A Chip Shop in Poznań, page 23
I’ve just called last orders when Richard wanders over for a top-up. I’m about to say something heartfelt about his pictures when Tony approaches and says, ‘I’m afraid you lost, Richard.’ (The white wine Tony’s heard so much about has plainly made him candid.)
Richard doesn’t know what to say. Then he does. He says, ‘Well I suppose it depends how you look at it.’
Tony doesn’t think much of this. ‘No. I’ve looked at it every way and you lost.’ I fill all our glasses and propose a toast to there having been a contest in the first place.
12 February. Tony calls.
‘You mentioned a native English speaker – is it still around?’
‘You mean Richard?’
‘No, a girl from Essex.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Tony.’
‘What? Wait. Marietta’s saying— Ah. It was Jędrzej. Jędrzej said a girl from Essex is moving into your room. Given that you’re leaving. Know anything about that?’
‘No.’
‘Fine. I’ll give him a call.’
When Jenny gets back from work, I ask about what Tony said.
‘Tony said a girl from Essex is moving into my room?’
‘Looks like it. Got a problem with that?’
‘It just feels a bit sudden.’
‘Dude, you’re leaving.’
‘And you’re comfortable with the idea of me being replaced?’
‘Yeah.’
79 The film Patrick made about Witold Pilecki got 10 million views. Patrick now hosts a popular television news programme in Poland. He will one day be President.
34
And to think I almost died getting here
13 February. I’m going to the mountains again. I’ve been told about a hut where gregarious ramblers sit around the fire and cook sausages on sticks and sing songs and feel cosy. Richard met a pair of musicians in a bar who said they’d done a concert there. They told him to go; he sent me instead.
I take a train south and then another east to Piwniczna-Zdrój. I seek instruction in the tourist information office. ‘Chatka pod Niemcowa?’ I say. The info team say it takes two hours and a torch. I barely have one of those things, I admit.
‘Then you can take the bus to Kosarzyska and then walk the shorter, steeper route from there. That way you’ll have a chance of arriving before sunset. Maybe I can mark the route on your map?’
I don’t have a map.
‘So you don’t have a map, or a torch, or much time. Are you certain this is your intention?’
The bus driver is jolly. The jolliest in Poland. He greets me with a beatific smile and a high five. I ask for Kosarzyska. ‘Prosto, prosto!’ he says, simple, simple. I take a seat. Fellow passengers touch me on the shoulder to confirm the driver’s prognosis. ‘Prosto, prosto!’ they say. After a few simple minutes the driver stops and points vaguely into the forest. ‘Up!’ he says. Up. Right. Got it. I thank him, go for another high five but he can’t because he has to hold the handbrake else the bus will recede. I turn to the passengers. They nod, point. ‘Up!’ they say.
The ladies at tourist info quoted 45 minutes from the bus stop. I’ve got about an hour’s light and only a smidgen of battery on my phone.80 It’s a gentle incline at first. Front yard dogs announce my passing to their keepers. Most are securely tethered and mild enough, just going through the motions really, but there’s always a jobsworth: a Patterdale Terrier, not content to issue a few barks, jumps onto the garden wall, which is level with my neck, then puts its teeth through the wire mesh fence the better to scare me. It doesn’t work. I’m unawed. I’m buoyant. I’m on an adventure and some mutt with ADHD isn’t going to ruin my mood. I whistle a tune as the houses thin out. The road thins out as well: it’s more of a track now, icy in patches, but nothing bothersome. For twenty minutes there’s nothing doing, just a relatively easy incline flanked by forest, and the odd detached property, but then the going gets harder, undulant and increasingly steep. Before long I’m using my hands as much as my feet. After what feels like an hour I finally sense a summit, which is as well because it’s almost twilight. I can make out four properties, the size of cereal boxes, each box solid black and pitched on the snowy mountainside. One property has lights on. A ten-minute march through snow gets me to a path that leads up to the property. It’s impossible underfoot, an ice rink in the dark. By now I’m panting, straining, and less buoyant by half. The back of the property is occupied by animals. I happen upon chickens. It’s patently not the chatka (hut) I’m after, but at this point I just want to tell someone I’m lost. There’s no obvious front door, so I knock on a window. There’s no answer. No movement. I retrace my steps (if they can be called steps), using my 1997 Nokia to lend a splash of light. The light falls on a stream. That wasn’t here before. I think of hurdling, start to fantasise about falling in and drowning in freezing water, then choose not to. As I follow the stream, the snow is mostly knee-high but occasionally I fall through into waist-high