Two Caravans

by Marina Lewycka

  The foreman pulls himself up and fires off a stream of abuse in Portuguese. Sulkily, they resume their work. There is an edge of barely suppressed excitement as the number of birds diminishes, and catching the remaining ones becomes more challenging. It is incredibly hot, the shit on the floor steaming like a manure heap, but they still can’t leave the doors of the barn open. These last few chickens are the survivors, the tough ones. They are all having to run around more, shouting and swearing, as they skid in the muck trying to corner and grab the birds.

  In the end, there is just one chicken left, a large canny bird that dodges and sidesteps with amazing skill as they try to close in on it. Then one of the Portuguese-Brazilians-the football enthusiast with the beautiful teeth-catches the fleeing chicken with the tip of his boot, sending it up into the air. Its wings are too weak to carry its weight, and as it flops down the second Portuguese-Brazilian runs up and gives it a mighty kick, sending it up into the air again. It is spinning and screeching. Feathers are flying everywhere. The older man is shouting to them to stop, but the game is too exciting. The first one boots it right across the feeding trough and raises his arms in the air shouting, “Goal! Goal!” The bird, dazed and dishevelled, picks itself up and starts to run again, limping. It is running towards Tomasz. Suddenly it stops and looks at him, its strange round eyes blinking. He looks back. They stand and face each other, man and bird. Then with a quick swoop, he bends down, grabs the bird, and holding it in both hands, dashes across the barn, opens the door and runs outside. Still holding the chicken against his chest, he sprints through the yard to a low wire fence beyond which is a dip with a hedge at the bottom. He leans and puts the chicken down on the other side of the fence. It stands there, bewildered, blinking in the bright light. He leans over, gives it a shove and whispers in Polish, “Run, chicken, run!” The bird hesitates for a moment, then suddenly it dashes towards the hedge as fast as its stunted little legs will carry it, and disappears into the undergrowth.

  The others have followed him outside, with puzzled looks on their faces.

  “What yer doing, Mick?” asks Neil.

  Tomasz turns to face them with a mad grin.

  “Rugby. I score.”

  By the time they have finished, he is so burnt out with exhaustion that he longs for that filthy mattress with five other sweaty exhausted bodies stretched out alongside. The four Portuguese-Brazilians have gone off somewhere with the lorry driver. Tomasz is too tired to go with them, and decides instead to stretch his legs and walk down to the village to see whether he can buy something to eat. Their pair of houses is on the outskirts of Titchington, which turns out to be no more than a cluster of quaint steep-gabled cottages with gardens full of roses, clustered around a pretty medieval church. He wonders whether the villagers know the horror that is happening on their doorstep. It was said that the villagers who lived near Treblinka had only a hazy idea of what was happening behind the barbed wire fence a few kilometres away. They, like the villagers of Titchington, must have been bothered by the smell when the wind blew in a certain direction.

  There is no shop or pub. He realises with dismay that he has nothing to eat, and there is nowhere to buy anything. When he gets back to the house, it is empty. The sleepers have all disappeared-there is nothing but their lingering smells and their shabby holdalls and overflowing carrier bags lined up against the walls to remind him they were there. He hunts around in the cupboards and finds some slices of stale bread and a tin of tomatoes. In a drawer in the kitchen there is a tin opener. He eats the tomatoes just like that, out of the tin, mopping out the juice with stale bread. At the end, he still feels hungry. If only there were some pilchards. Or some chocolate biscuits. And a nice glass of wine. Chianti. Rioja. He wonders where Yola and Marta are, and what they are eating. Rabbit maybe. Or fish. He imagines he can smell the dish, fragrant with herbs, and Yola, smelling of soap, passing a plate to him and smiling. Come, eat, Tomek.

  Then there is a knock on the door and, without waiting for him to open it, Neil walks in. He has changed out of his overalls into jeans and a black leather jacket, and he has a motorcycle helmet under his arm. In his other hand, he is holding something in a paper bag.

