Mother and Me

by Julian Padowicz

  “Yes, Yulli is a real little soldier,” Mother said. “In Warsaw he always wears a sword to the park, and he’s great friends with Capt. Vrushin.”

  This was almost as bad as saying I was sickly. But realizing that we were here to gain the release of Mr. Rokief, for whose arrest I may possibly have been responsible, I began to nod my head. Then, remembering that I wasn’t supposed to have understood what Mother had said, I changed the nod to scratching the top of my head and assumed my blank look. But having released my grip on the bottom of the chair seat, I found myself sliding forward again.

  I grabbed for the seat again, but even with both hands back under the seat, I could not check my slide. In a moment I was standing once more, the sound of my shoes against the floor echoing through the large room.

  “Stop fidgeting, dear,” Mother said. Then she smiled at the colonel. She said something to him that I couldn’t understand, but I would have bet that it had something to do with my alleged inability to sit still. The colonel smiled at me. It was actually a very kind smile, and I found myself wishing that he wasn’t a Russian. Then he opened a drawer in his desk and produced a brass military button with the same red star with the hammer and sickle on it that Capt. Vrushin had given me. This time I had no qualms about stepping forward and accepting it. My mother and I were on a mission, which I did not want to jeopardize.

  “Say thank you,” Mother prompted, just as I was in the process of doing exactly that.

  Now I had my choice of either climbing back up on my chair, knee first, a rather awkward procedure to be carrying out under the gaze of my adult companions, or performing a single, well-executed backwards hop. I chose the latter, but, alas, missed the crown of the slippery seat, which I knew would eventually cause me to slide back down to the floor. I slid down, landing as quietly as I could to try one more, better directed hop.

  “Stop that,” Mother whispered out of the side of her mouth. But the colonel, I could see, was watching the two of us closely. “He does this to annoy me,” Mother said to the commissar.

  “He is a boy,” Col. Bawatchov said, smiling at me. “I have two boys, one is Yulli’s age.” Then he signaled me with his finger to step towards the desk again. From the drawer he produced a pocket knife. It wasn’t new. Its sides were wood, stained brown and worn with handling. The two blades, one large, one small, had little grooves in them where you hooked your thumbnail in order to open them. I had seen Grandfather’s coachman, Adam, do that so he could peel an apple for me.

  As I reached across the desk to take the knife from his hand, the colonel surprised me by not releasing his grip. “Nosh,” he said, pronouncing the Russian word for knife, as we each held one end.

  “Nosh,” I repeated.

  With his other hand, the colonel pointed to his chest. “Moi nosh,” he said.

  “The colonel said, my knife,” Mother said.

  “Moi nosh,” I said after him, pointing to my own chest and not acknowledging Mother.

  Now the colonel pointed the finger at me. “Tvoi nosh,” he said.

  “Da, moi nosh,” I said quickly, before Mother could interfere, pointing to my own chest again.

  The colonel laughed and released the knife. “Haroshy malchyk,” he said, which I knew meant nice boy or something like that, but didn’t let on. Mother looked pleased.

  Earlier that very same year I had been permitted my first knife, the little hunting knife that I would wear to the park. I had not been allowed to unsheathe it without Kiki’s supervision, and I had had little actual application for the instrument. I certainly would not have been permitted to peel an apple or an orange. But its very presence, hanging there from the button that held my pants to my shirt on my left side, had been my badge of maturity until Lolek had preempted it as he left for the war.

  I fully expected the same rules of deployment to be applied to this weapon, but its presence in my pocket—no, the very fact that it had been entrusted to me—was a symbol of my manhood. Taking the knife from Col. Bawatchov, I noticed that most of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand were missing. That was like Adam, who had a piece of a finger missing as well. I wondered whether I was being sent a message.

  With the knife secure now in my hand, I stood to attention and said, “Thank you, Colonel,” in Polish. Military men, even in opposing armies, I knew, were respectful of one another’s rank.

