Magda's Daughter (15 page)

The officer heard ‘taxi', a universal word. ‘It will be very expensive to hire a taxi to take you that far,' he said to Helena.

‘How expensive?' she asked.

‘You'll have to negotiate with the drivers outside the station.' He nodded to them, then walked towards a telephone kiosk.

‘Thank you,' Helena called after him. She waited until the queue in front of the booking office had dissipated. ‘Do you know the village well?' she asked the clerk.

He carried on counting and stacking coins on the shelf below his counter, and spoke without looking at her. ‘My mother-in-law's sister is poor. My wife and I visit there once a month to take her food and warm clothes. It's not easy for old people in Poland, especially in the country areas. I can give you her address. She has lived in the village all her life. If your mother was born there, she will have known her. She may be able to tell you things. She may even know if you have any relatives living nearby.'

Helena ignored the clumsy hint. ‘Is there a hotel in the village?'

He laughed. ‘A hotel? What for? Visiting stud boars and bulls?'

‘Is there anyone who lets out rooms?' Helena persisted.

‘There is a bar in a side street off the main square. You can't miss it. It's next door to the shop. They have a room they let out to visiting officials from the Ministry of Agriculture. But if it's occupied?' His grin widened. ‘You'll have to return to the hotel here.'

‘There isn't anywhere else?' Helena pressed.

‘Between here and the village? A few barns and pigsties. Nothing a Westerner would want to stay in,' he mocked.

‘You'd be surprised how tough we Westerners can be. Thank you for the information.' Helena turned to Ned. ‘Let's go.'

‘Where?'

‘To find a taxi.'

Chapter Eight

Helena had expected to find a line of taxis waiting outside the station. There were none. She and Ned dropped their bags and looked up and down. Apart from a parked red Syrena, the car produced in Poland solely for domestic use, the street was remarkably empty, as devoid of people as it was of traffic.

‘I feel as though I've stepped into one of those sci-fi films where we're the only people left on the planet,' Ned commented. ‘But it's midday, so everyone must be taking a siesta.'

‘This is Poland, not Italy or Germany.'

‘Then they're all queuing for food somewhere. If I knew where, I'd join them. I'm so hungry I could even eat that foul breakfast again.'

A man emerged from a building across the road and walked towards them. He looked at their suitcases. ‘Taxi?' he unlocked the Syrena.

‘That doesn't look like a taxi to me,' Ned said suspiciously.

‘Taxi,' the man repeated.

Helena looked up and down the street again. Despite the police officer's suggestion that she barter with the “drivers” outside the station there wasn't another car or person in sight.

The man opened the door, pushed the driver's seat forward and motioned them into the back of the car.

‘That car hasn't any back doors. Once we're in there we'll be trapped. He could drive us into the woods, rob us blind and dump us miles from anywhere,' Ned whispered, mindful of his father's warnings. He picked up the suitcases. ‘We'll look for a hotel and get reception to call us a taxi.'

‘Norbert.' The police officer strolled out of the station and walked up to them. ‘Don't tell me you're pretending to be a taxi driver again.'

‘He's not a taxi driver?' Helena asked the officer.

‘Not an official one who pays his licence fee.'

‘When have I ever had an accident?' Norbert challenged the officer. ‘I'm a good driver with a car. These people want to be taken somewhere. Where's the harm?'

‘The harm is that you specialise in picking up gullible tourists and charging them ten times the going rate. And because they don't know any better, they pay you.'

‘What's the difference, if they're happy and I'm happy? Everyone knows Westerners have money to burn.' Norbert winked at Helena, and Ned stepped closer to her.

‘Not all of them are happy. A German couple came into the office to complain that you drove them into the woods, stopped the car and demanded twice what you'd originally asked for to return them to their hotel.'

‘A misunderstanding,' Norbert dismissed.

Tired of standing in the broiling midday sun, Helena turned to the police officer. ‘Where can we hire a real taxi?'

‘That's a good question,' he pontificated. ‘There aren't many in town and,' he gazed at the empty street, ‘they all appear to be engaged.'

‘You won't do better than me and my Syrena, miss,' Norbert  coaxed. ‘Together we'll fly you wherever you want to go. And so quickly you'll be amazed.'

‘Even if you pay him upfront, he'll stop the car halfway and ask for more,' the police officer warned.

‘Come on, sir,' Norbert whined, ‘we all need to make a living.' ‘A living not a fortune,' the officer emphasized.

‘If we can't get another car then we'll have to take his,' Helena said decisively. ‘How much would you charge?'

