Train Rides in Compartments with Priests (Part II)

Jazz standards, particularly from the swing epoch, fell very easily on the ear and imprinted themselves into musical memory. Charlie Barnet’s hit SKYLINER was monstrously difficult to remember.

Almost every tune from this era after three listenings was already memorized and one could easily whistle it even while shaving, but SKYLINER had to be listened to systematically numerous times, and very often unfortunately none of it would stick. Maybe more difficult was only the many measured solo piece by the saxophonist Tex Beneke, coming exclusively from the soundtrack to the film SUN VALLEY SERENADE, the very popular version of the Glenn Miller work CHATTANOOGA CHOO CHOO. Not for mastery.

For Bacz SKYLINER was no problem, but poor Siedlik to his great disappointment for many months couldn’t come to the song from any way despite his very strong musical memory. He constantly followed me and nagged me to whistle it for him, but when he tried, his attempt was something between POLAND IS NOT YET LOST and the then popular Russian song CAPTAIN, CAPTAIN. He was not happy, but Bacz laughed, saying always that when Siedlik visited the ZOO as a child, likely an elephant there must have trampled on his ears. Our trip to Łodz went according to plan. We stood fatally with money, because from excitement that they were going to a Melomani concert, the previous night the guys drank away almost all their cash, so about any first-class there could be no talk and even the same fact that we took the express was for us the peak of extravagance, but practically there was no other good connection.

We had for the three of us one pack of cheap cigarettes of the brand Sport, and I hoped that maybe I could pull some small loan out of Dziedzina. The train came according to schedule and we went into the compartment as the first ones and took up two spaces by the window and one middle seat facing forward.

Fortuitously this time the train did not fill up much and even for quite a long time we were alone in the compartment. Just as the train was getting ready to move, with haste ran in two out of breath militiamen, who took their places to both sides of the entrance to the compartment. Riding with such a crowd was for us already a complete bottom. Of course we could change compartments, but on the other hand it would be a bit unbeseeming, and we didn’t really feel like moving because we knew well that such good seats we would not be able to find anywhere on the train.

We hoped also that most likely the functionaries would soon get off, while after all an over four hour ride awaited us. Just at the next station came in the priest, taking out from the pocket of his white car coat his breviary. As if burying himself in prayer, the whole time from behind the book he observed his surroundings, and mainly us.

Sometime after twenty minutes he put away his breviary, hiding it back in his coat pocket after pedantically marking his place with one of the different colored tassels attached to the spine. He leaned back comfortably and nodded off.

The second hour of this horribly boring trip was passing already when suddenly Siedlik broke the silence.

“Mr. Platoon leader,” he turned to the higher ranked militiaman, “may we go to the toilet?”

The militiaman was for a second speechless, but quite quickly oriented himself as to what was going on and wonderfully assumed his role, stood up, corrected his belt, moving the holster of his pistol to the front and beckoned to Siedlik, “go, but no numbers.”

The two exited, leaving a shocked priest, who would never suspect that we could have been prisoners in transit. Now the entire time with the militiamen, whose acting was even better than ours, out of boredom we amused ourselves wonderfully, asking questions about when we would get to our destination, if after our arrival we would get some food, bemoaning that we were almost out of cigarettes and from their side we were given dull, official and soulless answers the kind typical for representatives of the national power and in all likelihood for every kind of police in the whole world.

For the priest everything was beginning to make sense.

Each of the three of us were dressed so strangely and our hair was cut so short, even the balding Bacz had his remaining hair cut very short. The poor pastor, made into a chump by all of us, looked at us with sympathy and compassion.

However not once did he say anything and it was apparent that he was very nervous. Some station was approaching; the priest put on his car coat, took his binder from the shelf, said good-bye and quickly directed himself to the exit. Indeed this had to be some bigger station because the train stayed there at least ten minutes and when it was getting ready to depart someone suddenly began to bang on the window.

We looked out with Bacz, and under the window stood our priest. He gestured at us to open it. When we did this and the train was already slowly leaving, at the last moment he pressed into our hands a rather large gray paper bag, whose contents we jovially deposited immediately on the seat he just vacated. The bag was full of cigarettes. We divided these equally with the militiamen and each of us was left with three packs.