Loves of Yulian

by Julian Padowicz

  The silly thing was that, after Sr. Segiera had slowed the plane down again, and, instead of taking off, we taxied back to the hangar, I didn’t feel sick anymore. Of course, I did feel very embarrassed and angry at myself.

  “Don’t worry,” the senhor had assured me, as he sponged me off in the bathroom. “I got sick the first time I flew too. And I was a lot older than you.”

  But, we had never even gotten into the air. The senhor had told Mother, earlier that day, that Paolo had actually flown with him and loved it. I doubted that the senhor considered me an adequate companion for his son now, even though he probably didn’t even know that I was Jewish.

  CHAPTER XII

  When Sr. Segiera brought me home, I could tell by Mother’s tense face and the state of the ashtrays in the room, that things had not been going well in my absence. “I don’t like this,” she said to the senhor. “Don’t ever do this to me again!”

  “He is a boy, Basia,” the senhor said. “Boys need to experience these things.”

  “He doesn’t need to experience going up in an airplane.”

  I noticed that Irenka was not in the room and the door to the bedroom was closed.

  “Basia, please be reasonable. I wouldn’t do it if it was dangerous. I’ve brought Paolo up.”

  “Because Paolo’s mother is dead.”

  “Basia.”

  “I don’t want to see you right now.”

  “I’ll go home and change and pick you up.”

  “I don’t want to see you.”

  “Basia, we are expected at the Salazars.”

  “I’m not going. Go by yourself. Say that I have a headache.”

  “It’s you they want to meet.”

  “Me? He’s your supervisor.”

  “I told him something of your story, and they want to hear it from you and to meet you.”

  Mother sighed. “I have to take a bath. Look at how I look. And I have no idea what to wear.”

  “You’ll find something.”

  “You think it’s easy?”

  “Basia, I know that you’re an artist about your clothes, and you work hard at making the exactly right impression. And when I get back, you will look terrific again.”

  “Well, don’t hurry. You know it takes me a lot longer than it does you.”

  “I know, Basia. I’ll see you in a while.”

  Mother got up on her tiptoes and gave the senhor a quick kiss on his closed lips. Then the senhor left, and I heard Mother say, as she passed through the bedroom, “Irenka dear, would you please iron my blue skirt and the green blouse. You know, the one with the little cuffs?” I could hear that Irenka was already filling Mother’s tub. Then, later, I heard Mother say from the bathtub, “He keeps dragging me to meet these dreary, people, but, I suppose, it’s important for his career, so I go.”

  Sr. Segiera had said nothing about my throwing up, or even about the fact that we never got off the ground. In fact, there had been nothing for Mother to be worried about. In fact, also, Mother had sounded very enthusiastic about my going up in the plane, when she mentioned it yesterday.

  The senhor and I had stopped for lunch at a funny little restaurant that was open to the street, with no front wall. The senhor ordered for me, and I had a sandwich of some sort and a delicious, chocolate drink called a milchek. Some months later, I would learn to pronounce it milk shake. The senhor didn’t seem the least bit angry with me. But he didn’t say anything more about me and Paolo doing things together.

  When Mother and Sr. Segiera came back to our suite that night, I wasn’t asleep, though I pretended to be. They didn’t turn the light on, but they whispered together for a minute or two, and I heard Mother giggle twice. There was a long silence, and then the senhor left.

  It was two or three weeks later that I came home from school, when it was raining, and suggested to Irenka that we put on our raincoats and walk to the movies. From the bus, I had seen some new posters that showed soldiers in frilly, three-cornered hats confronting men in round, fur hats, with the animal’s tail hanging from them. I recognized the outfits from a book I had had in Warsaw, and knew that the story took place in America, before they had streets and skyscrapers.

  But Irenka said that we couldn’t go because Mother was coming home early to take me to that café where Polish people met. She had a surprise for me.

