Memory and Desire

by Lisa Appignanesi

  ‘Herr Karl, I shall go straight to the police,’ Sylvie screamed, hearing the absurdity of her own voice. She drew herself to her full height. She was a good head taller than him. ‘The police, you hear.’

  ‘The police,’ he said in a strangled voice and the word brought the sperm teeming out of him onto the bed’s whiteness. ‘I am your police,’ He looked at her triumphantly with a hint of menace, a trace of revulsion. ‘And there’s no reason Frau Sylvie to be so high and mighty,’ he cackled. ‘You’re just a Pole, aren’t you? You know what Herr Hitler thought of the Poles. Racial vermin. Slaves. A nation that deserves to be swept off the face of the earth.’ He laughed his gleeful mad clown’s laugh and pointed to a tiny peephole in the wall opposite the bed. ‘I have seen you before. I know what you women get up to.’

  With a cocky gesture he left her shivering in the cold room.

  Sylvie packed her bags and stole silently from the flat. An acrid taste of disgust left with her. She felt numb, disoriented. It was as if, for the first time, the foul residue of war had penetrated to her, enveloped her very person. She sat huddled in the station, waited for the train and finally embarked on the last lap of her journey. It took her through Ostrava and then after another change, another delay, at last to Krakow.

  When she finally disembarked in the once royal city, her disorientation seemed to have grown. She no longer had a distinct sense of why she had come, the imperative that had forced her to this journey. It had taken her almost two weeks to complete an itinerary which should have taken at most two days. To her those two weeks stretched back into a time whose starting point had lost its distinctness.

  She walked through ancient, dimly familiar streets which reeked of sewage and poverty. Thin children played in the shadows of houses. People scurried. Everywhere Russian blended into Polish making her feel that she had lost her grip on her native tongue. A room, she thought dimly, I must find a room. Rest. She saw notices pinned up to buildings, inspected them. They didn’t lead her to rooms. They were pleas, endless exhortations, ‘If anyone has seen a boy of eight with brown hair who answers to the name of Thomasz Przemyk, please inform Rosa Przemyk at….’ ‘Disappeared in Warsaw on 5 August 1944, Tadeus Komorowski, 50. Any news welcome…’ Sylvie read, started visibly to shake. Then she remembered, Andrzej, she must find Andrzej, put notices up, on the walls, in the papers.

  ‘Pani szuka kogos?’, a woman approached her, an old woman with a crinkled face and a thin smile, a woman wearing a flowered head scarf. Sylvie saw Babushka, knew it was and wasn’t her.

  ‘Tak,’ ‘Yes, no,’ Sylvie replied, ‘I’m looking for someone, but I’m also looking for a room.’ A woman, she thought, I can trust a woman.

  ‘I was told the Russians have filled the hotels, but I need somewhere to stay.’

  The woman inspected her, took in the rich fur-lined coat, the slightly worn cases.

  Sylvie tried to counter her suspicion. ‘I’ve come from Paris, but I’m Polish. I’ve come to look for someone. Can you help me?’

  The woman hesitated, then nodded. She looked hungrily at Sylvie’s bags, took one from her. ‘Come with me.’

  She led her to a nearby building, up a dark, narrow staircase. ‘Here we are,’ she said.

  Sylvie’s heart sank. A bare, tiny flat. Three small rooms, of which the biggest was the kitchen. The only decoration was a small wooden crucifix, the portrait of a saint.

  The woman ushered her into a bedroom, removed children’s things from the bed, exhorted Sylvie to unpack, showed her a rickety wardrobe in the hall. ‘This is fine, isn’t it. Clean,’ she patted the narrow bed. She chatted, told Sylvie her name, Pani Baran, went to boil some water so Sylvie could wash, watched her open her cases. Sylvie saw the hunger in her eyes, handed her a large sausage.

  ‘Dziekuje, dziekuje,’ she bowed, bobbed, rushed away to hide her treasure.

  Sylvie sat down on the bed and wept.

