Mosaic

by Diane Armstrong

  Adam, too, was day-dreaming. He was looking forward to seeing their Aunt Karola whose sexy figure and flirtatious nature he’d found so exciting when she’d visited them in Antwerp the previous year. Avner had enjoyed showing off his attractive sister around town and had taken her on a shopping spree which had made Wanda intensely jealous. ‘He’s like a lover taking his young mistress around,’ she thought resentfully, wishing that her father would lavish the same kind of attention on her.

  To this day Adam can’t forget the way Karola kept pulling at a silk blouse which she’d recently had made. ‘I can’t understand it,’ she said. ‘It fitted perfectly a few weeks ago.’ Next morning, she burst out laughing. ‘I’ve figured out why it didn’t fit. I forgot to wear a brassiere!’ After fifty years, Adam’s eyes light up with devilry. ‘I sneaked up behind her and flicked the back of her brassiere so that it came undone! Imagine what a superb figure she had, that she didn’t know she wasn’t wearing a bra!’

  Adam tells me this when we meet for the first time at his sister Wanda’s house in Connecticut in 1990. My cousin is seventy years old, and his smooth white hair and royal blue eyes remind me of my father whose nephew he was. A stroke has left Adam’s speech slightly slurred but hasn’t affected his astonishing memory. Waving his hand deprecatingly whenever he can’t pronounce a word, he mimics himself good-naturedly. ‘You see how I talk, burrrr…’ he shrugs.

  As the Pontiac sped through Germany, Wanda looked at her father, so confident behind the wheel in his fashionable, well-cut suit. Before leaving the house, he always brushed his homburg with his special hat brush and made sure that his black and white shoes were immaculate. He was proud of Hela’s appearance too, loved to choose clothes for her busty, overweight figure, and discouraged her from dieting. ‘Losing weight will spoil your lovely face,’ he used to say. It was a prophetic statement. Many years later, Hela’s severe dieting did more than spoil her face: it cost her her life.

  The accident happened out of the blue at a township called Neumark. As Avner sped around the bend, happily tooting his horn, a cyclist suddenly swerved in front of him. Avner rammed his foot on the brake, but at one hundred and twenty kilometres an hour the big Pontiac skidded across the road as if on skates, turned over a few times and landed on its side. For a long moment there was silence. Then a voice screamed, ‘My leg! My leg!’

  Adam had seen the accident coming and had tensed up so much that when the car careered out of control, his leg stuck out of the open window and became pinned under the car when it overturned. ‘You’re all standing on my leg! I can’t move it!’ he yelled. Hela’s face was white. Something hurt just below her throat and, holding her hand against her broken collarbone, she screamed, ‘Where is Adam’s leg?’ She couldn’t see it because it was trapped beneath the car.

  From his awkward position, Adam looked at the road. No sign of the cyclist. ‘The sonofabitch caused the accident and then ran away!’ he swore, partly from anger but also from pain, because all the skin had been flayed off his leg which resembled a lump of raw meat. Soon a big black Porsche pulled up, and its well-dressed occupants craned their necks to see through the broken glass. Using a crowbar, their liveried chauffeur lifted the car, helped to pull them out and offered to go for the police.

  By the time the policeman arrived, Hela and Avner had found the cyclist. He was lying in the ditch, unconscious. The local gendarme was an elderly man who was about to retire in a week’s time and grumbled that he didn’t need the hassle of wrecked cars, injured cyclists and foreigners who didn’t know how to drive.

  The ambulance took Adam, Hela and the cyclist to hospital, while the policeman escorted Avner to the courthouse. Shortly afterwards, the cyclist died of a broken skull. The situation looked bad for Avner, a foreign Jew involved in a fatal car accident. In the magistrate’s court the policeman asked his nationality and religion and as he wrote down Polnische Jude, Avner’s heart raced with anxiety. The magistrate was courteous. ‘You have nothing to worry about, mein Herr,’ he said. ‘Those stories about Germans being anti-Semitic are lies, but we have to keep you here until the hearing tomorrow morning.’

