The Mascot (15 page)

“I sat there high up in the tree, both petrified and wondering what would be the right thing to do, when something very strange happened. I caught a glimpse of the face of one of the women. I recognized her. At first I didn't know who she was or where she was from, but then it dawned on me that she was from my village. I had this vivid impression that she'd been in our house when I was playing in the yard, and that she'd smiled at me. I nearly fell out of the tree. I had an overwhelming urge to spring down from my hiding spot and ask her outright, ‘Do you remember me?'

“But I didn't. I cannot describe clearly what happened to me. I must have become transfixed by my thought of home because the next thing I recall was coming to and realizing that the group had picked up their packs and moved quietly away. I felt defeated by their departure. But still I couldn't make up my mind what to do. Try to find them or stay hidden in the tree? I was tormented.

“If only I'd made myself known to them…” my father said. Even now he appeared to be devastated by this lost chance.

“The forest was deadly silent. I rubbed my eyes. I must still have been half in a dream. ‘Did this happen?' I asked myself. Or was it as I had suspected all along—that the forest held some kind of evil magic? Had they been ghosts? Had the woman I recognized from my village come back to punish me for deserting my family?

“Suddenly I didn't care whether that group of people was real or imagined. I scrambled down the tree and fled in the opposite direction. I ran without any concern about where I was going, and within moments I landed directly in the arms of two soldiers from the division who'd been sent out to search for me. I was hysterical and one soldier had to slap me hard to bring me to my senses.

“I learned that I'd been gone for nearly two days and how worried everybody had been. Many believed that I must have perished somewhere.

“The soldiers told me how ungrateful I was for all that had been done for me. But I was too overwhelmed by my experience to respond. They dragged me roughly back to camp. I feared what was in store for me.

“They took me directly to Sergeant Kulis, who was furious with me. One of the commanding German officers had ordered that I be sent back to Velikiye Luki immediately as punishment. The sergeant packed my stuff there and then, and that evening I left in the company of a platoon that was being relieved from frontline duty. I didn't even say farewell to Sergeant Kulis.

“The platoon reached Velikiye Luki a few days later. Even though I was famished, I wasn't permitted to stop at the mess for breakfast. I was ordered directly to Commander Lobe's quarters.

“The soldier who took me there pushed me forward, telling me to knock on the door. I heard the commander call out, ‘Enter.' He was in his bathroom standing bare-chested at the sink, shaving. The commander stared at my reflection in his mirror. ‘You,' he said, looking down at me disdainfully. Then he went on shaving in silence. I remained standing at attention, and he did not bother to put me at ease. I watched as he washed and dried himself off. He turned and brushed past me as he went into the main room. It was as if I'd become invisible.

“I remained standing where I was but felt drowsy because of lack of food and sleep. Suddenly his face was inches from mine. His eyes were bulbous and bloodshot, and his face was purple. He was like a vicious dog snarling and barking words at me, most of which I didn't hear because I was scared out of my wits, trembling and shaking uncontrollably.

“Then he stood upright and glared down at me with steely eyes. ‘I know what you were trying to do,' he said. He realized that I had been trying to run away from the army. He brought his face close to mine again and raised his hand. I braced myself. But he didn't hit me—instead he tore off the corporal's insignia from the collar of my jacket. ‘You're no longer a corporal,' he said sharply. ‘You are a private again. You're no longer on active duty. You're going back to Riga, to the Dzenis family.'

“Then he dismissed me. As I left he called after me so that I had to stop and turn. ‘You try this again,' he said, ‘and I'll kill you.'

“I had been disgraced. I didn't feel like a soldier at all. I felt small, like a child, and was too ashamed of myself to be worried by his threat.

“I was sent back to Riga by train that same day in the company of a guard. All the way back to Riga he didn't utter a single word to me, as if he distrusted me as a traitor.

“Uncle was waiting for me at Riga station, but there was no celebration this time. He, too, had been made aware of my conduct.” My father paused, seemingly exhausted by his recollection.

“I never saw Sergeant Kulis again,” he said reflectively. “He never came for me as I thought he would, and I never asked about him. I didn't want to be reminded of my failure. Or remind anybody about it.”

“Do you know what became of him?” I asked.

