Talk ten.
On the way to the Phi Phi Islands,
03rd December
- How powerful are these two Volvo engines propelling our speedy boat?
- How come you are suddenly interested in the technical issues of our excursion?
- We should be talking about something, shouldn’t we?
- We could keep quiet for a while. Look, Seth is sitting there so pensive. He must be thinking about something serious.
- Don’t play a dummy and pretend you don’t care at all about last night. That you are a cold-blooded, cynical bastard.
- Call me bastard! Can’t I be kidding a little?
- What are you kidding about?
- About us. Exclusively about us.
- Who started it all?
- The kidding?
- Now you play a fool and you don’t know what I am asking about. It was you or he?
- It’s obvious it was you!
- I only warned him that we always sleep in the nude. He could choose: to sleep on that narrow, looking very uncomfortable extra bed of his in our tiny room with a still smaller bathroom or join us in our bed whose dimensions almost exceeded the size of the room.
- There were three cover sheets in our bed, too.
- As usual you kept the air-conditioning so low that a quilt would’ve been good to have.
- That’s why I raised the temperature.
- Not only of the room.
- I only turned to my side and fell asleep.
- As a good boy Seth tried to lie down on that settee of his but I grasped his hand and pulled him over to our bed telling him that he would be much more comfortable there. With visible relief he jumped into our bed and I noticed that his knickers looked as if they were too small for him.
- You see, it was youuu! Did he keep the knickers on?
- I wouldn’t tear them off him, would I? Let him stay shy. He couldn’t fall asleep, though. He was fidgeting and turning round in the bed waking me up.
- Did he touch you?
- I wouldn’t know. I don’t think so. At an instant I pushed him away into your direction.
- You did?!
- I wanted to sleep. I saw him cuddle you and I dozed off.
- I don’t remember anything but I felt I was too hot. That malfunctioning air-conditioning!
- Of course. In the morning we saw that Seth was sleeping with no knickers on!
- Look, you can see the Phi Phi Island.[1]
- Here are some words for you about the archipelago because you haven’t read the guide book:
The group of Island of a common name Phi Phi [pee pee] belong administratively to the Krabi region. Ko Phi Phi Don is the biggest of all the islands and the only one which has regular inhabitants. The islands became famous when on the Ko Phi Phi Leh a British-American film The Beach with Leonardo Di Caprio was shot. This attracted criticism, with claimed that the film making had damaged the island's environment, since the producers bulldozed beach areas and planted palm trees to make it look like the book. At the same time the film caused invasion of tourist on the islands. Then the Ko Phi Phi Don was almost totally damaged by the tsunami of 2004 when most of the island’s buildings got devastated. Now a big part, but not all, has been restored at the effort of the whole nation.
- With great humility the Thais quickly forget about the bad that happens to them and immediately set about working and reconstructing of what has been damaged.
- Whereas us, the Poles, we must first „enjoy” the pain and suffer excessively. We like to immerse ourselves in the national pain.
- Hey. Don’t forget we are on holiday.
- The comparisons come up themselves.
- What can you compare your situation to, after coming back home from the States?
- To coming of a colourful bird from a short-lasted freedom back to the cage. A cosy cage but still a cage.
- You came back home, back to Andrzej and back to your work which wasn’t too bad. What were you missing?
- Freedom. Breathing air in a free country.
- Who forbade you to do so?
- The system.
- How did it turned out for you with Andrzej?
- I’m still not ready to take up the subject.
- Then Solidarity came, didn’t it?
- And it changed my life completely. Nevertheless, before the harbingers of the change arrived, I had been sent on business to Sweden in 1979. To a beautiful place in the north, by the Gulf of Bothnia – Luleå.
- We’ve already read about it.
- Meeting Roxana, apparently, as many others …
- Did you use to meet many girls on your way?
- I made friends with many of them. I’ve kept in touch with most of them up to now. Unfortunately, some of them were misfortunate enough to be counting for something more.
- Did they succeed?
- You are not letting it go, are you? Not in the way to satisfy them.
- Did Roxana fall in love with you, too?
- Out of my modesty I shouldn’t claim so. She was herself after harsh experiences of her immigration process from Romania, so predicting my trouble she suggested that she helped me in case the Russians would invade Poland
- What was that help supposed to be like?
- She knew all about me, she would visit us in Poland. She would help „hunt” for potatoes (!) and other desired foodstuffs whose shortage in Poland was very painful. She witnessed the weakening of Solidarity. She was the first person to tell me that something might happen in Poland. She offered me a marriage of convenience so that I and Andrzej could leave the country.
- You’ve already described the story. You were supposed to go first then arrange another marriage for Andrzej and eventually settle down in Sweden or somewhere in the West living happily ever after. Is that the way it should’ve been?
- Yes, it should’ve. But it didn’t happen. The life and people verified our ambitious plans and wishful thinking.
- What exactly happened?
- Let’s drop it for a while. The wedding took place in Sweden in April 1984 instead of 1982. I left for Göteborg only in September 1984.
- And there it has all started, huh?
- My professional life unexpectedly sped up.
- And the personal life?
- It was well regulated before leaving Poland and I thought my solitude in Sweden would barely be a transitional but necessary stage. I had to leave in order not to go crazy in the country after the martial law, and try out another life in the West.
- What happened to Andrzej at that time?
- He got a job as a doctor on a Polish ship in the voyage to India. He was supposed to come back for Christmas 1984 and we would then decide what to do next together.
- What did you do next together?
- For the moment, I’m telling you what I did during my first months in Sweden. We shared a nice, little flat with Roxana in a residential area in Göteborg. Unexpectedly, against my expectations, I got a job as a teacher of English in one of the institutions of so called continuous education – adult courses.
- How was your marriage going?
- Don’t make me laugh. Surely, you’d like to hear about consumption. Yes, there were some problems with the consumption.
- Weeeell?
- Roxana was a vegetarian. She would tolerate with a difficulty the look of my food in the fridge. “The dead bodies” in the kitchen, as she would call my meat dishes, was inacceptable for her. We neither could afford another fridge nor there was enough room for it in our small kitchen, anyway.
- Did you go vegetarian?
- No, I didn’t. In spite of my mental readiness for such change. Too much was going on in my everyday life so I simply couldn’t add another shock to it.
- What was your consensus like?
- There was no consensus. We agreed to put up with each other till Christmas. Should I decide to come back to Sweden after the New Year’s Day, I would have to find new lodgings for myself.
[1] Phi Phi Island
