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.