Strawberry Fields

by Marina Lewycka

  “If you will please say me what are the expenses, I will try to meet them.”

  I kept my voice civilized and polite. The chrome-bar tooth gleamed.

  “Little flovver, the expense vill be first to pay, and then you vill be pay. Nothing to be discuss. No problema.”

  “And you will give me back my passport?”

  “Exact. You verk, you get passport. You no verk, you no passport. Someone mekka visit in you Mama in Kiev, say Irina no good verk, is mek big problem for her.”

  “I have heard that in England—”

  “England is a change, little flovver. Now England is land of possibility. England is not like in you school book.”

  I thought of dashing Mr. Brown from Let’s Talk English—if only he were here!

  “You have an excellent command of English. And of Russian maybe?”

  “English. Russian. Serbo-Croat. German. All languages.”

  So he sees himself as a linguist; okay, keep him talking.

  “You are not a native of these shores, I think, Mr. Vulk?”

  “Think everything vat you like, little flovver.” He gave me a leering wink in the mirror, and a flash of silver tooth. Then he started tossing his head from side to side as if to shake out his dandruff.

  “This, you like? Is voman attract?”

  It took me a moment to realize he was referring to his ponytail. Was this his idea of flirtation? On the scale of attractiveness, I would give him a zero. For a person of minimum culture he certainly had some pretensions. What a pity Mother wasn’t here to put him right.

  “It is absolutely irresistible, Mr. Vulk.”

  “You like? Eh, little flovver? You vant touch?”

  The ponytail jumped up and down. I held my breath.

  “Go on. Hrr. You can touch him. Go on,” he said with horrible oily enthusiasm.

  I reached out my hand, which was still greasy and smelled of chips.

  “Go on. Is pleasure for you.”

  I touched it—it felt like a rat’s tail. Then he flicked his head, and it twitched beneath my fingers like a live rat.

  “I heff hear that voman is cannot resisting such a hair it reminding her of men’s oggan.”

  What on earth was he talking about now?

  “Oggan?”

  He made a crude gesture with his fingers.

  “Be not afraid, little flovver. It reminding you of boyfriend. Hah?”

  “No, Mr. Vulk, because I do not have a boyfriend.”

  I knew straightaway it was the wrong thing to say, but it was too late. The words just slipped out, and I couldn’t bring them back.

  “Not boyfriend? How is this little flovver not boyfriend?” His voice was like warm chip fat. “Hrr. Maybe in this case is good possibility for me?”

  That was a stupid mistake. He’s got you now. You’re cornered.

  “Is perhaps sometime we make good possibility, eh?” He breathed cigar smoke and tooth decay. “Little flovver?”

  Through the darkened glass, I could see woods flashing past, all sunlight and dappled leaves. If only I could throw myself out of the vehicle, roll down the grassy bank, and run in among the trees. But we were going too fast. I shut my eyes and pretended to be asleep.

  We drove on in silence for maybe twenty minutes. Vulk lit another cigar. I watched him through my lowered lashes, puffing away, hunched over the wheel. Puff. Stink. Puff. Stink. How much farther could it be? Then there was a crunching of gravel under the wheels, and with one last violent lurch the mafia-machine came to a halt. I opened my eyes. We had pulled up in front of a pretty steep-roofed farmhouse set behind a summery garden where there were chairs and tables set out on the lawn that sloped down to a shallow glassy river. Just like England is supposed to be. Now at last, I thought, there will be normal people; they will talk to me in English; they will give me tea.

  But they didn’t. Instead, a pudgy red-faced man wearing dirty clothes and rubber boots came out of the house—the farmer, I guessed—and he helped me out of Vulk’s vehicle, mumbling something I couldn’t understand, but it was obviously not an invitation to tea. He looked me up and down in that same rude way, as though I were a horse he’d just bought. Then he and Vulk muttered to each other, too fast for me to follow, and exchanged envelopes.

  “Bye-bye, little flovver,” Vulk said, with that chip-fat smile. “Ve meet again. Maybe ve mekka possibility?”

