Loves of Yulian

by Julian Padowicz

  There was, in my mind, an order, a system, into which things fit as they related to one another. And my new impression of Irenka was upsetting it. It didn’t fit. Actually, this was just like learning that people could have horns or tails and having to readjust one’s entire concept of reality in accordance. Now I was having to readjust my concept to the apparent fact that there could be grownups who still held childish beliefs, beliefs that I had long ago grown out of, and that my Irenka, who couldn’t speak French or coordinate her hands and feet in the breaststroke, was one of them.

  Her former employer, Mrs. Romanski, had taught Irenka to speak good Polish, and she had done a good job, because Irenka didn’t speak anything like the peasants I had heard speaking before our escape. Maybe I could teach Irenka to speak French. Yes, I had learned most of my French from Mademoiselle, whom Mother had hired as my governess in Lvoof, just before our escape. She had taught me while we went for our walks or played Gin Rummy, simply by speaking French to me. I could do the same with Irenka. And suddenly, the idea of my teaching Irenka French had restored my faith in her. And I was so excited by the prospect of lying on our beach blanket with Irenka and teaching her to speak French, that sleeping was out of the question. In fact, even lying still was no longer possible, and I got up and pulled an armchair to the window, where I would wait anxiously for the sun to come up.

  “Oh my God, Yulian! What are you doing there?” It was Mother’s frightened voice waking me up in the armchair by the window. It was still dark, except for the streetlights outside.

  I didn’t have a proper response to Mother’s question, so I closed my eyes and pretended to stay asleep.

  I felt Mother’s hand on my forehead, feeling for a fever. Then I felt her take my hand. “Come back to bed,” she said, quietly now, and pulling gently on my hand. I realized that she must think that I had walked there in my sleep, the way I had heard my Uncle Benek used to do in Poland.

  Keeping my eyes closed, I let Mother pull me to my feet. She was holding both of my hands now.

  I had had bouts of crying in my sleep, since the start of the war and woken up in the middle of the night, to be told that I had had bad dreams, though I couldn’t remember having them. It was a small step now for Mother to believe that I walked in my sleep as well. I had to press my lips between my teeth to keep from grinning, while I let Mother walk me back to my bed.

  “My God,” I heard her whisper under her breath, as we crossed the room. It was one of those expressions I had heard escaping from Mother on occasions, without her seeming to be aware of it.

  Maybe I shouldn’t have done this. I didn’t want to frighten Mother. But I couldn’t very well tell her now that I had only been fooling. I let her tuck me back into my bed and pretended to drop off into deep, untroubled sleep.

  CHAPTER VI

  The following morning, the big car came to take Mother to Sra. O’Brien’s again, and Irenka and I waved goodbye to her from the sidewalk, as we set out for the beach. Irenka had expected to be going to the pool again, for my prescribed exercise, but I had suggested that we save that for the afternoon, so that I could start in on the French lessons. Of course I hadn’t told her yet what it was that I was planning.

  “Tadek is all beaten up this morning,” she said, as I put my hand in hers. I was about to respond with an automatic expression of sympathy, but realized that her statement required some clarification, which was certain to come by itself, as well as that there had been a detectable tone of glee to Irenka’s statement. I waited.

  “He got into a fight with some people in a bar last night, and now he can barely see out of his eyes,” she finally went on. “And if he thinks I’m going to care for him, he can think about something else. He even ruined his good suit.”

  I had never actually known any grownup who had been in a fight. I, of course, knew about soldiers fighting with guns, and I had seen boys get into fights at recess in the school that I had attended for a year in Warsaw, so this took a moment to assimilate. “W. . . hat di. . . d th. . . ey f. . . ight about?” I finally asked, my curiosity aroused.

  “He didn’t tell me, and I don’t want to know,” she said.

  I took this as the end of discussion on that subject, though she had raised a new question, and, reluctantly, let it go. We walked the rest of the way in silence.

  “H. . . ow w. . . ould y. . . ou l. . . ike to s. . . peak F. . . rench?” I asked, once we were settled on our blanket.

  “I can’t. I don’t know how to speak in French,” Irenka said.

