Escape

By Bozena Szwed-Giacchini

The beginning of the story takes place during the times of the Polish People's Republic in the early seventies. The heroine, after her parent’s divorce, lives in solitude then gets to know a local gangster, whom she marries. She’s going through hell with him. She is beaten, battered, and threatened by him. A daughter is born to them. Heroine decides to escape the nightmare that she’s living in, but shortly the gangster finds her. Upon another beating, where he has a broken jaw and teeth, she makes another attempt to escape. There is no other way but to leave the country, where the gangster’s power does not reach. This time takes place during strict “communism” and the implementation of such a plan border near to a miracle. It was impossible to have her husband sign a consent form for their daughter to leave. But in some remarkable way she manages to complete all the formalities for the trip which leads her to a refugee camp in Italy. She spends a year there and then emigrates to Canada. She meets a millionaire whom she dumps for a young and poor man whom she falls in love with. She begins to successfully build a real estate business but after few months, it is ruined by her husband. After losing all their property, they decide to move the whole family to South Korea. In Seoul, the heroine's husband gets a job as an English teacher at a local university. The heroine quickly establishes relations with various embassies, and she opens her own company. She has great business and financial successes. With all her successes in the field of business, she fails in her private life. Her husband cheats on her notoriously, while being jealous of his wife's successes. Travels between Poland and Korea unable to decide whether to leave Asia or not. After another betrayal of her husband who is putting her to jail for trespassing of their own house, and a painful divorce, she decides to return to Poland.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Apr 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9798369419236

Bozena Szwed-Giacchini

Escaping from a difficult childhood and youth different from her peers, as a teenager, she married a local gangster. At the time, she did not realize the consequences of this decision. During the communist era in Poland, she managed to escape the country to the West, breaking free from the clutches of a criminal. She ended up in a refugee camp in Italy. Having received permission to go to America, she went to Canada. The book tells the story of a lonely, brave young lady whose life is constant mistakes, running away from men and the pursuit of happiness. It is about a Polish woman whose home was where she hung her hat: in Poland, Italy, Canada, Korea, the United States, Georgia, and Mongolia. With the love of her life, she went to South Korea, where she spent fifteen years in Seoul. She transformed from an immigrant into a businesswoman. Unfortunately, life did not allow her to enjoy happiness for a long time. She experienced a dramatic divorce. Once again, she fled, this time to her homeland, to survive numerous ups and downs. She achieved great success in the field of business. She participated in private meetings with presidents from three different countries and celebrities around the world. She went to Georgia and once again got married. When she went on vacation, she stayed for months when she fell in love with the place. She got to know Mongolia, the land of shamans and eternal snow, and she has traveled across America, Asia, and Africa. The author describes her strengths and weaknesses, great love, and loneliness, which she experienced since childhood. In her life, she experienced wealth, wonderful times, incredible sex, unforgettable adventuress, lofty feelings, and uncovering secrets, not only of the body but also of the soul and philosophy. Her intention in subsequent books is to convince readers that life does not end after fifty; it only begins. The author, despite being sixty-five years old, does not intend to retire at all. On the contrary, she wants to live life to the fullest, and she has many fascinating plans for the future. She intends to visit places where she has not been yet and fulfill dreams she has not managed to realize so far. This is the message she wants to share in her following books.

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Copyright © 2024 by BO GIA.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover art by Oksana Evteeva

Rev. date:  04/09/2024

Xlibris

844-714-8691

www.Xlibris.com

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CONTENTS

Preface

Chapter I: Beginning

Chapter II: First Escape

Chapter III: Fleeing the Country

Chapter IV: Venice

Chapter V: Latina

Chapter VI: Departure to the Hotel

Chapter VII: Canada, A Country Smelling of Resin (But Not for Me)

Chapter VIII: Mario

Chapter IX: The Love of My Life

VOLUME II

Chapter I: : Korea

Chapter II: New Job, New Opportunities

Chapter III: Departure to Poland

Chapter IV: Operation

Chapter V: Back to Korea

Chapter VI: Another Return to Poland

Chapter VII: Second Operation

Chapter VIII: Trip to the Big Fair

Chapter IX: Success in Business, But …

Epilogue

About the Author

PREFACE

I don’t like to read prefaces myself, so mine will be very short. The book you have in your hands is based on the adventures of my life, which in most cases were not planned. They were brought by my very strange and restless life, which threw me all over the world. Some parts of this book are fiction; others are truth. It is known, however, that human memory is unreliable, but I tried to faithfully present some situations as they were and other I made up.

