In Time, Out of Place Read online

  When Risheng and I walked past her toward the doors of the tourist centre, this woman suddenly reached out toward me and in stiff English said, “Sleep?”

  Startled, I quickly brushed her hand away.

  Undiscouraged, the woman continued to use her halting, limited English to make her meaning clear. “You, sleeping place? My house has.”

  Oh, at last I understood what she meant. She was an ordinary Polish person wanting to rent a room to tourists to make a little money. When I asked her how much, she said, “One person forty thousand zloty, two people eighty thousand.”

  I stopped and calculated. Eighty thousand zloty was about sixteen Singapore dollars. It was ridiculously cheap.

  After discussing the price, we immediately followed her to board a bus. We had stored our big luggage at the train station and only carried a light piece of hand baggage each, so taking the bus did not present any problems.

  After three stops, we alighted.

  In front of us was a long dirt road. The dull evening light fell over it, making the shadows dragging on the ground seem exhausted. At the end of the dirt road was a dilapidated four-storey apartment building. Not only was the paint peeling from the walls, but large chunks of plaster had fallen off, exposing the red bricks beneath. In front of the building was a large empty space where children happily played football and stray dogs wandered around stirring up dust everywhere. It was a filthy mess, but it gave a good feel for the pulse of life there.

  The woman lived on the third floor. Although everything outside was worn and dirty, inside it was like a whole different world. It was elegantly decorated, and absolutely spotless.

  The apartment was not spacious. A long hall, small bedrooms, a narrow washroom, and a cleverly arranged kitchen were all it contained. Potted plants were placed randomly in the flat, overwhelming the senses with a flood of green. The top of a short cabinet next to the wall was covered with sparkling crystal ornaments. There were also two very large photos. One was of a man, the other of a woman. The man had a vigorous, heroic bearing, and the woman was broadly beaming.

  Seeing me stare at the photos, the woman said proudly, “My husband and me.”

  Saying this, she pointed to her husband’s photo and then acted as if she were sleeping.

  I turned and looked at her bedroom with the door slightly ajar. Seeing that I had misunderstood, she immediately pointed up and then made the sign of the cross in front of her chest. We had come to the home of a lonely widow.

  We carried our light luggage to the bedroom. The bedroom, like the hall, was tidy, everything kept in its place. On the wall facing us were the couple’s pictures. The pictures had been taken when they were very young. They were both glowing with health and vitality, the woman like a little bird nestling at her husband’s broad chest. An unrestrained sweetness exuded from the photos. The perfect harmony of it reverberated, but now, one string of the lute was broken. Only able to listen to a “silent symphony” each night, could the woman help but cover her pillow with tears?

  The washroom displayed an interesting assortment of bottles and jars, all full of cosmetics. Toner, cleanser, face cream, rouge, powder, nail polish, lipstick—all in great abundance. It was clear she had everything she needed. I counted carefully and found that there were more than twenty different colours of lipstick alone!

  A beautiful woman past her prime is always one of the greatest worldly regrets. It was obvious that the woman had not yet accepted that her best years had passed her by.

  I took two sets of dirty clothes out of our luggage and washed them in the basin in the washroom, then hung them on the balcony to dry.

  The woman followed me out to help, and as the two of us went about this womanly work together, I had some vague feeling that I had been acquainted with her years before. It was getting dark, and I had just eaten a large ham sandwich on the train, which was cold and hard, and I felt bloated. On top of that, we had been rushing about all day and I felt extremely tired, and so did not feel like going out again. This kind-hearted woman brewed us a pot of thick Polish coffee.

  The three of us sat in the living room, Risheng absorbed in reading travel material whilst the woman and I gossiped. I call it gossip, but really it was the woman’s monologue. The worst part was that I didn’t understand a good portion of it because she spoke Polish, only occasionally throwing in a bit of poorly pronounced English for my sake. But with the use of sign language and certain keywords, I was gradually able to paint a profile of her life.