  “I m. . . ean, h. . . ow w. . . ould you l. . ike me to t. . . each you so that y. . . ou c. . an?”

  “Do you speak French?” There was real surprise in her voice.

  “I do.”

  “You swim, you speak French, and you do magic tricks. What else do you do? Do you dance?”

  Suddenly I was embarrassed. But I laughed. “I d. . . on’t d. . . ance,” I said, “but b. . . efore we es. . . caped f. . rom the R. . . ussians, I h. . . ad a g. . . overness who s. . poke F. . . rench to me, and I c. . . an do the s. . . ame w. . . ith you.”

  “But I won’t understand anything you say.”

  “W. . . ell, I’ll t. . . ranslate it f. . . or you. But s. . . ome w. . . ords you w. . . ill un. . . derstand j. . . ust f. . . rom wh. . . hat I’m t. . . alking ab. . . out, or d. . . oing.” The thought now descended on me that, maybe, my friend Irenka just wasn’t very smart.

  “Like how?” she asked. She sounded really interested now.

  “L. . ike, if I t. . . ell y. . . ou th. . . at I’m g. . . oing to s. . . it on the b. . . lanket, and y. . . ou d. . . on’t know the w. . . ord for b. . . lanket, but y. . . ou s. . . ee me s. . it d. . . own on it, th. . . en y. . . ou w. . . ill know th. . . at the w. . . ord m. . . eans b. . . lanket.”

  “Oh, so it’ll be like a game.”

  “Y. . . es.”

  “So go ahead and say, I’m going to sit down on the blanket, in French.”

  “Je v. . . eu m. . . ’assoir s. . . ur le. . . ” I began, but stopped. The fact was that I didn’t know the word for blanket, though Sr. Segiera had used it a few days before. Taking a step to the side and moving off the blanket, I added the word sable, as I seated myself on the warm sand.

  Irenka repeated the entire sentence with surprising accuracy. “That means I’m going to sit down on the blanket,” she said.

  “N. . . no d. . . d. . don’t you s. . . see m. . . me sit d. . . d. . . down on the s. . . sand?” I was beginning to lose my patience.

  “Oh, so you were trying to trick me.”

  “No, I j. . . ust d. . . idn’t know the w. . . ord for b. . . lanket.”

  Now Irenka laughed, and I found that I couldn’t be mad at her.

  “Say something else,” Irenka urged.

  “Je m. . . e l. . . eve,” I said, getting to my feet, and heard Irenka repeat the statement almost flawlessly.

  “I stand up?” she said.

  I nodded my head. Then I went ahead and gave Irenka several similar statements, which she repeated with equal accuracy. By the time we headed home for lunch, Irenka was able to say a number of things in French, most of them on the first try, and to remember them minutes later. I certainly did not remember my own learning experience as having been that easy, but I put it down to her being a grownup. On the other hand, I did find that I had to alter my earlier assessment of her intelligence.

  After lunch, at the swimming pool, Irenka informed me that she had instructions to see to it that I did a lot of swimming, while her own swimming lessons she had decided to put on hold for the moment.

  The telephone was ringing when I unlocked the door to our suite, and I rushed across the room to answer it before the caller hung up. Had I been less concerned over the chance of losing the call, I might have given myself some advance warning of the caller’s probable identity and prevented the long pause after Sr. Segiera said, “Basia?” mistaking my voice for Mother’s.<
br />
  “It’s J. . . ulien, Monsieur,” I finally said in French.

  “Ah, Julien. You recognized my voice. How are you?”

  “I a. . . m f. . . ine, M. . . onsieur. H. . . ow are y. . . ou?” I responded automatically, as I had been taught. But I had little interest in the state of his wellbeing. Rather, I was concerned over the restarting of his and Mother’s friendship and debating the possibility of not delivering the inevitable message to Mother. If she didn’t know that he had called, she would decide that he wasn’t a gentleman and the diamonds would be safe.

  “I have just flown back from ‘the Interior’ in an airplane,” he said. “Would you like to see a picture of my airplane?”

  I had no idea what “the Interior” was, but it didn’t matter. I instantly had a mental picture of Sr. Segiera’s head in a leather helmet and goggles, sticking out of the open cockpit of a silver biplane, and the question in my mind was whether he had been the pilot, himself, or whether there was a second head. I had never known anyone who knew how to fly an airplane! For that matter, I didn’t think I knew anyone who had ever flown in an airplane.

