Journeys with My Mother (27 page)

When Annette was about to be born, my mother came to Melbourne. As always, she was with me when I needed her. When I woke up from anaesthesia, she was the first to tell me, ‘Halinko, you have a beautiful daughter.' And Annette, who I spoke to in Polish from the day she was born, had a common language with her grandparents.

But no matter how special our reunions were, they always ended in farewells. The older my parents got, the harder it became to leave them. My father, by then smaller and frailer, his mop of thick hair replaced by the delicate white plumage of an old man, suffered a series of heart attacks. I understood that each one could have been his last. Tel Aviv airport must be the hardest place on earth to say goodbye. No one shies away from emotion, no stiff upper lip there. Our last embraces were full of sorrow, as if every separation was final. We tried not to be overwhelmed by the sadness of our parting, though Ola always had tears in her eyes. Once I'd lost sight of them, I allowed myself to weep.

Then came a time when my father was too weak to accompany us to the airport. He walked us to the lift in his striped pyjamas and slippers, embarrassed about being too weak to help me with our luggage. ‘Be strong Halinka,' he said, and – for the last time – he slapped my back.

When he died a year later, my mother lost her best friend.

Postscript

After death of my father, at the age of eighty, my mother decided to join us in Australia. She was determined to learn another language but learning, like her walking, didn't progress as fast as she would have liked. At Myer House in Melbourne, where she was the oldest student, others were puzzled why she bothered. Often I found her trying to read
The Age
, frustrated. Just about every word was underlined with blue biro, the meaning of which she had to find in the dictionary. This migration was the most difficult. Here she lacked the language and the authority that came with being a professional, in touch with her medical peers. She had to learn an entirely different world, neither Slavic nor Jewish. And if she did not succeed, it was not for lack of trying.

A few years after her arrival, she showed me her application for Australian citizenship.

‘Do you really need another one?' I asked.

The look on her face made me regret the question the moment it left my lips. Of course she wanted it, how else would she be able to vote?

Ola did not invite me to the ceremony, but one day she held the Certificate of Citizenship in front of my eyes. I felt bad about my small-mindedness, impressed by her autonomy.

As she grew older, Ola looked back, remembering, trying to make sense of her life: the war, grieving for her mother and sisters. Such anguish cannot be shared. Television images of distant and present wars, films and books, all seemed to trigger her memories. Some took her to Oryol or to the months spent in the forest, the hunger. She looked back at her younger self with disbelief, amazed that it was she who'd lived through it all.

When she moved to a small flat in St Kilda she was closer to other Polish- and Russian-speaking migrants.

There was not a day she would not go for a walk in the park; at other times, along St Kilda Esplanade. Sometimes we strolled together, stopping for lunch or coffee. She liked looking at the sea and walking with me arm in arm. She would squeeze it to let me know how happy she was to have me next to her.

Ola, who always looked younger than her age, grew old gracefully. With time, her balance worsened, making her fall. We bought a smart-looking walking stick, but such things were not for her.

One night, the old electric blanket set her bedding on fire. The heat woke her up. When she lifted the doona, she could see the glowing wire. I can imagine her in the middle of the night, shivering slightly from cold and agitation, trying to put the fire out while doona feathers floated in the air. She did not call me; instead, she stitched the doona and remade the bed.

There were other mishaps that my mother opted not to share with me. Like the time she climbed onto the table to change the light globe, not thinking that the solid table could topple so easily. It did. It also fell on her. When I came to see her she was in bed, the blanket pulled up to her chin, a mischievous look on her face.

‘Mum, are you sick?' I asked. ‘Why aren't you up?'

‘I won't tell you,' she said.

I sat on the bed next to her. ‘Please tell me, I have to know.'

‘I won't tell you, ever.'

Our conversation went on like this for a while, until she finally confessed, smiling bashfully. She had broken five ribs.

She hated vulgarity, though when vexed she would say
cholera
, but that was as far as it went. I never saw her unkempt. Maybe that was why she was called ‘a lady', which annoyed her enormously as she disliked being different. My friends thought her serene. And maybe she was. In her later years, she had the time to look carefully at everything and think about it. She could be moved by any flower and every leaf, the sight of children, books and music. She was an old woman, marvelling at the world, at nature and its evolution. She wondered what would happen to all our thoughts when we died.

And I wondered how it was possible to live through the misery of war and not go insane, to trust people, make friends, laugh and love. My mother was the least neurotic person I have known.

Someone once asked her what gave her strength. ‘Old trees,' she answered without searching for an answer, as if she were one of them.

‘
Babcia
,' Annette asked her, ‘are you afraid of death?'

‘Not at all.'

‘Truly?'

‘I will be gone when death comes,' my mother answered, smiling beatifically to reassure us. I believed her.

The two were very close, and Babcia always indulged her granddaughter by preparing everything she liked best. It delighted her to be able to do it. After lunch, they'd lie down in my mother's single bed. I could hear them talking about this or that. Then, secure in their nearness, enveloped in each other's warmth, they fell asleep.

One day, one of those perfect winter days – mild and sunny, when everything is framed in gold – Ola went to see her friends. She was staying with me then, recovering from another heart episode. She called later in the afternoon while waiting for a taxi, in the best of moods. The day, the friends, her park, the world – everything seemed perfect and she was buoyant. Our conversation was short – after all, we were about to see each other.

A few minutes later, on the way to the cab, she died of a massive heart attack … And I'd thought my mother would live forever and we would continue everything, our conversations and squabbles.

In the morning of that very same day, I'd knocked and peeped through the slightly opened door. My mother was fully awake, in a half-sitting position, the sun behind her forming a halo around her head. I had to laugh, she looked like a monarch. She was reading.

