The Pre-War Post-German Refrigerator (Part IV)

Meanwhile my unique pre-war post-German refrigerator, brought by my worker friends, had been peacefully sitting on the terrace for some time. 

In case some storm came, or rain, I covered and tied it with a triangular camping tarp. Each day I promised myself that tomorrow for sure I would get to it. 

Around this time one afternoon my worker buddies came and within three hours, leaving a pretty good mess, had taken care of everything. My bathroom was completely changed, because the blue-green tones became brutally dominated by an orange-beige color. 

Gone also was any trace of the unfortunate German girl shot by the Russian, of whom I thought quite often, and whose memory now faded away in the indiscriminating upheaval of renovation. 

The time came too when at last I became interested in my unique pre-war post-German refrigerator. From early in the morning, while Marika was still sweetly sleeping, I began laboriously to wash it, and primarily its snow-white interior. 

Just in case I also replaced the cable that powered it with electricity, but unfortunately despite any which way the refrigerator did not want to work. 

However, frankly speaking, I didn’t really know what I was doing. 

While I was laboring over it, from the corner of his eye my next door neighbor was looking at me while doing something by his motorcycle.

My next door neighbor was a repatriate from France. At this time a lot of Poles, who before the war or even earlier emigrated for bread, bamboozled by communist propaganda and spurred by local powers, returned to the county. 

This was primarily a lightly communized crowd, but in their imaginations communism looked completely different than it did in reality and made itself known in all its beauty and wonder only after their return. 

Their children were often born outside the country and raised there too, primarily with very weak knowledge of the Polish language. The move from the West to this wild and much less civilized country left them completely psychically broken. And there was no turning around. 

My next door neighbor, who carried the French sounding name Kiełbasiewicz, occupied the largest, five-room apartment. He had also a relatively young and foxy wife and four daughters, who developed well from a physical and intellectual standpoint. 

There was some grandmother there too, smoking Gauloises non-stop. They tried to revitalize a portion of the overgrown and horribly neglected garden not far from my terrace, and because of this I had with them some closer contact and saw that the older daughters especially were very interested in me and my lifestyle. 

This family, even though they were not so poorly proficient in the Polish language, among themselves communicated mainly in French. From the spring to the fall almost every Sunday, if the weather allowed it of course, in the French tradition they would go on a picnic. Mr. Kiełbasiewicz owned a large BMW motorcycle with a side car attachment. 

The view when they left in the morning was splendid. Dressed quite colorfully they saddled up on the motorcycle in the following order: first between the driver’s seat and the front on a special pillow they sat the youngest daughter, then the driver sat, meaning the man of the house, obligatorily in a black beret, and behind him the slightly older daughter, and behind her, with some trouble, they fit mom on the back seat. The two oldest daughters, actually already young ladies, despite their appropriate anatomical build shared the side car attachment and I always wondered how they fit in there. 

Behind the girls on top of the small trunk was the large well-secured picnic basket. When all of them sat already in their places, Mr. Kiełbasiewicz hit the gas and the family went slowly off. They looked like a group of French refugees from June of 1940, when Hitler marched on Paris, and from a distance it was even a nice sight to look at, specifically the lady of the house, whose lightly hanging beautiful and enticing butt cheeks, despite being maybe two numbers too large, bounced each time the machine negotiated some unevenness in the road. 

They would usually return quarreling late into the evening. Mom chided the daughters, the daughters berated the father, the father yelled at everyone and I always felt then like in the middle of some French film. 

Meanwhile my refrigerator, tied again with the camping tarp, continued to stand in the terrace, until one day Mr. Kiełbasiewicz asked me in his strange accent if maybe I wasn’t having some problems with it. 

I answered that indeed I was, and they were pretty big, because it simply didn’t work. He replied that if I had nothing against it he could take a look. 

He climbed up the terrace stairs uncertainly, and maybe for five minutes looked over every part and pipe I had precisely cleaned in the back, after which he asked me for two screwdrivers, which I immediately handed him, and he began to poke around. 

No more than two minutes passed when he connected the electric cable and the refrigerator suddenly shook lightly. Mr. Kiełbasiewicz and I pushed it from the terrace into the room. 

It worked.