  “Y. . . y. . . yes, M. . . m. . . onisieur,” I said, seeing my scheme go up in smoke.

  “May I please speak with your beautiful mother, Julien?”

  “Sh. . . she i. . . i. . . isn’t h. . . here, M. . . monsieur,” I said. I realized that I was lapsing into my stutter again.

  “Then, when she gets home, Julien, would you please tell her that I will pick you both up at nine o’clock—no, that would be too late for you—I will pick you up at seven thirty for dinner.”

  I said that I would. I wanted to ask if he would be bringing the picture of the airplane with him, but didn’t want to go through all that stuttering. Somehow I was much more conscious of my stutter on the telephone, than when speaking in person. “G. . . oodbye M. . . onsieur,” I said, making a great effort to curb the stutter. Then I hung up.

  There was, of course, another good thing about the senhor taking us out to dinner: the menu in the hotel restaurant was limited and the food not very interesting. I wondered whether he would be bringing the picture with him, or whether he meant it for another time.

  Because I didn’t have a watch, I wondered how long it would be until seven thirty. Yes, I was sure that he would bring it. To tell me that he had the picture and then not bring it, would be a cruelty that was not in the senhor’s character. Even though I knew that it could not possibly have any effect on the actual outcome, there was a feeling inside me that, if I were to take a piece of paper and draw the image that I wanted to see, that of only the senhor’s helmeted head sticking out of the opening on top of the fuselage, it might, somehow, influence reality. But, while I could see the airplane and its pilot so clearly in my head, I had absolutely no talent at drawing and, if there had been any truth to my supposition that the picture could affect reality, what I produced would have resulted in Sr. Segiera’s piloting a sausage.

  “Look what Sra. O’Brien gave me, mother said, when she came in, a little breathless because the elevator wasn’t running. Under her arm, Mother had a leather-bound notebook that was about four times as thick at the spine end as at the other. Laying it on the table, Mother opened it to reveal two, shiny metal rings, sticking up in the air. When she pulled one of the rings apart, the second one snapped open as well, and you could lift the pages right out. “See, you can add pages when you want, or change the order, or whatever you want,” she said. “The paper comes separately, with two holes in it, and you just clip the pages in.”

  We both marveled over this invention, with Mother even letting me snap the rings open and closed several times. “I’m helping the senhora write a book,” Mother said. “She was born in Russia, you know, during Tsarist times. You know what ‘Tsarist times’ means, don’t you?”

  I did. The count, with whom we had stayed for a while in Hungary, was also Russian and had lived there before the Communist Revolution. I tried to read what was written in Mother’s handwriting on the first page of the notebook, and it didn’t at first make any sense. Then I realized that it was supposed to be Russian, but wasn’t in that crazy Russian alphabet, but the regular one. Mother, I remembered, didn’t know how to write in Russian.

  “Y. . . ou’re w. . . riting it in R. . . ussian with P. . . olish l. . . etters,” I said.

  “Yes, we’re writing it in Russian, and then Sra. O’Brien will have somebody translate it into Portuguese.”

  I had serious doubts that a Russian-to-Portuguese translator could understand Mother’s writing. There were sounds in Russian for which the regular alphabet didn’t have letters. I expressed my doubts to Mother, who laughed. “Don’t worry about that, Yulek,” she said. “You and I will be in America before the book is finished. But, in the meanwhile, I’m getting paid. Look.”

  Mother took some money out of her purse. “Look at that, Yul. Your mother is a working woman,” she said and began to laugh at the idea. “We’ll go to a real restaurant for dinner tonight and celebrate.”

  Then I had to inform her that there were other plans.

  “What, he thinks he can ignore me like that, and then just call up when he feels like it and say to be ready at seven? Ha!”

  “S. . . s. . . seven th. . . th. . . thirty.”

  Mother picked the pillow off my bed and flung it across the room. “If he ever calls again, you are to just hang up on him, do you hear?” She paused to light a cigarette, and I could see her hand shaking. “Just hang up. Don’t say a single word—don’t let him say anything. Just hang up the moment you hear his voice!”