I reminded her that she needed to get up. She raised her head slightly to look at me and shimmied to show me how delighted she was. I noticed that she was nearing the end of
In Search of Lost Time
.

‘Fast reading for Proust,' I remarked.

She gave me that smile of hers. ‘I am only reading about love.'

Acknowledgments

The book has been more than five years in the making, emotionally confronting and difficult; also exhilarating.

There is great joy in putting down on paper something that did not exist before. I learned a great deal about writing. There was also the experience of an adrenaline rush when following trails leading to till-then-unknown documents, photographs, events; I am amazed it is still possible, so many years on.

As serendipity would have it, I have been lucky to find the descendants of Gurgen Martirosov and Valerii Slivkin. Meeting them enriched my life as well as the manuscript.

I want to thank Lee Kofman for her early mentoring and encouragement. She was the one who put me on the straight and narrow of writing. Thank you to Nadine Davidoff for her sensitive editing and for our chats on books and writing. My daughter, Annette, was my early and constant supporter and a careful reader, providing thoughtful critique.

I am grateful to my old school friend Krystyna Siwek-Wilczynska for many hours of heart-to-heart talks about what, for us, could never be the forgotten past: our strange childhood, our parents and their ideals, their silence and the tragic collapse of their world.

My cousin Haneczka is the only one who remembers those years and various family characters. I am thankful for her recollections. Thank you to my friends, here and in other parts of the world, for sustaining me with their interest and best wishes.

And last but not least I am indebted to Anna Blay, Louis de Vries and Diane Cameron of Hybrid Publishers for their sympathetic perspective. Once we started talking about the issues related to the publication of the book I knew I was in safe hands.

Select Bibliography

Bąk, Władaysław.
Pieszo i konno,
Książka i Wiedza, Warszawa, 1963.

Braithwaite, Rodrick.
Moscow 1941, A City and its People at War,
Vintage Books, New York, 2007.

Cabanowski, Marek.
Mój Grodzisk,
Groart Press, 1996

Edited work,
Bereziacy,
Książka i Wiedza, Warszawa, 1965.

Garlicki, Andrzej.
Piękne lata trzydzieste,
Prószyński i Ska, Warszawa, 2008.

Grubowska, Halina.
Haneczko musisz przeżyć,
Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada, Montreal, 2007.

Mirski, Michał.
Biegiem marsz,
Książka i Wiedza, Warszawa, 1958.

Rajsner, Rafael and Lew, Henry R.
The Stories Our Parents Found Too Painful To Tell,
AMLC Publications, Melbourne 2008.

Tec, Nechama.
Defiance,
Oxford University Press, New York, 2008.

Slivkin, Valerii.
History of Iskra detachment,
Beloruski Letopisec, Lida, 2008.

Snyder, Timothy.
Bloodlands; Europe between Hitler and Stalin,
Vintage Books, London, 2001.

Endnotes

1
    Of the total number of approximately 13,000, about a quarter of the ‘Zionists' went to Israel.

2
    A non-Jewish young girl or a woman.

3
    Auschwitz.

4
    A canopy under which a Jewish couple stand during their wedding.

5
    An oblong receptacle, containing a piece of parchment with handwritten prayers nailed to the door frame.

6
    Death camp near Warsaw.

7
    A term for a sect of orthodox Judaism.

8
    The Hebrew word for priest. The Cohens are believed to be the direct patrilineal descendants of Aaron, the brother of Moses.

9
    Marek Cabanowski,
Mój Grodzisk.

10
  Taken literarily means a whore; nowadays a swear word, used in place of punctuation.

11
  Jewish cemetery.

12
  Gravestones.

13
  The Sanacja (Restoration) regime brought Poland economic stability, but also meant a shift from democracy to authoritarianism. Marshal Piłsudski governed with a heavy hand and tolerated no opposition.

14
  Some guards were uncontrollable in their cruelty. Not long before my father did his time, two people were killed within a few days. A seventeen-year-old student from Vilnius was beaten to death; another man was buried alive.

15
  International Revolutionaries' Help Organisation.

16
  Respectful way to address men.

17
  Comintern – The Communist International. An international organisation that advocated world communism, founded in Moscow in 1919.

18
  Władysław Broniewski.

19
  Konstanty Galczynski.

20
  The German word for tank.

21
  Goodbye and thank you, comrade-sergeant.

22
  Schupo for short – the Protection Police of Nazi Germany

23
  Following orders from Berlin, Bolsheviks were the enemies of the Reich, placed outside the Geneva Convention. The Soviet Union had failed to sign the Convention; in Stalin's opinion, there were no prisoners of war, only traitors.

24
  Slave workers from Central and Eastern Europe.

25
  Garrison headquarters.

26
  Living quarters in Russian huts.

27
  People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs, encompassing the secret police.

28
  Enlistment of ordinary people for military service. A phrase that resonates through Russian history.

29
  
Armia Krajowa
(Home Army), consisted of Polish anti-Communist patriots. They fought against German invasion and Russian dominance.

30
  By 1943 the partisans had army-like organisations.
Iskra
(Spark) was one of the detachments (called
otriads
).

31
  A traditional, eastern-European variation of sauna.

32
  A Russian musical instrument.

33
  Polish Tobacco Monopoly.

34
  Halinka in Russian.

35
  Bernard was wrong: my father was wounded twice.

36
  Haneczka was mistaken. Ewa was taken in 1941.

37
  An endearing term for father.

38
  A slanted board on four legs, with a boot-shaped cutout, used for pulling off boots.

39
  Flowering water lily.

40
  The eastern side of the Vistula, called Praga, was not ruined.

41
  UNRRA – United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration.

42
  Police.

43
  A chief executive body of the Communist Party.