by Joanna Gruda
Geneviève had been detained in two prisons in France, then the Germans sent her to Ravensbrück, a camp for women. The conditions there were very harsh. She found herself among criminals, prostitutes, Catholics, and Jews. And very few communists. Even though she had no one to talk politics with, Geneviève had been fascinated by this micro society made up of so many different women. That was all she would agree to talk about.
May 8, 1945. Germany had signed the instrument of surrender. For a few weeks there were celebrations and demonstrations practically nonstop. The country was jubilant. Very moved by Arnold and Geneviève’s stories, I offered my services to the communist youth to go to the train stations in order to meet the prisoners coming back from the camps. We had to give them métro tickets, a square meal, and some money, and we helped the weakest ones to get where they had to go. Sometimes we would take them to our MJCF offices, for as long as it took for them to find their family, or friends they could go to.
Most of the people returning from the camps had already had medical treatment, and they’d been fed and regained some strength before returning to France. The ones I greeted didn’t look like those living skeletons I saw not long afterwards, once the photos the journalists had taken upon the liberation of the camps started to appear.
Geneviève and Arnold found a little apartment. That summer of 1945, they managed to get in touch with a few former pupils from L’Avenir Social, and on the first day of vacation they invited us to come to a party at their house. There were six of us in all, including . . . Rolande. With her sister Élise. And Philippe. And a certain Christian, who was older than me, and he was in uniform because he was leaving for Indochina the very next day. And there was Daniel, whom I used to think of as a “little kid” at the time, and who was twelve years old now.
Rolande was still just as beautiful, with a new self-confidence and a slightly irreverent sense of humor that I liked a lot. After the colony, she had gone to live with her aunt in Vendée. She wasn’t happy there. Shortly before the liberation of Paris, she managed to get a letter to Simone, one of our old instructors from L’Avenir Social, and Simone had agreed to take her in. So she’d had the extreme good fortune to experience first-hand what I was so miserable at having missed.
My faint memories of Christian were of a solitary and silent boy. Now he talked too much. He didn’t have a lot to say about his life during the war, but preferred to talk about Indochina. He thought the French administration of the colony must be defended at any cost. This led to a long discussion, which Geneviève brought to an end just before it degenerated, bringing out a delicious carrot cake.
Philippe’s manner had acquired a layer of cynicism which, in the long run, was irritating. He told us how he had convinced his parents to let him to join the Resistance. He had worked as a messenger toward the end of the war, when news had to be carried very quickly, and he wrote articles for the newspaper Défense de la France. He was determined to go into politics after his studies.
I decided not to say anything about the fact that I had spent part of the war living under an assumed name, one that everyone there was familiar with. So for the space of an evening I was Jules once again—Julot for Geneviève. It felt strange when Rolande asked if anyone had had any news from Roger and Pierre Binet. But no one had any news.
All those stories kept us up late, so we stayed overnight at Geneviève and Arnold’s place.
CHAPTER 37
A Revenant
A few days later, Lena came into the apartment with an expression on her face I’d never seen. There were tears in her eyes and she could hardly breathe.
“What’s going on?”
“Oh, my Julek, mój kochany! Do you know who I heard from?”
“Well, no.”
She sat down, and began to cry. Then to laugh. I was beginning to worry about her mental state when finally she said, “I’ve had a letter from your father. Through Anna. We’ve had news from Emil.”
Every time I had asked her about Emil, Lena said more or less the same thing: he was a soldier in the Russian army, fighting at the front. Now, in the uninterrupted stream of words coming out of her mouth, I understood that in fact, she hadn’t had any news for several years, and she didn’t know whether he was alive, or whether he’d started another life elsewhere, or whether he even thought about us sometimes. So now, to find out that he was alive, and back in Poland, and that he’d been moving heaven and earth to get in touch with us, was beyond anything she had ever dared hope for.
“He is back in Warsaw, and he went to Fruzia’s, who has address of their sister Anna. So, she sent letter.”
