Mother and Me (31 page)

Mother re-crossed her legs. “I will be honest with you, Comrade Colonel, because I know that is what you would want me to be,” she finally said, and she was speaking very carefully. “We liked the Russians much better when we could visit them in Russia instead of seeing them in our streets with rifles.”

The colonel didn't get angry at this, but thought about it for a moment before speaking. “Russians and Poles are like
brothers—our language is almost the same. But Russia is the bigger, stronger brother, and Poland is the little brother. The Germans attacked you, and we had to come and save you. But the reason Poland is so weak, like the other countries, is that the rich capitalists suck the life out of the people. In the Soviet Union, a factory or a farm isn't owned by one man who gets richer and richer, but by all the people. And now, you know, you are one of the factory owners, too. Have you ever thought of yourself as an owner of a factory, Comrade?”

Now it was my mothers turned to think.

“I have surprised you, haven't I?” the colonel said. “Think about it. You and I are owners of every factory in the Soviet Union that Poland is now a part of. We even own this beautiful palace.”

“But if I own this palace and every factory and farm in Poland and the Soviet Union,” Mother said, “why don't I have meat or milk to give to my son?”

The colonel shifted his gaze to me. Suddenly he stood up and went to the door through which the young officer had first appeared. He walked silently, and I realized he had no shoes on. He disappeared for about thirty seconds, then returned and resumed his seat.

“That is a temporary problem,” he said. “We will soon make your farms and your factories efficient.”

“Our farms and factories …” Mother began, but then she stopped.

“Yes?” He said

“Oh, nothing, Comrade Colonel,” Mother answered.

“You were going to tell me something about your farms and factories. You must not be afraid to tell me what you think. I asked you to tell me. Do you remember?”

Mother took the cigarette case out of her purse again and they both lit up. “This is the Ukraine,” Mother finally said. “It's the richest soil in all of Europe. Before you came we had the most beautiful vegetables, milk, cheese, eggs, chickens.”

“This is only temporary,” the colonel said again. “Soon you'll see. The Soviet Union is a paradise.”

“We will all look forward to it, Comrade Colonel,” Mother said, standing up and extending her hand again.

Once more the colonel stopped her. We resumed our seats and waited. Then the young officer came back into the room. He carried a package wrapped in a newspaper and tied with string, which he placed on the colonel's desk. “For the boy,” the colonel said to my mother, “some bread and ham.”

“Thank you very much, Comrade Colonel,” Mother said. “You are a very kind man.”

Now the colonel reached into his drawer one more time, pulled out a small piece of paper and wrote something on it. “Please come to see me whenever you have a problem,” he said. “This will get you in without having to wait.” They shook hands. Mother thanked him again and we left. I carried the package under my arm.

As we headed out into the street, Mother stopped. “Let's see if Vasilli is in,” she said, and we headed back into the building and down the hall to Capt. Vrushin's office. This time the captain was there, and I sat at an empty desk with a piece of paper to draw on and a pencil that the captain had given me, while Mother and the captain talked quietly at the far corner of the room.

I wasn't interested in the pencil and paper, though this was the first sheet of clean paper I had seen in a long time. I pulled the knife out of my pocket and hiding it behind the desk, proceeded to open it. The big blade felt sharp, as I had known it would be, when I rubbed my thumb across it the way Adam had done. The small blade was very hard to open, which surprised me. When it finally did open, I saw that the point was broken off. At first that was a disappointment, like the time Kiki and I had opened the birthday present from my Uncle Pavew and found a wing broken off the airplane that was really
supposed to fly. But I quickly realized that this blade was like the colonel's fingers, the ones with the tips missing.

We went to the Rokiefs' before going home. “Oh, Basia, you are so good to us,” Mrs. Rokief said. She was wearing the blue-and-white ski sweater she had worn on our last visit, only it seemed much bulkier. I realized that it was Mr. Rokief's sweater that she had put on over her own. It was colder here than it had been before. It seemed even colder than it was outside, and I wondered how that could be.

Renia and Zosia, who had been sitting together on one of the beds, came to the door to greet us. “Zosia,” Mrs. Rokief said, “why don't you go to the kitchen and make our guests some tea.”

“No, that's all right, Helenka,” Mother said. “I just wanted to tell you about my visit to the commissar, and then we have to leave.”

“What did he say?” she asked quickly, then interrupted herself. “Sit down, Basia.”

“Don't fuss, Helenka,” Mother said. But she sat down, and Mrs. Rokief pulled up another chair and sat down opposite her. She took Mother's hands in her own. Zosia and Renia crowded around her.

“As I said,” Mother went on, “the commissar is a very nice man and he said Roman should be home today.”

All three Rokiefs showed great relief. “You are so good, Basia!” Mrs. Rokief repeated.

“But why did they arrest him?” Renia asked.

“Detained him, dear,” her mother corrected.

“Why did they detain him?”

“I don't know,” Mother said. “Col. Bawatchov said it was nothing, and I didn't want to press him.”

