The other people in the room were an elderly Polish couple, also political exiles, Mr. and Mrs. Poznanski. He taught literature at the University of Lwow; his wife, a lovely, sad woman, helped Sophie to run the school. What struck me most about her were the wide, black velvet ribbons tied around her wrists. I found out that they hid ugly scars made by the chains she had worn marching in a prison convoy to Siberia.
Pani Wanda, as we called Madame Dalecka, taught history and Polish literature. She was overbearing and impatient, but the subjects themselves aroused “creativeness.” I started to write stories and poems, all extremely sad and very patriotic. My heroines bore a striking resemblance to the girl in Zola’s Une Page d’Amour.
Sophie Czarnowska was a biologist. She had the marvelous gift of making “boring” subjects exciting and interesting. For a short while she even succeeded in improving my marks in mathematics, but not for long. I fell in love with Dr. G. and my idiotic inability to concentrate on numbers returned.
In the afternoons I went to the Orthopedic Institute. It was only a few blocks away from the school and I was allowed to walk there by myself. I don’t suppose that Dr. G. was as single-mindedly attracted to “nymphets” as Lolita’s Mr. H.H., but he certainly did not hesitate to experiment with my emotions. In his presence I invariably had palpitations and dizzy spells.
One day Papa arrived in Lwow and took me to the theater to see a performance of Warszawianka—a play by the Polish poet Stanislaw Wyspianski. The leading role was played by Helena Modrzejewska, who, a very old lady then, had returned to Poland after many triumphant years in America. Papa had admired her in his youth, not only as an actress and famous beauty, but also as a great lady. She was a countess by marriage.
I sat beside my father in my best dress and I had never seen him as friendly. He even ventured into a halting, self-conscious conversation with me. But neither then nor later did I admit to him that the performance of Modjevska (as her name was spelt in the States) had left me ice-cold.
The unforgettable moment of the afternoon for me was the appearance of Ludwig Solski, the great Polish actor, who died not so long ago at the age of one hundred. He was celebrated in Communist Poland just as much as in the old divided one and during Pilsudski’s regime.
To honor Modjevska, the prominent actors of the Polish theater took supporting parts in the play. Solski’s was a walk-on. He was a soldier, returning from the battlefield—the play dealt with the 1830 Warsaw uprising—and all he had to do was to give Modjevska a token of love from her fiancé, killed in battle. Covered with mud he crossed the stage, saluted, handed her the blood-stained handkerchief or hair ribbon, I don’t know which; then turned and stumbled into the wings. For a moment all one could hear was the sobbing and sniffling of the audience. Papa wiped his eyes, while I dissolved in tears. At the end of the play Modjevska was showered with roses and had to come out again and again, but I screamed “Solski, Solski,” until Papa told me to be quiet and to behave.
In summer I returned to Wychylowka. Fräulein Marie was on vacation and we had many guests. We bathed in the Dnjester, had lunch on the shady veranda and in the afternoons took long walks to the forest. On our way through the wheatfields we picked bunches of cornflowers and poppies and gathered mushrooms and berries. I also went horseback riding with the officers of our cavalry regiment, who began to show an interest in me.
In the evening Mama, Rose and I clustered around Edward when he sat at the piano and, dividing the parts among us, we performed chorales and oratorios, operas by Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Puccini, Donizetti and the new sensation: Richard Strauss. Edward would accompany Mama when she sang Schumann, Schubert and Brahms Lieder. That summer we also discovered Gustav Mahler.
I returned to Miss Czarnowska, sunburnt and healthy.
More and more the theater became my obsession. In class I recited Shakespeare, and poems by Slowacki, Mickiewicz, Schiller and Goethe, and the fervor and the intensity of my interpretations made up for my other scholastic deficiencies. On my way to the Orthopedic Institute I would pass by the theater and gape at the actors loafing around the stage door. I lost my head completely after I saw Macbeth. Daydreaming became my main preoccupation. I was waiting breathlessly, anxiously, furiously, to grow up. I had had enough of childhood, enough of frustration, of puberty, enough of grammar and mathematics! In June I would be fourteen. When I put up my red hair I was Mary Stuart. When I wrapped a black shawl tightly around me, uncovering my breasts, I was Cleopatra. I was not a child anymore. My parents were not pleased with me.
