There's an Egg in My Soup (8 page)

There were two tape recorders in a locked cupboard in the English room, which I soon discovered were the only two tape recorders in the school. Anyhow, they weren't much use. Anything played above half volume sounded like a swarm of bees behind a newspaper, so again I relied on my own resources and brought my stereo to school.

There was no television at all. After months of contemplating the usefulness of a telly, I eventually started a campaign to get one. The school, however, was broke, and it was two years before a television appeared in the English room. But it was worth it in the end, if only to kill off a dull Monday showing movies.

As time went on, things improved steadily. But even
the chalk was hopeless. God knows what it was made of – granite, probably. It didn't write on the blackboard unless the board was wet. So every half an hour I would send a kid out to the bathroom to wet a cloth, which in turn would be used to wet the board. Eventually I found a box of real chalk in a shop and it did the trick.

Aside from the paucity of resources in the school, the fear that we were facing a cultural impasse because of wealth was nonsense. On the very first day, after the opening ceremony, the director and I went to have lunch with the English teachers. The heat had been too much for me, so I went to change out of my sweaty trousers and shirt and into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt. When I came back down, he smiled at me and told the English teacher who was with us that I could wear whatever I wanted in the class. It was good to have a young teacher from the West in the school, and the kids might learn something, he said. He was right. So long as you didn't show off your wealth – not that I was wealthy anyway – the kids were mature and sensible enough to be aware of modern trends without feeling they would never get to become part of them.

However, there was always a percentage of students in my classes who came from rural communities and who evidently lived in fairly impoverished conditions. There was nothing immediate that told you this, and none of them were in danger of starving. But eventually
you would start to notice things. They would shy away from buying new books. Some would use the same copybook for several subjects – the front for maths, the middle for history and the back for English. English was always at the back, which upset me a little. You would soon discover that many had lost fathers, mothers, or both. Yet they were tough, formidable kids, who spoke matter-of-factly when asked about their families, often volunteering information in essays that were read aloud quite freely in class. In the beginning, I was wary about what kind of questions I asked, but seeing that they were open and resilient when it came to sensitive subjects, I became more relaxed also. I enjoyed talking to them. Of course, there were plenty of kids whose folks were doing well, just like in any other society in Europe.

The simple thing to do with the tailor would have been to hand over four or five times the asking price. But to do that would have been to imbalance a whole way of life. Similarly, the temptation was there sometimes in the markets to overpay and congratulate yourself. In some of the markets of Warsaw, or those nearer the borders with Russia, old women sat on pieces of cardboard in the depths of winter, displaying the items from their own homes. It was a pretty wretched sight – photos of their family in meagre frames, cracked cups, rosary beads, socks that didn't match, even objects that would have belonged to those
now deceased, like an old pair of glasses. This was the sum total of their wealth and they were prepared to barter with it. You would see them on trains, many coming from the far reaches of the eastern borders with large nylon bags full of rubbish. They might travel a full day, only to sit on a piece of cardboard and sell their few possessions.

There were also people who specialised in the most absurd objects. Down at the market you would find a man who simply sold shoelaces. That was his living. I brought this up in class and made a joke about it. But in Poland, people didn't throw their shoes out just because of a hole or a loose heel. They brought them to a shoemaker, got them repaired and maybe even held onto them until another member of the family could use them. Laces snap more often than a sole wears out, so why shouldn't someone make a living out of them? Sure, hadn't I been desperate to find someone to sew buttons on a coat?

In the bleak mid-winter, somewhere around early December, I was plotting all kinds of schemes to buy some time off. I was worn out and feeling a bit homesick, and had developed an interesting strain of colour blindness from the snow that wasn't a pure white, but more a shade of grey.

This colour filled my every morning. As I shuffled to school, staring at my feet for treacherous patches of ice, it was a colour that got inside my head and remained there, clouding and dulling the brain. Worse, it was the same colour as the sky most of the time, so even looking up did no good. It was a colour that drove you to bury your head in a bottle or a pillow.

Around this time I had a particularly heavy weekend. It involved a party with some Polish people who had concocted a strange brew that they referred to as ‘whiskey'. It wasn't whiskey at all. It was clear for a start, and it was very sweet. I later discovered it was called ‘bimber', and was a type of poitín that really packed a punch. It punched and it kicked, and when it was all over it left you sitting in the bathroom whimpering for days afterwards. I prayed for sickness
but it didn't come. Few bugs withstand the temperatures here in winter, so illnesses are rare until spring. I couldn't wait until spring.

After the first lesson on the Monday, I inform one of the English teachers that I'm ill. She knows what's wrong. It is simply the vodka hangover that I described earlier. The vodka malaise, the one that imbues the sufferer with such apathy that if the world were coming to an end it would merely be welcomed. When people are perplexed by the laxity in the workplace of former communist states, they clearly have no appreciation of the effect of vodka on the human spirit. And at eight o'clock on a Monday morning, thirty-five screaming girls, no matter how beautiful they are as individuals, make no pretty picture.

