Mother went on to tell about the commissar who, she laughingly said, fell in love with her and offered to marry her and teach her to drive a tractor on his parents’ collective farm, which Mr. and Mrs. Brodnik laughed at a little, as well, and then about the hired guide who was supposed to carry me over the mountain, but abandoned us. She did not, specifically, say that she carried me, which was probably because I was sitting there, but neither did she say anything to suggest that she didn’t. She also said that I fell into the stream, and she had to pull me out, which was totally untrue as well, but she had told it that way so many times, that she probably believed it. I turned my attention to counting the iron pipes that held the awning over our heads and noticing how they were joined together so that the awning could be retracted.
Then a man whom the Brodniks knew, but mother didn’t, stopped by, and Mrs. Brodnik told him that this was Beautiful Basia from Warsaw, who had escaped from the Bolsheviks, on foot, over the Carpathian Mountains that February and was just in the middle of telling her story.
The man said that, yes, he had heard about the escape and was so glad to meet Mother in person, and wanted to hear her story. He pulled up a chair from another table, and sat down to listen. He was a small man, older than the Brodniks, with a large head of gray hair that needed a barber, thick, gray eyebrows, and stained fingertips. The fingers on his left hand were yellow from cigarettes; the ones on his right were stained black. He had on a very old brown suit that someone had mended, and he kept shrugging his shoulders, as though he were cold and trying to wrap the jacket around himself. His stained fingers kept drumming on the table. The longer that he sat there, the faster the drumming became until, finally, after listening for only a few minutes, he got up, explained that he had to go, kissed the ladies’ hands, and left.
Mrs. Brodnik explained that he had been a journalist in Poland, but, not knowing Portuguese, he had only been able to get a job as a printer’s assistant here in Rio. He earned very little money, and his wife had hanged herself in the stairwell of their apartment building a few months earlier. I felt terrible sadness for the poor man and for his dead wife and wondered whether she had hanged herself because she didn’t want to live in poverty or whether she did it so that he wouldn’t have to share his small salary with her. I didn’t know which I should hope for it to have been. If it was the first, she had done something very selfish and very cruel to her husband. If it was the second, then it was so terribly, terribly noble and sad.
I shuddered at the thought, and Mrs. Brodnik said, “Oh, the boy is cold,” which wasn’t true. “Bolek, give him your jacket.”
Mr. Brodnik stood up immediately and removed his jacket.
“I. . . am n. . . ot c. . . old,” I protested. I didn’t like the idea of wearing the man’s jacket.
“Put it over his shoulders,” Mrs. Brodnik instructed, and her husband draped it over me. I really, really didn’t like wearing his jacket, even just draped over my shoulders. I didn’t know why. I wouldn’t have minded wearing Irenka’s jacket, but I realized that I wouldn’t have liked Sr. Segiera’s jacket or Andre’s either. I tucked my elbows close to my sides to make as little contact with the material as possible.
Mother had finished telling her story, but the Brodniks had questions. “The boy needs something to eat,” Mrs. Brodnik then said.
“Yes,” Mr. Brodnik agreed and called the waiter over. He ordered me a ham sandwich.
“Can he eat a ham sandwich, please missus?” Mrs. Brodnik asked Mother, and Mother told her that I liked ham.
I wondered whether the Brodniks knew we were Jewish. Would they be so nice to us if they knew? I recalled hearing a conversation between Kiki and my cousin Fredek’s governess, in which Fredek’s governess said about somebody, “But he isn’t Polish—he’s a Jew.” Then I wasn’t really Polish either. Jewish was a religion, like Catholicism, not a nationality. Kiki had been Catholic and Polish, but I was just Jewish. So in America, I wouldn’t be American either, but just Jewish—exactly the same as I was now.
Then the waiter brought me the ham sandwich, but I wasn’t hungry anymore.
