There's an Egg in My Soup (2 page)

Hunger has a very discernible presence, despite its being derived from an absence. It is the first thing I notice the next morning, even before the shock of awakening in an alien environment.

It had been a long drive down the day before and there were no stop-offs. The school director had left some cold meat in the fridge, but I had eaten it all, straight from the packets with my fingers. There was also a bowl of fruit sitting on the table in my kitchen, but most of its contents had been given to the guide, who was also famished. The rest was tarnished by the fruit flies that had managed to rally themselves into a strong and determined congregation overnight. I eventually zapped them with a deodorant can and a box of matches as they flew around the centre of the room in a perfect circle.

At least it's sunny again. I can see the buttery yellow glow on the brown linoleum floor. If a pin dropped on that floor it would sound like lumber crashing on the floor of a forest. The place is as quiet and peaceful as a
tomb. There is also a smell in the flat – not altogether unpleasant, just a strange smell, a bit like vinegar. Maybe they used it to clean the windows before I arrived – vinegar with sheets of newspaper, just like my grandmother had done. All homes have their own smells and this one is mine now for the next twelve months. I wish I had taken along something with a pungent scent of home.

I venture into my bathroom, which has no floor. That is, no recognisable floor. A cold, grey platform of rough screed, it is decorated with a bath propped up by four stumpy legs and a large poor-mouth bowl for a neighbour. I don't like these bowls. They look distressed, as if they're constantly yawning at you. They also have a shelf that catches everything and leaves it there in the open until you flush. Why, I could never understand.

The walls of the bathroom, as with the rest of the flat, are painted a safe and warm cream colour. In the top corner, over the bathtub, a cast-iron grate with a pattern like a torn stocking offers the only form of ventilation. And from the ceiling, a solitary bulb, butt naked, hangs like a dead man from a length of wire. I make a mental note to get a shade for that light, but never get around to it. I also make a mental note to get more colour into the place – a few posters maybe, paintings, something. If it weren't for the greenery outside and the flashes of red on the communist-style signs around doorways, the
eye would have little colour to distract it.

The hot water is off, because school hasn't started yet, so I lean into the tub and splash a handful of cold water on my face and chest before gazing into the mirror. One of the greatest afflictions of western man is the fact that he spends most of the day living inside his own head. It's not a good thing. If you could have been inside mine at this time you would have seen demons. I have lost weight already, which I can't afford to do. My rib cage is like a washboard, my cheeks like inverted coconut shells. After roughly a quarter-century on the planet, I have only accumulated about ten stone, and I imagine a lot of it is going to be lost in this place. I need to get some food.

I get dressed in clothes that stick in the heat and go out into the main corridor. There are about ten doors on either side, including one into a washroom, and another self-contained flat just like mine at the far end. I wonder who lives there, because someone plainly does. There is a frosted glass window with a large plant just visible inside.

I stroll down the corridor, my footsteps sounding like the clatter of a ball in a squash court. This is just one wing of a very large bu1ilding that will soon be home to hundreds of students. By the looks of the names on the doors – ‘Jarek', ‘Marek', ‘Piotr' and so on – this section is for boys only, which is disappointing, but safe.

On my way out the front door I meet one of the
women who showed me round my flat yesterday evening. She must work in the school as a cleaner or cook, or maybe both. She is bubbly and friendly and, having no English, went to great lengths demonstrating how my bed worked – a contraption that isn't really a bed at all, but a couch that springs into a bed after a series of short, snappy manoeuvres. They use them here instead of beds since beds take up space. She introduces me to her daughter, a gorgeous- looking girl with eyes like a pair of hazelnuts. She smiles, nods politely and extends a hand quickly. She doesn't speak much English, but her friend, a young guy of maybe seventeen, speaks English pretty well. At least he's confident, and offers to show me round the town. I ask him about a supermarket and he looks mildly confused, asking me exactly what it is I want. When I tell him I just need a general store he scratches his head before finally setting off, lost somewhat in thought.

