My sister and I were nurses’ aides. The nurses, mostly nuns, showed us how to wash the wounded, clean the surgery rooms, change the dressings, bring the urine bottles and bedpans, and feed those who were unable to eat by themselves. Very soon they let us attend to more responsible chores. What seemed most important and what we desperately wanted to convey to those dazed, maimed men, was that we were personally concerned, and we tried to draw them out from the horrible anonymity into which they had been thrown. I could not bear the harsh, brutal, drill-sergeant tone in which the Ukrainians especially were addressed by doctors and nurses.
We were told that regiments were deserting en masse to the Russians, that they were shooting their own officers. It was rumored that our friend Colonel Brenner von Flammenberg had been killed by a bullet in the back of his head. Long columns of infantry passed Wychylowka, dirty, dejected, dragging their feet, numb with exhaustion.
The newspapers still claimed that thousands of Russians were surrendering, but we never saw Russian prisoners. A few Mongolians and Kalmucks were brought to the hospital. They had surrendered while on patrol but their wounds were not serious. All the wounded had that same uncomprehending stare. Lying in rows on the lumpy straw mattresses, they did not complain. Their patient, humble suffering was heartbreaking.
In the first weeks of the war aristocratic ladies used to inspect the hospitals. A princess and two pretty Hungarian countesses appeared in the operating room, escorted by the delighted chief surgeon. Lovely and fresh, in spotless white uniforms, the coquettish caps with the red cross emblem on their “marcelled” hair, perfumed handkerchiefs close to their pretty noses, they remained near the open window. The princess lifted her lorgnette to her eyes and looked with remarkable composure at the bloody mess, which was the leg of a dying man. After a few minutes, politely murmuring their great satisfaction that we were doing so well, the ladies hurried out of the room. We could hear the backfire of their automobile as it raced away. The young surgeon, to whom I was handing the swab, said in a loud voice: “psia krew.” These were the only Polish words he knew and they mean “bloody bitch.”
The Russians had Lwow and were encircling the “unimpregnable fortress,” Przemysl, where our High Command intended to annihilate them. While the newspapers were triumphantly announcing: “Przemysl is still in our hands,” the population in the eastern parts of Galicia greeted the Russians as liberators. Then the Austrian defense collapsed, and at last the order to evacuate the hospital was issued. The wounded, unable to travel, were transferred to the civilian hospital; for all the others and the medical staff, to which my sister and I belonged, a train was waiting at the station. I went home after the last of the wounded were placed on it.
It was late in the afternoon and the house looked sad and neglected, the broken windowpanes had not been replaced, the autumnal garden was devastated, no one was laughing in the kitchen, and I saw artillery digging in between the rose beds.
Inside, everything was in chaos. My mother and the servants were packing, in a great hurry, Papa’s precious Persian rugs, which he had collected with love and expense. Rolled into bales, they were to be taken to the Catholic church and hidden in the vaults. The Canonicus had offered to keep them there until our return, but Papa refused to be evacuated. He also protested my mother’s decision to bury the silver under the floor of the barn, because “The Geneva Convention protects private property and all belligerents have to abide by it.” This made Mama fly into one of her impetuous rages. My father slammed the door of his room, saying that he wouldn’t budge and we all could go wherever we chose. Friends who had come to say good-bye, tried in vain to talk to him. Finally a deputy of the city council convinced him that the Russians certainly would take him as a hostage and deport him to some horrible place in the interior of “mother Russia.” Papa gave in, and in a frenzy we all began to pack. We were permitted one suitcase each, but there were ten of us, not counting Aunt Bella’s two dogs. My Grandmother’s maid, Magda, and Niania were going with us. Niania took charge of a problem no one had thought of. In a short time she provided an enormous quantity of roast chicken, loaves of bread and cakes, dozens of hard boiled eggs, tea and cereal for Papa, also an alcohol stove. The foodbasket was the biggest and most important piece of luggage we carried with us. She even remembered to take food for the dogs.
