TE20 Migrant Mosaics

everywhere, and anyway her hairdressing apprenticeship was far too long ago. She wouldn’t have the confidence to return to hairdressing after the many years she’d spent first as a library assistant in the State Rubber Processing Combine and later, after the winds of change had blown, as a Public Relations bimbo for the local authority. As for Silvia… Berit looked at her. She too was ogling Tadeusz, though her main focus was his rugged jaw. To feed this fantasy she always kept a pack of Daydent mouth freshner with her. Pia told them about the previous week at work, when Tadeusz had stepped in as a translator and been paid a substantial fee by her boss, and now hoped to be called on more often for this type of thing. Their town encouraged commercial relationships with Kielce, there was even an office for it in Gotha, and how many peoplecould speak Polish?! (Obviously thewhole thingwas better for the Poles: on the Kielce side they had no problem finding people who spoke German.) Pia Geissler couldn’t stop endlessly raving on about Tadeusz, all the while constantly readjusting her top and her hair and re-touching her eyeliner. Although it was his skill as an interpreter she was extolling, Silvia secretly swapped that word for lover. They left the motorway at the Meerane exit. In Zwickau they allowed themselves a toilet stop and sat in a little ice-cream parlour. Berit noted they’d got little tubs of Swedish ice-cream just like the old days , and ordered one. The others of course followed suit. The four tubs arrived, and in revisiting the joys of thevanilla ice-creamwith itsapplesauce, egg liqueurand lashings of sweet cream, they were completely transported from the present into reminiscences about former times. Tadeusz excused 167