  The magistrate confiscated their passports and put them up at a hotel for the night, but they couldn’t rest because all evening people stomped up and down outside their room. When Avner became exasperated enough to put his head out of the door to see what was going on, he quickly closed it again, ashen-faced. Men in well-polished leather boots and peaked caps, with Nazi swastikas on their left arms, were striding along the corridor, greeting each other with snappy salutes and enthusiastic ‘Heil Hitlers!’ The room next door was the headquarters of the local Nazi party.

  The doctor who came back to check on Hela’s collarbone and change Adam’s dressing was a chatty fellow and Avner began to relax. ‘Are there any Jews in Neumark?’ he wanted to know.

  ‘Jawohl,’ the doctor replied. ‘One has a liquor store, the other is a grocer.’

  ‘And are they making a living?’ Avner asked. ‘I suppose that the grocer buys liquor from the wine merchant and the wine merchant buys groceries from the grocer?’ he said facetiously.

  The doctor looked at him in astonishment. ‘Bitte? What do you mean?’ he asked. ‘We all shop there!’ He too was anxious to dispel the idea of German anti-Semitism.

  Next morning, standing in the dock, Avner’s chest tightened with apprehension. Who knew what would happen to a Jew charged with killing a German citizen? Suddenly there was a flurry as the court officer announced that a witness had come forward to give evidence. It was the liveried chauffeur from the Porsche. Avner swallowed. His fate depended on this man.

  ‘I witnessed the whole accident,’ the chauffeur was saying. ‘It wasn’t the driver’s fault. The cyclist was weaving back and forth as if he was drunk and when the Pontiac tried to pass, he suddenly swerved in front of it. Herr Baldinger tried to avoid him but caught the rear wheel of the bicycle on his licence plate.’

  Avner breathed out again, hardly able to believe his luck, especially when the old policeman testified that the cyclist was the village drunkard. In spite of their testimonies, however, the magistrate decided that the case would have to be heard in court at a later date, and asked for 10 000 marks bail to allow them to continue their journey.

  Having regained his equanimity, Avner spoke up. ‘That’s out of the question. I don’t have that kind of money with me, I’m travelling with my family to visit my parents in Poland,’ he explained. To his relief, the judge accepted 3000 Belgian francs instead, which he placed neatly into a large white envelope. As they continued their interrupted journey, Avner mused that no matter how bad things seemed, it usually worked out well for him in the end.

  Before long, the Pontiac swung into Krakow’s labyrinth of narrow cobbled streets, and as usual when he visited his home town with his family, Avner pointed to the sombre fortress on Wawel Hill and the slow river that flowed beneath its ramparts. As the car slowed down along one of the narrow cobbled streets leading to his parents’ house, Wanda was upset to see barefoot urchins in tattered shirts running beside them, hands outstretched. She hadn’t seen beggars before, and as she looked around at the haggard women crouching along the pavements trying to sell their withered posies, and at the tired horses pulling old-fashioned black doroskys along the thoroughfares, she was glad she lived in Antwerp and not in this sad impoverished city.

  Avner’s visits always created great excitement in the family. He was jovial and generous and impressed everyone with his big car, lavish spending and entertaining stories. Life in the 1930s was hard for Daniel and Lieba but years seemed to fall off them when he was around.

  Their daughter Lunia couldn’t wait to show the visitors her luxurious apartment with its oak panelling, expensive Persian rugs, and bathroom with a separate little sink just for brushing your teeth. To this day my cousin Wanda can’t forget her aunt’s morning ritual. After Gizia the maid had served her breakfast in bed, she laced Lunia into her corset and then dropp
ed to the floor on her knees to pick up her mistress’s high-heeled shoes and ease her large feet into them.

  Lunia had prospered when her husband Berus had taken over the sausage casing business from Avner. With her shrewd direction and assistance, Berus used the basement of their home to package the merchandise and had gradually built up the business. ‘They did well because they were prepared to start small and wait until they’d built the business up, unlike my father who always had big ideas and wanted to get rich quick,’ says Adam.

