked exactly what kind of things were stolen at night and how often did these things happened.
-Somebody tried to steal one of Vladek's tractor tyres one night and if it hadn't been for the dogs barking it would have gone, said Andrzej.
-When did this happen?, I asked.
-Last October or November.
-But that was seven months ago?
-Yes, but a milk churn was stolen in the village only a couple of weeks ago and that'll never turn up.
-But surely anybody would be able to recognise his own milk churn in another man's yard wouldn't he?, I asked.
-Yes, but the thief was probably from another village or, if he was from Bocwinka, he'd have sold it in another village to buy vodka.
A little further gentle probing revealed that, apart from cattle rustling and poaching, the area was practically devoid of theft but it was always a topic of conversation. In the following ten months there were no other thefts in the village apart from our own garden hose which had been laying in our field and visible from the road for 6 weeks. I found the mention of cattle rustling exciting though, and asked about it.
-Cattle rustling?, I said, -Mr Polakowski told me yesterday that people didn't steal animals because they're recognisable.
-Ah, well, said Zenek, -it's not exactly cattle rustling and when it happens the animal isn't recognisable.
-How come?
-They kill the animal in the field and strip the flesh from it. The next morning there's only the skeleton left.
-Shit, who does this sort of thing, I asked.
-We don't know but we think it's Russians and Lithuanians from across the border. The police must think it too because they'll never go out to a village if it's reported. They wait until the next day.
-Why the next day?
-The police are scared of them, they all carry guns.
-Tell me, I said, -do you believe it's true that Russians walk across the border and steal your cows like this?
-One thing’s for sure, said Vladek. -It only happens in the border areas and since the old system fell, the borders aren't patrolled - anybody can walk through them. There's no fence even, just posts in the ground.
I was glad Alicja was indoors and couldn't hear what was being said. I was gladder still that we didn't take Mr Polakowski's cow off his hands. For the moment we'd exhausted the subject of itinerant Russian slaughter men roaming the fields at night and there was a lull in the conversation.
-Do you watch Neighbours? asked Andrzej
-What? the TV serial?
-Yeah.
-No.
-Oh.
The tractors came back after a while and the men worked hard all day, taking countless trailer loads out of the gate but still making little impression on the overall scene, and they refused the tea & coffee Alicja offered them. Around midday Vladek's wife Eva came to introduce herself. A very cheerful person. She was loud, crude and a total stranger to deodorant - but cheerful. She was about the same age as Vladek, mid thirties, with straight blonde hair and she put her hand to her mouth every time she smiled to hide the fact that one of her front teeth was missing.
There seemed to me to be a shortage of teeth in Bocwinka because half of the guys working in the garden had lost one or more of their teeth. We were wondering how much to pay all these workers and Alicja asked Eva how much the going rate was for a days labour. “A bottle”, was the reply. By this we presumed that she meant the price of a bottle of vodka but there are something like fifty different brands of vodka in the shops and the prices varied widely.
-What sort of price though? Alicja asked.
-Oh, the stuff they sell at the village shop will do for them. It's the cheapest stuff you can buy, just go down there and buy them a bottle each.
-Don't you think I should ask them if they'd prefer the money?
-No, they don't want money - they want vodka. If you give them the money they'll have to go down to the shop and buy the stuff themselves.
I was managing to follow this conversation and asked Eva -what if a man has only done half a days work, you can't give him half a bottle of vodka can you?
-No, she said -they don't sell half bottles in the village shop, you give him the cost of a half bottle or don't give him anything until he's done another half days work - then give him a bottle.
This was something new to me and I asked if it would be normal to give somebody, say, ten bottles for a big job but she told us that two was the normal limit and anything over that was usually paid in cash.
-Their wives will tolerate a bottle a day but if a man came home with ten, his wife would want to know why there wasn't any money for the house, she replied.
This was our first introduction to the "vodka economy" and Bocwinka, like all other Polish villages ran on it. We became quite used to being told "a half" or "a quarter" in answer to the question "what do we owe you?" That evening Alicja presented the men with a bottle of vodka each which they all accepted bar Vladek and sat down to drink it straight away. Bogdan was the only man who didn't finish his bottle and apart from Marek, who needed help to get out of the gate, they all wandered off home to do their evening milking looking only slightly the worse for wear.
I couldn't believe what I'd just witnessed, men drinking a whole bottle of vodka in the space of twenty minutes and walking away looking relatively normal. I ran upstairs to watch them from the attic window to see if it was a show of bravado after which they'd all fall over. It wasn't. A couple of them staggered a little but they certainly weren't swaying around and they all disappeared into their respective houses. I went out into the yard again to look at the labels on the bottles which they'd left behind - it was 40% proof!
Over the coming weeks we got to know Vladek and Eva well. Vladek was the most helpful person either of us had ever come across and without him our house renovation project would have taken at least another four months to complete and we would have spent a lot more money than we did. He knew where to buy things cheaply, how to bribe people to get things done quickly and he worked like a slave for us and would never accept payment. Many times he would co-opt friends and relations to put in a days work without payment or send them off somewhere to buy some otherwise unobtainable item like gate hinges or door handles. One afternoon he told Alicja that he'd like a little chat with us and so she invited him and Eva over for dinner that evening. The little chat was about what we intended to do with our land. We'd been thinking about it ourselves as there were a lot of thistles and other weeds beginning to appear and, as we were to be running a guest house, we wanted the land surrounding us to look well maintained.
Now, at dinner, Vladek asked if he could rent a few acres from us and knowing he couldn't possibly afford to do this I proposed that he use the land for the next twelve months, rent free, in return for all the help he'd given us. Both he and Eva were touched by what they mistook for generosity on our part and agreed to keep us in eggs, milk, potatoes and the odd chicken or piece of pork when they slaughtered an animal. We hadn't told anyone at this stage that we intended to accommodate foreign tourists in the house but now we told them because we wanted them to see why we needed to keep our fields and water meadows looking up to scratch. They were flabbergasted at the thought that any sane tourist would want to visit the area.
-Peter, said Vladek. -Can't you find anything else to do? You'll never get tourists to come here, there's nothing here for them - no hamburgers or dances or anything like that. Look, I've never had a holiday in my life so I don't know what these people need but from what I've seen on TV, Bocwinka isn't like any of those places where people go on holiday. I tried to explain that there was a new breed of tourist - the eco tourist - who would like to see what Bocwinka and the area had to offer but it was beyond his comprehension. I explained that a certain type of tourist would like to see the bison in the forest and the storks and cranes, wildflowers, the clean lakes. There were also people, I said, who'd like to see his farm or just walk around Bocwinka, maybe go for a ride in his horse and cart but to no avail - Vladek had grown up with all these things and could see no value in them.
-Alicja, he said. -You explain to him. He's the only foreigner that's visited Bocwinka since I was born except for the odd person who's lost his way and one old German who was born here and comes back every year. You'll never get a single guest.
-You don't need the money anyway do you? he asked.
It was time to acquaint our neighbours with the facts regarding our financial situation.
-Vladek, I said, -when this house is finally finished we will have spent all our money, we don't have any other income and there's no work in the area. Yes, we need the money.
-Oh, we all thought you were rich - you come from the West and we naturally presumed you were rich.
We again emphasized that all our money would be spent renovating the house and that after this we would be poorer than him if the business didn't come. They were clearly worried about us and made the suggestion that we take up farming saying that they could fix us up with a horse and we could borrow ploughs and other necessary equipment from around the village.
It took quite some time to convince them that we were definitely going ahead with our project but in the end they accepted it and said they'd help us in any way they could. Our dinners had gone cold with all this talking and I would normally have put them in the microwave but Vladek and Eva hadn't seen the microwave as yet and after telling them how broke we were, I didn't want to show it off so we carried on with our cold dinners.
Alicja asked if they'd like a cup of tea. They said "yes" and I put the kettle on. It hadn't occurred to me that they may not have seen an electric kettle before and Eva asked if this thing was indeed an electric kettle as she'd seen them being used on TV. Vladek looked at it for a while and asked if I wasn't worried about the thought of water and electricity being in such close proximity to each other. I was at a loss to be able to think of any other appliance to compare it with which they might have already used, such as a steam iron or electric hot water service because I knew that they were unlikely to have any of these things in their house. I was in the middle of explaining that we'd had this electric kettle for five years and there had never been a problem with it, that it was double insulated and so forth, when it came to the boil and turned itself off.
-What's happened to it now, asked Eva.
-It's turned itself off.
-Why?
-Because it's already boiled and this saves electricity and stops it from burning dry.
Vladek was intrigued, examined it and declared that he thought he knew how it worked - he probably did too because although he'd had no exposure to a lot of modern day things he's smart & logical when he's not drunk. The next night when Alicja was in their house collecting our milk another villager was visiting them and Eva told him that we had this very clever kettle that was electric & turned itself off.
-It's even better than that gas stove of Domagalski's. You can put it on and watch TV and you don't have to worry that it'll burn dry, she said.
Alicja came home and related this to me and said that she thought an electric kettle would make a nice present for them because Vladek was still helping us almost every day and still refused take any money in return for his efforts. We were in town a couple of weeks later and in a shop window we saw an electric kettle made in Poland under licence from an English company so we bought it and duly presented it to them but a month later they asked if we could take it back to the shop for them because it had stopped working.
We exchanged the kettle with no questions asked and gave it back to our neighbours only to find that the same thing happened again about six weeks later. I cursed Polish products telling Alicja that "they can't even make things under license without messing them up" and back we went to the shop. The shopkeeper was very apologetic and said that he'd sold over 20 of these kettles and we were the first people who had complained and wasn't it a shame that it had happened to us twice? Then, rubbing the handle, he said "what's this sticky stuff around the switch?" I said I didn't know and he remarked that the other one had this sticky stuff on it too.
But we were in luck because the previous kettle had been repaired and he handed it over to take back with us. We dropped in at Vladek's on the way home and gave Eva the kettle. -Oh good, she said -he's been missing his hard boiled eggs. As the story unfolded we heard how Eva had been sticking down the switch of the kettle with adhesive tape and cooking in it, amongst other things, hard boiled eggs for Vladek's packed lunch when he was working in the fields. She went on to say that she used it for making soups too but ended with - no good for buckwheat though, it burns onto that thing in the bottom.
Chapter 3
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 3
Renovating a house anywhere in the World comes with its attendant problems and we knew that taking on such a project, even in the West wouldn't be without them. We knew too that in this far flung backwater of the former Soviet empire things were going to be a little more frustrating but we could never have imagined some of the difficulties we would encounter.
We theorised that now communism had gone and free enterprise was becoming rampant in Poland there would be no more shortages in the shops and, whilst that may have been true for food and a few other essentials, it wasn't true for building materials. There were shortages for different reasons - former state owned industries were going bankrupt at a rate of knots leaving a manufacturing vacuum which wasn't yet being filled.
The floorboards in one of the bedrooms had been covered with linoleum which I'd lifted to reveal a patchwork of various sized floorboards and under them was a layer of beech leaves which had served as insulation. The beech leaves had also served as a food supply for a variety of weevil like, maggoty creatures which we didn't think our future guests would come to love and develop meaningful relationships with during the short periods spent in the house. I spent a day lifting all the floorboards in the room and, along with the aforementioned weevil like magotty things, burnt them in the yard.
A couple of days later we took a trip into town to our one and only hardware store to order the new floorboards and the new floor joists to which they would be nailed. The owner of the store would visibly cringe every time we walked in the door because five times out of ten we'd be asking for something he'd never heard of and I'd end up drawing pictures of things like spokeshaves and tubes of silicon sealant only to be told that, whilst he thought these things were good ideas, they were all in the realms of fantasy as far as he was concerned. So on this day we asked him where we could obtain plain, simple old floorboards. We were in luck, he'd heard of them - in fact, he assured us, just about every house had them.
-OK, good, so where do we go to buy them?
-When do you want to use them? he asked.
-Yesterday, preferably.
-Mmmmm..... floorboards are things you usually plan a couple of years in advance.
Now, as I don't want to take up an entire chapter on the subject of floorboard procurement in north east Poland, I'll try to make a long story short. First we had to visit the manager of the local forestry department who asked us if the floor was going to be varnished or whether we'd cover it with linoleum. When we told him that we intended to varnish the floor he advised us to wait until the following summer. I couldn't see the reason for it so asked him why.
-It's the wrong time of the year, the sap will be falling.
-So what's wrong with that?
-It means that the floorboards will have a pink tinge to them.
It took a lot of persuading on our part to convince him that we didn't mind pink tinged floorboards if it meant that we could get them this year instead of waiting until the following summer. He reluctantly agreed to help us and arranged for us to meet one of his men in the forest a week later. On the appointed day, and at the appointed spot in the forest, we met Leszek the forester. It was a cold day, the forest canopy all but excluded the sunlight and we were shivering by the time he turned up.
He was an hour late and came almost silently through the trees in a horse and cart and before acknowledging our existence he climbed down and filled the horse's nosebag with hay and fitted it over the horse’s mouth. Then, taking an axe from the back of the cart, wandered over to where we were standing. He was positively Neanderthal in appearance, looking as though he had only recently learned how to walk upright. He was unshaven, his breath stank of vodka, and his forehead sloped abruptly back from his nose. Once, in Bulgaria, we'd stopped our campervan to make a cup of tea and I'd walked up over a ridge to take a leak and had run slap bang into a family of shepherds clad from head to foot in nothing but sheepskins. It was as though I'd stepped back in time two centuries but the man who now stood in front of us was from an era way before this.
He was, to all intents and purposes, a product of the forest. His jacket was made from different coloured furs and a bunch of herbs of some kind was pinned to the collar. His trousers were of deerskin tied below the knees with leather thongs and his crowning glory a Russian style fur hat with flaps loosely flapping about his ears which he lifted when he listened to what we had to say. Only his gum boots attested to the fact that he was living in the twentieth century.
-You must be Leszek
-Why do you want floorboards at this time of the year, the sap's falling?
-It's the only time of year we'll be able to get that special pinkish tinge we're looking for, I replied.
They'll be weak if they're cut now - won't last you more than fifteen years and you'll have to replace them.
We spent half a day tramping around in the undergrowth looking at suitable floorboard trees and Leszek knew his stuff, or at least, he knew a hell of a lot more than me, enough for me to be impressed. He could tell exactly how much floorboarding we'd be able to get out of each tree, he knew which trees would be rotten on the inside, whilst showing no visible symptoms on the outside, and could judge the required length of four metres with only a cursory glance. He marked our trees with his axe and felled them the next day.
Vladek arranged two tractors and trailers to transport the trees to the sawmill where they were cut into rough boards and we were advised that we should leave them for two years to season. Ignoring the advice we located a wood drying kiln some 20 kilometres distant and organised for the boards to be transported there to spend a week drying in the kiln. Organising transport wasn't an easy task as most of the tractors in the locality weren't registered for the road and the owners reluctant to venture out of their villages. We hired a forestry department truck and driver for the job and paid in vodka. A week in the kiln wasn't really enough to thoroughly season the wood but as this was the only kiln in the district and they had other orders to take care of, a week was all the time we could get and we were advised to lay the boards without nailing them down for a year or so to give them time to shrink.
Next the partially dried, rough floorboards had to be taken by us to a carpenters shop to smooth plane them and put the tongues and grooves in and, after another round of vodka bottles for the transport, "hey presto" we had floorboards. This was achieved in the record time, so we were told, of only 6 weeks and, not taking the advice of those who knew, I laid them down and nailed them all. Six months later we had to lift them all and re-lay them because over a distance of 5 metres we had a total shrinkage of 12 centimetres.
Floorboards, however, were the least of our worries - the general quality of Polish tools and building materials was far worse and when I got around to fitting the two door locks we'd bought with us from Warsaw I was in for a frustrating time. Firstly our door frames were made of metal and to fit the lock catches I had to drill two holes. I opened my brand new set of Polish drill bits for the occasion and started work, but it soon became evident that the drills were too soft to attack the metal of the door frames. "Oh intercourse", I seem to remember saying to my good woman as the third one broke on contact and she set off hot foot on a quest for harder drill bits.
She returned some hours later with two German drills she'd managed to borrow from our man in the hardware store in town and these cut through the steel of the door frames like they were made of butter. Next I took from the packet two self tapping metal screws with which I attempted to fasten the catch to the frame. No such luck. I used up the whole packet of screws but none of them would screw into the metal frame, the threads stripping as I turned them. Alicja had been watching the proceedings and I looked up at her.
-If you think I'm going all the way to town again just to spend the rest of the day looking for non existent screws you'd better think again, she told me.
I threatened violence but to no avail and went off into the garden to vent my frustration on Misha who wasn't particularly sympathetic either.
The next day Alicja returned from somewhere with a packet of German self tapping screws and I kissed her. They were Philips screws with a star shaped slot - I didn't have a Philips screwdriver. Nothing daunted I set off for next door but Vladek didn't have one either although he knew who did.
-Go and see the Soltys (the village head man) he's got a couple of them, said Vladek.
Alicja accompanied me to the Soltys house in case I wouldn't be able to make myself understood and I got a loan of the two screwdrivers and we ended up inviting the Soltys and his wife over for a cup of coffee. While we were there I asked where their toilet was and that was when I found out that, in Bocwinka, only a few houses had inside toilets - in fact some of the houses didn't have any form of toilet! Not only that, but we were one of the few that had running water inside the house at times when it wasn't raining outside.
When we first moved into our house there had been running water both hot (from the slow combustion stove) and cold but we thought that our lack of a proper bathroom had been an exception rather than the rule and building a bathroom had been our first priority. So on the way home from the Soltys' house we had something new to discuss - the toilet habits of the Polish peasant.
-What happens? I asked Alicja, -when it's thirty below zero and you need a pee. I'm sure I wouldn't struggle into all that clothing just to go outside and pee in the yard where icicles would probably form before it hit the ground. Alicja pointed out that at that sort of temperature ones skin freezes to things upon contact and we wondered how many people had frozen to death in Bocwinka over the years from being stuck to an outside loo seat. By the time we arrived home it was just on dusk and I set to work straight away while Alicja prepared dinner. The German self tapping screws were magnificent, really hard metal and infinitely superior to the metal of the Polish door frame. Unfortunately they were also infinitely superior to both of the Soltys' screwdrivers, the ends of which both twisted off before my very eyes.
It took many months for me to learn not to become frustrated at happenings such as this. It was senseless to be angry in instances where nothing could be done to improve the situation but for me, a do it now person, it was hard going. I got used to sawing slots in screws before using them, cutting the lumps off of the pointed ends of nails where part of the head of the next nail was attached. I got used as well, to tools like chisels breaking and bending on me, pliers and stillsons the teeth of which blunted at the first time of using. The ultimate in bad quality tools, as far as I was concerned, was a brand new claw hammer which broke in half while I was using it - not the handle - the metal part!
There was a knock at the door one day and there stood an American, Chris Sykes. I said hello and he answered me in English which at first took me aback as I hadn't heard any English spoken in a long time. He had volunteered for an assignment in Poland working for a division of the World Bank, teaching business management to small entrepreneurs (Pygmies?)and he stayed with us for two weeks. One night when he returned home he mentioned that he would be dealing with the subject of quality control the next day and asked if we had any ideas. I told him about the tools, screws, nails and so forth and showed him a few reject screws I'd been keeping as conversation pieces. He couldn't believe what he saw and asked me what percentage of screws didn't have slotted heads. I couldn't put a figure on it and so he decided to get up early in the morning and buy some screws before going into work.
He bought two kilograms of 1" long wood screws and distributed them in small piles to each of 6 teams and asked them to sort into two piles - those which were usable and those which were not, gave them a few minutes and walked around to inspect the results. The students were so used to bad quality goods after suffering nearly 50 years of communism that they had put what Chris clearly considered rubbish into the good pile and so he had to break down the screws into categories:
1 Those with no slots in the head
2 Those with slots but no thread
3 Those with blobs of metal where the pointed end should be
4 Rivets (those with no slots or threads)
5 Those with slots so deep that the screwdriver would break the heads in half as they were turned.
Out of the two kilograms of screws he finished with eleven usable items and took the whole bag back to the States as a souvenir. Of course, what I didn't tell him was that out of the eleven there would be four or five which would twist in half when they were only half way through the wood. It was great to have Chris around for that fortnight, he had a great sense of humour and just to be able to speak English to someone other than Alicja was a delight. And it was while Chris was staying with us that the Soltys and his wife turned up one Sunday afternoon for that cup of coffee we'd offered them.
Poland is opening up to western ideas with a rapidity which continues to amaze me from week to week. This is particularly true, of course, in the cities, where American fast food has already all but replaced the far healthier traditional Polish take away food. The television is now full of voiced over western advertisements and it's this form of advertising which reaches the homes of the villagers in Bocwinka and, on this occasion, it was the home of the Soltys and his wife. They came into the kitchen and sat down at the table where we introduced Chis to them and then, pointing to our kitchen window sill Jana, the Soltys' wife, enquired -is that a toaster?
-No, I replied, -that's a window sill. She didn't recognise my small attempt at humour and getting up and touching the toaster she unleashed a barrage of questions about it.
-Australians eat toast all the time you know. On "Neighbours" they're always eating it. The bread jumps out when it's cooked doesn't it? I've never tried toast. I saw a toaster advertised on TV but the talk was too fast.
- Would you like to try some now?, I asked.
-How long will it take?
After assuring her half a dozen times that it would be no problem and they'd get home in time for the afternoon milking we embarked on a marathon toast tasting session. Honey, jam, cheese spread, tomato - you name it, they devoured it. But it was the conversation which took place directly after the first slice that stuck in my mind.
-What did you think of it?, I asked.
-Mine was a bit burnt, said the soltys.
-So was mine, said Jana.
We then had to explain the whole concept of toast.
-That's what toast is, really, said Alicja.
-What?.. burnt bread?.. Doesn't the toaster do anything else......just burn the bread? I thought it was a bit strange that you didn't put anything in with it, just the bread. What are all those numbers for?
-Oh they're just different settings. You can vary the degree of burning from just warm to absolutely black.
-Why do they have a setting that makes it black? Do Australians eat bread so burnt that it's black?
-Well, no actually, they don't
-So what's it for then?
We didn't have an answer. I'd never thought about it before but they were right, who eats badly burnt toast? We then pointed out that the toaster was useful because you could use yesterdays bread for breakfast. This didn't seem to be a real advantage to them because, as they told us, they use week old bread.
-You just wrap it in a damp towel and put it in the slow combustion oven for 5 minutes when you get up and the oven's still warm from the night before. You wouldn't know that it wasn't fresh bread.
As for toast/burnt bread, they informed us, all you have to do is wait for the stove to heat up and throw the bread on the hot plate.
-Better than that toaster thing too, if you've got a big family like us. We could get 10 pieces of bread on top of the stove. You can only get two in that thing.
We had to admit that the toaster was a stupid western invention just made for people who have more money than sense and that eating burnt bread anyway was just a little bit silly and after they'd eaten all our bread and cleaned out our honey jar they left. A couple of weeks later Eva dropped off our mail on her way home from the post office. Eva goes up to the Soltys house for an hour every morning to help get the kids off to school & clean up the breakfast dishes because Jana goes to work.
-You've got a toaster haven't you?
-Yes Eva.
-Did you show the Soltys wife how to make toast?
-Yes Eva.
-Thought so. She's down the post office bragging about how they have toast every morning for breakfast. What's it like anyway, this toast?
-Well Eva, it's just burnt bread actually, it's a silly idea really.
-Oh, that must account for all that black stuff in their sink every morning.
By now it was the beginning of August, the weather was hot and the days long and the storks on the school house roof had reared five chicks which were learning to fly and would daily land in our garden in search of frogs and worms. Our water meadows all the way down to the river were covered in wildflowers and daily we'd see a pair of cranes in the back fields and we realised that we were missing out on the best part of the year. We were tired of renovating with it's daily hassles but we realised too that if we were going to be ready to receive guests the following spring, we'd just have to keep at it.
Our every day schedule was one of work, eat and sleep and we had been putting in twelve to fifteen hour days ever since we moved in. Neither of us had ever renovated a house before and we were doing everything ourselves not only to save money but also because there were no tradesmen in the area who'd ever seen the standard which needed to be met. The few tradesmen we had used had proved to be thoroughly unreliable and would just fail to turn up next day if they didn't like the work or, as we later dicovered, we gave them coffee instead of vodka during their breaks.
It was around that time that the bathrooms were ready for tiling and Bogdan told us that he had a cousin who was a good tiler, didn't drink and was a hard worker. Alicja was glad to hear about Bogdan's cousin viewing the news as a way to give me a break because, as she kept telling me, I'd been overdoing it. I wasn't so sure, but after meeting the man, and judging him to be a cut above the average; I agreed to give him the work after leaving detailed written instructions with diagrams in case he couldn't read. He told us that he'd tiled twenty rooms in the hotel in town and invited us to go there and have a look at his workmanship. That was good enough for me and we hired him and went off for a weeks holiday to visit Alicja's brother in Warsaw and look around the city hardware shops hoping to find a few imported tools and a double drainer sink for the kitchen.
I was happy about the tiling arrangement mainly because Bogdan had arranged it and Bogdan was something of a perfectionist. His hair was always neat, his garden well kept, children well dressed and he was the only person in Bocwinka who had a book shelf with books on it. All these little things, I told myself, went to show what kind of a guy Bogdan was and I knew that he wouldn't see his cousin let us down.
Chapter 3
Renovating a house anywhere in the World comes with its attendant problems and we knew that taking on such a project, even in the West wouldn't be without them. We knew too that in this far flung backwater of the former Soviet empire things were going to be a little more frustrating but we could never have imagined some of the difficulties we would encounter.
We theorised that now communism had gone and free enterprise was becoming rampant in Poland there would be no more shortages in the shops and, whilst that may have been true for food and a few other essentials, it wasn't true for building materials. There were shortages for different reasons - former state owned industries were going bankrupt at a rate of knots leaving a manufacturing vacuum which wasn't yet being filled.
The floorboards in one of the bedrooms had been covered with linoleum which I'd lifted to reveal a patchwork of various sized floorboards and under them was a layer of beech leaves which had served as insulation. The beech leaves had also served as a food supply for a variety of weevil like, maggoty creatures which we didn't think our future guests would come to love and develop meaningful relationships with during the short periods spent in the house. I spent a day lifting all the floorboards in the room and, along with the aforementioned weevil like magotty things, burnt them in the yard.
A couple of days later we took a trip into town to our one and only hardware store to order the new floorboards and the new floor joists to which they would be nailed. The owner of the store would visibly cringe every time we walked in the door because five times out of ten we'd be asking for something he'd never heard of and I'd end up drawing pictures of things like spokeshaves and tubes of silicon sealant only to be told that, whilst he thought these things were good ideas, they were all in the realms of fantasy as far as he was concerned. So on this day we asked him where we could obtain plain, simple old floorboards. We were in luck, he'd heard of them - in fact, he assured us, just about every house had them.
-OK, good, so where do we go to buy them?
-When do you want to use them? he asked.
-Yesterday, preferably.
-Mmmmm..... floorboards are things you usually plan a couple of years in advance.
Now, as I don't want to take up an entire chapter on the subject of floorboard procurement in north east Poland, I'll try to make a long story short. First we had to visit the manager of the local forestry department who asked us if the floor was going to be varnished or whether we'd cover it with linoleum. When we told him that we intended to varnish the floor he advised us to wait until the following summer. I couldn't see the reason for it so asked him why.
-It's the wrong time of the year, the sap will be falling.
-So what's wrong with that?
-It means that the floorboards will have a pink tinge to them.
It took a lot of persuading on our part to convince him that we didn't mind pink tinged floorboards if it meant that we could get them this year instead of waiting until the following summer. He reluctantly agreed to help us and arranged for us to meet one of his men in the forest a week later. On the appointed day, and at the appointed spot in the forest, we met Leszek the forester. It was a cold day, the forest canopy all but excluded the sunlight and we were shivering by the time he turned up.
He was an hour late and came almost silently through the trees in a horse and cart and before acknowledging our existence he climbed down and filled the horse's nosebag with hay and fitted it over the horse’s mouth. Then, taking an axe from the back of the cart, wandered over to where we were standing. He was positively Neanderthal in appearance, looking as though he had only recently learned how to walk upright. He was unshaven, his breath stank of vodka, and his forehead sloped abruptly back from his nose. Once, in Bulgaria, we'd stopped our campervan to make a cup of tea and I'd walked up over a ridge to take a leak and had run slap bang into a family of shepherds clad from head to foot in nothing but sheepskins. It was as though I'd stepped back in time two centuries but the man who now stood in front of us was from an era way before this.
He was, to all intents and purposes, a product of the forest. His jacket was made from different coloured furs and a bunch of herbs of some kind was pinned to the collar. His trousers were of deerskin tied below the knees with leather thongs and his crowning glory a Russian style fur hat with flaps loosely flapping about his ears which he lifted when he listened to what we had to say. Only his gum boots attested to the fact that he was living in the twentieth century.
-You must be Leszek
-Why do you want floorboards at this time of the year, the sap's falling?
-It's the only time of year we'll be able to get that special pinkish tinge we're looking for, I replied.
They'll be weak if they're cut now - won't last you more than fifteen years and you'll have to replace them.
We spent half a day tramping around in the undergrowth looking at suitable floorboard trees and Leszek knew his stuff, or at least, he knew a hell of a lot more than me, enough for me to be impressed. He could tell exactly how much floorboarding we'd be able to get out of each tree, he knew which trees would be rotten on the inside, whilst showing no visible symptoms on the outside, and could judge the required length of four metres with only a cursory glance. He marked our trees with his axe and felled them the next day.
Vladek arranged two tractors and trailers to transport the trees to the sawmill where they were cut into rough boards and we were advised that we should leave them for two years to season. Ignoring the advice we located a wood drying kiln some 20 kilometres distant and organised for the boards to be transported there to spend a week drying in the kiln. Organising transport wasn't an easy task as most of the tractors in the locality weren't registered for the road and the owners reluctant to venture out of their villages. We hired a forestry department truck and driver for the job and paid in vodka. A week in the kiln wasn't really enough to thoroughly season the wood but as this was the only kiln in the district and they had other orders to take care of, a week was all the time we could get and we were advised to lay the boards without nailing them down for a year or so to give them time to shrink.
Next the partially dried, rough floorboards had to be taken by us to a carpenters shop to smooth plane them and put the tongues and grooves in and, after another round of vodka bottles for the transport, "hey presto" we had floorboards. This was achieved in the record time, so we were told, of only 6 weeks and, not taking the advice of those who knew, I laid them down and nailed them all. Six months later we had to lift them all and re-lay them because over a distance of 5 metres we had a total shrinkage of 12 centimetres.
Floorboards, however, were the least of our worries - the general quality of Polish tools and building materials was far worse and when I got around to fitting the two door locks we'd bought with us from Warsaw I was in for a frustrating time. Firstly our door frames were made of metal and to fit the lock catches I had to drill two holes. I opened my brand new set of Polish drill bits for the occasion and started work, but it soon became evident that the drills were too soft to attack the metal of the door frames. "Oh intercourse", I seem to remember saying to my good woman as the third one broke on contact and she set off hot foot on a quest for harder drill bits.
She returned some hours later with two German drills she'd managed to borrow from our man in the hardware store in town and these cut through the steel of the door frames like they were made of butter. Next I took from the packet two self tapping metal screws with which I attempted to fasten the catch to the frame. No such luck. I used up the whole packet of screws but none of them would screw into the metal frame, the threads stripping as I turned them. Alicja had been watching the proceedings and I looked up at her.
-If you think I'm going all the way to town again just to spend the rest of the day looking for non existent screws you'd better think again, she told me.
I threatened violence but to no avail and went off into the garden to vent my frustration on Misha who wasn't particularly sympathetic either.
The next day Alicja returned from somewhere with a packet of German self tapping screws and I kissed her. They were Philips screws with a star shaped slot - I didn't have a Philips screwdriver. Nothing daunted I set off for next door but Vladek didn't have one either although he knew who did.
-Go and see the Soltys (the village head man) he's got a couple of them, said Vladek.
Alicja accompanied me to the Soltys house in case I wouldn't be able to make myself understood and I got a loan of the two screwdrivers and we ended up inviting the Soltys and his wife over for a cup of coffee. While we were there I asked where their toilet was and that was when I found out that, in Bocwinka, only a few houses had inside toilets - in fact some of the houses didn't have any form of toilet! Not only that, but we were one of the few that had running water inside the house at times when it wasn't raining outside.
When we first moved into our house there had been running water both hot (from the slow combustion stove) and cold but we thought that our lack of a proper bathroom had been an exception rather than the rule and building a bathroom had been our first priority. So on the way home from the Soltys' house we had something new to discuss - the toilet habits of the Polish peasant.
-What happens? I asked Alicja, -when it's thirty below zero and you need a pee. I'm sure I wouldn't struggle into all that clothing just to go outside and pee in the yard where icicles would probably form before it hit the ground. Alicja pointed out that at that sort of temperature ones skin freezes to things upon contact and we wondered how many people had frozen to death in Bocwinka over the years from being stuck to an outside loo seat. By the time we arrived home it was just on dusk and I set to work straight away while Alicja prepared dinner. The German self tapping screws were magnificent, really hard metal and infinitely superior to the metal of the Polish door frame. Unfortunately they were also infinitely superior to both of the Soltys' screwdrivers, the ends of which both twisted off before my very eyes.
It took many months for me to learn not to become frustrated at happenings such as this. It was senseless to be angry in instances where nothing could be done to improve the situation but for me, a do it now person, it was hard going. I got used to sawing slots in screws before using them, cutting the lumps off of the pointed ends of nails where part of the head of the next nail was attached. I got used as well, to tools like chisels breaking and bending on me, pliers and stillsons the teeth of which blunted at the first time of using. The ultimate in bad quality tools, as far as I was concerned, was a brand new claw hammer which broke in half while I was using it - not the handle - the metal part!
There was a knock at the door one day and there stood an American, Chris Sykes. I said hello and he answered me in English which at first took me aback as I hadn't heard any English spoken in a long time. He had volunteered for an assignment in Poland working for a division of the World Bank, teaching business management to small entrepreneurs (Pygmies?)and he stayed with us for two weeks. One night when he returned home he mentioned that he would be dealing with the subject of quality control the next day and asked if we had any ideas. I told him about the tools, screws, nails and so forth and showed him a few reject screws I'd been keeping as conversation pieces. He couldn't believe what he saw and asked me what percentage of screws didn't have slotted heads. I couldn't put a figure on it and so he decided to get up early in the morning and buy some screws before going into work.
He bought two kilograms of 1" long wood screws and distributed them in small piles to each of 6 teams and asked them to sort into two piles - those which were usable and those which were not, gave them a few minutes and walked around to inspect the results. The students were so used to bad quality goods after suffering nearly 50 years of communism that they had put what Chris clearly considered rubbish into the good pile and so he had to break down the screws into categories:
1 Those with no slots in the head
2 Those with slots but no thread
3 Those with blobs of metal where the pointed end should be
4 Rivets (those with no slots or threads)
5 Those with slots so deep that the screwdriver would break the heads in half as they were turned.
Out of the two kilograms of screws he finished with eleven usable items and took the whole bag back to the States as a souvenir. Of course, what I didn't tell him was that out of the eleven there would be four or five which would twist in half when they were only half way through the wood. It was great to have Chris around for that fortnight, he had a great sense of humour and just to be able to speak English to someone other than Alicja was a delight. And it was while Chris was staying with us that the Soltys and his wife turned up one Sunday afternoon for that cup of coffee we'd offered them.
Poland is opening up to western ideas with a rapidity which continues to amaze me from week to week. This is particularly true, of course, in the cities, where American fast food has already all but replaced the far healthier traditional Polish take away food. The television is now full of voiced over western advertisements and it's this form of advertising which reaches the homes of the villagers in Bocwinka and, on this occasion, it was the home of the Soltys and his wife. They came into the kitchen and sat down at the table where we introduced Chis to them and then, pointing to our kitchen window sill Jana, the Soltys' wife, enquired -is that a toaster?
-No, I replied, -that's a window sill. She didn't recognise my small attempt at humour and getting up and touching the toaster she unleashed a barrage of questions about it.
-Australians eat toast all the time you know. On "Neighbours" they're always eating it. The bread jumps out when it's cooked doesn't it? I've never tried toast. I saw a toaster advertised on TV but the talk was too fast.
- Would you like to try some now?, I asked.
-How long will it take?
After assuring her half a dozen times that it would be no problem and they'd get home in time for the afternoon milking we embarked on a marathon toast tasting session. Honey, jam, cheese spread, tomato - you name it, they devoured it. But it was the conversation which took place directly after the first slice that stuck in my mind.
-What did you think of it?, I asked.
-Mine was a bit burnt, said the soltys.
-So was mine, said Jana.
We then had to explain the whole concept of toast.
-That's what toast is, really, said Alicja.
-What?.. burnt bread?.. Doesn't the toaster do anything else......just burn the bread? I thought it was a bit strange that you didn't put anything in with it, just the bread. What are all those numbers for?
-Oh they're just different settings. You can vary the degree of burning from just warm to absolutely black.
-Why do they have a setting that makes it black? Do Australians eat bread so burnt that it's black?
-Well, no actually, they don't
-So what's it for then?
We didn't have an answer. I'd never thought about it before but they were right, who eats badly burnt toast? We then pointed out that the toaster was useful because you could use yesterdays bread for breakfast. This didn't seem to be a real advantage to them because, as they told us, they use week old bread.
-You just wrap it in a damp towel and put it in the slow combustion oven for 5 minutes when you get up and the oven's still warm from the night before. You wouldn't know that it wasn't fresh bread.
As for toast/burnt bread, they informed us, all you have to do is wait for the stove to heat up and throw the bread on the hot plate.
-Better than that toaster thing too, if you've got a big family like us. We could get 10 pieces of bread on top of the stove. You can only get two in that thing.
We had to admit that the toaster was a stupid western invention just made for people who have more money than sense and that eating burnt bread anyway was just a little bit silly and after they'd eaten all our bread and cleaned out our honey jar they left. A couple of weeks later Eva dropped off our mail on her way home from the post office. Eva goes up to the Soltys house for an hour every morning to help get the kids off to school & clean up the breakfast dishes because Jana goes to work.
-You've got a toaster haven't you?
-Yes Eva.
-Did you show the Soltys wife how to make toast?
-Yes Eva.
-Thought so. She's down the post office bragging about how they have toast every morning for breakfast. What's it like anyway, this toast?
-Well Eva, it's just burnt bread actually, it's a silly idea really.
-Oh, that must account for all that black stuff in their sink every morning.
By now it was the beginning of August, the weather was hot and the days long and the storks on the school house roof had reared five chicks which were learning to fly and would daily land in our garden in search of frogs and worms. Our water meadows all the way down to the river were covered in wildflowers and daily we'd see a pair of cranes in the back fields and we realised that we were missing out on the best part of the year. We were tired of renovating with it's daily hassles but we realised too that if we were going to be ready to receive guests the following spring, we'd just have to keep at it.
Our every day schedule was one of work, eat and sleep and we had been putting in twelve to fifteen hour days ever since we moved in. Neither of us had ever renovated a house before and we were doing everything ourselves not only to save money but also because there were no tradesmen in the area who'd ever seen the standard which needed to be met. The few tradesmen we had used had proved to be thoroughly unreliable and would just fail to turn up next day if they didn't like the work or, as we later dicovered, we gave them coffee instead of vodka during their breaks.
It was around that time that the bathrooms were ready for tiling and Bogdan told us that he had a cousin who was a good tiler, didn't drink and was a hard worker. Alicja was glad to hear about Bogdan's cousin viewing the news as a way to give me a break because, as she kept telling me, I'd been overdoing it. I wasn't so sure, but after meeting the man, and judging him to be a cut above the average; I agreed to give him the work after leaving detailed written instructions with diagrams in case he couldn't read. He told us that he'd tiled twenty rooms in the hotel in town and invited us to go there and have a look at his workmanship. That was good enough for me and we hired him and went off for a weeks holiday to visit Alicja's brother in Warsaw and look around the city hardware shops hoping to find a few imported tools and a double drainer sink for the kitchen.
I was happy about the tiling arrangement mainly because Bogdan had arranged it and Bogdan was something of a perfectionist. His hair was always neat, his garden well kept, children well dressed and he was the only person in Bocwinka who had a book shelf with books on it. All these little things, I told myself, went to show what kind of a guy Bogdan was and I knew that he wouldn't see his cousin let us down.
Chapter 4
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 4
We had been toying with the idea of planting a maze on our land as a sort of added attraction to the guest house and I needed information on hedge plants so this was something I wanted to chase up in Warsaw. As far as I had been able to ascertain, there were no mazes at all in Poland and I told Alicja that if we built a maze around the house they'd have a hell of a job delivering the electricity bill but she remained singularly unimpressed.
-Think of the security aspect, I said. -Can you imagine some poor sod stealing our video recorder and trying to get out before Misha got him?
I had already written to Kew Gardens in England for advice on types of hedge plants and they replied saying that I should ask the staff at one of the Warsaw horticultural research stations because there are different climatic zones in Poland and they gave me the address. Armed with their letter, which I thought may impress, we visited the offices in Warsaw. I couldn't communicate too well with the receptionist but upon showing the Kew Gardens letter she recognized the Kew logo immediately. She called the director - a woman - and said that there was a visitor from Kew Gardens in reception.
We were shown in and given the red carpet treatment and asked how they could help us. I told her about the project and she was very enthusiastic about it and called in an expert, a gentleman of the horticultural persuasion. I remember thinking to myself that if he could tell us how to grow hedges anything like he could grow a beard we'd be onto something good. It was like talking to an Old English sheepdog. He had two magnificent headfulls of grey and white fluffy hair starting somewhere above the top of his head and flowing in an unbroken line down to his waist and there was no skin to be seen anywhere except for his nose and eyes. He even sounded like an old English sheepdog, all the words being muffled on the way out of a narrow, hirsute tunnel ending up in a low growl.
His lack of visible facial features however, changed dramatically when he opened his mouth which lit up like a gin palace as the sun glinted on an orifice half full of gold teeth. My mind shot back to a time three years before when, on hands and knees, I'd peered into a cave full of glow worms in Jugoslavia through a cleft in the rocks. But Madame Director and the sheepdog were both very helpful and gave us some sound advice on the types of plants which would withstand the harsh winters in our area. For some reason, at this point, I began to feel slightly uncomfortable in the physical sense of the word and shifted my weight on the chair which emitted a crunching sound. Further discreet probing with my fingers revealed that the chair was stuffed with gravel and covered with a thin layer of foam rubber.
I thought that this was taking things horticultural a bit far but, as far as I could ascertain, there was nothing actually growing in it. The Yeti/Sheep Dog/King Midas of the toothbrush spoke only Polish but knew all the Latin botanical names as well, while the director spoke Polish & English and didn't seem to know all the Latin names but was trying to impress this important visitor from Kew. Having determined which plants were best for the maze and having been warned off the Dutch seedlings, which they said were grown under glass and wouldn't stand Polish winters, I asked which trees could be used for screening the whole complex. We needed something that grew as fast as possible but could be trimmed at a height of 2 metres to form a tall, dense sort of hedge.
I had in mind pine trees because I knew they'd stand the Polish winters well and under ideal conditions could put on a growth of 75cm per annum. I asked if it was quicker, long term, to plant small trees which would take root fast or whether advanced, 3 year old plants, would come away quicker, pointing out that we couldn't afford to have even one tree which didn't take root. They were in favour of Hornbeam trees (Carpinus betulis) for which the Polish name is Grab. The Latin name for trees of the pine family being Pinus which in Polish is pronounced Peenus but sounds to the western ear like penis. After consultation with the sheepdog, the lady director turned to me.
-He says that in the long run the small penisis will come up faster than the big one and earlier will be the more solid one. But if you go for the grab, it's much better and only half the price.
I couldn't look at Alicja, for she'd have shown the slightest grin I'd have cracked up on the spot. I just drew in my cheeks and gripped the gravel. While in Warsaw we also had to re register the car for another year and for this, a certificate of roadworthiness was required. There were a few things wrong with the car but they couldn't be easily fixed because the model wasn't sold in Poland and spares were unavailable. One of the headlight glasses was cracked and if the car was to fail the test on this point it would have to be taken off the road until another glass could be imported. We found two testing stations which looked too good in that they were clean & efficient in appearance so we cruised around the suburbs until we found a really grimy looking place with a grimy looking tester. A few wrecks were scattered about the yard, rusty drums full of old sump oil waiting to be used in the heater when the weather cooled down and mechanics standing around smoking.
The overalls these guys wore were so covered in old grease and dust that they wouldn't have needed hanging up at the end of shift - they'd have been able to stand up in a corner somewhere. Mind you, the Alsatian guard dog looked worse than anything else in the yard, it too was covered in grease and dust and had some sort of skin problem which had caused it to loose most of the hair on it's back. It's teeth could only have been a distant memory and it couldn't have bitten anyone although it could probably have inflicted a nasty gumming.
We queued up for an hour or so until it was our turn and we had a good chance to observe the above mentioned grimy tester in action. He was as miserable as sin and he barked orders out to the various car owners as he told them to put their lights on, operate the windscreen wipers, press the brake pedal & so forth. Alicja and I agreed that I wasn't to speak a word of Polish during the test and she would play dumb and not know the English for the things that were wrong with the car. Just maybe, he'd give up when he couldn't get the message across.
Our turn eventually came and I drove the car onto a pair of rollers which the tester set in motion and then came the first order -Put the handbrake on. Alicja made a real mess of the instruction & I made out I couldn't understand her and she told the man that she didn't drive & didn't know the English for the word brake.
-Where's he from?
-He's from Australia.
-What's he doing driving a heap of shit like this then?
-Oh we don't have much money and we're on holiday here and we just bought this car to get around in. We'll sell it when we leave - couldn't afford to hire a car you see..........
With that he came up to the window and told me he had a brother with a second hand shop in Melbourne and asked if I knew the place. Alicja explained it to me and I said it was a great place. From then on the man was all smiles and terribly polite and he walked over and closed the garage doors so we wouldn't be bothered by the other people in the queue. He was saying things to Alicja like -would sir be so kind as to put the lights on.
This is good I thought, being a foreigner impresses people. Soon words gave way to hand signals and we no longer needed Alicja who went outside to stand in the sun and a young mechanic in his early twenties from the adjoining building came in to borrow a tyre lever. He saw the performance going on and asked what was happening.
-Oh, he's Australian.
-What language do they speak then?
-English
-How are you managing to communicate then? You can't speak English can you?
I could see the testers head swelling.
-Oh I get foreigners in here all the time. They all have to get their cars tested no matter where they come from. I've worked out a system. Yes, signs, I use signs, international signs, watch this.
He made a motion with his arm, pulling it up from the elbow and closing his hand to indicate to me that he wanted the handbrake on. I did this and the younger man was clearly impressed. This was followed by a blinking indicator sign right & left and start & stop signs for the engine and I was performing all these tasks like a trained monkey for him although we'd already been through them all once before. As soon as they'd finished their discussion and the young man went back next door the test ended abruptly. I was shown the cracked headlight glass and the bald tyres, the jerky windscreen wipers and told I'd have to buy a special reversing light like the one in a brochure he showed me. I smiled and put my hand in my pocket and produced the equivalent of ten dollars and handed it to him.
Into the office we went and he wrote out the certificate immediately. We shook hands and I addressed him in Polish saying -thank you very much for a very interesting experience. He was completely and utterly stunned. I was relating the experience to English speaking friends later in the evening, people with businesses and cash to spare and was told that I was silly to have gone through all that.
-Next time hand over the car papers with the ten bucks already inside before you start and you won't have to be in there for longer than it takes to write out the certificate, was their comment. -What's ten bucks when you can waste all that time?
In all we spent 6 nights in the city listening to friends telling us about the pressure of their work, other people’s divorces, the rocketing cost of living and so on and it bored us silly. But it was good to have a meal in a restaurant and go to a movie and speak English for a while. We left on the Saturday morning and 4 hours later we saw our regular old buzzard circling above the trees at the cross roads. Misha peed herself with excitement when we arrived and Eva was at our doorstep to greet us.
We had asked Eva & Vladek to sleep at our place and look after Misha while we were away and she was just as excited to see us as Misha had been although she didn't pee. I started to unload the car while Alicja went inside to put the kettle on and take the bags and suitcases from me as I made trips to and from the car. I plonked a couple of suitcases down on the step at Alicja's feet and looked up. She looked worried and I asked what was wrong, expecting to hear that Vladek and Eva had been cooking roast dinners or something in our toaster.
-Promise you won't be angry?
-I promise I won't be angry.
She led me into the bathroom and I was angry.
The imported Italian tiles we had traveled all over the district to find were stuck to the wall at various angles and touching each other leaving no room for the carefully chosen, colour co-ordinated imported German tile grout which we'd just brought back from Warsaw. Being unable to find a tile cutter anywhere, including Warsaw, I'd had a friend in England send us one but Bogdan's cousin, the tiler, had never seen one before and he'd used a pair of pliers to hack the tiles about, leaving jagged edges all over the place and he'd even broken two tiles and joined them together on the wall although there was half a box of unused spares on the floor.
I changed into my overalls immediately and began chipping the tiles away from the walls before the tile cement dried but it was too late and we ended up smashing the lot with a hammer. This was the last time we used "skilled labour" and apart from labouring jobs, we finished the whole house ourselves after getting my sister in England to send us every Do It Yourself book available. Mind you these books served to frustrate us no end as they were full of building materials and tools which we had no hope of getting where we lived.
Electrical wiring, plastering, bricklaying, plumbing and more - we did it all and made all the mistakes every amateur makes. It was what the books call a learning experience but the skills we developed will, hopefully, never be used again. By now we knew pretty well all of the people in the village as at one time or another they all came around the house to see what we were doing. At first they would offer advice but as the work progressed and they saw the general standard of finish on things, I became known as some sort of master craftsman and often found myself working with an audience.
They would marvel at my straight lines when I painted anything, not my ability to paint a straight line, but that I bothered to paint in a straight line at all. Products that hadn't yet made it to Bocwinka were of particular interest to all, especially silicon sealant which was dubbed "instant plastic" and thought by everyone to be the best thing yet invented. It was borrowed by everybody and now there's hardly a home in the village which doesn't bear some evidence of it and the makers of the product could do worse than to visit Bocwinka and see for themselves the applications to which it has been put.
I bet the makers didn't know, for example, that silicone sealant can be used for making artificial worms. They were used last winter as home made fishing lures which were jiggled in the water through the holes in the ice of the frozen lakes. And to good effect, it's reckoned in Bocwinka to be as good as any commercially available lure and, unlike real worms, it doesn't become brittle and snap in sub zero temperatures. Needless to say, nobody in the village ever bought a tube of silicone sealant - they couldn't afford it - they borrowed mine.
I first used it in front of an audience when I was fitting the satellite TV dish and wanted something to seal the co axial cable connections with. Someone asked what it was and I squirted a little on the fingers of all present to let them smell it and wipe it on their trousers knowing it would surprise them later when it solidified. It caused a lot of chatter and attracted the attention of a woman who I'd never seen before. She was passing by in the lane and upon hearing the lads, all excited like, wandered up the drive and stood among the crowd watching me. I didn't know who she was and she didn't introduce herself but she had a quieting effect on the proceedings and not a word was murmured until she left.
About a week later I was outside fastening a mail box to the fence, to stop the post lady from walking straight into our kitchen, when this woman turned up again and began an interrogation concerning our satellite TV system. She addressed me formally as "Pan" (sir) and she was unusually well spoken for a person living in Bocwinka. It had been a long time since I heard clearly spoken Polish which I could easily understand. She was, I suppose, in her mid fifties, her clothes were in tatters and she carried a home made string bag which was full wild mushrooms and various sprigs of wild plants such as stinging nettles and cowslips.
-Excuse me Pan, she said, -but I have an interest in that satellite of yours-
-Yes madam, what would you like to know?
-Well, I walk past here three times a day and that thing there (pointing to the dish) is always in the same place.
-Yes we only pick up the one satellite you see. There are others but we don't have a moveable dish.
She thanked me and went on her way only to appear again a few days later, first thing in the morning, when I was working in the garden.
-Excuse me Pan, but I didn't really understand what you told me about the satellite the other day. The satellite moves all the time doesn't it? I mean, it's up there in the sky going around all the time isn't it?
-Yes, that's right it's moving very fast in fact.
-Well how come that dish thing on your wall stays still then?
I explained as best I could that the satellite traveled at exactly the same speed as the earth as if on the spoke of a gigantic wheel and that it always stayed in the same place relative to our satellite receiver dish. I don't think that she got the idea but she nodded her head and winked at me as much as to say "dead clever these Chinese." At that point we ran out of conversation for a while and she told me that I shouldn't plant vegetable seeds next year until after the bullfinches had gone from the area. -They don't leave until after the last frost you know.
She then stared at me for a second or two.
-They say you've been to Australia?
-Yes that's right.
-Did you go there on a plane?
-Yes, on a plane.
-How does the plane land in Australia then?
-Just the same as here in Poland. I didn't notice any difference.
She had a stick in her hand and she drew the earth and then described an arc indicating the path of the plane travelling from Poland to Australia.
-When you get here. In Australia. The plane's the other way up isn't it? What I mean Pan, is that to come down to earth again it's actually got to go up as it were.
My breakfast was waiting for me and I tried to extricate myself from the situation by feigning ignorance but she wouldn't let me go.
-You're an educated man sir. I can see that. I'd like to talk to you some time about the universe. We have a small library here but there's nothing in it about the universe.
I asked a group of farmers outside the post office the next day, who this woman was and found that she was regarded as a weirdo by the rest of the village. She never visited anyone, even at Christmas, had no friends and apart from the village children, she was the only person who used the library. She'd apparently read every book in it several times and hadn't been out of the village for over twenty years. She had a widows pension, didn't use electricity (although it was connected to the house) grew her own food and hauled her own logs from the forest for cooking & heating. Andrzej the shopkeeper told me that she came in one day with a gap where there used to be a rotten tooth. -Visited the dentist have you madam?, asked Andrzej.
-No, she said, -pulled it myself.
I found out from the post lady, who delivered the occasional letter to the woman, that her name was Marta and I only came into contact with her on one more occasion before she died a few weeks after our discussion about the satellite dish. An English ecologist had written to us asking if we could show him some badgers during his intended stay and I asked Vladek if he could tell me where they lived. He told me to go and see Marta because, he said, she had once been seen feeding them at night in the old German cemetery.
She didn't invite me in and I could see that the house and outbuildings were in a bad state of decay from years of neglect. It was the only house in the village which didn't have chickens scratching around the yard, in fact no signs of animals at all except for a storks nest on the barn roof and I suspect that she was a total vegetarian because nobody in the village could ever remember seeing animals at her house. I asked her about the badgers and received a rather strange reply. She told me that she was sorry but she wouldn't tell me where to find them because all the animals were creatures of the earth and their relationship was to the earth and not to other species. She said that animals shouldn't bother each other unless they were predators and that they'd contact people if they felt the need.
“You'll just have to be patient Pan, and if, in your heart, you really want to meet them, they'll come to you eventually.”
For some reason it made news in the village that I'd visited "the strange one" and Jurek's mother made a point of stopping me on the road one day and telling me that it was widely believed that Marta didn't believe in God. She never turned up at either the Polish or Ukrainian shrines on religious days, her husband was buried in the village cemetery and she never visited the grave. -The devil's waiting for that one -Jurek's mother said.
I've always been attracted to out of the ordinary people and I've often regretted that I didn't get to know Marta before she died but at the time we were simply to busy renovating to go out and socialize. Her house was taken over by the council because there were no living relatives and, finding it beyond repair, they knocked it down and I took a few bricks from the rubble to build our barbecue with - I think that's the only memory of her now left in Bocwinka.
Chapter 4
We had been toying with the idea of planting a maze on our land as a sort of added attraction to the guest house and I needed information on hedge plants so this was something I wanted to chase up in Warsaw. As far as I had been able to ascertain, there were no mazes at all in Poland and I told Alicja that if we built a maze around the house they'd have a hell of a job delivering the electricity bill but she remained singularly unimpressed.
-Think of the security aspect, I said. -Can you imagine some poor sod stealing our video recorder and trying to get out before Misha got him?
I had already written to Kew Gardens in England for advice on types of hedge plants and they replied saying that I should ask the staff at one of the Warsaw horticultural research stations because there are different climatic zones in Poland and they gave me the address. Armed with their letter, which I thought may impress, we visited the offices in Warsaw. I couldn't communicate too well with the receptionist but upon showing the Kew Gardens letter she recognized the Kew logo immediately. She called the director - a woman - and said that there was a visitor from Kew Gardens in reception.
We were shown in and given the red carpet treatment and asked how they could help us. I told her about the project and she was very enthusiastic about it and called in an expert, a gentleman of the horticultural persuasion. I remember thinking to myself that if he could tell us how to grow hedges anything like he could grow a beard we'd be onto something good. It was like talking to an Old English sheepdog. He had two magnificent headfulls of grey and white fluffy hair starting somewhere above the top of his head and flowing in an unbroken line down to his waist and there was no skin to be seen anywhere except for his nose and eyes. He even sounded like an old English sheepdog, all the words being muffled on the way out of a narrow, hirsute tunnel ending up in a low growl.
His lack of visible facial features however, changed dramatically when he opened his mouth which lit up like a gin palace as the sun glinted on an orifice half full of gold teeth. My mind shot back to a time three years before when, on hands and knees, I'd peered into a cave full of glow worms in Jugoslavia through a cleft in the rocks. But Madame Director and the sheepdog were both very helpful and gave us some sound advice on the types of plants which would withstand the harsh winters in our area. For some reason, at this point, I began to feel slightly uncomfortable in the physical sense of the word and shifted my weight on the chair which emitted a crunching sound. Further discreet probing with my fingers revealed that the chair was stuffed with gravel and covered with a thin layer of foam rubber.
I thought that this was taking things horticultural a bit far but, as far as I could ascertain, there was nothing actually growing in it. The Yeti/Sheep Dog/King Midas of the toothbrush spoke only Polish but knew all the Latin botanical names as well, while the director spoke Polish & English and didn't seem to know all the Latin names but was trying to impress this important visitor from Kew. Having determined which plants were best for the maze and having been warned off the Dutch seedlings, which they said were grown under glass and wouldn't stand Polish winters, I asked which trees could be used for screening the whole complex. We needed something that grew as fast as possible but could be trimmed at a height of 2 metres to form a tall, dense sort of hedge.
I had in mind pine trees because I knew they'd stand the Polish winters well and under ideal conditions could put on a growth of 75cm per annum. I asked if it was quicker, long term, to plant small trees which would take root fast or whether advanced, 3 year old plants, would come away quicker, pointing out that we couldn't afford to have even one tree which didn't take root. They were in favour of Hornbeam trees (Carpinus betulis) for which the Polish name is Grab. The Latin name for trees of the pine family being Pinus which in Polish is pronounced Peenus but sounds to the western ear like penis. After consultation with the sheepdog, the lady director turned to me.
-He says that in the long run the small penisis will come up faster than the big one and earlier will be the more solid one. But if you go for the grab, it's much better and only half the price.
I couldn't look at Alicja, for she'd have shown the slightest grin I'd have cracked up on the spot. I just drew in my cheeks and gripped the gravel. While in Warsaw we also had to re register the car for another year and for this, a certificate of roadworthiness was required. There were a few things wrong with the car but they couldn't be easily fixed because the model wasn't sold in Poland and spares were unavailable. One of the headlight glasses was cracked and if the car was to fail the test on this point it would have to be taken off the road until another glass could be imported. We found two testing stations which looked too good in that they were clean & efficient in appearance so we cruised around the suburbs until we found a really grimy looking place with a grimy looking tester. A few wrecks were scattered about the yard, rusty drums full of old sump oil waiting to be used in the heater when the weather cooled down and mechanics standing around smoking.
The overalls these guys wore were so covered in old grease and dust that they wouldn't have needed hanging up at the end of shift - they'd have been able to stand up in a corner somewhere. Mind you, the Alsatian guard dog looked worse than anything else in the yard, it too was covered in grease and dust and had some sort of skin problem which had caused it to loose most of the hair on it's back. It's teeth could only have been a distant memory and it couldn't have bitten anyone although it could probably have inflicted a nasty gumming.
We queued up for an hour or so until it was our turn and we had a good chance to observe the above mentioned grimy tester in action. He was as miserable as sin and he barked orders out to the various car owners as he told them to put their lights on, operate the windscreen wipers, press the brake pedal & so forth. Alicja and I agreed that I wasn't to speak a word of Polish during the test and she would play dumb and not know the English for the things that were wrong with the car. Just maybe, he'd give up when he couldn't get the message across.
Our turn eventually came and I drove the car onto a pair of rollers which the tester set in motion and then came the first order -Put the handbrake on. Alicja made a real mess of the instruction & I made out I couldn't understand her and she told the man that she didn't drive & didn't know the English for the word brake.
-Where's he from?
-He's from Australia.
-What's he doing driving a heap of shit like this then?
-Oh we don't have much money and we're on holiday here and we just bought this car to get around in. We'll sell it when we leave - couldn't afford to hire a car you see..........
With that he came up to the window and told me he had a brother with a second hand shop in Melbourne and asked if I knew the place. Alicja explained it to me and I said it was a great place. From then on the man was all smiles and terribly polite and he walked over and closed the garage doors so we wouldn't be bothered by the other people in the queue. He was saying things to Alicja like -would sir be so kind as to put the lights on.
This is good I thought, being a foreigner impresses people. Soon words gave way to hand signals and we no longer needed Alicja who went outside to stand in the sun and a young mechanic in his early twenties from the adjoining building came in to borrow a tyre lever. He saw the performance going on and asked what was happening.
-Oh, he's Australian.
-What language do they speak then?
-English
-How are you managing to communicate then? You can't speak English can you?
I could see the testers head swelling.
-Oh I get foreigners in here all the time. They all have to get their cars tested no matter where they come from. I've worked out a system. Yes, signs, I use signs, international signs, watch this.
He made a motion with his arm, pulling it up from the elbow and closing his hand to indicate to me that he wanted the handbrake on. I did this and the younger man was clearly impressed. This was followed by a blinking indicator sign right & left and start & stop signs for the engine and I was performing all these tasks like a trained monkey for him although we'd already been through them all once before. As soon as they'd finished their discussion and the young man went back next door the test ended abruptly. I was shown the cracked headlight glass and the bald tyres, the jerky windscreen wipers and told I'd have to buy a special reversing light like the one in a brochure he showed me. I smiled and put my hand in my pocket and produced the equivalent of ten dollars and handed it to him.
Into the office we went and he wrote out the certificate immediately. We shook hands and I addressed him in Polish saying -thank you very much for a very interesting experience. He was completely and utterly stunned. I was relating the experience to English speaking friends later in the evening, people with businesses and cash to spare and was told that I was silly to have gone through all that.
-Next time hand over the car papers with the ten bucks already inside before you start and you won't have to be in there for longer than it takes to write out the certificate, was their comment. -What's ten bucks when you can waste all that time?
In all we spent 6 nights in the city listening to friends telling us about the pressure of their work, other people’s divorces, the rocketing cost of living and so on and it bored us silly. But it was good to have a meal in a restaurant and go to a movie and speak English for a while. We left on the Saturday morning and 4 hours later we saw our regular old buzzard circling above the trees at the cross roads. Misha peed herself with excitement when we arrived and Eva was at our doorstep to greet us.
We had asked Eva & Vladek to sleep at our place and look after Misha while we were away and she was just as excited to see us as Misha had been although she didn't pee. I started to unload the car while Alicja went inside to put the kettle on and take the bags and suitcases from me as I made trips to and from the car. I plonked a couple of suitcases down on the step at Alicja's feet and looked up. She looked worried and I asked what was wrong, expecting to hear that Vladek and Eva had been cooking roast dinners or something in our toaster.
-Promise you won't be angry?
-I promise I won't be angry.
She led me into the bathroom and I was angry.
The imported Italian tiles we had traveled all over the district to find were stuck to the wall at various angles and touching each other leaving no room for the carefully chosen, colour co-ordinated imported German tile grout which we'd just brought back from Warsaw. Being unable to find a tile cutter anywhere, including Warsaw, I'd had a friend in England send us one but Bogdan's cousin, the tiler, had never seen one before and he'd used a pair of pliers to hack the tiles about, leaving jagged edges all over the place and he'd even broken two tiles and joined them together on the wall although there was half a box of unused spares on the floor.
I changed into my overalls immediately and began chipping the tiles away from the walls before the tile cement dried but it was too late and we ended up smashing the lot with a hammer. This was the last time we used "skilled labour" and apart from labouring jobs, we finished the whole house ourselves after getting my sister in England to send us every Do It Yourself book available. Mind you these books served to frustrate us no end as they were full of building materials and tools which we had no hope of getting where we lived.
Electrical wiring, plastering, bricklaying, plumbing and more - we did it all and made all the mistakes every amateur makes. It was what the books call a learning experience but the skills we developed will, hopefully, never be used again. By now we knew pretty well all of the people in the village as at one time or another they all came around the house to see what we were doing. At first they would offer advice but as the work progressed and they saw the general standard of finish on things, I became known as some sort of master craftsman and often found myself working with an audience.
They would marvel at my straight lines when I painted anything, not my ability to paint a straight line, but that I bothered to paint in a straight line at all. Products that hadn't yet made it to Bocwinka were of particular interest to all, especially silicon sealant which was dubbed "instant plastic" and thought by everyone to be the best thing yet invented. It was borrowed by everybody and now there's hardly a home in the village which doesn't bear some evidence of it and the makers of the product could do worse than to visit Bocwinka and see for themselves the applications to which it has been put.
I bet the makers didn't know, for example, that silicone sealant can be used for making artificial worms. They were used last winter as home made fishing lures which were jiggled in the water through the holes in the ice of the frozen lakes. And to good effect, it's reckoned in Bocwinka to be as good as any commercially available lure and, unlike real worms, it doesn't become brittle and snap in sub zero temperatures. Needless to say, nobody in the village ever bought a tube of silicone sealant - they couldn't afford it - they borrowed mine.
I first used it in front of an audience when I was fitting the satellite TV dish and wanted something to seal the co axial cable connections with. Someone asked what it was and I squirted a little on the fingers of all present to let them smell it and wipe it on their trousers knowing it would surprise them later when it solidified. It caused a lot of chatter and attracted the attention of a woman who I'd never seen before. She was passing by in the lane and upon hearing the lads, all excited like, wandered up the drive and stood among the crowd watching me. I didn't know who she was and she didn't introduce herself but she had a quieting effect on the proceedings and not a word was murmured until she left.
About a week later I was outside fastening a mail box to the fence, to stop the post lady from walking straight into our kitchen, when this woman turned up again and began an interrogation concerning our satellite TV system. She addressed me formally as "Pan" (sir) and she was unusually well spoken for a person living in Bocwinka. It had been a long time since I heard clearly spoken Polish which I could easily understand. She was, I suppose, in her mid fifties, her clothes were in tatters and she carried a home made string bag which was full wild mushrooms and various sprigs of wild plants such as stinging nettles and cowslips.
-Excuse me Pan, she said, -but I have an interest in that satellite of yours-
-Yes madam, what would you like to know?
-Well, I walk past here three times a day and that thing there (pointing to the dish) is always in the same place.
-Yes we only pick up the one satellite you see. There are others but we don't have a moveable dish.
She thanked me and went on her way only to appear again a few days later, first thing in the morning, when I was working in the garden.
-Excuse me Pan, but I didn't really understand what you told me about the satellite the other day. The satellite moves all the time doesn't it? I mean, it's up there in the sky going around all the time isn't it?
-Yes, that's right it's moving very fast in fact.
-Well how come that dish thing on your wall stays still then?
I explained as best I could that the satellite traveled at exactly the same speed as the earth as if on the spoke of a gigantic wheel and that it always stayed in the same place relative to our satellite receiver dish. I don't think that she got the idea but she nodded her head and winked at me as much as to say "dead clever these Chinese." At that point we ran out of conversation for a while and she told me that I shouldn't plant vegetable seeds next year until after the bullfinches had gone from the area. -They don't leave until after the last frost you know.
She then stared at me for a second or two.
-They say you've been to Australia?
-Yes that's right.
-Did you go there on a plane?
-Yes, on a plane.
-How does the plane land in Australia then?
-Just the same as here in Poland. I didn't notice any difference.
She had a stick in her hand and she drew the earth and then described an arc indicating the path of the plane travelling from Poland to Australia.
-When you get here. In Australia. The plane's the other way up isn't it? What I mean Pan, is that to come down to earth again it's actually got to go up as it were.
My breakfast was waiting for me and I tried to extricate myself from the situation by feigning ignorance but she wouldn't let me go.
-You're an educated man sir. I can see that. I'd like to talk to you some time about the universe. We have a small library here but there's nothing in it about the universe.
I asked a group of farmers outside the post office the next day, who this woman was and found that she was regarded as a weirdo by the rest of the village. She never visited anyone, even at Christmas, had no friends and apart from the village children, she was the only person who used the library. She'd apparently read every book in it several times and hadn't been out of the village for over twenty years. She had a widows pension, didn't use electricity (although it was connected to the house) grew her own food and hauled her own logs from the forest for cooking & heating. Andrzej the shopkeeper told me that she came in one day with a gap where there used to be a rotten tooth. -Visited the dentist have you madam?, asked Andrzej.
-No, she said, -pulled it myself.
I found out from the post lady, who delivered the occasional letter to the woman, that her name was Marta and I only came into contact with her on one more occasion before she died a few weeks after our discussion about the satellite dish. An English ecologist had written to us asking if we could show him some badgers during his intended stay and I asked Vladek if he could tell me where they lived. He told me to go and see Marta because, he said, she had once been seen feeding them at night in the old German cemetery.
She didn't invite me in and I could see that the house and outbuildings were in a bad state of decay from years of neglect. It was the only house in the village which didn't have chickens scratching around the yard, in fact no signs of animals at all except for a storks nest on the barn roof and I suspect that she was a total vegetarian because nobody in the village could ever remember seeing animals at her house. I asked her about the badgers and received a rather strange reply. She told me that she was sorry but she wouldn't tell me where to find them because all the animals were creatures of the earth and their relationship was to the earth and not to other species. She said that animals shouldn't bother each other unless they were predators and that they'd contact people if they felt the need.
“You'll just have to be patient Pan, and if, in your heart, you really want to meet them, they'll come to you eventually.”
For some reason it made news in the village that I'd visited "the strange one" and Jurek's mother made a point of stopping me on the road one day and telling me that it was widely believed that Marta didn't believe in God. She never turned up at either the Polish or Ukrainian shrines on religious days, her husband was buried in the village cemetery and she never visited the grave. -The devil's waiting for that one -Jurek's mother said.
I've always been attracted to out of the ordinary people and I've often regretted that I didn't get to know Marta before she died but at the time we were simply to busy renovating to go out and socialize. Her house was taken over by the council because there were no living relatives and, finding it beyond repair, they knocked it down and I took a few bricks from the rubble to build our barbecue with - I think that's the only memory of her now left in Bocwinka.
Chapter 5
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 5
Despite the shortages of supply and a number of other related problems, by September we were ahead of schedule. Our intention was to open the house for business in May and things were looking good. We had surprised ourselves by the amount of work we had been able to get through in the last month without skilled help and it was due to our new methodology. Instead of downing tools and scouring the shops for things when we reached an impasse we started on the next job and asked Vladek to put the word out for whatever it was that we needed.
This meant that we had half a dozen jobs on the go at all times but in the middle of the month a few of them came together and life became, for a while, a little more comfortable. We now had a kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom set up more or less permanently even though there was still work to be completed in all of these rooms. Prior to this blissful state of affairs we had been living in one room at a time and migrating between rooms as the work dictated. After demolishing the slow combustion stove early in the piece our cooker had been a single burner on top of a gas bottle and we'd done the washing outside in a tin bath; our toilet having been a plastic bucket.
Good as our progress had been however, Alicja reminded me that come the second week in November all outside work would have to stop until April because the weather would be too cold. Winter, I was told by all, would be a time for house bound activities and visiting friends. I tended to view this as an attitude rather than a fact and although I recognised that the ground would be too hard for digging foundations and drains or holes for clothes posts and the like I was still confident that, no matter how cold it got, I'd be able to do something outside.
But September was clearly the time to sit down with paper and pencil and work out exactly which jobs should be completed before the freeze came. The garden would have to be straightened out ready for planting the trees and we'd have to get as much as possible done in the barn, where we were building an apartment, so that we could install some form of temporary heating in order to be able to work out there. Misha was growing at an alarming rate and it was obvious that fences would be needed to keep her in and this would have to be done before the ground became to hard to dig the post holes so we decided to leave all the interior painting and things like fitting skirting boards because all of these things could be done in the warm in a few months time - we'd concentrate as much as possible on the outdoor work.
I went down to the milk collection depot early one morning to look for Ivan who was reckoned to be the best man in the village when it came to fencing. At eight o'clock every morning Bocwinka's milk collection depot is the focal point for the farmers from four villages. I liked visiting the milk collection depot at this time of day to look at the various assembled modes of transport employed to bring the milk down from the farms. Some farmers would only have 5 litres of milk from a single cow and would transport it in a small churn tied to the handlebars of a bicycle, others would have perhaps fifty litres and would use a tractor and trailer. Some came from villages six kilometres distant and would push a bicycle with a couple of churns attached all the way there and back.
But there were other, more interesting modes of transportation too. One farmer always sent his crippled father along with one churn of milk. He could be seen every morning zig zagging down the street in a sort of three wheeled wheelchair powered by a chain attached through gears to the back axle. The old man wound two bicycle pedals around in front of him to provide most of the motive force and the balance was made up by a large dog in a harness. I'd seen him many times in his wheelchair and always thought the old man and his dog had been doing this together for years but when I asked how long the dog had been performing this function he said -only three months, he won't last long, this one. I get through two dogs a year - the strain kills them.
From an engineering stand-point Mr Koncevicz had the most interesting carriage. It was a long narrow, four wheeled cart where the horse had been removed and replaced by two thirds of a motorcycle. The steering was by means of the motorcycle handlebars and Mr Koncevicz sat on the motorcycle seat. Beneath him the back wheel had been removed and the rear of the motorbike frame was attached to the cut down horse shafts by four bolts and a lot of coiled fencing wire and two leather belts. The motorcycle chain had been lengthened to drive a sprocket on the front axle of the cart and the whole thing must have weighed upwards of a ton. It certainly weighed a lot more when the Koncevicz family of eleven all piled in it to go to church on Sunday mornings and all it had in the way of brakes was on the tiny motorcycle front wheel. Looking at the thing I was inclined to think the braking system wasn't as much of a worry as the chain, which, if it had broken at any speed, would probably have sliced Mr Koncevicz straight down the middle.
There was a man from Zywki, the next village along our lane, who had a current, no frills model Russian tractor. It was a peculiar thing in that it was a two seater and the two occupants sat side by side on a wooden bench seat just like a horse and cart. But the engine was the most primitive thing I'd ever seen. It was a single cylinder engine with an exposed flywheel, no bonnet and an open cooling system in which the water just bubbled away open to the air at the top. The driver could see when the water level was getting low and just poured in another bucketful. I asked the man why he didn't put some sort of cover over the flywheel in case it should pick up a foreign object and throw it at some passer-by. He told me that it wasn't a problem, had never been known to happen and that the greatest danger was it's habit of throwing hot water over all and sundry when traversing bumpy roads. Vladek told me he'd heard that in Russia they put a wire netting bag into the water jacket and cook eggs in it.
But today I was at the milk collection depot looking for Ivan and as I picked my way through a variety of wheel barrows, old prams, tin baths with wheels underneath and an assortment of home made trolleys I stumbled upon him - literally, he was drunk and sleeping in the grass. Jurek borrowed a pencil from Jana, the soltys's wife who ran the depot, and wrote a note for Ivan to come around and see me when he woke up and pinned it to his cap which was laying on his chest.
He arrived at the gate at eleven o'clock, I showed him what I wanted done, he went off to get the village measuring tape and came back three days later acting as if he'd only been away for ten minutes. Together we measured the length of fence we'd need and discussed the design. It had to be strong enough to withstand the weight of a snow drift and I wanted to know how far to bury the posts in the ground and what kind of wood to use. Ivan seemed to know his stuff and understood where the fence had to go and after measuring we came up with a requirement for a total of 200 metres worth of alder wood palings plus the rails and the oak posts which were to be burnt in the fire to preserve them before placement in the ground.
-I'll order the wood for you if you like, said Ivan
I thought that maybe Ivan was going to load the price by a few bottles and so declined the offer.
-No, that's OK thanks I know the forester down at Borki, we bought the wood for our floorboards from him.
-Yes, go to Borki, tell him I sent you and he won't give you any rubbish.
After he'd gone I took Alicja outside to show her the fencing plan but she had a better idea which involved leaving the wood shed outside the fence line and this reduced the length of fencing to exactly 148 metres. What with other, more pressing things, on our agenda we didn't get around to looking for fence wood for a fortnight. Buying the fence posts and palings, we just knew, was going to be another run around like when we'd bought the floor boards and this time the forester told us that they had stopped cutting for the season. We had visited him at his house where we found him and half a dozen of his workers - two of them unconscious from an excess of vodka and the rest half cut.
-But we have to have a fence, said Alicja -it's very important.
-Well, the only thing you can do is steal the stuff out of the forest
-Maybe, but we don't know anything about stealing trees and we don't have a chain saw or anything. What if we get caught?
-Oh you'd have to do it when I wasn't looking. You couldn't do it in daylight either and you'd have to keep off the asphalt roads in case the police caught you.
-Exactly what are you telling me?
-Oh, I'm not telling you anything, I can't tell you anything about stealing trees, I'm the forester; I'm here to stop people stealing trees
-Well, the position is that we need fencing posts and palings and we don't care too much about how they end up in our yard but we don't want to be involved in the actual......procurement, said Alicja
-You'll have to hire a thief then.
Alicja had at last broken the ice and there were smiles all round, the sort of half smirks which meant that we were involved in something mischievous together like a bunch of school kids.
-OK. So where do we find a thief?
Pointing to one of his comatose drinking partners he said -him, he's a good thief. I'll tell him about it when he wakes up and he'll organise everything for you.
I said that if this Rip Van Vodka would care to come around to the house when he was sober I'd show him exactly what we needed and tell him how much of it was required.
-That's not necessary- replied our forester, -just tell me how many metres you want to fence and he'll work out exactly what you need. He knows all about fencing.
-Great, we need enough for 148 metres and a few spare palings, OK?
-Be better if you took enough for 200 metres - it won't cost you any more.
We left the order in their capable hands and went home to spend the rest of the day planning the garden, pleased with the thought that we were gradually getting to know our way around - getting to know how to work the system as it were. -If only we'd known about this way of obtaining wood, our floorboards would probably only have been half the price, remarked Alicja.
The next morning before light I was woken by the noise of a tractor. This was nothing unusual but it seemed louder, nearer, than usual. Misha was going berserk and I climbed out of bed to investigate but looking out of the windows nothing untoward appeared to be going on so I brought Misha into the bedroom and told her to shut up. But when I went outside after breakfast there were tractor tyre marks in the soft earth of what one day would become our lawn and the barn doors had been lifted off their hinges. I was sure that we'd been ripped off and I ran over to the barn and looked in. There was a huge heap of planks strewn at random all over the interior of the building.
-It must be for our fence, I told Alicja. -The planks will be cut down later to make the palings.
-Nothing, but nothing ever moves this fast in Poland, especially up here in the wilds, Alicja told me. -I reckon someone like Vladek stole the stuff in the night and he wants to hide it here in case the police or the forestry officers come looking for it.
I waited until I saw Vladek coming past with the horse and went outside to ask if he knew anything about it.
-Yes, that's your fencing wood.
-They must have worked all night Vladek, it was only yesterday that we were speaking to the forester and his mates and they were all half cut at four in the afternoon.
