Loves of Yulian (3 page)

But, with M. Gordet translating, Mother discussed the issue with the Dutch brothers’ parents, while sitting in deck chairs, and reached the agreement that the three of us boys would all benefit from playing together, while the four of them had cocktails. Then, the three of us proceeded to sit cross-legged on the deck, while I stared at them, and they stared at me.

The four grownups seemed to fare a lot better, with no shortage of conversation. After a while, following some whispered conversation between the two brothers, one of them stood up and motioned for me to follow. While I would have preferred not to, I could imagine Mother telling me that I wasn’t playing nicely, so I got up and followed.

The brother who had first signaled me to follow, led the way around to the other side of the ship, and the other walked along behind me. When we reached the section where the lifeboats stood, the leader indicated that I and his brother should stand together in front of one of the boats so that he could take a picture of us with the imaginary camera he now held in his hands. This, at least, was something to do, and it was something I had seen a lot of the grownups do with real cameras, so I took my place willingly, planning to propose a picture of the two of them, once each had been photographed with me. Watching him “photograph” us, I realized that I could mime the procedure much better with things like fiddling with the lens and turning the little knob that wound the film.

But, suddenly, they had each grabbed one of my arms and were pushing me backwards, between two boats, towards where there was no railing between the deck and the ocean. Now I realized that they were trying to push me overboard. I couldn’t imagine that that was, really, what they were doing, since my absence would be quickly discovered and traced to them. This had to be a game—some kind of Dutch game. Looking down, I could see in my peripheral vision the wavy ocean rushing by and getting closer. But, on the other hand, they could just lie and say they didn’t know where I had gone. Or even that I had been showing off by standing near the edge on one foot and fallen off.

Then I found that I could wrap one hand around one of the lines by which the boats would be lowered. Holding tight to this line, I kicked out blindly with my foot. I felt it hit some target and heard a cry from one of the brothers. His hands released me immediately, as he grabbed for his eye. His brother let me go as well, as the first boy burst into loud sobs. In a moment they were both running back the way we had come, the sobs warning me that I would not be greeted with cordiality on my return.

I took my time on the way back, and, true to my fears, found the one brother sitting in his mother’s lap, a napkin full of ice against his eye, the other in his father’s lap. Seeing me arrive, Mother and M. Gordet both stood up. M. Gordet gripped me firmly by the elbow, and I was marched down to our cabin and told not to come out.

There were two other Polish-speaking people on board, a Mr. Kosiewicz and his wife, Mrs. Irena. The woman looked a little younger than Mother, and they were both very good-looking. Mr. Kosiewicz was tall and thin, with wavy blond hair and blue eyes, and Mrs. Irena had long chestnut hair that fell in thick waves onto her shoulders, soft looking cheeks, and large, green eyes. She was taller than Mother and even more beautiful, which Mother as much as admitted.

“That woman is so beautiful,” I heard her say to M. Gordet, as we saw the couple dance to a phonograph record in the lounge, before dinner. This was the day after my affair with the Dutch brothers, and I had not been allowed to leave Mother’s side all day.

“They’re Polish, you know, Basia,” M. Gordet said and Mother said, “Oh, I didn’t know that. They look like professional dancers, don’t they?”

The two were pressed very close together, and they moved like one person.

Then M. Gordet whispered something in Mother’s ear, and I saw her eyebrows go up a little. “Well, it’s wartime, you know,” she said.

I understood what she was saying. It wasn’t as though M. Gordet didn’t know that the Germans had occupied Poland and France and were, right then, bombing England. It was just that saying,
It’s wartime
, meant that certain things were all right, which wouldn’t have been all right in peacetime. But what all that had to do with the current situation, was a total mystery.

“And they look very much in love,” she added, with a little laugh. I tried to guess what it was that M. Gordet had whispered in Mother’s ear about the two, but came up empty.

When the record stopped playing, Mother said, “Why don’t we invite them over for a drink with us, George,” and M. Gordet got up and crossed the dance floor to where the two were standing. They spoke for a moment, then the three of them walked back to our table.

