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?