“For many years I assumed that he had died during the war. But then in the late fifties, long after the Dzenises took me with them to Australia, a letter arrived out of the blue. It was from Sergeant Kulis and had been sent from a suburb in New York City. He'd traced me through a network of Latvian soldiers—Daugavas Vanagi—he'd kept in touch with after the war.

“The envelope contained a short note and a photograph of Sergeant Kulis in the living room of his home with a boy of seven or eight sitting on his knee. I have the note here.”

My father reached into his case and immediately produced a yellowed envelope. He perched his reading glasses on the end of his nose and began to read.

“‘The seventh of June, 1958. Dear Uldis. It's been years since I last saw you. But I have often thought about you. Many times my wife Wilma and I have talked about you and wondered if you would remember us.

“‘We spent some nice days in Riga, do you remember? Then came the day you were sent back to Riga. It's been fifteen long years since then. God gave me luck and I survived the war. Now I live in America and work in the building industry. I have a son who is the same age as you when we parted. It would make me very happy if you were interested to be in contact with me.

“‘I want to hear about you and your life in Australia. I still think of you as my son. I always regret that I never adopted you. With kind regards, Jekabs Kulis.'”

“Amazing. Did you reply to the letter, Dad?”

“No.”

“Did you ever try to make contact with him?”

“Never.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to look to the future. Not rake up the past. I locked the letter away in my case and for a very long time, decades in fact, I forgot that I'd ever received it or that Kulis existed. That case is a bit of a curse, isn't it? I never know what I might find in it.”

I needed to clear my head. I rose and without thinking went to the back door. I opened it a fraction and was assaulted by a gust of icy wind.

“For God's sake!” my father exclaimed. I immediately slammed the door shut. I was disturbed, perhaps even slightly annoyed, that my father had kept so many things from me—more facts about Lobe, his initiation into the Latvian SS, the letter from Kulis, a fuller picture of his life in the Volhov swamps—and the truth was that I needed also to take stock of my father. I was baffled by the fact that my father had remained silent for more than fifty years. What almost superhuman strength had this required? What toll had silence taken on his inner life? My father seemed to inhabit two separate worlds. In one, he was my father with an “official” history, an authorized and edited version of the past. But in the other world he was still largely a stranger to me: a boy-soldier, origins unknown, who was shunted about, wide-eyed, in one of the worst bloodbaths in recent history.

One world was inexorably unraveling while a new, unpredictable one emerged.

I
t was late October 1943 when I arrived back in Riga. By my calculation I'd been away at the front for about four months.

“Uncle was waiting for me at the main station. All the way back to the apartment in Valdemara Street he remained silent next to me in the limousine.

“The atmosphere in the apartment was subdued when we went in. In the entrance hall I heard only the ticking of the ornate grandfather clock in the corner. Then I heard Auntie's footsteps in the hallway. She came into the foyer and greeted me much more formally than she had ever done before—she shook my hand. It dawned on me that the commander's suspicions about my attempted escape had been passed on to Uncle and Auntie and that they, too, felt betrayed by me.

“That afternoon Uncle had to go back to work at Laima and he left Auntie and me alone. No sooner had he closed the door behind him than Auntie swept me up into her arms and planted kisses on both my cheeks. She told me how much she'd missed me. I was overjoyed: Auntie had been pleased to see me after all, and she still cared for me.

“She scrutinized my face and a look of concern crossed her features. She told me that I had gotten much too frail and that I needed fattening up, and lots of fresh air.

“That night I overheard her discussing a holiday with Uncle, and shortly after that Auntie took me to a country house the family kept in a place called Carnikava on the Riga coast, some miles northeast of the city. We stayed there for about a week.” My father's face beamed at the memory so that I could almost see the little boy in him.

“I'd never laid eyes upon the sea before and, that first time, I was shocked. I stood on the shoreline for ages, entranced by the waves as they flowed to shore. Even though it was the Baltic and had nothing of the wildness I later saw in the Australian oceans, I remember how impressed I was by its immensity and power. For a moment I recollected when I was a child in the village and I'd pretend to be the ship's captain scanning the sea for pirates. Now here was the real sea before me, but I had no interest in playing pirates. I had become a real soldier.

“Auntie prepared delicacies for me every evening, especially my favorites, lamprey and smoked eel. At night together we'd build a fire to ward off the damp early autumn chill in the air. I'd lie on the sofa with my head on her lap, and she would read to me from a book of Latvian fairy tales. It was full of stories about ogres and mischievous spirits and other evil beings in the forests. I'd experienced enough of that already, but I didn't mind listening as it gave me an excuse to nestle close to Auntie. The sound of her gentle voice would lull me into a light slumber so that later Auntie would have to rouse me, take me upstairs, and tuck me in bed.

