Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  A moment later, it was too late. The train heaved into action, the woman encased in its iron depths, wrapped herself in her fur-lined coat and looked with satisfaction into the distance. The small group waited, a little forlornly, for the wave that never came.

  Sylvie Kowalska Jardine, almost six years to the day after she had initially planned a return to Poland, was now at last on her way. She knew that the others were adamantly set against her going. Jacob, Leo, Caroline, even the Princesse and Violette who were on a passing visit. She didn’t care. Only Leo gave her a fleeting pang: he was such a quiet, dutiful child, physically almost the replica of her brother Tadzio, but without Tadzio’s mischievous sparkle. A child, she thought, brought up in the claustrophobic proximity of old people whose anxieties shadowed his movements. A child who had, with the close of the war, come back into their midst like a shy stranger. Now, four months later, he was still timid, hesitant.

  Like a woman struggling out of a smoke-filled room where the fumes threatened to engulf her, Sylvie took a short choking breath.

  She needed, she had to get away. Life after the initial euphoria of liberation had taken on a dreariness which bordered on desperation. Some days she could see no reason for getting out of bed. Jacob seemed to have lost all interest in her, seemed more intent on his mother who was still mourning the death of her husband. He trailed guilty depression wherever he went. All he could think about were the dead, whose numbers seemed to grow daily. Or of the survivors of those horrendous extermination camps which she wanted to hear no more about. He spent all his time now working with those survivors. It was as if he had disappeared inside them.

  Caroline, if anything, was worse. Her days were composed of visits to the missing persons’ office, interminable waits by the telephone, scrambles for the post. She was looking for Joseph, her hope straining against her fear in an uneven contest.

  If only the baby that was growing in her had housed itself in Caroline, Sylvie thought. That would have made things better all round. Caroline would have a purpose in life, outside her obsessive search. And she would have a friend again, rather than a funereal vestige of the Caroline of old.

  No one knew about the baby. Not even Jacob. She hadn’t told him and he was too preoccupied, rarely came close enough to her, to notice. He had stopped making love to her altogether now. Sometimes she felt he had embraced death, averted his eyes from her body because it reminded him too painfully of life.

  She knew when the baby had been conceived. Sylvie laid a hand surreptitiously on her stomach and felt the slight taut bulge, still too small for anyone to notice unless they were looking particularly. It had been on the eighth of April, exactly a month before the war in Europe had finally ended. Jacques had arrived in the house, bearing a bunch of celebratory flowers. Kissed her, whistled a birthday tribute. Jacob had looked aghast. He had forgotten. He had tried to redeem himself by pretending he had planned a surprise birthday dinner at the Ritz. They had gone to the hotel, eaten what these days passed for an excellent dinner. As long as she had concentrated only on Jacques’s witticisms, and not focussed on Caroline’s ashen face or Jacob’s abstracted eyes, she could almost imagine that the last six years had never been.

  Later, at home, Jacques had asked her to sing. She had sat down at the piano and picked out a few tunes, and then almost as if she had been inspired, she sang. Sang the coded lyrics Jacob had improvised for her in that first wartime meeting in Marseilles.

  A l’Hôtel d’Alger

  dans un autre pays,

  je l’ai rencontré

  c’était le Samedi

  l’homme de mes rêves

  mais seulement le Samedi

  Dimanche il était parti.

  And then, she had added a new stanza.

  I saw him again

  I don’t quite know when

  A world had gone awry

  Perhaps it was April 45

  That man of my dreams

  Things had changed it seems.

  We had lost our dreams.

  Jacob had stared at her as if he were seeing her for the first time after a long absence. Then, when the others had gone, he had made love to her. Made love with a kind of desperation which their coupling could only momentarily assuage, a search for oblivion.

  In an odd way she remembered that day as the last significant day of her life. Since then everything had been gloom and pettiness. Sometimes Sylvie felt her hold on things was loosening. There was no one to talk to except Leo, no one to reflect her being, to notice whether she looked well or poorly, to shape the borders of herself. Increasingly she found herself daydreaming about the past, lost in the sheer exhilaration of the last few years.

