Unfunny April Fools’ Day in Poland
It’s 1 April 2020, April Fools’ Day. I don’t feel like joking, though, as recently the world has become rather unfunny. It has also dramatically shrunk: a small apartment, frantic browsing through the Internet, phone calls to family and friends. One after another, I delete from my calendar scheduled trips abroad, conferences, and meetings. It has been like that for three weeks now. A visit to France at the end of February seems so unusually remote today.
The government has introduced more restrictions on moving around and holding meetings. Even public parks and promenades are closed. Teenagers and kids may not stay outdoors unless with adult supervision, and three people chatting in a public place means paying a fine. Two people may walk together separated by a distance of not less than 2 meters. Those shops which have escaped closing (groceries, pharmacies, drugstores) from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. serve senior citizens only. They are the ones most vulnerable to infections and they must be protected. The Minister of Health is constantly emphasizing that this is no time for keeping fit; looking at my growing belly, I must agree. Even all-day exercise is not able to stop the pains in the back and the right arm; my filling-out — or as my partner affectionately calls it, nicely-rounded — body has long stopped bothering me. Naively, I hope to be soon able to return to the gym and active leisure. Only the “soon” gets postponed all the time. The coach, by the way, also gives vent to his frustration on Facebook: like many other Polish people, from now on he is going to earn only 80% of his salary, thus any extra money is at a premium. Yet, where to get it from, if we’re stuck at home? And we obey the rules, but somehow the number of the infected won’t fall.
In Poland now two dates are what matters: Easter, which is hoped to magically bring the end of general quarantine, and 10 May — the scheduled presidential election. The incumbent president maintains that if people can go shopping for groceries, they may as well go to the polls. The fact that the whole opposition (and common sense) have been arguing against the idea of holding the election on 10 May does not seem to convince the ruling party. The example of local government elections in France shows who may be right; however, as a well-known Polish actor Maciej Stuhr has recently said in his clip about Andrzej Duda, “The president is independent, even of common sense.” This is an obvious allusion to how much decision-making is done by the cabinet and how much by Jarosław Kaczyński. The subject of election is inflaming passions in both the right- and left-wing media; after all, we are in for a typical “silly season” — public life has frozen and there is nothing to talk about. All day it’s just the coronavirus, increasingly depressing statistics, and new restrictions supposedly able to stop people from spreading the disease.
I am a law-abiding citizen. Ever since universities were closed, I have hardly left home. Going shopping is almost like the quest for the Golden Fleece; tremendously depressing, by the way. The shops are closed, people sneak past, scowling at each other. God knows who is carrying what plague? This guy blowing his nose: does he have a common cold or THE virus?
As a university teacher I’m doing my best to minimize the damage. I sit at the computer all day preparing classes for e-learning. This takes much more time than normal, and is a source of even more frustration; experts all around claim the quality of our teaching is deteriorating. Those all-knowing pundits (especially knowing all about health and national security) are proliferating recently. One seems to be cleverer than the other, and their sophistry is meant to remedy all evil. It is good that at least the government is constantly trying to comfort us. The Prime Minister repeats that we’ll get over it together — there is a chance, then, that my teaching does make some sense. The problem is, the disconcerted face of the Minister of Health, who stands next to the PM during press conferences, seems to contradict the public message. Still, it’s probably good that the authority is trying to reassure us and show the light at the end of the tunnel. I do want to believe that it is not an approaching train.
Rumour has it that psychological clinics are to be opened, for people have been finding it hard to deal with their own lives. I don’t blame them, recent weeks have provided them with many reasons. Apparently the PM’s repeated mantras are not enough anymore. Or maybe the information about the clinics is just an April Fools’ joke? In the world of fake news, nobody knows for sure what is true and what is not. That’s why I’m sitting obediently at home, somehow glad that spring is not in a hurry to come. Sitting at home when it’s gloomy outside seems to be more comforting than in fine weather; and comfort is definitely what we need right now.
Tomasz Pudłocki is Professor of History at Jagiellonian University, Krakow (Poland). He specializes in the history of Galicia from the socio-cultural point of view, as well as the history of women and intellectual history. His latest book covers Polish-British intellectual connections in the interwar period (Ambasadorzy idei. Wkład intelektualistów w promowanie pozytywnego wizerunku Polski w Wielkiej Brytanii w latach 1918-1939, Historia Iagellonica: Kraków 2015). He recently co-edited (with Kamil Ruszała) a collective volume Intellectuals and World War I. A Central European Perspective (Jagiellonian University Press: Kraków 2018) and with Andrew Kier Wise, "For Your Freedom and Ours": Polonia and the Struggle for Polish Independence (TPN, IPN: Przemyśl 2019). Hi is currently working on a book about neophilologists in interwar Poland trapped between science and service to the State.