“Mme. Padowicz, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Kosiewicz,” M. Gordet said, though he had a lot of difficulty pronouncing both names
,
“and this is Madame’s son
Julien
.”

I stood up, as I had been taught, and shook hands firmly, with both of the guests, trying to look each directly in the eye. As I had discovered with many other grownup men around Mother, Mr. Kosiewicz did not shake my hand firmly or look me in the eye. His attention, I could see, was on Mother. But his wife gave me a warm handshake and looked at me from under her eyelashes with what, to me, was clearly an expression of shyness. I didn’t know that grownups could be shy as well.

“I understand you and your wife are Polish,” Mother was saying, in French, to Mr. Kosiewicz. “My son and I are from Warsaw, but M. Gordet doesn’t speak Polish.”

Now I could see exactly what it was that held Mr. Kosiewicz’s attention. It was Mother’s diamond ring. It was, I knew, the ring that Lolek had given her as an engagement present, and it had two large diamonds set side by side. The two were exactly alike and each one was as big as just about any diamond I had ever seen. I had seen the ring attract the attention of numerous people in the last few months, when Mother wore it. A lot of the time it actually spent in the lining of Mother’s dress, just below the waistband, where there were some tucks and a bulge wouldn’t show. A woman mother had met in Yugoslavia had fashioned a little pocket for her there, so she could get it in and out without resorting to needle and thread each time, which Mother wasn’t very good at. Actually, there were several pockets like that in the dress, but they were all empty now except for one that held the round, diamond broach, which Grandmother had given Mother just before the war began, and which Mother said she would die before selling because, someday, my wife would wear it. This sentiment was one that, at my age of eight and a half, I did not appreciate the way she did, and hoped that, if the need to sell it arose, as I could well see it happening, Mother would change her mind.

But, while the broach almost never came out of its secret pocket, there were many times when Mother would display her double-diamond ring. As she had explained to me, she and my stepfather had been planning to divorce before the war, so the engagement ring had only monetary value for her. And in restaurants and hotels, I had seen many eyes attracted to the stones, which, I understood, was Mother’s intention. But as for Mr. Kosiewicz, there was something in his expression that seemed to say something more than mere admiration. Right then and there I decided that I didn’t like the man, and it occurred to me that, as a result, in my thoughts and when talking to my friend, Meesh, who was in our cabin at the moment, I would refer to Mr. Kosiewicz not by his name, but, simply as Mr. K.

Meesh was a small, white teddy bear, though he was turning a little gray now. I had acquired him just before our escape from the Bolsheviks, when I was still seven and a half. At that time, I had considered him my son, and I would carry him everywhere, in the crook of my elbow. When we were escaping over the mountains, he had been in my backpack. But we were both older now, and Meesh spent most of the time in our room. When we traveled, he now rode inside my suitcase, rather than in the crook of my arm, because he really didn’t like meeting new people. But we could still talk to each other, even across a large room, though not through walls, in our silent language. We spoke to each other in words and sentences, just the way other people talk to each other, except that we did not need to say them out loud. And, when I got back to our cabin this evening, I would tell Meesh about meeting the greedy-looking Mr. K and his shy, pretty wife, whose first name I didn’t yet know, but didn’t want to call by Mr. K’s name.

Now, as Mother and M. Gordet conversed in French with Mr. K., I noticed that Mrs. Kosiewicz, sitting on my left, sat quietly in her chair looking down at her hands. When the waiter came to take a drink order, Mr. K ordered something for her without even asking what she wanted. It occurred to me then that maybe she did not speak French. If this were so, then my duty as a gentleman, I knew, was to engage her in a conversation in Polish. The duties of a gentleman, such as pulling chairs out for ladies, picking their napkins up when they dropped them, opening doors, entertaining them at the table, and keeping your own nails clean and your hair combed, were things that Mother had been lecturing me on ever since we had arrived in Hungary. But exactly how one went about beginning a conversation with a lady one doesn’t know, was something I had not learned yet.

