makeover.
Meanwhile, over on the southern edge of the city, in the middle of a field, sat a MiL helicopter retrofitted with a crop-spraying rig, from which hot-pink paint was still sizzling onto the grass, and leading from it out across the field a line of pink bootprints growing fainter and fainter as the Pink Pilot walked away into myth.
In time-honoured fashion there were angry recriminations in Parliament. There were resignations, mostly among air traffic controllers who had failed to notice the flight of the Pink Pilot.
Varsovians, on the other hand, loved the Palace’s paint-job. They claimed it made the thing so fucking obvious that they didn’t notice it any more, and when a few weeks later the Government attempted to have it cleaned there was a small riot.
This had all happened a year or so before Rudi arrived in Kraków, and he hadn’t visited Warsaw yet, but he’d seen it from time to time on various items in the news, and no matter where in the city the pictures came from the Pink Palace had seemed to lean into the background like one of those obnoxiously-drunken guests at a wedding party. Rudi thought it looked uncomfortably carnal .
“Poles, you see?” Fabio said when Rudi had explained it to him. “You absolutely cannot fucking predict what they will do. And now there is an army of them.”
“Well, nobody’s saying it’s the Pink Pilot painting the road signs,” Rudi said. “Just some people following his example.”
“And nobody’s ever caught the pink fucker.”
“No,” Rudi admitted, “nobody’s ever caught the pink fucker.”
“Well there you are then,” Fabio said, wagging a finger.
“Where am I then?” Rudi asked, puzzled.
“It must be him painting the road signs. Any person who is prepared to paint one building pink will almost certainly do so again.”
Rudi stared at him.
Whoever the ARP were, and wherever they came from, it was obvious that they had been particularly busy on this stretch of road. Most of the signs the car passed seemed to have been painted. This might have posed problems for drivers looking for directions, but Fabio never faltered.
Eventually, the sun came up. Rudi, who had been dozing again, opened his eyes to misty dawn light and without thinking about it oriented himself north-south, east-west.
“Where are we?” he said, struggling stiffly upright.
“ I don’t know,” Fabio said. “I just know where we’re going.”
“That’s great,” Rudi muttered. “Thank you, Fabio.”
As it turned out, sometime in the wee small hours they had outpaced the ARP’s handiwork and were back in an area of unmolested road signs. It didn’t take Rudi too long to work out where they were going, and an hour or so after that they arrived in Poznań.
“You could have told me where we were going,” Rudi said as they drove towards the city centre.
“I could have,” Fabio agreed. “But we are fated to go through life with too little information anyway. The sooner you learn that the better.”
Rudi looked at him. “Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“After two and a half months of your cooking,” Fabio said, “one develops a certain wry sense of humour.”
R UDI HAD NEVER been to Poznań before, but Michał, Max’s maitre d’, had been born in a village not too far outside the city, and on slow homesick evenings he had regaled the restaurant’s captive audience of Cracovians and Silesians and Kurds and Kosovars and Estonians with tales of his home town, so Rudi knew that Poznań had a Market Square second only to Kraków’s and had, for quite a long time, been a Prussian city named Posen. He knew that Mieszko I, conqueror of Silesia and Małopolska and the first historical ruler of Poland, was buried there, along with some other early kings and queens. He knew the oldest cathedral in Poland was there – and he knew some people in Kraków for whom that still rankled. He knew that the name of the city might have come from a person
Meanwhile, over on the southern edge of the city, in the middle of a field, sat a MiL helicopter retrofitted with a crop-spraying rig, from which hot-pink paint was still sizzling onto the grass, and leading from it out across the field a line of pink bootprints growing fainter and fainter as the Pink Pilot walked away into myth.
In time-honoured fashion there were angry recriminations in Parliament. There were resignations, mostly among air traffic controllers who had failed to notice the flight of the Pink Pilot.
Varsovians, on the other hand, loved the Palace’s paint-job. They claimed it made the thing so fucking obvious that they didn’t notice it any more, and when a few weeks later the Government attempted to have it cleaned there was a small riot.
This had all happened a year or so before Rudi arrived in Kraków, and he hadn’t visited Warsaw yet, but he’d seen it from time to time on various items in the news, and no matter where in the city the pictures came from the Pink Palace had seemed to lean into the background like one of those obnoxiously-drunken guests at a wedding party. Rudi thought it looked uncomfortably carnal .
“Poles, you see?” Fabio said when Rudi had explained it to him. “You absolutely cannot fucking predict what they will do. And now there is an army of them.”
“Well, nobody’s saying it’s the Pink Pilot painting the road signs,” Rudi said. “Just some people following his example.”
“And nobody’s ever caught the pink fucker.”
“No,” Rudi admitted, “nobody’s ever caught the pink fucker.”
“Well there you are then,” Fabio said, wagging a finger.
“Where am I then?” Rudi asked, puzzled.
“It must be him painting the road signs. Any person who is prepared to paint one building pink will almost certainly do so again.”
Rudi stared at him.
Whoever the ARP were, and wherever they came from, it was obvious that they had been particularly busy on this stretch of road. Most of the signs the car passed seemed to have been painted. This might have posed problems for drivers looking for directions, but Fabio never faltered.
Eventually, the sun came up. Rudi, who had been dozing again, opened his eyes to misty dawn light and without thinking about it oriented himself north-south, east-west.
“Where are we?” he said, struggling stiffly upright.
“ I don’t know,” Fabio said. “I just know where we’re going.”
“That’s great,” Rudi muttered. “Thank you, Fabio.”
As it turned out, sometime in the wee small hours they had outpaced the ARP’s handiwork and were back in an area of unmolested road signs. It didn’t take Rudi too long to work out where they were going, and an hour or so after that they arrived in Poznań.
“You could have told me where we were going,” Rudi said as they drove towards the city centre.
“I could have,” Fabio agreed. “But we are fated to go through life with too little information anyway. The sooner you learn that the better.”
Rudi looked at him. “Was that supposed to be a joke?”
“After two and a half months of your cooking,” Fabio said, “one develops a certain wry sense of humour.”
R UDI HAD NEVER been to Poznań before, but Michał, Max’s maitre d’, had been born in a village not too far outside the city, and on slow homesick evenings he had regaled the restaurant’s captive audience of Cracovians and Silesians and Kurds and Kosovars and Estonians with tales of his home town, so Rudi knew that Poznań had a Market Square second only to Kraków’s and had, for quite a long time, been a Prussian city named Posen. He knew that Mieszko I, conqueror of Silesia and Małopolska and the first historical ruler of Poland, was buried there, along with some other early kings and queens. He knew the oldest cathedral in Poland was there – and he knew some people in Kraków for whom that still rankled. He knew that the name of the city might have come from a person
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