  While Avner kept his family enthralled with stories about his enterprises and escapades, Wanda was falling in love with her cousin Tusiek, a skinny seventeen-year-old whose sense of humour kept her giggling helplessly. Like the rest of the family Tusiek was smitten with this vivacious girl whose raven tresses fell across her expressive face when she talked. Wanda revelled in the admiration of the whole family, especially her uncles who loved taking her out. Her Uncle Izio took her kayaking on the Vistula in Krakow; my father showed her around Wawel Castle; and Uncle Jerzy, who had a car agency at the time, took her and Tusiek for a drive in the countryside. While she and her cousin were kissing in the back seat, she glanced up and flushed scarlet when she saw Jerzy watching them in the rear-view mirror with an indulgent smile.

  To Adam’s relief, he was staying with Uncle Izio and Aunty Lola and not with his religious grandparents. Yom Kippur was approaching, and he was glad that, like his parents, Izio and Lola didn’t fast. Adam liked talking to his uncle about sport, while his new aunty Lola was excitingly frank about matters that he’d never heard adults mention before. When he remarked that Uncle Izio wasn’t wearing a wedding band, Lola, ever the realist, just shrugged. ‘Wearing a ring doesn’t mean anything,’ she said in her strong German accent. ‘If a man wants to pretend he isn’t married, all he has to do is just flick his ring off, like this, and that’s it!’

  One morning he noticed that she wore a nightgown, not pyjamas like his mother and sister, and he asked her about it. ‘Aunty Lola, you look so old-fashioned in that nightgown, why do you wear it?’

  She fixed her large dark eyes on him and shrugged. ‘It’s too much of a nuisance having to remove pyjamas in the middle of the night. Nightgowns are much easier, you just pull them up!’

  Soon after Yom Kippur, Avner and his family headed back to Antwerp but this time he chose a different route. After the car accident, he wanted to avoid Germany. Berlin was at a fever pitch of excitement because Benito Mussolini had just arrived, and Hitler was pulling out all stops to impress his guest with the might of the Third Reich. Like thousands of poisonous black spiders about to be released on an unsuspecting world, swastikas fluttered on scarlet banners all over the city. Tens of thousands of helmeted troops goosestepped with spinetingling precision, and an endless convoy of tanks and armoured trucks roared past while bands blared and ecstatic spectators roared approval for their Teutonic Messiah.

  Avner was enjoying the beautiful drive home past the jagged peaks of the Swiss Alps, but when he arrived home, bad news was awaiting him. The court in Neumark had issued a warrant for his arrest. Bail had been revoked and he was to stand trial for manslaughter. Several months later, however, he received an unexpected letter from Germany. Out of the large white envelope fluttered three banknotes, the same three 1000 Belgian franc bills that he’d lodged as bail! His trial had been cancelled because of an amnesty and they were returning his bail money.

  This incident, so typical of the reverses and reprieves that marked Avner’s life, added to his repertoire of anecdotes. He couldn’t get over the fact that although Nazis were confiscating Jewish property and stripping Jews of all their rights, in this isolated case they were keeping to the letter of the law and restoring to one Jew the small sum they’d taken from him legally. ‘They even returned my bail money in the original envelope!’ he used to say. ‘In Poland, they’d never find the envelope. In Belgium, the money would have disappeared. Such meticulous attention to detail could only happen in Germany!’

  CHAPTER 11

  Daniel was slowing up. At the table he often raised his trumpet to his ear to catch the conversation, and when strolling in the Planty Gardens he leaned more heavily on the shiny blackwood cane with its chased silver handle. But his gaze hadn’t lost its piercing clarity, he still had an air of distinction, and his houndstooth trousers still had their razor-sharp creases. When he wore the homburg elegantly tilted on his bald head, it was hard to believe that he was eighty-three years old.

  Unlike most of us who try to hide from God, Daniel had never ceased seeking Him out. He still rose at dawn, laid teffilin, and thanked the Almighty for the world which seemed more marvellous to him every day. Although on the rebbe’s advice he’d sold the house on Sebastiana Street to ease his financial situation, he and Lieba continued to live there and pay rent.

  Daniel had never sought power or position. Several years earlier, when his colleagues had offered to make him president or gabai of the Chevra Kadisha Burial Society, he’d declined the honour. ‘Being elected “gabai” is a fine thing,’ he told my father one day. ‘But to be voted out and become the “ausgabai”, that’s not so pleasant. I’d rather not become president than to become ex-president.’

