Silvana
Janusz’s father found the newly-weds a small flat in Warsaw. Two rooms on the top floor of a tall town house. They filled a suitcase and a trunk with their belongings and took a bus to the city.
‘I should carry you over the threshold,’ said Janusz as he put the key in the lock.
Silvana hesitated. He looked so handsome, his blue eyes shining at her. Nobody had ever looked at her the way he did. It was as if he saw something different in her, a truth that he had long been searching for. Of course he wanted to carry her into her new home. That’s what a husband had to do.
‘I’m not sure, Jan,’ she said. ‘Is it safe? For the baby, I mean. Look, why don’t I give you my gloves and hat. You could carry them inside for me instead.’
She saw the sadness in his face, and her optimism gave way to doubt. Perhaps he thought they had got things wrong, the baby coming along so quickly. Had he married her out of duty? By rights Janusz should be at university now, not offering to carry a pregnant peasant girl over the threshold of an attic apartment. Perhaps he was disappointed by the turn of events. Certainly his parents had been against the marriage.
But if Janusz was frustrated by his new life, he showed no sign of it.
‘Come here,’ he said laughing, and picked her up, making a big show of groaning and puffing out his cheeks, as if she were a huge burden to lift. He walked one step and then stood her down inside the door.
Silvana looked around the tiny flat. She finally had her own home.
Janusz jumped onto the kitchen table. ‘Can you climb up here? I want to show you the view. I’ll hold you tight, I promise.’
Through the skylight window it was possible to see the tops of the trees in the park.
‘It’s wonderful,’ she breathed, the table rocking slightly under their weight. ‘The city is wonderful.’
‘We have a fine view. The best in Warsaw, I’d say.’
He helped her down and handed her a present wrapped in gold paper.
‘Here. My wedding present to you.’
It was a necklace. A silver chain with a disc of coloured glass hanging from it, a small circle of blue no bigger than a one-grosz piece. Within the blue was a tree made of tiny circles of green and gold glass.
‘It comes from Jaraslaw, where the best glass and crystal comes from. It’s a tree. To remind us of our … of the first time we … That day in the woods …’
‘I remember,’ said Silvana. She held the little pendant up to the light, and the tree sparkled. She had a new life now with a man she loved. And she was free from her parents and her ghostly brothers at last.
Silvana loved the city from the moment she arrived. It felt alive and vibrant. The city women had short hair and wore tiny veiled hats, velvet cloches or berets perched on the back of their heads. They even walked differently. They took up more space on the pavements and led with their chins. Silvana, dressed in a straw hat and country clothes, led with her belly.
Janusz bought her a book, An Album of Film Land: A Pictorial Survey of Today’s Movie Stars. In the Café Blikle, where she ate Viennese pastries every morning at eleven, Silvana pored over the sepia images of actresses and actors, her fingers tracing high cheekbones and smooth skin, arched brows and Cupid’s-bow lips. Finally, she walked into a glass-fronted hairdresser’s shop and held out her book.
Her long chestnut hair was cut off, curls corkscrewing on the wooden floor. Silvana looked at recurring images of herself in the bevelled mirrors. She copied the other women in the salon, turning her head this way and that, nodding her approval while the hairdresser swept the piles of hair on the floor into a dustpan.
At home, undressing in the cramped bedroom of their flat, in front of an oval mirror, a pink satin slip straining over her stomach, Silvana looked at herself. She tossed her head back, her short bob shining. She was nineteen years old and thought she knew all there was to know about the world.
Janusz
The cottage was made of split logs, unpainted except for the tiny windows, whose frames were white. A rat-ruined thatch roof, like a hat pulled down at the brim, gave the building a dark, squat look. It was a simple peasant home, shabbier than some, not worse than others. What Janusz’s father would call a ‘one-acre starveling’s dwelling’.
Janusz had seen it from the brow of a hill, and walked down in the hope of finding someone who could tell him which way to get back on the road to Warsaw. He knocked but there was no response. He walked around the cottage several times and finally opened the front door, stooping to step inside.
