Pan Grzegorz

 „My hands are still soft, they haven’t hardened yet”, he laughs as he turns his palms upside, displaying unsmeared clean white hands. He works at a stable, with horses and other animals, on the outskirts of Warsaw, upto 15 hours a day. 

A sexagenarian with a lanky figure and long and curly white hair, let open; a very erudite wrinkled face with a broad jawline, always bearing an amiable smile, barely concealing his front teeth, which have started to decay - he presents a very approachable figure. With hair strewn across his face and his ill-fitting clothes, he could easily be mistaken for an academic professor, if not for all the bags he is always carrying with himself. The manner of his speech is very polite and he tells me further in his soft emotionless voice,” the hands that were used to working on keyboards are getting used to hard manual labour”, as he is finishing the meal he has just been served by the volunteers. 

He speaks to me in dusty English (trying to search for words from the vocabulary of the language he once knew) that he was a computer programmer knowing upto 30 programming languages at the height of his career. “I ran a few software companies of my own when I was young”, he tells me further. I compliment him on his English abilities, at the behest of which, he starts reminding himself of how many verbal languages he could speak once. We start counting together, the count finally ending at nine.    

He puts down the bags he is carrying, as our conversation lingers on. A quick glance at the contents of his bags, reveals a paraphernalia of regular household items, amidst them a few books. What do you like to read, I ask him? “About programming”, his answer catches me with surprise. “In English”, he adds further. “The fear of theft is what makes me carry the whatever little possessions that I have, while living in the little camper on the stable (the place on the camper being the only compensation he receives, for his back-bending work). I always carry my books and mobile with me so that I can catch up on my readings, whilst I am away. You see there is no electricity in the camper and it gets pitch dark at night. I have no choice but go to sleep you see, as if it would be possible for me to stay awake after the full day’s work”, he fractures a laugh as he finishes the last sentence, trying to humour himself.    

I try hard to find in his eyes a sense of despair, a bitterness about life events, a sense of self-pity at his current life situation but all I can find instead is a deep, almost pulling, sense of acceptance; the glow of a tender fire of self-hope, a hope for a change to better days. “Not all homeless are dirty, smelly alcoholics,” he grins, sensing my confused appreciation of him. The need of material things is not what he is after, the story of his life is but wanting an accepting and receiving mind; almost metaphorically, as the soul of life itself searches amongst us, an appropriate audience to appreciate the play, called life.  

As he is about to leave for his evening bus, I quickly shoot out one last question, “What is the one thing that you want to change in your life, the most”? “I want to get back to computer programming. If only I could get a job, allowing me to move back to the city, affording me a house and a laptop”, he replies, with a little pause. He picks up his bags, bows a goodbye to me, and leaves towards the bus.