Florian's Gate

by T. Davis Bunn

  Gregor walked with his swinging gait across the dusty street. “Never ask where the article came from, my boy. It’s tempting, I know, especially when you want to establish provenance. But trust here is very fragile and very carefully given. Everyone fears questions. Questions may lead to suspicions, and suspicions to some sort of harm. Let them offer the information if they care to, but never ask.” He looked up at Jeffrey. “They just might tell you.”

  As they approached the farmhouse gate, they were hailed from behind. They turned to see a short, slight man hustle across the gravel road on very bowed legs, his progress slowed by the water yoke suspended across his shoulders. The buckets hung from two metal chains and water sloshed on his pantlegs as he hastened to join them. With a practiced motion he swung open the gate, walked into the miniature yard, lowered the buckets to the ground, dropped the yoke, and motioned them inside. His neck and shoulders remained bent in the same posture they had while wearing the yoke.

  He offered Jeffrey his hand, but could not manage to unfurl his fingers. Jeffrey fitted his hand inside the man’s; it felt as if he were grasping an animal’s horn.

  The man’s age fell somewhere between thirty and seventy, and he barely reached Jeffrey’s rib cage. He and Gregor spoke a few words, enough for Jeffrey to see that the man had only two teeth in his mouth. Then he led them inside.

  A narrow hall opened on one side into the cow stalls and on the other into the cottage’s single room. The room’s floor was hard-packed earth covered with layers of cardboard boxes opened and trampled flat. The ceiling was even lower than in the other farmhouse. Heat was supplied from a tiled wood-burning stove, along whose upper surface stood several pots left to simmer all day. The air was full of scents—cabbage and pork and potatoes and nearby animals and stale sweat.

  In the center of the room an ancient woman half sat, half leaned on a tree-limb carved into a cane. Despite the day’s heat she wore multiple layers of sweaters, a headkerchief, and bright yellow boots with the toes cut out. A pair of gray woolen socks peeked through the toe holes.

  She eyed Jeffrey with a friendly glance and spoke a few words at Gregor.

  “Babcha—that means grandmother, or old dear in Polish—says that if she had a couple of men as big as you to carry her, she’d be all over the village,” Gregor translated.

  Jeffrey grinned from his bent-over stance. “If I see anyone my size looking for work, I’ll send him over.”

  The old woman cawed, showing a few lonely teeth, and said something that made Gregor laugh. “That was the first time she’d ever heard a language other than Polish. She asks if you’d talk some more.”

  “You mean, give a speech?”

  The old woman laughed once more. “You’ve made her day,” Gregor said.

  The old woman waved her cane at the man, who rummaged in a rag pile by the stove and came up with a rotting burlap sack. He handed it over to Jeffrey, said something that Gregor translated as, “Their grandson is getting married and wants to buy a farm. Prices are very cheap now for anyone with cash. There is a real crisis in the farming industry because the government has retracted all subsidies, and market prices often do not cover their spiraling costs. A lot of farmers have gone under.”

  Jeffrey hefted the article and guessed its weight at more than ten pounds. He tried to match Gregor’s casual tone. “Farmland wasn’t . . . what do you call it when the state takes it over?”

  “Collectivized. No, they started to, but the Poles in the government urged the Soviets not to insist. They feared a civil war. Land remained in the hands of the farmers who owned it already, with only the big estates being taken over by the government. Some of that land was also given out in small plots in an attempt to win the farmers over to their side.”

  Jeffrey nodded. He decided he had been polite long enough. Gingerly he unfolded the covering, stopped short when the article came into view. It was an eighteenth-century Meissen porcelain brule-parfum, an ornate container used to burn perfume—a sort of royal air-freshener. The central burner was square, each face decorated with delicate paintings of a young lady standing in her garden. The large base was of ormolu, or gilded bronze, as were the flower stems that wove a delicate pattern up each side of the burner. The flowers themselves were layer upon petalled layer of porcelain, some of the finest work Jeffrey had ever seen.