There were two rooms with pressed clay floors, one with a blackened fireplace, a kitchen table and chair. Potatoes were stored in a wicker basket by the door. The only decorations in the room were some handmade paper icons, carefully cut and folded forms representing different saints, lined up along the windowsill. They were yellowed by age and thick with dust.
The other room had a long bench against the wall, on which a cat and kittens slept. In a corner he found a decorated wooden chest with linen and blankets inside. A dowry chest painted with bouquets of flowers and small birds. Something a young girl would be given by her family on her wedding day. There was nothing else except the mildewed smell of poverty and loneliness.
In the yard, geese honked and chickens waded through thick layers of goose shit, scratching at the ground. The rains of the night before had turned the yard into a muddy mess and there was a stench in the air that made Janusz cough, pressing his hand over his nose. The place was empty. It was, he guessed, the home of the dead goose-woman.
Despite his vow to return to Warsaw, he felt compelled to stay. He would do something useful here in this dead woman’s home. He washed and bandaged his head wound with a strip of cotton sheet he found in the wooden chest, then he lit the fire in the hearth and cooked himself some potatoes.
The next day, he fed the geese and cleaned out the filthy henhouse. After that he walked around, noting the other jobs to be done. Every day he worked. He swept the yard and mended broken fences. He cleaned the two-room cottage and laid down branches of rosemary from the vegetable patch across the floors, to sweeten the air.
At night he slept in the chair by the hearth and dreamed of Silvana. By day he kept busy. He wanted to make things right. He didn’t ask himself any questions. He organized and tidied and brought in vegetables from the garden.
Out at the back of the cottage, hidden by a thicket of elder trees, he found an overgrown grassy mound marked with a birch-wood cross. The cross was worn and old, silvered by the weather to a pitted grey. There was no name, no way of knowing who was buried there. He sat down beside it, thinking of the old woman, her body still under the tree where he had left it, and felt weighed down by a loneliness that made his mouth taste bad and his eyes itch with salty tears.
There’d been an old woman in his small town, a bent creature with a downy beard of grey that had the local kids laughing till their sides split. She was crazy, spitting and swearing whenever they taunted her. His father had explained to him once, when Janusz and a group of boys had thrown stones at her windows just to see her come out screaming, that the old lady was lonely. His father had sat him down and said the word cautiously, as if it was an improper word to use in front of his son.
‘Loneliness is a disease anybody can catch. When your grandfather died in the war against the Bolsheviks, your grandmother caught the disease. She died of it when I was just a boy.’
‘But she had you,’ Janusz had replied. How could his grandmother have been lonely if she had children?
‘You can be lonely in the biggest crowd,’ said his father, and Janusz looked up at his steady face, settled in its white starched collar like an egg in an eggcup, not sure whether his father was telling him now about himself or his grandmother. Was it just that all the grown-ups in the world were lonely? That when he grew up he’d get the disease too?
‘She didn’t have her husband,’ continued his father. ‘That was what destroyed her.’ He si
ghed, stood up and patted Janusz on the shoulder. ‘Now, stop tormenting that old woman. One day you might be lonely and you’ll regret your behaviour here today.’
Janusz looked again at the unmarked grave. He knew what he had to do. He found some fencing wood in the log pile and, with a ball of twine, strapped a new piece of wood to the old, until he had the cross standing more or less upright. Then he set to, chopping back and clearing away the elder trees until he was so tired he could only stagger back to the house and sleep.
Janusz mended the water pump in the yard. He found a pot of whitewash and decided to repaint the window frames. Some days he just sat in the yard and watched the geese, thinking of his son and wife all those miles away and trying to work out how he had managed to become so lost and why he quite liked this numb state and this anonymous place. Over the weeks he lost track of time until finally one morning he woke up and realized he still had one more thing to do.
He started at dawn the following day, digging a hole beside the unmarked grave. By the time the afternoon threw long shadows across his back, the hole was deep enough. He drank a cupful of water from the pump in the yard, lit the fire in the hearth, took a blanket from the dowry box and went back to find the body of the old woman.