I’ve always been amused by Americans who say, Think positive. Positive thinking will change your life. Yes, exactly, I thought to myself, but let them try to live in Poland, especially in the times of communism, and let them change our reality with their positive attitude. Years later, however, I realized they were right. With our thoughts, worries, and fears, we bring upon ourselves all the misfortunes we are so afraid of. I felt firsthand that in many cases, I voluntarily brought misfortunes upon myself with my fears. By reading this book, you will see for yourself how easy it is to do these things and how difficult it is to go straight later.

I hope my stories can help many people look at their lives from a different perspective as well as give them faith and strength to make the decision to break away from toxic relationships, both personal and professional. My life is an example of the fact that you can start from scratch many times and still achieve success. I had no idea that my life would lead me along such winding roads. I’m happy I made mistakes I learned from and sometimes repeated without learning anything. Life is a beautiful adventure, sometimes painful but always bringing new experiences. It only depends on us whether we use them or not. I tried to throw myself into the deep water, and I always love challenges and new adventures. Every person is different, and everyone chooses what is best for them in life. Maybe my stories, which I present as a novel, will give some readers the courage to make crazy decisions. I also hope to give strength to all those who need it. I’m definitely not normal. At least that’s what my friends are saying, calling me crazy, in a positive sense, of course.

I also am happy to help all those in need and answer all your questions. I wish you a pleasant reading.

CHAPTER I

Beginning

Georgia, 2011

I’m sitting at the Sheraton Hotel in Batumi, where I just finished lunch with President Mishka, as they call him here. I brought a group of several Korean investors to Georgia. Through my contacts, I managed to organize a private, intimate lunch with Mikhail Saakashvili.

In fact, Mr. President looks much better than he does on TV. He is very kind and intelligent, and he speaks great English. The meeting took a professional business tone. In the beautiful Batumi outdoors, I was overwhelmed with nostalgia. I began to think about how I got so far that President Mishka is the third president with whom I have met personally. It’s really hard for me to believe it, but I did it myself.

* * *

I write this story to show that everything in life is possible. You just have to believe in your dreams and consistently strive to make them come true. Believing in them makes it possible for us to work miracles. I’m an example of that, so listen. My story, though it begins brutally—but every single word is true—brought me here. So if I can do it, so can you. Believe me, please. So let’s start from the beginning.

It’s the seventies, and the communists are doing well in Poland. I am an only child, a child from a so-called broken family. My father, a wonderful person, was a very elegant and handsome man. He was extremely intelligent, in no way fitting either those times or that political system. He loved women, and I have to admit they loved him too. Strangely, since childhood I had better relations with my father’s lovers than my own mother.

My father was the director of a large construction company. I can say I lived in luxury for those times. My father owned a large apartment and a car, and he hired a cleaning lady and a nanny to take care of me. My father’s driver drove me to school. Those who remember that period admit that we lived better than prosperously.

But as it happens in life, our ideal family did not last long. My mother, after another betrayal by my father, decided to leave him. This does not mean she herself was flawless. She was also cheating on him a lot. The difference between them was that my father always had beautiful women with class, and my mother, unfortunately, had gentlemen who were called ladies’ men or lounge lizards.

After another incident with my father, Mommy, without asking whether I liked this idea or not, decided to leave Dad and moved with me to her brother’s apartment. In one day, I was plucked from luxury and prosperity and landed on the floor, literally on the floor because there was no other room to sleep at my uncle’s place.

I am writing about this because similar nightmarish situations in some incomprehensible way began to repeat themselves in my life. I describe these falls and moving on to fight so women in a difficult life situation understand terrible things are not happening only to them. Other women have been through hell, like me, for example. I want them to understand there is always a solution, although sometimes it seems hopeless.

