Mother and Me

by Julian Padowicz

  Mother surprised us after lunch by coming home early and taking Mademoiselle and me to a café where, she said, they had cheesecake that day. They didn’t advertise it, she said with a little laugh, but if they knew you, and you asked for it, they had it. The café was dimly lit, and the glass display case by the front entrance was empty, except for a small white teddy bear. I supposed that it must have been placed there temporarily by the son or daughter of the café owner, since cafes did not, in my experience, sell teddy bears.

  Then I thought I heard my mother ask, “Yulek, would you like that teddy bear?”

  I could not have heard right. Such happiness could not be happening to me.

  “Oh, Julien,” Mademoiselle was saying excitedly, “what a beautiful teddy bear. Wouldn’t you like to have it?”

  The best I could do was to nod my head, and in a moment the bear was in the crook of my arm, looking up at me through his brown button eyes, the way baby Nadia had looked at me in the hall.

  He was about ten inches tall, made of white plush, with arms and legs that turned around wire joints in the shoulders and hips. I did not have to ponder a name, but immediately christened him Meesh, the equivalent of naming an English-speaking bear Teddy.

  Seated on my lap, Meesh shared the cheesecake with me, though I would not take the risk of staining him with tea. Teddy bears, I explained to Mother and Mademoiselle, did not like tea.

  I had had a bear in Warsaw, a large brown creature, almost as big as I was, who sat among my other toys in the corner by Kiki’s bed. I cannot remember his having a name or my ever playing with him. I don’t think I would have known how. And dolls, of course, were out of the question. But Meesh was my soulmate the moment my outstretched hands had touched the soft plush of his little body.

  I worried about taking him outside without a coat or mittens, but Mademoiselle explained to me that bears not only had fur, but extra layers of fat to insulate them from the cold. While I did not disbelieve her, I did have difficulty internalizing the idea that his little body was not uncomfortable in the December cold. Had I been permitted to unbutton my coat, I would have wrapped him inside along with me, but I had to settle for covering him as well as I could with my arm.

  That evening I taught Meesh the Our Father and the Hail Mary. Though he had no knees, by folding his legs back at the hips he could simulate a kneeling position, and I could hold his hands together for him. Unfortunately, there was no way that he could cross himself. Then he slept in my arms, and I remember waking several times, or maybe just dreaming that I did, concerned lest he be crushed by my large presence.

  The next morning he accompanied Mademoiselle and me on our walk and we learned to buy sleeping car tickets in French. Mademoiselle waited patiently while Meesh and I both repeated the French, Meesh in a squeaky baby-talk voice that Kiki would not have permitted me to use. On two or three occasions I even had to alert Mademoiselle to the fact that we were ready to go on, since her mind seemed to have wandered in the interim.

  For some reason there was no French at all over lunch, as Mademoiselle alternated bites of her bread and cheese with drags on her cigarette and I expounded on table manners to Meesh. It wasn’t till she interrupted my explanation of gin rummy with a suggestion that Meesh be put down for a nap, that I realized from her tone that Mademoiselle was annoyed over something.

  I promptly complied with her suggestion and turned my attention fully to cards. But instead of resuming the easy conversation of previous days, Mademoiselle surprised me with a most uncomfortable silence as well as the most thorough trouncing I had experience in any card game. Of the two, the silence was the more distressing.

  It was after playing three or four hands in virtual silence, and an atmosphere increasingly thicker in smoke, that I decided it was time for Meesh to rejoin us. As Mademoiselle shuffled the cards, I got down from my chair and proceeded toward my bed.

  “Where are you going?” Mademoiselle asked.

  “Meesh woke up,” I explained.

  “Sit down.”

  Mademoiselle’s command surprised me, and I resumed my seat.

  Mademoiselle laid the deck of cards down on the table with a very deliberate motion. “Julien, you have to realize,” she began, “that we are occupied by Communists here in Lvow, while Fascists are occupying the other half of Poland. People are being arrested and people are being killed. Some of us, who are cultured and accustomed to the finer things in life, have suddenly been reduced to living like peasants. You don’t know if your own father is alive in a prison camp or dead on a battlefield. This is no time for you be pretending that dolls are alive and talking to them as though they were people.” Having said that, Mademoiselle proceeded to light another lumpy cigarette.