The three of us skip down a side road that is collapsing in sand, hopping over grey and red bricks that sit in tidy little piles. Uneven, patchy and sinking at every second step, it looks like Beirut. They are building new footpaths, my companion tells me. And new apartments, and new roads, and a lot of other new things that are needed for a better infrastructure. Next I am told that that not many people will speak English. He tells me not to bother learning Polish. It is too difficult, and even a bold attempt will be a waste of
time. He tells me that it is not always sunny here, and not to expect good weather once the summer ends. He also tells me that there is little or nothing to do. He tells me that I will be bored. In fact, he does his best to convince me that I have made a big mistake.

We stop outside a large shop with a charming wooden front and the word ‘Delicatessy' painted across the top in red, giving it a Hansel-and-Gretel appearance. He insists that I can get everything I want inside, while he waits outside.

The shop is unusually wide but only about six feet deep, since the area for the public is abruptly cut off by an enormous length of counter. Behind this, all the produce is lined up in regimental style on shelves, the customers in front in a stiff and slow-moving queue. Most of them are old, the women in plain dresses, gripping string bags, the men in ill-matching trousers and jackets gripping the edge of the counter. They breathe heavily and wait patiently.

Those at the front of the queue slowly call out items, hesitating and searching the shelves with the tips of their fingers in the hope of finding what they came here for. Once the object is found on the shelf, the assistant, dressed in red apron, turns and stares at it for a moment as if to affirm its existence before moving toward it at the pace of a slug. The item is placed on the counter and the next one called out.

Apart from the voices of the assistants and the
customer at the top of the queue, there is little noise. People just gaze and wait, as if the day ahead has little else for them. Some turn to look at me, but it isn't a look of hostility, it is simply a look. The objects on the shelves are unrecognisable. Even the pictures on the tins make no sense. Chopped meat of some sort. Cucumber perishing in a large jar of pickle.

‘Didn't get anything?' my new friend asks when I come out.

‘No. Maybe you can show me to a butcher's?'

This is no better. The shop is like a small wooden hut and there is a large woman with a knife cutting a great slab of meat between her breasts, surrounded by every insect with a pair of wings.

‘Maybe you fancy a pizza?'

He takes me to the train station about half a mile from my home. The grey and rather drab-looking building sits like crude Lego, the words ‘PKP Minsk Mazowiecki' in harsh chunky letters across the flat roof. The lettering is redolent of communism, its form direct, imposing and menacing. Even the shape of the station building breaks all laws of aesthetics. It looks like it was just dropped there from the end of a crane.

Directly in front of the station, taxis snooze in the sun, the drivers' heads gazing up momentarily with each squeak of the station doors. The line is long, the engines cold. The drivers all wear similar shirts of browns, blues and greys, all with their sleeves rolled up.
The cars vary. There is the odd Mercedes, shining like a new coin in between cars that I have never seen before. Tiny little battered things like matchboxes wrapped in tinfoil that I later learn are called ‘maluchs', which actually means ‘tinies'. Few people seem eager to rush to the taxis, so most of the drivers are asleep.

To the left, a small, wooded park hides the bus depot, where groups of kids sit on benches under trees, chomping on hotdogs from nearby kiosks. Like the taxis, the buses don't seem to be going anywhere. They look old and clapped out, single-deckers with their destinations displayed on cards shoved onto their dashboards.

I am led to the pizza restaurant, but as we sit, I realise it isn't really a restaurant at all – more of a snack bar, sitting at the end of a long line of similar snack bars, none of which is very inviting. The pizzas are fished out of a freezer, cooked in a microwave, then presented on a plate as if freshly baked. The bottom is soggy, the ingredients strange. Peas, carrots and pickle. But at least it is cooked food.