The Russians were very close when we pulled out in the middle of the night. First everyone appeared despondent and frightened, but then, probably as a necessary outlet after the hectic weeks of emotional strain and physical exhaustion, we young people were seized by a sudden gaiety and recklessness. The sick and wounded joined in our mood.
Proceeding at a snail’s pace toward Hungary, for days shuffling back and forth, our train was only a few kilometers ahead of the advancing Russian army. After six days of what was normally a trip of two hours, we crossed the Carpathians and the train stood still in a muddy field, under the incessant November drizzle. On both sides of the track there were abandoned wagons loaded with gorgeous grapes, melons, plums, pears and apples, sending a tantalizing fragrance to our freightcars. We were forbidden to touch any fruit as we had suspected cholera cases among our wounded.
Our next stop was at Satoralya-Ujhailly in Hungary and the mayor of the City, notified that a colleague was on the evacuation train, sent my father a large basket of choicest fruit. In spite of all the warnings, we could not resist eating them. In Satoralya the hospital train was dismembered. The wounded and the doctors were divided among different hospitals in the hinterland and our family establishment transferred to a train for Budapest. From there it was only four hours to Vienna.
In those four hours, my thoughts turned from the beastliness and desolation of the present to the brighter aspects of the immediate future. The first thing that had reestablished my joie-de-vivre was the hot bath and excellent breakfast in the Budapest hotel. If, as I hoped, the Neue Wiener Buehne had opened (I had been completely out of touch with the Geyers), I would be obliged to continue my contractual obligations. A longing for grease paint and footlights overcame me and a great tenderness for Andreas, who had been very distant during the last months.
11
IN THAT FIRST YEAR of the war I became a member of a family again, and to make it more difficult, a refugee family. Comparing this with the hardship and sorrow war had imposed upon others, I considered it a minor sacrifice. The casualty lists in the morning paper and the anxiety about my brother Edward had subdued my desire for independence for a while. Soon after our exodus from Sambor, Edward had been drafted and, because of his near-sightedness, given an office job. But as the war went on and the physical fitness requirements were constantly lowered, there was always the chance that he could be sent to the front. Meanwhile he was giving concerts for the Red Cross, the bereaved families, and hospitals, which made him more useful to the war effort than his doubtful ability to shoot.
We lived first in a crowded, extremely ugly apartment, which Esther had rented. The atmosphere was unbearably depressing. Then Mama found a pleasant eighteenth century house on the outskirts of Vienna, in Grinzing, and we took the second floor. The large courtyard was enclosed by a vine-covered pergola and the grapes were still hanging from the leafless, twisted branches when we moved in. A graceful staircase led to our apartment and I can still feel the wooden steps sink in like the keys of a piano when I ran down in a hurry.
The Austrian and the German armies were entrenched on the Western Front, and Hindenburg, after his Tannenberg victory, was gathering forces to drive the Russians from Galicia.
Apprehensive about the outcome of the war, my father had nevertheless considered it his duty to invest all his money in war bonds. To him Europe without the Austro-Hungarian monarchy was unthinkable. When he emerged from his room to sit down at the dinner table, the meal invariably turned into a dreaded ordeal, especially for Dusko, who had been running wild in the big city. He had joined the roughest elements in his high school and the attraction was mutual. Excelling
in sports, he completely neglected his studies and Papa had visions of him as a soccer-playing hoodlum, while I worried about his constant demands for larger sums of money. This we did not dare to reveal to Papa. Optimistic as ever, my mother said there was no need to despair about Dusko, that she had had a serious talk with him; he had admitted a gambling debt, but promised to reform and avoid bad company. A few days later I noticed that Grandmother was no longer wearing her diamond brooch.
I tried to appeal to my younger brother’s reason, but was astounded by his complete lack of emotion, his cold disregard for our parents. His excuse was that in a year or so, he might be in the army—the war would still be on, he might be killed, so at least he intended to have a good time as long as he was alive. He was only concerned with his pleasures and his dominant position among the young toughs. I looked at him as he sat there, strong, stubborn, handsome and extremely antagonistic. He did not understand what the fuss was about; all he wanted was more spending money.
