Mother and Me

by Julian Padowicz

  Removing her coat, she showed a gray wool suit and, turning the veil up over her hat, revealed a narrow, olive-shaped face with a large and thin, somewhat hooked, nose. Her eyes were gray and distorted by the thick lenses of her glasses. The hair, pulled tightly back, was dark, streaked with gray, and she wore no makeup at all. Mademoiselle was not at all pretty.

  “It is all so terrible, Madame,” she was saying, somewhat breathless from her trip. “These Bolsheviks think they can do anything they want. Yesterday they forced my landlady to take in four Russian women, when we’re already three and four to a room. Madame can’t imagine.”

  “This is Yulian,” Mother said, changing the subject.

  “Yes,” Mademoiselle said, turning to me. “Yulian. Is that with an a or an e? My brother is Yulian with an e, the French way, Julien.”

  “With an a, Mademoiselle,” I said.

  “Blah, blah, blah?” she asked, and I realized she was addressing me in French. Then she added, “Blah, blah?” in response to my blank stare. “Blah, blah, blah, blah?”

  “Answer Mademoiselle,” Mother said to me.

  “I don’t know what she asked me,” I said.

  “But of course you do, darling,” Mother said, smiling. “She is speaking French to you. You spent a whole year at the Ecole.”

  “Blah, blah, blah, blah,” she said to Mademoiselle. This, I was sure, meant either that I was very shy or very stubborn. Then, to me, she said, “Blah, blah, blah, blah?”

  I shook my head.

  “You mean you didn’t learn any French in school?” Mother asked incredulously.

  “I learned bonjour and crayon and Padovich dans le coin.” The last of these was “Padovich, into the corner,” and I saw Mademoiselle laugh behind her hand.

  Mother didn’t consider it funny. “That’s all you learned?”

  I smiled weakly.

  “That’s all?”

  I nodded.

  “So why did we send you?”

  I did know other words, like for notebook and paper, blackboard, boy, and girl, but I enjoyed Mother’s frustration. I shrugged my shoulders.

  “That’s all right,” Mademoiselle said, bending a little towards me. “We will speak French this afternoon.” Mademoiselle had a funny way of bending. She didn’t bend just at the waist, but sort of all over, like a banana.

  “Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,” Mother said, shaking her head sadly. Mademoiselle clucked sympathetically.

  The two of them spoke French through lunch, and then Mother went out, leaving me with instructions to do everything Mademoiselle told me.

  “Alors,” she said, once she had removed her black hat and we had put the lunch dishes out into the hall, “we will start from the beginning—Chaise,” and she put her hand on the back of one of the chairs. “Repeat after me, chaise.”

  I repeated. We went on to table, book, shelf, window, floor, and numerous other objects around the room. Then she tested me, walking around the room to suddenly lay her hand on an object, which I would name in French. “Tres bien,” she said, which I recognized as meaning very good. In the space of half an hour, my French vocabulary more than doubled.

  “Now we will write them,” Mademoiselle said. “Go get your notebook.”

  I explained that I didn’t have one. Nor did I have a pencil or pen and ink.

  This created a definite problem. She asked if I had any books in French or Polish, and I explained that we hadn’t brought any from Durnoval. And the books on the bookshelves, I told her, we were forbidden to touch.

  “Alors,” Mademoiselle said again, “Madame, voici votre parapluie.”

  “Madame, voici votre parapluie,” I repeated, recognizing all the words except the last.

  “Missus, here is your umbrella,” Mademoiselle translated. Then she added, “La voiture de Monsieur vous attend devant la porte. The gentleman’s automobile is waiting for you in front of the door.” This I repeated as well.

  “L’opera commence dans une demi heure. The opera begins in half an hour,” she continued.

  In similar manner, we eventually found ourselves settled in the front row of the Paris opera house waiting for the curtain to go up on something called The Barber of Seville, the story of which she was eager to tell me because it was funny. But before she would do that, Mademoiselle felt it necessary to test me on what I had learned to date. It turned out, however, that the automobile, the umbrella, the tickets, the ticket-taker, the carpet, and virtually all of the verbs had failed to take root in my mind.

