13 Stradomska Street

by Andrew Potok

  A week or two into May, Montpelier’s streets are torn up for the installation of heavy ducts, which will carry heat from a woodchip burning plant to schools and government buildings, making my walks through town with Gabriel an adventure. On practically every street crossing, sweaty, buff men offer us help. “Would you like to take my arm, sir?” I am flabbergasted by their civility—no pity, just kindness. But bad things happen everywhere. In this lovely New England town, as I stand talking with a friend outside the gym, Gabriel at my side, I hear a beastly snarl and feel Gabriel being pulled away. In his sweet innocence, my dog is being viciously attacked. The perpetrator is on a leash, a woman at its other end. She pulls her dog back and runs. After momentarily examining my poor Gabriel, my friend Nona takes off in pursuit. I run up the stairs into the gym where Gabriel’s wound is examined and pronounced serious. I’m down at his side and feel the blood running down his back. He and I are both panting. Nona comes back, out of breath, the hit and run woman nowhere to be found. Someone called Loie and we race to the local vet who performs a long surgery. I call the police who promise to search for the hit-and-run perpetrator but she is never found. Though Gabriel is expected to have psychological repercussions, to slink away from other dogs and refuse to take me back to the scene of the crime, there is no such response from my forgiving dog. After a full recovery, Gabriel seems unaffected by canine PTSD. But it’s clear that immorality, at whatever level, has no borders.

  In June my son Mark and his wife Carol fly to Poland for an annual international conference attended by some thirty participants, half American, half German, and hosted by the lone Polish member. One year they met in the US, the next in Germany, and now in Warsaw. Their topic and their passion is the outing of hate groups, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, every kind of militia. My son, the editor-in-chief of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Report, is a hate expert. How strange is that? I the armchair hater, my wonderful firstborn a scholar in the field.

  Though very aware of Polish feelings about the Jews before, during, and after the war, both Mark and Carol love being in Poland. Loie and I had been there in miserable weather; now Mark sees it from a totally different perspective, the trees in bloom, the sidewalks gleaming, free of snow and ice.

  “Warsaw was beautiful,” Mark writes, “the architecture elegant, the shops and restaurants full to capacity, but we really loved Krakow.” They stayed in a first-class hotel just off the old Market Square, walked in Kazimierz, and visited a synagogue not far from the Hotel Rubinstein. They traipsed through the ornate interior, abundantly decorated with gold leaf. “We were stopped in our tracks in front of one of the stained glass windows,” Mark reports. “In front of us, embedded in the window, appeared the names of Izaak and Amalia Potok 1925.”

  Izaak and Amalia? I’m amazed that Loie didn’t see the window, the two of us having visited the same synagogue a few months before. I also realize that Izaak and Amalia were the parents of my dear Australian cousin Jurek.

  When Mark and Carol return from Poland, I fly down to Alabama. As delighted as I am to be with them, I do not like being in the Deep South, to me the Poland of America. Black people continuing to live there seem similar to Jews choosing to stay in Poland, although the two histories are very different. The Southern black experience has included slavery, lynching, and unrelenting American racism, whereas slavery as such has never been a part of European Jewish history.

  “What did you feel when you saw the stained glass window?” I ask Mark.

  “I can almost not describe it,” he says. “Seeing our name in that synagogue was thrilling. It gave me a very moving sense of my own history.”

  In the small Montgomery park where Mark walks his dogs, Baptist church “captains” run around proselytizing, asking if you are Christian and, if so, have you been “saved,” and, finally, if you are not a Baptist. If you aren’t Christian or don’t believe in God, they’ll press a red sticker onto your lapel, meaning that you are on your way to hell. If you are Christian but not saved or a Baptist, then you get a yellow sticker, meaning you might be saved from the lake of fire if you eventually see the light; and if you are both saved and a Baptist, then you get a green sticker, meaning that the path to heaven is wide open for you, heaven being severely “restricted,” like country clubs, golf courses, and professorships used to be.