  “This is a treasure,” Gregor said softly.

  Jeffrey nodded. Intertwined within the flowers were two cherubs, peeking out in timeless gaiety at a world of poverty and grime. “How on earth did it get here?”

  “That is a tale we shall never know.” Gregor drew himself upright and turned to the smiling old woman. “I shall tell her that we are interested, yes?”

  * * *

  “Gregor was quite right not to ask where it came from,” Alexander told him that evening. They walked beneath a sky turned into a crowning glory of brilliant hues by a slow-motion summer sunset. “We are here to buy antiques, not tales.”

  Jeffrey allowed himself to be guided by the gentleman’s silent directions, unsure if there was a destination, but glad to at least have Alexander up and about. “Don’t you ever wonder?”

  “Of course I do. And I am extremely grateful when someone trusts me enough to share a story or two.”

  His color was still not good, and his interest in the pieces was not as great as Jeffrey had expected. Alexander’s attention remained caught by something only he could see, with only a small part of his mind given over to the matter at hand. “After a while you learn enough to make a few guesses. That first woman’s house may once have been the servant’s quarters to a manor that was bombed out of existence during the war. Perhaps the lord of the manor gave her husband those pieces when they went out of fashion, a gift to an able servant. But about that second item, one can only speculate.”

  Alexander indicated with a motion of his chin that they should cross the street and take a course that appeared to follow the first line of old buildings. The contrast between old and new Cracow could not have been greater, especially at this border area. New Cracow consisted mostly of unadorned and unpainted multistory structures of concrete; they had been streaked and darkened by decades of pollution and neglect. Old Cracow cried to every passerby of a distant royal past. Palatial residences crowded close to one another, a living museum of structures whose designs spanned more than nine hundred years.

  “In December of 1981,” Alexander said, “all of Warsaw talked about the possibility of starvation. All of Poland, for that matter.” He led them onto a thin strip of green, beyond which rose remnants of an ancient city wall. “After months of protest marches and labor unrest, the Polish government had declared martial law. The Russians, everyone believed, were diverting food in order to discredit the Solidarity movement. The situation was growing more desperate by the day.”

  Alexander shook his head. “One day I went to the countryside near Lublin, and in a pub that night I heard one old farmer talking to another. He was using this loud voice that you would never have heard in Warsaw. He said, beating the table as he spoke, ‘In 1943 there were three entire Nazi divisions in Lublin province. And there were the partisans. And all the refugees from the bombed cities. Besides that, because the Russians were approaching, Lublin was the only province supplying food to Warsaw! The only province, feeding three Panzer divisions and the partisans and its folk and a city of a million and a half.’

  “At that point I noticed that the entire pub had grown silent. It was not just a listening silence, it was an agreement. This old man with one foot in the grave and nothing to lose was speaking for all of them. Even the chefs and dishwashers came out of the kitchen to listen and agree. I sat and watched, and I felt that here in this rotting little pub on the edge of a backward farming region, I had been brought face-to-face with the heart of Poland.

  “So this man, who all the while totally ignored the effect his words were having on the people around him, continued to clump his fist on the table with the
regularity of a heartbeat. He went on, ‘So what does that tell you? That Poland is poor? That Poland cannot feed itself? No! It is the Russians who have done this to us, who have robbed and impoverished us! People don’t need to fear starvation, and what’s more they know it. They fear hunger because they’re afraid to fear the real enemy. The people need to wake up and fear Russia! They need to open their eyes and see that here is a beast that will eat them whole! They need to recognize that the menace to the east does not care for them or their families or their land or their history, only for what they can take. They need to see it as a parasite that will suck all the blood from this great Polish nation, then cast the remains aside. There will be no tombstone for our nation, no marker in history, no more notice made than to any poor soul passing on in a Siberian labor camp. We will be gone, and that is that. Unless we wake up and know fear.’