  I could see pitfalls in this strategy. What if it was someone else who sounded like Sr. Segiera, and I hung up on him? But I said, “He s. . . said that he j. . . ust c. . . ame b. . . ack fr. . . om s. . . omewhere in an a. . . irplane.”

  But Mother was already laying out a solitaire on the table, and she did not respond.

  “When they call from downstairs to say that he’s here,” Mother said, after a while, as though it were the solitaire she was talking to, “tell them that I’m not here, and he can’t come up.”

  “B. . . ut they know y. . . ou’re h. . . ere. They s. . . aw you c. . . ome in.”

  “They will understand.”

  “W. . . hat w. . . ill they u. . . nderstand?”

  “People say they’re not in all the time, when they don’t want to see someone. Hotels understand that.”

  “W. . . hy d. . . on’t we j. . . ust go to d. . . inner be. . . fore he c. . . omes?”

  “Because, when he sees the desk clerk speaking to you, he’ll know that we are here and just don’t want to see him.”

  “B. . . ut th. . . at’s l. . . ying.”

  “All right, then, we just won’t answer it. The desk clerk will tell him that we are in, but just aren’t answering the phone. He’ll understand.”

  I had been instructed not to answer the phone before, when I was alone at night. Now I realized that that had been lying too. Or was it just failing to tell the truth, which wasn’t as bad?

  When the phone did ring, Mother and I looked at each other. I had always found not answering a ringing telephone to be very difficult. After a few rings, it would become like an itch that badly needed scratching. Maybe it would have been better to do as Mother wanted in the first place and tell them that she wasn’t in.

  Mother did not seem to be bothered by it. In fact, she seemed to be smiling a little, as she continued playing her solitaire.

  Finally, the ringing stopped. “We’ll give him a few minutes to leave, then we’ll go out to dinner,” Mother said. “Go comb your hair.”

  I was in the bathroom, combing my hair with a wet comb, which was the only way I could get my cowlick to stay down, when I heard a knock on our front door. “Flower delivery for Mme Barbara!” a man’s voice that I did not recognize was saying.

  Hurrying back to the living room, I found Mother standing a foot or two from
the door, biting on her lower lip. Seeing me come in, she pointed to the door and whispered, “Open it, Yul.” She stepped back to her table, as I stepped to the door.

  I opened the door. Behind a large bouquet of red flowers, stood Sr. Segiera, dressed in an all-white suit, his finger to his lips, requesting my silence. “Flowers for the beautiful senhora,” he said in that same make-believe voice.

  Mother stepped forward to receive them. “Ernesto!” she cried out, when she recognized him. Then, “No, no! You can’t do that! Get out!”

  “But Barbara,” he said in French, in his own voice, “I just got back from the Interior this afternoon.”

  “No, Ernesto! I don’t want to see you! Get out! Go away!”

  “I couldn’t call you because. . . ”

  “Gentlemen don’t behave this way!” Even speaking French, she used the English word gentlemen, just as she did in Polish.

  “Barbara,” he seemed to be pleading, “there was a messenger waiting in front of my house when I got home after our dinner, telling me that there was a problem I had to fix in the Interior, immediately. It was too late to call you, and there are no telephones there.”

  “Just go, Ernesto. Get out and take your flowers with you.” Then she slammed the door shut, crushing the flowers, I was sure, against Sr. Segiera’s white suit.

  “Look out the window and tell me when he leaves,” she said to me. Surprisingly, the anger was all gone from her voice now.

  Leaning out the window, I saw the top of a very long and shiny black car, parked in front of the hotel lobby. A man in some kind of military uniform leaned against a fender, smoking a cigarette. Suddenly the man flicked the cigarette away and opened the rear door. Sr. Segiera, in his white suit, but without the flowers, came out of the lobby, crossed the sidewalk in hurried steps, and ducked inside the back seat.

  “He’s g. . . one,” I said, as I watched the car pull away. With the senhor went my photograph of him piloting the airplane, which I was now sure must have been in one of the pockets of his white suit. But, with him, also went the fear of Mother’s growing to like him to the extent of giving away our diamonds.