“Yes, that's best,” Mrs. Rokief said. “We just want him back. And Yulian, I want to thank you so much for cheering me up so well when I was waiting for your dear mother in your apartment. He did magic tricks for me, you know, and recited some poems. He's so good at it.” I was embarrassed by the praise. I slipped my hand in my pocket and fingered my new knife.

“Yulek is very caring,” Mother said. Then we left. On the walk home, she said, “You are not to open that knife without a grownup,” just as I had anticipated. Actually, I wouldn't have been surprised if she had taken it away from me. “I know I can trust you,” she went on, but her tone made it more an admonishment than praise.

“So, did you get to see your commissar?” Auntie Paula asked when she, Auntie Edna, and Sonya came home that evening. “They tell me you have to wait two days to get in to see him.”

“Vasilli got me right in,” Mother answered. She was sitting at the table sewing up the strap on a black brassiere. “He was actually very nice,” she said, “but I don't like what I heard.” Both Aunties and Sonya sat down immediately to hear the details.

Mother put down her sewing. I thought she was going to tell them about the funny things he said about owning farms and factories. “As I said, Colonel Bawatchov was very nice,” she went on. “He even gave Yulek a pocket knife and some bread and ham to take home. But Roman wasn't arrested—or detained—under his authority. He knew nothing about it. It seems that there are two commissars, a military one and a political one. Vasilli told me afterwards that the political commissar is changed every two weeks so that no one can get friendly with him. His job is to see to it that everything is done strictly according to the party line.”

“It's a political police?” Auntie Edna said. “Like the Gestapo?”

“I guess,” Mother said.

“What did your friend Roman do?” Auntie Edna asked.

“I don't think he did anything. I don't know. Col. Bawatchov said it was nothing and he'd be released sometime today, but I don't know.”

“Maybe they have some questions about Polish law. Didn't you say he was a lawyer?” Auntie Edna asked.

“For three days?” Auntie Paula said. It seemed reasonable to me as well that they wouldn't hold a man for three days and nights just to ask him about the law. “I don't think they much care what Polish law is,” Auntie Paula went on.

“I didn't want to mention anything to Helenka about this political commissar business,” Mother said, “but I don't like the sound of it.”

“We're not political,” Auntie Edna said. “I don't intend to go around bad-mouthing Communism. Maybe that's what your friend Rokief did.”

“I don't think he'd be that stupid,” Mother said.

“Just don't get us involved in political issues,” Auntie Paula said. “You didn't say anything political to the commissar, did you?”

I wished I knew what political meant. I noticed Mother wasn't saying anything about what she had said about not liking Russians in our streets.

When Fredek came home with Miss Bronia, it didn't take him long to notice the bulge against my leg. “What did you get?” he asked.

I got up without a word and walked into the other room. Fredek followed. I did that because I didn't want to remind my mother about the knife, in case she wanted to take it away. But the mysterious nature that this lent to the whole business was not lost on me either.

Fredek grabbed the knife from my hand the moment I had it out of my pocket. He snapped the big blade open and felt its edge with his thumb. “Not very sharp,” he said. “That's good—you won't cut yourself. Your mother buy it for you?”

I placed myself between Fredek and the other room so no one would see. “No, the commissar gave it to me,” I said. I saw Fredek's eyes flick up at me for an instant as he struggled with a smaller blade.

“Ha, it's broken,” he said when he finally had the blade open. Fredek snapped both blades shut and handed the knife back with no further interest. “No wonder,” he added.

I wasn't quite sure what he meant, but let the matter pass. I put the knife back in my pocket, its value enhanced in my mind.

That evening I sneaked the knife under my pillow and wrapped my fingers around it. The knife had belonged to Col. Bawatchov, whose father had herded cows, and he had worked his way up through the ranks of the army to where he was almost a general. Maybe the knife had been given him when he was still a cowherd's son so he could use it to sharpen sticks and carve things and cut rope. I could see him at my age, walking beside his father, leading a herd of cows through the meadows. “You are old enough now to have your own knife,” the father says, handing it to him. “A big boy should have a knife.”

Now the boy could do for himself many of the things adults did and had done for him before. He could cut open an orange or carve himself a whistle or sharpen a stick to fight off wolves that threatened the cows. And then, when he went into the army, he used it for opening letters and packages, sharpening pencils, slicing cheese, cutting holes in harness. When he got married and had children, maybe he even used the knife to make a cradle.

Somewhere along the line he had snapped off the tip of the small blade. I could not imagine how he might have done that, but he had taken on some task that proved too much for the knife, saddening him.

But it hadn't destroyed the knife. It had continued serving … just like … just like the two missing fingers. They had been shot off by a bullet or lost in a sword fight or a wood-chopping accident. The colonel had experienced something like that, suffered like a soldier, then gone on, a stronger man.

And now he had given the knife to me, and it was lying right in my hand, under my pillow. A grown man had given me something that he had lived with and now I owned it.

It did occur to me, of course, that none of that might have been true. It might have been a knife that he had found on the sidewalk on his way to work just that morning. But even then, it would have been part of somebody's life—somebody did break that tip. And the wood sides did show plenty of wear, a lot of handling. Who knew how many people had handled it? And now it was mine.