  The next day Sylvie extricated herself from Pani Baran’s two children who followed her every move and made her way to the French consulate. Princesse Mathilde had insisted in no uncertain terms that she must go to the Consulate, must present the letter Sylvie was holding to the Consul. Sylvie now saw her wisdom. She had no idea where to begin her search for Andrzej, apart from the hit and miss strategy of the countless random announcements. But when she arrived at the Consular Building, she was emphatically told by a woman whom she thought could be either a housekeeper or a secretary that there was no one in. The Consul was away. For at least two weeks. Her stress on the importance of her mission, her plea that she was looking for a friend, held no sway. The woman simply shrugged, ‘Put an ad in the paper,’ she said.

  Sylvie kept back her tears, bought herself an execrable meal in a dowdy restaurant, found a newspaper office, returned desultorily to Pani Baran’s. Her hostess, when she told her, was more sympathetic to her problems. She patted Sylvie’s shoulder, ‘Come with me,’ she said, then hesitating, added, ‘Put on a hat.’

  She led her to Krakow’s central square and through the doors of the ancient cathedral. In its damp awesome depths, she stopped in front of a painted statue of the Virgin Mary. She invoked Sylvie to pray, to pray for the return of Andrzej. She lit a candle, bowed her head. Shivering, Sylvie imitated her gestures. She was transported back to the last time she had prayed in front of the Virgin, to the time when Tadzio and her parents had died. Her mind reeled. But then as now, prayer would not come to her.

  Pani Baran, however, smiled with a calm certainty. She led her to one of the cafés on the square. Despite the cold, despite the lack of anything Sylvie considered distinctly edible, it was crowded with voices and people. Pani Baran took her to a back table where an old gnarled man sat smoking an acrid cigarette. She spoke for Sylvie, named Andrzej Potacki. The old man gestured them into chairs, puffed at his cigarette, reflected, murmured Andrzej’s name over and over. Then he shook his head, ‘Nie wiem.’ He smiled toothlessly. ‘But come back in a day or two, I’ll keep my ears to the ground, make some enquiries.’ In the next breath he addressed Sylvie, ‘Do you have cigarettes?’

  It was her turn to shake her head, but she reached in her purse and gave him some change. He nodded rhythmically, ‘Dobrze, dobrze.’

  Sylvie lived out the passage of the days, counting them until the Consul’s return. Each day she explored another sector of the city, scanned people’s faces, read the walls, the newspapers. Each day as Polish gradually invaded her consciousness, she felt she was being thrown back further into her past. Certain streets at certain angles in particular lights spoke to her. Certain smells leapt into her nostrils, threatening her with their unnamed familiarity. She found it increasingly difficult to imagine Jacob. But at each corner, she thought she saw a face from her childhood.

  Exactly two weeks and one day after she had first gone to the Consulate, she returned. This time he was there. Sylvie presented her letter, waited. She was, respectfully now, ushered into a sitting room by the woman who had originally turned her away. It was the first time in weeks that she had been in an atmosphere which spoke of comfort. She sank back into brocade cushions, breathed deeply.

  The sound of a French voice startled her, ‘Madame Jardine, je suis enchanté.’ There followed a neat little speech which paid compliments to Sylvie, to the Princesse. ‘If I can be of any assistance…’

  Sylvie looked at the trim older man, the elegant cut of his suit. She talked, explained, shed a tear. At the end of the interview, she found herself a guest of the Consul’s, if only for two weeks. He was so sorry; another staff member was arriving then. Space would be tight, but for now, he welcomed her.

  Sylvie emerged with the sense of a minor triumph. She knew that there were no real grounds for it. She was no closer to finding Andrzej. But the consular building gave her the impression of being on firm terrain rather than in a dangerous swamp in which the earth might give way at any time and swallow her up.

  Pani Baran was not equally pleased to see her go. Nonethel
ess, she insisted on helping Sylvie pack, insisted that she have a bath before leaving. She brought out the old tin tub Sylvie had seen her use for the children. She watched Sylvie undress and began to chortle. ‘I knew you couldn’t be growing fat on our food, Pani Sylvie. So the man you are looking for is the child’s father.’ She shook her greying head, began a litany of names, of men who had disappeared, died.

  Sylvie, feeling her head whirl, cut her off sharply. ‘My husband is very much alive and in Paris,’ she said definitively. The statement suddenly brought back Jacob. For the first time since she had left Paris, she began to wonder why she had come here.

  She left Pani Baran all her remaining food. It meant more in that world of lacks than paper money.

