2007 - Two Caravans Read Free Page A

corner of the prefab is the toilet and shower room—though the shower doesn’t work and the toilet is locked at night. Why is it locked? wonders Andriy. What is the problem with using the toilet at night?
    He has woken early with a full bladder and an unspecific feeling of dissatisfaction with himself, his caravan mates, and caravan life in general. Why is it, for example, that although the men’s caravan is bigger, it still feels more cramped than the women’s caravan? It has two rooms—one for sleeping and one for sitting—but Tomasz has the double bed in the sleeping room all to himself and three of them are sleeping in the sitting room. How has this happened? Andriy has one of the seat-beds and Vitaly has the other. Emanuel has made himself a hammock from an old sheet and blue bale-twine, skilfully twisted and knotted, and slung it across the sitting room from corner to corner—he is lying there breathing deeply with his eyes closed and a cherubic smile on his round brown face.
    Andriy recalls Emanuel’s look of astonishment and horror when the farmer suggested he should share the double bed with Tomasz.
    “Sir, we have a proverb in Chichewa. One nostril is too small for two fingers.”
    Afterwards, he took Andriy to one side and whispered, “In my country homosexualisation is forbidden.”
    “Is OK,” Andriy whispered back. “No homosex, only bad stink.”
    Yes, Tomasz’s trainers are another insult—their stink fills the caravan. It is worst at night when the trainers are off his feet and stowed beneath the bed. The fumes rise, noxious and clinging, and dissipate like bad dreams, seeping through the curtain that divides the sleeping from the sitting room, hovering below the ceiling like an evil spirit. Sometimes, in the night, Emanuel rolls silently out of his hammock and places the trainers outside on the step.
    Another thing—why are there no pictures on the walls in the men’s caravan? Vitaly keeps a picture of Jordan under his bed, which he says he will stick up when he finds something to stick it with. He also keeps a secret stash of canned lager and a pair of binoculars. Tomasz keeps a guitar and a pair of Yola’s knickers under his bed. Emanuel keeps a bag full of crumpled papers.
    But the worst thing is that because of the slope, and the way their caravan is positioned, you can only get a view of the women’s caravan from the window above Tomasz’s bed. Should he ask Tomasz to move over so he can take a look, and see whether that girl is still around? No. They’d only make stupid remarks.
     
    In the women’s caravan they have been up since dawn. Yola has learnt from experience that it is better to rise early if they don’t want the Dumpling knocking on the door and inviting himself in while they are getting dressed, hanging around watching them with those hungry-dog eyes—doesn’t he have anything better to do?
    Irina and the Chinese girls have to get up first and fold away the double bed before there is room for anyone to move. They cannot use the lavatory and washroom until the Dumpling arrives with the key to the prefab—what does he think they’re going to do? Unroll the toilet rolls at night?—but there is a handy gap in the hedge only a few metres away, though Yola cannot for the life of her understand why there always seem to be faces grinning at the window of the other caravan whenever any of the women takes a nip behind the hedge, don’t they have anything better to do down there?
    There is a cold water tap and washing bowl at the side of the women’s caravan, and even a shower made from a bucket with holes in the bottom, fed from a black-painted oil drum stuck up in a tree. In the evening, after it has been in the sun all day, the water is pleasantly warm. That nice-looking boy Andriy, who is quite a gallant despite being Ukrainian, has erected a screen of birch poles and plastic sacks around it, disregarding the protests of Vitaly and Tomasz, who complained that he