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.