How I Got My Apartment (Part IV)

The first day I spent on getting the necessary technical aids for my lecture. On four white panels I painted enlarged copies of different drawings from Polish, primarily satirical, writings.

Everything was on there: an American super fortress B-29 above a map of Poland dropping bombs of Colorado bugs, yellow with black horizontal stripes; two Colorado bugs, one with the head of Truman, the other Eisenhower, sitting on the edge of the Polish map, drinking Coca-Cola; German bombers mixed with American and each one dropping its Colorado bugs; sitting atop the Coca-Cola a Colorado bug wearing Uncle Sam’s cylinder hat.

There was also Adenauer there, as a sower in a white gambeson with a large black cross on it, sowing Colorado bugs, Cyclon B, Marshall Tito sitting chained by the neck in a dog house with a dollar sign on it, John F. Dulles, Marshall, and to this the dumbest commentary you can imagine, written in large letters. The panels were a big hit.

The next day I began to work. My forty five minutes lectures I led three, four, and even five times daily. The disciplined listeners sat on the conclave, semi-circular outdoor stone steps, and I with my technical aids operated in the large flowerbed, which was the most important point in the whole week’s action, because just under it were all three of Vinny’s suitcases.

I had a very miscellaneous audience. Mostly they were the local ZMP circles, sometimes the army was brought in, once they brought by escort a large group of female prisoners, of which one, very pretty, tried unexpectedly to undo my fly, except in ZMP pants flies were buttoned. 

But the worst were the groups of children, who despite being beaten by their chaperones every which way, in no manner would sit still. My lectures made the biggest impression on the farmers, who knew full well the role of potatoes, for generations their standing as a staple food, and moreover for generations that they were the main ingredient for the production of vodka. 

Observing everything precisely, what was happening around, I understood that the best time to realize my mission began then when comradette Wanda, lackadaisical and lightly staggered after our short evening antics, made her way to her distant quarters and ended around four in the morning when the roosters began to crow, the cows to roar, the sheep to bray, the pigs to squeal, and the clatter very quickly becoming so unbearable that everyone began to run around. 

The days passed and I precisely counted the time, knowing that the last night for my mission was from Friday into Saturday, when on the driveway, punctually at three in the morning, an automobile would arrive, and at three oh three quickly depart. 

This was an iron deadline, which we arranged with Vinny, when we last saw each other, and to that time everything had to be precisely prepared and executed. Really the whole time I was seen by everyone. 

It did not have to do with anyone suspecting me of anything, but for these people I was simply a kind of attraction. 

When for example in the country store I bought a cheap hazel fishing rod in the hope that under the pretext of digging for bugs I could precisely locate in the ground the place where the suitcases would be found, within half an hour the folks as well as the kids as if racing brought me about twelve cans of freshly dug high grade bait. 

In the PGR canteen, which serviced me, the food was so terrible and so horribly unappetizing that often to avoid dying of hunger I went to the local tavern, where it was also very bad, but at least not so much as the canteen. 

There every now and then someone would sit down, offer to share a drink in a tone as if nothing else in life would please him more than to drink with some local idiot. 

One giant nightmare. 

However the worst pangs came from the several day absence of jazz, and the waltzes, kujawiaks, merry polkas, mass songs and chastushki emitted by the local kolkhoz committed me to nausea and black melancholy. 

The most important thing, which Vinny gave me, was a thick paper card the size of an appointment ticket, on which there was a strange chart:

++++++++++

Southnorth

8

1116

14start

++++++++++

It was a key that allowed the precise location of all three buried suitcases.