Dobryd (11 page)

I had always suspected that my mother and my aunt kept things from me. I knew I was more sheltered than other children. Now it was my turn to keep a secret from them. But how? Where would I find the necessary self-control to hide such terrible knowledge from them?

As I walked away from Elsa, sobs such as I had never experienced convulsed my every step. I made it to our secret shelter. All care for my new dress was forgotten. I saw it now as an object of shame and terror. By wearing it I betrayed my mother to everyone who saw me. I never wanted to put it on again. But how could I explain such an action at home, when only this morning I had been so happy with it?

I stayed in the hideout as long as I could. The degraded condition of my dress seemed to me a proper camouflage. When the crying gave way for a while, it was replaced by grandiose schemes I invented to protect my mother. By the time it became dark outside, I had already given up both alternatives: I was too weak to cry or to hope. Whether my mother continued her trips or not, we were in equal danger. Either way, I was certain we were lost.

I came home later than usual, hoping against all probability that they wouldn't notice me. In fact, just the opposite happened. For once, my mother's anxiety equalled that of my aunt's. My arrival reassured them momentarily, but when they noticed my appearance their fear returned. They fussed over me and tended to me, and then they began to question me.

My tears started again, and with them all my fears came spilling out. I told it all, stumbling over the words, dreading the moment they would be confirmed. My mother heard me out quietly, with attention. When my aunt tried to cut me off with reassurances, she stopped her so I could go on. Then it was her turn to speak. She didn't deny any of it, nor did she offer excuses. Instead she urged me to have confidence in her ability to overcome all odds.

After all, she reminded me, she had escaped from the Germans. Twice they had caught her on the way to the farm where my aunt waited for us, and each time, with me in her arms, she had escaped. She had brought us this far, taking care of our needs where so many others had failed, and she would continue to do so. There was nothing formidable about the Russians. Most of them were young boys, half-starved themselves, one generation away from illiteracy. She wasn't in the least afraid of them. As a matter of fact, most of them were her friends. They respected and liked her. Even if something was discovered, they would cover up for her. I was not to worry. From now on only good things would happen to me.

Did I believe her? She was very convincing. Like all mothers she had magical powers in shaping my perception of reality. I felt comforted and safe as long as she spoke to me. Yet from then on, until some months later when the trips ended, it was impossible for me to participate in the drama my mother and my aunt enacted around her arrivals and departures. I still felt an occasional response, but inside I knew that it was all different than it had been. I now had feelings and thoughts and fears that I had to hide, because I knew that confessing them would only add to my mother's burden. From then on I fully accepted and practised dissimulation and illusion.

It was then, I believe, that I began to develop as a distinct individual, someone other than my mother's child. Like everyone else I was learning to become a private, separate being, aware of parts of myself that I must never expose to others.

II

The trips to Lwow stopped when we left Dobryd. Our departure seemed to me a marvellous solution which would remove me from the horror I had experienced since Elsa's revelations. I was overjoyed to leave, even though I had formed many attachments to the ruined city and to my first friends.

Our move came about mostly because of Yuri. Since the day when he and his platoon had liberated us and he had carried me out of the barn into the outside world, we had become his adopted family. When the time came for his regiment to leave Dobryd and move westwards towards Germany, he was not going to leave us behind.

There were other reasons to make us wish to leave Dobryd. Everyone in the town seemed possessed by the need to get away from this unlucky region. There was a frantic scramble for the few daily exit permits. Most people were too impatient to wait out this lengthy and uncertain process, and they chose the quicker route of night-time border crossings. This alternative required not so much courage as money with which to bribe border guards to look the other way. One also had to have a certain unconcern for possessions, since the crossings had to be made on foot with very little encumbrance. This restriction was a serious problem, since people clung to the most useless objects with a tenacity incomprehensible in normal times. Their meagre belongings seemed particularly precious when they were forced to leave them behind.