  “Haroschi malchik,” the Colonel repeated. I, of course knew what it meant, but pretended ignorance. I would have liked to examine the knife, but I thought it more appropriate to pocket it and returned to my seat. This time, my hop landed me at the back of the seat, where the slope was towards the white-and-gold chair back.

  I could see the shape of the knife outlined through the material over my left thigh. It was just exactly the length of the spread of my hand, thumb to pinky. I could visualize myself opening the two blades and feeling their sharpness against my thumb, as I had seen Adam do. Then he had stroked it up and down on the side of his boot. My eyes wandered to the colonel’s boots by the fireplace and I wondered whether this had been his own, personal knife. I wondered whether I should tell Fredek about it or let him discover its shape in my pocket while I acted as though it were nothing.

  Then the young officer came back into the room carrying a file. He handed it to the colonel who put on a pair of rimless glasses and began leafing through it. He pronounced names under his breath. “Aha, Roman Rokief,” he finally said. After studying several pages he looked up at Mother. “It’s nothing,” he said. Then he said some more things that I didn’t understand and assured her that Mr. Rokief would be released by the end of the day.

  Thanking him warmly, Mother stood up to shake hands. I wiggled forward and then slid to the floor, landing quite silently. But the colonel, using both hands, waved us back to our seats.

  “You are a very intelligent woman, Comrade Barbara,” he said, “tell me, how do the Poles like us?”

  “As you know,” Mother said, smiling, “my little mother is Russian. She’s from Moscow. I love Russian people.”

  “But the others. How do they feel about us? I give orders, you know, to be very courteous. We are very kind to children.”

  “I have seen great courtesy from some of your soldiers, Comrade Colonel. Captain Vrushin has been particularly kind.”

  I could tell that Mother was trying not to tell the colonel anything that might make him angry. The colonel, too, must have sensed that Mother was holding back. He didn’t say anything and there was now a silence.

  Mother re-crossed her legs. “I will be honest with you, Comrade Colonel, because I know that is what you would want me to be,” she finally said, and she was speaking very carefully. “We liked the Russians much better when we could visit them in Russia instead of seeing them in our streets with rifles.”

  The colonel didn’t get angry at this, but thought about it for a moment before speaking. “Russians and Poles are like brothers—our language is almost the same. But Russia is the bigger, stronger brother, and Poland is the little brother. The Germans attacked you, and we had to come and save you. But the reason Poland is so weak, like the other countries, is that the rich capitalists suck the life out of the people. In the Soviet Union, a factory or a farm isn’t owned by one man who gets richer and richer, but by all the people. And now, you know, you are one of the factory owners, too. Have you ever thought of yourself as an owner of a factory, Comrade?”

  Now it was my mothers turned to think.

  “I have surprised you, haven’t I?” the colonel said. “Think about it. You and I are owners of every factory in the Soviet Union that Poland is now a part of. We even own this beautiful palace.”

  “But if I own this palace and every factory and farm in Poland and the Soviet Union,” Mother said, “why don’t I have meat or milk to give to my son?”

  The colonel shifted his gaze to me. Suddenly he stood up and went to the door through which the young officer had first appeared. He walked silently, an
d I realized he had no shoes on. He disappeared for about thirty seconds, then returned and resumed his seat.

  “That is a temporary problem,” he said. “We will soon make your farms and your factories efficient.”

  “Our farms and factories …” Mother began, but then she stopped.

  “Yes?” He said

  “Oh, nothing, Comrade Colonel,” Mother answered.

  “You were going to tell me something about your farms and factories. You must not be afraid to tell me what you think. I asked you to tell me. Do you remember?”

  Mother took the cigarette case out of her purse again and they both lit up. “This is the Ukraine,” Mother finally said. “It’s the richest soil in all of Europe. Before you came we had the most beautiful vegetables, milk, cheese, eggs, chickens.”

  “This is only temporary,” the colonel said again. “Soon you’ll see. The Soviet Union is a paradise.”

  “We will all look forward to it, Comrade Colonel,” Mother said, standing up and extending her hand again.

