A Chip Shop in Poznań, page 13
Tim leaves around midnight with a girl called Mari and her colleague Aga. I join them at Dragon a couple of hours later. I mostly sit quietly in the garden while Tim shows Mari footage of himself introducing a golf tournament on BBC News. Mari hints on several occasions that Aga is keen to know me better. I tell Mari that I’m so exhausted I couldn’t desire a sticky toffee pudding, not if my life depended on it. Besides, there is Anita. There is always Anita. She owns the back of my mind.
11 August. It is early afternoon and Tim is still asleep. I get on the floor and shuffle up to his bedside and hope to gently rouse him by whispering in his ear all I know about Poland. I tell him of the king who was kind to Jews because he had fallen for one. I tell him about the various partitions which saw the country portioned like a pie. I speak of 966, of June ’56, of 1655 when the Swedes popped over for an ultra-violent session of Supermarket Sweep, and finally the popular pope who got shot in the face but wasn’t bothered. I vouch for golonka and bigos and then disparage Chopin, hoping this last might cause him to stir, it being so unjust. It does the trick. Tim yawns and stretches and then opens his eyes one at a time, which is weird. The first thing he says is: ‘Can we go and see Bridget Jones’ Baby tonight?’48
16 August. A slow shift with Kuba in the evening. To pass the time, I am purposefully attentive to small things. The look of paper towel as it slowly takes on oil. The sound of chips and seasoning being thrown about in a slick metal bowl. The gradual softening of frozen cod fillets under a tap. The cling of soles on linoleum. The distant hodgepodge of talk at the bar and at the tables. The wind making music out of the trees. The fit of bubbles as potato lands in boiling oil, and the pursuant drama of a pale limp chip being engulfed and altered in the fryer. Kuba’s breathing, louder and heavier when he has headphones on. The slow motion of Lucas smoking behind the bar. I am attentive for an hour then stop because I cut myself.
17 August. Anita arrives at the flat. The plan was to look at flight options for the wedding. In the event, before the kettle has even boiled, Anita is saying that she can’t come because her passport has expired. I let the kettle finish boiling before I reply. That’s alright, I say. She doesn’t stay long after that. I don’t think she even finishes her tea.49
47 ‘But I’ve no spade to follow men like them. / Between my finger and my thumb / the squat pen rests. / I’ll dig with it.’
48 The best thing about the film was that we were sat right at the back, as far away from it as possible. Tim left the next morning.
49 I remember not being that bothered about Anita not being able to come. If anything, I think I was relieved. For all my daydreaming about red dresses and what-not, I still feared her company, and feared that too much of it would result less in anagnorisis (which is not a type of orgasm) and more in confirmation that we are a poor match, a bad team, at odds, notwithstanding the fondness we have for each other.
21
What do the Polish do at the seaside? (Sopot)
20 August. Sopot is on the north coast of Poland betwixt Gdańsk and Gdynia and its flag depicts a seagull killing a fish. The local tennis courts were put down before the local church was put up. There is an annual Wagner festival that was established by Wagner to celebrate the works of Wagner. The synagogue was burnt down in 1938, the Kaczynski twins (elder died in a plane crash; younger heads the current government) were born and raised here, and, most ominous of all, the town is twinned with Southend-on-Sea.
At the bottom of Monte Cassino (the main shopping street) is a long pier reaching out into the Baltic Sea. I had a Polish teacher for a while, Monika, and she and I once got our wires crossed regarding a pier. For some reason, I was trying to say the word pier in Polish. She leant in, straining to make sense of my effort.
‘What are you trying to say?’ she said.
‘Pier,’ I said, in English.
‘Ah,’ she said – ‘gruszka.’ (I now know that gruszka means pear, not pier, but I didn’t at the time.)
‘Fine,’ I said, then continued with my story in Polish: ‘Yeah, so there isn’t much to see in Portsmouth, apart from the big pear.’
‘The big pear?’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ I said.
‘That’s interesting,’ she said.
‘Well, not really,’ I said.
‘Not really?’ she said.
‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘most coastal towns have got one.’
In any case, I give Sopot’s pier a miss because it’s 10 zloty to get on the thing. Ten zloty to be 50 metres closer to Sweden? Jog on.50
There is a Starbucks on the beach. Not by the beach, on the beach. I get changed in the café’s disabled toilet. No one from Starbucks seems to mind me doing so. Indeed, the staff seem uncharacteristically friendly. I witness one staff member, a girl in her early twenties and rushed off her feet, give time she plainly can’t spare to an old lady who has more than she knows what to do with. I buy an espresso and then tap-dance across the sand to the Baltic Sea – ouch! ooh! ow! eee! – wishing all the while, coffee jumping about willy-nilly, that I’d left my socks on.
