I needed help. I needed more than help. I needed an ally, a confidant, a Robin to my Batman. Well maybe not a Robin but someone who was on my side. I found him among the hapless fucks who tried to pass themselves off as translators.
A guy at the bar named Curtis had recommended him to me after I had been complaining about my situation. It seemed that he was not only the best Polish speaker among the foreigners but was mainly self taught. The group were a little standoffish about him as he didn’t really socialise with them. They all knew his work though.
I liked the idea that he had the good sense not to associate with the barflies. I quickly found him on Google the next morning at work, Kinsley Andrews. He was working for a translator not a million miles away from my office so as the crew answered call after call from the UK, I picked up a few documents in Polish and headed down to meet the guy.
I enjoyed the stroll and the excuse to get out of the office, where I was increasingly not needed. The team were functioning and Monika cracked the whip then looked to me for approval. I spent most of my time acting as liaison between various departments in the UK. I had learnt very quickly that the biggest enemy, biggest threat to M&M was itself. The infighting and mudslinging between departments, between managers and senior staff was a joke but nothing was funny about it.
HR might have preached about strategic alignment but they were too focused on their battle with Finance and Legal to follow through on it. Legal and Finance co-operated or more accurately left each other to their own devices while Sales, Marketing, Customer Service and Logistics battled for relevance. Only Catering, Security and Production were free from the vicious barbs and vitriol of office politics. This simply was because everyone else knew that those three were at the bottom of the food chain.
Did anyone wonder about translation services?
Where did they fit in the corporate hierarchy?
Well I finally made my way past what was called the Jewish Ghetto to a small office above a printers. I was amused to see that the translation service’s door was padded with the kind of material that they use on mental patients walls in movies. I wondered why it was and came to the conclusion that if they were closed it must drive their clientele insane. I still don’t know why it was that way in truth and sometimes in Poland there is no explanation, some things just are.
Inside the office there was a tiny receptionist buried under a mass of hair. It could have been Slash if you’d slipped an axe into her hands. She smiled at me and asked in Polish if she could help me. I was beginning to understand their utterances but I couldn’t reply yet. I just looked at her blankly while I tried to form something in my head that might work on my tongue.
I was at a translator’s for God’s sake though. If I could just walk in anywhere and speak English this was the place. So I did. I explained myself and as I was asking about this fellow named Kinsley a short bespectacled individual popped his head around a door and peered out at me.
“Hello.” He said. “Can I help you?”
“I hope so. I have some work for you.” I waved the handful of documents at him.
“If you leave them with Caroline I’ll get to them this afternoon. Is there a deadline you need met?”
Ha.
Deadlines.
I had forgotten about those fucking things.
Like we agree a time or date that something should be done by and it is?
Not in Poland pal.
Oh he was so British.
I needed him on my staff or at least to hang out with.
“Could we talk privately for a moment?” I asked not wanting this to end.
“Erm, sure.” He looked across at the door opposite then walked across and ushered me in. He spoke to the women occupying the office and then we were alone. “So what’s up?”
I explained my situation and the story of how I came to be in Poland and finally to him and his office. He seemed genuinely touched that people thought so highly of him and his work. I was right though, he felt the same about the ex-pat scene as I did. He said that he’d tried a few of the websites and casual meet-ups but he felt more comfortable with the Poles now. I was waiting to pounce with my job offer but he struck first and asked if I fancied grabbing lunch. I wasn’t really hungry but why not.
He returned to his room for his coat while I smiled at Slash. All the time I was waiting I was hoping she would unleash an epic guitar solo out of the ether. She didn’t and as Kinsley emerged from his office wrapping his scarf around his neck, he was followed out by a procession of six young ladies.
The first I recognised as the women whose office we had used for our little chat.
She was followed by a tall thin brunette, a short blonde, another two tall skinny brunettes and then finally a vision, an Adriana Lima look-a-like who gave Kinsley a peck on the cheek as she floated past.
My job to convince him to come and join M&M just got a lot harder. I could see why he liked the company of Poles. Anyone would like the company of any nationality if they were surrounded by such a harem and the only male in the office.
“That’s Monika.” He said.
“I have a Monika at my office too but not like that.”
The volumeous hair, lips and wide eyes were hard to forget but then Kinsley said what I had learnt all Polish people think.
“She is beautiful but here they think she is fat. They think all English girls are fat too and eat nothing but chips. You have got to let them have their small glories. The poorer the country, the more they pride themselves on the beauty of their women and their men’s ability to drink. The truth is that while Poles do drink more, most Brits would drink them under the table and like you saw there are a lot of women with nice bodies but not much going on in the face department and totally bereft of any character.”
“What about Monika?” I asked. I guess I was asking about her personality because I had seen a woman who filled her jeans but wasn’t spilling out of them.
“Very pretty. Good English. Shy. Loves cats.” That seemed to be it.
Who was I to judge?
What did me and Elly have in common?
Oh yeah, we both thought she looked great and we both loved her.
We found an Italian place and he ordered a green salad and pasta, I got the lasagne. It was a quiet little place and gave us a chance to talk. I felt that he needed it just as much as I did and even though he might have shunned ex-pat bars it didn’t mean he didn’t want contact.
I learnt his back story and found out that he was from the wrong side of the Pennines but not Liverpool thankfully. He had a brother and spoke German and Russian as well as been self taught in Polish. He asked if I was going to learn but I told him that I didn’t plan on staying and that I’d started to pick up the odd word but in truth I worked all day in English and could point out the stuff I wanted at the supermarket. I had learnt to ask for ‘plaster-key’ when I wanted meat and they’d cut me some slices. That was enough.
“I never planned to stay either.” He said knowingly.
“Why did you learn the language then?”
“I was working in Russia and started to learn so I had something special on my resume. I came for some experience and now I’ve been at that office for three fucking years.”
He seemed angry with himself reflecting on the time he had spent there but by and large he was the happiest guy I’d met in Poland. Some of the younger women had a bubbly energy that would be stripped out of them once they woke up to adulthood but the men were less optimistic and ex-pats were all quasi-suicidal.
I tried my best to convince him to come and join me but I could see that it would be difficult to get him out of that office. He checked over the contracts I had brought pointing out several things that would seem strange to a foreigner but not to a Pole and thus wouldn’t have been mentioned by Paweł. He knew his stuff and refused to let me buy his lunch. He didn’t even charge me for his consultation. Instead he invited me and Elly for a BBQ with him and Monika at the weekend in some forest. He explained how I could get there and then decided he would meet us at the last Metro stop.
We said our goodbyes and I waited eagerly all week to go for a BBQ. I knew the weather was shit and that a BBQ was a strange idea but something might have worked out. On Friday though he called and said there wouldn’t be a BBQ
and asked instead if we fancied a wine tasting.
Wine tasting?
With a plate of cheese?
Have you got any Pimm’s while you’re at it?
Sure I said, knowing Elly would hate it. Well she’d have to suck it up for a bit and she could talk to Monika. It would be nice for her to have a friend in the city. She nodded and agreed and seemed happy like always but when the weekend came around I could see she was searching for excuses to get out of the BBQ, the wine tasting didn’t capture her imagination either but after a quick chat she decided that getting out of the flat was better than another cartoon marathon.
Elly wanted to grab a McDonalds on the way there which was strange as she usually ate nothing. I didn’t mind though. I just assumed that she was happy with me and had stopped dieting and waiting for her Mr. Right to come along. I hoped that she already had him.
We met Kinsley and Monika by a different Metro and moved away towards the wine tasting. To say that the Metro was only one straight line and a few stops a lot of Warsaw revolved around it, especially for the younger people.
The wine tasting was a crock of shit. Other than trying to shift a load of second rate Hungarian wine, the cheese platter was vile. We were all laughing and getting along but Monika and Elly were sneering at each other when backs were turned followed by smiles and polite but guarded comments to each other’s faces.
Kinsley insisted on being called Kins and we agreed a flat rate fee for consultations. Monika was happy as it was her friend’s mother’s firm and it looked good for Kin’s. I felt good about signing a deal and actually doing something in Poland, even if it would mean that I didn’t really do much.
The Hungarian Ambassador joined us at some juncture during the evening and invited us to a gallery opening. When we got there it was much more a celebration of alcohol than art and mixed with the offensive wine we had just drunk, we all ended the night in quite a state.