KRAKOW is TMMFITW
On a hillside outside TMMFITW, a zoo-keeper led a hyena through the long grass. The keeper wore tracksuit bottoms with two white stripes down them and a grey hooded top bearing the text “Homo Wandalus” [1]. In his right hand he held a huge wooden club.
The zoo-keeper was laughing hysterically. “You free now, free as bird ha ha! Bat you mast walk down heel. I mean, which bas will take facking hyena? Ha ha ha-ha-ha!” He bent down and stared into the creature’s glassy brown eyes. The hyena slouched off with a snarl.
“Hey! Hey! I never said you were agly. As man say in London, don’t get the hump [2] mate!!! Ha ha ha-ha haaaah!!”
A group of Dutch tourists passed the hyena as they trekked up the hill.
“Hallo?!” one of them shouted. “Do you know where the zoo is?” The hyena stopped in his tracks and stared blankly at the tourists before continuing on his way.
*
“Yes Tariq, yes, that’s precisely my point,” said the American after the waitress had left their starters on the table. “Sure, they can be dour and melancholic but you know what?”“What?”
“It’s not their true nature.”
“Not their true nature?”
“No.”
“So what is true nature of Poles, oh wise American?”
“It’s a tendency to hilarity, a propensity to mirth, a leaning towards levity!”
“Shit Joe, you are using again difficult words. Say it in the plain English please won’t you?”
“Man, these Poles really love to laugh!”
The waitress had returned to her seat at the bar. She took a drag on a cheap brand cigarette and stared into space. Her face was impassive. Dusk was falling outside. The old city walls loomed dark over the tiny restaurant.
“Let me have the menu. I want to order a drink,” said the Iraqi. “Nothing alcoholic though. This zeeveech [3] goes to my head.”
“You pronounce it zheeveets man”
“Whatever. It’s juice I’m after.”
*
Half of the audience were hoping the male dancer’s tights would fall down. The other half, not wishing to see him humiliated, were praying that he would pull his tights up over his arse crack. Then at least they would be able to admire the female dancers without being distracted.Onno followed the enticing dance moves of the svelte [4] young women. They made mistakes, and the quality of the dancing varied but the imperfections only made the whole thing more endearing to him. After the performance he lingered by the changing room, taking care not to be standing in such a way that he might come across as a Peeping Tom [5].
The rest of the audience had congregated on the landing above the majestic staircase of the theatre. Several of them, drunk and perhaps inspired by the performance they had just seen, had begun dancing. An elderly man pushed a floor polishing machine back and forth behind the dancers. He was smiling to himself and swaying his hips from side to side ever so slightly, ever so subtly. Onno, who had collected signatures from the modern style ballerinas, saw the cleaner’s dance and reached for his video camera.
“The secret dance of the polishing Pole,” he whispered into the microphone.
*
In this most religious of cities, people were capable of extreme acts of devotion. It wasn’t unheard of for even tourists to offer up impromptu prayers to the soul of the city, hug the corners of buildings and linger in courtyards, tracing with trembling fingers the outlines of murals. One famous and officially sanctioned devotional act was to wear a dragon suit and lick the sooty dust from window sills in the old town.But what led Anna to break her teeth on the Sukiennice, at the very centre of the city’s central square? Hers was no ordinary dementia. It seemed her devotion to the city had slipped into a delirium in which she saw herself literally consuming buildings, taking bites out of statues and churches. And what could be more cake-like than the famed Cloth Hall?
“I forp ip wass marzipan,” [6] she said afterwards. It took four months for the repairs to her teeth to be completed.
*
“This carpet is made of salt,” said the guide. The Belgian regent looked at the man’s earnest Slavic face, his huge watery eyes and fine sandy hair. “I suppose you are joking with me Pavel?” the king asked, patting the guide’s back as they walked towards the entrance to the mine.
“No. All here is salt. Buildings? Salt. Trees? Salt. Cars? Salt. Guides and ticket sellers? Salt. Even I, Pavel Markowski, I am composed of salt. It’s surprise to you your royal highness?”
The king didn’t answer; his attention had been drawn to a crowd of people gathered in front of the picnic benches beside the entrance to the mine. They were dancing and cheering while the band played la Brabançonne. Some had climbed onto the shoulders of others. “Oh-ley, ohley ohley oh-leeyy!!” they chanted merrily amid peals of raucous laughter.
“You Poles are certainly a happy lot!” said the king, bemused by the spectacle.
“No, these are not Poles,” replied his guide.
“Not Poles?”
“No.”
“Then who are these jolly people upstaging me and making a mockery of my country’s proud anthem?”
“I’m afraid I don’t know who are they.”
“Are they made of salt?”
The guide paused, took out a handkerchief printed with tiny dragons and blew his nose, emitting a sharp trumpet-like sound. He smiled a sly smile.
“All is salt, your highness, all”.
*
Dud Spiegelman and his wife Anna of the New York Institute of Architects, sat on the terrace of Café Ariel. “I expected smaller balls,” said Dud, stirring the three dumplings in his matzo balls [7] soup.“I’ve got big balls too,” said Anna.
“Wow! Look at this! The balls are floating in an equilateral triangle. Symmetry, sweet symmetry!!”
“Enough already with the symmetry thing! Oh baby, the fish, he cometh!”
The waiter placed an ornamental plate on their table. On it lay a huge carp with two mounds of dill and saffron flavoured mashed potato to one side.
“This is their signature dish, right?”
“Mmm, yep,” said Anna. “Sepharadine Carp. Spielberg mentions it in his Krakow memoirs”
“No kidding!”
“Yeah. He came here most days when they were shooting in the city”
“Hey! Check out the potato! Wow!”
“Oh yeah!!”
The Spieglemans leant over the table and peered at the mounds of mashed potato; they had been shaped into breasts and topped with cherry tomatoes for nipples.
“How naughty!” squealed Anna.
“Symmetrical potato boobs!” said Dud. “This city is a real turn-on. I’m not kidding!’
*
“Yes, like that. Lie in bath and place the cucumber slices on your eyes. Don’t worry, it’s nice sensation. I think you will enjoy.”The guide gave instructions to assistants in a back room as Maaike adjusted the shoulder strap on her canary yellow one-piece swimsuit and stepped gingerly into the tub.
“Ooh, it’s cold,” she said. “I hope the milk’s warm.”
“Yes, it’s warm,” said Konrad. “Ah, here it comes.” Two burly men in overalls pushed a trolley laden with pans of warm milk over to the side of the bathtub.
“In the legend, they used cream, but it is too expensive for us,” said Konrad. “The woman of nobleman family took cream bath as emollient, like Cleopatra, but main reason was to help her bear child.”
The assistants poured the milk over the Dutch woman until she was almost submerged and only her head and toes were showing above the liquid.
“Did she have a child then?” said Robin, Maaike ’s fiancé.
“Yes, five, four girls and a boy. The girls grew up and bore him grandchildren and the boy took after the throne”
“You mean took over the throne”
“Yes, took over. His name was Andrzej, which is Andrew in English”
“So the baths actually helped her to have children?”
“According to legend. We drink milk on this special day when we remember daughter from nobleman family who bathed in milk to bear.”
The tourists were hushed and reverent as the guide paused and looked up at the vaulted ceiling of the brick cellar.
He swallowed and then made a strange noise, a smothered snort. Could he have been suppressing a laugh?
“In the city we have special name for milk,” he said, fixing the tourists with his cool blue eyes.
“We call it juice to bear.”
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