  Because Mark is a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, he and his family are targeted by the white supremacist hate groups whose activities the center monitors. Their house is surrounded by television cameras, their images constantly on view by security people at the center. A police car is always parked near his house, sometimes with a cop inside, sometimes not, but hopefully threatening enough to keep the bad boys away. My son and his family are mostly unruffled (for how else could they live?) but, even though I’m enormously proud of the work he and the center are engaged in, I fear for their lives. In many ways, being in the present American South is like being in present-day Poland. Hatreds seethe in both populations, sometimes expressed, sometimes in abeyance. My body becomes more rigid, more fearful, seemingly always on guard for signs of injustice.

  Well known and justifiably celebrated for his even-handed reporting of hate incidents that sprout up all over the country, so far Mark has been tolerated by the dangerous, gun-toting people who inhabit white supremacist militias, and by venomous interviewers on Fox News and other Tea Party crackpots. His bravery, clear-mindedness, and fine writing skills; his powers of concentration and long, hard, daily hours of work bring me great pleasure and enormous pride.

  Unlike me, an emotional ranter by nature, my son prefers judgment based on scholarship, the seriousness displayed in academic historical studies. Even though I agree that a well-written scholarly work has its special seductiveness and charm, a look back into history, not to speak of ongoing events, is based largely on personal interpretation and is thus trustworthy only up to a point. I respect my son’s love of “serious” tomes, but I wish he trusted fiction as a way of truth telling as much as he trusts nonfiction.

  In Warsaw he was invited to visit the then-nearly-completed Museum of Jewish History whose construction had not given me great hope for the re-education of an anti-Semitic public, whereas Mark was capable of seeing it as a promising step forward. “I like your ability to not pre-judge it,” I tell him. “I wish I could think of it as positively as you do.”

  Then Mark tells me that while he and Carol sat in an outdoor café in the great Market Square of Krakow, they witnessed a huge demonstration organized by a very popular reactionary radio station, with thousands of marchers high-stepping and singing patriotic songs, holding up red and white Polish flags and signs proclaiming that Poland is for the Poles only.

  Mark and Sarah’s mother, from whom they inherited half their genes, was an Episcopalian from Tulsa, Oklahoma and, in spite of my children’s being born in Paris and Mallorca, they are both American in a way that I am not, and thus much more distant from the history that I carry around with me, including not only the traumas but the sense of not belonging.

  When Sarah flies East for a visit, we harness our dogs and head into town, Gabriel stopping as always for a sniff at his usual pee stops, Sarah and Zelda going on ahead. We get off the cement path leading away from the State House and sit down on the grass, wonderful flower smells all around us. “My memories of sitting at a long table at the Plainfield Grange for our political Seders are lovely,” Sarah tells me when I steer the conversation to our mutual sense of belonging. “They were full of family and friends, a sweet part of my history.” We lie down next to each other, my beautiful daughter’s head on my shoulder. “My memories of sitting at a long table in Greece or Italy with Mama and Peter, on the boat or wherever,” she says after a few moments of silence, “were very different. I belonged there only by the skin of my teeth, battling for recognition. With everyone at the table dead drunk, I’d fall asleep in my chair. It was awful.” She settles Zelda, who is sniffing the fragran
t grass. “I love being part of a warm, inclusive, judgmental, argumentative tribe. Even though those Plainfield Seders were pretty outrageous, even comical in retrospect with their political correctness and liberation theology, they did follow a Haggadah especially re-written for lefty occasions such as ours.”

  “I am a Jew,” Sarah says, surprising me a little with the vehemence of her statement. “I love the Jewish world with its warmth and joy in discussing everything, never taking anything for granted. I love that. As for the property in Krakow,” she says, “I have zero feelings about it. All I know is your lifelong attitude about Poland.”

  Even when she was quite little, my beautiful daughter stumbled in a dark room, knocking over blocks she had put together during the day. The first time Joan made me aware of Sarah’s apparent night blindness, a terrible dread filled my body, perhaps my first feeling about the inevitability of something loosely defined as destiny. The worst of it was thinking that this little beauty, a little “Brigitte Bardot,” according to my father, would go blind.