I assumed I could just say I was sick, go home and spend a few days in bed. But because I am working for a State institution, my medical health insurance is the same as it would be for a Polish person. To get a sick note I have to go to the local ‘polyclinic' to be inspected by a State nurse. If deemed sick enough, I'll then be given a ‘zwolnienie', a ‘free note', for a week or as long as necessary. So off I go to convince the State.

The polyclinic is a large block with little to distinguish it from its neighbouring blocks but for the red sign on the wall. These signs, which are your staid, functional communist insignias, are placed on all State buildings and institutions, from schools and surgeries to
civic offices and even hotels. The typical sign might very bluntly read ‘The Primary Music School of the District of Minsk Mazowiecki on Kazikowskiego Street', the sign itself no bigger than a newspaper. Such signs will soon be phased out, of course. But the hilarious thing is that such is their prevalence, people who have opened their own shops or businesses are unable to consider doing much different. Their stores are still named after their function, with the occasional addition of the family name or that of their first-born child to distinguish it from a State-owned property. You might stumble upon a shoe shop called ‘Shoe Shop Agnieszka', or a pub called ‘Drink Bar Peter', with those less creative simply calling their vegetable shop ‘Vegetables'. At least you know what you're getting and, as the name would suggest, the ‘poly' clinic is where a specialist for every part of the body can be found.

As with most public buildings in winter, the inside of the polyclinic is protected from the intense cold by a massive dark curtain, as thick as a carpet, immediately inside its doors. When walking into a dark curtain, it is human nature to bend the head forward, and many people have had to go straight back into the polyclinic having nutted themselves on the way out. If you do make it through in one piece, a wall of stifling, stale heat smacks you in the face.

Upon entering, you go to a hatch to talk to a nurse and explain, briefly, what is wrong with you. Having
described your symptoms at the hatch, you present your ID, in my case a teacher's ID, for inspection.

These IDs are gold dust here – you can't even board a train without one. But to make life a little more tricky, there are a few types. There is the basic ID, which gives your general credentials, from date and place of birth to your current residence, parents' names and so on. Then there is your professional identification, which denotes your status as a student, teacher, civil servant or whatever. These particular IDs entitle you to subsidised travel on trains and buses, as much as fifty percent depending on your occupation – teachers are quite high up in terms of social standing, and are entitled to the full fifty percent. They are one of a few useful documents you have to carry with you.

Finally, there is your medical ID, a sort of logbook that keeps track of all your visits to State clinics, the types of illness you were suffering from at the time and the drugs you were prescribed. It's kept for life and is a handy little document – when you start getting older you can read over your history and get a fair idea of what you're likely to croak from and when. But the number of times I lost my medical ID, and the suffering I had to endure to have it replaced, was worse than any illness that I remember. And I can remember quite a lot about being sick in Poland with or without that book.

I broke a wrist falling after a long night in a pub. I blamed the cobblestones, which were covered in black
ice, but the doctors knew better and put a heavy cast on it for my troubles. I put my back out on another occasion and was almost two months out of school. I begged to get back into school, such was the boredom of sitting at home. Once you've been given a sick note by the State clinic, however, you're not allowed out until you've fully recovered or until the period on the ‘zwolnienie' has passed. If you're seen rambling around on the streets, there will be problems, questions will be asked, and you could even be docked money. I could never understand that rule, and am convinced it is just some odd quirk that has hung over from the commies. But I stuck to it nonetheless.

Having established the fact that you're sick, you are given a ticket, a room number and a floor level, which should match you up to the right doctor or nurse. If you make a mistake at this point, you could wind up in God knows what department, being probed with God knows what kind of implement in God knows which orifice. So it is vital to get your symptoms right. I have been told by the staff in school to say I have a sore throat, since it is quite likely a teacher will get a sore throat, and a teacher with a sore throat isn't much use and needs time off to recover.

When I find my appointed room, I take a seat on a bench beside a long line of invalids. The old woman next to me has a chest that sounds like a sawmill. At
regular intervals, she looks up wide-eyed and bellows at the ceiling. Each cough from her triggers a chain reaction of coughing down along the queue. And maybe it's just me, but there is a menacing sense of the Grim Reaper all around. The place is vacuously bare, with long corridors and hollow, banging doors that bring to mind a morgue. Nobody says anything and everyone looks sicker than they probably are, shivering and moaning, wrapped in bundles and possessed of a far-off gaze like dead sheep.

Like so many waiting areas, this doesn't seem like a good place for the sick. It would either make you sick if you're not already sick, or sicker if you are. However, it is clean and there is a system in place that has already filtered patients without the use of an overpriced GP. Private doctors do exist here, mostly expensive off-duty public doctors working evenings.

At least all these people will be seen and treated by the end of the day, even if it is going to be a long day. They won't be lying on trolleys for weeks, and it's all paid for by the State. If you do go to a private doctor – like I did when my back went out – the chances are they'll tell you to go to the hospital anyway if further treatment is needed.