  Her husband had worked for the ministry of foreign affairs and was doing quite well. When he was fifty, he died of a sudden heart attack. Since then, she had lived alone, a period of six years. Her three children were all grown. Like many other families in the world, the mother had endured much difficulty raising her children, only to see them fly the nest as soon as they were able. This ageing mother hen left in her empty nest, cut up her warm and tender memories into small slices, storing them in her “memory box”, taking out one slice a day to chew on slowly. Now, her own life was like a chewed sugarcane stalk, left without flavour, but her memories were like the sweet stalks of sugarcane, and when she chewed on them, it made her feel sentimental towards life.

  In the previous two years, in order to dispel the loneliness, she had started to rent out her apartment to tourists from all over the world. The most glorious outcome, according to her, had been that she had once taken in a group of young Americans, about thirteen of them, who packed the whole apartment.

  Now, she said and laughed proudly, she packed the whole apartment with her voice.

  It got late, but she was not tired. On the contrary, she seemed to grow more energetic, but my own eyelids seemed to be weighted down by lead, so heavy they could barely remain open. We said good night and went to our room, falling sound asleep.

  When we awoke, the sun was already shining brightly on the mattress. The aroma of coffee floated into the room. I went out and saw that the woman had already prepared breakfast. Inside a small, pretty bamboo basket covered with white cloth were many long bread rolls, and a beige porcelain plate held two eight-inch sausages. Coffee, butter and jam were all neatly arranged in the shape of a horseshoe on the table.

  The bread was hard as stone, and the sausage cold as ice. Risheng suggested, “Why don’t you go into the kitchen and fry the sausage yourself?”

  The woman was sitting alone in the kitchen, having her own simple breakfast of just coffee and bread.

  I told her I wanted to fry the sausage. She immediately took a small frying pan from the cabinet beneath the stove. The pan had a slight layer of waxy substance on it, yellow and shiny. I thought it was dirty. When I took it to the sink and started to wash it, the woman quickly stopped me. Taking the pan from me, she put it on the stove and lit the fire. When the pan was hot, the waxy substance immediately disappeared. Looking more closely, I realised that it was oil. Probably when she cooked last night, the pan had accumulated this excess oil, and she couldn’t bear to wash it away, so it just remained on the pot. Using this leftover oil, I fried the sausages until they smelled delicious, making a wonderful meal.

  After that, we went out.

  Gdansk is a large, old city in the north of Poland. Near the coast, it is the most beautiful harbour on the Baltic Sea. The buildings in the city were destroyed during the war, but afterwards they were rebuilt according to the original plans.

  Walking on the stone pavement, we casually soaked up the ancient atmosphere of the old stone houses, feeling as if we had been transported to an earlier century.

  We drew up a full itinerary for the day. In the morning we took a boat tour of the Baltic Sea, walking barefoot on this famous stretch of beach. Midday, we toured the old streets, visiting several cathedrals and the old city wall. In the afternoon, we visited the war memorial at Westerplatte and also saw the stronghold where the Polish workers went on strike to bring about the abolition of martial law in the same year. At night, we enjoyed a brilliant Polish folk d
ance performance.

  When we went back to the woman’s home, it was already close to midnight. The long dirt road had no lights. The dim moonlight blurred our shadows on the ground. The atmosphere was a little eerie and menacing.

  The woman was leaning against the door waiting anxiously for us. When she saw us, a smile broke over her face. She urged us to come in, a string of Polish rushing out from her mouth. As she went on nonstop, I felt as if I had entered a time tunnel, the time machine bringing me back to a time long ago. Now I was a young person coming home late, listening to her mother’s scolding.

  The woman followed behind me, bringing me a pair of slippers and turning on the gas water heater so I could bathe. Whilst I was bathing, I smelled coffee brewing from outside the washroom. When I came out, I saw two cups of coffee placed neatly on the table. She sat in the hall, pointing at the coffee, then pointing at the clock, urging us to drink it quickly and go to bed. The next morning at six-thirty, we would depart, taking a train to another city in southern Poland. I told her that since we were leaving so early, she should not get up to prepare breakfast for us the next morning.