  How different it had all been then. How well she remembered the look of wonder on Jacob’s face as he learned how she and Caroline had planned his escape from prison, then sprung him. A look of wonder which extended to each touch, each excited glance during his period of convalescence in that remote farmhouse. And then had come the exhilaration of sabotage. Three times they had worked together, before Jacob had again insisted on going his separate way. Three times she had had the opportunity to marvel at Jacob’s cool implacability. It was as if there was another, a different man housed in him as he calmly uttered unquestionable orders; infused them with his own determined purpose. With him, danger, the swift secrecy of laying explosives, was merely an incident in a longer narrative which bore a triumphant end. Even Caroline had blossomed in his atmosphere of quiet resolution and incontestable hope, laying aside her depression to work beside them. Yes, those had been the best times. Sylvie could still feel the tingle in her fingers, the catch in her throat when she pushed down the lever on the detonator.

  And all in order to return to the banality of a Paris flat, to hunt in bare shops for everyday needs.

  Andrzej’s letter had come as a godsend. It had taken weeks to reach her, had chased her through a variety of addresses. In its enigmatic terseness, its bravura, it was pure Andrzej.

  ‘Silweczka!’ he addressed her in the caressing diminutive, ‘Poland is free and again in chains. I trust you and yours are well. I salute you. Andrzej.’

  That was the extent of it. There was no address. Only a postmark. Krakow. Sylvie had hugged the letter to her for two days, breathed in Andrzej’s unshackled air. Then without telling anyone she had gone about purchasing a train ticket, getting the necessary visas. Only a week before her planned departure had she announced her intention to Jacob.

  A look of utter astonishment had come over his face. ‘Sylvie, this is madness,’ he had said. ‘Poland is in ruins. A wasteland. There are still pockets of fighting. It’s no place for a woman on her own. And the journey. You’ll never get there.’

  She had looked at him scornfully.

  He had tried quiet persuasion. ‘If it’s your Babushka you want to see, you know very well that there is almost no chance that she’s still alive. Why, even before the war, it was hardly likely. Sylvie be reasonable.’

  ‘I too am allowed to pay homage to my dead,’ is all she had said to him.

  Eventually she had told him of the letter from Andrzej. An edge of anger had entered his voice. ‘You don’t know where he is, Sylvie. There’s no address. And its irresponsible. What about Leo? He needs you.’

  Sylvie had been deaf to his protests. She had spent her last days taking Leo to the movies, to a concert. And she had packed her bags. One full of whatever durable food she could find. Another with clothes. One evening Jacob had walked in and thrown in her face the information he had gleaned about Andrzej: it was more than Sylvie knew for certain.

  ‘Andrzej Potacki. Mathematician. Twenty-eight-years-old. A lieutenant in Anders’ army. Probably parachuted into Poland last year. I guess that makes him a hero in your books,’ he had sneered the last at her.

  It had dawned on Sylvie that he was jealous. And his words had confirmed her suspicion. ‘I trust you intend to come back,’ he had said coldly.

  ‘I imagine so,’ s
he had answered, her tone equally cool. But a little note of triumph played in her ear.

  That night she had slept in Leo’s bed.

  Sylvie looked out the murky train window. Grey drizzle. Flat barren land. Here and there, the remnants of an abandoned tank. The train moved, slowly, heavily, in fits and starts. Destination seemed a distant idea unrelated to its fitful progress. Goods trains rattled past them as they made interminable stops at innumerable small stations or on desolate stretches of track. Reims, Chalons, Chaumont. The changing flow of passengers who shared her compartment were silent, wary. They avoided each other’s eyes. It was hardly any different from the wartime trains, Sylvie reflected, except that the passport and ticket checks were carried out with a semblance of politeness. Nonetheless, as they crossed the border into Switzerland, she was grateful for the diplomatic pass the Princesse had, at the last moment, procured for her.

  At Basle, she stayed overnight in a small hotel. Her dreams were in Polish. She was a small girl, running, running. When she woke she had difficulty remembering where she was. But at least the train left the sleepy station on time. In Zurich it was another matter. The platforms teemed with people and languages. The train to Vienna was delayed and then delayed again and again.