  A surprise for me at the café, meant meeting some person or persons. It could have been my aunts, Edna and Paula with Miss Bronia and my cousins, Fredek and Sonia, all of whom we had left in Durnoval before our escape. The only one of them that it would have been a pleasant surprise to see, would have been Miss Bronia. Or, maybe, Mademoiselle, who had taught me French in Lvoof. Or it could even have been my governess, Kiki!

  Suddenly, I was frightened. I had changed so much since Kiki and I had parted. What would I say to her? How was I supposed to act toward her now, now that I could walk in the street by myself, buy things in stores, and had those strange, embarrassing desires regarding Irenka.

  I didn’t miss Kiki anymore, and I certainly didn’t want to go back to our old relationship. I grew quite anxious, waiting for Mother. I could handle the others, but I didn’t want to face Kiki. But then I realized that the probability of its being any one of these people was very slight. Mother and I were the only people we knew, who had escaped from Poland after the war. And none of the people whom I was afraid of meeting was the type to go climbing the Carpathian Mountains. The only exception was my cousin, Fredek, but he was six months younger than me.

  “I have a surprise for you, Yulian,” Mother said, when she came home, and I could tell that she was very pleased with that fact.

  “Is it Kiki?” I asked. While the odds were very small, as long as the possibility existed, I wanted to be prepared.

  Mother’s tone softened immediately, “No darling, it’s not Kiki,” she said. In an uncharacteristic gesture, she stroked my head. Evidently, she had mistaken my concern for a longing. “I have no news about Kiki. But I’m sure you’ll be very excited.”

  All the way to the café I was trying to figure out who the surprise could possibly be. The number of people that I knew and cared about was very limited. My concentration on the question was so great that when we arrived at the café, I realized that I had, actually, been holding Mother’s hand.

  There were people sitting at three tables, but I didn’t recognize any of them. I was relieved to see that none of them was a child. Of course, my “surprise” may not have arrived yet. We would sit at an empty table and wait for them.

  But Mother did not hesitate to select a table. She led me directly toward a man and woman whom I could not imagine having ever seen before. How this could be my surprise, I could not imagine. The man stood up, as we approached. He had gray hair and a long, triangular face that ended in a narrow chin and a long, sharp nose. On one cheek, there was a large, brown spot.

  “Hello Basia,” the man said, and he kissed Mother’s cheek.

  “How are you, Yulian?” she responded.

  So the man’s name was Yulian. Well, that was a surprise, since I had never met another one, but hardly worth all that excitement. Now she was leaning down to kiss the woman.

  Then she turned to introduce me. “Yulian,” she said to me, “this is Yulian Tuwim.”

  It took absolutely no time for the name to register. Yulian Tuwim was the poet who had written the Locomotive poem that Kiki and I loved so much. He was a famous poet.

  Mr. Tuwim had his hand out. “I’m glad to finally meet you, Yulian. You’re a poet too.”

  Something, about what he said, struck me as odd. He had not, I realized, said anything like, I hear, or, Your mother tells me.

  “Your poems are very good,” he said, as I put my hand into his.

  He had read my poems? How did he get them?

  “I hope you’ll keep on writing,” he said.

  “Say something to Mr. Tuwim, Yulian,” Mother s
aid.

  “He does his speaking with his pen,” Mr. Tuwim said, with a little laugh.

  Mother laughed too, a little. “He used to have such beautiful manners, in Poland.”

  “He should keep writing, you know,” he said to Mother.

  “Oh, I’ll have some of that,” Mother said, pointing to the teapot on the table, as she sat down. The waiter went to get her a cup. “Do you think he has enough talent to become famous?” she asked Mr. Tuwim.

  “Well, Basia, fame is so much a matter of chance.”

  “I know that. But does he have the talent?”

  “He’s very young still. Who knows what he’ll be interested in when he gets older. He may want to build bridges.”

  That was all silly talk. Mother talked as though we weren’t Jewish. She pretended that we weren’t, which was all fine for her. But people would find out and they wouldn’t want to read my poems. Jews didn’t become famous people.

