Primeval and Other Times

THE TIME OF PAWEŁ

“You have to live,” said Paweł. “You have to bring up children, earn a living, keep on studying and climbing upwards.”

And so he did.

He and Aba Kozienicki, who had survived the concentration camp, went back to trading in timber. They bought a forest for felling and organised the cutting and transport of the wood. Paweł bought a motorbike and drove around the district in search of orders. He got himself a pigskin briefcase in which he kept a receipt book and several copying pencils.

As business was going quite well and there was a steady stream of cash flowing into his pocket, Paweł decided to continue his education. Studying to be a doctor was no longer very realistic, but he could still improve his qualifications as a health worker and paramedic. Now he spent his evenings fathoming the mysteries of how flies multiplied and the complex sequences in the life of tapeworms. He studied the vitamin content in nutritional products and the ways illnesses spread, such as tuberculosis and typhoid. Over several years of courses and training he became convinced that medicine and hygiene, once liberated from the power of ignorance and superstition, would be capable of transforming human life, and the Polish village would change into an oasis of sterilised pots and yards disinfected with Lysol. So Paweł was the first in the district to devote one room in his house to a bathroom and medical treatment room in one. It was spotlessly clean in there, with an enamelled bathtub, scrubbed taps, a metal waste bin with a lid, glass containers for cotton wool and wadding, and a glazed cabinet with a padlock, in which he kept all his medicines and medical instruments. Once he had finished the next course, he had nursing qualifications, and now in this room he gave people injections, without forgetting at the same time to give them a short lecture on the subject of everyday hygiene.

Then the business with Aba collapsed, because the forests were nationalised. Aba went away. He came to say goodbye. They embraced like brothers. Paweł Boski realised that a new stage in his life was beginning and that from now on he must manage on his own, on top of that in completely new conditions. He could not keep a family merely on giving injections.

So he packed all his certificates into his leather briefcase and rode his motorbike to Taszów to look for work. He found it at the health centre, which was the district kingdom of sterilisation and stool samples. From then on, especially after joining the Party, he gradually and irrevocably began to gain promotion.

His job involved travelling on his noisy motorbike around the neighbouring villages and inspecting the cleanliness in shops, restaurants, and bars. In all these places, his appearance, with his leather briefcase full of documents and test tubes for excrement, was regarded like the coming of a rider of the Apocalypse. If he wanted, Paweł could have any shop or eatery closed down. He was important. He was given presents, treated to vodka and the freshest jellied pig’s feet.

This was how he met Ukleja, who was the owner of a cake shop in Taszów and several other, less official businesses. Whereas Ukleja introduced Paweł to the world of secretaries and lawyers, drinking sprees and hunting, willing busty barmaids and alcohol, which provided the courage to get as much out of life as possible.

In this way, Ukleja took the place vacated by Aba Kozienicki, the place assigned in the life of every man for a friend and guide, without whom a man would be just a lonely, misunderstood warrior in a world of chaos and darkness, which creeps out from every corner the moment his back is turned.