I worked at the sandwich, because I didn’t want to hurt Mr. Brodnik’s feelings, while Mother was still answering the Brodniks’ questions, and the Brodniks were telling Mother who, of her Warsaw acquaintances, might be in Rio. Then Mrs. Brodnik asked Mother if she could come back in two days and tell the story all over again to the other Polish people in Rio. She would get the word out tomorrow, and anyone who wanted to hear it would come to this restaurant, which was also a café and a regular meeting place for Polish people.
Mother said she would be happy to, and they agreed on a time. Mother made me thank Mr. Brodnik for the use of his jacket and for the sandwich, and we walked back to our hotel.
I didn’t want to go back to the restaurant/café with Mother, two days later, but she said that I had to. The walk would be good for my appetite. And she also said that it was perfectly all right for me to speak among the Polish people. Back in Portugal, Mother had told me that I should speak as little as possible, when we were with other people, supposedly so I wouldn’t say anything that might alert any German spies to our presence. We had been told by a man from the Polish embassy in Budapest that the Nazis did not want us to reach America, where Mother planned to write her book. But I knew that the real reason that Mother did not want me to speak in front of other people was because of my stammer. And the real reason why she said it was all right for me to speak in front of the Polish people was because my stammer was going to be a part of her story.
So I went and saw fourteen people, including the Brodniks, sitting around some tables that had been pushed together, and all the people stood up and applauded as we walked into the café area.
Mother hugged some of the people, she cried a few times, laughed once, and both laughed and cried at the same time once. All this took some time, and I suddenly felt a pair of woman’s arms around my neck. Turning around, I found myself looking up at a woman I did not recognize.
“Little Yulechek,” she said, using the extreme diminutive of my name, “you don’t remember me, do you?”
“N. . . o, p. . . lease m. . . issus,” I said.
“You and your governess came to our apartment, one time when our little grandson, Yanechek was staying with us, and you played t. . . .t. . . .” Suddenly she was crying. She hugged me tight to her large chest, having to bend over to do so.
I understood that something must have happened to her grandson, in the war, or maybe she just didn’t know what had become of him, and this was terribly sad, and I wished there was something I could say to comfort her. I raised up on tiptoe so that, at least, she wouldn’t have to bend as far.
“I’m sorry,” she said, between sobs. “I’m so glad you and your beautiful mother got out all right. Will you sit beside me?”
It didn’t much matter to me where I sat, and if it gave this woman comfort for me to sit beside her, that was the least I could do. I nodded my head.
“Here, you sit here,” she said, pulling out a chair, “and I’ll sit here.”
I sat down. The others were still standing and talking.
“Would you like something to eat or drink? Maybe some ice cream?”
I wasn’t interested in ice cream, but even if I had been, I couldn’t take anything from this poor woman who had lost so much. “N. . . o th. . . ank y. . . ou, p. . . .lease m. . . issus,” I said. .
“Oh, you poor, poor boy!” she exclaimed. “What has happened to you? You didn’t speak like that in Warsaw. What did the Bolsheviks do to you?”
I shook my head. “It w. . . asn’t th. . . e B. . . olsh. . . eviks, p. . . lease m. . . issus. I d. . . id s. . . omething b. . . ad in H. . . ungary.”
“Something bad? What are you talking about? Who told you that you did something bad? How could you do something bad? Nonsense! I will talk with your mother.”
Mother was just starting to tell our
story again, and the woman stopped talking aloud. “When she is finished,” she whispered, “I will have a talk with her.”
Mother was telling about driving out of Warsaw, during the bombing, in the back of the truck that was from my stepfather, Lolek’s factory, in the middle of the night. I felt the woman’s hand reach for mine. Of course I let her hold it, though it was a little awkward, with my arm against the wrought iron arm of her chair. She bent down to me, “Wouldn’t you like a nice cup of hot chocolate?” she whispered.
I remembered the chocolate from the other evening, and I had enjoyed it. But I couldn’t accept it. I made a huge effort to say, “No thank you,” without either stuttering, or dragging the sounds out, because of how it upset her, and pretty well succeeded.
