Dobryd

by Ann Charney

  “Eventually he settled in Louisiana, probably because it was as different as could be from his native region. To everyone’s surprise he became in time a very prosperous cotton mill owner. He still wrote often, and even after his parents were dead he continued to come to Dobryd once a year. During these visits he behaved like the proverbial rich uncle from America, showering everyone with extravagant presents and leaving us children with our mouths open while he told us of his adventures. We adored him of course. At the end of his stay he would always try to persuade one of us to visit with him for a while. We would have gone readily, but of course your grandmother wouldn’t hear of it. To her, America was a land of savages, paupers and criminals, and she wouldn’t let her children have anything to do with such people.

  “In 1938 he visited Dobryd for the last time, bringing with him tickets and visas for our entire family. He was deeply worried about what the Germans might do under Hitler. Yet he couldn’t convince any of us to leave. Now, of course, our attitude seems insane. But then, you see, we had our families, our involvements, friends, positions, land that we valued. Mostly, I suppose, we felt safe. After all, ours was by no means a peaceful region. There had been wars before and we had survived. We were so much a part of Poland it was impossible to imagine the kind of betrayal that was being prepared all around us.

  “Uncle Louis left alone, with his useless visas, and the last letter we received from him urged us one final time to get away from Dobryd. By then it was already too late.

  “Well, let’s not talk about those sad times. I want to tell you about Dobryd as it was before the war.

  “The one place that symbolized Dobryd for me was the Café Imperiale. Everybody went there. It was the town’s most fashionable meeting place, the heart of its social life, located on the promenade that led from the public gardens to the town’s main square.

  “You and I have walked that street many times together, but of course nothing remains of its former splendour. Do you remember the tree stumps that we passed every ten yards or so? These were once tall chestnut trees. Beneath them children played, parents exchanged greetings with friends, young people courted and fell in love. The trees were as old as the town. The Germans cut them down to use as firewood.

  “On a Sunday afternoon everyone was to be found along the promenade. People came to see and to be seen. The ladies examined each other with great care. They dressed in their best clothes and there were costumes there that would not have been out of place in Paris or Berlin. The ladies of Dobryd subscribed to fashion magazines from the big cities and as soon as they arrived, dressmakers would be set to work, copying the photographs. In another week or so these accurate and exquisitely made reproductions were being admired during the Sunday promenade.

  “Sometimes during the Sunday walk, people would stop for refreshments in one of the several cafés along the way. The Café Imperiale was the most elegant and popular of these meeting places. The walls were of black marble, illuminated by bracketed candelabra. The tables were marble as well, and around them were armchairs of deep red velour. The adults usually ordered strong coffee which would arrive with a thick coating of cream. For the children there were delicate, chiffon-light pastries with cream fillings, and coloured ices. Everyone drank mineral water, which was always served with small crystal plates of fruit preserves. Dear God, just talking about it makes my mouth water.”

  My aunt stops. It is getting dark, but I guess that her eyes are filled with tears. I don’t press her to go on. I know that sooner or later she will return to the story on her own. She is as caught up in it as I am. We both sense it is best to break off before my mother and Yuri come home. Their disapproval spoils our pleasure and so we try to keep our pastime secret.

  Sometimes, however, my mother noticed that my aunt had been crying. She would be angry and scold both of us. She would take me aside and tell me that I mustn’t ask for stories constantly, that it wasn’t good for my aunt to live in the past so much. But I didn’t believe her. I knew how my aunt’s face changed when she told her stories. How young and proud and gay she looked for the time that the story lasted. The next day, when she started where we left off, we returned to the past with the urgency and pleasure derived from forbidden pastimes.

  IV

  My aunt and I are seated in her kiosk. It is early in the morning and there are few customers. We have all the time in the world to continue the story of Dobryd. There is a small stove in the corner and we sit close to it for the warmth. Occasionally we fill our cups with tea from the kettle that we keep hot all day. When someone comes to visit my aunt, they will take my place next to her and I will run off to look for my friends. For the moment, however, we are alone together, separated from the rest of the marketplace by the images my aunt evokes for us.

  “I told you that Dobryd was never a dull or sleepy place. Whatever was happening in the big capitals sooner or later found its echo in Dobryd. Good and bad, it all came here. The young people of the town adopted ideas that were fashionable with young people everywhere at that time.

  “I remember when the anarchists were in the news in Vienna and Berlin; Dobryd too had its little band of zealous followers.

  “Who were they? Well, mostly they were idle young men, rebelling against their fathers by pretending to challenge all order. I remember they marched a lot and they carried a huge black flag. Occasionally they would get into fist-fights with the police, but mostly they were a nuisance rather than a serious menace. Once however, one of their pranks got out of hand. There was a bomb and some people were injured. It was written up in the Warsaw Gazette.

