Mrs Hetman's House

From 1988 to 1992 I lived in Warsaw, Poland for nearly four and half years in three different houses.

I inherited the first house from my predecessor and disliked it from the beginning. It was small and connected to another house and it was near the airport and I could hear all the landings and take-offs and taxiing of planes. I managed to persuade my HQ to let me move and I was out of the house within a month.

The second house was modern and rather luxurious by Polish standard. It was in a leafy neighbourhood, near a small, pretty round about. It had four floors including a spacious basement, and a nice garden with a plum tree that fruited generously in summer. A few doors away lived Poland’s most prodigious and celebrated film director Andrej Wajda, but I never met him!

I did not have a good rapport with the landlady though as I found her rather mean/stingy (in Malay we say ‘berkira’). During my two-years stay, I was once burgled while I was at the opera. The thief only managed to enter my bedroom on the 3rd floor and took away my cash, watches AND my documents! Strange enough my documents – passport, legitimation cards, driving license and check book were later wrapped in newspaper and thrown in somebody’s garden in a small town 50 kms from Warsaw. The lady who found it was kind enough to call my office and I gladly received my documents back.

When my contract was about to end the landlady asked for a preposterous 80% increase in the rent if I wanted to stay on. I duly submitted it to my HQ and was resigned to looking for another house as there was no way I was going to get that amount of increase approved.

But against all odds, I did get the increase approved. But the landlady was only willing to let me stay on another three months with the increased rental. And she had the audacity to tell me that she only wanted the three months rental to renovate her kitchen – which was in fact the worst feature of the house.

Well, there was no way I was going to let her have her cake and eat it too. I was determined to find another house.

As luck would have it, a neighbour diagonally across from my house one day rang my doorbell, introduced herself and invited me to visit inspect her house. More like her small castle I thought of that imposing house right at the round about, which was beyond my dream till then. Standing at a landing on the grand staircase underneath a huge glittering chandelier amidst an opulent surrounding inside the house, I remember thinking if only I could have this house.

I thanked her and said there was no way I could afford to rent her house. A few days later she rand my bell again and asked how much I could pay her and I quoted the sum that my HQ had recently approved. Next day she came around and said I could have her house for that rental, and added that she had the French, the Arab and a multinational company wanting to rent her house at a much higher rental, but she wanted ME to stay in her house.

So at the appointed time I moved into Mrs. Hetman’s house, just across the road. She and her adult son Konrad moved out only with their clothes, and their huge dog Bartek! She drove off in her big Mercedes and Konrad in his sporty BMW. And we were then in Socialist Poland! I was amazed at her wealth and her total ease about it at a time when the country was so poor and struggling. When I asked her why she did not take away at least some of her precious things like her antique porcelains, silvers and paintings, she told me to just enjoy and look after them. She said she was tired of living in and looking after that huge house after her husband died and with her chronic back problem and wanted to live in an apartment close to her mother in the town Lodz, some hours’ drive from Warsaw.

I remember thinking, was I playing caretaker or what, and paying for it too! I was also anxious that the house would not have my personal identity, but it worked out in the end.

A few weeks later, a beautiful little kitten fell into my basement washing room from the garden. He became my lovable pet I named Jing. And we lived happily in that opulent home for the next two and half years till my final departure from Poland.

A lot of things happened in Poland in those years I lived in Mrs. Hetman’s house. The Berlin Wall tumbled down, the Iron Curtain came crashing down and Communism disintegrated. I went through a rough time at work and most difficult emotional period of my adulthood.

But it was always good to come back to my very own sanctuary – Mrs Hetman’s grand, opulent house, which had taken a character of its own with a combination of my select personal belongings and Mrs. Hetman’s, and cared for lovingly by my loyal maid Irena who had been with me from the very first house.
Mrs Hetman, where ever you are today - Sto lat, sto lat! Dziekuje Pani bardzo!