POLES APART Draft

He gazed blankly out the window. A young couple were walking down the street, their big night out having turned from sweet to sour.

The Essex Road looked no better from the number 73 bus than it did from the 495. The bendiness held no especial novelty. He’d been riding the trams for years in Warsaw. Sure the double decker had something. He would go upstairs just to reassure himself that the drab petticoats of London really were more dismal one story up than at street level.

Not true of the 205 though. He took the 205 to Liverpool street and had to concede the view from upstairs was good: the occasional gargoyle and fancy piece of Victorian brick work. And all that glass real estate. In Warsaw the skyline was still dominated by the Birthday Cake despite the explosion of building since 1989. Even the Marriott could not compete with that bizarre Palace of Culture. So much had happened in Poland since the safety of the Iron Curtain had been torn away.

Suddenly the Saturday night couple caught his eye again. The guy had just hurled a huge bunch of flowers down on the pavement. Dmitri Polanski noted wryly that he kept a firm grip on the magnum of Champagne. The bus jolted forward.

“Good,” he thought to himself in his mother tongue. “I get to watch a little.” This was no silent conflict. Nevertheless he could hear nothing above the constant irritability of the streets. They were obviously giving it some though. He could tell by the gesticulations and the grotesquely opened mouths.

A couple of elderly females in front of him were discussing the merits or otherwise of dried apricots. Their voices seemed to synchronise with the action outside. Were you supposed to soak dried apricots and if so why bother buying them. Why not just get fresh ones. Or tinned ones. No: tinned ones tasted completely different. Dmitri imagined it. He concentrated as he peered through the pane. Yes: these young English lovers were having a massive and destructive public altercation over apricots.

He had been in London only two weeks but already identified with the broken and tired population. Like communism before, capitalism seemed intent on snuffing out the mortal flame, turning our natural colour to a monochrome, these poor irreligious folk struggling with their handbags and glad rags. And yet the old regime had been good to him. He had worked, had a home, food on the table, security, a family. Life was simple back then. He drove a tram, and it simply followed the tracks. Not like these bendy buses.

Unlike Britain, Poland had become indominatable in the face of invasion and conquest. The Poles had learned to survive the winds of change, however sadistic and amoral. Not so the British. They were without inoculation and had embraced brash North American consumerism as though it would not kill them all, given time. When the winner takes all, almost everyone looses. To Dmitri, the people on the Essex Road did not look like winners.

The Polish knew an invasion when they saw one and would use it to their advantage if they could; steel themselves against the onslaught. They might even try to stand up to it like they did with the Nazis. They would get the great capitalistic beast and force it to work for them. He, Dmitri Polanski, was a case in point. He was part of a new vanguard now. Part of the great Diaspora that was flowing from the East. The boot was on the other foot and if need be they would bring it down hard on the drowning face of this withered Empyreal State. It made him laugh in a dry unamused kind of way.

Once, the World Service had broadcast a program on emigration. Somehow the transmission had got to Posnan. Even as a child in the 1960’s, the young Dmitri nurtured hopes of lifting the iron curtain sufficiently to slip to the West and more particularly, England. Even then he had the beginnings of an intense anglophilia. He had listened, enthralled. A woman from Somalia had come to the UK in the 1950’s. She had thought the huge signs saying “Take Courage” were Government hoardings, designed to raise the spirits of a beleaguered and battered post war nation. Dmitri wondered if the British Government might consider their own public information campaign now: massive posters proclaiming “Do Not Despair”. He pondered on it a moment. Do not despair. Looking at this London now before him he wondered why one should not despair. Why not? The other happy couple in Downing Street would have to come up with an answer to that one first.

The bus jolted again and Dmitri thought of all those compatriots who could drive this bus so much better if only they were recruited. If British Rail could do it in the West Indies why not Transport for London in Eastern Europe. The whole system could be run, owned and staffed by Poles. How much more pleasant the transit systems could be with a little piped folk music to keep a smile on the face, a song in the heart. He had sought a job but his English was still too shaky.

He was up parallel with the feuding couple again. The boyfriend was searching for something, probably cigarettes, and absently handed the magnum to his girlfriend. She grasped it by the neck. In a split moment she had brought it smashing down, shards and fizzing fluid making a surprisingly large black stain on the pavement in front of them. He could hear the explosion. The couple in front of him stopped talking and looked out the window.

For a moment the world stood still, the bus stood still and everyone stopped and stared. Now they had nothing. A clock ticked inside Dmitri’s head.

And then the moment passed. The great big city machine went grinding on. Lover boy seemed at a loss to know what to do and after another moment of incredulity marched off full pelt ahead. Dmitri could just hear the words: “ you fucking bitch” ringing out in amongst the ceaseless city racket.

“Loud.” He thought.

For a moment the woman looked up the street after her diminishing boyfriend and then slowly turned. As she did her eyes locked with Dmiti’s as he stared, gormless from the sealed window. The two of them were no more than three metres apart. He raised his eyebrows involuntarily. She blinked and his blood ran cold. But then she was off, back the way she had come. She had a mission. For a moment the Pole hesitated and then got to his feet. The couple in front of him said something about ‘young love’ and the ‘happy couple’ as he made his way quickly to the back of the bus. He peered out the rear window. Sure enough, there she was, picking up that big bouquet discarded there on the street.

With a growing smile he found himself another seat.

“Good for you,” he thought to himself sweetly. “That’s good for you.”



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