-Yes, I heard all about it down at the milk depot earlier on. They cut the stuff two weeks ago when you measured your back yard with Ivan. Ivan told them you'd be needing the wood and they've had it stashed in the forest under a big pile of leaves and other rubbish ever since - they've been scared stiff that someone from the forestry department would find it.
-Why didn't he mention it to me then?
-No, he wouldn't have told you about it. He's been worried that you weren't going to order it though because he charged the forester two bottles for getting the business, told the forester he was sending you down to order the wood from him and he's already drank the two bottles. The forester's been worried too because he's doing it illegally. Peter, you should let me handle these things for you - if you'd have only told me about it I'd have told you to hang on for a while and soon they'd have approached you to take it off their hands for next to nothing.
So much for us knowing how to work the system! But it couldn't be argued that when Ivan finished his work, in a lightning four days, the fence was perfect and took the weight of some very heavy snow drifts during the winter without moving an inch out of line. Meanwhile Vladek had volunteered to landscape the garden for us using the horse, plough and an assortment of other implements we didn't know the names of and he was doing a good job but was hindered by a number of bee hives which were in the way of the plough.
When we first took possession of the house from Mr Polakowski it was agreed between us that he could leave his seven bee hives in the garden until the time was right for bee moving. This, he assured us, wouldn't be later than the first week in September. We were careful never to go near Mr Polakowski's bee hives because he told us that bees were delicate creatures & didn't like to be disturbed. Come the third week in September I'd sent word to him four times asking if he would move his bees but nothing was happening and Vladek was becoming impatient to finish the landscaping because he would soon be busy with his field work and wouldn't be able to help us.
I stood pondering the hives one evening when I saw a wasp go into one of them and I cautiously lifted the lid. The hive was absolutely devoid of bee frames, bees or anything else to do with the procurement of that sticky substance which bees are famous for and was occupied only by a wasps nest. I checked another hive and another, but they too were empty and upon checking the fourth one found it full of bee keeping equipment, a smoke generator, bee keepers gloves, veiled hat etc. This left three hives and I found that out of the total of seven, only two had bees inside.
It was beginning to look as though we'd been taken for a ride and after making a few enquiries we learned that Mr Polakowski now lived in a third floor flat in the middle of town and had nothing more than a balcony on which to keep his hives and only the flowers in a window box for his bees to work with. He was obviously using our garden for storage. I mentioned it to Vladek and together we moved the five vacant hives (after destroying the wasps nest) out of the way so that he could continue landscaping.
Two weeks went by and then one evening around seven o'clock Vladek arrived drunk & we sat together on the verandah smoking and staring out at the garden. Every time Vladek had too much to drink he became bolder. He'd promise anyone anything and come up with silly ideas which, he would assure me, he'd put into operation the next day. The next day, of course, he wouldn't remember. But on this evening his idea was that he was going to move the two occupied hives.
"Yes" I said, "let's do it together in the morning."
"No, no , no. No, not the morning, I need to be drunk for this job. I'm going to do it now - don't need your help"
We told him, even begged him not to do it but he wasn't to be dissuaded once his mind was made up and donning old Polakowski's bee keeping hat & gloves he staggered towards the first hive and taking it in his arms set off across the garden. The bees went troppo, circling his head and stinging him through his clothes but at first he was too anaesthetized by the effects of the vodka to feel anything.
Now, it's known that when bees locate a good patch of pollen they return to the hive and perform a dance which indicates to their work mates the direction & distance between the hive and the flowers. I can tell you that whatever their terpsichorean abilities they could have learned a few new steps from our neighbour that evening. Vladek suddenly let out a hell of a scream, dropped the hive and broke into some kind of jazz pasadoble, the likes of which are yet to be seen in any Latin American dancing competition. It was the most energetic dance I think I've yet witnessed. It combined a flamenco like movement of the feet with the slapping usually practiced by leather shorted, overweight German accountants at October fests but was made all the more entertaining by the fact that it was performed whilst running at the speed of a supercharged Carl Lewis towards the fence.
Vladek was demonstrating a latent athletic ability even he didn't know he had as he cleared our fence and threw himself into his horse drinking trough and we saw the splash go up just like in the Wild West movies. The rest of the family came running from the house thinking him to be injured and his father laughed so much that he was forced to sit down & rest until his breath caught up with him. We all had a good laugh and Alicja and I went inside for a cup of tea but had hardly boiled the kettle when we heard the gate open. Vladek had come back for the remaining hive. There was no opportunity to reason with him and we watched from the window, speechless, as he purposefully staggered towards the hive, this time clad in a thick winter coat for good measure.
We ran outside just in time to see him, hive in hands, trip over the hastily placed previous hive which broke open strewing the contents on the ground.
This time our hero didn't waste any time dancing. He was up in a flash & away on his toes taking the same path as before but this time he wasn't so lucky when he reached the fence and he ran straight into it knocking himself out cold. By now quite a crowd had gathered at our fence and I was suddenly struck by the absurdity of the situation & started to laugh out loud but the soltys was the one who immediately saw the seriousness of the situation.
He leapt over the fence and ran across to where Vladek was lying & shouted "if they sting him in his throat he won't be able to breathe" and he wrenched up a handful of stinging nettles, which were the tallest plants growing in that spot, and began flailing away at the bees. The bees weren't stupid either; they new that it was Vladek they were after and now the air was thick with them around where he was laying. It was the old man (Vladek's father) who with characteristic calmness saved the situation. He casually grabbed a handful of hay & threw it over the fence to me. -Light it Peter, light it. Spread it all around his head and light it. Someone threw a box of matches into the fray and I did as instructed and within a very short space of time the bees were keeping their distance.
Vladek was unconscious for a good five minutes and when he came round he decided that it might be a good idea to retire from the scene. The old man came over just on dusk and, although we didn't know it until the morning, he'd set the hives up again. We went over to see Vladek after breakfast, his face was badly swollen and we were told by Eva that she'd spent the remainder of the previous evening picking stings out of him with a pair of tweezers. But sitting at the kitchen table was the old man enjoying his morning cup of tea with bread and honey. I looked at the honey and then at him and he smiled. -No use letting it go to waste was it?, he said.
We never saw much of Vladek's father. He was old and spent most of his time sitting indoors or on the seat outside in their back garden which he did for hours at a stretch ;his threshold of boredom was seemingly limitless. I'd last seen him in August out in the road with Old Man Miankowski waving the storks goodbye and they were both wondering aloud if they'd still be alive when they returned next year.
It was during the third week in August that the storks began circling over our house and the nearby lake. They are the most graceful of birds when in flight and for five days they flew around in circles, a few more coming into the flock every day until there were over fifty of them. One day Alicja came out to the barn where I was working and told me to come quickly and watch the storks. A big catherine wheel of storks was unwinding with the birds on the outside of the circle gradually peeling off and following each other in a straight line across the lake and over the forest. They were heading back to Africa and as we wandered out of the gate and down the lane to get a better look we saw that the school kids were all out in the road with their teachers waving them goodbye.
We took a stroll up to where Vladek's father and Old Man Miankowsi were standing and struck up a conversation. Old man Miankowski told us that the storks were late and should have left on the 18th of the month. He said that this was a sign that we were in for a mild winter and that his well would run dry next year unless we had heavy snow falls. This turned out to be true but when we got to know Old Man Miankowski a little better we found that just about all the folk lore he imparted to us was complete rubbish. But it was from him that we first heard why Bocwinka was populated by so many people of Ukrainian extraction.
In 1946 these people had been living in the far south east of Poland in the Ukrainian borderlands and formed a sizeable ethnic minority. Sizeable enough to have had the Communist government of the time more than a little concerned that they could become some sort of ethnic thorn in their sides and foment trouble, demand the use of their own language, claim that they were persecuted and so on.
The government solved the problem with a standard communist government solution - they simply knocked on their doors one day and told them that they would be moving somewhere in twenty four hours time and that they must pack a limited amount of luggage for the trip. Ethnic groups were divided and scattered to the four corners of Poland in this way and the process was duplicated all over Eastern Europe.
Bocwinka was all but empty at the time as most of the previous occupants had been German and they'd been "sent back" to Germany. Old Man Miankowski was among the lucky ones because when he arrived in Bocwinka he was placed in a house which was far superior to that which the family had been living in when they were in the south east and the outbuildings were full of good, modern German farm implements. Not so his friend Alexander who had been a blacksmith and upon arrival in Bocwinka was placed in a partially completed, windowless house and, like everyone else, was given a production quota to fulfil with serious consequences if it wasn't met.
Alexander has long since passed away but his son Stan still lives in the village and like his father he never quite got the hang of farming. Instead, he took to poaching and did well out of it all through the days of the communists. So well that he managed to keep his farm as a front for all those years, purchasing his production quota from others and raising a family of seven children. I was later to develop a good relationship with Stan who took me along with him on a few of his nocturnal outings. The Germans who were expelled from our own house, which at that time was only partially completed, were never heard of again until the Autumn of 1994 when one of the sons (who was only 15 years old when they left) came back to look at the place.
He was an immaculately dressed, silver haired old gentleman, driving a top of the range BMW and smelling of after shave lotion. He brought with him a German speaking Polish nephew to act as translator not knowing that we were English speakers and communication was long winded but we still managed a reasonable conversation from German to Polish and Polish to English. He had been born in a small house in our garden and his father was still building our house when the family was told to leave the country. He took me outside and showed me where the old house had been. By then Vladek's landscaping had eliminated all trace of the foundations. He cried and I put my arm around his shoulder thinking of the childhood memories which this scene must have invoked, the forced deportation and the hardships the family must have had to endure in a newly war torn Germany.
He wasn't crying with sadness though but with happiness that our house (or, as he called it, the new house) was being restored and he would finally get to see the place completed. He told us that he had had the vision of the house for all those years and expected it to be in ruins and he gave us our first booking for two weeks in the following year for him and his brother. I asked if he was disappointed in the general state of the area, knowing that the communists had let the whole country fall into a state of disrepair.
-No, he said. -Not at all, it's all just as I remembered it. There's been so much so called progress in Germany since the war that it's now unrecognizable but here it's all as we left it. Even the agriculture is the same as it was, scythes and horses have gone from where I live. No, the countryside hasn't changed apart from the trees, there are more forests than I remember but if all the houses could have a new coat of paint it would be like stepping through a time warp. Where else in the World can a man go back after nearly fifty years and find that nothing has happened?
-Yes, I said, -I guess communism has a lot to answer for.
-In some ways yes, but I hope we Germans will look after it all as well as this when the pendulum swings back again.
-Do you really think it'll happen?
-Oh yes I'm sure Germany doesn't have any designs on this area at all at present but if you read your history you'll see that national borders have never lasted long in this part of the world.
I asked him if he remembered what had actually happened - how the Germans were sent to the newly delineated Germany after the war. He said that many of them left by any method possible when they heard that the Russians were advancing throughout the area and headed West. Nobody had expected the Russian advance to be as quick as it was and a large number of people were rounded up while still on the road and sent back to where they had lived. Most people, however, stayed and were governed for the first few months by the Russians and, following that, by the Poles. The Russians had made them work. Some, including his father, had to drive cows and horses east to the railway headings where they were sent to Russia. Others had to round up all the agricultural tools and machinery and that too was sent to Russia.
He said that his mother was charged with the collection of all the musical instruments in the village which had to be delivered to a railhead somewhere where they stayed out in the weather and rotted. The last action of the Russians, before handing over to the Poles had been to recruit most of the able bodied men in the district to rip up all the railway lines and throw them onto the trains which took it all back to Russia.
His family, like most others, hung around for a few months living hand to mouth until they heard one day that they were free to go to West to Germany. They could only take hand luggage with them and had to walk for three days to a railway station from where they were transported free to the old East Germany and from there escaped through a hole on the fence to West Germany. The electricity meter reader came around in September and it was then that I learnt that we were the only people in the entire village who weren't cheating our meter.
Alicja had read to me an article in the newspaper some months earlier which said that, in some Polish villages, only thirty percent of the electricity which went into the village actually registered on house electricity meters and, at the time, I didn't take much notice of it. I was in Eva's kitchen one day when she looked out of the window and let out a gasp. She asked me to turn the kettle off and ran upstairs coming back with a long length of electric cable which she took straight down to the cellar.
She ran around turning off everything powered by electricity except for a light which was hung on a piece of string over a box full of three day old chicks and then looked at the meter. It wasn't going around fast enough so she switched on the kitchen light and had another look. Satisfied that the wheel was going around at the required speed she turned the gas back on and continued to make me a cup of tea. The meter man knocked at the door a few minutes later, read the meter and left. Eva immediately dampened a piece of rag, stuffed it into the slow combustion stove and stood looking out of the window.
-What's that for I asked.
-Oh, if anybody sees the white smoke they'll know something's not right. The people across the valley may see it.
-But what for, I asked.
-Everyone in the village does it as soon as the meter man leaves. It lets everyone know that he's around.
Vladek later showed me how everybody cheated on electricity, it was simple.
The old fashioned wiring included a screw in fuse upstairs in every house located before the meter. All that was necessary was to unscrew it and screw it back in again with a length of cable inserted into the screw hole. The other end of the cable had a multiple electric socket attached and it was possible to run practically anything in his house from it.
-Of course the electricity department know that everybody’s cheating, said Vladek -but they don't have the money to go around re-wiring houses with new meter boxes, anyway, he added, -they've got to catch you at it haven't they?
Chapter 5
Despite the shortages of supply and a number of other related problems, by September we were ahead of schedule. Our intention was to open the house for business in May and things were looking good. We had surprised ourselves by the amount of work we had been able to get through in the last month without skilled help and it was due to our new methodology. Instead of downing tools and scouring the shops for things when we reached an impasse we started on the next job and asked Vladek to put the word out for whatever it was that we needed.
This meant that we had half a dozen jobs on the go at all times but in the middle of the month a few of them came together and life became, for a while, a little more comfortable. We now had a kitchen, bathroom and a bedroom set up more or less permanently even though there was still work to be completed in all of these rooms. Prior to this blissful state of affairs we had been living in one room at a time and migrating between rooms as the work dictated. After demolishing the slow combustion stove early in the piece our cooker had been a single burner on top of a gas bottle and we'd done the washing outside in a tin bath; our toilet having been a plastic bucket.
Good as our progress had been however, Alicja reminded me that come the second week in November all outside work would have to stop until April because the weather would be too cold. Winter, I was told by all, would be a time for house bound activities and visiting friends. I tended to view this as an attitude rather than a fact and although I recognised that the ground would be too hard for digging foundations and drains or holes for clothes posts and the like I was still confident that, no matter how cold it got, I'd be able to do something outside.
But September was clearly the time to sit down with paper and pencil and work out exactly which jobs should be completed before the freeze came. The garden would have to be straightened out ready for planting the trees and we'd have to get as much as possible done in the barn, where we were building an apartment, so that we could install some form of temporary heating in order to be able to work out there. Misha was growing at an alarming rate and it was obvious that fences would be needed to keep her in and this would have to be done before the ground became to hard to dig the post holes so we decided to leave all the interior painting and things like fitting skirting boards because all of these things could be done in the warm in a few months time - we'd concentrate as much as possible on the outdoor work.
I went down to the milk collection depot early one morning to look for Ivan who was reckoned to be the best man in the village when it came to fencing. At eight o'clock every morning Bocwinka's milk collection depot is the focal point for the farmers from four villages. I liked visiting the milk collection depot at this time of day to look at the various assembled modes of transport employed to bring the milk down from the farms. Some farmers would only have 5 litres of milk from a single cow and would transport it in a small churn tied to the handlebars of a bicycle, others would have perhaps fifty litres and would use a tractor and trailer. Some came from villages six kilometres distant and would push a bicycle with a couple of churns attached all the way there and back.
But there were other, more interesting modes of transportation too. One farmer always sent his crippled father along with one churn of milk. He could be seen every morning zig zagging down the street in a sort of three wheeled wheelchair powered by a chain attached through gears to the back axle. The old man wound two bicycle pedals around in front of him to provide most of the motive force and the balance was made up by a large dog in a harness. I'd seen him many times in his wheelchair and always thought the old man and his dog had been doing this together for years but when I asked how long the dog had been performing this function he said -only three months, he won't last long, this one. I get through two dogs a year - the strain kills them.
From an engineering stand-point Mr Koncevicz had the most interesting carriage. It was a long narrow, four wheeled cart where the horse had been removed and replaced by two thirds of a motorcycle. The steering was by means of the motorcycle handlebars and Mr Koncevicz sat on the motorcycle seat. Beneath him the back wheel had been removed and the rear of the motorbike frame was attached to the cut down horse shafts by four bolts and a lot of coiled fencing wire and two leather belts. The motorcycle chain had been lengthened to drive a sprocket on the front axle of the cart and the whole thing must have weighed upwards of a ton. It certainly weighed a lot more when the Koncevicz family of eleven all piled in it to go to church on Sunday mornings and all it had in the way of brakes was on the tiny motorcycle front wheel. Looking at the thing I was inclined to think the braking system wasn't as much of a worry as the chain, which, if it had broken at any speed, would probably have sliced Mr Koncevicz straight down the middle.
There was a man from Zywki, the next village along our lane, who had a current, no frills model Russian tractor. It was a peculiar thing in that it was a two seater and the two occupants sat side by side on a wooden bench seat just like a horse and cart. But the engine was the most primitive thing I'd ever seen. It was a single cylinder engine with an exposed flywheel, no bonnet and an open cooling system in which the water just bubbled away open to the air at the top. The driver could see when the water level was getting low and just poured in another bucketful. I asked the man why he didn't put some sort of cover over the flywheel in case it should pick up a foreign object and throw it at some passer-by. He told me that it wasn't a problem, had never been known to happen and that the greatest danger was it's habit of throwing hot water over all and sundry when traversing bumpy roads. Vladek told me he'd heard that in Russia they put a wire netting bag into the water jacket and cook eggs in it.
But today I was at the milk collection depot looking for Ivan and as I picked my way through a variety of wheel barrows, old prams, tin baths with wheels underneath and an assortment of home made trolleys I stumbled upon him - literally, he was drunk and sleeping in the grass. Jurek borrowed a pencil from Jana, the soltys's wife who ran the depot, and wrote a note for Ivan to come around and see me when he woke up and pinned it to his cap which was laying on his chest.
He arrived at the gate at eleven o'clock, I showed him what I wanted done, he went off to get the village measuring tape and came back three days later acting as if he'd only been away for ten minutes. Together we measured the length of fence we'd need and discussed the design. It had to be strong enough to withstand the weight of a snow drift and I wanted to know how far to bury the posts in the ground and what kind of wood to use. Ivan seemed to know his stuff and understood where the fence had to go and after measuring we came up with a requirement for a total of 200 metres worth of alder wood palings plus the rails and the oak posts which were to be burnt in the fire to preserve them before placement in the ground.
-I'll order the wood for you if you like, said Ivan
I thought that maybe Ivan was going to load the price by a few bottles and so declined the offer.
-No, that's OK thanks I know the forester down at Borki, we bought the wood for our floorboards from him.
-Yes, go to Borki, tell him I sent you and he won't give you any rubbish.
After he'd gone I took Alicja outside to show her the fencing plan but she had a better idea which involved leaving the wood shed outside the fence line and this reduced the length of fencing to exactly 148 metres. What with other, more pressing things, on our agenda we didn't get around to looking for fence wood for a fortnight. Buying the fence posts and palings, we just knew, was going to be another run around like when we'd bought the floor boards and this time the forester told us that they had stopped cutting for the season. We had visited him at his house where we found him and half a dozen of his workers - two of them unconscious from an excess of vodka and the rest half cut.
-But we have to have a fence, said Alicja -it's very important.
-Well, the only thing you can do is steal the stuff out of the forest
-Maybe, but we don't know anything about stealing trees and we don't have a chain saw or anything. What if we get caught?
-Oh you'd have to do it when I wasn't looking. You couldn't do it in daylight either and you'd have to keep off the asphalt roads in case the police caught you.
-Exactly what are you telling me?
-Oh, I'm not telling you anything, I can't tell you anything about stealing trees, I'm the forester; I'm here to stop people stealing trees
-Well, the position is that we need fencing posts and palings and we don't care too much about how they end up in our yard but we don't want to be involved in the actual......procurement, said Alicja
-You'll have to hire a thief then.
Alicja had at last broken the ice and there were smiles all round, the sort of half smirks which meant that we were involved in something mischievous together like a bunch of school kids.
-OK. So where do we find a thief?
Pointing to one of his comatose drinking partners he said -him, he's a good thief. I'll tell him about it when he wakes up and he'll organise everything for you.
I said that if this Rip Van Vodka would care to come around to the house when he was sober I'd show him exactly what we needed and tell him how much of it was required.
-That's not necessary- replied our forester, -just tell me how many metres you want to fence and he'll work out exactly what you need. He knows all about fencing.
-Great, we need enough for 148 metres and a few spare palings, OK?
-Be better if you took enough for 200 metres - it won't cost you any more.
We left the order in their capable hands and went home to spend the rest of the day planning the garden, pleased with the thought that we were gradually getting to know our way around - getting to know how to work the system as it were. -If only we'd known about this way of obtaining wood, our floorboards would probably only have been half the price, remarked Alicja.
The next morning before light I was woken by the noise of a tractor. This was nothing unusual but it seemed louder, nearer, than usual. Misha was going berserk and I climbed out of bed to investigate but looking out of the windows nothing untoward appeared to be going on so I brought Misha into the bedroom and told her to shut up. But when I went outside after breakfast there were tractor tyre marks in the soft earth of what one day would become our lawn and the barn doors had been lifted off their hinges. I was sure that we'd been ripped off and I ran over to the barn and looked in. There was a huge heap of planks strewn at random all over the interior of the building.
-It must be for our fence, I told Alicja. -The planks will be cut down later to make the palings.
-Nothing, but nothing ever moves this fast in Poland, especially up here in the wilds, Alicja told me. -I reckon someone like Vladek stole the stuff in the night and he wants to hide it here in case the police or the forestry officers come looking for it.
I waited until I saw Vladek coming past with the horse and went outside to ask if he knew anything about it.
-Yes, that's your fencing wood.
-They must have worked all night Vladek, it was only yesterday that we were speaking to the forester and his mates and they were all half cut at four in the afternoon.
-Yes, I heard all about it down at the milk depot earlier on. They cut the stuff two weeks ago when you measured your back yard with Ivan. Ivan told them you'd be needing the wood and they've had it stashed in the forest under a big pile of leaves and other rubbish ever since - they've been scared stiff that someone from the forestry department would find it.
-Why didn't he mention it to me then?
-No, he wouldn't have told you about it. He's been worried that you weren't going to order it though because he charged the forester two bottles for getting the business, told the forester he was sending you down to order the wood from him and he's already drank the two bottles. The forester's been worried too because he's doing it illegally. Peter, you should let me handle these things for you - if you'd have only told me about it I'd have told you to hang on for a while and soon they'd have approached you to take it off their hands for next to nothing.
So much for us knowing how to work the system! But it couldn't be argued that when Ivan finished his work, in a lightning four days, the fence was perfect and took the weight of some very heavy snow drifts during the winter without moving an inch out of line. Meanwhile Vladek had volunteered to landscape the garden for us using the horse, plough and an assortment of other implements we didn't know the names of and he was doing a good job but was hindered by a number of bee hives which were in the way of the plough.
When we first took possession of the house from Mr Polakowski it was agreed between us that he could leave his seven bee hives in the garden until the time was right for bee moving. This, he assured us, wouldn't be later than the first week in September. We were careful never to go near Mr Polakowski's bee hives because he told us that bees were delicate creatures & didn't like to be disturbed. Come the third week in September I'd sent word to him four times asking if he would move his bees but nothing was happening and Vladek was becoming impatient to finish the landscaping because he would soon be busy with his field work and wouldn't be able to help us.
I stood pondering the hives one evening when I saw a wasp go into one of them and I cautiously lifted the lid. The hive was absolutely devoid of bee frames, bees or anything else to do with the procurement of that sticky substance which bees are famous for and was occupied only by a wasps nest. I checked another hive and another, but they too were empty and upon checking the fourth one found it full of bee keeping equipment, a smoke generator, bee keepers gloves, veiled hat etc. This left three hives and I found that out of the total of seven, only two had bees inside.
It was beginning to look as though we'd been taken for a ride and after making a few enquiries we learned that Mr Polakowski now lived in a third floor flat in the middle of town and had nothing more than a balcony on which to keep his hives and only the flowers in a window box for his bees to work with. He was obviously using our garden for storage. I mentioned it to Vladek and together we moved the five vacant hives (after destroying the wasps nest) out of the way so that he could continue landscaping.
Two weeks went by and then one evening around seven o'clock Vladek arrived drunk & we sat together on the verandah smoking and staring out at the garden. Every time Vladek had too much to drink he became bolder. He'd promise anyone anything and come up with silly ideas which, he would assure me, he'd put into operation the next day. The next day, of course, he wouldn't remember. But on this evening his idea was that he was going to move the two occupied hives.
"Yes" I said, "let's do it together in the morning."
"No, no , no. No, not the morning, I need to be drunk for this job. I'm going to do it now - don't need your help"
We told him, even begged him not to do it but he wasn't to be dissuaded once his mind was made up and donning old Polakowski's bee keeping hat & gloves he staggered towards the first hive and taking it in his arms set off across the garden. The bees went troppo, circling his head and stinging him through his clothes but at first he was too anaesthetized by the effects of the vodka to feel anything.
Now, it's known that when bees locate a good patch of pollen they return to the hive and perform a dance which indicates to their work mates the direction & distance between the hive and the flowers. I can tell you that whatever their terpsichorean abilities they could have learned a few new steps from our neighbour that evening. Vladek suddenly let out a hell of a scream, dropped the hive and broke into some kind of jazz pasadoble, the likes of which are yet to be seen in any Latin American dancing competition. It was the most energetic dance I think I've yet witnessed. It combined a flamenco like movement of the feet with the slapping usually practiced by leather shorted, overweight German accountants at October fests but was made all the more entertaining by the fact that it was performed whilst running at the speed of a supercharged Carl Lewis towards the fence.
Vladek was demonstrating a latent athletic ability even he didn't know he had as he cleared our fence and threw himself into his horse drinking trough and we saw the splash go up just like in the Wild West movies. The rest of the family came running from the house thinking him to be injured and his father laughed so much that he was forced to sit down & rest until his breath caught up with him. We all had a good laugh and Alicja and I went inside for a cup of tea but had hardly boiled the kettle when we heard the gate open. Vladek had come back for the remaining hive. There was no opportunity to reason with him and we watched from the window, speechless, as he purposefully staggered towards the hive, this time clad in a thick winter coat for good measure.
We ran outside just in time to see him, hive in hands, trip over the hastily placed previous hive which broke open strewing the contents on the ground.
This time our hero didn't waste any time dancing. He was up in a flash & away on his toes taking the same path as before but this time he wasn't so lucky when he reached the fence and he ran straight into it knocking himself out cold. By now quite a crowd had gathered at our fence and I was suddenly struck by the absurdity of the situation & started to laugh out loud but the soltys was the one who immediately saw the seriousness of the situation.
He leapt over the fence and ran across to where Vladek was lying & shouted "if they sting him in his throat he won't be able to breathe" and he wrenched up a handful of stinging nettles, which were the tallest plants growing in that spot, and began flailing away at the bees. The bees weren't stupid either; they new that it was Vladek they were after and now the air was thick with them around where he was laying. It was the old man (Vladek's father) who with characteristic calmness saved the situation. He casually grabbed a handful of hay & threw it over the fence to me. -Light it Peter, light it. Spread it all around his head and light it. Someone threw a box of matches into the fray and I did as instructed and within a very short space of time the bees were keeping their distance.
Vladek was unconscious for a good five minutes and when he came round he decided that it might be a good idea to retire from the scene. The old man came over just on dusk and, although we didn't know it until the morning, he'd set the hives up again. We went over to see Vladek after breakfast, his face was badly swollen and we were told by Eva that she'd spent the remainder of the previous evening picking stings out of him with a pair of tweezers. But sitting at the kitchen table was the old man enjoying his morning cup of tea with bread and honey. I looked at the honey and then at him and he smiled. -No use letting it go to waste was it?, he said.
We never saw much of Vladek's father. He was old and spent most of his time sitting indoors or on the seat outside in their back garden which he did for hours at a stretch ;his threshold of boredom was seemingly limitless. I'd last seen him in August out in the road with Old Man Miankowski waving the storks goodbye and they were both wondering aloud if they'd still be alive when they returned next year.
It was during the third week in August that the storks began circling over our house and the nearby lake. They are the most graceful of birds when in flight and for five days they flew around in circles, a few more coming into the flock every day until there were over fifty of them. One day Alicja came out to the barn where I was working and told me to come quickly and watch the storks. A big catherine wheel of storks was unwinding with the birds on the outside of the circle gradually peeling off and following each other in a straight line across the lake and over the forest. They were heading back to Africa and as we wandered out of the gate and down the lane to get a better look we saw that the school kids were all out in the road with their teachers waving them goodbye.
We took a stroll up to where Vladek's father and Old Man Miankowsi were standing and struck up a conversation. Old man Miankowski told us that the storks were late and should have left on the 18th of the month. He said that this was a sign that we were in for a mild winter and that his well would run dry next year unless we had heavy snow falls. This turned out to be true but when we got to know Old Man Miankowski a little better we found that just about all the folk lore he imparted to us was complete rubbish. But it was from him that we first heard why Bocwinka was populated by so many people of Ukrainian extraction.
In 1946 these people had been living in the far south east of Poland in the Ukrainian borderlands and formed a sizeable ethnic minority. Sizeable enough to have had the Communist government of the time more than a little concerned that they could become some sort of ethnic thorn in their sides and foment trouble, demand the use of their own language, claim that they were persecuted and so on.
The government solved the problem with a standard communist government solution - they simply knocked on their doors one day and told them that they would be moving somewhere in twenty four hours time and that they must pack a limited amount of luggage for the trip. Ethnic groups were divided and scattered to the four corners of Poland in this way and the process was duplicated all over Eastern Europe.
Bocwinka was all but empty at the time as most of the previous occupants had been German and they'd been "sent back" to Germany. Old Man Miankowski was among the lucky ones because when he arrived in Bocwinka he was placed in a house which was far superior to that which the family had been living in when they were in the south east and the outbuildings were full of good, modern German farm implements. Not so his friend Alexander who had been a blacksmith and upon arrival in Bocwinka was placed in a partially completed, windowless house and, like everyone else, was given a production quota to fulfil with serious consequences if it wasn't met.
Alexander has long since passed away but his son Stan still lives in the village and like his father he never quite got the hang of farming. Instead, he took to poaching and did well out of it all through the days of the communists. So well that he managed to keep his farm as a front for all those years, purchasing his production quota from others and raising a family of seven children. I was later to develop a good relationship with Stan who took me along with him on a few of his nocturnal outings. The Germans who were expelled from our own house, which at that time was only partially completed, were never heard of again until the Autumn of 1994 when one of the sons (who was only 15 years old when they left) came back to look at the place.
He was an immaculately dressed, silver haired old gentleman, driving a top of the range BMW and smelling of after shave lotion. He brought with him a German speaking Polish nephew to act as translator not knowing that we were English speakers and communication was long winded but we still managed a reasonable conversation from German to Polish and Polish to English. He had been born in a small house in our garden and his father was still building our house when the family was told to leave the country. He took me outside and showed me where the old house had been. By then Vladek's landscaping had eliminated all trace of the foundations. He cried and I put my arm around his shoulder thinking of the childhood memories which this scene must have invoked, the forced deportation and the hardships the family must have had to endure in a newly war torn Germany.
He wasn't crying with sadness though but with happiness that our house (or, as he called it, the new house) was being restored and he would finally get to see the place completed. He told us that he had had the vision of the house for all those years and expected it to be in ruins and he gave us our first booking for two weeks in the following year for him and his brother. I asked if he was disappointed in the general state of the area, knowing that the communists had let the whole country fall into a state of disrepair.
-No, he said. -Not at all, it's all just as I remembered it. There's been so much so called progress in Germany since the war that it's now unrecognizable but here it's all as we left it. Even the agriculture is the same as it was, scythes and horses have gone from where I live. No, the countryside hasn't changed apart from the trees, there are more forests than I remember but if all the houses could have a new coat of paint it would be like stepping through a time warp. Where else in the World can a man go back after nearly fifty years and find that nothing has happened?
-Yes, I said, -I guess communism has a lot to answer for.
-In some ways yes, but I hope we Germans will look after it all as well as this when the pendulum swings back again.
-Do you really think it'll happen?
-Oh yes I'm sure Germany doesn't have any designs on this area at all at present but if you read your history you'll see that national borders have never lasted long in this part of the world.
I asked him if he remembered what had actually happened - how the Germans were sent to the newly delineated Germany after the war. He said that many of them left by any method possible when they heard that the Russians were advancing throughout the area and headed West. Nobody had expected the Russian advance to be as quick as it was and a large number of people were rounded up while still on the road and sent back to where they had lived. Most people, however, stayed and were governed for the first few months by the Russians and, following that, by the Poles. The Russians had made them work. Some, including his father, had to drive cows and horses east to the railway headings where they were sent to Russia. Others had to round up all the agricultural tools and machinery and that too was sent to Russia.
He said that his mother was charged with the collection of all the musical instruments in the village which had to be delivered to a railhead somewhere where they stayed out in the weather and rotted. The last action of the Russians, before handing over to the Poles had been to recruit most of the able bodied men in the district to rip up all the railway lines and throw them onto the trains which took it all back to Russia.
His family, like most others, hung around for a few months living hand to mouth until they heard one day that they were free to go to West to Germany. They could only take hand luggage with them and had to walk for three days to a railway station from where they were transported free to the old East Germany and from there escaped through a hole on the fence to West Germany. The electricity meter reader came around in September and it was then that I learnt that we were the only people in the entire village who weren't cheating our meter.
Alicja had read to me an article in the newspaper some months earlier which said that, in some Polish villages, only thirty percent of the electricity which went into the village actually registered on house electricity meters and, at the time, I didn't take much notice of it. I was in Eva's kitchen one day when she looked out of the window and let out a gasp. She asked me to turn the kettle off and ran upstairs coming back with a long length of electric cable which she took straight down to the cellar.
She ran around turning off everything powered by electricity except for a light which was hung on a piece of string over a box full of three day old chicks and then looked at the meter. It wasn't going around fast enough so she switched on the kitchen light and had another look. Satisfied that the wheel was going around at the required speed she turned the gas back on and continued to make me a cup of tea. The meter man knocked at the door a few minutes later, read the meter and left. Eva immediately dampened a piece of rag, stuffed it into the slow combustion stove and stood looking out of the window.
-What's that for I asked.
-Oh, if anybody sees the white smoke they'll know something's not right. The people across the valley may see it.
-But what for, I asked.
-Everyone in the village does it as soon as the meter man leaves. It lets everyone know that he's around.
Vladek later showed me how everybody cheated on electricity, it was simple.
The old fashioned wiring included a screw in fuse upstairs in every house located before the meter. All that was necessary was to unscrew it and screw it back in again with a length of cable inserted into the screw hole. The other end of the cable had a multiple electric socket attached and it was possible to run practically anything in his house from it.
-Of course the electricity department know that everybody’s cheating, said Vladek -but they don't have the money to go around re-wiring houses with new meter boxes, anyway, he added, -they've got to catch you at it haven't they?
Chapter 6
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 6
September came and our water went. I was in the shower one morning when the water slowed to a trickle and then stopped altogether. At first I thought that the pump had packed up but after pulling it to pieces and not being able to get it all back together I went looking for Big Jan the plumber. Unfortunately pumps turned out to be one gap in Big Jan's plumbing knowledge and he suggested I should ask Marek who was always having pump problems and should know how to put one back together. Marek was one of my favourite people in Bocwinka. He was tall, skinny and gaunt looking and always had a sickly look about him, probably because he was an alcoholic. His habit was no secret and he even made jokes about it - it was a fact of his life which he accepted and didn't seem unhappy about.
Drunkenness and alcoholism in Polish villages carry little of the stigma attached to the habit in Western countries but I will return to the subject later in the chapter. Just as I had found Ivan asleep at the milk depot, so I found Marek in the same state on the pavement outside the post office and left a note sticking out of his jacket pocket hoping he'd see it when he woke up.
Bogdan, the village intellectual, found the note and came around the house with it explaining that Marek couldn't read anyway. He asked what was wrong and upon receiving my answer went straight to the well, peered in for a second or two and told me that there was no water in it. I felt stupid for not having looked, like someone who couldn't start his car because he'd run out of petrol, and said I'd get Vladek to bring a tank full with the tractor and dump it down the shaft. Being short of water with only two of us in the house had us worried. Mr Polakowski had told us that the well was inexhaustible when we bought the place. What were we going to do when half a dozen people were staying in the house and taking showers each day?
Bogdan was of the opinion that the bottom had gone, although what this meant I couldn't imagine, and he disappeared returning later with two others and a length of rope. One man went down the well and they bailed every last drop of water out of it and inspected the floor. The wells all over Poland are all filled by seepage from ground water rather than being located over underground streams and sometimes, they said, the bottom will give way and let the contents run away into the earth. However, our bottom looked alright but they lined it with clay to be sure and brought a couple of big container loads of water on the back of a tractor and filled the well.
As time went by we found that we were simply using more water than the well could supply. The locals couldn't understand it, Polakowskis had lived in the house for years and never had a problem, and there were many theories put forward as to why we had developed a water shortage. A group of ladies engaged Alicja in a discussion about it down at the post office one day and concluded that it must be our washing machine but during the discussion it became evident that, by village standards, we were indeed big water users.
-Don't forget that you've got a bath too, one of them had said. -baths use a lot of water. If the pair of you go filling the bath up every month of course you'll have no water.
We already knew that people in the village weren't as familiar with soap and water as we were and we narrowed the water shortage down to this and the fact that people didn't water their gardens as we did - the thinking being that if an ornamental plant couldn't survive unaided, it wasn't worth having. Poland has the least renewable water resources in the whole of Europe and the vast majority of Polish villages have no other water supply than their individual wells, a fact of which we were totally unaware. In fact the best advice anyone at that party in Warsaw could have given us would have been "check the water supply before you buy."
However, Bocwinka was luckier than most villages as we had a vast underground lake beneath us, larger than the entire village, and a communal electric pump. The only problem would be getting the water to the house. We went over to see Vladek about it and he volunteered to bring water every day if necessary in the communal water container which sat on a trailer specially designed to go on the back of both tractor and horse. This was a great relief to us at the time but the next year when we actually had a few guests Vladek proved to be unreliable. His intentions were good but there was no predicting when he'd be drunk and unable to bring the water. Worse still, he'd sometimes attempt to bring water when he was paralytic and on one occasion drove straight through our closed gates, smashing them to firewood, and on up the path exiting through the fence at the other side of the garden before remembering what he'd come for and stopping the tractor.
It was particularly embarrassing on that occasion as we had the ambassador of a Western embassy and his wife staying with us to whom I'd written a letter inviting them to come for a free weekend in the hope that word of our venture would spread around Warsaw's diplomatic community. The ambassador's secretary had telephoned us the week before and one of her questions had been about security. I reassured her by telling her about Misha the guard dog and our security light. "If he's worried about the car being stolen he can park it in our garage and we'll put ours outside." I told her.
On the fateful day the ambassador and his wife were taking breakfast outside on the verandah and Alicja was approaching the table with a tray containing toast and orange juice. I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I heard Vladek's tractor coming up the drive at speed, which was nothing unusual, but there was always a point at which the engine would die and his brakes would squeal. On this day it didn't happen and I lifted my head just in time to see pieces of the shattered gate go flying up the path.
Misha, who'd been sitting in the middle of the drive barked the doggy equivalent of “arrrrrgh fuuuuck” and took off like a chemical reaction with ears flattened and her tail between her legs. This was followed by the ambassadors own rendition of the doggy equivalent of “arrrrrgh fuuuuck” in his native tongue and his wife screamed and damaged her knee on the table as she tried to make off in a hurry. Alicja just stood riveted to the spot with her tray of toast and orange juice in hand and watched Vladek go by in a mud coloured flash as he bounced right through the car park, where the ambassador’s car would have been, and disappeared through a hole in the fence that didn't actually exist up until that point.
Although I could appreciate that this was probably going to be a serious blow to our efforts to attract the "right class of clientele" I was stricken with an attack of the giggles and had to make myself scarce for a while. When at last I felt I could control myself and emerged to apologise to the lucky couple I could feel the laughter welling up inside me again and excused myself saying that I thought I should go and see if the driver was alright. I found Vladek sitting in the ploughed field where the tractor had stopped and we both burst out laughing and rolled around on our backs in stitches. And that's where the ambassador found us.
The peculiar thing about the incident was the publicity it gave us at the embassy down in Warsaw and over the next three months we had half a dozen other couples from the same embassy come to stay with us and they all wanted to see Vladek, his tractor and the newly mended fence. The memory of the expression on the ambassador’s wife's face is now imprinted on my brain and I still suffer from uncontrollable laughter whenever I tell anyone about it.
The end of water carting in this way finally came when Marek, who couldn't be bothered to wait the 30 minutes for the pump to fill the village water container, thought he'd take a short cut by backing the whole trailer and container into our lake where it could fill quicker through the hole in the top. It sank beneath the water and resisted the joint village efforts to pull it out for over a week. At the time our well was nearly empty and I took a trip into town where I bought two hundred metres of hose pipe to connect us direct to the village pump making us independent - or so we thought. Six weeks later the hose pipe was stolen.
But let me return to the every day drinking habits of the average Polish villager. Twelve years ago when we first visited Poland together on holiday I bought a Polish/English travel guide and on page 2 it said "never try to out-drink a Pole." Never was a phrase more appropriate although on that particular trip we stuck to the cities where, though the drinking can be hard, it in no way compares to the drinking habits of village Poles.
I'd already heard the stories - "once you open a bottle of vodka you don't stop until it's finished" and "you're not real friends until you've been drunk together" - but phrases such as these are usually taken at face value and do not prepare the Westerner for a drinking session with a group of villagers. These people don't drink for the taste, don't sit and sip whilst playing cards or talking about how many pigs they're going to sell next year. They drink solely for the alcoholic effect - they drink to get drunk pure and simple.
Vodka, of course, is the drink of the country and no matter what wonderful properties are attributed to this liquid anesthetic, it isn't a tasty drink. Although most Poles claim to be able to tell a good vodka from a bad one, I'm at a loss to see exactly how the connoisseur judges any alcoholic beverage when it only comes into contact with the taste buds for a matter of milliseconds. It's been my experience that if a Polish farmer invites you to drink with him he's actually saying "get drunk with me" and during the 40 or so minutes required to complete the process there will be no comments as to the quality or taste of the drink itself, in fact no appreciation of anything but the effect it has on the senses.
How well I remember comments at Western dinner parties concerning the quality of the wine - "that was a good Claret, full of body" or "I personally prefer a good Barsac to a Sauterne with my desert." And whenever friends were coming to dinner and we were in two minds what wine to buy to go with the food we intended to serve, we'd get a couple of bottles of rose because it went with practically anything. Well, in Poland, vodka is a bit like Rose in that it can, and does, go with anything, at any time and with anyone. It's drunk at weddings, funerals, board meetings, dinner parties and all other social occasions. In Bocwinka it's drunk in cellars, hedgerows, hay barns, outside the post office, on the back of tractors and in the fields at lunch time. Yes, a versatile drink is the vodka, a great social leveler - every man in Bocwinka gets leveled by it, socially or otherwise, at least once a week.
Drunkenness was such an accepted way of life in Bocwinka that I would find myself wondering why they bothered to come up with excuses for their drinking sessions, but they did, and they were surprisingly inventive about it:
International Women's Day:
There was a knock on Eva's door at 8am on this day and there stood six men who'd come straight from the shop after dropping their milk off at the depot. Between them they were carrying 4 bottles of vodka. Eva didn't drink, in fact she hated the stuff.
These guys must have heard that it was International Women's Day on the TV news, discussed it at the morning milk collection and decided to buy a few bottles.
-Good morning Eva my love, says Mishu -we've come to see madam to wish her the very best of health on this day of all days
-Sod off, he hasn't got time to get drunk today. We've got to move the cows to the lower field and fix the fences. Go on, get out.
-Eva my love, we haven't come to see your husband, we've come to see you. Don't you know what day it is? It's International Women's Day and you're an International Woman.
At this point Vladek, who'd been down at the shop himself but hadn't the courage to return at the same time as the lads, arrived home to be told by his wife that under no circumstances were these gentlemen setting foot in the house.
-OK then, said Ivan. -We'll just have a quick one out here on the step to toast your health and we'll be on our way.
Four hours later when Alicja went over to get our milk they were still there, including Vladek, on the step, laying on top of each other like a litter of new born piglets fast asleep.
I was outside in the lane early one May morning picking up the empty vodka bottles which had been thrown into our hedge, when Vladek came past on the tractor with his daily milk delivery. He tooted the horn and I stood up to wave when I noticed that he was steering with one hand and holding a bunch of flowers in the other. I'd never seen this before but thought no more about it until a few minutes later when Marek came past with his horse and cart, two milk churns in the back and a bunch of flowers balanced on top of them.
Something was going on and I went in for a cup of tea and mentioned it to Alicja who said it was probably a religious celebration and they would be putting the flowers on the shrine. The shrine was only 50 metres from our house and could be clearly seen from our upstairs window so I quickly grabbed my camera and went up to see if I could get a shot of some traditional, religious celebration. There was no one at the shrine but as I looked past it, towards the milk depot, I could see about 20 tractors and horse carts parked outside; all the drivers sporting bunches of flowers.
It was Jana, the milk collection lady's, name day and over the next 10 minutes I watched as all the flowers were tied to her bicycle completely obscuring the whole machine. Jana emerged from the building to a roar from the crowd and what I presume was the Polish equivalent of "happy birthday to you" was sung by all present. Then it started. Stan the poacher was the first to pull a bottle from his coat pocket and he held it aloft with a shout. Hands then went for bottles like they were six guns on the street at high noon. By this time Alicja was upstairs with me and we agreed that Stefan and Marek, who'd promised to come around to fell one of our trees, wouldn't be turning up that day.
A couple of hours later I was working in the yard when Vladek & Zenek appeared at the gate absolutely legless with their arms around each others necks. They'd come to a joint decision with regard to the short walk to our house; neither of them could stand on their own so they'd clung together and hobbled up to our gate.
-Peter. We're in trouble.
-I can see that Zenek.
-No, you don't understand. The man who drives the milk tanker is drunk and if he doesn't get it back to the factory the milk will be unsaleable. And he'll lose his job. And we won't get paid for the milk. And....he's got the milk from 5 other villages in there too.
-Oh dear, do you want to use our phone?
-Yes..No. Well... yes but that's not the point. Can Alicja ring the milk factory for us afterwards?
-After what?
-Oh yes. You're a good man Peter. Isn't he a good man Vladek?
-Yes, he's a good man. You're a good man Peter. You're a good worker and you help your wife to cook and... and what? Oh yes, you keep your grass short and you take Misha for walks.
-Issa good dog, Mish Mish's agood dog.
-Big dog, rip the arse off you wouldn't she Vladek?
-Yep, rip the arse off you.
-Eh Peter......you're the only man in the village who's not drunk except for old Miankowski but he can't drive because of his feet.
-Never could bloody drive you stupid sod.
-Just tell me what you’re getting at- I said.
-Oh, You'll have to drive the tanker.
-Christ, I can't drive a bloody great thing like that.
-Yes you can, iss easy. The driver will be with you, he'll show you the gears and everything....You'd be helping a lot of people.
It was stupid, I could have been in all sorts of trouble, but in the end I agreed and I got to drive my first milk tanker while Alicja followed in the car. I was terrified for the whole 12 kilometres to the milk factory and the driver was no use at all, he slept all the way. When we finally arrived at the factory gate there was a man waiting for us; we shook hands, he handed me a present of large lump of cheese in a polythene bag and I got back in the car with Alicja and went home. This was the one, singular event which told the population for miles around that I was a good guy - even though I helped my wife with the cooking and walked the dog - and the next day a gang of men turned out to fell our dead tree and knock our garden into shape.
Drunkenness occasionally has its amusing side and one such occasion occurred when we had our neighbours staying in the house while we were away in Warsaw. We returned to find a half used bottle of vodka inside the dog's kennel and asked everyone who the owner was. Nobody would own up to it but it was a good bet that it belonged to Vladek who'd probably hidden it in the kennel from Eva. Ever since there had been a standing joke in the village about our Misha being a drunk but it was over a year later that we found out a little more about what happened during that trip to Warsaw.
We had a visit from the local police department, two very personable young men who wanted to avail themselves of Alicja's translating abilities. We invited them in and they spent an hour or so moaning about the lack of government funding and then, when we were bosom buddies, told us an interesting story.
-A while back you had your neighbours looking after the place while you were away in Warsaw.
-Yes, that's right.
-Well, they had a bit of a party here and they ran out of food.
-Oh, that's nothing to worry about, we told them they could help themselves to anything in the cupboard while we were away.
-Yes, perhaps so, but they were also looking after your dog weren't they?
-Yes, so?
-Yes....... I don't know if your dog was any thinner when you got back but they were so drunk that they ate two tins of her Pedigree Pal and they didn't know it until the morning when they woke up and saw the picture of the dog on the tin. It's been the talk of the district for a long time but I don't suppose anyone here would have told you. After a pleasant chat they got up to leave and we saw them to the gate at which point, as they opened the car doors, one of them turned and with a smile said -and I hear you're a pretty good milk tanker driver.
We thought the Pedigree Pal story was hilarious and it was a frequent topic of conversation between Alicja & myself over the following fortnight, after which we forgot about it. Forgot about it, that is, until one night when Vladek and Eva paid us a visit and Sky News happened to be on TV. During the commercial break there was an advert for dog food and Vladek said
-That's what you feed Misha on, isn't it?
-Yes but we're going to start cooking up our own stuff for him like you do for your dogs. That way we'll know what goes into it. There's been a lot of controversy about Pedigree Pal on English TV lately. It seems that some of the Asian immigrants there couldn't read the label on the tin and a few of them ate it.
-What's wrong with that, it's good meat isn't it?
-Yes, it probably is but it has preservatives and chemicals in it which react with alcohol and would be illegal to put in human food - dogs don't drink you see, but Asians do.
-Oh?
-Yes, it can take anything up to 18 months before it reacts.
-So what's wrong with them - these Asians?
-Oh, I don't know much about it but a lot of them are in hospital. Apparently it starts with aching joints, elbows, knees and so on and it gets progressively worse the more they drink. The doctors don't know exactly what it is.
-Oh.
I knew that Vladek had had a problem with pains in his right elbow for some weeks and had trouble lifting anything with his right arm and now I reached across the kitchen table to top up his glass. He placed his hand over the top of it saying -no thanks I think that'll do for tonight. Got to be up early in the morning, got a long day in front of us.
It must have been a good fortnight later that I was driving home from town and stopped to pick up Ivan.
-What's wrong with your neighbour (Vladek) then Peter?
-I dunno, is there something wrong with him?
-Well, he's been on the wagon for a hell of a long time, not like him at all is it?
Vladek actually stayed off the drink for a whole month and he was as miserable as sin.
And when he eventually came home drunk one afternoon I saw him standing in the yard outside the house demonstrating to Eva that he could move his arm without pain. Eva was all smiles and glad to have the old Vladek back again as she helped him negotiate the door step into the house. There had apparently been a big drinking session that day and towards the evening a woman who we'd never met before, came to the house in agony asking to be taken to the doctor because every man in the village was too drunk to drive again. She was extremely apologetic and when we asked what the big drinking event was all about she said that a cow had been rescued from drowning in the swamp.
On another occasion I visited the doctor in town and he was fascinated at the thought of a Westerner living in a Polish village. When I told him I was from Bocwinka he told me that he had been in our village only the previous night with the ambulance. -Oh, I said, -nothing too serious I hope?. -No, he replied. -A man got so drunk at a name day celebration that he was sure he was dying. The worst drunk (from the point of view of being permanently drunk) in Bocwinka was Marek. A man of 42 years who looked 65 and whose wife left him because of his drunken habits.
The second winter after we moved to the village he fell into a stupor one night outside our house. It was 22 below zero and he was found some time later with frostbite on his toes. Not long afterwards Alicja and I were driving over to the next village one day when we came up behind a stationary motorbike and as we slowly drove past and looked at the rider we could see that he was going through the motions of riding. Both his feet were on the ground, hands on the handlebars and he was swaying slightly from side to side and looking straight ahead.
-Who was that, asked Alicja. -Don't know, I replied -but if he doesn't move off the road someone's going to drive up he back of him - I thought he was moving when we came up behind him.
When we were coming home forty minutes later he was still there, still going through the motions, but facing in the other direction. I told Vladek about it the next time I saw him. -Oh that's the forester from Borki - he was drunk and Jurek and Adam came past, stopped the tractor and turned him around for a laugh.
-But how did he get there?, I asked.
-Don't know but he's always doing it. He gets drunk and rides his bike and then just stops and sort of sleeps it off with his eyes open like a fish - never gets off the bike. A couple of years ago he had his headlight stolen while he was still sitting on it.
Halina and Ryszard, the couple we had been to see on the day we saw the Borki forester and his motorbike, were a couple of university educated drop-outs from Warsaw who became our best friends but were regarded as weirdoes by the local population. We used to see them every week and after living in the area for six years they had a fund of funny stories to relate and we often spent Saturday nights swapping experiences from our respective villages.
They told us that a friend of theirs was a drummer in a rock group and one weekend they were playing at a festival down in Crakow, a distance of 170 kilometres from their home town, and they set off in the late evening. Some time after dark they nearly ran over a drunken man who was laying with his push bike in the middle of the main Warsaw Cracow road. He was quite unconscious and stinking of vodka and they picked him and the push bike up and put them in the back of the van intending to drop him off at the next town.
However, an argument ensued between the band members and they forgot about their sleeping guest until they were some ninety kilometres further on. They stopped in a small town and attempted to revive the man but he was still out to the world and snoring heavily and so they left him on a park bench with his bike propped up against a nearby tree. Just imagine what this guy would have thought when he woke up! I bet he's still telling his kids -when I was your age I could ride ninety kilometres a night even after two bottles of vodka.
Another story they related to me was something they read in the paper. There had been a family gathering somewhere down south in the mountains in winter and three brothers had attended with their father who died in his sleep the night before they were due to leave. They had apparently discussed transporting the body back home to Gdansk and decided that it would be quicker and cheaper to dress him and take him home on the early train. The paper didn't go into all the details except to say that they managed to get the body into a compartment and laid it down full length on a seat as if he was asleep.
Then, being somewhat uncomfortable with the situation they moved to another compartment where they proceeded to drown their sorrows with a few bottles of vodka. The soporific effect of the vodka ensured that the three of them were sound asleep as the train came into, and went out of their home station and they slept all the way to the end of the line. They were woken by the train cleaning staff and went to collect the body only to find that it had disappeared and a row developed during which the cleaning staff were accused of stealing the corpse and the police were called. The body was found on the track the same day but how it got there wasn't clear until some weeks later.
Two youths had entered the compartment where the apparently sleeping old man was laid out and attempted to lift a heavy suitcase up onto the rack above the body. The suitcase had fallen down onto, as they thought, the sleeping man and when he didn't wake up they shook him, and on finding him dead, presumed that they had killed him and together they threw him out of the window. I read in a recent edition of "Newsweek" that in the town of Stargard "a man chopped off the head of his friend on a dare during a drinking spree". The judge’s comment was "it was a kind of a contest."
It's difficult for the average Westerner to imagine how anybody could possibly become so drunk as to invite a drinking partner to sever his head. But to anyone who's spent a fortnight in a Polish village in winter, it's entirely believable although it is interesting to speculate under which circumstances the decapitation could have occurred. Was it in a drinking establishment where an axe was borrowed from the barman?, in a wood shed, maybe, where the axe was readily at hand? or perhaps the participants were tree fellers drinking alone in the forest.
Imagine it happening in a pub in the Western World:
-Eh Fred, eh Fred. Fred, listen.
-Yeah, wot, I'm lisssnin.
-I dare you to chop off my head.
-Alright, I'll chop off your head.
-No you wouldn't.
-Yes I would.
-Wouldn't.
-Would, bloody would.
-No you wouldn't you gutless bastard - go on, go on then. Lets see you chop off my head - I dare you.
BONK - THWACK...........!!!!
-See, that bloody showed you didn't it? I say didn't it?
Enough material could easily be collected to fill a book on the exploits of drunks in Bocwinka and its neighbouring villages but the reader may be surprised to hear that Russians are considered here to be really serious drinkers - unlike the Poles. A Polish TV documentary on drunkenness in Russia recently showed people who were so hooked on alcohol, and so unable to afford it, that they shaved their heads and rubbed into their scalps a home made alcoholic preparation of floor polish, perfume, anti dandruff shampoo and pepper to simulate the effects of being drunk.
With the exception of Bogdan, who could be seen staggering once a month or so, I think it fair to say that every man in Bocwinka would be said to have a serious drinking problem if he lived in the West. And Bocwinka, I hasten to add, is certainly not an exception. I've often wondered why drunkenness is so prevalent in Poland. At first I was tempted to think it had its origins in the cold climate, to keep the circulation going, but it gets pretty cold in parts of Sweden and Finland and I don't think that farmers in those countries spend much of their time out of action through the effects of alcohol.
Is it Slavic? I don't think so because we've spent a lot of time in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Jugoslavia and whilst I've observed drunkenness on the streets of those countries I've never seen it as prevalent as it manifests itself in Poland. A product of communism? - no light at the end of the tunnel, despair and misery? Not so, because I've read accounts of travellers to Poland going back two hundred years and the writers have seen fit to mention it. Perhaps it's a combination of all these things and more.
In Bocwinka it is no exaggeration to say that a third of the men are drunk once a week in the warmer months and well over half of them are drunk at least twice a week in winter. There is no doubt that they would be drunk every day if they were able to afford it. During our second year in the house we were visited by a delegation of Western European agricultural boffins who were toying with the idea of setting up an EEC funded model farm in the area to show Polish farmers how to become more productive. They were full of questions about Polish farmers, their mentality, how many hours per day did the average farmer spend working at his living, could they work together in co-operatives, were they capable of adapting to change etc. etc.
I told them that the first thing they would have to address was the alcohol problem because, through alcohol, Polish farmers are out of action for at least one day a week, possibly more. It was easy to see that they didn't believe me and they put forward the theory that any farmer facing financial ruin would cut down on his drinking if he was shown a way to earn money. I'm afraid that I was unable to share their optimism and advised them to either teach farmers to drive tractors when under the influence or group them into cooperatives and roster the drinking sessions.
Chapter 6
September came and our water went. I was in the shower one morning when the water slowed to a trickle and then stopped altogether. At first I thought that the pump had packed up but after pulling it to pieces and not being able to get it all back together I went looking for Big Jan the plumber. Unfortunately pumps turned out to be one gap in Big Jan's plumbing knowledge and he suggested I should ask Marek who was always having pump problems and should know how to put one back together. Marek was one of my favourite people in Bocwinka. He was tall, skinny and gaunt looking and always had a sickly look about him, probably because he was an alcoholic. His habit was no secret and he even made jokes about it - it was a fact of his life which he accepted and didn't seem unhappy about.
Drunkenness and alcoholism in Polish villages carry little of the stigma attached to the habit in Western countries but I will return to the subject later in the chapter. Just as I had found Ivan asleep at the milk depot, so I found Marek in the same state on the pavement outside the post office and left a note sticking out of his jacket pocket hoping he'd see it when he woke up.
Bogdan, the village intellectual, found the note and came around the house with it explaining that Marek couldn't read anyway. He asked what was wrong and upon receiving my answer went straight to the well, peered in for a second or two and told me that there was no water in it. I felt stupid for not having looked, like someone who couldn't start his car because he'd run out of petrol, and said I'd get Vladek to bring a tank full with the tractor and dump it down the shaft. Being short of water with only two of us in the house had us worried. Mr Polakowski had told us that the well was inexhaustible when we bought the place. What were we going to do when half a dozen people were staying in the house and taking showers each day?
Bogdan was of the opinion that the bottom had gone, although what this meant I couldn't imagine, and he disappeared returning later with two others and a length of rope. One man went down the well and they bailed every last drop of water out of it and inspected the floor. The wells all over Poland are all filled by seepage from ground water rather than being located over underground streams and sometimes, they said, the bottom will give way and let the contents run away into the earth. However, our bottom looked alright but they lined it with clay to be sure and brought a couple of big container loads of water on the back of a tractor and filled the well.
As time went by we found that we were simply using more water than the well could supply. The locals couldn't understand it, Polakowskis had lived in the house for years and never had a problem, and there were many theories put forward as to why we had developed a water shortage. A group of ladies engaged Alicja in a discussion about it down at the post office one day and concluded that it must be our washing machine but during the discussion it became evident that, by village standards, we were indeed big water users.
-Don't forget that you've got a bath too, one of them had said. -baths use a lot of water. If the pair of you go filling the bath up every month of course you'll have no water.
We already knew that people in the village weren't as familiar with soap and water as we were and we narrowed the water shortage down to this and the fact that people didn't water their gardens as we did - the thinking being that if an ornamental plant couldn't survive unaided, it wasn't worth having. Poland has the least renewable water resources in the whole of Europe and the vast majority of Polish villages have no other water supply than their individual wells, a fact of which we were totally unaware. In fact the best advice anyone at that party in Warsaw could have given us would have been "check the water supply before you buy."
However, Bocwinka was luckier than most villages as we had a vast underground lake beneath us, larger than the entire village, and a communal electric pump. The only problem would be getting the water to the house. We went over to see Vladek about it and he volunteered to bring water every day if necessary in the communal water container which sat on a trailer specially designed to go on the back of both tractor and horse. This was a great relief to us at the time but the next year when we actually had a few guests Vladek proved to be unreliable. His intentions were good but there was no predicting when he'd be drunk and unable to bring the water. Worse still, he'd sometimes attempt to bring water when he was paralytic and on one occasion drove straight through our closed gates, smashing them to firewood, and on up the path exiting through the fence at the other side of the garden before remembering what he'd come for and stopping the tractor.
It was particularly embarrassing on that occasion as we had the ambassador of a Western embassy and his wife staying with us to whom I'd written a letter inviting them to come for a free weekend in the hope that word of our venture would spread around Warsaw's diplomatic community. The ambassador's secretary had telephoned us the week before and one of her questions had been about security. I reassured her by telling her about Misha the guard dog and our security light. "If he's worried about the car being stolen he can park it in our garage and we'll put ours outside." I told her.
On the fateful day the ambassador and his wife were taking breakfast outside on the verandah and Alicja was approaching the table with a tray containing toast and orange juice. I was in the kitchen washing dishes when I heard Vladek's tractor coming up the drive at speed, which was nothing unusual, but there was always a point at which the engine would die and his brakes would squeal. On this day it didn't happen and I lifted my head just in time to see pieces of the shattered gate go flying up the path.
Misha, who'd been sitting in the middle of the drive barked the doggy equivalent of “arrrrrgh fuuuuck” and took off like a chemical reaction with ears flattened and her tail between her legs. This was followed by the ambassadors own rendition of the doggy equivalent of “arrrrrgh fuuuuck” in his native tongue and his wife screamed and damaged her knee on the table as she tried to make off in a hurry. Alicja just stood riveted to the spot with her tray of toast and orange juice in hand and watched Vladek go by in a mud coloured flash as he bounced right through the car park, where the ambassador’s car would have been, and disappeared through a hole in the fence that didn't actually exist up until that point.
Although I could appreciate that this was probably going to be a serious blow to our efforts to attract the "right class of clientele" I was stricken with an attack of the giggles and had to make myself scarce for a while. When at last I felt I could control myself and emerged to apologise to the lucky couple I could feel the laughter welling up inside me again and excused myself saying that I thought I should go and see if the driver was alright. I found Vladek sitting in the ploughed field where the tractor had stopped and we both burst out laughing and rolled around on our backs in stitches. And that's where the ambassador found us.
The peculiar thing about the incident was the publicity it gave us at the embassy down in Warsaw and over the next three months we had half a dozen other couples from the same embassy come to stay with us and they all wanted to see Vladek, his tractor and the newly mended fence. The memory of the expression on the ambassador’s wife's face is now imprinted on my brain and I still suffer from uncontrollable laughter whenever I tell anyone about it.
The end of water carting in this way finally came when Marek, who couldn't be bothered to wait the 30 minutes for the pump to fill the village water container, thought he'd take a short cut by backing the whole trailer and container into our lake where it could fill quicker through the hole in the top. It sank beneath the water and resisted the joint village efforts to pull it out for over a week. At the time our well was nearly empty and I took a trip into town where I bought two hundred metres of hose pipe to connect us direct to the village pump making us independent - or so we thought. Six weeks later the hose pipe was stolen.
But let me return to the every day drinking habits of the average Polish villager. Twelve years ago when we first visited Poland together on holiday I bought a Polish/English travel guide and on page 2 it said "never try to out-drink a Pole." Never was a phrase more appropriate although on that particular trip we stuck to the cities where, though the drinking can be hard, it in no way compares to the drinking habits of village Poles.
I'd already heard the stories - "once you open a bottle of vodka you don't stop until it's finished" and "you're not real friends until you've been drunk together" - but phrases such as these are usually taken at face value and do not prepare the Westerner for a drinking session with a group of villagers. These people don't drink for the taste, don't sit and sip whilst playing cards or talking about how many pigs they're going to sell next year. They drink solely for the alcoholic effect - they drink to get drunk pure and simple.
Vodka, of course, is the drink of the country and no matter what wonderful properties are attributed to this liquid anesthetic, it isn't a tasty drink. Although most Poles claim to be able to tell a good vodka from a bad one, I'm at a loss to see exactly how the connoisseur judges any alcoholic beverage when it only comes into contact with the taste buds for a matter of milliseconds. It's been my experience that if a Polish farmer invites you to drink with him he's actually saying "get drunk with me" and during the 40 or so minutes required to complete the process there will be no comments as to the quality or taste of the drink itself, in fact no appreciation of anything but the effect it has on the senses.
How well I remember comments at Western dinner parties concerning the quality of the wine - "that was a good Claret, full of body" or "I personally prefer a good Barsac to a Sauterne with my desert." And whenever friends were coming to dinner and we were in two minds what wine to buy to go with the food we intended to serve, we'd get a couple of bottles of rose because it went with practically anything. Well, in Poland, vodka is a bit like Rose in that it can, and does, go with anything, at any time and with anyone. It's drunk at weddings, funerals, board meetings, dinner parties and all other social occasions. In Bocwinka it's drunk in cellars, hedgerows, hay barns, outside the post office, on the back of tractors and in the fields at lunch time. Yes, a versatile drink is the vodka, a great social leveler - every man in Bocwinka gets leveled by it, socially or otherwise, at least once a week.
Drunkenness was such an accepted way of life in Bocwinka that I would find myself wondering why they bothered to come up with excuses for their drinking sessions, but they did, and they were surprisingly inventive about it:
International Women's Day:
There was a knock on Eva's door at 8am on this day and there stood six men who'd come straight from the shop after dropping their milk off at the depot. Between them they were carrying 4 bottles of vodka. Eva didn't drink, in fact she hated the stuff.
These guys must have heard that it was International Women's Day on the TV news, discussed it at the morning milk collection and decided to buy a few bottles.
-Good morning Eva my love, says Mishu -we've come to see madam to wish her the very best of health on this day of all days
-Sod off, he hasn't got time to get drunk today. We've got to move the cows to the lower field and fix the fences. Go on, get out.
-Eva my love, we haven't come to see your husband, we've come to see you. Don't you know what day it is? It's International Women's Day and you're an International Woman.
At this point Vladek, who'd been down at the shop himself but hadn't the courage to return at the same time as the lads, arrived home to be told by his wife that under no circumstances were these gentlemen setting foot in the house.
-OK then, said Ivan. -We'll just have a quick one out here on the step to toast your health and we'll be on our way.
Four hours later when Alicja went over to get our milk they were still there, including Vladek, on the step, laying on top of each other like a litter of new born piglets fast asleep.
I was outside in the lane early one May morning picking up the empty vodka bottles which had been thrown into our hedge, when Vladek came past on the tractor with his daily milk delivery. He tooted the horn and I stood up to wave when I noticed that he was steering with one hand and holding a bunch of flowers in the other. I'd never seen this before but thought no more about it until a few minutes later when Marek came past with his horse and cart, two milk churns in the back and a bunch of flowers balanced on top of them.
Something was going on and I went in for a cup of tea and mentioned it to Alicja who said it was probably a religious celebration and they would be putting the flowers on the shrine. The shrine was only 50 metres from our house and could be clearly seen from our upstairs window so I quickly grabbed my camera and went up to see if I could get a shot of some traditional, religious celebration. There was no one at the shrine but as I looked past it, towards the milk depot, I could see about 20 tractors and horse carts parked outside; all the drivers sporting bunches of flowers.
It was Jana, the milk collection lady's, name day and over the next 10 minutes I watched as all the flowers were tied to her bicycle completely obscuring the whole machine. Jana emerged from the building to a roar from the crowd and what I presume was the Polish equivalent of "happy birthday to you" was sung by all present. Then it started. Stan the poacher was the first to pull a bottle from his coat pocket and he held it aloft with a shout. Hands then went for bottles like they were six guns on the street at high noon. By this time Alicja was upstairs with me and we agreed that Stefan and Marek, who'd promised to come around to fell one of our trees, wouldn't be turning up that day.
A couple of hours later I was working in the yard when Vladek & Zenek appeared at the gate absolutely legless with their arms around each others necks. They'd come to a joint decision with regard to the short walk to our house; neither of them could stand on their own so they'd clung together and hobbled up to our gate.
-Peter. We're in trouble.
-I can see that Zenek.
-No, you don't understand. The man who drives the milk tanker is drunk and if he doesn't get it back to the factory the milk will be unsaleable. And he'll lose his job. And we won't get paid for the milk. And....he's got the milk from 5 other villages in there too.
-Oh dear, do you want to use our phone?
-Yes..No. Well... yes but that's not the point. Can Alicja ring the milk factory for us afterwards?
-After what?
-Oh yes. You're a good man Peter. Isn't he a good man Vladek?
-Yes, he's a good man. You're a good man Peter. You're a good worker and you help your wife to cook and... and what? Oh yes, you keep your grass short and you take Misha for walks.
-Issa good dog, Mish Mish's agood dog.
-Big dog, rip the arse off you wouldn't she Vladek?
-Yep, rip the arse off you.
-Eh Peter......you're the only man in the village who's not drunk except for old Miankowski but he can't drive because of his feet.
-Never could bloody drive you stupid sod.
-Just tell me what you’re getting at- I said.
-Oh, You'll have to drive the tanker.
-Christ, I can't drive a bloody great thing like that.
-Yes you can, iss easy. The driver will be with you, he'll show you the gears and everything....You'd be helping a lot of people.
It was stupid, I could have been in all sorts of trouble, but in the end I agreed and I got to drive my first milk tanker while Alicja followed in the car. I was terrified for the whole 12 kilometres to the milk factory and the driver was no use at all, he slept all the way. When we finally arrived at the factory gate there was a man waiting for us; we shook hands, he handed me a present of large lump of cheese in a polythene bag and I got back in the car with Alicja and went home. This was the one, singular event which told the population for miles around that I was a good guy - even though I helped my wife with the cooking and walked the dog - and the next day a gang of men turned out to fell our dead tree and knock our garden into shape.
Drunkenness occasionally has its amusing side and one such occasion occurred when we had our neighbours staying in the house while we were away in Warsaw. We returned to find a half used bottle of vodka inside the dog's kennel and asked everyone who the owner was. Nobody would own up to it but it was a good bet that it belonged to Vladek who'd probably hidden it in the kennel from Eva. Ever since there had been a standing joke in the village about our Misha being a drunk but it was over a year later that we found out a little more about what happened during that trip to Warsaw.
We had a visit from the local police department, two very personable young men who wanted to avail themselves of Alicja's translating abilities. We invited them in and they spent an hour or so moaning about the lack of government funding and then, when we were bosom buddies, told us an interesting story.
-A while back you had your neighbours looking after the place while you were away in Warsaw.
-Yes, that's right.
-Well, they had a bit of a party here and they ran out of food.
-Oh, that's nothing to worry about, we told them they could help themselves to anything in the cupboard while we were away.
-Yes, perhaps so, but they were also looking after your dog weren't they?
-Yes, so?
-Yes....... I don't know if your dog was any thinner when you got back but they were so drunk that they ate two tins of her Pedigree Pal and they didn't know it until the morning when they woke up and saw the picture of the dog on the tin. It's been the talk of the district for a long time but I don't suppose anyone here would have told you. After a pleasant chat they got up to leave and we saw them to the gate at which point, as they opened the car doors, one of them turned and with a smile said -and I hear you're a pretty good milk tanker driver.
We thought the Pedigree Pal story was hilarious and it was a frequent topic of conversation between Alicja & myself over the following fortnight, after which we forgot about it. Forgot about it, that is, until one night when Vladek and Eva paid us a visit and Sky News happened to be on TV. During the commercial break there was an advert for dog food and Vladek said
-That's what you feed Misha on, isn't it?
-Yes but we're going to start cooking up our own stuff for him like you do for your dogs. That way we'll know what goes into it. There's been a lot of controversy about Pedigree Pal on English TV lately. It seems that some of the Asian immigrants there couldn't read the label on the tin and a few of them ate it.
-What's wrong with that, it's good meat isn't it?
-Yes, it probably is but it has preservatives and chemicals in it which react with alcohol and would be illegal to put in human food - dogs don't drink you see, but Asians do.
-Oh?
-Yes, it can take anything up to 18 months before it reacts.
-So what's wrong with them - these Asians?
-Oh, I don't know much about it but a lot of them are in hospital. Apparently it starts with aching joints, elbows, knees and so on and it gets progressively worse the more they drink. The doctors don't know exactly what it is.
-Oh.
I knew that Vladek had had a problem with pains in his right elbow for some weeks and had trouble lifting anything with his right arm and now I reached across the kitchen table to top up his glass. He placed his hand over the top of it saying -no thanks I think that'll do for tonight. Got to be up early in the morning, got a long day in front of us.
It must have been a good fortnight later that I was driving home from town and stopped to pick up Ivan.
-What's wrong with your neighbour (Vladek) then Peter?
-I dunno, is there something wrong with him?
-Well, he's been on the wagon for a hell of a long time, not like him at all is it?
Vladek actually stayed off the drink for a whole month and he was as miserable as sin.
And when he eventually came home drunk one afternoon I saw him standing in the yard outside the house demonstrating to Eva that he could move his arm without pain. Eva was all smiles and glad to have the old Vladek back again as she helped him negotiate the door step into the house. There had apparently been a big drinking session that day and towards the evening a woman who we'd never met before, came to the house in agony asking to be taken to the doctor because every man in the village was too drunk to drive again. She was extremely apologetic and when we asked what the big drinking event was all about she said that a cow had been rescued from drowning in the swamp.
On another occasion I visited the doctor in town and he was fascinated at the thought of a Westerner living in a Polish village. When I told him I was from Bocwinka he told me that he had been in our village only the previous night with the ambulance. -Oh, I said, -nothing too serious I hope?. -No, he replied. -A man got so drunk at a name day celebration that he was sure he was dying. The worst drunk (from the point of view of being permanently drunk) in Bocwinka was Marek. A man of 42 years who looked 65 and whose wife left him because of his drunken habits.
The second winter after we moved to the village he fell into a stupor one night outside our house. It was 22 below zero and he was found some time later with frostbite on his toes. Not long afterwards Alicja and I were driving over to the next village one day when we came up behind a stationary motorbike and as we slowly drove past and looked at the rider we could see that he was going through the motions of riding. Both his feet were on the ground, hands on the handlebars and he was swaying slightly from side to side and looking straight ahead.
-Who was that, asked Alicja. -Don't know, I replied -but if he doesn't move off the road someone's going to drive up he back of him - I thought he was moving when we came up behind him.
When we were coming home forty minutes later he was still there, still going through the motions, but facing in the other direction. I told Vladek about it the next time I saw him. -Oh that's the forester from Borki - he was drunk and Jurek and Adam came past, stopped the tractor and turned him around for a laugh.
-But how did he get there?, I asked.
-Don't know but he's always doing it. He gets drunk and rides his bike and then just stops and sort of sleeps it off with his eyes open like a fish - never gets off the bike. A couple of years ago he had his headlight stolen while he was still sitting on it.
Halina and Ryszard, the couple we had been to see on the day we saw the Borki forester and his motorbike, were a couple of university educated drop-outs from Warsaw who became our best friends but were regarded as weirdoes by the local population. We used to see them every week and after living in the area for six years they had a fund of funny stories to relate and we often spent Saturday nights swapping experiences from our respective villages.
They told us that a friend of theirs was a drummer in a rock group and one weekend they were playing at a festival down in Crakow, a distance of 170 kilometres from their home town, and they set off in the late evening. Some time after dark they nearly ran over a drunken man who was laying with his push bike in the middle of the main Warsaw Cracow road. He was quite unconscious and stinking of vodka and they picked him and the push bike up and put them in the back of the van intending to drop him off at the next town.
However, an argument ensued between the band members and they forgot about their sleeping guest until they were some ninety kilometres further on. They stopped in a small town and attempted to revive the man but he was still out to the world and snoring heavily and so they left him on a park bench with his bike propped up against a nearby tree. Just imagine what this guy would have thought when he woke up! I bet he's still telling his kids -when I was your age I could ride ninety kilometres a night even after two bottles of vodka.
Another story they related to me was something they read in the paper. There had been a family gathering somewhere down south in the mountains in winter and three brothers had attended with their father who died in his sleep the night before they were due to leave. They had apparently discussed transporting the body back home to Gdansk and decided that it would be quicker and cheaper to dress him and take him home on the early train. The paper didn't go into all the details except to say that they managed to get the body into a compartment and laid it down full length on a seat as if he was asleep.
Then, being somewhat uncomfortable with the situation they moved to another compartment where they proceeded to drown their sorrows with a few bottles of vodka. The soporific effect of the vodka ensured that the three of them were sound asleep as the train came into, and went out of their home station and they slept all the way to the end of the line. They were woken by the train cleaning staff and went to collect the body only to find that it had disappeared and a row developed during which the cleaning staff were accused of stealing the corpse and the police were called. The body was found on the track the same day but how it got there wasn't clear until some weeks later.
Two youths had entered the compartment where the apparently sleeping old man was laid out and attempted to lift a heavy suitcase up onto the rack above the body. The suitcase had fallen down onto, as they thought, the sleeping man and when he didn't wake up they shook him, and on finding him dead, presumed that they had killed him and together they threw him out of the window. I read in a recent edition of "Newsweek" that in the town of Stargard "a man chopped off the head of his friend on a dare during a drinking spree". The judge’s comment was "it was a kind of a contest."
It's difficult for the average Westerner to imagine how anybody could possibly become so drunk as to invite a drinking partner to sever his head. But to anyone who's spent a fortnight in a Polish village in winter, it's entirely believable although it is interesting to speculate under which circumstances the decapitation could have occurred. Was it in a drinking establishment where an axe was borrowed from the barman?, in a wood shed, maybe, where the axe was readily at hand? or perhaps the participants were tree fellers drinking alone in the forest.
Imagine it happening in a pub in the Western World:
-Eh Fred, eh Fred. Fred, listen.
-Yeah, wot, I'm lisssnin.
-I dare you to chop off my head.
-Alright, I'll chop off your head.
-No you wouldn't.
-Yes I would.
-Wouldn't.
-Would, bloody would.
-No you wouldn't you gutless bastard - go on, go on then. Lets see you chop off my head - I dare you.
BONK - THWACK...........!!!!
-See, that bloody showed you didn't it? I say didn't it?
