Chapter 3

BEYOND THE PALESKI

Chapter 3

Renovating a house anywhere in the World comes with its attendant problems and we knew that taking on such a project, even in the West wouldn't be without them. We knew too that in this far flung backwater of the former Soviet empire things were going to be a little more frustrating but we could never have imagined some of the difficulties we would encounter.

We theorised that now communism had gone and free enterprise was becoming rampant in Poland there would be no more shortages in the shops and, whilst that may have been true for food and a few other essentials, it wasn't true for building materials. There were shortages for different reasons - former state owned industries were going bankrupt at a rate of knots leaving a manufacturing vacuum which wasn't yet being filled.

The floorboards in one of the bedrooms had been covered with linoleum which I'd lifted to reveal a patchwork of various sized floorboards and under them was a layer of beech leaves which had served as insulation. The beech leaves had also served as a food supply for a variety of weevil like, maggoty creatures which we didn't think our future guests would come to love and develop meaningful relationships with during the short periods spent in the house. I spent a day lifting all the floorboards in the room and, along with the aforementioned weevil like magotty things, burnt them in the yard.


A couple of days later we took a trip into town to our one and only hardware store to order the new floorboards and the new floor joists to which they would be nailed. The owner of the store would visibly cringe every time we walked in the door because five times out of ten we'd be asking for something he'd never heard of and I'd end up drawing pictures of things like spokeshaves and tubes of silicon sealant only to be told that, whilst he thought these things were good ideas, they were all in the realms of fantasy as far as he was concerned. So on this day we asked him where we could obtain plain, simple old floorboards. We were in luck, he'd heard of them - in fact, he assured us, just about every house had them.

-OK, good, so where do we go to buy them?

-When do you want to use them? he asked.

-Yesterday, preferably.

-Mmmmm..... floorboards are things you usually plan a couple of years in advance.

Now, as I don't want to take up an entire chapter on the subject of floorboard procurement in north east Poland, I'll try to make a long story short. First we had to visit the manager of the local forestry department who asked us if the floor was going to be varnished or whether we'd cover it with linoleum. When we told him that we intended to varnish the floor he advised us to wait until the following summer. I couldn't see the reason for it so asked him why.

-It's the wrong time of the year, the sap will be falling.

-So what's wrong with that?

-It means that the floorboards will have a pink tinge to them.

It took a lot of persuading on our part to convince him that we didn't mind pink tinged floorboards if it meant that we could get them this year instead of waiting until the following summer. He reluctantly agreed to help us and arranged for us to meet one of his men in the forest a week later. On the appointed day, and at the appointed spot in the forest, we met Leszek the forester. It was a cold day, the forest canopy all but excluded the sunlight and we were shivering by the time he turned up.

He was an hour late and came almost silently through the trees in a horse and cart and before acknowledging our existence he climbed down and filled the horse's nosebag with hay and fitted it over the horse’s mouth. Then, taking an axe from the back of the cart, wandered over to where we were standing. He was positively Neanderthal in appearance, looking as though he had only recently learned how to walk upright. He was unshaven, his breath stank of vodka, and his forehead sloped abruptly back from his nose. Once, in Bulgaria, we'd stopped our campervan to make a cup of tea and I'd walked up over a ridge to take a leak and had run slap bang into a family of shepherds clad from head to foot in nothing but sheepskins. It was as though I'd stepped back in time two centuries but the man who now stood in front of us was from an era way before this.

He was, to all intents and purposes, a product of the forest. His jacket was made from different coloured furs and a bunch of herbs of some kind was pinned to the collar. His trousers were of deerskin tied below the knees with leather thongs and his crowning glory a Russian style fur hat with flaps loosely flapping about his ears which he lifted when he listened to what we had to say. Only his gum boots attested to the fact that he was living in the twentieth century.

-You must be Leszek

-Why do you want floorboards at this time of the year, the sap's falling?

-It's the only time of year we'll be able to get that special pinkish tinge we're looking for, I replied.

