Dobryd

by Ann Charney

  II

  It all began innocently enough with my aunt’s attempts to amuse and distract me by telling stories whenever I was being difficult or impatient. In no time at all I was addicted, hanging on to her every word, begging her to go on and on.

  The first stories are associated in my mind with an unpleasant routine, which makes their content particularly unreal and troubling for me.

  The table has been cleared, the kerosene lamp removed from its hook on the wall and placed on the table. A familiar procedure is about to begin, one which I both look forward to and dislike: the light is used to search out the lice in my hair. To take my mind off this activity which I find so tedious, my aunt will amuse me with storytelling.

  The only thing that keeps the lice partly under control are these nightly searches. My mother is by now very good at this work. Every time she spots a louse she lowers the lamp and I feel the slight crunch as it is squashed between her thumbnails.

  Eventually I become impatient. I don’t want to keep still. My head hurts from leaning back. But it’s not time for me to get up. The acceptable quota of dead lice for each evening has not been reached. My aunt is called to help out.

  She pulls her chair over so that she is sitting facing me, but because of the way I’m sitting, I can’t see her face. My eyes are on the ceiling but after a while I get tired of watching the insect colony that thrives up there. I prefer to close my eyes and “see” my aunt’s story. Her voice, detached from her face, seems to come from far away. Her stories are never the kind that begin “once upon a time”. They are “real,” but the effect is the same.

  Above all, my aunt preferred the stories of her youth. Perhaps like all children I once said to her “Please tell me about when you were a little girl,” and a pattern between us was established.

  We have returned to the beginning of this century. She is a young girl again, describing the joys of summer holidays spent in the family’s country home:

  “I was always sad when summer ended. It seems to me I lived from one summer to the next, wishing the time in between would pass more quickly. Not that I didn’t like school in Vienna. The teachers were very nice to me. I had many friends. On Sundays I went to your grandfather’s cousin’s house, where there were always a lot of young people and parties and dances. Vienna itself was a beautiful, rich city. There was so much to see and do. The one afternoon a week we were allowed to go out on our own seemed all too short.

  “None of this compared, however, to the way I felt about our country house. You see, I was born in it, and I could still remember what it was like living there all year around. Your mother was only a baby when your grandfather moved into town for the winters. I was the oldest and I could remember what it had been like. To live in any other place seemed like a cruel banishment to me, and afterwards, whenever I saw the house again, at the beginning of each summer, I felt my exile more deeply than ever. But there was also joy, the joy of coming home after a long absence.

  “When we arrived, the servants who lived in the house were already outside waiting for us. As soon as our carriage stopped, a little girl, no bigger than you are now, would come forward to welcome us with bread and salt. I was always the first out and such was my excitement that I had to kiss everyone near me. They would kiss me back with equal enthusiasm.

  “In our house there was none of the awkwardness that usually separates servants and masters. It was such a happy household. Some of the younger women had been my playmates when we were children and they felt quite free to tease me about how much I’d grown, what a young lady I’d become, and how my father had better find me a husband before I was an old maid. They, of course, were all married by then, and some had children. These things happened very early in the village. This difference in experience separated us as much as any class differences—perhaps more so. As married women they belonged to a secret world, and until I was initiated into it there were all sorts of things they couldn’t talk about before me. Nevertheless, I still felt as close to them as I used to when we all played together.

  “The only person who disapproved of this was your grandmother. As a matter of fact, she objected to a lot of things that were part of our life in the country. She never really felt comfortable away from the city or her relatives. We were the only Jewish landowners in the area and she feared her children were becoming assimilated. Every spring when it was time to prepare for the move she would complain and look for excuses not to go. Your grandfather, I think, was quite capable of leaving her behind for the summer and in the end this always forced her to come along. Once we were there, however, even she softened a bit.

  “The house itself was just an ordinary large manor house joined to the village below it by a long avenue of old lime trees. It was its setting and the life we had there that made it so special for me. It stood in the midst of flower gardens, berry bushes, and rows upon rows of fruit trees. The odour that came from these as they flowered was one of the great attractions of living in the house. The beehives behind the orchard produced a honey that tasted like no other I’ve ever had. I suppose it had something to do with the richness and variety of the blossoms. Beyond these were the woods, where as children we used to play and hide, and where we learned all about picking mushrooms.

  “Once a year your great-great aunt from Cracow arrived at our country house to gather certain leaves and herbs that grew in the nearby forest. I remember she never allowed us to go with her on these expeditions. We would try to follow but she always spotted us and made us go back. I don’t know what she picked; it was all very mysterious. So were the preparations she made from her pickings. No one ever learned what exactly went into each one. None of us, I suppose, was considered sufficiently gifted to be entrusted with her secret formulas.

  “The family treated her as something of a joke. Especially the so-called enlightened members, who despised all local customs and traditions. To them she was a source of embarrassment. Still, she had a great reputation. People came from all over to seek her help and buy her preparations. They certainly worked for her. She remained vigorous and attractive as long as I knew her. Who knows how much longer she could have lived? I remember how she danced with all the young men at your mother’s wedding.

