Mother and Me

by Julian Padowicz

  “Ah, Missus, I regret that I cannot accommodate that request either. There is a train to Lvow at five twenty-three that Missus and her son will be on. It is quite a comfortable train, and we have no accommodations here for….”

  “But we will be shot,” Mother said. “The Soviets will take us off the train and shoot us.”

  “Ah, no, Missus. The Soviet authorities….”

  Mother stood up. “My son and I did not walk eleven hours to exhaustion through the snow to be put on a train back into Soviet hands!”

  “There is nothing I can do. We have our orders.”

  Now Mother was shouting. “Mister has been giving me cigarettes here and coffee and pumping me for information, knowing all along that he was sending us to our death!”

  “It is only a routine report that I have to file …”

  “Routine report? My son and I are not one of your routine border incidents. We have walked eleven hours through the snow, risking bullets, risking wolves …”

  “There are no more wolves in these woods—the peasants have….”

  “Can Mister even look at me when I speak to him?”

  Mr. Vostokos was looking down at something he was writing on his desk. He looked up at Mother now. “I am sorry—there is nothing that I can do. Missus must not be hysterical. The Soviet government does not shoot civilians.”

  “Not be hysterical? I have lived five months with the Bolsheviks and …”

  “I must ask Missus to sit down now.”

  “Mister is not inhuman,” Mother said in a suddenly quieter tone. “He has beautiful children of his own …”

  “I am sorry, but I must ask Missus to sit down.”

  “I have money …”

  Mr. Vostokos held up his hand to stop her. “If Missus does not sit down, I will have the constable put her in the cell,” he said, looking down at the papers again.

  Suddenly Mother reached her two hands under the papers on his desk and flung them into the air.

  The policeman jumped down from his platform and grabbed Mother’s arm.

  “The cell has no stove,” Mr. Vostokos said.

  Mother sat down. She was breathing hard.

  “Missus must go sit with her son now,” Mr. Vostokos said. He was gathering his papers, and he pointed blindly in my direction.

  The policeman put his hand on Mother’s arm again. She stood up and let him lead her to the chair next to mine. Suddenly she looked very tired and much older. As she sat down next to me, I saw tears flowing down her face.

  Instinctively, I put my arms around her. “It’s all right,” I assured her. “Don’t cry. Everything will be all right.”

  “He’s secret police,” Mother said under her breath.

  “What?”

  “He’s trying to make me tell him things. I have nothing to tell him. Do your rosary.”

  “My rosary?”

  “Your rosary—hurry, do your rosary.”

  “Are the Russians going to shoot us?” I asked. Until a moment ago, I would have been sure the answer would have to be no. Soldiers and spies were stood up in front of brick walls with a blindfold and a cigarette—Fredek had even made me stand with him in front of a brick wall on the farm, close our eyes and hold our hands behind our backs while he spat defiant words at the Nazi firing squad—but none of this was any part of my mother’s and my reality. Except that her mention of the secret police had just crashed into that reality.

  “Of course not. Now do your rosary,” Mother said.

  I could tell now from Mother’s tone that piety was not the motive behind her order. Mother had a plan. On the other hand, Mother’s plans did not fill me with confidence. I pulled the rosary out of my pocket and began with the crucifix. Mother had her rosary in her hands as well. She was mumbling the Hail Mary where it should have been the Our Father and with a few la-la’s in the middle. I raised the volume of my praying, prompting Mother with the correct words, but seemed to have no corrective effect. In fact there were la-la’s now where the right words had been earlier. Mother’s mind, I understood, was elsewhere.

  I looked at the old man. He seemed to be asleep, his arms folded over his chest. I watched the policeman step to the stove to put in more wood. The round stove with its door open looked like Mr. Vostokos with his ear.

  After a while Mr. Vostokos stood up. “I am going home to dinner now,” he said. “I will be back. Yoosef will bring Missus some dinner. We have a toilet through here.” He indicated a door in the back wall, then put on his leather coat and green hat. The old man stood up as well.