They'll be weak if they're cut now - won't last you more than fifteen years and you'll have to replace them.

We spent half a day tramping around in the undergrowth looking at suitable floorboard trees and Leszek knew his stuff, or at least, he knew a hell of a lot more than me, enough for me to be impressed. He could tell exactly how much floorboarding we'd be able to get out of each tree, he knew which trees would be rotten on the inside, whilst showing no visible symptoms on the outside, and could judge the required length of four metres with only a cursory glance. He marked our trees with his axe and felled them the next day.

Vladek arranged two tractors and trailers to transport the trees to the sawmill where they were cut into rough boards and we were advised that we should leave them for two years to season. Ignoring the advice we located a wood drying kiln some 20 kilometres distant and organised for the boards to be transported there to spend a week drying in the kiln. Organising transport wasn't an easy task as most of the tractors in the locality weren't registered for the road and the owners reluctant to venture out of their villages. We hired a forestry department truck and driver for the job and paid in vodka. A week in the kiln wasn't really enough to thoroughly season the wood but as this was the only kiln in the district and they had other orders to take care of, a week was all the time we could get and we were advised to lay the boards without nailing them down for a year or so to give them time to shrink.

Next the partially dried, rough floorboards had to be taken by us to a carpenters shop to smooth plane them and put the tongues and grooves in and, after another round of vodka bottles for the transport, "hey presto" we had floorboards. This was achieved in the record time, so we were told, of only 6 weeks and, not taking the advice of those who knew, I laid them down and nailed them all. Six months later we had to lift them all and re-lay them because over a distance of 5 metres we had a total shrinkage of 12 centimetres.

Floorboards, however, were the least of our worries - the general quality of Polish tools and building materials was far worse and when I got around to fitting the two door locks we'd bought with us from Warsaw I was in for a frustrating time. Firstly our door frames were made of metal and to fit the lock catches I had to drill two holes. I opened my brand new set of Polish drill bits for the occasion and started work, but it soon became evident that the drills were too soft to attack the metal of the door frames. "Oh intercourse", I seem to remember saying to my good woman as the third one broke on contact and she set off hot foot on a quest for harder drill bits.

She returned some hours later with two German drills she'd managed to borrow from our man in the hardware store in town and these cut through the steel of the door frames like they were made of butter. Next I took from the packet two self tapping metal screws with which I attempted to fasten the catch to the frame. No such luck. I used up the whole packet of screws but none of them would screw into the metal frame, the threads stripping as I turned them. Alicja had been watching the proceedings and I looked up at her.

-If you think I'm going all the way to town again just to spend the rest of the day looking for non existent screws you'd better think again, she told me.

I threatened violence but to no avail and went off into the garden to vent my frustration on Misha who wasn't particularly sympathetic either.

The next day Alicja returned from somewhere with a packet of German self tapping screws and I kissed her. They were Philips screws with a star shaped slot - I didn't have a Philips screwdriver. Nothing daunted I set off for next door but Vladek didn't have one either although he knew who did.

-Go and see the Soltys (the village head man) he's got a couple of them, said Vladek.

Alicja accompanied me to the Soltys house in case I wouldn't be able to make myself understood and I got a loan of the two screwdrivers and we ended up inviting the Soltys and his wife over for a cup of coffee. While we were there I asked where their toilet was and that was when I found out that, in Bocwinka, only a few houses had inside toilets - in fact some of the houses didn't have any form of toilet! Not only that, but we were one of the few that had running water inside the house at times when it wasn't raining outside.

When we first moved into our house there had been running water both hot (from the slow combustion stove) and cold but we thought that our lack of a proper bathroom had been an exception rather than the rule and building a bathroom had been our first priority. So on the way home from the Soltys' house we had something new to discuss - the toilet habits of the Polish peasant.