  I found Mademoiselle’s calling Meesh a doll offensive, but could clearly see how upset she was and determined it best for Meesh to extend his nap. When Mademoiselle picked the cards up again, I realized that her hands were as unsteady as they had been a few days before.

  “Would Mademoiselle tell me about another one of those funny operas?” I asked, though I had found nothing funny about the cigar girl and the cow fighter.

  “Most operas aren’t funny,” she said. “There is nothing funny about Carmen.”

  This confirmed my own opinion of the piece. Under the impression that all opera was supposed to be funny, I had been harboring a definite doubt as to my own judgement. What was most important, however, was that Mademoiselle was, quite visibly, settling down from being upset. “Most opera is tragic, the way that most life is tragic,” Mademoiselle was saying. I realized, it would be best if Meesh maintained a low profile around Mademoiselle.

  “As your mother has most certainly learned by now, because everyone knows,” Mademoiselle was saying, “last night they arrested more people, some of whom I am sure, she knew.”

  When Mother came home that evening, she and Mademoiselle again talked in French. I caught words like street and door and chair, and by the gravity of their tone I guessed that they were talking about the arrests of the previous night. But when Mademoiselle finally left, Mother’s mood quickly changed as she surprised me with a piece of red cloth which, she explained, was to become a coat for Meesh.

  I watched in disbelief as Mother folded the cloth in half and then proceeded to cut it into a shape that, frankly, resembled a dress more than a coat. The finished garment, sewn together with brown thread and fastened by a white button, made my poor Meesh look something like a misshapen red mushroom. But the very idea of my mother’s initiative and effort in our behalf, got to my heart and Meesh’s as nothing I could remember. I had the desire to wrap my arms around Mother’s neck, but I didn’t know if she would like it.

  Christmas came and went, as did my birthday, three weeks later. I was eight, an age I had waited for decades to achieve, but, somehow, it meant little now. Just before Christmas, Mother gave Mademoiselle some money for us to buy a tree, tabletop size, which we decorated with colored paper cutouts that Mademoiselle proved very clever at making. I understood that there would be no presents, except that Mother gave Mademoiselle a pair of wool gloves, which, Mother explained, weren’t a Christmas present. They were used but serviceable, and Mademoiselle was so pleased that her knees bent almost into a curtsey.

  I told the Christmas story to Meesh after we had trimmed the tree. Meesh had developed the habit of taking long naps while Mademoiselle was there. Mademoiselle told both of us about Christmas at the Countess’s house.

  On Christmas Eve, Mother really surprised me by knowing some of the words to some Christmas songs. She didn’t know many of the words, but joined Mademoiselle and me when she could. Mother had insisted that Mademoiselle dine with us that evening, and even Mrs. Potkanskova, our landlady, with her one blackened eyeglass, came in with a bottle of vodka and some glasses on a tray and stayed to hear Mademoiselle sing a song in French. I hoped she had remembered to lock her crazy husband’s door firmly behind her.

  Then it was right on my birth
day, January thirteenth, as I turned eight, that Bogda was late and breathless bringing our supper. “Oh, Missus,” she said, “I am so sorry for being late with your supper, but I was looking all over for Dr. Kratynovich, and nobody can find him.”

  When Mother asked why the doctor’s services were needed, Bogda told us that baby Nadia was very sick. Besides which, her parents, who already owed Mrs. Potkanskova a lot of rent, didn’t have money for doctors or medicine or anything. I immediately reached for Meesh and cradled him in my arms, as Mother asked if that was the reason for all the footsteps we were hearing in the hall. Bogda said that, yes, Mrs. Potkanskova had a thermometer and now was applying wet compresses to the baby’s forehead.