  Suddenly Mother had stood up too and crossed to meet him just outside his railing. She said something that I couldn’t hear.

  “Missus will sit down with her son or she will wait in the cell!” he said angrily.

  Mother sat down again.

  I saw the old man purse his lips and shake his head in imitation of Mr. Vostokos, following him to the door. I suppressed my laugh.

  “Pederast,” Mother said after they had left the building.

  “What did you say?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I had heard her all right. It was just that I had not heard that word before. Now I understood it to be an expletive I should commit to memory.

  Through the window I saw the two men get into the sleigh and, with the old man at the reins and Mr. Vostokos in back with the robe over his lap, drive away.

  Mother leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, the rosary limp in her hands. I understood it to be no longer necessary to continue saying mine. With all that was going on, my heart had not been in it anyway. At the big desk, the policeman continued writing, but I noticed that, with Mr. Vostokos gone, he had unbuttoned the top two buttons of his tunic. He had on a green flannel undershirt underneath.

  “Does Mr. Policeman speak Polish?” Mother asked across the room. Her voice was very friendly now. The policeman shook his head. Like Mr. Vostokos, he kept his eyes down on the paper. Mother tried Russian, German, and French with the same results. “Oh come, this close to the border, Mister must certainly understand a little Polish,” she coaxed. The policeman wiggled his hand indicating that he understood a little.

  “Is Mister from this village?”

  The policeman nodded his head.

  “Is Mister married?”

  He nodded again.

  “Does Mister have children?”

  He held up three fingers. Then he put his index finger to his lips signifying silence. I wondered why his children should be kept secret, then realized he was telling Mother to be quiet.

  “But why?” Mother asked. “Nobody will know if we speak. And I’m only asking about your children.”

  The policeman reached back and tapped the wall behind him where the cell must have been. Mother closed her eyes again.

  I wondered if I could manage to close one eye now without using my hand. I squeezed my left cheek up against my eye and closed it. I found that the other eye closed as well. But I could then force my right eye open a little, while still keeping the left eye squeezed shut with the help of the rest of the left side of my face. I realized how twisted my face must be, but it was a wink, and when the old man came back, I would surprise him.

  It wasn’t long before I saw the old man drive his sleigh back into the space outside the window. He was alone now. He covered the horse again and hung a feed bag over his nose. Then he lifted an iron pot out of the sleigh. As he passed my window, he looked in and winked at me.

  I began to wink back, but he was already past the window before I got my eye closed. But that was all right—I would wait till he was inside and sitting down.

  The man stamped his feet outside and brought the pot into the police station. He walked to the other end of the room and through the door into the back room. The policeman followed him.

  “We could run away now,” I whispered to Mother. I said it out of a sense of loyalty, but certain that this was not a practical plan.

  �
�Hush,” Mother said. I decided to practice my wink one more time.

  Then the old man came back in, carrying a tray with two steaming bowls and some sliced bread. I realized that if I showed him my wink now, he would be unable to respond the same way that he could later, when he wasn’t doing anything. Of course if he did not sit down near me again …

  “Do you speak Polish?” I heard Mother ask the old man, as he handed her a bowl. He smiled and nodded his head.

  “Do you live in this village?”

  He nodded again, handing the other bowl to me. He put the tray with the bread on the chair next to mine and returned to the policeman’s desk. The policeman had set two bowls on the desk.

  “The old fool doesn’t understand a word I said,” Mother said.

  Our lunch was a meat stew, and it was delicious. Mother didn’t want hers and offered it to me, but I was too full. The two men talked in low tones as they ate, seated at the big desk across the room. Mother leaned her head back against the wall. I thought she might be asleep, but then I saw that her eyes were open and staring at the ceiling.

  Now I began to explain to Meesh that I had taught myself to wink and would surprise the old man with it at the first opportunity, but I must have fallen asleep because the next thing I knew, Mr. Vostokos was walking across the room to his desk in his leather overcoat. He had a newspaper under his arm.

  “I trust Missus’s dinner was satisfactory,” he said with his back to us as he hung his coat on its coat hanger.

