CHAPTER 18
‘Not Upon the Polished
Roads of
Their Makers’ Intention’
–T.E. Lawrence (‘Lawrence of Arabia’) on
Rolls-Royce Staff Cars in the Desert - Seven Pillars of Wisdom
‘Na
zdrowie, Mike!
Good vodka!’
‘Na zdrowie!’
I downed another
shot
of my home-made Żubrówka vodka.
I was sharing it amongst the other drivers
of the Polish Automobile Club as we were interviewed under bright lights.
‘Who is the President
of the club?’ I asked naively. They looked at
each other aghast.
‘Are you the President,
Witek?’ one driver with a ponytail
asked.
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Are you, Staś?’ This questioner looked
like Orson Welles in a
Bugatti T-shirt.
‘No. Not me.’ Everyone looked nonplussed.
‘We don’t know who
the President is and we don’t care! We are all leaders here! Do you want to be the President?’
I declined graciously.
Upon returning to Warsaw the problem
of parking
the old Rolls somewhere safe
had become painful and I enlisted the assistance of the
automobile club. They promised a space in the Technical Museum
as an exhibit, but as usual it required a number
of obstacles
to be surmounted, not the least of which was the moodiness
and whimsical nature of the curator.
‘Perhaps he will decide against
your car, Mike. You must contact him
every time to go out and he may decide
against it every day.’
214 A COUNTRY IN THE MOON
There was
a faint possibility of parking in the basement of the former communist party headquarters.
Zosia’s husband generously offered me the use of a cramped
underground parking
space in the centre used by the official
drivers of his ministry. Double steel doors led from the street to a courtyard and a red and white striped
boom barrier. The guard lived beside it in a shack.
A steep ramp led down to another padlocked steel door and a bunker about
fifty metres below street level.
The car was perfectly
safe and I could have free access
provided my romantic assignations with Zosia were never discovered. I dreaded
to think of the outcome
of Polish vengeance on my beautiful machine. I also felt
morally uncomfortable about the whole situation. However, I
put any reservations well
to the back of my mind as there was no other
viable alternative.
The first classic car rally around Poland for eighty years was to begin
the following week and I had decided to take part.
The last international event
of
this
type was won
in 1913 by Count
Konstanty Broel-Plater in a valveless
Benz. The Poles had an illustrious record as racing drivers long before
the
exploits
of their fighter pilots.
GP Bugattis were extensively raced in Poland by the wealthy
aristocracy in the 1930s at the Lwów Grand Prix (now L’viv in western Ukraine)
and in the Tatra Race in the Carpathian moun-
tains. The female Polish grand-prix
driver Maria Koumian drove her Bugatti
to particularly glamorous
public acclaim. In 1952 the Italian ace Rudolf Caracciola was interviewed at Monte Carlo. When asked which tracks he found
most difficult, he answered: ‘Definitely Nurburgring, next Monte Carlo, but no . . ..Lwów, yes Lwów
in 1932 . . . It was a difficult
route, Monte Carlo is a mere velodrome.
I remember Count Potocki, oh . . . it’s an
old story . . .’
The economic depression
of the 1920s did for these
great races but failed
to demolish the élan of the
drivers.
The
most
famous Polish driver of the era was Count Louis
Zborowski who raced at Brooklands in the 1920s and lived splendidly in the Palladian stately home Higham
Park in Kent. He competed in Bugattis, Aston Martins and his own aero-engined monsters designed with his engineer Clive Gallop,
one of the original Bentley
Boys. He called each of the four examples of this car Chitty Bang Bang. Ian Fleming
was inspired to write the story
of the magical car Chitty Chitty
‘Not Upon the Polished Roads of Their Makers’
Intention . . .’ 215
Bang Bang based on the Polish Count’s
romantic exploits the day his son remarked to him, ‘Daddy, you love James
Bond more than you love me.’147
Some sixty historic cars and motorcycles including marques seldom seen by Westerners
set off from Warsaw on a course of 1500 kilometres.
Richard
was to act as navigator and my son Alexander had flown in from Lisbon
to bolster his father’s wavering resolve.
We had first to complete
a few bizarre
driving
tests in Piłsudski Square near the tomb
of the Unknown Soldier – balancing
the car on a pivoting platform and driving
blind in a straight line with a green bag over the driver’s
head.