After leaving my father, we lived, that is, camped, at my uncle’s place. It was difficult to call these conditions living in an apartment. My mother had to look for a job as soon as possible. When we lived together with my father, she was the director of a nursing school. Finding a new work in Warsaw turned out to be very difficult. But in the end, she managed to get a job as a nurse in a hospital in a little town near Warsaw. She rented a small apartment near the hospital. My school was also nearby, about a ten-minute walk from home. It seemed our lives were slowly beginning to return to normal. Exactly as I said, it seemed to. I don’t know if my mother wanted to spite my father or if that were her character, but she started dating guys all the time. It wouldn’t matter much to me, if it weren’t for two rather horrific facts.

First, they were mostly married men. In a small town, such a fact is rather difficult to hide. I have had a very high sense of ethics since I was a child. I was outraged by my mother’s behavior and the fact she could have broken up other people’s marriages. Even though I was a little girl, I felt ashamed of what she was doing. Second, and more horrifically, many of my mother’s lovers sexually harassed me during visits to our home. Even though so many years have passed, the memory of what was done to me brings back immensely tragic and painful memories. I still can’t deal with this trauma. I don’t know if my mother didn’t see it or if she didn’t want to know. I prefer to think she didn’t realize it. But given her continued behavior, I wouldn’t let myself cut off not only my hand but my fingernail. It’s scary and disgusting for a little girl when a grown man touches her intimate parts and the fucker tells her to touch his genitals. She does not know what to do in such a drastic situation. On the one hand, she sometimes sees this bastard touching her mother, so it shouldn’t be a bad thing. On the other hand, she subconsciously knows this is not good, especially since it does not give her any pleasure. At the same time, she is afraid to tell her mother so as not to make her angry. Such a motherfucker does not realize how enormously it destroys the child’s psyche for her whole future life.

Every visit of my mother’s lovers was a nightmare for me. As soon as she told me they would visit her that night, I was shaking. I was getting diarrhea from nerves. I didn’t know where to hide. I was too young to leave the house, especially since the bastard was coming at night. Unfortunately, my bedroom was on the way to the bathroom. These sons of the bitches, under the pretext of using the toilet, were coming into my room. I still can’t get it out of my head why my mother didn’t wonder about the fact of such long absences of the bastards. Every time they went to the toilet, did they have fucking constipation? I was also afraid to tell my father about these heinous practices. I knew he would probably kill the fuckers if he found out what they were doing with his little princess.

I lived in this horror, praying every morning that no one would come to visit my mother the next night. The nightmare ended when my mother found a permanent partner and moved out to live with him. This left me alone at my home when I was about fourteen years old. Some would think, How can a mother leave a teenager alone unattended? Apparently, it did not cause her any problems.

What was happening then had a strong impact on my psyche, and maybe that’s why, as a young girl, I made so many mistakes in choosing my own partners. With the stubbornness of a maniac, I was looking for a defender, a boy who would protect me from what happened to me when I was a child. Unfortunately, my choices were usually tragic.

So I grew up in toxic conditions. For a moment, my parents decided to get back together, but unfortunately this attempt failed. It did not bring the expected chance to save their marriage. Maybe my father heard about the frequent visits of Mother’s lovers. To this day, I don’t know. If we add the quarrels of both parents to this period, during which plates and glasses flew in the air, we would have a full picture of our ideal family life. After endless fights, my parents finally decided to get a divorce. I stayed with my mother, but not for long.

As I mentioned, when I was about fourteen, my mother left me alone, and to my great happiness and satisfaction, she moved out with her new boyfriend. After some time, she married him. He had two small children, whom she raised with great commitment. The new husband had a rather nasty character. No one from Mother’s family was able to accept him. When he died years later, all members of her family refused to come to the funeral, even though I insisted on it. That’s how much they liked him.

But let’s get back to me. When Mommy left me, I had a wonderful life. I started to become truant. I had parties almost every day at home. Of course, I had to say goodbye to high school. I started studying in some professional school. That was when the hormones kicked in. I met a handsome boy who was older than I was. He was wonderful, or so it seemed at that time. Stupid me. Unfortunately, he soon turned out to be an ordinary hooligan. However, I was very impressed by the fact he was a thug.

