Mosaic

by Diane Armstrong

  Little Andzia used to run upstairs to Grandmother Ryfka’s, her heavy fringe bobbing over dark eyes which missed nothing. Seeing the candy box on the sideboard, she used to ask her for a sweet but she rarely got one. ‘But you gave some to Aunty Berta’s children!’ Andzia would complain.

  ‘That’s because Aunty Berta is poor and her children never see sweets. Your mother is well off, so you don’t need them,’ her grandmother told her. Berta was badly off because her husband preferred drinking mead to working. ‘Uncle was…Uncle was…he wasn’t rich,’ Aunty Andzia falters. She doesn’t want to say that he drank.

  For my great-grandfather Abraham, Krakow was a wonderful place for a holiday, but he didn’t want to live there. He missed Szczakowa, especially his business, although he’d left the running of the store to his son Herman. Although his wife didn’t want to leave Krakow, he insisted on going home and so Ryfka packed her bags regretfully and went back with him.

  But before long she was back. Unable to settle down in the small provincial town, she braved her husband’s displeasure, packed her bags once more, and returned to Krakow. This time, however, there was no room in Sebastiana Street, so Lieba found her mother a room in a widow’s house in Agnieszka Street. From the moment Ryfka laid her deep-set dark eyes on her landlady, she had it in for her. ‘May God forgive me, but my fingers tingle when I look at that woman. She’s as ugly as sin,’ she shuddered.

  Before long she was saying, ‘When she brings my coffee in the morning, she stares at me with those malevolent eyes of hers. I’m sure she’s going to give me the evil eye.’

  Although Lieba considered this to be ‘bube meise’ or old wives’ tales, she tried to reason with her. ‘But Mama, why would she do that? She has nothing against you, she’s a respectable woman. Perhaps you’re imagining it.’

  But no amount of reassurance could shake Ryfka’s conviction that the woman would bring her bad luck. ‘She’ll be the death of me, you’ll see,’ she insisted. ‘I’m sure I’m going to die in this room.’

  Not long afterwards, my great-grandmother started getting headaches. Looking at her daughter meaningfully, she nodded with some satisfaction despite her pain: ‘You didn’t believe me, Lieba, but that’s what I’ve been telling you. That woman has cast the evil eye on me.’

  When Ryfka’s headache persisted, Lieba became so concerned that she called Professor Eckstein, who recommended hot compresses. ‘So much for your evil eye, mama,’ Lieba teased her as she applied a compress to her mother’s frowning brow. ‘You’ll see, bilineder, in a few days your head will be like new, God willing.’

  Ryfka gave her daughter a sceptical look. ‘From your mouth to God’s ear,’ she sighed.

  But instead of improving, the headaches grew worse. Within a short time, Ryfka died in that room on Agnieszka Street, just as she had predicted. It was November 1917, just after the Bolshevik Revolution which shook the world, but this event went almost unnoticed in the Baldinger household which was mourning for Ryfka Spira.

  Lieba had a black outfit made for her mother’s funeral at an expensive salon in Krakow. Andzia, who was thirteen years old at the time, watched her mother getting ready for the funeral. Usually energetic and matter-of-fact, Lieba sobbed so much that she could hardly fasten her blouse. ‘Why are you crying so much, Mama?’ Andzia asked. ‘After all, Grandmother was so old!’

  Wiping the large tears that rolled down her cheeks, Lieba said, ‘You’re too young to understand. Old or young, a mother is a mother and can never be replaced.’

  Aunty Andzia can still remember the horror she felt when Lieba put her outfit on the floor, rumpled it and tore the lapel before putting it on. ‘Mama, your new suit!’ she cried.

  ‘That’s the custom, to show humility when we’re in mourning,’ Lieba explained. To Andzia, even then, spoiling a smart outfit was sacrilege.

  By the time the war ended in 1918, instead of elation, there was chaos and uncertainty in Krakow. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had collapsed and suddenly there was a dangerous power void. But politics abhors a vacuum. The nation of Poland, which had not existed since 1772, now arose like Phoenix out of the ashes of the burnt-out empire. The creation of the independent Polish state resulted in popular euphoria, but the proud Polish eagle had claws as well as wings.