  At first, Mother didn’t answer him. “It was very good, thank you,” she finally said, even though her bowl was still on the chair next to mine, untouched.

  “The constable’s wife is an excellent cook,” Mr. Vostokos said. He was seated sideways at his desk now and he leaned down. I realized he was brushing his shoes.

  Through the window, I could see the old man unhitching the horse from the sleigh and then leading him somewhere out of my line of sight. I hoped he was coming back into the building. I also hoped that when he did come, he would again sit near me. Mr. Vostokos was now sitting back up in his chair, reading the newspaper he had brought. “I would give Missus a newspaper to read,” he said across the room, “but they’re in Hungarian.” Mother didn’t answer him.

  Then the old man came back past my window and winked at me again. This time, I didn’t even try to wink back, waiting for a more opportune time and crossing my fingers in hope.

  Coming back into the building, the old man sat down where he had sat before and, like before, he crossed his arms, yawned, and then closed his eyes. I waited for him to open the one eye and look at me. But he didn’t. Time went by, and the old man seemed to be asleep. I wondered if he really was or whether he was teasing me.

  Then, suddenly, the eye popped open. This, I knew was an opportunity I could not let slip—there might not be another. As he watched me, I forced my left cheek up, closing both eyes, then carefully let the right eye open as far as possible without opening the left. The old man opened his mouth wide and put his hands to his face in exaggerated surprise. I mimed a laugh, opening my mouth wide and wagging my head left and right. I didn’t know whether we really needed to hide our game from Mr. Vostokos, but, somehow, it made it more fun.

  Then I remembered the steel washer in my pocket. I drew it out, held it up for the old man to see, then pretending to throw it at him, I palmed it instead. The old man first raised his hands in pretend fear, then rolled onto his side away from me, covering his head with his arms. Then he turned to look at me over his shoulder. I made the washer reappear out of my ear. The old man gripped his head in make-believe amazement.

  I repeated the trick several more times, pretending to throw and then pulling the washer out of my hair, my mouth, my nose…. Though he did not roll over to dodge my throw any more, the old man’s astonishment at each reappearance was undiminished. After I had pulled the washer out of my nose twice and three times out of my ear, the old man raised a finger to stop me. I opened my eyes wide expressing my eager anticipation of what he would do next and saw him look at that raised finger with equal curiosity—as though he, too, was waiting to see what the finger might be planning to do.

  Finally, the finger began to move slowly towards his face. I saw his eyes follow it and begin to cross as the finger approached his nose. Reaching the tip of his nose, the finger pushed it in. Immediately, his tongue propped out of his mouth and his eyebrows shot up in surprise.

  Now the finger moved slowly toward his right ear, followed by the eyes. As the finger pressed the ear, the protruding tongue shot to that corner of the mouth, and the man’s whole head jerked back in surprise. Then the finger began to move across the face toward the other ear.

  Suddenly, Mr. Vostokos’s voice startled us both as he barked something in Hungarian, and the old man straightened up in his chair with his hands folded in his lap. I, too, sat up as I would have in response to the teacher’s command in school. Mother seemed to be sleeping, but I could see her eyes behind her eyelashes move from Mr. Vostokos to the old man and then to me.

  I thought it best to devote some time to Meesh, whom I had ignored, and began to explain that Mr. Vostokos was angry at the old man and me for playing and that Mother was pretending to be asleep, but was really watching and listening and had a plan. What I did not communicate to Meesh was my skepticism regarding any plan of Mother’s. And suddenly it began to dawn on me that we were, indeed, going back to Poland and the Russians. I was not so much concerned about being shot as about not getting to that hotel room in Budapest with a comfortable bed, our own modern bathroom, and a restaurant where you could order anything on the menu, which had by now become my reality.

  The policeman stepped down from his platform to switch on an overhead light, and I realized it was growing dark. He nodded to the old man, who got up and went outside. I watched him pass my window without looking at me, and disappear.

