Dobryd (10 page)

I never heard Halka speak of Dobryd again and I never thought of her in terms of it. It was only when I returned to Montreal and noticed how alike Halka and my mother were in so many ways, that I realized how much of their resemblance had its source in Dobryd. A small, insignificant town had marked them so indelibly that to me they would always seem set apart from other people.

Was Dobryd really unique, as it had always seemed to me? Can I trust its portrait rendered in nostalgia? The place no longer exists, not even in name. The Russians renamed it after they annexed and rebuilt it. It seems appropriate to me that like other lost cities, it has left behind it only a mythical legacy that goes beyond fact.

PART FOUR

I

A short time after my mother began working for the Russians as a translator, she received a bonus for her work which made her the envy of our neighbours. The night she brought it home—a small piece of paper with her photograph attached, permitting her to travel anywhere in Poland—she, Yuri and my aunt talked of nothing else. It was hard for me to share their excitement. All I understood from their conversation was that my mother could now travel as often as she liked and that she would have to be very careful.

Why should she want to leave Dobryd, I wondered. The prospect of my mother's travels did not please me at all. I dreaded being separated from her for any length of time. Fear entered my heart. What if something terrible happened to her on one of her journeys and she never returned?

Later that night, when my mother came into my room, my anxiety spilled over. She smiled and reassured me. She promised she would never be gone very long, not more than a day or so. There was no danger at all. At the end of her trips there would always be a gift for me.

I trusted her and my fears retreated.

She soon began going regularly to Lwow, the old university town some ninety kilometres west of Dobryd. At the end of the war it had quickly re-established its claim to being the most important city in the region. The university had been reduced to ruins, but its marketplace, the criterion of civilization in those days, was already renowned. Sitting in my aunt's booth, I had often heard travellers extol its merits. These descriptions roused my curiosity and reconciled me to my mother's departures.

In our family, the trips became the highlight of the week. The rest of the time we either helped my mother prepare for one, or we listened to her tell us what she had seen and heard during her absence. The nights when she was to return from Lwow I insisted on waiting up for her no matter how late it was, and my aunt, for once, thought of something other than my well-being. Together we would wait, for the moment contemporaries, since in contrast to my mother, we were both helpless, weak children.

I didn't know why my mother went to Lwow every week, nor how she managed to bring back the things she did. She returned flushed, tired, but always triumphant, her arms full of packages—surprises for me and my aunt. When she talked of her trips I understood only bits and pieces of what she said, yet I loved to listen to her and watch her face as she recreated her day for us.

What enchanted me most about those trips, more than the things she brought back for me, was the effect the trips had on her and consequently on us. My mother was then in her early thirties. The war had marked her, as it had everyone else. She had lost her husband, parents, a brother, sisters, most of her friends. The war had destroyed her home, a way of life, the beliefs that had been the core of her existence. It left her physically ravaged—her weight had been halved during the two and a half years we lay hidden in the barn loft. Now she had to provide for us in a world that was as alien as anything could possibly be to the enlightened, prosperous milieu in which she had spent most of her life.

Yet in spite of what she had endured, there was nothing passive or submissive about her. People always thought of her as someone very strong, someone to lean on in difficulties, a person who seemed in charge of her life.

I had absolute faith in her. I knew she would take care of me and that with her I was always safe. The events of my childhood, terrible as they were, did not affect me as might be expected. My mother was always there, a protective barrier between me and all evil. Because of her presence and her strength, I grew up with the impression that mine had been a happy childhood. Strange as it seems, this was how I always thought of it.

As a child I was never taken into her confidence, and I knew very little of what she thought or felt. When I compare her with the other adults I knew, she stands in my memory apart from them, illuminated by the energy and vitality that always emanated from her. In those days everyone who came near her seemed to me by comparison half-dead and because I belonged to her, I knew that nothing really terrible would happen to me.

Somehow she left me and others with the impression that even during the war and immediately after it she did more than just survive. There was a sense of satisfaction about her life then. She had fought against impossible odds and won. Years later, in Canada, living in prosperity and peace, her sense of resolution and strength ebbed away. As I grew older I became familiar with her frailties and her limitations, but the impression from my childhood remained with me despite all the changes in her and in me.

On the days she returned safely from Lwow, it was as if a spark had reanimated all of us. My aunt forgot her burden of grief and rejoiced, restored to the vital person she must once have been. At these moments, I could picture her as the young lady of her stories. The rest of the time she was as the war had made her—a frightened, superstitious woman, ageless and old at the same time. The simplest acts of everyday life had become terrifying obstacles for her, and she turned more and more to omens, old wives' tales and the magic of repetition to help her through her days. I sensed even then that my aunt had lost touch with reality, but it was only much later that I became familiar with the terrifying world she inhabited.

Yet, on the nights when my mother was about to return and my aunt was busy cooking for her, I would look at her and see, not someone familiar, but someone whom I regretted not knowing. I would have given anything to keep my aunt as she was just then, smiling, animated, in control.

When my mother finally arrived, we both rushed at her, filled with excitement. Sometimes it seemed to me that my aunt was the true child in these moments. It was something about the way she would lose herself totally in the pleasure of my mother's return, while I viewed them both from a certain distance.

I watched my aunt. Her eyes turned an intense blue, the fair skin of her face flushed, her hands, always occupied, seemed suddenly fragile and fluttering. Surreptitiously, because she knew my mother disapproved of this habit, she lit a candle in the corner of the room, an offering for my mother's safe return. In a few minutes, the emotions that caused this transformation subsided and she became her familiar self once again.