Of course, as it happens in such an environment, we drank alcohol, smoked cigarettes, and very often argued. My beautiful boyfriend started reaching out to me. I was trapped. I couldn’t free myself from him. I lived alone, and I was only sixteen at the time. My mother lived with her husband in Warsaw, and my father worked somewhere in Poland. I was on my own. And then I fell into the rain and under the gutter.

I met a local gangster nicknamed Shark—who was years later accused of murder and wanted all over the country—who was almost nine years older than I was. At that time, he was shaking the whole town. I saw in him a chance to get rid of the hooligan I had met earlier. This new acquaintance consequently turned out to be tragic for me in my near future.

It all started innocently. Shark began to scavenger hunt at me. I pretended to play with him. At the time, I was too stupid to realize who this man was and what I was getting into. As a very young, inexperienced girl, far from a woman at the time, I was impressed that an adult guy was interested in me. A man in his late twenties, in my opinion, was an older guy, but I needed him to get rid of the hooligan.

Shark began to come with flowers and invite me to dinners. We drove around to expensive pubs, as for those times, in his fancy car. You can imagine the impression that all of this made on me, a little girl. I was impressed that the gangster was interested in my humble person. Everything looked beautiful, but crime stories never end with a happy ending.

Today, I wonder why I got involved with Shark and why I married him so quickly. It seems to me that his mother played a big role here, a wonderful woman who was my ideal mother. She was the kind of mother I had always dreamed of and wanted to have. She gave birth to Shark at the age of forty, a kind of sensation at that time. The two older siblings spoiled the much younger brother very much, especially his sister, an old spinster who treated him almost like her own child. My mother-in-law was a loved and very good person. She lived a life of love and peace with her husband, devoting herself wholeheartedly to the family and upbringing of children. At home, there was always warmth and happiness, so foreign to me. I loved visiting them. There was always a delicious homemade dinner, freshly baked cake, and a smile on her cheerful face. Unfortunately, this wonderful person passed away much too early. She died in my arms without losing her warm smile. It was a huge blow and indescribable pain for me. After her death, my father-in-law wrapped up after his wife in two months. He just couldn’t imagine his life without her. I loved them very much, especially my mother-in-law, who treated me like her own daughter. She did a lot more for me than my birth mother.

But back to me and Shark. When I lived alone, a new family moved into my building. A married couple with a girl about my age lived upstairs. As peers, we quickly became friends and began to drop by often. Her mother remarried, and her new husband did not have very good relations with his stepdaughter. One day, Shark came up with the idea to introduce her to a friend from his environment, a thief. We, two stupid toddlers, thought it was fun. We didn’t realize what we were getting into. The consequences did not have to wait long. One day, the police rushed to my friend’s apartment in search of this criminal.

I was terrified because I knew the thief had just come to visit her. I waited with horror for the police to appear at the door with a handcuffed criminal and my friend dragged to the police station. To my great surprise, the cops left the apartment empty-handed. Imagine that the girl hid him, at the last minute, in the sofa bed. The cops searched the entire apartment, but it did not occur to them to look there. We, two morons, were happy like a fool, thinking it was fun. The guys flew for Alpaga (cheap wine) out of happiness, and we celebrated the defeat of law enforcement officers. Yes, those were crazy times.

Our idyll, unfortunately, did not last long because Shark began to get very jealous and thus very aggressive. He also began to drink until he dropped, and then his jealousy became morbid. One time, he beat up a guy walking across the street just because he looked at me. Another time, when I was watering the flowers on the balcony, some god of the spirit of the guilty man was passing by. He praised my flower beds out of courtesy. (We lived on the ground floor.) Shark jumped from the balcony and beat the poor man.

At that time, one of Shark’s colleagues offered him a job at the Benkel at the Różycki bazaar in Warsaw. Benkel was a three-card game you couldn’t win. Shark played cards very well, and he cheated even better at the same cards. It was in his blood. Even when he played with me for fun, he couldn’t help but cheat. Since he started working on the Benkel, the money began to flow to us like water in a mountain stream. The Benkel guys, of course for encouragement, would let the poor people win once or twice and then clear them to zero. Bandits, as for those times, earned on this game—or rather cheating at it—made huge money. In a month, Shark brought home more money than the average Smith earned for a year. Money started to go to his head, and he started drinking even more.

