Mother and Me (30 page)

“If he asks you anything,” Mother whispered to me, “pretend you don't understand any Russian.”

There was a very large room with pink walls and, again, the large rectangles of a darker pink, in the middle of the lighter pink, under which people in overcoats and heavy jacket sat in chairs lining the walls. A few spoke together in whispers. A soldier sat at a little desk with spindly legs and carved metal corner ornaments, guarding a set of tall double doors. His rifle rested against the side of the desk.

Our guide led us up to the soldier at the door, put his hands on the desk and said something to him quietly. Then our soldier let himself through the doors into the next room. As we waited, I saw my mother bite her lower lip, something Kiki told me only babies did. Then she suddenly stopped, straightened up, and pulled down on the décolleté, which she had originally wanted to hold down with the brooch.

In a few moments the soldier came out again and held the door for us to go into the commissar's office. “Hold my hand,” Mother said out of the side of her mouth as we passed through the open door.

It was much warmer in this room. Col. Bawatchov stood up as we came in and held his hand out across his desk. “I've been told you speak beautiful Russian,” he said to Mother, in
Russian, of course. Immediately I saw him to be a larger version of the little officer who had offered us sugar cubes in the hotel lobby on our first day in town. His head was round like a soccer ball, mostly bald, with small but widely set round eyes, over a short, fleshy nose. His roundish torso reminded me of a snowman. Unlike the overcoated people in the waiting room, he had his jacket off, and a pair of blue suspenders held up his blue pants. I noticed that there was a fire going in the large fireplace. A pair of tall boots warmed themselves at a discreet distance from the fire.

“My little mother is Russian,” my mother said, shaking hands. “She is from Moscow.”

An all-red flag stood next to the commissar's large ornate desk. Directly behind him, a portrait I recognized to be of Joseph Stalin hung in a much larger rectangle of bright green paint in the duller green wall. As in the other room, rectangles of bright paint contrasting with the duller color decorated the walls. Except for this one of Stalin and the angels on the ceiling, I had seen no pictures anywhere in the palace. One wall panel, painted white, was framed in a fringe of gray material looking as though something had been cut out of it.

The commissar motioned us to two chairs. They were white with antique gold trim, curvy legs, and seats upholstered in a white-and-pink striped material. They were a lot like the chairs in our Warsaw apartment and the ones you weren't allowed to sit on in the Royal Palace in the park. Except that this upholstery had been stained by what I speculated must have been tea, since this was what Russians liked to drink.

Climbing up onto the chair indicated for me, I immediately found myself sliding forward again on the slippery material. Her spike-heeled shoe anchored to the floor and her right knee crossed over the left, my mother had no such problem. My own feet dangled inches above the inlaid floor and gravity exerted its pull to draw me ever closer to the front edge of the padded seat. In Warsaw, I had had the table to stop my slide, but here
I had to clamp my fingers around the wood underside of the seat and hang on.

Col. Bawatchov said that he understood Mother was there regarding a Roman Rokief, except that he had no record of any Roman Rokief. What that must mean, he said, was that her friend was being detained by the political commissar. He himself, he explained, was the military commissar, but there was also a political commissar who operated independently of him.

A lot of this I understood as he spoke. What I didn't catch, I picked up later as Mother explained it to the Aunties.

Suddenly I heard Col. Bawatchov shout out a name. It may have been the loudest shout I had ever heard. In a moment a door to the commissar's left opened and a young officer came in. I heard the colonel give him instructions to bring him something. I couldn't make out what he said, but when the officer had gone out again, the colonel explained to Mother that he had sent him to the political commissar's office to find out about Mr. Rokief.

Mother thanked him for his kindness, then produced her silver cigarette case and, leaning forward, offered him a cigarette. The colonel quickly stood up and accepted one. Then he picked a box of matches out of his desk drawer and lit Mother's cigarette. His own, he placed in a long, black-and-silver cigarette holder before lighting it. He must have caught Mother looking longingly at the precious matches because he handed them to her and told her to keep them. “I have more,” he said.