  A few minutes later, he was back outside the window, pushing a wheelbarrow. He stopped at the wagon sleigh and began shoveling something from the wheelbarrow into the sleigh. Steam was rising from it, and it took a minute or two for me to realize that it was horse manure. He shoveled it all into a pile in the middle of the sleigh on top of the straw. The he put the shovel back into the barrow and wheeled it back to wherever he had brought it from.

  A few minutes later he was back again, leading the horse. He led him to where the two sleighs stood, turned him around, and backed him between the traces of the wagon sleigh. I could barely see in the fast-growing darkness as he fastened the harness. Then the old man climbed into the iron, one-person driver’s seat and drove it forward out of my sight.

  In a few minutes, the old man was back inside. He reported something to the policeman, who then went to speak to Mr. Vostokos. I could tell that whatever he said didn’t please the man. Mr. Vostokos said something angry across the room to the old man. The old man shrugged his shoulders. The policeman said something else to Mr. Vostokos. The old man pursed his lips and shook his head in imitation of Mr. Vostokos, as he had done earlier.

  “It is time to go to the train station,” Mr. Vostokos announced. “I hope Missus will come quietly.”

  Mother stood up and walked to the railing again. “I will come quietly, Mr. Minister,” she said in a calm and quiet voice that I could barely hear. “I will also get on that train, but I implore Mister that he send my son to the Polish consul in Budapest.”

  Suddenly I felt the blood drain from my face. The idea of separating from Mother terrified me.

  “No, no!” the words were out before they were in my mind. I was crying. I rushed to where Mother was standing and grabbed her around the waist.

  “Yulian, you must be a soldier,” Mother scolded. “You must grow up and come back to fight for Poland.” Then she turned to Mr. Vostokos again. “I implore you as one parent to another. You have two beautiful children. Think of them.”

  Much to my relief, Mr. Vostokos was shaking his head. “I cannot help Missus,
” he said. “I am not a monster. I would like to help, but I can’t. I must file my report.”

  He stood up and began putting on his coat. He nodded to the policeman, who put his hand gently on Mother’s elbow.

  “Put your coat on, Yulian,” Mother said to me. I went back for my coat, my knapsack, and Meesh. In a moment we were all standing in front of the building by the sleigh. I could smell the manure.

  “I have some good new for Missus, at least,” Mr. Vostokos said. “She will not have to bear the aggravation of my company any longer. The constable informs me that the harness on the passenger sleigh is broken and he must take this farm sleigh. The sleigh is not clean, and I am not dressed for such travel at the moment. I will have to walk home.” Then he tipped his green hat and began picking his way carefully through the snow.

  The policeman helped Mother into the sleigh. The old man was already in the sleigh, and I saw him fixing a spot in the straw for us to sit at the back.

  “It is only in the middle,” I said to Mother. The only word I could think of for manure wasn’t one I could use with Mother. “There isn’t any at the way back—we can sit there.”

  I climbed in after Mother and moved to the back, but saw her move to the front as the policeman settled himself in the single driver’s seat.

  “Mr. Policeman,” Mother said, kneeling behind him in the straw. “Will you take my son to your home—to your wife? I have money and jewels that will make you and your family rich.”

  I again felt that terror at the thought of separation. I could see myself being led by the policeman into a strange house with strange people.

  Now I saw Mother tear a button off her jacket and unwrap something, which I knew to be jewelry, and hold it out to he policeman in the palm of her hand.

  The policeman didn’t respond. But he didn’t say no, as the other man had, to relieve my fear. He had a sheepskin jacket on over his uniform, and he hunched over the reins and clucked the horse into motion.

  The sky was clear with a large moon and many stars as we drove through the dark village with barely glowing windows. We moved at a walking pace, but even that small wind effect made me shiver with the cold. I didn’t have on the layers of clothes that I had worn yesterday. Mother continued talking to the policeman, though I couldn’t hear her words any more. The man remained hunched over the reins in his two hands and seemed to make no response to her. The old man sat with his back against the driver seat and grinned at me. I was in no mood to play games now. I clutched Meesh tightly to my chest, mostly for warmth.