To speak plainly, it feels odd to be on a Baltic beach, to have one’s feet scorched by sand next to a body of water synonymous with frigid conditions. Back in England, to suggest that it’s very cold we often say, ‘Cor – it’s Baltic.’ I say this a few times a year, which is probably about normal for someone my age, though henceforth I’m going to stop saying it, because it’s like the Gobi Desert up here. Half of the beach dwellers are in their birthday suits or thereabouts. One man is wearing a pair of swimming trunks so small that if he wished to recycle the Lycra he wouldn’t have enough for an eyepatch. They call this part of the country the Polish Riviera, if you’ll credit that. Polish Riviera doesn’t seem to fit, does it? The phrase has an oxymoronic quality, like ‘military intelligence’ or ‘business ethics’. Traditionally, Sopot has been a resort for the well-heeled, and on the face of it continues to be so, though I admit it can be hard to judge the quality of a person’s heel when they’ve nothing on. The sea here is also known for its healing properties. Busloads used to come with fractured ankles and lung cancer to ‘take the waters’ and be improbably cured. In the event, the only thing that happened when they took the waters was they got wet.
When I call at a bar at the bottom of Monte Cassino and ask for directions to a hostel on the edge of town, I’m given four sets from four punters: my map is massacred with conflicting biro. A long walk follows, through sloping semi-suburbs in search of shelter. The hostel, when I find it, is full. An alternative is suggested via the intercom – Lunatic on Independence Avenue – but that’s also full. I don’t mind the setbacks: searching for a bed allows for an initial survey, a rough introduction, and it forces me to ask questions, seek advice, off-the-cuff and off-line. Ignorance is fruitful. My slow lap of Sopot concludes at the MOLO Hotel by the train station. It is 50 quid a night. Given that it’s 8pm, and given my luck so far, I don’t turn my nose up. The hotel is certainly spacious; you could have a cricket match in the lobby; but spaciousness doesn’t always add character, if anything it is wont to take it away. The received wisdom has space down as a prize, a reward, a marker of status, something to be strived for, paid through the roof for, and yet in my experience too much space tends to be isolating and stressful, because it takes you away, it removes you. In my hotel room there is room for several others. There is bottled water but no biscuits and no tea and coffee making facilities, which are the only reason the British bother with hotels. I pop down to the spa, hoping to improve myself. I give the sauna a go, but it was hotter in my room to be frank, so give up after five minutes, less relaxed than when I went in. The steam room is on form, however. The mist is impenetrable. I use my hands to find a tiled bench, and then slide into a corner. I close my eyes and deliberately relax.
‘Dzień dobry,’ says a male voice from somewhere in the steam room. I say nothing, thinking it might be coming from a speaker. When the voice sounds again, when it asks me how I’m doing, I know I’m not alone.
‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘And sir?’
‘You should be naked,’ the man says, ‘I’m naked.’ As if to prove his point the man gets up and brings his nakedness towards my nose. He’s doing a back stretch, he says, because he can’t bear being stiff any more.
I get out and lie down on a heated bench. There are two mirrors directly above me – one reflects my lower body, the other my upper. My midriff is politely avoided. Between the mirrors is a mosaic of Narcissus leaning into a pool of water. I’m not in the habit of looking at myself. Paradoxically, the reason I resist my reflection is vanity – I fear what I’ll see, I worry that I’ll disappoint myself. It is concern for my appearance that makes me avoid it. If I remain ignorant of my appearance, I reason, I can hold on to the idea that I look like James Dean. I look at my face. It looks tired, there’s no doubt about it. It needs a shave. The ears are irregular, curvy, on the large side, which is why I prefer to keep them covered with hair. I’ve never looked at my eyes. Not really. I quite like them. There’s a chip on one of my upper front teeth, which is why I prefer to keep my mouth shut in photos. The teeth aren’t white; they speak of bad habits. I move down to my knees. The left is bigger, bloated, damaged. It has been since a bad tackle playing football when I was ten. I don’t like the knee, but not sufficiently to hide it away. People don’t judge knees. I’ve got an even coat of body hair, which isn’t ideal, but I’ve never bothered to remove any of it because I don’t want people to think I care. It’s a blessing my middle isn’t reflected, else we’d be here all day. It’s a can of worms down there. I close my eyes and count to 50. I get to thirteen then decide that none of it matters.
The main street is swamped with inordinate couples ambling in the late summer twilight. I am not being hyperbolic. There is a very infestation of couples. A plague of conjoined drones, each pairing sun-kissed and senseless. What do they say to each other? I return to the bar where I’d been given directions. Sztos it’s called, on Generała Józefa Bema Street. (Joseph Bema was a local baker.51) One of the girls who gave me directions is behind the bar. Because we’d had a little chat and a bit of a laugh earlier, she insists I don’t have to pay for my drink. I ask where to go next and she tells me to try the oldest pub in Sopot, The Blue Poodle, which has been trading since 1992. I take a table on the terrace, consider the menu. I like its opening boast in English: ‘Artistic interior, climatic music, delicious drinks and excellent Polish cuisine mean the already above threshold could fall into the amazing atmosphere.’ I’d say that was spot on. The pub’s terrace is like the stalls of a theatre, arranged to give diners a view of the street-stage, on which an ensemble of sad clowns and drunk mechanicals perform an unwitting drama: there is a dispute over a spilt drink, and then the man who did the spilling gets up to remonstrate and drops his coins and there is a scrap for the spoils. I feel like a pervert watching; using this unfortunate fish tank for light entertainment. All of us vacationers on the terrace with monkfish and clams, set up to gawp at the resort’s Commedia dell’arte.
