Greener Grass

‘Dzień dobry, jak się  pan miewa? Good morning, Sir. How are you?’ Said the security man as he leaned out of the security hut window to greet Paweł.

            ‘Bardzo dobry, dziękuję, a ty? Very good, thank you, and you?’ Replied Paweł automatically, slipping into the ridiculous Polish formality that inevitably accompanied every chance encounter with another human being. He had just stopped walking, to be checked in at the entrance to the eponymous brewery in the centre of Leżajsk. He had walked to work today, pushing his bike, as it was January. The local river San was immobile, locked in its icy phase until mid March and the only road clearing was shovel-full’s of sand scattered randomly across the road by bored men riding on the back of flatbed trucks. Salt was too expensive while the sand was free from the local pit. This may have helped the grip of the tyres of trucks and cars but it did nothing to assist bikes as they struggled over and through the ruts.

            ‘Tak, bardzo dobry dziękuję, yes, also very good, thank you’ the security man completed the social dance, glad of a small interruption to interrupt the boredom of his twelve hour shift.

Paweł walked on through the forbidding, rusty steel gates to his allocated space and carefully locked his bike to the steel railing before entering the brew house, and climbing the concrete steps to the malting floor where he worked, spreading the sprouting barley out across the floor, checking the growth and then collecting it together to get it ready for the kiln. He was happy with his job because, although it was poorly paid, he worked in the warm malting room so he was kept warm all through the South Eastern Polish winters at no cost to himself.

His first job today was to finish clearing the malting floor then sweeping it clean, ready for the next batch of barley but he was called into the brew master’s office by Wojciech Dutko before he had a chance to get started.

            ‘Come in and sit down,’ said Pan Dutko. Paweł’s stomach lurched, he knew there was bad news coming, he had only been in the office twice in the five years he had worked at the brewery and he had never been asked to sit down.  ‘The sales of the brewery have dropped, partly because of the hard winter and the difficulty of getting the trucks out so we have to make cutbacks in the labour force. I am afraid we will have to let you go.’

            ‘But I am not paid so very much, Pan Dutko, so there will be little savings by getting rid of me and anyway, who will do my work in the malting room?’

            ‘That is not your problem now, we will find someone,’ said Wojciech, ‘now go over to the office, they are expecting you. Pick up the money owed to you and you can have the rest of the day off.’

Paweł knew this was not the real reason as he had seen no drop in the amount of malting that had come through his room, he suspected something else was going on. He slowly cycled home but stopped at the sklep, shop, on his way to buy something for his tea. He morbidly looked at the new steel grill over the front display window that had some curlicues designed in to try to make it look like a work of art rather than the functional anti-theft device that was its real role in life.

He chatted to old man Skrzypczak, after the ritual of asking after each other’s health, behind the counter. He was full of the news that his nephew had got a new job at the brewery, the wages were good and he would be working in a warm room on the malting floor. Apparently it had all been arranged by the old man’s son in law who worked at the brewery, name of Dutko. This was not corruption, Paweł knew that, it was just that, if you had any sort of power or influence, you were expected to use it to the advantage of anyone in your family . This was Social Darwinism in action – Survival of the Best connected.

Paweł was very unhappy with this news but was determined to get another job quickly. The next day he pushed his bike and cycled where possible, along the familiar route to the same industrial estate and talked his way past a security guard by saying he had an appointment at the Personnel Department.

            He was in the personnel department of a factory belonging to Hortex, the largest fruit juice manufacturer in Poland and now had to talk his way into a job. The deputy Personnel Manager, Andrzej Stefanek was one of his neighbours so he shamelessly claimed that, ‘Andrzej had told me that there was a vacancy on the apple juice line.’ By coincidence, there was and he got the job on a trial basis and on very low wages. It was now up to him to prove he could do the job and to work his way up in the company to earn more money. He also had to keep clear of Pan Stefanek for a time so that he wasn’t asked any awkward questions.

            Paweł was kitted out with rubber boots, overalls, rubber gloves and an apron as it was dirty, cold work in the factory. His job was to stand at the conveyor and pick out the rotten or damaged apples as they were unloaded from the tote bin and carried to the crusher where the Soc, juice, was extracted.

            He was quite happy doing his twelve hour shifts in spite of the cold and poor money until, one day Andrzej Stefanek found out that he was working there and had got his job by deception. He was sacked immediately. He was out of work again with no contacts and so little chance of another job. 

            He was in the karczma, pub, one night drowning his sorrows with Żubrówka, his favourite buffalo grass vodka, with his friend from the village when Jakub suggested they go to England as he had heard that there were plenty of well-paid jobs there. ‘We could go together, ‘ Jakub suggested. ‘It must be better than staying here with no job or money.’

            They spent a month doing research, borrowing money for the fare from the family and contacting Jakub’s Uncle in Peterborough for some temporary accommodation. They could fly by Ryanair from Rzeszów-Jasionka Airport which was only forty miles away near the steel town built by the communists at Nova Huta. This would take them to Stansted, or they could use the much cheaper – but longer coaches and ferries. They decided to take the coach to save money. They got the first coach from the Rynek Starego Miasta  in Leżajsk, the  old town square, for the six hour trip to Warszawa, Warsaw, and then another on to Berlin, London, Peterborough and Boston.

*

It was cold, very cold, and Paweł’s back was aching from constantly bending forward with both hands to grab the next one and separate the  flowering head from the stem before dropping the head, carefully into the constantly-running conveyor. He looked over to Jakub, level with him but cutting a different row; grinned to show that he felt just the same, cold and aching.

            It was 3 am, dark, cold. They were both in a sort of crude tent rigged up on top of a long trailer pulled slowly across the never-ending field by a tractor. The only respite they had was when the tractor reached the end of the field and had to manoeuvre around, ready for the return trip and also when the other trailer came alongside to take the loaded crates away to the warehouse where they were to be collected by the ever – hungry supermarkets.

 Paweł and Jakub were seated right at the back of the trailer, on a bench just above the ground with their feet on a cross bar just in front of them. Their job was to cut the cauliflowers with one chop of the machete they each held in their right hand while lifting the head with the left to deftly drop it into the next vacant conveyor bucket. The conveyor took the cauliflowers up to the body of the trailer that was kitted out like a production line where the heads were inspected, weighed, wrapped in film, labelled and packed into crates by several women. It was cold, back breaking work but the job was secure, there were potatoes, brocoli, cabbage and the hated sprouts to harvest as well as the cauliflowers and the pay was regular and good.

            ‘Trawa jest bardziej zielona, co? The grass is greener, huh?’ said Jakub.

Paweł just grinned in reply and carried on chopping.