  Upon graduating from college, Mark’s first job was as labor reporter for the Hammond Times of Indiana. On one of his visits home, I took him to a small party of artists and art supporters. He could not contain his disdain the next morning at breakfast, telling me that he would have preferred a father who was a labor organizer rather than an artist—a poignant memory that now makes me smile, remembering that wonderful young man, smitten by his growing importance in the journalism world. It hurt at the time. As for my daughter, surely she would have preferred a father who did not pass his blindness on to her.

  Just as Mark would have preferred Saul Alinsky as a father, Sarah deserved a father free of this dread gene and, being stuck with it, one who did not suck up all the attention at a time when teenage Sarah needed all the attention she could get, as well as a strong and resolute father. Not only was she living with my emotional absence, more accurately a sporadic presence, she was devastated by her mother’s abandonment and neglect in Greece, which created an unfillable well.

  None of us knew much about happy families. Joan and I came from families that each of us felt compelled to flee and, having done so, we played out whatever seductive examples came to our juvenile, adventurous minds, living, we thought, like D. H. and Frieda Lawrence, Gerald and Sara Murphy and the Lost Generation admirers they attracted. Joan, also an only child, did everything she could to get away from her Oklahoma mother and father, to the extent of marrying a Jewish refugee artist, about as far from her origins as possible; while Charlotte, who came into my life later, ran from her own dysfunctional family, which included a despised mother, a glorified father, and four brothers: the slumlord Irwin who, filthy rich, spent time in prison; a brother who was poisoned while in the Navy during World War II and presumed dead; another who was a docile part-time archivist; and Jerry, who spent his entire life in Israel, a righteous life-long kibbutznik, the only one she truly loved. Still, Charlotte and I tried hard to coalesce around our kids, house, and friends and, if nothing else, succeeded in creating the look of stability.

  When Sarah reminds me of our times at the Museum of Modern Art or watching Mamet’s A Life in the Theater in the Village or sitting next to each other at another performance of The Nutcracker, I beam, thrilled to recall instances of sharing so many things when they were young.

  “Papa, you were a huge force in my life,” Sarah says. “You were very loving when you wanted to be. You sat with me for hours on those brightly colored couches in the living room, listening to Mozart. I always knew that you loved me. You let me sit on your lap and lean my ear into your neck and listen to your after-dinner coffee go down your throat. You let me fluff up your hair and make you look like a clown.” We move into the kitchen where Sarah makes us tea. Even though she chides herself for having been clunky, in fact she moves with enormous grace. “You were present and loving when you were there. Charlotte became more jealous of your time, and you were more involved in either going blind or your friends. Mark and I used to joke, ‘Here comes another best friend into Papa’s life.’”

  “The best friends were as essential as sunlight, and the oncoming blindness consumed all my attention.”

  Our house was a welcoming haven. In the course of nearly thirty years, nothing gave me more pleasure than bringing gifts for the house or fixing its endless list of deteriorating parts, some as fundamental as foundation walls, some ornamental, like the almost-Tiffany chandelier saved from the wreckage of a colonial revival house on Boston’s Beacon Hill, which then cast its warm yellow-orange light on the dining table. My old Vermont farmhouse grew more beautiful and welcoming every year. The kitchen was a blend of rosy cherrywood cabinets, pounded iron hinges and knobs, tiled counters, a butcher-block peninsula under green-shaded hanging lights.

  At Thanksgiving dinner on Richardson Street, Mark says, “Remember when you took me to that opera? We went to a restaurant before, the time you introduced me to calves’ brains. Can’t find them so easily anymore,” my son says, then remembers the opera we saw, “The Love for Three Oranges. And that movie, one of the first made by a black director, Melvin Van Peebles’s Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song.”

  Looking back at moments with Mark and Sarah brings me great joy and comfort. It reassures me that, however flawed my fathering was, my children and I shared many memorable times, and that being a decent father does not require learning by example. All in all, the Potok survivors, a few in Australia, one in Sweden, my dearest cousin and her family in London, Mark, Sarah, and I, aren’t doing too badly. As a matter of fact, we are privileged in countless ways.