  Mademoiselle’s disappointment was unmistakable. “Ah, your mind is tired, poor boy,” she finally said. She put her hands together and brought them up to her face in thought. “What shall we do to divert you?”

  I shrugged.

  “Do you have cards?” she finally asked.

  Yes, we did have the cards my mother did her solitaire with. They were well worn. Then, did I know how to play gin rummy? In the next few hours, I learned to play gin rummy.

  I had watched my grandmother play gin rummy with Lolek, and I had seen Mother and Lolek play bridge with other couples, and I had always admired the dexterity with which these card players shuffled the cards. But, except for Mr. Lupicki’s card tricks, I had never seen cards move as quickly or with as much flourish as they did through the hands of Mademoiselle. Her long, thin fingers seemed magnetic, as they led the nimble cards through their acrobatics.

  “Do you miss Warsaw?” Mademoiselle asked, when I no longer needed her guidance to play my hand.

  The question was either silly or totally beyond my experience. “Yes,” I said, sensing that to be the desired response. I recalled the card players in our Warsaw apartment not looking up from their cards as they mumbled around cigarettes hanging between their lips.

  “I miss it very much,” Mademoiselle said. “You had a nanny whom you loved very much, your mother told me.”

  “She was my governess,” I corrected her.

  “And you had a beautiful apartment and all your little friends.”

  I acknowledged this to be so, wondering where it was all heading.

  “We had a beautiful home too—that is, Mme. la Contesse, whose companion I was, and I. Madame had wonderful, charming friends. And now they’re all gone—the house is gone, the friends are gone, and even the poor Countess is gone.”

  Mademoiselle sniffed, but I detected it to be a sob. I speculated that she had played gin rummy a lot with the Countess and now it made her sad. I wondered if I should show her a trick with my washer, which had cheered up poor Mrs. Rokief when her husband had been detained. But something told me that Mademoiselle would not be so easily cheered up.

  “I miss Kiki very much,” I finally said. “That was what I called my governess. Her real name was Miss Yanka, but I called her Kiki from when I can remember.” It was true, I did miss Kiki, but I said it mostly because I sensed that somehow it would make Mademoiselle feel better.

  “You poor boy.” Now Mademoiselle had a lace-edged handkerchief up to her eyes. And then I needed a handkerchief as well, though I wasn’t sure whether it was over my loss or Mademoiselle’s.

  We had both recovered our composure by the time Mother returned late in the afternoon and were able to delight her with my recitation of French names for the numerous objects around us. Mademoiselle seemed to take great pleasure in flowing around the room, an expression of mystery on her face, touching objects with quick movements, and I would try to name them as quickly as I could. When I hesitated, Mademoiselle, with her back to Mother, would mouth the words for me.

  I saw the gratitude with which Mademoiselle accepted the money that Mother gave her, and I was aware of a tender feeling for the woman that was somehow different from any that I had had for Miss Bronia or Miss Vanda or Kiki, or for anyone. I had the sense that Mademoiselle and I had shared something very special that afternoon. Mademoiselle was not loving like Miss Bronia, fun like Miss Vanda, or engraved in my psyche as Kiki was. But there was a strange quality to
the relationship I now had with this adult woman with graying hair, who clearly was not accustomed to relating to children and with whom I had spent only one afternoon. It was a quality I could not name, though I could feel and almost taste it.

  “Bonjour, Madame, bonjour, Julien,” Mademoiselle said when she came to our room the next morning. She was wearing her black veil again.

  “Bonjour, Mademoiselle,” I answered. Mother, who was fixing her hair in the little makeup mirror in the lid of her bag, said, “I have to hurry. I’m meeting with your friend, Mr. Botchek.” Then she explained that she had arranged for Bogda to bring us lunch at noon, and would Mademoiselle please take me for a walk this morning—making sure that I was warmly dressed.

  Out on the sidewalk, I automatically reached for Mademoiselle’s gloved hand. I felt it quickly withdraw, when we first touched, then stop and softly grip mine. Through my glove, I could feel a hole in hers. We walked without speaking.