  “Eat your supper and don’t come out,” Mother said to me, indicating the plate of cabbage borsch with a boiled potato in the middle. Then she stood up and left the room, followed by Bogda.

  It must have been in her excitement that Bogda left the door open. I could hear whispering in the hall, though I could not make out the words. I put a spoonful of the borsch into my mouth, but I could just visualize Fredek in my situation running to the open door the moment that Mother and Bogda were out of the room. It took both my curiosity and a sense that there was something manifestly wrong in my docilely continuing to obey my confining instructions in this instant, to make me follow Fredek’s example. In three quiet leaps I was at the door.

  Several people stood in a cloud of cigarette smoke in the hall, speaking in whispers, still too quietly for me to understand. One man I recognized from an encounter outside the bathroom. The others, I assumed to be fellow tenants as well. Mother was not among them, and they, I presumed, didn’t know about her orders, so I felt safe standing in plain sight in the doorway.

  Then, suddenly, Mother came out of the sick room, followed still by Bogda, and catching me full in my guilt. I pressed tightly against the door jamb, holding my breath, but Mother brushed right past me into the room. “I want you to stay with Yulek till I get back,” she was saying to Bogda. Then she sat down on the chair and proceeded to pull on her boots.

  “You do everything Bogda says,” she said to me. She didn’t look at me, and I couldn’t tell if that was from anger or preoccupation. “I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Then she was putting on her coat as she marched out the door.

  “Missus is going out to find another doctor,” Bogda said when Mother had left, but she was looking past me out into the hall.

  “Are they Catholic?” I asked her. I had seen Bogda’s little gold cross, so I presumed she would understand my concern. To my surprise, she turned to me with a look of scorn. “Mrs. Potkanskova wouldn’t have any Jews living here,” she said. Instinctively, my hand went up to scratch my chest, flipping the medallion outside my collar.

  “Has she been christened yet?” I asked.

  Bogda’s eyes opened wide. “Father!” she said. “Somebody has to get Father.” With that, Bogda rushed out into the hall and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen.

  Left by ourselves, I explained to Meesh that baby Nadia, who lived next door with her parents, was very sick and might die. Mother, I told him, had gone to find a doctor, and Bogda was fetching a priest in the event that Nadia hadn’t yet been christened. Christening would get her into heaven, and he and I would be christened as well, as soon as the opportunity arose. Meesh cried about poor Nadia, though he had never actually seen her, and I made him feel better by explaining that it was wartime and a lot of people were being killed. Then I finished my soup, even though it was almost cold, because I was hungry.

  In a bit, I could hear the presence of additional people in the hall and even Bogda’s voice, but nobody came into our room. With the hall noises of no more interest to me, I closed the door quietly and decided to put Meesh to bed. Having tucked him under my blanket, I took off my shoes and lay down beside him to tell him a story.

  As I told him about Hanzel and Gretel, however, I couldn’t help remembering the way my mother had pulled on her boots and her coat when the others were just milling around in the hall, and gone out to find a doctor for Nadia. “Missus is going out to find another doctor,” Bogda had said, clearly not so much to inform me as in awe. I could visualize Mother walking down the streets of this strange city, looking for doctor signs.

  Then I realized that I had been asleep, and people were whispering in our room. Someone had spread a blanket over me.

  I had learned the trick of opening my eyes just a slit and looking through my lashes, pretending to be asleep, but my head was facing the wrong way. I gave a sleepy sigh while I turned my head and made a show of resettling my shoulders, as I had watched Fredek do, before lifting my eyelids for a glimpse. Now I saw that Mother was standing right beside my bed.

  “A healthy looking boy,” I heard a man’s voice whisper in Russian.

  “His legs are like sticks,” Mother whispered back. “Look at his little arm, Doctor.” Out of the corner of my eye, I could see a piece of blue army trousers. “In Warsaw we would give him tonic and oil,” Mother went on.

  “He’s doing fine,” the doctor reassured her. “His breathing is strong.” I was imitating the slow, deep breathing I had heard Kiki do in her sleep.