The
reception
south
along
the Vistula was tremendously enthusiastic with people lining
the roads throwing rose petals as if we were in the Mille Miglia road
race.
‘Piękny! Piękny!’ (‘Beautiful! Beautiful!’) they called as I drove by.
 |
| The Rally takes a break at the picturesque and historic town of Kazimierz Dolny on the Vistula River not far from Warsaw |
The appearance of a neo-Gothic fantasy
castle announced our arrival in Lublin,
a city of rich intellectual, religious and cultural heritage. As is customary in Poland the
Old Town
is surrounded by sterile communist concrete.
The Nobel prize-winning novelist Isaac Bashevis Singer paints
an eloquent portrait of nineteenth-century
Lublin in his powerful
novel The Magician
of Lublin.
The dusk descended. Beyond the city there was still some light, but
among the narrow streets and high buildings it was already dark. In the shops,
oil lamps and candles were lit. Bearded
Jews, dressed in long cloaks
and wearing wide boots,
moved through the streets
on their way to evening
prayers. A new moon arose,
the moon of the month
of Sivan.
There were still puddles
in the streets, vestiges
of the spring rains, even though
the sun had been blazing
down
on
the
city
all day.
Here
and
there
sewers
had flooded over with rank water;
the air smelled of horse
and cow dung and fresh milk from the udder. Smoke came from the chim- neys; housewives were busy preparing
the evening
meal: groats with soup, groats with stew, groats with mushrooms .
. . The
147 In the film the name Chitty Chitty Bang Bang comes from the noise the car makes. Actually
Count
Zborowski named his cars after a bawdy soldiers’ song from the Great War concerning officers based in France.
They would obtain
a weekend pass known
as a chit to go to Paris and enjoy the delights
of certain accommodating ladies. The unusual name Chitty Bang Bang is thus readily explained.
216 A COUNTRY IN THE MOON
world beyond Lublin was in turmoil
.
. . Jews everywhere were being driven from their villages . . . But here in Lublin one felt only
the stability of a
long-established community.
This original
medieval trading city gave rise to its own characteristic form of Renaissance architecture and was one of the most important centres
of Jewish life in Europe. Most importantly it witnessed the signing of
the Union of Lublin which established the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in
1569. In many ways this republic embodied at a much earlier
date similar political
ideals to those that inspired the formation of the European Union. It brought together democratic principles, civil rights,
constitutional law and remarkable religious tolerance
in the finest of political
orders.
In 1939 almost a third of the total population of Lublin were
Jewish. The largest Talmudic
library in the world was located here and a famous Yeshiva (high school)
was staffed with distinguished refugee Jewish teachers from all
over Europe.
The scenes of innocently
integrated civilization were swept away forever
by
the
horrors of nearby Majdanek concentration camp. One
exhibit
in the fine
museum is a barrack block crammed to bursting with the discarded shoes of Jews. Without signage or commentary, choking
with stale odour, this silent testimony to horror is
the most eloquent I have seen in Poland. Clouds of black ravens nest in the trees,
squawking raucously and drifting above the camp like ashes carried
by the wind. A synagogue
has recently been renovated in the
city within the elegant yellow-ochre old Yeshiva building where scholars used to study the Talmud. Exhibits
for a museum are being collected
mainly from Christian Poles who preserved sentimental
objects owned by murdered Jewish friends – a silver ladle, some broken candlesticks, a powder box kept for sixty years by an old lady. The mass killing of Jews was regarded
by a majority
of Poles as a sign of the depravity
of the German conqueror. An unremarked
solidarity existed in the face of this common enemy as Poles waited in fear of their own genocide. Scarcely
any
traces now remain of the Jews of Lublin. Their absence haunts ancient courtyards, their ghosts lean over the old wooden
balconies.
The modern city is one of the most vibrant and attractive I have encountered in the country. The reconstruction of
‘Not Upon the Polished Roads of Their Makers’
Intention . . .’ 217
magnificent
Renaissance town houses in the winding
warren of streets and old squares is proceeding apace.
In summer the streets and sidewalk cafés teem with Mediterranean
bustle. A Jewish pub called Mandragora
has been opened
by a woman
with Jewish
roots who enthusiastically maintains
many ceremonies associated with the culture and imports spices from Israel. The Catholic University
of Lublin is the
only
such
institution in
East
Central
Europe
and during
the communist period remained
a repository of Polish Catholic culture.