Enough material could easily be collected to fill a book on the exploits of drunks in Bocwinka and its neighbouring villages but the reader may be surprised to hear that Russians are considered here to be really serious drinkers - unlike the Poles. A Polish TV documentary on drunkenness in Russia recently showed people who were so hooked on alcohol, and so unable to afford it, that they shaved their heads and rubbed into their scalps a home made alcoholic preparation of floor polish, perfume, anti dandruff shampoo and pepper to simulate the effects of being drunk.
With the exception of Bogdan, who could be seen staggering once a month or so, I think it fair to say that every man in Bocwinka would be said to have a serious drinking problem if he lived in the West. And Bocwinka, I hasten to add, is certainly not an exception. I've often wondered why drunkenness is so prevalent in Poland. At first I was tempted to think it had its origins in the cold climate, to keep the circulation going, but it gets pretty cold in parts of Sweden and Finland and I don't think that farmers in those countries spend much of their time out of action through the effects of alcohol.
Is it Slavic? I don't think so because we've spent a lot of time in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia and Jugoslavia and whilst I've observed drunkenness on the streets of those countries I've never seen it as prevalent as it manifests itself in Poland. A product of communism? - no light at the end of the tunnel, despair and misery? Not so, because I've read accounts of travellers to Poland going back two hundred years and the writers have seen fit to mention it. Perhaps it's a combination of all these things and more.
In Bocwinka it is no exaggeration to say that a third of the men are drunk once a week in the warmer months and well over half of them are drunk at least twice a week in winter. There is no doubt that they would be drunk every day if they were able to afford it. During our second year in the house we were visited by a delegation of Western European agricultural boffins who were toying with the idea of setting up an EEC funded model farm in the area to show Polish farmers how to become more productive. They were full of questions about Polish farmers, their mentality, how many hours per day did the average farmer spend working at his living, could they work together in co-operatives, were they capable of adapting to change etc. etc.
I told them that the first thing they would have to address was the alcohol problem because, through alcohol, Polish farmers are out of action for at least one day a week, possibly more. It was easy to see that they didn't believe me and they put forward the theory that any farmer facing financial ruin would cut down on his drinking if he was shown a way to earn money. I'm afraid that I was unable to share their optimism and advised them to either teach farmers to drive tractors when under the influence or group them into cooperatives and roster the drinking sessions.
Chapter 7
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter Seven
All too soon came winter - and it was only autumn. Maybe it wasn't winter to the locals but it was winter to us and by the second week in October, when my daughter Sarah came to visit us from Australia, we were already wondering how we were going to stand the next few months of intense cold. Autumn had been beautiful but in the space of three weeks the leaves on the trees had changed colour and fallen. We'd been saving autumn to go mushrooming and go for long walks in the forest but suddenly it was all over and it was winter in everything but name.
The winter weather came overnight. One day the temperature had been plus eight degrees Celsius and the next it was down to minus ten. The wind came with it too, an east wind sweeping in from the steppes that made minus ten degrees feel colder than minus twenty on a still day. It was a cold snap which lasted for only six days but made us realise just how cold, cold could really be. Expressions like bone chilling and frozen to the marrow had, up until then, been nothing more than that - expressions. But now I knew that I'd never been really cold in my life and I knew too that mid winter was still weeks away.
The cold snap ended as quickly as it had begun, the thermometer went up to minus four during the day and the wind stopped completely. It was getting ready to snow. Alicja opened her eyes at around six one morning and seeing a new lightness coming through the curtains got up to investigate.
-Peter, Peter, wake up quick. Come and see.
-What's wrong?
-Everything is covered in white as far as you can see, all the houses, the fields, everything.
-Perhaps god’s finally managed to ejaculate.
The World outside was covered by half a metre of the cold wet white stuff and Misha was in her element. It was her first snow and she was a snow dog. I don't know how she knew she was supposed to be a snow dog but she did. It was already programmed into her.
As soon as I let her out of the house she ran around in circles stopping every now and then to push her snout down into the snow, rolling on her back and then leaping to her feet again to continue lapping the garden. She kept this up until exhausted and then slowly began to excavate a tunnel which she lived in for nearly four months refusing to enter the house or use the kennel I had spent so much time and effort in constructing. Sometimes there would be heavy snow falls while she was in her tunnel but she always managed to dig herself out and she did high speed circles in the garden every day probably to warm herself up before disappearing underground once more.
Shortly after the first snow of the season I was working in the barn watching Misha's antics from the window when Marek came around to see me. He was unshaven, half cut as usual and had obviously peed his pants. It was a sad sight. A man still in his early forties but with a face so wrinkled that anyone would have put him at sixty. His hair was all over the place, his forehead grazed, no doubt, from falling over in the road, one front was tooth missing and one of his coat pockets was hanging off. By this time I'd installed a wood burning stove in the barn to allow me to work in the cold weather and I had a kettle on the go. I lifted the boiling kettle to make him a cup of black coffee while he took his coat off and stood swaying with his back to the stove with me watching closely in case he should fall and burn himself.
I poured the coffee and turned to hand it to him when I noticed that he was sporting a new top. Emblazoned across it in English were the words "Exiting Designs For Trendy Young Girls." I've always been a compulsive giggler and I'm afraid the situation got the better of me. He didn't know what was written on his top and it was no use trying to explain to him what it said, he was too far gone, but I put the coffee down on a stack of wood and laughed until tears came. Marek was in fits too but, of course, he didn't know what for. Marek had come to see if I'd finished with his saw bench which had been standing in our yard for a month or more and I asked him if I could keep it for another two days. I wanted to saw up our old garden fence which had been stacked up outside the animal house ever since Ivan had put up our new fences. I now had a heater in the barn and wanted to burn the old fence in it to keep warm.
He agreed and as I was busy he said he'd find someone to saw it all up for me -probably cost you two bottles or so but you can sort it out with them when they arrive.
The someone, a young couple, turned up shortly thereafter and I showed them what I wanted done and left them to it, adding that they were welcome to come into the barn to warm themselves up whenever they liked and to have a cup of tea. I knew the girl, her name was Ania and she was the daughter of Gienek who lived only four doors away. I'd never seen the boy before and he introduced himself as Andrzej. He was from Zywy, a village about five kilometres away. We agreed on a price for the job (they didn't want vodka) and they set to, Andrzej sawing and Ania bringing the wood up to the saw bench for him. They quickly had a system worked out and were making very fast progress as I wandered in and out of the outbuildings looking for any other old wood to add to the pile to be sawed. I'd been back in the barn for a while when they both came in holding an old coffee table and a small book shelf and they asked me if these items were really to be sawn up. It was all rubbish as far as I was concerned and I said that if they wanted them, they were most welcome to take them home. They thanked me and stayed for a cup of tea and a warm by the fire.
-You must be freezing, I said.
-No, it's not too bad, we're used to it. This isn't really cold at all. You wait until January, that's when it gets cold. Now you can still work in this weather.
They went back outside and worked for an hour or so and I heard the saw bench slowing to a stop and put the kettle back on the stove expecting them to come in for another cup of tea but as they didn't appear I presumed that they'd gone home for lunch.
All morning Alicja and Sarah had been out shopping in town and were unaware that Marek had been to the house or that the old fence was being reduced to firewood but now I could hear the car coming up the drive and Misha bark her greeting so I knew that they were home.
Shortly afterwards Sarah came into the barn and put the wood bucket down on the floor.
-Kitchen stove going out is it?, I enquired.
-Dad......
-What?
-There's someone having it off in the wood shed.
-What do you mean, having it off?
-Having it off, you know, having it off.
-What, you mean?.... they can't be, it's 15 below zero out there.
-Christ Dad I'm old enough to know what two people having it off looks like. They are, they're doing it in the wood shed. Do you want me to draw you a picture or what?
I looked around for a pencil but decided against it.
-Well Dad, the kitchen fire's going to go out soon and I'm not going in the wood shed again to get wood. Here, have a wood bucket. Lunch will be ready in ten minutes.
The saw didn't start up again for quite some time and when it did only Andrzej was there working by himself. Ania, I presume had been too embarrassed to hang around after being discovered by Sarah. The following day they both turned up again and started work and had been at it for a couple of hours when Marek came around again with Gienek, the girls father, to see if they'd finished with the saw bench. I shook hands with Gienek and nodding towards the old coffee table and bookcase which were still standing outside the wood shed, I said
-They asked if they could have those couple of bits of furniture, are they getting married?
-No, they're good mates those two, always on the look-out for a bit of work, they work really well together too. Known each other since they were small kids. No they'll already have a customer for your old bits of furniture I shouldn't wonder. Married? no, not them.
Then looking over towards Andrzej, Gienek shouted above the din of the saw -He wants to know if you're getting married? They both laughed and Andrzej carried on working.
It was a June wedding and when the baby, a boy, was born, Alicja calculated that, in all probability, it was conceived in our wood shed. -What did they call him?, I asked when I heard the news. -Probably Woody like Woody Allen, was Sarah's comment. But the June wedding was still a long way off and we hadn't yet worked out how we were going to cope with winter. We consulted Vladek and Eva about how much wood we'd need for heating to see us through until spring. We also went into town and spent a lot more than we intended on winter clothes for we'd come to realise that the winter clothes we already had were going to be inadequate. We had anti freeze for the car and an electric heat gun sent up from Warsaw. The heat gun was meant for stripping paint but I thought it would be just the thing for thawing out car door locks and frozen pipes.
On Eva's advice we bought two yards of cotton wool which she told us was the best thing for blocking chinks around windows where the cold draughts could come in and for the front and back door keyholes. When winter hit we found that she had been right about the keyholes. An icy blast came through them when the wind was in the right direction and on days when there was freezing rain the keys would become frozen in the locks if left for an hour or so. A plug of cotton wool smeared in Vaseline was all that was required, it was easy to remove and formed a perfect seal.
I was constantly amazed at the effect that Western television commercials and ideas exerted in a place where, until a few years ago, television was used primarily as an instrument of propaganda. Soon after the fall of communism a whole new batch of voiced over Western soap operas and situation comedies started to appear on Polish TV as well as imported pop music video clips and a host of washing powder commercials. Something else that came with it all were the Western style game shows and quiz shows which, for Poles, was something new, a concept in TV entertainment which didn't exist before.
The most popular of the quiz games was "The Wheel of Fortune" a game in which three contestants guess words & phrases from a blank panel which lights up with an extra letter each time a contestant guesses correctly. This program became extremely popular in Poland and everyone in our village watched it - and I mean everyone. It has even effected the traditional pattern of work for the farmers who will make sure they are at home for their evening meal when the Wheel of Fortune is showing, returning afterwards to finish whatever they were doing.
For decades, while hay making was on, they worked until it was too dark to see and then went for their evening meal but this time honoured tradition changed when the Wheel of Fortune made its appearance on TV. Grass cutting & turning, as well as harvesting, has always been a communal event because it has to be done while the weather is favourable and no man could handle the amount of work on his own. They work one man's field one day and another man's the next. But when half the crew say they're going home to watch Wheel of Fortune, there's not much the others can do but follow suit.
So, what's so appealing about Wheel of Fortune? They give away cars!! They don't give away BMWs or even Opel Cadets on the Polish version of the game, just locally produced cars but still, no TV program ever gave away so much as a bicycle pump through all those years of communism. It fascinated the population of Bocwinka to see seemingly ordinary people winning all sorts of goodies, including the cars, for guessing a few simple words & phrases that they themselves could get right half the time before the contestants managed it. Of course there's a bit more to it than that; the contestants are having to perform under a certain amount of pressure and can't see the overall view of the game as well as the viewer at home. But it looks easy.
Stan the poacher's wife Ursula came around the house just after the post had been delivered one morning to ask if we'd be in that evening because she had something important to discuss and while she was sitting at the kitchen table, the school teacher’s wife arrived too. The school teacher's wife was a little uneasy when she saw we had company and said that she wanted to ask a favour but she'd come back later. The afternoon brought two more "appointments" and we couldn't figure out what was going on. Misha had managed to jump the fence for the first time that week and perhaps she'd been after all these people's chickens?
We were curious but also just a little concerned that we may have upset the whole village somehow and it was in the back of our minds all day. Folks in the village are religious and we had a small shrine on our land which some of the older people used instead of a church on Sundays & religious holidays. I kept the grass down around the perimeter of it and the last time I'd cut the grass I'd missed with the scythe and accidentally trimmed a small shrub. Perhaps it was this? Ursula turned up in the evening while we were having dinner and we were relieved that at least she didn't have any complaints. She had written off for an application form to appear as a contestant on the Wheel of Fortune and it had arrived earlier in the day. There were twenty questions with multiple choice answers on the form and she wanted some help with it.
Now, compared with questionnaire, the game on TV was an absolute doddle. There were questions about geography, Greek mythology, film stars, political events, dates of famous battles and all manner of things.
Alicja took a look at it and began to translate it for me. The first question was "What was the name of the dog belonging to the boatman who ferried the dead across the river Styx?" I just happened to know it because I used to live close to a naval base which bore the same name as this dog. Ursula was most impressed but we couldn't answer all of the questions and we told her we'd look the rest up in the encyclopedia and get back to her.
-Where is the river Styx anyway?
-Oh it's just a story, it probably never existed in real life.
-Is it a Polish story?
-No it's an old Greek story actually.
-Oh......that's a hard one then. I mean, if you hadn't read the book you wouldn't know the answer would you?
-No, I suppose not.
-Do you think the book would be in our school library?
-No, I wouldn't think so Ursula.
-So not many people would get it right then. I mean, people here, in Bocwinka?
-No, I suppose not.
-Good. So you'll get back to me tomorrow then? Don't tell anyone I'm trying to get on the Wheel of Fortune though will you?
Over the next week a third of the adult population of our little village came around to our house with these application forms and each person swore us to secrecy. In one case a husband & wife came separately and made us promise not to tell their other halves. Apparently there had been an announcement on the program that contestants were needed and the address given. Almost everyone in our village, and probably every other village in Poland, had sent off for an application form and they had all arrived in the space of a couple of days. By the end of the week I was so used to answering the same questions that people came to look upon me as a latter day Einstein as I rattled off the answers to questions they didn't understand. Zenek came around straight after morning milking having told the rest of the men at the milk collection depot that I'd asked for his advice about growing vegetables.
-Why do you think they're asking all these difficult questions? You don't have to answer questions like that when you're playing the game on telly.
Now, Zenek was a nice bloke, very polite & helpful and when it came to fixing agricultural machinery there weren't many farmers anywhere who could hold a candle to him (in fact there'd probably have been an explosion if anyone had) but he wasn't what you'd call an intellectual giant.
-Well Zenek, I think it's because they don't want, er, um, people on the program who are a bit...shall we say....um.....well, you know, a bit thick if you know what I mean.
-Oh well, I can understand that. Some of them are right idiots if you ask me. They couldn't possibly have answered these questions themselves, they must have had help,... some of them.
-Oh, really? I haven't seen the program myself.
-Yeah, right thicko's some of 'em.
Eva from next door came with her application form and sat in the kitchen.
-I'm going to be on the Wheel of Fortune you know. All I've got to do is answer a few questions and then they'll send me an invitation and I'll have to go down to Warsaw for an audition. Can I borrow some of your clothes Alicja, just for the day, well, just for the show?
-Yes, of course.
She looked at the application form.
-Where's Easter Island? What's a hypot...hypo...hypton....Here, what does this say?
- Hypotenuse.
-Oh...oh. What's that then? I know...... they're those big grey things that live in Africa or somewhere.
-Elephants?
-No no. No...no. Not Elephants, those things with the one horn. Or have they got horns? They stand around in mud all day with birds on their backs, I think it's in Africa.
-No Eva. I think you'll find it's something to do with triangles or something. Look at the three answers they give you to choose from, does it say anything about triangles or animals?
-No, but I'm sure it's an animal - they whiz their tails around when they're having a shit. Anyway, let’s forget that one. There's one about Ajax. You should know this one because it's made in the West isn't it? They sell it in town now but these answers you choose from are a bit funny - answer B says about Paris. Is that where they make it? Is it French?
-Let's have a look at the paper. No, this one's from an old Greek story about Troy which they taught us in school. Ajax and Paris were people. Why don't you leave the paper with us and we'll fill it out and let you have it back?
-That's a bit bloody stupid isn't it - who reads old Greek stories, what's wrong with Polish stories? Do you think all those people who go on the program read old Greek stories?
-Dunno' Eva, but anyway we'll let you have this paper back when we've filled it out.
-OK, good idea.
-What will you do if you win a car then Eva?
-I'd sell the car, wouldn't keep the car. No, everybody in the village would want to use it. I'd sell it and I'd go on holiday - wouldn't take Vladek with me - he wouldn't come anyway, he'd have to do the milking. When you've got animals you can't both go away, not for any length of time.
-Where would you go?
-Oh, I think I'd go to where the sand is........
-Sand?. You mean the desert?
-No, - the sand and the palm trees. You know, Africa or somewhere like on "Miami Vice". I'd sit around the swimming pool all day drinking vodka with stuff in it
-Stuff, what kind of stuff?
-Oh I don't know, that stuff they mix in with those long spoons.
Bogdan was the fifth to appear at the door with his piece of paper. I liked Bogdan because he was a thinker and the only farmer who ever broke with tradition and was prepared to take a chance with a crop never before grown in the area.
-I wonder if you'd be so kind as to help me with the answers to a few questions? I've decided to apply as a contestant on the Wheel of Fortune and I have to answer a few general knowledge questions to qualify.
-Sure Bogdan, take a seat.
-I'd appreciate it if you'd keep it confidential though, I'm not telling anyone about it.
-Yes, I quite understand.
-I think I stand a good chance of getting on the program if I can get all these answers right because I've studied it and I can guess most of the words on the board before the contestants and I have all my teeth.
-You have all your teeth?
-Yes, if you watch the program you'll see that they never have anyone on there who's got a tooth missing.
I wouldn't have thought about it but he was right, you don't see people on TV game shows, or any other TV show for that matter, who don't have a full compliment of teeth. This ruled out a large percentage of the village population of Poland and certainly more than half of the people in Bocwinka. By far the most amusing of our visitors was Mr Miankowski the husband of Mother Miankowska the village herbalist. He was thought to be in his late seventies although he claimed not to know his date of birth and this, it was said, was intentional.
Apparently some twenty years ago the local records library burned down and a census had to be taken to re establish the lost information. Old Miankowski is said to have bought a walking stick, developed a limp and aged 15 years overnight. When the census was completed he was immediately put on an old age pension and had never worked on the farm since. His eyesight was poor and he couldn't read the questionnaire so Alicja read it out. We went through the same old questions in the same old order until it came to the one about Ajax. We were quite taken aback when he knew the answer - in fact he knew the whole story of Troy.
I asked him where he came across this story and we learned that he'd been classically educated in Lvov before the war. I told him that we'd visited Troy and enjoyed the experience.
-I don't believe in archeology, he said.
-No, why not?
-Because it's so easy for them to make mistakes, assumptions.
-Oh, I don't know, it's a fairly sophisticated business these days.
-Well' let me tell you a story young man. When we first came here after the war the German population had left and me and my friend Alexander, God rest his soul, were the first here - Bocwinka was deserted. We were given houses and told to start farming.
Well, we looked around for the best pieces of equipment and started hauling them to our houses but there were no horses. The Russians had taken all the good horses and sent them off to Russia but there were a few lame ones around which had gone wild. Over the weeks Alexander and I rounded up a lot of them and we looked after them to see if, with a bit of good treatment, they'd come good again. Anyway, 13 horses were too far gone and, one by one, had to be put down. We discovered a great big dry well up near the school which had originally been the well for the whole village. There were only the two of us and we lead each horse up to the well and stood it so that when we shot it, it would fall down the well
-Interesting, do go on Mr Miankowski.
-Well, just imagine. In a thousand years time when some archeologist digs it up they'll say that it's two thousand years old and it was the sacrificial burial place of some tribe of horse worshippers.
He'd just flattened any argument concerning archeology I could possibly have put forward.
-If I do get to be on the program do you perhaps have a pair of strong glasses I could borrow? It's my eyesight you see. I wouldn't be able to see the board
-How do you watch the program on TV then?
-Oh, I use two pairs, mine and my wife’s.
-I see you out and about in the horse & cart though?
-Don't have to look when I'm in the cart - old Anton (the horse) knows the way around.
-What if you meet a car down at the cross roads?
-I've still got my hearing remember but anyway Anton would just stay in one spot until it had gone.
It took the best part of a fortnight before we were free of visitors and another week before we were free of radishes. Almost all of the Wheel of Fortune candidates brought us a bunch of radishes and we ended up having to throw most of them out. Radishes, I suppose, are the easiest plants to grow in the garden but there's nothing you can do with them except eat them raw. We went through our cook books searching in vain for quiche radishe, radish a la King, radish soufflé or radish any bloody thing. But no, when God, in his infinite wisdom, created the radish he couldn't have foreseen that we'd invent the cooker.
As for the Wheel of Fortune, nobody from Bocwinka even made it to an audition. I think our geographical location was enough to put the producers off. One look at the map would have told them all they needed to know about Bocwinka and the people in it.
Chapter Seven
All too soon came winter - and it was only autumn. Maybe it wasn't winter to the locals but it was winter to us and by the second week in October, when my daughter Sarah came to visit us from Australia, we were already wondering how we were going to stand the next few months of intense cold. Autumn had been beautiful but in the space of three weeks the leaves on the trees had changed colour and fallen. We'd been saving autumn to go mushrooming and go for long walks in the forest but suddenly it was all over and it was winter in everything but name.
The winter weather came overnight. One day the temperature had been plus eight degrees Celsius and the next it was down to minus ten. The wind came with it too, an east wind sweeping in from the steppes that made minus ten degrees feel colder than minus twenty on a still day. It was a cold snap which lasted for only six days but made us realise just how cold, cold could really be. Expressions like bone chilling and frozen to the marrow had, up until then, been nothing more than that - expressions. But now I knew that I'd never been really cold in my life and I knew too that mid winter was still weeks away.
The cold snap ended as quickly as it had begun, the thermometer went up to minus four during the day and the wind stopped completely. It was getting ready to snow. Alicja opened her eyes at around six one morning and seeing a new lightness coming through the curtains got up to investigate.
-Peter, Peter, wake up quick. Come and see.
-What's wrong?
-Everything is covered in white as far as you can see, all the houses, the fields, everything.
-Perhaps god’s finally managed to ejaculate.
The World outside was covered by half a metre of the cold wet white stuff and Misha was in her element. It was her first snow and she was a snow dog. I don't know how she knew she was supposed to be a snow dog but she did. It was already programmed into her.
As soon as I let her out of the house she ran around in circles stopping every now and then to push her snout down into the snow, rolling on her back and then leaping to her feet again to continue lapping the garden. She kept this up until exhausted and then slowly began to excavate a tunnel which she lived in for nearly four months refusing to enter the house or use the kennel I had spent so much time and effort in constructing. Sometimes there would be heavy snow falls while she was in her tunnel but she always managed to dig herself out and she did high speed circles in the garden every day probably to warm herself up before disappearing underground once more.
Shortly after the first snow of the season I was working in the barn watching Misha's antics from the window when Marek came around to see me. He was unshaven, half cut as usual and had obviously peed his pants. It was a sad sight. A man still in his early forties but with a face so wrinkled that anyone would have put him at sixty. His hair was all over the place, his forehead grazed, no doubt, from falling over in the road, one front was tooth missing and one of his coat pockets was hanging off. By this time I'd installed a wood burning stove in the barn to allow me to work in the cold weather and I had a kettle on the go. I lifted the boiling kettle to make him a cup of black coffee while he took his coat off and stood swaying with his back to the stove with me watching closely in case he should fall and burn himself.
I poured the coffee and turned to hand it to him when I noticed that he was sporting a new top. Emblazoned across it in English were the words "Exiting Designs For Trendy Young Girls." I've always been a compulsive giggler and I'm afraid the situation got the better of me. He didn't know what was written on his top and it was no use trying to explain to him what it said, he was too far gone, but I put the coffee down on a stack of wood and laughed until tears came. Marek was in fits too but, of course, he didn't know what for. Marek had come to see if I'd finished with his saw bench which had been standing in our yard for a month or more and I asked him if I could keep it for another two days. I wanted to saw up our old garden fence which had been stacked up outside the animal house ever since Ivan had put up our new fences. I now had a heater in the barn and wanted to burn the old fence in it to keep warm.
He agreed and as I was busy he said he'd find someone to saw it all up for me -probably cost you two bottles or so but you can sort it out with them when they arrive.
The someone, a young couple, turned up shortly thereafter and I showed them what I wanted done and left them to it, adding that they were welcome to come into the barn to warm themselves up whenever they liked and to have a cup of tea. I knew the girl, her name was Ania and she was the daughter of Gienek who lived only four doors away. I'd never seen the boy before and he introduced himself as Andrzej. He was from Zywy, a village about five kilometres away. We agreed on a price for the job (they didn't want vodka) and they set to, Andrzej sawing and Ania bringing the wood up to the saw bench for him. They quickly had a system worked out and were making very fast progress as I wandered in and out of the outbuildings looking for any other old wood to add to the pile to be sawed. I'd been back in the barn for a while when they both came in holding an old coffee table and a small book shelf and they asked me if these items were really to be sawn up. It was all rubbish as far as I was concerned and I said that if they wanted them, they were most welcome to take them home. They thanked me and stayed for a cup of tea and a warm by the fire.
-You must be freezing, I said.
-No, it's not too bad, we're used to it. This isn't really cold at all. You wait until January, that's when it gets cold. Now you can still work in this weather.
They went back outside and worked for an hour or so and I heard the saw bench slowing to a stop and put the kettle back on the stove expecting them to come in for another cup of tea but as they didn't appear I presumed that they'd gone home for lunch.
All morning Alicja and Sarah had been out shopping in town and were unaware that Marek had been to the house or that the old fence was being reduced to firewood but now I could hear the car coming up the drive and Misha bark her greeting so I knew that they were home.
Shortly afterwards Sarah came into the barn and put the wood bucket down on the floor.
-Kitchen stove going out is it?, I enquired.
-Dad......
-What?
-There's someone having it off in the wood shed.
-What do you mean, having it off?
-Having it off, you know, having it off.
-What, you mean?.... they can't be, it's 15 below zero out there.
-Christ Dad I'm old enough to know what two people having it off looks like. They are, they're doing it in the wood shed. Do you want me to draw you a picture or what?
I looked around for a pencil but decided against it.
-Well Dad, the kitchen fire's going to go out soon and I'm not going in the wood shed again to get wood. Here, have a wood bucket. Lunch will be ready in ten minutes.
The saw didn't start up again for quite some time and when it did only Andrzej was there working by himself. Ania, I presume had been too embarrassed to hang around after being discovered by Sarah. The following day they both turned up again and started work and had been at it for a couple of hours when Marek came around again with Gienek, the girls father, to see if they'd finished with the saw bench. I shook hands with Gienek and nodding towards the old coffee table and bookcase which were still standing outside the wood shed, I said
-They asked if they could have those couple of bits of furniture, are they getting married?
-No, they're good mates those two, always on the look-out for a bit of work, they work really well together too. Known each other since they were small kids. No they'll already have a customer for your old bits of furniture I shouldn't wonder. Married? no, not them.
Then looking over towards Andrzej, Gienek shouted above the din of the saw -He wants to know if you're getting married? They both laughed and Andrzej carried on working.
It was a June wedding and when the baby, a boy, was born, Alicja calculated that, in all probability, it was conceived in our wood shed. -What did they call him?, I asked when I heard the news. -Probably Woody like Woody Allen, was Sarah's comment. But the June wedding was still a long way off and we hadn't yet worked out how we were going to cope with winter. We consulted Vladek and Eva about how much wood we'd need for heating to see us through until spring. We also went into town and spent a lot more than we intended on winter clothes for we'd come to realise that the winter clothes we already had were going to be inadequate. We had anti freeze for the car and an electric heat gun sent up from Warsaw. The heat gun was meant for stripping paint but I thought it would be just the thing for thawing out car door locks and frozen pipes.
On Eva's advice we bought two yards of cotton wool which she told us was the best thing for blocking chinks around windows where the cold draughts could come in and for the front and back door keyholes. When winter hit we found that she had been right about the keyholes. An icy blast came through them when the wind was in the right direction and on days when there was freezing rain the keys would become frozen in the locks if left for an hour or so. A plug of cotton wool smeared in Vaseline was all that was required, it was easy to remove and formed a perfect seal.
I was constantly amazed at the effect that Western television commercials and ideas exerted in a place where, until a few years ago, television was used primarily as an instrument of propaganda. Soon after the fall of communism a whole new batch of voiced over Western soap operas and situation comedies started to appear on Polish TV as well as imported pop music video clips and a host of washing powder commercials. Something else that came with it all were the Western style game shows and quiz shows which, for Poles, was something new, a concept in TV entertainment which didn't exist before.
The most popular of the quiz games was "The Wheel of Fortune" a game in which three contestants guess words & phrases from a blank panel which lights up with an extra letter each time a contestant guesses correctly. This program became extremely popular in Poland and everyone in our village watched it - and I mean everyone. It has even effected the traditional pattern of work for the farmers who will make sure they are at home for their evening meal when the Wheel of Fortune is showing, returning afterwards to finish whatever they were doing.
For decades, while hay making was on, they worked until it was too dark to see and then went for their evening meal but this time honoured tradition changed when the Wheel of Fortune made its appearance on TV. Grass cutting & turning, as well as harvesting, has always been a communal event because it has to be done while the weather is favourable and no man could handle the amount of work on his own. They work one man's field one day and another man's the next. But when half the crew say they're going home to watch Wheel of Fortune, there's not much the others can do but follow suit.
So, what's so appealing about Wheel of Fortune? They give away cars!! They don't give away BMWs or even Opel Cadets on the Polish version of the game, just locally produced cars but still, no TV program ever gave away so much as a bicycle pump through all those years of communism. It fascinated the population of Bocwinka to see seemingly ordinary people winning all sorts of goodies, including the cars, for guessing a few simple words & phrases that they themselves could get right half the time before the contestants managed it. Of course there's a bit more to it than that; the contestants are having to perform under a certain amount of pressure and can't see the overall view of the game as well as the viewer at home. But it looks easy.
Stan the poacher's wife Ursula came around the house just after the post had been delivered one morning to ask if we'd be in that evening because she had something important to discuss and while she was sitting at the kitchen table, the school teacher’s wife arrived too. The school teacher's wife was a little uneasy when she saw we had company and said that she wanted to ask a favour but she'd come back later. The afternoon brought two more "appointments" and we couldn't figure out what was going on. Misha had managed to jump the fence for the first time that week and perhaps she'd been after all these people's chickens?
We were curious but also just a little concerned that we may have upset the whole village somehow and it was in the back of our minds all day. Folks in the village are religious and we had a small shrine on our land which some of the older people used instead of a church on Sundays & religious holidays. I kept the grass down around the perimeter of it and the last time I'd cut the grass I'd missed with the scythe and accidentally trimmed a small shrub. Perhaps it was this? Ursula turned up in the evening while we were having dinner and we were relieved that at least she didn't have any complaints. She had written off for an application form to appear as a contestant on the Wheel of Fortune and it had arrived earlier in the day. There were twenty questions with multiple choice answers on the form and she wanted some help with it.
Now, compared with questionnaire, the game on TV was an absolute doddle. There were questions about geography, Greek mythology, film stars, political events, dates of famous battles and all manner of things.
Alicja took a look at it and began to translate it for me. The first question was "What was the name of the dog belonging to the boatman who ferried the dead across the river Styx?" I just happened to know it because I used to live close to a naval base which bore the same name as this dog. Ursula was most impressed but we couldn't answer all of the questions and we told her we'd look the rest up in the encyclopedia and get back to her.
-Where is the river Styx anyway?
-Oh it's just a story, it probably never existed in real life.
-Is it a Polish story?
-No it's an old Greek story actually.
-Oh......that's a hard one then. I mean, if you hadn't read the book you wouldn't know the answer would you?
-No, I suppose not.
-Do you think the book would be in our school library?
-No, I wouldn't think so Ursula.
-So not many people would get it right then. I mean, people here, in Bocwinka?
-No, I suppose not.
-Good. So you'll get back to me tomorrow then? Don't tell anyone I'm trying to get on the Wheel of Fortune though will you?
Over the next week a third of the adult population of our little village came around to our house with these application forms and each person swore us to secrecy. In one case a husband & wife came separately and made us promise not to tell their other halves. Apparently there had been an announcement on the program that contestants were needed and the address given. Almost everyone in our village, and probably every other village in Poland, had sent off for an application form and they had all arrived in the space of a couple of days. By the end of the week I was so used to answering the same questions that people came to look upon me as a latter day Einstein as I rattled off the answers to questions they didn't understand. Zenek came around straight after morning milking having told the rest of the men at the milk collection depot that I'd asked for his advice about growing vegetables.
-Why do you think they're asking all these difficult questions? You don't have to answer questions like that when you're playing the game on telly.
Now, Zenek was a nice bloke, very polite & helpful and when it came to fixing agricultural machinery there weren't many farmers anywhere who could hold a candle to him (in fact there'd probably have been an explosion if anyone had) but he wasn't what you'd call an intellectual giant.
-Well Zenek, I think it's because they don't want, er, um, people on the program who are a bit...shall we say....um.....well, you know, a bit thick if you know what I mean.
-Oh well, I can understand that. Some of them are right idiots if you ask me. They couldn't possibly have answered these questions themselves, they must have had help,... some of them.
-Oh, really? I haven't seen the program myself.
-Yeah, right thicko's some of 'em.
Eva from next door came with her application form and sat in the kitchen.
-I'm going to be on the Wheel of Fortune you know. All I've got to do is answer a few questions and then they'll send me an invitation and I'll have to go down to Warsaw for an audition. Can I borrow some of your clothes Alicja, just for the day, well, just for the show?
-Yes, of course.
She looked at the application form.
-Where's Easter Island? What's a hypot...hypo...hypton....Here, what does this say?
- Hypotenuse.
-Oh...oh. What's that then? I know...... they're those big grey things that live in Africa or somewhere.
-Elephants?
-No no. No...no. Not Elephants, those things with the one horn. Or have they got horns? They stand around in mud all day with birds on their backs, I think it's in Africa.
-No Eva. I think you'll find it's something to do with triangles or something. Look at the three answers they give you to choose from, does it say anything about triangles or animals?
-No, but I'm sure it's an animal - they whiz their tails around when they're having a shit. Anyway, let’s forget that one. There's one about Ajax. You should know this one because it's made in the West isn't it? They sell it in town now but these answers you choose from are a bit funny - answer B says about Paris. Is that where they make it? Is it French?
-Let's have a look at the paper. No, this one's from an old Greek story about Troy which they taught us in school. Ajax and Paris were people. Why don't you leave the paper with us and we'll fill it out and let you have it back?
-That's a bit bloody stupid isn't it - who reads old Greek stories, what's wrong with Polish stories? Do you think all those people who go on the program read old Greek stories?
-Dunno' Eva, but anyway we'll let you have this paper back when we've filled it out.
-OK, good idea.
-What will you do if you win a car then Eva?
-I'd sell the car, wouldn't keep the car. No, everybody in the village would want to use it. I'd sell it and I'd go on holiday - wouldn't take Vladek with me - he wouldn't come anyway, he'd have to do the milking. When you've got animals you can't both go away, not for any length of time.
-Where would you go?
-Oh, I think I'd go to where the sand is........
-Sand?. You mean the desert?
-No, - the sand and the palm trees. You know, Africa or somewhere like on "Miami Vice". I'd sit around the swimming pool all day drinking vodka with stuff in it
-Stuff, what kind of stuff?
-Oh I don't know, that stuff they mix in with those long spoons.
Bogdan was the fifth to appear at the door with his piece of paper. I liked Bogdan because he was a thinker and the only farmer who ever broke with tradition and was prepared to take a chance with a crop never before grown in the area.
-I wonder if you'd be so kind as to help me with the answers to a few questions? I've decided to apply as a contestant on the Wheel of Fortune and I have to answer a few general knowledge questions to qualify.
-Sure Bogdan, take a seat.
-I'd appreciate it if you'd keep it confidential though, I'm not telling anyone about it.
-Yes, I quite understand.
-I think I stand a good chance of getting on the program if I can get all these answers right because I've studied it and I can guess most of the words on the board before the contestants and I have all my teeth.
-You have all your teeth?
-Yes, if you watch the program you'll see that they never have anyone on there who's got a tooth missing.
I wouldn't have thought about it but he was right, you don't see people on TV game shows, or any other TV show for that matter, who don't have a full compliment of teeth. This ruled out a large percentage of the village population of Poland and certainly more than half of the people in Bocwinka. By far the most amusing of our visitors was Mr Miankowski the husband of Mother Miankowska the village herbalist. He was thought to be in his late seventies although he claimed not to know his date of birth and this, it was said, was intentional.
Apparently some twenty years ago the local records library burned down and a census had to be taken to re establish the lost information. Old Miankowski is said to have bought a walking stick, developed a limp and aged 15 years overnight. When the census was completed he was immediately put on an old age pension and had never worked on the farm since. His eyesight was poor and he couldn't read the questionnaire so Alicja read it out. We went through the same old questions in the same old order until it came to the one about Ajax. We were quite taken aback when he knew the answer - in fact he knew the whole story of Troy.
I asked him where he came across this story and we learned that he'd been classically educated in Lvov before the war. I told him that we'd visited Troy and enjoyed the experience.
-I don't believe in archeology, he said.
-No, why not?
-Because it's so easy for them to make mistakes, assumptions.
-Oh, I don't know, it's a fairly sophisticated business these days.
-Well' let me tell you a story young man. When we first came here after the war the German population had left and me and my friend Alexander, God rest his soul, were the first here - Bocwinka was deserted. We were given houses and told to start farming.
Well, we looked around for the best pieces of equipment and started hauling them to our houses but there were no horses. The Russians had taken all the good horses and sent them off to Russia but there were a few lame ones around which had gone wild. Over the weeks Alexander and I rounded up a lot of them and we looked after them to see if, with a bit of good treatment, they'd come good again. Anyway, 13 horses were too far gone and, one by one, had to be put down. We discovered a great big dry well up near the school which had originally been the well for the whole village. There were only the two of us and we lead each horse up to the well and stood it so that when we shot it, it would fall down the well
-Interesting, do go on Mr Miankowski.
-Well, just imagine. In a thousand years time when some archeologist digs it up they'll say that it's two thousand years old and it was the sacrificial burial place of some tribe of horse worshippers.
He'd just flattened any argument concerning archeology I could possibly have put forward.
-If I do get to be on the program do you perhaps have a pair of strong glasses I could borrow? It's my eyesight you see. I wouldn't be able to see the board
-How do you watch the program on TV then?
-Oh, I use two pairs, mine and my wife’s.
-I see you out and about in the horse & cart though?
-Don't have to look when I'm in the cart - old Anton (the horse) knows the way around.
-What if you meet a car down at the cross roads?
-I've still got my hearing remember but anyway Anton would just stay in one spot until it had gone.
It took the best part of a fortnight before we were free of visitors and another week before we were free of radishes. Almost all of the Wheel of Fortune candidates brought us a bunch of radishes and we ended up having to throw most of them out. Radishes, I suppose, are the easiest plants to grow in the garden but there's nothing you can do with them except eat them raw. We went through our cook books searching in vain for quiche radishe, radish a la King, radish soufflé or radish any bloody thing. But no, when God, in his infinite wisdom, created the radish he couldn't have foreseen that we'd invent the cooker.
As for the Wheel of Fortune, nobody from Bocwinka even made it to an audition. I think our geographical location was enough to put the producers off. One look at the map would have told them all they needed to know about Bocwinka and the people in it.
Chapter 8
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 8
November the first for those who, like me, don't know much about these things, is All Saints Day and on All Saints Day Poles think about their dead. Everybody buys candles and takes a trip to the cemetery to place them upon the graves of their deceased relatives, friends, poets, authors, national heroes and, if you don't have anyone - the grave of your choice. Cemeteries are transformed for that one day, preparations usually starting a week beforehand with a clean up, and on the night, you can't get near a decent sized cemetery for traffic, in fact Poland's biggest traffic jams are caused by people visiting cemeteries on November the first.
Most of the candles are manufactured in glass jars and you can buy candles which will stay alight in the foulest of weather for two days and the cemeteries present a beautiful sight on the night of November first - well worth a visit by anyone and you can see the glow of the candles in the sky for a mile or more when approaching a large town cemetery. We were doing our weekly shopping in Gizycko on the Friday before All Saints Day and, at the market, Alicja bought four grave candles. I asked where we were going to put them.
-Oh, on a grave somewhere, I don't know yet, she said.
When we returned home and unpacked everything we put the candles in a cupboard where they completely slipped our minds until All Saints Day. The roads were slippery from a snow fall that morning and we didn't want to drive into town unless it was absolutely necessary so we decided on something else. There are four old German/Prussian cemeteries in and around Bocwinka and they've been out of use since the 1940s when the German population left and the Poles and Ukrainians came and built their own cemeteries. We discovered one of them when walking Misha one day. It was only twenty metres away from the road but we would never have found it if Misha hadn't found a badgers hole there. -I know, said Alicja. -Lets take Misha for a walk and put the candles on a couple of the graves down past where Marek lives, in that old German cemetery we found.
It seemed as good a place as any, seeing that we didn't have any relations buried in the village, and we set off candles in hand. The cemetery, like all German cemetries in the area, was badly neglected. The locals saw no reason to maintain the resting place of a race of people who they knew nothing about, and who had left the area before they, themselves, came to live here. It was hard to make out where the graves were, for most of them had trees growing up through the middle of them, but we uncovered two headstones and brushed the snow away with a branch, pulled up a few weeds and scratched around until they looked reasonably presentable. Not knowing who was buried there I scratched the names Hansel at the foot of one grave and Gretel at the other and we lit the candles and left.
It had been on a Tuesday and on the Thursday morning Vladek came over to the house to ask if he could borrow my binoculars. My binoculars were very popular in the village because most farmers have land on which they graze cattle away from their houses. Using the binoculars, they could check on their cattle thereby saving themselves a walk. I handed them over and didn't think any more about it until Alicja, who was going down to the shop, came back in the gate a few seconds later saying "here, come and have a look at this."
I walked out of the gate and saw most of the male population of the village standing outside the post office and Vladek, with my binoculars, sitting on the post office chimney. We ambled down to have a look and as we got nearer we could see all the women looking out of their upstairs windows. Alicja asked what it was all about but was met with a wall of silence and the chatter didn't start up again until we'd done our shopping and were walking back down the road almost out of earshot. It had us intrigued and we watched the proceedings from our upstairs windows for a while but couldn't make out what all the commotion was about.
Vladek was obviously reporting what he saw through the binoculars and everything he was saying seemed to be chewed over by the rest of them and twice someone ran up the road in the direction Vladek was looking in. We eventually became fed up with watching it, Alicja saying that whatever it was, she would hear about it sooner or later from Eva, who couldn't keep anything to herself for long, and we went back downstairs and carried on with the days work. This time though, Eva kept it to herself for a fortnight and we didn't find out until she'd had a few drinks at a christening one Sunday and came over to tell us what a good time we'd missed through not being there. -What was going on that day down at the post office when Vladek was sitting on the roof with the binoculars?, I asked her.
She sank in her chair and her voice dropped to a whisper as she turned to Alicja.
-Ghosts down at the old German cemetery, the one down by Marek's place.
I didn't know the Polish for ghost and asked Alicja what had been said. She told me in English and I remarked that we were lucky not to have encountered the said ghosts when we were down there lighting candles. Without changing her tone of voice Alicja advised me in English not to pursue the subject as she had inkling that we and the ghosts were one and the same. Marek had apparently staggered outside the house for a pee before bed time on All Saints Night, seen the glow of our candles at the cemetery and ran to his brothers house, some two hundred metres away, arriving there stone cold sober and screaming his head off.
Their neighbours had turned out of bed and seen the glow too and the next day, after a couple of stiff drinks, Big Jan had been persuaded to ride quickly past the cemetery and he came back with tales of strange markings on the ground and the snow having melted away on one of the graves. Rumours had begun to spread around Bocwinka of how cows wouldn't graze near the cemetery, dogs put their tails between their legs and whined whenever they got near the place and then someone from town was said to have been driving along the road and seen the ghost of a young German woman with a noose around her neck.
We'd unwittingly started something, the village was scared stiff but by the time we found out about it, it had already gone too far for us to admit to everybody that it was us who'd simply lit a few candles and we couldn't think what to do to ease people’s minds. The Soltys came to see us saying that it was all getting out of hand and he asked me for a lift to Kruklanki (the nearest village with a church) in the car to see the priest about performing some sort of right to get rid of the German woman's ghost. I waited in the car outside the priests house and when the Soltys returned he told me that the priest had told him that if it was a German cemetery and a German woman's ghost it would be a protestant soul and he, as a Catholic priest, couldn't do anything about it.
On the way home in the car the Soltys told me candidly that he didn't really believe in ghosts and asked me, as a Westerner, for my opinion. I told him that I thought there was probably some perfectly rational explanation for the goings on at the old German cemetery - perhaps some old German had come back and put a candle on his father’s grave?
-Why don't we take the dogs with us and go and have a look?, I asked.
-Not fucking likely, came the reply.
-OK , I'll tell you what I'll do. When we get home I'll get Misha and I'll go over there with her and have a look, maybe there's some footprints or something. But you'll have to stand in the road and witness that I've been there or people may not believe it. At home we parked the car, collected Misha and wandered up the road meeting Jurek on the way.
-What brings you down to our end of the village?
-We're going down to the cemetery, said the Soltys, and inclining his head towards me said -he's going to go over there with Misha.
Jurek spread the word on the Bocwinka Information Superhighway and I had a large following right up until I walked off the road and into the trees - they all stood back on the road. I collected the four glass jars which had held the grave candles, tied Misha to a tree and sat down for a smoke before returning to a heroes welcome. I held the glass jars up as I walked back across the field and the Soltys was shouting -see, see, it was just some old German who put some candles on a family grave. As we all walked back up the road I could hear the comments. I was fearless, they were saying, even though I didn't drink, helped my wife with the cooking and had been seen hanging sheets out on the line.
I was the Pied Piper of Bocwinka, all the kids walking along behind me and everybody crowding around asking questions. Everybody, that is, except old man Miankowski who made me feel uncomfortable because he kept looking at me and, although he didn't say anything, I had the feeling that he knew the real story or, at least, had put two and two together and come up with something other than ghosts.
The really cold weather started in November although without the wind it wasn't unpleasant, rather, it was deceiving. It was possible to work up quite a sweat walking around if suitably attired but we were lulled into a false sense of security as it seemed so warm compared with the cold snap we'd experienced a few weeks previously. The thermometer dropped to minus 23 and seldom rose above it for the next four months but the drop in temperature, like the last time, had occurred suddenly one night and I had no time to prepare for it. Everyone else in the village knew that it was coming as, at that time of year, they all watched the weather forecast as if their lives depended on it.
I stepped outside after breakfast and the first thing I noticed was that the snow had gone hard, but when I took a breath I thought my lungs were going to snap freeze. The rest of the day was spent in thawing things out starting with the kitchen water supply which I'd run too close to the cellar window and it had frozen. Next we had to insulate it and block up the cellar window with straw to prevent a repeat performance. Readers living in places like Canada would already know about cold weather and tend to dismiss the things we went through on that day as being the result of poor preparation and that's true but we'd never lived in such a climate and didn't know what to expect.
I tried to get into the garage but the door had frozen shut and I had to thaw out both it, and the door lock, with a hair dryer before I could gain entry. That wasn't too bad and I wasn't too surprised when I had to do the same to get into the car but what did phase me was that I then found that the diesel in the tank had frozen solid and I had to spend hours on my back under the fuel tank heating it up with a heat gun. All the fuel lines and the filter had frozen too as had the injector pump and it was nightfall before I finally managed to start the car after adding petrol to the diesel to stop it freezing again. We left a heater under the car all night and in the morning drove to town and bought some cold weather fuel additive at the garage as well as a bottle of windscreen washer anti freeze as the washer bottle was a solid block of ice.
-Is there anything else I'll need for the cold weather -I asked the man at the garage.
-Only a bottle of vodka, was the reply.
I smiled knowingly but he was serious. -You should always carry one in the car with you over winter, especially at night.
-Oh, why?
-If you slide off the road in these parts you may not see another car all night and if the engine stops and you've no heat, a bottle of vodka can stop you freezing to death - keep your circulation going.
Winter was looking more serious every day and we took his advice. Of course the cold weather affected other, every day things, too, which previously I hadn't given a thought to. Misha's plastic bowl was frozen to the ground and when I kicked it - it broke in half; I picked up the garden hose to store it in the garage and it snapped too. Once when we returned home from the shops we forgot to bring in a litre bottle of Coke and when I found it in car the next morning it had split its plastic container and was a solid, bottle shaped lump. I removed the plastic bottle and stood the frozen litre of Coca Cola on a garden seat where it stayed for weeks before finally melting.
Cigarette lighters wouldn't work; my camera shutter froze closed; ball point pens wouldn't write; padlocks on the outbuildings had to be heated with the heat gun before they would open. And I left a ladder on the ground one night and broke it the next day when attempting to prise it up from where it had fallen. A shovel which I'd left leaning against a veranda post fell over during the night and I had to dig it up with a pick axe in the morning after we'd had freezing rain.
This wasn't the coldest part of the year and one night in January the temperature dropped to minus 31 and the car battery split open. One thing we did like about the cold weather was that the tractors went inside and the horses and sleighs came out and every morning before eight o'clock a procession of them went by the house carrying the milk down to the collection depot. By this time we'd been in the village for more than half a year and we received in the post a letter informing us that my permanent residency papers had at last made their way through the system (if indeed there was one) and we were summoned to the county offices to collect my identity card.
We knew what sort of a day we were in for before we left home and we weren't looking forward to it at all. Polish government offices aren't the most inviting of places at the best of times and there is always some idiotic reason why you can't get all your business done in the one visit - necessitating another trip just to get someone to put a stamp on a piece of paper because he was on sick leave the first time you went. I suppose that wherever one chooses to live in this world one comes into contact with bureaucracy in one form or another. If you change address, have to re register your car, are blessed with a new baby etc. you have to visit the relevant office block and present your papers.
A sizeable book could be written on the intricacies of Polish government bureaucracy if anybody, including the bureaucrats could ever get to the bottom of it. I've been in countless government offices during my time in eastern Europe and there's little difference between them. What I describe here goes for Poland, The Czech & Slovak republics, Hungary, Bulgaria and the old East Germany. There seems to have been one central plan somewhere which dictated the architecture, the decor, pot plants and the miserable people who inhabit these places during their working lives.
For the most part, private enterprise has given its buildings a face lift in Poland but not so government office blocks where there's no money to spend on non essentials like decor. Our county office block was a large, shabby, less than imposing structure 6 floors high, built of glass and aluminum with a flat roof and surrounded by a pot holed car park and badly maintained gardens.
We walked up the crumbling concrete steps with the concrete re-enforcing wires sticking out of the edge of each tread. The steps were flanked by hand rails made from welded scaffold pipes, painted grey to match the concrete. I opened the aluminium framed glass door, which had once been fitted with an automatic door closer but now only displayed a number of screw holes where it had once been, and stepped onto a rag covered rubber mat made from old car tyres. The rags covering the floor mat had been placed there by the cleaning staff in an attempt to stop the worst of the dirt and snow being trodden into the building.
Once inside the dingy foyer, and standing on the carpetless, white speckled, grey terrazzo which covered the whole of the interior, my first impression was one of filth. This was not the case; the whole building was spotless but the decor so dismal as to give this impression - a riotous celebration of pure dinge. There was an all pervading smell of disinfectant. A very basic, un perfumed disinfectant I've smelled a hundred times in similar buildings and which immediately brought to mind unpleasant memories of hours spent waiting in line outside closed office doors for some minor clerk to condescend to see me.
Ahead of us was the information board showing the room & floor numbers of the different government departments and to the right were the lift doors between which was a much dented, galvanized bucket of sand which served as an ash tray. A dark corridor ran off to either side of us painted up to shoulder height in dark brown oil paint and above this ragged line was a flaking, off-white emulsion paint. The emulsion had been applied at a later date than the oil paint and the workman evidently was suffering from the after effects of a night on the drink when he did the job. We walked down a corridor reading the signs on each door as we went until we came to the one we wanted and sat down on a cheap vinyl covered bench seat with cigarette burn holes in it.
Two other people were in front of us in the queue, they'd already been there for two hours and we began a standard, winging conversation about the inefficiency of government departments. Both were holding small parcels which we knew contained presents to help grease the wheels of the bureaucratic machinery. How did we know? Because we had one too! I used to object to the business of bribing people to do their own jobs but soon learnt that it could save hours of waiting in corridors and, once the person you have to see spies that little brown paper bag, everything moves along at a faster pace.
They have strange way of running things. On the other side of the office door is a person who you want to see but as they have no way of knowing that you're out in the corridor, you knock and enter. If the person has someone with them you apologise and exit. It becomes a little confusing however, if the room is occupied by two or more officials who have people sitting on the opposite sides of their desks. You apologise and exit without knowing which official it was that you needed to see as they have no signs on their desks to tell you who's who.
When this happens you wait for someone to come out and then enter and ask the official with the vacant chair opposite them if they are the person you want to see. On finding that your official is the one who's still busy you go out to the corridor and tell the rest of the queue that the other official is free. When an official has finished with a person and the chair is unoccupied they wouldn't dream of telling anyone about it, shout out "next" or indicate in any way that they're open for business.
In the corridor were 24 office doors, each with a minimum of two locks but some with up to four. As we sat there, people came out of these doors with pieces of paper, shopping bags and kettles. Without exception they all locked at least one of the locks behind them. Every person has his or her own electric kettle in their office but no running water, and so they must walk to the nearest tap to fill up and as they're responsible for what's in their offices they must lock up behind them. Each office door was also equipped with two plasticine filled bottle tops of the crown seal type, one on the door and the other on the door frame with a piece of string running between them. When the occupant of the office leaves for an extended period of time they stretch the piece of string across the bottle tops and press it into the plasticine.
They then push their individual, state supplied, seal into the plasticine and this tells them when they arrive in the morning whether or not someone has broken into their office. They don't have a clue who has broken into their office but if the plasticine has been tampered with they don't enter before calling a witness. The peculiar thing is that some of these string & plasticine sealed doors have a frosted glass panel in them which, if broken, is large enough to permit entry without breaking the string. I presume that the cleaners have their own seals or they clean while the occupant is still in the room.
All the corridors in these state offices suffer from an overdose of strip lights in the ceilings but most of the tubes have been removed to save on electricity and this adds to the general feeling of dinginess. After finally getting to see our minor official we next had to visit the woman director of the passport office who had her own waiting room in which we sat for a few minutes as we were told that she was busy in another office. She was obviously an important person as she had a fitted carpet in her waiting room which I could see carried on through into her inner sanctum. It also carried on up the wall covering all the skirting boards and ended in a jagged, frayed line about ten centimetres from the floor. We sat down in the two arm chairs which I swear visibly winced as they took the weight.
There had once been decorative knobs on each arm but now only the holes bore witness to the fact that they were missing, and between us was a veneered chipboard coffee table, minus a considerable amount of veneer and on top of which was the only attempt at decoration in the whole room. There was a small plastic doily with a green pottery vase on it and these thing, I take it, belonged to the director because they were the only moveable objects in the whole room which weren't numbered.
Everything in state run Polish offices, factories, restaurants, railway stations etc. is numbered. I don't mean those little stickers which auditors on occasion will attach to office furniture in the West but ugly numbers an inch high painted in white oil paint with a ragged brush. One state run hotel in our local town of Gizycko was allocated a sizeable amount of money which they spent on new dark stylish chairs and tables for the restaurant. We went in there for lunch one day and I remarked to Alicja how much better it all looked with the new furniture but when we returned a week later all this beautiful new furniture had white hand painted numbers on it. W165/872A/37 - that's what was written on the leg of our table.
Back to the waiting room: On the opposite wall were two framed notice boards both screwed to the wall by someone who had one leg longer than the other, each with a small padlock, although it was difficult to see why because someone had forgotten to put the glass in the frames. To the right of the notice boards was the vinyl padded door through which we'd just entered. It bore 3 locks, the hole where a 4th had been, and a piece of string which was attached to the door frame by a nail and could be pulled through the hole and pressed into a plasticine filled bottle top in the corridor.
Good thinking here - only one bottle top was doing the work of two. I wondered aloud why other office workers hadn't adopted this bottle top saving method of door sealing but was told by Alicja that it was probably done during a bottle top shortage and that the director was most likely on the list for another bottle top which hadn't yet arrived. Behind us, below the drab lace curtains, was a battery of the most primitive radiators imaginable - simply galvanized water pipes with large, crinkly washers welded to them. Above these were the floor to ceiling windows, two of which were cracked and bore the hardened residue of sticky tape on either side of the cracks. The window frames were stuffed at intervals with cotton wool to keep out the draughts and almost screwed to the ceiling was a pelmet.
There was a novel hat stand/coat rack in one corner. It was in the ever popular, neo classical, communist agricultural machine shop style featuring a central column made of 2" water pipe welded to which were legs made from concreters steel fixing bars. The whole was painted in tired green which made a nice change from battleship grey. The walls boasted (if that's the word) 4 power points, each one hanging off the wall with live, un-insulated wires showing. Each covered in wall paint where the painter had missed his mark. In fact everything had splashes of paint on it - even the industrial pedal bin which looked as though it had seen prior service in a tank.
A glance up at the ceiling revealed that the room was fitted with a modern, infra red, heat sensing alarm system but obviously you can't beat the old bottle tops for maximum security because the door to the directors office had two sets of them. It also had 2 door locks, an empty fire extinguisher holder and a notice saying "Director" written with some artistic skill in black & yellow crayon on white cardboard. The brightest object in the waiting room was a healthy looking cactus obviously well looked after and standing all of 5 feet high. The only thing which detracted from its appearance was B/122/SJ13 painted on the pot in which it stood.
The director arrived looking exhausted and carrying 2 shopping bags overflowing with vegetables. She apologised for keeping us waiting and put the shopping bags down on the floor while she rummaged through her handbag for an enormous bunch of keys. One bag fell over and a cabbage rolled across the floor and as I bent down to retrieve it I noticed that one of her shoe uppers was parting company with the sole. And as she lifted the other foot I could see a large hole in the sole covered from the inside with a piece of rubber.
We were shown into her office and with great courtesy asked to take a seat while she sat herself down behind the desk. She was a woman of perhaps 40 years of age and thoroughly professional but her appearance would have led anyone to think otherwise. Her hair was older than she was and her clothes were ill fitting and not at all colour co-ordinated. When the conversation began I found the Polish too fast for me to keep up with and so gave up and concentrated on observing the room. It had all the standard features of the waiting room plus a few extras which befit a person occupying such a high position.
There were the three push button telephones, neither of which had a full compliment of buttons, two Russian electric typewriters and a disheveled looking wall unit which used to have Yale type locks but had been removed leaving the holes for use as handles - the handles having fallen off long ago. Two huge safes almost covered the wall behind her, standing about 6 feet high with big brass handles. It would have taken dynamite to break into them and it would have taken King Kong or the lady at our local post office to have moved them but, nevertheless, they were numbered just in case. And - you guessed it - they had bottle tops on each side of the doors and the string was in place.
Mounted on the ceiling amongst the flaking paintwork was another infra red alarm like the one in the waiting room and it caused me to ponder on how one would go about gaining entry to this room and breaking into one of these huge safes. I mean - what a headache for the intending burglar. You'd have a lot of equipment to carry and you'd have to de-activate two infra red alarms, get through 5 locks, dynamite the safe and after all that you'd be absolutely stuffed if you'd left your string cutters behind!
I lost track of what was going on between Alicja and the director and was brought back when the lady asked us if we'd please wait in the waiting room because she had to go to another office. She was most apologetic as she saw us out and locked the two locks on her door. She returned after an absence of an hour, handed me my papers and congratulated me on being a resident of the county. Having finished with the director all that was left to do was to get two bits of paper photocopied. This necessitated a trip to the basement and into a grotto which made the directors waiting room look like Donald Trump's lounge room.
It hadn't had a coat of paint in years, there were no windows, and if there'd have been any money to be made in cockroach farming I would have leased it like a shot. Two qualified, degree holding, mechanical engineers (as evidenced by their business cards) operated the brand new flashy Japanese photocopier and while it was warming up they gave us a written receipt for the equivalent of 25 cents which was in triplicate and included upon it our name & address. The counter was logged & a book signed by both operators before & after making our two copies.
That was it, we'd finished and we asked where we could find a restaurant for lunch. -Why not use the canteen, they said. -It's cheap and the food's good. We eventually found the canteen on the top floor after a trip in the lift which had no safety doors and we had to be careful not to touch the open front as it sped past the doors of each floor. The three walls & ceiling of the lift cubicle were of varnished wood paneling and the light wasn't working. The effect as we traveled upwards was one of being in a tea chest hurtling through space with planets rushing by at speed as the light from the door windows on each floor flashed by. It's most likely that Einstein conceived his theory of relativity in just such a place.
The canteen had seen better days, it's true, but it was the lightest, airiest place in the whole building with its tables & tubular steel chairs (all numbered) lined up with military precision disappearing into the distance. We ordered soup (Polish soups are akin to English stews) and a portion of beetroot salad each. The prices for each item on the menu were accompanied by the weight of each portion in grams and we got exactly the correct weight. I watched as my helping of beetroot salad was placed on the scales and then reduced by two spoonfuls to bring it down to the regulation 100 grams and I felt sort of cheated somehow.
I sat down on K 122/159 at a table called S 575/234 and we sampled our culinary delight for the day. It was excellent and the price ridiculously low but it wasn't an enjoyable meal simply because of the surroundings and we left the building, (and probably 2 or 3 grams of salad on each plate) and strolled down town to a private restaurant for coffee. It was like being on another planet. Trendy decor, trendy young people, trendy palm trees in trendy pots and a Sade CD playing in the background. After a three hour drive through a blizzard we were glad to get home and the day's events confirmed that our decision to leave cities behind and opt for country living had been right for us. I even found driving around the small county capital a nerve wracking experience and wondered how I had ever managed to drive around in a full blown city all day, when I was employed as a sales representative years ago, without having a nervous breakdown.
Meanwhile, down on the farm, the plaster on the walls of the apartment in the barn had dried and it was ready for painting which was a job I didn't mind at all as it required a minimum of skill and was one of those jobs where I could see where I'd been at the end of the day. I can never understand why Michelangelo worked himself up into such a state over the Sistine chapel ceiling, if he'd done the plastering he would have had something to complain about. The first thing one has to do when painting newly plastered barn walls in sub zero temperatures, of course, is to warm the place up. And with a wood shed full of nicely sawn old fencing material just waiting to be reduced to ashes I fired up the stove until it was glowing red hot and making that sort of Jabberwock galumphing sound as it tried to punch a bigger hole in the chimney.
But when I picked up the first container of paint I found that it was frozen into a solid block and so was everything else including the oil paints and varnishes so we had to move the whole lot to the cellar under the house where the temperature would stay above zero all winter. Alicja had been unable to find imported acrylic wall paint and so we'd reluctantly bought the Polish product and we set about thawing the stuff out in a bath full of warm water, a process which, it soon became obvious, was going to take hours. I was anxious not to loose the precious heat from the old stove in the barn so I made up a temporary bed out there and set the alarm to wake me every three hours in order to keep the thing filled with wood.
In the morning it was uncomfortably hot but I dressed myself in shorts and a T shirt and set to work. I was thrilled with the way the paint was going on, it was drying in no time at all and I thought to myself that we'd at last found a Polish product that was good value for money. I'd done the ceiling and three walls before Vladek arrived and he was suitably impressed - at first. Nobody in Bocwinka had real paint on their walls, just a mixture of lime, water and some sort of colouring agent stirred into it and when visiting anyone else's house one had to be careful not to touch the walls because it came off all over one's clothes.
-This Polish paint's great stuff, I said.
-Oh? I've never used it.
-Yes, it dries almost upon contact and it's washable too.
Vladek had never heard of washable paint and he ran his hands over a part of the wall.
-That's not dry Peter, that's frozen.
-It can't be. It's red hot in here.
-No Peter, there are no cavities in barn walls, not like houses with an air space between the bricks. This barn's all solid stone, it would take you a fortnight to heat it up now that it's frozen right through. The air might be hot in here but the walls are still cold.
Vladek's estimate wasn't far off. It actually took ten days of heating before the paint melted and ran down the walls onto the floor - another learning experience. Sometime before the middle of the month the bison came back to their old breeding station in the forest close by, and we went up to see them one morning after arranging to go with the foresters on one of their feeding trips. The bison were bred at this place years ago and turned loose into the forest in the 1960's where they roam at will until winter when food becomes scarce and they return to their old grounds where they're fed cabbages and sugar beet.
The fee for the trip was two bottles and we set off in a horse and cart with a pair of foresters, sitting on top of a pile of half frozen cabbages, wishing we'd thought to bring cushions with us. Both of the men had had a little to drink and were enjoying themselves with bawdy jokes by the time we arrived at the clearing and parked the cart. One of them took the horse away and tied it to a tree where it was given a few handfuls of hay and stood silently munching. Alicja climbed down from the cart to get a photograph of the horse and I was still sitting on the cabbages when a snort came from the forest and one of the foresters told me to get ready with the camera because the herd would be emerging from the larch trees at any minute.
He too jumped down from the cart and rolled a few cabbages across the hard ground in the direction of the snort and we waited silently. A big bull, the leader of the herd was first to make an appearance followed at a distance by about twenty smaller (albeit huge) animals. I was ready with the camera, which had a reasonably powerful zoom lens attached and I took my time lining up the definitive bison shot. Click - I got it. Those of you who've used a powerful zoom lens will know that on full zoom it gives a fairly limited field of view and that when you pull back to a wider angle you can see much more. This is exactly what I did, but as I did, a big eye came into view.
I lowered the camera from my face and found myself confronted with an enormous shaggy headed brute only a few feet from the cart sniffing and blowing great clouds of steamy, exhaled air in my direction. It was time to get out and I cautiously swung around to get down from the cart on the other side but found that I was surrounded by bison from all sides. I looked across to where the others were standing with worried looks on their faces.
-What shall I do?
-They said to just sit there- yelled Alicja.
-Can't they scare them off or something?
There was a discussion between Alicja and the two men at the end of which she turned back to me.
-They said not to move. They won't attack you but they say they're jumpy and if you make a sudden movement and they raise their heads they could gore you with their horns.
I was worried and through my head was running a TV news bulletin.
"This morning in the north east, near the Russian border, a Western photographer was ripped to pieces by a herd of wild bison whilst sitting on top of a pile of half frozen cabbages."
It wasn't exactly a feeding frenzy, in fact the bison were quite subdued, but every now and then one of them would remove a supporting cabbage and they'd all tumble down causing me to have to adjust my position. When this happened they'd all snort and stand back a couple of paces as if they were going to charge en masse. I was, well, frightened I suppose is the most polite way of putting it. I could smell their breath and see my reflection in their eyes and they were big, so big that I would think that the head of the big bull would have tipped the scales at about a third of my weight. They were lined up three to four deep around the cart and I was worried that they would begin jostling to get at the cabbages and perhaps tip the cart over. I yelled to Alicja that I was going to run for it the first chance I got, which wasn't long in coming, and as the bison moved around there was a gap at the end of the cart and I leapt off and ran for all I was worth.
I wasn't a bit frightened now - I was scared shitless, because I could hear the thundering of hooves behind me and I could feel the ground shaking. Reaching what I thought would be the safety of the trees I was unable to see one with branches low enough for me to be able to climb and I weaved in and out until I found a spruce tree with low branches and ran up it. I stood on a branch and turned to face the angry herd only to find that there wasn't a bison to be seen anywhere - they'd been more scared than me and taken off in the other direction. It was clearly the funniest thing the two foresters had ever seen and one of them literally had tears streaming down his face as he staggered about slapping his thighs and giggling.
I however, wasn't so happy. I'd ripped my new jacket on the tree, my hands were covered in sap and my camera, which I'd dropped on exiting the cart, had been flattened in the stampede. I sent it back to Pentax in Japan telling them it was bloody useless and that it wasn't even a big bison which had trodden on it thinking that the unusual circumstances might lead them to put it in the Pentax hall of fame or something and send me a new one but they didn't even reply.
Before November was out I had my first encounter with black ice on the roads and apart from having to learn to drive all over again it wasn't as bad as I had expected. We were perhaps lucky in having a four wheel drive vehicle and for most of the winter we managed to stay on the road with only the occasional excursion into the ditches. But one evening we had a small accident. We were driving along a perfectly straight piece of road which had two deep snow ruts in the middle of it, long since frozen over with black ice. In winter all the small roads turn into one lane tracks with two ruts in the middle and one has to drive with a wheel in each rut and slow down to walking pace when meeting a car coming the other way.
This slow speed is essential as extricating the car from the ruts is difficult. You turn the front wheels but the car tends to go straight head until the tyres grip and you quickly head out of the groove and keep on going until you finish up in the ditch. On this day a motorbike was coming towards us in the rut on our side of the road and he applied his brakes but the motorbike came straight at us with the wheels locked. The rider frantically attempted to steer the bike out of one rut and into the other but it didn't happen for him and as he fell backwards off the bike I saw that he had a canister strapped to his back.
The canister acted like a sort of toboggan and he spun around in the rut about ten times like an over enthusiastic rap dancer before sliding up the side of it launching himself into the air and he cleared the side of the road by a good half a metre as he flew away out of sight. He looked like some sort of Superman with a jet propelled back pack off on another mission. It all happened within the space of a couple of seconds and that's what made it funny. The man had been coming towards us, fallen off, spun around, flown through the air and disappeared all in complete silence - there was all this action and suddenly there was nothing left but the motorbike.
The man was out there in the snow somewhere, possibly hurt, and all we could do was sit in the car laughing at the spectacle which had momentarily appeared before our eyes and Alicja was in near hysterics as we got out of the car to look for him. The hysterics soon stopped though, when we looked down the embankment and found that he'd vanished completely. We walked up and down the side of the road looking down into the snow and there wasn't a sign of him. I didn't want to jump down off the embankment because I didn't know how deep the ditch was likely to be under the snow.
After a while we heard a muffled groaning noise and with a little shouting managed to roughly locate him on the other side of the ditch and I cautiously slid down the bank on my back. As I had suspected, the ditch, was indeed, deep, in fact over my head, and Alicja threw me the snow shovel so that I could dig my way through and up the other side. When I eventually found the man, all that was showing above the snow were the tips of his boots and he was laying in a perfect, spread eagled, imprint of himself about two feet deep as if he'd been dropped from the sky by a helicopter.
I grabbed hold of his outstretched hand to pull him out but he seemed to be inordinately heavy and all that happened was that I sank down into the snow and so had to dig around under one side of him until he could roll out. He struggled to his knees and slipped off the shoulder straps which held the canister to his back, leaving a perfect imprint of the canister manufacturers name in the snow, and I stooped down to lift it. It was heavy.
-What have you got in there?, I said.
-Twenty litres of petrol.
-Christ, what if you'd hit me and it had broken open. You'd have gone up like an incendiary bomb.
-Been doing it for twenty years and I haven't had a problem so far. Fallen off plenty of times too.
I helped him up the embankment and we put him back on his motorbike and that's the last we saw of him but I thought about the incident every time we drove past that spot. Shortly afterwards we decided that I'd have to go to England with a couple of big suitcases and buy some decent tools and a few other items (including satay sauce) which we were unable to find in Poland. I hadn't been back to England for a couple of years and I hadn't visited the area in Hampshire where I was born and raised for almost twenty but as I'd had a long standing invitation from my old school buddy Brian to stay at his place I took him up on it.
I'd forgotten how easy shopping was in civilisation and it only took two days to fill my suitcases with all sorts of hardware goodies it would have taken months to locate in Poland and I found myself with time on my hands. Brian and I got to talking about our school days and the conversation inevitably turned to old friends, girls we used to fancy and all the other things you talk about with old friend while realising that you're twenty years older than you thought you were.
He told me that Reggie Bundy was dying of cancer so I found his address and went to visit him. The Bundy family were, I suppose, a bit rougher than most in the village and as a kid I wasn't allowed to play with Regie and his brother but used to sneak around their house without telling my father I'd been there. There was always a good atmosphere in their house, five kids, father away in the merchant navy and always orange squash & biscuits. Mrs. Bundy had a horse & cart and on Sundays they'd all go out for a drive in it. It was the only horse left in the village and I used to enjoy giving it grass from my hand.
I found Reggie’s house and his wife showed me into the lounge room where Reggie was lying on a bed looking pretty bad but he recognised me straight away. His younger brother Vacuum was there too. I forget Vac's real name but he was called Vacuum because the science teacher once told him "a vacuum Bundy? a vacuum, my boy, is what you have between your ears". I talked with Reggie for a while and then Mrs. Bundy, who was by then 76 years old & looking the same as she did when I was a kid, arrived. We reminisced about the village as it used to be and I said -and you used to have that horse & cart, I loved that horse & cart.
She looked at me for a second and said -a horse & cart?. That, was a pony & trap I'll have you know.
There was something unusual about her face but, at first, I couldn't make out what it was. She had smiled at me as she entered the room and there was a continuous, unbroken line of teeth. Nothing unusual about that, but when she opened her mouth to speak she had only four teeth in her upper jaw at the top right and four lower ones at the bottom left and over the years her jaws had adapted to the situation. As she talked, her mouth alternated between the continuous ivory coloured line of the teeth and the two opposing rectangles of the black void. It was sort of like talking to a pianola keyboard or a set of semaphore flags.
I'd have liked to have spent more time with Reggie' but he was tired and I said goodbye knowing that I'd never see him again. I'd hardly given him a thought over the past twenty years but now his death would be a loss to me and a reminder that I too was mortal. Vac asked me if I'd care to accompany him to the pub for a swift half, adding that there would probably be people there who I'd remember and who'd like to see me, so we strolled down the road and into the Nelson.
The pub was busy and I was introduced to some of the roughnecks who I vaguely remembered from school and my teenage years, one of whom was Cecil Filmore, brother of Ray Filmore.
Inclining his head towards Cecil, Vacuum began.
-Ere, I'll tell you a funny story about 'is bruvver's nipper. I wuz in this pub in Porta fuckin' Reeko 'avin a jar an' in walks these sailors.
-Puerto Rico Vac, what were you doing in Puerta Rico?
-I wuz in the Merch (Merchant navy) wasn' I.
-What was Puerta Rico like then Vac?
-Dunno, only ever saw the pubs. San One (San Juan), that was the place, One Eaters Pub (Juanita's) it was called.
At this point Cecil Filmore intervened with -One Eaters? they only got the one plate then 'ave they Vac?
Roy Kemp then yelled from the other end of the bar -peraps the landlord lost 'is bottom set.
The bar-tender cut in with -you can probably get away with only one 'eater in an 'ot country. We got central 'eating 'ere.
-Ow come the tables ain't in the middle then?, replied Kempy.
Someone who I didn't know shouted -just as well you wazn't in Chilly (Chile) then, wiv ony the one 'eater. Could 'ave froze to deff.
Vac' continued:
-Funny bastards ain't they? if Kempy 'ad a brain 'ed be fuckin' dangerous. Anyway, I wuz avin' a beer an' in walks these fuckin' sailors an' I looks at one of 'em an' ee wuz the fuckin' spit of Ray Filmore. I sez "Ere... you". An' they finks there's gunna be a fuckin' rumble so they all walks over an' stans there like.
-Where you from?, I sez.
-An' Eee sez -England.
An I sez -I can fuckin' tell that but where from?
-Ampshire, ee sez.
-We narrows it down to where we both lives on the same fuckin' estate right 'ere. Turns out Eee lives in Calshot Crescent 'an I lives in Netley View Road.
I tells 'im that Eee looks the spit of a bloke I went to school wiv called Ray Filmore an' Eee sez "that's my ole man"
-Unbelievable Vac, small World, small World, I said.
-Fuckin' unbelievable i'nnit Pete, Ray Filmore's nipper in a bloody pub all the way over there? Wan anovver beer?
Vacuum used to hang around with Roy Jenkins so I asked what Roy was doing these days.
-Poor fucker's dead.
-Roy, dead! What happened?
-Yeah we wuz avin' a drink down the Grapes one Friday night an' Ee'd ad a row wiv'is missus an she'd blown 'im out about summfin'. Anyow, come closin' time Eee sez goonnite an' pisses off. Then Eee goes down Fatty Pullen's chip shop an' gets cod & chips an' goes down by the shore, puts an 'ose pipe on the exhaust an' frough the window an' fuckin' gasses 'imself poor fucker. Never even ate 'is fish & chips - cod it was.
It's unlikely that I'll ever go back to that particular part of England because my family all live elsewhere now, but my lasting memory of the people of my youth will be the women. Everyone ages and although women live longer than men, the women generally seemed to have suffered from the effects of living to a larger degree than their husbands. I called on Val' Lovejoy who I went out with for a while when I was about seventeen. We had a great talk about old times and who had divorced whom, etc. and she told me that she'd just been out for coffee with Janet Jones who I also used to go out with.
-Janet was always crazy about you, she said. -I bet she'd love to see you. I'm going to see her next Wednesday morning, why don't you come with me?
Feeling suitably flattered I was quite looking forward to it when we arrived outside Janet's door and I stood to one side out of view. The door opened & Val' started off the conversation with -do you remember that bloke you used to rave about years ago. The one with the red car we all used to go over to town in?
-No, she said.
Val was a little embarrassed and carried on prompting until she managed to kindle the faintest glimmer in Janet's mind and then said -well, he's here.
Janet looked around the door frame and managed a weak -oh. We went into the kitchen where she was busy making cheese rolls for her son & husband's lunches for the next day, neatly wrapping them in cling foil and placing them in Tupperware containers in the fridge.
-Don't you ever give them anything but cheese?, Val said.
-No, replied Janet, - if they don't like them they swap them with the other blokes.
Then ensued a discussion on what the two of them fed their respective husbands on and they forgot I was there so I asked how to make pastry because, in Poland, I'd been craving apple pies. Neither of them had made pastry for years because, as they explained, in England you can buy frozen pastry. So that was the end of my conversation for a while and they carried on talking about their husbands sandwiches until the kettle boiled and we retired to the lounge room to drink our tea. Janet opened the draw of a dresser and brought out some clothes she'd bought from the catalogue for her grand child and kids clothes were the subject of discussion for 20 minutes thereafter.
The lounge room was papered in the wallpaper that has been used to adorn the walls of cheap Chinese restaurants in England for as long as I can remember - that red felt fluffy stuff on a gold background, and the room was full of ornaments, iridescent kingfishers, wall plaques from Clovelly, porcelain crinoline ladies and small baskets of porcelain flowers and, of course, the drinks cabinet with neatly arranged, dust free cut glasses. And on the top, a cut glass vase with plastic flowers in it. Bocwinka was already calling me back home. I cast my eyes around for a talking point and found a wall plate from Greece.
They'd been there on a package holiday but wouldn't go again - too hot, restaurant kitchens were filthy and you couldn't tell what you were eating because all the food was mixed together.
-I like my meat and two veg' you can see what you're getting with that. Oh, and the wine. We had this bottle of wine somewhere that tasted like disinfectant.
-Retsina?, I enquired.
-No, can't remember where it was.
Mixed together Greek food led onto Chinese restaurants and the fact that you couldn't tell what you were getting there either but that it was most probably cat which, they assured me, closely resembled chicken when cooked. I pointed out that it would probably be easier to buy chickens than catch cats and you could be sure of a constant supply of chickens whereas cat supply was at best unreliable. They told me that although they probably keep a few chickens in the freezer to fool the health inspector, the Chinese bred cats at the back of their restaurants. I asked why they didn't breed chickens instead because chickens are a lot less fussy about what they eat than cats and poultry can convert vegetation to meat quicker and more effectively than animals.