  “Psychoanalysis was becoming fashionable then as well. One of the town’s brightest young men went off to Vienna to study with the master. We all read about it. I understood little of what I read, and even that seemed highly outrageous to me, but I tended to side with those who were most enthusiastic. The students in Dobryd were divided into two groups: the followers of Freud and the followers of Marx. Of the two I preferred the first group, perhaps because your mother and her friends belonged to the other side. I found them humorless and very naive. In our group it seemed to me we were closer to reality and we enjoyed ourselves more. In any case, the ideas, the books were there and we brought to them the same passion that kept young people awake late into the night in all the large European cities.

  “There was also a feminist movement but for some reason they were taken even less seriously than the anarchists. They had their own special dedicated following, but the rest of the town laughed at them. Why? I don’t know really. They were just considered ridiculous and that was that.

  “Their leader was an American girl, Maria. She had come to the town on a visit with her parents. One of our doctors had fallen in love with her and she married him and remained in Dobryd. Your poor aunt Celia was her friend and that’s how we all got to know her. She was a lovely woman and somehow no one ever laughed at her, even if they laughed at the marches she organized, and at some of her other activities. Your mother was a little girl then and she would often follow Celia on these marches. When they noticed her they would send her to the head of the column. Your mother enjoyed this a great deal, until your grandmother heard about it and put a quick stop to her activities. Once she was older she immediately joined the movement just to spite your grandmother. After all, your grandfather had always encouraged his daughters as much as his son. He was an exception in his time and his class.

  “I want to tell you about Maria, so you will remember her. She should never be forgotten. She was young when she took up the feminist cause. No one could understand why she chose to make herself ridiculous. Being the wife of a small town doctor had a lot to do with it. The poorer Jewish women in the ghettos, you see, were really miserable creatures—they were considered inferior from birth. When they married, their wishes were rarely consulted. They had many children whom they usually had to provide for by taking in work or keeping shop while their husbands spent their days praying and studyi
ng the holy books. Even on feast days they had to serve their husbands and sons first, and they were not allowed to sit next to them in the synagogue.

  “The conditions of the Christian women who came to see her husband were even worse. Most of the time they were the only beasts of burden their husbands could afford. A Polish peasant usually wore out two or three in his lifetime.

  “Unfortunately, the women Maria wanted most to reach were the ones who, under their husbands’ orders, closed their doors in her face. Her following consisted of a small number of enlightened, middle-class women, like your aunt Celia, for whom feminism was another way of being ‘modern’ and filling their days.

  “Yet Maria was never discouraged. Always full of energy, she rushed about town from morning till night, seeing to her women, organizing volunteers, giving of herself to anyone who needed her. At the end of her life, when she was in her forties, it was reported that she had retained her spirit of defiance and her courage.

  “It happened in Treblinka. I wish you might never know of such places, but from now on all children will be taught about them. That way it may never happen again. Treblinka was a place where people were taken to be killed. Many people from our town died there and often they did not suspect what was going to happen to them until it was actually happening. This was a horror without precedent, and the worst rumours tended to be discounted. We refused to believe what we heard.

  “Maria was taken to Treblinka with her husband, but they were separated as soon as they arrived. A few hours later she found herself surrounded by a group of women all of them naked and shivering, their heads shaved, waiting to go into the “showers” from which they would never come out alive. In the few minutes that remained before the doors opened for them, Maria had somehow guessed the sinister purpose of those showers. She passed the word along to her companions. It was the last time that she was to appeal to them and they did not let her down. When the moment came and the guards were moving the women along, Maria’s group turned on the guards and attacked them. The guards were armed and the women had only their teeth and nails to use against them, but they fought fiercely. Somehow the story survived them. It spread throughout the camp and beyond it. I heard about it almost as soon as we returned to Dobryd. You must never forget it. Maria was a heroine, a true heroine of Dobryd, and she was not the only one.”

  Our first interruption. A customer waits to be served, but for once I don’t mind the intrusion. My aunt’s words are ringing in my ears, my heart feels heavy and my head hurts. I feel as if I am being crushed by a terrible weight. I want to get away from it and ease the pain that almost paralyses me. I make my way out of the kiosk and for a while I wander about the marketplace. All my usual pleasures are there but this morning there is no comfort in them. Almost in spite of myself I make my way back to my aunt.

  V

  My aunt is alone once again. There is a fresh glass of tea in her hands, and as soon as she sees me approach she rises to prepare one for me. With it there is a plate of my favourite cookies. The warm liquid is very soothing. I sip it slowly, waiting patiently for my aunt to begin.

  Instead, however, she turns to me and takes my face in her hands. “You don’t look well, my child. Are you all right? Perhaps your mother is right. These stories aren’t good for you. I must stop talking to you this way. You know, sometimes I forget how old you are. I even forget you’re here and God knows what you’re thinking all this time.”