On a Tuesday there is only one disco open, upstairs in the crooked house across the street. I leave the stalls and cross the stage and climb the stairs to Ego. It is unduly full. Loud, indecipherable music. Couples sit at the bar, while around the dance floor hopeful boys sip their drinks and share agendas. I take a seat to the side and there try in good faith to understand what pleasure is being had by those around me. A spirit of enquiry drew me to Ego, but what is everyone else’s excuse? The singletons can plead desire, but what about the unspeaking couples nursing drinks they don’t appear to want? A girl approaches and tells me to smile. Then she performs the instruction because nothing can be heard. You need to have fun, she shouts. You need to smile. You need to smile because if you don’t, I might start to doubt myself. Smile, she says. I don’t have to, I say. Then go home, she says. I smile when she says that. Because she’s got a point. I entered Ego fully aware it wasn’t going to do much for me. I entered as a cynic, an ombudsman, a lightweight anthropologist, a jerk. I entered because it intrigues me that at the end of the day this is what we do. People want levity, gaiety – I get that. People want concentration, congestion, traffic, they want to collide – I get that, too. People want an alien-abstract environment at odds with life, where things are on hand to sustain the departure, the displacement, the disappearance. I get it. I understand and relate. I’ve been here a thousand times, dancing to the tune. But being here alone makes you see more; it makes you see the sorrow.
I go to church after breakfast. It’s at the top of Monte Cassino, Southern-German Neo-Gothic allegedly. A few pews in front of me, a Pole’s prayer is broken by a phone call. I’m quite sure she takes the Lord’s name in vain searching her pockets for the offending mobile. It must be something urgent, because she leaves immediately. The phone call has brought her down to earth. The vignette makes me laugh.
I trundle down the hill then take a left towards the tennis club, where I sit on a modest grandstand and watch four men in their eighties compete fiercely on clay. It is good and sweet to watch this ordinary encounter, to witness the huffing and puffing, the mortal shuffling, the dud volleys that provoke mockery from the other side of the net. Despite autumn being a month away, a leaf falls onto my hand at deuce. I finger it, snap its main vein. It’s lost its green and will be mulch before long. Then another falls, and then another, as if the first had encouraged the others. I’m tempted to read the leaves as a symbol or metaphor, but don’t in the end. I just brush them off and continue with the game until it’s done.
I enter a café called LAS, drawn by its good-looking employee, who tells me her boyfriend has died. All I’d asked was why do you live here? Her name is Alicia and I have nothing to say: I can only look at her and then order something. I take my coffee outside, where a child is busy on a rocking horse. As I chat with the mother, the child keeps rocking and smiling and then asks her mother if the man is speaking English. I point to the horse and say in Polish that it is a cat, a dog, a pig, anything but a horse. She enjoys that, my innocence. She looks to her mother each time I guess wrong, as if to ask, ‘Is this guy for real?’ I go in to pay, and when I come out they’re gone.
I eat a good lunch at a beach café, just fresh cod well cooked and seasoned and served with chips and salad. Customers compete for the sunlit tables. When I took my table it had been undesirable – shady and on the margin – but before long it’s the only table in the sun, the apple of all eyes, which says something about the shifting nature of value. It is not unusual for me, I reflect, to be fashionable by chance. When I prolong my visit by ordering coffee and starting to write, I sense stirrings of discontent at neighbouring tables. I imagine the sound of their pain: The man in the sun is now writing, Kasia – what will he think of next? Or: He’s gone and ordered coffee, Stan, and I shouldn’t be surprised if it’s a pint just to spite us. In the event, by the time my coffee comes I am in the shade again, and where there was lack there is plenty, and so on.
I’ve an hour before my train. I lie on the beach and read Status Anxiety.52 Perhaps the book is infectious because with each page I grow more envious of the couples around me, of their mutual worship, their rolling about, their coupledom. Yesterday I called them drones. Today I worship them. I watch the best bodies (male and female, mind) with a respectful discretion between pages, paragraphs and sometimes even lines. Basic, I know, to take an easy, low pleasure watching other humans with very little on, but there you are – or there they are, rather. When I close my eyes and try to relax, two voluble girls drop towels nearby then proceed to laugh for an hour. I enjoy their friendship though it means nothing to me. What do the Polish do at the seaside? They stroll and play and read and build castles from sand, as others elsewhere.
50 You would actually be 50 metres closer to Kaliningrad, the Russian enclave that sits between Poland and Lithuania. The term ‘jog on’, for those over 40, means ‘thanks but no thanks’.