  By 1938 my grandfather realised that the longer you live, the less life turns out as you expect. Over the years most of his dreams for his children had turned to dust. He’d longed to have children so that he could pass on the religious faith which had sustained him all his life, but in this he hadn’t succeeded.

  He had known who he was, while his sons knew what they didn’t want to be. Instead of becoming a rabbi and consecrating his mind to the service of God, his beloved Avner had devoted his talents to Mammon. None of the other sons found solace in the sacred Torah whose vision of perfection had inspired him throughout his life. None of them laid teffilin or kept kosher homes, but he accepted their right as adults to choose their own paths and never interfered in their lives.

  Apart from Rozia, none of his daughters were religious either. As a young girl, Lunia had once asked him, ‘Tatunciu, why do you believe in God?’ It was a daring question which verged on blasphemy but he gave her his considered answer. ‘Luniu, religion is not a matter for discussion,’ he said. ‘Either you believe or you don’t. But I would strongly urge you to believe.’ He knew that the believer was blessed in many ways, but to believe in God you had to transcend the limits of the physical world. Faith was beyond reason.

  With schooling too, the children had disappointed him. In spite of all the money he’d spent on private tutors over the years, most of them hadn’t finished high school. Apart from Hesiu, who’d educated himself as an adult, only Karola had matriculated and gone on to university. At the thought of his favourite daughter, Daniel checked the time on the fob watch hanging off the gold chain draped across his waistcoat. Although the newlyweds lived in Sosnowiec where Karola was still teaching, they visited every Sunday and lit up the house on Sebastiana Street with their light-heartedness. Lunia and Andzia had already arrived and Lieba was grumbling that Karola was an hour late for lunch and the roast chicken would be ruined.

  Karola was married to Stasiek Neufeld, an attorney she’d met while teaching in Sosnowiec. Stasiek was tall, dark, handsome and full of charm, and soon became a favourite with the whole family. According to Uncle Izio, who had a nostalgic smile on his face while he talked about his genial brother-in-law, Stasiek had been a prominent attorney in Sosnowiec who would have gone to the top of his profession if he hadn’t been Jewish. ‘He was offered a high position on condition that he converted to Catholicism, but my sister Karola told him that if he did that, she would no longer be his wife.’

  Finally the bell shrilled, and there she was, tall, slender and more radiant than ever, in peals of laughter at something that Stasiek had said. ‘The chicken has dried out,’ Lieba sighed but her son-in-law soon disarmed her. ‘I really can’t understand why we’re so late, Mother,’ he said with an innocent expression. ‘We woke up o
n the dot of one, jumped out of bed and drove to Krakow as fast as we could!’

  Turning to Lunia, he pointed to a small pimple on his wife’s face. Putting his arm affectionately around her shoulder, he said, ‘Don’t you agree I’m entitled to compensation? Even with the cheapest watch, you get a twelve-month guarantee, but I’ve only been married six months and this face is already marked!’

  While everyone laughed, including Lieba, Lunia was looking approvingly at the understated dress Karola wore with such an air of casual elegance, while Andzia thought how happy she and Stasiek looked together. Everyone loved this golden couple. Perhaps this adulation made them too trusting of others and too sure of themselves so that they weren’t prepared for the inhumanity that was soon to engulf the world.

  Sitting at the table with her in-laws, my mother liked to listen to her father-in-law whom she adored. ‘Daniel was a perfect gentleman, he had innate courtesy,’ she used to reminisce. ‘He always made me and the other daughters-in-law feel very welcome. That’s more than I could say for some of his daughters,’ she would add darkly. Whenever Lunia and Andzia made malicious comments about their ‘out-laws’ or whispered behind their hands, a pained look would cross Daniel’s face. ‘Please remember that we have guests and be polite,’ he would admonish his daughters, who blushed at their father’s mild rebuke. Daniel’s gentleness was his strength.

  Although Andzia’s tongue was lacerating, and her eyes as unforgiving as needles, my mother adored hearing stories about her little son Fredzio who was like a sunbeam with his fair curls, blue eyes, and precocious mind. ‘Come on, sing your song, Fredzio,’ urged his older sister Krysia, and soon they were all laughing until tears rolled down their faces as the toddler lisped the words of a popular love song: ‘We had a date last night at nine but then she said she won’t be mine!’