The following morning I turned
the Spirit of
Ecstasy towards
Zamość, the città ideale of the Late Renaissance known as the ‘Padua of the North’. An old wood-block print of this star-shaped fortified capital
of the estate of Grand
Hetman Jan Zamoyski
had fascinated
me since I had first seen it in the window of a Warsaw antique
shop. We left Lublin early, mist rising from the fields,
the landscape polished by moist light. The Lublin Upland
is a largely unspoilt agricultural region between the Vistula and the Ukrainian frontier
in the east, part of the European latifundia
or great grain estates.
The old car was performing
immaculately, wafting characteristically through the countryside with no apparent motive force.
The quilted meadows were dressed in summer green.
Enormous twin-spired parish churches dominated the flat landscape but
one searched
in vain for
the
village that financed their construction. Many single horses, a few harnessed in pairs, ploughed the fields.
Surprisingly elderly men plodded behind the animals with the traces slung around their necks, grasping an implement of primitive design, pushing
it deep into the earth.
Women with their heads wrapped
in colourful scarves were sowing seed in an ancient biblical
manner,
grasping a handful from a hessian bag and casting it in an arc with a wide
sweep of the arm. Men dropped potatoes
into furrows. These
ancient Polanie or people
of the fields unbend from their work
to rise up in silhouette
against the wide sky and clumps
of birch and willow to gaze vacantly
at your passing. I stopped
at a village
to buy warm fresh bread for breakfast.
No amount of reading prepared
me for the exalted
architectural impact of Zamość. The town was surrounded by characterless communist concrete but the elegant
Baroque spire of the Old Town led me forward. Zamość is the perfect
embodiment of
the
Polish
218 A COUNTRY IN THE MOON
Renaissance-Mannerist style. The sides of the square are some one hundred metres long, lined with Renaissance houses
above vaulted arcades with wrought-iron lamps and plasterwork. They
provide cool shade in summer and
protection from the
severe winter. At night the square was eerie and mysterious with the galleries fitfully illuminated
by gas lamps in the shadow
of Renaissance pediments.
The folk decorations
of the Armenian merchants’ houses were transformed into grotesque shapes
that
seemed to possess veiled threats. Hurrying silhouettes were muffled against the chill. Today the architectural spaciousness of the piazza has disappeared under a welter of sponsored brewery
umbrellas and alfresco dining.
The city was designed
and built in the late sixteenth
century
by Bernardo Morando of Padua as a work of art and the capital
of the estate of Grand Hetman (Commander-in-Chief)
Jan Zamoyski (1542–1605), head of one of the most illustrious Polish magnate families and arguably the most powerful
Pole in history. A noble Sarmatian portrait of
the Chancellor, a man of profound humanist
learning who assembled one of the great libraries of Europe and studied at the University of Padua, hangs in the museum.
The city is an expression
of the platonic ideal of community life
built according to Italian
Renaissance theorists intended
to reflect the order of the cosmos, the divine music of the spheres. In the sixteenth century
the market would
have teemed
with Jews, Armenians, Turks, Magyars, Ruthenians, Greeks, Italians and even Scotsmen as well as Poles. The city was on an important crossroads
on the trade route through Lwów
linking Northern Europe with the Black Sea. The city is
a perfect realization of the Palladian bello secreto of musical harmony and architectural form.
For this illustri-
ous magnate, the capital of his ‘kingdom’
(half the size of Belgium)
combined a centre of commerce and habitation,
a massive fortress, a
cultural academia (university), a place of religious observance and finally his residence. This ‘Latin’ capital
is a unique survival in Europe.
The town was one of only two fortress cities that managed to withstand
the Swedish sieges in the mid-seventeenth century. Although once an important trading
hub, today Zamość struggles economically with unemployment as
it is no longer on the way to anywhere. Colourful washing made bright splashes of colour above
‘Not Upon the Polished Roads of Their Makers’
Intention . . .’ 219
vegetable
gardens
in
Italianate courtyards.
Dogs
and
chickens rooted amongst the wrecks of
old American cars. The Zamoyski
Palace was turned into
a military hospital
in 1830 but is now being restored, the equestrian statue of Jan Zamoyski
re-erected.
The Poles in the region around Zamość suffered a terrible fate during the Second World War. It was designated the ‘First Resettlement Area’ of the Generalgouvernement of the Nazis. This ‘ethnic cleansing’ resulted in the resettlement, execution and torture of
some 110,000 Polish peasants and the clearing
of hundreds of villages.