For some time my family remained apart from all this frenzy. Almost every week another neighbour would come to say good-bye. Yet the possibility of our own departure was not discussed. The reasons that made other people hesitate were not even mentioned in our house. My family lived from day to day, and the future, if it existed for others, no longer held any meaning for us. We excluded ourselves voluntarily from it and looked upon those who did not do so as lacking a sense of decency.

It required a will as strong as Yuri's to force my mother and aunt out of this state. This was a role he had played in our lives from the beginning. From the time we had first come together, he had taken on the task of pulling us slowly and patiently into the world of everyday reality.

The first time I saw him, he himself had seemed outside ordinary limits, a creature from another world. Now he was familiar, and close, part of my everyday world, but I could still remember our first meeting, when I had seen him as an extraordinary, god-like being. At the age of five, I had known only emaciated bodies like my own, for whom the mere act of walking had become almost impossible. In such a setting, Yuri's presence and his appearance could easily pass for something miraculous.

Other things about him confirmed this first vision. In particular, I remember the military decorations he wore. Because of some trick of lighting, they glowed that day with a power of their own. I remained frozen before this marvellous sight, until it came closer and closer and I felt myself lifted into its magical beam.

Yuri was then in his early twenties, tall, with fair hair and a face that was never serious. Like most Russians, he had endured unbelievable hardship and suffering, but their effect on him was not apparent, at least not in the way that ours could be read in our faces and bodies. His enthusiasm and optimism seemed to have shielded him from the worst physical ravages. One had only to listen to Yuri describe the battles he had fought in, to realize how much he felt a part of the eventual success of his country's struggle. His own private interest was insignificant. The common cause was the important one. Physical hardship was also neutralized by the intense camaraderie that existed between him and the other soldiers and the confidence they all shared in their eventual success.

When we first came to know them, at a time when the enemy was beaten and the end was in sight, euphoria had transformed this band of young people into superior beings. Later, when we knew Yuri better, as he came to depend on us for whatever family warmth we could give him, he lost this special aura for me. At times, when he asked my mother's help with the books he was trying to learn from or when he kissed my aunt and thanked her for cooking a favourite dish, or when he gave himself entirely to one of my make-believe games, he seemed to become my contemporary. Still, I never forgot the promise and the beauty he brought with him the first time I saw him. It made the transition from hiding to freedom easier for me in many ways.

I don't know why Yuri was drawn to us more than to the other survivors, perhaps because of me, perhaps because my mother and my aunt were women without men. Yuri was very chivalrous. Although he fought side by side with Russian women soldiers without apparent constraint, with other women his attitude changed. He became very gentle and shy. Towards my aunt, in particular, he behaved with extreme courtesy and refinement. His manner with her seemed somehow incongruous with his usual tough behaviour. He was very appealing.

Yuri's arrival in our lives had seemed miraculous. One day we had been abandoned, starving, without hope. The next day we had acquired a kind and devoted protector. From the very beginning, he had a way of making people laugh, even my mother and my aunt. He was not alone in this. All his friends, the young soldiers he brought with him to visit us, had this characteristic. They had been fighting for months, some of them for years, against terrible odds, yet they had about them an air of gaiety and good cheer. Theirs was the care-free laughter one associates with casual pleasures, and not with fighting and dying.

Soon Yuri began to come to us not only as our protector, but also as a friend. He was delighted with my aunt when she told him to call her
ciociu
, as I did. In a short while, they created a relationship in which she became his distant mother and he was her son who had left for the war. It was an expedient duplication, they realized. They were stand-ins for principals who never appeared. Yet there was genuine feeling between them, apart from the ghosts they sought in each other.

Yuri spoke often of his real mother, whom he hadn't seen or heard from in months. His father and his brothers had all been killed by the Germans early in the war. Then it had been his turn to go into the army. He was still an adolescent when he left his village, and although he had since grown into a man and witnessed all kinds of horror, his longing for home had never diminished.