  The new atmosphere of aggressive patriotism increasingly defined itself by marginalising and scapegoating the Jews. Already during World War I, there had been pogroms against Jews who were blamed for food shortages and escalating prices. In 1918 a wave of demonstrations hit Krakow and a mob comprised of students, General Haller’s legionnaires and various rabble-rousers rampaged down Grodzka Street where Lieba’s sisters Berta and Karola had their shops. They looted market stalls, tore the beards of old Jews, set houses on fire and bludgeoned people, while policemen looked the other way. Anti-Semitic slogans and ditties echoed all over the city: ‘Father Leo drowned in the lake because he sold the Jews some cake!’ ‘The Jews have millions but we’ve got Legions, let’s show them what our Legions can do!’ The rabble-rousers jeered and brandished sticks as they shattered shop fronts and kicked the shopkeepers.

  The Baldingers had been Jewish citizens of the Austro-Hungarian Empire but they were about to become Jews in a Polish state. All over Europe, the swords of war had been replaced by ploughshares, but those with sensitive hearing could already detect the sound of cymbals clashing in the distance.

  CHAPTER 6

  Soon after Poland gained its independence, Avner lost his. One week after the Armistice was signed in November 1918, he married his sweetheart, Hela Majerczyk.

  Abraham Majerczyk’s kosher sausages were famous throughout Krakow, but for many of his customers, the girl who served behind the counter was far more delectable than the salamis she sold. Hela resembled the early Hollywood movie stars, a plump, strikingly pretty girl with large blue eyes, masses of wavy hair the colour of shiny new chestnuts, and a smile that cheered up the most miserable customers. There was a lushness in Hela’s beauty, a promise of sensuality in her soft mouth, and a gaiety that attracted everyone she met.

  Avner, who had an eye for a pretty face until the day he died, fell madly in love. His postcards from Austria palpitated with longing, and during his long leave from the army he bought enough salami to feed an entire army. Before long Hela’s heart was racing whenever he came in. Dashing in his high-collared army jacket and peaked cap, Avner had a cheeky way of looking deep into her eyes in a way that made her blush right down to her little toes. She was entranced by his easy flow of conversation, effortless compliments and inexhaustible fund of stories which made her peal with laughter.

  Hela was not just a pretty face. From the age of sixteen she had been running her father’s busy shop on her own. When in 1914 her father had moved to Holland to escape conscription, he took the five younger children with him and left his eldest daughter to look after the business. Hela, who was an excellent pupil, never forgave her mother for not letting her finish high school. ‘Why didn’t Mother look after the shop herself instead of taking me out of school?’ she used to say.

  On the other side of the globe in Connecticut, Hela’s daughter Wanda, who has been telling me about her mother and their stormy relationship, is suddenly struck by an interesting thought. ‘Mother always blamed her mother for taking her out of school. Why wasn’t she angry with her father? After all, he was equally responsible.’ Suddenly another insight takes her by surprise. ‘You know, I’m just like her!’ my cousin exclaims. ‘She blamed her mother all her life, and I’ve been doing exactly the same thing!’

  Avner and Hela’s wedding festivities lasted for one week. Avner was resplendent in tails, a stiff wing-collar shirt with four black buttons, and silk top hat; and Hela, with her delicate face, plump little figure and masses of curls, looked enchanting in her lace gown and long filmy veil. It was a large wedding—the relatives alone on both sides must have added up to over a hundred guests, with all the cousins on the Spira and Baldinger side, as well
as Hela’s large family.

  Fridzia, the youngest of the eleven Baldinger children, remembers attending her big brother’s wedding. She was a five-year-old with a round face and a winning smile, and everyone made a fuss of her because of her sore knee. Two months before, she’d come home from kindergarten in her black shoes, ribbed stockings and red overcoat trimmed with fur. When she had tried to clamber up onto a bench to see what was cooking on the big tiled stove, the bench had overbalanced and she’d fallen into the basin of boiling water which Anielcia had left on the floor.

  For weeks her father Daniel was the only one she would allow near her scalded knee. A faraway look comes into my aunt’s dark eyes while she talks. ‘I remember sitting in the little bath while Daddy tried to get me to straighten my leg bit by bit, because it hurt. As I straightened it, and the knee started to disappear underwater, he’d say, “Big fishy, little fishy,” and then, “Look! Fishy all gone!”’ Her eyes tremble with tears. ‘He was so patient with us children.’