•
As my treatments at the Orthopedic Institute were no longer necessary I had returned home. My father hardly acknowledged my melancholy “good mornings” and delegated Mama to bring me back to my senses. Fräulein Marie did her best to deflate my ego, but nothing could shake my conviction that I was a great actress. There were still a few people who believed in me: Sophie Czarnowska—I missed her quiet humor and warm encouragement so much—my sister and my brother, and our friends Zdzislaw and Wanda. They, however expressed realistic doubts about how I would feel if, not lucky enough to find a job in Lwow, Krakow or Warsaw, I would have to join a wandering troupe and play before crude audiences in the dirty halls of small Galician towns.
Many Polish and Ukrainian companies came to Sambor. The Ukrainians had a good reputation and performed operas by Glinka, comedies, and folk musicals and dances. They had good orchestras, lovely costumes, and were enthusiastically supported by their co-nationals; but the Polish intelligentsia, always contemptuous of everything Ukrainian, never went to see them. The higher bracket of Imperial and District employees, the big landowners, also the lawyers, Jewish and non-Jewish, were Polish, but they were not interested in supporting the shabby, wandering Polish troupers, and preferred to travel two hours by train and see better performances in Lwow. I have retained a feeling of deep gratitude for those poor, wretched actors, among whom were some with real talent. Their nomadic life fascinated me, and no warning could dispel its attraction.
And so I went on dreaming and reciting Schiller, which drove Fräulein Marie crazy: “Hoer auf, Salomé, sei nicht so exaltiert,” she would scream at me. By “exaltiert” she meant being an extrovert, which was a deadly sin in the eyes of my father and mother also. Fräulein Marie referred to me as “exaltiert” at least twenty times a day. As we spoke mostly either German or French, I was always addressed by my full name: “Salomé,” with the accent on é; only when we spoke Polish was I called “Salka.” Mama’s younger sister, Aunt Bella, had joined the antagonistic chorus, and addressed me as “Sarah der Narr”—Sarah was my middle name and “Narr” means “fool” in German—mocking my decision to be a second Sarah Bernhardt. Things would have been different if I had had a vocation for music. Edward had all the support of my parents. But he only needed a piano and a sheet of lined paper to prove his talent. Mine was bound to a bigger and more complicated apparatus.
Mama told me firmly that I didn’t have the remotest chance of being sent to a dramatic school. Papa refused even to listen to such an absurdity. I might as well forget all that nonsense and marry a decent man. “But don’t you remember,” I cried, “how bitter you were because your parents did not let you finish your studies?”
“Oh, well,” said my mother lightly, “I was bitter, but now I am glad.”
A young university student was hired to tutor Rose and Edward for their exams, and his was also the ungrateful task of giving me lessons in history, literature and science, as required in the higher grades of the public schools. History and literature interested me, but I was an absolute failure in science. Marie continued to devote as little effort as possible to instructing us in French grammar and German.
During the two years I had spent in boarding school, my father had succeeded in “electrifying” the city; even telephones had been installed. Our house had its own power generator in the cellar, which pumped water into the bathroom and toilet. Before this miraculous improvement, the servants had
had to carry tubs and huge jugs of hot water into the various bedrooms.
The electric streetlights on the Promenade made night life much livelier. The square around the city hall had been transformed into a garden, the old cobblestones taken out, a well-kept lawn laid, and shrubs planted. The acacia trees looked trim and rejuvenated. Undoubtedly, the town was embellished, and even the bored cavalry officers admitted that Sambor was by no means the worst garrison. This was no comfort to me; I felt trapped and locked out from life. Perched on the garden fence I watched the passing trains with an increasing melancholy.
Otherwise, to be truthful, I didn’t have a bad time. I owned a horse and, as my father disapproved of women riding astride, I got a sidesaddle and a riding habit. Young officers, habitués of my mother’s afternoon teas, escorted me on my rides. And though still faithful to Dr. G., I was flirting with three lieutenants. In the mornings I infuriated our tutor by my inattention. By silent agreement, Marie and I had decided to avoid each other.