  “The man went on for over an hour to a completely silent group. Nobody said a word the entire time. When he stopped, he became just another trembling old gentleman in dirty farming clothes, and the pub became just another roadside hut selling simple food and watery beer and vodka. Mind you, in Warsaw the man would have quietly disappeared. That, my friend, is the power of a farmer in hard times. No one but a man supplying food could have spoken those words and lived to see another sunrise.”

  Through the trees up ahead, the dimming light illuminated a shadow-structure of towers and turrets all clustered tightly together. Jeffrey pointed. “What on earth is that?”

  At first Alexander did not reply. They left the trees behind and stopped at the edge of a plaza that ringed the structure. His voice was none too steady when he finally said, “That is Florian’s Gate.”

  In the foreground of Florian’s Gate stood a sturdy circular barbican, a sort of mini-castle built as a first line of defense. It was constructed of brick and crowned by numerous peaked towers. The barbican fronted the gate itself, an older square tower connected to the medieval town wall. Both wall and gate were of stone, with upper reaches notched for bowmen and crowned by a tall wood-slat roof.

  “In olden times each guild was assigned a gate,” Alexander said, working to keep his voice steady as they walked around the barbican. “They had to both maintain the structure and arm it. St. Florian was the patron saint of fire fighters. You’ll find his statue in the tower’s recesses. He’s always shown suited in shining armor, pouring water from his helmet over a flame.”

  As they approached the tower’s arched portal, Alexander took a firm grip on Jeffrey’s arm. “If you would please allow, I will rely on your strength for just a moment.”

  Jeffrey slowed his pace to match Alexander’s, feeling the fingers digging into his arm. They stopped fifty feet or so before the entrance; it was clear that Alexander was going no farther. Jeffrey searched the fading sunlight beyond the portal but found only crowds strolling down cobblestone ways.

  “I haven’t visited this part of Cracow in fifty years,” Alexander said, still maintaining his clenched grip on Jeffrey’s arm.

  “Why not?”

  “Centuries of history have passed through this gate,” Alexander replied. “But for me it holds only one memory. It was here that I was arrested and dragged off as a sixteen-year-old boy.”

  “What for?”

  “Reasons were not always given at that time. Events simply occurred. Survival was such a difficult matter that questions of any sort became luxuries one could not afford.”

  Jeffrey felt the chill of horror. “You were arrested by the Nazis?”

  “I cannot imagine passing through that gate ever again,” Alexander murmured. “Not ever. Even standing here, I am filled with dread and hopelessness.” He pointed a shaking hand toward the portal’s recesses. “Do you see the candles flickering there?”

  “Yes.”

  “In the center of the tower gate is an altar. There is a brass frame imbedded in the stone, and in it is a sacred painting. Still today travelers stop and pray for a good journey, as they have done for almost a thousand years.” He allowed his arm to fall back. “There were lilacs in the altar vase that day, and candles flickering where someone had come to pray earlier that morning. It was the last thing I saw before they loaded me in the truck and drove me away.”

  Alexander steered Jeffrey around and began walking away. “Where was mercy when I needed it? Why were my prayers not answered?”

  Jeffrey fought against his rising sense of dread. “Where did they take you?”

  “I have a favor to ask,” Alexander said in reply.

  Jeffrey turned to face him. “Anything.”

  His discomfort was plainly visible. “This is a most difficult matter, but I need your help, I’m afraid.”

  “All you have to do is ask, Alexander.”

  “Ah, but you do not know what it is that I wish to request.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Jeffrey replied flatly.

  Alexander inspected him, said, “You are indeed a friend.”

  “I’d like to be.”

  “Very well.” He took a shaky breath. “I am called to face my past. And because I know no other way to say it, I shall confess to being afraid to face it alone.”

  “You want me to go somewhere with you?”

  “If you would.”

  “Sure. When do we leave?”

  “Tomorrow at first light. I wish to have this done and behind me.”

  Jeffrey nodded. “I’ll go over and leave a note for Gregor.”