On the other hand, I did have one weapon that had served me well a number of times in difficult social situations. That was the copper washer that I kept well-polished and in my pocket at all times. A man to whom we had given a ride in our truck, when we were escaping from Warsaw and the bombs, had taught me how to palm a coin, making it disappear and appear again out of people’s ears and places like that. The coin that he had given me to practice with, Mother had taken away from me, because I wasn’t allowed to accept money from strangers, but, long ago, I had found the washer lying on the ground, polished it, and had been practicing with it ever since. So now I slowly reached into my pants pocket and, hoping that Mrs. Kosiewicz did not see me doing it, maneuvered the washer out of the handkerchief that it was entangled in and into my palm. Then just as slowly, I proceeded to withdraw my hand and place it in my lap. For maybe a minute, I sat there looking around at the room, and finally turned to Mrs. Kosiewicz, on my left. “Oh, p. . . please Missus,” I said, in the awkward way the Polish language does these things, “did M. . . Missus know that th. . . there is s. . . something in M. . . Missus’s ear?”

I saw Mrs. Kosiewicz blink in surprise. “My ear?” she said in a quiet, but genuinely surprised voice.

“Yes,” I said. Then I reached over and produced the washer, as though out of her ear.

“Oh,” she said. “You did a magic trick.” As a child,
you
, was all the form of address that I was entitled to.

“A m. . . magic t. . . rick?” I said, as though that was the furthest from the truth.

“Why, you pretended to pull that thing out of my ear,” she said.

She was smiling as she said it, and I was suddenly emboldened by an idea. I noticed that her surprised voice had made the others turn to look at us. “W. . . what th. . . thing?” I said, making the washer disappear again. “W. . . what th. . . thing is M. . . issus t. . . talking about?”

To my very great delight, Mrs. Kosiewicz laughed.

Then I saw Mr. K give his wife a quick, annoyed look, then turn back to Mother with a smile. “She doesn’t speak French,” he said, confirming my suspicion.

“That was very clever,” Mrs. Kosiewicz said. “Can you do any other tricks?”

I shook my head. I knew that shaking my head wasn’t polite, but, with her asking for more tricks, my self-confidence had left me. I had hoped she would show me a trick, herself, or tell me a joke or something. But she was looking at me and smiling, as I was at her, but didn’t seem to know what to say either.

This was a very new experience for me. In the past, all of Mother’s grownup friends had had lots of questions to ask me about where I had been, what I liked to do, what I liked to eat, what grade I was in, where I had spent the summer, and so forth. But not Mrs. Kosiewicz. I put it down to the fact that she hadn’t been grown up long enough.

On the other hand, since I knew some of those conversation-starting questions, why shouldn’t I ask her them? Mrs. Kosiewicz certainly seemed friendly enough not to feel insulted.

“S. . . so tell me, please M. . . Missus,” I began. “Where has M. . . Missus been spending the s. . . summer?”

“Well—I’m sorry, I don’t know your name.”

I realized that M. Gordot’s introductions had been in French. “It’s Y. . . Yulian,” I said.

“That’s a beautiful name.”

Everyone said that.

“My name is Irena. You can call me Irena, if you want, instead of the Mrs. Kosiewicz. In fact I’d like that better.”

I had never had a grownup lady tell me to call her by her first name before. Except, of course, for Kiki, but I had been calling her that as long as I could remember, and it had probably started before I was old enough to call her Miss Jane. “All r. . . right. . . ” I had intended to add the
Irena
to the end of that statement, but, somehow, it wouldn’t come out.

Then I remembered that now that we were out of Europe, I could talk about our escape. I hadn’t been supposed to tell anyone about it before, in case the story got back to the Nazi-sympathizers who were looking for us to stop Mother from writing her book in America. That’s not to say that it hadn’t slipped out a few times, when we were in the company of people who I was sure weren’t Nazi-sympathizers, particularly when I had to correct distortions that my mother made, like when she said that I had fallen into the stream and she had to pull me out, which was totally untrue, or left out the little fact that, if I hadn’t found a strong stick and moved that tree branch off her leg, she would still be sitting there in the woods. And Mrs. Irena—I had no trouble calling her
Mrs. Irena
—who only spoke Polish, certainly wasn’t a Nazi-sympathizer.