He showed us photographs he had carried with him during the battles of Stalingrad and Leningrad, when the Russians had at last succeeded in driving the Germans back. He described his village, the friends he had there, his favourite walks and pastimes when he was growing up. Any incident could precipitate the flow of his reminiscences. Perhaps this was something else he and my aunt shared. During the months of loneliness he had reworked his memories, expanded them, and kept guard over them. In normal times these would have been overlaid with newer experiences, but in the midst of war he preferred to hold on to them until they had flourished to such an extent that he could no longer contain them in his head.

His meeting with us provided the necessary outlet. With great relief it all came spilling out. The age of his listener was not important. Many times when he and I were together, he would talk to me as he talked to my aunt or my mother, and I would feel flattered by this intimacy between us and hide the fact that I understood very little of what he said.

One day, as a special treat, my aunt prepared a favourite dish of Yuri's, made of mushrooms and cream. It reminded Yuri of the woods near his village, and the mushrooms that grew there in great abundance. My mother had also enjoyed picking mushrooms as a girl, and they began to compare their hunts and the special, memorable specimens they had discovered.

As they incited each other through a mutual pleasure in this subject, Yuri became more and more excited, as if he were actually about to discover a rare, hidden growth. My mother, on the other hand, was affected in a different way. She grew sadder and quieter, and soon Yuri was the only one left talking.

He noticed her changed mood and stopped, surprised.

“What is the matter,” he asked her. “Have I said something to upset you?”

“No, no,” she assured him. “It gives me great pleasure to listen to you, it's only that.…”

“Only what?” he persisted, and so, reluctantly, not wanting to ruin for him the pleasure of his reminiscence, she answered.

“Well, you see,” she answered, “you will return to your woods one day. Mine will never grow again.”

Yuri, who could not bear the thought that there were pains he could not alleviate, did not answer her, or so it seemed at the moment. He turned to me and picked me up. I saw that he had twisted his face into one of the funny masks that always delighted me. But this time I knew our game was different. We were not playing merely for our own pleasure. My mother was our audience and her laughter was to be our applause. I understood this as well as if he had whispered instructions in my ear, and I cooperated fully, going along with him in the pretence that the game only involved the two of us.

III

Yuri was now part of our household. He still slept in the army barracks, but he was with us every day. At night, an extra plate of food waited for him. When he arrived at last, he would unbutton his tunic, pull off his boots, and sigh like a man who had come home. There was no electricity then, and we often sat in the dark, talking. I would fall asleep listening, and then Yuri would help my mother put me to bed. Sometimes he managed to get fuel for our lamp. Then Yuri and I would play while my aunt mended clothes and my mother worked on her translations.

After the first weeks in Dobryd, the Red Army established control over the town and its surrounding region, and there was little to keep the soldiers busy. Yuri, with time on his hands, would now be in and out of the house, like any member of the family. When he came, he was never idle. Often he would arrive early in the morning, just as my aunt set out for the marketplace, carrying bags of merchandise, odds and ends to sell, or to exchange for fuel or food. He would take the bags from her and carry them to the market. There he would help her to set up the little kiosk and spread her wares.

Often they would meet soldiers along the way, friends of Yuri's who found his attachment to us slightly ridiculous. They teased him and laughed at him when they met him like this, carrying bags of cast-offs for an elderly lady, but Yuri remained perfectly at ease. He laughed at himself as easily as his friends did and went right on doing what had to be done without any sign of embarrassment.

Once, however, there was trouble. Yuri had just deposited my aunt, with her bags, in her usual place. Next to her, one of our neighbours sat in a make-shift shelter selling cigarettes. A Russian officer, one of Yuri's superiors, bargained with the woman about the price. She refused to lower it. The officer became angry, especially when he noticed that my aunt and Yuri were witnesses to his haggling. In disgust, he threw down the handful of cigarettes he had chosen. They spilled everywhere on the ground. The woman began to berate him as she bent to pick them up, quietly, however, since her fear of him restrained her anger. Even so, he heard her. He turned around and came back.