Rose had returned to Germany. She had accepted an engagement with the Görlitz Stadttheater. Aunt Bella had a new profession: she was playing the piano in a movie theater, improvising with great ingenuity the incidental music to slapstick comedy and gaudy melodrama. Her free hours were divided between two lovers, one young, the other middle-aged. She could not decide which one she liked better.
Of course, the first thing I did after my return was to rush to the café where I used to meet Andreas, and telephone him. There was no answer in his studio. A feeling of anguish seized me. I had written to him and he must have read in the newspapers that Sambor had been evacuated. I was walking down the street dejectedly, when I saw him coming toward me . . . Was there a greater proof of love, belonging, telepathy, call it what you may! Neither war, distance, nor time had changed him. He said that every day he had gone to our café to read the papers and wait for me.
The theater had reopened but the actors were paid only half of their former salaries. The war had interrupted Emil Geyer’s ambitious program and like most other producers he was concerned with profitable entertainment. We played farces, light comedies and, of course, the Brieux play about syphilis. It was our patriotic contribution to the war.
In the Spring of 1915 a German offensive had thrown the Russians out of Galicia. Sambor was freed, but the prospects for victory were dimmed when the Italians joined the Allies. Hindenburg’s victory at Tannenberg and the breakthrough at Gorlice balanced the scale, and made it possible for my father to return to Sambor and resume his duties as mayor. Niania went with him, overjoyed to leave Vienna. She had been so unhappy there that she had even refused to go sightseeing. Once I persuaded her to visit St. Stephen’s Cathedral, which I had hoped would impress her, but her only melancholy comment was: “It is big.” At night she would bring the tray with my supper, sit down at my bedside and unburden her heart: Vassili was prisoner of war in Russia and it was a relief to know that he was no longer in danger of being killed; but “did they give him anything to eat?” It took ages to get news through the Red Cross.
An officer we knew, who had stopped in the now liberated Sambor, brought us the rugs from the vault of the Catholic church. Mama intended to sell a few particularly valuable pieces, to finance the rebuilding of our dilapidated Wychylowka, but when we opened the wooden crates we saw that the rats had been more destructive than the passing armies. They had eaten holes as huge as wagon wheels, and the damage to the rugs was so great that it was impossible to have them repaired. We were also told that all the furniture in the house had been looted, and only the walls and the roof remained.
Mama, Grandmother and Dusko also went home. Edward had been transferred to the “liberated” Przemysl. Only I remained. Life in Vienna had changed. Although the night clubs and swank restaurants were crowded, the blockade was felt strongly by all those who did not have the money to hoard. I often went hungry.
Toward the end of the season Dr. Geyer gave me a leading role in Der Graf von Gleichen, a drama in which Albert Steinrueck, the great German actor, appeared as guest. He must have been in his middle-forties then, a square-set man with a lion’s face framed by hair so fair it seemed almost white. Off stage he was one of the most fascinating human beings, without any pose, straightforward and a talented painter. He drank a great deal.
It was difficult for me to concentrate on my acting career during the war. The struggle for roles and success had become meaningless; on the streets one saw more and more women in mourning. My colleagues advised me to break with Andreas and leave Vienna. I had an offer to return to Reinhardt, but paralyzed by my infatuation I refused to move.
It must have been late in July that the theater closed and I was free to return to Wychylowka. The trains, though they took much longer, were more or less on schedule, and terribly crowded and dirty. It was hot and stuffy in the compartment. A late moon broke through the clouds when we were traveling through Galicia. In the cold, gray-green light I could clearly see the landscape: miles and miles of ravaged forestland of which nothing was left but black, broken treetrunks, their charred, skeleton arms desperately reaching up to the sky. Among them were thousands of white crosses. They made the forest an unending, nightmarish cemetery.