  “Here, Mick. I got this for you. Solid-er nosh.”

  The bag is warm. Tomasz opens it. Inside, in a foil container, is a small chicken-and-mushroom pie.

  “Thank you.” He starts to unwrap it. The smell is penetrating and delicious. It must be the tiredness, or all the pent-up horror of the chicken barn, or maybe just loneliness that makes the tears spring into his eyes. “Thankyou. You have saved me from desolation row.”

  “Desolation row.” Neil nods. “That’s good. Is it a film?”

  “It is song.”

  “I like that.”

  “And good luck with your voyage.”

  “Yeah.” The lad shuffles his feet backwards towards the door. “Yeah. I’m getting there.”

  There is a full moon that night, which shines in through the open curtains of the upstairs bedroom, lighting up the five sleeping figures curled on their mattresses on the floor-five strangers, who arrived at half past midnight and made such a noise when they came in that they woke Tomasz, who had gone to bed three hours earlier. Now, despite his weariness, he can’t get back to sleep. He listens to their deep, rhythmic breathing, and stares at the moon. He is thinking about the chicken-the one that ran away. Is it sleeping in the hedge tonight, under the moonlight? Is it enjoying its freedom? What is freedom?

  “Yerll be on chicken-shit clear-up for a few days. Then they’re sending yer to the slaughterhouse,” Darren had said, and Tomasz had shuddered.

  “Is there not another job I could do?”

  “Nah, pal. Yer’ve got to go where they send yer.”

  “Where black is the colour and none is the number.” Darren gave him a funny look.

  Is he freer here in the West today than he was in Poland in the years of communism, when all he dreamt of was freedom, without even knowing what it was? Is he really any freer than those chickens in the barn, packed here in this small stinking room with five strangers, submitting meekly to a daily horror that has already become routine? Tormentor and tormented, they are all just damned creatures in hell. There must be a song in this.

  Yola was in a foul mood. She had discovered that morning, don’t ask how, that the Slovak women who shared their hotel room had no pubic hair. How could this be permitted? Presumably they were not born this way-well, presumably they were, but acquired it in the natural course of things, and had taken unnatural steps to remove it. There are many bad things that can be said about communism, but one thing is certain, in communist times women did not abuse their pubic hair in this way-a practice which is unnatural, unsightly, undignified and, without being too specific, potentially dangerous.

  Brooding on the abuses that women perpetrate on themselves and each other, Yola arrived at Buttercup Meadow Farmfresh Poultry near Shermouth already spoiling for a fight. And her mood darkened even more when she discovered that she, a woman of action with two years of supervisory experience and an advanced knowledge of Angliski way of life, and of life in general (which she will tell you about later), was not immediately appointed to a supervisory post within the plant. Instead the supervisor of her section was a rather coarse and disagreeable Romanian woman called Geta, who spoke appalling English and had difficulty in communicating with her workforce, who were mostly Slavs and who had no conception of the importance of sexual harmony in maintaining a pleasant atmosphere in the workplace. She had a distasteful habit of spitting onto her fingers as she reached for the chicken pieces coming down the line, and Yola supposed it could only be her blond hair, which anyone but a fool could see was dyed, and her shameless bosom, which was clearly held up with latex foam and underwiring (an abomination on which Yola also has some strong opinions which she will tell you later), and her Diploma in Food Hygiene from the Polytechnic Institute at Bucharest, which anyone but a fool could see was a forgery, whi
ch had secured for her this enviable position.