  Sylvie, sitting in the crowded waiting room, had the sense that she was hovering somewhere outside her body. She clung to her suitcases as if they were her sole grip on reality. When at last she boarded the train, she sat back in her seat and instantly closed her eyes. She prayed that she might not wake until they reached Vienna.

  She had forgotten about borders.

  At the small market town of Feldkirch, they were all suddenly and ominously ordered off the train. Passports were barked for. A thorough search was in place. The smallest minutiae of cases was turned over, sniffed. Fear tugged at Sylvie, fastened on her throat, a fear she had never felt during the war, not even when at the last, her small cases were filled with rifles. It caught her unawares, perhaps precisely because she was unprepared. She only managed to hold herself up by leaning heavily on the wall of the station. A man, seeing her ashen face, took her arm. ‘Yes,’ he murmured, ‘just like the Nazis. Habits don’t change quickly.’

  Not until the first dawn light glimmered were they allowed back on the train.

  At Innsbruck, Sylvie was told there would be no trains to Vienna until the following day, if then. Tears started to stream down her face. The teller took pity on her, told her there was a train in an hour to Salzburg. Perhaps she might like to visit Mozart’s birthplace.

  Sylvie wanted to kiss him. The sprightly line of a Mozart concerto formed in her ear. She hummed inwardly. In her mind’s eye, her fingers flitted over keys. Sound poured out, drowning the bevy of the station. Sylvie playing, waited, still playing, boarded the Salzburg train. In Salzburg, the station hotel had a room for her. She forgot about food, wanting only the comfort of a bed. Sylvie slept. In her dreams, she was in the pink house. Her parents’ house. She was sitting at the grand piano. Mozart flew from her fingertips. ‘Pa..pa…PA,’ her father, standing beside her, sounded out the rhythm. She looked up for his approval. ‘Dobrze, dobrze, bardzo dobrze,’ his smile gleamed white. He patted her head, let his hand rest on her shoulder. Sylvie took it, brought it to her lips.

  She woke again to a feeling of displacement, in time as much as in space. There would be no trains, she was told, until later. No, no one was quite sure when. With a sigh she left her cases at the station and sat in a small café to sip something that went under the name of coffee. Then she wandered through the town, stumbled upon Mozart’s birthplace, paid homage. The cobbled streets, the colours and proportion of the houses, reminded her of something, what was it, long ago. She couldn’t quite place it.

  When she finally reached the station again, she was told a train was about to leave. Sylvie rushed, scrambled with her cases. She suddenly realised that she had lost her sense of destination. The journey itself had taken over, a journey which seemed to be as much about taking her back in time as across space.

  They arrived in Vienna late that night. But the station still swarmed with frenetic activity and a maze of foreign tongues. Sylvie’s head reeled. Every second person seemed to be in uniform. A welter of uniforms: Russian, British, American, French. She walked over to a Frenchman. Hardly trusting her disused voice, she asked about hotels. He looked at her as if she were a madwoman, then pointed her towards a kiosk. There a man told her in no uncertain terms that there were no rooms to be had in Vienna. Sylvie felt the tears leap again to her eyes. She shook herself. What was the matter with her. She tried to see whether there were any benches where she could sit. Worse come to worse, she told herself, she could stay the night out in the station.

  Sylvie trailed her cases listlessly round the station. She saw people bedded down on the floor, a woman with a child, an old man. When she thought she could walk no more, she spotted a station café and breathed a sigh of relief. She walked in, queued for a place, and at last found herself at a small dismal table. The man behind her was shown to the same place. Sylvie looked at him briefly, a small man with lanky hair, the traces of a moustache. She concentrated on placing her order.

  When she had finished, he addressed her, ‘Sie suchen ein Zimmer? A room?’

  Sylvie watched his shifty eyes, but despite herself, found herself nodding.

  He smiled craftily, rubbed his thumb against two rather grubby fingers. ‘You have money? Real money? Dollars?’ he spoke now in broken English.