  She is the only one of the Baldinger children who recalls Daniel as an affectionate father. ‘My first memory is sitting on Father’s lap at the age of two or three and peeing on him! I can still remember the gentle touch of his hand on my head when he stroked me.’ Thirteen years earlier, when my father, at the age of three, had wanted to sit on Daniel’s lap, he was rebuked because this privilege was reserved for babies, but being the last, Fridzia was allowed to be a baby as long as she liked.

  By the time her brother Avner got married, Fridzia’s knee had almost healed and everyone smiled indulgently when this chubby little girl clambered up onto a chair in her black taffeta dress with flounces edged with pink, her fat little legs in black patent pumps and white stockings, beamed at the upturned faces of her relatives and recited a poem which she remembers to this day.

  As we talk in her flat in Krakow, which is still furnished with her sister Karola’s sideboard, Lunia’s divan and her brother Jerzy’s white-painted kitchen cupboard, this short plump woman with straight grey hair and a beaming smile recites the ditty she sang for her family almost eighty years ago, probably in the same sing-song way. ‘All gather round on this special date, for a wedding we shall celebrate. Let us show how much we care, and congratulate the happy pair!’

  It was Fridzia’s older sister Rozia who taught her this, and all the other poems she knew. ‘Rozia kept me in such a stern grip that you can’t imagine! She was like a mother, only more strict. I used to howl like a banshee because I didn’t want to learn all these verses but she wouldn’t relent. She was always angry and upset and I copped it because I was the youngest. It was because she was deaf. But underneath it all, she was very good-hearted.’ My aunt gives a deep sigh, recalling Rozia’s tragic fate.

  Unlike Fridzia, Matus, the youngest Baldinger son, did not attend his big brother’s wedding. Distressing experiences linger longer and more vividly in the memory than happy ones, and even at the age of eighty, Matus, who has been called Marcel ever since he arrived in Paris in 1928, could still remember how he felt when the whole family went to Avner’s wedding and he was the only one left behind. Even now, decades later, that memory clouds his amber-coloured eyes. ‘Perhaps I’d ripped my trousers and didn’t have anything suitable to wear,’ he muses. ‘Or maybe it was after I’d thrown a glass which cut Fridzia’s chin. I was always in trouble. One day Father tied me to a chair so I couldn’t run away.’ Marcel is a big, generous-hearted man with enough warmth to thaw an iceberg, but anger simmers just beneath the surface waiting to explode, like a dormant volcano. ‘I wanted to go to Avner’s wedding so badly that to make sure I stayed home, my father tied me to the door handle with a rope and left me there,’ he recalls.

  One year later, however, Matus was allowed to attend his sister Lunia’s wedding. The reception was held at the elegant Hotel Londres. As Szymon Spira, one of Lieba’s brothers, had married the daughter of the hotel owners, the family probably got special rates. A beatific smile crosses Aunty Lunia’s wrinkled face, and her papery hands flutter with emotion when she recalls her wedding day. ‘Oh, my wedding!’ she exclaims, and immediately she’s swept away on a flood of euphoria.

  For a moment the hated convalescent home disappears and Lunia is twenty-two again, radiant in her bridal gown, like the brides she used to watch as a child. Her faded grey eyes gleam inside their crumpled pouches as she declaims in an awed whisper, ‘What a wedding that was! You see, I was the first Baldinger daughter to get married.’

  Almost thirty years after the china merchant had told Daniel about a marriageable young woman in Szczakowa, another shadchen stepped up to him in the Chevre Tilem Synagogue after morning prayers. ‘Reb Danil, you have a marriageable daughter, and I know a respectable young man from a good family who would make her a good husband,’ he told him.

  Lunia was already at an age when most girls were already married, so she listened with interest when her father reported the shadchen’s offer. She still read love stories and yearned for romance, but her mother never stopped trying to bring her down to earth. ‘Luniu, you’ll find out that life isn’t like novels,’ Lieba used to sigh. ‘Especially when you’re married. You’ll have to learn to accept what comes your way and adjust to your husband’s wishes.’ Lunia looked sharply at her mother. There was no way she was going to marry a man whose wishes included having a baby every year and running her life.

  Lunia’s first meeting with Berus took place at her parents’ home in Sebastiana Street. He was a serious-looking young man of twenty-nine with shiny glasses, but she liked his quiet manner, dimpled chin and nicely shaped mouth. ‘I’m a lucky woman because I married the man I loved, while my sister Andzia, on the other hand…’ my aunt says, and looks at Andzia’s daughter who has accompanied me to the nursing home. Krysia is pointedly staring into the distance, her jaw set in an angry line. She is furious with her aunt because she feels betrayed and can hardly bear to look at her. ‘Everyone loved Berus,’ Aunty Lunia is saying. ‘You loved him too, Krysienka,’ she says in a honeyed voice, trying to woo her angry niece.