  Lvow had a boulevard as wide as the avenues in Warsaw. People were shoveling last night’s snow from in front of shops.

  “Nous marchons sur le boulevard,” Mademoiselle said, breaking the silence. “We are walking on the boulevard.”

  I automatically repeated the French. Mademoiselle repeated the French sentence again, and I repeated it one more time.

  “Nous marchons sur le trotoir. We are walking on the sidewalk.”

  “Nous marchons sur le trottoir. Nous marchons sur le trot-toir. Nous marchons sur le boulevard. Nous marchons sur le boulevard,” I said without further prompting.

  “Très bien, Julien.”

  I knew that this meant very well, and I could tell by her tone that Mademoiselle was pleased. “Nous marchons sous les arbres. We are walking underneath trees,” she said.

  I repeated this too, along with the previous sentences, delighting Mademoiselle further.

  In a similar manner, I learned about walking under clouds, over the snow, and past stores and houses. “Won’t we surprise your mother when she returns!” Mademoiselle said. For her sake, I practiced silently after she had declared that I had learned as much as I could at one time.

  We didn’t say anything to each other for awhile after that. I didn’t know what to talk about with Mademoiselle, and suspected that, unlike the other women in my life, she had the same feeling.

  “Oh, do you see that house?” Mademoiselle surprised me after a bit. She didn’t point, but said, “That one with the little Doric columns.”

  I saw a house with pillars holding up a little triangular roof over the doorway. “That’s something like Madame’s house in Warsaw, except that it had three stories.” This one had only two.

  I had little interest in the dead Countess’s house, which didn’t exist any more either, but I felt that it was important to Mademoiselle that I act as if I did. “It must have been very nice,” I said.

  “The carriage house was in back. Mme. la Contesse had matched chestnuts.” The chestnuts I understood to be horses, and would have liked to hear more about them, but knew that I should let Mademoiselle say what she wanted to.

  “The Countess did have an automobile as well, but she didn’t like riding in it—she said it smelled bad. Although she must have meant on the outside, because it smelled perfectly nice inside, and it was very comfortable. When they came and took it for the army, she was glad to get rid of it. We went everywhere in the carriage. I think she thought it was more elegant.”

  I could picture this Countess seated in an open carriage with Mademoiselle beside her. She had on a long old-fashioned dress and a large plumed hat. I remembered seeing someone like that riding a carriage in the park. Her dress had been a lavender color with lots of lace, her hair was all white, and there had, in fact, been a younger woman riding with her. Two little dogs sat on the bench across from her.

  “Did she have any dogs?” I asked.

  “Pardon?” Mademoiselle said. I realized her mind was elsewhere and regretted interrupting.

  “I just asked if she had any dogs, the Countess.”

  “Ah, yes, Madame loved dogs. Whenever we ate dinner, her two little Pekinese would eat from their little bowls in the corner.”

  “I think I once saw you and the Countess riding in the park,” I said.

  “Oh yes, that may be.” Suddenly Mademoiselle was paying full attention to our conversation. “Yes, that may very well be. Did you walk in the park with your governess?”

  “Yes, her name was Kiki.”

  “And did you love your Kiki very much?”

  Ordinarily, that question would have embarrassed me, but somehow, to Mademoiselle, I didn’t mind saying, “I guess so.”

  “And I loved Madame very much. She was like a second mother to me. She died in my arms, you know, on the way here from Warsaw. It was in that same carriage. A heart attack from the heat and trying to run into woods whenever the Stukas came.”

  I wanted to ask about the dogs and the horses, but knew I shouldn’t. I knew that Mademoiselle wanted to tell me more about the Countess.

  “There were people all around, but no one to help—no doctors or sisters. All I could do was hold her while she fought to breathe. We were stopped with the road jammed with stopped and overturned wagons and cars. People on foot could move, but we couldn’t. They kept walking past the carriage, looking in, and walking on. Then there was like a rattle. There really is a death rattle, you know. And then Madame stopped breathing.”