There was a silence as they looked at each other and then at me and I realised that the theory of Chinese restaurant owners breeding cats hadn't been challenged before - it was a known fact - what planet was I from? Poor Janet, she used to be alive and good company. Now she's so much older than me, stuck in a self carved rut. It wouldn't be so bad if she was content in her ignorance of the World and what's happening around her but she complained about everything, winging constantly.
Val' and I spent three hours at Janet's house and other than the fact that I'd once been living in Australia she still doesn't know anything about me, where I live, what I was doing in England - she didn't ask. From the people I visited (mostly around the 45 to 50 mark) I formed the opinion that superannuation is what life's all about in England and that a retirement without financial worries is the best thing that can happen to a person.
-Ron's only got another seven years to go and we'll be alright - and it's index linked too. Janet had said.
-And does he like the Post Office?, I asked.
-God no, he bloody hates it, dreads getting up in the mornings.
I didn't get a chance to meet Ron but I felt terribly sorry for him as I'd feel for anyone who'd spent God knows how long working at a job he hated and was going to sacrifice another seven years of his life to it. I thought about Reggie Bundy and came to the conclusion that superannuation really is the curse of the working class.
Then there was Joyce- my friend Brian's mum. I first met Brian at school when we were both 9 years old and hung around with him until I got married and have always kept in touch. In those days Joyce would have been in her late twenties to early thirties and I used to like to visit their place because Brian's parents were much younger than mine and I had more in common with them. Brian's a bachelor and I stayed at his house for a week before heading back to Poland. His parents live next door to him and I saw Joyce at 9 30am & 5 15pm every day when she popped in. Of course Joyce is an old lady these days and she has only two subjects of conversation - literally. When Brian picked me up from the station he warned me about it.
-The old man can still hold a good conversation, in fact you'll find him quite well informed but the old lady's lost it. She's got it into her head to buy a carpet runner and she's been talking about it for bloody weeks - the only other thing she can talk about is our cat Winkle.
He was right. We arrived at Brian's at 10pm and straight away we went in to see George & Joyce before they went to bed. George was great, recalling instances of when Brian & I were teenagers and the pranks we used to get up to & so forth.
Then I heard -come & have a look at this Peter. Look at the way this carpet's wearing just inside the door. It's a good carpet, genuine Axminster, we've had it for 17 years. There's nothing wrong with it apart from this spot just inside the door, it's not worth getting a new one is it? I was thinking about getting one of those carpet runners from Simpsons Hardware, what do you think?.
-Well, I........
-They're only 12 pounds you know & they've got different colours to choose from. You'll be going up the village won't you?, have a look at them - see what you think.
George then asked me what it was like in Poland, did I think that Lech Walesa was really a great man, how far were we from the Russian border and a few other pertinent questions but before I could answer him a little voice from the corner said -only 12 pounds.
We discussed the carpet runner every day, twice a day, for a fortnight and I got so pissed off with the subject that I went up to the hardware store and bought her one after checking with the salesman that Joyce would be able to change it if the colour wasn't right - then we discussed it twice a day until I left two weeks later. Every night Brian would come home & say -what's the latest on the carpet runner? One night we were watching the news when Joyce came in. The health minister was speaking about the advantages of re equipping old Hospitals as opposed to building new ones. The quote was -you might as well use the resources you already have.
Joyce said -that's what I mean about carpet runners you see Peter. You might as well use what you've got. No use buying a new carpet when 90% of it's still alright.
This woman could have turned Einstein's quantum theory into a discussion about bloody carpet runners. She was even worse when it came to Winkle the cat - what he'd had for breakfast every day, how regular his bowels were, how she caught him looking at sparrows with evil intent etc. etc. I got to hate the poor animal and found myself making disgusting gestures at it when she wasn't looking. When the time came to head back to Poland I popped in next door and it was all quite touching. George told me to look after my health, to avoid stressful situations and take a daily walk. He then added that he was an old man and he didn't suppose he would ever see me again. We shook hands in typical, stiff upper lip, English fashion and I turned to walk out through the kitchen. She was waiting for me -there's the carpet runner see Peter, looks alright, what do you think?
The journey back was uneventful, apart from the fact that a mad woman on the train made off with one of my jumpers and a bar of chocolate at Frankfurt station, but the contrast between the two cultures was glaring.
No stiff upper lip in Bocwinka, Vladek threw his arms around me and kissed me on both cheeks. Polish men are confidently secure in their sexual identity - nobody's going to call a man a poof for showing his feelings. As for carpet runners, I looked at the floor in Eva's kitchen - she's not going to have to worry about carpet runners during her lifetime.
Chapter 8
November the first for those who, like me, don't know much about these things, is All Saints Day and on All Saints Day Poles think about their dead. Everybody buys candles and takes a trip to the cemetery to place them upon the graves of their deceased relatives, friends, poets, authors, national heroes and, if you don't have anyone - the grave of your choice. Cemeteries are transformed for that one day, preparations usually starting a week beforehand with a clean up, and on the night, you can't get near a decent sized cemetery for traffic, in fact Poland's biggest traffic jams are caused by people visiting cemeteries on November the first.
Most of the candles are manufactured in glass jars and you can buy candles which will stay alight in the foulest of weather for two days and the cemeteries present a beautiful sight on the night of November first - well worth a visit by anyone and you can see the glow of the candles in the sky for a mile or more when approaching a large town cemetery. We were doing our weekly shopping in Gizycko on the Friday before All Saints Day and, at the market, Alicja bought four grave candles. I asked where we were going to put them.
-Oh, on a grave somewhere, I don't know yet, she said.
When we returned home and unpacked everything we put the candles in a cupboard where they completely slipped our minds until All Saints Day. The roads were slippery from a snow fall that morning and we didn't want to drive into town unless it was absolutely necessary so we decided on something else. There are four old German/Prussian cemeteries in and around Bocwinka and they've been out of use since the 1940s when the German population left and the Poles and Ukrainians came and built their own cemeteries. We discovered one of them when walking Misha one day. It was only twenty metres away from the road but we would never have found it if Misha hadn't found a badgers hole there. -I know, said Alicja. -Lets take Misha for a walk and put the candles on a couple of the graves down past where Marek lives, in that old German cemetery we found.
It seemed as good a place as any, seeing that we didn't have any relations buried in the village, and we set off candles in hand. The cemetery, like all German cemetries in the area, was badly neglected. The locals saw no reason to maintain the resting place of a race of people who they knew nothing about, and who had left the area before they, themselves, came to live here. It was hard to make out where the graves were, for most of them had trees growing up through the middle of them, but we uncovered two headstones and brushed the snow away with a branch, pulled up a few weeds and scratched around until they looked reasonably presentable. Not knowing who was buried there I scratched the names Hansel at the foot of one grave and Gretel at the other and we lit the candles and left.
It had been on a Tuesday and on the Thursday morning Vladek came over to the house to ask if he could borrow my binoculars. My binoculars were very popular in the village because most farmers have land on which they graze cattle away from their houses. Using the binoculars, they could check on their cattle thereby saving themselves a walk. I handed them over and didn't think any more about it until Alicja, who was going down to the shop, came back in the gate a few seconds later saying "here, come and have a look at this."
I walked out of the gate and saw most of the male population of the village standing outside the post office and Vladek, with my binoculars, sitting on the post office chimney. We ambled down to have a look and as we got nearer we could see all the women looking out of their upstairs windows. Alicja asked what it was all about but was met with a wall of silence and the chatter didn't start up again until we'd done our shopping and were walking back down the road almost out of earshot. It had us intrigued and we watched the proceedings from our upstairs windows for a while but couldn't make out what all the commotion was about.
Vladek was obviously reporting what he saw through the binoculars and everything he was saying seemed to be chewed over by the rest of them and twice someone ran up the road in the direction Vladek was looking in. We eventually became fed up with watching it, Alicja saying that whatever it was, she would hear about it sooner or later from Eva, who couldn't keep anything to herself for long, and we went back downstairs and carried on with the days work. This time though, Eva kept it to herself for a fortnight and we didn't find out until she'd had a few drinks at a christening one Sunday and came over to tell us what a good time we'd missed through not being there. -What was going on that day down at the post office when Vladek was sitting on the roof with the binoculars?, I asked her.
She sank in her chair and her voice dropped to a whisper as she turned to Alicja.
-Ghosts down at the old German cemetery, the one down by Marek's place.
I didn't know the Polish for ghost and asked Alicja what had been said. She told me in English and I remarked that we were lucky not to have encountered the said ghosts when we were down there lighting candles. Without changing her tone of voice Alicja advised me in English not to pursue the subject as she had inkling that we and the ghosts were one and the same. Marek had apparently staggered outside the house for a pee before bed time on All Saints Night, seen the glow of our candles at the cemetery and ran to his brothers house, some two hundred metres away, arriving there stone cold sober and screaming his head off.
Their neighbours had turned out of bed and seen the glow too and the next day, after a couple of stiff drinks, Big Jan had been persuaded to ride quickly past the cemetery and he came back with tales of strange markings on the ground and the snow having melted away on one of the graves. Rumours had begun to spread around Bocwinka of how cows wouldn't graze near the cemetery, dogs put their tails between their legs and whined whenever they got near the place and then someone from town was said to have been driving along the road and seen the ghost of a young German woman with a noose around her neck.
We'd unwittingly started something, the village was scared stiff but by the time we found out about it, it had already gone too far for us to admit to everybody that it was us who'd simply lit a few candles and we couldn't think what to do to ease people’s minds. The Soltys came to see us saying that it was all getting out of hand and he asked me for a lift to Kruklanki (the nearest village with a church) in the car to see the priest about performing some sort of right to get rid of the German woman's ghost. I waited in the car outside the priests house and when the Soltys returned he told me that the priest had told him that if it was a German cemetery and a German woman's ghost it would be a protestant soul and he, as a Catholic priest, couldn't do anything about it.
On the way home in the car the Soltys told me candidly that he didn't really believe in ghosts and asked me, as a Westerner, for my opinion. I told him that I thought there was probably some perfectly rational explanation for the goings on at the old German cemetery - perhaps some old German had come back and put a candle on his father’s grave?
-Why don't we take the dogs with us and go and have a look?, I asked.
-Not fucking likely, came the reply.
-OK , I'll tell you what I'll do. When we get home I'll get Misha and I'll go over there with her and have a look, maybe there's some footprints or something. But you'll have to stand in the road and witness that I've been there or people may not believe it. At home we parked the car, collected Misha and wandered up the road meeting Jurek on the way.
-What brings you down to our end of the village?
-We're going down to the cemetery, said the Soltys, and inclining his head towards me said -he's going to go over there with Misha.
Jurek spread the word on the Bocwinka Information Superhighway and I had a large following right up until I walked off the road and into the trees - they all stood back on the road. I collected the four glass jars which had held the grave candles, tied Misha to a tree and sat down for a smoke before returning to a heroes welcome. I held the glass jars up as I walked back across the field and the Soltys was shouting -see, see, it was just some old German who put some candles on a family grave. As we all walked back up the road I could hear the comments. I was fearless, they were saying, even though I didn't drink, helped my wife with the cooking and had been seen hanging sheets out on the line.
I was the Pied Piper of Bocwinka, all the kids walking along behind me and everybody crowding around asking questions. Everybody, that is, except old man Miankowski who made me feel uncomfortable because he kept looking at me and, although he didn't say anything, I had the feeling that he knew the real story or, at least, had put two and two together and come up with something other than ghosts.
The really cold weather started in November although without the wind it wasn't unpleasant, rather, it was deceiving. It was possible to work up quite a sweat walking around if suitably attired but we were lulled into a false sense of security as it seemed so warm compared with the cold snap we'd experienced a few weeks previously. The thermometer dropped to minus 23 and seldom rose above it for the next four months but the drop in temperature, like the last time, had occurred suddenly one night and I had no time to prepare for it. Everyone else in the village knew that it was coming as, at that time of year, they all watched the weather forecast as if their lives depended on it.
I stepped outside after breakfast and the first thing I noticed was that the snow had gone hard, but when I took a breath I thought my lungs were going to snap freeze. The rest of the day was spent in thawing things out starting with the kitchen water supply which I'd run too close to the cellar window and it had frozen. Next we had to insulate it and block up the cellar window with straw to prevent a repeat performance. Readers living in places like Canada would already know about cold weather and tend to dismiss the things we went through on that day as being the result of poor preparation and that's true but we'd never lived in such a climate and didn't know what to expect.
I tried to get into the garage but the door had frozen shut and I had to thaw out both it, and the door lock, with a hair dryer before I could gain entry. That wasn't too bad and I wasn't too surprised when I had to do the same to get into the car but what did phase me was that I then found that the diesel in the tank had frozen solid and I had to spend hours on my back under the fuel tank heating it up with a heat gun. All the fuel lines and the filter had frozen too as had the injector pump and it was nightfall before I finally managed to start the car after adding petrol to the diesel to stop it freezing again. We left a heater under the car all night and in the morning drove to town and bought some cold weather fuel additive at the garage as well as a bottle of windscreen washer anti freeze as the washer bottle was a solid block of ice.
-Is there anything else I'll need for the cold weather -I asked the man at the garage.
-Only a bottle of vodka, was the reply.
I smiled knowingly but he was serious. -You should always carry one in the car with you over winter, especially at night.
-Oh, why?
-If you slide off the road in these parts you may not see another car all night and if the engine stops and you've no heat, a bottle of vodka can stop you freezing to death - keep your circulation going.
Winter was looking more serious every day and we took his advice. Of course the cold weather affected other, every day things, too, which previously I hadn't given a thought to. Misha's plastic bowl was frozen to the ground and when I kicked it - it broke in half; I picked up the garden hose to store it in the garage and it snapped too. Once when we returned home from the shops we forgot to bring in a litre bottle of Coke and when I found it in car the next morning it had split its plastic container and was a solid, bottle shaped lump. I removed the plastic bottle and stood the frozen litre of Coca Cola on a garden seat where it stayed for weeks before finally melting.
Cigarette lighters wouldn't work; my camera shutter froze closed; ball point pens wouldn't write; padlocks on the outbuildings had to be heated with the heat gun before they would open. And I left a ladder on the ground one night and broke it the next day when attempting to prise it up from where it had fallen. A shovel which I'd left leaning against a veranda post fell over during the night and I had to dig it up with a pick axe in the morning after we'd had freezing rain.
This wasn't the coldest part of the year and one night in January the temperature dropped to minus 31 and the car battery split open. One thing we did like about the cold weather was that the tractors went inside and the horses and sleighs came out and every morning before eight o'clock a procession of them went by the house carrying the milk down to the collection depot. By this time we'd been in the village for more than half a year and we received in the post a letter informing us that my permanent residency papers had at last made their way through the system (if indeed there was one) and we were summoned to the county offices to collect my identity card.
We knew what sort of a day we were in for before we left home and we weren't looking forward to it at all. Polish government offices aren't the most inviting of places at the best of times and there is always some idiotic reason why you can't get all your business done in the one visit - necessitating another trip just to get someone to put a stamp on a piece of paper because he was on sick leave the first time you went. I suppose that wherever one chooses to live in this world one comes into contact with bureaucracy in one form or another. If you change address, have to re register your car, are blessed with a new baby etc. you have to visit the relevant office block and present your papers.
A sizeable book could be written on the intricacies of Polish government bureaucracy if anybody, including the bureaucrats could ever get to the bottom of it. I've been in countless government offices during my time in eastern Europe and there's little difference between them. What I describe here goes for Poland, The Czech & Slovak republics, Hungary, Bulgaria and the old East Germany. There seems to have been one central plan somewhere which dictated the architecture, the decor, pot plants and the miserable people who inhabit these places during their working lives.
For the most part, private enterprise has given its buildings a face lift in Poland but not so government office blocks where there's no money to spend on non essentials like decor. Our county office block was a large, shabby, less than imposing structure 6 floors high, built of glass and aluminum with a flat roof and surrounded by a pot holed car park and badly maintained gardens.
We walked up the crumbling concrete steps with the concrete re-enforcing wires sticking out of the edge of each tread. The steps were flanked by hand rails made from welded scaffold pipes, painted grey to match the concrete. I opened the aluminium framed glass door, which had once been fitted with an automatic door closer but now only displayed a number of screw holes where it had once been, and stepped onto a rag covered rubber mat made from old car tyres. The rags covering the floor mat had been placed there by the cleaning staff in an attempt to stop the worst of the dirt and snow being trodden into the building.
Once inside the dingy foyer, and standing on the carpetless, white speckled, grey terrazzo which covered the whole of the interior, my first impression was one of filth. This was not the case; the whole building was spotless but the decor so dismal as to give this impression - a riotous celebration of pure dinge. There was an all pervading smell of disinfectant. A very basic, un perfumed disinfectant I've smelled a hundred times in similar buildings and which immediately brought to mind unpleasant memories of hours spent waiting in line outside closed office doors for some minor clerk to condescend to see me.
Ahead of us was the information board showing the room & floor numbers of the different government departments and to the right were the lift doors between which was a much dented, galvanized bucket of sand which served as an ash tray. A dark corridor ran off to either side of us painted up to shoulder height in dark brown oil paint and above this ragged line was a flaking, off-white emulsion paint. The emulsion had been applied at a later date than the oil paint and the workman evidently was suffering from the after effects of a night on the drink when he did the job. We walked down a corridor reading the signs on each door as we went until we came to the one we wanted and sat down on a cheap vinyl covered bench seat with cigarette burn holes in it.
Two other people were in front of us in the queue, they'd already been there for two hours and we began a standard, winging conversation about the inefficiency of government departments. Both were holding small parcels which we knew contained presents to help grease the wheels of the bureaucratic machinery. How did we know? Because we had one too! I used to object to the business of bribing people to do their own jobs but soon learnt that it could save hours of waiting in corridors and, once the person you have to see spies that little brown paper bag, everything moves along at a faster pace.
They have strange way of running things. On the other side of the office door is a person who you want to see but as they have no way of knowing that you're out in the corridor, you knock and enter. If the person has someone with them you apologise and exit. It becomes a little confusing however, if the room is occupied by two or more officials who have people sitting on the opposite sides of their desks. You apologise and exit without knowing which official it was that you needed to see as they have no signs on their desks to tell you who's who.
When this happens you wait for someone to come out and then enter and ask the official with the vacant chair opposite them if they are the person you want to see. On finding that your official is the one who's still busy you go out to the corridor and tell the rest of the queue that the other official is free. When an official has finished with a person and the chair is unoccupied they wouldn't dream of telling anyone about it, shout out "next" or indicate in any way that they're open for business.
In the corridor were 24 office doors, each with a minimum of two locks but some with up to four. As we sat there, people came out of these doors with pieces of paper, shopping bags and kettles. Without exception they all locked at least one of the locks behind them. Every person has his or her own electric kettle in their office but no running water, and so they must walk to the nearest tap to fill up and as they're responsible for what's in their offices they must lock up behind them. Each office door was also equipped with two plasticine filled bottle tops of the crown seal type, one on the door and the other on the door frame with a piece of string running between them. When the occupant of the office leaves for an extended period of time they stretch the piece of string across the bottle tops and press it into the plasticine.
They then push their individual, state supplied, seal into the plasticine and this tells them when they arrive in the morning whether or not someone has broken into their office. They don't have a clue who has broken into their office but if the plasticine has been tampered with they don't enter before calling a witness. The peculiar thing is that some of these string & plasticine sealed doors have a frosted glass panel in them which, if broken, is large enough to permit entry without breaking the string. I presume that the cleaners have their own seals or they clean while the occupant is still in the room.
All the corridors in these state offices suffer from an overdose of strip lights in the ceilings but most of the tubes have been removed to save on electricity and this adds to the general feeling of dinginess. After finally getting to see our minor official we next had to visit the woman director of the passport office who had her own waiting room in which we sat for a few minutes as we were told that she was busy in another office. She was obviously an important person as she had a fitted carpet in her waiting room which I could see carried on through into her inner sanctum. It also carried on up the wall covering all the skirting boards and ended in a jagged, frayed line about ten centimetres from the floor. We sat down in the two arm chairs which I swear visibly winced as they took the weight.
There had once been decorative knobs on each arm but now only the holes bore witness to the fact that they were missing, and between us was a veneered chipboard coffee table, minus a considerable amount of veneer and on top of which was the only attempt at decoration in the whole room. There was a small plastic doily with a green pottery vase on it and these thing, I take it, belonged to the director because they were the only moveable objects in the whole room which weren't numbered.
Everything in state run Polish offices, factories, restaurants, railway stations etc. is numbered. I don't mean those little stickers which auditors on occasion will attach to office furniture in the West but ugly numbers an inch high painted in white oil paint with a ragged brush. One state run hotel in our local town of Gizycko was allocated a sizeable amount of money which they spent on new dark stylish chairs and tables for the restaurant. We went in there for lunch one day and I remarked to Alicja how much better it all looked with the new furniture but when we returned a week later all this beautiful new furniture had white hand painted numbers on it. W165/872A/37 - that's what was written on the leg of our table.
Back to the waiting room: On the opposite wall were two framed notice boards both screwed to the wall by someone who had one leg longer than the other, each with a small padlock, although it was difficult to see why because someone had forgotten to put the glass in the frames. To the right of the notice boards was the vinyl padded door through which we'd just entered. It bore 3 locks, the hole where a 4th had been, and a piece of string which was attached to the door frame by a nail and could be pulled through the hole and pressed into a plasticine filled bottle top in the corridor.
Good thinking here - only one bottle top was doing the work of two. I wondered aloud why other office workers hadn't adopted this bottle top saving method of door sealing but was told by Alicja that it was probably done during a bottle top shortage and that the director was most likely on the list for another bottle top which hadn't yet arrived. Behind us, below the drab lace curtains, was a battery of the most primitive radiators imaginable - simply galvanized water pipes with large, crinkly washers welded to them. Above these were the floor to ceiling windows, two of which were cracked and bore the hardened residue of sticky tape on either side of the cracks. The window frames were stuffed at intervals with cotton wool to keep out the draughts and almost screwed to the ceiling was a pelmet.
There was a novel hat stand/coat rack in one corner. It was in the ever popular, neo classical, communist agricultural machine shop style featuring a central column made of 2" water pipe welded to which were legs made from concreters steel fixing bars. The whole was painted in tired green which made a nice change from battleship grey. The walls boasted (if that's the word) 4 power points, each one hanging off the wall with live, un-insulated wires showing. Each covered in wall paint where the painter had missed his mark. In fact everything had splashes of paint on it - even the industrial pedal bin which looked as though it had seen prior service in a tank.
A glance up at the ceiling revealed that the room was fitted with a modern, infra red, heat sensing alarm system but obviously you can't beat the old bottle tops for maximum security because the door to the directors office had two sets of them. It also had 2 door locks, an empty fire extinguisher holder and a notice saying "Director" written with some artistic skill in black & yellow crayon on white cardboard. The brightest object in the waiting room was a healthy looking cactus obviously well looked after and standing all of 5 feet high. The only thing which detracted from its appearance was B/122/SJ13 painted on the pot in which it stood.
The director arrived looking exhausted and carrying 2 shopping bags overflowing with vegetables. She apologised for keeping us waiting and put the shopping bags down on the floor while she rummaged through her handbag for an enormous bunch of keys. One bag fell over and a cabbage rolled across the floor and as I bent down to retrieve it I noticed that one of her shoe uppers was parting company with the sole. And as she lifted the other foot I could see a large hole in the sole covered from the inside with a piece of rubber.
We were shown into her office and with great courtesy asked to take a seat while she sat herself down behind the desk. She was a woman of perhaps 40 years of age and thoroughly professional but her appearance would have led anyone to think otherwise. Her hair was older than she was and her clothes were ill fitting and not at all colour co-ordinated. When the conversation began I found the Polish too fast for me to keep up with and so gave up and concentrated on observing the room. It had all the standard features of the waiting room plus a few extras which befit a person occupying such a high position.
There were the three push button telephones, neither of which had a full compliment of buttons, two Russian electric typewriters and a disheveled looking wall unit which used to have Yale type locks but had been removed leaving the holes for use as handles - the handles having fallen off long ago. Two huge safes almost covered the wall behind her, standing about 6 feet high with big brass handles. It would have taken dynamite to break into them and it would have taken King Kong or the lady at our local post office to have moved them but, nevertheless, they were numbered just in case. And - you guessed it - they had bottle tops on each side of the doors and the string was in place.
Mounted on the ceiling amongst the flaking paintwork was another infra red alarm like the one in the waiting room and it caused me to ponder on how one would go about gaining entry to this room and breaking into one of these huge safes. I mean - what a headache for the intending burglar. You'd have a lot of equipment to carry and you'd have to de-activate two infra red alarms, get through 5 locks, dynamite the safe and after all that you'd be absolutely stuffed if you'd left your string cutters behind!
I lost track of what was going on between Alicja and the director and was brought back when the lady asked us if we'd please wait in the waiting room because she had to go to another office. She was most apologetic as she saw us out and locked the two locks on her door. She returned after an absence of an hour, handed me my papers and congratulated me on being a resident of the county. Having finished with the director all that was left to do was to get two bits of paper photocopied. This necessitated a trip to the basement and into a grotto which made the directors waiting room look like Donald Trump's lounge room.
It hadn't had a coat of paint in years, there were no windows, and if there'd have been any money to be made in cockroach farming I would have leased it like a shot. Two qualified, degree holding, mechanical engineers (as evidenced by their business cards) operated the brand new flashy Japanese photocopier and while it was warming up they gave us a written receipt for the equivalent of 25 cents which was in triplicate and included upon it our name & address. The counter was logged & a book signed by both operators before & after making our two copies.
That was it, we'd finished and we asked where we could find a restaurant for lunch. -Why not use the canteen, they said. -It's cheap and the food's good. We eventually found the canteen on the top floor after a trip in the lift which had no safety doors and we had to be careful not to touch the open front as it sped past the doors of each floor. The three walls & ceiling of the lift cubicle were of varnished wood paneling and the light wasn't working. The effect as we traveled upwards was one of being in a tea chest hurtling through space with planets rushing by at speed as the light from the door windows on each floor flashed by. It's most likely that Einstein conceived his theory of relativity in just such a place.
The canteen had seen better days, it's true, but it was the lightest, airiest place in the whole building with its tables & tubular steel chairs (all numbered) lined up with military precision disappearing into the distance. We ordered soup (Polish soups are akin to English stews) and a portion of beetroot salad each. The prices for each item on the menu were accompanied by the weight of each portion in grams and we got exactly the correct weight. I watched as my helping of beetroot salad was placed on the scales and then reduced by two spoonfuls to bring it down to the regulation 100 grams and I felt sort of cheated somehow.
I sat down on K 122/159 at a table called S 575/234 and we sampled our culinary delight for the day. It was excellent and the price ridiculously low but it wasn't an enjoyable meal simply because of the surroundings and we left the building, (and probably 2 or 3 grams of salad on each plate) and strolled down town to a private restaurant for coffee. It was like being on another planet. Trendy decor, trendy young people, trendy palm trees in trendy pots and a Sade CD playing in the background. After a three hour drive through a blizzard we were glad to get home and the day's events confirmed that our decision to leave cities behind and opt for country living had been right for us. I even found driving around the small county capital a nerve wracking experience and wondered how I had ever managed to drive around in a full blown city all day, when I was employed as a sales representative years ago, without having a nervous breakdown.
Meanwhile, down on the farm, the plaster on the walls of the apartment in the barn had dried and it was ready for painting which was a job I didn't mind at all as it required a minimum of skill and was one of those jobs where I could see where I'd been at the end of the day. I can never understand why Michelangelo worked himself up into such a state over the Sistine chapel ceiling, if he'd done the plastering he would have had something to complain about. The first thing one has to do when painting newly plastered barn walls in sub zero temperatures, of course, is to warm the place up. And with a wood shed full of nicely sawn old fencing material just waiting to be reduced to ashes I fired up the stove until it was glowing red hot and making that sort of Jabberwock galumphing sound as it tried to punch a bigger hole in the chimney.
But when I picked up the first container of paint I found that it was frozen into a solid block and so was everything else including the oil paints and varnishes so we had to move the whole lot to the cellar under the house where the temperature would stay above zero all winter. Alicja had been unable to find imported acrylic wall paint and so we'd reluctantly bought the Polish product and we set about thawing the stuff out in a bath full of warm water, a process which, it soon became obvious, was going to take hours. I was anxious not to loose the precious heat from the old stove in the barn so I made up a temporary bed out there and set the alarm to wake me every three hours in order to keep the thing filled with wood.
In the morning it was uncomfortably hot but I dressed myself in shorts and a T shirt and set to work. I was thrilled with the way the paint was going on, it was drying in no time at all and I thought to myself that we'd at last found a Polish product that was good value for money. I'd done the ceiling and three walls before Vladek arrived and he was suitably impressed - at first. Nobody in Bocwinka had real paint on their walls, just a mixture of lime, water and some sort of colouring agent stirred into it and when visiting anyone else's house one had to be careful not to touch the walls because it came off all over one's clothes.
-This Polish paint's great stuff, I said.
-Oh? I've never used it.
-Yes, it dries almost upon contact and it's washable too.
Vladek had never heard of washable paint and he ran his hands over a part of the wall.
-That's not dry Peter, that's frozen.
-It can't be. It's red hot in here.
-No Peter, there are no cavities in barn walls, not like houses with an air space between the bricks. This barn's all solid stone, it would take you a fortnight to heat it up now that it's frozen right through. The air might be hot in here but the walls are still cold.
Vladek's estimate wasn't far off. It actually took ten days of heating before the paint melted and ran down the walls onto the floor - another learning experience. Sometime before the middle of the month the bison came back to their old breeding station in the forest close by, and we went up to see them one morning after arranging to go with the foresters on one of their feeding trips. The bison were bred at this place years ago and turned loose into the forest in the 1960's where they roam at will until winter when food becomes scarce and they return to their old grounds where they're fed cabbages and sugar beet.
The fee for the trip was two bottles and we set off in a horse and cart with a pair of foresters, sitting on top of a pile of half frozen cabbages, wishing we'd thought to bring cushions with us. Both of the men had had a little to drink and were enjoying themselves with bawdy jokes by the time we arrived at the clearing and parked the cart. One of them took the horse away and tied it to a tree where it was given a few handfuls of hay and stood silently munching. Alicja climbed down from the cart to get a photograph of the horse and I was still sitting on the cabbages when a snort came from the forest and one of the foresters told me to get ready with the camera because the herd would be emerging from the larch trees at any minute.
He too jumped down from the cart and rolled a few cabbages across the hard ground in the direction of the snort and we waited silently. A big bull, the leader of the herd was first to make an appearance followed at a distance by about twenty smaller (albeit huge) animals. I was ready with the camera, which had a reasonably powerful zoom lens attached and I took my time lining up the definitive bison shot. Click - I got it. Those of you who've used a powerful zoom lens will know that on full zoom it gives a fairly limited field of view and that when you pull back to a wider angle you can see much more. This is exactly what I did, but as I did, a big eye came into view.
I lowered the camera from my face and found myself confronted with an enormous shaggy headed brute only a few feet from the cart sniffing and blowing great clouds of steamy, exhaled air in my direction. It was time to get out and I cautiously swung around to get down from the cart on the other side but found that I was surrounded by bison from all sides. I looked across to where the others were standing with worried looks on their faces.
-What shall I do?
-They said to just sit there- yelled Alicja.
-Can't they scare them off or something?
There was a discussion between Alicja and the two men at the end of which she turned back to me.
-They said not to move. They won't attack you but they say they're jumpy and if you make a sudden movement and they raise their heads they could gore you with their horns.
I was worried and through my head was running a TV news bulletin.
"This morning in the north east, near the Russian border, a Western photographer was ripped to pieces by a herd of wild bison whilst sitting on top of a pile of half frozen cabbages."
It wasn't exactly a feeding frenzy, in fact the bison were quite subdued, but every now and then one of them would remove a supporting cabbage and they'd all tumble down causing me to have to adjust my position. When this happened they'd all snort and stand back a couple of paces as if they were going to charge en masse. I was, well, frightened I suppose is the most polite way of putting it. I could smell their breath and see my reflection in their eyes and they were big, so big that I would think that the head of the big bull would have tipped the scales at about a third of my weight. They were lined up three to four deep around the cart and I was worried that they would begin jostling to get at the cabbages and perhaps tip the cart over. I yelled to Alicja that I was going to run for it the first chance I got, which wasn't long in coming, and as the bison moved around there was a gap at the end of the cart and I leapt off and ran for all I was worth.
I wasn't a bit frightened now - I was scared shitless, because I could hear the thundering of hooves behind me and I could feel the ground shaking. Reaching what I thought would be the safety of the trees I was unable to see one with branches low enough for me to be able to climb and I weaved in and out until I found a spruce tree with low branches and ran up it. I stood on a branch and turned to face the angry herd only to find that there wasn't a bison to be seen anywhere - they'd been more scared than me and taken off in the other direction. It was clearly the funniest thing the two foresters had ever seen and one of them literally had tears streaming down his face as he staggered about slapping his thighs and giggling.
I however, wasn't so happy. I'd ripped my new jacket on the tree, my hands were covered in sap and my camera, which I'd dropped on exiting the cart, had been flattened in the stampede. I sent it back to Pentax in Japan telling them it was bloody useless and that it wasn't even a big bison which had trodden on it thinking that the unusual circumstances might lead them to put it in the Pentax hall of fame or something and send me a new one but they didn't even reply.
Before November was out I had my first encounter with black ice on the roads and apart from having to learn to drive all over again it wasn't as bad as I had expected. We were perhaps lucky in having a four wheel drive vehicle and for most of the winter we managed to stay on the road with only the occasional excursion into the ditches. But one evening we had a small accident. We were driving along a perfectly straight piece of road which had two deep snow ruts in the middle of it, long since frozen over with black ice. In winter all the small roads turn into one lane tracks with two ruts in the middle and one has to drive with a wheel in each rut and slow down to walking pace when meeting a car coming the other way.
This slow speed is essential as extricating the car from the ruts is difficult. You turn the front wheels but the car tends to go straight head until the tyres grip and you quickly head out of the groove and keep on going until you finish up in the ditch. On this day a motorbike was coming towards us in the rut on our side of the road and he applied his brakes but the motorbike came straight at us with the wheels locked. The rider frantically attempted to steer the bike out of one rut and into the other but it didn't happen for him and as he fell backwards off the bike I saw that he had a canister strapped to his back.
The canister acted like a sort of toboggan and he spun around in the rut about ten times like an over enthusiastic rap dancer before sliding up the side of it launching himself into the air and he cleared the side of the road by a good half a metre as he flew away out of sight. He looked like some sort of Superman with a jet propelled back pack off on another mission. It all happened within the space of a couple of seconds and that's what made it funny. The man had been coming towards us, fallen off, spun around, flown through the air and disappeared all in complete silence - there was all this action and suddenly there was nothing left but the motorbike.
The man was out there in the snow somewhere, possibly hurt, and all we could do was sit in the car laughing at the spectacle which had momentarily appeared before our eyes and Alicja was in near hysterics as we got out of the car to look for him. The hysterics soon stopped though, when we looked down the embankment and found that he'd vanished completely. We walked up and down the side of the road looking down into the snow and there wasn't a sign of him. I didn't want to jump down off the embankment because I didn't know how deep the ditch was likely to be under the snow.
After a while we heard a muffled groaning noise and with a little shouting managed to roughly locate him on the other side of the ditch and I cautiously slid down the bank on my back. As I had suspected, the ditch, was indeed, deep, in fact over my head, and Alicja threw me the snow shovel so that I could dig my way through and up the other side. When I eventually found the man, all that was showing above the snow were the tips of his boots and he was laying in a perfect, spread eagled, imprint of himself about two feet deep as if he'd been dropped from the sky by a helicopter.
I grabbed hold of his outstretched hand to pull him out but he seemed to be inordinately heavy and all that happened was that I sank down into the snow and so had to dig around under one side of him until he could roll out. He struggled to his knees and slipped off the shoulder straps which held the canister to his back, leaving a perfect imprint of the canister manufacturers name in the snow, and I stooped down to lift it. It was heavy.
-What have you got in there?, I said.
-Twenty litres of petrol.
-Christ, what if you'd hit me and it had broken open. You'd have gone up like an incendiary bomb.
-Been doing it for twenty years and I haven't had a problem so far. Fallen off plenty of times too.
I helped him up the embankment and we put him back on his motorbike and that's the last we saw of him but I thought about the incident every time we drove past that spot. Shortly afterwards we decided that I'd have to go to England with a couple of big suitcases and buy some decent tools and a few other items (including satay sauce) which we were unable to find in Poland. I hadn't been back to England for a couple of years and I hadn't visited the area in Hampshire where I was born and raised for almost twenty but as I'd had a long standing invitation from my old school buddy Brian to stay at his place I took him up on it.
I'd forgotten how easy shopping was in civilisation and it only took two days to fill my suitcases with all sorts of hardware goodies it would have taken months to locate in Poland and I found myself with time on my hands. Brian and I got to talking about our school days and the conversation inevitably turned to old friends, girls we used to fancy and all the other things you talk about with old friend while realising that you're twenty years older than you thought you were.
He told me that Reggie Bundy was dying of cancer so I found his address and went to visit him. The Bundy family were, I suppose, a bit rougher than most in the village and as a kid I wasn't allowed to play with Regie and his brother but used to sneak around their house without telling my father I'd been there. There was always a good atmosphere in their house, five kids, father away in the merchant navy and always orange squash & biscuits. Mrs. Bundy had a horse & cart and on Sundays they'd all go out for a drive in it. It was the only horse left in the village and I used to enjoy giving it grass from my hand.
I found Reggie’s house and his wife showed me into the lounge room where Reggie was lying on a bed looking pretty bad but he recognised me straight away. His younger brother Vacuum was there too. I forget Vac's real name but he was called Vacuum because the science teacher once told him "a vacuum Bundy? a vacuum, my boy, is what you have between your ears". I talked with Reggie for a while and then Mrs. Bundy, who was by then 76 years old & looking the same as she did when I was a kid, arrived. We reminisced about the village as it used to be and I said -and you used to have that horse & cart, I loved that horse & cart.
She looked at me for a second and said -a horse & cart?. That, was a pony & trap I'll have you know.
There was something unusual about her face but, at first, I couldn't make out what it was. She had smiled at me as she entered the room and there was a continuous, unbroken line of teeth. Nothing unusual about that, but when she opened her mouth to speak she had only four teeth in her upper jaw at the top right and four lower ones at the bottom left and over the years her jaws had adapted to the situation. As she talked, her mouth alternated between the continuous ivory coloured line of the teeth and the two opposing rectangles of the black void. It was sort of like talking to a pianola keyboard or a set of semaphore flags.
I'd have liked to have spent more time with Reggie' but he was tired and I said goodbye knowing that I'd never see him again. I'd hardly given him a thought over the past twenty years but now his death would be a loss to me and a reminder that I too was mortal. Vac asked me if I'd care to accompany him to the pub for a swift half, adding that there would probably be people there who I'd remember and who'd like to see me, so we strolled down the road and into the Nelson.
The pub was busy and I was introduced to some of the roughnecks who I vaguely remembered from school and my teenage years, one of whom was Cecil Filmore, brother of Ray Filmore.
Inclining his head towards Cecil, Vacuum began.
-Ere, I'll tell you a funny story about 'is bruvver's nipper. I wuz in this pub in Porta fuckin' Reeko 'avin a jar an' in walks these sailors.
-Puerto Rico Vac, what were you doing in Puerta Rico?
-I wuz in the Merch (Merchant navy) wasn' I.
-What was Puerta Rico like then Vac?
-Dunno, only ever saw the pubs. San One (San Juan), that was the place, One Eaters Pub (Juanita's) it was called.
At this point Cecil Filmore intervened with -One Eaters? they only got the one plate then 'ave they Vac?
Roy Kemp then yelled from the other end of the bar -peraps the landlord lost 'is bottom set.
The bar-tender cut in with -you can probably get away with only one 'eater in an 'ot country. We got central 'eating 'ere.
-Ow come the tables ain't in the middle then?, replied Kempy.
Someone who I didn't know shouted -just as well you wazn't in Chilly (Chile) then, wiv ony the one 'eater. Could 'ave froze to deff.
Vac' continued:
-Funny bastards ain't they? if Kempy 'ad a brain 'ed be fuckin' dangerous. Anyway, I wuz avin' a beer an' in walks these fuckin' sailors an' I looks at one of 'em an' ee wuz the fuckin' spit of Ray Filmore. I sez "Ere... you". An' they finks there's gunna be a fuckin' rumble so they all walks over an' stans there like.
-Where you from?, I sez.
-An' Eee sez -England.
An I sez -I can fuckin' tell that but where from?
-Ampshire, ee sez.
-We narrows it down to where we both lives on the same fuckin' estate right 'ere. Turns out Eee lives in Calshot Crescent 'an I lives in Netley View Road.
I tells 'im that Eee looks the spit of a bloke I went to school wiv called Ray Filmore an' Eee sez "that's my ole man"
-Unbelievable Vac, small World, small World, I said.
-Fuckin' unbelievable i'nnit Pete, Ray Filmore's nipper in a bloody pub all the way over there? Wan anovver beer?
Vacuum used to hang around with Roy Jenkins so I asked what Roy was doing these days.
-Poor fucker's dead.
-Roy, dead! What happened?
-Yeah we wuz avin' a drink down the Grapes one Friday night an' Ee'd ad a row wiv'is missus an she'd blown 'im out about summfin'. Anyow, come closin' time Eee sez goonnite an' pisses off. Then Eee goes down Fatty Pullen's chip shop an' gets cod & chips an' goes down by the shore, puts an 'ose pipe on the exhaust an' frough the window an' fuckin' gasses 'imself poor fucker. Never even ate 'is fish & chips - cod it was.
It's unlikely that I'll ever go back to that particular part of England because my family all live elsewhere now, but my lasting memory of the people of my youth will be the women. Everyone ages and although women live longer than men, the women generally seemed to have suffered from the effects of living to a larger degree than their husbands. I called on Val' Lovejoy who I went out with for a while when I was about seventeen. We had a great talk about old times and who had divorced whom, etc. and she told me that she'd just been out for coffee with Janet Jones who I also used to go out with.
-Janet was always crazy about you, she said. -I bet she'd love to see you. I'm going to see her next Wednesday morning, why don't you come with me?
Feeling suitably flattered I was quite looking forward to it when we arrived outside Janet's door and I stood to one side out of view. The door opened & Val' started off the conversation with -do you remember that bloke you used to rave about years ago. The one with the red car we all used to go over to town in?
-No, she said.
Val was a little embarrassed and carried on prompting until she managed to kindle the faintest glimmer in Janet's mind and then said -well, he's here.
Janet looked around the door frame and managed a weak -oh. We went into the kitchen where she was busy making cheese rolls for her son & husband's lunches for the next day, neatly wrapping them in cling foil and placing them in Tupperware containers in the fridge.
-Don't you ever give them anything but cheese?, Val said.
-No, replied Janet, - if they don't like them they swap them with the other blokes.
Then ensued a discussion on what the two of them fed their respective husbands on and they forgot I was there so I asked how to make pastry because, in Poland, I'd been craving apple pies. Neither of them had made pastry for years because, as they explained, in England you can buy frozen pastry. So that was the end of my conversation for a while and they carried on talking about their husbands sandwiches until the kettle boiled and we retired to the lounge room to drink our tea. Janet opened the draw of a dresser and brought out some clothes she'd bought from the catalogue for her grand child and kids clothes were the subject of discussion for 20 minutes thereafter.
The lounge room was papered in the wallpaper that has been used to adorn the walls of cheap Chinese restaurants in England for as long as I can remember - that red felt fluffy stuff on a gold background, and the room was full of ornaments, iridescent kingfishers, wall plaques from Clovelly, porcelain crinoline ladies and small baskets of porcelain flowers and, of course, the drinks cabinet with neatly arranged, dust free cut glasses. And on the top, a cut glass vase with plastic flowers in it. Bocwinka was already calling me back home. I cast my eyes around for a talking point and found a wall plate from Greece.
They'd been there on a package holiday but wouldn't go again - too hot, restaurant kitchens were filthy and you couldn't tell what you were eating because all the food was mixed together.
-I like my meat and two veg' you can see what you're getting with that. Oh, and the wine. We had this bottle of wine somewhere that tasted like disinfectant.
-Retsina?, I enquired.
-No, can't remember where it was.
Mixed together Greek food led onto Chinese restaurants and the fact that you couldn't tell what you were getting there either but that it was most probably cat which, they assured me, closely resembled chicken when cooked. I pointed out that it would probably be easier to buy chickens than catch cats and you could be sure of a constant supply of chickens whereas cat supply was at best unreliable. They told me that although they probably keep a few chickens in the freezer to fool the health inspector, the Chinese bred cats at the back of their restaurants. I asked why they didn't breed chickens instead because chickens are a lot less fussy about what they eat than cats and poultry can convert vegetation to meat quicker and more effectively than animals.
There was a silence as they looked at each other and then at me and I realised that the theory of Chinese restaurant owners breeding cats hadn't been challenged before - it was a known fact - what planet was I from? Poor Janet, she used to be alive and good company. Now she's so much older than me, stuck in a self carved rut. It wouldn't be so bad if she was content in her ignorance of the World and what's happening around her but she complained about everything, winging constantly.
Val' and I spent three hours at Janet's house and other than the fact that I'd once been living in Australia she still doesn't know anything about me, where I live, what I was doing in England - she didn't ask. From the people I visited (mostly around the 45 to 50 mark) I formed the opinion that superannuation is what life's all about in England and that a retirement without financial worries is the best thing that can happen to a person.
-Ron's only got another seven years to go and we'll be alright - and it's index linked too. Janet had said.
-And does he like the Post Office?, I asked.
-God no, he bloody hates it, dreads getting up in the mornings.
I didn't get a chance to meet Ron but I felt terribly sorry for him as I'd feel for anyone who'd spent God knows how long working at a job he hated and was going to sacrifice another seven years of his life to it. I thought about Reggie Bundy and came to the conclusion that superannuation really is the curse of the working class.
Then there was Joyce- my friend Brian's mum. I first met Brian at school when we were both 9 years old and hung around with him until I got married and have always kept in touch. In those days Joyce would have been in her late twenties to early thirties and I used to like to visit their place because Brian's parents were much younger than mine and I had more in common with them. Brian's a bachelor and I stayed at his house for a week before heading back to Poland. His parents live next door to him and I saw Joyce at 9 30am & 5 15pm every day when she popped in. Of course Joyce is an old lady these days and she has only two subjects of conversation - literally. When Brian picked me up from the station he warned me about it.
-The old man can still hold a good conversation, in fact you'll find him quite well informed but the old lady's lost it. She's got it into her head to buy a carpet runner and she's been talking about it for bloody weeks - the only other thing she can talk about is our cat Winkle.
He was right. We arrived at Brian's at 10pm and straight away we went in to see George & Joyce before they went to bed. George was great, recalling instances of when Brian & I were teenagers and the pranks we used to get up to & so forth.
Then I heard -come & have a look at this Peter. Look at the way this carpet's wearing just inside the door. It's a good carpet, genuine Axminster, we've had it for 17 years. There's nothing wrong with it apart from this spot just inside the door, it's not worth getting a new one is it? I was thinking about getting one of those carpet runners from Simpsons Hardware, what do you think?.
-Well, I........
-They're only 12 pounds you know & they've got different colours to choose from. You'll be going up the village won't you?, have a look at them - see what you think.
George then asked me what it was like in Poland, did I think that Lech Walesa was really a great man, how far were we from the Russian border and a few other pertinent questions but before I could answer him a little voice from the corner said -only 12 pounds.
We discussed the carpet runner every day, twice a day, for a fortnight and I got so pissed off with the subject that I went up to the hardware store and bought her one after checking with the salesman that Joyce would be able to change it if the colour wasn't right - then we discussed it twice a day until I left two weeks later. Every night Brian would come home & say -what's the latest on the carpet runner? One night we were watching the news when Joyce came in. The health minister was speaking about the advantages of re equipping old Hospitals as opposed to building new ones. The quote was -you might as well use the resources you already have.
Joyce said -that's what I mean about carpet runners you see Peter. You might as well use what you've got. No use buying a new carpet when 90% of it's still alright.
This woman could have turned Einstein's quantum theory into a discussion about bloody carpet runners. She was even worse when it came to Winkle the cat - what he'd had for breakfast every day, how regular his bowels were, how she caught him looking at sparrows with evil intent etc. etc. I got to hate the poor animal and found myself making disgusting gestures at it when she wasn't looking. When the time came to head back to Poland I popped in next door and it was all quite touching. George told me to look after my health, to avoid stressful situations and take a daily walk. He then added that he was an old man and he didn't suppose he would ever see me again. We shook hands in typical, stiff upper lip, English fashion and I turned to walk out through the kitchen. She was waiting for me -there's the carpet runner see Peter, looks alright, what do you think?
The journey back was uneventful, apart from the fact that a mad woman on the train made off with one of my jumpers and a bar of chocolate at Frankfurt station, but the contrast between the two cultures was glaring.
No stiff upper lip in Bocwinka, Vladek threw his arms around me and kissed me on both cheeks. Polish men are confidently secure in their sexual identity - nobody's going to call a man a poof for showing his feelings. As for carpet runners, I looked at the floor in Eva's kitchen - she's not going to have to worry about carpet runners during her lifetime.
Chapter 9
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 9
December brought more snow, deep snow, necessitating more digging to keep a clear path to the garage, the channel to which was by now like taking a trip through the Corinth Canal and I was grateful to Vladek's father for having made me a proper snow shovel. One morning I struggled through a fresh snow fall down to the shop to collect our regular loaf of bread, which came three times a week, and on this particular morning I was thinking to myself just how good it was to live in the countryside on days like this. How clean the village looked every time the snow gave us a new white carpet.
It was 10 o'clock and outside the milk depot were half a dozen farmers passing a bottle of vodka around. They'd been there since 7.30am when they'd dropped off their milk to be carried to town by the tanker and had waited until the shop opened at 8am so that they could take the bread home to their families. Now they were all merry and singing songs I couldn't understand - a congenial bunch of drunks who asked me to join them but I declined saying I hadn't yet had breakfast. Soon some of their wives would turn up to tell them off and take them home for breakfast too.
At the shop I could see through the window that Pani Zosia's two regular gossip ladies were sitting at the table drinking coffee and they both said hello and smiled as I walked up to the counter. Our village shop was kept spotlessly clean by Pani Zosia, everything on the shelves was lined up with the precision of a Swiss watch factory workshop and the 1933 model, German apothecaries scales were so shiny as to cause temporary blindness when the sun caught them.
At the right hand of the counter were the barter baskets in which one could always find eggs and vegetables grown in the village gardens and the contents of the three baskets were always displayed with a few flowers and a clean table cloth. I was never been able to work out quite how this barter system actually worked but folks seemed to leave maybe a dozen eggs and tell Pani Zosia that, failing money, they wanted carrots in exchange. When they returned the next day Pani Zosia went through a mental reckoning in which she deducted the cost of their bread from the difference between the eggs and carrots, handed over a loaf and asked for 3 zlotys.
At times, the mathematics seemed extremely complex to the observer but nevertheless Pani Zosia's computer like brain seldom made a mistake and she commanded a certain respect in the village for these mental gymnastics. I walked towards her, smiled and said good morning as Pani Zosia's hand went down under the counter for the loaf of bread she knew I'd come for when the door burst open and one of the gossip ladies shouted -get that whoring thing out of here. I turned around to see what it was all about. At the threshold stood Vladek and another man who I'd seen around the village, both beaming like kids who'd just been given good school reports. They were both holding onto one end of a pitchfork and at the other was impaled a ferrety looking animal which was dripping blood onto the shop floor.
It was a kuna (beech marten) which had the misfortune to have chosen to take up residence in the shop's attic and Pani Zosia had mentioned to Vladek that she'd heard something scampering around up there. I thought Pani Zosia would have been angry at the sight of an impaled beech marten dripping blood all over her clean floor but no, she was angry about something else. She wanted the animal, and an argument developed between her and the two men as to who was going to have the skin. The men were shouting that they'd caught the thing and should be entitled to keep it but she was saying that it was on the shop's premises and it was hers. Pani Zosia was not an easy person to argue with and she quickly took possession of the poor creature and disappeared outside with it.
All this time I was waiting for my bread but as I looked out of the window, I could see Pani Zosia at work skinning the animal. It obviously wasn't the first time she'd skinned an animal and in short time was holding the pelt aloft and inspecting the pitchfork hole in it's neck. She handed the carcass back to Vladek and his friend telling them to give it to their dogs and came back inside with apologies to me for having kept me waiting.
She walked around to the other side of the counter wiping her hands on her apron as she did so and pushed my bread across the counter towards me. There was a big, red, bloody thumb print on it. I pointed at it and she said -I'm sorry about that. She wiped her hands again and gave me another loaf. -I'll take that one home for my husband's pigs, she said, and placed it on a shelf in the adjoining store room.
I said my goodbyes and walked out of the door. To my left was a large woman pushing her drunken husband towards home and on my right was all that was left of the beech marten - a patch of bright red blood in the snow. As I reached our gate I was accosted by Vladek and we stood talking for ten minutes or thereabouts when we were joined by Eva who'd just returned from the shop. Under her arm was a loaf of bread with a bloody thumb print on it. -Cut your hand have you Eva?, I said. She looked at her hands, stroked her face and looked at them again. -That's strange, she said. -I wonder where the blood came from? With that, Vladek grabbed the loaf from her. -No it's not bloody strange, he said, -I know where it came from. And he set off for the shop with a stride born of fury. If successful in his avowed intent I knew Pani Zosia would be walking home bandy legged at the close of business.
When winter is in full swing and farm work comes to a halt it's the time that people visit each other to talk, drink, play cards, watch TV, moan about the neighbours and discuss new ways to cheat the electricity meter. When the temperature drops to minus twenty the kids don't have to go to school and whole families visit their friends and neighbours to spend an entire day, apart from milking time, in each other's company. They invariably take their own food and the women share the cooking whilst the men share the vodka. What the kids shared I've never found out, but they spent most of their time outside making snow men, pulling each other around on sledges and doing all the things kids anywhere do when the snow's on the ground.
On some days it was just too cold to venture outside for more than twenty minutes and, as I'd finished all the inside work for which materials were available, I looked around for other things to do. When I was in England I had bought a short wave radio so that we could listen to the BBC World service and now seemed a good time to rig up an aerial outside. I went to the shed and selected a couple of planks which I nailed to the apex of the barn roof in a cross shape and fixed both the FM and the short wave radio aerials to it. The reception wasn't perfect but nevertheless, being able to hear English programs (and Radio Moscow in English) made a considerable difference to the time spent indoors that winter.
Another thing which kept the boredom away was our friendship with Halina and Ryszard who could always be found at home when it was below minus twenty because Ryszard was a school teacher in Mozdzany, a village close to us. So in December we found ourselves doing exactly as the locals did. We'd get together and eat and drink, the atmosphere being something like boxing days in England. Whenever my sister would send us something from civilisation like a jar of garlic and ginger sauce we'd save it until we visited Halina and Ryszard and we'd cook up a feast.
Their neighbour Janek has a horse and sleigh on which he took us out several times for a trip in the forest where we'd light a bonfire and roast potatoes. I liked Janek and we developed something of a relationship after he found that I had pretty keen eyesight and could spot fresh blood in the snow. This isn't as ominous as it sounds - when deer and elk are shedding their antlers they leave blood spots as they wander about. Antler souvenirs formed a part of Janek's income. But on one such trip he seemed a bit removed and uncomfortable with me and referred to me as father when speaking to Alicja. She thought it was some sort of term of endearment but when the vodka bottle was passed around he didn't take it, causing Ryszard to raise his eyebrows, and when we returned to Janek's house he referred to me again as father.
It transpired that Janek had been told by a neighbour that I was some kind of priest and the rumour was well established in Mozdzany. Our area, being isolated and generally short on information, thrived on rumours. They were started at the drop of a hat and in no time would become unshakable, incontrovertible fact hard to dislodge or disprove. Through Eva we'd heard a number of rumours about ourselves and had usually found them to be a source of amusement. As the only Westerner living in a village in the whole of the north east it was inevitable that I would attract a certain amount of attention. It was assumed by many that I'd come to this forgotten corner of the country to bury my shady past or to try to forget some tragedy which had occurred in the past.
This particular rumour though, Ryszard pointed out, shouldn't be taken too lightly by us for Janek had heard that we were members of an American religious cult. One thing we didn't want was to be seen to be going against the grain of Catholicism which, we knew, would make us unpopular in the area and we could see that if the rumours from both our villages came together something bigger could be made out of me, a cult leader, walking fearlessly into the old, ghost ridden, German cemetery. Even worse if old man Miankowski was to spread it around that he thought we'd been lighting candles in there. I told Janek that the cross on our barn roof was a radio antenna and that whole story about me being a cult leader was complete rubbish and he promised to spread the word around at the morning milk collection in Mozdzany.
Ryszard eventually found the source of the rumour through another teacher at school. It was simple. Jan Boczinski, a farmer from Zywki, had been driving his tractor past our house, seen me putting up my cross shaped radio aerial, put two and two together and come up with a number other than four. We didn't keep animals like everyone else and the apartment we were building in the empty barn was to be a mission hall. Ryszard reminded me that it was time to put up the new fence I had been making to go around the shrine of the Virgin Mary just outside our gate. I had taken down the old fence a month before and hadn't got around to re placing it. Ryszard had heard in school that I'd vandalised the shrine by taking the fence away and this all fitted in with the way cult leaders behaved - next he'll be taking the cross down! -Once you get on the wrong side of the priest, said Ryszard, -life can become difficult up here.
The next day I was up early and seen by all the men at the milk depot erecting a new picket fence around the shrine. Zenek wandered over to ask if he could give me a hand and during the course of the work I let it be known that I thought it was an outrage that the Virgin Mary's fence should have been allowed to fall into such disrepair. "With all these able bodied men in the village, and a forest full of wood just up the road, it looks as though the folks of Bocwinka don't care about The Virgin" I said. Zenek was suitably ashamed and I knew he'd pass on what I'd said to everyone at the depot.
When Alicja next saw Eva she told her what the people of Mozdzany had been saying about us and that was enough. Eva, who often told Alicja that she didn't believe in gossiping, soon spread the word that all the people who lived in Mozdzany were mentally deficient and had nothing better to do with their time than make up stories. Within two days we'd heard what was being said at Ryszard's school - Jan Boczinski and his wife were being ridiculed for making up fairy tales. The rumour had been successfully killed.
Poland's north east is the most economically depressed part of the country and probably always will be. It is a region of lakes and forests with practically no industry. Farming is, for the most part, at subsistence level there are virtually no resources beneath the ground and people are poor - some of them desperately so. The vast majority of the people in the region earn their money through farming and the farms are, more often than not, so small that in the West they would be called smallholdings. The soil is poor, and the growing season is short, and paying ones bills is a never ending struggle.
Most farmhouses in the region are inhabited by extended families, the average being something in the order of eight people per house and the farm income is often pooled. Poles have a great attachment to their land and will, generally, struggle against all odds not to loose it. The law pertaining to farm land however, is that once farmers become too old to work the land they can receive a pension by handing the land over to the state (in which case they can continue to stay on in the farm house) or, they can keep the land in the family by handing the farm over to one of their sons.
When this latter situation obtains, the old folks get their pension which, of necessity, they share with the rest of the family living in the house. In Bocwinka, for example, a number of farming families would encounter severe financial difficulties if it weren't for the old folks pension money going towards paying the bills. In a December newspaper Alicja read how a woman pensioner in her seventies had died and the family had kept her in the shed for two months without telling the authorities so that they could continue to receive her pension. They had folded her into the sitting position where she had frozen solid and every so often they placed her on a seat outside the door in order to let the rest of the village know that she was still around, The article went on to say that the ruse was discovered by the electricity meter reader who called one day and upon receiving no reply to his customary "good morning" looked at her and noticed that she had taken on a somewhat Negroid appearance.
Half way through December with our renovations almost at a standstill, and in spite of the short wave radio, we were becoming bored and when we were approached by a school in Gizycko to teach the kids English for two days a week, we accepted. The school curriculum had for many years dictated that children must be taught a second language but they were all learning Russian simply because there were no teachers of any other language available.
Now, it isn't until you start to teach someone your own language that you realise how little sense it makes and I regularly tied myself up in knots trying to explain what phrases like "terribly good" meant. One day I made the mistake of saying that something or the other "will be bought tomorrow" and I was challenged by a studious looking twelve year old.
-Please sir, how can that be?
-How can what be?
-Please sir, you taught us that "will be" is future tense and "bought" is past tense. So how can you say "will be bought?"
-Don't fill your heads with theory, it's a danger, I told them, -just say it.
I was also asked to explain, and give examples of the "The-Future-Perfect-in-the-Past-Continuous/Progressive-Tense."
Where the hell did you get that?, I asked
-It's right here in this English book, came the reply
I looked at it, and the examples it gave were "I would have been going" and "would I have been going?"
I went to see the school principal after the lesson and explained that although I spoke the language, I didn't actually know the first thing about it, hoping to get out of the whole thing but, as he explained, it would be a good thing for the students just to hear the language spoken by a native speaker. He went on to say that the only other chance his students had was to be taught by the Russian language teacher who was at that moment in the staff room ploughing her way through books in an attempt to learn English herself and she'd never met or spoken to an English speaker in her life. He tugged at my heart strings and I didn't have the courage to say no.
One particularly uncomfortable moment in my brief career as a teacher of English came when a fifteen year old girl asked me the meaning of the word cunnilingus. She was one of those girls who, to use a wonderfully descriptive Polish expression, "had the dick in her eyes".
To convey the meaning of this expression is difficult; sultry, sensuous, furtive, flirtatious, tarty, sexy. She was all of these in small portions, and mature beyond her years, but the whole package was wrapped in a kind of child like innocence. She was taking the piss out of me. I knew it, she knew I knew it, but she knew too that the rest of the class hadn't heard of the word - it was a secret between us. She knew that I knew what the word meant - and she knew, that I knew, that she knew what the word meant.
She was sitting in the front row with a half smile on her face, her tongue touching her top lip and she was tapping a pencil against her left ear - waiting for my reply. I denied all knowledge of the word but told her that she'd probably misheard it and what had actually been said was "cunning linguist".
-No, she replied -it's in a book
-Let's see, I said flicking through the English/Polish dictionary, playing for time and wondering if I could get away with telling her it was a service offered on The Irish airlines or something.
-No, it's not in here, I said.
-It's in mine, said another girl
-Oh good, what does it say?, I asked.
-I'll tell her later, replied the girl.
Alicja had written an ingenious chart to teach actions and feelings towards a variety of objects. On the left were the feelings: I like, I loath, I'm worried about, I love, I hate, I have mixed feelings about, I feel good about.
On right was another list: politicians, cabbage, Russians, hotels, petrol, sun, rain - about twenty words in all. It worked well but half the kids didn't seem to have any feelings towards politicians and the like so we re vamped it to include things which kids are more interested in: bicycles, skis, bats, balls, hockey sticks, chocolate, computer games and so on. Alicja spent a lot of time writing this up on a black board where we intended to leave if undisturbed but the kids made so many funny or rude sentences from it that we had to wipe it off.
An angelic looking eight year old boy with a pained look on his face came out with -I'm concerned about my balls. I casually strolled over to my desk, lifted the top to face the class and, in silence, giggled until tears were streaming down my face. Alicja couldn't hold on to it under this sort of pressure and she burst out laughing and sat down. We were in stitches but the kids didn't know why because testicles in Poland are referred to as eggs. They weren't long in finding out though, and the next lesson was filled with short sentences about balls.
One day we took fifteen ten year olds for a walk around town where we looked in all the shops to find English writing on the packaging of various Polish and imported products. We felt that this would be of some practical use to them and that they would at last be able to use some of the words we'd been teaching them. There were lots of English words - ORANGE JUICE, MILK, BOUNTY BARS, MINERAL WATER, MARS, PHOTO SERVICE - all new words in Poland which were beginning to appear alongside the Polish words on Polish products and I instructed the kids to write them down.
When we returned to the class room I called each kid out to the front and had them write the words they'd found on the blackboard and we went through them to determine the meaning of each. The words were mostly food products. "Stanley Jet Cut Saw" took a bit of explaining as did "Uncle Bens Stir Fry Sweet & Sour Sauce." but I wasn't quite prepared for "THE BEST TITS IN THE USA."
-That's an interesting one, I said -where did you find that one?
-In the video shop window, said the little girl.
I went on to explain that tit was in fact, short for titmouse, a small bird of which there were many right outside the window at that present moment.
-But it had a picture of a lady on the box, she said.
Most of the time the man in the video shop didn't have the slightest idea what his videos were about because he couldn't read English either. I was glad that the little girl didn't see the one called "Anal Fever II." God only knows how I would have got out of that one. Mind you, when I mentioned it to Alicja she did point out that, in accounting parlance, anal is short for analysis and that the lady on video box could have been an accountant in an office where the central heating was stuck on high.
Micheal, the son of the school principal who had satellite TV at home asked me one Monday morning “what is the women's snatch?” I had a fair idea of what I thought it was but couldn't have imagined where he'd heard it so I asked him. -On Eurosport, he said. -they keep saying it at the weight-lifting. Most humorous were the essays which we were able to laugh about in the privacy of the kitchen when we marked them at home.
Every week I would give the kids a short essay as homework. I'd specify the subject and give them a few words stipulating that they weren't to use these actual words but to locate alternatives from their dictionaries. For one of these pieces I asked them to imagine that they were in their bedrooms one night and they had a hunch that there was a burglary going on next door. They were to write a detailed report of their observations from the bedroom window to give to the police the next day.
At home in the kitchen I could see the smile widening on Alicja's face. -Got a good one?, I asked her.
-Yes, have a look at this.
She handed me a piece of paper covered with the neatest imaginable calligraphic handwriting and I read down the page until I came to the following paragraph.
-It was the burguling. I knew what was happening within me and I came on the window for a good spectacle.
As Christmas was in the offing, the headmaster of the school asked me if I thought any of the children were up to doing a nativity play in English. I knew that they were, without exception, a long way off being able attempt anything like this and the headmaster was a little disappointed. He suggested however, that I devote a lesson to the story of Christmas because it was a story they all knew and should be able to follow. It went down very well and the kids were interested to know about English Christmas traditions, Christmas pudding, what scenes were on English Christmas cards and whether or not we sang carols. I taught them to sing Silent Night in English and the parents were most impressed even though they couldn't understand a word of it.
As a result of this unbridled success I was asked to do something on the story of Easter and, as I was running out of ideas, I started on it straight away thinking that by the time Easter came around we would have had a few rehearsals, and should get it right. I had Alicja draw pictures on the blackboard of Jesus carrying the cross, being crucified and a few other scenes pertaining to the subject and the kids all sat in their seats spellbound as I went slowly through the story which I'd taken the trouble to re learn myself for the occasion. They liked the story and I gave them a small questionnaire about Easter as homework. In answer to the question "what happened at Easter." One kid wrote "Romans nailed Jesus to the hot cross bun."
With a few weeks of English lessons under their belts the kids were at the stage where they were making jokes in English during their other lessons. This being a source of embarrassment to their teachers, we were approached by a few of them to teach them English too. These lessons had to be held at our house in secrecy so that the kids wouldn't find out and the group included Natasha, the Russian teacher who had been teaching herself English from books. I felt sorry for her. One day she'd been given a pile of books and told that she had two months to become an English teacher. She had protested saying that she didn't know the English language and was told by the principal "the kids have to learn English now, Russian language lessons will cease and you're the language teacher" adding "who else should we give the job to - a maths teacher?"
Natasha had never heard the English language spoken, didn't even have a cassette to listen to and by the time she started with us she had already developed her own forms of pronunciation which were difficult to correct. One day she asked me what arseholes were and I explained as best I could without becoming too anatomical but she was sure that I had the wrong word. -The gas from them causes much pollution, she said -I've read that people have stopped using them in the West but I don’t think we have them here. She was, of course, referring to aerosols.
During another lesson she bought up the subject of stiff drinks. I told her that, as far as I could think, it applied only to undiluted alcoholic drinks.
-A stiff whiskey or a stiff gin Natasha, I said.
-A stiff beer?
-No, come to think of it
-Could you have a stiff orange juice, lemonade, Fanta?
-No, it must just be spirits-let me think.
-You couldn't have a stiff Cock then? She was referring to Coke.
One teacher who used to attend the lessons at our house was Zbigiew Kowalski who had worked as an electrical engineer for Polish Ocean Lines and had visited many different countries picking up the English language as he went. Zbigniew's English was at the stage where he could communicate quite well but this also put him at the stage where he could make more advanced cock ups with the language than the rest of the class.
At one lesson I asked everyone to give me just a few sentences about what they did first thing in the morning. Zbigniew's effort was:
-I get up at seven to the clock. I make the coffees. I'm making for the house to be warm. And then I get up my wife.
Sometime during December the reed cutters arrived in the village to cut thatching reeds and they simply drove straight out onto the lakes in their horses and carts and began cutting at ground/ice level. We'd seen individuals fishing through holes in the ice but didn't know that it was already strong enough to stand the weight of a horse and cart and we went down to watch the operation. They had some kind of special tool to cut the reeds with, as an ordinary scythe was too flimsy to touch them, but it seemed a fairly easy job nevertheless. The reeds were cut and stacked in huge bundles and I thought for a moment how good our roof would look with thatch instead of tiles and I enquired about the cost. "Nothing" I was advised and the reed cutters explained that they didn't have to pay anyone for the reeds but that there were some lakes on which they were not allowed to cut for fear of destroying water bird habitats.
We went off the idea when we found that it wouldn't be possible to get insurance on the house if we had a thatched roof but we learned that the reeds from Bocwinka were all for export to England where they would be chemically treated against fire before being sold. The foreman told me the price they were paid for cutting and transporting the reeds and a quick mental reckoning showed that a one hundred square metre house would take only something in the order of thirty American dollars worth of reeds to thatch.
I've no idea what the stuff costs by the time it gets to the house owner in England but I'm sure that people with recently thatched houses in the UK would have a shock if they knew how much the reeds cost at source. Knowing that the ice was now thick enough to stand the weight of the car we waited until the reed cutters had left and went for a spin on the lake. Spinning around on frozen lakes is the best fun anyone can have in their car unless they're up to no good at drive in movies but it's a lot safer, and you can keep it up for longer. But unlike bonking in drive-ins it looses its appeal the more you do it.
It was tremendous fun to get the car up to 40kmh and spin the steering wheel around and watch the trees on the banks go by in slow motion but after a while it became boring - so we took up fishing. Now, fishing IS boring, but only if you go about it the wrong way. The ice was half a metre thick so we borrowed Vladek's auger and bored two holes through it about 20 centimetres in diameter and far enough apart to park the car in between them.
Then, when we had nothing else to do, we would drive out on the lake, park between the holes and fish from the car windows. It was quite a pleasant way to spend the day, especially when the sun was shining because inside the car it was warm.
Alicja usually sat in the front, me in the back and we'd drink coffee from a thermos flask and read books with the radio on taking the occasional stroll or slide as the fancy took us. I found that there's nothing special involved in walking on water, it's just a matter of the temperature at which one chooses to do it. I can thoroughly recommend Eskimo style fishing as therapy for stressed out business executives, as long as the worms are kept inside the car. If you leave them outside at anything below about minus twenty they become hard to distinguish from pretzels within five minutes. The actual catching of fish, obviously, is to be avoided at all costs in those temperatures as the fingers become numb way before the fish is unhooked.
On one such fishing expedition we saw the Soltys go by with a Christmas tree on the back of a sleigh and, thinking about it, realised that we were loosing track of time. Time was beginning to mean less and less to us to the extent where I no longer wore a watch. There were no newspapers available in Bocwinka and all days, except Sundays, were almost the same. We'd gone from living from hour to hour and were now living from Sunday to Sunday. Christmas had been sneaking up on us while we weren't looking. Everyone living in our lane was of Ukrainian descent and had their Christmases two weeks later than the Poles so we hadn't noticed.
I didn't know whether loosing track of time was a good thing or not. One of the reasons we had changed our lifestyle and moved to such a sparsely populated, remote area was that there had never been enough time in our lives - we'd had enough of deadlines and getting to appointments on time. Now though, the thought of loosing a week began to worry me slightly. I'd lost a week of my life, of my time, a week in which nothing had happened and there had been nothing to measure its passing. I had the feeling that I could be missing out on something, that the World was still functioning and moving slowly forward while I'd been in some sort of coma. The feeling was short lived and it didn't make me want to return to life in a city but it was a feeling that I hadn't anticipated. It was a reminder that I hadn't yet shaken off the shackles of a high pressure past life and perhaps wouldn't ever be able to.
I was despondent for a couple of days wondering if I could ever fully adapt to life in the wilderness. One thing lacking in my life was conversation with other English speakers and, if my Polish improved, I knew that I'd still be stuck for conversation on topics other than farming. There was nothing Alicja could do to cheer me up so she suggested that we visit Halina and Ryszard to see if they'd like to spend Christmas day with us. I wasn't in the mood but thought that maybe it would be a good time to drown my sorrows in a few vodkas with Ryszard and so reluctantly agreed.
They had company when we arrived, a woman of about thirty named Marta who lived not far from them but who I'd never before met. We sat at the table discussing Christmas preparations, relatives who'd visit, what food would be cooked and how, and, to me, Marta seemed reasonably well informed. She was well dressed and her make up wasn't overdone as it so often is with village women, and I though she was probably a teacher at Ryszard's school. She asked me if I would miss my family over the festive season and told me that she couldn't bear to be without her relatives at Christmas. She'd visited an orphanage and was going have a ten year old boy stay with her and her family for a couple of weeks and she said that she'd sent a parcel of dried food to somewhere in Bosnia. She said that she didn't know who'd end up with her dried food but hoped that it would brighten someone's day when they opened the package.
She spoke slowly for me so that I could keep up with what she was saying and I was beginning to think that here was someone who was local but had a bit more to say, a bit more to discuss than the price of livestock. Nobody, I reminded myself, in Bocwinka had the slightest interest in starving people in Bosnia, in fact many of them barely knew there was a war going on there and nobody knew where it was.
She then turned to Ryszard, who was held in some esteem in the area as a man of learning, and asked -is it true that on Christmas Eve the animals all talk to each other?
I thought it was a joke but she was deadly serious and Ryszard, who after seven years of living in the area was well versed in village folk lore and beliefs, told her that he didn't know but that he too had heard this and it seemed to be common knowledge. She then asked me if the animals talked to each other in England on Christmas Eve, and as I had by then worked out that she was a farmer’s wife, I asked her why she had never gone out to the barn to listen.
-Because people say that if you hear them you will be struck dumb, she replied. I asked if she knew of anybody who'd been struck dumb by listening to animals on Christmas Eve. She hadn't.
-If they do speak to each other in England, I said. -I wonder if it's in English or Polish.
It didn't faze her at all and she told me that, just like humans, it was only natural to expect English cows to speak English and Polish cows to speak Polish. -After all, they wouldn't learn Polish from listening to English farmers when they were doing the milking would they?
Instances such as this (and there were many) served to highlight the mentality, attitudes and ingrained traditions of the folk who live in that corner of Europe. Even the people in our small town, whose kids we taught English to, and who seemed relatively sophisticated, generally still had the same beliefs under the veneer and we still had to be careful not to offend them with our sense of humour. With only a few days left to Christmas we needed a tree but although we lived in a region covered in forest with literally thousands of hectares of suitable trees, there were none on sale. This was understandable - nobody would have bought one anyway. So like everybody else we set out with an axe to steal one.
We took Misha with us and walked in the direction of Zywki lake which was surrounded by Christmas trees and as we drew within a few hundred metres of it we could hear a sort of pinging noise, hard to define but something like a flock of wild ducks on the wing but at great distance. A couple of times we stopped to listen but the sound seemed to be coming from all around us rather than from one specific direction. We plodded on again until we reached the shore of the lake and then saw where the noise was coming from. Little Yusef, the village idiot, was standing at the edge of the lake with a branch in his hands. Some twenty metres distant were three holes in the ice with logs laid behind them. A string of stones had been laid in a line and little Yusef was striking them with the branch using it like a hockey stick.
The object of the game was to tee off with the branch sending the stone bouncing across the ice until it struck the logs and bounced back into one of the holes in the ice. As the stones bounced, they made the pinging noise we'd heard which was amplified using practically the whole lake surface as a sounding board. The noise could be heard almost half a kilometre away and I was most impressed and began bouncing stones across the ice and banging the hard end of Misha's dog lead on it which produced a sound like submarine depth soundings. Little Yusef was enjoying the fact that I was enjoying the experience and he leaped about banging the surface of the lake with the stick and then he ran to the bank and came back with a sizeable flat rock. He put the rock down on the ice and slid it around with his foot - just like the low pitched, moaning sounds made by whales.
This was an astonishing thing - here was a guy who could play a lake! He may not have known any actual tunes but all the ingredients were there. What little Yusef was doing was unique, or at least I'd never heard anything like it, and I couldn't help but think that this was a marketable sound if only he could be discovered by some talent spotter who'd lost his way at Dover.
My mind ran riot with the possibilities:
"And now ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment - Little Jusef and his amazing musical lake."
Of course, he couldn't take the thing on tour with him but maybe he could play the odd ice rink or two. Mike Oldfield with his tubular bells, Simon Smith and his dancing bear, all would pale into insignificance compared with a man who could play a lake. And what about Swan Lake? Little Yusef could play it while the Bolshoi Ballet actually danced on it.
-Ask him what other sounds he can make on the lake, I asked Alicja.
She asked him and he rubbed the rock around until he created a shiny patch of clear ice, picked up his stick as if to strike it and indicated to me that I should put my ear to the ice while he banged it with the stick. I did - my ear stuck to the ice and little Yusef ran away up the bank whooping and screaming like a banshee.
I didn't get up and Misha came over and licked my face.
-Peter, are you alright?
-Of course I'm not alright. The little bastard's conned me, my ear's suck to the fucking ice.
It was lucky that I'd been wearing gloves or my hands would have stuck too. As it was, there was no way for Alicja to help me and I ended up tearing a small piece of flesh off of the outer rim of my ear. I wanted to do something nasty to little Yusef but he was miles away by the time I stood up, although we could still hear him whooping as he ran down the lane. I was the laughing stock of the village - the only person who'd ever been conned by the village idiot. And, it wasn't the last time.
Little Yusef's life is tragic and it's fortunate that he isn't aware of it. He is, so they say, "borderline" mentally retarded and has that permanently happy disposition so often found among people of that type. He is around 30 years old with no living relatives and lodges with an old witch of a woman in the village who managed to get him classified as mentally retarded and herself classified as his guardian. This means that his monthly pension cheque is paid directly to her and Little Yusef never gets to see any money whatsoever. He's virtually her slave and she feeds him on nothing but pork fat & potatoes, his clothes are always in tatters and even in the very coldest of weather we'd see him walking around with the holes in his gum boots stuffed with straw. Twice a day he has to milk the cows and cart the two milk churns over a kilometre to the milk depot on a push-bike without tyres.
Little Yusef however, is the village thief. "Do you want to buy a chicken every Saturday" he asked Alicja shortly after we moved in. Alicja agreed with the proviso that he would pluck them and remove the insides and for a long time after that we enjoyed a Sunday roast chicken. And good chickens they were too, free range and with a taste like chickens used to have when I was a kid. At the same time we were getting our eggs from Vladek once a week and as time went on the number of available eggs was dwindling. Alicja would come home from next door with 6 or 8 eggs instead of the dozen we used to get and one day I asked Vladek if the chickens were going off the lay.
-No, he said -the foxes or polecats must be getting them. They're disappearing from Jurek's place too. I'll have to start shutting them up at night I suppose.
-What about Little Yusef, I said. -Is he loosing them too?
-No" said Vladek. “He doesn't keep chickens"
Not knowing that Little Yusef was a thief I didn't put two & two together right then, although I did wonder where Yusef was getting the chickens from. But if he was buying them from somebody & selling them to us at a profit, then good for him. Then one afternoon I ran across Vladek down by the shrine where he was picking a drunken Little Yusef up from the side of the road. I stopped to give him a hand and we dragged him to where he'd be able to sleep it off without getting run over.
