13 Stradomska Street

by Andrew Potok

  On the one hand, we have greed and the yearning for power; on the other we have the Bach Musical Offering and The Art of Fugue, Homer’s Odyssey, Shakespeare’s King Lear, the Velazquez Las Meninas. When I sit in my comfortable living room and listen to a late Beethoven quartet or piano sonata, to Mahler’s Das Lied von der Erde, all the pain and hatred leave me. I am immersed in the truth of art. I know that the species I am part of has attained these extraordinary transcendent levels of being. They fill me with wonder and deep satisfaction.

  5.

  As a stiff early winter wind shakes the bedroom windows in the middle of a sleepless night, I again conjure up my grandparents.

  “When you saw it coming, did you turn toward god or did you already know that god was dead and that nothing could save you?” I ask.

  “Jendrush, dear Jendrush,” Paulina says, using my little boy diminutive, “this is a complicated question. We were not sure. We wanted to believe in something but it became more and more difficult. Mostly we were—how do they say it, Solek?—yes, agnostic. And I think all our children came to the same conclusion.”

  I tell them that piety and anti-Semitism still thrive. “Even back in Vermont where some of the strangest beliefs are tolerated, you better watch out before you tell anyone you’re an atheist.”

  “We were agnostics but word of this did not pass through the front door,” my grandfather Solomon says.

  I am relieved. This is my family. “There is so much I want to know. What did you think about Freud, Marx, Tolstoy, Shakespeare, Moliere, Mickiewicz? Did you have a favorite painting, a Rembrandt or a Titian? Did you love Schubert or Viennese waltzes? Surely Chopin.”

  “He read Tolstoy and Chekhov in Russian,” my grandmother says, nudging her husband. “I loved those French painters—you know—those boating parties, the girls who kicked their legs so high, the flowers.”

  “If only the world turned out the way you wanted,” I tell them, almost in tears, “you would have finished your lives so differently, possibly with a quiet death at home, surrounded by your children and by me, we who love you.”

  “It does sometimes happen like that,” my grandmother says.

  A poem I love pops into my head and I get out of bed, go to my computer to get it right. I find the document, Wyslawa Szymborska’s “On Death, Without Exaggeration,” and my computer reads it aloud.

  It can’t take a joke,

  find a star, make a bridge.

  It knows nothing about weaving, mining,

  farming,

  building ships, or baking cakes . . .

  Sometimes it isn’t strong enough

  to swat a fly from the air.

  Many are the caterpillars

  that have outcrawled it . . .

  6.

  At the end of this summery day in October, I feel safe and content. Loie and I have made a succulent braised pot roast for dinner. Tomorrow a first-class chamber music concert awaits us in town and the World Series is about to begin.

  In the middle of the night, I wake from a dream in which I am trying to find my way home in a rural landscape. Even though my eyesight is intact, it’s getting late and I want to get home before nightfall. Some paths are familiar; most are not. Every once in a while, I come upon a house, knock on a door, and ask directions. Each time, a man steps out of his house to point the way, nodding toward a small path or no path at all, and always a steeper climb. Each man is kind, encouraging, eager to help. New hills appear every time I think I have come to the end, which somehow doesn’t dissuade me from going on. Finally, I hear Loie’s voice in the distance. “You’re almost home,” she says.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My return to Poland, the basis for this book, would not have been possible without the extraordinary help of my wife, Loie Morse, who suffered the indignities of March weather in Krakow with me and helped me navigate the memories of my early life that emerged during that visit. Loie kept me sane and safe not only in Poland but also at home in Vermont during the nearly three years it took to write this book.

  With his intelligence, compassion, and generosity, my friend Mathew Rubin helped me manage the volatile emotions that this writing provoked. And then there is Richard Witte whose hours of listening to my book-related kvetches and responding with friendship and intelligence also made a huge difference in whatever quality this book achieves.

  This book has gone through several transformations of structure and content, reflecting my slowly evolving interpretation of history, both personal and political. I am grateful to Chris Lynch and Sally Brady for their early editing help, but most of all I thank Mary Beth Hinton for her masterful editing of the emergent final version. The generous reading and suggestions offered by Jay Neugeboren, Elinor Langer, and Lawrence Weschler greatly benefited this book.

  Without the technical assistance of the Vermont Division for the Blind and especially the patience and love of Geoff and Peggy Howard, I don’t believe that I could have managed the difficulties that blindness imposes on the writing process. My stepson Jed Clifford was of great help when computer problems arose. Last, but assuredly not least, I thank The Seeing Eye, a magnificent resource for those of us within the blind population who choose to be guided by its beautifully trained guide dogs. The last two of the five dogs who have brought safety and love to my life—the now-retired noble Gabriel and the new black Lab wonder, Z—were both trained by the very best, Walt Sutton and Shannon Deuschle.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ANDREW POTOK was a successful visual artist until he lost his sight in his forties. Subsequently he authored several important books: Ordinary Daylight: Portrait of An Artist Going Blind, about his loss of eyesight and its impact on work, identity, and personal relationships; My Life with Goya, a novel about a young Jewish artist’s life in America following World War II; A Matter of Dignity: Changing the World of the Disabled, portraits of therapists and activists who worked to more fully integrate disabled persons into mainstream American life; and My Father’s Keeper, a novel about a father-son relationship marred by hatred and betrayal. He lives in Vermont.