“And what does he say in his letter?”
“Wait, I make quick translation: ‘My dear Lena and Julek, you must wonder if I am still alive. Yes, I am. Just barely, I am back in Poland, and they tell me you are in France. I want to see you again. I have much to tell you, too much to write here. Write to me and tell me if you are going to come back to Poland, now that war is over. I send you big hugs and kisses from Emil, your ghost.”
Lena and I sat there for a few minutes without saying a thing. Thoughts were whirling in my head. I had never seen Emil since learning he was my father. But I had always liked him, you might even say that I felt close to him. At the same time, what could remain of a closeness I had felt when I was four or five years old, now that I was fifteen? I had often wondered whether I would ever see him again, and I’d hoped I would, but I had been growing increasingly doubtful. I could not say that I’d missed him, it made me sadder to think about Fruzia and Hugo. But one thing was for sure, I had never imagined going back to Poland to live, a country where I couldn’t even speak the language anymore. I was a proper Frenchman now, and even somewhat nationalistic about it.
“We’ll have to think about it. Not right away, but soon. Whether we want to go back to Poland.”
“You can do what you want, but I’m staying here. I’m French. Next year I have the first baccalaureate exam, I can’t go to school in Poland, it’s out of the question.”
“I understand. But we’ll think about it and talk about it later. Okay?”
Two days later, Lena had a proposal for me. One I could not refuse. We would go and spend the summer vacation in Poland. And after that, we would come back to Paris, unless we both agreed to stay in Poland. And she served up a sledgehammer argument: we would make the trip in a Soviet warplane.
To take a plane! The trip was worth it for that alone. And basically I was happy to know I would see Emil, Fruzia, and Hugo again. We would be leaving a few days after the national holiday on July 14.
This was the first postwar Bastille Day. The parade in Paris was grandiose, practically gigantic. I was very proud, personally, because I had the good fortune of parading next to an American soldier. I don’t know how, but he had showed up a few days earlier at Tobcia and Beniek’s place. Since his last name was Rappoport, I think that he must have been some vague cousin of Lena and her sisters. He spoke Yiddish with Tobcia and my mother. But with me he spoke English. That’s how I ended up, on the French national holiday, speaking English with an American cousin.
Four days later, on July 18, Annette came to drive Lena and me to the airport at Le Bourget, where we would board our flight to Poland, sitting on the floor in a Soviet warplane that had no seats, a Tupolev. There were other people too, a dozen passengers in all. The plane took off, lifting heavily from the ground, up it went, then came down a little bit, then up again. The engines made a deafening sound, preventing any conversation until the plane reached its cruising speed high in the sky. We were shaken, tossed, knocked back and forth. I looked at Lena, and I am sure that throughout the entire war, all those years of clandestinity, she had never been so terrified. The expression as white as a sheet fit her perfectly just then; I wish I could come up with something more original, but sometimes you just have to go with what is patently obvious.
Once we were settled in up above the clouds, we were able to speak with our fellow passengers. I talked mainly with a Polish lady, Sophie, who had been with the International Brigades in Spain. She told me about her war, which was very different from mine.
We flew above Germany. Then we were in Poland. The plane began to lose altitude. Lena went her alabaster color again. Everyone tried to find a spot at the window to watch as we landed in Warsaw. The weather was magnificent, and the view was perfect. When we saw the city, everyone stopped breathing. It was terrible. Unreal. There was nothing left. Nothing. Ruins, just ruins, everywhere. No one could think of a single word, there was no way to describe what all of us were seeing at the same time. Some began to weep in silence.
We landed at Warsaw airport. From there we were taken to the Hotel Polonia, the first obligatory stop for people who didn’t know where to go in the devastated city. Since we knew that Emil had managed to find Fruzia and Hugo, we would be going to their house. There were lots of horses and carts outside the hotel, with coachmen calling out their destinations: Na ˚oliborz, na ˚oliborz! Na Prage˛, na Prage˛! We took one that was headed for Joliboge (or so it sounded to my French ears).
