Island Operation (Part VII)

But we’ll finish with that past and return to the present thread. 

Before Bronco returned from the station’s baggage storage, where he left two packages, I managed to make four more identical packages with the rest of the cork. We shrewdly hid away the fishing rod in some hole so that no one could find it. That first day’s take was six identical packages. The market value of each was an even six thousand złoty, meaning the entire day’s take came out to thirty six thousand. Not a bad result for the first day. 

I took two of the four packages and told Bronco that ten minutes after I leave he should take his two to the photoplasticon near the market. There he would buy a ticket, go in and observe through the binoculars the moving three dimensional, sliding images, waiting for about an hour until I returned and took everything from him.

The photoplasticon was a strange place. It was just at the edge of the market, on one of the many main streets running out of it. You entered directly from the sidewalk. Really there wasn’t even any entrance there, only a spare, eighty people standing room only architectural recess that acted as a vestibule.

To the right side there was a small cash register and, right next to it, a very thin entrance for the audience which was opened electronically by the ticket agent. The whole place, from the late morning to the late evening, constantly played wonderful music. At a time when Russian music dominated everywhere, or even worse domestic folk music, the so called masses’ songs, here at full volume non-stop records blasted—because tape players did not exist yet—the best American big-band swing: Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and Count Basie. Sometimes sang Louis Armstrong, Edith Piaf, and even with his characteristic treble the French sleaze Tino Rossi.

The owner and the manager was a hunchback of about fifty who before the war apparently owned two cinemas in Lwow. We all always wondered where he had gotten such great records. After many years someone finally told me that one of his relatives had simply worked at this time as a driver in the Polish Military Mission in West Berlin and often sent him the best recordings. This music attracted many young clients.

Always, and especially during bad weather, many youth of both genders often discretely grooved to the rhythm of this beautiful music, hanging around in this photoplasticon’s large vestibule. That was the sounds. To the sights, it was pretty much complete garbage. Mainly were displayed three-dimensional slides, most often, and this was easy to tell by the outfits and haircuts, originating before even the First World War.

They were presented thematically and as a sort of photographic reportage, having to do with, for example, the carnival in Venice in the year 1908, Napoli and Capri in 1911, the Grand Canyon in Arizona or Niagara Falls. The audience was a little more excited by the reportage from savage countries, in which the savage women often blithely demonstrated their long, protruding tits, not to mention even for example what the savage men demonstrated. There was no end to the laughter.

From time to time, after closing, the hunchback organized showings of pornographic slides for the friendliest, most trusted and initiated guests, of course at an appropriately higher price. In this bleak time, many things, under penalty of several years in prison, were sourly prohibited—among them, if it bothered somebody, pornography. I was able to see three such showings.

Of course everyone was always obligated to full conspiracy, as if in this photoplasticon we were plotting and preparing an attempt at the lives of Bierut, Rokossowski and Cyrankiewicz all together. The music was turned off and in the hall an embarrassed and ominous silence took over.

The first showing, probably still from the twenties, had to do with two very hard-working and active Parisian—revealed by the Eiffel tower in the window in the background—hotel maids, who in any way possible tried to make the hotel guests’ stays in this beautiful French capital more attractive and warm.

The second showing was also pre-war, and touched on the very interesting topic of gruppensex—and to that also in Czechoslovakia. Precisely speaking, it showed, in full anatomical detail, the great invention of three wildly attractive Czech ladies, one of which looked a lot like Milena.

The third three-dimensional spectacle consisted of slides that showed in unusual and intriguing frames the fascinating lady-gentlemen adventures of one Josefine Mutzenbacher. Each set had as many slides as there were places in the photoplasticon. Here there were more than a good thirty, so that each showing had a sizeable and pretty educating story.

But generally this was not all this place was about.

With the quiet approval of the hunchback the photoplasticon served primarily as a guaranteed place for the many youth, without regard to the weather or season, of a certain intimacy. The surroundings were not actually the best, and except for the engulfing darkness, which helped in this situation, the couple would only make use of the bar-like stool cemented into the floor.

Fortunately the youth, and mainly the girls, were then pretty flexible. In high school and college, much weight was placed on physical education, and beyond that a large set of this youth also had SPO lapels, meaning Ready to Work and Fight—a lapel at this time very important and anyway obligatory, received after passing a special commission consisting of rather hard, centralized sports tests.

From time to time this establishment was visited by controllers from the board of education or from the local ZMP committee, who tried to catch truants who messed around there during school hours. ZMP activists, the best of the best, endowed with the appropriate papers, had as their assignment to check, verify and take down the names and information from the couples who made out there.

Similar ZMP actions were taken also in cinemas, parks, public events, and really everywhere. Their aim was to enforce upon the youth the so-called socialistic morality. In addition to this, would they come across a pair that offered resistance, for protection they could always call upon the Citizen’s Militia, which was required to offer them assistance in such a situation. The good hunchback never let such groups inside immediately and always stalled by pretending to examine the documents verifying their powers thoroughly, and having under his finger the switch for the lights in the hall, in case a group from the board of education came, he switched the lights on and off twice, and in the case of the ZMP three times.

Thanks to these signals of light everyone in the audience was precisely warned so that him and her had enough time to make discrete use of one of the several exits.

Bronco knew where to find the photoplasticon and as a joke I did not warn him to what kind of surprises he could be vulnerable there.