  The week in the Consulate brought no news of Andrzej. Sylvie let out two of her dresses, had another made, wrote a letter home. Out of pride, the writing of it made her reaffirm her certainty that soon she would locate Andrzej. She also said that she was searching out any living relatives. And, the letter added, she had decided that she would visit the family home. It was a thought that had hovered at the back of her mind and at that moment became a determination.

  But first the Consul suggested that she visit Warsaw. There was a man he knew there who had been with Anders’ army. He had many contacts, might be able to help.

  Sylvie packed a single case and travelled to Warsaw, a continually interrupted journey which lasted a day and most of a night.

  She arrived in a desolate, wintry wasteland which staggered description. Ruins had been spoken of, but in her mind’s eye, these had borne a picturesque tinge. The reality was the horror of utter devastation. Narrow lanes, carved through torrents of fire blackened rubble, eerie windowless shells of houses, looming staircases attached to scorched, fragile facades. Every here and there a wooden cross, shrivelled flowers, announcing a grave. And everywhere the scribbled messages, like incantations, evoking the missing. A city of the dead. The disappeared.

  Sylvie made her way through debris. At every turn, small groups of men, women and children worked with bare hands, the occasional spade, to clear the waste. Amidst it Sylvie shivered to see bones, skeletal remains. She averted her eyes, tried to be as brave as these children. At last, at the corner of a small square which boasted the fragment of a pedestal and an armless cherub, she found herself in front of the address she had been searching for.

  The consul’s friend. He was sitting in front of a small stove which gave off a mere whisper of heat. A cavernous man with an empty sleeve pinned neatly to his jacket, in a room where the wall looked as if it might precariously tumble at any moment.

  ‘Come in, come in,’ he welcomed Sylvie.

  She stated her business. He looked at her oddly as she gave him Andrzej’s name.

  ‘Yes, I know him,’ he said, then paused.

  Elation flooded through her.

  ‘But I don’t know where he is.’

  Something in the way he said it gave Sylvie a start. She recognized that tone. What was it? She gazed into the man’s eyes. And then she located it. It was the whiff of the clandestine, the guarded.

  ‘Can you find him? Get him a message from me?’

  Her excitement made him smile.

  ‘I’ll try, but I can’t promise.’

  Sylvie told him where she would be staying.

  ‘Don’t hope too much,’ he cautioned her as she left. ‘And try other means, any means you have.’

  Sylvie nodded, thanked him. She couldn’t help the happiness that murmured inside her.

  Two weeks later, in that dismal city it subsided. A cold wind gusted in from the plains. A remorseless slate sky quashed all possibility of hope. She had tried to trace some relatives with a pre-war address she still had. She had walked from street to indistinguishable street, picking her way carefully, to no end. No one seemed to know anything. The Russian officials she tried to talk to made short shrift of her enquiries. They treated her as an enemy. She began to see that even the desolation around her was not going to guarantee a true peace.

  One day amidst the ruins, in a narrow street level room, she found a hat shop. The absurdity made her laugh and then cry. The tears became a regular occurrence, catching her alone, in public, unawares.

  Beneath the tears, the only reality seemed to be the reality of waiting. She was filled with her waiting. Everyday she went to see the Consul’s friend. Everyday, he shook his head lugubriously. She tried other sources, pinned messages to walls. To no avail. She began to understand Caroline’s madness. The sheer inert weight of increasingly hopeless anticipation. Its tentacles filled the air one breathed, bowed one’s shoulders. She had a desire to hold her friend, weep with her.

  After another period of waiting, she felt herself suffocating, cracking under the burden. Time seemed to have lost its significance. She had forgotten how long she had been here. Only the sight of her growing belly in a cracked mirror one day made her aware of its passage. She decided to go to Lodz. She had another address there. Another set of relatives in the giant industrial city. But here, too, the search proved fruitless.

  She returned to Krakow, to the safety of the Consulate. She no longer had a distinct sense of who Andrzej was. Why she was looking for him. She walked up to blond men in the street, peered into their faces, apologised. His image had grown indistinct. Sometimes, despite the persistence of her search, she forgot who was its object. Andrzej’s name took on the shape and substance of her father, the flickering form of her mother. One morning she woke up whimpering, ‘Papush, Mama.’