But the woman shook her head with a sad expression on her face, and I realized that my refusal was upsetting her. Maybe I should have accepted. Maybe my accepting her offering would actually make her happy. Maybe my accepting would not be taking something away from her, but, actually, doing something for her. I resolved to say, yes, to her next offer.
A few minutes later, the woman leaned down to me again and whispered an offer of tea. I accepted, and soon two cups and a little pot of tea were placed in front of us. My tea needed sugar, and the sugar was out of my reach. But my table companion seemed to be quite relaxed now and involved in Mother’s story, and I wouldn’t have disturbed her for anything in the world.
I had been hoping that Irenka, preferably without Mr. K., would be at the café as well, since she was also Polish, but I did not see her. Following school, the next day, I went to tell Irenka about the cafe, and that it was a meeting place for Polish people, since she seemed to be alone a lot of the time now. There was no answer to my knock, which surprised me because that had never happened before. Irenka had been there every other time I had knocked, and, now, I was very disappointed. But as I turned to head back up the stairs, the elevator door opened, and Irenka stepped out.
“You were coming to visit me,” she said.
“Y. . . es. I w. . . anted to t. . . ell you s. . . ometh. . . .ing.”
“Oh, what would that be?” she asked, but I could tell by her tone that her mind was elsewhere.
“I’ll t. . . ell you wh. . . en we g. . . et i. . . nside.”
“Oh, I can’t let you come in. Tadek is very sick, and I wouldn’t want you to become infected. Your mother would kill me. Tell me out here or save it for another time.”
“Wh. . . at does he h. . . ave?”
“Oh, the doctor has some long name for it, that I never heard of.”
So I told her about the café being a place where Polish people went, and she might meet some friends there, the way Mother did, but I didn’t want to go into the details of Mother’s story telling, standing out there in the hall. Irenka thanked me, and then shooed me up the stairs, before she would unlock her door. If it had been all right to wish for Mr. K. to get sick enough to die, I think I would have done so.
Apparently, Sr. O’Brien, Andre, kept asking Mother to go out places with him, because she would come home, sigh, roll her eyes, and tell me that he had asked her out again. I didn’t see what Mother’s problem was. Sure, Andre was different from Sr. Segiera, but that did not make him bad. He took us out to eat and told funny stories, which Mother did laugh at.
Once every two weeks or so, Mother would accept his invitation, though he asked her more often than that. Each time she would tell me that it was only because she didn’t want to spoil her relationship with Andre’s mother. Then she would, always, bring me along.
Since Andre was very rich and, also, the son of her employer, I doubted that my presence was really for the purpose of guarding Mother’s diamonds. Mother would usually explain my presence, to him by saying something to the effect of my being very delicate and that, with what I had been through, I could not be left alone. She also explained my stutter to him as the result of our scary escape over the Carpathian Mountains into Hungary, evidently forgetting that, earlier, she had said it was due to malnutrition. Neither explanation was, of course, true, since I didn’t begin stuttering till we left Hungary for Yugoslavia. But accustomed, by now, to being represented as either physically or emotionally delicate, I did not raise an objection.
I had never heard Mother explaining me that way to Sr. Segiera. Of course, Mother and Sr. Segiera did a lot of talking that was out of my earshot. They went out without me a lot of the time, and, even when I was along, they would often put their heads close together and talk in low voices, I supposed about things that I would have no interest in.
It was funny, but Sr. Segiera didn’t tell jokes, the way Andre told jokes, some of which I could tell were intended to amuse me, and he didn’t allow me to call him by his first name, and he usually took us out in his old Chevrolet, rather than his chauffeur-driven Lincoln Continental, but I really liked Sr. Segiera better, as, I was sure, Mother did too.
One time, I noticed, with some amusement, that Sr. Segiera’s fingernails had all grown to the length that Mother prescribed for gentlemen. On the other hand, I also realized, that Mother no longer smoked in his presence.
One time, when Sr. Segiera had to fly to the “interior” again, Mother said that Andre was taking us for a motorboat ride. Now, I knew that that should have gotten me excited. Back in Poland, last summer, Kiki and I would watch the long motorboats skimming along the water, and I would long to be in the cockpit of one of them, cutting through the water with the wind blowing around me and the waves swishing by. But, right now, nothing excited me, including the prospect of a motorboat ride.