The most direct route was straight through the Warsaw ghetto. What was left of it. I had thought there would be no greater shock than the one we’d had as the plane was landing over Warsaw. But I was wrong. Warsaw was devastated, yet there were a few buildings standing here and there, there were still streets that defined limits. But in the ghetto there was nothing. Not even streets. Everything was crushed, flattened. The horse picked its way through the rubble along the path that had been cleared by repeated passage. A powerful odor of corpses filled our nostrils. A halo of dust floated over the ruins.
The building where I had spent my Polish childhood had not been destroyed. ˚oliborz, oddly enough, seemed to have been spared. I felt all wobbly inside. I knew every step in the stairway. I knew there were twenty between each landing. I resisted the desire to count them. The walls had aged, of course, but some of the marks I remembered were still there, just the same but darker. The stairs were full of rubble. We climbed up to the top floor and knocked on the door of number 23.
Hugo opened the door. And froze, his hand before his lips, like Lena a few days earlier when she saw tall, emaciated Arnold. Was this the most common, most oft-repeated gesture, after the end of the war? He called out to Fruzia. She cried out, seemed to hesitate between throwing arms around Lena, hugging me (but I was so tall now that she didn’t know where to put her arms), and collapsing into tears. She chose to combine the first and last options, and burst into tears in Lena’s arms. Hugo spoke to me. Lena hurried to explain the inexplicable: I no longer spoke Polish. Or at least that was what I took her words to mean when I saw Hugo and Fruzia’s stunned expression.
There was one question I was dying to ask: did Hugo receive a lighter I sent to him way back at the beginning of my stay in France, as part of my strategy to inform him I’d been kidnapped? Lena had forgotten the episode and conveyed my request to Hugo quite candidly. He shook his head. For that I needed no translation. How many times had Lena betrayed me in this way?
On the wall in the kitchen someone had written in tall black letters: Kapitan Michał Gruda, with the number of his military posting. It was my father: he had come to Hugo and Fruzia’s place, found no one in the apartment, and left this message. Lena burst out laughing.
“I’ve often wondered what our names would be. Well, I think the matter is settled! Since your father’s name is still Gruda, you will be Julian Gruda, as you were when you were born.”
Even though I was happy to see Hugo and Fruzia again, I was restless in their presence, because conversation was difficult, and I didn’t like having to turn to my mother all the time. Besides, I suspected she did not translate my words very accurately, or those of my former parents. I was eager to explore Warsaw, or what was left of it. But I could understand that after all these years apart we couldn’t just have a cup of tea for twenty minutes and then leave. So I listened, and tried to see what I could make out from these long processions of words, whether there were any that were familiar. Hugo seemed to notice my restlessness. During a spell of silence, he looked at me, winked, stood up and left the room. I turned and looked at Fruzia, who shrugged, as if to tell me she had no idea what he had gone to do. Hugo came back holding something that looked like a photograph. He handed it to me. Dear Lord! I had never found out whether he had paid the photographer, and I was sure that the photo had never been developed, and we’d never received it. But there they all were, all the friends from my first life. And I was right in the middle, looking very serious, a simple little Polish boy who was living with the people he thought were his parents. I remembered the names of all the children my age. I sat there for a long time looking at the photograph, very moved.
It was decided that Lena and I would stay there until another option became available. I wanted to walk around the town on my own, and so Lena wrote a note on a piece of paper: Mieszkam na ˚oliborzu, WSM, Kolonia 5. Przepraszam, ale nie rozumiem po polsku. Which said, “I live in ˚oliborz, WSM (for Warsaw Habitation Cooperative), Colony 5. I am sorry but I don’t speak Polish.” After a few days, I didn’t need the paper anymore, I knew how to say those two sentences.
