by Lily Brett
L I L Y B R E T T
“Spain sold wolfram ore to the Germans,” Ruth said. “Wolfram ore was used to make tungsten, a particularly hard metal that was crucial to the Germans’ war effort.”
“Oy, oy, oy,” said Edek. “I did not know this.”
“Nobody in that part of the world was innocent,” Ruth said. “The Swedes let German troops cross Sweden to join in the invasion of the Soviet Union. The Swedes let two hundred and fifty thousand German troops use the Swedish railway system.”
“It is hard to believe,” said Edek.
“The Swedish navy provided an escort service for German military supply ships,” Ruth said. “These countries were all busy making a profit from the murder of Jews. After the war, the Allies, England, America, and France, asked Spain, Sweden, Portugal, and Turkey to return the gold, looted from Jews, that Germany had paid them with. They didn’t want to.
They hung on to the gold. And the Allies didn’t even ask them to give back gold that had been transferred through Switzerland by the Germans.
Nobody wanted to give up anything.” She paused. “You can see why I don’t want their money,” she said, “can’t you?”
“Maybe,” Edek said.
“No one was punished except the Jews,” Ruth said. “Alfred Krupp, the main manufacturer of German artillery, armor plate, submarines, and war-ships for Hitler, was never punished. The directors of I. G. Farben, who ran the factories at Auschwitz, were all acquitted of war crimes like using slave labor. Apparently they were all acquitted for lack of evidence.”
“I could have given them this evidence,” said Edek.
“Of course,” said Ruth. “But nobody asked you.”
They walked in silence. Ruth hoped that she hadn’t depressed Edek. It was depressing to think about how many people were pleased to benefit from the murder of Jews. And here, in this Catholic country, with barely a Jew left, anti-Semitism was still evident. Maybe the Poles didn’t know that, earlier this year, their Pope, the Polish Pope John Paul II, had made a historic move. The Pope had apologized for the Catholic Church’s silence during the Holocaust. In Vienna, in June, he had given a speech in which he said, “Unspeakable suffering was inflicted on the Jewish people, in Europe. Reconciliation with the Jews,” he added, “is one of the most fun-T O O M A N Y M E N
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damental duties of Christians in Europe.” Maybe the Poles had missed out on that speech?
Edek and Ruth were on Kamedulska Street. They stopped outside number 23. Ruth felt suddenly frightened. She shouldn’t have forced her father to come to Poland.
“Did I force you to come to Poland?” she said to Edek. He didn’t seem to hear her. He was staring at the building. He looked dazed.
“This is it,” he said.
“I know,” she said. She wanted to say something else, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.
“This is it,” Edek said again.
Ruth looked at the concrete and brick apartment block. It looked shabbier than she remembered. She remembered walking into this building fifteen years ago. She remembered how difficult it had been for her to breathe. As though the inhabitants who no longer inhabited the apartment block took up all the breathing space. She could feel their presence. She had thought that she could feel their movements. The movement of children, cousins, mothers, grandmothers. On the first floor, Ruth had thought she could hear laughter and bustle. When she had knocked at one of the apartment doors, an old lady had emerged and told her that no one else was at home during the day, on that floor.
“Tadek and Moniek did have apartments in this building, too,” Edek said. “They did live here with their families.” So there were children, Ruth thought. There were mothers and cousins and grandmothers in this building.
“Your brothers Tadek and Moniek?” She said.
“Of course,” Edek said, “which other Tadek and which other Moniek should I mean?” Edek looked cold. He had his hands in his pockets and his shoulders hunched.
“Shall we go inside, Dad?” she said. “It’s cold out here.”
“Maybe we do not need to go inside?” Edek said. “There is nothing more to see inside. You can see everything what there is to see from here.
Come on, Ruthie, let us go back to the hotel.”
“Can we just look around the courtyard, out the back, then?” she said.
“What is there to see?” he said. “Nothing.” She tried not to look disappointed.
