Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This" (16 page)

Any content is suspect. The Commies objected even though they're
supposed to be atheists.

In Poland a Fender guitar costs between 150,000 and 200,000
zloyts. There are only about five officially sanctioned places to play
in the whole country. I visited one of the best sound studios. It had
sixteen tracks. To do a proper final mix the tape has to be taken to
West Germany. It's impossible to say how many records the most
popular groups could sell. There's a shortage of record plastic. But
the Poles plug along, keeping up with the trends. The music videos
I saw were no worse than MTV's, though many had been shot on
8mm home-movie film. The synthesizer tunes I heard were done on
the kind of electric keyboards we used to have at roller rinks, but
the results weren't any dippier than the new Prince album. All this
jury-rigging was admirable, but it was like watching genius high
school sophomores tinkering in the rec room with dad's dictaphone.
And the people I talked to were no happier than genius high school
sophomores usually are.

I had some drinks with an extraordinary rock critic I'll call
Kazimierz. Indeed, I had a great many drinks with him. We sat
down with a bottle of vodka at three in the afternoon and drankPolish style-two-ounce shots taken at a gulp until the bottle was
gone. Then somebody stopped by his house with another bottle and
we drank that.

Kazimierz is a vade mecum of popular music from Johnny Ace
to Joy Division. He's a well-known editor and commentator in
Poland and a popular disc jockey and journalist. He speaks English, German and Russian. And he lives with his mother in a
housing development.

The housing development was a high-rise, but with freightelevator-style electric lift and steel stairs and doors. The apartment
had three tiny rooms. The walls were concrete, of course. It was a
sort of basement in the sky. And here was Kazimierz, an educated,
hard-working man of forty, with only an eight-by-ten-foot bedroom
to call his own. We didn't talk about music for long.

"I was working overseas when martial law came," said
Kazimierz. "I was terrified of what might be happening here. It took
me six months to get back in the country. And all that time I could
get no news about anyone I knew. When I landed at the airport, I saw the ZOMO, the new riot police that had just been constituted.
And they were standing at the airport eating ice cream cones. At
that moment I knew they were human. I knew there was hope."

And that was all the hope he had to cling to, just that the
enemy was human. "This country has not had a hopeful history," I
said.

"I'll tell you a Polish joke you may understand now," said
Kazimierz. "It explains something about our national survival. One
Pole is telling another about his visit to America. He says, `I went
to see a fellow and he fixed us drinks.'

`Yes,' says the second Pole.

`Then do you know what he did?' says the first.

`No,' says the second.

`He put the cap back on the bottle!"'

I asked Kazimierz what had happened to Solidarity. "I haven't
heard anyone mention Lech Walesa," I said, "except one American
reporter."

"No one cares about that any more. It's old history," said
Kazimierz. "Only people from the West think it means anything
anymore.

We drank ourselves blind. In the next room Kazimierz's
mother sat between narrow slab walls, stolidly watching government TV. My notes are a jumble. I can make almost nothing of
them, except at the bottom of one page, in wobbly, painstaking
letters I've written: "We have no weapons and no chances. No
weapons and no church. We live in a -land that's not ours."

On the day before I left I took a long walk with Zofia. "I'd like
to see the West," she said.

"Can you leave?"

"If you are of a certain level, it can be arranged. But you need
an invitation, a job or a sponsor of some kind. Do you think I could
find a job in the West?"

"Zofia, you're fluent in what, Polish, English, German, Spanish and Arabic?"

"Yes. But -I am only fair in Russian and Latin."

"And you have how many higher degrees?"

"Nearly three now."

"Zofia, you'd have to carry a pistol to keep from being made
president of the World Bank. Would you defect?"

"No. It would break my parents hearts. My father fought in
the resistance. He is not a Communist but he belongs to the
Peasant's Party, that is allied with the government." Zofia shrugged,
"Besides, this is my country .-I should see it through."

We were walking down Nowy Swiat Street in front of the offices
of the Central Committee of the Polish United Workers Party, which
is what the Communists call themselves in Poland. Zofia said,
"This will sound strange to you, but when the army took over and
martial law was first declared, there was hope somehow. The army
has always had prestige-for their bravery against the Germans in
1939 and the Russians in the 1920s and so on. All the reserves
were called up, all the young men. When we saw the soldiers at the
barricades, they were friends of ours from school-not like the
police who come from a different class. General Jaruzelski raised
the Polish national flag for the first time next to the Party flag on the
Central Committee building." Zofia paused.

"And?" I said.

"And that was all." Zofia gestured to the street, to the lumpy,
gray-faced people. "Everything is the same as it was." Then she
brightened. "Have you heard about the Russian and American
generals? They are arguing about who has the best troops. The
Russian general says, `We feed our troops one thousand calories a
day.' The American general says, `We feed our troops three thousand calories a day. `Nonsense!' says the Russian general, `no one
can eat an entire sack of potatoes in twenty-four hours."'

On the way back to my hotel I finally got arrested. Four large
policemen blew their whistles and surrounded me on the plaza in
front of the Palace of Culture and Science. They hustled me into a
police van. One paged through my passport, while the other three
glowered menacingly. I met their stares with a steady gaze. They
weren't going to break me. I sat in the sweltering van with my legs
crossed casually, a faint smile on my lips; I was determined to let
no emotion show. I fancied they'd rarely dealt with as cool a
customer as I. And I'd composed the lead sentence and first two
paragraphs of the New York Times story about my arrest on
trumped-up espionage charges before they got it across that I'd
been nabbed for jaywalking. I was fined $2.

