No Going Back

by Anna Patrick

  ‘What a coincidence. I’m not sure how long he worked for the paper but his career prospered, and he became the Editor In Chief of the Morning Express in Warsaw. Later, and I’m guessing this resulted from his turbulent home life, he became the editor of the Red Courier.’

  ‘Wasn’t that the evening paper with the red masthead?’

  ‘Yes, that’s the one. Don’t tell me your mother read that one as well.’

  ‘No, my father. He used to buy a copy at the station before heading home from work and I would look through it sometimes, though, to be honest, the adverts interested me more than the articles.’

  ‘Tata loved his job and from what I’ve heard he excelled at it, well at first he did; later things took a turn for the worse. I wish you could have met him, Renata. He was a brilliant man: erudite, opinionated, a witty raconteur and convivial host. He loved poetry, especially the works of Cyprian Norwid, and he wrote poetry himself. You would have liked him, I’m sure, and he would have taken to you immediately.’

  ‘He sounds an amazing man.’

  ‘He was. He really was.’

  Renata reached for her friend’s hand as she remembered her father.

  ‘I’m not sure when he married my mother or even how he met her, but her maiden name was Wanda Gloszkowska and her Coat of Arms was Jastrzebiec.’

  ‘Goodness Marta, do you think the lice know they’re feasting on such fine blood? They should feel honoured.’

  Marta grinned.

  ‘It’s amusing how important these things were in the past. It seemed to be instinctive that if you knew somebody’s name you also knew their Coat of Arms. I wonder if such details will remain important?’

  ‘People find it hard to let go of the past at the best of times and we’ve all been through the worst of times. Perhaps that will make genealogy even more important and people will want to identify themselves with their ancestors more than ever.’

  ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘Tell me more about your father. Was he handsome?’

  ‘He was, not that I’m biased.’

  ‘Of course not. And what about your mother? Was she beautiful?’

  ‘Yes, they made a striking couple, and they lived the good life. A considerable salary funded champagne and caviar, tailored clothes, servants, trips to the theatre and concerts, everything they needed or thought they needed for their happiness, including the arrival of their beloved daughter, me.’

  ‘So your parents loved each other at the beginning?’

  ‘Yes, I have no reason to doubt it.’

  ‘Oh, that makes it so much worse.’

  ‘It does. Now that I’ve started talking about my family all these memories are crowding into my head. I was having a nap, sleeping in a pram or a cot outside in the garden – this must have been at Hortensia Street – and a storm broke out. It must have happened suddenly because I was alone when the thunder and lightning started. The branches of a tree are swaying above me and I wonder now if lightning struck the tree? Anyway, they came running to fetch me, but by then I was screaming blue murder.

  ‘As you know, I’m still terrified of thunderstorms and want to hide in some dark cupboard until it’s all over. It’s bizarre after everything we have been through in the camp that I’m so frightened of a natural phenomenon. I can’t say which I find worse: the flashes of lightening or the sound of the sky falling in.

  ‘Another memory is when I kept getting terrible sore throats, and the doctor decided that I needed my tonsils removed. In those days they used to do that operation without anaesthetics. Can you imagine it? At first, I opened my mouth willingly, and they got the scissors or whatever instrument they used inside my mouth and cut out the first tonsil.

  ‘They didn’t get the second one. I screamed and screamed mostly from the pain, but also from the outrage of it all. When they tried to reason with me, I clamped my mouth shut. Mama tried pleading and bribing me with treats, but I was adamant and they gave up.’

  ‘Goodness, Marta, you have had the most extraordinary childhood. Did you continue to suffer from sore throats?’

  ‘I can’t remember but I guess it must have cured the problem to some extent because nobody ever mentioned my tonsils again.’

  ‘No, they wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Time we got back to my family. Let me tell you about my uncles. The oldest, Jerzy, became a government minister in charge of home affairs; he married a woman called Wanda Dowojna-Sylwestrowicz, and they had a daughter Krystyna. The youngest, Tadeusz, joined the Army and married a woman called Zofia Hubicka and they had a daughter Alicja.’

  ‘So that means all three brothers had just one daughter each.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. Krystyna and I were born in the same year; Alicja came along seven years later and everyone acknowledged her to be the most beautiful of the three cousins.’

  ‘What’s happened to them?’

  ‘Well, I imagine Uncle Jerzy would have escaped to safety, his family too, when the Germans invaded. I guess he’s part of the Polish Government in Exile in London. I don’t know where Uncle Tadeusz is now, but his wife and daughter are still in Poland, at least I assume they are. They were the ones living with my grandfather.’

  ‘What about your parents? What happened to them?’

  ‘Stalin’s henchmen murdered Tata at Katyn; my mother died when I was thirteen.’

  ‘Oh I’m so sorry, Marta.’

  ‘It’s all right, Renata. I’ve grieved for them in the past and I miss them all the time, but the pain isn’t the same anymore.’

  ‘So what about your Aunt Haneczka?’

  ‘Ah well, she is central to this story, but we’d better save her for our next escape.’

  ‘Oh, must we?’

  ‘Who knows how many more Sundays lie ahead.’