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L I L Y B R E T T
“I’ll just have a look around the courtyard,” she said. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“I will come with you,” said Edek. He followed her into the hallway.
“Look how many apartments they did make on every floor,” he said. He had stopped at an old intercom system just inside the hallway, and was counting the buzzers. “It looks like they did make three apartments from my parents’ apartment,” Edek said. “Look, see here, on the second floor. It used to be our apartment, and the apartment of the Zukers and the apartment of the Bermans. Now, it is one, two, three, four, five, six apartments.
The Zukers’ apartment and the Bermans’ apartments was not big apartments. They must have made the extra ones from our apartment.”
It was very quiet, in the building. There was no sign of life. Either the occupants were very old, or out at work. Edek had walked toward the staircase. He was touching the banister. What was he thinking about? Ruth wondered. What was he remembering? Ruth kept very quiet. She didn’t want to disturb him.
Ruth looked at the crumbling plaster in the hallway. She had remembered this hallway as tiled. Tiled with smooth, cream tiles. Cream tiles with a patterned border. How could she have replaced the patchy plaster with Italian tiles? She couldn’t believe she could have had such a distorted vision.
“Was this hallway ever tiled?” she said to her father.
“No,” he said. She looked at the staircase she had held on to fifteen years ago. The staircase whose banister she had gripped to keep a grip on herself. She remembered it as marble. It was not marble. It was made of wood. A wooden staircase. It didn’t curve and sweep in a broad semi-circle. The staircase had a gentle curve, and it was quite wide. But it was not ornate and it was not marble. How could she have turned the creaky timber stairs into marble steps? Sheer force of will, she thought. She must have needed them to be marble. She must have not wanted to see any decay, any disintegration. The marble must have represented the life and the shine that must have been there, once. The life that she was looking for.
Ruth was shocked. She had a clear recollection of touching the tiled wall with her cheek. How clear could recollections be? They couldn’t be that clear. There were no tiles, no marble, no shine, no life. There was just T O O M A N Y M E N
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a run-down building, at 23 Kamedulska Street. She wiped away her tears.
She didn’t want to make Edek feel bad. He must be feeling bad enough.
Edek started to walk up the stairs. Ruth followed him. He stopped at the landing on the first floor.
“Here lived Tadek,” he said to Ruth. Edek’s voice was quite firm, but his eyes and face and mouth looked shaken. “And here lived Moniek,” he said. “I did like his two children very much.”
“Moniek and Tadek lived next door to each other?” Ruth said. She knew it was a stupid comment. The doors to the two apartments were side by side. But she didn’t know what else to say. She didn’t want to ask about Moniek’s children. She didn’t want to ask whether they were boys or girls, or one of each? Or what age they were. Or what happened to them. She knew that they were all dead. But how did they die? And when? In all probability Edek didn’t know.
“Here lived Mr. and Mrs. Bader,” Edek said, pointing to another door.
“They was a very nice couple. She could not have any children and she did give me always a piece of lekekh, a piece of spunch cake, when she did bake on Fridays.”
“How nice,” Rut
h said.
“She did bake a very good spunch cake,” Edek said. Ruth loved the way Edek pronounced sponge. She had always adored this pronunciation. As a teenager she had taken it up herself. She had looked for opportunities to bring spunch cakes into conversations.
“I could smell Mrs. Bader’s spunch from my bedroom,” Edek said. The placing of “smell” and “spunch” so close to the word “bedroom,” in the one, small sentence, added a dimension to the word “spunch” that Ruth had never noticed. Smell, and spunch, sounded distinctly sexual when linked to a bedroom.
What was she doing playing around with words and their connotations, now? Ruth thought. This was not the moment to go off on some word-association fantasy. She had to stay connected to the present at the moment.
“You lived on the next floor up,” she said to Edek.
“I lived on the next floor,” he said. “The second floor.”