“I always dropped off to sleep easily, but later I'd wake up screaming, haunted by nightmares I couldn't remember. Auntie would rush to my room and, to calm me down, sing Latvian folk songs I'd never heard before or tell me another fairy tale until I eventually nodded off again.”

When I was a child, my father had spoken of his time at Carnikava as one of happy and peaceful days spent in a rural idyll. He had even shown us photographs taken there. However, something unsettled me about these ostensibly innocent photographs in which my father seemed withdrawn and somehow damaged. His arms were folded guardedly across his chest. It was the expression on his face that had most disturbed me. He looked as if he had just woken from a nightmare at the moment the photograph was taken.

This impression hadn't made sense to me as a child because he'd never given us the slightest intimation of the violent and bloody world he had belonged to before Carnikava. Hearing his words now, I understood that expression on his face—truly he had just woken from the nightmare of his experiences with the soldiers.

My father with Auntie in Carnikava, 1943.

At that moment, I felt an inexpressible gratitude to Auntie. I was moved to know that my father had had someone to comfort him and look out for him. In fact, my childhood memories of Auntie were of a kindly person who, although capable of little English, communicated to us through her warmth, often planting kisses on our foreheads unexpectedly, much as I imagine she'd done to my father as a boy.

But I couldn't escape the thought that my father did not wake up from his nightmares into the love of his own family; he was an orphan thrust among strangers. There had not been a soul who could reassure him that the world was as it should be, because he knew instinctively and through experience that it was not.

I turned my attention back to my father's words.

“In the week following our return from Carnikava, I overheard a conversation between Auntie and Uncle about whether I should return to school. Uncle's opinion was that it wouldn't be possible, because I'd become even more unruly after being at the front. He'd decided that, instead, I should go to Laima Chocolates with him every day and be tutored there.

“I was confused. ‘Lessons in a chocolate factory?' I thought to myself. ‘What could they teach me there?' But I also looked forward to it—I pictured myself gobbling chocolate all day long, as much as I desired. But I'd gotten it all wrong. Uncle had my day, particularly the mornings, mapped out for me.

“Our limousine would pull up outside the factory at seven forty-five. I still wore my uniform—I refused to wear civilian clothes—and I would give a curt salute to the receptionist. Then I'd trail into the factory behind Uncle as he went about his daily inspection of the workers, who stood to attention by their machines and packing tables.

“The workers would greet Uncle and then me. ‘Good morning, Private Kurzemnieks,' they'd say, and I'd salute in response.

“When we reached his office, Uncle always gave me the same order: ‘To your duty, young soldier!' he'd say, and I'd head over to a child's desk—stacked with books that he'd organized for me—by the window.

“Then we would both settle down to our work. Obviously, Uncle was very busy with the running of the factory. People would be coming and going all morning—his secretary, section managers, and others. He'd arranged for me to have a tutor—Miss Novackis, she was called—to teach me how to read and write in Latvian, as well as give me lessons in Latvian history. We'd always begin the day's classes with Latvian language. I'd read in halting Latvian from books. I was never any good at reading. I was never any good with books, for that matter. I couldn't even handle them properly—I'd fumble with them.

“I was a quick learner, but I couldn't settle. I'd get bored and easily distracted. I couldn't concentrate. It was hard going for a boy of my age, with all I'd been through, to sit diligently at my desk all morning long.

“As soon as Uncle was out of the office on some business, I'd jump out of my chair and head for the window. I'd gaze down at the street below. I longed to be outside and free, especially if I saw somebody in uniform passing by. It reminded me of my comrades who were still at the front.

“The afternoons were best of all.” My father smiled nostalgically. “I was the king of Laima. I had the run of the factory and was free to do as I wished, as long as I stayed out of trouble.

“I'd become a popular figure among the workers on the factory floor and would wander among them, chatting. I was a greedy little thing as well, and I'd stuff both pockets of my jacket with chocolates. Later, I'd find a deserted corner of the storeroom, where I'd devour them until I was nearly sick.

