A Drop of Rain (13 page)

Stein seems to find little that distinguishes those who helped from those who did not.

I wish I could ask my father whether our family hid Jews. What's the use of being half Dutch if I know little about Dutch culture and history?

Eva says I should go to Holland for a visit. Going to
Poland changed her life, she says. I'd like to go to my grandparents' village.

I asked Eva if she'd go with me. She got vague and said, “Maybe later.”

I told her Naomi's never going to fully accept me, and that's that. Naomi is waiting for her knight-in-shining-armour father.

Eva got upset and pleaded with me not to be angry. She said she can't choose me over her daughter and dying sister. Of course, I told her I understand. And I do.

There are some advantages to being the fifty-something veteran of two failed marriages and a victorious battle with the bottle.

Eva threw her arms around me like I was some kind of hero.

Sometimes I think it is easier to be a true hero in war time. Selfless acts are wrung from you, because the circumstances are extraordinary.

Those of us who have known only peace easily degenerate into idle wilfulness. We consider ourselves first. We do not accept the existence of higher moral imperatives.

Unless, of course, we're religious.

Saturday, October 30, 1999

When I went to work this morning, I was excited about designing an outfit for my singing act. I finally told Sarah that I love to sing and play music, and she invited me to audition for her band. Her band needs an extra act for a Christmas gig they're doing. Mary and I were going to make a pattern for my outfit tonight after work. Mary was going to come for dinner at my place, visit with Hanna and help me with the pattern.

I've had two lessons on Mary's landlady's sewing machine, and I'm going to buy my own second-hand sewing machine when I save enough money. I'm making so little money with this job, I'll never save up enough to go somewhere warm at Christmas anyway. And who would I go with? Sarah's family is supposedly going to Florida, but I don't want to go with them and listen to their arguing. Besides, they haven't invited me. Anyway, they might not go now.

As it turned out, Mary and I didn't make the
pattern for my outfit. Mary was very tired and upset. She just wanted to go to her room and rest after work. Then she wanted to go to the Saturday-evening mass.

The new, young director of the Rec Plex hired two men to clean full time at night. Then the director reduced Mary and the other full-time, day-time woman cleaner to part-time. The women are supposed to work about three-quarters time. But they still have to do the same amount of work as before! And they no longer receive benefits like dental insurance or sick leave!

The director says that Mary and the other woman will do less work. He says that he has “reorganized” the work. But Mary says that the director does not know what the work is really like. She says the director never consulted her. He only did calculations on paper. I suspect that the director did not consult Mary, because he could not understand her English. The director probably doesn't know Mary was a doctor. He doesn't seem to notice that she does a super job of cleaning.

I told Mary that I would quit my job in protest of this obvious discrimination against women, and that she should quit too. She said I shouldn't quit, because this is my first job ever104 and good experience. She said she's not quitting because she won't be able to find another job.

To show Mary that I care about what happens to her, I walked over to her place after supper and went with her to her church. I have never been to a Catholic
mass before. Mom always says that I should make up my own mind about religion. She feels that the quarter of me that is Jewish is very important, but so are the three-quarters that are Catholic.

Mom admires the Polish pope, and she is proud of the Catholic tradition, but she disagrees with the church about a lot of things, like divorce. She is also skeptical about the Virgin birth, which she says is a myth. But she says that myth is not necessarily bad.

Mom and Joe watched a
TV
series where an American journalist named Bill Moyers interviewed a professor named Joseph Campbell. Campbell writes books about myth. Mom and Joe had long discussions at the dinner table about how myth should not mean “lie”, as it does so often in modern society, but another way of seeing the truth.

Joe said: “Myth is an effective way of encoding truth in so-called primitive societies.” Whatever that's supposed to mean.

Mary doesn't
discuss
her religion. She really
believes
it. Yet she knows a lot about modern science because she is a doctor. While she was kneeling, praying, singing and going up to the front for communion, I was sitting in the pew beside her. I did not move or make a sound; I only watched. The most interesting thing for me was the procession at the beginning and end of the mass, when the priests entered and exited carrying this huge cross that could be seen above the assembled worshippers. The procession with the cross was eerie and beautiful. It was like time travelling, like journeying back through centuries of Christianity.

I think Mary really
believes
because of everything
she has been through, and everything she is still going through. She also believes because, as a doctor, she knows that faith, even more than music, helps in hard times.

Here is what
Poland: A Tourist Guide
said about the Warsaw Uprising: “The Warsaw Uprising broke out on August 1, 1944, and continued 63 days, every underground organization in the city joining in the battle. Some 22,000 underground soldiers and 180,000 civilians were killed. Afterwards, the Nazis deported all the remaining population and proceeded with the systematic destruction of the city.” Those were truly hard times for the Polish people.

Another thing I liked about the mass I went to with Mary was the music. There was a choir with all young people, accompanied by a piano and guitars. Even the conductor was young and good looking. I wish I could belong to that choir. But I'd probably have to be a member of the Catholic church. Maybe there's another choir in Mapleville that I could join. In a choir you don't have to be ravishingly beautiful or amazingly talented.

Tomorrow is Hallowe'en. Mary says there is nothing
like our North American October 31 in Poland. In Poland, November 1 is All Saints' Day. This is a very holy, serious day when everybody goes to the cemetery to honour the dead.

I showed Mr. Dunlop the stories I have so far from Mary. He said I should find some other people to interview also, because I need a “wider perspective”. Mom gave me the name of a Polish Jewish woman at the college who would be “happy” to be interviewed by me. I was jolted by something this woman said. I hadn't realized that a lot of Polish people were and are anti-Semitic. I think my mother idealizes Poland when she talks to me about it.

What a Polish Jewish woman said when she was interviewed by Naomi at the college where she teaches English:

I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors from Krakow, Poland. During and after the war, my mother disguised herself as a Christian. After the war, she left Krakow and went to Wroclaw. She had become convinced that her sister had died in a Krakow hospital because anti-Semitic Polish doctors would not give her medicine. My mother had been settled in an apartment in Wroclaw for a several months when a Polish
Catholic priest dropped in and remarked that there were no Christian symbols on the walls.

My mother left Poland altogether that night, and she never returned.

I guess there has always been a love-hate relationship between Polish Jews and Polish Christians. Anyway, that's how I came to be born in West Germany.

When I was a child here in Canada, I got stories of bloated bodies piling up and of all the other horrors. I got these stories with my mother's milk. And it was not only the Nazis my mother told me about, it was also the Polish Catholics. The Polish Catholics were anti-semitic too.

By the time I was a teenager, I was pretty sick of these stories.