“Let’s go up,” Ruth said.
Edek looked at her. “We had, downstairs, in the back, a place where a man did come with a cow,” he said.
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L I L Y B R E T T
“You had a cow out the back?” said Ruth.
“The cow did not belong to us,” said Edek. “The cow did belong to the man what came to us with the cow. He came with the cow and a big bucket.
He did milk the cow and did put the milk from his bucket into the buckets of the people what lived in this building. He did come a few times a week.”
“I didn’t know that,” Ruth said.
“There is a lot that you do not know,” said Edek.
“I know,” she said.
“The milk did come straight, fresh, out of the cow,” said Edek. “It did taste very good.”
“You wouldn’t be able to drink milk like that now,” said Ruth.
“Why?” said Edek.
“Because cows are fed hormones and antibiotics,” she said. “The antibiotics go into the milk. Raw milk is a perfect place for a variety of bacteria to multiply in.”
“Really?” said Edek. “I did not know this.”
“Today milk is pumped directly from the cows’ udders, by milking machines, to steel tanks, and from there to refrigerated trucks,” Ruth said.
“You did see this?” said Edek.
“I went to a dairy farm, once,” she said. “Two years ago. They told me two hundred and eighty million glasses of milk are consumed by Americans every day.”
“Two hundred and eighty million?” said Edek.
“Yes,” she said. “It’s a lot of milk.”
Ruth stopped talking. Why was she talking about milk? She thought that this was possibly the most complicated conversation about milk that had ever taken place on this spot of the landing, on the first floor of 23
Kamedulska Street.
“You want to see where the man did milk his cow?” Edek said. “Come on, I’ll show you.” He started to walk downstairs.
“Dad,” she said. “Let’s see if we can see into your old apartment first?
Then we can go and look around the back.”
“You do not want to see where I got my milk?” Edek said.
“I do,” she said. “But later.” Edek walked back up to her. They went up the stairs to the second floor.
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“You want to knock on the door?” Ruth said. They were standing outside Edek’s old apartment, the apartment he grew up in.
“No,” he said.
“Shall I knock?” she said.
“No,” he said.
“One of us has to knock,” she said. “This is the door that used to be the front door of your apartment? Right?” she said.
“This is the door,” Edek said.
Suddenly, and abruptly, Edek lifted his fist and knocked on the door. A loud abrasive knock. Ruth’s heart started racing. She felt breathless. The door opened slightly. An old man looked out into the darkened hallway. He seemed about Edek’s age, but more aged than Edek. His shoulders were bent, and he seemed to have trouble seeing. He fumbled in his pockets and put on the glasses he was searching for. He peered at Edek and Ruth.
Edek stepped forward. He extended his hand to the man. Edek explained, with the aid of a multitude of polite and well-mannered expressions and bows of respect, that he was here to take nothing away from this man. He introduced himself. He explained that he once lived in this building. “I grew up here,” he said. “And I just want to see the home of my childhood again. The home of my mother and father.”
Edek motioned toward Ruth and said that Ruth, too, wanted to see where he had grown up. The old man looked up at Ruth. “She has been here before,” he said. Ruth understood what he was saying. “He remembers me,” she said to Edek.
“She was here fourteen or fifteen years ago,” the old man said. “She wore a long black coat. And her hair was much longer.”
“He remembers your coat,” Edek said.
“It was only an ordinary coat,” Ruth said. Even an ordinary coat had looked luxurious in Poland then. People were queuing for bread and there was no toilet paper. The man looked at the coat that Ruth was wearing now.
It was a new coat. But still black. He smiled at her.
“He’s remembering that I gave him several hundred zlotys,” Ruth said to Edek.
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L I L Y B R E T T
“Several hundred?” said Edek.
“They were worth much less, then,” she said. “I am not interested in taking anything away from you, kind sir,” Edek repeated. “Neither is my daughter.”
“Your family owned this building,” the man said. “Your daughter told me.”