Thousands of Polish
children were dragged
from the arms of their screaming mothers to be brought up with a new racial identity as Germans.
The town was renamed Himmlerstadt and intended to be an outpost of German culture in the east. The Jews were trans- ported to Bełżec and Sobibor extermination camps.
Mounted police fell like a pack of savages
on the Zamość Jewish quarter. It was a complete surprise. The brutes on horseback
in particular created a panic; they raced through the streets
shouting insults,
slashing out on all sides with their whips. Our community then numbered 10,000 people.
In a twinkling, without
even realizing what was happening,
a
crowd of 3,000 men, women and children, picked
up haphazardly in the streets and in the houses, were driven to the station and deported to an unknown destination. The spectacle, which the ghetto presented
after the attack, literally
drove
the
survivors
mad.
Bodies
everywhere, in the streets, in the courtyards, inside the houses; babies thrown from
the third or fourth
floor lay crushed on the pavements.148
Thousands of Polish citizens of the town, including many children, were executed in the Rotunda, a
nineteenth-century gunpowder magazine constructed by
the Austrians. It lies in a memorial
park south
of the defensive walls. The road crosses
the inevitable railway
tracks near the local station and shunting
yards. The building
is a brick drum with an open
arena in the centre covered in cinders. There are cells within
the
circular
walls that are
dank and dark,
148 David Mekler quoted
in Zamość Ghetto Aktion Reinhard Camps (http://deathcamps.org)
220 A COUNTRY IN THE MOON
reeking of evil
and death. Many candles burn before memorial
sculptures but no cosmetic restoration has taken place here since the war. The damp mould of decay catches in the throat as one wanders about, spirits sinking lower and lower. The arena is entered
through the original
Nazi wooden and barbed-wire gate painted with gothic German script. Through the barred apertures one can see today’s children laughing happily in the sunshine, paddling in the nearby lake, and running along paths dusted
with wildflowers. The presence of the black night of
the soul directly beside the golden achievements of the Renaissance is a haunting and
profound mystery. Poland
is unique in these displays of light and utter darkness.
By chance we had arrived during a memorial service. The Polish Air
Force provided
a guard
of honour. Cinders crunched
ominously underfoot. Torches were lit around
the memorial as dusk descended.
Carbines were raised and the live rounds
fired with a tremendous flash, smoke and deafening
roar, the reports tearing off the walls in a
terrifying amplified explosion
that reminded one in a
physical way, like a punch to the abdomen,
of Nazi executions. The brick drum concentrated the sound painfully, acrid smoke filling the nostrils, brass cartridge cases spinning into the cinders.
I circled the Rotunda looking at the forest of white crosses and the plaques denoting the camps where the citizens of the ‘Padua of the North’, the noblest expression of Renaissance humanism,
had been brutally exterminated.
From Zamość the rally passed
through the Roztocze National Park, the last home of the small, wild Polish horse called the Tarpan. Sitting in the centre of open field covered in yellow dandelions
was a tiny, blonde
Polish
girl with a red ribbon in her hair making
a
crown of cornflowers and buttercups. A shaft
of
sunlight
fell
through a gap in the trees creating
a golden halo around her head. Two peasant farmers
without teeth engaged me in conversation and leaped backwards into
a pond in rustic surprise when I said I was from
Australia. The
forests of huge fir trees (the largest
in Poland with a height
of 50m) and magnificent Carpathian beeches give way to spruce,
oak, hornbeam and aspen. The superb lakes
support a huge variety of water-birds. There is an untouched wildness about the landscape
of the eastern borderlands of Poland
that is intensely romantic in its solitude. Yet in the midst
of this natural
lyricism
‘Not Upon the Polished Roads of Their Makers’
Intention . . .’ 221
tragedy so often lurks.
I came upon a car that had passed me at suicidal speed and which had now left
the road and slammed
into a tree-trunk. The
driver was slumped unconscious or dead over the wheel, his face crushed and bleeding, his young
wife or girlfriend sitting by the roadside looking at him and weeping – an awful irruption of reality into my dreams.
I stopped at a nearby farmhouse and with great linguistic difficulty called an ambulance.