  “Can you give him some kind of tonic?” Mother insisted. Then, in a less urgent tone, she added, “You were so good with the baby. You have such gentle hands for an army doctor.”

  “At the university, I trained to be a blah-blah.”

  “Oh, what is that?”

  “That’s a doctor for the lungs.”

  Then, a third voice intruded. “We have to go, Dr. Bielsky,” a man, whom I couldn’t see, said.

  “Yes, just a minute,” the doctor said. He and Mother stepped away from my bed, and I could see them better now. The doctor was a young man with blond hair, and he was buttoning his tunic while looking at something to his left.

  “That’s my makeup bag,” Mother said. “Would you like to have it?”

  “I could carry my instruments in it. But no, it’s too valuable. It’s too beautiful.”

  “Well, there is no makeup to buy any more, and your instruments are much more important. It’s brown, so it’s perfect for a man.” I saw Mother open the little leather case and take out the few items she had in it. She handed it to him. The doctor’s hands stopped in mid-air, as though he was reluctant to touch the soft leather. Now I could see the other man standing by the door. He was in civilian dress, his black overcoat unbuttoned, a gray fedora on his head. His hands were in his coat pockets.

  “Please take it, Comrade Doctor. You saved the baby’s life, and we are very grateful,” Mother said.

  “I hope I saved her life. I will have to see her again.”

  Mother pressed the case into his hands. “It’s from Vienna,” she said. “And I have other suitcases to sell in case some of your fellow officers are interested.”

  “Thank you very much, Comrade.” I saw that he was already playing with the brass spring latch.

  Then I heard the other man speak from where he stood beside the door. “How many suitcases do you have, Comrade?” he asked.

  “Three, Comrade. Would you like to see them?”

  “No, but I am curious why you would want to sell them.”

  “I need the money, Comrade,” Mother said. “I am a woman alone with a little boy, and I need money to live on.”

  “And you like it so much here in Lvow, Comrade, that you don’t plan to travel again.” This wasn’t a question.

  “I like it very much in Lvow,” Mother said. “If we do travel again, Comrade, I’m afraid we will have to do it with more modest luggage.”

  “And suitcases are awkward to carry through the woods, aren’t they?”

  “Through the woods?”

  “Through the woods and across the border, Comrade.”

  “You forget, Comrade,” Mother answered, “that I am just a woman with a little son, who isn’t very strong. I would not dream of going through the snow on foot.”

&
nbsp; The doctor cut in. “We should go now, Comrade,” he said.

  The other man ignored him. “No, the border is quite well sealed now. But spring is beautiful in these parts. Don’t do anything foolish, Comrade. When spring comes, we will be patrolling the borders so that not even a squirrel can get through.” He seemed to find this funny and gave a little laugh.

  “Thank you for your warning, Comrade. But I assure you that we have no plans to escape.”

  “That’s good. But we will be keeping an eye on you just the same, Comrade Waisbrem.”

  Suddenly, I saw Mother flinch. Then she crossed the room and held out her hand. “And I don’t know your name, Comrade,” she said.

  The man didn’t take his hands from his pockets. “Come,” he said to the doctor. He turned and reached for the doorknob and opened the door. “Come,” he said again, stepping into the hall.

  The doctor put Mother’s bag under his arm and picked up his own canvas bag by the handle. With his other hand, he picked up his hat. “Goodbye, Comrade,” he said, “and thank you.” Then he followed the other into the hall.

  Mother walked to the table and sat down. I saw her put her elbow on the table and rest her chin in her hand. I understood how rude the man had been to not shake her hand or even tell her his name.

  Now there was a quiet knock on the door. For a moment, Mother didn’t move, and I almost spoke out to tell her. Then she got up and walked slowly to the door. She opened it, holding one finger to her lips for quiet.

  It was Nadia’s young father who stood in the doorway. I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could tell by his face and the way he tilted his head left and right that he was thanking Mother. She whispered something back and then patted his hand. He bent over her hands and kissed them both. He looked like he was crying. Mother touched his cheek with her hand, said something, and then closed the door gently.