  When we retired to the room, I found that the clothes we had hung on the balcony had been ironed and arranged on hangers and hooked over a nail on the wall.

  I packed our things and took out five peaches we had bought in the city that day and placed them on the desk, preparing them as a gift for our host the next morning. Fruit was a luxury item in Poland. A huge ice cream cone might only cost a cent, but these peaches had cost us more than sixty cents each.

  I looked at the ripeness of the peaches, and I could not help but think of the woman’s smiling face. Would she like them?

  We didn’t talk the whole night. We got up early the next morning, but the woman was up even earlier. She had prepared breakfast for us, two slices of bread for each with savoury smoked meat pressed between them. She put them in a plastic bag and handed them to me.

  I put the peaches on the table, then said goodbye to her. She put her arms around my shoulders and kissed my cheeks once, twice, and then a third time. Her eyes were bright with tears.

  Ah, when the dragonfly brushes the water, it doesn’t leave any traces. I was a dragonfly flitting over her lake of life, a tiny, light dragonfly. When I flew past, I cast a shadow, but no lasting mark, yet she was actually touched by it. I wondered, did she secretly think of me as a sort of substitute for her children, since they were so far away from home?

  The woman walked us out and stood at the staircase watching us until we had almost disappeared from sight. We walked to the end of the dirt road. When we turned back, we saw a tiny distant shape, still as a statue, a seemingly permanent fixture.

  Pearl of the Black Sea

  WHEN I FIRST set foot in Sozopol, I fell hopelessly in love with it.

  Small, exquisite stone houses stood quietly along an extremely narrow lane. Beside the street were very ordinary trees, randomly casting clusters of graceful green shadows here and there. The fragrance of flora and fauna and the music of the birds wafted on the sea breeze.

  Sozopol, on the edge of the Black Sea, is a small town with a population of no more than fifty thousand, situated in the eastern part of Bulgaria. When Risheng and I arrived there on a public bus, it was Sunday afternoon. Our first impression was, “It’s quiet.” There was no sound of traffic nor the bustle of human life. All we could hear was the wind and the waves, and the soft rustle of the leaves in the breeze.

  Carrying our hand luggage, we walked toward the coast of the Black Sea in search of accommodation. The guesthouse, having begun operations after the opening up of Bulgaria, was privately run. The spacious room had an attached balcony full of fresh flowers. Sitting on the balcony, we could admire the picturesque view of the Black Sea to our heart’s content.

  And we were very content. What made it even more gratifying was that this double room only cost six US dollars!

  By the time we had finished with all the check-in procedures, it was midday. Our stomachs were rumbling, so we went out in search of something to eat.

  We found it surprising that many of the stalls selling seafood along the coast of the Black Sea had not opened. When we asked the young people who sat smoking in front of the stalls about this, they shrugged and said in broken English, “Sunday, no work.”

  Then they pointed further up the road and added, “Over there, have!”

  Seafood Stalls Selling Herring

  It was a seafood stall run by a couple. In front of the stall were some tables that had been wiped really clean.

  A man wearing a white shirt and grey pants and with a very thick, black moustache stood braving the smoke that rose from the oil as he fried fish. Sweat droplets lined his forehead. His wife had short hair and large eyes, and she wore a smile as she deftly placed the fried fish with a pile of potatoes on a plate.

  I looked at the fish in the stall. All were long, flat-bodied, small-mouthed Pacific herring. The fried fish smelled good, and one kilo only cost twenty-two lev (about two Singapore dollars).

  We ordered some herring, potatoes, and a bottle of beer, then sat down and started munching on our meal. The fish bones were soft and the meat tasty. We dug into the food, and before long, we had cleaned our plates.

  Then, as the woman who owned the stall was clearing the table, she suddenly startled me with her good English, “I’ll bring you more herring, okay?”

  “Okay, we’ll have another kilo,” I said without hesitation.

  Midday had passed, and the other customers had dispersed. Risheng and I settled comfortably into our chairs and waited for the fish.

  The stall-keeper brought a huge plate of fish to us, accompanied by a bright, sunny smile.