  The waiter brought me a milchek, which I must have ordered without even realizing it. The grownups were in conversation, now, about something that didn’t have anything to do with me or my poems. Mother must have found my poems under my shirts, in the bureau drawer, where I had been hiding them, and given them to Mr. Tuwim some time ago. I had a hard time keeping my eyes from the big brown spot on Mr. Tuwim’s cheek. I remembered the fact that I had been introduced to the man who had written the Locomotive poem, in our Warsaw apartment, some years ago, though I could not remember the actual event. I certainly didn’t remember the brown spot on his cheek.

  There was something different about Mr. Tuwim—different from other men I knew. There was a gentleness about the way he spoke, even the way he moved, that was different. He moved his hands a lot, when he spoke, but not quickly. Those hands, with their long fingers, had written The Locomotive and the one about the farm family trying to pull a turnip out of the ground. I would have loved to become a poet like Mr. Tuwim. I didn’t need to fly airplanes or be a soldier or a cowboy, or even build bridges. I wanted to write poems that people read and loved, the way Kiki and I loved The Locomotive, and talk gently like Mr. Tuwim.

  But I knew that would not be possible for me.

  I wrote two more poems, over the next couple of weeks, and Mother promised that she would show them to Mr. Tuwim as well.

  One evening, when she came home from work, Mother said to Irenka, “I think we need to go and buy you a tennis dress.”

  I could tell that Irenka was as surprised by this statement as I was. “I don’t know how to play tennis,” she said.

  By the smile on Mother’s face, I could tell that she was enjoying the confusion she had just created.

  Then Irenka seemed to grasp something that I didn’t. “Oh yes?” she said. “Your friend?”

  “He wants me,” Mother said, walking on into the bathroom and speaking as she went, “to go with him to the home of some friends of his for the weekend, where, he says, there will be tennis and swimming and dancing. You should like that.”

  Irenka followed her into the bedroom and spoke through the closed bathroom door. “It sounds like you would have a good time,” she said. “Don’t you want to go? And I don’t know how to play tennis.”

  “I’m sure he’ll be happy to teach you. I don’t need tennis or swimming or dancing. And I just don’t want to go overnight with him. I don’t know what’s on his mind. It would be different with you—you’ll have just met. It’s not exactly the meeting I had in mind, but I think it will work out fine. And I really don’t want to go.”

  I guessed that they must be talking about Andre, since Irenka knew Sr. Segiera, and that there must have been a whole lot more to the conversation prior to all this, that I had missed out on.

  “Would he want to bring a total stranger to his friends?” Irenka asked the same question that was on my mind.

  I heard Mother come out of the bathroom. “Once he meets you,” she said, “that’s exactly what he’ll want to do.”

  “No, really.”

  “Yes, really.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Mother did not come out into the living room, and I guessed that she was changing her clothes. “He’s a perfect gentleman, you know,” I heard her say. “It’s just that I’ve been out enough times with him now, that he’s likely to be having ideas. That’s how men are. The worst thing that can happen to you, is that you’ll have to slap his face once. You’ll have a good time. Now go fix your face.”

  Then somebody closed the door, and there was more talk going on, that I couldn’t quite hear.

  Then we were in the store and Irenka was trying on tennis dresses. She came out of the dressing room in a knee-length white dress with blue trim, shook her head, and said, “I can’t do this.”

  “What do you mean, you can’t?” Mother said. “Don’t you like the dress? I don’t like it either. Try another one.”

  Irenka shook her head again. “It’s not the dress. I can’t pretend.”

  “Pretend what?”

  “You know. It was all right when Tadek and I were pretending together. He did all the talking.”

  “And now, Andre will do all the talking. Believe me. All you’ll need to do is smile and say, yes and no.”

  “But I’d be lying to your friend.”

  “What do you mean lying?”

  “Who I am.”

  “Who are you? This isn’t Poland. Nobody knows who your parents are. You were brought up in a good house. You speak well—you have good manners. You’re not going to pick up your soup bowl and drink from it. Don’t be stupid. Try a different dress—I don’t like the way this one fits around your bust.”

