Lovetown by Michal Witkowski

Author:Michal Witkowski
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781846273636
Publisher: Granta
Published: 2011-04-07T04:00:00+00:00

The Old Dears (Cont.)

‘I don’t like it. It’s not that I’m intolerant, but I just don’t like it when those straight blokes come here with their tarts and bugger off into the dunes to relieve themselves, absolutely clueless as to what sort of place this is. What, isn’t your straight nudist beach enough for you? I say to them. Isn’t the normal beach enough? Isn’t the entire straight normal world enough?!’

One Old Dear put on a pair of large, horn-rimmed glasses and did the crossword; of course she’d later be sending it in in hopes of winning a prize. They were always happy to take part in competitions. They sent in whatever was asked for, peeling and rubbing off code after code, forever dialling the number on the screen. One of them, somewhat younger, won a whole month’s pass to a solarium once, with unlimited access. She practically fried her skin. Which was a miracle, since that was in the early nineties, when the lamps weren’t as strong. Another one got a trip to a spa from some mineral water company (the code was under the bottle top). But when she arrived, they told her:

‘This competition was meant for women…’

But she went ahead and milked that vacation all she could regardless; she joined the ladies for aerobics, and in the mud bath, and for the makeover. There were two other gentlemen there as well, so she had an excuse: she wasn’t the only man…

Those two gentlemen and our Old Dear (Wiesław) always sat down to eat in the same dining hall as the ladies on the ‘Diet Boot Camp’. Only they got to eat whatever their hearts desired, while the ladies had to make do with a lettuce leaf, half an orange, a crust of stale bread, maybe a bit of fat-free kefir. Two in particular were going crazy with hunger; they hadn’t eaten anything since morning, and the trainers had driven them up and down the mountains all day. In the end they couldn’t take it any longer; they kept looking over at the men’s table piled high with food and they attacked it all, devoured everything! Puddings, ice cream, everything! The two men came back, looked and said: ‘All gone.’ That’s how our Wiesława recounted it, standing there, fanning herself with her bodice-ripper.

‘All gone – can you believe it, Michał? And those men always sat together, and they were so well-groomed, the one with highlights, the other one with highlights…’

I was succumbing to slumber, the sun’s hot tongue lapped at me, the waves glinted blindingly. I nuzzled my face in the blanket and felt hard sticks and pine cones bulging under the fabric… I felt languorous, sated… I wanted to fall asleep in the sun, amidst the drone of flies and sough of waves, and later I would get up and have a swim and go back to sleep. Then Old Dear No. 1 shows me what a wonderful, orange windbreak she’d got, with the Kolastyna logo on it; they were giving them away free at Rossman’s with the purchase of any sunblock.

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