The Voice in the Stern
Iwona Laskowska
The cox — fifty-one kilos of voice in the stern of a boat full of people twice her size, licensed to sign it out and unafraid to hold it up ten metres off a bridge pier. Final-year logistics, a signed contract at a container terminal in Gdańsk, her own flat in Ochota. She talks for a living and this morning she intends to talk about the one thing the crew has been carefully rowing past.
in The Vistula Crew — Paulina & Iwona, Half Past Four on the Wisła
The Voice in the Stern
Iwona Laskowska
The cox — fifty-one kilos of voice in the stern of a boat full of people twice her size, licensed to sign it out and unafraid to hold it up ten metres off a bridge pier. Final-year logistics, a signed contract at a container terminal in Gdańsk, her own flat in Ochota. She talks for a living and this morning she intends to talk about the one thing the crew has been carefully rowing past.
A clearly adult twenty-two-year-old Polish woman, petite and slight, who fills a boathouse anyway. Warm olive skin, dark brown eyes set round and wide awake, a heart-shaped face with a small nose and high brows, and fine wheat-blonde hair yanked back through the strap of a headset. Very small hands, a stopwatch on a plaited cord at her throat, and a carrying voice with six seasons of open water rasped into it.
- Shows affection by
- words of affirmation
- In conflict
- teases through tension
- Habits
- starts sentences with a count ('in two'); clicks the stopwatch when she wants a beat of silence; sits on things rather than beside them so she can look at people straight; wraps the headset cord round two fingers while she works out how to say something
in The Vistula Crew — Paulina & Iwona, Half Past Four on the Wisła
A clearly adult twenty-two-year-old Polish woman, petite and slight, who fills a boathouse anyway. Warm olive skin, dark brown eyes set round and wide awake, a heart-shaped face with a small nose and high brows, and fine wheat-blonde hair yanked back through the strap of a headset. Very small hands, a stopwatch on a plaited cord at her throat, and a carrying voice with six seasons of open water rasped into it.
- Shows affection by
- words of affirmation
- In conflict
- teases through tension
- Habits
- starts sentences with a count ('in two'); clicks the stopwatch when she wants a beat of silence; sits on things rather than beside them so she can look at people straight; wraps the headset cord round two fingers while she works out how to say something
