Riding the Iron Rooster Read Online Free PDF Page A

apart—got on, examined passports, demanded to see money, scribbled receipts. Theirs was a mysterious business. They all wore old, terrifying shoes.
    Poland from the train looked altogether senile—exhausted fields, decaying apartment houses, broken roads, and great, dusty factories. It has the appearance of an elderly country—it is visibly doddering—but it has the most humane and polite people I have ever met, thoroughly gentle and civilized, which is probably the reason theirs is a history of being overrun and occupied.
    In my compartment was a little group traveling together—mother, daughter, grandson. They were from Katowice, and being with the daughter reminded me that young Polish women are madly attractive, with clear skin and large, limpid eyes and lovely hair.
    "Don't go to Mongolia," Ewa said. "Come to Katowice and I will show you interesting things."
    The mother rolled her eyes and said, "She's crazy—pay no attention to her."
    Woityek the little boy was solemn faced and sat without making a sound. A Polish man offered Woityek an apple, which the little boy took but didn't eat. That was another thing. The Poles seemed to me to be very kind and courteous to each other; the Germans were less so; the Russians not at all.
    Ewa said, "We have relations in Chicago, in New Jersey, in Los Angeles, too. If it weren't for them we'd probably starve. They send us money. I'd like to go there—the States. Or maybe to Paris. I could learn French."
    Ewa was twenty-eight and had been divorced for two years. She worked in a bank in the foreign exchange section. I told her I wanted to withdraw some money I had in a bank in Warsaw, the Bank Handlowy. She gave me precise instructions, the address, the telephone numbers. She said it would be easy.
    When this family took out their lunch they offered me some sandwiches and fruit, and so I broke out one of my bottles of amontillado and we drank it together.
    "Mongolia's so far away," Ewa said. And then it sounded as though she were saying to Woityek, "He's going all the way to Mongolia on the train!"
    "They came here once, you know—the Mongols."
    Battle of Liegnitz (1241), about eighty miles south of here: we had just stopped at Zbaszynek. The Mongols annihilated a combined army of Germans and Poles.
    "Everyone came here," Ewa said. "That's why Poland is such a mess."
    On the station platform, two fat, white-faced workmen slathered brown paint on an iron bench. The paint dripped and ran, and when they painted the feet of the bench they slopped paint on the platform. Some Poles watched disapprovingly but said nothing. They wore snap-brim hats and carried plastic briefcases. Most Poles seemed overweight; they talked constantly about food and food shortages—but that wasn't odd. Food is a frequent topic with fatties. They wore old clothes and had sour bready breath and lived in pockmarked houses.
    Ewa and her mother and child got out at Poznan to catch the train for Katowice, but gave me their address.
    "Send us a postcard from Mongolia..."
    We were delayed in Konin. That was convenient. I could write without my arm being jogged. I wrote:
In brown April, in Poland, it looks as though spring will never come—bare trees, dead grass like rags, cold winds, rubbly earth, apartments plastered with wet washing, furrowed fields with nothing sprouting, a man plowing with one skinny horse, men shoveling dust, muddy creeks and ditches, a plastic bag jammed on a stick to scare birds; such monotony ... But this is the view in April, when things in Poland look so bleak that even the ducks seem to be drowning, and the chickens are frantic. In a month or so, things will be different: spring will come, the whole country will be in bloom. Yet it still seems an awful fate to be a Pole.
    It seemed to me, as we set off again, that the only really interesting buildings were the churches—the only ones with curves, at any rate. The rest were all right angles and had