After my mother had been going to Lwow for some time, I became dissatisfied with waiting for her, receiving my present, and listening to her adventures. I wanted to go with her. My pleading to take me along became a ritual of her departures. She always refused, of course, and her reasons were valid enough to satisfy any adult: the roads were bad, the trucks that picked her up were crowded and would not stop for a woman with a child, she wanted to keep me away from large crowds. But to a child, they meant nothing. There had to be something else. I was certain she was keeping the real reason from me.

Perhaps I had caught this habit of suspicion from my aunt, who was never satisfied with the explanations that seemed plausible to most people. As it happened I was right to doubt my mother. But there was no satisfaction in my discovery.

I learned the truth about my mother's trips from Elsa, the daughter of one of our neighbours. It was on a day that had begun with much pleasure. I had a new dress, my first real dress. Until then my aunt had made my clothes from old remnants or dyed sackcloth.

Elsa was one of those girls who are born to be coquettes. There was no other way of explaining her obsession with her appearance. She did not acquire her tastes from her grandmother, with whom she lived. Nor were there any women at the time in the town whom Elsa could have regarded as models to emulate. Yet, in spite of the drabness around us, Elsa, on the verge of adolescence, managed to develop the same preoccupations with grooming that I was to discover a few years later among teenagers in Canada.

When I came down the stairs from our flat, I spotted her in the doorway leading to the courtyard, but I didn't go over to her. Normally she had no use for me: I was much too young to share her pastimes or to be of any interest to her. This time, however, my changed appearance roused her. She called me over and I walked towards her, proud of her attention, and stiff with the responsibility of keeping my new clothes clean. Elsa looked me over with enthusiasm.

“How nice you look!” she exclaimed. “I wish I could get something decent to wear.” An expression of resentment and spite settled over her pretty features. “You're lucky. Your mother works for the Russians and she can get you anything you want.”

“You're wrong,” I protested. “My mother didn't get this dress from the Russians. She bought it for me in Lwow.”

Elsa looked at me with contempt. “I know how she got it better than you do, silly. Of course the Russians didn't give it to her. What do you take me for? I'm not a baby like you. I know how much they pay. But I also know that she didn't just buy it. She must have stolen plenty from the Russians to get that dress for you.”

For a long moment I could think of nothing to say. Was Elsa serious, or was this just another form of the teasing to which she subjected all those younger than her?

“Stolen? How can you say that? My mother told me. She said it was just luck. She found someone who needed the money and she bought it for very little.”

“You're just a kid. What do you expect her to say? She's not going to tell you the truth. It's too serious a matter for her to trust you with.”

At this point Elsa's insinuations clicked with my own previous suspicions. I became certain that she did know something I didn't know. A wave of terror, something like nausea, came over me, and I knew I shouldn't persist. But it was too late. Too much had already been said to turn back.

“What do you know? Tell me. What do you mean—the truth?”

Elsa looked at me in a different way, calculating just how much she could benefit from the anxiety she had just evoked in me. After a minute she turned away, as if she had no further interest in talking to me.

“I can't tell you. I overheard my grandmother talking about it to a neighbour. She'd beat me if she found out I told you. You'd better go away.”

But I was not going to be dismissed. Besides, I sensed that Elsa was after something. If only I could guess what it was.

“Your grandmother won't find out. I promise. Look, I'll give you my piece of white tulle. Maybe you can make something out of it.” I trembled inside as I committed the precious bit of cloth that wasn't mine to give. But Elsa wasn't interested.

“Don't be stupid. What would I do with that piece of rag? It may be all right for you and my sister and that kid you play with, but don't expect me to play games like that. I'm going to get some proper clothes.”

My mind did a quick inventory of all my possessions. Did I own anything that Elsa would consider fit to wear? All I could think of were some hair ribbons, but surely Elsa would find these too childish as well. I was about to give up in despair, when Elsa herself came up with a suggestion. She must have paid more attention to our games than we suspected.

“I want your perfume bottle.”

I hesitated when Elsa named her price. For the last few days our play-acting props had been enriched by a perfume vial with an atomizer attached to it and a handle decorated with a ragged gold fringe. The perfume had been used up long ago, but its fragrance still lingered inside the container. I don't remember which one of us found it. It belonged to the three of us. We kept it at my house, however, along with our other treasures, since we agreed I had the most privacy.

The bottle, like the piece of tulle, was a sacred communal object. By giving it away, wouldn't I be betraying my friends? My heart filled with remorse, but I knew I could not resist Elsa. I ran upstairs, and in a minute the bottle was in my hands. No one saw me with it, and there were no witnesses as I handed it over to Elsa. When she accepted it I felt almost grateful to her. It seemed a small price to pay for the information I was about to receive.

Elsa did not even look at the bottle when I handed it to her, but with a quick, careless gesture she made it disappear.

“What are you going to tell the others?”

“I don't know. I'll make something up.”

“Well, that's your worry. Now I'll tell you. My grandmother said your mother steals little bags of sugar from the army storehouse and brings them home, hidden in her clothes. At the end of the week she takes the sugar to Lwow, where she trades it. My grandmother said that what she is doing is very dangerous. If she's caught, they'll shoot her. It's true that everyone steals, and they overlook it if it's an unimportant person, but your mother is the translator for the head colonel. That's an important job. I heard the women say it happened once before. The Russians caught a man who did what your mother does, and shot him on the spot.

“That's all I heard. Now you know how your mother gets all those things for you. Remember, you promised not to tell anyone I told you.”

It never occurred to me to doubt Elsa's words. The horror of her explanation fitted in perfectly with the view I myself had of the world—danger lurked everywhere. My pretty new dress carried the price of my mother's life. There were no innocent pleasures.