In our town, there was a popular café, Adria, which Shark liked very much. He sat there all evenings after work and offered drinks to all the regulars. Having a lot of money, he could bribe police. Adria’s manager repeatedly called me to take the drunk Shark home, to which I told her, Please call the police.

She replied, The cops will not come because he is drinking with them.

Those were the days. Today it is a bit hard to believe, but during the Polish People’s Republic, it was normal. It was just the years of a Free America, as we used to say. The more money there was, the more drinking and beating. Of course it was me. Around this time, I got pregnant. My mother-in-law was just overjoyed about it. Although she had two other adult children, she could not expect grandchildren from them because her daughter, as we know, was an old spinster and the eldest son did not want to have children.

My daughter was born, and she became the apple of my mother-in-law’s eye. She just took over her heart completely. Shark was also crazy about our child. Somehow this little creature did whatever she wanted with him. She captured his heart completely. He was as docile as a lamb toward her.

When our daughter was still young, my mother visited me once to see her granddaughter. She didn’t do it very often. It so happened that Shark invited the cops on the same day to our apartment for a party heavily sprinkled with alcohol. At some point, out of the blue, something bounced back on him.

He somehow pulled a pistol from the holster of one of the policemen and held it to my head, screaming, Now I’m going to kill you, bitch.

I don’t know why, but I wasn’t scared at all, not because I was sure he wouldn’t shoot, but because I didn’t care anymore and I think I wanted him to do it. My mother turned white as a wall, and in panic, she fled to the kitchen. The policemen, when they noticed what had happened, sobered up in a second.

I, on the other hand, stoically looking him straight in the eye, said, Shoot, motherfucker. I don’t care anymore anyway.

In the eyes of imagination, the cops saw themselves fired from their work and thrown on the streets, unemployed. What could a policeman do, except he is a policeman, when he is forbidden to practice his profession? Nothing. I don’t know who was more terrified, my mother or them. They knew that if the gun fired, they were soft-boiled. After all, they were on duty. They would have to explain how the weapon ended up in the hands of the criminal and why the shot was fired. That’s the first thing. And second, they were terrified of approaching a drunken fury. Somehow, they finally managed to take away the weapon from the maniac hands and then disappeared at the speed of light.

My situation was becoming more and more tragic. There was no whip on Shark. When I called the police when he beat me up, they did not accept my report at all. When they finally took him away, he left the police station after a few hours, and in gratitude for the denunciation, I got a double biting. My only salvation was Shark’s friend, Strong. For some reason unknown to me, he disliked Shark very much. Officially, they supposedly were colleagues, but in reality, they were great enemies. Years later, I found out that Strong had a crush on me. Because he was married, he could not show his affection officially. After a while, I added two and two together and realized that every time that news went around town that Shark had beaten me, Strong had found a way and an excuse to drench Shark.

When I finally managed to escape from my tormentor years later, Strong caught poor Shark somewhere on the street, put him in the trunk of his car, and took him to the forest. He beat him up so hard that he almost killed him. Shark spent almost two months in the hospital and barely recovered. It was revenge for the fact that I had fled the country because of Shark. This is one of the examples of the indication that Strong had some feelings for me.

I also remember another incident. I went to Różycki’s bazaar to meet Shark. I don’t remember why I went there, maybe to do some shopping and take some money from my husband. Anyway, I entered through a side entrance. I was walking toward the Benkel, and out of nowhere, a boy attached to me. I must admit that I was a very attractive young woman at that time. I was tall and slim with long, dark hair and fashionable clothes. The boy started picking on me.

I said politely, Go away. I’m not interested. I’m in a hurry. Leave me alone and go your own way.