  Once more the colonel stopped her. We resumed our seats and waited. Then the young officer came back into the room. He carried a package wrapped in a newspaper and tied with string, which he placed on the colonel’s desk. “For the boy,” the colonel said to my mother, “some bread and ham.”

  “Thank you very much, Comrade Colonel,” Mother said. “You are a very kind man.”

  Now the colonel reached into his drawer one more time, pulled out a small piece of paper and wrote something on it. “Please come to see me whenever you have a problem,” he said. “This will get you in without having to wait.” They shook hands. Mother thanked him again and we left. I carried the package under my arm.

  As we headed out into the street, Mother stopped. “Let’s see if Vasilli is in,” she said, and we headed back into the building and down the hall to Capt. Vrushin’s office. This time the captain was there, and I sat at an empty desk with a piece of paper to draw on and a pencil that the captain had given me, while Mother and the captain talked quietly at the far corner of the room.

  I wasn’t interested in the pencil and paper, though this was the first sheet of clean paper I had seen in a long time. I pulled the knife out of my pocket and hiding it behind the desk, proceeded to open it. The big blade felt sharp, as I had known it would be, when I rubbed my thumb across it the way Adam had done. The small blade was very hard to open, which surprised me. When it finally did open, I saw that the point was broken off. At first that was a disappointment, like the time Kiki and I had opened the birthday present from my Uncle Pavew and found a wing broken off the airplane that was really supposed to fly. But I quickly realized that this blade was like the colonel’s fingers, the ones with the tips missing.

  We went to the Rokiefs’ before going home. “Oh, Basia, you are so good to us,” Mrs. Rokief said. She was wearing the blue-and-white ski sweater she had worn on our last visit, only it seemed much bulkier. I realized that it was Mr. Rokief’s sweater that she had put on over her own. It was colder here than it had been before. It seemed even colder than it was outside, and I wondered how that could be.

  Renia and Zosia, who had been sitting together on one of the beds, came to the door to greet us. “Zosia,” Mrs. Rokief said, “why don’t you go to the kitchen and make our guests some tea.”

  “No, that’s all right, Helenka,” Mother said. “I just wanted to tell you about my visit to the commissar, and then we have to leave.”

  “What did he say?” she asked quickly, then interrupted herself. “Sit down, Basia.”

  “Don’t fuss, Helenka,” Mother said. But she sat down, and Mrs. Rokief pulled up another chair and sat down opposite her. She took Mother’s hands in her own. Zosia and Renia crowded around her.

  “As I said,” Mother went on, “the commissar is a very nice man and he said Roman should be home today.”

  All three Rokiefs showed great relief. “You are so good, Basia!” Mrs. Rokief repeated.

  “But why did they arrest him?” Renia asked.

  “Detained him, dear,” her mother corrected.

  “Why did they detain him?”

  “I don’t know,” Mother said. “Col. Bawatchov said it was nothing, and I didn’t want to press him.”

  “Yes, that’s best,” Mrs. Rokief said. “We just want him back. And Yulian, I want to thank you so much for cheering me up so well when I was waiting for your dear mother in your apartment. He did magic tricks for me, you know, and recited some poems. He’s so good at it.” I was embarrassed by the praise. I slipped my hand in my pocket and fingered my new knife.

  “Yulek is very caring,” Mother said. Then we left. On the walk home, she said, “You are not to open that knife without a grownup,” just as I had anticipated. Actually, I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had taken it away from me. “I know I can trust you,” she went on, but her tone made it more an admonishment than praise.

  “So, did you get to see your commissar?” Auntie Paula asked when she, Auntie Edna, and Sonya came home that evening. “They tell me you have to wait two days to get in to see him.”

  “Vasilli got me right in,” Mother answered. She was sitting at the table sewing up the strap on a black brassiere. “He was actually very nice,” she said, “but I don’t like what I heard.” Both Aunties and Sonya sat down immediately to hear the details.

  Mother put down her sewing. I thought she was going to tell them about the funny things he said about owning farms and factories. “As I said, Colonel Bawatchov was very nice,” she went on. “He even gave Yulek a pocket knife and some bread and ham to take home. But Roman wasn’t arrested—or detained—under his authority. He knew nothing about it. It seems that there are two commissars, a military one and a political one. Vasilli told me afterwards that the political commissar is changed every two weeks so that no one can get friendly with him. His job is to see to it that everything is done strictly according to the party line.”

  “It’s a political police?” Auntie Edna said. “Like the Gestapo?”

  “I guess,” Mother said.

  “What did your friend Roman do?” Auntie Edna asked.

  “I don’t think he did anything. I don’t know. Col. Bawatchov said it was nothing and he’d be released sometime today, but I don’t know.”

  “Maybe they have some questions about Polish law. Didn’t you say he was a lawyer?” Auntie Edna asked.

  “For three days?” Auntie Paula said. It seemed reasonable to me as well that they wouldn’t hold a man for three days and nights just to ask him about the law. “I don’t think they much care what Polish law is,” Auntie Paula went on.

  “I didn’t want to mention anything to Helenka about this political commissar business,” Mother said, “but I don’t like the sound of it.”

  “We’re not political,” Auntie Edna said. “I don’t intend to go around bad-mouthing Communism. Maybe that’s what your friend Rokief did.”

  “I don’t think he’d be that stupid,” Mother said.

  “Just don’t get us involved in political issues,” Auntie Paula said. “You didn’t say anything political to the commissar, did you?”

  I wished I knew what political meant. I noticed Mother wasn’t saying anything about what she had said about not liking Russians in our streets.

  When Fredek came home with Miss Bronia, it didn’t take him long to notice the bulge against my leg. “What did you get?” he asked.

  I got up without a word and walked into the other room. Fredek followed. I did that because I didn’t want to remind my mother about the knife, in case she wanted to take it away. But the mysterious nature that this lent to the whole business was not lost on me either.

  Fredek grabbed the knife from my hand the moment I had it out of my pocket. He snapped the big blade open and felt its edge with his thumb. “Not very sharp,” he said. “That’s good—you won’t cut yourself. Your mother buy it for you?”

  I placed myself between Fredek and the other room so no o
ne would see. “No, the commissar gave it to me,” I said. I saw Fredek’s eyes flick up at me for an instant as he struggled with a smaller blade.

  “Ha, it’s broken,” he said when he finally had the blade open. Fredek snapped both blades shut and handed the knife back with no further interest. “No wonder,” he added.

  I wasn’t quite sure what he meant, but let the matter pass. I put the knife back in my pocket, its value enhanced in my mind.

  That evening I sneaked the knife under my pillow and wrapped my fingers around it. The knife had belonged to Col. Bawatchov, whose father had herded cows, and he had worked his way up through the ranks of the army to where he was almost a general. Maybe the knife had been given him when he was still a cowherd’s son so he could use it to sharpen sticks and carve things and cut rope. I could see him at my age, walking beside his father, leading a herd of cows through the meadows. “You are old enough now to have your own knife,” the father says, handing it to him. “A big boy should have a knife.”

  Now the boy could do for himself many of the things adults did and had done for him before. He could cut open an orange or carve himself a whistle or sharpen a stick to fight off wolves that threatened the cows. And then, when he went into the army, he used it for opening letters and packages, sharpening pencils, slicing cheese, cutting holes in harness. When he got married and had children, maybe he even used the knife to make a cradle.

  Somewhere along the line he had snapped off the tip of the small blade. I could not imagine how he might have done that, but he had taken on some task that proved too much for the knife, saddening him.

  But it hadn’t destroyed the knife. It had continued serving … just like … just like the two missing fingers. They had been shot off by a bullet or lost in a sword fight or a wood-chopping accident. The colonel had experienced something like that, suffered like a soldier, then gone on, a stronger man.

  And now he had given the knife to me, and it was lying right in my hand, under my pillow. A grown man had given me something that he had lived with and now I owned it.