Mother had, evidently, picked up on my mood, as we waited for Andre to arrive. “It’s a motorboat ride to an island,” she said. “You’ll love it.” And as we rode down the elevator, she coaxed, “A big smile now. You know, if you think you’re going to have fun, you will.”
That was a ridiculous thing to say, and as we bumped along the wave-tops, Mother turned in the front seat, holding the kerchief around her hair, and said in Polish, “If you embarrass me today with that long face of yours, when Sr. O’Brien is trying so hard to entertain us, you will be very sorry. Just pretend you are having a good time. Look at me—I have a smile on my face. What does a smile cost? It costs nothing.”
And, here, she was right—a smile did cost nothing—but, somehow, I could not form my face into a smile, even if I had wanted to. Instead, I pressed my lips tightly together, and Mother turned away with an angry shake of the head. “I don’t know what’s wrong with him,” she shouted to Andre, above the noise. “He’s been like this for weeks now. I’ve taken him to the doctor, and there’s nothing wrong with him. He’s just decided that he’s going to give me a hard time.”
“Well, you know, Barbara, that’s how boys are,” Andre said.
And then, I suppose maybe out of habit, and forgetting that I had learned to speak French in the last few months, she said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do with him anymore. He’s not like other children. The school principal tells me he doesn’t play with the children in school. He’s gotten into fights, knocked another boy down, and come home with skinned knees. He has no appreciation for all I’ve done for him. And then he does this just to upset me.”
And later that day, as we sat on the island, having watched a Negro man, dressed only in shorts, tie his two ankles together and climb a palm tree, to throw coconuts down for us, and I had a little glass of cocoanut milk sitting in front of me, that I didn’t want to drink, Mother whispered to me, “Andre has just told me that the ship that picks up Jewish children to take to Palestine is in the harbor, right now. We can take you to the ship straight from here.” It was a familiar ploy, but, even though I knew she was lying, the mere idea of it had always been very painful for me. “You’ll never see me again,” she continued, as she had on other occasions, knowing how that would upset me, “but you’ll be able to play with all the other children.”
She had first sai
d it in Budapest, where there were ships tied up in the Danube and in Dubrovnik, which was right on the Adriatic Sea and in Barcelona on the Mediterranean, and even in Madrid, where there was no harbor.
I knew how to put a stop to it. In the past, I had to put my arms around her neck and told her that I loved her and didn’t want to be away from her. Even though I knew that there was no ship, I would do that, and we would be done with it. This time, however, there was no force in the world that could make me perform that charade. “Go ahead,” I said, turning my back to her. I immediately regretted turning my back because I couldn’t see the expression on her face. But I didn’t hear her say anything more.
On the way back from the island, Andre made the boat go really fast, with its bow out of the water and banging against each wave. Mother held the kerchief around her head with one hand, clutching the side of the cockpit with the other, with her teeth clenched, but still smiling every time Andre turned to look at her. And, for the first time that day, I found something to smile about.
Sr. Segiera was away, all that next week, and I suggested to Mother that we go to that café, when she comes home from work, because she might meet more of her Warsaw friends. My real reason was that the ham sandwich I had had there the first time was a lot better than the food they served at the hotel. I could munch it, while the grownups talked, and she would not be urging me to eat. Mother agreed, and we did meet a couple there that Mother knew from Warsaw. They also had American visas and were waiting for their turn to be allowed in. The man and woman had left Poland just before the war began, because they were sure it was coming, and had arrived in Brazil some months before we did. The only news they were able to give Mother about what had become of mutual friends was the report that one of those friends had been arrested by the Nazis and sent to a concentration camp. This made Mother cry, and it made me feel guilty about my ham sandwich. If I had been willing to put up with hotel food, Mother would not have learned about her friend. I did not suggest going there again.
Loves of Yulian Page 17