-What happens? I asked Alicja, -when it's thirty below zero and you need a pee. I'm sure I wouldn't struggle into all that clothing just to go outside and pee in the yard where icicles would probably form before it hit the ground. Alicja pointed out that at that sort of temperature ones skin freezes to things upon contact and we wondered how many people had frozen to death in Bocwinka over the years from being stuck to an outside loo seat. By the time we arrived home it was just on dusk and I set to work straight away while Alicja prepared dinner. The German self tapping screws were magnificent, really hard metal and infinitely superior to the metal of the Polish door frame. Unfortunately they were also infinitely superior to both of the Soltys' screwdrivers, the ends of which both twisted off before my very eyes.

It took many months for me to learn not to become frustrated at happenings such as this. It was senseless to be angry in instances where nothing could be done to improve the situation but for me, a do it now person, it was hard going. I got used to sawing slots in screws before using them, cutting the lumps off of the pointed ends of nails where part of the head of the next nail was attached. I got used as well, to tools like chisels breaking and bending on me, pliers and stillsons the teeth of which blunted at the first time of using. The ultimate in bad quality tools, as far as I was concerned, was a brand new claw hammer which broke in half while I was using it - not the handle - the metal part!

There was a knock at the door one day and there stood an American, Chris Sykes. I said hello and he answered me in English which at first took me aback as I hadn't heard any English spoken in a long time. He had volunteered for an assignment in Poland working for a division of the World Bank, teaching business management to small entrepreneurs (Pygmies?)and he stayed with us for two weeks. One night when he returned home he mentioned that he would be dealing with the subject of quality control the next day and asked if we had any ideas. I told him about the tools, screws, nails and so forth and showed him a few reject screws I'd been keeping as conversation pieces. He couldn't believe what he saw and asked me what percentage of screws didn't have slotted heads. I couldn't put a figure on it and so he decided to get up early in the morning and buy some screws before going into work.

He bought two kilograms of 1" long wood screws and distributed them in small piles to each of 6 teams and asked them to sort into two piles - those which were usable and those which were not, gave them a few minutes and walked around to inspect the results. The students were so used to bad quality goods after suffering nearly 50 years of communism that they had put what Chris clearly considered rubbish into the good pile and so he had to break down the screws into categories:

1 Those with no slots in the head

2 Those with slots but no thread

3 Those with blobs of metal where the pointed end should be

4 Rivets (those with no slots or threads)

5 Those with slots so deep that the screwdriver would break the heads in half as they were turned.

Out of the two kilograms of screws he finished with eleven usable items and took the whole bag back to the States as a souvenir. Of course, what I didn't tell him was that out of the eleven there would be four or five which would twist in half when they were only half way through the wood. It was great to have Chris around for that fortnight, he had a great sense of humour and just to be able to speak English to someone other than Alicja was a delight. And it was while Chris was staying with us that the Soltys and his wife turned up one Sunday afternoon for that cup of coffee we'd offered them.

Poland is opening up to western ideas with a rapidity which continues to amaze me from week to week. This is particularly true, of course, in the cities, where American fast food has already all but replaced the far healthier traditional Polish take away food. The television is now full of voiced over western advertisements and it's this form of advertising which reaches the homes of the villagers in Bocwinka and, on this occasion, it was the home of the Soltys and his wife. They came into the kitchen and sat down at the table where we introduced Chis to them and then, pointing to our kitchen window sill Jana, the Soltys' wife, enquired -is that a toaster?

-No, I replied, -that's a window sill. She didn't recognise my small attempt at humour and getting up and touching the toaster she unleashed a barrage of questions about it.

-Australians eat toast all the time you know. On "Neighbours" they're always eating it. The bread jumps out when it's cooked doesn't it? I've never tried toast. I saw a toaster advertised on TV but the talk was too fast.

- Would you like to try some now?, I asked.

-How long will it take?

After assuring her half a dozen times that it would be no problem and they'd get home in time for the afternoon milking we embarked on a marathon toast tasting session. Honey, jam, cheese spread, tomato - you name it, they devoured it. But it was the conversation which took place directly after the first slice that stuck in my mind.

