Marina Lewycka - Two Caravans

Yola was in a foul mood. She had discovered that morning, don’t ask how, that the Slovak women who shared their hotel room had no pubic hair. How could this be permitted? Presumably they were not born this way-well, presumably they were, but acquired it in the natural course of things, and had taken unnatural steps to remove it. There are many bad things that can be said about communism, but one thing is certain, in communist times women did not abuse their pubic hair in this way-a practice which is unnatural, unsightly, undignified and, without being too specific, potentially dangerous.

Brooding on the abuses that women perpetrate on themselves and each other, Yola arrived at Buttercup Meadow Farmfresh Poultry near Shermouth already spoiling for a fight. And her mood darkened even more when she discovered that she, a woman of action with two years of supervisory experience and an advanced knowledge of Angliski way of life, and of life in general (which she will tell you about later), was not immediately appointed to a supervisory post within the plant. Instead the supervisor of her section was a rather coarse and disagreeable Romanian woman called Geta, who spoke appalling English and had difficulty in communicating with her workforce, who were mostly Slavs and who had no conception of the importance of sexual harmony in maintaining a pleasant atmosphere in the workplace. She had a distasteful habit of spitting onto her fingers as she reached for the chicken pieces coming down the line, and Yola supposed it could only be her blond hair, which anyone but a fool could see was dyed, and her shameless bosom, which was clearly held up with latex foam and underwiring (an abomination on which Yola also has some strong opinions which she will tell you later), and her Diploma in Food Hygiene from the Polytechnic Institute at Bucharest, which anyone but a fool could see was a forgery, which had secured for her this enviable position.

Anyway, this underwired fake-diploma fake-blondie starts trying to show Yola how to put two pieces of chicken onto a polystyrene tray, which anyone would think from the way she goes on you would need a polytechnic certificate for, when all you have to do is grab two bits of breast from the conveyor belt which has all kinds of chopped-up chicken meat on it, and you don’t have to spit on your hands like that fakie-Romanian does, and when Yola points this out to her she gets huffy and says, you Polish women now you legal you think you know everything but you don’t know anything, and you put your two bits of breasts on tray like this, and you tuck all loose bits of fat and skin underneath to make breasts look nice and plump, which when you think about it is just what latex foam does to fake-blondie’s underwired bosom, in fact fake-blondie discloses that these chickens also have water, salt, pork meat and other stuff injected in to make them look plump, which is even worse than latex when you think about it, because you have to eat it, which you don’t with latex-though things what men do nowadays nothing would surprise her-and then you just cover them with bit of cling film from this big roll, and then you send them down belt to women who do weighing and stick labels on, yellow labels for one supermarket, blue labels for another, and so on. You don’t need a certificate for that, do you?

Malta’s job is even less challenging.

When she arrived at Buttercup Meadow she made it clear that the job she wanted was feeding the chickens. But her supervisor, a nice friendly Lithuanian chap who had no front teeth, but in spite of-or maybe because of-this spoke quite good Polish, explained that there was no longer such a job, because the feeding of chickens was now completely automated on account of the mixture of hormones and antibiotics they get, and in any case the poultry barn is very smelly and is not a suitable place for a young woman of her sensitivity.

Instead, she was assigned to the part of the plant where chickens are graded. They come through from the slaughterhouse on a belt, and all Marta has to do is examine the chickens, select those which are plump and undamaged, and place them on another belt-these are the ones which will be packaged and sold as whole birds. The birds which are a little bruised, or just have, say, a leg broken, or ammonia bums on their hocks, are left on the line, and they go through to another part of the plant where they are chopped into chicken pieces and then go through for packaging, where Ciocia Yola is doing her bit. The chickens which are very badly bruised and mangled go into a huge plastic tub, from where they will be taken and processed for the catering industry-pies, restaurants, chicken nuggets and school dinners.

At first, Marta is too engrossed in spotting and selecting the whole and undamaged birds to think very much about the process, and she doesn’t question why so many birds are coming through those folding rubber doors in such a terrible state. The chickens she selects, although unfortunately dead, have a pleasant and peaceful look about them as well as good plump breasts, and she passes the time thinking up delicious recipes through which they could pass into the next world with dignity. For instance they could be stuffed with oatmeal, tarragon, lemon and garlic, or with cranberries, brown sugar and belly pork-that is her mother’s favourite-or with breadcrumbs, butter and dried fruits, or with chestnuts and…actually chestnuts are quite nice by themselves. And they can be coated with a tasty marinade of paprika and yoghurt, or honey and horseradish, but not too much horseradish, that can be a bit strong, maybe just pepper, cracked black peppercorns that crunch when you bite, and a sprinkle of marjoram, which is always nice with white meats.

She would like to ask the supervisor, who is quite nice for a Lithuanian, whether she could take a chicken home with her one day, to try out that horseradish recipe-of course she would pay for it-but then she remembers that they are no longer in the caravan, and there is nowhere to cook in their cramped hotel room. Well, that is one more thing that will have to wait until she gets home.

She finds that when she is not thinking of recipes or the deeds of the saints, which can get rather repetitive after a while, she is thinking increasingly of her home in Zdroj, of her older brother, who is still living with them, her mother, who is a teacher, and her father, who works at the town hall and is a colleague of Tomasz’s-what, she wonders, has become of him?-and little Mirek, who is often part of their family too, when Yola is in pursuit of a new husband. And though Tola’s ways are sometimes rather sinful, it is not for us to judge her, because none of us is without sin, and who knows what we would do in that situation, and it was a disgrace that the baby’s father left her, walked out and left her with a Down’s syndrome baby to bring up on her own.

“When are we going home, Ciocia?” Marta asks Yola, as they stand in the sunshine outside the plant, counting their first week’s wages.

“When? When we are millionaires.” Yola smiles grimly at her niece. Surely there has been a mistake. The wages are about a quarter of what Vitaly promised. There is a slip of paper in the envelope with them, with all kinds of incomprehensible letters and numbers. There was never any of this nonsense with old Dumpling. Just cash in hand.

“Deductions-what is this mean?” she asks Geta, who is standing nearby, also counting her wages, which look considerably more than Yola’s, even though she does nothing but strut around and stick her nose into everything. At least when Yola was a supervisor she set an example through her own hard work.

“Deductions is everything what you paying,” squawks Geta in her appalling English. “See-transports, accommodations, taxes, superannuations, Nis.”