I don’t know if there were such things as pet shops in Warsaw at that time. Puppies, however, were commonly sold on the street by men from the country who stood on the sidewalk, holding a puppy, with several more tucked into the pockets of their heavy peasant jackets. Whenever we passed one, my heart would melt at the sight of the puppy’s head sticking out from between the man’s hands. I knew I couldn’t have one, and my soul cried for a puppy to love. I would have settled for a cat, if I had had to, but the hunger for a dog that I could love and hold and stroke was more than I could bear at times. Lying in bed at night, I would sometimes fantasize myself playing with a dog. I could actually feel his soft round head against my palm and his little legs tucked under him in my lap. Then I would break down into tears and turn my mind to prayer to ease the pain.
One day when my grandmother was visiting from Lodz, she accompanied Kiki and me on a walk. I don’t remember where we were going, but we came across a man selling puppies on the corner and stopped. How much did he want for the puppy, my grandmother asked. My heart wanted to leap to the sky for joy. But my brain knew better by then. It held my heart in check, knowing well the odds for disappointment. When my grandmother and the man from the country could not come to terms, I was able to walk on.
A major problem was with toothpaste tubes. Every morning and evening, I would carry the toothpaste that Kiki and I shared, along with my toothbrush and towel, to my parents’ bathroom, if it was free, or the kitchen sink, if it wasn’t. As the toothpaste tube became exhausted, I would be aware of a great sadness. Soon it would be empty and discarded into the trash, and we would start a brand new, strange tube from a box.
As the life of the old tube wound to a close, I would take less and less paste on my brush and perform heroics of rolling, unrolling, flattening, and pressing to extend its life by one more day. I would look down on its flattened, twisted body, knowing that it would soon be going into the garbage, and tears would come into my eyes. When reality could no longer be denied and a sleek new tube replaced the faithful old friend, I was depressed and resentful. I knew how ridiculous this was, but I could not help myself. If ever I needed proof that the abuse of my birdie was having its consequences, I had it in this bizarre response to what I knew to be a natural life process.
I remember a party in our apartment. The dining room table had disappeared and been replaced by several small tables covered with red-and-white checked tablecloths. To our polished wood and silk chairs, had been added other polished wood and silk chairs, but of a different style, and the dining room, as I walked through it on the way to and from the kitchen, was an empty restaurant with unmatched chairs.
For a while, I was a waiter with my handkerchief over my wrist, serving imaginary food with sweeping gestures to beautiful imaginary people. I took orders for chicken and rice with yellow, lemony sauce; cold borscht with sour cream; chopped spinach scrambled with an egg, and sausage, all on an imaginary pad, and then swept up menus with a flourish that impressed even me.
In the park, later that day, I fanaticized being allowed to serve at that evening’s party.
Then, after Kiki and I had had our supper in our room and I was in my nightshirt and bathrobe, the guests began to arrive. Because our room was off the entrance hall, near the front door, I could peek (Kiki surprised me by allowing me to do this) through the crack in the not-quite-closed door, at the arrival—the men in identical tuxedoes and the women in sparkling, frilly, floor-length gowns in various colors, with bare shoulders under their fur stoles, and naked backs. Kiki, I remember, sat at our table reading a little book. From the look on her face, I could tell she was in a bad mood.
My mother came into our room at one point, carrying a plate with funny things on it and a glass with wine that had bubbles. She had on a gown of a shiny black material that clung very tight to her body, except that just at the knees it flared out because there were what I now know to be called pleats, with a bright green material on the inside. When she stood still, you could just see a thin green line, but when she walked, the green flashed in a wider or narrower wedge. The stark simplicity of the black dress with its flashing green wedge, topped by Mother’s deep gold hair and emerald earrings, was absolutely the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.
Kiki would not have any of the wine or the funny things on the plate, and she told Mother that I had already had my dinner and brushed my teeth. Then the two of them walked to the window at the other end of the room and started to talk in hushed voices.
Kiki had to look up to talk to my mother. “That’s much too late,” I heard her say in a very emphatic tone. “Much too late.”
I could tell by Mother’s body language that she acquiesced, and she left the room nodding her head and carrying the wine and the funny things. Kiki went back to her book.
After a while, a strange woman in a maid’s uniform came into our room. “She says to come now,” she said over my head to Kiki. Then she pulled up her skirt, adjusted her stocking, and left the room.
“Come here,” Kiki said to me, almost as though she were angry at me. I walked over cautiously. She reached for my hairbrush and smoothed my freshly washed hair. Then she stood up, took me by the hand, and we marched out into the hall. I had no idea where we were going.
The guests were all sitting or standing in the salon, and all turned the same way as though for a performance. For a moment I thought someone would be doing magic tricks. But we walked to an empty chair in front of everyone, and I realized I was going to have to recite. Kiki told me to stand on the chair. “Say the poem, ‘I’m Not Afraid Of Anyone’,” she said.
I had had to recite poems before, for my grandparents or an aunt and uncle, but never for this kind of audience. But I knew the poem well and had been taught to recite in a firm voice its braggadocio lines about even facing down tigers. Kiki didn’t need to prompt me even once.
The applause was tremendous and people shouted “encore,” which I knew meant more. I knew a song that Marshal Pilsudski’s brigade used to sing, which I thought would go well with the tone of the poem, and I began to sing it, but Kiki took me by the hand, dismounted me from the chair, and marched me out of the room. I was still singing as we went out the door.
A few minutes later, one of the ladies with a rouged face, and a frilly blue gown with bare shoulders came into our room with a plate of those funny things again. “You sweet, sweet boy,” she said, kissing me. She smelled of perfume, liquor, and cigarettes. She took one of the funny things in her fingers and indicated that I should open my mouth. It was the most awful thing I had ever tasted, but I didn’t let on.
“You’ve done a wonderful job with him, Miss Yanka,” she said to Kiki.
“Thank you, Madam,” Kiki said. Then the woman placed the plate on the table, kissed me again, and swished out. Kiki picked up the plate and slid its contents into the wastebasket.
My grandparents on my mother’s side, lived in the city of Lodz, an hour or so away by an express train called The Torpedo. As I remember, it consisted of just two highly streamlined, self-propelled cars and no engine. A couple of times a year, Kiki and I would pack our bags and take The Torpedo to spend a few days with the grandparents. I was usually sick the day before departure, and the morning of the trip we would rise early and try to eat breakfast. But the anxiety over not missing the train made me unable to eat, and Kiki and I would sit at the little table in our room as she tried to will the food down my throat, while she continually checked her little gold wristwatch.
This was the one occasion when I would, regularly, see Kiki’s will overcome by circumstances. It was not intentional on my part, but I simply could not get the food down, and eventually her anxiety for the train would overcome her resolve, and we would dash for the train station—there to sit on our suitcases as train after train was called before ours began to board.
Grandfather was many years older than Grandmother. He was in a wheelchair, paralyzed from the waist down, diabetic, and attended by a man named
Francishek. Poking out of Grandfather’s left pant leg was something I first took for the end of a sword scabbard, but realized later it was a rubber incontinence device.
Grandfather was an Orthodox Jew. When he was not at the hosiery factory he owned, he would sit at the dining room table reading what must have been a religious book. Because of this reading and his advanced years, I had to walk on tiptoe all the time I was there. I remember trying to figure out why this was necessary even when he was at the factory and eventually coming to the conclusion that the entire household must have been accustomed to quiet. I was very proud of this deduction.
Every afternoon, Grandfather would ride in his carriage around the park. Grandfather had his own carriage, his own horse, and his own driver named Adam. Kiki and I would accompany him on these rides, Kiki beside Grandfather in the carriage and I on the driver seat beside Adam. Adam was missing most of the index finger of his right hand. I knew instinctively that I shouldn’t look at it, but it drew my eyes the same way that my birdie pulled at my hand. I was happy to distinguish this as only a social rather than a mental health transgression.
When we got to the park, Adam would let me hold the reins. I knew no greater happiness in my childhood than sitting beside Adam with the reins in my hands.
One day at the dinner table—Kiki and I ate in the dining room at my grandparents—Grandfather choked on a piece of meat and died. Francishek and somebody else carried him into the next room while Grandmother screamed, and a doctor who lived upstairs was hastily summoned. But Grandfather was dead. It turned out to have been his heart and not a piece of meat.
It was decided that my mother, the youngest of his eight children, should not be told of his passing. I reasoned that by not seeing him or hearing from him for awhile, my mother would gradually arrive at the realization that Grandfather had passed away, without experiencing the shock that a sudden announcing of his death might have caused.
This theory proved pretty much correct when my mother telephoned from Warsaw on the following day and asked to speak to me.
“Don’t tell Mother that Grandfather is dead,” everyone mouthed as I was handed the receiver, even though I had already been briefed on this conspiracy.
“How are you today?” Mother asked.
“I’m fine,” I said. Speaking on the phone was a new experience for me since no one had ever asked to talk with me before.
“And how is Kiki?”
“She’s fine too.”
“And Grandmother?”
“Grandmother is fine.”
“And how is Francishek?”
“Francishek is fine.”
“And Adam?”
“Adam is fine.”
“And how is the horse?”
“The horse is fine.”
Then she blindsided me. “And how is Grandfather?”
“Grandfather is dead,” I told her.
I did not need the looks of horror around me to inform me that I had broken down under interrogation.
“Grandfather is asleep,” Grandmother mouthed.
“No, no,” I corrected myself. “I meant he’s asleep. He’s sleeping,” before the receiver was abruptly pulled from my hand.
I remember no pain at Grandfather’s passing. There had been no closeness between us. He was just an old man I was supposed to love … quietly. This does not mean that I was a stranger to grief. Every second Sunday, Kiki had her day off. At these times, I was overcome by an emotional agony that I could neither bear nor understand. I knew that Kiki was coming back that night, but I would still find myself lying face down in the front hall, bellowing out my pain like a cow.
There was no consoling Yulian. However, Mother and one or two of her perfumed friends would sometimes try by taking me to one of the cafes for which Warsaw was famous, and I would be allowed to order any delicacy I chose. Making choices was a foreign experience for me.
The decision always came down to two kinds of cheesecake, Viennese and Krakow. The former was fairly light with a powdering of confectionery sugar. The Krakow version was richer with some brown pastry strips over the top. All the cafes seemed to carry both varieties and the choice was always difficult, though the decision invariably came down in favor of the native Krakow style.
But even the taste of the cheesecake, consumed in a few minutes, did not cancel my pain. To this day, cheesecake has a bittersweet taste for me.
On several occasions, it was my stepfather, Lolek, who applied a masculine solution to my problem. One time we took a taxi ride into the country and back, which did little for me. Another time, he took me to the movies where two comedians, one fat, one thin, were featured. They were named Flip and Flap, and whether these were Laurel and Hardy dubbed into Polish or a home grown version, I don’t know. The results were not much better than with the cheesecake, though I’m not aware of any residual emotions triggered by Laurel and Hardy.
I can remember few other efforts at any bonding between me and my parents. There was the time Lolek returned from some foreign trip with toy soldiers for me. I, of course, already owned a couple dozen three-dimensional lead soldiers, about two inches high in brightly colored uniforms. The ones Lolek had brought me were about half that height and only two dimensional, but there were hundreds of them. My mind arranged them in both parade and battle order as he and I opened box after box of marching, charging, and shooting soldiers on the dining room floor.
I thanked Lolek profusely, motivated by both well-schooled manners and the sincerest gratitude. But I couldn’t have them, he said, until I kissed him on the lips.
This was a total shock to me. I had never kissed anybody on the lips, and I found the very idea disgusting. I didn’t get my soldiers that day, but they did appear, some months later, in my cupboard. On another occasion, my mother and Lolek tried to get me into bed between them one morning. This was more intimacy than I could handle, and I remember kicking and screaming.
There was also the time my mother was assisting Kiki in giving me a bath, and asked which of them I loved more. “I love you both the same,” I pronounced, congratulating myself on my diplomacy, while marveling at Mother’s stupidity in thinking that my love for her could, in any way, approach what I felt for my inseparable Kiki.
“You must love your mother more,” Kiki immediately admonished me. “You must always love your mother more than anyone else.”
On my fifth birthday I remember receiving a telegram from my mother. One hundred years, it wished me, a barrel of wine, and a beautiful wench. In Polish it rhymes and may well be a standard birthday wish under certain circumstances. The next time that my mother and Kiki met, I overheard my governess murmuring something about how madam must have been drunk.
What I remember of summers, Kiki and I spent in a resort town on the Baltic Sea. If we turned right coming out of our hotel, we could walk to the bay. If we turned left, we walked to the beach on the open sea and played in the sand or the mild surf. We would float in the shallow water supporting and propelling ourselves with our hands against the bottom, pretending that we were swimming. When we walked around the town, we would hold pinkies, it being too hot to hold hands.
Recently, I came across a photograph of the two of us in that town. I was surprised to find that, though I was always small for my age, at six or seven, when that picture was taken, I wasn’t much shorter than Kiki. The photograph confirms my memory of her long blond braid wound around her head. She has a kindly, but tired face. Though I know she was no more than thirty, she looks older. I suspect her health was not robust.
The start of school was something that I had looked forward to since I could remember. Students wore little navy blue uniforms with colored stripes down the sides of long trousers, and brass buttons on their tunics. They had billed military caps, and they marched in parades carrying flags and singing patriotic songs. Had the afterlife not been so weighty a subject for me at the time, I might now be resorting to the cliche, “my idea of Heaven.”
September 19
38 came, and Kiki took me by the hand to first grade. And someplace between the dream and reality a cog must have come loose.
It would be fashionable, or perhaps cute, Mother must have decided, if the school I attended were to be French. There was such a school within a few blocks of our house, set up, I presume, for the children of French families stationed in Poland. Because it did not have its own facilities, it rented them from another school in the afternoon, after normal school hours. And in the French fashion, its uniform was not long trousers with a colored stripe down the side and brass buttons, but a black smock with a Peter Pan collar, topped by a beret. A lifetime of dreams was shattered in one blow.
In my black smock and beret I was walked the several blocks to school each afternoon and walked home again, mercifully after dark.
The intent had been that I learn French. But the school did not teach French. It taught the three R’s in French to French-speaking children.
I learned a number of things in this school. I learned, for example, that you could roll your pencil down the sloping desk surface, but it was sure to make the boy or girl, sitting beside you in the two-person desk, make a fuss to the teacher, which resulted in your being made to stand in the corner. I learned that if you had a pocket knife, which I of course didn’t, you could cut long, sharp splinters out of the desk seat or even carve your own initials in it. I also learned that even though we weren’t allowed to use pens, if you dipped your pencil in the inkwell that the morning kids used, you could make ink lines on paper with it. And then I discovered, purely on my own, that if you took chalk dust from the trough at the bottom of the blackboard and mixed it with the ink, you could get paste of various shades of blue, depending on how much ink you used. I also learned one French phrase, “Padowicz dans le coin!” It meant Padowicz into the corner, and I learned it through the technique of repetition. What I had done to merit this on most occasions, I never knew. But one way or another, I had made that part of our classroom my own. And since Warsaw was mostly obliterated by the Germans before the start of the following school year, I can say with reasonable certainty that I was its last occupant.
Mother and Me Page 2