Emilia Marchelewska recalls her childhood in Poland, where a single road separated its inhabitants into two separate lives
A road that starts in Paris and ends in Moscow goes straight through my home village in Poland, dividing into two parts. On the western side, there is the school – a secondary level agricultural school teaching the modern ways of farming. It also includes student accommodation and two apartment blocks where we, the teachers’ families, lived.
On the eastern side, you will see the grounds of a former state farm where people worked collectively for a share of the overall productivity. It was called PGR, which in Polish stands for Polskie Gospodarst-wo Rolne. ‘Pegierusy’ is what we called people from there. My mother didn’t allow me to use this word, but what else could they be called?
In the 1980s, the last decade of socialism in Poland, the village prospered. It was full of life and excitement – and full of children. But the road divided us into two separate worlds. ‘We’ were the teachers’ children, and we were getting primary education on our doorstep. ‘They’ were the children of the school’s cleaners and carers; they were sent to a school in the next village over.
Between the school and the apartment blocks, there was a green yard and a playground. It had merry-go-rounds, a sandpit, a slide and our favourite, the swings. We spent hours there challenging our skills on climbing frames and singing songs on the swings!
Every now and then, the Pegierusy would invade our playground. We could hear them approaching from a distance; they seemed to us like a barbarian horde appearing from between the trees at the edge of the yard, racing for the swings and screaming savagely. “I’m taking the yellow one!” they shouted. “I want the one on the right!”
It was clear they were enjoying themselves hugely as they took over our swings. But they were terrifying! They were older, bigger and louder then us. We used to hide and wait until they got bored and went away. Of course, we never showed that we were afraid of them. We simply pretended we had something more amusing to do than being at the playground.
The only times we ever got together were during Christmas parties organised by the school for the children of the staff. I remember feeling awkward being in the same room with the Pegierusy, a bit shy and a bit intimidated. But we were encouraged by the grown-ups to play together, to dance in circles and sing.
After a while it turned out that we got along well. When snack time came we all equally enjoyed the chocolate biscuits served in the dining hall. We were together under the same label and given the same sweets, and we quickly forgot about the road that divided our village.