  In the shadow of a forgotten dream, Sylvie decided it was time to visit their graves.

  The next day there was a letter from Andrzej. She couldn’t believe it. She wanted to dance for joy. He said he would come to see her. He couldn’t give a precise date. But he would come. Sylvie had a sudden image of her father embracing her. Saw herself and her brother running joyfully through the woods, playing mischievous pranks. Saw Andrzej. She lay down on the bed and smiled.

  The quality of her waiting changed, became increasingly tangled up with memory. Days merged into weeks. Still Andrzej didn’t come.

  She sat in her small back room and sewed. None of her clothes fitted her. She was making two skirts into one in a crazy patchwork. Her fingers moved clumsily, actions blinded by tears. When would he come? She felt heavy, inert.

  The Consul came to her room. His eyes moved from her thin, strained face to the now sizeable bulge of her belly. He cleared his throat politely, ‘I have been thinking, Madame Jardine, perhaps it would be better if you returned to France this week. I have a friend leaving. He could accompany you.’

  Sylvie looked at him as if through a haze. Her hands flew protectively to her baby. ‘Yes, yes’ she murmured, acknowledging his concern. ‘But I need another week, perhaps two,’ she mumbled vaguely unable to imagine a leaving. ‘My friend is coming. And I need to go to my parents’ grave.’

  He didn’t scold her, didn’t think her mad. He had seen her condition before. Hundreds shared it. He simply shook his head, a little sadly, and then tried to make things easier for her. He said he would arrange for her ticket to Lublin.

  So that the consul wouldn’t confront her too often, she forced herself to spend time in public places, sitting in the few central cafés. One day she overheard two journalists speaking English. They were talking in low voices about battles in the East, partisans, resistance against the Russians. That’s where Andrzej would be, she thought dismally. That’s what his first card had been about. ‘Poland is free and again in chains.’ That’s what he had meant. He was fighting, fighting still. She went up to the journalists, told them she had heard them, asked what places they had been talking about. Blurted out that she wanted to go there. Had to find somebody. Somebody named Andrzej Potacki.

  They looked at her as if she were mad. ‘That’s no place for a woman,’ one of them murmured. And the other added, ‘In one of the villages, I went to, half the women had been raped. Cossacks, they told me. R
aped. Even the pregnant ones,’ he looked significantly at her stomach. They advised her to go back to France.

  Sylvie walked slowly back to the Consulate. It had become almost impossible to talk to anyone. No one understood. More and more, the only reality seemed to lie in the shadows which moved within her.

  And then Andrzej was there. A knock came on her door and the little maid bade her to go to the rear sitting room. She walked heavily, opened the door to see a man in a greatcoat restlessly pacing the width of the room.

  ‘Andrzej,’ Sylvie spoke with difficulty. She felt her legs giving way. The maid held her, directed her to the sofa. Sylvie sank heavily into its depths. ‘Andrzej, is it really you?’ her voice was a hoarse whisper.

  He was at her side, clutching her hand. ‘Silweczka, you mad woman, what are you doing in this godforsaken country?’

  The maid closed the door on them discreetly.

  Sylvie stared at him. He was thin, his face grey, but his eyes still danced beneath the incorrigible fall of his hair. ‘Andrzej,’ she repeated his name, again and again. She held him. ‘I’ve come to find you. I’ve found you,’ a teasing smile curled her lips, ‘And now I’m going to take you away.’

  ‘Madwoman,’ he shook his head, gazed at her tenderly. Then, like a mischievous younger brother he patted her stomach. ‘And this, is this my Christmas present?’

  Sylvie lowered her lids shyly, avoided his question. ‘You will come to France with me, won’t you?’ she held his hand tightly.

  He groaned comically, but his face was serious. ‘Silweczka, you’re a brave girl. And it’s wonderful to see you, to see you alive, well. But you have no idea what’s going on.’ Suddenly he looked round him suspiciously, lowered his voice, spoke with urgency, ‘It’s not France here. This country is still at war. Nothing is over for us.’ His eyes grew fiery, intent. ‘We didn’t live like rats in cellars for years, didn’t lose millions of our people, our cities, in order to be slaves to the Russians. You understand?’