‘To take you where?' Norbert asked.

Helena gave him the name of the village.

‘It's three hours there and three hours back for me. There's no way I'll get a return fare.'

‘How much?' Helena repeated.

Norbert glanced slyly at the officer. ‘Dollars or zlotys?'

Helena hesitated. She knew it was illegal to give Poles foreign currency or trade in anything except zlotys.

Norbert broke the silence. ‘I could do it for twelve dollars.'

‘That's three days' pay,' the police officer told Helena.

Norbert scratched the side of his nose. ‘Tomorrow and the day after I could make zilch.'

‘Knowing you, that's not likely. What are you selling this week, Norbert? Stolen watches or fake Levi jeans?'

‘The driver asked for twelve dollars.' Helena said to Ned in English.

‘For five, I'll note the number of the Syrena and make Norbert promise to take you straight there and stick to the agreed fare,' the officer offered.

Helena recalled the policeman heading for the public telephone in the station after he left them. And Norbert's swift arrival after she and Ned walked out on to the street.

‘Five dollars,' the officer repeated.

‘You said he'd leave us in the woods,' Helena reminded.

‘Not now I've helped you make the arrangements. He's not a bad sort and he's a good driver. He'll get you there in one piece.'

‘Have you seventeen dollars?' Helena asked Ned. She had a hundred tucked into a money belt she'd tied around her waist but she didn't want to flaunt it publicly and she knew that Ned had broken his share of the dollars into small amounts and secreted them in various pockets in his shirt and jeans.

‘Seventeen dollars is a lot,' Ned objected.

‘Twelve for the driver, five for the officer. And please don't try to haggle. It'll draw attention to us and it's illegal to pay for anything in American dollars,' she murmured, when a man leaving the station stopped and stared at them.

‘Even to a policeman.'

‘A police officer's word will carry more weight than ours.'

Ned pulled a small leather bag from inside his shirt. He opened it and extracted three five dollar bills and two singles. Helena took them from him, slipped the officer five dollars and gave the rest to Norbert.

 ‘Have a good journey.' The police officer turned on his heel and returned to the station.

Norbert walked to the back of his car and opened the boot.

He lifted the suitcases from the pavement and piled them inside. ‘Don't worry, you and your girlfriend will be fine with me,' he said to Ned in English. ‘I know how to look after tourists from the West.'

‘You certainly know how to charge them,' Ned complained.

Ned helped Helena into the back of the car and, conscious that there was no back door, sat behind the driver's seat. There was little he could do while Norbert was driving, but it comforted him to know that if they stopped, should it prove necessary, he could always throw the cord from his duffle bag around the man's neck and throttle him from behind. He reached for Helena's hand.

‘All the communists we've met so far seem to be on the make and take,' he observed quietly.

‘Peter warned us what it would be like.'

‘He was right. Anyway, as we've allowed ourselves to be picked up by what the people on Ponty market call a spiv, we may as well use him.' Ned leaned forward when Norbert sat in the driver's seat. ‘I'm starving. Is there any chance of buying food on the way?'

‘It will cost you.' Norbert turned and flashed a grin.

‘I didn't expect you to conjure up a meal for nothing,' Ned answered.

‘What do you want?'

‘What can you get?' Ned tossed the question back at him.

‘A large, well-cooked cold chicken, fresh bread rolls, butter, apples and plums.'

‘Sounds good.' In spite of her determination to get to the village as quickly as possible, Helena's mouth was already watering. ‘Five dollars.' Norbert held out his hand.

Ned reflected that their money wasn't going to last long at the rate they were spending it, but after only two days behind the Iron Curtain he wasn't anxious to make their stay a long one. ‘Where do we get it?'

‘I know a restaurant. You stay in the car. I'll go in the back door.'

‘And pay a dollar for the chicken and a dollar for everything else,' Ned guessed.

Norbert laughed. ‘A driver has to eat, too. But because I like you and your girlfriend, I'll throw in two bottles of beer at no extra cost. How's that for generosity?'

As Norbert had promised, the chicken was good, with plenty of meat, the bread rolls were so fresh they were still warm, and if the apples were wormy and the plums hard, Helena decided it would be mean-spirited to grumble. She and Ned gazed out of the car window at the passing scenery.

‘The countryside's not as green as Germany,' Ned commented.

‘The climate is drier,' Norbert informed him.

‘Your English is very good,' Helena complimented him between mouthfuls of chicken roll.

‘It was the only subject worth studying at school. Poland's future lies in the West, not the East. The Russians who live outside Moscow and Leningrad are even poorer than we are.'