  “The last time I saw her was the day after you were born. She arrived at your grandfather’s house and placed a special necklace around your neck. Baltic amber I think it was, but it wasn’t an ordinary necklace of course. Then she was off, without stopping even for a glass of tea. Too many people needed her she said. She was ninety-three when the Germans shot her.

  “The necklace? Manya, our seamstress, got it. It wasn’t very valuable but she wanted it because it came from your great-great aunt. Peasants like Manya were in great awe of her.

  “Where was I? Yes, the house. After a quick run through the garden I would turn to the house. Each room received a short inspection, and the best, my own room, was saved for the last. Then I was in it, and it was just as it had always been, except that the shutters were closed, waiting for me to open them. Beyond lay the richness of the fields, the rooftops of the village, and the mountains. Now I had really come home.

  “The days passed quickly, much quicker than in town or at school. What did we do? Let me think. Oh, so many things.

  “Well, for one thing, there was all the work that was part of the summer and harvesting. I didn’t really have to help but I wanted to. We picked mushrooms, strung them in garlands and hung them up to dry in attic rooms. We gathered baskets full of wild roses for syrups and jams. They seemed to grow more abundantly each year. Then there were berries to pick—red and white currants, gooseberries and blueberries. Some were used for preserves; others were set aside to ferment and eventually were made into liqueurs. The farmers brought us their choicest vegetables, and these too were preserved in glass jars for the winter.

  “We were a large family, but over the year we scarcely dented the supplies that were stored at the end of summer in the cellars and pantrie
s. Yet each summer there was the same frantic activity to lay aside more and more preserves. I suppose most of it was habit, but there was also a great generosity in those times. There was always a steady stream of beggars, wanderers and gypsies at our back door who were fed and equipped with supplies. No one was ever turned away empty-handed, and we never went visiting without taking along a basket full of samples from our garden.

  “The same useless abundance applied to our linen and undergarments. At some point during our stay, the village seamstress would arrive and move into the house. She would sew all day long, making linens, shifts, towels. There was already enough linen in that house to last us a lifetime. Still, every summer, a new supply was made to fill yet another closet.

  “The room where the seamstress worked was usually filled with women, friends of hers who dropped in to keep her company, and some of the servants who wanted to learn from her. There was always a pot of tea brewing, and everyone kept busy working and talking. Whatever the seamstress finished we embroidered with the family’s initials, and everything had to be trimmed with the hand-made lace that we all worked on constantly. Downstairs, the servants worked hard plucking geese, preparing the down, and packing it into the huge linen quilts and pillowcases that we sewed upstairs.

  “As you see, there really was a lot to do. And since I didn’t have to do any of it, the fun for me lay in starting one thing, dropping it for another, picking it up again when the hard part had been done by someone else and getting all sorts of compliments for my skills. When I got tired of that there was time for reading, long walks, picnics and visiting. The possibilities of my life seemed endless there, except that it all went so fast—much too fast for me.

  “Then, when the fields were most beautiful, thick, golden and swaying, it was time for me to set out for school.

  “My trunk was packed with new clothes, delicacies from our kitchen, presents for my teachers and our cousins, but I participated in none of this. It was too painful for me to prepare my own banishment. I really couldn’t see it any other way. Especially since I was the first to leave. The others stayed on for another two weeks, when the young children returned to Dobryd. How I envied them. In fact, when it was time for me to leave I would have gladly changed places with anyone in the village.

  “At last the day of my departure would arrive. I would wake up to the mournful looks of the servants. For them, all separations were fatal. Our finest horses, all the same height and size, of a uniform grey colour, would be brought out and harnessed. Your grandfather, knowing how sad I felt, would drive me to the train himself. I was indifferent to it all. I watched the house disappear from view. I looked at the fields which we drove through, the farmers who bowed to us as we passed, and already I missed them as if I were a long way from home.

  “On the train I would eat the food that had been packed for me, feeling very sorry for myself, thinking of the others still in the house, probably having a great time, my presence among them already forgotten. During those first painful hours of separation I consoled myself with the promises I made about the future. Once I was grown up, nothing would keep me from living there whenever I wanted to. It was inconceivable to me then that anything could happen that would prevent me from keeping the promise I made to myself.

  “How foolish such faith in the future seems now. But at that time I wasn’t the only one to feel that way. We all did. We thought that life would always go on as we knew it. Who could have foreseen what lay ahead of us? Such horrors were without’ precedent.”

  My mother had given up searching my scalp. We were both listening to my aunt. My mother, growing into adolescence fifteen years later than my aunt, had had an entirely different youth. She had always been drawn to the socialist and revolutionary ideas of her time. As a result she had a more critical impression of her bourgeois childhood. As a young girl her activities had been very different from those that kept my aunt in the company of other women, delighting in the traditional tasks of a young lady. Yet the spell of my aunt’s nostalgia was so powerful that she never interrupted. In any case, now that it was all gone, destroyed, there was no point in correcting my aunt’s reminiscences.