The young man did not want to give up. At this point, unfortunately for my womanizer, Strong appeared from nowhere. I asked him about Shark. At that moment, my picker approached us with a grudge that I was talking to this guy, but I ignored him, and I was hurting his feelings by doing that. This was enough for Strong to get angry and start beating the would-be amateur. Leaving this unpleasant situation, I only heard Strong was throwing the poor guy against the bazaar metal shacks. He must have been beating him up quite a bit. I warned the guy, but he wouldn’t listen. I think he was a visitor from out of town.

Yes, dear readers, such were the times for gangsters. If you had money, the man was practically untouchable because he had paid both the police and bandits. Obviously obvious, as my friend Czesław said, even if the cups were nearby, they would not be reacted because they were corrupted by the guys from the Benkel. Even when people reported they had been robbed to a dry thread in a game of three cards, the police officially took the boys out from the Benkel, as if to the police station, only to release them somewhere around the corner of a nearby building after less than a few minutes.

The game of three cards drew everyone in, like gambling, especially women. They stood and played to the last penny; quite often they didn’t even have money for the bus ticket to go home. Crowds of people always gathered around the Benkel. You could bet anything: cash, rings, bracelets, or wedding rings. Nobody in this game had been winning. Imagine how difficult it was for young or old women to go home without a wedding or engagement ring. It cost money to get it back, but for the lost jewelry, with the goodwill of the boys, you could pay in kind. If the lady looked quite attractive, she still had some chance to get the valuables back. The exchange transaction usually took place in the stairwell of the nearest building. If it went well, it ended only with the so-called blow job.

Money in those days could buy anything. Even the Palace of Culture, the biggest and tallest building in the center of Warsaw, was reported as sold several times, obviously as a scam. If you wanted to belong to the gang, you had to be strong. To people from the underworld, any nice (read: cultured) person was a potential sucker to fuck. I’ll tell you an illustrative story of which I was the main character.

Jack, nicknamed Soplic from Jack Soplic from the obligatory reading novel at school, Pan Tadeusz, really wanted to get to the Benkel. From the beginning, I didn’t like him. I didn’t like his personality. The bandits I knew were characterful; he wasn’t. Such a foxy guy who wanted to please everyone for his own benefit.

I told Shark, Watch out for him. I don’t like his behavior and his character. He’s just a fake. He cannot be trusted.

Soplic somehow realized he was not accepted into the Benkel because of me; thus, he would lose a lot of money. He decided to take revenge. Knowing, which was not a secret of course, how jealous Shark was, he spread a rumor in town that I had slept with him. I had no idea about it, but fortunately Danka, Strong’s wife, came to me and brought me this shocking news.

Do you know what Soplic is talking about you?

What can he say about me? I hardly know the guy.

Well, he is saying that you’re sleeping with him.

My eyes almost popped out of disbelief. Whaaaaaaat!? I growled out of anger.

Exactly what you heard.

Shark was not at home at that moment; he was of course drinking with his buddies. I asked Danka if she knew where I could find Soplic. She replied that probably everyone was drinking with Strong, but she had no idea where. I ran out of the house and got into the car. Fortunately Shark went with the guys, and he left our car in the parking lot. I started to drive around all the pubs in the city, where the guys usually played. They were nowhere to be found, neither in Adria nor in Stylowa. Only Świder remained, the pub Under the Oaks. It was my last chance.

I went there, furious to the red. I ran inside and started looking around the restaurant. (I was wearing a baseball hat, jeans, and the same jeans jacket. Basically, I looked like a boy.) I saw them right away; all the guys sat at separate tables. I noticed Shark first, and behind him at the next table was my victim, Soplic. And at the next table, Strong was sitting.

Furious as an angry Doberman, as I was passing by Shark, I growled, Look what gone happen.

I caught up with Soplic, and with all my strength and fury, I started beating him with my fists. I had a huge dose of adrenaline from my anger. I called him names mercilessly, cursing worse than a convict. At that moment, Strong rose up from his table to come to the rescue of his buddy. He thought that some sucker was soldering his friend. He grabbed me by the jacket collar, lifting me up easily, like a puppy.

He was about to punch me with his fist when I shouted at the last moment, Strong, it’s me!

Extremely surprised, he put me on the floor, and at that moment, I grabbed a chair and hit Jack with it because I could not reach him with my fists.

Strong, with big surprise, asked