He knew he was near to it by the cloud of flies that flew up to meet him. Her body was covered in them, a metallic-blue mass moving in glistening shivers. He retched at the sight of them. It was his fault for leaving her there so long. He realized now that all the tidying and mending had been a way of putting off this moment. He lifted the blanket and threw it over the body, bundling it up, flies and all. Carrying her back to the house, he was half afraid the old woman was still alive and it was her, not the flies, pushing and pulsing under the blanket.
He dropped his burden into the ground and began shovelling the earth on top of her, working as fast as he could, until the noise of the flies became muffled and he could slow down and take his time.
When he had finished, he recited the Lord’s Prayer. He leaned on the spade, looking out across the fields. Now this final act was done, he knew he couldn’t stay much longer. There was nothing else to do here. He figured he’d stay for another week. Then he’d have to leave. He had to go back to Warsaw.
His best plan would be to find a village and get news of the war. Then he’d go home and see Silvana and Aurek. He’d see his family. Let everyone know he was safe and start again as if none of this had happened. He’d fight for his country and nobody would ever need to know about the train and how he had stayed behind when it left.
He stood up and was about to cross himself when he saw something that made him take up the spade in his two hands again. Two men coming across the fields. Two men in uniform.
He met them in the yard. Close up they looked all wrong to be soldiers. One was a lanky kid, bony-faced, with hands that were too large for his wrists. The other one was stout, heavy black eyebrows and a nose big enough to be Jewish. Short-legged and barrel-chested, he walked heavily. Their uniforms didn’t fit them properly. The boy’s jacket was too short in the arm; the other man’s too tight in the chest.
‘Dzien dobry,’ said the boy. ‘Good day to you.’
‘You can put that down,’ said the older man, holding his hands up in mock surrender. ‘We only want a bit of food and then we’ll be on our way.’
Janusz didn’t lower the spade. ‘Where have you come from?’
‘Lwow. We escaped from the Russians.’
‘Russians?’
‘They’re against us now,’ the boy said. ‘Didn’t you know?’
‘I don’t know anything. I lost my regiment a while ago.’ He frowned. Exactly how long had he been here now? He looked at the other man. ‘So what’s happening?’
‘The Germans took Warsaw three weeks ago. They came across the borders from Pomerania, East Prussia, Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia. We weren’t prepared at all. Now the Russians want a piece of the action too …’
‘We’ve been betrayed. Poland’s been pissed on from both sides.’ The boy rolled his eyes when he spoke, showing the whites, like a horse about to take flight.
Janusz looked at their stubbled faces, saw the tiredness in their eyes. He couldn’t understand how things had moved so quickly. The older man must have seen the confusion on Janusz’s face. He spoke slowly and carefully, explaining what was happening. Warsaw had surrendered to the Germans. The Russians had first entered Poland as allies and had quickly become occupiers, too quickly for anybody to understand. Now the country was being divided up between the two of them.
‘Bruno Berkson,’ said the older man, holding out his hand. ‘And this is Franek. Franek Zielinski. We were part of the defence on the eastern border. When the Russians came, our officers told us not to attack. We laid down our guns and the Russians took everything, our weapons, tanks, food. They took it all. Franek and I escaped when they were marching us to a prison camp. We’ve been on the run ever since. Hiding in woods and barns. If you could give us something to eat we’ll be on our way.’
Janusz put down the spade, dusted mud off his trousers. ‘And Warsaw? What do you know about Warsaw? My wife is there …’
‘From what we’ve heard, the city’s in ruins.’
Franek sniffed. ‘And full of szkops. Overrun by Germans.’
Janusz turned to Bruno. Already he preferred the older man to this boy with his hurried speech and uncoordinated limbs.
‘But how did it all happen so quickly? What date is it?’
‘October 8th,’ said Franek. ‘My mother’s birthday. I wanted to send her a postcard, but Bruno says we’ll have to do it when we get to France.’ He nodded at the freshly turned earth behind them. ‘What are you doing up there? What’re you digging for?’