  Mark and Sarah’s children—Anna, Rachel, and Nickie—have no contact with my old world, its story a foggy irrelevance. On the other hand, I can imagine a future descendant, maybe even with a different surname, who might be attracted by any of the family’s twentieth- and twenty-first-century dramas. One day, one of them might receive a call from Artur’s son in Krakow that the recovery and sale of the Stradomska Street property has been accomplished and a large sum of money will be routed to their bank accounts.

  11

  REPARATIONS

  1.

  Three short e-mails arrive from Edward Prokocimer’s son in Israel, Miron Prokocimer, who wrongly inherited the Stradomska Street property. The first sounds mildly uninterested:

  “I have received a mail from my cousin P. Prokocimer regarding the property located in Stradom 13 Krakow,” he writes. “Many years ago I have approached the issue on behalf of my late mother. Many of the facts which Mr. Borowsky [who is he?] has mentioned in his letter were not known to me. I have stopped dealing with this issue years ago. I am not interested in the matter in any way, and I do not want any part in this claim. I will be more than glad to meet you in the future, and regain contact with the remaining Prokocimer family members.”

  The next e-mail states that he expects an immediate answer from me, writing that he thinks it important that he and I have direct contact concerning this matter. “Notably I have a different information regarding the tragic death of Paulina Prokocimer-Potok H”YD during the Holocaust,” he writes. “I am really looking forward to hear from you. Please answer. As stated yesterday you do not have any conflict of interests with me regarding the building in Krakow. The same is true with Phillipe Prokocimer and his siblings.”

  Another note arrives, in a surprisingly friendly tone. He writes: “Hello Andrew, It is really exciting to have found you! We are true cousins of second degree!” He attaches a photograph. “Is the man on the right side of the photo your father?” he asks. It was not. “The lady on the left and the gentleman next to her are my late parents: Helena and Dr. Edward Prokocimer. The picture must have been taken sometime in the early thirties. Shabbat shalom, Miron.”

  I forward the Miron correspondence to Artur and Basia, who then write the following to Miron Prokocimer:

  “I am contacting you on behalf of Mr. Artur Bobrowski and Mr. Marcin Kosiorkiewicz—who represent your cousin
—Mr. Andrew Potok. As you already know, there are pending proceedings in Krakow Court with regard to Paulina Prokocimer and her siblings’ inheritance (one half of a tenement located in Krakow), and more specifically—regarding to the change of the old court’s decision. The actual title book appoints only you and your mother, which is/was an effect of a mistake from 1940s. As result of the actual proceedings, the ownership will be newly split as follows:

  • one-fourth for Andrew Potok,

  • one-eighth for you and your mother,

  •one-eighth for Bruno Prokocimer’s children.

  “All parties—as natural heirs—are involved and must participate. Having said that, we kindly ask you to provide contact details to your attorney in Poland, and in case you don’t have any, your physical address for receipt of court’s correspondence. Thank you very much upfront.

  “Our client mentioned, you are not interested in this matter, which seems kind of incomprehensible, since there is no conflict between the parties, but only a mistakenly disclosed ownership title (to you and your mother). Thank you.”

  Basia then writes me with the numbers:

  “Further to our yesterday’s e-mail, we wanted you to know that the property should generate an income of approximately ~10–15,000 USD (brutto)/per month. Keeping it simple, it is about ~ 100,000 USD / per year (after taxes & other costs). According to the Polish law, the building’s administrator is obligated (if required) to present all settlements of accounts for the past 10 years, and repay old incomes. Assuming that the property generated about ~500,000 USD in the last five years and additional ~ 250,000 USD in the previous five years (2003–2008), Artur thinks that you and your cousins theoretically should be paid ~ 300–400,000 USD. We want you to know, Andrew, that Miron (Marian) Prokocimer is appointed in the Land Register Book of the tenement. If he responds to your e-mail, please ask him kindly, if he has ever received any profits out of the property rents, and if not, if any administrator has ever presented him reports concerning monthly or yearly income. We want him to know and realize, that you are aware of all these information.”