In summer we always had houseguests. One of these was Professor Balasicz from the University of Lwow, whose platonic love for Mama did not interfere with his friendship and respect for my father. He was the only one to take up the issue of my future profession with my parents. Papa, of course, stopped him short, but after a long talk with my mother, the Professor suggested that an actor-director he knew should judge if I had any talent. Then all other decisions should be based on that. He offered to arrange an audition and I went to Lwow with Mama and Edward, who was studying there with the Czech pianist, Vilem Kurz. While Edward was having his lesson, Mama and I rang the doorbell of a shabby apartment in the vicinity of the theater. An elderly man opened the door, motioned us into a dark, poorly furnished room and without letting me take a breath after the four flights of stairs, grumpily ordered me to start with whatever I had prepared. Of course I began with Schiller’s Mary Stuart, my performance, although appalling, must have been rather touching. After I had finished, the director turned to my mother and said sharply: “I’m sorry, I can’t help you, dear lady. The girl has talent. She’s not beautiful; girls with talent rarely are. Still it’s your problem, not mine, to stop her from becoming an actress. All I can do is warn her that it’s not an easy or pleasant life.” Then he added: “But there are wonderful women in our profession.”
I was beaming, but Mama’s reaction, after we had left, was characteristic: “Well, didn’t I tell you. It is not a profession for a decent girl.”
“But he said that I had talent!” I cried. “Real talent! And you wanted him to tell me the opposite.”
As always when she was wrong, my mother got angry and told me to shut up and that from then on all debates about my stage career were finished, once and for all.
An hour later, though, she discussed it at length with Dr. G., to whom she took me for a final consultation. Dr. G. looked at me and in his tired, silky voice said that from his own personal observation the Polish theater was nothing but intrigues and misery. One had to be very strong not to succumb to a dissolute life.
I stared at him and wondered how I could ever have been in love with him.
After this, my life went on tepidly and aimlessly. I was pale and apathetic. The doctor in Sambor stuffed me with iron pills and liver tonics, but nothing seemed to help. Finally he advised a cure in Franzensbad in Bohemia. It was decided that I should go there with my mother’s best friend, Esther Mandl, who was married to a Viennese lawyer. The prospect of this trip lifted my spirits immediately. At last I was to visit the place of my dreams: Vienna. But by the time we got ready and everything was arranged, the Burgtheater had closed for the summer and my days in Vienna were confined to sightseeing, of which the Prater left the most vivid memory. The huge Ferris wheel, the carousel and the puppet shows, and then the elegant ladies and gentlemen in the famous fiacres, or riding horseback along the Hauptallee with its century-old chestnut trees, enchanted me. The Mandls were delighted with my lack of sophistication. They had no children and their lives were overshadowed by Esther’s domineering mother, Mrs. Koffler, a bitter, disappointed woman who lived with them.
In summer Dr. Mandl, an enthusiastic mountain climber, used to take a few weeks off to go to his beloved Dolomites, but Esther had to accompany her mother for her annual cure in Franzensbad. It was impossible to escape this filial sacrifice.
Esther and her maid Poldi were packing, putting mothballs in the cupboards and dusters on the furniture, rolling up the rugs, harassed beyond description by Mrs. Koffler. When everything was done, the two ladies and I took the train to Franzensbad, while Dr. Mandl went hiking.
The famous spa was a huge disappointment. Mrs. Koffler would not even let me order for myself in the restaurant, reducing my standing with the waiters to that of a mere child. There were no young people in the dismal place and morosely I drank the hideous waters and took the revolting mud baths.
I have forgotten what brought Zdzislaw, my childhood friend, to Vienna, but he called on me after we had returned from Franzensbad. As a farewell present Dr. Mandl gave us two tickets to the matinee of La Dame aux Camélias, played by Sarah Bernhardt. She was giving a series of guest performances with her ensemble in the Theater an der Wien.
Zdzislaw (he was sixteen) in his best suit and an Einspaenner (one-horse cab) took me to the theater. My hands in the new white gloves were icy with excitement.