  ‘I guess so. Oh Marta, thank you for doing this. I feel I’ve been living a different life just hearing about your family.’

  ‘And you must tell me about your family.’

  ‘Boring.’

  ‘Mm, there’s a lot to be said for boring.’

  Boredom would be a privilege in this environment: yawning and stretching and looking around for alternative activities; it would mean time to consider and assess, to exercise choice as a human being instead of obeying commands like a slave.

  So much of their life was experienced on a knife-edge. There was nothing dull or blunted about their existence: everything was extreme, intense, concentrated, from the hunger in their stomachs to the cold numbing their limbs to the fear stalking their every move.

  21

  ‘I’ve been living with your family all week. I can’t wait to find out more.’

  ‘In that case we must move onto my Aunt Haneczka who lies at the centre of this whole tale. She was a remarkable woman. Intelligent, erudite, a true patriot, she lived several lives all at once and still found time to read a book or go to the theatre. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘Yes, very much so. I used to be friends with a girl at school like that, always doing something, going somewhere, joining something or other and she still achieved top grades in all her subjects.’

  ‘That sounds similar. Aunt Haneczka became one of the first women doctors in Poland. She completed her medical studies at the University of Lausanne and worked as a surgeon at the Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Warsaw. During the Great War she operated in two of the Red Cross Hospitals; one at Brest-Litovsk but I can’t remember where the other one was.

  ‘Towards the end of 1917 they put her in charge of the press department of the First Polish Corps in the East.’

  ‘That’s a change of direction.’

  ‘Another of those several lives lived all at once. Aunt Haneczka was a social and political activist no matter what else she did.’

  ‘Your family must be very proud of her.’

 
‘There’s still more to admire because the Polish Military Organisation working for Poland’s freedom sent her and her husband Stefan to work undercover in Moscow, Kiev, St Petersburg and then in Finland and Paris. For that undercover work they awarded her the Cross of Independence with Swords and the Silver Cross of the Order of Military Virtue.

  ‘The Virtuti Militari? Heavens. There aren’t many women who get awarded that.’

  ‘When she returned to Poland, she worked in the High Command of the Polish Army and then in the office of the Civil Head of State and in 1930 she became a senator.’

  ‘Was she beautiful?’

  ‘More striking looking than beautiful, a handsome woman rather than a pretty one, although she was thirty years older than me so perhaps I’m not the best person to comment on her looks.

  ‘My last memory of her was in Warsaw when she worked night and day to staunch the fires started by all the bombs. I really admired her for that because I couldn’t stand it myself. After only a few days I had to get out. I’m such a coward.’

  ‘No wonder. I imagine the bombing resembled one enormous storm with fires like lightening and explosions like thunder.’

  ‘Mm I never considered that. Actually, Renata, that makes me feel better. Perhaps I’m not such a coward, more a victim of my childhood trauma.’

  ‘Don‘t say that, you’re not a coward at all. Nobody who survives this camp day after day can be called a coward. Besides, I don’t suppose getting out of Warsaw was easy.’

  ‘No, the roads were full of people trying to leave and the Luftwaffe were merciless, dropping bombs on refugees, flying low and strafing women and children as they ran into the fields and dived into the ditches.’

  ‘A taste of what they had in store for us.’

  ‘Indeed. Only this isn’t helping us escape, so let’s change the subject.

  ‘What I don’t understand is why your aunt is central to your story.’

  ‘Ah, because instead of reaching the dizzy heights of a senator, she could so easily have become a social outcast.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because in 1915, while still single, she became pregnant with a married man’s child.’

  ‘What a delicious scandal. Oh dear, I am sorry, Marta, I shouldn’t have said that. It’s your family after all.’

  ‘No, it’s all right. A man called Stefan Hubicki, a bachelor some ten years older, also a doctor, stepped in and married her and averted the scandal. Do you remember my uncle Tadeusz married a woman called Zofia Hubicka? Well, Stefan was her relative. Now whether the family put pressure on him or whether he was an honourable and decent man who wanted to help a colleague or whether he had always admired her from afar, who knows? But in whatever way the marriage came about, he accepted her son, Andrzej, as his own.’

  ‘And the married man who made her pregnant?’

  ‘Are you familiar with the architect who designed the Sejm Meeting Hall and who helped to restore the Royal Castle after we regained independence in 1918? He was one of the founders of the Society for the Preservation of Historical Monuments.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, the man I am referring to is Kazimierz Skorewicz. Apparently he graduated from the St Petersburg Institute of Civil Engineers and became the city architect of Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan in the Russian Empire, before he returned home to Poland.’

  ‘Pity he didn’t stay there in Baku.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘You know what I really hate? There he is this successful architect, but it could be a man in any profession, and he has his fun and then he walks away from it all leaving your aunt, but it could just as easily be any other woman, to face the social disgrace he’s responsible for.’

  ‘Well, it’s always been different for men. Although to be fair, I’m not in a position to say exactly what happened. Maybe she fell in love with him and instigated the affair if not the actual pregnancy. Whatever the circumstances, my family found out and her brothers, including my father, vowed to avenge their sister and make him pay for his misdeed in a way that would cause him maximum social disgrace.’

