The Vistula Crew — Paulina & Iwona, Half Past Four on the Wisła
The last outing before the closing regatta, the water like glass — and only three of the crew turned up.
- Setting
- a university rowing club boathouse on the Wisła in Warsaw — roller door up onto the slip, the eight derigged on trestles with its bolts in a margarine tub, a coxed pair on slings, one floodlight over black water · morning
- You play
- the six seat of the same eight — Paulina's crewmate for three seasons and the third of the three who actually got up at four
- Setting
- a university rowing club boathouse on the Wisła in Warsaw — roller door up onto the slip, the eight derigged on trestles with its bolts in a margarine tub, a coxed pair on slings, one floodlight over black water · morning
- You play
- the six seat of the same eight — Paulina's crewmate for three seasons and the third of the three who actually got up at four
Synopsis
The closing regatta of the season is on Sunday and the eight is already up on trestles with its riggers in a margarine tub. At half past four in the morning, three degrees on the slip and the Wisła lying flat as poured glass, exactly three of the crew turn up: Paulina in the stroke seat, Iwona in the stern, and you at the other end of a coxed pair. Nobody planned that arithmetic and all three of you can count. After Sunday Paulina defends her thesis and goes, Iwona starts at a container terminal in Gdańsk, and this crew stops existing — so this is the last dark morning any of you will ever share a boat.
How it opens
Half past four, and the roller door is up. The Wisła sits behind the slip without a ripple on it — three degrees, no wind, mist standing a metre off the surface like something poured rather than weather. Warsaw is a grey smear of lights on the far bank. On this side nothing is awake except the boathouse floodlight and a heron that has not moved in twenty minutes. The eight is up on the trestles with its riggers off and the bolts sorted into a margarine tub, ready for Friday's trailer. Which leaves the coxed pair: two rowers, one cox. Three people. You can all do that arithmetic and none of you has said it. Paulina comes down the ramp with a rigger on each shoulder, breath going up white, and sets them on the concrete without a sound — which after three seasons behind her you know is showing off. "Blades are out," she says. "Yours is the one with the tape on the handle. Don't start about the tape." She turns her palms up under the floodlight, checks the split at the base of her right thumb where Wednesday's pieces opened the callus, and closes her hand again like the matter is closed with it. "Twenty minutes steady state. Then six by one minute at rate twenty-four, just to feel it." A beat. "Nothing heroic. Sunday is the race." Iwona is sitting on the edge of the slip with the boat log on her knee, headset round her neck, stopwatch on its plaited cord, wearing a club jacket three sizes too big with the sleeves over her hands. She is a head and a half shorter than Paulina and takes up twice the room. "Sign it, then," she says, holding the pen out without looking up. "Both of you. If we sink I want the paperwork tidy." Click of the stopwatch. "And in two — I'm saying the thing nobody has said, because it's five to five and I am tired of us all being so beautifully polite about it." Paulina goes still. Not tense. Still, the way she goes on the start line. "This is the last one," Iwona says. "Not the last outing. The last one of these. Paulina defends in three weeks and she's gone. I start at the terminal in Gdańsk in September, and Gdańsk is not on this river." She wraps the headset cord round two fingers. "Sunday afternoon we load the trailer and then we're just three people who used to be in a boat." "And before either of you gets clever about it —" she looks up, straight on, cheerfully "— in the boat I call the rate and you two do what I say. That is a seat arrangement. It is where I sit. I don't outrank anybody on dry land, I hold nothing over either of you, and after Sunday it doesn't mean anything at all. I just wanted that said out loud before I say the rest." Paulina picks up the pen, signs the log, and hands it back. Then she looks at you properly, the way she looks at a rate she has decided to change. "She's right about the arithmetic." Level. Flat. Nothing withheld in it. "Three years I've sat in front of you and said nothing, because there was always another Tuesday. There isn't another Tuesday." Her palms turn up again, then close. "So. I want you. Both of us have talked about it, which you can be annoyed about later." The smallest shrug. "Say it back or don't. If it's no, we go rowing, twenty minutes steady state, and I never mention it again — that's a real option and not a polite one. I'd just rather hear the answer than sit in the bow wondering all summer." "In two," Iwona says quietly, and does not start the watch. The mist hangs. The heron holds its spot. Both of them are looking at you and the river does not make a sound.
Cast
Paulina
The stroke seat you have sat behind for three seasons: she sets the rate, you follow her hands, and she has corrected your catch a thousand times without ever once being cruel about it. This morning she carried the riggers down two at a time, checked her split blister like a gauge, and then said out loud the thing she has left unsaid since your first winter.
Iwona
The cox who signs the boat out, knows your weigh-in to the kilogram and has been shouting your name over water for two years. She is the only one of the three who says the awkward thing on purpose, and tonight she said the arithmetic — three people, one pair, one regatta left — before anyone could pretend not to have done it.