Some sixty kilometres from the Ukrainian border we reached the great palace of Łańcut which also lies on an ancient trade route from Western
Europe to Ruthenia. After the ‘cynical
surgery’ of the third partition of 1795 this area became part of the Austrian
province of Galicia. We
were directed to the usual rotting former communist accommodation functioning at that time as a violin summer camp. Łańcut hosts
a
famous
annual
music
festival.
What
a
contrast between the beautiful melodies floating from open windows and the dead flies in our freezing
room, the urine running across
the floor from the broken pipes
and blocked drains of the communal bathroom. This type of accommodation
has happily almost
completely disappeared.
The crush of people around the cars obscured one of the grandest aristocratic residences in the country and
one of the most remark- able in Europe.
The palace
was one of the few magnate residences
relatively untouched either by the war or the communist period. In the late sixteenth
century a fortified
country house stood on the site, the stronghold of
the brigand Stanisław Stadnicki known as ‘The Devil of Łańcut’ for his reckless and predatory behaviour. In the mid-seventeenth century the fabric was altered and expanded into a
palazzo in fortezza by the fabulously
wealthy
Lubomirski family. During the Polish Commonwealth they were said to own 360 towns and possessed greater wealth
than many European royal families. The ubiquitous Dutch baroque architect Tylman van Gameren modernized
the
castle,
adding
the
baroque towers
with great
copper-sheathed cupolas as well as strengthening the fortifications
against the Turkish
threat.
Elżbieta Lubomirska née Czartoryska was one of the wealthiest, most beautiful and cultured
women in Warsaw although she suffered from
‘excessive
sensibility’ and a neurasthenic disposition. Later
in life she spent her time at Łańcut ensconced on a chaise
222 A COUNTRY IN THE MOON
longue in a darkened
room with her migraine headaches ministered to by a
graceful young Turk. She had shared a sentimental
and intellectual intimacy with the young Stanisław Augustus Poniatowski (the last king of Poland)
and thoroughly put him through the grinder of jealousy
and romantic
despair.
He wrote
mawkishly in his Mémoires: ‘she
seemed to belong to a superior
order of being’.149
 |
| The Gardens of the Palace of Lancut |
Łańcut is reminiscent of a large English country house but rather more
stylish and certainly
less straight-laced. Elżbieta transformed
the castle into a grand palace worthy of
one of the greatest magnate families.
A large garden was laid out in the English
style and a Florentine artist created a sculpture gallery that displays
Roman busts
and antique marbles
covered by a superb trompe l’oeil
sunlit pergola covered
in vines. Elżbieta’s adopted son Henryk Lubomirski appears
as an androgynous, cosmetically voluptuous sculpture of Amor carved by Antonio Canova. The Turkish suite pulsates in enthralling red, an opulent
orientalism
casting one back to the Sarmatian
heritage of seventeenth-century Poland.
Elżbieta was a good musician and employed
an Italian composer and a pupil of Haydn to be the Kapelmeister of her private
orchestra. She created
an exquisite private
theatre and staged French plays by Marivaux
and sketches (or ‘Parades’) written by her son-in-law
Jan Potocki (1761–1815). This character straight from fiction was an ethnographer, linguist, early balloonist, mystic, oculist and author of the astonishing Manuscript
Found in Saragossa, a
labyrinthine weave of exotic and fantastical tales told by a
young army officer.
The Potockis inherited the palace in the early nineteenth century
and it ‘became a byword for slightly vulgar show and manic entertaining’.150 Emperor Franz Josef
II, Afghan monarchs, Romanian princesses, Daisy von
Pless, Madame de Staël and the Duke
and Duchess
of Kent were all house guests for foxhunts and shooting in company with assorted politicians, celebrities and the wandering
refugee aristocracy of France.
My concert pianist grand-uncle had
taken a few lessons from the great musical pedagogue Theodor
149 My account of Elżbieta Lubomirska is derived in part from the superb The Last King of Poland
by Adam Zamoyski (London 1992)
150 Poland: A Traveller’s Gazetteer, Adam Zamoyski
(London 2001) p. 132
‘Not Upon the Polished Roads of Their Makers’
Intention . . .’ 223
Leschetizky
who
was born in the castle
in 1830, his father
being music master to the Potockis.
In
Vienna he was the renowned
teacher of some of the greatest pianists
of the age including Ignacy Jan Paderewski, Ignaz Friedman and Artur Schnabel.