  When Irenka had gone back into the changing room, Mother said, “She can’t pretend. What does she want to do, go back to being somebody’s maid?” This was one of those times when she was talking partly to me and partly to herself. Then she turned to me and said, “Yulian, do you remember how you pretended to be sick, when we were staying on the farm, last fall?” That was when we were afraid of the Ukrainian peasants, right after the Russians had come. But the Ukrainians didn’t show up that day, and I waited, all day, in bed and never, actually, got a chance to pretend. Now I nodded my head.

  “Well, tomorrow, I want you to pretend you’re sick again. Would you do that for me?”

  I nodded again.

  “When Andre comes, you’ll pretend to be sick, and I’ll tell him how sorry I am, but we can’t go with him.”

  “A. . . nd th. . . en I. . . renka w. . . ill go w. . . ith h. . . im?” I asked excited to, finally, be included in the subterfuge.

  Mother nodded her head, a conspiratory look on her face.

  I loved it when Mother was like that. It was like the time we were walking back from the American embassy and making fun of things in shop windows.

  “I think I w. . . ill h. . . ave as. . . .thma,” I said, as though I were selecting from a menu and remembering my cousin Fredek having an asthma attack in those damp rooms in Durnoval, before Mother and I escaped.

  “We don’t need anything quite that dramatic,” Mother said, a little laugh in her voice. “How about a nice, quiet sore throat?”

  “A s. . . ore th. . . roat it w. . . ill be,” I agreed, glad to be on the team.

  The following morning, when Andre came to pick us up, I was in bed, on my sofa, Mother’s scarf around my throat. I had suggested a wet cloth on my forehead, but Mother had rejected it.

  The look of disappointment on Andre’s face, when Mother told him that we couldn’t go, could have been mistaken for nothing else. He had on his blue jacket, with its brass buttons, and white pants and white shoes. “Why doesn’t your friend stay with him?” he suggested.

  Seeing an opportunity to ad lib here, I put a look of terror on my face. “He really needs to be with me,” Mother said. “I’m sorry, but he’s terrified to be separated from me at night. He’s been through so much, you
know.”

  “You’re supposed to be my tennis partner, this afternoon,” Andre said, with almost a wail in his voice.

  “And I’ve found you a new partner. You’ll have to teach her to play, of course, but she’s a wonderful dancer.”

  I wanted to add that he would have to teach her to swim, too, but realized that I would be stepping out of character.

  Andre tilted his head to one side. “Is she good-looking?” he asked.

  “That you’ll have to judge for yourself. She is from a very old Polish family. And you’ll be able to speak Portuguese to her. She doesn’t speak French.”

  Mother’s exaggerations no longer surprised me, though, technically speaking, Irenka’s family went back to Adam and Eve, just like anyone else’s.

  Now Mother walked to the bedroom door, opened it only enough to pass through, and closed it behind her.

  Andre looked at me, a worried look on his face. “Is she good-looking?” he whispered.

  I nodded, reassuringly. The look remained. He lit a cigarette, then paced back and forth across the room, glancing at the closed door. “It’s the woman who lives with you?” he whispered.

  I nodded again. Andre did not seem reassured. I could not imagine what was taking so long in the bedroom. Irenka had been ready and waiting before he arrived, and only ducked into the bedroom when Mother told her to, after the desk clerk called. Andre looked nervously at his watch, then at the door again.

  Finally the door opened. Andre spun around to face it, but it was only Mother. “Irena will be right out,” she said. She had her little brown suitcase in her hand, and she set it down by the front door.

  “Irena?” Andre repeated.

  “Don’t you think it’s a beautiful name?”

  “Yes, yes, very beautiful,” Andre agreed. Then I saw his mouth drop open.

  Facing Andre, I had not seen Irenka step through the door. She was wearing her beige, silk blouse and a very full blue skirt that I had not seen before, with her sunglasses on top of her lush, wavy, brown hair. I had never seen anyone so beautiful. She was looking down at the floor. “She’s very shy,” Mother half whispered in French.