  I try to reassure her: “I’m fine, ciociu. Really, my friends tell me even worse stories about the war. Everybody hears them at home. But I want to hear them from you.”

  These exchanges are part of the storytelling ritual. We know, even as my aunt protests and I reassure her, that sooner or later we will give way to our usual pastime—our secret vice that separates us from everyone else.

  “Dobryd. Yes, we were talking of Dobryd. Its young people. How fine they seem to me now. They were filled with a kind of naive idealism that glowed in them and transformed them. Of course it was the age of idealism, of new ideas. We believed the world could be changed. We quarrelled about methods, and each group thought the other mistaken, but we were all united in our belief that a better world was coming and we would make it. The most unlikely people became the most ardent revolutionaries.

  “I’m thinking of Grisha, a friend of your mother’s, but first I have to tell you something about the communists of that time. Yes, I know you’ve heard that word from Yuri, but the young people I’m thinking of were quite different from Yuri and his friends. The ones I knew spent most of their time on the terrace of the Café Imperiale. There they sat, day after day, talking, arguing. Some of them were your mother’s close friends. They formed a study group, and together they immersed themselves in the works of Hegel, Marx, Lenin.

  “When you’re older perhaps your mother will tell you more about these men. In any case the young communists of Dobryd were for the most part content to argue about texts. Just as their fathers and grandfathers a generation back had spent their days in prayer houses studying and interpreting the sacred books.

  “However, a few young people did more than just argue and talk. Instead of waiting for the new order to come to them they set out to seek it, to make it happen.

  “I want to tell you about two of these people because they were special friends of your mother’s. Grisha and Halka.

  “Grisha was the son of one of the town’s richest and most respected families. As an only child, delicate from birth, he had been cherished and over-protected. He was an intelligent and curious boy, and his father spared no effort to provide him with the best tutors and the latest books. Somehow, the new ideas that were then so much in the wind reached this sheltered adolescent and found their mark. Alone in his room, without any inspiration or guidance other than his books and journals, knowing very little about life outside his home, he became a revolutionary.

  “The only real revolution around then was the one that had taken place in Russia and so Grisha began preparations for making his way there. While everyone around him fussed and worried about his health, he was plotting a course of action that was to remove him from all luxury and protection and lead him to the heart of revolutionary activity. He was very ingenious about it. I can’t imagine how he managed to keep his activities secret from a family as close as his.

  “I remember him very well. Occasionally he would have dinner with us. A pale, thin boy, very serious and yet also childlike, like someone who had only learned about life from books. To us, his disappearance seemed even more shocking than to the rest of the town.

  “A few weeks before his twentieth birthday he vanished from Dobryd. His parents spared no effort to find him, but the weeks went by and there was no hint or trace of his whereabouts. The whole town was rife with speculation. The boy’s parents came to see your mother and beseeched her to tell them anything she might know. But she knew no more than anyone else. It was true that she had been Grisha’s friend but they had never really been close. Grisha was already then exercising the discipline of a revolutionary and he kept his plans to himself.

  All sorts of rumours began to spread about him. There was talk in the town of spirits, enchantments, spells. The parents were desperate enough to pursue the most far-fetched clues but it was useless.

  “Then he himself resolved the mystery. A letter from him, postmarked in the Soviet Union, arrived at his parents’ house. He told them that they must forget about him. From now on he would only live to bring about the revolution where it was most needed. The pain he caused his parents, he wrote, was insignificant compared to the misery most people lived in. They must find comfort in the fact that he was now happier than he had ever been.

  “Grisha was true to his word. The letter was the only communication ever received from him. But they heard about him indirectly, and through constant inquiry they kept up with the events of his life. He was frequendy imprisoned in different European cities where the Party sent him as an organizer. He seemed to
turn up whenever a strike or an uprising occurred. Eventually he became quite important in the Party. Your mother heard that he had been sent on a diplomatic mission to Germany.

  “I can’t even imagine him in all those roles. I wonder if he survived the war? His parents were among the first killed. They could have bought their way out. They had enough money, and at that time it could still be done, but they seemed to have lost their desire to live. Who knows, Grisha may even turn up here one day looking for them.”

  My aunt stops for a minute’s rest. We both look about us as if we expect Grisha to step forth from amongst the shoppers in the marketplace and identify himself to us. His story horrifies me. I cannot bear to hear of the cruelty he has shown his parents. I think of myself and my aunt and my mother and I promise myself that I will never leave them, not even when I’m grown up. I will never make them cry. Impulsively, I rush over to my aunt and wrap my arms around her and press against her with all my might.

  She looks surprised, and then pleased, and hugs me to her.

  VI

  My aunt and I are walking home from the market. The ruins we pass have become the familiar landscape of my childhood and I no longer see them. But then my aunt draws my attention to a particular spot: