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.