stuff. It’s the idea of drowning in snow that really gets under my skin. There aren’t many advantages to dying in plain sight, but at least you’d get hoovered up pretty quickly. If I drown in the snow I won’t be found till spring. And then, because I’ll look fresh and ruddy like I’ve just got out the shower after a game of squash, people will think I just fell over, or had a heart attack because I eat too much butter. I don’t want to overstate the degree of jeopardy. I’m not panicking. Danger of this sort – clumsy, incremental – is actually rather prosaic. I’m not stood at the edge of a precipice. No one’s holding a knife to my throat. I am just slowly and steadily being a twat. When I’m still, I can hear a low symphony of vague noises. I think about animals. Hunting is popular in rural Poland. It wouldn’t be so if there was nothing to hunt. Many animals that have died out in other parts of Europe survive in Poland. There’s the bison, the brown bear, the grey wolf, the Eurasian lynx and the beaver. I could hold my own against a beaver, but I don’t fancy running into a lynx. Some people like danger. They get a buzz. You know the type. They drive with unnecessary speed. They climb trees. They marry Italians. They need to risk their life to feel fully alive. I don’t. I feel fully alive when I play golf well, or cook something that tastes nicer than expected, or receive a handwritten letter. If I met Bear Grylls we’d have nothing to say to each other. There’d be a prolonged awkward silence. I’d order the soup, he’d order the stingray. The next closest building is about 100 metres away. I start to climb towards it but it’s hopeless: the approach is too steep, the way too icy. God knows how the inhabitants commute to work.
A car approaches from below and then parks. Nobody gets out. It’s a youngish couple. I know because I’m at the driver’s window. The poor things have come out to the middle of nowhere for some peace and quiet only to run into me. The driver lowers her window and confirms I’m off course. She shows me on her phone where we are and where I should be. Four kilometres separate the two. I should have turned right about an hour ago. She tells me to get in. The young man next to her is plainly not impressed by this development. I sense they were about to have a meaningful conversation. We descend gingerly. They’ve chains on the wheels. I try to break the ice – you two from here? Doing something this evening? – but my efforts only add to the chill. I’m told to get out. Sorry? ‘Here,’ she says. ‘Here you say goodbye.’ We’re down by the Patterdale Terrier. She points out where the track splits. I was too busy eyeballing the dog to notice. I hesitate. If I’m honest I thought she was going to drive me to the hut. ‘Idź!’ says the man – go! I offer money to be driven all the way. ‘Idź!’ he says again. I get out, they drive off, and I’m back to square one. I plod judiciously in the right direction for ten minutes, but it’s no good, I’m on a sodding treadmill. I’ll have to swallow my pride and ask for a lift. I call the hut.
‘Who are you?’
‘Benjamin.’
‘Where are you for the love of God?’
‘By the bus stop on the main road.’
‘Wait.’
I wait until a jeep pulls up. I apologise repeatedly but Jerzy doesn’t want to hear it. With some people you get an immediate sense of their character. I’ve not been in the car a minute before I’ve decided the man next to me is deep. Visually – slight, sixties, unkempt – he reminds me of Walt, the guy in my neighbourhood who can’t ever rub two nickels together. It’s not a quick ride, and nor is it an easy one. I wouldn’t have stood a chance: the way is barely passable in a jeep. Several times we get caught up and are forced to slide backwards momentarily as Jerzy tries to find some traction by shifting gears and doubling the revs. He is impassive throughout, showing no outward sign of consternation or unease. For him, this is hanging washing on the line. There’s a pocket bible on the dashboard, for reading at red lights.
There are two main buildings, each built from logs and sealed in places with flattened beer cans. One is for Jerzy, the other for guests. No electricity, no running water, no signs of life. I’m shown to my dormitory. Double bunkbeds, and a couple of singles. He tells me to sleep on top because it’s warmer, and that I should start a fire in the oven for the same reason. He shows me the small kitchen space – tea and mugs and leftover mustards – and a larger dormitory which sleeps up to 50 in season. In season. I’m his first guest since the end of summer. There’s a reason: although charming and rustic, this place is a fridge. A long-held suspicion that I’m a wally is confirmed. He lights a few candles, gets together a couple of blankets, reminds me where the water is – out there, in the darkness. The blankets don’t seem enough. Good night, he says. When I look at him, I hope he can see the moisture in my eyes.