  Krysia nods. ‘That’s true. I did. And if he hadn’t asked me to take care of you before he died, I wouldn’t have put up with you all these years.’

  Lunia gives her niece a long pained look, and raises her pencilled eyebrows. ‘That’s news to me,’ she sighs.

  The first time they met, Berus Selinger’s sister impressed Lunia almost as much as her suitor did. While they sat in the Baldingers’ sitting room, near the piano with the flowered shawl thrown over it, trying to make polite conversation, Lunia’s eyes kept straying to the sister’s diamond ring and diamond earrings. To this day she can’t forget them. ‘Her diamonds were this big,’ she says, making a circle of her crooked thumb and index finger.

  After Berus left, Lunia’s heart was thumping. ‘Mamunciu,’ she said with a blush, ‘if Mr Selinger wants me, I’d be very happy to have him, because he really appealed to me.’

  Lieba was shocked at this unmaidenly expression of desire. ‘Luniu!’ she rebuked her daughter. ‘One doesn’t say such things!’

  Lunia didn’t take rebukes lightly. ‘Mamunciu,’ she replied tartly, ‘I’m not telling strangers, I’m only telling you so that you’ll know how I feel.’

  Lieba looked doubtful. ‘But you know, your suitor doesn’t have any profession,’ she pointed out. Berus had done a year or two of economics but had interrupted his course and become a railway clerk so that he wouldn’t be conscripted into the army.

  Lunia wasn’t put off. ‘It doesn’t matter, I like him and I’ll be happy to eat dry bread with him!’ Now she giggles girlishly at herself. ‘See, I told you I was brought up on romantic novels!’

  When the betrothal was announced and Berus was invited to meet the rest of the family, Lunia noticed that he was looking at the necks of the older female relatives and his expression made it clear that he didn’t like what he saw. Lieba, her sisters Berta and Karola, and Auntie Pepcia, Uncle Ignacy’s wife, all had thick necks that bil
lowed beneath their chins. Lunia could tell that he was wondering whether his fiancée would end up looking like her mother and her aunts.

  The following day Lunia took more care than usual dressing for her date with Berus, selecting a three-quarter jacket in forest green and a matching skirt with an inverted pleat. To complete the outfit, she wore a dashing little hunting hat that she’d made from one of her father’s hats and wore at a rakish angle over her forehead. She didn’t forget to drape one of those new tricot scarfs to hide her neck, but as they walked along the dappled avenues in the Planty Gardens, she could feel Berus’s eyes boring into her neck through the scarf.

  Laughing, she points to a faint scar on her neck. ‘From that day on, I was always self-conscious about my neck. I had it operated on here in Tel-Aviv in 1942, but the surgeon messed it up and severed a nerve and for a time I couldn’t even talk.’

  Convinced that appearance was everything, Lunia spent much of her time looking into dress shops, poring over fashion magazines and studying how the couturiers achieved their effect. She knew exactly how her wedding dress of French silk should be cut to make her look slimmer and more willowy, how the train should make a shell-like circle on the floor behind her, and how her veil should drift around her face and flow down her back, accentuating the elegant fall of the skirt. She was very explicit that the train be wide enough to twirl as she danced, but not long enough to trip over it.

  The dressmaker was accustomed to Miss Lunia’s detailed instructions and her gimlet glance which picked up the slightest imperfection. But the veil was made by a high-class couturière who disliked this self-important young woman with the bossy manner.

  When Lunia saw the veil for the first time on her wedding day, she couldn’t believe her eyes. Surely this flimsy scrap of gauze wasn’t her bridal veil. White faced with anger, she shouted at the dressmaker, ‘I told you exactly what I wanted. What is this supposed to be? I don’t know whether to put it on my head or blow my nose on it. That’s not a veil, it’s a handkerchief with four corners flapping over my face! You did this to spite me!’ she stormed. No amount of explaining that long veils were old-fashioned while shorter ones were more chic could placate the furious bride. Shaking with fury she put the ridiculous little gauzy scarf on her carefully coiled hair, dried her eyes, put her chin up, and stepped outside.