“We do not want this building,” Edek said. “I have lived for nearly sixty years without this building. Why should I decide I want this building now?
I am an old man. I just want to see my old home.” Edek paused for a minute. He looked at Ruth, then turned back to the man. “As a matter of fact, dear sir, I did not want to come here. What do I want to think about the past for? I am comfortable with my life. But she wanted me to come.
She wanted to be here with me. What can you do when your child wants something? And she is my only child.”
“I have two daughters, myself,” the old man said.
“Congratulations,” said Edek.
Edek turned to Ruth. “I do not think he is going to let us in,” he said.
“I’ve been able to understand most of what he’s saying,” said Ruth.
“You understand more Polish than you know,” said Edek. “What are we going to do? I think we have to go.”
“We have to let him know we’ll make it worth his while,” said Ruth.
Edek turned to the old man.
“I know that to let perfect strangers, with no warning, into your own home is an inconvenience,” he said. “We will of course make up to you for this inconvenience.”
The old man nodded his head. He stepped back and opened the door.
“You were right,” Edek said to Ruth.
They both entered the apartment. Inside, it was dark. The man switched on a lamp. Edek looked around. He seemed disoriented. He took a few steps and stumbled. He turned in the other direction and walked into a wall. “Be careful, Dad,” Ruth said.
“They did chop it all up,” Edek said. “They did cut off one room which used to be here. It must be now in the apartment next door.”
“They haven’t looked after the place, have they?” she said.
“You can say that again, brother,” Edek said. “Brother” was an Australian expression Edek had latched on to not long after his arrival in the country.
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“You can say that again, brother,” he repeated.
Everything about the apartment was worn and in a state of decay. The walls were peeling, the windows were blackened, the carpet was thread-bare and stained. Everything looked dirty.
“You have a ve
ry nice place,” Edek said to the old man.
“Sit down, sir,” the old man said. “I will make a cup of tea.”
“Shall we have a cup of tea?” Edek said to Ruth.
“I guess we have to,” she said.
“Thank you very much,” Edek said to the man. Ruth and Edek walked into the living room. “This room used to be part of our lounge room,” Edek said. Ruth was too distressed to be reassured by his pronunciation of
“lounge.” From the day he had learned the word he had pronounced it
“lunge.” “I’m lunging with my spunch,” Ruth used to say, to amuse Garth. It always made him laugh. Not even the thought of lunging with a spunch could make her laugh now. She felt so miserable, standing in this cramped, slumped, and grubby apartment. She had remembered more light in the apartment, more room, more life. She had embellished everything. She mustn’t have seen the neglect, the breaks, and the chips and cracks. She must have overlooked the dust and dirt. She must have been overwhelmed. Overawed to be there at all. Overawed by the thoughts of the lives that had been so alive here.
When she had walked up the stairs in Kamedulska Street for the first time she had known she was placing her feet on the same steps her father had stepped on. As a child. As a teenager. As a young man. The same stairs her grandmother and grandfather had stood on. They had all used those stairs. All the aunties and uncles and cousins and nephews and nieces. And, that year, fifteen years ago, when she, Ruth Rothwax, had been twenty-seven years old, she, too, had walked up and down those stairs.
She had walked up and down the stairs for two or three hours before she had knocked on the door of the apartment. She had walked from the ground floor to the top floor, five flights of stairs, dozens of times. She had almost been in a daze. As she walked she had imagined the children who must have run from one floor to the other. And the mothers and the fathers. And her father. And her father’s father and her father’s mother. She had been quite exhausted when she had arrived in this apartment. Maybe that accounted for her blemished vision.
Edek looked distressed. “This was not like it was when we did live
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L I L Y B R E T T
here,” he said. “It was a beautiful apartment.” He looked over in the corner. “The balcony is still there,” he said. “My father used to watch me come home from school from this balcony. He did want to check that I did have my hat on.”