“I loved to watch the engineer, too, as he maintained the factory's machinery. I'd question him endlessly and absorb every detail of how he fixed the plant equipment. Sometimes he'd pass me a small piece of equipment that I'd spend hours on, dismantling it and then putting it together again. I had an aptitude, it seemed, for mending things, which kept me out of mischief,” my father joked, “but not away from the chocolates.”

I was curious about Uncle and tried to steer our discussion in that direction.

“Tell me, Dad, did Uncle ever wear a uniform?” I interrupted my father.

“No. I never saw him in a uniform. He was a civilian.”

“Did he mix with soldiers and officers?”

My father nodded. “Occasionally officers would appear at Laima.”

“I wonder what they were doing in a chocolate factory?”

“To be honest, I never thought about it.”

“Did you recognize any of them?”

“Only Commander Lobe. Quite a number of weeks had elapsed since my return to Riga, when one day, without any notice, he reappeared in Uncle's office. After that he turned up regularly at Laima so that I started to see more of him. His headquarters were just around the corner from Laima and from the window near my desk I could see him striding toward the factory.”

“Why was Lobe there so frequently?”

“The commander and Uncle were old friends. They'd been in the Bolshevik revolution together years before. They fought against the Bolsheviks for Latvian independence. They belonged to a group called Lacplesis.”

“Lacplesis?”

“That's right,” my father said. “The Society of the Bear. It was the association of freedom fighters for Latvia. On the rare occasions the commander and Uncle spoke about Lacplesis, it was only in glowing terms of the bravery of Lacplesis members and its noble cause. In fact, I believe Uncle had been given the house in Carnikava as a reward for bravery and services to Lacplesis.”

I made a mental note to try to discover more about this group. (Later I was to learn that Lacplesis was closer to an organization of Latvian Fascists.)

“Uncle also told me many years later that Commander Lobe had worked for him in Laima for a while, early on during the war. Uncle had helped him out with a job and a place to stay. According to Uncle, the commander had been on duty in Ventspils on the northwest coast of Latvia, but for some unknown reason, he'd been relieved of his command and had left the army. All I know is that it had something to do with not obeying a German order.”

My father looked ill at ease and shifted in his seat. “But the commander's visits often had something to do with me as well. I hadn't seen him since he'd ordered me back from the front. At first things were uneasy between us: inside I was rigid with fear as I couldn't forget the threat that he'd made to kill me, but he was determined to break the ice.

“He'd sit down next to me as I studied at my desk and draw in his chair close to mine—so close that I could smell his uniform and the soap he used to wash himself—and check my work over my shoulder. He was less formal than Uncle, very hearty and cheerful, but he had sharp eyes. He watched everything like a hawk.

“One day, he and Uncle had a conversation in which my name was mentioned several times. I kept my head down, but in fact I was eavesdropping. It seemed that he was keen to organize something to do with me. Uncle appeared resistant to whatever it was, but Commander Lobe spoke forcefully back to him. After that Uncle seemed to give in to the commander. In reality, I suppose that Uncle didn't have much choice. Being a member of the SS, the commander usually got his way.

“The following morning, the commander reappeared. He took me away from Miss Novackis. He stood me in the center of the room and announced that I was reinstated as a corporal. He presented me with a new military jacket displaying the rank of corporal on the lower sleeve and the collar.

“I was over the moon. I'd no sooner put the jacket on—it fit perfectly—than he ordered me to make ready. I was to go out to lunch with him immediately, even though it was still early. I had a feast of lampreys and strawberry ice cream, while he sat back in his chair and examined me as if I were under a microscope. Then finally he spoke. ‘Do you want to be a good patriot?' he asked. I didn't know what patriot meant, but I nodded my head gravely, my mouth still full of ice cream.

“‘Do you want to help Latvia?' he went on. I nodded my head again, this time more enthusiastically. I would have done anything to redeem myself in his eyes. He tousled my hair. ‘Good soldier,' he said.

“That day changed everything. I spent more time with Commander Lobe, several times a week, in fact.

“There was another incident in particular that changed the nature of our relationship. The commander had taken me to a park, and while he sat on a bench, smoking, I wandered off to a merry-go-round to play. At one point an elderly gentleman approached me, curious about how I'd become a soldier. I was lost for an answer—nobody had asked me this before. I ran back to the commander and asked him. I thought the commander would give me an answer. Instead he rose abruptly and, taking me by the hand, hurried back to headquarters.