“Well, I’m from Mars,” the professor says, “It’s not too far from Venus, you know”. His Gandalf-like appearance certainly endeared him to me before, but as he speaks he starts to look more Lord of Ward C than Lord of the Ring. And Mars is light years from Venus! Is he insane AND astronomically misguided? Worry seeds germinate in my stomach. This could be a long night …
“It’s a little town in Pennsylvania,” he continues, and points out two towns on the map of the USA he’s brought with him, along with a 1-litre bottle of berry juice.
The occasion is our first ever Pralka Party, an event that we’ve organised in an attempt to get to know the fellow inhabitants of the Dom Akademicki ulica Nieszawska where we live. In this communist-style block of flats, the so-called “klucz do pralnia” takes the place of capital in other societies. That is, while being one of the chief objects of desire, it also stimulates social interaction and co-operation among the members of our community. It is generally controlled by forces that are hierarchically inaccessible to the common man, and the more it circulates, the healthier our society tends to be. (It’s the key to the washing room).
Thanks to the yellow bibles of Langenscheidt, however, most residents simply ask for the “klucz pralka”, which, when said to a Pole, generates the sort of reaction you would get when asking an English speaker for the key to the washing machine. (“Sure, just park her round back when you’re done, OK?”).
The system we have inherited requires you to go to the administrator, who follows the tradition of all administrators in the countries formerly known as communist, by responding to any request with “impossible”. (We’ve taken to calling the administrators goblins. Usually not to their face — we’re more civilised than that. Usually). You then ask, via a lingua franca that relies on the representation of wildly complex ideas by waving your arms and hands until communication is achieved, who has the key at present. The goblin shows you a room number and you proceed to knock on that door.
“Klucz pralka?” you ask, warming up your arms for the next conversation. And so it goes. You follow the paper trail until, on some lucky day, you locate the klucz pralka. You get a little taste of the Soviet dream as you joyfully load your clothes into a machine that could easily have served as prop on The Battleship Potemkin. For today you are happy to be a worker, you labour with a smile, in anticipation of the joys that tomorrow will hold and the knowledge that no longer shall the people of Poznan hold their breath as you pass them in the street.
I usually operate washing machines in the way American action heroes land planes. No idea what I’m doing, no clue as to what the buttons mean, and no experience of the actions required to make this thing work. Yet, somehow, I always manage to bring her down safely. So whether I’m choosing bawe?niany or we?niany, gora?y or ch?odny, really makes very little difference to me. I have a mystical relationship with pralkas. I operate them from a place somewhere inside me that just knows. (I suspect if I develop this instinct, perhaps by meditative isolation, I will also learn the location of the Island of the Missing Sock).
Enough pralka though — back to the Pralka Party. We welcome the professor to our flat, which is unnaturally clean after an unnatural session of cleaning by Cormac earlier in the day. And to our delight he turns out to be not only fully sane, but also very sharp-witted and one of the most interesting people I’ve ever met. He strikes up a conversation in Esperanto with Cormac, leaving me scratching my armpit, picking at my head and stopping just short of munching on a banana as they (probably) tell fart jokes in the world’s only artificially constructed language. I busy myself with rounds of berry juice for everyone and presenting the array of snacks which, even if I have to say so myself, look pretty damn impressive considering it’s the handiwork of two heterosexual males.
As the other comrades of Nieszawska arrive, the Pralka Party takes off. That the Adam Mickiewicz University offers more languages than the entire South African university system becomes apparent as our previously anonymous colleagues introduce themselves. All lecturing in their native languages are: Nikos (Greece), Parapin (Thailand), Charles (Wales), Melody and Sammi (China), Sophie (Belgium) and, of course Cormac (Ireland) and Tertius (South Africa). Let’s not forget Supawit, also from Thailand, a geologist studying the tsunami.
“But it’s over,” someone asks, “why would you study it?”
A few heads turn in indignant confusion as to the direction of the question. Supawit laughs nervously. Another round of berry juice for everyone. We’ve also started mixing apple juice and Wódka Z.o?a;dkowa Gorzka, which ranks high up with The White Russian and rum and Sparletta on my list of deliciously unlikely beverages.
Minutes after the Thai contingent arrives, the conversation turns to transsexuality. This must be to Parapin and Supawit as apartheid is to a South African. Foreigners looking at you with screwed-up eyes, “But why? And … how?” lingering behind every question, and the standard meek mantras to explain the inexplicable. Fortunately, in the microcosmos of Nieszawska, we are all satellite constellations, the centre of the universe a 20th century myth, and there is no position from which one could mock the other.
Another inevitable topic is learning the Polish language. Raising this is a bit like talking about Bafana’s chances at the World Cup. Heads nod gravely, laughter dies down, and I, the eternal optimist, find myself using the word “but” excessively. The mood of the party dampens to the point where I can hear the professor quietly talking to Cormac. I pick up that, besides Esperanto, he also speaks and understands Chinese, Japanese, and Latin. Yes, Latin. Not livin’ la vida loca. Ut carmen planto mihi volo vomito.
“So how long did it take you learn Polish?” I ask.
“What, Polish?” he answers, as we prepare for humiliation: “I’ve given up five times!”
A sigh blows through the comrades. I decide to get on with the other agenda of the evening. See, so be honest, the motivations behind the Pralka Party were not entirely innocent. Typically Irish and South African, we had vague political ambitions too. We reckoned, if we could just organise ourselves, this problem of the circulation of the klucz pralka need not be. We’re all adults, civilised people, surely we can just, you know, get along?
This was not to be. Soon after I raised the issue (my suggestion tended towards the anarchist stand — we simply don’t lock the door and let the system run itself) negotiations broke down. Charles, felt we could set up a list allowing every person two hours to use the pralka. My immediate African reaction to this very European solution was “Who would administrate it? Who would police it?” The professor simply shook his head as we battled out different solutions to the age-old problems of limited resources. There would be no simple solution to our troubles.
The Pralka Party would remain the good kind of party — the kind that features laughter and fun in addition to the silliness we’ve come to expect from the other kind. Now, if we’d all spoken Esperanto, things might have been different. Probably not, though.
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