And at the beginning of August, at Hugo and Fruzia’s place, Emil showed up. He and Lena embraced somewhat awkwardly. They looked at each other for a long time, not saying anything. Where to begin, after so long? Silence seemed a good solution to me. They hugged a second time, a bit less awkwardly, a bit more tenderly. Then Emil turned to me. He smiled. Pursed his lips and closed his eyes, as if to hold back his tears. He came over to me and began to speak.
“Przepraszam, ale nie rozumiem po polsku,” was what I said, with my heavy French accent, but I was rather proud that I had learned a bit of Polish so quickly.
You would have thought I had just informed him that his entire family had died! I’ve never seen anyone’s mood change so abruptly. His eyes opened wide and filled with horror. He turned to Lena, and began to yell at her, really yell!
“What? He doesn’t speak Polish anymore? What were you thinking? Honestly, I prepared myself for every eventuality—that my son might be crippled. Handicapped. Disfigured. An idiot, even. But never, never could I have imagined that he would no longer understand Polish. What were you thinking? How could you have let such a thing happen?”
And wasn’t that a lovely reunion for a couple who hadn’t seen each other in ten years?
The next day, Lena informed me that Emil was coming to pick me up and that we’d be taking the train. He wanted me to go with him to visit the place where he worked. He hoped to get to know me that way, and create a bond between father and son. I had no objections. It was on a train that Lena had informed me that I was her son. So it seemed fitting that it was on a train that Emil was going to try to become my father.
When Emil came to the door, he reached into a big bag and took out a Polish army uniform and asked me to put it on. He was wearing his captain’s uniform (from the Polish army, too, because he never was in the Red Army, as my mother had said). Apparently it would be easier for me to get around in an army uniform. So it was as a soldier that I had my first outing with my real father.
CHAPTER 38
The Trip with Emil
We climbed aboard a train packed with Polish and Russian soldiers. My father knew a few of them, and he introduced me to them with a mixture of pride and embarrassment—because of my linguistic handicap. The journey seemed endless; I got completely fed up with nodding my head whenever anyone spoke to me, and pretending to understand what they were saying. And the train moved at a snail’s pace: we stopped in fields, we stopped in stations. Soldiers climbed on, others got off. Later, my father would explain that the trip from Warsaw to Poznan´, which normally took three hours, had lasted almost twenty.
My feelings toward Emil were amb
ivalent. I didn’t know him at all, and felt no attachment to him, but there was nevertheless this little something inside me, a feeling of recognition. I was eager to know who this man was, what he thought, how he expressed himself. I noticed that he often made the other soldiers laugh, even without acting the clown. I could sense a sharp intelligence and great sensitivity. In short, I had a lot of time to spy on the man I knew was my father.
At last we arrived in Poznan´. A woman officer was waiting for us at the station. She was with her daughter, Basia, a pretty girl roughly my age, her round face adorned with dimples and almond-shaped eyes. We settled into their little two-room apartment. For how long? I had no idea. The girl and I couldn’t say anything to each other, at least with words. So we found another language, a more tactile one. So far, I liked traveling with my father.
We stayed in Poznan´ for a few days. Initially I had been under the impression that Emil was here on a military mission. But as we spent most of our time at the lady’s apartment, I eventually understood that his mission was more personal than professional.
One morning Emil came to get me. Our stay in Poznan´ was over. I put on my soldier’s uniform, packed my bag and gave Basia one last kiss. And we left for the station, where we took the train for Wrocław. We got there in the middle of the night, after a long journey. There were several groups of soldiers at the station, as many Russians as there were Poles. My father went over to a group of Poles. After that he motioned me over, and we sat down on the cement ground. My father explained something to me, still in Polish, because he hadn’t accepted the fact that I couldn’t understand a thing. I gathered we’d be spending the night there. I made a pillow with my bag and after a good hour I managed to fall asleep. I don’t know how long I had been asleep when another train came into the station. Some soldiers got off. Emil talked with them for a quarter of an hour or so. Then he came and sat back down next to me. I fell asleep again. Another train came in, with more soldiers. And the same scenario all over: my father got up, they all huddled together and talked . . . This time, my father came back and motioned to me to get up.