Chapter 4

BEYOND THE PALESKI

Chapter 4


We had been toying with the idea of planting a maze on our land as a sort of added attraction to the guest house and I needed information on hedge plants so this was something I wanted to chase up in Warsaw. As far as I had been able to ascertain, there were no mazes at all in Poland and I told Alicja that if we built a maze around the house they'd have a hell of a job delivering the electricity bill but she remained singularly unimpressed.

-Think of the security aspect, I said. -Can you imagine some poor sod stealing our video recorder and trying to get out before Misha got him?

I had already written to Kew Gardens in England for advice on types of hedge plants and they replied saying that I should ask the staff at one of the Warsaw horticultural research stations because there are different climatic zones in Poland and they gave me the address. Armed with their letter, which I thought may impress, we visited the offices in Warsaw. I couldn't communicate too well with the receptionist but upon showing the Kew Gardens letter she recognized the Kew logo immediately. She called the director - a woman - and said that there was a visitor from Kew Gardens in reception.

We were shown in and given the red carpet treatment and asked how they could help us. I told her about the project and she was very enthusiastic about it and called in an expert, a gentleman of the horticultural persuasion. I remember thinking to myself that if he could tell us how to grow hedges anything like he could grow a beard we'd be onto something good. It was like talking to an Old English sheepdog. He had two magnificent headfulls of grey and white fluffy hair starting somewhere above the top of his head and flowing in an unbroken line down to his waist and there was no skin to be seen anywhere except for his nose and eyes. He even sounded like an old English sheepdog, all the words being muffled on the way out of a narrow, hirsute tunnel ending up in a low growl.

His lack of visible facial features however, changed dramatically when he opened his mouth which lit up like a gin palace as the sun glinted on an orifice half full of gold teeth. My mind shot back to a time three years before when, on hands and knees, I'd peered into a cave full of glow worms in Jugoslavia through a cleft in the rocks. But Madame Director and the sheepdog were both very helpful and gave us some sound advice on the types of plants which would withstand the harsh winters in our area. For some reason, at this point, I began to feel slightly uncomfortable in the physical sense of the word and shifted my weight on the chair which emitted a crunching sound. Further discreet probing with my fingers revealed that the chair was stuffed with gravel and covered with a thin layer of foam rubber.

I thought that this was taking things horticultural a bit far but, as far as I could ascertain, there was nothing actually growing in it. The Yeti/Sheep Dog/King Midas of the toothbrush spoke only Polish but knew all the Latin botanical names as well, while the director spoke Polish & English and didn't seem to know all the Latin names but was trying to impress this important visitor from Kew. Having determined which plants were best for the maze and having been warned off the Dutch seedlings, which they said were grown under glass and wouldn't stand Polish winters, I asked which trees could be used for screening the whole complex. We needed something that grew as fast as possible but could be trimmed at a height of 2 metres to form a tall, dense sort of hedge.

I had in mind pine trees because I knew they'd stand the Polish winters well and under ideal conditions could put on a growth of 75cm per annum. I asked if it was quicker, long term, to plant small trees which would take root fast or whether advanced, 3 year old plants, would come away quicker, pointing out that we couldn't afford to have even one tree which didn't take root. They were in favour of Hornbeam trees (Carpinus betulis) for which the Polish name is Grab. The Latin name for trees of the pine family being Pinus which in Polish is pronounced Peenus but sounds to the western ear like penis. After consultation with the sheepdog, the lady director turned to me.

-He says that in the long run the small penisis will come up faster than the big one and earlier will be the more solid one. But if you go for the grab, it's much better and only half the price.

I couldn't look at Alicja, for she'd have shown the slightest grin I'd have cracked up on the spot. I just drew in my cheeks and gripped the gravel. While in Warsaw we also had to re register the car for another year and for this, a certificate of roadworthiness was required. There were a few things wrong with the car but they couldn't be easily fixed because the model wasn't sold in Poland and spares were unavailable. One of the headlight glasses was cracked and if the car was to fail the test on this point it would have to be taken off the road until another glass could be imported. We found two testing stations which looked too good in that they were clean & efficient in appearance so we cruised around the suburbs until we found a really grimy looking place with a grimy looking tester. A few wrecks were scattered about the yard, rusty drums full of old sump oil waiting to be used in the heater when the weather cooled down and mechanics standing around smoking.