I think about leaving. If I’m already cold, then what is to come? I weigh up my options: they weigh nothing, because I don’t have any. I thought there’d be a restaurant, and a warm communal space where a group of us would watch Good Will Hunting and drink red wine. In the event, I’ve checked in to an unheated shed for the night and been handed a table cloth for warmth. And to think I almost died getting here. I try to light the fire. I arrange the smaller logs into a pyramid in the chamber of the oven. I twist and light newspaper and nurse it into gaps, willing its flame to spread. But it’s no good. I’ve said it before: I’m not a practical person. I make jogging look difficult. It ought to be otherwise. My dad was a shipwright and a carpenter. He can put things together in his sleep. And my mum was a nurse. She had to inject and repair. So where the hell is my nous, my dexterity? Jerzy’s back with another blanket, thank goodness. He sees me struggling, tuts, shakes his head, then does it himself in less than a minute. The round hole in the roof of the oven is covered with a big kettle, which is constantly heated, constantly whistling, constantly topped up. He gestures food, eating, have I eaten? I shake my head, communicate with sad eyes that I thought there’d be a restaurant, or sausages on sticks. He looks at the ground, takes off his cap, scratches the crown of his head. He hadn’t anticipated this. He’s accustomed to guests being resourceful, self-sufficient, especially those travelling alone in winter. I’m like a cack-handed nephew that’s come to stay. Only he doesn’t love me, and he doesn’t have to pretend to. ‘Chodź,’ he says. Come.
He takes me through to his place. There’s electricity. There’s a radio. The fire is big and blazing. Without saying a word, he sits me down, gives me an apple, some coffee with milk, then heats up a stew of beans and sausage and garlic, which he serves with bread and butter, and a single gherkin. I have never seen such tender and comprehensive hospitality so reluctantly bestowed. I savour it. Boy, do I savour it. The coffee, the stew, the fire, the warmth of each. Simple things, suddenly precious. Value is circumstantial, I think, cradling the mug, beholding the apple, mopping up the stew with bread. As I sit and eat, Jerzy transcribes every detail he can find in my passport into his ledger. My mother’s maiden name goes in, as does the fact that I was in Russia a few years ago. Jerzy has learnt the value of information.
‘Are your mother and father still married?’
‘No.’
‘Do you go to church?’
‘No.’
‘Wife?’
‘No.’
‘Employment?’
‘No.’
‘So why are you here?’
When I admit that I’m not entirely sure, Jerzy is forced to conclude that there isn’t much to me, that I’m remarkable by dint of doing and believing nothing, that my life is characterised by a lack of faith and a lack of meaningful action. He leaves the room and returns with more food. Not one to serve breakfast in bed, he’s serving it now: a jar of gherkins, a tin of gulasz angielski (spam), bread and butter. I cradle the largesse in my arms. On top of the picnic he puts a sleeping bag and a key. ‘Better to lock,’ he says.
I write by candlelight for an hour, drinking cups of hot water to keep my hands warm. I keep the oven full of wood, and the kettle topped up. I start to warm to its whistle and what it means. Coldness reassembles around my bones, notwithstanding the fire. I go outside to piss. The wind – coming up from Slovakia – howls. There’s a bounty of stars. One is shooting. I’ve never been curious about the firmament. I spend my curiosity elsewhere, on more down-to-earth stuff, like cricket and party politics. How we allocate our curiosity says a lot about our character. Note to self: wonder about the stars more. The darkness scares me less and less. I load the fire, put on all my clothes, ignore the sight of my breath and try to dream.
The Pope is at the end of the room. Beside him, two guitars, each missing a string. A chest of drawers is spilling left-behind shoes and hats and T-shirts. No whistle from the kettle, sunlight at the edges of the curtains. I stretch like a cat, drag myself outside. The jeep is gone. Jerzy’s out. I see everything by daylight – the huts, the outside toilet, the mountains, the Poprad Valley. Five cats are snoozing in a basket in the sun: the youngest are the friendliest. I sit on a swing and count twenty peaks, not including our own. I look at Slovakia to the south, at its shape and palette, and decide it could be Poland. The grass is as green, the peaks as tall, the air as clear. I listen to snow or ice melting or breaking. You can hear it pop, crack, snap. There’s a barbecue area, a campfire, a shower drawn from a natural spring – in this light, at this temperature, this place is idyllic, a brief Eden.