Mother thanked him and asked what part of Russia he came from. I knew that Russia was the biggest country in the world and in parts of it people looked almost Chinese. He mentioned a place whose name had no meaning to me and went on to say that his father had herded cows. Mother congratulated him on how much he had achieved.

“In the Soviet Union,” he said, “a man can become anything he wants to be.”

This claim for the ubiquitous Soviet Union snapped my mind to sharp attention. Certainly a man could not become an eagle or an elephant however much he might want to be one. And what if half the men in the Soviet Union decided they all wanted to be king? That, obviously, wasn't workable. And what if a man wanted to be a doctor, but didn't know what medicine cured what sickness—how fair would that be to his patients? Was it possible that magic really did exist and that the Soviet Union … ? No, Kiki had told me quite unequivocally that magic existed only in fairy tales. It was quite clear, I decided, that the commissar, just like the announcements over the loudspeakers, was telling us lies.

“I am a language teacher,” I heard Mother say in response to some question. “I used to teach French and German in a high school in Warsaw. I was in Paris last summer.” I remembered Mother's saying that Capt. Vrushin had told her to be sure and mention that she had been to Paris. And as far as being a language teacher was concerned—well, this Russian deserved to be lied to, I decided.

“Now, with us here, comrade, you could teach at a university, if you are a good enough teacher, and I'm sure you are. And some day you and your son could have your own apartment.”

I found it amusing to hear him address Mother as comrade, which Miss Bronia had explained was the way all Russians addressed each other. Mother did not tell the colonel that in Warsaw we already had our own apartment. I understood that they were passing the time while they waited for the young officer to return with information.

Colonel Bawatchov asked Mother what my name was, to which she answered “Yulli,” which was what my Russian grandmother sometimes called me.

“Yulli, do you like soldiers?” the colonel asked me.

“Yulli doesn't speak Russian,” Mother quickly interjected. She was saying it to the colonel, but looking straight at me.
Technically, of course, she was right. I was finding that I understood a great deal more Russian then I had thought, but I had never actually tried speaking it.

“I don't understand,” I said in Polish, looking as blankly as I could from one to the other. I was enjoying this sanctioned mendacity. But I hoped I wouldn't have to act sickly again.

“The colonel asks if you like military things, darling,” Mother translated for me.

“Yes,” I said, nodding my head.

“Yes, Yulli is a real little soldier,” Mother said. “In Warsaw he always wears a sword to the park, and he's great friends with Capt. Vrushin.”

This was almost as bad as saying I was sickly. But realizing that we were here to gain the release of Mr. Rokief, for whose arrest I may possibly have been responsible, I began to nod my head. Then, remembering that I wasn't supposed to have understood what Mother had said, I changed the nod to scratching the top of my head and assumed my blank look. But having released my grip on the bottom of the chair seat, I found myself sliding forward again.

I grabbed for the seat again, but even with both hands back under the seat, I could not check my slide. In a moment I was standing once more, the sound of my shoes against the floor echoing through the large room.

“Stop fidgeting, dear,” Mother said. Then she smiled at the colonel. She said something to him that I couldn't understand, but I would have bet that it had something to do with my alleged inability to sit still. The colonel smiled at me. It was actually a very kind smile, and I found myself wishing that he wasn't a Russian. Then he opened a drawer in his desk and produced a brass military button with the same red star with the hammer and sickle on it that Capt. Vrushin had given me. This time I had no qualms about stepping forward and accepting it. My mother and I were on a mission, which I did not want to jeopardize.

“Say thank you,” Mother prompted, just as I was in the process of doing exactly that.

Now I had my choice of either climbing back up on my chair, knee first, a rather awkward procedure to be carrying out under the gaze of my adult companions, or performing a single, well-executed backwards hop. I chose the latter, but, alas, missed the crown of the slippery seat, which I knew would eventually cause me to slide back down to the floor. I slid down, landing as quietly as I could to try one more, better directed hop.