  Anyway, this underwired fake-diploma fake-blondie starts trying to show Yola how to put two pieces of chicken onto a polystyrene tray, which anyone would think from the way she goes on you would need a polytechnic certificate for, when all you have to do is grab two bits of breast from the conveyor belt which has all kinds of chopped-up chicken meat on it, and you don’t have to spit on your hands like that fakie-Romanian does, and when Yola points this out to her she gets huffy and says, you Polish women now you legal you think you know everything but you don’t know anything, and you put your two bits of breasts on tray like this, and you tuck all loose bits of fat and skin underneath to make breasts look nice and plump, which when you think about it is just what latex foam does to fake-blondie’s underwired bosom, in fact fake-blondie discloses that these chickens also have water, salt, pork meat and other stuff injected in to make them look plump, which is even worse than latex when you think about it, because you have to eat it, which you don’t with latex-though things what men do nowadays nothing would surprise her-and then you just cover them with bit of cling film from this big roll, and then you send them down belt to women who do weighing and stick labels on, yellow labels for one supermarket, blue labels for another, and so on. You don’t need a certificate for that, do you?

  Malta’s job is even less challenging.

  When she arrived at Buttercup Meadow she made it clear that the job she wanted was feeding the chickens. But her supervisor, a nice friendly Lithuanian chap who had no front teeth, but in spite of-or maybe because of-this spoke quite good Polish, explained that there was no longer such a job, because the feeding of chickens was now completely automated on account of the mixture of hormones and antibiotics they get, and in any case the poultry barn is very smelly and is not a suitable place for a young woman of her sensitivity.

  Instead, she was assigned to the part of the plant where chickens are graded. They come through from the slaughterhouse on a belt, and all Marta has to do is examine the chickens, select those which are plump and undamaged, and place them on another belt-these are the ones which will be packaged and sold as whole birds. The birds which are a little bruised, or just have, say, a leg broken, or ammonia bums on their hocks, are left on the line, and they go through to another part of the plant where they are chopped into chicken pieces and then go through for packaging, where Ciocia Yola is doing her bit. The chickens which are very badly bruised and mangled go into a huge plastic tub, from where they will be taken and processed for the catering industry-pies, restaurants, chicken nuggets and school dinners.

  At first, Marta is too engrossed in spotting and selecting the whole and undamaged birds to think very much about the process, and she doesn’t question why so many birds are coming through those folding rubber doors in such a terrible state. The chickens she selects, although unfortunately dead, have a pleasant and peaceful look about them as well as good plump breasts, and she passes the time thinking up delicious recipes through which they could pass into the next world with dignity. For instance they could be stuffed with oatmeal, tarragon, lemon and garlic, or with cranberries, brown sugar and belly pork-that is her mother’s favourite-or with breadcrumbs, butter and dried fruits, or with chestnuts and…actually chestnuts are quite nice by themselves. And they can be coated with a tasty marinade of paprika and yoghurt, or honey and horseradish, but not too much horseradish, that can be a bit strong, maybe just pepper, cracked black peppercorns that crunch when you bite, and a sprinkle of marjoram, which is always nice with white meats.

  She would like to ask the supervisor, who is quite nice for a Lithuanian, whether she could take a chicken home with her one day, to try out that horseradish recipe-of course she would pay for it-but then she remembers that they are no longer in the caravan, and there is nowhere to cook in their cramped hotel room. Well, that is one more thing that will have to wait until she gets home.

  She finds that when she is not thinking of recipes or the deeds of the saints, which can get rather repetitive after a while, she is thinking increasingly of her home in Zdroj, of her older brother, who is still living with them, her mother, who is a teacher, and her father, who works at the town hall and is a colleague of Tomasz’s-what, she wonders, has become of him?-and little Mirek, who is often part of their family too, when Yola is in pursuit of a new husband. And though Tola’s ways are sometimes rather sinful, it is not for us to judge her, because none of us is without sin, and who knows what we would do in that situation, and it was a disgrace that the baby’s father left her, walked out and left her with a Down’s syndrome baby to bring up on her own.

  “When are we going home, Ciocia?” Marta asks Yola, as they stand in the sunshine outside the plant, counting their first week’s wages.

  “When? When we are millionaires.” Yola smiles grimly at her niece. Surely there has been a mistake. The wages are about a quarter of what Vitaly promised. There is a slip of paper in the envelope with them, with all kinds of incomprehensible letters and numbers. There was never any of this nonsense with old Dumpling. Just cash in hand.