  Years later I remembered my mother’s silence and I wondered about it. What had it really been like to grow up in that house? However, at the time my aunt actually told these stories, the question of whether they were true or not did not even enter my mind. The distance between them and our room with its kerosene lamp was the measure of my enchantment.

  These stories made me see my aunt and my mother as two people who were strange and quite different from me. Of course their physical presence was as I had always known it, and it continued to be familiar and dear to me. Beyond it, however, I could now visualize a whole realm of people and their settings, which were part of them but which I would never know.

  Without knowing what I was feeling, I experienced at this time the sadness that comes with the awareness of the limited knowledge we have even of those with whom we are most intimate. Just as they would never know the world that I would inhabit one day as an adult, the early part of their lives would remain to me forever a mystery. The glimpse of the past that I caught through my aunt’s stories continued to intrigue me with what it concealed as well as with what it revealed.

  III

  Another story, another time. A different setting. It’s late afternoon and my aunt is sitting with me in the kitchen. A thick, savoury soup is simmering. My aunt lets me taste it for her. Once again I feel physically disoriented. I can smell the soup, hear the voices of our neighbours, feel my hunger before the food. Yet, I sense these are false clues. My senses are betraying me. When my aunt resumes her story my confusion fades.

  We are back in the pre-war world. I have only to step through our door, run down the stairs into the street, and I will find Dobryd before its destruction. I will walk through it with a sense of familiarity, its plan etched in my mind by my aunt’s words.

  “When I was a child we lived in the country house most of the year. I remember whenever we came to Dobryd I thought it large and splendid.

  “Then, at the age of fourteen, I was sent to boarding school in Vienna. Your grandfather, who felt at home in most of the capitals of Europe, wanted his children to know something of life beyond Dobryd. It was my first time away from home, and I realized that Dobryd was, after all, only a small town.

  “But it was never just a small town. Perhaps the fact of being near the renowned University of Lwow had something to do with it. There was also a tradition in the area that the people of Dobryd were a special breed. Wherever they might emigrate, they always distinguished themselves in some way. In any case, there was never anything sleepy or dull about the place, nor about the life that went on in your grandfather’s house.

  “When I first arrived at school, I remember that my teachers were surprised to find that I was as accomplished as any of the other students in the kind of knowledge that was then considered essential for a young girl. I spoke German as well as they did, my handwriting was sufficiently beautiful to hold up as an example, I had studied the violin, and I knew every variety of handiwork that was fashionable. I was also very skilful in making my own designs which the other girls copied.

  “At first when I arrived no one had ever heard of Dobryd. The first year I brought two of my new friends home for the holidays. Our house was always full of young people. Your grandfather enjoyed having them. He always said that he had more in common with them than with people his own age. It was very lively and gay during the holidays. My friends were surprised to find such charming, well-informed people in a place they had never even heard about. When we were back in school, they told the others about their visit, and from then on I was no longer teased about being homesick.

  “Many years later, when your uncle was wounded in Italy during World War I, I went to keep him company while he convalesced. The hospital was in Naples and as soon as he was better we did a lot of sightseeing together. One time we spent a wh
ole day in Pompeii. I was astonished by the level of civilization people had enjoyed there before its destruction. I had no sense of foreboding then, yet somehow it reminded me of Dobryd—a small town, distant from the centre of the world, Rome in this case, yet enjoying a rich and complex culture. By comparison, the villages we had passed that morning seemed to belong to a much more primitive epoch.

  “Although we lived in the country until your mother was born, most of your grandfather’s family lived in Dobryd. Your grandfather was born there, and his family had lived there for as long as anyone could remember. In every generation there were always some who left. The younger ones went to study abroad, in Vienna or Lausanne. Often they would settle there. Others emigrated to New York or Montevideo, not out of choice, but because of some scandal or a sudden bankruptcy. I remember that these cousins cried when they came to say good-bye to us. How we pitied them.

  “Often they became prosperous in their new homes. Some of their new wealth was spent on trips to Dobryd and lavish presents. Yet we always sympathized with them for having to live out their lives amongst strangers. Their sons and daughters, born and raised in distant cities, were also sent home on holidays to acquaint them with the rest of the family. Their parents secretly hoped that when they returned they would bring back a bride or a future husband. This was only one of the ways in which the links between Dobryd and other faraway places were constantly renewed and strengthened.

  “One regular visitor from abroad was your great-uncle Louis. I don’t think you ever saw him. No, of course you couldn’t have. He came for the last time just before you were born and after that there was no way for him to return. He’s probably still alive. After all, it’s only been six years and he was a vigorous, elegant man, who seemed years younger than his age.

  “He was your grandfather’s younger brother, always eager to travel and to experience life beyond the family circle. He decided to emigrate to the United States. His parents wept and argued and mourned for him as if he had contracted a fatal illness. In the end when they realized he would not be swayed, they equipped him with money and letters of introduction, and he promised to return and visit them often. But in America, he was too restless to remain in one place. He kept on travelling across the country until he reached California, and after a few months he resumed his journey. I was only a child then, but I remember the excitement in our house whenever a postcard arrived from him. After everyone had read it I was allowed to save it, and your uncle got the postage stamp for his collection.