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I mean, there just aren’t that many words you can use when
you want to say something nice to a girl, especially in a
cafeteria, when she’s giving you your soup or your main
course or clearing the dishes away.
It’s another matter that as far as words are concerned,
something has happened between men and women, don’t
you think? Someone here said to me once that words are
unnecessary, that they’re dying out. It’s obvious what a man
is, what a woman is, what do you need words for. True or
false ones, wise or unwise, elegant or clumsy, either way
they all lead without exception to the same thing. So what
are they for?
True, on the building sites things weren’t that great either
when it came to words. You used them as much as was
needed on the construction. And you can imagine what
kinds of words they were mostly. One job followed another,
so you just dropped by the cafeteria to quickly eat your
lunch and then hurry back to work. You were dirty and
sweaty, you didn’t even wash your hands sometimes. Plus,
while you were eating there were other men waiting for
your place the moment you were done. Where could you be
expected to learn other words? You look nice today, Miss
Basia, or Basieńka, that was all some of them could manage.
And those were the ones we reckoned knew how to talk. It
was much simpler to just grab hold of her braid.
Were any of them in love with her? I can’t speak for the