-What did you think of it?, I asked.

-Mine was a bit burnt, said the soltys.

-So was mine, said Jana.

We then had to explain the whole concept of toast.

-That's what toast is, really, said Alicja.

-What?.. burnt bread?.. Doesn't the toaster do anything else......just burn the bread? I thought it was a bit strange that you didn't put anything in with it, just the bread. What are all those numbers for?

-Oh they're just different settings. You can vary the degree of burning from just warm to absolutely black.

-Why do they have a setting that makes it black? Do Australians eat bread so burnt that it's black?

-Well, no actually, they don't

-So what's it for then?

We didn't have an answer. I'd never thought about it before but they were right, who eats badly burnt toast? We then pointed out that the toaster was useful because you could use yesterdays bread for breakfast. This didn't seem to be a real advantage to them because, as they told us, they use week old bread.

-You just wrap it in a damp towel and put it in the slow combustion oven for 5 minutes when you get up and the oven's still warm from the night before. You wouldn't know that it wasn't fresh bread.

As for toast/burnt bread, they informed us, all you have to do is wait for the stove to heat up and throw the bread on the hot plate.

-Better than that toaster thing too, if you've got a big family like us. We could get 10 pieces of bread on top of the stove. You can only get two in that thing.

We had to admit that the toaster was a stupid western invention just made for people who have more money than sense and that eating burnt bread anyway was just a little bit silly and after they'd eaten all our bread and cleaned out our honey jar they left. A couple of weeks later Eva dropped off our mail on her way home from the post office. Eva goes up to the Soltys house for an hour every morning to help get the kids off to school & clean up the breakfast dishes because Jana goes to work.

-You've got a toaster haven't you?

-Yes Eva.

-Did you show the Soltys wife how to make toast?

-Yes Eva.

-Thought so. She's down the post office bragging about how they have toast every morning for breakfast. What's it like anyway, this toast?

-Well Eva, it's just burnt bread actually, it's a silly idea really.

-Oh, that must account for all that black stuff in their sink every morning.

By now it was the beginning of August, the weather was hot and the days long and the storks on the school house roof had reared five chicks which were learning to fly and would daily land in our garden in search of frogs and worms. Our water meadows all the way down to the river were covered in wildflowers and daily we'd see a pair of cranes in the back fields and we realised that we were missing out on the best part of the year. We were tired of renovating with it's daily hassles but we realised too that if we were going to be ready to receive guests the following spring, we'd just have to keep at it.

Our every day schedule was one of work, eat and sleep and we had been putting in twelve to fifteen hour days ever since we moved in. Neither of us had ever renovated a house before and we were doing everything ourselves not only to save money but also because there were no tradesmen in the area who'd ever seen the standard which needed to be met. The few tradesmen we had used had proved to be thoroughly unreliable and would just fail to turn up next day if they didn't like the work or, as we later dicovered, we gave them coffee instead of vodka during their breaks.

It was around that time that the bathrooms were ready for tiling and Bogdan told us that he had a cousin who was a good tiler, didn't drink and was a hard worker. Alicja was glad to hear about Bogdan's cousin viewing the news as a way to give me a break because, as she kept telling me, I'd been overdoing it. I wasn't so sure, but after meeting the man, and judging him to be a cut above the average; I agreed to give him the work after leaving detailed written instructions with diagrams in case he couldn't read. He told us that he'd tiled twenty rooms in the hotel in town and invited us to go there and have a look at his workmanship. That was good enough for me and we hired him and went off for a weeks holiday to visit Alicja's brother in Warsaw and look around the city hardware shops hoping to find a few imported tools and a double drainer sink for the kitchen.

I was happy about the tiling arrangement mainly because Bogdan had arranged it and Bogdan was something of a perfectionist. His hair was always neat, his garden well kept, children well dressed and he was the only person in Bocwinka who had a book shelf with books on it. All these little things, I told myself, went to show what kind of a guy Bogdan was and I knew that he wouldn't see his cousin let us down.