  Then Mademoiselle didn’t say anything more, and we walked on in silence. I knew I shouldn’t say anything, and I was proud of my understanding. I was also well aware that Mademoiselle shouldn’t really be telling me all this and that, if Mother found out, Mademoiselle would be in trouble. Maybe she would even be fired, and I didn’t want that to happen—not for my sake, because I liked her, and not for her sake, because I knew she was poor.

  We were on our way home by now, and I could tell by the changes in the pressure of Mademoiselle’s hand that a series of emotional memories must be passing through her mind. Suddenly, Mademoiselle realized that we had walked past our house, and we had a little laugh about that.

  “You’re a very good friend, Julien,” Mademoiselle said as we walked back to the house, and I knew that this meant something more than just a good boy.

  As we entered the hall of our apartment, I saw a woman step out of the bathroom carrying a baby. Seeing me stop, when we were about to pass each other, the woman stopped too. “Her name is Nadia,” she said, lowering the baby so that I could see her. “You can touch her.”

  I touched my finger to her little, curly hand and watched her make sucking motions with her mouth. I had never touched a baby before, or even seen one up close.

  Our lunch was already on the table when we got to our room. “Oops,” Mademoiselle said, laughing, “I think we were out too long. I don’t have my watch any more.”

  “I know where you can get …” I began, thinking of Miss Vanda, but stopped, realizing that Mademoiselle had probably had to sell hers.

  “Apres le dejeuner, nous allons jouer aux cartes. After lunch we will play cards,” she said with an enthusiasm that seemed a little unnatural. I repeated the sentence twice and, as a bonus, added, “Nous marchons sur le boulevard.”

  “Bravo Julien!” Mademoiselle enthused. That was the same thing Miss Vanda had said two days before, and it felt just as good. The French language, I realized, had real possibilities. I could have recited more, though I couldn’t remember the funny word for sidewalk, but something told me that this could also be overdone.

  We played gin rummy in silence at first, and I won the first two hands. I had expected more French sentences, but Mademoiselle’s mind seemed to be somewhere else, and her hands, which had manipulated the cards with such mastery the day before, now seemed to be shaking.

  “If a Russian soldier tries to speak to you,” she finally said, “you should just tell him that you don’t speak Russian.”

  “All right,” I said, not understanding where th
is had come from or where it was heading.

  “But don’t talk to them under any circumstances. Do you understand?”

  I said that I did.

  “If they try to give you candy or anything, don’t accept it.”

  I didn’t want to tell her that I already knew about that and accepted the advice courteously.

  “Oh, what they’re doing!” she said.

  I understood that she meant the Russians.

  “I don’t know if I should be telling you these things, but I guess you’ll know soon enough.”

  Now I waited anxiously to hear what I wasn’t supposed to know.

  “They came and arrested poor Mr. Stepkin now, you know. I don’t know if your mother knows him.” Mademoiselle paused again, and I didn’t know whether I was expected to answer her implied question. But she continued. “He didn’t do anything except that he was another lawyer.”

  “Another lawyer?” I said, wondering if Mother had told her about Mr. Rokief.

  “Last week it was Mr. Kaftonovich.”

  “We knew a lawyer in Durnoval who they arrested too,” I said. “Mother went to ask about him, but they said he had never been arrested, though the first time we went, they said that he was. Mother says that they either sent him to Siberia or killed him.”

  From the expression on Mademoiselle’s face, I wasn’t sure she had really heard me. She was rearranging her cards, and her hands were definitely shaking now.

  “Yes,” she finally said, “lawyers, judges, army officers, men in government…. Oh, do you mind terribly if I smoke? Mrs. Zabalchik, my landlady, says I shouldn’t smoke around you, but I do need a cigarette. Do you mind just one—half of one?”

  I said that I didn’t mind, and Mademoiselle took a pack of lumpy, hand-rolled cigarettes from her purse. “I’ve even learned to roll my own cigarettes,” she said, with an embarrassed smile. “I never thought….” Then I could see the pleasure spread over her face as she inhaled the first puff.

  I waited as Mademoiselle filled her lungs three more times. Then she carefully snuffed the cigarette and laid it down on the table, apparently for future use. I remembered Capt. Vrushin and his lump of sugar.