Janusz looked at the old woman’s grave. He had no wish to tell them the truth.
‘I was burying a dead dog. If you’re hungry you’d better come this way. I can find you something to eat.’
He led them to the cottage, thinking about what they’d said. Had he really spent over a month here? He glanced back at the mound of earth. A mass of flies still buzzed above it. How he hated those insects. If it was already October, the coming Polish winter would soon kill them, and he’d be glad. The old woman would be able to rest in peace. Then she might finally stop haunting his dreams.
‘Come in,’ he said to the men, holding the door open. As they entered he realized he was glad they were there. He’d been alone too long.
Ipswich
Aurek has his own room. His mother told him it was just for him, and he wonders what he’s going to do with it. He doesn’t understand why he can’t share with her, why she has to sleep in another room where he is not allowed. He pulls his sheets into a ball, drags his eiderdown up to the headboard of his rickety iron bed and makes a nest. He’d rather sleep under the trees. He misses the feel of the shelter he and his mother squeezed into for so long.
With his knuckled spine pressed hard against the wall, sheets twisted around him, his eyes follow the upward tilt of hundreds of small grey aeroplanes flying in formation across the bumpy walls. There is a dark wardrobe he won’t open in case a man with an axe is hiding in it, and a bookshelf with heavy-looking English books stacked on it. The one thing he likes is the picture on the wall; a black-and-white print of puppies crowded into a basket with ribbons around their necks. That’s the image to concentrate on when the night comes and the wardrobe starts mocking him for sleeping alone.
He climbs out of the muddle of bedclothes, takes a leap past the wardrobe, and is up on the windowsill, face against the window.
There are other houses across the way, red brick with outhouses just like this one and long rows of gardens where washing lines flash and billow. The tree at the bottom of his garden is covered in new leaves tight as children’s fists. It’s a perfect tree for climbing and already a towering friend to Aurek. He can almost smell the earthy, beetle-shell scent of its bark and he longs to climb into its branches.
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sp; But he can’t go into the garden. His mother is down there, kneeling in the earth, planting seeds. The man she says is his father is working alongside her, digging a trench for potatoes. That’s the man who has taken his mother away from him.
The glass is cold against Aurek’s cheek.
‘You’re not my father,’ he breathes, a circle of mist appearing on the windowpane. ‘Pan jest moim wrogiem. You are enemy.’
In the garden, Janusz stops his work and wipes his face with his sleeve. He looks up at the sky, and Aurek wonders if he has heard his whisperings and is considering what he said. As Janusz slams his spade into the ground and begins turning over the soil again, Aurek leaps back onto the bed, pulling the covers over him.
Beyond the closed knot of his folded limbs, he is sure he hears the wardrobe door creak. He is shot through with fear. He huddles deeper into his nest and croons to himself, a soft birdsong to keep the enemy away.
In the first few months, Janusz struggles to find an order to their life. He leaves home early for work and when he returns, he teaches Silvana and Aurek English. They read together and then listen to the radio, mimicking the crystal-clear accents of the presenters.
He’s surprised and pleased at the way Silvana picks up the language. She looks better week by week. Her skin is still pale but she has put on a little weight and he’s hoping she will soon lose the watchfulness in her eyes, the constant look of mistrust. What he hadn’t bargained for was the amount of time he would spend teaching Silvana and Aurek not to do things. Not to take a bath in their clothes. Not to fidget when they listen to the radio. Not to steal vegetables from the allotments by the river. After coming home from work several times to find the front door open and the house empty, he also teaches them not to wander off into the town and spend hours getting lost. Aurek has to learn not to hide food around the house; that it belongs in the kitchen. He must not go into his parents’ bedroom. Ever. Nor must he touch his mother’s breasts. Ever. That’s something Janusz has lost his temper over, sending the boy wailing to his room. The boy also learns not to bring animals of any description into the house after Janusz finds a nest of harvest mice wrapped in a tea towel in his bed.
22 Britannia Road Page 5