  “In all of Sozopol, it seems your stall is the only one open,” I said.

  “Yes,” she replied, beaming. “All the other stalls rest on Sunday. Only we work seven days a week, fourteen hours a day, without fail!”

  Seeing our map on the table, she pointed and asked hospitably, “You are tourists?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “What is most worth seeing in this little town?”

  “Sozopol is a sparkling pearl in the Black Sea, and every corner is an unforgettable scenic spot!” She laughed as she spoke, pulling out a pack of cigarettes from her pants pocket. Then, looking at us, she added, “Can I sit down for a chat?”

  I quickly pulled up a chair for her.

  She took out her lighter and with a click, lit her cigarette. Puffing on it, she said, “Now, where are you staying?”

  I told her the name of the guesthouse. Anxiously, she asked, “How much are you paying for a double room?”

  “Six US dollars.”

  “Wow!” She looked shocked.

  “The room is spacious and beautiful, and it has a sea view. You can even hear the waves from the sea,” I said proudly. “And it’s not far from town.”

  “But it’s too expensive!” In a totally unexpected tone, she interrupted my detailing of the room’s virtues. “In Sozopol, many people rent rooms to guests. You can get a room with breakfast for one US dollar.”

  “One US dollar!” It was my turn to be shocked. I knew the cost of living in Bulgaria was low but had never imagined it could possibly be this low.

  She exhaled a cloud of smoke, watching it as it drifted away, then said in a tone that sounded a little worried, “Bulgaria is currently facing two issues—the instability of our currency and public disorderliness—and both are detrimental to the development of the tourism industry. Our seafood stall in Sozopol relies heavily on tourists, and if there is a decline in the number of tourists, we will be the first to feel the impact.”

  Opening a Nation, a business opportunity?

  The female stall owner, called Irinna, was chattier than most of the people we met here As if feeling that we’d quickly become like lifelong friends, she told me that she had been a clerk in Sofia, Bulgaria’s capital, but work didn’t get her very far, and so after the political change
s in 1989 and the privatisation of industry, she and her husband Ivan looked around for a location to open a snack stall.

  “At first our dream was to sell barbecued meat, but in Bulgaria, it’s not always easy to get meat. After we thought about it for a while we decided to open a seafood stall on the coast of the Black Sea. There’s always an unlimited supply of fish in the ocean.”

  As I took bites of the herring, I asked, “When you decided to open a seafood stall, why didn’t you choose Golden Sands instead?”

  Golden Sands is Bulgaria’s most famous tourist destination, situated on the east coast. It teems with tourists in spring and summer.

  “That’s a good question.” She smiled and explained, “Golden Sands was the first place we discussed, but the rent there was more than we could afford, really astronomical. Ivan and I spent many months flipping through the newspapers every day, checking location and rent until we were worn out. Then, we finally read in one paper about stalls for rent in Sozopol on the Black Sea coast and promptly made our decision to rent one immediately.”

  “How much is the rent?”

  “It is fifteen thousand lev per year, and we signed a four-year contract. We had to pay sixty thousand lev in total.” (That was about six thousand Singapore dollars.)

  “Is business good?”

  “In the beginning, we really had to work hard to manage, but I thought Sozopol was the most beautiful little town on the coast of the Black Sea. With the continued development of the tourist industry, it should do very well, eventually. So far, my opinion has not been proven wrong.” In high spirits, she said, “Now, business is not too bad. In July and August, at the peak of tourist season, I can sell more than a hundred kilos of fish a day, a hundred kilos of potatoes, and five hundred drinks.”

  A hundred kilos of fish! To repeatedly clean so many fish, slicing the belly and removing the offal, was certainly a difficult way to make a living.

  “Yes,” Irinna nodded and said, “every day at four or five, Ivan and I go to the fisherman’s wharf and buy freshly caught fish. When we come back, we have to spend several hours cleaning them. The most difficult part is midsummer, when it is really hot and we have to stand in all that oily smoke frying fish. It feels like my whole body is being grilled!”