  “Deductions-what is this mean?” she asks Geta, who is standing nearby, also counting her wages, which look considerably more than Yola’s, even though she does nothing but strut around and stick her nose into everything. At least when Yola was a supervisor she set an example through her own hard work.

  “Deductions is everything what you paying,” squawks Geta in her appalling English. “See-transports, accommodations, taxes, superannuations, Nis.”

  “Nis?”

  “In England, everybody paying. Is law.”

  “And this one-TR. What is this?”

  “This is mean trenning ret. You no skill you must hewa trenning.”

  “Trenning? What is it?”

  “Trenning is learn. You must learn how to do this job.”

  “This job every idiot can do. How I am learn?”

  “I teach, you learn. I teach you to put chicken on tray.”

  “And for this I pay?”

  “After two week will be normal ret.”

  “And you are pay more?”

  “Of course. I supervisor ret.”

  Yola feels a red-hot pressure building up inside her as though she is about to explode, and Marta has to hold her back, and who knows what might have happened at this point were it not for the intervention of an incredibly handsome young man with long blond hair and muscles in his calves the size of prize-winning marrows such as most women can only dream of-and yes, he is wearing shorts, which most men cannot get away with but in this case it is acceptable, in fact it is excellent, because the legs are suntanned and covered with fine blond hairs, and have muscles the size of-yes, we know that already. Anyway, this godlike man steps forward and says, “Do you need any help with your payslip?” Well, in this situation what woman would not?

  And marrow-legs explains everything, how the superannuation is for her pension when she retires, but since she will be retiring in Poland not in England she will not see a penny of this, and she will probably not see a penny anyway because these bloodsuckers will not pay the money into any pension fund, but will put it into their own pockets to spend on Rolls-Royce cars and luxury yachts, and yes, since she has mentioned it, probably they will also buy uncomfortable underwears for their sluttish wives, and the same is with this National Insurance, and maybe the tax too-if the taxman sees any of it he will be lucky, and the deductions for transport and accommodation are not strictly illegal, but they are excessive, and he will look into it if she likes. And at the end he asks her whether she would like to join the Poultry Workers’ Union. Well, in this situation what woman would not?

  Tomasz, too, has been recruited to the Poultry Workers’ Union by a young man wearing shorts who accosted him on the way in to work, though the young man’s legs were not a factor in persuading him-it was a deep unaccountable anger with Vitaly, and everything that he represents. That Vitaly, he is too impatient-he is so much in a hurry t
o get rich that he has forgotten the basics of how to be a human being. And Tomasz felt angry with himself, too: he should never have got involved in Vitaly’s schemes. He had come to England to hunt for some rare Bob Dylan numbers and see a bit of the world before he got too old, and yes, maybe even find love if it should come his way. Yet somehow he had allowed himself to be degraded to the point where he could inflict suffering on other living creatures without so much as a quiver of sentiment. He had become a pawn in their game.

  It was only seven o’clock in the morning, and already two terrible things had happened to him today. When he had gone down at dawn into the squalid eating room of the house to stuff his mouth with a few slices of bread, margarine and jam-yes, he had invested in some apricot jam-before the white van came for him at six o’clock, he sat down to work on the song which he had been composing in his head during the night. And that’s when he discovered that his guitar was missing. He couldn’t believe it at first. He hunted everywhere, under the table with its debris of food scraps and crumpled wrappings from last night’s meals, in the mouldy kitchen cupboards, through the bedrooms still clogged with the over-breathed air of exhausted sleepers, in the grimy understairs cupboard. That was it. There wasn’t anywhere else to look. Someone had stolen it. One of these desperate anonymous men from some impoverished or war-blasted region of the world had stolen his guitar, and by now had probably traded it for-for what? A bottle of vodka? A chicken-and-mushroom pie?