The unique carriage museum has, next to a collection in Paris, the most extensive assemblage of private equipage
in the world, including the elegant calèche
reputed to have been used by Chopin. Sleighs
of basket-work, gilded and upholstered in green velvet and deeply lined with fur, remind one of races across the winter ice in the novels of Pasternak or Tolstoy. The
walls of the museum are ornamented with hunting trophies, including a rather unpleasant giraffe severed mid-neck and mounted vertically. The Potockis retained the palace until 1944 when the dashing Alfred Potocki
was forced to load 14
railways freight cars with precious objects and dispatch them ahead of the Soviet Army to Vienna, Lichtenstein and finally France.
They were
related
to
nearly
all the crowned heads of Europe, which
ensured the survival of the palace
(assisted by a sign hung
on the gate reading National Museum),
but
the communists forbade the return of its treasures to Poland. Despite the depredations of
war Łańcut gives a unique and breathtaking intimation of the splendour
and wealth of Polish magnate
families.
We were
treated
to
a fine chamber
music
concert
in the Sala
Balowa the first evening
as part of the
annual
music
festival. A number of priests, bishops,
and archbishops had chosen
to attend a performance of Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater and Tchaikovsky’s Souvenirs de Florence. The elderly Princess Potocka was present but seemed rather distraite. In this beautiful
Aigner ballroom I could imagine an elegant past audience of Polish officers, ministers, artists and
revolutionary writers dancing with radiant women in silk and jewels as guests of the Potockis. My body aching
from a fast and reckless morning ride on their hunting
estate near Julin was
now bathed and relaxed. Under the chandeliers listening to a sentimental Wieniawski
Polonez with
the keenest pleasure, I recalled the forest rushing past, the pounding of hooves, the slight fear of the unknown as I too dreamed
of a Polish mistress.
Early next morning
we left Łańcut. The rally was heading
into the far east corner of the country and suddenly took
an
224 A COUNTRY IN THE MOON
unsealed road
outside of the town. At the bottom of an incline, the ruts and undulations of a dry stream bed appeared to present no particular
danger. I overcooked my approach
speed and the car violently
bottomed. The unmodified suspension
is rather
soft and I was forever clouting
obstacles – hidden
spikes, stones, culverts. A frightful
roaring came from the engine.
The underside was intact but I had struck a rock and broken the left bank of the
exhaust
manifold
at the elbow. Experience has taught me that
although
they
are strong,
nothing is simple to repair
on a Rolls-Royce. We were 900 kilo- metres east of Berlin and in deep trouble. Some Polish children, as usual, broke my despair.
‘Excuse me, sir. Can we take a picture
of your beautiful car?’
The rally support vehicle led the car like a wounded lion, growling and vengeful, to a local mechanic in the town.
A man was welding a pair of enormous wrought iron gates from the Potocki palace. Sundry dilapidated sheds contained a riot of ancient
lathes and other metal-working machines. His round,
fresh-faced wife immediately offered me a hearty
bean stew. I was despondently hunched over a bowl of it in the kitchen
lamenting our lot with my son Alexander
when Richard came in.
‘Michael. Good news, old chap. There is a Polish mechanic down- stairs who worked on Rolls-Royce
cars in Chicago.’
‘Get out! I’m in no mood for jokes,’
I shouted ill temperedly.
‘No, I’m serious. He repaired the car owned by the mayor
of
Chicago.’
‘Richard, will you please stop torturing me and go away!’ Jan
the mechanic stood in the doorway of the farmhouse.
He was a gangly, hyperventilating man with a cracked spectacle lens and a comforting smile who told me he ‘spoke American’.
‘No big video! I fix mayor of Chicago
Royce-a-Rolls when mafia blow him up with a bomb. No big deal this repair. Józef he help me. No big video!’
The man working on the gates wandered
in our direction and silently crawled under the car. Jan clearly knew a great deal about the rear of the vehicle where the bomb had exploded but seemed less certain
about the engine compartment. Anyway it was now well out of my hands. The Poles had taken over. The repair become a question
of national pride. Correct size tools were the main problem as
‘Not Upon the Polished Roads of Their Makers’
Intention . . .’ 225
my carefully assembled English set had been stolen in the Poznań robbery. The rally
had continued on south towards the town of Sanok and left us to our own devices. The two-way radio
of the Kommandor suddenly squawked.
‘Krzysztof?’
‘Yes. What’s up?’
Squawk.
‘It’s Konrad. Where are you?’
‘120 kilometres from Łańcut. Why are you asking?’
Squawk.
‘We need some English
tools for the Rolls-Royce
immediately!’
‘OK. I’ll bring them in a flash! Like bringing
blood to the wounded!’
Darkness. Torrential rain of a wild Polish summer
storm. Vodka. Five men push a heavy car half into an ill-lit
garage with a chicken coop and a crazy tethered
Pekinese. The tools arrive but none fit the bolts as
they have rusted slightly smaller
over the years.
‘No big video, Mike! My cousin has a factory
and will make tool for us. I will measure
with micrometer. We go home now for dinner. You sleep my place! It will be big party!’
We returned to his modest home for a vast meal which confirmed with a vengeance the
adage that in Poland guests
are considered ‘God in the house’.
The next morning after a huge breakfast we returned to the garage and the tool was duly delivered. Its handmade
appearance looked none too promising
but it fitted perfectly. Each bolt was first hit a
terrific blow with an iron
bar
and
sledgehammer
to
loosen
it. I became nervous indeed
of the beautiful machine and moved from foot to foot with a
furrowed brow.
‘Go eat apricots from tree, Mike. You are make me nervous!
Stop looking and worrying. We done this to Russian
diggers and tanks. No big video!’
Mechanics seemed to be arriving from all over Poland to work on the car. Giving unsolicited advice is a Polish trait
that can be helpful but can often be conflicting. Two Poles and three opinions,
it is said. The exhaust manifold was soon off and they hot-welded the cast metal after truing up the faces by eye on a grinding wheel. An art in itself. Russian tank gaskets were trimmed and glued to the faces.
 |
Jan and Józef hot welding the cast iron exhaust manifold, faces trued by eye
|
226 A COUNTRY IN THE MOON
The repair came together perfectly and by late afternoon the work was finished.
Jan was descended from Austrian stock who had inhabited
Łańcut for many generations. While talking of the large number
of priests in his family he took me on a tour of the ‘hidden’
town. First to
the
parish
church
where
both
mechanics
had
repaired
icons, crosses and gates. The seldom visited
dusty tombs of the Potockis
were shown us by an old lady in headscarf,
thick woollen socks and clogs. Then to the presbytery of a priest who had courageously concealed Solidarity activists hiding in the nearby forest in the crypt of his three-hundred-year-old wooden church. He had been arrested
and tortured many times
during martial law but had never become a collaborator, unlike many priests whose shady pasts are now being revealed. He lifted a lighted
candle aloft for me to inspect the ancient polychrome decoration
in the cavernous
roof. This intelligent, articulate and handsome
man with a hint of subversiveness was clearly a character from an unwritten Graham
Greene novel. He had many pretty female callers while we drank tea, vivacious young ladies who became innocently
flirtatious
in his company.
Another celebratory night followed.
In the morning we were packing the car and about to leave
when a voice erupted from
the house.
‘You don’t leave,
Mike! You must wait my brothers.’
I was getting
impatient to rejoin
the rally that was now hundreds of kilometres distant and camped by a lake. We waited.
Seated in the car and poring
over a map, I suddenly
felt drops of water falling
on my face. I thought it was raining. I looked around to see two priests, Jan’s brothers, dressed in surplice and soutane, blessing
the car with holy water.
‘We come to bless your car for safe journey!’
Richard, Alexander and I were still not permitted to
leave until we had consumed yet another
enormous
lunch.
Some
of
my favourite Polish food
appeared – żurek (sour rye flour soup with sausage and hard-boiled egg), naleśniki (pancakes with sweet or savoury filling), the fantastically popular pierogi ruskie (dumplings shaped like ravioli filled
with savoury cheese served
with chopped fried smoked bacon. The sweet variety with blueberries and slightly sour cream are superb) and bigos (a ‘hunter’
stew of sauerkraut and
‘Not Upon the Polished Roads of Their Makers’
Intention . . .’ 227
various types of meat, sausage and mushrooms). The meal concluded
with coffee and pączki (a closed
doughnut with sugar glaze filled with rose-flavoured jam).
An unaccustomed joy entered
the proceedings. Jan and Józef charged us nothing for the repair or the two full days accommodation and food. We had experienced
some of the finest qualities of Poles – emotional warmth and support in distress,
solidarity, overwhelming hospitality and acres
of food, the ability to improvise solutions in impossible circumstances and a
final flourish of the Catholic Church. A big video indeed