“Stop that,” Mother whispered out of the side of her mouth. But the colonel, I could see, was watching the two of us closely. “He does this to annoy me,” Mother said to the commissar.

“He is a boy,” Col. Bawatchov said, smiling at me. “I have two boys, one is Yulli's age.” Then he signaled me with his finger to step towards the desk again. From the drawer he produced a pocket knife. It wasn't new. Its sides were wood, stained brown and worn with handling. The two blades, one large, one small, had little grooves in them where you hooked your thumbnail in order to open them. I had seen Grandfather's coachman, Adam, do that so he could peel an apple for me.

As I reached across the desk to take the knife from his hand, the colonel surprised me by not releasing his grip. “Nosh,” he said, pronouncing the Russian word for knife, as we each held one end.

“Nosh,” I repeated.

With his other hand, the colonel pointed to his chest. “Moi nosh,” he said.

“The colonel said, my knife,” Mother said.

“Moi nosh,” I said after him, pointing to my own chest and not acknowledging Mother.

Now the colonel pointed the finger at me. “Tvoi nosh,” he said.

“Da, moi nosh,” I said quickly, before Mother could interfere, pointing to my own chest again.

The colonel laughed and released the knife. “Haroshy malchyk,” he said, which I knew meant nice boy or something like that, but didn't let on. Mother looked pleased.

Earlier that very same year I had been permitted my first knife, the little hunting knife that I would wear to the park. I had not been allowed to unsheathe it without Kiki's supervision, and I had had little actual application for the instrument. I certainly would not have been permitted to peel an apple or an orange. But its very presence, hanging there from the button that held my pants to my shirt on my left side, had been my badge of maturity until Lolek had preempted it as he left for the war.

I fully expected the same rules of deployment to be applied to this weapon, but its presence in my pocket—no, the very fact that it had been entrusted to me—was a symbol of my manhood. Taking the knife from Col. Bawatchov, I noticed that most of the third and fourth fingers on his left hand were missing. That was like Adam, who had a piece of a finger missing as well. I wondered whether I was being sent a message.

With the knife secure now in my hand, I stood to attention and said, “Thank you, Colonel,” in Polish. Military men, even in opposing armies, I knew, were respectful of one another's rank.

“Haroschi malchik,” the Colonel repeated. I, of course knew what it meant, but pretended ignorance. I would have liked to examine the knife, but I thought it more appropriate to pocket it and returned to my seat. This time, my hop landed me at the back of the seat, where the slope was towards the white-and-gold chair back.

I could see the shape of the knife outlined through the material over my left thigh. It was just exactly the length of the spread of my hand, thumb to pinky. I could visualize myself opening the two blades and feeling their sharpness against my thumb, as I had seen Adam do. Then he had stroked it up and down on the side of his boot. My eyes wandered to the
colonel's boots by the fireplace and I wondered whether this had been his own, personal knife. I wondered whether I should tell Fredek about it or let him discover its shape in my pocket while I acted as though it were nothing.

Then the young officer came back into the room carrying a file. He handed it to the colonel who put on a pair of rimless glasses and began leafing through it. He pronounced names under his breath. “Aha, Roman Rokief,” he finally said. After studying several pages he looked up at Mother. “It's nothing,” he said. Then he said some more things that I didn't understand and assured her that Mr. Rokief would be released by the end of the day.

Thanking him warmly, Mother stood up to shake hands. I wiggled forward and then slid to the floor, landing quite silently. But the colonel, using both hands, waved us back to our seats.

“You are a very intelligent woman, Comrade Barbara,” he said, “tell me, how do the Poles like us?”

“As you know,” Mother said, smiling, “my little mother is Russian. She's from Moscow. I love Russian people.”

“But the others. How do they feel about us? I give orders, you know, to be very courteous. We are very kind to children.”

“I have seen great courtesy from some of your soldiers, Comrade Colonel. Captain Vrushin has been particularly kind.”

I could tell that Mother was trying not to tell the colonel anything that might make him angry. The colonel, too, must have sensed that Mother was holding back. He didn't say anything and there was now a silence.