The overalls these guys wore were so covered in old grease and dust that they wouldn't have needed hanging up at the end of shift - they'd have been able to stand up in a corner somewhere. Mind you, the Alsatian guard dog looked worse than anything else in the yard, it too was covered in grease and dust and had some sort of skin problem which had caused it to loose most of the hair on it's back. It's teeth could only have been a distant memory and it couldn't have bitten anyone although it could probably have inflicted a nasty gumming.

We queued up for an hour or so until it was our turn and we had a good chance to observe the above mentioned grimy tester in action. He was as miserable as sin and he barked orders out to the various car owners as he told them to put their lights on, operate the windscreen wipers, press the brake pedal & so forth. Alicja and I agreed that I wasn't to speak a word of Polish during the test and she would play dumb and not know the English for the things that were wrong with the car. Just maybe, he'd give up when he couldn't get the message across.

Our turn eventually came and I drove the car onto a pair of rollers which the tester set in motion and then came the first order -Put the handbrake on. Alicja made a real mess of the instruction & I made out I couldn't understand her and she told the man that she didn't drive & didn't know the English for the word brake.

-Where's he from?

-He's from Australia.

-What's he doing driving a heap of shit like this then?

-Oh we don't have much money and we're on holiday here and we just bought this car to get around in. We'll sell it when we leave - couldn't afford to hire a car you see..........

With that he came up to the window and told me he had a brother with a second hand shop in Melbourne and asked if I knew the place. Alicja explained it to me and I said it was a great place. From then on the man was all smiles and terribly polite and he walked over and closed the garage doors so we wouldn't be bothered by the other people in the queue. He was saying things to Alicja like -would sir be so kind as to put the lights on.

This is good I thought, being a foreigner impresses people. Soon words gave way to hand signals and we no longer needed Alicja who went outside to stand in the sun and a young mechanic in his early twenties from the adjoining building came in to borrow a tyre lever. He saw the performance going on and asked what was happening.

-Oh, he's Australian.

-What language do they speak then?

-English

-How are you managing to communicate then? You can't speak English can you?

I could see the testers head swelling.

-Oh I get foreigners in here all the time. They all have to get their cars tested no matter where they come from. I've worked out a system. Yes, signs, I use signs, international signs, watch this.

He made a motion with his arm, pulling it up from the elbow and closing his hand to indicate to me that he wanted the handbrake on. I did this and the younger man was clearly impressed. This was followed by a blinking indicator sign right & left and start & stop signs for the engine and I was performing all these tasks like a trained monkey for him although we'd already been through them all once before. As soon as they'd finished their discussion and the young man went back next door the test ended abruptly. I was shown the cracked headlight glass and the bald tyres, the jerky windscreen wipers and told I'd have to buy a special reversing light like the one in a brochure he showed me. I smiled and put my hand in my pocket and produced the equivalent of ten dollars and handed it to him.

Into the office we went and he wrote out the certificate immediately. We shook hands and I addressed him in Polish saying -thank you very much for a very interesting experience. He was completely and utterly stunned. I was relating the experience to English speaking friends later in the evening, people with businesses and cash to spare and was told that I was silly to have gone through all that.

-Next time hand over the car papers with the ten bucks already inside before you start and you won't have to be in there for longer than it takes to write out the certificate, was their comment. -What's ten bucks when you can waste all that time?

In all we spent 6 nights in the city listening to friends telling us about the pressure of their work, other people’s divorces, the rocketing cost of living and so on and it bored us silly. But it was good to have a meal in a restaurant and go to a movie and speak English for a while. We left on the Saturday morning and 4 hours later we saw our regular old buzzard circling above the trees at the cross roads. Misha peed herself with excitement when we arrived and Eva was at our doorstep to greet us.