  “Maybe.”

  I knew it was the wrong thing to say, but by then I was just desperate to get away.

  The farmer shoved my bag into his Land Rover and then he shoved me in too, giving my behind a good feel with his hand as he did so, which was quite unnecessary. He only had to ask and I would have climbed in by myself.

  “I’ll take you straight out to the field,” he said, as we rattled along narrow winding lanes. “You can start picking this afternoon.”

  After some five kilometers, the Land Rover swung in through the gate, and I felt a rush of relief as at last I planted my feet on firm ground. The first thing I noticed was the light—the dazzling salty light dancing on the sunny field, the ripening strawberries, the little rounded trailer perched up on the hill and the oblong boxy trailer down in the corner of the field, the woods beyond, and the long, curving horizon, and I smiled to myself. So this is England.

  The men’s trailer is a static model, a battered old fiberglass box parked at the bottom of the field by the gate, close to a new prefab building where the strawberries are crated and weighed each day. Stuck onto one corner of the prefab is the toilet and shower room—though the shower doesn’t work and the toilet is locked at night. Why is it locked? wonders Andriy. What is the problem with using the toilet at night?

  He has woken early with a full bladder and an unspecific feeling of dissatisfaction with himself, his trailer mates, and trailer life in general. Why is it, for example, that although the men’s trailer is bigger, it still feels more cramped than the women’s trailer? It has two rooms—one for sleeping and one for sitting—but Tomasz has the double bed in the sleeping room all to himself and three of them are sleeping in the sitting room. How has this happened? Andriy has one of the seat-beds and Vitaly has the other. Emanuel has made himself a hammock from an old sheet and blue bale twine, skillfully twisted and knotted, and slung it across the sitting room from corner to corner. He is lying there breathing deeply with his eyes closed and a cherubic smile on his round brown face. Andriy recalls Emanuel’s look of astonishment and horror when the farmer suggested he should share the double bed with Tomasz.

  “Sir, we have a proverb in Chichewa. One nostril is too small for two fingers.”

  Afterward, he took Andriy to one side and whispered, “In my country homosexualization is forbidden.”

  “Is okay,” Andriy whispered back. “No homosex, only bad stink.”

  Yes, Tomasz’s sneakers are another insult—their stink fills the trailer. It is worst at night when the sneakers are off his feet and stowed beneath the bed. The fumes rise, noxious and clinging, and dissipate like bad dreams, seeping through the curtain that divides the bedroom from the sitting room, hovering below the ceiling like an evil spirit. Sometimes, in the night, Emanuel rolls silently out of his hammock and places the sneakers outside on the step.

  Another thing—why are there no pictures on the walls in the men’s trailer? Vitaly keeps a picture of Jordan under his bed, which he says he will stick up when he finds something to stick it with. He also keeps a secret stash of canned lager and a pair of binoculars. Tomasz keeps a guitar and a pair of Yola’s panties under his bed. Emanuel keeps a bag full of crumpled papers.

  But the worst thing is that because of the slope, and the way their trailer is positioned, you can only get a view of the women’s trailer from the window above Tomasz’s bed. Should he ask Tomasz to move over so he can take a look and see whether that girl is still around? No. They’d only make stupid remarks.

  In the women’s trailer they have been up since dawn. Yola has learned from experienc
e that it is better to rise early if they don’t want the Dumpling knocking on the door and inviting himself in while they are getting dressed, hanging around watching them with those hungry-dog eyes—doesn’t he have anything better to do?

  Irina and the Chinese girls have to get up first and fold away the double bed before there is room for anyone to move. They cannot use the lavatory and washroom until the Dumpling arrives with the key to the prefab—what does he think they’re going to do? Unroll the toilet paper at night?—but there is a handy gap in the hedge only a few meters away, though Yola cannot for the life of her understand why there always seem to be faces grinning at the window of the other trailer whenever any of the women slips behind the hedge. Don’t they have anything better to do down there?