So I didn't become a prisoner of conscience or see any salt
mines or brain washing in Poland-that would have been too
exciting. And I didn't see any Evil Empire-that would have been
too interesting. Communism doesn't really starve or execute that
many people. Mostly it just bores them to death. Life behind the
Iron Curtain is like living with your parents forever-literally, in
many cases. There are a million do's and dont's. It's a hassle getting
the car keys. No, life behind the Iron Curtain is worse than that.
It's Boy Scout Camp-dusty; dilapidated; crummy food; lousy
accommodations; and asshole counselors with whistles. TWEET!
"Count off by threes!" TWEET! TWEET! "Who short-sheeted the
politburo?"TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! "A good Pole is loyal, helpful, obedient . . . " It's reveille and the buddy system and liver and
Kool-Aid and capture the flag for all eternity; and Mom and Dad
will never come to get you-they're snoring in the next bunk.

Is it worth risking nuclear war and the annihilation of mankind to avoid living like this? Don't ask anybody who just got back
from Warsaw.

JANUARY 1987

My friend Dorothy and I spent a weekend at Heritage USA, the
born-again Christian resort and amusement park created by television evangelists Jim and Tammy Bakker, who have been so much in
the news. Dorothy and I came to scoff-but went away converted.

Unfortunately, we were converted to Satanism. Now we're up
half the night going to witch's sabbaths and have to spend our free
time reciting the Lord's Prayer backward and scouring the neighborhood for black dogs to sacrifice. Frankly, it's a nuisance, but if it
keeps us from going to the Heritage USA part of heaven, it will be
worth it.

Just kidding. In fact, we didn't actually come to Heritage USA
to scoff. At least I didn't. I came because I was angry. Normally I
take a live-and-let-live attitude toward refried Jesus-wheezing TV
preachers. They've got their role in life, and I've got mine. Their
role is to be sanctimonious panhandlers. My role is to have a good
time. They don't pray for cocaine and orgies. I don't go on the tube
and ask people to send me $100. But, when a place like Heritage USA starts advertising fun in the sun and Heritage's founders start
having drug blasts and zany extramarital frolics, I feel they're
stepping on my turf.

Heritage USA is a fair-size chunk of Christendom, 2,300
acres. It's half an hour from the go-go New South Sun Belt town of
Charlotte, North Carolina-just over the border into the poky Old
South Bible Belt county of York, South Carolina. The Heritage
entrance gate appears to be a colonial Williamsburg turnpike toll
plaza. Admission is free, however. Inside the gate you have the
same vaguely depressing pine barrens that you have outside. A
dozen roads meander through the scrub with the sly purposelessness of burglary lookouts.

Not that Heritage USA is an "empty vessel" (Jeremiah 51:34).
By no means. Recreation facilities are "ministered unto you abundantly" (II Peter 1:11). There are playgrounds, kiddie rides, bridle
paths, tennis courts and swimming pools, where I guess you have to
lose faith at least temporarily or you'll just stand around on top of
the water. And there are vacation cottages for rent and condo homes
for sale, plus campgrounds and acres of gravel to park your Winnebago on. You can see the house where Billy Graham grew up and
make Amityville Horror jokes about it. A golf course is being laid
out. I'll rush back as soon as it's done, to hear what new kinds of
blasphemy Christian golf leads to:

"The rough ways shall be made smooth"

-Luke 3:5

"Thou shalt not lift up any iron."

-Deuteronomy 7:5

"This cup is the New Testament in my blood."

-I Corinthians 11:25

"I will put my hook in thy nose."

-II Kings 19:28

And you can visit the world headquarters of PTL, which is in the
middle of a huge scandal right now, just like a real television
network.

Midst these lesser marvels is an artificial lake with a fifty-twofoot water slide and the world's largest wave-making pool. A little
choo-choo train goes all the way around the lake shore. And across
from the train station is an enormous hotel, shopping mall, theater,
restaurant and indoor inspirational loitering center.

The architects must have been touched by the holy spirit
because they were definitely speaking the language of design in
tongues when they did this. At one end there's the Heritage Grand
Hotel-Georgian on steroids, Monticello mated with a Ramada Inn
and finished in Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers gothic. This is
attached to a two-hundred-yard stretch of bogus Victorian house
fronts, which screen the shopping mall. The house fronts have
extruded plastic gingerbread details and are painted in colors unfit
for baboon posteriors. Interesting that the same God who inspired
the cathedral at Chartres, Westminster Abbey and the Sistine
Chapel also inspired this. That Big Guy Upstairs can be a real
kidder.

The Christmas decorations were still up at Heritage. From the
entrance gate all the way to the water slide, the place was festooned
with Yule lights and other pagan symbols of the season-tinseled
evergreens, holly wreaths, snowmen, candy canes. But no Santa
Claus. His elves were there, stuffing stockings and wrapping presents, but Santa himself was nowhere to be found. When we walked
into the hotel lobby, carolers were singing: