That evening Mother returned from her mission declaring it a success, and for the next two weeks or so, we saw no sign of Capt. Boris. Our supply of gift food, of course, depleted to a jar of caviar and one of herring that we saved for a social emergency.
Supplies of food in stores seemed to get scarcer as well. The foraging expeditions that the mothers carried on every day managed to put something on the table every morning and evening, but more often than not it wasn’t meat. Milk, eggs, butter, and, of course coffee were not available at all, and it seemed that the adults would come home from their search later and later, and more and more exhausted every evening.
The supply of firewood that the soldiers had brought back from the train station for us, was long gone by now. Miss Bronia had discovered a peasant who, one day a week—not the same day unfortunately—could be found driving his wagon around our neighborhood with a load of wood. When she or any of the mothers came across it, they would buy as much wood as could be carried home. Capt. Vrushin had said he would let us know when another wood train came in.
Nights, we were still able to get through in layers of clothing so that the wood could be saved for cooking. But winter was coming, and, if there was a plan for dealing with the cold, I was not aware of it.
Capt. Vrushin came by one evening, by invitation. He came by himself, brought us a large piece of cheese, and had tea out of a glass.
He didn’t play his harmonica this time or laugh a lot, but talked quietly with our four adults. Remembering the business of the brass button with a red star he had given me, I kept out of the way so no one would ask me what I had done with it. Fredek, who had been sick that day, was introduced and got a button too, though it was an extra one the captain had brought in his pocket, and he didn’t have to cut it off his uniform. When Fredek showed it to me later, I stressed that it came from a Russian army uniform. Fredek told me that his father had a German helmet from the Big War and what was wrong, he asked, with collecting enemy souvenirs. I couldn’t come up with an answer.
A few days later, Mrs. Rokief came to our door looking for Mother. Everyone was out except Fredek, me, and Sonya. I was the only one Mrs. Rokief knew or who had any idea who she was. Remembering the kind way in which she had treated me, I introduced her to my friends. I had been schooled in this amenity by Kiki.
Mrs. Rokief asked if she could wait for Mother, and Sonya, equally schooled in amenities, offered to make her tea. Mrs. Rokief accepted.
She sat leaning forward in her chair, her knees and feet tight together, her hands clasped in her lap. To me she looked worried. She wore a black overcoat that was too big for her, a kerchief on her head, and her soft gray eyes were squinted into a frown.
I knew that it was up to me to entertain my mother’s visitor. I pulled up a chair facing her and asked how she was feeling. Mrs. Rokief gave me a quick little smile and said she was fine. I next asked about Mr. Rokief and her daughters, and they were fine too. I wondered why she was upset, but had the presence of mind not to do it aloud.
Sonya brought a cup of tea, and I apologized for having no milk to offer, as Mrs. Rokief had done on our visit there. Mrs. Rokief said that that was all right.
I told her what a nice time I had had with Zosia and Renia the other day. Mrs. Rokief said that they had enjoyed my company as well. She picked up her teacup but her hand trembled and she had to steady it with her other one.
I asked if she thought it was going to snow. Mrs. Rokief answered that she hadn’t noticed. I asked if her tea was all right, and she said it was fine, and then I racked my brain for another topic to discuss.
I saw Fredek whispering something to Sonya over by the stove. I guessed it was about Mr. Rokief’s being a spy and found some pleasure in the way my fabrication had grown. Then, on an inspiration, I asked Mrs. Rokief if she wanted to see a magic trick. She smiled and said, yes, and I proceeded to make my washer appear out of her right ear, then her left, and finally disappear into thin air. I thought it was the best I had ever done it, and Mrs. Rokief smiled and said that was nice. Then she asked when I thought my mother would be back. I said I didn’t know, but secretly hoped it would be very soon.
“Would Missus like to hear some poetry?” I asked.
“No thank you, dear,” she said and then changed her mind. “Yes, I would love to hear you recite.”
I must have filled the next half-hour reciting every poem I knew. I was just considering singing the national anthem when Mother and Miss Bronia finally came in the door. From the shape of their shopping bags, I guessed they had found vegetables.
“Helenka!” Mother said as soon as she saw Mrs. Rokief sitting there. “What’s wrong?” She crossed the room quickly. Mrs. Rokief stood up and almost fell into Mother’s arms. “Basia, Basia, Yulian has been taking such good care of me,” she cried as though that were her complaint.
“What’s the matter?” Mother said.
“They’ve detained Roman.”
“Detained?”
“That’s what they said.”
“Oh my God! What’s happened?”
“I don’t know. He didn’t do anything. They came last night, knocked on the door, and said the commissar had some questions to ask him and they would bring him back in two hours.”
“And he’s not back yet?” Mother asked.
Mrs. Rokief shook her head. I could see Fredek and Sonya whispering again by the stove.
Suddenly I remembered Fredek talking with Capt. Vrushin that evening. Would Fredek have told the captain my fib about Mr. Rokief’s being a spy? No, he wouldn’t have.
“I will go see Capt. Vrushin,” I heard Mother telling Mrs. Rokief. “If Roman isn’t back, I will go see him first thing tomorrow. I’m sure it’s a mistake of some kind.”
“Oh Basia, why would they do this? Roman hasn’t done anything,” Mrs. Rokief said.
“It’s a mistake. It’s simply a mistake. Maybe there’s somebody else with your name or who looks like Roman. I don’t know. I will straighten it out. Or maybe Roman is home already. Go home now, Helenka, and see if Roman isn’t home. I’ll bet he is. And tomorrow morning, if Roman still isn’t back, you come over here and we’ll go see Vasilli together.”
When Auntie Paula and Auntie Edna came home later, Mother said, “They’ve detained Roman Rokief, that lawyer from Krakow that I met.”
Auntie Paula and Auntie Edna looked at each other. “Detained?” Auntie Edna said.
“Well, that’s what they call it. I don’t know exactly what it means.”
“What did he do?” Auntie Paula asked.
“I don’t think he did anything.”
“Then why would they arrest—or detain—him?” Auntie Paula asked.
Chapter Five
The next morning Mrs. Rokief came back, more upset than she had been the day before, and she and Mother went to see Capt. Vrushin.
“He said I should go see the commissar, a Colonel Bawatchov,” Mother explained to Auntie Edna and Auntie Paula that evening. “He said he has no idea what it’s all about, but the colonel will like it that I speak Russian so well. He said to be sure to tell him I’ve been to Paris. This sounds like I should go without poor Helenka who’s likely to cry. Vasilli said he could get me in to see him tomorrow.”
“No,” Auntie Paula said suddenly. “You can’t go to see the commissar.”
“What do you mean I can’t go?”
“You want to go,” Auntie Paula said, “speak Russian to him, tell him you’ve been to Paris, and invite him here for vodka and dancing. Then, if Sonya doesn’t want to dance with one of his officers or Fredek pretends to shoot him in the head, he has us all arrested and sent to Siberia.”
I had heard of Siberia. It was the coldest place on earth and criminals were sent there for punishment.
“This isn’t our problem,” Auntie Edna said. “We don’t even know your Roman Rokief.”
“They’re my friends. They’ve been very kind to me.” Mother was speaking angrily now.
“They may be your friends,” Auntie Edna continued, “but you’re involving all of us. You’re putting us all in danger.”
“How am I putting anyone in danger? I’m just going to talk to him. Vasilli says he’s a reasonable man.”
“Don’t you see, Basia … ?” Auntie Edna began again, but Auntie Paula interrupted her. “No, she doesn’t see. She doesn’t see because she doesn’t want to.”
“No, you’re the ones who don’t see. You don’t see because you’re afraid to see. You’re afraid to do anything to help yourselves. You’re two old Jewesses afraid to do anything to help yourselves because it means taking a risk. To save my dear friends, or to save my son, I’m not afraid to take a risk.”
Suddenly, my mother was sounding like one of the poems Kiki had taught me. Except that the part about the old Jewesses had really surprised me.
The next morning I saw that Mother had taken a diamond brooch of hers out of the jacket lining where she had hidden it that day on the farm. She had on a gray wool suit that I hadn’t seen her wear for a while, and she used the diamond brooch to make her décolleté lower so that you could see the line where her breasts came together.
“No, Basia, you can’t do that!” Auntie Paula almost shouted. “This is a man far from home with total power in this town. You can’t tease him like that.”
I expected Mother to make another brave speech about not being afraid, but she let herself be persuaded to take off the brooch and to bring me with her.
“A beautiful woman with a little child would be much more compelling,” Auntie Edna said. “Maybe he has a child at home.” Auntie Edna and Auntie Paula were sounding as though they didn’t want Mother to make any more speeches.
Capt. Vrushin’s office was in a palace. I had no idea there was such a place in Durnoval, this town of low, gray, and mostly dirty buildings. The hallway had moldings painted gold, and large dark blue rectangles in the lighter blue walls. The dark rectangles weren’t all the same size and I wondered what sort of design scheme that was. Frankly, I didn’t find it very attractive. There were designs and angels painted on the ceiling. Only the floor, inlaid with different kinds of wood, was scratched and muddy. I was reminded of the slippers they made you put over your shoes when you went into the Royal Palace in the park in Warsaw.
Capt. Vrushin’s office was on the ground floor, and he wasn’t there. But a soldier had been instructed to take us upstairs to the commissar’s office. As he walked ahead of us, back down the hall toward the stairs, I could actually see the marks that his metal heels were making in the wood floor. They looked like large fingernail clippings. He climbed the stairs two at a time, then waited at the top for Mother and me to catch up.
“If he asks you anything,” Mother whispered to me, “pretend you don’t understand any Russian.”
There was a very large room with pink walls and, again, the large rectangles of a darker pink, in the middle of the lighter pink, under which people in overcoats and heavy jacket sat in chairs lining the walls. A few spoke together in whispers. A soldier sat at a little desk with spindly legs and carved metal corner ornaments, guarding a set of tall double doors. His rifle rested against the side of the desk.
Our guide led us up to the soldier at the door, put his hands on the desk and said something to him quietly. Then our soldier let himself through the doors into the next room. As we waited, I saw my mother bite her lower lip, something Kiki told me only babies did. Then she suddenly stopped, straightened up, and pulled down on the décolleté, which she had originally wanted to hold down with the brooch.
In a few moments the soldier came out again and held the door for us to go into the commissar’s office. “Hold my hand,” Mother said out of the side of her mouth as we passed through the open door.
It was much warmer in this room. Col. Bawatchov stood up as we came in and held his hand out across his desk. “I’ve been told you speak beautiful Russian,” he said to Mother, in Russian, of course. Immediately I saw him to be a larger version of the little officer who had offered us sugar cubes in the hotel lobby on our first day in town. His head was round like a soccer ball, mostly bald, with small but widely set round eyes, over a short, fleshy nose. His roundish torso reminded me of a snowman. Unlike the overcoated people in the waiting room, he had his jacket off, and a pair of blue suspenders held up his blue pants. I noticed that there was a fire going in the large fireplace. A pair of tall boots warmed themselves at a discreet distance from the fire.
“My little mother is Russian,” my mother said, shaking hands. “She is from Moscow.”
An all-red flag stood next to the commissar’s large ornate desk. Directly behind him, a portrait I recognized to be of Joseph Stalin hung in a much larger rectangle of bright green paint in the duller green wall. As in the other room, rectangles of bright paint contrasting with the duller color decorated the walls. Except for this one of Stalin and the angels on the ceiling, I had seen no pictures anywhere in the palace. One wall panel, painted white, was framed in a fringe of gray material looking as though something had been cut out of it.
The commissar motioned us to two chairs. They were white with antique gold trim, curvy legs, and seats upholstered in a white-and-pink striped material. They were a lot like the chairs in our Warsaw apartment and the ones you weren’t allowed to sit on in the Royal Palace in the park. Except that this upholstery had been stained by what I speculated must have been tea, since this was what Russians liked to drink.