  There is a cold-water tap and washing bowl at the side of the women’s trailer, and even a shower made from a bucket with holes in the bottom, fed from a black-painted oil drum stuck up in a tree. In the evening, after it has been in the sun all day, the water is pleasantly warm. That nice-looking boy Andriy, who is quite a gallant despite being Ukrainian, has erected a screen of birch poles and plastic sacks around it, disregarding the protests of Vitaly and Tomasz, who complained that he spoiled their innocent entertainment—really those two are worse than the children at nursery school, what they need is a good smacking—and now they can no longer see the shower, they spend all their time making comments about the items on the women’s wash line. Recently a pair of her panties has disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Yola cannot for the life of her understand how grown men can be such fools. Well, in fact, she can.

  It was Tomasz who stole the panties, in a moment of drunken frivolity one night last week. They are made of white cotton, generously cut, with a pretty mauve ribbon in the front. He has been looking out ever since for the right moment to return them discreetly without being caught—he wouldn’t want anyone to think he is the sort of man who steals women’s underwear from wash lines and keeps them under his bed.

  “I see Yola has washed her undies again today,” he says morosely in Polish, peering through Vitaly’s binoculars from the window above his bed. “I wonder what is the meaning of this.”

  The white panties dangle in the air like a provocation. When Yola recruited him to her strawberry-picking team, there had been a twinkle about her that had seemed to suggest she was inviting him to…well, more than just pick strawberries.

  “What do you mean, what is the meaning?” asks Vitaly in Russian, mimicking Tomasz’s Polish accent. “Most of what women do is completely meaningless.”

  Vitaly is vague about his origins and Tomasz has never pressed him, assuming he is some kind of illegal or Gypsy. Despite himself, he is impressed by the way Vitaly can slip easily between Russian, Polish, and Ukrainian. Even his English is quite good. But what use are all those languages if you have no poetry in your soul?

  “In the poetry of women’s undergarments, there is always meaning. Like the blossoms that fall from a tree as the heat of summer approaches…. Like clouds that melt away…”

  He can feel a song coming on.

  “Enough,” says Vitaly. “The Angliskis would call you a soiled old man.”

  “I am not old,” protests Tomasz.

  In fact he has just turned forty-five. On his birthday he looked in the mirror and found two more gray hairs on his head, which he pulled out at once. No wonder his hair is beginning to look thin. Soon he will have to surrender to the grayness, to cut his hair short, put away his guitar, exchange his dreams for compromises, and start worrying about his pension. What has happened to his life? It is just slipping away, like sand through an hourglass, like a mountain washed to the sea.

  “Tell me, Vitaly, how has life turned you into a cynic at such a young age?”

  Vitaly shrugs. “Maybe I was not born to be a loser, like you, Tomek.”

  “Maybe there is still time enough for you.”

  How can he explain to this impatient young man what it has taken him forty-five years to learn—that loss is an essential part of the human condition. That even as we are moving on down that long lonesome road, destination unknown, there is always something we are leaving behind. He has been trying all morning to compose a song about it.

  Putting down the binoculars, he reaches for his guitar and begins to strum, tapping his feet in time to the rhythm.

  There once was a man, who roamed the world o’er.

  Was he seeking for riches, or glory, or power?

  Was he seeking for meaning, or truth or…

  This is where he gets stuck. What else is that wretched man seeking?

  Vitaly gives him a pitying look.

  “Obviously he is looking for someone to fuck.”

  He picks up the binoculars, turns the knob to focus, and gives a soft whistle between his teeth.

  “Hey, black man,” he calls to Emanuel in English, “come and see. Look, it’s just like the little panties that Jordan is wearing in my poster. Or maybe…”—he adjusts the binoculars again—“…maybe it is one of those string nets they use to package salami.”

  Emanuel is sitting at the table, chewing a pencil for inspiration as he composes a letter.

  “Leave him, leave him,” says Tomasz. “Emanuel is not like you. He is…” He strums a couple of chords on his guitar as he searches for the right phrase. “In this box of fiberglass, he is searching for a gem.”

  “Another loser,” snorts Vitaly.