I buy my two companions Cokes and as I eat I am asked a lot of questions, the answers not coming very freely. I have only been here a day and already I have discovered that curiosity knows no bounds. The same sense of bewilderment stretches from the young to the old; nobody can understand why the hell a ‘rich man from the west' – as they put it – would want to come
to a small town so randomly located in the east of Poland at such a time.

And it is randomly located. If you can cast your mind back to geography class and the reasons why an area is first settled, you'd be hard pressed to recall one that could explain the existence of Minsk Mazowiecki. It is nowhere near the coast. From what I can see, there are no longer any mineral deposits or any natural resources of any kind. On the map of the region it looks like a mistake. On the map of the country it is barely a black dot. In fact, it has a history as a settlement that goes back to the fifteenth century and began its life on the banks of the Srebrna (silver) River. The Srebrna has long since lost both its shimmer and its status as a river, and is now more of a brackish stream. Minsk is really just a satellite town, one of many that have developed along the rail track from Warsaw to Russia.

Little of any historical note seems to stand out. In fact, there is little that stands out at all. The town has a park where grass does its best to grow. In the centre of the park lies the standard cultural centre that all Polish towns have. They are generally called ‘the Palace' and are used for concerts and meetings. This one also has a restaurant in its basement. There is a church, a few schools, the obligatory army barracks and one or two shopping streets. The stores vary in style from modern brick buildings to old wooden ones that just about hang in there, but at least give some sense of a past. After
that, there are a few sprawling residential quarters, again made up of modern blocks and wooden homes.

That is about it. It isn't exactly ugly, just lacking something, and like a lot of towns near Warsaw really serves a basic function – in this case, giving people somewhere to live. But the most alarming fact of all is that there is no entry for the town in my Lonely Planet guide.

These guides are honest. If a place is good it says it's good. If a place is a dump then it says so. And destinations both good and bad can contribute to the travel experience. But if a place isn't mentioned at all then only one conclusion can be drawn – there is, quite frankly, no reason for going there.

As for the timing? Well, I am here precisely because times are hard. Communism is not long toppled and the place is a bit of a mess. Their government asks our government for help. So they get me, and the eighteen others who are right now wandering around similar towns and villages, being asked the same questions.

So, to answer all their questions, I lie. A little. I lie a little because I haven't figured it all out myself yet. I haven't had time to think about it. From the application to the interview process was only a matter of weeks. The training flew by and before we knew it we were packing our bags. But I have a feeling that time is something I am going to have plenty of here.

I tell them I want to teach in Poland because I have
met some Polish people before and I became very fond of them. I tell them I am tired of hearing about people going to other countries to work. I tell them that I think Poland is an interesting country to visit and that I might learn something from the experience.

They're not convinced. The young girl throws a vacant stare back at me and fiddles with her straw. The guy just shakes his head and sighs. Both responses amount to the same thing – they just can't understand what I am doing here.

It had never occurred to me that these people would be gob-smacked at the thought of someone leaving the West to work in the East when thousands are trying to do exactly the opposite. It is as if they find the whole thing cynical or insulting in some way, that there is a certain luxury available to me that I can do such a thing at this stage of my life. It is an aspect of voluntary work that I had never considered. Many people resent charity, and the Polish people are a proud, resilient nation. I will have to think of a better reason for being here, I decide, something that will sound more convincing at least. I made the decision to give a period of my life to help those less fortunate. I want to do some good. And I do genuinely want to devote a couple of years to teaching. The two will work together, I thought. But I will have to do better than that if I am going to convince the Poles. Besides, calling the Polish people ‘less fortunate' would be a great mistake.

We walk idly round the town for the rest of the afternoon, picking out landmarks and placing them mentally in distances from my home. The young kid, whose name is Jarek, drops the odd interesting remark about the town he lives in, but there is a jaded tone in everything he says. The girl, Agnieszka, smiles mostly and says very little. And I wonder how they fill their days here. What do they do on a long summer holiday in the town? What do they look forward to?