We had asked Eva & Vladek to sleep at our place and look after Misha while we were away and she was just as excited to see us as Misha had been although she didn't pee. I started to unload the car while Alicja went inside to put the kettle on and take the bags and suitcases from me as I made trips to and from the car. I plonked a couple of suitcases down on the step at Alicja's feet and looked up. She looked worried and I asked what was wrong, expecting to hear that Vladek and Eva had been cooking roast dinners or something in our toaster.

-Promise you won't be angry?

-I promise I won't be angry.

She led me into the bathroom and I was angry.

The imported Italian tiles we had traveled all over the district to find were stuck to the wall at various angles and touching each other leaving no room for the carefully chosen, colour co-ordinated imported German tile grout which we'd just brought back from Warsaw. Being unable to find a tile cutter anywhere, including Warsaw, I'd had a friend in England send us one but Bogdan's cousin, the tiler, had never seen one before and he'd used a pair of pliers to hack the tiles about, leaving jagged edges all over the place and he'd even broken two tiles and joined them together on the wall although there was half a box of unused spares on the floor.

I changed into my overalls immediately and began chipping the tiles away from the walls before the tile cement dried but it was too late and we ended up smashing the lot with a hammer. This was the last time we used "skilled labour" and apart from labouring jobs, we finished the whole house ourselves after getting my sister in England to send us every Do It Yourself book available. Mind you these books served to frustrate us no end as they were full of building materials and tools which we had no hope of getting where we lived.

Electrical wiring, plastering, bricklaying, plumbing and more - we did it all and made all the mistakes every amateur makes. It was what the books call a learning experience but the skills we developed will, hopefully, never be used again. By now we knew pretty well all of the people in the village as at one time or another they all came around the house to see what we were doing. At first they would offer advice but as the work progressed and they saw the general standard of finish on things, I became known as some sort of master craftsman and often found myself working with an audience.

They would marvel at my straight lines when I painted anything, not my ability to paint a straight line, but that I bothered to paint in a straight line at all. Products that hadn't yet made it to Bocwinka were of particular interest to all, especially silicon sealant which was dubbed "instant plastic" and thought by everyone to be the best thing yet invented. It was borrowed by everybody and now there's hardly a home in the village which doesn't bear some evidence of it and the makers of the product could do worse than to visit Bocwinka and see for themselves the applications to which it has been put.

I bet the makers didn't know, for example, that silicone sealant can be used for making artificial worms. They were used last winter as home made fishing lures which were jiggled in the water through the holes in the ice of the frozen lakes. And to good effect, it's reckoned in Bocwinka to be as good as any commercially available lure and, unlike real worms, it doesn't become brittle and snap in sub zero temperatures. Needless to say, nobody in the village ever bought a tube of silicone sealant - they couldn't afford it - they borrowed mine.

I first used it in front of an audience when I was fitting the satellite TV dish and wanted something to seal the co axial cable connections with. Someone asked what it was and I squirted a little on the fingers of all present to let them smell it and wipe it on their trousers knowing it would surprise them later when it solidified. It caused a lot of chatter and attracted the attention of a woman who I'd never seen before. She was passing by in the lane and upon hearing the lads, all excited like, wandered up the drive and stood among the crowd watching me. I didn't know who she was and she didn't introduce herself but she had a quieting effect on the proceedings and not a word was murmured until she left.

About a week later I was outside fastening a mail box to the fence, to stop the post lady from walking straight into our kitchen, when this woman turned up again and began an interrogation concerning our satellite TV system. She addressed me formally as "Pan" (sir) and she was unusually well spoken for a person living in Bocwinka. It had been a long time since I heard clearly spoken Polish which I could easily understand. She was, I suppose, in her mid fifties, her clothes were in tatters and she carried a home made string bag which was full wild mushrooms and various sprigs of wild plants such as stinging nettles and cowslips.

-Excuse me Pan, she said, -but I have an interest in that satellite of yours-

-Yes madam, what would you like to know?

