Locked and Down
It was a week before Barbara’s fifty-third birthday when the government announced the lockdown. She thought that the virus couldn’t choose a worse time, given that this week she was meant to have a birthday party and fly to Madrid with Adam. The trip to Madrid was a no-go under these circumstances, but she decided to have her party by moving it from the following Friday to Sunday, as the restrictions were meant to be introduced on Monday. She quickly phoned her guests, asking if they were able to come and all agreed, except Beata, who left Warsaw to visit her mother before the lockdown. Barbara spent the whole Saturday cooking and baking cakes, as she prided herself on offering guests exclusively home-made dishes. They all came: Anna, Lucyna, Halina, Hubert and Franek. Adam wasn’t there. She never invited him to her birthday celebrations because he was some of her friends’ old boss; other knew his wife and it was awkward for them to meet, all things considered. Barbara and Adam usually celebrated her birthday separately, just the two of them, either abroad or in Adam’s little summer house on his allotment, some twenty kilometres from Warsaw.
This year, the party saw similar conversations, mostly about children and travel. Hubert was showing pictures of his youngest daughter who was three years old. Everybody agreed that she was beautiful, like an angel with blue eyes and blond curly hair. He also mentioned that his older daughter, who was in her twenties, was recently promoted. Hubert was Barbara’s first boyfriend and it was always a bit sad to see his children, making Barbara think that they could have been hers. But it was her decision to ditch him thirty years ago and it was a testimony to the maturity of both of them that they remained friends and helped each other in difficult times.
‘How is your niece?’ asked Hubert, when they finished admiring his offspring. ‘Tamara should finish her studies in Summer, with a two-year delay, but even now she has no sense of urgency, maybe because she is worried about what will happen next. She would like to travel, but has no money and now it’s not possible.’
‘Exactly. Courtesy of the Chinese. Their government infected its own people first and then passed it to the world, knowing that China would beat it easily, while the rest of the world will be mortally wounded. This would allow them to buy foreign assets at a reduced price and make us their slaves. European governments shouldn’t fall into this trap. They should break ties with China and prioritise protecting their economies. Lockdown is madness,’ said Hubert.
‘This is a conspiracy theory. The priority of every government is protecting its people, especially the vulnerable: the old and the disabled. Economies can rise, while people cannot. Once somebody dies, she dies forever,’ replied Lucyna.
‘People always die,’ said Hubert. ‘This is a fact of life. And overall it’s a good thing. Can you imagine what the world would look like if everybody was immortal? We would be fighting each other for every inch of land. Unfortunately, these days people are unable to accept any type of death; death is not just a tragedy, but a crime committed by a careless government. Yesterday I read that a 103-year old man died of Covid-19 and his grandson said that if our hospitals weren’t so underfunded, his grandfather might carry on living. How long was he meant to live, according to his family, I wonder?’
‘I agree, but it’s only in the West and maybe postcommunist East that people see death as unexpected and immoral. I once met somebody who was researching the effectiveness of AIDS education in Africa and I recall her saying that in rural Zambia life was so precarious that the people found it laughable that westerners would not smoke cigarettes because it might kill them after thirty years of smoking. These were people who could fall ill and die with no explanation as to why, and this was an accepted fact of existence, so to be afraid of something years in the future was inconceivable to them,’ said Franek.
‘I admire this attitude,’ said Barbara. ‘Maybe this makes these people happier than us, as they cherish every moment of their life. By contrast, many in the West always invest in the future and overlook the present.’
‘This was discovered a long time ago by Jung,’ replied Hubert. ‘He described a conversation he had with a Native American chief who pointed out to him that most white people have tense faces, staring eyes and a cruel demeanour. He said: “They are always seeking something. What are they seeking? The whites always want something. They are always uneasy and restless. We don’t know what they want. We think they are mad,”’
‘You are too hard on westerners. I see them as martyrs, who sacrifice themselves on the altar of progress. If not for them, Native Americans might still have not invented the wheel,’ said Franek.
‘Maybe they would be happier without the wheel,’ said Anna.
‘No, they wouldn’t. This is proven by the fact that no society rejects technological inventions; everybody wants to have them. There is no way back, even hippies couldn’t live in their communes permanently,’ replied Franek.
‘Where were you meant to go?’ asked Lucyna, turning to Barbara.
‘First Madrid, but we wouldn’t stay there long. The plan was to visit smaller places, like Toledo and Segovia and we were meant to spend a week in a village whose name I forgot. I like small towns and villages in southern countries, especially Spain and Greece, as travelling there is like travelling back in time. You cannot do it in Poland, as nothing authentic is left. What tourists see in Poland is a cross between a skansen and a simulacra.’
‘This is not true,’ said Hubert. ‘We simply look differently at our own surroundings and those of other countries. We don’t know how to be tourists in our own country or city.’
‘Maybe this pandemic will force us to become tourists in our own houses if we won’t be able to travel even to a neighbouring town,’ said Halina. ‘To be honest, when I opened my wardrobe last weekend, I felt like a tourist as I couldn’t recognise three quarter of the garments I had accumulated.’
The guest laughed and carried on. Barbara left them and moved to the kitchen to check on supper. Lucyna wanted to help her, but Barbara replied that it was better if she was in charge, given how small her kitchen was. She was thinking that although all of them knew that she was meant to go on holiday with Adam, they talked to her as if she was travelling by herself. He was always bracketed off by her friends. She knew that the reason was that her friends didn’t accept their relationship. ‘He is not right for you,’ they said in the past, till they stopped mentioning him altogether. He wasn’t good, because he was married and never left his wife. He had lived in this bigamous relationship for almost thirty years, spending weekdays and official holidays with his wife and children and weekends and other holidays with Barbara. Yet Barbara accepted it from the beginning because a weekend with Adam was more precious for her than a whole week with anybody else. Indeed, it was so precious because it was so short. They were never bored with each other and they treasured every minute spent together. She tried to explain it to her friends, but they regarded her as a naïve victim of Adam’s manipulative behaviour. Ultimately she forgave them, as she knew that they cared for her and no friendship was perfect.
The next day the woman who was in charge of a large editorial office which published over thirty magazines held a meeting for the employees, telling them that from the next day the journalists had to work from home until the restrictions were lifted. They needed to pack all their stuff because nobody knew when they would be back and some might not return at all. Moreover, the office might be rented out to cover some of the expected losses from the decreased sales.
‘How optimistic,’ said a colleague sitting next to Barbara. ‘I hope this witch never returns.’
‘Indeed,’ she replied.
Barbara’s younger colleague, Anita, who helped cover the culture and entertainment section in three magazines, asked Barbara, when they were queuing for cardboard boxes to pack their belongings: ‘How can we write about culture and entertainment when there will be no culture and entertainment to write about? All festivals, concerts and theatre performances are to be cancelled.’
‘There is always culture and entertainment,’ replied Barbara. ‘Use your head. For a week or so we can write about how the virus affects the culture and entertainment sector at large and cover the events which were cancelled. Then we can interview some celebrities asking them how they are copying with the lockdown and tips for others. In the third stage we will write about stars who died from Coronavirus or committed suicide. Believe me, when putting food on your table is at stake, people get very creative. We will be too.’
Anita didn’t say anything, but looked at Barbara with respect, but this did not flatter Barbara. It only made her think that it was her bad luck to always get incompetent collaborators.