The station in Sambor had been bombed and damaged; detachments of Austrian soldiers, hundreds of peasants, and Jews in kaftans were milling around, dragging boxes, suitcases and packages. One did not know whether they were leaving or returning. We drove home in a hired fiacre, as we no longer had our horses. Mama, rosy-cheeked and smiling, hugged me, happy that I was back. She had good news: Edward had a furlough and would be coming home. Papa felt much better and was busy at his office. Everything else in the house was going well, thanks to Loginoff, the Russian prisoner of war allotted to Wychylowka for farm work. Presently, as we drove up to the house, I saw a huge, beaming, strikingly handsome Russian standing at the gate, waving happily and announcing at the top of his voice: “Barynia Salka,” as if we had known each other all our lives. And as usual Niania, Marynia the maid and fourteen-year-old Ivan, who functioned as cowboy, kitchen help and Dusko’s personal valet, came running to embrace me, all barefoot.
From outside, the house looked unchanged. The windows and doors had been replaced, but still needed a coat of paint. Asters and carnations were growing in the front garden and the lawn was well cared for; but the rose bushes were gone, having given their lives for Kaiser and Vaterland. Inside everything had been destroyed, the furniture stolen or burned, even the tiles in the stoves were missing. The two grand pianos had been disembowelled and used as mangers. They were now a sad pile of disconnected parts. But to Mama’s great triumph, the buried silver had been found untouched, and now shone, brightly polished, from the roughly hewn sideboard Loginoff had made for the dining room. The other rooms also had plain wooden furniture: chairs, benches, shelves, beds and tables he had constructed. Only the living room contrasted sharply with the crude primitiveness of the other rooms. Great-grandfather’s eighteenth century desk with all its drawers and secret compartments, which had mystified us so much when we were children, was there. Leather armchairs, a sofa, and a rug under the oak table, made the room comfortable and even elegant. The black marble Empire clock stood on the white mantelpiece again. All had been rescued by a kind soul from Papa’s office.
It is impossible to imagine how Wychylowka would have withstood the war if it had not been for Loginoff, the carpenter, gardener, farmer and veterinary, who adopted it as his new homeland. In Russia he had a wife, three children and a fertile farm overlooking the Volga, which he had abandoned to fight for the Czar. Luckily for us, he thought it better to stay alive, and on his first patrol went over to an Austrian infantry regiment, whose Ukrainian detachment was just debating whether they themselves should not surrender to the enemy. As the Austrian casualties were extremely severe, more peasants were drafted and the prisoners of war distributed among landowners to ease the labor shortage. Loginoff never ceased to bless his fate that he was assigned to my father;
he was received with open arms in our household. He was also very popular in town, where he was permitted to move freely by day and he became very successful in bargaining with black marketeers. He liked to tell us about his family and the rich crops of his farm, but he was not a man to live on memories. It was obvious to everyone except Papa, that he and our attractive maid Marynia were very much in love, although the law made it an offense for the female population to “fraternize” with prisoners of war.
Outside our garden fence was a German ammunition dump. Railroad tracks had been built to connect it with the station, and at the crack of dawn we would be awakened by the freight cars rolling in and the officers and sergeants cursing the prisoners who loaded them. They were Mongolians, Tartars and Kalmucks, all looking like skeletons. Loginoff told me that there had been five hundred of them, but half had died of hunger and typhoid fever. He had dug a hole under the fence separating the dump from our barnyard, and at night the starving men came crawling in with their mess tins to get the cabbage and potato soup Niania cooked for them. Sometimes Niania’s relatives illegally slaughtered a pig and brought a slice of fat or a few bones to add to the soup. This meager help was only a drop in the bucket, but if the POWs saw us on the road, something like the shadow of a smile lit up the skull-like faces.
The German officers had a bowling alley and the commander paid us a formal visit and invited us to bowl with them. It was impossible to refuse, and I shall never forget that afternoon. Neither Mama, Rose nor I showed any talent for bowling, especially as the presence of the two skeletons putting up the pins prevented us from appreciating our hosts’ humor and indubitable politeness.
The Kindness of Strangers Page 11