Hours pass and many sleep like the dead. But a sudden click of the lock on the door and the reaction is like a hare released at a greyhound track. People shout and wave bits of paper, doctors appear and push back
the mob while hoarse kids scream at their mothers. In all this chaos, there is nothing I can do but wait until it has calmed down. I go with the flow of the crowd until I'm swept, like a piece of flotsam, onto a cushioned chair in front of a nurse.

The nurse is a friendly, but naturally a suspicious, woman. Heard every hard luck story and is not prepared to give me an easy go of it just because I'm a foreigner. A hangover would instil little sympathy, and I have been warned not to mention my numb right foot, so I have to try something else. Here I am passed my wild card. She hands me a thermometer and sends me outside. I am to sit with it under my armpit while the next patient is dealt with. Realising my thermometer is not going to reach the stars, I go into the bathroom and run it under the hot tap until it hits a sufficiently frightful level. Temperature levels panic Polish nurses in winter, so she gives me a list of drugs and a week off. Miraculously, she actually discovers a sore throat I didn't know I had, so it has all worked out very well in the end.

With a week off, I line up a few books I've been meaning to read and settle into bed to relax. I feel good now. The snow is pelting the windows and I can hear the rushed footsteps of the kids outside as they dash from boarding block to school. I'm in such a childishly joyous mood, in fact, that I even look at my watch every hour and figure out what class I'm missing, what
tripe will be served up for dinner and what temperature it'll be come dusk. At lunchtime, some of the kids arrive with a tray of soup and bread, a few cartons of juice and some chocolate. They wish me a speedy recovery, and I'm very moved at that. I thank them, but tell them that I've no intention of speeding up the recovery. The day passes nice and slowly, most of it spent reading and sleeping, with no further plans but for more of the same the next day.

The next morning at precisely eight o'clock, however, a cruel intervention takes place. In the middle of a nice doze there comes a deafening, ear-splitting noise and immediately a bit from a pneumatic drill pierces the wall, missing my ear by only a few inches. I leap off the bed and stare in disbelief at the wall beside my pillow. The bit is gone, but the evidence, a white powdery circle of chewed up plaster, lies lifeless on my sheet. Just then, there is a knock on my door and almost simultaneously the bulbs blink out all over my flat like dodgy Christmas lights.

I open the door, my face frozen in fear, as much through the implications of that drill as the near miss. It is the director of the boarding school, who tells me the corridor is going to be rewired and the power will be off during the day for the next couple of weeks. Because of the inconvenience of moving me out, they have decided my flat will be left alone. Everyone else, however, will be moved to another wing. The door
closes. The drill kicks into life again next door. No lights for reading, no stereo for music, nothing to do and a whole week to do it in.

For the week, I bathe in candlelight and spend my time daydreaming. I'm now forced to eat the boarding school food because there's no power and I can't get to the shops or cafés. The workers traipse in and out of my flat all day, because the main fuse box is located in the hallway. That doesn't really bother me; I just stay in the main room. Each evening when they finish – any time between six and ten – I remind them to turn the power back on for my section. Then the problems really start.

Every evening when power is restored, they have managed to mess something else up. After they are gone, I might discover that the kitchen light works, but the main room is left in darkness. Or a socket on one side is operable and the rest dead. Whenever I enquire, they simply tell me that everything will be fine eventually, and not to worry. The word ‘eventually', similarly used by Marx, Lenin and the rest of the boys, has scary connotations in Poland.

Despite the inconvenience, I am glad that the power problem is finally being looked at. It was a complete mess. There were nights when the fuse box in the hall hummed and droned like a bumble bee – it was only a matter of time before it either exploded or burned the building down while we all slept peacefully in our beds.
But about three weeks later, when the boys were just about to pack up, the bathroom light suddenly died.

In they came, two of them. The first went into the bathroom and played with the switch a few times while prodding the suspended bulb with the end of his cigarette. Then he went out and looked at the new fuse box, pulling at his bottom lip and muttering something not very promising under his breath. The pair then had a sort of discussion and finally turned to me. ‘Nie bylo,' they said.

This means literally, ‘it wasn't there', and is far graver than ‘nie ma', ‘it's not there', which at least implies some hope. In other words, they were saying that there never was a light in the bathroom. Then they walked out. That was it. I was left standing in the bathroom staring at a light that never existed, trying to figure out a way to get round the problem. George Orwell had given a name to this approach in his alarmingly familiar
1984
– he called it ‘doublethink'.

The process of doublethink was used by the Party in Orwell's tale to cover up any mistakes that had been made, and involved simply negating a matter in your mind and replacing it with whatever the Party told you to. It took a bit of practice, but appeared to work – at least for the Party. Applying the process of doublethink to my situation was simple. They had made a mistake when installing the new fuse box and clearly forgot to connect up the bathroom light. It was a mistake they
didn't want to remedy – the wiring was finished and that was the end of it.

That evening, the director of the school and the school electrician were called over after I mentioned it to the director of the internat. He also looked at it, prodded it with his cigarette and, after a discussion that was mostly made up of shrugs, turned to me and asked if I was sure I'd really had a light.