After the solemn three knocks the audience became silent and the curtain rose. The first scenes left us cold. We found the French troupe no better than the Polish theater in Lwow. Then came the crushing disappointment: the “divine Sarah’s” entrance. All we saw was an old, frightfully old woman, holding on to armchairs and leaning against the fireplace, draped like a mummy in costly silks, pushing a mop of brick red hair over her forehead, the big vermilion mouth revealing protruding teeth. Everything about her was artificial; Zdzislaw and I giggled disrespectfully, while our neighbors indignantly hushed us. The curtain fell amid great applause from which we arrogantly refrained. We wondered if we should not leave the theater and take a long stroll through the city, but we did not have the courage and did not dare to hurt Dr. Mandl’s feelings.
In the second act Marguerite asks her old lover, Count Something-or-Other, to give her the money for a country house in which she can spend a happy summer with Armand. At that moment a letter from Armand is delivered to her. He has seen the Count’s carriage in front of her door and, believing her unfaithful, never wants to see her again.
Sitting by the fireplace, Sarah Bernhardt read the letter, tore it up and said something like: “Cher ami—this letter saves you thirty thousand francs.” Suddenly her voice moved me so deeply that tears poured down my face and I could not stop them, much as I tried.
During the next intermission Zdzislaw and I remained silent and did not leave our seats. We were awed by a miracle.
It is now more than half a century since I heard Sarah’s famous cry, her thrice-repeated “Armand!” I shall never forget it.
•
There were dances and garden parties at Wychylowka, and in winter skating and sleigh rides. Rose and I had many admirers and flirted a lot. Rose was courted romantically, as she was delicate and beautiful. As a prospective actress I provoked a less respectful approach. But neither Rose nor I took our conquests seriously. The best times were still when we were alone with Edward, sitting around the piano. Our younger brother, Dusko, led a life quite separate from ours. He spent his time outdoors, bullying the peasant boys who were tending the cows, riding his pony like a circus acrobat, swimming and playing games. He was strong and beautiful. With his copper-colored hair he looked like the child Siegfried. He had our parents completely enslaved. Papa never came home without bringing him a present and knowing his power, Dusko took unheard of liberties with him. We three older children were amazed that it was Papa, the severe, unapproachable Papa, who spoiled him most.
At that time Amalia Kanarienvogel (Canary bird) frequently appeared at Wychylowka. She had a shop on
the Promenade, where she sold silks, linen, imported perfume, stockings and haberdashery. Short, stout and very ugly, she had remained unmarried, and grudgingly supported a large family—mother, stepfather, brothers and stepsisters, the latter much younger than herself. They worked in the shop as salesgirls and when Amalia addressed them it was in striking contrast to the drooling sweetness she showed toward her customers (only to curse them in Yiddish when they had left). But she adored my mother and had a strange hold over her, which can only be explained by the fact that at some time my mother had confided too much in Amalia.
I was fifteen when Amalia persuaded Mama that it was time to get busy on my trousseau. Shrewdly she suggested that when I saw all the lovely things I would own as a married woman, I would give up my crazy ideas about becoming an actress. She also got busy finding me a husband.
My father did not like her. He was not feeling well and withdrew to his bedroom as soon as “the canary bird” appeared and had his supper served on a tray.
His illness—or rather discomfort—was diagnosed by the doctors in Vienna and Bad Kissingen as a nervous stomach. Later they found that he had ulcers in the duodenum, and prescribed a rigid, bland diet. My father hated it and became more irascible and ill-humored than ever. Still, he fulfilled all his duties with the utmost discipline. His law practice suffered only because of his administrative tasks as Mayor, but he had two associates to carry on in his office. Needless to say, Amalia Kanarienvogel had her eye on these young men, and soon they were escorting me on the Promenade. But my father’s frowns put a quick stop to that. The young men braved only two Sunday afternoons in our house; then they did not show up anymore. Amalia was elated when a new cavalry lieutenant was transferred to our garrison. His name was “Schoen” (Beautiful). He was tall, blue-eyed, dark-haired and pink-cheeked. He looked magnificently manly with his well-groomed mustache and exaggerated cavalry swagger. For Amalia he also had the great advantage of being Jewish. Edward, Rose and I found him a bore, and ludicrous; nevertheless, he came not only to tea, but quite often stayed for supper.
The Kindness of Strangers Page 5