-Well, I walk past here three times a day and that thing there (pointing to the dish) is always in the same place.

-Yes we only pick up the one satellite you see. There are others but we don't have a moveable dish.

She thanked me and went on her way only to appear again a few days later, first thing in the morning, when I was working in the garden.

-Excuse me Pan, but I didn't really understand what you told me about the satellite the other day. The satellite moves all the time doesn't it? I mean, it's up there in the sky going around all the time isn't it?

-Yes, that's right it's moving very fast in fact.

-Well how come that dish thing on your wall stays still then?

I explained as best I could that the satellite traveled at exactly the same speed as the earth as if on the spoke of a gigantic wheel and that it always stayed in the same place relative to our satellite receiver dish. I don't think that she got the idea but she nodded her head and winked at me as much as to say "dead clever these Chinese." At that point we ran out of conversation for a while and she told me that I shouldn't plant vegetable seeds next year until after the bullfinches had gone from the area. -They don't leave until after the last frost you know.

She then stared at me for a second or two.

-They say you've been to Australia?

-Yes that's right.

-Did you go there on a plane?

-Yes, on a plane.

-How does the plane land in Australia then?

-Just the same as here in Poland. I didn't notice any difference.

She had a stick in her hand and she drew the earth and then described an arc indicating the path of the plane travelling from Poland to Australia.

-When you get here. In Australia. The plane's the other way up isn't it? What I mean Pan, is that to come down to earth again it's actually got to go up as it were.

My breakfast was waiting for me and I tried to extricate myself from the situation by feigning ignorance but she wouldn't let me go.

-You're an educated man sir. I can see that. I'd like to talk to you some time about the universe. We have a small library here but there's nothing in it about the universe.

I asked a group of farmers outside the post office the next day, who this woman was and found that she was regarded as a weirdo by the rest of the village. She never visited anyone, even at Christmas, had no friends and apart from the village children, she was the only person who used the library. She'd apparently read every book in it several times and hadn't been out of the village for over twenty years. She had a widows pension, didn't use electricity (although it was connected to the house) grew her own food and hauled her own logs from the forest for cooking & heating. Andrzej the shopkeeper told me that she came in one day with a gap where there used to be a rotten tooth. -Visited the dentist have you madam?, asked Andrzej.

-No, she said, -pulled it myself.

I found out from the post lady, who delivered the occasional letter to the woman, that her name was Marta and I only came into contact with her on one more occasion before she died a few weeks after our discussion about the satellite dish. An English ecologist had written to us asking if we could show him some badgers during his intended stay and I asked Vladek if he could tell me where they lived. He told me to go and see Marta because, he said, she had once been seen feeding them at night in the old German cemetery.

She didn't invite me in and I could see that the house and outbuildings were in a bad state of decay from years of neglect. It was the only house in the village which didn't have chickens scratching around the yard, in fact no signs of animals at all except for a storks nest on the barn roof and I suspect that she was a total vegetarian because nobody in the village could ever remember seeing animals at her house. I asked her about the badgers and received a rather strange reply. She told me that she was sorry but she wouldn't tell me where to find them because all the animals were creatures of the earth and their relationship was to the earth and not to other species. She said that animals shouldn't bother each other unless they were predators and that they'd contact people if they felt the need.

“You'll just have to be patient Pan, and if, in your heart, you really want to meet them, they'll come to you eventually.”

For some reason it made news in the village that I'd visited "the strange one" and Jurek's mother made a point of stopping me on the road one day and telling me that it was widely believed that Marta didn't believe in God. She never turned up at either the Polish or Ukrainian shrines on religious days, her husband was buried in the village cemetery and she never visited the grave. -The devil's waiting for that one -Jurek's mother said.

I've always been attracted to out of the ordinary people and I've often regretted that I didn't get to know Marta before she died but at the time we were simply to busy renovating to go out and socialize. Her house was taken over by the council because there were no living relatives and, finding it beyond repair, they knocked it down and I took a few bricks from the rubble to build our barbecue with - I think that's the only memory of her now left in Bocwinka.