Climbing up onto the chair indicated for me, I immediately found myself sliding forward again on the slippery material. Her spike-heeled shoe anchored to the floor and her right knee crossed over the left, my mother had no such problem. My own feet dangled inches above the inlaid floor and gravity exerted its pull to draw me ever closer to the front edge of the padded seat. In Warsaw, I had had the table to stop my slide, but here I had to clamp my fingers around the wood underside of the seat and hang on.
Col. Bawatchov said that he understood Mother was there regarding a Roman Rokief, except that he had no record of any Roman Rokief. What that must mean, he said, was that her friend was being detained by the political commissar. He himself, he explained, was the military commissar, but there was also a political commissar who operated independently of him.
A lot of this I understood as he spoke. What I didn’t catch, I picked up later as Mother explained it to the Aunties.
Suddenly I heard Col. Bawatchov shout out a name. It may have been the loudest shout I had ever heard. In a moment a door to the commissar’s left opened and a young officer came in. I heard the colonel give him instructions to bring him something. I couldn’t make out what he said, but when the officer had gone out again, the colonel explained to Mother that he had sent him to the political commissar’s office to find out about Mr. Rokief.
Mother thanked him for his kindness, then produced her silver cigarette case and, leaning forward, offered him a cigarette. The colonel quickly stood up and accepted one. Then he picked a box of matches out of his desk drawer and lit Mother’s cigarette. His own, he placed in a long, black-and-silver cigarette holder before lighting it. He must have caught Mother looking longingly at the precious matches because he handed them to her and told her to keep them. “I have more,” he said.
Mother thanked him and asked what part of Russia he came from. I knew that Russia was the biggest country in the world and in parts of it people looked almost Chinese. He mentioned a place whose name had no meaning to me and went on to say that his father had herded cows. Mother congratulated him on how much he had achieved.
“In the Soviet Union,” he said, “a man can become anything he wants to be.”
This claim for the ubiquitous Soviet Union snapped my mind to sharp attention. Certainly a man could not become an eagle or an elephant however much he might want to be one. And what if half the men in the Soviet Union decided they all wanted to be king? That, obviously, wasn’t workable. And what if a man wanted to be a doctor, but didn
’t know what medicine cured what sickness—how fair would that be to his patients? Was it possible that magic really did exist and that the Soviet Union … ? No, Kiki had told me quite unequivocally that magic existed only in fairy tales. It was quite clear, I decided, that the commissar, just like the announcements over the loudspeakers, was telling us lies.
“I am a language teacher,” I heard Mother say in response to some question. “I used to teach French and German in a high school in Warsaw. I was in Paris last summer.” I remembered Mother’s saying that Capt. Vrushin had told her to be sure and mention that she had been to Paris. And as far as being a language teacher was concerned—well, this Russian deserved to be lied to, I decided.
“Now, with us here, comrade, you could teach at a university, if you are a good enough teacher, and I’m sure you are. And some day you and your son could have your own apartment.”
I found it amusing to hear him address Mother as comrade, which Miss Bronia had explained was the way all Russians addressed each other. Mother did not tell the colonel that in Warsaw we already had our own apartment. I understood that they were passing the time while they waited for the young officer to return with information.
Colonel Bawatchov asked Mother what my name was, to which she answered “Yulli,” which was what my Russian grandmother sometimes called me.
“Yulli, do you like soldiers?” the colonel asked me.
“Yulli doesn’t speak Russian,” Mother quickly interjected. She was saying it to the colonel, but looking straight at me. Technically, of course, she was right. I was finding that I understood a great deal more Russian then I had thought, but I had never actually tried speaking it.
“I don’t understand,” I said in Polish, looking as blankly as I could from one to the other. I was enjoying this sanctioned mendacity. But I hoped I wouldn’t have to act sickly again.
“The colonel asks if you like military things, darling,” Mother translated for me.
“Yes,” I said, nodding my head.
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