‘You've been to Russia?' Helena had been curious about the country ever since she'd read
Anna Karenina
, which Alma Raschenko had given her for her fourteenth birthday.

‘My mother is Russian.'

‘Do you speak the language?' Ned dropped a chicken bone back into the cardboard box in the basket and tore one of the wings from the carcass.

‘Not as well as I speak English.' Norbert waved his hand in the air. ‘What do you think of our Polish forest?'

‘Very pretty.' Helena drank a mouthful of beer from the bottle.

‘And haunted,' Norbert said. ‘So many people were massacred there during the war that the peasants won't walk through it at night.'

‘Polish people?' Helena moved to the edge of the seat.

‘Poles, Jews, Russians and, when we Poles had the chance, Germans,' Norbert said with relish.

‘Did you live here during the war?' Helena asked.

‘I was born and grew up in the town, but I have no intention of dying there. When I save enough money I'm going to America. Have you been there?'

Ned had, but Helena kicked him to warn him to stay silent.

‘What was it like here during the war?'

‘Bloody and terrible for the survivors; even bloodier for those who were killed.'

‘Did you fight?'

‘I was only twelve when it finished. But my father joined the partisans and I ran errands for them. I remember the Russians marching in. I was six years old. They ordered everyone into the town square – men, women, children, old, young, sick, healthy. It made no difference. They separated out those they didn't like the look of, shot half and sent the other half to Siberia. When the Germans drove the Russians out in 1941, things became even worse. They killed people for amusement, cut food rations for Polish people to below starvation level, rounded up everyone who was young, fit and healthy, and sent them to work camps in Germany. But the Jews received the most savage treatment. My father's brother's wife was Jewish. She was murdered in Treblinka.'

‘Did the rest of your family suffer?' Helena probed.

‘I just told you, all the Poles suffered during the war. No one in the country escaped. Look over there.' He pointed to a roofless ruin, its crumbling stone walls barely visible beneath a tangle of ivy, brambles and weeds. ‘That used to be a flourishing farm. My father knew the owner, He had over fifty cows.'

‘What happened?' Even as Helena asked the question she dreaded hearing the answer.

‘The Germans drove into the farmyard early one morning and accused the farmer and his two sons of helping the partisans. They shot the entire family, even the baby, stole all the animals and burned the buildings.'

‘My mother told me a little of what is was like here during the war.'

‘Your mother lived here?'

‘In the village,' Helena confirmed.

‘So that's why you want to go there. To see relatives?'

‘No, but I want to see my father's grave. Is the village like this one?' Helena moved the conversation on.

About fifty houses were scattered either side of the sandy road. A few were brick but most were wood. All were in dire need of care, attention and a coat of stain or paint. Apart from a few vegetable plots, the gardens weren't tended, and the few flowers that bloomed were straggly and overblown, as if they hadn't been pruned in years.

‘The village you're going to is smaller but not that different,' Norbert replied.

‘Are all the people there farmers?' Ned asked.

‘No. There are two factories close by. One makes jam, the other sausages. People either work in them or on the collective farm. A few of the older people still live on their own small plots of land.'

‘This is just what I expected after talking to Peter,' Ned whispered under cover of the engine noise. ‘In communist countries everything belongs to everyone, but no one takes responsibility for or cares for anything, including the houses they live in, which are left to rot. After last night's fiasco I dread to think where we'll be sleeping tonight. A village is bound to have less to offer than Warsaw.'

‘That doesn't necessarily mean the accommodation will be as bad.' Helena leaned close to Norbert. ‘The clerk in the railway station said something about a bar in the village. Do you know where it is?'

‘Yes.' Norbert nodded.

‘He said there is a room there that they rent out.'

‘I didn't know.'

‘Do you know of anyone else that rents rooms there?' Helena hoped there'd be a small hotel or boarding house the clerk hadn't heard of.

‘No, but I'll take you to the bar. If they haven't a room to spare they might know of someone who does. So,' he leaned back in his seat, ‘are you planning to do much sightseeing while you're here? Because if you are, there are castles and churches that I could show you.'

‘No, thanks. We just want to go to the village,' Ned interrupted.

‘But if you give us your telephone number, we'll let you know when we're coming back. Provided, of course, we don't spend all our money in the village and have none left to pay you the return fare.'

‘There's nothing to spend your money on in the village,' Norbert said authoritatively. ‘I'll give you the number of the bar nearest my apartment. I call in there once a day to pick up my messages. So telephone at least a day before you want to come back. Two days would be better. ‘