I return to my room, rip pages from my diary and try to make a fire, but it doesn’t take to me, I don’t catch on. I hear Jerzy return. Some minutes later he brings me coffee and shows me how to do it. He signals for me to watch and learn, to note what he does with the wood, how he scrapes candlewax onto the pyre, where he attempts ignition. His tutorial is – to an extent – self-interested. He thinks I’m here for a few days, so he’d better teach me lest I remain in his care, a prospect that scares him. The coffee is unusually enjoyable. I take it to the outside toilet, where I think about satisfaction. My coffee was unusually enjoyable because of the context – it was unexpected, I was touched by Jerzy’s tuition. Now I’m on the loo it isn’t the same. In pursuit of happiness, my habit – and I don’t think I’m alone – is to consider the thing too much, and the context too little. The trouble is you can’t buy a context at the shop. You can’t order a batch online, or have one heated up for you. A context can’t be summoned; it can only happen. When you ask someone what satisfies them they’ll probably give a list of things – badminton, Spain, Naomi. Our conception of pleasure is habitually limited to one ingredient, one constituent – the thing, the place, the person. Closer to the truth is that pleasure is a composite of many small things, some of them invisible, intangible, contextual – mood, temperature, company. One crucial element in any pleasurable context is a lack of pain. The stew and fire and apple were all pleasurable because they were preceded by cold, frustration, anxiety and confusion. At the end of the day – and at the start of it – pleasure may be little more than the absence of discomfort, or the presence of relief. Schopenhauer said something along these lines, if I’m not mistaken, on the toilet or otherwise.81
I’ve decided to move on. For all I’ve said about the site’s virtues, I simply can’t do another night like that, in that cold. It won’t kill me, I’m sure, but I won’t enjoy it for a second, and a night made up of seconds is a long one. I’m glad I came, glad I got here, glad I met Jerzy and was prompted to think about his character and what he needs from life, and so doing what I need from life. What I don’t need from life is any more gulasz angielski. It’s disgusting, no matter the context. I eat what I can then take my diary and pocket dictionary outside and write. Coincidentally, Jerzy emerges with a cup of tea and a newspaper. He sits elsewhere, reads silently for some minutes – twelve, thirteen, something like that – then laughs of a sudden, fully and throatily. It makes me smile. I don’t turn to ask him about the source of his laughter, though I should like to. Something dry, I would have thought, dry as a bone. Then another laugh, though this one’s not Jerzy’s. I turn to see a man reading the regulamin (regulations) posted to the door of the guest hut. He’s a hiker, that much is apparent. Maybe he wants a bed? Jerzy continues with his newspaper, as if the hiker weren’t there. ‘We have a friend,’ I say to Jerzy.
‘I don’t know,’ he says, without lifting his head.
I go to the hiker. He is well-built and affable; his sweat smells of white wine. He wants tea with lemon, isn’t interested in a bed, wouldn’t mind knowing what an Englishman is up to in this neck of the woods. I tell him to speak to the governor if he wants tea, that it’s as well he isn’t interested in a bed for it’s like a fridge in there, and that I’m just passing through. His English is copious but irregular. ‘Passing through, huh? Then I must ask God for a copy of your route!’ He reads the regulamin once more, shakes his head, disbelieving. ‘You have to be the Pope to stay here!’ he laughs. ‘Or Saint Paul at least. I’m religious but I don’t like this severity, no-no, not this way. I’m surprised he permits respiration.’ He turns to me abruptly, has a point to make. ‘Religion is like your penis,’ he says. ‘You have one, I have one. You don’t show me yours, I don’t show you mine.’ I agree this is probably for the best. He gets out his crucifix. ‘See? I wear it under my blouse. That is the difference. It is personal and not on the outside. All this’ – he waves a hand at the rules and the icons – ‘is too much on the outside. This guy is showing everyone his penis. I will ask him for some tea with lemon.’