  Again, despite herself, Sylvie nodded. She clamoured against her own fear. Why, this man was no different from the black marketeers she had spent so much of the war with, she told herself firmly. Murder was hardly his business. But she held tightly to her bag.

  He drank his coffee, watched her crumble her tasteless cake, let her pay for him. Then he took her bags and gestured for her to follow him. For that at least, Sylvie thought, she should be grateful.

  They walked silently through narrow, cobbled streets, keeping away from the main thoroughfares. At last, in a tiny dark lane, huddled against the gothic bulk of St Stefansdom, he stopped in front of a house and pressed a buzzer. There was an answering ring. Sylvie followed him up three narrowly curving flights of stairs where a door opened on a small, neat, middle-aged man with a trim Hitler moustache.

  ‘Kommen sie hinein, kommen sie hinein,’ the man welcomed her smilingly. Then with a gesture of distaste, he passed Sylvie’s guide some bills and closed the door on him.

  Sylvie looked round her: a small spare flat, but tidy. Her host chatted to her in his rapid sing song Viennese. She only followed half of it, had the sense that he was telling her his life story, a whirlpool of words and events which culminated in a dying wife and a door being opened on a room with a vast double bed, a dark ornate wardrobe. She looked longingly at the clean, ironed sheets.

  ‘Ja, ja, Sie sind müde,’ he smiled and smiled, a clown’s smile which didn’t sit naturally on his face. ‘Ja, aber nur ihren pass bitte,’ he launched into a story about a man who had snuck out on him in the middle of the night, asked apologetically for her passport. Sylvie showed it to him, then with an instinctive cunning withdrew it. ‘Ich bezähle ihnen jetzt,’ she said, reaching for her purse.

  He looked a little hurt, but whipped the money away from her.

  She didn’t know quite what it was, but she decided to sleep with her clothes on, tuck her bag under her pillow. She didn’t like Vienna, Sylvie thought, as she sank into the soft bed. She would do her best to be out of here tomorrow.

  As it was, Sylvie spent five nights in Herr Karl’s flat. During that time she was treated at length to his theory of a watery apocalypse which would sink this mired world in the way it deserved. She was also made privy to his habit of polishing his five pairs of boots, his visible wealth, daily, as she sipped her ersatz coffee in his tiny kitchen. The rest of her time was largely spent arguing with stubborn Russian officials and waiting for the pass and the ticket which would take her first to
Ostrava and then to Krakow.

  Paris seemed a million miles away from St. Stefansdom, a city in another universe.

  On her last night at Herr Karl’s Sylvie decided she would allow herself the luxury of getting fully undressed, of washing herself slowly from top to toe at the tiny sink in preparation for her departure. She paused for a moment in the process to gaze at the mound of her stomach. For a flickering second, it occurred to her that this whole journey was a kind of madness. Then she slipped naked between the bedsheets and wandered quickly into that world of dreams which was becoming as real to her as her peregrinations.

  She was startled from sleep by a sound she couldn’t quite place, the catch of a breath, the creak of a floorboard. She felt cold, pulled the blankets over her from where they had strayed. It was then that she felt a weight on the bed. She sat up, opened her eyes. In the glimmer of a single candle, she saw Herr Karl perched at the very edge of the bed.

  ‘Ja, ja, das bin ich,’ his voice crooned strangely. ‘It’s only me.’

  She took in the baggy pyjama top, the hand wrapped round an erection, the scraggy testicles, the glazed eyes. She wanted to hit him, but she stayed her hand, wrapped the blanket more tightly round her. He moved to pull it from her, to caress her bare shoulders. Sylvie drew away.

  ‘Herr Karl,’ she said in an icy voice. ‘I am a married woman, a pregnant woman.’

  She saw him blink, saw the rubbing hand falter, and then the croon came again, ‘Ja, ja, das macht nicht. It doesn’t matter. You’re so beautiful.’ He pulled her towards him, tried to move her hand to his crotch. She kicked him, leapt out of bed. She didn’t know what fed his excitement more, the sight of her nudity, or the kick. But his eyes, shone brighter than ever; the erection strained. He came towards her.