-He's been thieving again, said Vladek. -The only time he has money for vodka is when he sells something he's pinched.
-Oh, I didn't know he pinched things, he seems a nice little bloke, I said.
-Yes he is, but he's a compulsive clepto'. Everybody knows about it but we tolerate it because that woman he lodges with gives him a rotten time. You just have to keep your eyes about you when he's around, that's all.
It suddenly struck home - the chickens. -Vladek, I said, -he's been selling us a chicken every Saturday and you and Jurek have been loosing chickens. You don't think....?
-Yes, said Vladek. -Jurek wondered if Yusef was taking them but we couldn't think where he'd be getting rid of them - we didn't think about you. We both looked down at Little Yusef and burst out laughing.
Towards the end of the month a stranger arrived in Bocwinka or, at least, a stranger to us and one day at lunch Alicja asked me if I'd seen him. I told her that she was getting as nosy as the locals and we had a laugh about how our lives had changed since we'd taken up village life and how we could now tell who was going up the road by the sound of his tractor. When next we were visited by Eva, Alicja asked who this newcomer was.
-Oh he's not new, that's Piotr, he's Bogdan's brother. He's come here for Christmas with the family, he works in Germany now, got a lot of money.
-Is he single?, Alicja asked
-Yes but he wanted to marry me at one stage.
Eva wasn't originally a Bocwinka girl but came from a town close to Warsaw and met Vladek when she came to visit her brother who had taken up farming in the village. Eva has a heart of gold and a number of other qualities but one of them sure isn't good looks. She has a terribly foul mouth, is a gossip, reeks of BO and can hit a cow with a piece of wood or a stone from 40 paces. Nevertheless, when she started to visit Bocwinka courting Vladek she was seen by the local lads as being a sophisticated city girl and therefore, highly desirable. So desirable if fact that shortly before the wedding Bogdan's brother Piotr, had offered Vladek a car for her. Vladek soon realised that the offer hadn't been as good as it could have been when, after turning Piotr down, he was offered the same car plus a calf by Jasiek, Bogdan's other brother. Both Vladek and Eva told the story with much pride.
Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas day, is the most important day on the calendar in Poland when the presents are opened and the Christmas feast is enjoyed. Traditionally the festivities commence at the sight of the first star in the sky which usually shows itself at around five in the evening. If it's cloudy, they start anyway. The Christmas feast consists of thirteen meatless dishes, some of which must be fish - usually pickled herring but always fresh carp. A spare place is always set at the table - some say it's for the homeless and others that it's for Jesus. I don't know why the fresh fish dish has to be carp but it does and a week before Christmas, live carp appear in tin baths at markets all over Poland. These fish are enormous things and are purchased and taken home before they die where, if the purchaser lives in town, the fish are put in the bath for a week. This, I am told, is because carp taste a little muddy when first taken from the pond and the fresh bath water cleans them out and replaces the mud with the traditional taste of Christmas chlorine.
I you live in Bocwinka however, the odds of you having a bath in which to put your Christmas fish are something in the order of 15:1 and so another place like the kitchen sink (usually too small) or a tin bath in front of the TV has to be found. Finding a vessel in which to keep your live carp for a week isn't the only problem if one lives out of town - getting the carp home alive can be an even bigger hassle. Mindful of the problem, and the realisation that, with communism gone one is free to engage in private enterprise, two young men decided to do something about it.
Basing their enterprise along similar lines to Western ice cream vans, albeit a tad more slimy, the results of their entrepreneurial efforts arrived in Bocwinka at midday on the Friday before Christmas. I heard a horn blowing, a bell ringing and somebody bellowing something I didn't understand so I opened the window to see if I could hear any better. Going slowly past the house was the Kruklanki fire tender and I yelled to Alicja that there must be a fire somewhere. She came to the window and listened for a moment.
-What are they yelling about?
-They're shouting "carp"....
- Shouting what?-
-Carp.
-What, fish carp? I mean, does the word mean anything else in
Polish?
-No, carp means carp. They must be selling carp, I think
-Can't be.
-Well, let’s go see.
By the time we clambered into our warm weather clothes and caught up with the fire tender, which had stopped a little further up our lane, at least half the village had gathered around. Sure enough, slap bang in the middle of Bocwinka was a fire tender full of carp - a first.
Live carp delivery was a new concept, not only to me, but to the rest of Bocwinka and created an inordinate amount of interest. We all stood around listening to the sales spiel, about how fresh they were, that they'd already been in the tank for two days swimming naturally which, they said, was equal to a whole week in a tin bath when it came to removing the muddy taste. Another selling point was the price - the same as in town but you didn't have to spend the money on the bus fare.
But what really sold people was the fact that if your bus was late on the way home from town you could end up with a dead carp on your hands. Once the carp is dead, they told me, you can't get rid of the muddy taste. I couldn't help but admire the entrepreneurial spirit of these two young men who'd put the sales pitch together, hired the fire tender and even bought polythene bags for the customers to take the fish home in. They'd made up a special net, like a hanging basket on a piece of chain, for retrieving the fish from the small hole in the top of the tank and although catching them seemed to be difficult it did add something of a side-show aspect to the proceedings.
Every now and then a fish would flap itself free from the net as it emerged from the top of the tank and it would flap around on the bed of the truck. This happened three times and out of the corner of my eye I could see Little Yusef eyeing up the situation. The next time a carp hit the floor he pounced on it like a cougar and was off up the lane with it, head down, whooping and screaming, his oversized, hole riddled gum boots flapping around his legs. He ran out of sight up the nearest driveway and straight into the stomach of Big Jan who was walking out of his gate. Big Jan (Hydraulicus giganticus) is the closest thing Bocwinka has to a plumber, or the Empire State Building. A massive, bearded behemoth of a, of a.......well, man I guess, who stood in the lane head, shoulders, and waist above Little Yusef.
Our carp thief was returned to the fire tender screaming and kicking whereupon Big Jan held him upside down over the hole in the tank for a while threatening to dunk him. All manner of things came out of little Yusef's pockets, coins, buttons, nails, bits of rolled up fencing wire, used matches, all along with a liberal sprinkling of dead leaves, straw and dried cow manure. A woman beckoned to one of the young carp sellers and whispered something in his ear and he handed Yusef a fair sized fish free of charge. Little Yusef, now bursting with confidence, jumped up and down on the spot making rude gestures at Big Jan before taking off again. A few paces down the lane the fish flapped out of his arms and onto the snow covered lane. Little Yusef dived on it and it slithered over the edge and under the snow which lay on the slope down to the river.
At that point the snow had drifted up to half a metre or so and Little Yusef's fish was somewhere under it. He dug frantically with his hands throwing up clouds of snow in his wake but couldn't find it. Big Jan strolled back up the lane to see if he could help Little Yusef retrieve his carp but Yusef saw him coming and ran back up to the road. There he stood impatient, swaying from side to side, like a hyena waiting for a lion to eat its fill, Or for a whole pack of village idiots to emerge from the bushes and snap at Big Jan's heels, worry him away.
It didn't take much kicking around for Big Jan to find the fish. He made his way back up the slope to the road and beat it on the hard snow until it ceased to show any signs of life. Then with a great under arm heave sent it sliding up the lane to where little Yusef stood. Little Yusef watched as it slid flapping past him and, while it was still moving, caught up with it and picked it up on the run like a dropped baton at an Olympic relay race. He didn't come back and Vladek told us that he still had pieces of it two weeks later. He'd hung them up on strings in the barn where they'd frozen in the cold air and he'd been cooking them over a fire down by the lake away from the eyes of his guardian.
Chapter 9
December brought more snow, deep snow, necessitating more digging to keep a clear path to the garage, the channel to which was by now like taking a trip through the Corinth Canal and I was grateful to Vladek's father for having made me a proper snow shovel. One morning I struggled through a fresh snow fall down to the shop to collect our regular loaf of bread, which came three times a week, and on this particular morning I was thinking to myself just how good it was to live in the countryside on days like this. How clean the village looked every time the snow gave us a new white carpet.
It was 10 o'clock and outside the milk depot were half a dozen farmers passing a bottle of vodka around. They'd been there since 7.30am when they'd dropped off their milk to be carried to town by the tanker and had waited until the shop opened at 8am so that they could take the bread home to their families. Now they were all merry and singing songs I couldn't understand - a congenial bunch of drunks who asked me to join them but I declined saying I hadn't yet had breakfast. Soon some of their wives would turn up to tell them off and take them home for breakfast too.
At the shop I could see through the window that Pani Zosia's two regular gossip ladies were sitting at the table drinking coffee and they both said hello and smiled as I walked up to the counter. Our village shop was kept spotlessly clean by Pani Zosia, everything on the shelves was lined up with the precision of a Swiss watch factory workshop and the 1933 model, German apothecaries scales were so shiny as to cause temporary blindness when the sun caught them.
At the right hand of the counter were the barter baskets in which one could always find eggs and vegetables grown in the village gardens and the contents of the three baskets were always displayed with a few flowers and a clean table cloth. I was never been able to work out quite how this barter system actually worked but folks seemed to leave maybe a dozen eggs and tell Pani Zosia that, failing money, they wanted carrots in exchange. When they returned the next day Pani Zosia went through a mental reckoning in which she deducted the cost of their bread from the difference between the eggs and carrots, handed over a loaf and asked for 3 zlotys.
At times, the mathematics seemed extremely complex to the observer but nevertheless Pani Zosia's computer like brain seldom made a mistake and she commanded a certain respect in the village for these mental gymnastics. I walked towards her, smiled and said good morning as Pani Zosia's hand went down under the counter for the loaf of bread she knew I'd come for when the door burst open and one of the gossip ladies shouted -get that whoring thing out of here. I turned around to see what it was all about. At the threshold stood Vladek and another man who I'd seen around the village, both beaming like kids who'd just been given good school reports. They were both holding onto one end of a pitchfork and at the other was impaled a ferrety looking animal which was dripping blood onto the shop floor.
It was a kuna (beech marten) which had the misfortune to have chosen to take up residence in the shop's attic and Pani Zosia had mentioned to Vladek that she'd heard something scampering around up there. I thought Pani Zosia would have been angry at the sight of an impaled beech marten dripping blood all over her clean floor but no, she was angry about something else. She wanted the animal, and an argument developed between her and the two men as to who was going to have the skin. The men were shouting that they'd caught the thing and should be entitled to keep it but she was saying that it was on the shop's premises and it was hers. Pani Zosia was not an easy person to argue with and she quickly took possession of the poor creature and disappeared outside with it.
All this time I was waiting for my bread but as I looked out of the window, I could see Pani Zosia at work skinning the animal. It obviously wasn't the first time she'd skinned an animal and in short time was holding the pelt aloft and inspecting the pitchfork hole in it's neck. She handed the carcass back to Vladek and his friend telling them to give it to their dogs and came back inside with apologies to me for having kept me waiting.
She walked around to the other side of the counter wiping her hands on her apron as she did so and pushed my bread across the counter towards me. There was a big, red, bloody thumb print on it. I pointed at it and she said -I'm sorry about that. She wiped her hands again and gave me another loaf. -I'll take that one home for my husband's pigs, she said, and placed it on a shelf in the adjoining store room.
I said my goodbyes and walked out of the door. To my left was a large woman pushing her drunken husband towards home and on my right was all that was left of the beech marten - a patch of bright red blood in the snow. As I reached our gate I was accosted by Vladek and we stood talking for ten minutes or thereabouts when we were joined by Eva who'd just returned from the shop. Under her arm was a loaf of bread with a bloody thumb print on it. -Cut your hand have you Eva?, I said. She looked at her hands, stroked her face and looked at them again. -That's strange, she said. -I wonder where the blood came from? With that, Vladek grabbed the loaf from her. -No it's not bloody strange, he said, -I know where it came from. And he set off for the shop with a stride born of fury. If successful in his avowed intent I knew Pani Zosia would be walking home bandy legged at the close of business.
When winter is in full swing and farm work comes to a halt it's the time that people visit each other to talk, drink, play cards, watch TV, moan about the neighbours and discuss new ways to cheat the electricity meter. When the temperature drops to minus twenty the kids don't have to go to school and whole families visit their friends and neighbours to spend an entire day, apart from milking time, in each other's company. They invariably take their own food and the women share the cooking whilst the men share the vodka. What the kids shared I've never found out, but they spent most of their time outside making snow men, pulling each other around on sledges and doing all the things kids anywhere do when the snow's on the ground.
On some days it was just too cold to venture outside for more than twenty minutes and, as I'd finished all the inside work for which materials were available, I looked around for other things to do. When I was in England I had bought a short wave radio so that we could listen to the BBC World service and now seemed a good time to rig up an aerial outside. I went to the shed and selected a couple of planks which I nailed to the apex of the barn roof in a cross shape and fixed both the FM and the short wave radio aerials to it. The reception wasn't perfect but nevertheless, being able to hear English programs (and Radio Moscow in English) made a considerable difference to the time spent indoors that winter.
Another thing which kept the boredom away was our friendship with Halina and Ryszard who could always be found at home when it was below minus twenty because Ryszard was a school teacher in Mozdzany, a village close to us. So in December we found ourselves doing exactly as the locals did. We'd get together and eat and drink, the atmosphere being something like boxing days in England. Whenever my sister would send us something from civilisation like a jar of garlic and ginger sauce we'd save it until we visited Halina and Ryszard and we'd cook up a feast.
Their neighbour Janek has a horse and sleigh on which he took us out several times for a trip in the forest where we'd light a bonfire and roast potatoes. I liked Janek and we developed something of a relationship after he found that I had pretty keen eyesight and could spot fresh blood in the snow. This isn't as ominous as it sounds - when deer and elk are shedding their antlers they leave blood spots as they wander about. Antler souvenirs formed a part of Janek's income. But on one such trip he seemed a bit removed and uncomfortable with me and referred to me as father when speaking to Alicja. She thought it was some sort of term of endearment but when the vodka bottle was passed around he didn't take it, causing Ryszard to raise his eyebrows, and when we returned to Janek's house he referred to me again as father.
It transpired that Janek had been told by a neighbour that I was some kind of priest and the rumour was well established in Mozdzany. Our area, being isolated and generally short on information, thrived on rumours. They were started at the drop of a hat and in no time would become unshakable, incontrovertible fact hard to dislodge or disprove. Through Eva we'd heard a number of rumours about ourselves and had usually found them to be a source of amusement. As the only Westerner living in a village in the whole of the north east it was inevitable that I would attract a certain amount of attention. It was assumed by many that I'd come to this forgotten corner of the country to bury my shady past or to try to forget some tragedy which had occurred in the past.
This particular rumour though, Ryszard pointed out, shouldn't be taken too lightly by us for Janek had heard that we were members of an American religious cult. One thing we didn't want was to be seen to be going against the grain of Catholicism which, we knew, would make us unpopular in the area and we could see that if the rumours from both our villages came together something bigger could be made out of me, a cult leader, walking fearlessly into the old, ghost ridden, German cemetery. Even worse if old man Miankowski was to spread it around that he thought we'd been lighting candles in there. I told Janek that the cross on our barn roof was a radio antenna and that whole story about me being a cult leader was complete rubbish and he promised to spread the word around at the morning milk collection in Mozdzany.
Ryszard eventually found the source of the rumour through another teacher at school. It was simple. Jan Boczinski, a farmer from Zywki, had been driving his tractor past our house, seen me putting up my cross shaped radio aerial, put two and two together and come up with a number other than four. We didn't keep animals like everyone else and the apartment we were building in the empty barn was to be a mission hall. Ryszard reminded me that it was time to put up the new fence I had been making to go around the shrine of the Virgin Mary just outside our gate. I had taken down the old fence a month before and hadn't got around to re placing it. Ryszard had heard in school that I'd vandalised the shrine by taking the fence away and this all fitted in with the way cult leaders behaved - next he'll be taking the cross down! -Once you get on the wrong side of the priest, said Ryszard, -life can become difficult up here.
The next day I was up early and seen by all the men at the milk depot erecting a new picket fence around the shrine. Zenek wandered over to ask if he could give me a hand and during the course of the work I let it be known that I thought it was an outrage that the Virgin Mary's fence should have been allowed to fall into such disrepair. "With all these able bodied men in the village, and a forest full of wood just up the road, it looks as though the folks of Bocwinka don't care about The Virgin" I said. Zenek was suitably ashamed and I knew he'd pass on what I'd said to everyone at the depot.
When Alicja next saw Eva she told her what the people of Mozdzany had been saying about us and that was enough. Eva, who often told Alicja that she didn't believe in gossiping, soon spread the word that all the people who lived in Mozdzany were mentally deficient and had nothing better to do with their time than make up stories. Within two days we'd heard what was being said at Ryszard's school - Jan Boczinski and his wife were being ridiculed for making up fairy tales. The rumour had been successfully killed.
Poland's north east is the most economically depressed part of the country and probably always will be. It is a region of lakes and forests with practically no industry. Farming is, for the most part, at subsistence level there are virtually no resources beneath the ground and people are poor - some of them desperately so. The vast majority of the people in the region earn their money through farming and the farms are, more often than not, so small that in the West they would be called smallholdings. The soil is poor, and the growing season is short, and paying ones bills is a never ending struggle.
Most farmhouses in the region are inhabited by extended families, the average being something in the order of eight people per house and the farm income is often pooled. Poles have a great attachment to their land and will, generally, struggle against all odds not to loose it. The law pertaining to farm land however, is that once farmers become too old to work the land they can receive a pension by handing the land over to the state (in which case they can continue to stay on in the farm house) or, they can keep the land in the family by handing the farm over to one of their sons.
When this latter situation obtains, the old folks get their pension which, of necessity, they share with the rest of the family living in the house. In Bocwinka, for example, a number of farming families would encounter severe financial difficulties if it weren't for the old folks pension money going towards paying the bills. In a December newspaper Alicja read how a woman pensioner in her seventies had died and the family had kept her in the shed for two months without telling the authorities so that they could continue to receive her pension. They had folded her into the sitting position where she had frozen solid and every so often they placed her on a seat outside the door in order to let the rest of the village know that she was still around, The article went on to say that the ruse was discovered by the electricity meter reader who called one day and upon receiving no reply to his customary "good morning" looked at her and noticed that she had taken on a somewhat Negroid appearance.
Half way through December with our renovations almost at a standstill, and in spite of the short wave radio, we were becoming bored and when we were approached by a school in Gizycko to teach the kids English for two days a week, we accepted. The school curriculum had for many years dictated that children must be taught a second language but they were all learning Russian simply because there were no teachers of any other language available.
Now, it isn't until you start to teach someone your own language that you realise how little sense it makes and I regularly tied myself up in knots trying to explain what phrases like "terribly good" meant. One day I made the mistake of saying that something or the other "will be bought tomorrow" and I was challenged by a studious looking twelve year old.
-Please sir, how can that be?
-How can what be?
-Please sir, you taught us that "will be" is future tense and "bought" is past tense. So how can you say "will be bought?"
-Don't fill your heads with theory, it's a danger, I told them, -just say it.
I was also asked to explain, and give examples of the "The-Future-Perfect-in-the-Past-Continuous/Progressive-Tense."
Where the hell did you get that?, I asked
-It's right here in this English book, came the reply
I looked at it, and the examples it gave were "I would have been going" and "would I have been going?"
I went to see the school principal after the lesson and explained that although I spoke the language, I didn't actually know the first thing about it, hoping to get out of the whole thing but, as he explained, it would be a good thing for the students just to hear the language spoken by a native speaker. He went on to say that the only other chance his students had was to be taught by the Russian language teacher who was at that moment in the staff room ploughing her way through books in an attempt to learn English herself and she'd never met or spoken to an English speaker in her life. He tugged at my heart strings and I didn't have the courage to say no.
One particularly uncomfortable moment in my brief career as a teacher of English came when a fifteen year old girl asked me the meaning of the word cunnilingus. She was one of those girls who, to use a wonderfully descriptive Polish expression, "had the dick in her eyes".
To convey the meaning of this expression is difficult; sultry, sensuous, furtive, flirtatious, tarty, sexy. She was all of these in small portions, and mature beyond her years, but the whole package was wrapped in a kind of child like innocence. She was taking the piss out of me. I knew it, she knew I knew it, but she knew too that the rest of the class hadn't heard of the word - it was a secret between us. She knew that I knew what the word meant - and she knew, that I knew, that she knew what the word meant.
She was sitting in the front row with a half smile on her face, her tongue touching her top lip and she was tapping a pencil against her left ear - waiting for my reply. I denied all knowledge of the word but told her that she'd probably misheard it and what had actually been said was "cunning linguist".
-No, she replied -it's in a book
-Let's see, I said flicking through the English/Polish dictionary, playing for time and wondering if I could get away with telling her it was a service offered on The Irish airlines or something.
-No, it's not in here, I said.
-It's in mine, said another girl
-Oh good, what does it say?, I asked.
-I'll tell her later, replied the girl.
Alicja had written an ingenious chart to teach actions and feelings towards a variety of objects. On the left were the feelings: I like, I loath, I'm worried about, I love, I hate, I have mixed feelings about, I feel good about.
On right was another list: politicians, cabbage, Russians, hotels, petrol, sun, rain - about twenty words in all. It worked well but half the kids didn't seem to have any feelings towards politicians and the like so we re vamped it to include things which kids are more interested in: bicycles, skis, bats, balls, hockey sticks, chocolate, computer games and so on. Alicja spent a lot of time writing this up on a black board where we intended to leave if undisturbed but the kids made so many funny or rude sentences from it that we had to wipe it off.
An angelic looking eight year old boy with a pained look on his face came out with -I'm concerned about my balls. I casually strolled over to my desk, lifted the top to face the class and, in silence, giggled until tears were streaming down my face. Alicja couldn't hold on to it under this sort of pressure and she burst out laughing and sat down. We were in stitches but the kids didn't know why because testicles in Poland are referred to as eggs. They weren't long in finding out though, and the next lesson was filled with short sentences about balls.
One day we took fifteen ten year olds for a walk around town where we looked in all the shops to find English writing on the packaging of various Polish and imported products. We felt that this would be of some practical use to them and that they would at last be able to use some of the words we'd been teaching them. There were lots of English words - ORANGE JUICE, MILK, BOUNTY BARS, MINERAL WATER, MARS, PHOTO SERVICE - all new words in Poland which were beginning to appear alongside the Polish words on Polish products and I instructed the kids to write them down.
When we returned to the class room I called each kid out to the front and had them write the words they'd found on the blackboard and we went through them to determine the meaning of each. The words were mostly food products. "Stanley Jet Cut Saw" took a bit of explaining as did "Uncle Bens Stir Fry Sweet & Sour Sauce." but I wasn't quite prepared for "THE BEST TITS IN THE USA."
-That's an interesting one, I said -where did you find that one?
-In the video shop window, said the little girl.
I went on to explain that tit was in fact, short for titmouse, a small bird of which there were many right outside the window at that present moment.
-But it had a picture of a lady on the box, she said.
Most of the time the man in the video shop didn't have the slightest idea what his videos were about because he couldn't read English either. I was glad that the little girl didn't see the one called "Anal Fever II." God only knows how I would have got out of that one. Mind you, when I mentioned it to Alicja she did point out that, in accounting parlance, anal is short for analysis and that the lady on video box could have been an accountant in an office where the central heating was stuck on high.
Micheal, the son of the school principal who had satellite TV at home asked me one Monday morning “what is the women's snatch?” I had a fair idea of what I thought it was but couldn't have imagined where he'd heard it so I asked him. -On Eurosport, he said. -they keep saying it at the weight-lifting. Most humorous were the essays which we were able to laugh about in the privacy of the kitchen when we marked them at home.
Every week I would give the kids a short essay as homework. I'd specify the subject and give them a few words stipulating that they weren't to use these actual words but to locate alternatives from their dictionaries. For one of these pieces I asked them to imagine that they were in their bedrooms one night and they had a hunch that there was a burglary going on next door. They were to write a detailed report of their observations from the bedroom window to give to the police the next day.
At home in the kitchen I could see the smile widening on Alicja's face. -Got a good one?, I asked her.
-Yes, have a look at this.
She handed me a piece of paper covered with the neatest imaginable calligraphic handwriting and I read down the page until I came to the following paragraph.
-It was the burguling. I knew what was happening within me and I came on the window for a good spectacle.
As Christmas was in the offing, the headmaster of the school asked me if I thought any of the children were up to doing a nativity play in English. I knew that they were, without exception, a long way off being able attempt anything like this and the headmaster was a little disappointed. He suggested however, that I devote a lesson to the story of Christmas because it was a story they all knew and should be able to follow. It went down very well and the kids were interested to know about English Christmas traditions, Christmas pudding, what scenes were on English Christmas cards and whether or not we sang carols. I taught them to sing Silent Night in English and the parents were most impressed even though they couldn't understand a word of it.
As a result of this unbridled success I was asked to do something on the story of Easter and, as I was running out of ideas, I started on it straight away thinking that by the time Easter came around we would have had a few rehearsals, and should get it right. I had Alicja draw pictures on the blackboard of Jesus carrying the cross, being crucified and a few other scenes pertaining to the subject and the kids all sat in their seats spellbound as I went slowly through the story which I'd taken the trouble to re learn myself for the occasion. They liked the story and I gave them a small questionnaire about Easter as homework. In answer to the question "what happened at Easter." One kid wrote "Romans nailed Jesus to the hot cross bun."
With a few weeks of English lessons under their belts the kids were at the stage where they were making jokes in English during their other lessons. This being a source of embarrassment to their teachers, we were approached by a few of them to teach them English too. These lessons had to be held at our house in secrecy so that the kids wouldn't find out and the group included Natasha, the Russian teacher who had been teaching herself English from books. I felt sorry for her. One day she'd been given a pile of books and told that she had two months to become an English teacher. She had protested saying that she didn't know the English language and was told by the principal "the kids have to learn English now, Russian language lessons will cease and you're the language teacher" adding "who else should we give the job to - a maths teacher?"
Natasha had never heard the English language spoken, didn't even have a cassette to listen to and by the time she started with us she had already developed her own forms of pronunciation which were difficult to correct. One day she asked me what arseholes were and I explained as best I could without becoming too anatomical but she was sure that I had the wrong word. -The gas from them causes much pollution, she said -I've read that people have stopped using them in the West but I don’t think we have them here. She was, of course, referring to aerosols.
During another lesson she bought up the subject of stiff drinks. I told her that, as far as I could think, it applied only to undiluted alcoholic drinks.
-A stiff whiskey or a stiff gin Natasha, I said.
-A stiff beer?
-No, come to think of it
-Could you have a stiff orange juice, lemonade, Fanta?
-No, it must just be spirits-let me think.
-You couldn't have a stiff Cock then? She was referring to Coke.
One teacher who used to attend the lessons at our house was Zbigiew Kowalski who had worked as an electrical engineer for Polish Ocean Lines and had visited many different countries picking up the English language as he went. Zbigniew's English was at the stage where he could communicate quite well but this also put him at the stage where he could make more advanced cock ups with the language than the rest of the class.
At one lesson I asked everyone to give me just a few sentences about what they did first thing in the morning. Zbigniew's effort was:
-I get up at seven to the clock. I make the coffees. I'm making for the house to be warm. And then I get up my wife.
Sometime during December the reed cutters arrived in the village to cut thatching reeds and they simply drove straight out onto the lakes in their horses and carts and began cutting at ground/ice level. We'd seen individuals fishing through holes in the ice but didn't know that it was already strong enough to stand the weight of a horse and cart and we went down to watch the operation. They had some kind of special tool to cut the reeds with, as an ordinary scythe was too flimsy to touch them, but it seemed a fairly easy job nevertheless. The reeds were cut and stacked in huge bundles and I thought for a moment how good our roof would look with thatch instead of tiles and I enquired about the cost. "Nothing" I was advised and the reed cutters explained that they didn't have to pay anyone for the reeds but that there were some lakes on which they were not allowed to cut for fear of destroying water bird habitats.
We went off the idea when we found that it wouldn't be possible to get insurance on the house if we had a thatched roof but we learned that the reeds from Bocwinka were all for export to England where they would be chemically treated against fire before being sold. The foreman told me the price they were paid for cutting and transporting the reeds and a quick mental reckoning showed that a one hundred square metre house would take only something in the order of thirty American dollars worth of reeds to thatch.
I've no idea what the stuff costs by the time it gets to the house owner in England but I'm sure that people with recently thatched houses in the UK would have a shock if they knew how much the reeds cost at source. Knowing that the ice was now thick enough to stand the weight of the car we waited until the reed cutters had left and went for a spin on the lake. Spinning around on frozen lakes is the best fun anyone can have in their car unless they're up to no good at drive in movies but it's a lot safer, and you can keep it up for longer. But unlike bonking in drive-ins it looses its appeal the more you do it.
It was tremendous fun to get the car up to 40kmh and spin the steering wheel around and watch the trees on the banks go by in slow motion but after a while it became boring - so we took up fishing. Now, fishing IS boring, but only if you go about it the wrong way. The ice was half a metre thick so we borrowed Vladek's auger and bored two holes through it about 20 centimetres in diameter and far enough apart to park the car in between them.
Then, when we had nothing else to do, we would drive out on the lake, park between the holes and fish from the car windows. It was quite a pleasant way to spend the day, especially when the sun was shining because inside the car it was warm.
Alicja usually sat in the front, me in the back and we'd drink coffee from a thermos flask and read books with the radio on taking the occasional stroll or slide as the fancy took us. I found that there's nothing special involved in walking on water, it's just a matter of the temperature at which one chooses to do it. I can thoroughly recommend Eskimo style fishing as therapy for stressed out business executives, as long as the worms are kept inside the car. If you leave them outside at anything below about minus twenty they become hard to distinguish from pretzels within five minutes. The actual catching of fish, obviously, is to be avoided at all costs in those temperatures as the fingers become numb way before the fish is unhooked.
On one such fishing expedition we saw the Soltys go by with a Christmas tree on the back of a sleigh and, thinking about it, realised that we were loosing track of time. Time was beginning to mean less and less to us to the extent where I no longer wore a watch. There were no newspapers available in Bocwinka and all days, except Sundays, were almost the same. We'd gone from living from hour to hour and were now living from Sunday to Sunday. Christmas had been sneaking up on us while we weren't looking. Everyone living in our lane was of Ukrainian descent and had their Christmases two weeks later than the Poles so we hadn't noticed.
I didn't know whether loosing track of time was a good thing or not. One of the reasons we had changed our lifestyle and moved to such a sparsely populated, remote area was that there had never been enough time in our lives - we'd had enough of deadlines and getting to appointments on time. Now though, the thought of loosing a week began to worry me slightly. I'd lost a week of my life, of my time, a week in which nothing had happened and there had been nothing to measure its passing. I had the feeling that I could be missing out on something, that the World was still functioning and moving slowly forward while I'd been in some sort of coma. The feeling was short lived and it didn't make me want to return to life in a city but it was a feeling that I hadn't anticipated. It was a reminder that I hadn't yet shaken off the shackles of a high pressure past life and perhaps wouldn't ever be able to.
I was despondent for a couple of days wondering if I could ever fully adapt to life in the wilderness. One thing lacking in my life was conversation with other English speakers and, if my Polish improved, I knew that I'd still be stuck for conversation on topics other than farming. There was nothing Alicja could do to cheer me up so she suggested that we visit Halina and Ryszard to see if they'd like to spend Christmas day with us. I wasn't in the mood but thought that maybe it would be a good time to drown my sorrows in a few vodkas with Ryszard and so reluctantly agreed.
They had company when we arrived, a woman of about thirty named Marta who lived not far from them but who I'd never before met. We sat at the table discussing Christmas preparations, relatives who'd visit, what food would be cooked and how, and, to me, Marta seemed reasonably well informed. She was well dressed and her make up wasn't overdone as it so often is with village women, and I though she was probably a teacher at Ryszard's school. She asked me if I would miss my family over the festive season and told me that she couldn't bear to be without her relatives at Christmas. She'd visited an orphanage and was going have a ten year old boy stay with her and her family for a couple of weeks and she said that she'd sent a parcel of dried food to somewhere in Bosnia. She said that she didn't know who'd end up with her dried food but hoped that it would brighten someone's day when they opened the package.
She spoke slowly for me so that I could keep up with what she was saying and I was beginning to think that here was someone who was local but had a bit more to say, a bit more to discuss than the price of livestock. Nobody, I reminded myself, in Bocwinka had the slightest interest in starving people in Bosnia, in fact many of them barely knew there was a war going on there and nobody knew where it was.
She then turned to Ryszard, who was held in some esteem in the area as a man of learning, and asked -is it true that on Christmas Eve the animals all talk to each other?
I thought it was a joke but she was deadly serious and Ryszard, who after seven years of living in the area was well versed in village folk lore and beliefs, told her that he didn't know but that he too had heard this and it seemed to be common knowledge. She then asked me if the animals talked to each other in England on Christmas Eve, and as I had by then worked out that she was a farmer’s wife, I asked her why she had never gone out to the barn to listen.
-Because people say that if you hear them you will be struck dumb, she replied. I asked if she knew of anybody who'd been struck dumb by listening to animals on Christmas Eve. She hadn't.
-If they do speak to each other in England, I said. -I wonder if it's in English or Polish.
It didn't faze her at all and she told me that, just like humans, it was only natural to expect English cows to speak English and Polish cows to speak Polish. -After all, they wouldn't learn Polish from listening to English farmers when they were doing the milking would they?
Instances such as this (and there were many) served to highlight the mentality, attitudes and ingrained traditions of the folk who live in that corner of Europe. Even the people in our small town, whose kids we taught English to, and who seemed relatively sophisticated, generally still had the same beliefs under the veneer and we still had to be careful not to offend them with our sense of humour. With only a few days left to Christmas we needed a tree but although we lived in a region covered in forest with literally thousands of hectares of suitable trees, there were none on sale. This was understandable - nobody would have bought one anyway. So like everybody else we set out with an axe to steal one.
We took Misha with us and walked in the direction of Zywki lake which was surrounded by Christmas trees and as we drew within a few hundred metres of it we could hear a sort of pinging noise, hard to define but something like a flock of wild ducks on the wing but at great distance. A couple of times we stopped to listen but the sound seemed to be coming from all around us rather than from one specific direction. We plodded on again until we reached the shore of the lake and then saw where the noise was coming from. Little Yusef, the village idiot, was standing at the edge of the lake with a branch in his hands. Some twenty metres distant were three holes in the ice with logs laid behind them. A string of stones had been laid in a line and little Yusef was striking them with the branch using it like a hockey stick.
The object of the game was to tee off with the branch sending the stone bouncing across the ice until it struck the logs and bounced back into one of the holes in the ice. As the stones bounced, they made the pinging noise we'd heard which was amplified using practically the whole lake surface as a sounding board. The noise could be heard almost half a kilometre away and I was most impressed and began bouncing stones across the ice and banging the hard end of Misha's dog lead on it which produced a sound like submarine depth soundings. Little Yusef was enjoying the fact that I was enjoying the experience and he leaped about banging the surface of the lake with the stick and then he ran to the bank and came back with a sizeable flat rock. He put the rock down on the ice and slid it around with his foot - just like the low pitched, moaning sounds made by whales.
This was an astonishing thing - here was a guy who could play a lake! He may not have known any actual tunes but all the ingredients were there. What little Yusef was doing was unique, or at least I'd never heard anything like it, and I couldn't help but think that this was a marketable sound if only he could be discovered by some talent spotter who'd lost his way at Dover.
My mind ran riot with the possibilities:
"And now ladies and gentlemen, for your entertainment - Little Jusef and his amazing musical lake."
Of course, he couldn't take the thing on tour with him but maybe he could play the odd ice rink or two. Mike Oldfield with his tubular bells, Simon Smith and his dancing bear, all would pale into insignificance compared with a man who could play a lake. And what about Swan Lake? Little Yusef could play it while the Bolshoi Ballet actually danced on it.
-Ask him what other sounds he can make on the lake, I asked Alicja.
She asked him and he rubbed the rock around until he created a shiny patch of clear ice, picked up his stick as if to strike it and indicated to me that I should put my ear to the ice while he banged it with the stick. I did - my ear stuck to the ice and little Yusef ran away up the bank whooping and screaming like a banshee.
I didn't get up and Misha came over and licked my face.
-Peter, are you alright?
-Of course I'm not alright. The little bastard's conned me, my ear's suck to the fucking ice.
It was lucky that I'd been wearing gloves or my hands would have stuck too. As it was, there was no way for Alicja to help me and I ended up tearing a small piece of flesh off of the outer rim of my ear. I wanted to do something nasty to little Yusef but he was miles away by the time I stood up, although we could still hear him whooping as he ran down the lane. I was the laughing stock of the village - the only person who'd ever been conned by the village idiot. And, it wasn't the last time.
Little Yusef's life is tragic and it's fortunate that he isn't aware of it. He is, so they say, "borderline" mentally retarded and has that permanently happy disposition so often found among people of that type. He is around 30 years old with no living relatives and lodges with an old witch of a woman in the village who managed to get him classified as mentally retarded and herself classified as his guardian. This means that his monthly pension cheque is paid directly to her and Little Yusef never gets to see any money whatsoever. He's virtually her slave and she feeds him on nothing but pork fat & potatoes, his clothes are always in tatters and even in the very coldest of weather we'd see him walking around with the holes in his gum boots stuffed with straw. Twice a day he has to milk the cows and cart the two milk churns over a kilometre to the milk depot on a push-bike without tyres.
Little Yusef however, is the village thief. "Do you want to buy a chicken every Saturday" he asked Alicja shortly after we moved in. Alicja agreed with the proviso that he would pluck them and remove the insides and for a long time after that we enjoyed a Sunday roast chicken. And good chickens they were too, free range and with a taste like chickens used to have when I was a kid. At the same time we were getting our eggs from Vladek once a week and as time went on the number of available eggs was dwindling. Alicja would come home from next door with 6 or 8 eggs instead of the dozen we used to get and one day I asked Vladek if the chickens were going off the lay.
-No, he said -the foxes or polecats must be getting them. They're disappearing from Jurek's place too. I'll have to start shutting them up at night I suppose.
-What about Little Yusef, I said. -Is he loosing them too?
-No" said Vladek. “He doesn't keep chickens"
Not knowing that Little Yusef was a thief I didn't put two & two together right then, although I did wonder where Yusef was getting the chickens from. But if he was buying them from somebody & selling them to us at a profit, then good for him. Then one afternoon I ran across Vladek down by the shrine where he was picking a drunken Little Yusef up from the side of the road. I stopped to give him a hand and we dragged him to where he'd be able to sleep it off without getting run over.
-He's been thieving again, said Vladek. -The only time he has money for vodka is when he sells something he's pinched.
-Oh, I didn't know he pinched things, he seems a nice little bloke, I said.
-Yes he is, but he's a compulsive clepto'. Everybody knows about it but we tolerate it because that woman he lodges with gives him a rotten time. You just have to keep your eyes about you when he's around, that's all.
It suddenly struck home - the chickens. -Vladek, I said, -he's been selling us a chicken every Saturday and you and Jurek have been loosing chickens. You don't think....?
-Yes, said Vladek. -Jurek wondered if Yusef was taking them but we couldn't think where he'd be getting rid of them - we didn't think about you. We both looked down at Little Yusef and burst out laughing.
Towards the end of the month a stranger arrived in Bocwinka or, at least, a stranger to us and one day at lunch Alicja asked me if I'd seen him. I told her that she was getting as nosy as the locals and we had a laugh about how our lives had changed since we'd taken up village life and how we could now tell who was going up the road by the sound of his tractor. When next we were visited by Eva, Alicja asked who this newcomer was.
-Oh he's not new, that's Piotr, he's Bogdan's brother. He's come here for Christmas with the family, he works in Germany now, got a lot of money.
-Is he single?, Alicja asked
-Yes but he wanted to marry me at one stage.
Eva wasn't originally a Bocwinka girl but came from a town close to Warsaw and met Vladek when she came to visit her brother who had taken up farming in the village. Eva has a heart of gold and a number of other qualities but one of them sure isn't good looks. She has a terribly foul mouth, is a gossip, reeks of BO and can hit a cow with a piece of wood or a stone from 40 paces. Nevertheless, when she started to visit Bocwinka courting Vladek she was seen by the local lads as being a sophisticated city girl and therefore, highly desirable. So desirable if fact that shortly before the wedding Bogdan's brother Piotr, had offered Vladek a car for her. Vladek soon realised that the offer hadn't been as good as it could have been when, after turning Piotr down, he was offered the same car plus a calf by Jasiek, Bogdan's other brother. Both Vladek and Eva told the story with much pride.
Christmas Eve, rather than Christmas day, is the most important day on the calendar in Poland when the presents are opened and the Christmas feast is enjoyed. Traditionally the festivities commence at the sight of the first star in the sky which usually shows itself at around five in the evening. If it's cloudy, they start anyway. The Christmas feast consists of thirteen meatless dishes, some of which must be fish - usually pickled herring but always fresh carp. A spare place is always set at the table - some say it's for the homeless and others that it's for Jesus. I don't know why the fresh fish dish has to be carp but it does and a week before Christmas, live carp appear in tin baths at markets all over Poland. These fish are enormous things and are purchased and taken home before they die where, if the purchaser lives in town, the fish are put in the bath for a week. This, I am told, is because carp taste a little muddy when first taken from the pond and the fresh bath water cleans them out and replaces the mud with the traditional taste of Christmas chlorine.
I you live in Bocwinka however, the odds of you having a bath in which to put your Christmas fish are something in the order of 15:1 and so another place like the kitchen sink (usually too small) or a tin bath in front of the TV has to be found. Finding a vessel in which to keep your live carp for a week isn't the only problem if one lives out of town - getting the carp home alive can be an even bigger hassle. Mindful of the problem, and the realisation that, with communism gone one is free to engage in private enterprise, two young men decided to do something about it.
Basing their enterprise along similar lines to Western ice cream vans, albeit a tad more slimy, the results of their entrepreneurial efforts arrived in Bocwinka at midday on the Friday before Christmas. I heard a horn blowing, a bell ringing and somebody bellowing something I didn't understand so I opened the window to see if I could hear any better. Going slowly past the house was the Kruklanki fire tender and I yelled to Alicja that there must be a fire somewhere. She came to the window and listened for a moment.
-What are they yelling about?
-They're shouting "carp"....
- Shouting what?-
-Carp.
-What, fish carp? I mean, does the word mean anything else in
Polish?
-No, carp means carp. They must be selling carp, I think
-Can't be.
-Well, let’s go see.
By the time we clambered into our warm weather clothes and caught up with the fire tender, which had stopped a little further up our lane, at least half the village had gathered around. Sure enough, slap bang in the middle of Bocwinka was a fire tender full of carp - a first.
Live carp delivery was a new concept, not only to me, but to the rest of Bocwinka and created an inordinate amount of interest. We all stood around listening to the sales spiel, about how fresh they were, that they'd already been in the tank for two days swimming naturally which, they said, was equal to a whole week in a tin bath when it came to removing the muddy taste. Another selling point was the price - the same as in town but you didn't have to spend the money on the bus fare.
But what really sold people was the fact that if your bus was late on the way home from town you could end up with a dead carp on your hands. Once the carp is dead, they told me, you can't get rid of the muddy taste. I couldn't help but admire the entrepreneurial spirit of these two young men who'd put the sales pitch together, hired the fire tender and even bought polythene bags for the customers to take the fish home in. They'd made up a special net, like a hanging basket on a piece of chain, for retrieving the fish from the small hole in the top of the tank and although catching them seemed to be difficult it did add something of a side-show aspect to the proceedings.
Every now and then a fish would flap itself free from the net as it emerged from the top of the tank and it would flap around on the bed of the truck. This happened three times and out of the corner of my eye I could see Little Yusef eyeing up the situation. The next time a carp hit the floor he pounced on it like a cougar and was off up the lane with it, head down, whooping and screaming, his oversized, hole riddled gum boots flapping around his legs. He ran out of sight up the nearest driveway and straight into the stomach of Big Jan who was walking out of his gate. Big Jan (Hydraulicus giganticus) is the closest thing Bocwinka has to a plumber, or the Empire State Building. A massive, bearded behemoth of a, of a.......well, man I guess, who stood in the lane head, shoulders, and waist above Little Yusef.
Our carp thief was returned to the fire tender screaming and kicking whereupon Big Jan held him upside down over the hole in the tank for a while threatening to dunk him. All manner of things came out of little Yusef's pockets, coins, buttons, nails, bits of rolled up fencing wire, used matches, all along with a liberal sprinkling of dead leaves, straw and dried cow manure. A woman beckoned to one of the young carp sellers and whispered something in his ear and he handed Yusef a fair sized fish free of charge. Little Yusef, now bursting with confidence, jumped up and down on the spot making rude gestures at Big Jan before taking off again. A few paces down the lane the fish flapped out of his arms and onto the snow covered lane. Little Yusef dived on it and it slithered over the edge and under the snow which lay on the slope down to the river.
At that point the snow had drifted up to half a metre or so and Little Yusef's fish was somewhere under it. He dug frantically with his hands throwing up clouds of snow in his wake but couldn't find it. Big Jan strolled back up the lane to see if he could help Little Yusef retrieve his carp but Yusef saw him coming and ran back up to the road. There he stood impatient, swaying from side to side, like a hyena waiting for a lion to eat its fill, Or for a whole pack of village idiots to emerge from the bushes and snap at Big Jan's heels, worry him away.
It didn't take much kicking around for Big Jan to find the fish. He made his way back up the slope to the road and beat it on the hard snow until it ceased to show any signs of life. Then with a great under arm heave sent it sliding up the lane to where little Yusef stood. Little Yusef watched as it slid flapping past him and, while it was still moving, caught up with it and picked it up on the run like a dropped baton at an Olympic relay race. He didn't come back and Vladek told us that he still had pieces of it two weeks later. He'd hung them up on strings in the barn where they'd frozen in the cold air and he'd been cooking them over a fire down by the lake away from the eyes of his guardian.
Chapter 10
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 10
We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day at Halina and Ryszards along with their relatives from Warsaw. It cheered me up no end and I completely forgot about loosing time, loosing that week when nothing happened. With two glasses of vodka time just seemed to flow slowly away into space, with which, I'd read somewhere, it is inextricably linked anyway.
After four vodkas time actually becomes space and space becomes movement. After six vodkas there's a brief period of say, a second, where time, space and movement divide and are identifiable as separate entities before spinning back into the cake mix. The time is 11 pm - the space is someone’s lounge room floor - the movement is their revolving ceiling. To some observers this space/time/movement continuum lasts only for a matter of nano seconds but it's there, even if Einstein did get it wrong and didn't learn how to measure it.
I didn't get my time back, that's impossible, but the space that it occupied in my head grew smaller as the ceiling revolved. The feeling was that of a light house keeper running up the steps so fast that he screwed his head into the roof until it covered his ears - quiet. I woke up, it was still Christmas but it was breakfast time. I couldn't eat it. -I'm never going to drink again; it's just not worth the suffering.
We went back there on New Years Eve and I only had one vodka. Space, time and movement obeyed Newtons laws of motion and every action had an equal and opposite reaction. Every stress had it's equivalent strain, they all spoke Polish too fast; I didn't understand them; they sang songs and I didn't understand them; they wished me a happy new year and I understood them. We went home. On the way an animal ran across the road in front of us stopping momentarily in the car headlights. It was a doggy, foxy thing about two feet long with a bushy tail and a slightly opossum like face. A composite animal, the likes of which I'd never seen before, with a light ruff coloured around its neck.
-Did you see that?
-See what.
-That animal.
-Your drunk.
-No, there was an animal there.
-I didn't see it - you're drunk.
-I'm not, I only had one.
I asked everyone what it could have been but nobody had any ideas except Bogdan whose idea was that I should ask someone else because he didn't know. Then, as I was halfway down his drive, he shouted after me -Try Stan, he knows all about animals. I'd been looking for an excuse to talk to Stan the poacher for I only knew him as a nodding acquaintance and we were intending to try to attract bird and animal watchers to the guest house. A poacher, I reasoned, would be just the person to use as a guide or, failing that, Stan' should be able to show me where various animals lived and I could do the guiding myself.
Bocwinka is perfectly situated for the eco tourist with an interest in animals and birds, butterflies and wildflowers. The area has been virtually undisturbed for over fifty years and is one of the last places left in Europe with its ecology still reasonably intact. This, together with the fact that it is surrounded by lakes and forests containing all sorts of rare fauna and flora with no industry of any kind, made us think that we'd have something unique to offer intrepid English speaking eco tourists.
But when I called on Stan he professed to know no more about animals than anyone else in the village and was at a loss to understand why Bogdan should have told me that he did. He told me that the animal I'd seen was most probably a "jenot" but said that he didn't know anything about their habits. I came home and told Alicja that I'd most probably seen a jenot on new years eve but she'd never heard the word so we consulted the encyclopedia and found that it was a Raccoon Dog - an animal from Siberia which had first migrated to north east Poland some forty or so years ago.
When I told Vladek that Stan had said that it was a raccoon dog I'd seen on the road that night he cursed himself for not having thought of it at the time.
-A jenot, yes of course. Yes, there's a few of them around here. Did Stan show you one?
-No. He said he doesn't know much about them.
-Doesn't know much about them? He's got jenot skins hanging up in his barn - I saw them yesterday. Was he wearing a fur hat when you were speaking to him?
-Yes.
-Well that's jenot fur. He sells the skins to someone for making hats.
I was going to have to find another way to get in with Stan but, for the moment, I couldn't think how. One morning as we were about to leave the house, the bell rang. I cursed, we didn't want visitors, we were already late for my dentist appointment. I looked around the corner of the house and saw Zenek standing at the gate, the low morning light highlighting the holes in his face giving him the marbled appearance of a Baalbek statue.
-You'd better make it quick Zenek, we're going out.
-You can't go out, it's rabies day.
-It's what?
-Rabies day.
Not being a word I was used to hearing, I didn't know what he was talking about.
-Rabies day? - what's that?
-You know, that disease foxes get. Misha's got to be vaccinated against it, it's compulsory. You've got to take her down to the cross roads.
-What happens if I don't?
You'll have to take her into town and have it done there or they can fine you. They can even put her down if you don't comply.
-OK I'll be there.
I put the lead on our Misha and hurried off down to the cross roads. I needn't have bothered to hurry because when I arrived there was a queue of 15 people and, I suppose 25 dogs. It seems we were the last to find out about rabies day and, although I was in a hurry, the operation hadn't even started and the vet was still putting his equipment together. The one day a year when the vet comes with his bag of needles is something of a social event. Every household has at least one dog and most families have two or three so it's the only occasion when the whole village, like it or not, has to turn out and stand next to each other.
A social occasion, of course, doesn't necessarily mean a sociable occasion and two of the men in the queue weren't on speaking terms. Anton and Marian hadn't spoken for months because of an incident which had occurred at the start of haymaking. Not many of the power poles in Bocwinka are earthed and when a thunderstorm is immanent folks all pull the plugs on their televisions in case they blow up. Back in the 1960's the electricity department promised to rectify the situation but meanwhile the village is still waiting and kids at school are told not to touch the power poles under any circumstances.
During hay-making Anton was on the way home one evening when he stopped to shake some sand out of his boots and for this purpose he leaned against a telegraph pole with both hands while he tried to kick one of his boots off. A tractor came up the lane pulling behind it a cart-load of hay, on top of which were three, partially drunk, farmers including Marian who spotted Anton leaning against the telegraph pole shaking one of his legs. Marian is a young, enthusiastic person and sometimes does tend to be a little impulsive and on this occasion he summed up the situation in a flash.
He assumed that Anton was being electrocuted by the un earthed power pole and, taking his pitchfork in hand, leapt from the top of the travelling haystack bringing down the pitchfork handle across Anton's wrists in an effort to disengage him from the source of the problem. Anton ended up with a broken wrist and had to be taken to Gizycko hospital, a twenty kilometre journey, in a horse and cart because nobody had a tractor registered for the road and the only car in the village was broken down. Now both Anton, Marian and their dogs stood in the queue three places from one another, each trying to pretend that he hadn't seen the other.
Dogs, unlike their owners, never seem to express their displeasure with one another through silence. Some of dogs in the queue hated each other and were anxious to show it. Dogs on Polish farms are nearly always small, snappy, terrier sized creatures which are kept on chains all their lives. They're not badly treated, in fact they're usually the subjects of much affection but still, they seldom get to go anywhere unless they break their chains (or sometimes, strings). Now, when you keep a dog on a chain all the time it usually becomes aggressive and that was the case with practically every dog in the village. Rabies day is the one day when they can all get together and decide who's going to be the boss for another year.
Dogs who never get to meet, who only bark at each other from afar and who know each other only from the scent carried on the wind, all get to bark, growl, slobber & snap at each other just once a year. Villagers don't walk their dogs and therefore don't have dog leads, so most of the dogs were either carried in their owners arms or were on short pieces of old baling twine. Old Polish baling twine is not the strongest of materials with which to secure an eager village mongrel and some of them broke loose. Others simply jumped out of their owners arms and it was on for young & old.
There were fights going on all around and under the vet's car, owners bumping into each other as they hurtled back and forth cursing their respective pooches and people saying; -Well, your dog started it, my little Burek was minding his own business until that ugly wretch of yours went for him.
The vet eventually sorted himself out and sat in the passenger seat of the car, notebook in hand, as his first client stepped forward. It was Big Jan the plumber. Big Jan is the roughest, toughest man in the village and he's held in awe by many because he can turn the nettle crushing machine for hours on end without a break. Nettles are good feed for pigs but first they need to be crushed in the machine and this is Jan's forte. I tried the nettle crushing machine once and could barely keep it going with two hands but big Jan can spin it with one hand and feed the nettles in with the other. The vet licked his pencil and looked up at the giant towering before him. The little mongrel in Jan's arms seemed to fade seamlessly into his long straggly beard. Big Jan is almost completely bald and with the little pair of eyes peering out of his beard it looked for all the world as if his head was stuck on upside down.
-Name?
-Jan Stachlewski.
-Is that the dogs name or your name?
-My name.
-I don't want your name, I want the dogs name.
Big Jan leaned towards the vet's ear & muttered something.
-Speak up, I can't hear you.
-Amorek - (The word is used for cupid in Polish)
-So that's Amorek Stachlewski is it?
-Mmmm
There was sniggering in the ranks which stopped abruptly when Jan, indignant, turned around. The vet did his work, took the money and Big Jan headed for home, his Cupid in his arms. A few more dogs & owners came and went without incident until Stankiewicz the poacher fronted up. He had 4 dogs tied together with string and had to untie each one as its turn came and tie the remaining three to the vet's car door handle. One of his dogs, Rudy, was to say the least, unusual in appearance. It could best be described as a cocker spaniel cross, crossed that is, with an armadillo. It bore all the ancestral hallmarks of the cocker spaniel but in place of fur it had scales everywhere except for its lower legs.
It wasn't a pretty sight and was made all the more unsightly by the addition of a white plastic bucket over its head, placed there, as he told the vet, -to stop Rudy scratching his scabby ears. The vet wasn't at all impressed with Rudy and donned his plastic gloves before touching him. The queue broke apart and all stood around the car in silence to watch. Vladek was first to speak
-Whatever that dog's got is most likely infectious, you should have the bloody thing put down.
-Mind your own business Vladek, Rudy will be right as rain in a couple of weeks. Mother Miankowska's given me some stuff to rub over him.
-Mother Miankowska? What would she know about dogs, she's a bloody witch.
-She's not a witch, she's a herbalist. She cured my feet. The doctors didn't know what was wrong with them but Mother Miankowska fixed them up in no time.
Of course what nobody was saying, was that Mother Miankowska was Stankiewicz's aunt but a timid little voice came out of the crowd. -My husband would still be alive if it wasn't for Mother Miankowska
You could have heard a pin drop and the vet, grinning, stuck the needle into Rudy's wrinkled red neck. Rudy let out a hell of a shriek and turned on the vet but was prevented from biting him by the white plastic bucket. We stood there as Stankiewicz tied and untied his pieces of string and presented the vet with his next offering. It too was a little out of the ordinary. It was two dogs long, half a dog high and covered in long hair like a silky terrier. It was as though Stankiewicz had purchased an Old English Sheepdog self assembly kit and hadn't fully understood the instructions. I could imagine the leg extension pieces being scattered around on the floor of his barn somewhere.
While all this was going through my head, Marek came staggering down the road with a fairly respectable looking mongrel on a leather lead. The poor thing was having to dance like John Travolta to avoid being trodden on as it kept a wary eye on its owner's staggering movements in a vain attempt to anticipate the direction of the next lurch. Marek almost pulled up when he reached the car, that is to say he was only moving backwards & forwards by a step or two. He spent a few seconds trying to get Stankiewicz 's long haired whatever it was into focus and then:
-Is that a dog? Is that a doggg? eh, a dog? haaa. You'd have to give it a piece of sausage before you could kick it up the arse or you'd never know which way round it was. Haaaa. Look, look everybody isssa dog' eh? Haaaa........
Marek was having trouble telling which way round he himself was and, in particular, which way was up and he fell across the bonnet of the vet's car. Two men from the queue laid him down in the back of a cart after assuring him that they'd take care of his dog and he promptly fell asleep. More pooches were punctured during which another argument developed between a farmer and the wife of the shop owner, in which she tried to pin the parenthood of her latest litter of pups on his dog and then came Jakub's turn.
-What's her name?
-Don't know.
-What do you mean you don't know?
-She hasn't got a name.
I saw one man in the queue nudge another and smirk.
-Well, what do you call her when you want her to come?
-I don't have to call her, she's always on the chain.
-Well, I have to have a name. We have to have a record of which dogs we've vaccinated.
-Call her what you like then.
-Alright she's to be known as Kropka. OK?
-It's OK with me.
-How old is she?
-Don't know.
-Oh come on, don't you remember when you got her?
Someone at the back of the queue yelled out that she must have been three because she was from the same litter as his own dog and the vet filled in the appropriate space on the form.
-Alright, give her to me then, said he vet. Something went wrong with the hand over and the dog broke free and ran around the other side of the car with Jakub in pursuit. The dog quite obviously thought that it was all a game and darted back and forth around the car as Jakub ran after it getting redder and redder in the face.
-Whore, he shouted. -Come here whore! The dog immediately stood to attention and trotted up to Jakub wagging its tail as it did so.
The secret was out, the whole village now knew the dog's real name and roars of laughter filled the air. Old ladies started whispering to each other behind cupped hands.
-Well I never, did you see that? Whatever's it coming to, fancy giving the poor animal a name like that.
-Yes, I know. I've never liked him you know, he treats his wife terribly. Mrs. Siepietowska told me that he locked her out of the house one night and she had to sleep at her sister’s house. Just because she gave him salad. Said he'd been working like a dog all day and he wanted real food when he came home.
-Yes, I know, I know. That's what I mean you see - man like that.
Our Misha was last in the queue and when the vet produced the vaccine bottle I asked for a clean needle. Every dog including scabby Hubert had been vaccinated with the same needle and it hadn't been so much as wiped clean. The vet didn't object. He just reached into the back of the car and grabbed a new needle. A group of dog owners were standing within earshot and one of them asked why his dog hadn't been vaccinated with a clean needle.
-You didn't ask.
-Well, you should have changed needles anyway. You can catch diseases from dirty needles.
-Yes but.........
-The department gives you needles and you save them so you can use them yourself in your own practice.
-Now, look here...
We left them arguing and set off hot foot for my dentist’s appointment arriving late with apologies.
-Sorry we're late. It’s rabies day in Bocwinka, I said. He gave me a strange look and said -perhaps I should wear gloves then.
It was shortly after rabies day that my chance to develop a friendship with Stan Stankiewicz the poacher presented itself when Mr Polakowski, the previous owner of our house came to see us. With the money from the sale of the house, he'd bought himself a small Polski Fiat, the first car he'd ever owned, and he liked to visit Bocwinka to show it off to his old neighbours. He could never understand why we were bothering to do all the work we were doing to his old house and every time he came to the village he'd drop in to see what else we'd done and offer all sorts of advice. On this occasion I asked him about raccoon dogs and where to find them but received the same answer Bogdan had given me - go and see Stan.
I told him that my previous visit to Stan had been unproductive but Mr Polakowski said he'd fix it for me right away if I'd care to accompany him to Stan's house. -Stan and I go back a long way, he said. -I was a great friend of his father, Alexander - I taught him how to catch fish. Worst thing I ever did.
-Oh, how come?, asked Alicja.
-Because I had the only commercial fishing license for Soltmany Lake and Stan used to take nearly as many fish out of it as I did. I threatened him with the police several times but in the end I had to take him behind the post office and sort him out.
-But you get along alright with him these days?, I enquired
-Oh that was years ago when he was a kid. We came to an agreement after I'd loosened a couple of his teeth and over the years he's been very good to me and my family. In fact he still is but these days we do a bit of business together. That was one reason for buying the car - Stan's still taking fish and I still have my old customers away from the village. It wasn't the fact that he was taking fish that used to annoy me, God knows there's plenty enough fish in the lake. No, it was that the little sod was selling them right here in Bocwinka. He was selling them cheaper than me and I was the one who was having to pay the license fees and then travel all over the place to get rid of the catch because he'd taken away my local market.
We finished our coffee and drove down to Stan's house where we were shown inside and told to make ourselves comfortable - Stan saying that he'd join us shortly. We sat at the table talking to his wife Ursula while through the window I could see Stan putting a sack of something heavy into Mr Polakowski's boot before coming inside with a bottle and three glasses. He unscrewed the top but I put my hand over the glass indicating that I didn't want anything from the bottle.
-He doesn't drink Stan
-Yes, so I've heard but I didn't believe it
Mr Polakowski didn't beat about the bush but came right out with the business in hand.
-I told Peter that you'd show him jenots Stan.
-Jenots, what would I know about jenots?
-Don't play games with me Stan. I told the man you're our local poacher and you could show him jenots. Alright?
-You told him I'm a poacher? He's had the police up at his house.
-That was because someone stole his hose pipe Stan. Whoever it was should be ashamed of himself, stealing from a foreigner. You'd call the police too if it was your hose pipe wouldn't you?
Stan ran a finger around the top of his glass for a second or two.
-Jenots aren't around in the day, they’re night animals.
-Christ Stan, the man's not a bloody idiot - he knows that. Show the man jenots at night.
Stan still wasn't sure and asked -what if he tells the police I'm a poacher?
Mr Polakowski was becoming irritated and I at last opened my mouth to say that I didn't have to see a jenot, I just wanted to know where I could find a jenot hole and at what time of night would be the best time for a sighting. But Mr Polakowski wasn't in the listening mood and went on.
-He's not going to tell the police, he can't even speak Polish, he just wants to see a jenot so he can show tourists where they live.
-Why would tourists want to see a jenot?
Polakowski raised his voice.
-Jesus and Mary Stan. How should I know? - some people are like that. There's programmes on TV about animals - someone must be interested.
In the face of Mr. Polakowski's bullying Stan at last agreed to show me a jenot and said he'd call for me at around 9 o'clock that evening. I was well prepared with a back pack containing a thermos of coffee, a torch and a groundsheet to lay down on. I was dressed in layers of dark clothes to keep warm in case we had to spend time sitting outside a hole in the ground and I was ready at half past eight. The bell rang, I said goodbye to Alicja adding that I didn't know what time I'd be home - "animals are unpredictable. Maybe we'll see one in the first hour, maybe it will take all night."
Stan' was at the side gate and as I approached he pushed it towards me. I pushed it back towards him. He pushed it back again and I tried to explain that I was ready, he didn't have to come in - I was on my way out. He was impatient. He pushed the gate towards me again and walked into the yard. Ah' OK he wanted to speak to Alicja in Polish. He didn't. He walked straight past the house and Misha, our ferocious guard dog, came running up to him. They knew each other but he'd never met her before - the cunning bastard, I bet he got to know her at night and then had our hose pipe away?
He still hadn't said a word to me as I followed him around the back of the barn. He stopped and beckoned me over to stand under one of our plum trees. I watched as he took something out of a paper bag, placed it on the ground and retired to the plum tree next to me where he motioned me to crouch down with him.
It was probably all of five minutes and I'd seen my first pair of jenots - on my own land living in a hole under my own barn less than fifty metres from my house. Having made me feel like someone who didn't know what was going on in his own back yard, which I was, Stan stood up and said goodnight. The whole thing had taken no more than ten minutes.
At last the ice was broken with Stan and, although we didn't see a lot of him from then on, we did use him a few times as a guide when we had bird watchers staying with us.
Chapter 10
We spent Christmas Eve and Christmas day at Halina and Ryszards along with their relatives from Warsaw. It cheered me up no end and I completely forgot about loosing time, loosing that week when nothing happened. With two glasses of vodka time just seemed to flow slowly away into space, with which, I'd read somewhere, it is inextricably linked anyway.
After four vodkas time actually becomes space and space becomes movement. After six vodkas there's a brief period of say, a second, where time, space and movement divide and are identifiable as separate entities before spinning back into the cake mix. The time is 11 pm - the space is someone’s lounge room floor - the movement is their revolving ceiling. To some observers this space/time/movement continuum lasts only for a matter of nano seconds but it's there, even if Einstein did get it wrong and didn't learn how to measure it.
I didn't get my time back, that's impossible, but the space that it occupied in my head grew smaller as the ceiling revolved. The feeling was that of a light house keeper running up the steps so fast that he screwed his head into the roof until it covered his ears - quiet. I woke up, it was still Christmas but it was breakfast time. I couldn't eat it. -I'm never going to drink again; it's just not worth the suffering.
We went back there on New Years Eve and I only had one vodka. Space, time and movement obeyed Newtons laws of motion and every action had an equal and opposite reaction. Every stress had it's equivalent strain, they all spoke Polish too fast; I didn't understand them; they sang songs and I didn't understand them; they wished me a happy new year and I understood them. We went home. On the way an animal ran across the road in front of us stopping momentarily in the car headlights. It was a doggy, foxy thing about two feet long with a bushy tail and a slightly opossum like face. A composite animal, the likes of which I'd never seen before, with a light ruff coloured around its neck.
-Did you see that?
-See what.
-That animal.
-Your drunk.
-No, there was an animal there.
-I didn't see it - you're drunk.
-I'm not, I only had one.
I asked everyone what it could have been but nobody had any ideas except Bogdan whose idea was that I should ask someone else because he didn't know. Then, as I was halfway down his drive, he shouted after me -Try Stan, he knows all about animals. I'd been looking for an excuse to talk to Stan the poacher for I only knew him as a nodding acquaintance and we were intending to try to attract bird and animal watchers to the guest house. A poacher, I reasoned, would be just the person to use as a guide or, failing that, Stan' should be able to show me where various animals lived and I could do the guiding myself.
Bocwinka is perfectly situated for the eco tourist with an interest in animals and birds, butterflies and wildflowers. The area has been virtually undisturbed for over fifty years and is one of the last places left in Europe with its ecology still reasonably intact. This, together with the fact that it is surrounded by lakes and forests containing all sorts of rare fauna and flora with no industry of any kind, made us think that we'd have something unique to offer intrepid English speaking eco tourists.
But when I called on Stan he professed to know no more about animals than anyone else in the village and was at a loss to understand why Bogdan should have told me that he did. He told me that the animal I'd seen was most probably a "jenot" but said that he didn't know anything about their habits. I came home and told Alicja that I'd most probably seen a jenot on new years eve but she'd never heard the word so we consulted the encyclopedia and found that it was a Raccoon Dog - an animal from Siberia which had first migrated to north east Poland some forty or so years ago.
When I told Vladek that Stan had said that it was a raccoon dog I'd seen on the road that night he cursed himself for not having thought of it at the time.
-A jenot, yes of course. Yes, there's a few of them around here. Did Stan show you one?
-No. He said he doesn't know much about them.
-Doesn't know much about them? He's got jenot skins hanging up in his barn - I saw them yesterday. Was he wearing a fur hat when you were speaking to him?
-Yes.
-Well that's jenot fur. He sells the skins to someone for making hats.
I was going to have to find another way to get in with Stan but, for the moment, I couldn't think how. One morning as we were about to leave the house, the bell rang. I cursed, we didn't want visitors, we were already late for my dentist appointment. I looked around the corner of the house and saw Zenek standing at the gate, the low morning light highlighting the holes in his face giving him the marbled appearance of a Baalbek statue.
-You'd better make it quick Zenek, we're going out.
-You can't go out, it's rabies day.
-It's what?
-Rabies day.
Not being a word I was used to hearing, I didn't know what he was talking about.
-Rabies day? - what's that?
-You know, that disease foxes get. Misha's got to be vaccinated against it, it's compulsory. You've got to take her down to the cross roads.
-What happens if I don't?
You'll have to take her into town and have it done there or they can fine you. They can even put her down if you don't comply.
-OK I'll be there.
I put the lead on our Misha and hurried off down to the cross roads. I needn't have bothered to hurry because when I arrived there was a queue of 15 people and, I suppose 25 dogs. It seems we were the last to find out about rabies day and, although I was in a hurry, the operation hadn't even started and the vet was still putting his equipment together. The one day a year when the vet comes with his bag of needles is something of a social event. Every household has at least one dog and most families have two or three so it's the only occasion when the whole village, like it or not, has to turn out and stand next to each other.
A social occasion, of course, doesn't necessarily mean a sociable occasion and two of the men in the queue weren't on speaking terms. Anton and Marian hadn't spoken for months because of an incident which had occurred at the start of haymaking. Not many of the power poles in Bocwinka are earthed and when a thunderstorm is immanent folks all pull the plugs on their televisions in case they blow up. Back in the 1960's the electricity department promised to rectify the situation but meanwhile the village is still waiting and kids at school are told not to touch the power poles under any circumstances.
During hay-making Anton was on the way home one evening when he stopped to shake some sand out of his boots and for this purpose he leaned against a telegraph pole with both hands while he tried to kick one of his boots off. A tractor came up the lane pulling behind it a cart-load of hay, on top of which were three, partially drunk, farmers including Marian who spotted Anton leaning against the telegraph pole shaking one of his legs. Marian is a young, enthusiastic person and sometimes does tend to be a little impulsive and on this occasion he summed up the situation in a flash.
He assumed that Anton was being electrocuted by the un earthed power pole and, taking his pitchfork in hand, leapt from the top of the travelling haystack bringing down the pitchfork handle across Anton's wrists in an effort to disengage him from the source of the problem. Anton ended up with a broken wrist and had to be taken to Gizycko hospital, a twenty kilometre journey, in a horse and cart because nobody had a tractor registered for the road and the only car in the village was broken down. Now both Anton, Marian and their dogs stood in the queue three places from one another, each trying to pretend that he hadn't seen the other.
Dogs, unlike their owners, never seem to express their displeasure with one another through silence. Some of dogs in the queue hated each other and were anxious to show it. Dogs on Polish farms are nearly always small, snappy, terrier sized creatures which are kept on chains all their lives. They're not badly treated, in fact they're usually the subjects of much affection but still, they seldom get to go anywhere unless they break their chains (or sometimes, strings). Now, when you keep a dog on a chain all the time it usually becomes aggressive and that was the case with practically every dog in the village. Rabies day is the one day when they can all get together and decide who's going to be the boss for another year.
Dogs who never get to meet, who only bark at each other from afar and who know each other only from the scent carried on the wind, all get to bark, growl, slobber & snap at each other just once a year. Villagers don't walk their dogs and therefore don't have dog leads, so most of the dogs were either carried in their owners arms or were on short pieces of old baling twine. Old Polish baling twine is not the strongest of materials with which to secure an eager village mongrel and some of them broke loose. Others simply jumped out of their owners arms and it was on for young & old.
There were fights going on all around and under the vet's car, owners bumping into each other as they hurtled back and forth cursing their respective pooches and people saying; -Well, your dog started it, my little Burek was minding his own business until that ugly wretch of yours went for him.
The vet eventually sorted himself out and sat in the passenger seat of the car, notebook in hand, as his first client stepped forward. It was Big Jan the plumber. Big Jan is the roughest, toughest man in the village and he's held in awe by many because he can turn the nettle crushing machine for hours on end without a break. Nettles are good feed for pigs but first they need to be crushed in the machine and this is Jan's forte. I tried the nettle crushing machine once and could barely keep it going with two hands but big Jan can spin it with one hand and feed the nettles in with the other. The vet licked his pencil and looked up at the giant towering before him. The little mongrel in Jan's arms seemed to fade seamlessly into his long straggly beard. Big Jan is almost completely bald and with the little pair of eyes peering out of his beard it looked for all the world as if his head was stuck on upside down.
-Name?
-Jan Stachlewski.
-Is that the dogs name or your name?
-My name.
-I don't want your name, I want the dogs name.
Big Jan leaned towards the vet's ear & muttered something.
-Speak up, I can't hear you.
-Amorek - (The word is used for cupid in Polish)
-So that's Amorek Stachlewski is it?
-Mmmm
There was sniggering in the ranks which stopped abruptly when Jan, indignant, turned around. The vet did his work, took the money and Big Jan headed for home, his Cupid in his arms. A few more dogs & owners came and went without incident until Stankiewicz the poacher fronted up. He had 4 dogs tied together with string and had to untie each one as its turn came and tie the remaining three to the vet's car door handle. One of his dogs, Rudy, was to say the least, unusual in appearance. It could best be described as a cocker spaniel cross, crossed that is, with an armadillo. It bore all the ancestral hallmarks of the cocker spaniel but in place of fur it had scales everywhere except for its lower legs.
It wasn't a pretty sight and was made all the more unsightly by the addition of a white plastic bucket over its head, placed there, as he told the vet, -to stop Rudy scratching his scabby ears. The vet wasn't at all impressed with Rudy and donned his plastic gloves before touching him. The queue broke apart and all stood around the car in silence to watch. Vladek was first to speak
-Whatever that dog's got is most likely infectious, you should have the bloody thing put down.
-Mind your own business Vladek, Rudy will be right as rain in a couple of weeks. Mother Miankowska's given me some stuff to rub over him.
-Mother Miankowska? What would she know about dogs, she's a bloody witch.
-She's not a witch, she's a herbalist. She cured my feet. The doctors didn't know what was wrong with them but Mother Miankowska fixed them up in no time.
Of course what nobody was saying, was that Mother Miankowska was Stankiewicz's aunt but a timid little voice came out of the crowd. -My husband would still be alive if it wasn't for Mother Miankowska
You could have heard a pin drop and the vet, grinning, stuck the needle into Rudy's wrinkled red neck. Rudy let out a hell of a shriek and turned on the vet but was prevented from biting him by the white plastic bucket. We stood there as Stankiewicz tied and untied his pieces of string and presented the vet with his next offering. It too was a little out of the ordinary. It was two dogs long, half a dog high and covered in long hair like a silky terrier. It was as though Stankiewicz had purchased an Old English Sheepdog self assembly kit and hadn't fully understood the instructions. I could imagine the leg extension pieces being scattered around on the floor of his barn somewhere.
While all this was going through my head, Marek came staggering down the road with a fairly respectable looking mongrel on a leather lead. The poor thing was having to dance like John Travolta to avoid being trodden on as it kept a wary eye on its owner's staggering movements in a vain attempt to anticipate the direction of the next lurch. Marek almost pulled up when he reached the car, that is to say he was only moving backwards & forwards by a step or two. He spent a few seconds trying to get Stankiewicz 's long haired whatever it was into focus and then:
-Is that a dog? Is that a doggg? eh, a dog? haaa. You'd have to give it a piece of sausage before you could kick it up the arse or you'd never know which way round it was. Haaaa. Look, look everybody isssa dog' eh? Haaaa........
Marek was having trouble telling which way round he himself was and, in particular, which way was up and he fell across the bonnet of the vet's car. Two men from the queue laid him down in the back of a cart after assuring him that they'd take care of his dog and he promptly fell asleep. More pooches were punctured during which another argument developed between a farmer and the wife of the shop owner, in which she tried to pin the parenthood of her latest litter of pups on his dog and then came Jakub's turn.
-What's her name?
-Don't know.
-What do you mean you don't know?
-She hasn't got a name.
I saw one man in the queue nudge another and smirk.
-Well, what do you call her when you want her to come?
-I don't have to call her, she's always on the chain.
-Well, I have to have a name. We have to have a record of which dogs we've vaccinated.
-Call her what you like then.
-Alright she's to be known as Kropka. OK?
-It's OK with me.
-How old is she?
-Don't know.
-Oh come on, don't you remember when you got her?
Someone at the back of the queue yelled out that she must have been three because she was from the same litter as his own dog and the vet filled in the appropriate space on the form.
-Alright, give her to me then, said he vet. Something went wrong with the hand over and the dog broke free and ran around the other side of the car with Jakub in pursuit. The dog quite obviously thought that it was all a game and darted back and forth around the car as Jakub ran after it getting redder and redder in the face.
-Whore, he shouted. -Come here whore! The dog immediately stood to attention and trotted up to Jakub wagging its tail as it did so.
The secret was out, the whole village now knew the dog's real name and roars of laughter filled the air. Old ladies started whispering to each other behind cupped hands.
-Well I never, did you see that? Whatever's it coming to, fancy giving the poor animal a name like that.
-Yes, I know. I've never liked him you know, he treats his wife terribly. Mrs. Siepietowska told me that he locked her out of the house one night and she had to sleep at her sister’s house. Just because she gave him salad. Said he'd been working like a dog all day and he wanted real food when he came home.
-Yes, I know, I know. That's what I mean you see - man like that.
Our Misha was last in the queue and when the vet produced the vaccine bottle I asked for a clean needle. Every dog including scabby Hubert had been vaccinated with the same needle and it hadn't been so much as wiped clean. The vet didn't object. He just reached into the back of the car and grabbed a new needle. A group of dog owners were standing within earshot and one of them asked why his dog hadn't been vaccinated with a clean needle.
-You didn't ask.
-Well, you should have changed needles anyway. You can catch diseases from dirty needles.
-Yes but.........
-The department gives you needles and you save them so you can use them yourself in your own practice.
-Now, look here...
We left them arguing and set off hot foot for my dentist’s appointment arriving late with apologies.
-Sorry we're late. It’s rabies day in Bocwinka, I said. He gave me a strange look and said -perhaps I should wear gloves then.
It was shortly after rabies day that my chance to develop a friendship with Stan Stankiewicz the poacher presented itself when Mr Polakowski, the previous owner of our house came to see us. With the money from the sale of the house, he'd bought himself a small Polski Fiat, the first car he'd ever owned, and he liked to visit Bocwinka to show it off to his old neighbours. He could never understand why we were bothering to do all the work we were doing to his old house and every time he came to the village he'd drop in to see what else we'd done and offer all sorts of advice. On this occasion I asked him about raccoon dogs and where to find them but received the same answer Bogdan had given me - go and see Stan.
I told him that my previous visit to Stan had been unproductive but Mr Polakowski said he'd fix it for me right away if I'd care to accompany him to Stan's house. -Stan and I go back a long way, he said. -I was a great friend of his father, Alexander - I taught him how to catch fish. Worst thing I ever did.
-Oh, how come?, asked Alicja.
-Because I had the only commercial fishing license for Soltmany Lake and Stan used to take nearly as many fish out of it as I did. I threatened him with the police several times but in the end I had to take him behind the post office and sort him out.
-But you get along alright with him these days?, I enquired
-Oh that was years ago when he was a kid. We came to an agreement after I'd loosened a couple of his teeth and over the years he's been very good to me and my family. In fact he still is but these days we do a bit of business together. That was one reason for buying the car - Stan's still taking fish and I still have my old customers away from the village. It wasn't the fact that he was taking fish that used to annoy me, God knows there's plenty enough fish in the lake. No, it was that the little sod was selling them right here in Bocwinka. He was selling them cheaper than me and I was the one who was having to pay the license fees and then travel all over the place to get rid of the catch because he'd taken away my local market.
We finished our coffee and drove down to Stan's house where we were shown inside and told to make ourselves comfortable - Stan saying that he'd join us shortly. We sat at the table talking to his wife Ursula while through the window I could see Stan putting a sack of something heavy into Mr Polakowski's boot before coming inside with a bottle and three glasses. He unscrewed the top but I put my hand over the glass indicating that I didn't want anything from the bottle.
-He doesn't drink Stan
-Yes, so I've heard but I didn't believe it
Mr Polakowski didn't beat about the bush but came right out with the business in hand.
-I told Peter that you'd show him jenots Stan.
-Jenots, what would I know about jenots?
-Don't play games with me Stan. I told the man you're our local poacher and you could show him jenots. Alright?
-You told him I'm a poacher? He's had the police up at his house.
-That was because someone stole his hose pipe Stan. Whoever it was should be ashamed of himself, stealing from a foreigner. You'd call the police too if it was your hose pipe wouldn't you?
Stan ran a finger around the top of his glass for a second or two.
-Jenots aren't around in the day, they’re night animals.
-Christ Stan, the man's not a bloody idiot - he knows that. Show the man jenots at night.
Stan still wasn't sure and asked -what if he tells the police I'm a poacher?
Mr Polakowski was becoming irritated and I at last opened my mouth to say that I didn't have to see a jenot, I just wanted to know where I could find a jenot hole and at what time of night would be the best time for a sighting. But Mr Polakowski wasn't in the listening mood and went on.
-He's not going to tell the police, he can't even speak Polish, he just wants to see a jenot so he can show tourists where they live.
-Why would tourists want to see a jenot?
Polakowski raised his voice.
-Jesus and Mary Stan. How should I know? - some people are like that. There's programmes on TV about animals - someone must be interested.
In the face of Mr. Polakowski's bullying Stan at last agreed to show me a jenot and said he'd call for me at around 9 o'clock that evening. I was well prepared with a back pack containing a thermos of coffee, a torch and a groundsheet to lay down on. I was dressed in layers of dark clothes to keep warm in case we had to spend time sitting outside a hole in the ground and I was ready at half past eight. The bell rang, I said goodbye to Alicja adding that I didn't know what time I'd be home - "animals are unpredictable. Maybe we'll see one in the first hour, maybe it will take all night."
Stan' was at the side gate and as I approached he pushed it towards me. I pushed it back towards him. He pushed it back again and I tried to explain that I was ready, he didn't have to come in - I was on my way out. He was impatient. He pushed the gate towards me again and walked into the yard. Ah' OK he wanted to speak to Alicja in Polish. He didn't. He walked straight past the house and Misha, our ferocious guard dog, came running up to him. They knew each other but he'd never met her before - the cunning bastard, I bet he got to know her at night and then had our hose pipe away?
He still hadn't said a word to me as I followed him around the back of the barn. He stopped and beckoned me over to stand under one of our plum trees. I watched as he took something out of a paper bag, placed it on the ground and retired to the plum tree next to me where he motioned me to crouch down with him.
It was probably all of five minutes and I'd seen my first pair of jenots - on my own land living in a hole under my own barn less than fifty metres from my house. Having made me feel like someone who didn't know what was going on in his own back yard, which I was, Stan stood up and said goodnight. The whole thing had taken no more than ten minutes.
At last the ice was broken with Stan and, although we didn't see a lot of him from then on, we did use him a few times as a guide when we had bird watchers staying with us.
Chapter 11
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 11
Marek was discovered asleep in the snow outside our place one night in February. He was, of course, smashed out of his brain but nobody knew how long he had been laying there and he was carried up to Mother Miankowska's house. -He's got frostbite in his toes, she said. We were called upon to transport him to hospital in the car. At the hospital Marek was still too far gone to know what was happening and we left him there saying that we'd telephone to see how he was the next day. We returned to Bocwinka and spent the rest of the night at his brother’s house discussing who was going to do what at Marek's farm in his absence.
Drunk or not, Marek is a good man with animals and though his house looks like a poltergeists bowling alley his animals and poultry are always well looked after. We were all worried at this point that he may loose some of his toes and not be able to carry on at the farm so arrangements were made to see that everything for the time being would carry on as normal in his absence. The following day we rang the hospital. No decision had been made on whether Marek would loose any of his toes but he was going to have to spend some time in bed and so a couple of days later, when we were going into town to teach English, we took along Andrzej and Adam to visit him.
Marek was sitting up in bed and, apart from having the shakes, he looked better than we'd seen him for a long time and, predictably, had already become the ward comedian. We left Andrzej and Adam there arranging to collect them at six in the evening and went off to our English classes where we spent almost a whole lesson explaining to children and teachers alike, the meaning of Hot dogs as opposed to Hot Pies.
This was more involved than it would at first appear because of the Polish word for DOG- which just happens to be PIES although it's pronounced PEE-ESS. One of the town shops had been supplied from somewhere with frozen English steak and onion pies together with an electric pie oven in the form of a small traction engine. The abysmal state of British marketing being what it is, the whole deal came with promotional signs and leaflets in English. The kids had all heard of hot dogs, although they didn't know what they were, and now there was a big yellow and red sign in town advertising hot pies - and pies, they knew, meant dog in Polish.
Dog, we explained, was American slang for sausage. The easiest way to explain it all was to draw pictures on the board and put names alongside them so Alicja drew a sausage, a bread roll, a dog and two pies which almost sorted the problem out. Almost, because the science teacher who, upon finding that the word dog was American slang for sausage, asked -what about sausage pies.
It was all horribly confusing and made all the more so when one of the kids held up an English picture book with a datschund in it, underneath which were printed the words "sausage dog." We were quite worn out at the end of the session when someone came into the classroom with a message asking us if we'd go back to Bocwinka to pick up a pair of crutches from the school caretaker before returning to the hospital.
We were sorry that Marek was being released from hospital so soon because we could envisage him getting drunk again and neglecting his toes but we collected the crutches, turning up late at the hospital. Our concern about Marek being released early, evaporated as soon as we entered the hospital lobby - the crutches weren't for him but for Adam who was sitting on a bench with his left foot in plaster!
-Oh for Christ's sake, said Alicja -go on, tell us all about it.
Adam looked at his shoes and we could smell the vodka on him.
-Oh no, you've been drinking haven't you?, she yelled
He mumbled something about being sorry that we'd had to go back to Bocwinka to collect the crutches and offered to pay for the petrol. Andrzej had already gone home by some other means, being frightened, no doubt, that Alicja would tell him off. We went to see the duty sister. She hadn't been on shift when the accident occurred but she'd heard what happened.
Apparently Adam and Andrzej had been drinking vodka in the ward with Marek and had been caught red handed by the matron who'd beaten them about their heads and in their panic to make themselves scarce they both ran for the open door at the same time. Andrzej had shoved Adam aside as they reached it and Adam had hit his toes against a metal weight which was acting as a doorstop. He'd had his gum boots in his hands at the time - a nurse had told him to take them off.
That same week I was shifting some planks in the barn and I came across a number of butterflies which I presumed to be dead, having suffered temperatures down to minus thirty. I brought one inside to show Alicja but within half an hour in the warm it had been fooled into thinking it was spring and was flying around the kitchen. It just happened to be on the day when we received a copy of BBC Wildlife magazine and when I opened it up I found an illustration of the actual butterfly which was sitting on the window-sill in front of me. It was a large tortoiseshell and the article said that it was now very rare in the British Isles.
I went back to the barn and as I looked more closely I could see a big round clump of them all facing towards the centre of the circle like closely packed segments in an orange, dozens of them. There were other butterflies too, in smaller clumps of six or eight, but I knew nothing of the subject and couldn't identify them. I reasoned that if these things were as rare as the BBC Wildlife magazine said they were, perhaps it would be possible to attract butterfly watchers to our guest house. I went over to see Vladek to ask if he had any butterflies in his barn too.
Assuming that one butterfly watcher watches, say, two thousand butterflies in his butterfly watching career, and the average non butterfly watching person watches twenty five butterflies per year, (a not unreasonable assumption?) then, if you don't have a calculator handy, these statistics make butterfly watchers rarer than the large tortoise-shell. Not the sort of person one gets into conversation with down at the pub very often. In fact they're so rare that Vladek couldn't bring himself to believe in their existence, couldn't credit that such a species existed on the planet. He wanted to know why they watched butterflies. I didn't know either but I told him that in the kitchen at home I had a magazine which actually had the address of a butterfly watching club in it.
In Vladek's mind there had to be something not quite kosher about a grown man who watched butterflies, something effeminate. But then, I was always coming up with what, to him, seemed crazy ideas and he took me up into his attic. Hanging from the roof trusses were literally hundreds of large tortoiseshells, red admirals and peacock butterflies. -It's the same in your attic too, he said -but I suppose you haven't looked. What about flies, do people watch flies as well? -No, I said. -Why? He walked over to the attic window and pulled off a chunk of loose plaster from the wall. It was black with flies three or four deep numbering in the thousands, a grotesque sight.
Periodically, throughout winter, our satellite dish was covered in snow and ice, making satellite TV reception so poor that we found ourselves watching more and more Polish TV which came from a normal antenna in the attic.Polish TV reception had never been good but was, nevertheless, watchable. Then, one night, it was absolutely perfect on both channels and we were at a loss to understand why. I fiddled with the connections but couldn't make it go back to its old self and so decided to be happy about it, whatever caused it.
Over the next three or four days the reception varied and I couldn't find the reason for it and so called the boy genius who'd installed the system. This guy was good and well up with all the latest Western technology but this one had him baffled and he visited us a few times in the evenings with new bits and pieces which he thought would cure the problem. Nothing worked though, and he gave up. I went around to see Zenek's wife who worked in Gizycko to ask her if she'd try to find someone there who knew something about TVs and ask them to visit us. I described the problem we were having and Zenek recognised it, knew the symptoms inside out.
-Would you like to know what causes it?
-Alright, tell me
-The army - it's the army that causes it?
He explained further that only five kilometres away from us was an early warning radar station which they switched off whenever the temperature dropped below a certain point. The reason was simple. The grease they used to lubricate the turn-tables of the revolving radar dishes solidified at low temperatures. When the grease went solid they shut everything down and the TV reception in the whole area improved.
Any reader of this book intending to invade north east Poland should contact the writer who, for a fee of twenty guineas, will divulge the exact temperature at which his planes may go undetected. The advent of permanently bad Polish TV reception in the second half of the month was a clear signal that the weather was warming up. At last the snow was going and the level of the water in the well was creeping upwards. It would still be a long time before we'd see new leaves on the trees but the green of the grass in the fields was a welcome change
Although the house wasn't yet ready to receive guests we had a letter from a bird watching holiday firm in Scotland, a small husband and wife operation who had heard about us and wanted to come and see if the area and the house had potential as a destination for their clients. We made plain to them that it wasn't a good time to view the house and an even worse time to judge the potential for bird watching but they came anyway and, although they stayed only a week, they loved it and I managed to get in a months worth of English conversation.
Don and Anne were an adventurous couple who arrived in a Land Rover and spent the whole week exploring the lakes and forests taking hundreds of photographs. They were more than impressed with Stan the poacher's knowledge of the local birds. I invited him around one night and he went through the bird book with them telling them exactly what their clients would be able to see in the area, where to see it and when. They overcame the language barrier with a kind of universal chirpy cheepy tongue involving bird calls. They'd point to the illustration of a bird and whistle, click, cough etc. until they all agreed. Stan was good at it and if he'd worn his working gear he could have reproduced the smells of each bird's individual environment to go with it from his scratch and sniff trousers.
When Don and Anne left on a Sunday morning, they asked us to do them a favour. Could we please go down to Zywki village and call on a farmer who wanted his photograph taken? They described the house and told us that they'd promised to take the man's photograph but they'd only had slide film in the camera at the time and had said they'd go back. -Just stand outside the gate & wave your camera around, our visitors had said. -And he'll come out and ask you for a photo.
We did just as they said and within a minute or two of his dogs announcing our arrival the man came out of the house. He was a very cheerful, bald headed peasant in his mid thirties who looked as if he'd been dressed by the costume designer for "Oliver" ten years ago. Now, ten years, later he appeared to be clad entirely in hand me ups. And he smelled of cow. Not a cow dung sort of smell but that warm, friendly kind of milky smell that cows give off when you get close to them in the milking parlour.
He asked if we had any film in our camera and on being told that we had, said -Oh good, a couple of foreigners were here yesterday with a camera but they had some problem with it. -Yes, said Alicja. -They were staying at our house over in Bocwinka and they asked us to come and take your photograph"
He then went into a long discourse as to why he wanted his photograph taken. His mother and father had both died in the past year and he wanted a wife to cook and clean for him. There is a shortage of women in Polish villages and he couldn't find one who'd have him, so he wanted to send a photograph to distant relations in the Ukraine to try to attract one. Our prospective groom, Stefan, said that Ukrainian women were much easier to please than Polish women because conditions in the Ukraine are so bad and people are so much poorer. -To them, he said, -Poland is a paradise.
He asked me what I thought of Russian, Byelorrusian and Lithuanian women but, not having met many, I was unable to advise him. I could see that his heart was already set on a Ukrainian wife because of the adverse comments he made about women of other nationalities. He said that Byelorussians and Lithuanians could steal his money and run back home across the borders - both of which were close at hand.
Then, after making sure that Alicja didn't have any sisters who couldn't find husbands, he went off to get changed into his Sunday best for the photographic session. While he was in the house Alicja whispered to me that she thought him a bit eccentric and thought that he probably couldn't get a wife locally for this reason. Getting changed didn't take him long and he came running out of his kitchen door combing what was left of his hair and dressed in what looked like an old WW2 British army de-mob suit reeking of moth balls but still with his gum boots on.
-I went down to the Ukranian border you know. But they wouldn't let me in. They said you have to have an invitation before they'll let you in. I thought there may have been some girls at the border looking for husbands but the customs officers said there weren't any.
He stopped at the well, drew half a bucket of water and cleaned his gm boots using a handful of straw as a brush.
-After that I was feeling down you know. I went to the monastery but they didn't want me - said I was too old and I'd lost too much hair.
This confirmed Alicja's suspicions that he was something of an eccentric. The qualifications for "monkery" hardly being likely to include a full head of hair and he was only about 35 years old - they simply didn't want him.
He asked how much the photograph would cost and although we repeatedly told him that we wouldn't charge him he was most insistent. In the end we accepted the offer of some milk which we didn't need because our needs in this area were already being more than adequately met by Eva, our next door neighbour. He ran back into the house again and came back out in his original Oliver Twist hand me ups and chased a cow out of the field into the yard where he tied it to the well, pulled up a stool and began milking it into a filthy bucket.
-Some people around here think I'm nuts, he said. -Would you believe it? We assured him that we wouldn't, and he continued milking.
We stopped him when the bucket was a third full of milk and he ran off into the barn returning with a clean churn and a filthy piece of rag through which he proceeded to strain the milk from the bucket and proudly handed me the churn to put in the car. -There, you've already been paid. You can drop the churn back any time and now you can take my photograph.
This was just what we'd been looking for. This time we actually had someone who would pose for us without shyness, somebody who actually wanted his photograph taken. He'd forgotten that he was still in his working clothes and I didn't remind him until I had the half a dozen shots I wanted.
-Do you want to put your suit back on Stefan?
-Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. You've already taken the photo. Now you'll need more milk for the photo' of me in the suit. I'd better get it while I'm still in my working clothes. We told him over and over that we didn't want any more milk but that when we'd finished what he'd already given us, we'd be back for more and he scurried back into the house.
Everything about him was high speed as though we were charging him by the hour and like a quick change artist he was back again in no time wearing the de mob-suit.
-Could you just wait a while until I get the animals together, he said. -The photograph should include my animals. I don't want her to think I'm poor.
He rounded up the other cow and tied them both together to a stake which he hammered into the ground and then whistled to his horse which came at a gallop. He handed me the horse tether and asked me to hold onto it and he took a running jump over his fence into the next door neighbours yard. I could hear a conversation going on with the neighbouring farmer but I couldn't get the gist of it. Alicja translated.
-Maciek, Maciek I need one of your horses.
-Why?
-I'm having my photograph taken so that I can get myself a Ukrainian girl and I don't want her to think I'm poor so I need another horse.
-But what's going to happen if you get her here and she sees that you only have one horse?
-I'll tell her the other one died.
-She's only got to look over the fence and she'll be able to see that it's my horse that's in the photograph.
-I'll say they were twins.
-You're being dishonest Stefan. Your mother wouldn't have liked it but if you want to borrow a horse your welcome. But remember, God always repays.
He returned with a beautiful brown cart horse and stood with an arm around each horses neck while we ran off a few more frames.
-You know, I've been thinking. Do you think that if I send her a photograph dressed like this she'll think I'm a wealthy type who dresses like this all the time? She might think I'm not a good worker. She might think she'd be doing all the farm work while I sit around in a suit drinking and talking. I wouldn't let her do the ploughing anyway - wouldn't let her touch the horse at all. My Daddy and me were the only people who could work the horse.
-Why don't you send her two photographs then, one in your suit and one in your working clothes?
-Good idea, I'll get you some more milk then for the other photograph.
-No, we've already taken the other photograph.
-Have you..........what about the milk then?
We left him with a promise to come back in a few days when the film had been processed, drove home and put the milk churn outside the back door after giving the contents to Misha and the cat. For the time being we forgot all about the episode. On the Wednesday evening we were visited by Vladek and Eva. They were both dressed in their best clothes and Vladek had had a shave which was unusual because he only shaves on Sundays. They came in and sat down as I put the kettle on and there was clearly some sort of embarrassed silence, the uneasy feeling you get when you have to tell someone (as I once had to) that they have terrible B.O. and the rest of the office is complaining about it. Half way through my cup of tea the silence was broken by Vladek.
-Is the milk OK......are we giving you enough?
-Yes thanks Vladek, we'll let you know if we need more.
-Oh. Well, I know you've had a few of the English staying with you lately and they like milk in their tea......wondered if we were giving you enough?
There was a pause and Eva, who is nowhere near as tactful as Vladek, couldn't keep it in any longer. -We saw the milk churn outside your door. What's wrong with our milk?
We explained the situation and the reason that we had a renegade milk churn on the premises and they were happy again but it had come to light that they were jealous. They saw us as their foreigners and didn't want other people helping us. It was, in a way, quite touching and I was somewhat humbled by it. When we told them the story of the farmer and the photographs they laughed. -Stefan? he'll never find a wife, he's nuts. He even got flung out of the monastery. It's a pity really because he's a nice bloke. Don't drink his milk though whatever you do. They won't accept it at the collection depot.
The next Saturday we returned to Stefan's farm with not 2 but 4 photographs of him and he was just like a kid at Christmas.
-The last photograph I had taken was at my communion you know, I was 8 years old then, he said.
"Bad things always come in threes" - is a load of old rubbish put about by old women who still think that daylight saving makes their curtains fade quicker and old men who's friends were killed by snipers when lighting cigarettes in the trenches during WW 1. Bad luck, in fact, only sometimes comes in threes. Our third hospital visit that month was occasioned by an accident which occurred in our very own lounge room.
Jurek and his family were visiting us in the evening and we had a bowl of fruit on the coffee table in front of us. I saw his seven year old son Marek looking at it and asked him which piece of fruit he'd like. He picked out an orange and I could see that he didn't know what to do with it - it hadn't occurred to me that he might not have had an orange before - so I went to the kitchen to get a knife and peeled it for him. Alicja told him to watch out for the pips and he took one from his mouth to inspect it but as he squeezed it between thumb and forefinger it shot across the room. This was tremendous fun for him and he spent the rest of the evening firing pips around our lounge room and kitchen until we heard him scream.
He looked alright and Misha wasn't in sight but he was stamping his feet and crying so much that he couldn't tell us what was wrong with him. During a break in the noise he told his mother that he'd put an orange pip in his ear and it was hurting him. We laid him down on the kitchen table where the light was best but we couldn't see the pip and I ran next door to borrow their torch with which we were just able to see the rounded end of the pip. Young Marek was in agony because the pip was touching his ear drum but there was no way that we were going to try to remove it in case we pushed the offending object further in.
We all bundled into the car and took a trip to the hospital in Gizycko where Marek was the only patient in casualty and we were all allowed to watch the doctor's efforts to remove the orange pip. Marek was laid on his side on a table with his head hanging over the edge and the offending ear facing the ground. The doctor crouched underneath him with a syringe full of warm water and attempted to flush the pip from Marek's ear. He tried a number of times without success managing to turn the pip around but it proved impossible, by this method, to extricate it, and he called in two of his colleagues but they too were stumped. One of the doctors said that some method of suction was required but no suitable equipment was available in the hospital and, for the moment, all three of them disappeared leaving us with the screaming Marek.
They returned after a few minutes and told us that they had telephoned the town dentist who had agreed to meet us at his surgery where one of the doctors would try to suck the pip out with the saliva suction device. Now, it's not common knowledge but saliva suction devices (I can only vouch for machines of Russian manufacture) are to big too fit inside the ears of seven year olds, at least, not without modification. The attempted modification was undertaken with a hacksaw and a pair of pliers which left the dentists equipment looking much the worse for wear and the pip, if anything, further down the hole.
Plan No 3, after dropping the doctor back at the hospital, was to drive to a larger hospital some 40 kilometres distant where, thanks to a telephone call by the unsuccessful doctor, they were already expecting us and had made some initial preparations. They had decided that the pip needed to be dry in order to stop it slipping and turning around. This was accomplished by means of a hair dryer and a piece of hose - one doctor holding the hair dryer and the other directing the warm stream of air into Marek's listening device. The smell of burning rubber filled the room.
This done, amid much crying, they turned their joint attention to the extraction process. A length of small bore rubber tubing was inserted into Marek's ear and the doctor sucked for all he was worth on the other end. They tried four times, modifying the end of the tubing with the scissors between each try before giving up. They told us that the pip was no longer touching the ear drum and asked us to come back the next day when doctors "more used to this sort of thing" would be on duty.
We all sat in the car outside the hospital wondering what we should do next. Marek had stopped crying and said that it didn't hurt any more but we didn't like the idea of waiting until the next day. Alicja had an idea. An American doctor we had met some months before was doing something, although we didn't know what, at a hospital in another town about twenty kilometres further away. We didn't even know if he was still there but decided to give it a try and drove the twenty kilometres, arriving at the hospital at close to eleven pm. Cliff wasn't on duty but they gave us his address and we got him out of bed.
-Sure, he said. -Go back to the hospital and wait for me. I'll be there as soon as I can get some clothes on. We stood around in the waiting room until he arrived. Cliff is an imposing man, well over six foot and weighing something like fourteen stone and Jurek's wife was terrified of him. Apart from me she hadn't met another foreigner before and this one was so big.
She hugged her son closer to her chest not wanting to let him go and Alicja, seeing her concern, tried to comfort her by telling her that Cliff was a qualified doctor. She needn't have bothered however, as Cliff, turning to the parents, addressed them in perfect, city Polish, telling them not to worry and holding out his hands for Marek. We didn't know that Cliff's parents were Polish and that he'd grown up speaking the language. Jurek's wife reluctantly handed him over and Cliff invited us to follow him into his office where he laid Marek down on the couch tucking a pillow under his head. He then washed his hands - something none of the other doctors had done - pulled out his little torch from his spotlessly clean white coat and kneeling over Marek inspected the ear.
-What have you been digging in there with? He asked.
We told him about our experiences in the two other hospitals and at the dentist's and he just smiled. Then, taking Marek's head he put one hand gently under his right ear and slapped him hard on the other side of his head.
The kid let out a yelp and Cliff turned him over for another look in his ear -Mmm - almost out. Hold him there Peter, keep that ear facing down.
Cliff rummaged around in his draw and found a small tube and then took a cotton bud and removed the cotton from it. He put a spot of the substance from the tube on the end of the cotton bud stick, turned Marek over and carefully lowered it into the ear.
-OK, he said, and holding the stick up, -here's your orange pip.
-What was that stuff, I asked pointing to the tube.
-Good old Super Glue, replied Cliff.
Jurek and his wife were much relieved and Cliff offered us coffee which he made right there in his office and we got to talking about what he was doing in Poland. He told us that he was on a two year assignment from a hospital in Chicago and, although he had qualified as a gynecologist, his present job was to teach Polish heart specialists how to use some complex new equipment which had been donated to Poland by it's American manufacturers. We thanked him and after exchanging addresses we left for the long drive back to Bocwinka. Jurek was the first to speak and he remarked how fortunate it was that we had known Cliff and he said that it seemed as though Cliff knew what he as doing but added that he could have removed the pip himself if he'd had some of that instant glue.
A few days later Vladek, who'd been at Jurek's place, dropped of a live chicken for us to give Cliff as he'd refused payment. A chicken is the standard payment for small favours but we explained to Vladek that Cliff got all of his meals at the hospital and would have no use for a chicken. He understood and volunteered to pluck and clean out the insides and let us have it back to eat ourselves. We said we'd fix up Cliff some other way. Alicja telephoned Cliff and told him about Jurek's present. He laughed and told her that if he'd accepted all the live chickens he'd been offered since he came to Poland he'd be able to give Colonel Sanders a run for his money so we invited him and his wife Susan over for a chicken dinner the following Sunday.
We had a good time too, Cliff had us in fits with some of the stories from the hospital. After dinner we took them down to see Jurek and his family, first telling them to use our toilet if they needed to because we knew that Jurek didn't have one. It was dark when we ran the gauntlet, single file, between the snapping jaws of Jurek's two chained dogs and knocked on his door. A lot of people in the village chain their dogs on each side of the path leaving just enough room to walk between them - the theory being that it's difficult for a thief to pick his way in the dark between the dogs if he's running or carrying anything of substance.
Jurek's mother opened the door and, upon seeing Cliff, fled to her room and didn't come out all the time we were there. We were embarrassed but Cliff said he was used to it as he often had patients from "off the farm" at the hospital and some of them just refused outright to be touched by him. We were shown into the kitchen/lounge/dining/bedroom/chicken plucking and, on Sundays, bathroom, and Cliff and his wife were given the best chairs near the big tiled slow combustion stove.
Jurek is a poor man even by Bocwinka standards, only having two horses, two cows and an assortment of fowls. He has only a small piece of land and rents a few hectares from others. He doesn't have running water or central heating and he has to support a daughter who is studying to become a lawyer in Warsaw. We'd already explained all this to Cliff and as he looked around the room he remarked to me that he could appreciate that the present of a chicken was no small thing.
But poor or not, the welcome he and Susan were given couldn't have been bettered anywhere as Jurek's wife busied herself making tea and potato pancakes on the stove in front of us and Marek brought out his birds egg collection from under the bed in the corner. Susan studied biology in the States and she was interested in the birds eggs, asking Alicja to translate the names of the birds which Marek was coming out with. Seeing this, Jurek went out to the barn and brought back an assortment of skins from animals he'd trapped or otherwise brought to a premature end and before we knew it, three hours had passed. As we walked home Cliff told us that being among Jurek's family was one of the few real experiences he'd had in his life, that the society that he was a part of was terribly plastic in comparison.
Chapter 11
Marek was discovered asleep in the snow outside our place one night in February. He was, of course, smashed out of his brain but nobody knew how long he had been laying there and he was carried up to Mother Miankowska's house. -He's got frostbite in his toes, she said. We were called upon to transport him to hospital in the car. At the hospital Marek was still too far gone to know what was happening and we left him there saying that we'd telephone to see how he was the next day. We returned to Bocwinka and spent the rest of the night at his brother’s house discussing who was going to do what at Marek's farm in his absence.
Drunk or not, Marek is a good man with animals and though his house looks like a poltergeists bowling alley his animals and poultry are always well looked after. We were all worried at this point that he may loose some of his toes and not be able to carry on at the farm so arrangements were made to see that everything for the time being would carry on as normal in his absence. The following day we rang the hospital. No decision had been made on whether Marek would loose any of his toes but he was going to have to spend some time in bed and so a couple of days later, when we were going into town to teach English, we took along Andrzej and Adam to visit him.
Marek was sitting up in bed and, apart from having the shakes, he looked better than we'd seen him for a long time and, predictably, had already become the ward comedian. We left Andrzej and Adam there arranging to collect them at six in the evening and went off to our English classes where we spent almost a whole lesson explaining to children and teachers alike, the meaning of Hot dogs as opposed to Hot Pies.
This was more involved than it would at first appear because of the Polish word for DOG- which just happens to be PIES although it's pronounced PEE-ESS. One of the town shops had been supplied from somewhere with frozen English steak and onion pies together with an electric pie oven in the form of a small traction engine. The abysmal state of British marketing being what it is, the whole deal came with promotional signs and leaflets in English. The kids had all heard of hot dogs, although they didn't know what they were, and now there was a big yellow and red sign in town advertising hot pies - and pies, they knew, meant dog in Polish.
Dog, we explained, was American slang for sausage. The easiest way to explain it all was to draw pictures on the board and put names alongside them so Alicja drew a sausage, a bread roll, a dog and two pies which almost sorted the problem out. Almost, because the science teacher who, upon finding that the word dog was American slang for sausage, asked -what about sausage pies.
It was all horribly confusing and made all the more so when one of the kids held up an English picture book with a datschund in it, underneath which were printed the words "sausage dog." We were quite worn out at the end of the session when someone came into the classroom with a message asking us if we'd go back to Bocwinka to pick up a pair of crutches from the school caretaker before returning to the hospital.
We were sorry that Marek was being released from hospital so soon because we could envisage him getting drunk again and neglecting his toes but we collected the crutches, turning up late at the hospital. Our concern about Marek being released early, evaporated as soon as we entered the hospital lobby - the crutches weren't for him but for Adam who was sitting on a bench with his left foot in plaster!
-Oh for Christ's sake, said Alicja -go on, tell us all about it.
Adam looked at his shoes and we could smell the vodka on him.
-Oh no, you've been drinking haven't you?, she yelled
He mumbled something about being sorry that we'd had to go back to Bocwinka to collect the crutches and offered to pay for the petrol. Andrzej had already gone home by some other means, being frightened, no doubt, that Alicja would tell him off. We went to see the duty sister. She hadn't been on shift when the accident occurred but she'd heard what happened.
Apparently Adam and Andrzej had been drinking vodka in the ward with Marek and had been caught red handed by the matron who'd beaten them about their heads and in their panic to make themselves scarce they both ran for the open door at the same time. Andrzej had shoved Adam aside as they reached it and Adam had hit his toes against a metal weight which was acting as a doorstop. He'd had his gum boots in his hands at the time - a nurse had told him to take them off.
That same week I was shifting some planks in the barn and I came across a number of butterflies which I presumed to be dead, having suffered temperatures down to minus thirty. I brought one inside to show Alicja but within half an hour in the warm it had been fooled into thinking it was spring and was flying around the kitchen. It just happened to be on the day when we received a copy of BBC Wildlife magazine and when I opened it up I found an illustration of the actual butterfly which was sitting on the window-sill in front of me. It was a large tortoiseshell and the article said that it was now very rare in the British Isles.
I went back to the barn and as I looked more closely I could see a big round clump of them all facing towards the centre of the circle like closely packed segments in an orange, dozens of them. There were other butterflies too, in smaller clumps of six or eight, but I knew nothing of the subject and couldn't identify them. I reasoned that if these things were as rare as the BBC Wildlife magazine said they were, perhaps it would be possible to attract butterfly watchers to our guest house. I went over to see Vladek to ask if he had any butterflies in his barn too.
Assuming that one butterfly watcher watches, say, two thousand butterflies in his butterfly watching career, and the average non butterfly watching person watches twenty five butterflies per year, (a not unreasonable assumption?) then, if you don't have a calculator handy, these statistics make butterfly watchers rarer than the large tortoise-shell. Not the sort of person one gets into conversation with down at the pub very often. In fact they're so rare that Vladek couldn't bring himself to believe in their existence, couldn't credit that such a species existed on the planet. He wanted to know why they watched butterflies. I didn't know either but I told him that in the kitchen at home I had a magazine which actually had the address of a butterfly watching club in it.
In Vladek's mind there had to be something not quite kosher about a grown man who watched butterflies, something effeminate. But then, I was always coming up with what, to him, seemed crazy ideas and he took me up into his attic. Hanging from the roof trusses were literally hundreds of large tortoiseshells, red admirals and peacock butterflies. -It's the same in your attic too, he said -but I suppose you haven't looked. What about flies, do people watch flies as well? -No, I said. -Why? He walked over to the attic window and pulled off a chunk of loose plaster from the wall. It was black with flies three or four deep numbering in the thousands, a grotesque sight.
Periodically, throughout winter, our satellite dish was covered in snow and ice, making satellite TV reception so poor that we found ourselves watching more and more Polish TV which came from a normal antenna in the attic.Polish TV reception had never been good but was, nevertheless, watchable. Then, one night, it was absolutely perfect on both channels and we were at a loss to understand why. I fiddled with the connections but couldn't make it go back to its old self and so decided to be happy about it, whatever caused it.
Over the next three or four days the reception varied and I couldn't find the reason for it and so called the boy genius who'd installed the system. This guy was good and well up with all the latest Western technology but this one had him baffled and he visited us a few times in the evenings with new bits and pieces which he thought would cure the problem. Nothing worked though, and he gave up. I went around to see Zenek's wife who worked in Gizycko to ask her if she'd try to find someone there who knew something about TVs and ask them to visit us. I described the problem we were having and Zenek recognised it, knew the symptoms inside out.
-Would you like to know what causes it?
-Alright, tell me
-The army - it's the army that causes it?
He explained further that only five kilometres away from us was an early warning radar station which they switched off whenever the temperature dropped below a certain point. The reason was simple. The grease they used to lubricate the turn-tables of the revolving radar dishes solidified at low temperatures. When the grease went solid they shut everything down and the TV reception in the whole area improved.
Any reader of this book intending to invade north east Poland should contact the writer who, for a fee of twenty guineas, will divulge the exact temperature at which his planes may go undetected. The advent of permanently bad Polish TV reception in the second half of the month was a clear signal that the weather was warming up. At last the snow was going and the level of the water in the well was creeping upwards. It would still be a long time before we'd see new leaves on the trees but the green of the grass in the fields was a welcome change
Although the house wasn't yet ready to receive guests we had a letter from a bird watching holiday firm in Scotland, a small husband and wife operation who had heard about us and wanted to come and see if the area and the house had potential as a destination for their clients. We made plain to them that it wasn't a good time to view the house and an even worse time to judge the potential for bird watching but they came anyway and, although they stayed only a week, they loved it and I managed to get in a months worth of English conversation.
Don and Anne were an adventurous couple who arrived in a Land Rover and spent the whole week exploring the lakes and forests taking hundreds of photographs. They were more than impressed with Stan the poacher's knowledge of the local birds. I invited him around one night and he went through the bird book with them telling them exactly what their clients would be able to see in the area, where to see it and when. They overcame the language barrier with a kind of universal chirpy cheepy tongue involving bird calls. They'd point to the illustration of a bird and whistle, click, cough etc. until they all agreed. Stan was good at it and if he'd worn his working gear he could have reproduced the smells of each bird's individual environment to go with it from his scratch and sniff trousers.
When Don and Anne left on a Sunday morning, they asked us to do them a favour. Could we please go down to Zywki village and call on a farmer who wanted his photograph taken? They described the house and told us that they'd promised to take the man's photograph but they'd only had slide film in the camera at the time and had said they'd go back. -Just stand outside the gate & wave your camera around, our visitors had said. -And he'll come out and ask you for a photo.
We did just as they said and within a minute or two of his dogs announcing our arrival the man came out of the house. He was a very cheerful, bald headed peasant in his mid thirties who looked as if he'd been dressed by the costume designer for "Oliver" ten years ago. Now, ten years, later he appeared to be clad entirely in hand me ups. And he smelled of cow. Not a cow dung sort of smell but that warm, friendly kind of milky smell that cows give off when you get close to them in the milking parlour.
He asked if we had any film in our camera and on being told that we had, said -Oh good, a couple of foreigners were here yesterday with a camera but they had some problem with it. -Yes, said Alicja. -They were staying at our house over in Bocwinka and they asked us to come and take your photograph"
He then went into a long discourse as to why he wanted his photograph taken. His mother and father had both died in the past year and he wanted a wife to cook and clean for him. There is a shortage of women in Polish villages and he couldn't find one who'd have him, so he wanted to send a photograph to distant relations in the Ukraine to try to attract one. Our prospective groom, Stefan, said that Ukrainian women were much easier to please than Polish women because conditions in the Ukraine are so bad and people are so much poorer. -To them, he said, -Poland is a paradise.
He asked me what I thought of Russian, Byelorrusian and Lithuanian women but, not having met many, I was unable to advise him. I could see that his heart was already set on a Ukrainian wife because of the adverse comments he made about women of other nationalities. He said that Byelorussians and Lithuanians could steal his money and run back home across the borders - both of which were close at hand.
Then, after making sure that Alicja didn't have any sisters who couldn't find husbands, he went off to get changed into his Sunday best for the photographic session. While he was in the house Alicja whispered to me that she thought him a bit eccentric and thought that he probably couldn't get a wife locally for this reason. Getting changed didn't take him long and he came running out of his kitchen door combing what was left of his hair and dressed in what looked like an old WW2 British army de-mob suit reeking of moth balls but still with his gum boots on.
-I went down to the Ukranian border you know. But they wouldn't let me in. They said you have to have an invitation before they'll let you in. I thought there may have been some girls at the border looking for husbands but the customs officers said there weren't any.
He stopped at the well, drew half a bucket of water and cleaned his gm boots using a handful of straw as a brush.
-After that I was feeling down you know. I went to the monastery but they didn't want me - said I was too old and I'd lost too much hair.
This confirmed Alicja's suspicions that he was something of an eccentric. The qualifications for "monkery" hardly being likely to include a full head of hair and he was only about 35 years old - they simply didn't want him.
He asked how much the photograph would cost and although we repeatedly told him that we wouldn't charge him he was most insistent. In the end we accepted the offer of some milk which we didn't need because our needs in this area were already being more than adequately met by Eva, our next door neighbour. He ran back into the house again and came back out in his original Oliver Twist hand me ups and chased a cow out of the field into the yard where he tied it to the well, pulled up a stool and began milking it into a filthy bucket.
-Some people around here think I'm nuts, he said. -Would you believe it? We assured him that we wouldn't, and he continued milking.
We stopped him when the bucket was a third full of milk and he ran off into the barn returning with a clean churn and a filthy piece of rag through which he proceeded to strain the milk from the bucket and proudly handed me the churn to put in the car. -There, you've already been paid. You can drop the churn back any time and now you can take my photograph.
This was just what we'd been looking for. This time we actually had someone who would pose for us without shyness, somebody who actually wanted his photograph taken. He'd forgotten that he was still in his working clothes and I didn't remind him until I had the half a dozen shots I wanted.
-Do you want to put your suit back on Stefan?
-Oh, Jesus, Mary and Joseph. You've already taken the photo. Now you'll need more milk for the photo' of me in the suit. I'd better get it while I'm still in my working clothes. We told him over and over that we didn't want any more milk but that when we'd finished what he'd already given us, we'd be back for more and he scurried back into the house.
Everything about him was high speed as though we were charging him by the hour and like a quick change artist he was back again in no time wearing the de mob-suit.
-Could you just wait a while until I get the animals together, he said. -The photograph should include my animals. I don't want her to think I'm poor.
He rounded up the other cow and tied them both together to a stake which he hammered into the ground and then whistled to his horse which came at a gallop. He handed me the horse tether and asked me to hold onto it and he took a running jump over his fence into the next door neighbours yard. I could hear a conversation going on with the neighbouring farmer but I couldn't get the gist of it. Alicja translated.
-Maciek, Maciek I need one of your horses.
-Why?
-I'm having my photograph taken so that I can get myself a Ukrainian girl and I don't want her to think I'm poor so I need another horse.
-But what's going to happen if you get her here and she sees that you only have one horse?
-I'll tell her the other one died.
-She's only got to look over the fence and she'll be able to see that it's my horse that's in the photograph.
-I'll say they were twins.
-You're being dishonest Stefan. Your mother wouldn't have liked it but if you want to borrow a horse your welcome. But remember, God always repays.
He returned with a beautiful brown cart horse and stood with an arm around each horses neck while we ran off a few more frames.
-You know, I've been thinking. Do you think that if I send her a photograph dressed like this she'll think I'm a wealthy type who dresses like this all the time? She might think I'm not a good worker. She might think she'd be doing all the farm work while I sit around in a suit drinking and talking. I wouldn't let her do the ploughing anyway - wouldn't let her touch the horse at all. My Daddy and me were the only people who could work the horse.
-Why don't you send her two photographs then, one in your suit and one in your working clothes?
-Good idea, I'll get you some more milk then for the other photograph.
-No, we've already taken the other photograph.
-Have you..........what about the milk then?
We left him with a promise to come back in a few days when the film had been processed, drove home and put the milk churn outside the back door after giving the contents to Misha and the cat. For the time being we forgot all about the episode. On the Wednesday evening we were visited by Vladek and Eva. They were both dressed in their best clothes and Vladek had had a shave which was unusual because he only shaves on Sundays. They came in and sat down as I put the kettle on and there was clearly some sort of embarrassed silence, the uneasy feeling you get when you have to tell someone (as I once had to) that they have terrible B.O. and the rest of the office is complaining about it. Half way through my cup of tea the silence was broken by Vladek.
-Is the milk OK......are we giving you enough?
-Yes thanks Vladek, we'll let you know if we need more.
-Oh. Well, I know you've had a few of the English staying with you lately and they like milk in their tea......wondered if we were giving you enough?
There was a pause and Eva, who is nowhere near as tactful as Vladek, couldn't keep it in any longer. -We saw the milk churn outside your door. What's wrong with our milk?
We explained the situation and the reason that we had a renegade milk churn on the premises and they were happy again but it had come to light that they were jealous. They saw us as their foreigners and didn't want other people helping us. It was, in a way, quite touching and I was somewhat humbled by it. When we told them the story of the farmer and the photographs they laughed. -Stefan? he'll never find a wife, he's nuts. He even got flung out of the monastery. It's a pity really because he's a nice bloke. Don't drink his milk though whatever you do. They won't accept it at the collection depot.
The next Saturday we returned to Stefan's farm with not 2 but 4 photographs of him and he was just like a kid at Christmas.
-The last photograph I had taken was at my communion you know, I was 8 years old then, he said.
"Bad things always come in threes" - is a load of old rubbish put about by old women who still think that daylight saving makes their curtains fade quicker and old men who's friends were killed by snipers when lighting cigarettes in the trenches during WW 1. Bad luck, in fact, only sometimes comes in threes. Our third hospital visit that month was occasioned by an accident which occurred in our very own lounge room.
Jurek and his family were visiting us in the evening and we had a bowl of fruit on the coffee table in front of us. I saw his seven year old son Marek looking at it and asked him which piece of fruit he'd like. He picked out an orange and I could see that he didn't know what to do with it - it hadn't occurred to me that he might not have had an orange before - so I went to the kitchen to get a knife and peeled it for him. Alicja told him to watch out for the pips and he took one from his mouth to inspect it but as he squeezed it between thumb and forefinger it shot across the room. This was tremendous fun for him and he spent the rest of the evening firing pips around our lounge room and kitchen until we heard him scream.
He looked alright and Misha wasn't in sight but he was stamping his feet and crying so much that he couldn't tell us what was wrong with him. During a break in the noise he told his mother that he'd put an orange pip in his ear and it was hurting him. We laid him down on the kitchen table where the light was best but we couldn't see the pip and I ran next door to borrow their torch with which we were just able to see the rounded end of the pip. Young Marek was in agony because the pip was touching his ear drum but there was no way that we were going to try to remove it in case we pushed the offending object further in.
We all bundled into the car and took a trip to the hospital in Gizycko where Marek was the only patient in casualty and we were all allowed to watch the doctor's efforts to remove the orange pip. Marek was laid on his side on a table with his head hanging over the edge and the offending ear facing the ground. The doctor crouched underneath him with a syringe full of warm water and attempted to flush the pip from Marek's ear. He tried a number of times without success managing to turn the pip around but it proved impossible, by this method, to extricate it, and he called in two of his colleagues but they too were stumped. One of the doctors said that some method of suction was required but no suitable equipment was available in the hospital and, for the moment, all three of them disappeared leaving us with the screaming Marek.
They returned after a few minutes and told us that they had telephoned the town dentist who had agreed to meet us at his surgery where one of the doctors would try to suck the pip out with the saliva suction device. Now, it's not common knowledge but saliva suction devices (I can only vouch for machines of Russian manufacture) are to big too fit inside the ears of seven year olds, at least, not without modification. The attempted modification was undertaken with a hacksaw and a pair of pliers which left the dentists equipment looking much the worse for wear and the pip, if anything, further down the hole.
Plan No 3, after dropping the doctor back at the hospital, was to drive to a larger hospital some 40 kilometres distant where, thanks to a telephone call by the unsuccessful doctor, they were already expecting us and had made some initial preparations. They had decided that the pip needed to be dry in order to stop it slipping and turning around. This was accomplished by means of a hair dryer and a piece of hose - one doctor holding the hair dryer and the other directing the warm stream of air into Marek's listening device. The smell of burning rubber filled the room.
This done, amid much crying, they turned their joint attention to the extraction process. A length of small bore rubber tubing was inserted into Marek's ear and the doctor sucked for all he was worth on the other end. They tried four times, modifying the end of the tubing with the scissors between each try before giving up. They told us that the pip was no longer touching the ear drum and asked us to come back the next day when doctors "more used to this sort of thing" would be on duty.
We all sat in the car outside the hospital wondering what we should do next. Marek had stopped crying and said that it didn't hurt any more but we didn't like the idea of waiting until the next day. Alicja had an idea. An American doctor we had met some months before was doing something, although we didn't know what, at a hospital in another town about twenty kilometres further away. We didn't even know if he was still there but decided to give it a try and drove the twenty kilometres, arriving at the hospital at close to eleven pm. Cliff wasn't on duty but they gave us his address and we got him out of bed.
-Sure, he said. -Go back to the hospital and wait for me. I'll be there as soon as I can get some clothes on. We stood around in the waiting room until he arrived. Cliff is an imposing man, well over six foot and weighing something like fourteen stone and Jurek's wife was terrified of him. Apart from me she hadn't met another foreigner before and this one was so big.
She hugged her son closer to her chest not wanting to let him go and Alicja, seeing her concern, tried to comfort her by telling her that Cliff was a qualified doctor. She needn't have bothered however, as Cliff, turning to the parents, addressed them in perfect, city Polish, telling them not to worry and holding out his hands for Marek. We didn't know that Cliff's parents were Polish and that he'd grown up speaking the language. Jurek's wife reluctantly handed him over and Cliff invited us to follow him into his office where he laid Marek down on the couch tucking a pillow under his head. He then washed his hands - something none of the other doctors had done - pulled out his little torch from his spotlessly clean white coat and kneeling over Marek inspected the ear.
-What have you been digging in there with? He asked.
We told him about our experiences in the two other hospitals and at the dentist's and he just smiled. Then, taking Marek's head he put one hand gently under his right ear and slapped him hard on the other side of his head.
The kid let out a yelp and Cliff turned him over for another look in his ear -Mmm - almost out. Hold him there Peter, keep that ear facing down.
Cliff rummaged around in his draw and found a small tube and then took a cotton bud and removed the cotton from it. He put a spot of the substance from the tube on the end of the cotton bud stick, turned Marek over and carefully lowered it into the ear.
-OK, he said, and holding the stick up, -here's your orange pip.
-What was that stuff, I asked pointing to the tube.
-Good old Super Glue, replied Cliff.
Jurek and his wife were much relieved and Cliff offered us coffee which he made right there in his office and we got to talking about what he was doing in Poland. He told us that he was on a two year assignment from a hospital in Chicago and, although he had qualified as a gynecologist, his present job was to teach Polish heart specialists how to use some complex new equipment which had been donated to Poland by it's American manufacturers. We thanked him and after exchanging addresses we left for the long drive back to Bocwinka. Jurek was the first to speak and he remarked how fortunate it was that we had known Cliff and he said that it seemed as though Cliff knew what he as doing but added that he could have removed the pip himself if he'd had some of that instant glue.
A few days later Vladek, who'd been at Jurek's place, dropped of a live chicken for us to give Cliff as he'd refused payment. A chicken is the standard payment for small favours but we explained to Vladek that Cliff got all of his meals at the hospital and would have no use for a chicken. He understood and volunteered to pluck and clean out the insides and let us have it back to eat ourselves. We said we'd fix up Cliff some other way. Alicja telephoned Cliff and told him about Jurek's present. He laughed and told her that if he'd accepted all the live chickens he'd been offered since he came to Poland he'd be able to give Colonel Sanders a run for his money so we invited him and his wife Susan over for a chicken dinner the following Sunday.
We had a good time too, Cliff had us in fits with some of the stories from the hospital. After dinner we took them down to see Jurek and his family, first telling them to use our toilet if they needed to because we knew that Jurek didn't have one. It was dark when we ran the gauntlet, single file, between the snapping jaws of Jurek's two chained dogs and knocked on his door. A lot of people in the village chain their dogs on each side of the path leaving just enough room to walk between them - the theory being that it's difficult for a thief to pick his way in the dark between the dogs if he's running or carrying anything of substance.
Jurek's mother opened the door and, upon seeing Cliff, fled to her room and didn't come out all the time we were there. We were embarrassed but Cliff said he was used to it as he often had patients from "off the farm" at the hospital and some of them just refused outright to be touched by him. We were shown into the kitchen/lounge/dining/bedroom/chicken plucking and, on Sundays, bathroom, and Cliff and his wife were given the best chairs near the big tiled slow combustion stove.
Jurek is a poor man even by Bocwinka standards, only having two horses, two cows and an assortment of fowls. He has only a small piece of land and rents a few hectares from others. He doesn't have running water or central heating and he has to support a daughter who is studying to become a lawyer in Warsaw. We'd already explained all this to Cliff and as he looked around the room he remarked to me that he could appreciate that the present of a chicken was no small thing.
But poor or not, the welcome he and Susan were given couldn't have been bettered anywhere as Jurek's wife busied herself making tea and potato pancakes on the stove in front of us and Marek brought out his birds egg collection from under the bed in the corner. Susan studied biology in the States and she was interested in the birds eggs, asking Alicja to translate the names of the birds which Marek was coming out with. Seeing this, Jurek went out to the barn and brought back an assortment of skins from animals he'd trapped or otherwise brought to a premature end and before we knew it, three hours had passed. As we walked home Cliff told us that being among Jurek's family was one of the few real experiences he'd had in his life, that the society that he was a part of was terribly plastic in comparison.
Chapter 12
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 12
By mid March it seemed safe to assume the sub zero temperatures were over and that we'd seen the last of the snow. Soon it would be spring when young men's fancies would turn to what young girls had been fancying all winter. Misha, no longer having her snow tunnel to live in, had migrated to the kennel and, just like hibernatory animals, people too were emerging from the confines of their houses to spend more time in their gardens.
Ryszard came around to see us. After almost a year of saving their money Halina and Ryszard bought a new, Japanese colour television set but Ryszard had a problem with tuning it because the instructions, which were in eight languages, didn't include Polish. It was their first colour TV and they were understandably anxious to see it working so we downed tools and followed him straight back to their house. There was also a new antenna to be installed on the roof, a job which fell to me, and I spent half an hour up a ladder in the cold while everyone else sat in the lounge room, shouted instructions through the window and drank tea.
-How's that?
-A bit more. No, too much, go back. Hold it right there. Can you bolt it up just where it is?
-Is that it then?
-No, you'll have to go back out there again but there's something interesting on - come in and get warm.
I went inside and had to make myself a cup of tea as everyone else was engrossed in a program showing old black and white footage of World war 11. I couldn't understand it and tried to interrupt but was told to be quiet. They'd tell me all about it later. There was a lot of Polish chatter going on punctuated by uproarious laughter at one point and I waited patiently until the end of the program to ask what it was all about.
The TV program had been about Polish partisans and had featured the man who used to own Halina and Ryszard's house. It told of his heroic exploits fighting against the Germans in the forests on the Czech border during WWII. At the end of the program there was a list telling what had happened to all these partisans - most of which were by now dead. When it came to the previous owner of Halina and Ryszard's house it said "died in a road accident" and gave the date. That he had died in a road accident was true but not, as one would imagine, a collision between two fast moving, passenger carrying vehicles. He was cycling home one night totally paralytic and fell off his bike into a puddle containing only a few centimetres of water where he had lain, unconscious, face down, and drowned. Halina and Ryszard knew this first hand as they had attended his funeral.
That funeral had been eight years ago but now we ourselves were to attend a village funeral within days of hearing the story. We arrived home after shopping in Gizycko one afternoon and as Alicja was opening the gate we heard Eva calling us to the fence. Vladek's father had died. We didn't know he was ill but he'd been taken to hospital the previous day and had died early in the morning. I quite liked the old man but I seemed to be the only person who did. His family, especially his wife, didn't like him at all. He had been a tyrant to his family in his younger days, a drunkard who beat his wife and kids, he was both stingy with his money and lazy. As soon as Vladek had been physically strong enough to run the farm his father had feigned illness and never worked a day from then on.
His hatred for Eva, she said, stemmed from the fact that she had bought nothing into the marriage in the form of a dowry, wasn't from a Ukrainian family and didn't belong to the Orthodox faith. Of course, I saw none of this, mainly, I suppose, because I couldn't understand the language well enough to feel the atmosphere when I visited their house. His body was brought back from the hospital and he lay in his coffin on a table in the lounge room for two days and nights under the framed pictures of Jesus and the Virgin and Child. Plastic saints with halos on sticks stood guard on top of the sideboard and dozens of poor quality candles burned in the room filling it with so much smoke it hurt my eyes and the smell of moth balls from the suit they'd dressed him in took my breath away as I entered the room.
I'd never imagined Vladek's father in a suit and tie - certainly not one of my ties. I'd loaned it to Vladek weeks ago and now hoped they didn't give it back. Vladek, his mother and Eva, eyes reddened through lack of sleep and an overdose of candle smoke, took turns to sit with the body all day and all night as a procession of friends and relatives filed past him, each stopping to kiss his cheek. Even small children were lifted so as to be able to reach and kiss him.
One would have thought, from viewing the number of people who attended the room, that the old man had been well liked but people were saying what an old bastard he'd been even before they left the house. They put their arms around the widow's shoulders and hugged her but not to display sympathy for her having lost a life long companion. They seemed to be saying "don't worry, everything will be alright now he's gone."
We watched the funeral procession go by our windows. The coffin was carried by Gienek, Andrzej, Zenek and Ivan - two Poles and two Ukrainians. In front went two relations from somewhere other than Bocwinka carrying aloft colourful banners topped by the Ukrainian Orthodox cross. Behind came the widow followed by Vladek and Eva, side by side, and then various relatives in order of importance, villagers bringing up the rear. And ten paces behind - a staggering Marek. They sang some kind of funeral dirge as the coffin was laid in Jurek's cart, which only a matter of days beforehand had seen service in the fields during muck spreading. The flowers were placed on top and without ceremony Jurek and Adam climbed aboard and geed the horse into action.
A bus had been hired to take the mourners to the cemetery and this now slowly edged it's way out from behind the milk depot to take aboard it's impassive, slightly bored looking passengers, four of whom carried shovels. As it took off we followed slowly on in the car. The journey, at horse and cart speed, to Kruklanki church seemed to take an age. As we entered the church we knelt and crossed ourselves in careful imitation of those in front of us. The men who had already performed this ritual stood to one side, ushering, with outstretched hands, the ladies towards their seats. Not knowing the protocol to adopt I hung back and stood with the rest of the men but they all waved me past.
The Kruklanki church was built by German Protestants early in the century and now, through shortage of funds, served two religions catering for both Poles and Ukrainians. The garish, nay, tasteless decor bore traces of all three faiths, brightly painted cardboard cut outs of Roman centurions stood at either side of the altar - I know not what for - and cooking foil clad saints adorned the walls. The service took almost two hours and I was starting to get fidgety only ten minutes into it. The dirges were long and depressingly reverent and I understood about the same amount as I would have understood at a funeral in any other country. A peculiarity of the Orthodox Ukrainian funeral service, I thought, was that only the women sang the hymns. I was mistaken. I looked behind me and found that, apart from Vladek, I was one of only four men in the congregation - the rest had all slipped back out and were on the opposite side of the road outside the post office drinking vodka.
The inside of the church was bitterly cold and we were the only people not prepared for it. Everyone else was well wrapped up in winter coats including the pop (Ukrainian priest) who wore over his ceremonial robes a black quilted jacket emblazoned with the words PUBLIC ENEMY. I would have liked to have told him what the words meant in English but, as Alicja pointed out, it was unlikely that another English speaker would ever see it. I had understood not a single word all through the service until the end when I heard the Polish word "dachowki." I knew that it meant roof tiles and my mind raced back to childhood Sunday school classes - "the wise man built his house upon a rock" - no that wasn't it. I asked Alicja what it was all about when we got outside. It had been an appeal for money to buy roof tiles for the church.
We trooped outside, eyes blinking in the sunshine, and the male contingent began to wander back to our side of the road, a couple of them hiding their bottles behind a waste paper basket before they did so. Although they were all dressed in their best, some wore gum boots (the only foot coverings they possessed) and Vladek had on a pair of black plimsolls. We walked in procession to the grave, a sermon was read and the coffin lowered into the soft, muddy earth. One of the ropes jammed and after a few pulls on it, which nearly turned the coffin over, the owner of the rope decided, reluctantly, to abandon it and dropped it into the hole. The women then filed past the grave, each stooping to pick up a handful of earth which she threw onto the top of the coffin. This was followed by the men but by that time the area around the grave was so well trodden that we each scraped up a handful of mud and shook it all over each other trying to dislodge it from between our fingers. This step of the proceedings over, Vladeks father was buried by the sons of the men he'd known since he was first forced to move to Bocwinka in 1946. Adam lost a shoe in the process. Vladek's mother seemed, if anything, relieved as she approached us
-He's got a lovely voice hasn't, he the priest?
-Yes, said Alicja, -lovely voice.
-He's not as good as the one we had before though, he could reach the really high notes just like a woman. But he's good though, this one.
-Yes, said Alicja -I thought he was excellent.
-I'll move into his room now where the stove is. And see if I can get a television, he wouldn't have television you know.
After the funeral I had an article to finish for an English wildlife magazine and Alicja was also busy so we called in at the party only for a short while to pay our respects and offer our toilet for the lady funeral goers. Like most families in the district Vladek and Eva had no toilet either inside the house or out. Bodily functions were taken care of in the orchard in the warm weather or in the milking parlour when it was cold.
While I was typing a man came into the kitchen. -Toilet's through there, I said
-No, he said -It's nearly eight o'clock. I wondered if I could see the weather forecast. I couldn't see a TV over at Vladek's.
-Of course, I said. -Vladek's got a TV but it's probably in another room for the duration of the party.
-I'm sorry to bother you, he said -but it was snowing when I left the south east and I'm wondering how conditions will be on the way home. We've got the kids with us and if I'm going to get stuck in the snow I'd rather it was daylight. We'll stay in a hotel the night if the weather looks bad.
We watched the forecast together, I watched the temperature chart and he listened to the words.
-Good, he said -according to that, we should have a good trip back.
-They don't always get it right though do they?, I said.
-No, he said -but at least they don't lie about it any more.
-Lie about the weather?
-Yes, they used to under the old system - the communists lied about everything.
I asked him why the government would have lied about the weather, -after all, I said -forecasters get it wrong anyway, why would they have the need to lie. This man, whose name I never did ask, used to work in the city engineers department in Warsaw where, during winter, they were nightly given the correct forecasts. The central heating act - or whatever it was called in the constitution - stated that the heating to apartment blocks must be turned on when the temperature dropped below a certain set point for three consecutive nights. The country was always short of coal to fire the city's central boilers because it was exported to earn hard currency, so to save money on energy the Met' Office reports were distorted and a higher temperature was given out on the weather forecast. You could have been freezing to death but if the weather forecast said you weren't, you were not!
This gave the dwellers of apartment blocks no basis for complaint when the weather was cold and the heating wasn't operating. The reason that the city engineers department was given the real temperature was that they had to salt the roads to keep the traffic moving. Every Pole has a fund of such stories and I never tire of hearing them. Ryszard told me a good one about how he procured his car, a small 650cc Polish Fiat, that was sitting in his garage as he spoke and which he'd owned for over ten years.
Ryszard received a letter one day which informed him that after a wait of eight years, he had been allocated a new car. He had paid his last instalment on it about five years beforehand and he had paid in Polish currency. Had he paid in American Dollars, he could have had a car much sooner - the government was desperate for hard currency. Ryszard and a friend went to the factory by train and bus to pick up his car. When they arrived, they handed in the letter of entitlement and were told that they could choose which ever car they wanted. They walked out into the yard and saw a line of cars, all white except for one orange one. They chose the orange one, signed the necessary papers and drove the car away.
A few kilometres down the road, they had occasion to brake hard and the windscreen fell out and broke on the ground in front of them. They loaded the pieces into the boot and went back to the factory where the man didn't question their story at all and told them to pick another car. They said that they particularly liked the orange one and asked if they could have another windscreen for it. -I'd like to help you, he said, -but we don't have any more windscreens.
They offered him a bribe, as was the normal thing to do in the situation, but the man was adamant that there were no more windscreens to be had. Reluctantly they chose a white car, said goodbye and left. On the way out of the factory they had to drive over the kerb and as they did so, Ryszard's companion noticed the windscreen move inside the rubber. They stopped and pushed the glass lightly and could see that without too much encouragement, the same thing would happen again, Ie. the windscreen would fall out.
They reversed back into the factory yard and proceeded to try all the other windscreens. All of them were the same, all loose. They went back to the office and explained to the man what had happened, negotiated with him and ended up taking the orange car but with the windscreen out of one of the white ones which they loaded into the back seat. They arrived home six hours later with themselves and the interior of the car wet through after having driven through a rain storm. Ryszard had a friend who was a solicitor and he asked him if he could write a letter of complaint to the factory for him and see if the factory would be willing to exchange the present windscreen for a better one when they came into stock.
The solicitor wrote the letter, and sent it off on Ryszards behalf and waited for a reply. Nothing was forthcoming despite follow up letters until eventually the solicitor rang the manager of the factory and demanded an answer. The manager wasn't at all evasive and apologised for not answering the letters. But, he said, it wasn't the fault of the car factory, it was the fault of the glass factory which had supplied windscreens thinner than specified.
Here, I must digress while I explain the workings of a small but typical part of the communist system. Each factory or production unit of any kind had a yearly quota to meet and if met, all the workers would get a bonus, sometimes money, sometimes goods. One of the problems however was that quite often, the raw materials required to meet this quota were unavailable. Now back to the story; The windscreen factory had a quota to meet but the raw materials for making glass were in short supply and they just couldn't get enough. So what would you, as a factory manager, do when confronted with this situation? You'd probably do what the Poles did.
The factory had say, a ten thousand windscreen quota and only enough glass for seven thousand so they met their quota by making each windscreen thinner, so thin in fact that they fell out of the rubbers which were supposed to hold them in the cars. I remember that the first time I visited Poland in 1985 we stayed on a farm for three days and, upon seeing a stack of twenty five tractor brake drums in the farmers shed the first morning, I had asked if he was hoarding them in case of a shortage. -No, was the reply -they're there because there's a glut. I told the farmer that, to my mind, it didn't make sense to spend ones money on hoarding things in a time of plenty.
-Ah, that's because you don't understand the system, he replied, -I haven't bought them because I want them - I've been forced to buy them.
We went out for the day and I brought the subject up again over the dinner table that night and was educated in the ways of the system. Poland made a limited number of very good quality farm tractors, they are surprisingly tough and well suited to the conditions of the country. Our host told me that some farmers would pool their resources and buy a tractor between them and that they would take it in turns to guard these tractors at night. I said that I thought it unlikely that anyone would try to steal a tractor because there were so few of them that it would be hard for the thief to conceal fact that he had a tractor for very long.
-I haven't finished yet, said our farmer. -It's not the tractor they want, it's the parts they can unbolt from it."
The tractor factory had a quota to meet. In their job specification it said that they had to produce so many tons of spare parts per year to meet the quota. It didn't specify exactly which spare parts; it just said say, "five hundred tons of spare parts." The workers in the factory looked at this and came up with an idea, a typically Polish idea. They would make five hundred tons of brake drums - nothing else, just brake drums. Brake drums are heavy and they require less machining than any other part of the tractor so it was easier to meet the quota in this way. So what was the result of producing only brake drums as spare parts you are wondering? Well, stop reading, look at the ceiling and think for a bit. You have a situation where there is an excess of brake drums and a shortage of all other spare parts. Try to think of the logical consequences of such a situation; try to think how it would affect you as a farmer and we'll see, by your answer, if you could fit well into a communist society.
This is what happened: The farmers ended up with sheds full of brake drums because when they went into the spare parts shop to buy, say, an injector pump for their tractor, the guy in the shop said "an injector pump? you have to buy ten brake drums to get one of those." This state of affairs gives rise to the bribery which goes on anywhere in the World where demand for goods exceeds supply. If there was only one injector pump in the shop and there weren't going to be any more for a long time (until they got a new quota system sorted out at the factory) the real value of an injector pump would escalate.
In these circumstances the farmer would offer to pay the man in the shop a bribe so he'd sell it to him rather that anyone else. Guess what would happen then? The guy in the shop would say -oh that one (the injector pump on the shelf behind him) is only for show, or -that one is already sold but if you leave me your name and address, I'll see what I can do.
What that actually meant was that he was unofficially auctioning it to the highest bidder. You would have offered him, say, 10 dollars extra and he would say -I'm sorry I can't do that but, as I said, I'll see what I can do. If he didn't get a better offer by the end of the week he would contact you and say -OK, ten dollars extra and it's yours. If the farmer was lucky enough to secure this spare part, he would understandably guard his tractor at night from spare parts thieves. When a vital spare part was unavailable and the crops were ready for harvesting a farmer would have to have been a very upright person not to have been tempted to steal somebody else's parts or buy them from somebody who had stolen them.
Under communism everything was controlled by some state planning organization which conducted the affairs of industry from afar, in offices, and on paper. It might have made sense on paper and in theory but in this system everything was planned so far in advance that it was impossible for the planners to cater for every eventuality. For instance, the people who planned the production of cars didn't know that windscreen glass would be in short supply when they were only two years into the five year plan.
It wouldn't have mattered to them anyway because they'd done their job, and glass supply was some other department's business. So they would get into these uncoordinated situations where one department didn't know or care about the problems of another department.
In production schedules, a host of other things play their parts too. Things like the Polish currency of the time being worthless in the west. If they didn't get enough hard currency into the country, they couldn't buy the raw materials for, say, windscreens from a western country because the western supplier would say -we're not going to be paid in that crap, give us dollars.
So to a certain extent I could sympathize with these poor long term planners, it wasn't their fault that they'd put together a plan for car production and the government couldn't raise the cash to buy windscreen material. It must have been demoralizing to have done a good job and then to have watched it all come undone. I recall another time when we were in Poland and the place was alive with a couple of stories which had appeared in the newspapers
The government was desperately in need of glass but couldn't afford to buy the raw materials from overseas so the department responsible for glass supply sought to alleviate the problem by offering money back for re-usable empty glass containers. At the time there was a huge stockpile of tomato sauce in the warehouses which was years old and hadn't been sold. This was released to the shops at a discount to encourage people to buy it. The thinking was that people would use the tomato sauce and return the empties to claim the money on the bottles.
This would have been alright if the department who were responsible for setting the price of the tomato sauce had been in contact with the department who set the price on the returned bottles. But they had no reason to, communism didn't work like that. The result was that there was more money offered for the return of a tomato sauce bottle than a new bottle of tomato sauce cost to buy in the first place. Poles used to spend an inordinate part of their lives looking for opportunities like this and it wasn't long before it was picked up by two resourceful students. These guys invested every penny they had in tomato sauce, tipped it down the drain and claimed the money back on the bottles. With the money, they bought more tomato sauce and on it went.
They went to other cities to obtain tomato sauce and did the same. They were lucky that it happened to be a product that wasn't in high demand and they didn't have much trouble in procuring the stuff. They made a lot of money in a very short space of time but the law caught up with them and took them to court where they were proved innocent of any crime and let off. These two guys had achieved hero status at the time of our visit.
Another one? OK.
This one is about shoes. Quotas were applied in various ways, sometimes your quota would have been related to using up materials (you'd have to process so many tons of, say, fabric) and sometimes it was on the number of units produced. For instance if the factory had an ample supply of the raw materials required, then it made sense to set the workers a quota on materials used rather than units produced.
A few years ago, shoppers in Warsaw found that there was a sudden shortage of regular sized shoes, and what shoes they were able to find, were for some reason, all in large sizes. People were saying "this is stupid, if they made small sizes as well, there would be more shoes to go around." The reason was that the quota system at the shoe factory had changed and the workers bonus, under this new plan, was paid on a materials used basis rather than the number of shoes produced. The easiest way to get rid of the most leather and fulfil their quota was to make the largest size shoes which they had machinery to cope with.
Getting the idea?
We used to come to Poland quite frequently and I gradually got used to it and didn't ask "why?" so often. It was cold when we arrived in Warsaw one year so we went out to buy me a singlet. We found a shop with stock (no mean feat) and I said that I'd like a singlet to fit me. I didn't know what size but I indicated that it was for me. The shop assistant handed me a singlet and a pair of underpants which I didn't need. The underpants were made for a giant, in fact it was a subject of great hilarity to Alicja and I because they were the biggest pair of underpants we'd ever set eyes on.
-No thanks, don't need underpants, I said.
-They come in sets, was the reply.
-Well the singlet is my size but both of us could get into the underpants, can I have a smaller pair of underpants, please.
-Sorry, that's the set, that's how they come, she said.
-Seriously, I said. -have you ever seen a human being with a shape like that?
-Do you want the stuff or don't you?
I took the set and I didn't question it because, by that time, I could work it out for myself. "Remember the brake drums", I said to myself - "yes, the quota, it will have something to do with the quota." Poles didn't think about these peculiarities, they knew. For them it was normal because they worked in these factories and were responsible for these cock ups. They had a lot of extremely funny jokes about it all.
Can you imagine it becoming normal to you? Of course not, but I'm sure that if anybody had spent six weeks working in a factory in Poland under the old system it would have rubbed off onto him so smoothly that he wouldn't have noticed it happening. The whole of the communist bloc operated on a work to rule basis and to them it was normal and nobody, used a grain of initiative in their jobs. If you did use your common sense and initiative, and something went wrong, you could have been blamed for it because everyone was interested only in covering their own backs and looking for someone else to blame all the time.
If you worked by the book and never deviated, and something went wrong, the guy who wrote the book was to blame and your own back was covered. The inevitable results of it were shortages of goods and long queues everywhere. In Russia shortly before the fall of communism, the workers in a shoe factory in Leningrad nailed 4,000 heels onto the wrong end of shoes because the instructions were wrong. They knew what they were doing and they knew they could get away with it and still stay within the specifications. The reasons for such a seemingly unthinking course of action were not specified in the newspaper which contained this information but one scenario, a fairly common one, could have been revenge. E.g. the guy who wrote the specifications could have covered his own back on a previous occasion by blaming the workers in the shoe factory for his own mistake, so by nailing the heels on to the front of the shoes, they could get back at him.
Sometimes workers used to work strictly according to the book with the express intention of stuffing up the system. It wasn't their system, they hated communism, and if their instructions were at all ambiguous and could be interpreted differently, they'd go ahead and produce an unusable product - a legal form of protest, a reminder which said "you haven't got us yet - we remember."
Poland, according to an article in The Financial Times, actually achieved a negative Gross Domestic Product in some years, because the value of some manufactured products was less than the value of the raw materials which went into them. I can quite believe it too because, harping back to a pet complaint, the quality of metal articles like screws and rivets manufactured in Poland is still so poor as to make a large percentage of them unusable and they end up being thrown away. It would seem to make more sense to throw the steel away in the first place and save on the costs incurred in the manufacturing process - then, import decent screws and rivets which won't have the effect of slowing down production in those factories which must make use of them.
The Poles suffered under other peoples systems for two hundred years except for a brief respite between the two World wars, when Poland was owned and run by the Poles. They have become consummate experts in stuffing up other peoples systems and now that free market forces operate in the country, people have to adjust to it and they're not finding it easy. The mentality of the whole population now has to change and become more positive. They will have to learn that this attitude is, in effect, like urinating in their own swimming pools. But who can blame them for having had this attitude so far? Whole generations, in fact most of the present day work force, were brought up under communism - born into it - and now somebody tells them it's all wrong.
But down on the farm it's the quality of the vodka that matters, not the screws. Vladeks father and his contemporaries, when they were first exiled to Bocwinka, found its barns and outhouses crammed with tools and agricultural machinery hidden from the Russians by the Germans. He told me that the only Germans he'd ever met were in army uniforms during the war but, he said, holding up a scythe blade for my perusal;-look at this metal, Poland still hasn't produced anything as good.
Chapter 12
By mid March it seemed safe to assume the sub zero temperatures were over and that we'd seen the last of the snow. Soon it would be spring when young men's fancies would turn to what young girls had been fancying all winter. Misha, no longer having her snow tunnel to live in, had migrated to the kennel and, just like hibernatory animals, people too were emerging from the confines of their houses to spend more time in their gardens.
Ryszard came around to see us. After almost a year of saving their money Halina and Ryszard bought a new, Japanese colour television set but Ryszard had a problem with tuning it because the instructions, which were in eight languages, didn't include Polish. It was their first colour TV and they were understandably anxious to see it working so we downed tools and followed him straight back to their house. There was also a new antenna to be installed on the roof, a job which fell to me, and I spent half an hour up a ladder in the cold while everyone else sat in the lounge room, shouted instructions through the window and drank tea.
-How's that?
-A bit more. No, too much, go back. Hold it right there. Can you bolt it up just where it is?
-Is that it then?
-No, you'll have to go back out there again but there's something interesting on - come in and get warm.
I went inside and had to make myself a cup of tea as everyone else was engrossed in a program showing old black and white footage of World war 11. I couldn't understand it and tried to interrupt but was told to be quiet. They'd tell me all about it later. There was a lot of Polish chatter going on punctuated by uproarious laughter at one point and I waited patiently until the end of the program to ask what it was all about.
The TV program had been about Polish partisans and had featured the man who used to own Halina and Ryszard's house. It told of his heroic exploits fighting against the Germans in the forests on the Czech border during WWII. At the end of the program there was a list telling what had happened to all these partisans - most of which were by now dead. When it came to the previous owner of Halina and Ryszard's house it said "died in a road accident" and gave the date. That he had died in a road accident was true but not, as one would imagine, a collision between two fast moving, passenger carrying vehicles. He was cycling home one night totally paralytic and fell off his bike into a puddle containing only a few centimetres of water where he had lain, unconscious, face down, and drowned. Halina and Ryszard knew this first hand as they had attended his funeral.
That funeral had been eight years ago but now we ourselves were to attend a village funeral within days of hearing the story. We arrived home after shopping in Gizycko one afternoon and as Alicja was opening the gate we heard Eva calling us to the fence. Vladek's father had died. We didn't know he was ill but he'd been taken to hospital the previous day and had died early in the morning. I quite liked the old man but I seemed to be the only person who did. His family, especially his wife, didn't like him at all. He had been a tyrant to his family in his younger days, a drunkard who beat his wife and kids, he was both stingy with his money and lazy. As soon as Vladek had been physically strong enough to run the farm his father had feigned illness and never worked a day from then on.
His hatred for Eva, she said, stemmed from the fact that she had bought nothing into the marriage in the form of a dowry, wasn't from a Ukrainian family and didn't belong to the Orthodox faith. Of course, I saw none of this, mainly, I suppose, because I couldn't understand the language well enough to feel the atmosphere when I visited their house. His body was brought back from the hospital and he lay in his coffin on a table in the lounge room for two days and nights under the framed pictures of Jesus and the Virgin and Child. Plastic saints with halos on sticks stood guard on top of the sideboard and dozens of poor quality candles burned in the room filling it with so much smoke it hurt my eyes and the smell of moth balls from the suit they'd dressed him in took my breath away as I entered the room.
I'd never imagined Vladek's father in a suit and tie - certainly not one of my ties. I'd loaned it to Vladek weeks ago and now hoped they didn't give it back. Vladek, his mother and Eva, eyes reddened through lack of sleep and an overdose of candle smoke, took turns to sit with the body all day and all night as a procession of friends and relatives filed past him, each stopping to kiss his cheek. Even small children were lifted so as to be able to reach and kiss him.
One would have thought, from viewing the number of people who attended the room, that the old man had been well liked but people were saying what an old bastard he'd been even before they left the house. They put their arms around the widow's shoulders and hugged her but not to display sympathy for her having lost a life long companion. They seemed to be saying "don't worry, everything will be alright now he's gone."
We watched the funeral procession go by our windows. The coffin was carried by Gienek, Andrzej, Zenek and Ivan - two Poles and two Ukrainians. In front went two relations from somewhere other than Bocwinka carrying aloft colourful banners topped by the Ukrainian Orthodox cross. Behind came the widow followed by Vladek and Eva, side by side, and then various relatives in order of importance, villagers bringing up the rear. And ten paces behind - a staggering Marek. They sang some kind of funeral dirge as the coffin was laid in Jurek's cart, which only a matter of days beforehand had seen service in the fields during muck spreading. The flowers were placed on top and without ceremony Jurek and Adam climbed aboard and geed the horse into action.
A bus had been hired to take the mourners to the cemetery and this now slowly edged it's way out from behind the milk depot to take aboard it's impassive, slightly bored looking passengers, four of whom carried shovels. As it took off we followed slowly on in the car. The journey, at horse and cart speed, to Kruklanki church seemed to take an age. As we entered the church we knelt and crossed ourselves in careful imitation of those in front of us. The men who had already performed this ritual stood to one side, ushering, with outstretched hands, the ladies towards their seats. Not knowing the protocol to adopt I hung back and stood with the rest of the men but they all waved me past.
The Kruklanki church was built by German Protestants early in the century and now, through shortage of funds, served two religions catering for both Poles and Ukrainians. The garish, nay, tasteless decor bore traces of all three faiths, brightly painted cardboard cut outs of Roman centurions stood at either side of the altar - I know not what for - and cooking foil clad saints adorned the walls. The service took almost two hours and I was starting to get fidgety only ten minutes into it. The dirges were long and depressingly reverent and I understood about the same amount as I would have understood at a funeral in any other country. A peculiarity of the Orthodox Ukrainian funeral service, I thought, was that only the women sang the hymns. I was mistaken. I looked behind me and found that, apart from Vladek, I was one of only four men in the congregation - the rest had all slipped back out and were on the opposite side of the road outside the post office drinking vodka.
The inside of the church was bitterly cold and we were the only people not prepared for it. Everyone else was well wrapped up in winter coats including the pop (Ukrainian priest) who wore over his ceremonial robes a black quilted jacket emblazoned with the words PUBLIC ENEMY. I would have liked to have told him what the words meant in English but, as Alicja pointed out, it was unlikely that another English speaker would ever see it. I had understood not a single word all through the service until the end when I heard the Polish word "dachowki." I knew that it meant roof tiles and my mind raced back to childhood Sunday school classes - "the wise man built his house upon a rock" - no that wasn't it. I asked Alicja what it was all about when we got outside. It had been an appeal for money to buy roof tiles for the church.
We trooped outside, eyes blinking in the sunshine, and the male contingent began to wander back to our side of the road, a couple of them hiding their bottles behind a waste paper basket before they did so. Although they were all dressed in their best, some wore gum boots (the only foot coverings they possessed) and Vladek had on a pair of black plimsolls. We walked in procession to the grave, a sermon was read and the coffin lowered into the soft, muddy earth. One of the ropes jammed and after a few pulls on it, which nearly turned the coffin over, the owner of the rope decided, reluctantly, to abandon it and dropped it into the hole. The women then filed past the grave, each stooping to pick up a handful of earth which she threw onto the top of the coffin. This was followed by the men but by that time the area around the grave was so well trodden that we each scraped up a handful of mud and shook it all over each other trying to dislodge it from between our fingers. This step of the proceedings over, Vladeks father was buried by the sons of the men he'd known since he was first forced to move to Bocwinka in 1946. Adam lost a shoe in the process. Vladek's mother seemed, if anything, relieved as she approached us
-He's got a lovely voice hasn't, he the priest?
-Yes, said Alicja, -lovely voice.
-He's not as good as the one we had before though, he could reach the really high notes just like a woman. But he's good though, this one.
-Yes, said Alicja -I thought he was excellent.
-I'll move into his room now where the stove is. And see if I can get a television, he wouldn't have television you know.
After the funeral I had an article to finish for an English wildlife magazine and Alicja was also busy so we called in at the party only for a short while to pay our respects and offer our toilet for the lady funeral goers. Like most families in the district Vladek and Eva had no toilet either inside the house or out. Bodily functions were taken care of in the orchard in the warm weather or in the milking parlour when it was cold.
While I was typing a man came into the kitchen. -Toilet's through there, I said
-No, he said -It's nearly eight o'clock. I wondered if I could see the weather forecast. I couldn't see a TV over at Vladek's.
-Of course, I said. -Vladek's got a TV but it's probably in another room for the duration of the party.
-I'm sorry to bother you, he said -but it was snowing when I left the south east and I'm wondering how conditions will be on the way home. We've got the kids with us and if I'm going to get stuck in the snow I'd rather it was daylight. We'll stay in a hotel the night if the weather looks bad.
We watched the forecast together, I watched the temperature chart and he listened to the words.
-Good, he said -according to that, we should have a good trip back.
-They don't always get it right though do they?, I said.
-No, he said -but at least they don't lie about it any more.
-Lie about the weather?
-Yes, they used to under the old system - the communists lied about everything.
I asked him why the government would have lied about the weather, -after all, I said -forecasters get it wrong anyway, why would they have the need to lie. This man, whose name I never did ask, used to work in the city engineers department in Warsaw where, during winter, they were nightly given the correct forecasts. The central heating act - or whatever it was called in the constitution - stated that the heating to apartment blocks must be turned on when the temperature dropped below a certain set point for three consecutive nights. The country was always short of coal to fire the city's central boilers because it was exported to earn hard currency, so to save money on energy the Met' Office reports were distorted and a higher temperature was given out on the weather forecast. You could have been freezing to death but if the weather forecast said you weren't, you were not!
This gave the dwellers of apartment blocks no basis for complaint when the weather was cold and the heating wasn't operating. The reason that the city engineers department was given the real temperature was that they had to salt the roads to keep the traffic moving. Every Pole has a fund of such stories and I never tire of hearing them. Ryszard told me a good one about how he procured his car, a small 650cc Polish Fiat, that was sitting in his garage as he spoke and which he'd owned for over ten years.
Ryszard received a letter one day which informed him that after a wait of eight years, he had been allocated a new car. He had paid his last instalment on it about five years beforehand and he had paid in Polish currency. Had he paid in American Dollars, he could have had a car much sooner - the government was desperate for hard currency. Ryszard and a friend went to the factory by train and bus to pick up his car. When they arrived, they handed in the letter of entitlement and were told that they could choose which ever car they wanted. They walked out into the yard and saw a line of cars, all white except for one orange one. They chose the orange one, signed the necessary papers and drove the car away.
A few kilometres down the road, they had occasion to brake hard and the windscreen fell out and broke on the ground in front of them. They loaded the pieces into the boot and went back to the factory where the man didn't question their story at all and told them to pick another car. They said that they particularly liked the orange one and asked if they could have another windscreen for it. -I'd like to help you, he said, -but we don't have any more windscreens.
They offered him a bribe, as was the normal thing to do in the situation, but the man was adamant that there were no more windscreens to be had. Reluctantly they chose a white car, said goodbye and left. On the way out of the factory they had to drive over the kerb and as they did so, Ryszard's companion noticed the windscreen move inside the rubber. They stopped and pushed the glass lightly and could see that without too much encouragement, the same thing would happen again, Ie. the windscreen would fall out.
They reversed back into the factory yard and proceeded to try all the other windscreens. All of them were the same, all loose. They went back to the office and explained to the man what had happened, negotiated with him and ended up taking the orange car but with the windscreen out of one of the white ones which they loaded into the back seat. They arrived home six hours later with themselves and the interior of the car wet through after having driven through a rain storm. Ryszard had a friend who was a solicitor and he asked him if he could write a letter of complaint to the factory for him and see if the factory would be willing to exchange the present windscreen for a better one when they came into stock.
The solicitor wrote the letter, and sent it off on Ryszards behalf and waited for a reply. Nothing was forthcoming despite follow up letters until eventually the solicitor rang the manager of the factory and demanded an answer. The manager wasn't at all evasive and apologised for not answering the letters. But, he said, it wasn't the fault of the car factory, it was the fault of the glass factory which had supplied windscreens thinner than specified.
Here, I must digress while I explain the workings of a small but typical part of the communist system. Each factory or production unit of any kind had a yearly quota to meet and if met, all the workers would get a bonus, sometimes money, sometimes goods. One of the problems however was that quite often, the raw materials required to meet this quota were unavailable. Now back to the story; The windscreen factory had a quota to meet but the raw materials for making glass were in short supply and they just couldn't get enough. So what would you, as a factory manager, do when confronted with this situation? You'd probably do what the Poles did.
The factory had say, a ten thousand windscreen quota and only enough glass for seven thousand so they met their quota by making each windscreen thinner, so thin in fact that they fell out of the rubbers which were supposed to hold them in the cars. I remember that the first time I visited Poland in 1985 we stayed on a farm for three days and, upon seeing a stack of twenty five tractor brake drums in the farmers shed the first morning, I had asked if he was hoarding them in case of a shortage. -No, was the reply -they're there because there's a glut. I told the farmer that, to my mind, it didn't make sense to spend ones money on hoarding things in a time of plenty.
-Ah, that's because you don't understand the system, he replied, -I haven't bought them because I want them - I've been forced to buy them.
We went out for the day and I brought the subject up again over the dinner table that night and was educated in the ways of the system. Poland made a limited number of very good quality farm tractors, they are surprisingly tough and well suited to the conditions of the country. Our host told me that some farmers would pool their resources and buy a tractor between them and that they would take it in turns to guard these tractors at night. I said that I thought it unlikely that anyone would try to steal a tractor because there were so few of them that it would be hard for the thief to conceal fact that he had a tractor for very long.
-I haven't finished yet, said our farmer. -It's not the tractor they want, it's the parts they can unbolt from it."
The tractor factory had a quota to meet. In their job specification it said that they had to produce so many tons of spare parts per year to meet the quota. It didn't specify exactly which spare parts; it just said say, "five hundred tons of spare parts." The workers in the factory looked at this and came up with an idea, a typically Polish idea. They would make five hundred tons of brake drums - nothing else, just brake drums. Brake drums are heavy and they require less machining than any other part of the tractor so it was easier to meet the quota in this way. So what was the result of producing only brake drums as spare parts you are wondering? Well, stop reading, look at the ceiling and think for a bit. You have a situation where there is an excess of brake drums and a shortage of all other spare parts. Try to think of the logical consequences of such a situation; try to think how it would affect you as a farmer and we'll see, by your answer, if you could fit well into a communist society.
This is what happened: The farmers ended up with sheds full of brake drums because when they went into the spare parts shop to buy, say, an injector pump for their tractor, the guy in the shop said "an injector pump? you have to buy ten brake drums to get one of those." This state of affairs gives rise to the bribery which goes on anywhere in the World where demand for goods exceeds supply. If there was only one injector pump in the shop and there weren't going to be any more for a long time (until they got a new quota system sorted out at the factory) the real value of an injector pump would escalate.
In these circumstances the farmer would offer to pay the man in the shop a bribe so he'd sell it to him rather that anyone else. Guess what would happen then? The guy in the shop would say -oh that one (the injector pump on the shelf behind him) is only for show, or -that one is already sold but if you leave me your name and address, I'll see what I can do.
What that actually meant was that he was unofficially auctioning it to the highest bidder. You would have offered him, say, 10 dollars extra and he would say -I'm sorry I can't do that but, as I said, I'll see what I can do. If he didn't get a better offer by the end of the week he would contact you and say -OK, ten dollars extra and it's yours. If the farmer was lucky enough to secure this spare part, he would understandably guard his tractor at night from spare parts thieves. When a vital spare part was unavailable and the crops were ready for harvesting a farmer would have to have been a very upright person not to have been tempted to steal somebody else's parts or buy them from somebody who had stolen them.
Under communism everything was controlled by some state planning organization which conducted the affairs of industry from afar, in offices, and on paper. It might have made sense on paper and in theory but in this system everything was planned so far in advance that it was impossible for the planners to cater for every eventuality. For instance, the people who planned the production of cars didn't know that windscreen glass would be in short supply when they were only two years into the five year plan.
It wouldn't have mattered to them anyway because they'd done their job, and glass supply was some other department's business. So they would get into these uncoordinated situations where one department didn't know or care about the problems of another department.
In production schedules, a host of other things play their parts too. Things like the Polish currency of the time being worthless in the west. If they didn't get enough hard currency into the country, they couldn't buy the raw materials for, say, windscreens from a western country because the western supplier would say -we're not going to be paid in that crap, give us dollars.
So to a certain extent I could sympathize with these poor long term planners, it wasn't their fault that they'd put together a plan for car production and the government couldn't raise the cash to buy windscreen material. It must have been demoralizing to have done a good job and then to have watched it all come undone. I recall another time when we were in Poland and the place was alive with a couple of stories which had appeared in the newspapers
The government was desperately in need of glass but couldn't afford to buy the raw materials from overseas so the department responsible for glass supply sought to alleviate the problem by offering money back for re-usable empty glass containers. At the time there was a huge stockpile of tomato sauce in the warehouses which was years old and hadn't been sold. This was released to the shops at a discount to encourage people to buy it. The thinking was that people would use the tomato sauce and return the empties to claim the money on the bottles.
This would have been alright if the department who were responsible for setting the price of the tomato sauce had been in contact with the department who set the price on the returned bottles. But they had no reason to, communism didn't work like that. The result was that there was more money offered for the return of a tomato sauce bottle than a new bottle of tomato sauce cost to buy in the first place. Poles used to spend an inordinate part of their lives looking for opportunities like this and it wasn't long before it was picked up by two resourceful students. These guys invested every penny they had in tomato sauce, tipped it down the drain and claimed the money back on the bottles. With the money, they bought more tomato sauce and on it went.
They went to other cities to obtain tomato sauce and did the same. They were lucky that it happened to be a product that wasn't in high demand and they didn't have much trouble in procuring the stuff. They made a lot of money in a very short space of time but the law caught up with them and took them to court where they were proved innocent of any crime and let off. These two guys had achieved hero status at the time of our visit.
Another one? OK.
This one is about shoes. Quotas were applied in various ways, sometimes your quota would have been related to using up materials (you'd have to process so many tons of, say, fabric) and sometimes it was on the number of units produced. For instance if the factory had an ample supply of the raw materials required, then it made sense to set the workers a quota on materials used rather than units produced.
A few years ago, shoppers in Warsaw found that there was a sudden shortage of regular sized shoes, and what shoes they were able to find, were for some reason, all in large sizes. People were saying "this is stupid, if they made small sizes as well, there would be more shoes to go around." The reason was that the quota system at the shoe factory had changed and the workers bonus, under this new plan, was paid on a materials used basis rather than the number of shoes produced. The easiest way to get rid of the most leather and fulfil their quota was to make the largest size shoes which they had machinery to cope with.
Getting the idea?
We used to come to Poland quite frequently and I gradually got used to it and didn't ask "why?" so often. It was cold when we arrived in Warsaw one year so we went out to buy me a singlet. We found a shop with stock (no mean feat) and I said that I'd like a singlet to fit me. I didn't know what size but I indicated that it was for me. The shop assistant handed me a singlet and a pair of underpants which I didn't need. The underpants were made for a giant, in fact it was a subject of great hilarity to Alicja and I because they were the biggest pair of underpants we'd ever set eyes on.
-No thanks, don't need underpants, I said.
-They come in sets, was the reply.
-Well the singlet is my size but both of us could get into the underpants, can I have a smaller pair of underpants, please.
-Sorry, that's the set, that's how they come, she said.
-Seriously, I said. -have you ever seen a human being with a shape like that?
-Do you want the stuff or don't you?
I took the set and I didn't question it because, by that time, I could work it out for myself. "Remember the brake drums", I said to myself - "yes, the quota, it will have something to do with the quota." Poles didn't think about these peculiarities, they knew. For them it was normal because they worked in these factories and were responsible for these cock ups. They had a lot of extremely funny jokes about it all.
Can you imagine it becoming normal to you? Of course not, but I'm sure that if anybody had spent six weeks working in a factory in Poland under the old system it would have rubbed off onto him so smoothly that he wouldn't have noticed it happening. The whole of the communist bloc operated on a work to rule basis and to them it was normal and nobody, used a grain of initiative in their jobs. If you did use your common sense and initiative, and something went wrong, you could have been blamed for it because everyone was interested only in covering their own backs and looking for someone else to blame all the time.
If you worked by the book and never deviated, and something went wrong, the guy who wrote the book was to blame and your own back was covered. The inevitable results of it were shortages of goods and long queues everywhere. In Russia shortly before the fall of communism, the workers in a shoe factory in Leningrad nailed 4,000 heels onto the wrong end of shoes because the instructions were wrong. They knew what they were doing and they knew they could get away with it and still stay within the specifications. The reasons for such a seemingly unthinking course of action were not specified in the newspaper which contained this information but one scenario, a fairly common one, could have been revenge. E.g. the guy who wrote the specifications could have covered his own back on a previous occasion by blaming the workers in the shoe factory for his own mistake, so by nailing the heels on to the front of the shoes, they could get back at him.
Sometimes workers used to work strictly according to the book with the express intention of stuffing up the system. It wasn't their system, they hated communism, and if their instructions were at all ambiguous and could be interpreted differently, they'd go ahead and produce an unusable product - a legal form of protest, a reminder which said "you haven't got us yet - we remember."
Poland, according to an article in The Financial Times, actually achieved a negative Gross Domestic Product in some years, because the value of some manufactured products was less than the value of the raw materials which went into them. I can quite believe it too because, harping back to a pet complaint, the quality of metal articles like screws and rivets manufactured in Poland is still so poor as to make a large percentage of them unusable and they end up being thrown away. It would seem to make more sense to throw the steel away in the first place and save on the costs incurred in the manufacturing process - then, import decent screws and rivets which won't have the effect of slowing down production in those factories which must make use of them.
The Poles suffered under other peoples systems for two hundred years except for a brief respite between the two World wars, when Poland was owned and run by the Poles. They have become consummate experts in stuffing up other peoples systems and now that free market forces operate in the country, people have to adjust to it and they're not finding it easy. The mentality of the whole population now has to change and become more positive. They will have to learn that this attitude is, in effect, like urinating in their own swimming pools. But who can blame them for having had this attitude so far? Whole generations, in fact most of the present day work force, were brought up under communism - born into it - and now somebody tells them it's all wrong.
But down on the farm it's the quality of the vodka that matters, not the screws. Vladeks father and his contemporaries, when they were first exiled to Bocwinka, found its barns and outhouses crammed with tools and agricultural machinery hidden from the Russians by the Germans. He told me that the only Germans he'd ever met were in army uniforms during the war but, he said, holding up a scythe blade for my perusal;-look at this metal, Poland still hasn't produced anything as good.
Chapter 13
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 13
Bocwinka lies roughly midway between two lakes connected by a river which runs through our own land. Upstream from Bocwinka is Soltmany lake and downstream, Zywki lake. At Easter time when the snow melts, the Zywki lake fills up, due to a restriction at its outlet, and the water backs up along the river flooding the water meadows.
On Easter Sunday I got out of bed at about 7am and, as usual, the first thing I did was to pull the curtains back to check on the weather. After a week of fairly solid rain I was delighted to note that it was a sunny day. The view down the valley to the river had been a deciding factor in buying the house although, at the time, we didn't know that the view would be covered in snow for five months of the year. Now it was just as we'd seen it on our first visit, the cloudless blue sky above the ridge on the other side of the valley, a ribbon of alder and willow trees recently decked out with fresh new leaves following the line of the river banks, a few cows grazing at the top of the slope and......hey, wait a minute, who's that on our land.
Four men in gum boots, hands in pockets and heads bowed were paddling about in the flooded meadows. They were shuffling their feet as people do at markets when the haggling reaches an impasse, the way people kick the dust around before coming up with the next offer. I switched on the kettle and went to look for the binoculars but, remembering that Vladek hadn't returned them from the last time he borrowed them, I made a cup of tea and returned to the window. The four men were each walking off in different directions. I thought it strange but dismissed it from my mind until I went over to Vladek's that evening for the milk.
-Did you see some men walking around in our water meadows this morning?, I asked.
-Yes, I was one of them.
-What were you doing down there?
-szczupak Peter, it's Easter, this is szczupak time.
Szczupak is Polish for pike and I asked exactly what "pike time" meant knowing full well this would mean that I wouldn't get home for at least an hour, during which I'd be compelled to drink at least two cups of the foulest coffee known unto man.
Although this stuff bears a label designated "coffee" it's made from 10% coffee, 70% chicory, a sprinkling of wheat and barley and something which tastes uncannily like the smell you get when you put a chain saw through a tree with an ants nest in it. Mind you, the taste is the best part of it, the consistency is even worse. We called it True Grit because the particles in it refused to sink for ten minutes by which time it was cold and even more unpalatable. I always drank it hot through clenched teeth but even then I'd find annoying little granules in the remoter regions of my mouth for half an hour afterwards.
Vladek & Eva, of course, were unaware that there was any other sort of coffee to be had and once when they came to our house and we gave them German filter coffee they couldn't get over the taste but preferred to have it unfiltered the next time. So, I settled back in the armchair, True Grit in hand, and prepared myself to be educated on "pike time".
At Easter time, give or take a week, the pike make their way up and down river from the two lakes, to lay their eggs in the warm shallows of the water meadows. The pike prefer to deposit their eggs in the warmest, and therefore the shallowest, parts of the flooded meadows which makes them fairly easy prey to the villagers. However, the problem faced by the villagers is not so much one of catching the pike but of catching them unseen - it's not legal. It's a fairly sophisticated operation that starts with what I'd seen out of our bedroom window - a scouting party to see if the pike have arrived. Satisfied that they have, something like a Territorial Army operation begins.
There are the goodies, in the shape of the village farmers, and the baddies, in the shape of the rangers from the department of inland waterways & fisheries. Both sides have a clear objective; the goodies have to remove as many fish as possible from the river, the baddies have to catch the goodies in the act. It's a game that's been going on for more than twenty years and was started when the department of inland waterways & fisheries first discovered that the river in Bocwinka was a spawning ground and should therefore, come under it's protection.
Both sides play hard to win and the game is taken very seriously. But, like the Oxford & Cambridge boat race, the same side seems to win most years - the Bocwinka team. The department also sends it's scouting party for walks in the water meadows to determine the time when the game will commence. This is signalled by the arrival of an old 4 wheel drive van which parks on the road bridge, giving it's two occupants a clear view of the river both upstream and downstream.
Bocwinka's advance intelligence agent, Agnieszka "The Mole" Ropelska will by that time already have alerted Pani Zosia in the shop, who will have spread the word via the village information superhighway. Agnieszka is Pani Zosia's daughter and she works in town at the department of the baddies and keeps her ears open for information about when the rangers will begin their surveillance. The baddies all know that she's the village informant and the subject is never brought up in the office in front of her but she knows what's going on anyway because of the fact that they stop speaking in front of her just before the event.
Back in Bocwinka, after dark, look-outs are posted in the upstairs windows of two houses overlooking the road and the lads go to work laying their nets down at the river. The early warning system isn't terribly sophisticated; all that happens is that the look-outs switch their upstairs lights on if they see a car coming. And as there is only one road into and out of the village it works perfectly providing that the look-out isn't drunk.
During my first "pike time" there were four nets in the shallows, so well hidden that I only managed to find one of them in daylight. They were simply straight lines of netting strung across different parts of the meadow & tied to submerged stakes. In the same way that pheasants are beaten out of a thicket at a shoot, the fish are directed into the nets by three or four people walking abreast towards it. Two drainage ditches run from the meadows into the river and there they place a different type of net. These are ordinary fisherman's keep nets with a strip of netting sewn onto either side of the mouth so that when spread out, they cover the width of the ditches.
Of course, the men from the department look all over for the nets and sometimes find & confiscate them but it's impossible to point a finger at anybody. The rangers also keep a close eye on the villagers who are sometimes to be seen casually strolling through the meadows in gum boots, but in daylight, that's all they do -stroll. I was invited on one of these strolls and was asked if I'd like to bring Misha along although I couldn't quite make out the purpose, or why the lads made so much fuss of her as we walked down towards the river. The strategy had been well worked out before I was invited to take part. They split into two groups, one each side of the net. Then, in chorus, the lads on the opposing side of the net all started to call Misha who splashed towards them. And, unbeknown to me, drove the pike before her.
To them, I must have seemed remarkably thick - I was the only person during this walk in the water who didn't know what he was there for - I still hadn't seen the net. Suddenly, out of a clump of alder trees emerged a man in an official looking hat and expensive, green gum boots.
-OK, what are you lot up to, said the green booted official.
-We're taking this man's dog for a walk in his own meadow, replied Marian. -He's a foreigner and he lives in that white house up there and this is his land and he wants to know why you're trespassing on it.
There was nothing the man could do except check to see that the dog was registered (which it was) and we kept on strolling for another 10 minutes before returning to our homes. Although the fish are driven into the nets during daylight hours they can only be taken under the cover of darkness so, in daylight, poaching by another method takes place. The modus operandi is to hide in the trees with a home made harpoon cut from the forest and simply spear the fish as they spawn in a foot of water where their mobility is impaired by the meadow grass. This though, is a one man operation simply because there is only one pair of wading boots in the village and they all take it in turns to wear them. I once saw the village wading boots being repaired, they were of the poorest quality Russian manufacture and had 13 pieces of bicycle inner tube vulcanised over the rips and tears.
But to get back to Vladek, Eva and the second cup of True Grit - there in their lounge room I was regaled with tales of pike times past and what struck me as funny was that the goodies and baddies all knew each other, in some cases went to school with each other. The stories were mostly of midnight chases somewhat reminiscent of the partisans fighting the Nazis. The men from the department have the advantage in that they have strong torches and once the beam picks out one of the farmers, the chase is on to head him off before he gets home because he'll already be in bed when the torch light shines through the window.
If any of his mates can get to his house first they'll let his dogs off the chain and delay the baddies by accusing them of wandering around the village at night with intent to steal. Another ruse used is for someone other than the fugitive to switch on his kitchen light for a couple of minutes. This sometimes causes the pursuers to think that their man has just reached home (the wrong home) and upon arrival at the door they're greeted by a perfectly dry farmer rather than the soggy, out of breath peasant they've been looking for.
It all sounded like tremendous fun to me and I asked Vladek if I could accompany the party on the next night time campaign and he agreed. However, after he'd consulted with the lads he reported back to me that they'd talked about it and, although I must understand there was nothing personal about their decision, they didn't want me along because they didn't think I could run fast enough in gum boots and I didn't know any hiding places. I was though, honoured with the position of look-out from our upstairs windows. A decision arrived at because the previous year, one of the look-outs fell asleep after consuming a half bottle of vodka and, as a result, caused a few men to have to run faster than they would have liked.
I was also mentioned in dispatches in the smokehouse and a toast was drunk to "The Anglik". Every household, including ours, has a smoker which consists of an earth tunnel at the end of which is an oil drum with a lid on it. The fish, eels or meat are hung from fencing wire in the oil drum and wood shavings lit at the tunnel entrance. These are for the use of individual families but two farms have underground root cellars with large smokers. It was in one of these that all the men involved in the pike catching gathered together, smoked their fish and drunk copious quantities of vodka.
-To the best fucking milk tanker driver in Bocwinka, shouted Zenek and they all downed another glass - and so it went on. I went home and left them to it.
That Easter, the joint village effort brought in 37 pike and an assortment of smaller fish over four nights. The heaviest weighed in at a little over 24 lb although the majority were around the 4 lb mark and I was shown the preserved head of one pike from twelve years ago which, I was assured, had weighed over 35 lb. Two things impressed me about the whole episode: one being that they were sensible enough not to have taken all the available pike because they recognised that they would have to leave some to breed in the coming years. And the second being that after the pike were cured, they sent fish around to a couple of widows and families whose men were too old to have taken part in the event but were of the generation who had taught these guys to catch the pike years ago.
April saw the first wedding of the year in our little community, in fact the first wedding either of us had seen in Poland. The bridegroom's name was Piotr and he was a well dressed, clean cut city boy from Warsaw - when he arrived - that is. By the time he left however, his parents would have had difficulty in recognising him. He came to Bocwinka to marry Alexandra, a girl who was born just across the valley from us. We'd never seen either of them before, as Alexandra lives in Warsaw where she studies biology at the Polytechnic and it was there that she met Piotr.
They are both of Ukrainian descent and came to be married in the local Ukrainian church and spend their honeymoon in the village where Alexandra was born. The party went on for 6 days and hardly a stroke of work was done in the whole of Bocwinka during that time. The couple arrived two days before the event in a shiny, new red Mazda and came around to see us about accommodating some of the wedding party who would be coming the next day and had nowhere to sleep. We agreed, although not relishing the thought of a crowd of drunken party goers staying in the house & sleeping 6 to a room.
The first thing we did was to move most of the breakable objects up to the attic and change the layout of the furniture so that there would be fewer objects for them to bump into when they returned drunk in the early hours. We searched the linen cupboard for old towels and tablecloths to put over the mattresses, just in case, and hid all the booze in the shed. Our guests arrived on the Friday evening and we were more than a little surprised at the standard of both the people and the cars they arrived in. They were immaculately turned out in the very latest gear and with four cars so exclusive that when the owners were out of the way I took a photograph of the house with the fleet in the foreground and used it as our publicity shot.
We showed them around the house and they all liked it and complimented us on the colour of the kitchen tiles, the choice of wood we'd used for the floors and so forth and one of the men produced a video camera and filmed the whole place. At 4pm on Saturday the wedding party left the village and at 6pm they returned from the church and drove up the lane as far as our house where they were stopped, in what we were told was the traditional Ukrainian fashion, by the rest of the village.
The children, dressed in their best clothes, were all lined up at the sides of the road as far as a table which blocked the way and had upon it a loaf of bread and a saucer of salt. The bride & groom were in the first car and were expected to partake of the bread and salt and, in gratitude, hand over a bottle of vodka. A problem arose - they didn't have a bottle of vodka and the self appointed reception committee weren't going to let them past until they'd paid up.
An argument developed during which it was revealed that the groom didn't drink and didn't know or care a hoot about Ukrainian traditions and his new in laws were derided by the Ukrainian & Polish factions alike for letting their daughter marry a city slicker. The argument raged for some 20 minutes and ended up in a total boycott of the reception by the village population - although the lure of free vodka brought everyone back together again on the Sunday.
Meanwhile, in the lane outside our house, the argument was still blazing and ended with the wedding party all backing their cars down the lane and going home (the reception was held in the barn) by another route. Insults were hurled after them all and remarks were made concerning the bridegrooms gender and legitimacy- even the Polish faction were up in arms about his ignorance of Ukrainian tradition. Around noon on Sunday, the groom's brother who was staying at our place, turned up with a couple of broken toes which he got from kicking a table leg during a football match involving a balloon at the reception the night before.
We ran him into the hospital in Gizycko where we had to wait three hours for him to be attended to and then had to chase around Bocwinka to see who had the village crutches. In payment for services rendered Alexandra's mother came to the house and presented us with a live chicken. The bride's father had gone to much expense for his daughter's wedding, buying in and slaughtering a cow and 2 pigs and he had also purchased a quantity of live chickens to be on hand should they run out of meat.
We didn't quite know what to do with the chicken and we didn't want to appear ungrateful so we accepted it and I held it upside down by the legs until Alexandra's mum had gone. I put it in a sack to keep it quiet and after dark we sneaked out with it in the car and drove around several villages looking for a suitable home and new family for it. The trouble was that we'd forgotten that chickens don't roam around the streets at night and there wasn't another chicken in sight.
I wanted to release it in the first field we came to but Alicja was scared that a fox would get it and so we drove around for ages before we saw a brand new chicken coop next to the road in the village of Soltmany and I threw the chicken over the fence. On Monday we were woken by Misha's bark and, opening the door, we were greeted by the new groom and his new mother in law who explained that Piotr had been bitten by their dog on the day of his arrival and the wound had now turned septic. As all the car owners present in the village were either drunk, partly drunk or suffering, she asked if I would be kind enough to take another trip to the hospital, adding that I could use Piotr's car.
We had to go to Gizycko anyway to do some shopping and we dropped him off at the hospital arranging to pick him up a couple of hours later. But when we turned up to collect him we were told that he'd already left. We searched the whole town for him and ended up at the pizza bar opposite the railway station where we sat drinking tea and wondering where to look next.
Alicja saw him first. -There he is, that's him over there on the platform.
I looked across the road and sure enough there he stood as if waiting for a train and I left my cup of tea and went over to him. He was distraught and I couldn't understand him and so beckoned Alicja to join us. He told Alicja he was going home and never coming back. He didn't like his new in laws, Bocwinka, or the drunken load of bums who lived there and we found ourselves acting as marriage guidance counselors to one half of a marriage which was only 3 days old. With much coaxing Alicja eventually managed to get him to come home with us, although against his better judgement, and for the day's effort we received another live chicken which we disposed of that night by the method previously employed.
We didn't know it but while we were at the railway station the ambulance had been in Bocwinka and had taken Alexandra, Piotr's bride, and two other wedding guests to the same hospital with stomach cramps. Piotr came around to the house in the evening to once more cry on Alicja's shoulder. He carried on at length about his guilt feelings, for being so insensitive, thinking only of himself while his dear Alexandra was suffering and he ended up sleeping at our place. The next afternoon, Tuesday, I drove Piotr into town in his car to pick up Alexandra and received from her mother - another sodding chicken! I took another short drive to Soltmany that night and threw it over the fence to join its friends.
It wasn't long after this that a fire broke out in one of the barns in the village and everyone, including Piotr, turned out to lend a hand with the fire fighting. Poor Piotr was standing just outside the barn door with a full bucket of water waiting to hand it up the ladder to Bogdan, when he was struck on the head with an empty bucket thrown down from upstairs. The blow, which I suspect was deliberate, rendered him unconscious, and when he came round a few minutes later he found himself laying in the manure heap where he'd been placed as a joke by those who he'd been silly enough to argue with on his wedding night.
His back was covered in the stuff and I took him home in the car wearing only his underpants - the rest of his clothes, I insisted, went into the boot. Alicja stuck a plaster over the cut in his forehead, put his clothes in soak and I leant him a pair of my overalls. We then sent him back to his in-law's house with strict instructions not to return with a chicken. In due course we received a parcel from Warsaw containing my laundered overalls and a small present for the house together with a letter thanking us for all our help and inviting us to stay with Piotr & Alexandra next time we visited the capital.
A fortnight or so after the wedding a man from Soltmany came to the gate and told us that he wanted to sell his house. He'd heard that we were wealthy and thought we might be interested in buying it. I told him that we weren't in the market for another house and he left. When he'd gone I heard Eva calling me and went over to the fence to see what she wanted.
-What did he want? she said.
-He's trying to sell me his house.
-Did he tell you about his chickens?
-No, what chickens?
-He's got these chickens over in Soltmany and he reckons that every week God sends him another one. He tells everybody about it.
-What? God sends him another chicken? A big one or a small one?
-We don't think it's true Peter. It's true that he's got more chickens than he started off with but everybody's saying that he goes out at night and steals them and then tells everyone he gets them from God.
-Is he very religious then Eva?
-He didn't used to be but he is now.
We'd been out with the dog one evening and when we got to the other side of the valley we could see that a car had pulled into our drive. I looked at it through the binoculars and saw that the registration wasn't Polish so, thinking that we might get a booking for the house, we hurried back home arriving breathless. A German couple in their mid thirties were standing at the gate and the wife, who spoke English, said that they'd come to ask us a few questions about the area. We asked them in for a drink and asked how we could help them. Her mother had been born over sixty years ago in Jeziorowskie, a village close by, and they had visited the house two years ago and met the Polish family who now lived in it.
They had recently visited the family again and found that the house was for sale and they wanted to buy it for use as a holiday home but they knew that, not being Polish, they couldn't legally own it. They had heard that we were foreigners and so came to see us hoping that we could advise them on the legal aspects of leasing the place. We couldn't help them with their problems but during our conversation she told us that her late father was born somewhere not far away, also in village. She couldn't remember the name of the place (and it would have been changed to a Polish name anyway) but she remembered that he had said there was a pyramid there. I quizzed her about this pyramid but she couldn't remember anything other than that her father had mentioned that it was a spooky place and that, as a child, he had been scared to go close to it.
The subject had me intrigued and I determined to find out as much as I could about it and let her know if I came up with anything. Over the coming weeks Alicja wrote letters to historical societies asking about it but to no avail. I asked everyone we knew if they'd heard of a village with a pyramid but all it got me was strange looks and I gave up. History in our area, as far as Poland is concerned, started after World War Two and anything prior to this was known only to the Germans. I was surprised when, a few weeks after speaking to the German couple in our house, I received a letter from them telling me the name old German name of the village. With this information I was able to quite easily find the Polish name and, with the help of a detailed military map, find its location. It was only twenty minutes drive from Bocwinka and was called Zabin.
I found Zabin without a problem but I drove through it three times without finding any sign of a pyramid so I stopped at the village bus stop where three teenage boys were sitting. I asked them if they knew if there was a pyramid in the village but they just looked at me with blank expressions. Alicja had already told me how to pronounce pyramid in Polish before I left the house so I knew I was asking for the right thing - just not getting through. I asked the kids again saying that it might not be in the village but near the village, but again I was met with blank stares so I got out of the car and drew a picture of a pyramid. This time there was a reaction but I couldn't tell exactly of what kind. So far they hadn't said a word to me but now, they seemed to go even quieter as though I'd asked for something they weren't allowed to discuss.
I pointed to my drawing and said -where this? where this?, at which point one of them opened his mouth and said to the other two,-vamper. It was a word I wasn't familiar with but I picked up on it and pointing to the drawing again said -this is vamper? One of them seemed to nod and so, not being able to get any further with them, I got back in the car and went looking for someone else to ask. Two old women walking along the pavement didn't know what I was on about but I saw a man outside the shop and showed him my drawing and he, at least smiled. I asked him if he knew where there was a pyramid and added, for good measure the word vamper which the kids had used. He looked up at me with eyebrows raised thoughtfully, rummaged around in his pocket and produced a pencil with which he drew me a map with a triangle to illustrate the pyramid. I thanked him and started the car but he put his hand on the door and came closer.
-Why do you want to go there?
-Just interested.
-Be careful, he said.
I thanked him and drove off following the map he'd drawn. Just outside the village the road went through forest and quite suddenly I came across a gap in the trees, a straight line cut long ago and now overgrown. At the end of the gap, some three hundred metres from the road, was my pyramid. I could see that it wasn't a classical pyramid shape but more slender, almost like a squat church spire and it was set on top of a big square box of a building about four metres high. I stepped off the road and went straight away up to my knees in mud. The whole of the immediate area surrounding the pyramid was swampy and I thought that vamper probably meant swamp or bog in Polish.
I tried to get to it through the forest from all directions, eventually finding a way that was reasonably solid underfoot, and I stood under it looking up at the "spire". From a patch where the outer plaster covering had come away I could see that it was built of bricks and that there had once been windows and a big double door in the box like part at the bottom, but they had been bricked up. I walked around it and on one side somebody had knocked a few bricks out of one of the bricked up windows and I climbed up to it and looked in. It was dark but I could see the floor directly under the window and so I climbed through it. I moved a couple of paces forward and took my cigarette lighter out of my pocket and lit it.
On my right was an open coffin with a headless body in it, not a skeleton but a dead body. I moved to the left and there was another one. It suddenly came to my mind that the word the kids and the old man had said to me wasn't vamper but vampir - Polish for vampire. Now, I don't believe in vampires, never have. But I do believe in fear and the next thing I remember is being outside again leaning against a tree with the noise of my heart banging in my head and throat. I took a couple of photographs from the outside of the building and hurried home.
That night I went to see Ryszard and Halina and told them what I'd seen and Ryszard agreed to accompany me back to the pyramid the next afternoon. We took a torch and gum boots and Alicja's instant camera, as it had an inbuilt flash, and set out. We re-traced my steps of the previous day until we arrived at the hole in the side of the pyramid where I handed Ryszard a torch and told him to look inside. He took one look, stepped back and leaned against the wall shaking. I took back the torch and looked in. There were three coffins visible each with the lid off and each contained a headless body, but on closer inspection they seemed to be dried out. When we eventually plucked up enough courage to go inside we saw that there were four closed coffins and four minus the lids. Three adults lay in the open topped coffins and the fourth contained the body of a small child.
They were all obviously very old, perhaps hundreds of years, but their skin hadn't decomposed, instead, it had turned to hard leather and where it had drawn back from the finger nails it did indeed give the hands a vampire like appearance. Once outside again Ryszard and I took stock of the situation. The pyramid was located in swampy ground and the trees around it were alder trees which thrive in wet conditions and the pyramid had moss growing on the outside of it. Everything seemed to say that the bodies in the coffins should have decomposed very quickly but even the coffins were so dry that they were turning to powder.
I thought we'd found something unique that the Polish equivalent of the National Trust would have been vitally interested in but when we returned home, nobody, including the local newspaper, displayed the slightest interest in it. We were not the first people to have come across it in recent years, as evidenced by the hole in the wall, but nobody we contacted had ever heard of it or wanted to know about it. Months later Ryszard managed to locate a newspaper article on the subject written years beforehand. It said that it had been built by a Fritz von Farenheid in 1811 as a family tomb when his 11 year old daughter died. Fritz von Farenheid had spent some time in Egypt where he had made a study of one of the pyramids and he had designed the family tomb himself.
At that time, however, the family lived over one hundred kilometres from the site and no reason was given in the article for it's being positioned where it is. The journalist also went on to say that it's alignment to the sun is the same as that of the great pyramid of Cheops and that it is positioned on ley lines. The heads of the corpses were said locally to have been kicked around and lost by Russian soldiers who also threw the bodies out of the pyramid but which were rescued by the villagers and returned to their coffins.
I wondered what happened to the von Farenheid family, perhaps they all perished in the war? But it did seem strange to me that being born in England, I'd always looked upon Australia as being short on history. In the middle of Europe however, I was now living in a place where history only began fifty years beforehand.
Chapter 13
Bocwinka lies roughly midway between two lakes connected by a river which runs through our own land. Upstream from Bocwinka is Soltmany lake and downstream, Zywki lake. At Easter time when the snow melts, the Zywki lake fills up, due to a restriction at its outlet, and the water backs up along the river flooding the water meadows.
On Easter Sunday I got out of bed at about 7am and, as usual, the first thing I did was to pull the curtains back to check on the weather. After a week of fairly solid rain I was delighted to note that it was a sunny day. The view down the valley to the river had been a deciding factor in buying the house although, at the time, we didn't know that the view would be covered in snow for five months of the year. Now it was just as we'd seen it on our first visit, the cloudless blue sky above the ridge on the other side of the valley, a ribbon of alder and willow trees recently decked out with fresh new leaves following the line of the river banks, a few cows grazing at the top of the slope and......hey, wait a minute, who's that on our land.
Four men in gum boots, hands in pockets and heads bowed were paddling about in the flooded meadows. They were shuffling their feet as people do at markets when the haggling reaches an impasse, the way people kick the dust around before coming up with the next offer. I switched on the kettle and went to look for the binoculars but, remembering that Vladek hadn't returned them from the last time he borrowed them, I made a cup of tea and returned to the window. The four men were each walking off in different directions. I thought it strange but dismissed it from my mind until I went over to Vladek's that evening for the milk.
-Did you see some men walking around in our water meadows this morning?, I asked.
-Yes, I was one of them.
-What were you doing down there?
-szczupak Peter, it's Easter, this is szczupak time.
Szczupak is Polish for pike and I asked exactly what "pike time" meant knowing full well this would mean that I wouldn't get home for at least an hour, during which I'd be compelled to drink at least two cups of the foulest coffee known unto man.
Although this stuff bears a label designated "coffee" it's made from 10% coffee, 70% chicory, a sprinkling of wheat and barley and something which tastes uncannily like the smell you get when you put a chain saw through a tree with an ants nest in it. Mind you, the taste is the best part of it, the consistency is even worse. We called it True Grit because the particles in it refused to sink for ten minutes by which time it was cold and even more unpalatable. I always drank it hot through clenched teeth but even then I'd find annoying little granules in the remoter regions of my mouth for half an hour afterwards.
Vladek & Eva, of course, were unaware that there was any other sort of coffee to be had and once when they came to our house and we gave them German filter coffee they couldn't get over the taste but preferred to have it unfiltered the next time. So, I settled back in the armchair, True Grit in hand, and prepared myself to be educated on "pike time".
At Easter time, give or take a week, the pike make their way up and down river from the two lakes, to lay their eggs in the warm shallows of the water meadows. The pike prefer to deposit their eggs in the warmest, and therefore the shallowest, parts of the flooded meadows which makes them fairly easy prey to the villagers. However, the problem faced by the villagers is not so much one of catching the pike but of catching them unseen - it's not legal. It's a fairly sophisticated operation that starts with what I'd seen out of our bedroom window - a scouting party to see if the pike have arrived. Satisfied that they have, something like a Territorial Army operation begins.
There are the goodies, in the shape of the village farmers, and the baddies, in the shape of the rangers from the department of inland waterways & fisheries. Both sides have a clear objective; the goodies have to remove as many fish as possible from the river, the baddies have to catch the goodies in the act. It's a game that's been going on for more than twenty years and was started when the department of inland waterways & fisheries first discovered that the river in Bocwinka was a spawning ground and should therefore, come under it's protection.
Both sides play hard to win and the game is taken very seriously. But, like the Oxford & Cambridge boat race, the same side seems to win most years - the Bocwinka team. The department also sends it's scouting party for walks in the water meadows to determine the time when the game will commence. This is signalled by the arrival of an old 4 wheel drive van which parks on the road bridge, giving it's two occupants a clear view of the river both upstream and downstream.
Bocwinka's advance intelligence agent, Agnieszka "The Mole" Ropelska will by that time already have alerted Pani Zosia in the shop, who will have spread the word via the village information superhighway. Agnieszka is Pani Zosia's daughter and she works in town at the department of the baddies and keeps her ears open for information about when the rangers will begin their surveillance. The baddies all know that she's the village informant and the subject is never brought up in the office in front of her but she knows what's going on anyway because of the fact that they stop speaking in front of her just before the event.
Back in Bocwinka, after dark, look-outs are posted in the upstairs windows of two houses overlooking the road and the lads go to work laying their nets down at the river. The early warning system isn't terribly sophisticated; all that happens is that the look-outs switch their upstairs lights on if they see a car coming. And as there is only one road into and out of the village it works perfectly providing that the look-out isn't drunk.
During my first "pike time" there were four nets in the shallows, so well hidden that I only managed to find one of them in daylight. They were simply straight lines of netting strung across different parts of the meadow & tied to submerged stakes. In the same way that pheasants are beaten out of a thicket at a shoot, the fish are directed into the nets by three or four people walking abreast towards it. Two drainage ditches run from the meadows into the river and there they place a different type of net. These are ordinary fisherman's keep nets with a strip of netting sewn onto either side of the mouth so that when spread out, they cover the width of the ditches.
Of course, the men from the department look all over for the nets and sometimes find & confiscate them but it's impossible to point a finger at anybody. The rangers also keep a close eye on the villagers who are sometimes to be seen casually strolling through the meadows in gum boots, but in daylight, that's all they do -stroll. I was invited on one of these strolls and was asked if I'd like to bring Misha along although I couldn't quite make out the purpose, or why the lads made so much fuss of her as we walked down towards the river. The strategy had been well worked out before I was invited to take part. They split into two groups, one each side of the net. Then, in chorus, the lads on the opposing side of the net all started to call Misha who splashed towards them. And, unbeknown to me, drove the pike before her.
To them, I must have seemed remarkably thick - I was the only person during this walk in the water who didn't know what he was there for - I still hadn't seen the net. Suddenly, out of a clump of alder trees emerged a man in an official looking hat and expensive, green gum boots.
-OK, what are you lot up to, said the green booted official.
-We're taking this man's dog for a walk in his own meadow, replied Marian. -He's a foreigner and he lives in that white house up there and this is his land and he wants to know why you're trespassing on it.
There was nothing the man could do except check to see that the dog was registered (which it was) and we kept on strolling for another 10 minutes before returning to our homes. Although the fish are driven into the nets during daylight hours they can only be taken under the cover of darkness so, in daylight, poaching by another method takes place. The modus operandi is to hide in the trees with a home made harpoon cut from the forest and simply spear the fish as they spawn in a foot of water where their mobility is impaired by the meadow grass. This though, is a one man operation simply because there is only one pair of wading boots in the village and they all take it in turns to wear them. I once saw the village wading boots being repaired, they were of the poorest quality Russian manufacture and had 13 pieces of bicycle inner tube vulcanised over the rips and tears.
But to get back to Vladek, Eva and the second cup of True Grit - there in their lounge room I was regaled with tales of pike times past and what struck me as funny was that the goodies and baddies all knew each other, in some cases went to school with each other. The stories were mostly of midnight chases somewhat reminiscent of the partisans fighting the Nazis. The men from the department have the advantage in that they have strong torches and once the beam picks out one of the farmers, the chase is on to head him off before he gets home because he'll already be in bed when the torch light shines through the window.
If any of his mates can get to his house first they'll let his dogs off the chain and delay the baddies by accusing them of wandering around the village at night with intent to steal. Another ruse used is for someone other than the fugitive to switch on his kitchen light for a couple of minutes. This sometimes causes the pursuers to think that their man has just reached home (the wrong home) and upon arrival at the door they're greeted by a perfectly dry farmer rather than the soggy, out of breath peasant they've been looking for.
It all sounded like tremendous fun to me and I asked Vladek if I could accompany the party on the next night time campaign and he agreed. However, after he'd consulted with the lads he reported back to me that they'd talked about it and, although I must understand there was nothing personal about their decision, they didn't want me along because they didn't think I could run fast enough in gum boots and I didn't know any hiding places. I was though, honoured with the position of look-out from our upstairs windows. A decision arrived at because the previous year, one of the look-outs fell asleep after consuming a half bottle of vodka and, as a result, caused a few men to have to run faster than they would have liked.
I was also mentioned in dispatches in the smokehouse and a toast was drunk to "The Anglik". Every household, including ours, has a smoker which consists of an earth tunnel at the end of which is an oil drum with a lid on it. The fish, eels or meat are hung from fencing wire in the oil drum and wood shavings lit at the tunnel entrance. These are for the use of individual families but two farms have underground root cellars with large smokers. It was in one of these that all the men involved in the pike catching gathered together, smoked their fish and drunk copious quantities of vodka.
-To the best fucking milk tanker driver in Bocwinka, shouted Zenek and they all downed another glass - and so it went on. I went home and left them to it.
That Easter, the joint village effort brought in 37 pike and an assortment of smaller fish over four nights. The heaviest weighed in at a little over 24 lb although the majority were around the 4 lb mark and I was shown the preserved head of one pike from twelve years ago which, I was assured, had weighed over 35 lb. Two things impressed me about the whole episode: one being that they were sensible enough not to have taken all the available pike because they recognised that they would have to leave some to breed in the coming years. And the second being that after the pike were cured, they sent fish around to a couple of widows and families whose men were too old to have taken part in the event but were of the generation who had taught these guys to catch the pike years ago.
April saw the first wedding of the year in our little community, in fact the first wedding either of us had seen in Poland. The bridegroom's name was Piotr and he was a well dressed, clean cut city boy from Warsaw - when he arrived - that is. By the time he left however, his parents would have had difficulty in recognising him. He came to Bocwinka to marry Alexandra, a girl who was born just across the valley from us. We'd never seen either of them before, as Alexandra lives in Warsaw where she studies biology at the Polytechnic and it was there that she met Piotr.
They are both of Ukrainian descent and came to be married in the local Ukrainian church and spend their honeymoon in the village where Alexandra was born. The party went on for 6 days and hardly a stroke of work was done in the whole of Bocwinka during that time. The couple arrived two days before the event in a shiny, new red Mazda and came around to see us about accommodating some of the wedding party who would be coming the next day and had nowhere to sleep. We agreed, although not relishing the thought of a crowd of drunken party goers staying in the house & sleeping 6 to a room.
The first thing we did was to move most of the breakable objects up to the attic and change the layout of the furniture so that there would be fewer objects for them to bump into when they returned drunk in the early hours. We searched the linen cupboard for old towels and tablecloths to put over the mattresses, just in case, and hid all the booze in the shed. Our guests arrived on the Friday evening and we were more than a little surprised at the standard of both the people and the cars they arrived in. They were immaculately turned out in the very latest gear and with four cars so exclusive that when the owners were out of the way I took a photograph of the house with the fleet in the foreground and used it as our publicity shot.
We showed them around the house and they all liked it and complimented us on the colour of the kitchen tiles, the choice of wood we'd used for the floors and so forth and one of the men produced a video camera and filmed the whole place. At 4pm on Saturday the wedding party left the village and at 6pm they returned from the church and drove up the lane as far as our house where they were stopped, in what we were told was the traditional Ukrainian fashion, by the rest of the village.
The children, dressed in their best clothes, were all lined up at the sides of the road as far as a table which blocked the way and had upon it a loaf of bread and a saucer of salt. The bride & groom were in the first car and were expected to partake of the bread and salt and, in gratitude, hand over a bottle of vodka. A problem arose - they didn't have a bottle of vodka and the self appointed reception committee weren't going to let them past until they'd paid up.
An argument developed during which it was revealed that the groom didn't drink and didn't know or care a hoot about Ukrainian traditions and his new in laws were derided by the Ukrainian & Polish factions alike for letting their daughter marry a city slicker. The argument raged for some 20 minutes and ended up in a total boycott of the reception by the village population - although the lure of free vodka brought everyone back together again on the Sunday.
Meanwhile, in the lane outside our house, the argument was still blazing and ended with the wedding party all backing their cars down the lane and going home (the reception was held in the barn) by another route. Insults were hurled after them all and remarks were made concerning the bridegrooms gender and legitimacy- even the Polish faction were up in arms about his ignorance of Ukrainian tradition. Around noon on Sunday, the groom's brother who was staying at our place, turned up with a couple of broken toes which he got from kicking a table leg during a football match involving a balloon at the reception the night before.
We ran him into the hospital in Gizycko where we had to wait three hours for him to be attended to and then had to chase around Bocwinka to see who had the village crutches. In payment for services rendered Alexandra's mother came to the house and presented us with a live chicken. The bride's father had gone to much expense for his daughter's wedding, buying in and slaughtering a cow and 2 pigs and he had also purchased a quantity of live chickens to be on hand should they run out of meat.
We didn't quite know what to do with the chicken and we didn't want to appear ungrateful so we accepted it and I held it upside down by the legs until Alexandra's mum had gone. I put it in a sack to keep it quiet and after dark we sneaked out with it in the car and drove around several villages looking for a suitable home and new family for it. The trouble was that we'd forgotten that chickens don't roam around the streets at night and there wasn't another chicken in sight.
I wanted to release it in the first field we came to but Alicja was scared that a fox would get it and so we drove around for ages before we saw a brand new chicken coop next to the road in the village of Soltmany and I threw the chicken over the fence. On Monday we were woken by Misha's bark and, opening the door, we were greeted by the new groom and his new mother in law who explained that Piotr had been bitten by their dog on the day of his arrival and the wound had now turned septic. As all the car owners present in the village were either drunk, partly drunk or suffering, she asked if I would be kind enough to take another trip to the hospital, adding that I could use Piotr's car.
We had to go to Gizycko anyway to do some shopping and we dropped him off at the hospital arranging to pick him up a couple of hours later. But when we turned up to collect him we were told that he'd already left. We searched the whole town for him and ended up at the pizza bar opposite the railway station where we sat drinking tea and wondering where to look next.
Alicja saw him first. -There he is, that's him over there on the platform.
I looked across the road and sure enough there he stood as if waiting for a train and I left my cup of tea and went over to him. He was distraught and I couldn't understand him and so beckoned Alicja to join us. He told Alicja he was going home and never coming back. He didn't like his new in laws, Bocwinka, or the drunken load of bums who lived there and we found ourselves acting as marriage guidance counselors to one half of a marriage which was only 3 days old. With much coaxing Alicja eventually managed to get him to come home with us, although against his better judgement, and for the day's effort we received another live chicken which we disposed of that night by the method previously employed.
We didn't know it but while we were at the railway station the ambulance had been in Bocwinka and had taken Alexandra, Piotr's bride, and two other wedding guests to the same hospital with stomach cramps. Piotr came around to the house in the evening to once more cry on Alicja's shoulder. He carried on at length about his guilt feelings, for being so insensitive, thinking only of himself while his dear Alexandra was suffering and he ended up sleeping at our place. The next afternoon, Tuesday, I drove Piotr into town in his car to pick up Alexandra and received from her mother - another sodding chicken! I took another short drive to Soltmany that night and threw it over the fence to join its friends.
It wasn't long after this that a fire broke out in one of the barns in the village and everyone, including Piotr, turned out to lend a hand with the fire fighting. Poor Piotr was standing just outside the barn door with a full bucket of water waiting to hand it up the ladder to Bogdan, when he was struck on the head with an empty bucket thrown down from upstairs. The blow, which I suspect was deliberate, rendered him unconscious, and when he came round a few minutes later he found himself laying in the manure heap where he'd been placed as a joke by those who he'd been silly enough to argue with on his wedding night.
His back was covered in the stuff and I took him home in the car wearing only his underpants - the rest of his clothes, I insisted, went into the boot. Alicja stuck a plaster over the cut in his forehead, put his clothes in soak and I leant him a pair of my overalls. We then sent him back to his in-law's house with strict instructions not to return with a chicken. In due course we received a parcel from Warsaw containing my laundered overalls and a small present for the house together with a letter thanking us for all our help and inviting us to stay with Piotr & Alexandra next time we visited the capital.
A fortnight or so after the wedding a man from Soltmany came to the gate and told us that he wanted to sell his house. He'd heard that we were wealthy and thought we might be interested in buying it. I told him that we weren't in the market for another house and he left. When he'd gone I heard Eva calling me and went over to the fence to see what she wanted.
-What did he want? she said.
-He's trying to sell me his house.
-Did he tell you about his chickens?
-No, what chickens?
-He's got these chickens over in Soltmany and he reckons that every week God sends him another one. He tells everybody about it.
-What? God sends him another chicken? A big one or a small one?
-We don't think it's true Peter. It's true that he's got more chickens than he started off with but everybody's saying that he goes out at night and steals them and then tells everyone he gets them from God.
-Is he very religious then Eva?
-He didn't used to be but he is now.
We'd been out with the dog one evening and when we got to the other side of the valley we could see that a car had pulled into our drive. I looked at it through the binoculars and saw that the registration wasn't Polish so, thinking that we might get a booking for the house, we hurried back home arriving breathless. A German couple in their mid thirties were standing at the gate and the wife, who spoke English, said that they'd come to ask us a few questions about the area. We asked them in for a drink and asked how we could help them. Her mother had been born over sixty years ago in Jeziorowskie, a village close by, and they had visited the house two years ago and met the Polish family who now lived in it.
They had recently visited the family again and found that the house was for sale and they wanted to buy it for use as a holiday home but they knew that, not being Polish, they couldn't legally own it. They had heard that we were foreigners and so came to see us hoping that we could advise them on the legal aspects of leasing the place. We couldn't help them with their problems but during our conversation she told us that her late father was born somewhere not far away, also in village. She couldn't remember the name of the place (and it would have been changed to a Polish name anyway) but she remembered that he had said there was a pyramid there. I quizzed her about this pyramid but she couldn't remember anything other than that her father had mentioned that it was a spooky place and that, as a child, he had been scared to go close to it.
The subject had me intrigued and I determined to find out as much as I could about it and let her know if I came up with anything. Over the coming weeks Alicja wrote letters to historical societies asking about it but to no avail. I asked everyone we knew if they'd heard of a village with a pyramid but all it got me was strange looks and I gave up. History in our area, as far as Poland is concerned, started after World War Two and anything prior to this was known only to the Germans. I was surprised when, a few weeks after speaking to the German couple in our house, I received a letter from them telling me the name old German name of the village. With this information I was able to quite easily find the Polish name and, with the help of a detailed military map, find its location. It was only twenty minutes drive from Bocwinka and was called Zabin.
I found Zabin without a problem but I drove through it three times without finding any sign of a pyramid so I stopped at the village bus stop where three teenage boys were sitting. I asked them if they knew if there was a pyramid in the village but they just looked at me with blank expressions. Alicja had already told me how to pronounce pyramid in Polish before I left the house so I knew I was asking for the right thing - just not getting through. I asked the kids again saying that it might not be in the village but near the village, but again I was met with blank stares so I got out of the car and drew a picture of a pyramid. This time there was a reaction but I couldn't tell exactly of what kind. So far they hadn't said a word to me but now, they seemed to go even quieter as though I'd asked for something they weren't allowed to discuss.
I pointed to my drawing and said -where this? where this?, at which point one of them opened his mouth and said to the other two,-vamper. It was a word I wasn't familiar with but I picked up on it and pointing to the drawing again said -this is vamper? One of them seemed to nod and so, not being able to get any further with them, I got back in the car and went looking for someone else to ask. Two old women walking along the pavement didn't know what I was on about but I saw a man outside the shop and showed him my drawing and he, at least smiled. I asked him if he knew where there was a pyramid and added, for good measure the word vamper which the kids had used. He looked up at me with eyebrows raised thoughtfully, rummaged around in his pocket and produced a pencil with which he drew me a map with a triangle to illustrate the pyramid. I thanked him and started the car but he put his hand on the door and came closer.
-Why do you want to go there?
-Just interested.
-Be careful, he said.
I thanked him and drove off following the map he'd drawn. Just outside the village the road went through forest and quite suddenly I came across a gap in the trees, a straight line cut long ago and now overgrown. At the end of the gap, some three hundred metres from the road, was my pyramid. I could see that it wasn't a classical pyramid shape but more slender, almost like a squat church spire and it was set on top of a big square box of a building about four metres high. I stepped off the road and went straight away up to my knees in mud. The whole of the immediate area surrounding the pyramid was swampy and I thought that vamper probably meant swamp or bog in Polish.
I tried to get to it through the forest from all directions, eventually finding a way that was reasonably solid underfoot, and I stood under it looking up at the "spire". From a patch where the outer plaster covering had come away I could see that it was built of bricks and that there had once been windows and a big double door in the box like part at the bottom, but they had been bricked up. I walked around it and on one side somebody had knocked a few bricks out of one of the bricked up windows and I climbed up to it and looked in. It was dark but I could see the floor directly under the window and so I climbed through it. I moved a couple of paces forward and took my cigarette lighter out of my pocket and lit it.
On my right was an open coffin with a headless body in it, not a skeleton but a dead body. I moved to the left and there was another one. It suddenly came to my mind that the word the kids and the old man had said to me wasn't vamper but vampir - Polish for vampire. Now, I don't believe in vampires, never have. But I do believe in fear and the next thing I remember is being outside again leaning against a tree with the noise of my heart banging in my head and throat. I took a couple of photographs from the outside of the building and hurried home.
That night I went to see Ryszard and Halina and told them what I'd seen and Ryszard agreed to accompany me back to the pyramid the next afternoon. We took a torch and gum boots and Alicja's instant camera, as it had an inbuilt flash, and set out. We re-traced my steps of the previous day until we arrived at the hole in the side of the pyramid where I handed Ryszard a torch and told him to look inside. He took one look, stepped back and leaned against the wall shaking. I took back the torch and looked in. There were three coffins visible each with the lid off and each contained a headless body, but on closer inspection they seemed to be dried out. When we eventually plucked up enough courage to go inside we saw that there were four closed coffins and four minus the lids. Three adults lay in the open topped coffins and the fourth contained the body of a small child.
They were all obviously very old, perhaps hundreds of years, but their skin hadn't decomposed, instead, it had turned to hard leather and where it had drawn back from the finger nails it did indeed give the hands a vampire like appearance. Once outside again Ryszard and I took stock of the situation. The pyramid was located in swampy ground and the trees around it were alder trees which thrive in wet conditions and the pyramid had moss growing on the outside of it. Everything seemed to say that the bodies in the coffins should have decomposed very quickly but even the coffins were so dry that they were turning to powder.
I thought we'd found something unique that the Polish equivalent of the National Trust would have been vitally interested in but when we returned home, nobody, including the local newspaper, displayed the slightest interest in it. We were not the first people to have come across it in recent years, as evidenced by the hole in the wall, but nobody we contacted had ever heard of it or wanted to know about it. Months later Ryszard managed to locate a newspaper article on the subject written years beforehand. It said that it had been built by a Fritz von Farenheid in 1811 as a family tomb when his 11 year old daughter died. Fritz von Farenheid had spent some time in Egypt where he had made a study of one of the pyramids and he had designed the family tomb himself.
At that time, however, the family lived over one hundred kilometres from the site and no reason was given in the article for it's being positioned where it is. The journalist also went on to say that it's alignment to the sun is the same as that of the great pyramid of Cheops and that it is positioned on ley lines. The heads of the corpses were said locally to have been kicked around and lost by Russian soldiers who also threw the bodies out of the pyramid but which were rescued by the villagers and returned to their coffins.
I wondered what happened to the von Farenheid family, perhaps they all perished in the war? But it did seem strange to me that being born in England, I'd always looked upon Australia as being short on history. In the middle of Europe however, I was now living in a place where history only began fifty years beforehand.
Chapter 14
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 14
After sending dozens of promotional letters to English bird and wildlife clubs, our first paying guests started to turn up at the beginning of May, and we considered ourselves well prepared except for the garden which still needed a lot of work. We'd thought of everything and even had Alicja's brother and his family visit us from Warsaw as pretend guests so we could have a dry run before the real guests arrived. The month was pretty well booked out and being the month of May, they were all bird watchers.
The only thing we weren't entirely prepared for was the species of guest - "Anglicus binocularis". These people are a rare breed in themselves. They came by car or by train after getting off the plane in Warsaw and the first thing which distinguished them from normal people was the manner of dress. The majority of them being clad in a series of pockets held together by a few small pieces of jacket or waistcoat. The second distinguishing feature was the sheer amount of equipment they carried. The sound recording equipment, two or three cameras, binoculars, books etc and one young man arrived with a lap top computer with a bird database program.
They were a messy and absent minded breed too. They would spend all day wandering around in the forests or tramping the reed beds of the lakes and then return to the house deep in conversation about icterine warblers and walk straight into their rooms, mud all over their boots and wet weather gear dripping. The reaction of the locals to our guests was fascinating and the best "watching" of any kind, as far as we were concerned, was to watch the villagers watching the bird watchers. It was completely beyond their comprehension why any one should want to photograph birds.
Aside from ourselves nobody in the village owned a camera and most folks hadn't had a photograph of themselves taken since their first communion when they were kids. To see these pocket covered foreigners with cameras, binoculars & bird books tramping about down on the river banks was the best entertainment ever to have hit Bocwinka. The whole village, without exception, was extremely friendly and most tolerant when it came to bird watchers tramping across their fields and invading their farmyards for photographs of outside toilets but this friendliness was sometimes misconstrued by the bird-watchers.
One single bird-watcher, a man in his early thirties, came on the train and had no transport. We fixed him up with a bicycle and a packed lunch the first day and gave him a map showing the most likely spots to search for black storks and off he went. Shortly after leaving the house the gear changing cable snapped and the bike was stuck in the highest gear which was obviously hard work for him on what was an unusually hot day for May. He returned home at seven in the evening absolutely worn out and I sat him down outside and gave him a cold beer. "You know," he said "you're lucky to still have your push-bike. Twice it was nearly stolen."
He told me that a man with a horse and cart stopped and tried to take the bicycle from him and another man was about to make off with it right outside the post office while he was inside buying envelopes. Before he'd finished his beer Vladek and Jurek turned up and our bird-watcher told me out of the corner of his mouth that these were the two men who'd tried to steal the bike. It turned out that both of them had seen him struggling away in high gear and had only wanted to see if they could fix the bike for him but he'd run away on both occasions.
After the explanations they took both him and the bike over to Vladek's barn, fixed the gears, oiled the chain and adjusted the saddle & handlebars. That was at eight o'clock and at about eleven he hadn't returned so Alicja suggested that I go look for him. I found him, Vladek and Jurek still in the barn deep in conversation about farming techniques. They'd managed a three hour conversation on the subject. Our guest didn't speak a word of Polish and the English of the other two, I knew, was limited to commands we gave to our dog Misha - come, sit and shake hands.
How they managed I've no idea but Vladek told me the next day -that English bloke really knows his stuff when it comes to farming. He didn't however, know his stuff when it came to drinking, and he was carried home by Jurek two nights later after foolishly accepting an invitation to visit his house. The evenings were fun that May - we had binocular competitions in which the guests compared their equipment and told each other they'd made the wrong choice. These events would go on for anything up to a couple of hours as the conversation lead on to comparisons between Nikon & Minolta auto focus camera systems. I confess that I didn't understand half of what they were talking about but just to hear all that English being spoken was a rare treat for us both.
During these sessions I took to wandering around the village looking for storks on roof tops. Three or four times a week a stork would spend the night on the roof of our barn but if not, there were always a few somewhere in the village. As soon as I found one I'd return to the house and shout "STORK". The word stork to a bird watcher is what the word scramble is to a fighter pilot - they grab their gear and run. It never failed to clear the house and gave us half an hour to straighten the carpets and clean the table off.
On one occasion we looked out of the kitchen window after dinner to be entertained by a crude attempt at a human pyramid as 3 men attempted to hoist a fourth into a position from which to get a better camera angle. The next evening however, was even better. Three of them held a 15 foot high ladder in the middle of the vegetable garden as they took it in turns to climb to the top and shoot off a few frames, during which I was desperately looking around in our bedroom for a film to get what I thought would be the definitive bird watcher shot.
As this was going on Stan the poacher and his eldest son were ploughing one of their fields opposite our house and I saw Stan leave his son holding the horse and run indoors bringing the rest of the family out to watch the spectacle. The evenings were the time for identification disputes concerning various birds and I learned to keep my mouth shut as I listened to the same birds being given different labels from week to week. One thing I found is that bird-watching is an inexact science when it comes to the identification of birds of prey in flight - the average British bird-watcher hasn't got a clue compared to any man living in Bocwinka and none could hold a candle to Stan the poacher.
The identification arguments weren't only confined to such lofty birds either. One of our nesting boxes in the garden was taken over by a pair of common tree sparrows. I didn't know they were common tree sparrows until I'd heard several bird-watchers identify them differently and sat down with a pair of binoculars and studied them with a bird book. Just to make sure I asked Stan the poacher who didn't even take a millisecond to confirm their identity and after this I told bird-watchers that they were a mainland European sub species which had been identified by a Polish ornithologist. They loved it, took dozens of photographs and could rattle off the differences between the birds in our nesting box and the common tree sparrow with the confidence of David Attenborough.
Nightjars were good value too - we didn't have any in our fields but I didn't know. One of our early bird-watchers dragged me outside one night to listen to them and spent a considerable amount of time recording their cries - or whatever it is that nightjars do and for a few weeks I used to say to people "come outside and listen to the nightjars." They were all very impressed and I was quite pleased about it too until one man turned up with a cassette tape of bird noises and they proved to be nightingales. No tribe of human beings were ever as dedicated to a subject as "Anglicus binocularis" is to his and I can only admire a person who'll sit for 3 hours next to a lake in the evening waiting for the cranes to appear after having left his insect repellent behind.
We've seen bird-watchers leave the house looking reasonably normal only to return after dusk looking like the Elephant Man. And whereas most people would spend the rest of the night complaining about mosquitoes, all they talked about was a crane taken at F8 with a shutter speed of 1/15 in silhouette with the dying sun behind it - remarkable. Bird watchers wives, it's interesting to note, are perfectly normal people. Some of them too were keen bird watchers but, from our observations, were able to hold conversations on subjects other than avifauna.
They would usually take themselves off into town, go shopping with Alicja or do something normal like spending the day on a ferry boat on the lakes or reading books in the garden and generally have a good time. By the time they left us the wives were usually completely relaxed and re-charged while their spouses were worn out. Mind you, bird-watchers were nowhere near as weird as hunters. We had an enquiry from a German hunting firm written in perfect English. They informed us that they'd be bringing their own taxidermist and asked if we had a spare room for his "stuffing activities!
While some of the "Anglicus binoculari" were staying with us, we had another wedding in the village. This time between the couple who Sarah had seen copulating in our wood shed back in October. This was a much more "down home" sort of event than the wedding of the previous month. Gienek and his wife Helka had planned and executed all the arrangements themselves and apart from half a dozen folks from out of town, only villagers attended. The previous year had been one of drought and the potatoes and sugar beet had only grown to half their usual size making much of the harvest unsaleable. Gienek and Helka had saved some of it over winter in their root cellar from which they now intended to make their daughter's wedding vodka in a home made still.
Helka came around the house a few days prior to the wedding with an invitation for us to attend and at the same time collected all the spare bottles we had which she placed carefully on the straw in the back of the cart. I asked how many bottles they were going to make and she said she wasn't sure but something like a hundred. A quick mental reckoning showed that this would probably work out to about one and a half bottles per guest - it was going to be some party. I followed Helka home to see if I could be of any help with the preparations but Gienek had things well in hand and had done a good job of it all. He'd cleaned out the barn and splattered a mixture of lime and water over the walls and ceiling with a birch broom and then hung army camouflage netting over it all. The result was quite effective and I asked what he was going to use the netting for after the wedding.
-Oh Christ, it's not mine. I couldn't afford that.
-Whose is it then?
- It belongs to the army. I went up to the radar station and saw some of the soldiers. Asked them if they'd like to come to a wedding and told them that they'd have to loan me a few things from their stores for a week.-
They'd done him proud too. At the two entrances to the barn were army tunnel tents and inside was an army field kitchen with a flue going out through the window - an enormous thing on wheels with four big cooking pots sunk into it under which a fire would be lit on the day. There were army issue enamel mugs and plates, army trestle tables and army perforated steel plating covering a large part of the courtyard. All it needed was a couple of missile launchers and the guests would have felt that they'd been conscripted rather than invited.
Come the big day there were five tables set up along the route from the church to the reception, all with bread and salt, and at each point there was a line of home made rag flags strung across the road. Gienek wasn't taking any chances with arguments over vodka (as there had been at the wedding of Piotr and Alexandra) and the back seat of the first car was well stocked. At each table a bottle was handed over and all went smoothly - even Little Yusef had been enterprising enough to make himself a table and had sat at it for hours in advance so as not to miss his bottle. We didn't attend the church service but, instead, joined in at the tail end of the procession after it passed the house.
Our three English bird-watching guests were invited along with us and they were enthralled by the procession alone which amongst the cars included six tractors, two horses and carts, a combine harvester carrying a family of four and an invalid carriage. The bird-watchers must have taken twenty or thirty photographs between them before we even got into the car. At the reception they asked me if I thought it would be alright to take photographs. I thought I'd do the right thing and ask, but I already knew the answer - everyone wanted their photographs taken - some people hadn't had a photograph of themselves taken in twenty years and never in colour.
This was the first time we'd seen the whole village turned out in their Sunday best and it was a real treat for the photographers. Half the men and a few of the women had front teeth missing and the general mode of dress didn't fit into any specific period in history. Marek was, well, creased and clad in a lumberjack shirt with the collar worn away and a 1950's, wide American tie with what had once probably been a luminous picture of Betty Grable on it. The shirt was too small around the neck causing the collar to lift up like a butterfly. The remainder of the ensemble consisted of a tweedish sports jacket with soup stains down the front and a pair of grey trousers with the burned imprint of an iron just above the right knee.
Big Jan didn't look too bad at all in a blue serge suit with a handkerchief protruding from the top pocket. But as the evening wore on, and the jacket became undone, it could be seen that the handkerchief was, in fact, the tip of his shirt front which had been pulled up and tucked through a slot in the inside of the jacket. It was the first time I'd seen Zenek clean shaven. He used to remind me of Yasser Arafat in that whenever I saw him he was sporting two days growth. I don't know how some people always seem able to achieve this permanent, two days growth look - perhaps they buy special long razor blades or something. Designer stubble - that's the phrase.
Old Man Miankowski had a pair of the most striking braces available anywhere. They were made from plaited baler twine skillfully woven and they wouldn't have looked out of place in a trendy London boutique - an idea for those readers in the fashion business. Jurek, who is normally the best dressed peasant in the village, should have come in his working clothes. He had on one of the Russian shirts which were popular at the market in town a few months previously. It was white with red polka dots but polka dots which looked as though they'd been done with a felt tipped pen. It looked for all the world as though he'd been eating tomato soup and sneezed. He was, however, colour co-ordinated with a blood red tie which gave the appearance of his throat having been cut. His bell bottomed black trousers covered highly polished cut down gum boots with black felt edging around the tops.
Vladek and Eva were resplendent in clothes borrowed from us. Three men wore identical light blue safari suits which, Eva whispered to Alicja, were brought from the Gypsies who came around Bocwinka from time to time.
Generally, the women were surprisingly fashionable - not much different from fashions to be found in small English villages - the sort of stuff available by mail order pattern from English newspapers. The handbags were the let down - not much being available in the local shops except for the sort of handbags the Queen uses. Come to think of it the fashion sense of the women in Bocwinka would have put the Queen to shame but that's not terribly difficult to do. Suffice to say, this is probably one of the few places in the world where Norman Hartnel could find a niche in the export market.
Anything with English wording printed on it is automatically presumed to be a quality product but if the owners of two shopping bags which appeared at the reception had been able to read what they held in their hands they would have, more than likely, thought otherwise. The bags were made of a woven plastic, raffia kind of fabric and emblazoned with large round yellow ICI logos and wording about the percentage content of nitrogen, potassium and phosphate. Who had the idea of producing shopping bags from disused English or American fertilizer sacks I have no idea but they were sold in the market in Gizycko and considered to be something of a designer item in Bocwinka.
We left the reception in the early hours but our three guests stayed and had breakfast returning late in the morning saying that we ought to advertise weddings in Bocwinka and charge double for the experience. When they left the next week they were loaded down with home made jams and pickles which their new found friends had given them to take home to their wives. During the time that we had been living in the village two barns had burned down in neighbouring villages and one in Bocwinka. There had too, been one near miss in Borki and three out of the four occasions were associated with an overdose of vodka. I had the pleasure of being present at the closing stages of number five.
I was shopping in Kruklanki with Eva when we heard the fire siren go.
-Hope it's not in Bocwinka again, I said.
-Me too - there's not much water in any of the wells. Haven't had enough rain, said Eva.
We drove back towards Bocwinka at a leisurely rate until we saw smoke rising from what we thought could have been our house. I quickened the pace. As we rounded the bend leading into the village we could see that it wasn't our house but Domagalski's barn which was covered in smoke. The sides of the road were littered with the entire Bocwinka transport fleet - both cars, 2 post office motorcycles, numerous tractors, push-bikes and an invalid carriage which, we were later informed, had transported 2 people plus the invalid to the scene of the fire. I parked our car out of the way and ran towards the smoking barn to offer assistance.
The hay loft had been smoldering for quite some time before bursting into flames and the fire had been caused by the making of moonshine vodka. Domagalski and his two brothers had been involved in the distillation process and although the recommended modus operandi on such occasions is to bottle the produce first and then get smashed, they'd found the clear liquid irresistible and got stuck into it as it came trickling from the still. In mid stupor one of them had knocked the still over and hey presto, instant barn fire.
By the time we arrived the whole village had turned out and two men were drawing buckets from the next door neighbour's well (Domagalski's well having already been bucketed dry) and pouring the contents into an assortment of leaking pots & pans which were being ferried to the barn by a chain of awfully serious looking men, women & children. I'd never seen the village in crisis before, everybody looking red faced and exhausted and nobody saying a word as they ran back & forth. This was serious stuff and I grabbed a milk churn and queued up at the well to be joined shortly by Alicja who'd already been carrying buckets for half an hour & looked all in.
The milk churn I found myself in possession of, had seen better days and three short pieces of wood, which served to block up holes, protruded from its sides. It was soon filled and I took off, following the line out of sight around the back of the house, ending at the smoking barn. A ladder was propped up against the upstairs door and the water containers were being emptied into a tin bath from which buckets were being drawn and handed up the ladder to Big Jan who was throwing the water at the fire. I ran to and from the well a few times until more people turned up from Zywki and relieved a few of us for a much needed break. It was only then that I had a chance to stand back and look at what was going on.
It was chaos, pure and simple, and frightening to look upon. Everyone knew what was at stake - a family's livelihood. There were two families who I knew had been feuding with each other for over two years but now they were working alongside each other to help save the property of another villager. Everyone knew too that the property wouldn't have been insured - if the fire spread to the house as well that would be the end of the Domagalski family's farm and the meager income which went with it. I feel guilty for letting it be known that when I stood back as a spectator I began to see a funny side to it. Dozens of soggy villagers running around like chickens with their heads cut off, a sort of Keystone Kopski scene from an old movie. Like Pieter Bruegel would have painted Dantes Inferno in that sort of peasanty cartoon style - Domagalski's Inferno.
The area around the tin bath had turned into a swamp with people slipping over & spilling the contents of their buckets. As they ran back to the well they bumped into others coming the other way who also spilled a good deal of the water they were carrying until the whole track through the courtyard was a mud slide of dissolved pig, cow and geese droppings. As I watched, one of the postmen carrying a bucket swerved sideways to avoid another bucket carrier, banged the ladder under the hay loft with his head and went down and out. A young girl came around the corner of the barn swinging a saucepan full of water and promptly tripped over him. Big Jan jumped down from the hay loft and dragged the postman out of the way.
Grabbing the girls empty saucepan he dipped it into the tin bath and threw the contents over the face of postman who soon raised himself on one elbow & looked up at big Jan as if for advice - and he got it. -Get up you fucking cretin, there's work to be done - Jan turned on his heels and ran back up the ladder.
Amid all this panic we heard the siren of the fire truck which had come from Soltmany 5 kilometres away. It was a small, peculiar looking truck which I suspect had seen previous duty as a riot control vehicle because it had water cannon, somewhat akin to a large hypodermic needle, on top of the cab. As it rounded the bend in the road & slid sideways into the open farm gate it flattened two bicycles and did considerable damage to one of the post office motorbikes. A cheer went up and a way was cleared for it to reach the fire. Domagalski, ran up and opened the passenger door and two men fell out into the quagmire. They were both blind drunk but the driver insisted that it wasn't a problem as he'd only had a couple of swigs at the bottle and knew how to work the pump.
He looked efficient as he leaped from the cab and gave instructions on how to roll out the hoses. The hypodermic needle, apparently being out of action. This done, he turned the pump on and found that they'd forgotten to bring water with them. The hoses were disconnected amongst much swearing and led out to the well, the pump thrown into reverse and preparations made to fill the fire engine from the one and only well which still contained water. The well was pumped dry before the fire engine's tank was full to capacity and then the process had to be reversed again, this time to pump water, all being well, at the fire.
The hoses were re-coupled and the pump screamed into action. One man stood at the top of the ladder and signaled for the valve to be opened. The only hitch was that he didn't receive the water he was expecting. The hose hadn't been properly re-connected and it reared up and sprayed the precious water all over the courtyard and everyone standing around it. It finally lodged itself in the dung heap and squirted liquefied cow manure all over the truck which within a short space of time began to look like the original "Slurry with the Syringe on top" and nobody could get near enough to turn the valve off.
The precious water was being lost while the barn roof still burned. The men all turned on the fire engine driver shouting insults and Domagalski, crying, punched him in the face. The scene was turning decidedly nasty, Gienek was waving a pitch fork in front of the man's face and I didn't want to be a part of it. I scanned the crowd looking for Alicja, thinking to grab her and get out of it. I didn't want to end up in court as a witness and there was nothing I could have done to calm the situation.
Thankfully, at that minute, another fire engine, this time from Kruklanki, screeched to a halt outside the gate, backed up and drove into the courtyard. The crew jumped from the cab, pushed the Soltmany fire engine out of the way and began their work. These guys were good, not only good but sober and obviously used to dealing with farm fires. The fire chief stood on top of the cab and asked for the owner to come forward.
-I'm the owner, said Domagalski
-Right, go inside the house & pull the fuses
-The fire's in the barn, not the house, replied Domagalski.
The fire chief raised his voice threateningly
-Do as I fucking well tell you, you idiot. We're going to spray your house first, your barn may go up and set light to the house.
He then told everyone to stand back and the five man brigade laid their hoses in a very polished manner, perfect team-work which couldn't be faulted. With the house roof thoroughly doused, they turned their attention to the barn which by that time was beginning to show long, licking flames through the roof tiles. They poured an enormous amount of water through the hay loft door before exhausting their supply and just as they did so a fire tender turned up with more. It had been an example of complete professionalism and I felt proud to be almost Polish.
The whole thing was over inside ten minutes and the population of Bocwinka, stunned by the display of efficiency, stood quietly staring open mouthed at these supermen from Kruklanki. The silence was however, soon broken by a guttural, gargling Jurrasic Park like scream of rage followed by a dull thud. All eyes turned towards the barn from which it came and presently a monster dragged itself out of the odoriferous slurry which now filled the ground floor. Half Bigfoot, two parts Incredible Hulk and 25% Mikheal Gorbachov (the discoloured patch on the bald head) it was a terrifying sight to behold covered, as it was, in straw, feathers and liquefied animal manure. Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon it slowly staggered to the door and leaned against the wall gasping for breath.
It seemed vaguely familiar - it was Big Jan who'd just fallen through the barn ceiling. We'd all forgotten about Big Jan. He'd been upstairs throwing buckets of water on the fire and he'd just been crawling out of the hay loft door when a wall of water had hit him full in the chest and thrown him back inside. He was greeted as a hero, scraped reasonably clean and escorted outside to dry off. Domagalski began to thank everybody present and offered the fire chief a bottle of vodka. He received in return, a refusal and a lecture.
Climbing atop his fire engine, the fire chief surveyed the crowd. He was an imposing sight, the fire chief, as he removed his helmet and ran his hand through his silvery hair. A tall, dignified looking man well into his 60s with a back as straight as a ramrod, he reminded me of Carl Lagerfeld having that same, slab sided, kind of face that puts one in mind of two cans of corned beef. And like all great orators he drew in his breath and paused the orator’s pregnant pause.
-You idiots, you cretins. I know how this fire was caused, I've seen the still, the heap of potatoes, the bottling equipment. It was the drink that caused it and now you're all going to get drunk to celebrate the fact that it's safely extinguished.
You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Ladies, take your men home and put them to work.
He then led Pan Domagalski over to the wall of the house.
-See that?
-See what? asked Domagalski.
-That - are you blind? That's an outside electrical connection. Look at it - just look at it - it's not sealed and there are bare wires hanging out of it. If I hadn't insisted that you pull the fuses my men could have been electrocuted when we doused your house down. I'm fining you one hundred zlotys and someone from the council will be around next week to fine you another hundred if it hasn't been put right.
All present hung their heads in shame as they all made moonshine in their barns too. This man from Kruklanki made them feel small and they stood shuffling their feet and looking at their toes. I felt ashamed too, although I didn't know why - I paid top whack for my vodka in the shop. The firemen began rolling up their hoses and Vladek stepped forward to offer help but was refused and I figured it was time to go home. In the evening I went next door to collect our milk and saw Eva alone milking the cows.
-Where's Vladek? - I asked.
-At the fire.
-I thought it was out, what's wrong now?
-Oh, nothing, he'll be drunk when he gets home. Domagalski went out & bought vodka for everyone who helped with the fire so all the men will be drunk tonight. Milking's still got to be done though Peter hasn't it? You alright for eggs?
-Yes thanks Eva.
-Peter, do you mind if I ask you something?
-No, what?
-Well, what are men like in the West?
-Same as here I suppose Eva - what do you mean.
-Oh, I dunno...... I see all these Americans on TV - you know.
-Yeah?
-Yes, they're different to Polish and Ukrainian men - they're like you. You see them in the kitchen helping their wives and stuff. How often do men get drunk in the West?
-It's hard to say Eva. Some people get drunk more than others, like here. Look at Marek and then look at Bogdan - people are different.
-I know but on TV you see all sorts of people, you know.... country people, city people. There's Neighbours, Dallas, Miami Vice, Hawaii Five O and sometimes there are those documentaries about people. You never see anybody drunk do you.
-Yes Eva, but that's on TV isn't it. You don't see many drunks on Polish TV either do you?
She was right of course there aren't many places in the Western World where you can guarantee that you'll see a drunken man every day of the week but that's what Eva's going to see every day for the rest of her life.
Still - Russians are the worst aren't they?
Chapter 14
After sending dozens of promotional letters to English bird and wildlife clubs, our first paying guests started to turn up at the beginning of May, and we considered ourselves well prepared except for the garden which still needed a lot of work. We'd thought of everything and even had Alicja's brother and his family visit us from Warsaw as pretend guests so we could have a dry run before the real guests arrived. The month was pretty well booked out and being the month of May, they were all bird watchers.
The only thing we weren't entirely prepared for was the species of guest - "Anglicus binocularis". These people are a rare breed in themselves. They came by car or by train after getting off the plane in Warsaw and the first thing which distinguished them from normal people was the manner of dress. The majority of them being clad in a series of pockets held together by a few small pieces of jacket or waistcoat. The second distinguishing feature was the sheer amount of equipment they carried. The sound recording equipment, two or three cameras, binoculars, books etc and one young man arrived with a lap top computer with a bird database program.
They were a messy and absent minded breed too. They would spend all day wandering around in the forests or tramping the reed beds of the lakes and then return to the house deep in conversation about icterine warblers and walk straight into their rooms, mud all over their boots and wet weather gear dripping. The reaction of the locals to our guests was fascinating and the best "watching" of any kind, as far as we were concerned, was to watch the villagers watching the bird watchers. It was completely beyond their comprehension why any one should want to photograph birds.
Aside from ourselves nobody in the village owned a camera and most folks hadn't had a photograph of themselves taken since their first communion when they were kids. To see these pocket covered foreigners with cameras, binoculars & bird books tramping about down on the river banks was the best entertainment ever to have hit Bocwinka. The whole village, without exception, was extremely friendly and most tolerant when it came to bird watchers tramping across their fields and invading their farmyards for photographs of outside toilets but this friendliness was sometimes misconstrued by the bird-watchers.
One single bird-watcher, a man in his early thirties, came on the train and had no transport. We fixed him up with a bicycle and a packed lunch the first day and gave him a map showing the most likely spots to search for black storks and off he went. Shortly after leaving the house the gear changing cable snapped and the bike was stuck in the highest gear which was obviously hard work for him on what was an unusually hot day for May. He returned home at seven in the evening absolutely worn out and I sat him down outside and gave him a cold beer. "You know," he said "you're lucky to still have your push-bike. Twice it was nearly stolen."
He told me that a man with a horse and cart stopped and tried to take the bicycle from him and another man was about to make off with it right outside the post office while he was inside buying envelopes. Before he'd finished his beer Vladek and Jurek turned up and our bird-watcher told me out of the corner of his mouth that these were the two men who'd tried to steal the bike. It turned out that both of them had seen him struggling away in high gear and had only wanted to see if they could fix the bike for him but he'd run away on both occasions.
After the explanations they took both him and the bike over to Vladek's barn, fixed the gears, oiled the chain and adjusted the saddle & handlebars. That was at eight o'clock and at about eleven he hadn't returned so Alicja suggested that I go look for him. I found him, Vladek and Jurek still in the barn deep in conversation about farming techniques. They'd managed a three hour conversation on the subject. Our guest didn't speak a word of Polish and the English of the other two, I knew, was limited to commands we gave to our dog Misha - come, sit and shake hands.
How they managed I've no idea but Vladek told me the next day -that English bloke really knows his stuff when it comes to farming. He didn't however, know his stuff when it came to drinking, and he was carried home by Jurek two nights later after foolishly accepting an invitation to visit his house. The evenings were fun that May - we had binocular competitions in which the guests compared their equipment and told each other they'd made the wrong choice. These events would go on for anything up to a couple of hours as the conversation lead on to comparisons between Nikon & Minolta auto focus camera systems. I confess that I didn't understand half of what they were talking about but just to hear all that English being spoken was a rare treat for us both.
During these sessions I took to wandering around the village looking for storks on roof tops. Three or four times a week a stork would spend the night on the roof of our barn but if not, there were always a few somewhere in the village. As soon as I found one I'd return to the house and shout "STORK". The word stork to a bird watcher is what the word scramble is to a fighter pilot - they grab their gear and run. It never failed to clear the house and gave us half an hour to straighten the carpets and clean the table off.
On one occasion we looked out of the kitchen window after dinner to be entertained by a crude attempt at a human pyramid as 3 men attempted to hoist a fourth into a position from which to get a better camera angle. The next evening however, was even better. Three of them held a 15 foot high ladder in the middle of the vegetable garden as they took it in turns to climb to the top and shoot off a few frames, during which I was desperately looking around in our bedroom for a film to get what I thought would be the definitive bird watcher shot.
As this was going on Stan the poacher and his eldest son were ploughing one of their fields opposite our house and I saw Stan leave his son holding the horse and run indoors bringing the rest of the family out to watch the spectacle. The evenings were the time for identification disputes concerning various birds and I learned to keep my mouth shut as I listened to the same birds being given different labels from week to week. One thing I found is that bird-watching is an inexact science when it comes to the identification of birds of prey in flight - the average British bird-watcher hasn't got a clue compared to any man living in Bocwinka and none could hold a candle to Stan the poacher.
The identification arguments weren't only confined to such lofty birds either. One of our nesting boxes in the garden was taken over by a pair of common tree sparrows. I didn't know they were common tree sparrows until I'd heard several bird-watchers identify them differently and sat down with a pair of binoculars and studied them with a bird book. Just to make sure I asked Stan the poacher who didn't even take a millisecond to confirm their identity and after this I told bird-watchers that they were a mainland European sub species which had been identified by a Polish ornithologist. They loved it, took dozens of photographs and could rattle off the differences between the birds in our nesting box and the common tree sparrow with the confidence of David Attenborough.
Nightjars were good value too - we didn't have any in our fields but I didn't know. One of our early bird-watchers dragged me outside one night to listen to them and spent a considerable amount of time recording their cries - or whatever it is that nightjars do and for a few weeks I used to say to people "come outside and listen to the nightjars." They were all very impressed and I was quite pleased about it too until one man turned up with a cassette tape of bird noises and they proved to be nightingales. No tribe of human beings were ever as dedicated to a subject as "Anglicus binocularis" is to his and I can only admire a person who'll sit for 3 hours next to a lake in the evening waiting for the cranes to appear after having left his insect repellent behind.
We've seen bird-watchers leave the house looking reasonably normal only to return after dusk looking like the Elephant Man. And whereas most people would spend the rest of the night complaining about mosquitoes, all they talked about was a crane taken at F8 with a shutter speed of 1/15 in silhouette with the dying sun behind it - remarkable. Bird watchers wives, it's interesting to note, are perfectly normal people. Some of them too were keen bird watchers but, from our observations, were able to hold conversations on subjects other than avifauna.
They would usually take themselves off into town, go shopping with Alicja or do something normal like spending the day on a ferry boat on the lakes or reading books in the garden and generally have a good time. By the time they left us the wives were usually completely relaxed and re-charged while their spouses were worn out. Mind you, bird-watchers were nowhere near as weird as hunters. We had an enquiry from a German hunting firm written in perfect English. They informed us that they'd be bringing their own taxidermist and asked if we had a spare room for his "stuffing activities!
While some of the "Anglicus binoculari" were staying with us, we had another wedding in the village. This time between the couple who Sarah had seen copulating in our wood shed back in October. This was a much more "down home" sort of event than the wedding of the previous month. Gienek and his wife Helka had planned and executed all the arrangements themselves and apart from half a dozen folks from out of town, only villagers attended. The previous year had been one of drought and the potatoes and sugar beet had only grown to half their usual size making much of the harvest unsaleable. Gienek and Helka had saved some of it over winter in their root cellar from which they now intended to make their daughter's wedding vodka in a home made still.
Helka came around the house a few days prior to the wedding with an invitation for us to attend and at the same time collected all the spare bottles we had which she placed carefully on the straw in the back of the cart. I asked how many bottles they were going to make and she said she wasn't sure but something like a hundred. A quick mental reckoning showed that this would probably work out to about one and a half bottles per guest - it was going to be some party. I followed Helka home to see if I could be of any help with the preparations but Gienek had things well in hand and had done a good job of it all. He'd cleaned out the barn and splattered a mixture of lime and water over the walls and ceiling with a birch broom and then hung army camouflage netting over it all. The result was quite effective and I asked what he was going to use the netting for after the wedding.
-Oh Christ, it's not mine. I couldn't afford that.
-Whose is it then?
- It belongs to the army. I went up to the radar station and saw some of the soldiers. Asked them if they'd like to come to a wedding and told them that they'd have to loan me a few things from their stores for a week.-
They'd done him proud too. At the two entrances to the barn were army tunnel tents and inside was an army field kitchen with a flue going out through the window - an enormous thing on wheels with four big cooking pots sunk into it under which a fire would be lit on the day. There were army issue enamel mugs and plates, army trestle tables and army perforated steel plating covering a large part of the courtyard. All it needed was a couple of missile launchers and the guests would have felt that they'd been conscripted rather than invited.
Come the big day there were five tables set up along the route from the church to the reception, all with bread and salt, and at each point there was a line of home made rag flags strung across the road. Gienek wasn't taking any chances with arguments over vodka (as there had been at the wedding of Piotr and Alexandra) and the back seat of the first car was well stocked. At each table a bottle was handed over and all went smoothly - even Little Yusef had been enterprising enough to make himself a table and had sat at it for hours in advance so as not to miss his bottle. We didn't attend the church service but, instead, joined in at the tail end of the procession after it passed the house.
Our three English bird-watching guests were invited along with us and they were enthralled by the procession alone which amongst the cars included six tractors, two horses and carts, a combine harvester carrying a family of four and an invalid carriage. The bird-watchers must have taken twenty or thirty photographs between them before we even got into the car. At the reception they asked me if I thought it would be alright to take photographs. I thought I'd do the right thing and ask, but I already knew the answer - everyone wanted their photographs taken - some people hadn't had a photograph of themselves taken in twenty years and never in colour.
This was the first time we'd seen the whole village turned out in their Sunday best and it was a real treat for the photographers. Half the men and a few of the women had front teeth missing and the general mode of dress didn't fit into any specific period in history. Marek was, well, creased and clad in a lumberjack shirt with the collar worn away and a 1950's, wide American tie with what had once probably been a luminous picture of Betty Grable on it. The shirt was too small around the neck causing the collar to lift up like a butterfly. The remainder of the ensemble consisted of a tweedish sports jacket with soup stains down the front and a pair of grey trousers with the burned imprint of an iron just above the right knee.
Big Jan didn't look too bad at all in a blue serge suit with a handkerchief protruding from the top pocket. But as the evening wore on, and the jacket became undone, it could be seen that the handkerchief was, in fact, the tip of his shirt front which had been pulled up and tucked through a slot in the inside of the jacket. It was the first time I'd seen Zenek clean shaven. He used to remind me of Yasser Arafat in that whenever I saw him he was sporting two days growth. I don't know how some people always seem able to achieve this permanent, two days growth look - perhaps they buy special long razor blades or something. Designer stubble - that's the phrase.
Old Man Miankowski had a pair of the most striking braces available anywhere. They were made from plaited baler twine skillfully woven and they wouldn't have looked out of place in a trendy London boutique - an idea for those readers in the fashion business. Jurek, who is normally the best dressed peasant in the village, should have come in his working clothes. He had on one of the Russian shirts which were popular at the market in town a few months previously. It was white with red polka dots but polka dots which looked as though they'd been done with a felt tipped pen. It looked for all the world as though he'd been eating tomato soup and sneezed. He was, however, colour co-ordinated with a blood red tie which gave the appearance of his throat having been cut. His bell bottomed black trousers covered highly polished cut down gum boots with black felt edging around the tops.
Vladek and Eva were resplendent in clothes borrowed from us. Three men wore identical light blue safari suits which, Eva whispered to Alicja, were brought from the Gypsies who came around Bocwinka from time to time.
Generally, the women were surprisingly fashionable - not much different from fashions to be found in small English villages - the sort of stuff available by mail order pattern from English newspapers. The handbags were the let down - not much being available in the local shops except for the sort of handbags the Queen uses. Come to think of it the fashion sense of the women in Bocwinka would have put the Queen to shame but that's not terribly difficult to do. Suffice to say, this is probably one of the few places in the world where Norman Hartnel could find a niche in the export market.
Anything with English wording printed on it is automatically presumed to be a quality product but if the owners of two shopping bags which appeared at the reception had been able to read what they held in their hands they would have, more than likely, thought otherwise. The bags were made of a woven plastic, raffia kind of fabric and emblazoned with large round yellow ICI logos and wording about the percentage content of nitrogen, potassium and phosphate. Who had the idea of producing shopping bags from disused English or American fertilizer sacks I have no idea but they were sold in the market in Gizycko and considered to be something of a designer item in Bocwinka.
We left the reception in the early hours but our three guests stayed and had breakfast returning late in the morning saying that we ought to advertise weddings in Bocwinka and charge double for the experience. When they left the next week they were loaded down with home made jams and pickles which their new found friends had given them to take home to their wives. During the time that we had been living in the village two barns had burned down in neighbouring villages and one in Bocwinka. There had too, been one near miss in Borki and three out of the four occasions were associated with an overdose of vodka. I had the pleasure of being present at the closing stages of number five.
I was shopping in Kruklanki with Eva when we heard the fire siren go.
-Hope it's not in Bocwinka again, I said.
-Me too - there's not much water in any of the wells. Haven't had enough rain, said Eva.
We drove back towards Bocwinka at a leisurely rate until we saw smoke rising from what we thought could have been our house. I quickened the pace. As we rounded the bend leading into the village we could see that it wasn't our house but Domagalski's barn which was covered in smoke. The sides of the road were littered with the entire Bocwinka transport fleet - both cars, 2 post office motorcycles, numerous tractors, push-bikes and an invalid carriage which, we were later informed, had transported 2 people plus the invalid to the scene of the fire. I parked our car out of the way and ran towards the smoking barn to offer assistance.
The hay loft had been smoldering for quite some time before bursting into flames and the fire had been caused by the making of moonshine vodka. Domagalski and his two brothers had been involved in the distillation process and although the recommended modus operandi on such occasions is to bottle the produce first and then get smashed, they'd found the clear liquid irresistible and got stuck into it as it came trickling from the still. In mid stupor one of them had knocked the still over and hey presto, instant barn fire.
By the time we arrived the whole village had turned out and two men were drawing buckets from the next door neighbour's well (Domagalski's well having already been bucketed dry) and pouring the contents into an assortment of leaking pots & pans which were being ferried to the barn by a chain of awfully serious looking men, women & children. I'd never seen the village in crisis before, everybody looking red faced and exhausted and nobody saying a word as they ran back & forth. This was serious stuff and I grabbed a milk churn and queued up at the well to be joined shortly by Alicja who'd already been carrying buckets for half an hour & looked all in.
The milk churn I found myself in possession of, had seen better days and three short pieces of wood, which served to block up holes, protruded from its sides. It was soon filled and I took off, following the line out of sight around the back of the house, ending at the smoking barn. A ladder was propped up against the upstairs door and the water containers were being emptied into a tin bath from which buckets were being drawn and handed up the ladder to Big Jan who was throwing the water at the fire. I ran to and from the well a few times until more people turned up from Zywki and relieved a few of us for a much needed break. It was only then that I had a chance to stand back and look at what was going on.
It was chaos, pure and simple, and frightening to look upon. Everyone knew what was at stake - a family's livelihood. There were two families who I knew had been feuding with each other for over two years but now they were working alongside each other to help save the property of another villager. Everyone knew too that the property wouldn't have been insured - if the fire spread to the house as well that would be the end of the Domagalski family's farm and the meager income which went with it. I feel guilty for letting it be known that when I stood back as a spectator I began to see a funny side to it. Dozens of soggy villagers running around like chickens with their heads cut off, a sort of Keystone Kopski scene from an old movie. Like Pieter Bruegel would have painted Dantes Inferno in that sort of peasanty cartoon style - Domagalski's Inferno.
The area around the tin bath had turned into a swamp with people slipping over & spilling the contents of their buckets. As they ran back to the well they bumped into others coming the other way who also spilled a good deal of the water they were carrying until the whole track through the courtyard was a mud slide of dissolved pig, cow and geese droppings. As I watched, one of the postmen carrying a bucket swerved sideways to avoid another bucket carrier, banged the ladder under the hay loft with his head and went down and out. A young girl came around the corner of the barn swinging a saucepan full of water and promptly tripped over him. Big Jan jumped down from the hay loft and dragged the postman out of the way.
Grabbing the girls empty saucepan he dipped it into the tin bath and threw the contents over the face of postman who soon raised himself on one elbow & looked up at big Jan as if for advice - and he got it. -Get up you fucking cretin, there's work to be done - Jan turned on his heels and ran back up the ladder.
Amid all this panic we heard the siren of the fire truck which had come from Soltmany 5 kilometres away. It was a small, peculiar looking truck which I suspect had seen previous duty as a riot control vehicle because it had water cannon, somewhat akin to a large hypodermic needle, on top of the cab. As it rounded the bend in the road & slid sideways into the open farm gate it flattened two bicycles and did considerable damage to one of the post office motorbikes. A cheer went up and a way was cleared for it to reach the fire. Domagalski, ran up and opened the passenger door and two men fell out into the quagmire. They were both blind drunk but the driver insisted that it wasn't a problem as he'd only had a couple of swigs at the bottle and knew how to work the pump.
He looked efficient as he leaped from the cab and gave instructions on how to roll out the hoses. The hypodermic needle, apparently being out of action. This done, he turned the pump on and found that they'd forgotten to bring water with them. The hoses were disconnected amongst much swearing and led out to the well, the pump thrown into reverse and preparations made to fill the fire engine from the one and only well which still contained water. The well was pumped dry before the fire engine's tank was full to capacity and then the process had to be reversed again, this time to pump water, all being well, at the fire.
The hoses were re-coupled and the pump screamed into action. One man stood at the top of the ladder and signaled for the valve to be opened. The only hitch was that he didn't receive the water he was expecting. The hose hadn't been properly re-connected and it reared up and sprayed the precious water all over the courtyard and everyone standing around it. It finally lodged itself in the dung heap and squirted liquefied cow manure all over the truck which within a short space of time began to look like the original "Slurry with the Syringe on top" and nobody could get near enough to turn the valve off.
The precious water was being lost while the barn roof still burned. The men all turned on the fire engine driver shouting insults and Domagalski, crying, punched him in the face. The scene was turning decidedly nasty, Gienek was waving a pitch fork in front of the man's face and I didn't want to be a part of it. I scanned the crowd looking for Alicja, thinking to grab her and get out of it. I didn't want to end up in court as a witness and there was nothing I could have done to calm the situation.
Thankfully, at that minute, another fire engine, this time from Kruklanki, screeched to a halt outside the gate, backed up and drove into the courtyard. The crew jumped from the cab, pushed the Soltmany fire engine out of the way and began their work. These guys were good, not only good but sober and obviously used to dealing with farm fires. The fire chief stood on top of the cab and asked for the owner to come forward.
-I'm the owner, said Domagalski
-Right, go inside the house & pull the fuses
-The fire's in the barn, not the house, replied Domagalski.
The fire chief raised his voice threateningly
-Do as I fucking well tell you, you idiot. We're going to spray your house first, your barn may go up and set light to the house.
He then told everyone to stand back and the five man brigade laid their hoses in a very polished manner, perfect team-work which couldn't be faulted. With the house roof thoroughly doused, they turned their attention to the barn which by that time was beginning to show long, licking flames through the roof tiles. They poured an enormous amount of water through the hay loft door before exhausting their supply and just as they did so a fire tender turned up with more. It had been an example of complete professionalism and I felt proud to be almost Polish.
The whole thing was over inside ten minutes and the population of Bocwinka, stunned by the display of efficiency, stood quietly staring open mouthed at these supermen from Kruklanki. The silence was however, soon broken by a guttural, gargling Jurrasic Park like scream of rage followed by a dull thud. All eyes turned towards the barn from which it came and presently a monster dragged itself out of the odoriferous slurry which now filled the ground floor. Half Bigfoot, two parts Incredible Hulk and 25% Mikheal Gorbachov (the discoloured patch on the bald head) it was a terrifying sight to behold covered, as it was, in straw, feathers and liquefied animal manure. Like the Creature from the Black Lagoon it slowly staggered to the door and leaned against the wall gasping for breath.
It seemed vaguely familiar - it was Big Jan who'd just fallen through the barn ceiling. We'd all forgotten about Big Jan. He'd been upstairs throwing buckets of water on the fire and he'd just been crawling out of the hay loft door when a wall of water had hit him full in the chest and thrown him back inside. He was greeted as a hero, scraped reasonably clean and escorted outside to dry off. Domagalski began to thank everybody present and offered the fire chief a bottle of vodka. He received in return, a refusal and a lecture.
Climbing atop his fire engine, the fire chief surveyed the crowd. He was an imposing sight, the fire chief, as he removed his helmet and ran his hand through his silvery hair. A tall, dignified looking man well into his 60s with a back as straight as a ramrod, he reminded me of Carl Lagerfeld having that same, slab sided, kind of face that puts one in mind of two cans of corned beef. And like all great orators he drew in his breath and paused the orator’s pregnant pause.
-You idiots, you cretins. I know how this fire was caused, I've seen the still, the heap of potatoes, the bottling equipment. It was the drink that caused it and now you're all going to get drunk to celebrate the fact that it's safely extinguished.
You should all be ashamed of yourselves. Ladies, take your men home and put them to work.
He then led Pan Domagalski over to the wall of the house.
-See that?
-See what? asked Domagalski.
-That - are you blind? That's an outside electrical connection. Look at it - just look at it - it's not sealed and there are bare wires hanging out of it. If I hadn't insisted that you pull the fuses my men could have been electrocuted when we doused your house down. I'm fining you one hundred zlotys and someone from the council will be around next week to fine you another hundred if it hasn't been put right.
All present hung their heads in shame as they all made moonshine in their barns too. This man from Kruklanki made them feel small and they stood shuffling their feet and looking at their toes. I felt ashamed too, although I didn't know why - I paid top whack for my vodka in the shop. The firemen began rolling up their hoses and Vladek stepped forward to offer help but was refused and I figured it was time to go home. In the evening I went next door to collect our milk and saw Eva alone milking the cows.
-Where's Vladek? - I asked.
-At the fire.
-I thought it was out, what's wrong now?
-Oh, nothing, he'll be drunk when he gets home. Domagalski went out & bought vodka for everyone who helped with the fire so all the men will be drunk tonight. Milking's still got to be done though Peter hasn't it? You alright for eggs?
-Yes thanks Eva.
-Peter, do you mind if I ask you something?
-No, what?
-Well, what are men like in the West?
-Same as here I suppose Eva - what do you mean.
-Oh, I dunno...... I see all these Americans on TV - you know.
-Yeah?
-Yes, they're different to Polish and Ukrainian men - they're like you. You see them in the kitchen helping their wives and stuff. How often do men get drunk in the West?
-It's hard to say Eva. Some people get drunk more than others, like here. Look at Marek and then look at Bogdan - people are different.
-I know but on TV you see all sorts of people, you know.... country people, city people. There's Neighbours, Dallas, Miami Vice, Hawaii Five O and sometimes there are those documentaries about people. You never see anybody drunk do you.
-Yes Eva, but that's on TV isn't it. You don't see many drunks on Polish TV either do you?
She was right of course there aren't many places in the Western World where you can guarantee that you'll see a drunken man every day of the week but that's what Eva's going to see every day for the rest of her life.
Still - Russians are the worst aren't they?
Chapter 15
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 15
At the end of May we finally waved goodbye to the two saw benches and the concrete mixer which had been a part of our garden decor ever since we moved in. There was a new openness, a sense of space, to our view from the kitchen window. It was time for a lawn.
There were no lawns within miles of us, the only grassed areas around houses having been created by grazing animals and poultry. Lawns simply aren't a tradition in Poland as they are in Western countries where they seem to be considered as something of an art form. Before the last winter had set in I had been cutting an area of grass in the field just outside the garden fence line and I'd started again on it as soon as the snow had cleared in the spring. This was going to be our lawn - a turf lawn.
I prepared the ground around the house, made it ready to receive the turfs from the field and went looking for help to dig and lay them. It was going to be hard work, not the sort of stuff for a city wimp like me. When I'd planned the fences I'd overlooked the fact that, sooner or later, I'd have to transport the turfs from the field to the area around the house. Now, with fences in place, the turfs would have to travel a long way in wheelbarrows around the outside of the fence to get through the gate.
I went down to the milk depot but nobody was interested in doing the work and I had to raise the price to one and a half bottles a day before I had any takers. I chose Big Jan, Jurek and Zenek; Vladek, I knew, would join in as soon as he saw the three of them working in our garden. We walked back to the house and I led them out through the gate in the fence and pointed to the grass I'd been nurturing.
-I want that lot dug up about five centimetres deep and moved over there, I said pointing to the area I'd cleared.
-What lot?, asked Big Jan.
-This, I said, stamping my foot on the grass.
-Oh, said Big Jan smiling, -I thought you meant the grass.
-If he doesn't mean the grass, what does he mean? asked Jurek.
-I don't know, replied Jan.
-Well, if you don't know, what did you think he meant when you said you thought he meant the grass?
Big Jan was confused. He squatted down and jabbed a finger at the grass.
-What I thought...........what I thought.....
-He's got the wrong word again, said Zenek.
Big Jan grabbed a handful of grass and stood up. He held it up for me to see.
-To jest trawa (this is grass). You've got the wrong word.
Jurek suggested a few alternative words, trench, hole, drain pipe, mole, top soil but I was adamant that I wanted the grass moved.
-Why don't you go and get that dictionary with the Polish and English words in it, suggested Zenek.
I did one better. I found that Alicja was already up and dressed and I dragged her out of the house to interpret.
-He wants the grass moved, said Alicja.
-What for?, asked Zenek.
-We want to make a lawn with it, said Alicja.
-No, no, said Big Jan, -that's not how you make lawns. I know all about lawns, I did them in the army. No, with a lawn you have to make the ground right first, make it all nice and flat and bring in some good soil and sieve it and then you sprinkle the seed on it. You can buy special grass seed. Gienek can get you some, he knows the soldiers at the radar station. They'd never seen turfs before and Alicja had to explain, at length and with diagrams, exactly what we wanted. They were all opposed to the idea;
-You can transplant things like cabbages and lettuces and flowers, said Zenek, -but grass is like carrots and parsnips - it won't grow, people don't do it.
Persuasive as ever, Alicja got them to agree to try on a "don't say we didn't warn you" basis and, once Vladek joined in, they had a thoroughly good day constructing the giant "green jigsaw" in the garden. The "Green Jigsaw" became the talk, not only of our village, but all the surrounding villages and people came from far and wide to view it. They usually arrived with one of the four men who did the work and were given a guided tour of the lawn from the paths and were asked not to touch it. It was a source of great pride to the lads and they liked to show it off.
They'd stand on the path, wave their hands about and discuss the fact that they'd done such a good job that you couldn't see the joins. Occasionally one of the "Tour Guides" would tip toe onto the grass and pull out a weed to show that he was an official green-keeper. We still had to make another lawn at the side of the house but the area was too big a project for turfs so we decided to do it with seed and Vladek volunteered to do the whole thing for us.
He leveled the ground with horse, plough, and a variety of implements we didn't know the names for, making a perfect job of it and he managed to get hold of twenty kilos of grass seed from somewhere which, he told us, must be sowed either while it was raining or just before the rain so that the seed would get a good soaking. We waited for the rain which was a fortnight in coming and one drizzly afternoon Vladek came staggering into the garden pissed out of his brain with a big bag of grass seed over his shoulder.
-Peter, go over to the house and Eva will give you the grass sowing machine.
I put on my wet weather gear and left the house. All the way from our door, out of the gate, up the lane and into Vladek's shed I followed a thick trail of grass seed. The bag had a hole in it but Vladek was too drunk to have seen it. Eva handed me a weird looking box with two handles and leather straps on it and I took it back to Vladek. The grass sowing machine was over 50 years old, left in Bocwinka by the Germans in the 1940s and would probably be valuable as an antique anywhere in the West.
It consisted of a big funnel shaped hopper which sat on Vladek's stomach, the leather straps went across his back and over his shoulders like a harness. A crank handle was positioned on each side of the hopper and as Vladek walked he turned the handles which spun a sort of turbine wheel at the front and sprayed the seed out in front of him. He set off staggering and trying to keep to a straight line as he walked towards the fence turning the crank handles as he went. Turning the handles and walking at the same time required a sense of co-ordination which had, temporarily, deserted him.
If he'd had a monkey on his shoulder, any observer would have thought that he was some sort of agricultural entertainer; an itinerant organ grinder on the way to some medieval fair. He reached the fence and leaned against it trying to focus. I was with him and as we looked back down the zig zag line of newly sprayed grass seed it reflected exactly how drunk he was.
-Fill up the hopper again Peter, he said -and we'll have another go. See if we can't get it straighter this time.
Once charged with a full hopper of seed, Vladek closed one eye as if sighting down a gun barrel and swayed about all over the place as he made towards the opposite end of the garden with me trying to steer him from behind with my hands on his shoulders. Reaching the safety and support of the fence he once more paused for breath and to admire his handiwork. I looked over at Alicja who was by then close to wetting herself and she shouted to me in English -look at him, all the seed's stuck to his face.
She was right. On the last pass over the garden Vladek had been against the wind and a good half kilogram of seed now covered his head and shoulders giving him the appearance of a MacDonalds sesame seed bun on legs. When he'd finished we got him to stand in a bare patch while Alicja went over him with the floor brush. It rained intermittently over the next week at the end of which a thin, serpentine line of green grass sprouts snaked it's way from Vladek's shed to our verandah. The grass seed Vladek had sown on the garden was coming on too, a covering of light green wispy hairs which looked uniform unless I stood at the fence line and let my eye follow Vladek's vodka lines. The weather was warming up and we'd travelled all over the disrict trying to get plants for the garden but there were no nurseries anywhere. Alicja decided that she'd have to take a trip to Warsaw to look for a few ornamental trees and early one morning she started out.
-By the time you get back from Warsaw the lawn will have filled in, I told Alicja, -the whole thing will be green.
-Keep the water up to it won't you, she said, -and if you're going to be out in the garden all the time I'm away, wear a T shirt. You know what you're like for burning yourself.
-Yeah, sure. Don't worry about me.
-No, seriously, she said -the forecasters are saying June's going to be a hot month.
As usual she'd stocked the house with plenty of microwavable food for me so that I didn't need to go off the premises, except for walking Misha, and I was happy, I had a project to get stuck into - I was going to plant my first hedge. I had the ground well prepared in the morning but it was a scorcher of a day so I left it until the sun was going down before I started to put the hedge plants in the holes I'd dug. The bell rang and, looking over my shoulder I saw Dariusz at the gate. We never saw much of Dariusz. He only lived next door but one, but our paths seldom crossed and, consequently, he hadn't had a chance to develop an ear for my brand of Polish. He was asking me a question and although I could understand a little of what he was saying, he wasn't getting anything at all of what I was throwing at him.
We went next door to see Vladek who I had more contact with and could understand better. He was in the courtyard working on his tractor and Darius engaged him in a rather serious conversation during which I heard Vladek say three times -don't you worry, Peter won't mind. Dariusz shook my hand and walked off towards his house. I couldn't make out what was going on. Dariusz had come to our house to see me, he'd spoken with Vladek, and now he'd gone, leaving me none the wiser. I asked Vladek if I'd upset Dariusz. He put his spanner on the tractor seat then walked over to the tap and began to wash his hands before speaking. He told me that I hadn't upset Darius and he carried on talking slowly, stopping every now and then to make sure I understood what he was saying.
I understood the bit about Darius's mother and about the doctor but little else except for the Polish word for door. -Your door Peter - you know, the door.
I'd left my hedge plants with their roots exposed in the warm air and I wanted to get back to them before they dried out so I pretended to understand, but I was nodding in the wrong places and he saw through me.
-Come Peter, I'll show you, said Vladek.
We walked back to our house and he took his boots off and went inside, up the hall to our bedroom door.
-May I?, said Vladek, pointing to the bedroom door.
-Yes, I said
He stuck his foot under the door and slid it up off it's hinge posts. Then, with the door under his arm he walked back down the hall stopping at the outside door. He opened it and made me understand that he wanted to take it to Dariusz's house.
-OK, I said -Dariusz wants to borrow the door. Am I right so far?
-Good, Good, said Vladek.
-That's OK, but why does he want it?
Vladek said it was for Dariusz's mother and the doctor and he threw in a few words I didn't know for good measure. I couldn't grasp the full meaning of his discourse but I figured that I didn't have to - I'd got the gist of it, the part that concerned me.
I deduced that the doctor was coming to see Dariusz's mother and her bedroom didn't have a door.
-Yes, fine, I said. -How long does he want it for.
-Only two or three days, said Vladek.
-OK, no problem, I said.
Vladek left with the door under his arm and I carried on with my hedge plants. It was getting dark. When Alicja returned from Warsaw the first thing she asked about was the whereabouts of the bedroom door.
-Oh, Dariusz has borrowed it for a few days. It should be back tomorrow.
-Borrowed it, she said, -borrowed our bedroom door. People don't borrow doors they either have them or they don't have them. Why did he want our bedroom door?
-Search me; it's something to do with his Mum being sick. I didn't understand the conversation.
-It's about time you started knocking off work an hour earlier and studying the language. It's not just going to happen without some effort from you, you know.
I could sense a long standing dispute bubbling up again so I changed the subject and made a cup of tea while Alicja unpacked and showed me all the things she'd bought in Warsaw which we couldn't afford. She held up a jumper-
-What do you think?
-Not much.
It's not for me it's a present for Eva.
-How much did it cost?
-Not telling you.
A typical husband and wife conversation not carried on in the best of humour and it had all started because of her reaction to the missing bedroom door. I couldn't see anything wrong with the bedroom door being missing, especially as nobody was staying with us at the time. If she hadn't have come home a day early she wouldn't have known about it anyway - I would have had it back in place. But, with hindsight, I suppose it is a little unusual for a wife to come home and find that her husband has loaned the bedroom door to someone who lives up the road.
-All the doors are the same, I said. -I'll lift one off the small bedroom and put it on our bedroom - won't take a minute.
-It's a different colour.
-Oh shit, I said.
-OK, I'll leave you to be grumpy by yourself, said Alicja. -I'm going over Eva's to give her her jumper.
-I'm not bloody grumpy, you are.
The outside door slammed. She came back an hour later.
-You know that door?
-Yes I do seem to recall something about a door, I said. -Don't tell me, they've burnt the bloody thing to keep warm?
-No actually. Did you know Dariusz's mother had died?
-Oh, what a pity, she was a nice old thing.
-Well, that nice old thing is laid out on our fucking bedroom door. That’s what they wanted it for - to lay here out on.
When Dariusz brought the door back Alicja wouldn't have it in the bedroom. I couldn't understand her reasoning and pointed out that, as the woman didn't actually die on the door, (at least we didn't think she had) we shouldn't be troubled with a haunted bedroom or anything of that ilk. Alicja however, was adamant, and I had to swap it with the door in the kitchen. Even then she thought of Dariusz's mother every time she put the broom behind it.
Gradually we were beginning the convert some of the accommodation enquiries we'd been getting into firm bookings and everybody who came to stay with us liked the place. They liked the whole combination, house, garden, peasants, locality, peace and quite - all the work we'd done was beginning to pay off and there was a great deal of satisfaction in it for us. We had been living in Bocwinka long enough to start to taking for granted the things which we'd found the most appealing about living there in the first place. The guests liking it served as a reminder and the stories they told us about the crime rate in their own countries, the pressure of work, the traffic jams, being scared to let their kids play outside on the pavement, made us think that, all in all, we'd done the right thing.
They were fascinated by the simple people and the traditional farming practices in Bocwinka. Some likened it to the way rural Ireland had been fifty years ago. Older guests loved to see cows being milked by hand in the fields and peasant farmers using the scythe to cut their wheat and the old fashioned wheat sheaves stacked in rows in the fields. The concept of mixed farming where practically every farm had an assortment of pigs, chickens, cows, geese, ducks, and horses, and the sight of farmers growing things for their own, family use, is so long gone from the industrialised countries of Europe that, to most of our guests, it wasn't even a distant memory. Several guests told us that they'd seen these sights only as illustrations in children's "learn to read" books.
The storks which landed daily on our barn roof must have been amongst the most photographed birds in Europe. People seem to have a special kind affection for storks, for one thing they're big and instantly recognisable but it's the baby bringing legend which is fixed in everyone's mind. Many times guests would ask us what storks ate and, on being told that they carnivorous and predatory, found it hard to believe that such a nice thing was a natural born killer. We had expected that our guests would mostly be the bird, flower and animal watching types and we'd geared up for it, but the majority of them just wanted to sit in the garden and relax. They were captivated by the place itself and, apart from going for the odd half hour walk and photographing farmyards, we had them hanging around the garden all day.
We'd spent a considerable amount of time learning all about the flora and fauna which inhabited the forests and reed beds of the lakes and Alicja had collected reams of information about the local attractions. She'd collated all her findings and we'd had information sheets printed to show guests how to get to places, where to eat, and all those other little things which a good host does but hardly anybody was interested.
I felt like kicking them out of the house sometimes. They'd spent all that money to get to our place and now they were just hanging around a garden which they could have done at home. There was another World just outside the gate and they were going to go home not having seen it. The only place which did seem to interest them was Hitler's eastern front headquarters where he spent two years, on and off, directing the war against Russia. This is a massive complex deep within a forest about an hours drive from the house and seems to have some fascination for foreigners of all nationalities.
One of Alicja's information sheets showed how to get to the place and on the back of the same sheet were directions to The Church of The Holy Linden Tree a few kilometres further on. It's a truly spectacular, baroque religious church with an enormous organ on which recitals are played for the entertainment of visitors. Keith and Jenny, a young English couple who were staying with us, went to see it. When they returned I asked what they though of it. They were impressed with the guided tour and the architecture but the husband said that they could perhaps have been a little more reverent in the choice of music the nuns played in the souvenir kiosk.
-Oh, -I said. -Everyone plays Western music here these days and those two old ladies in the kiosk wouldn't have known what the words meant. I know the song you mean because when we were there, we had a laugh about it too. They were playing that song which goes "I'm crucifed, crucified by my saviour" - right?
-No,he said, -they were playing "You Sexy Motherfucker" by Prince.
As he was telling me this, Misha was barking her head off. Not her usual bark but an incessant gerrroudofitt sort of bark which I knew could mean one of two things - either the postman or Bogdan was at the gate. Funny how dogs take a dislike to some people isn't it?
It was Bogdan asking for help. Bogdan was very formal compared to the rest of the folks in Bocwinka. Everyone else called me Peter but Bogdan would insist on this formal, Polish approach, and called me Pan which roughly translates to mister. I didn't much like being called Pan by someone I knew well. It always seemed kind of un-friendly to me although it was never meant that way. It was just one of those cultural things I should have got used to - when in Rome do as the Romans do - but who wants to enter politics or go into the mafia?
Whilst living in Poland I often thought of having my surname changed by deed poll. Asonic maybe, what about that...Pan Asonic? Or maybe Demonium, Taloons or Orama? No, I've got it! - American Highway. Yes, just imagine receiving a letter addressed to Pan American Highway No 36 Bocwinka. Postman would be really stuffed wouldn't he?
Anyway, back to Bogdan. Most of the villagers adapted well to my lack of Polish grammar and they spoke a special, non grammatical pidgin Polish to me which didn't involve the genitive, accusative or any of that academic rubbish they put in the "You too can speak Polish in less time than it takes a rat to crawl up a drainpipe" language books.
-Peter, we need you - you are necessary.
-I've given up milk tanker driving Bogdan.
-No, we just need you to pull on a rope.
Simple, non grammatical Polish - I understood it. I understood the words, that is, but I didn't understand why it was necessary for me to pull on a rope - I'm a little round shouldered, granted, but I'm not exactly Quasimodo and we didn't have any bells in the village.
Keith and Jenny were still standing on the verandah and I excused myself;
-I'm sorry but I have to go and pull on a rope. I'll see you later.
-What's on the other end of the rope then, asked Keith.
-I don't know, I said, -but it must be pretty heavy.
-Is it alright if I tag along?
-Of course, I said -maybe you can pull on it too.
We followed Bogdan out of the gate and, straight opposite, across the lane, we saw the problem. A cow was stuck in the mud in the water meadows down at the river bank. Although the area close to the river bank was always soft underfoot this was a dry summer and the cows had been allowed to graze further down the slope than usual. There was an electric fence between the cows and the real boggy part of the meadow but Bocwinka is subject to power cuts on a regular basis. During one of these cuts one cow had walked straight through the fence and become bogged down. The ground was too soft for tractors and the horse owners were scared that their horses would get stuck in, so the only way was to pull the animal out using people power.
Planks had been laid across the bog and a simple rope harness wound around the cow's body and "leg pits". Now all the spare pieces of rope in the village were being knotted together to start the tug of war, albeit with an unwilling participant at the other end. I knew it was a serious matter because the Michellin ladies were all there. The Michellin ladies, as we called them, are 4 enormous sisters, in their mid forties, who are all married to local farmers. Each of them is as strong, if not stronger, than any man in the village, bar Big Jan, and this was an occasion requiring strength and above all, weight.
I'm not sure but I suspect that three of them are triplets because they all have the same looks, mannerisms and chins. Yes, chins - they each have this sort of corrugated neck which makes them look as though their heads are mounted on sliced loaves. It took some time to effectively knot together something like 10 pieces of varying thicknesses of old ropes but at last all was ready and we took a hold of the rope and pulled under the instruction of Mr Miankowski who was unable to participate on account of his bad feet.
One, two, three-pull! Nothing happened. One, two, three-pull! the rope broke sending us all to our knees on the planks. All were in good humour however, and the rope was repaired and we tried again. It was all pretty futile and the cow wasn't even trying. It seemed to have given up, resigned to its fate. Shovels were brought down to the meadow and a ramp dug towards the cow's front feet and saplings cut to place in front of the animal to prevent it sinking again when it was finally freed.
Alicja had been watching from the window and she arrived with Jenny to lend some extra weight to our end of the rope for the next try.
This time we were sure that the animal could be extricated and we waited for a few of the men to finish their cigarettes before trying again. We all stood around talking and Maria, one of the Michellin ladies who was acting as the tug of war anchor woman, still had a hold of the rope. I heard someone mention Marek and glancing up I saw him coming towards us in his usual crab-like gait - three steps forward, one step back, half a step sideways and off he goes again. Having a toe amputated had made no perceptible difference to the way he walked.
-Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it's Marek, someone said
-That's all we need, how bad is he?
-Not too bad
Marek wasn't disliked by the rest of the village but he was a nuisance sometimes and couldn't stop giggling. Drunk though he invariably was, he had a wonderful sense of humour and would use his cover of drunkenness to crack jokes that he couldn't get away with if he was sober. I read in a magazine a while back that every time you drink alcohol you loose millions of brain cells. Well, either Marek was endowed at birth with an uncommon amount of them or his brain's on automatic pilot because he's permanently drunk and his head doesn't appear to be shrinking.
It's just one of life's unanswered mysteries as far as I'm concerned, like why lemmings don't buy life insurance policies or why Mormons all have the same pressure in their bicycle tyres. Marek had obviously just got out of bed. His fly was undone, hair all over the place and he looked half asleep as he came on down the hill.
-Czshpk, hic.....haa mud, haaargh - stuck in the hic mud!
Marek eyed Maria the Michellin lady who still held the rope.
-You'll never get her out of there - haaaargh. Not with only one cow you won't. And turning to Maria said -How'd you get stuck in there like that then? Luckily the Michellin ladies are all good sports, used to jokes about their weight, and they got as much of a laugh out of Marek's remark as the rest of us.
Then it was back to work again. Mr Miankowski shouted "One, two, three", muscles taughtened, chins shook and we heaved for all we were worth. There was a sucking noise as the cow moved and this time we managed to take a step forward before the weight of the animal pulled us slithering back to our starting point. Two more tries brought the same result and now the cow's owner began to look worried. A rest was suggested during which time the ramp was dug deeper and more saplings thrown in before the next try.
The ground was too soft for a tractor and if it didn't work this time, it was agreed by all, the owner would have to hire a bulldozer on tracks to get the poor animal back on terra firma. Marek was still staggering around muttering & giggling to himself but nobody paid him any attention as we all took a hold on the rope for the final effort. One, two, three-pull! What happened next I wasn't witness to because I was facing away from the cow but Alicja and Jenny told us all about it afterwards. All I knew was that there was a hell of a bellow and I, along with everyone else, went face down in the mud and felt the rope slithering under me.
Marek had untied the electric fence using the corner of his jacket to prevent himself getting a shock and then, as Mr Miankowski started his count down, raised the cows tail and thrust the wire hard up into it's nether regions. I felt every knot go by as the rope disappeared down the line underneath us until it got to Andrzej who had his foot wound around it and he took off on his back following the cow. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth was heard as they traveled towards a small patch of brambles from which the cow, the rope and Andrzej's right gum boot emerged.
We all ran over to where Andrzej lay and stood him up but although he was looking a little the worse for wear, no bones were broken.
But cows are funny animals you know, all they think about is eating and as soon as it was free of Andrzej it just stood still, grazing away as though nothing had happened.
-Heeee, hoooo....haaaaargh
We all turned around to see Marek kneeling in the mud still clutching the electric fence wire with the corner of his coat and giggling like a kid.
-OK that's got the cow taken care of, now it's your turn Maria, shouted Marek.
We were all having hysterics and the atmosphere was so good that the entire tug-o-war party stayed talking in the meadows until milking time. Keith and Jenny both agreed that it was the best fun they'd ever had on holiday.
It got me thinking though. With all this business about steroid taking among athletes lately, I wonder if there's anything in the Olympic rules about electric starting. Ben Johnson wouldn't have needed steroids if Marek had been around at the start of that famous 100 metre sprint.
Chapter 15
At the end of May we finally waved goodbye to the two saw benches and the concrete mixer which had been a part of our garden decor ever since we moved in. There was a new openness, a sense of space, to our view from the kitchen window. It was time for a lawn.
There were no lawns within miles of us, the only grassed areas around houses having been created by grazing animals and poultry. Lawns simply aren't a tradition in Poland as they are in Western countries where they seem to be considered as something of an art form. Before the last winter had set in I had been cutting an area of grass in the field just outside the garden fence line and I'd started again on it as soon as the snow had cleared in the spring. This was going to be our lawn - a turf lawn.
I prepared the ground around the house, made it ready to receive the turfs from the field and went looking for help to dig and lay them. It was going to be hard work, not the sort of stuff for a city wimp like me. When I'd planned the fences I'd overlooked the fact that, sooner or later, I'd have to transport the turfs from the field to the area around the house. Now, with fences in place, the turfs would have to travel a long way in wheelbarrows around the outside of the fence to get through the gate.
I went down to the milk depot but nobody was interested in doing the work and I had to raise the price to one and a half bottles a day before I had any takers. I chose Big Jan, Jurek and Zenek; Vladek, I knew, would join in as soon as he saw the three of them working in our garden. We walked back to the house and I led them out through the gate in the fence and pointed to the grass I'd been nurturing.
-I want that lot dug up about five centimetres deep and moved over there, I said pointing to the area I'd cleared.
-What lot?, asked Big Jan.
-This, I said, stamping my foot on the grass.
-Oh, said Big Jan smiling, -I thought you meant the grass.
-If he doesn't mean the grass, what does he mean? asked Jurek.
-I don't know, replied Jan.
-Well, if you don't know, what did you think he meant when you said you thought he meant the grass?
Big Jan was confused. He squatted down and jabbed a finger at the grass.
-What I thought...........what I thought.....
-He's got the wrong word again, said Zenek.
Big Jan grabbed a handful of grass and stood up. He held it up for me to see.
-To jest trawa (this is grass). You've got the wrong word.
Jurek suggested a few alternative words, trench, hole, drain pipe, mole, top soil but I was adamant that I wanted the grass moved.
-Why don't you go and get that dictionary with the Polish and English words in it, suggested Zenek.
I did one better. I found that Alicja was already up and dressed and I dragged her out of the house to interpret.
-He wants the grass moved, said Alicja.
-What for?, asked Zenek.
-We want to make a lawn with it, said Alicja.
-No, no, said Big Jan, -that's not how you make lawns. I know all about lawns, I did them in the army. No, with a lawn you have to make the ground right first, make it all nice and flat and bring in some good soil and sieve it and then you sprinkle the seed on it. You can buy special grass seed. Gienek can get you some, he knows the soldiers at the radar station. They'd never seen turfs before and Alicja had to explain, at length and with diagrams, exactly what we wanted. They were all opposed to the idea;
-You can transplant things like cabbages and lettuces and flowers, said Zenek, -but grass is like carrots and parsnips - it won't grow, people don't do it.
Persuasive as ever, Alicja got them to agree to try on a "don't say we didn't warn you" basis and, once Vladek joined in, they had a thoroughly good day constructing the giant "green jigsaw" in the garden. The "Green Jigsaw" became the talk, not only of our village, but all the surrounding villages and people came from far and wide to view it. They usually arrived with one of the four men who did the work and were given a guided tour of the lawn from the paths and were asked not to touch it. It was a source of great pride to the lads and they liked to show it off.
They'd stand on the path, wave their hands about and discuss the fact that they'd done such a good job that you couldn't see the joins. Occasionally one of the "Tour Guides" would tip toe onto the grass and pull out a weed to show that he was an official green-keeper. We still had to make another lawn at the side of the house but the area was too big a project for turfs so we decided to do it with seed and Vladek volunteered to do the whole thing for us.
He leveled the ground with horse, plough, and a variety of implements we didn't know the names for, making a perfect job of it and he managed to get hold of twenty kilos of grass seed from somewhere which, he told us, must be sowed either while it was raining or just before the rain so that the seed would get a good soaking. We waited for the rain which was a fortnight in coming and one drizzly afternoon Vladek came staggering into the garden pissed out of his brain with a big bag of grass seed over his shoulder.
-Peter, go over to the house and Eva will give you the grass sowing machine.
I put on my wet weather gear and left the house. All the way from our door, out of the gate, up the lane and into Vladek's shed I followed a thick trail of grass seed. The bag had a hole in it but Vladek was too drunk to have seen it. Eva handed me a weird looking box with two handles and leather straps on it and I took it back to Vladek. The grass sowing machine was over 50 years old, left in Bocwinka by the Germans in the 1940s and would probably be valuable as an antique anywhere in the West.
It consisted of a big funnel shaped hopper which sat on Vladek's stomach, the leather straps went across his back and over his shoulders like a harness. A crank handle was positioned on each side of the hopper and as Vladek walked he turned the handles which spun a sort of turbine wheel at the front and sprayed the seed out in front of him. He set off staggering and trying to keep to a straight line as he walked towards the fence turning the crank handles as he went. Turning the handles and walking at the same time required a sense of co-ordination which had, temporarily, deserted him.
If he'd had a monkey on his shoulder, any observer would have thought that he was some sort of agricultural entertainer; an itinerant organ grinder on the way to some medieval fair. He reached the fence and leaned against it trying to focus. I was with him and as we looked back down the zig zag line of newly sprayed grass seed it reflected exactly how drunk he was.
-Fill up the hopper again Peter, he said -and we'll have another go. See if we can't get it straighter this time.
Once charged with a full hopper of seed, Vladek closed one eye as if sighting down a gun barrel and swayed about all over the place as he made towards the opposite end of the garden with me trying to steer him from behind with my hands on his shoulders. Reaching the safety and support of the fence he once more paused for breath and to admire his handiwork. I looked over at Alicja who was by then close to wetting herself and she shouted to me in English -look at him, all the seed's stuck to his face.
She was right. On the last pass over the garden Vladek had been against the wind and a good half kilogram of seed now covered his head and shoulders giving him the appearance of a MacDonalds sesame seed bun on legs. When he'd finished we got him to stand in a bare patch while Alicja went over him with the floor brush. It rained intermittently over the next week at the end of which a thin, serpentine line of green grass sprouts snaked it's way from Vladek's shed to our verandah. The grass seed Vladek had sown on the garden was coming on too, a covering of light green wispy hairs which looked uniform unless I stood at the fence line and let my eye follow Vladek's vodka lines. The weather was warming up and we'd travelled all over the disrict trying to get plants for the garden but there were no nurseries anywhere. Alicja decided that she'd have to take a trip to Warsaw to look for a few ornamental trees and early one morning she started out.
-By the time you get back from Warsaw the lawn will have filled in, I told Alicja, -the whole thing will be green.
-Keep the water up to it won't you, she said, -and if you're going to be out in the garden all the time I'm away, wear a T shirt. You know what you're like for burning yourself.
-Yeah, sure. Don't worry about me.
-No, seriously, she said -the forecasters are saying June's going to be a hot month.
As usual she'd stocked the house with plenty of microwavable food for me so that I didn't need to go off the premises, except for walking Misha, and I was happy, I had a project to get stuck into - I was going to plant my first hedge. I had the ground well prepared in the morning but it was a scorcher of a day so I left it until the sun was going down before I started to put the hedge plants in the holes I'd dug. The bell rang and, looking over my shoulder I saw Dariusz at the gate. We never saw much of Dariusz. He only lived next door but one, but our paths seldom crossed and, consequently, he hadn't had a chance to develop an ear for my brand of Polish. He was asking me a question and although I could understand a little of what he was saying, he wasn't getting anything at all of what I was throwing at him.
We went next door to see Vladek who I had more contact with and could understand better. He was in the courtyard working on his tractor and Darius engaged him in a rather serious conversation during which I heard Vladek say three times -don't you worry, Peter won't mind. Dariusz shook my hand and walked off towards his house. I couldn't make out what was going on. Dariusz had come to our house to see me, he'd spoken with Vladek, and now he'd gone, leaving me none the wiser. I asked Vladek if I'd upset Dariusz. He put his spanner on the tractor seat then walked over to the tap and began to wash his hands before speaking. He told me that I hadn't upset Darius and he carried on talking slowly, stopping every now and then to make sure I understood what he was saying.
I understood the bit about Darius's mother and about the doctor but little else except for the Polish word for door. -Your door Peter - you know, the door.
I'd left my hedge plants with their roots exposed in the warm air and I wanted to get back to them before they dried out so I pretended to understand, but I was nodding in the wrong places and he saw through me.
-Come Peter, I'll show you, said Vladek.
We walked back to our house and he took his boots off and went inside, up the hall to our bedroom door.
-May I?, said Vladek, pointing to the bedroom door.
-Yes, I said
He stuck his foot under the door and slid it up off it's hinge posts. Then, with the door under his arm he walked back down the hall stopping at the outside door. He opened it and made me understand that he wanted to take it to Dariusz's house.
-OK, I said -Dariusz wants to borrow the door. Am I right so far?
-Good, Good, said Vladek.
-That's OK, but why does he want it?
Vladek said it was for Dariusz's mother and the doctor and he threw in a few words I didn't know for good measure. I couldn't grasp the full meaning of his discourse but I figured that I didn't have to - I'd got the gist of it, the part that concerned me.
I deduced that the doctor was coming to see Dariusz's mother and her bedroom didn't have a door.
-Yes, fine, I said. -How long does he want it for.
-Only two or three days, said Vladek.
-OK, no problem, I said.
Vladek left with the door under his arm and I carried on with my hedge plants. It was getting dark. When Alicja returned from Warsaw the first thing she asked about was the whereabouts of the bedroom door.
-Oh, Dariusz has borrowed it for a few days. It should be back tomorrow.
-Borrowed it, she said, -borrowed our bedroom door. People don't borrow doors they either have them or they don't have them. Why did he want our bedroom door?
-Search me; it's something to do with his Mum being sick. I didn't understand the conversation.
-It's about time you started knocking off work an hour earlier and studying the language. It's not just going to happen without some effort from you, you know.
I could sense a long standing dispute bubbling up again so I changed the subject and made a cup of tea while Alicja unpacked and showed me all the things she'd bought in Warsaw which we couldn't afford. She held up a jumper-
-What do you think?
-Not much.
It's not for me it's a present for Eva.
-How much did it cost?
-Not telling you.
A typical husband and wife conversation not carried on in the best of humour and it had all started because of her reaction to the missing bedroom door. I couldn't see anything wrong with the bedroom door being missing, especially as nobody was staying with us at the time. If she hadn't have come home a day early she wouldn't have known about it anyway - I would have had it back in place. But, with hindsight, I suppose it is a little unusual for a wife to come home and find that her husband has loaned the bedroom door to someone who lives up the road.
-All the doors are the same, I said. -I'll lift one off the small bedroom and put it on our bedroom - won't take a minute.
-It's a different colour.
-Oh shit, I said.
-OK, I'll leave you to be grumpy by yourself, said Alicja. -I'm going over Eva's to give her her jumper.
-I'm not bloody grumpy, you are.
The outside door slammed. She came back an hour later.
-You know that door?
-Yes I do seem to recall something about a door, I said. -Don't tell me, they've burnt the bloody thing to keep warm?
-No actually. Did you know Dariusz's mother had died?
-Oh, what a pity, she was a nice old thing.
-Well, that nice old thing is laid out on our fucking bedroom door. That’s what they wanted it for - to lay here out on.
When Dariusz brought the door back Alicja wouldn't have it in the bedroom. I couldn't understand her reasoning and pointed out that, as the woman didn't actually die on the door, (at least we didn't think she had) we shouldn't be troubled with a haunted bedroom or anything of that ilk. Alicja however, was adamant, and I had to swap it with the door in the kitchen. Even then she thought of Dariusz's mother every time she put the broom behind it.
Gradually we were beginning the convert some of the accommodation enquiries we'd been getting into firm bookings and everybody who came to stay with us liked the place. They liked the whole combination, house, garden, peasants, locality, peace and quite - all the work we'd done was beginning to pay off and there was a great deal of satisfaction in it for us. We had been living in Bocwinka long enough to start to taking for granted the things which we'd found the most appealing about living there in the first place. The guests liking it served as a reminder and the stories they told us about the crime rate in their own countries, the pressure of work, the traffic jams, being scared to let their kids play outside on the pavement, made us think that, all in all, we'd done the right thing.
They were fascinated by the simple people and the traditional farming practices in Bocwinka. Some likened it to the way rural Ireland had been fifty years ago. Older guests loved to see cows being milked by hand in the fields and peasant farmers using the scythe to cut their wheat and the old fashioned wheat sheaves stacked in rows in the fields. The concept of mixed farming where practically every farm had an assortment of pigs, chickens, cows, geese, ducks, and horses, and the sight of farmers growing things for their own, family use, is so long gone from the industrialised countries of Europe that, to most of our guests, it wasn't even a distant memory. Several guests told us that they'd seen these sights only as illustrations in children's "learn to read" books.
The storks which landed daily on our barn roof must have been amongst the most photographed birds in Europe. People seem to have a special kind affection for storks, for one thing they're big and instantly recognisable but it's the baby bringing legend which is fixed in everyone's mind. Many times guests would ask us what storks ate and, on being told that they carnivorous and predatory, found it hard to believe that such a nice thing was a natural born killer. We had expected that our guests would mostly be the bird, flower and animal watching types and we'd geared up for it, but the majority of them just wanted to sit in the garden and relax. They were captivated by the place itself and, apart from going for the odd half hour walk and photographing farmyards, we had them hanging around the garden all day.
We'd spent a considerable amount of time learning all about the flora and fauna which inhabited the forests and reed beds of the lakes and Alicja had collected reams of information about the local attractions. She'd collated all her findings and we'd had information sheets printed to show guests how to get to places, where to eat, and all those other little things which a good host does but hardly anybody was interested.
I felt like kicking them out of the house sometimes. They'd spent all that money to get to our place and now they were just hanging around a garden which they could have done at home. There was another World just outside the gate and they were going to go home not having seen it. The only place which did seem to interest them was Hitler's eastern front headquarters where he spent two years, on and off, directing the war against Russia. This is a massive complex deep within a forest about an hours drive from the house and seems to have some fascination for foreigners of all nationalities.
One of Alicja's information sheets showed how to get to the place and on the back of the same sheet were directions to The Church of The Holy Linden Tree a few kilometres further on. It's a truly spectacular, baroque religious church with an enormous organ on which recitals are played for the entertainment of visitors. Keith and Jenny, a young English couple who were staying with us, went to see it. When they returned I asked what they though of it. They were impressed with the guided tour and the architecture but the husband said that they could perhaps have been a little more reverent in the choice of music the nuns played in the souvenir kiosk.
-Oh, -I said. -Everyone plays Western music here these days and those two old ladies in the kiosk wouldn't have known what the words meant. I know the song you mean because when we were there, we had a laugh about it too. They were playing that song which goes "I'm crucifed, crucified by my saviour" - right?
-No,he said, -they were playing "You Sexy Motherfucker" by Prince.
As he was telling me this, Misha was barking her head off. Not her usual bark but an incessant gerrroudofitt sort of bark which I knew could mean one of two things - either the postman or Bogdan was at the gate. Funny how dogs take a dislike to some people isn't it?
It was Bogdan asking for help. Bogdan was very formal compared to the rest of the folks in Bocwinka. Everyone else called me Peter but Bogdan would insist on this formal, Polish approach, and called me Pan which roughly translates to mister. I didn't much like being called Pan by someone I knew well. It always seemed kind of un-friendly to me although it was never meant that way. It was just one of those cultural things I should have got used to - when in Rome do as the Romans do - but who wants to enter politics or go into the mafia?
Whilst living in Poland I often thought of having my surname changed by deed poll. Asonic maybe, what about that...Pan Asonic? Or maybe Demonium, Taloons or Orama? No, I've got it! - American Highway. Yes, just imagine receiving a letter addressed to Pan American Highway No 36 Bocwinka. Postman would be really stuffed wouldn't he?
Anyway, back to Bogdan. Most of the villagers adapted well to my lack of Polish grammar and they spoke a special, non grammatical pidgin Polish to me which didn't involve the genitive, accusative or any of that academic rubbish they put in the "You too can speak Polish in less time than it takes a rat to crawl up a drainpipe" language books.
-Peter, we need you - you are necessary.
-I've given up milk tanker driving Bogdan.
-No, we just need you to pull on a rope.
Simple, non grammatical Polish - I understood it. I understood the words, that is, but I didn't understand why it was necessary for me to pull on a rope - I'm a little round shouldered, granted, but I'm not exactly Quasimodo and we didn't have any bells in the village.
Keith and Jenny were still standing on the verandah and I excused myself;
-I'm sorry but I have to go and pull on a rope. I'll see you later.
-What's on the other end of the rope then, asked Keith.
-I don't know, I said, -but it must be pretty heavy.
-Is it alright if I tag along?
-Of course, I said -maybe you can pull on it too.
We followed Bogdan out of the gate and, straight opposite, across the lane, we saw the problem. A cow was stuck in the mud in the water meadows down at the river bank. Although the area close to the river bank was always soft underfoot this was a dry summer and the cows had been allowed to graze further down the slope than usual. There was an electric fence between the cows and the real boggy part of the meadow but Bocwinka is subject to power cuts on a regular basis. During one of these cuts one cow had walked straight through the fence and become bogged down. The ground was too soft for tractors and the horse owners were scared that their horses would get stuck in, so the only way was to pull the animal out using people power.
Planks had been laid across the bog and a simple rope harness wound around the cow's body and "leg pits". Now all the spare pieces of rope in the village were being knotted together to start the tug of war, albeit with an unwilling participant at the other end. I knew it was a serious matter because the Michellin ladies were all there. The Michellin ladies, as we called them, are 4 enormous sisters, in their mid forties, who are all married to local farmers. Each of them is as strong, if not stronger, than any man in the village, bar Big Jan, and this was an occasion requiring strength and above all, weight.
I'm not sure but I suspect that three of them are triplets because they all have the same looks, mannerisms and chins. Yes, chins - they each have this sort of corrugated neck which makes them look as though their heads are mounted on sliced loaves. It took some time to effectively knot together something like 10 pieces of varying thicknesses of old ropes but at last all was ready and we took a hold of the rope and pulled under the instruction of Mr Miankowski who was unable to participate on account of his bad feet.
One, two, three-pull! Nothing happened. One, two, three-pull! the rope broke sending us all to our knees on the planks. All were in good humour however, and the rope was repaired and we tried again. It was all pretty futile and the cow wasn't even trying. It seemed to have given up, resigned to its fate. Shovels were brought down to the meadow and a ramp dug towards the cow's front feet and saplings cut to place in front of the animal to prevent it sinking again when it was finally freed.
Alicja had been watching from the window and she arrived with Jenny to lend some extra weight to our end of the rope for the next try.
This time we were sure that the animal could be extricated and we waited for a few of the men to finish their cigarettes before trying again. We all stood around talking and Maria, one of the Michellin ladies who was acting as the tug of war anchor woman, still had a hold of the rope. I heard someone mention Marek and glancing up I saw him coming towards us in his usual crab-like gait - three steps forward, one step back, half a step sideways and off he goes again. Having a toe amputated had made no perceptible difference to the way he walked.
-Oh Jesus, Mary and Joseph, it's Marek, someone said
-That's all we need, how bad is he?
-Not too bad
Marek wasn't disliked by the rest of the village but he was a nuisance sometimes and couldn't stop giggling. Drunk though he invariably was, he had a wonderful sense of humour and would use his cover of drunkenness to crack jokes that he couldn't get away with if he was sober. I read in a magazine a while back that every time you drink alcohol you loose millions of brain cells. Well, either Marek was endowed at birth with an uncommon amount of them or his brain's on automatic pilot because he's permanently drunk and his head doesn't appear to be shrinking.
It's just one of life's unanswered mysteries as far as I'm concerned, like why lemmings don't buy life insurance policies or why Mormons all have the same pressure in their bicycle tyres. Marek had obviously just got out of bed. His fly was undone, hair all over the place and he looked half asleep as he came on down the hill.
-Czshpk, hic.....haa mud, haaargh - stuck in the hic mud!
Marek eyed Maria the Michellin lady who still held the rope.
-You'll never get her out of there - haaaargh. Not with only one cow you won't. And turning to Maria said -How'd you get stuck in there like that then? Luckily the Michellin ladies are all good sports, used to jokes about their weight, and they got as much of a laugh out of Marek's remark as the rest of us.
Then it was back to work again. Mr Miankowski shouted "One, two, three", muscles taughtened, chins shook and we heaved for all we were worth. There was a sucking noise as the cow moved and this time we managed to take a step forward before the weight of the animal pulled us slithering back to our starting point. Two more tries brought the same result and now the cow's owner began to look worried. A rest was suggested during which time the ramp was dug deeper and more saplings thrown in before the next try.
The ground was too soft for a tractor and if it didn't work this time, it was agreed by all, the owner would have to hire a bulldozer on tracks to get the poor animal back on terra firma. Marek was still staggering around muttering & giggling to himself but nobody paid him any attention as we all took a hold on the rope for the final effort. One, two, three-pull! What happened next I wasn't witness to because I was facing away from the cow but Alicja and Jenny told us all about it afterwards. All I knew was that there was a hell of a bellow and I, along with everyone else, went face down in the mud and felt the rope slithering under me.
Marek had untied the electric fence using the corner of his jacket to prevent himself getting a shock and then, as Mr Miankowski started his count down, raised the cows tail and thrust the wire hard up into it's nether regions. I felt every knot go by as the rope disappeared down the line underneath us until it got to Andrzej who had his foot wound around it and he took off on his back following the cow. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth was heard as they traveled towards a small patch of brambles from which the cow, the rope and Andrzej's right gum boot emerged.
We all ran over to where Andrzej lay and stood him up but although he was looking a little the worse for wear, no bones were broken.
But cows are funny animals you know, all they think about is eating and as soon as it was free of Andrzej it just stood still, grazing away as though nothing had happened.
-Heeee, hoooo....haaaaargh
We all turned around to see Marek kneeling in the mud still clutching the electric fence wire with the corner of his coat and giggling like a kid.
-OK that's got the cow taken care of, now it's your turn Maria, shouted Marek.
We were all having hysterics and the atmosphere was so good that the entire tug-o-war party stayed talking in the meadows until milking time. Keith and Jenny both agreed that it was the best fun they'd ever had on holiday.
It got me thinking though. With all this business about steroid taking among athletes lately, I wonder if there's anything in the Olympic rules about electric starting. Ben Johnson wouldn't have needed steroids if Marek had been around at the start of that famous 100 metre sprint.
Chapter 16
BEYOND THE PALESKI
Chapter 16
July saw us as the official stork counters for our local borough - a job which we were offered by a group of ornithologists who were part of an international team conducting a stork inventory covering the whole of Europe. The ornithologists were expecting to find over 30,000 storks (approximately 25% of the world's stork population) in Poland, most of which they expected to be located in the north east of the country and we were given a parish and a detailed map on which to mark each nest.
We were told that the area could be covered in three days on a bicycle but in fact it actually took Alicja & I thirteen days going around by car and if we'd known what we were letting ourselves in for we'd have thought twice about it. Some of the hamlets we visited consisted of only 2 or 3 houses with no car access and we had to walk across fields & down forest tracks to get to them. The farmers & foresters who lived in these places were, for the most part, completely cut off from the rest of the world for 3-4 months over winter and they told us that only during dire emergencies would they get the horse and sleigh out of the barn. In one small settlement we met a woman whose husband had died during winter and the body had to be kept in one of the out houses for 5 weeks while the temperature hovered between minus 15-25 Celsius and snow drifts prohibited travel.
This same woman told us that she had never met a foreigner although she had seen some Russian soldiers at some time near the end of WWII when they came through on the way to Berlin. She was a young girl at the time and her father had hidden her and her sister in the hay loft from where they watched the soldiers take all the vegetables from their garden and lead away their only cow. Needless to say, most people thought we were a little strange - nobody counts storks, least of all people who have all their senses about them - but the hospitality in some of these isolated places was something we won't forget for a long time. We returned home each day with a boot load of vegetables and flowers after having refused countless live chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese.
We were in the village of Zywy towards the end of our stork counting and asking questions of a young couple who had a storks nest on the roof. Alicja was asking the questions in Polish and telling me the answers in English as I filled in the spaces on the questionnaire. An older man appeared at the door, smiled and said -Vood yoo like to haff zum nize kalt beer unt to sit int dershadow?-I was quite taken aback at hearing English spoken in a village and accepted his offer. His name was Ernst and he was a German businessman spending his holiday with the occupants of the house who were distant relations.
He spoke no Polish, his hosts no German, and he wanted someone to talk to. He convinced us that we should stay for dinner. He was born in 1938 in that very house and had gone to Germany when the family was repatriated along with all the other Germans from the area at the end of the war. His mother had died recently in Germany and when going through her papers he found hundreds of newspaper cuttings pertaining to Zywy and other villages in the locality. He took these papers home and began to read them in the evenings and determined to visit the area and see if he could locate the house where he was born. He made enquiries by mail and, to his amazement; the husband of the young couple living in the house was related to him.
It was two years before he had time to return to his roots and, just before he did, he purchased a brand new, top of the line, Mercedes. His wife refused to accompany him on his trip to Poland and implored him not to take their new car saying that Poles were well known car thieves so, in an effort to appease her, he had spent a lot of money on the very latest, hi tech, computerised security alarm. He spent a week in Zywy where, as in Bocwinka, it was obvious that nobody in the village would steal his car and then he stole something himself. It was his grandmother's gravestone which he was going to take home to Germany and place alongside his mother's gravestone in the cemetery in the town where he lived.
He put the grave stone in the boot of his car and went off across the border to Kalingrad in Russia for two days and came back to Zywy again. Arriving after dark, he alarmed the car and went to bed.
Chapter 16
July saw us as the official stork counters for our local borough - a job which we were offered by a group of ornithologists who were part of an international team conducting a stork inventory covering the whole of Europe. The ornithologists were expecting to find over 30,000 storks (approximately 25% of the world's stork population) in Poland, most of which they expected to be located in the north east of the country and we were given a parish and a detailed map on which to mark each nest.
We were told that the area could be covered in three days on a bicycle but in fact it actually took Alicja & I thirteen days going around by car and if we'd known what we were letting ourselves in for we'd have thought twice about it. Some of the hamlets we visited consisted of only 2 or 3 houses with no car access and we had to walk across fields & down forest tracks to get to them. The farmers & foresters who lived in these places were, for the most part, completely cut off from the rest of the world for 3-4 months over winter and they told us that only during dire emergencies would they get the horse and sleigh out of the barn. In one small settlement we met a woman whose husband had died during winter and the body had to be kept in one of the out houses for 5 weeks while the temperature hovered between minus 15-25 Celsius and snow drifts prohibited travel.
This same woman told us that she had never met a foreigner although she had seen some Russian soldiers at some time near the end of WWII when they came through on the way to Berlin. She was a young girl at the time and her father had hidden her and her sister in the hay loft from where they watched the soldiers take all the vegetables from their garden and lead away their only cow. Needless to say, most people thought we were a little strange - nobody counts storks, least of all people who have all their senses about them - but the hospitality in some of these isolated places was something we won't forget for a long time. We returned home each day with a boot load of vegetables and flowers after having refused countless live chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese.
We were in the village of Zywy towards the end of our stork counting and asking questions of a young couple who had a storks nest on the roof. Alicja was asking the questions in Polish and telling me the answers in English as I filled in the spaces on the questionnaire. An older man appeared at the door, smiled and said -Vood yoo like to haff zum nize kalt beer unt to sit int dershadow?-I was quite taken aback at hearing English spoken in a village and accepted his offer. His name was Ernst and he was a German businessman spending his holiday with the occupants of the house who were distant relations.
He spoke no Polish, his hosts no German, and he wanted someone to talk to. He convinced us that we should stay for dinner. He was born in 1938 in that very house and had gone to Germany when the family was repatriated along with all the other Germans from the area at the end of the war. His mother had died recently in Germany and when going through her papers he found hundreds of newspaper cuttings pertaining to Zywy and other villages in the locality. He took these papers home and began to read them in the evenings and determined to visit the area and see if he could locate the house where he was born. He made enquiries by mail and, to his amazement; the husband of the young couple living in the house was related to him.
It was two years before he had time to return to his roots and, just before he did, he purchased a brand new, top of the line, Mercedes. His wife refused to accompany him on his trip to Poland and implored him not to take their new car saying that Poles were well known car thieves so, in an effort to appease her, he had spent a lot of money on the very latest, hi tech, computerised security alarm. He spent a week in Zywy where, as in Bocwinka, it was obvious that nobody in the village would steal his car and then he stole something himself. It was his grandmother's gravestone which he was going to take home to Germany and place alongside his mother's gravestone in the cemetery in the town where he lived.
He put the grave stone in the boot of his car and went off across the border to Kalingrad in Russia for two days and came back to Zywy again. Arriving after dark, he alarmed the car and went to bed.