  Dear Sister

  Thank you for the money you sent for with its help I have now journeyed from Zomba to Lilongwe and so on via Nairobi into England. I hope these words will receive you for when I came to the address you gave in London a different name was written at the door and nobody knew of your wherebeing. So being needful of money I came into the way of strawberry picking and I am staying in a trailer with three mzungus here in Kent. I am striving with all my might to improve my English but this English tongue is like a coilsome and slippery serpent and I am always trying to remember the lessons of Sister Benedicta and her harsh staff of chastisement. So I write hopefully that you will come there and find these letters and unleash your corrections upon them dear sister. And so I will inform you regulally of my adventures within this rainstruck land.

  From your beloving brother Emanuel!

  The women’s trailer is already in sunshine, but the sun hasn’t yet reached the bottom of the field, where Andriy is standing at the kitchen end of the men’s trailer trying to light the gas to make some tea. The coarse banter from the sleeping room irritates him, and he doesn’t want the other three to notice the agitation that has come over him since yesterday. He lights another match. It flares and burns his fingers before the gas will catch. Devil’s bum! That girl, that new Ukrainian girl—when their eyes met, did she smile at him in a particular way?

  He replays the scene like a movie in his head. It is this time yesterday. Farmer Leapish arrives as usual in his Land Rover with the breakfast food, the trays of empty boxes for the strawberries, and the key to the prefab. Then someone steps out of the passenger door of the Land Rover, a pretty girl with a long plait of dark hair down her back, and brown eyes full of sparkle. And that smile. She steps into the field, looking around this way and that. He is there standing by the gate, and she turns his way and smiles. But is it for him, that smile? That’s what he wants to know.

  He made a point of sitting next to her at dinner.

  “Hi. Ukrainka?”

  “Of course.”

  “Me too.”

  “I can see.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Irina.”

  He waited for her to ask—“And yours?”—but she didn’t.

  “Andriy.”

  He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.

  “From Kiev?” he continued.

  “Of course.”

  “Donetsk.”

  “Ah, Donetsk. Coal miners.”

  Did he detect a hint of condescension in her voice? />
  “You been to Donetsk?”

  “Never.”

  “I came to Kiev.”

  “Oh yes?”

  “In December. When demonstrations were going on.”

  “You came for demonstrations?” A definite condescending lilt.

  “I came to demonstrate against demonstrations.”

  “Ah. Of course.”

  “Maybe I saw you then. You were there?”

  “Of course. In Maidan Square.”

  “In demonstration?”

  “Of course. It was our Orange Freedom Revolution.”

  “I was with the other side. White and Blue.”

  “The losing side.”

  She smiled again. A flash of white teeth, that’s all there was to it. He tries to picture the face, but he can’t get it into focus. No, there was more to it than teeth; there was a crinkling around the nose and eyes, a little lift of the eyebrows, and two infuriating dimples winking below the cheeks. Those dimples—he can’t get them out of his mind. Was it just a smile, or did it mean something?

  And if it means something, does it mean I’ve got a good possibility here? A good possibility of a man-woman possibility? Should I take things further? Or should I just play it cool? A girl like that—she’s too used to men running after her. Wait for her to show the first card. But what if she’s shy—what if she needs a bit of help with that first card? Sometimes a man must act to bring about a possibility.

  But then again, isn’t this the wrong time and place, Andriy Palenko, to be involving yourself with another Ukrainian girl? What about the blond-haired Angliska rosa you came all this way to England for, the pretty blue-eyed girl who is waiting for you, though she doesn’t know it yet herself, loaded with high-spec features: skin like smetana, pink-tipped Angliski breasts, golden underarm hair like duckling down, et cetera. And a rich Papa, who at first may not be too happy about his daughter’s choice because he wants her to marry a banker in a bowler hat like Mr. Brown—what father would not?—but when he gets to know you will soften his heart and welcome you into his luxurious en-suite-bathroom house. For sure he will find a nice little job for his Ukrainian son-in-law. Maybe even a nice car…Mercedes. Porsche. Ferrari. Et cetera.