  “Thank you, my young friend. Your strength will be most needed.”

  “May I ask where we’re going?”

  Alexander gave him a haunted, empty look. “Auschwitz.”

  CHAPTER 13

  The two-lane road to Oswiecim, as the town was called in Polish, had neither lane markers nor road-signs. They passed through village after small cluttered village, the stretches in between lined with chestnut and oak and silver-leafed birch. At times their branches reached up and over the road, weaving a green canopy through which golden sunlight flickered and streamed.

  The slow-moving traffic held their speed to less than forty miles an hour for most of the way. Dark-fumed trucks thundered around horse-drawn carts, old men pushing wheelbarrows, sedately bouncing buses, and boxy East European cars. The only transport refusing to obey the unmarked speed limit were the newer Western cars, which powered around other vehicles and blind corners with aggressive madness.

  Signals of newly planted capitalism sprouted alongside the way in the form of dilapidated buses converted into roadside cafes. Only the multitude of Kapliczki—shrines with a Christ or Madonna and child—bore fresh paint. Often someone was kneeling in prayer before them; always they were encircled by wreaths of newly planted flowers.

  Alexander said nothing from the moment he seated himself in the car to the point when they arrived in Oswiecim, the village where the Auschwitz concentration camp memorial was located. He sat with shoulders hunched and face pointed slightly to the right, seeking to keep himself hidden from the driver beside him and from Jeffrey behind.

  They passed the city-limits sign for Oswiecim. Kantor stirred and sighed the words, “It is indeed a heavy day.”

  Their way took them along two sides of a mile-long wall constructed from concrete blocks framed with steel girders and railroad sidings. It was topped by rusted steel pylons and coiled strands of barbed wire. Every fifty meters or so, a guard tower’s peaked roof and blank windows stared down at them from beyond the wall.

  They pulled into a vast parking lot where several dozen buses vied for space with taxis and private cars and mini-vans. Hundreds of people, most of them teenagers, milled about under the leafy shade trees.

  Alexander seemed blind to all but his own internal world. He rose from the car with the slow trembling of an ancient man, blinked at the sky, murmured, “Why is there sun?”

  Jeffrey moved up next to him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”

  “There should be no sun here. From this place the light should be for
ced to hide its face.”

  Jeffrey touched Alexander’s arm. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  Alexander drew himself erect with an effort. “Come along, Jeffrey. My past is calling.”

  As they passed into the reception hall, a sign covering the entire left wall announced in seventeen languages that no child under the age of thirteen was allowed past this point. Alexander stood before it for a time before saying, “The Nazis were not so considerate.”

  The hall was lined with broad-framed photographs: multiple barbed-wire fences; a nighttime view of the infamous entrance gates; an Orthodox Jew in prayer robes and tefflin saying Kaddish; flowers strewn in great piles on and around the ovens used for cooking down the bodies; a snowy winter dawn casting gloomy light over the central prison square; a black-and-white sea of forks and spoons that at first glance appeared to be a pile of glinting bones.

  Jeffrey halted before a poem posted at the door leading out to the camp. It read:

  Electric wires, high and double

  Won’t let you see your daughter

  So don’t believe the censored letter of mine

  Since truth is different,

  But don’t cry, Mother

  And if you would like to seek your child

  Look for the ashes in the fields of Birkenau

  They’ll be there, so look for the ashes

  In the fields of Auschwitz,

  In the woods of Birkenau,

  Mama, look for the ashes, I’ll be there!

  Monika Domlke

  Born 1920

  As they walked into the green park bordering the camp, Alexander began, “In the morning of August 12, 1940, about a year after the German invasion, I walked down to Florian’s Gate. The plaza there held a sort of unofficial market, a place where people gathered with things to buy or sell. I was looking for a pair of pants and a pair of shoes. Things were getting steadily worse, especially with respect to supplies. It was becoming harder and harder to find food and simple things like clothes. So that particular morning I went by myself on the streetcar to Florian’s Gate.