  ‘No. How on earth would they be able to do that?’

  ‘By seducing his daughter and causing her ruin.’

  ‘Oh my God, like Natasha Rostova in War and Peace.’

  ‘Renata, you are a constant surprise. So you’ve read Tolstoy?’

  ‘I loved that book and spent a whole summer with my nose stuck in its pages only emerging for meals or to help round the house when my mother forced me to. When that beast Kuragin kisses her and plans to abduct her, I thought it was the end of the world.’

  Marta couldn’t help laughing at the contrast between Renata’s imagined apocalypse and the reality of their daily extermination.

  ‘You know, Renata,’ she said, smiling at her friend, ‘we started this weekly escape to help you, but I think it’s helping me every bit as much.’

  ‘Then I’m glad. Now come on, what happened next?’

  ‘Well, they assigned my father the task of seducing Maryta, but when he met her, it was a coup de foudre. They both fell head over heels in love with each other.’

  Renata pressed her palms to her cheeks, her mouth slack.

  ‘This is amazing.’

  ‘I told you the story was incredible.’

  ‘What about your poor mother caught up in all this? Presumably she knew nothing about this proposed seduction?’

  ‘No, I can’t imagine for a second she would agree to it. And it was a terrible thing to do; Maryta wasn’t to blame for her father’s indiscretions.’

  ‘No, and it was your mother, and you who suffered.’

  ‘What are you two talking about?’ Their blokova had wandered over to their bunk and now stood close to Renata.

  ‘Oh, about men and their foolish ways,’ said Renata, focused on a louse.

  The blokova spat on the ground, folded her arms and leant on the bunk post.

  ‘Men? Huh there isn’t one I wouldn’t have strangled at birth, the pathetic, disgusting creatures. Now, if you want to experience true relationships, I’m more than happy to enlighten you.’ She let her eyes linger on Renata.

  ‘Thank you, I appreciate the offer, but I wouldn’t dream of upsetting your special friends because I’ve heard the loving way they talk about you. Besides, information gets out and if my fiancé ever found out, he would kill me, even inside a concentration camp, I promise you that.’

  The blokova sniffed and considered arguing further but the devotion of her acolytes mollified her.

  ‘If you ever change your mind…’

  ‘You’ll be the first to know, blokova. Thank you again.’

  ‘Wow you handled that brilliantly,’ said Marta.

  ‘God, can you imagine it? As if our life wasn’t foul enough without having to service the blokova nightly. It’s not that I object to what other people do; it’s being coerced into something that should be private and voluntary. Do you mind if we go out for a brisk walk? I need to clear my head.’

  The following Sunday, Renata was eager to find out more.

  ‘We reached the point where your father and Maryta had fallen in love with each other, so what happened next?’

  ‘There must have been a period of uncertainty and, I hope, of conscience for my father. All I remember is that it devastated Mamusia, and she kept saying ‘Pray that your Father doesn’t leave us.’ Remember I was so young I didn’t understand what was going on.’

  ‘Oh, that is so sad. How awful for you to feel your mother’s happiness depended on the success of your prayers.’

  ‘I doubt I could have articulated that thought but you’re right. It was a terrible burden to place on a child though I am sure she didn’t mean to. She was a loving mother, but she was also still very much in love with my father.’

  ‘What a man to
inspire such love and devotion from two different women.’

  ‘In my eyes he was just my Tata. It wasn’t until I was much older that I appreciated him as an individual; I guess that’s true of all children.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right. My father seemed a distant figure in my childhood, and when I grew up, the war broke out. He enlisted and now I have no idea where he is or even if he is still alive. What a waste it all is. Anyway, let’s get back to your parents.’

  ‘I don’t remember how long the uncertainty continued for, weeks or months, but eventually Tata and Maryta set up home together. That’s when they sent me away to boarding school, one run by the Ursuline nuns. I hated it there, loathed it with a passion. The nuns did their best, but all I wanted was to get back to my home and my beloved mother. My father too, but at that age it’s your mother who’s most important. Hence my naughtiness and always getting into trouble. It was my childish way of saying I wanted to be with her.’

  ‘Why didn’t you stay with your mother?’

  ‘She had to work as a seamstress to support us.’

  ‘But surely your father paid alimony for you after the divorce?’

  ‘Actually, I’ve been wondering about that. People bandied about the word divorce, but the conversation always stopped dead when I walked in so naturally I assumed that’s what happened. But perhaps they only separated. My mother was a staunch Catholic so I wonder now if she would have agreed to a divorce. She would have been dead set against it on religious grounds alone, never mind her personal feelings.

  ‘Also I don’t remember any wedding ceremony for Tata and Maryta. I suppose they might not have invited me, but there were no photos in their apartment and none of their friends ever mentioned one.’

  ‘Perhaps if your mother had agreed to a divorce, a financial settlement would have enabled you to stay at home.’

  ‘Perhaps, but then the Church would have deprived her of Holy Communion and that prospect was more devastating for her than being unable to keep me at home.’