Mother and Me (51 page)

That, I could go along with. I moved into Mother's tracks where the going was easier. But we were on the slope now, and the footing was slippery. We were making little headway.

Mother seemed to be having much more trouble than I was. Instead of pushing her legs through the light snow, she kept trying to lift her feet up over it and then slamming them down. I saw her stagger a few times as she slipped on the icy footing. Finally she lost her footing altogether and sat down hard in a cloud of snow. I realized she no longer had her bag.

“Do you want me to go back to get your bag?” I asked. I didn't get an answer.

“I'll hurry,” I assured her.

“I said, no!” Mother shouted.

Instinctively I looked back at the guard again. He was still walking away from us, and I saw he must have opened the wine bottle because he now had it raised to his lips.

“We have to go on,” Mother said, to my relief. Now she got to her hands and knees and began crawling up the hill on all fours.

I didn't have to do that. I remembered climbing snowy hills with Kiki last winter and turned my toes out to grip with the sides of my feet. But Mother was making better headway than I was, so I had little choice but to drop to my knees and follow her example. There were tree stumps under the snow, making the footing more difficult.

We kept crawling up the slope. I understood that if we reached a certain height before the guard turned around, he wouldn't be as likely to see us.

Mother wasn't crawling as fast as I could have. I could hear her labored breathing. I kept looking over my shoulder at the guard, still with his back to us.

Then suddenly my right arm sank into a bottomless hole, stopping only when my face pressed against the packed snow. I tried to pull it out, but something, there under the snow, held it. Terror gripped me.

“What is it?” Mother asked in alarm, turning back towards me. I realized that I had begun to cry.

“I can't get my arm out!” I said, my face buried in snow. “Something's grabbed me!”

“Shshsh,” Mother said, “I'm coming.”

“Hurry!” I was suddenly covered in sweat. “It's pulling me down.”

“It's not pulling you down. Be quiet.”

I clenched my teeth. Mother reached down into the snow and pulled up on my sleeve. I felt my arm release. As the fear dissipated, I felt the space filling with shame.

“There's a crust under the snow here, and your hand broke through,” Mother explained unnecessarily. “Just put your elbows down so that your weight is on your whole forearm, and come on.” She turned and started up the hill again. Deeply humiliated, I followed.

Crawling with her elbows on the snow, Mother's behind, in its big black skirt, stuck up in the air, wiggling back and forth as she crawled. It looked, I decided, like a giant ball of Kiki's yarn. I spread my own knees apart so as not to offer a similar silhouette.

I looked down at the road to see if the guard had heard us. I saw him turn and begin walking back towards us. “The soldier is walking back towards us,” I said, making sure there was no alarm in my tone.

“Don't worry about him,” Mother shot back. “Just climb.”

I wondered why we shouldn't worry. Would the wine make him so drunk that he wouldn't be able to see us or shoot at us? Was it poisoned wine, maybe? We were only about a quarter of the way up the mountain. Looking down at the guard again, I could see him walking his post still apparently oblivious of our presence.

After a while Mother stopped. “We have to … rest,” she said, out of breath. She lay down in the snow. “Lie down. It'll … make it harder … for anyone to see us.”

I lay down, though I didn't need to rest. I could feel my heart beating a little faster, but I was certainly not out of breath like my mother. I had been walking all over Lvow with Mademoiselle while Mother had been sitting around cafes, smoking cigarettes.

Now below us I could see a long sleigh, like a farm wagon on runners, pulled by two horses, following along the route our sleigh had traveled. It was filled with soldiers.

“Look, there are more soldiers coming” I said. “I think they're going to change the guard.”

“Damn!” Mother said. “Keep your head down,” she ordered sharply. “Don't move.”

I didn't need to be told that. I made myself as flat as possible, the side of my face against the snow, the way Kiki's brother had done on the battlefield in the last war. I could no longer see the sleigh and hoped that it meant that the soldiers couldn't see me either.

“Damn, they're changing the guard,” Mother whispered, which was just what I had said. Of course, it also meant that she wasn't really keeping her head down the way she had told me to.

“All right, we have to be very careful now. There's a new guard—don't let him see you,” Mother said after some time. “We have to crawl the rest of the way on our stomachs. And don't make any noise.”

I had practiced this in our Warsaw apartment, crawling along the floor between chair legs, the way Kiki's brother had crawled from trench to trench under the barbed wire. I kept the side of my face down almost to the snow, turned my feet out so that my heels wouldn't stick up, and followed Mother.

But she didn't seem to know about turning your feet out, and the heels of her boots bobbed up and down in front of me.

“Put your heels down,” I said in a loud whisper.

“Shshsh, be quiet,” Mother whispered back. She hadn't put her face down sideways either, and I could see the top of her head in its wool hat.

“Turn your toes out so your feet lie flat and put your face down on its side,” I said, speaking with the authority of experience.

“Hush!” Mother said.

I let it go—we were nearing the top anyway.

The ground wasn't as steep anymore. “Yulek,” Mother said, “when I give the signal, we're going to stand up and run as fast as we can into the woods. I know how fast you can run.”

This was undoubtedly an untruth—Mother had never seen me run. And it was very unlikely that Kiki had reported the results of the races we had had on the beach when I had beaten her. What was more likely was that Mother was just trying to make me want to demonstrate my speed and run faster—which, of course, was totally unnecessary in view of the circumstances. Besides which, she hadn't even said what the signal to run was actually going to be.

For a few minutes Mother lay very still, breathing hard. I knew what she was doing—she was resting up for the sprint to the top. I could have done it without resting. Finally I saw Mother rise to all fours. “Now!” she whispered, straightening to a crouched position and running up the hill. I followed and beat her to the top. In a moment Mother was hugging a tree for support at the top of the hill, trying to catch her breath again. I stood clear of any tree, my hands on my hips. Actually, I did have to take some deep breaths, but I managed to do it through my nose so you couldn't notice.

I heard strange gasps from Mother and realized she was trying to laugh while she gulped air. She slid down the tree trunk, sinking slowly to her knees, and finally sat down. “Yulek,” she said, “we're out of Poland. Do you realize that? We've escaped the damned Bolsheviks!”

Mother was looking down at the guard now, the new guard, who hadn't had any wine to drink, who was looking up at us. He had probably noticed us when we had made that last dash, and was now standing in the snow, a few feet from the road with his hands on his hips. Mother got to her feet again and, putting her thumb between her index and middle finger, gave him what we called a “fig,” a gesture of derision that I was never allowed to make. The soldier didn't respond, but at that distance he probably could not distinguish the gesture. Mother sank to her knees again, laughing.

I pressed my heels together and, standing at attention, put two fingers up to the imaginary visor of my hat in the Polish military salute to the enemy soldier whom we had beaten.

“What are you doing?” Mother demanded. “Are you saluting that Bolshevik swine?”

I didn't understand Mother's anger. These were not Germans, whom we all hated. Mother had liked Col. Bawatchov and Capt. Vrushin, and she had even talked nicely to the soldiers on the train. For all we knew, the soldier down below was one of the ones who had been on the train with us. “I was saluting Poland,” I said, not wanting to create problems.

“Poland,” Mother repeated. I detected a little sneer in her voice. “That Polish peasant betrayed us. He took my money and promised to carry you. Then he dumps us into the snow and leaves us there to die.”

“I was perfectly able to climb the hill by myself.” I did not want to continue that subject.

“We're not there yet. There's a long walk ahead of us. And where is that coward Max? Where is Max right now, please tell me?”

I was thinking now of the way Mother had been last night, telling me about when she had been a little girl and about God.

“He's back in a café in Lvow,” she said, I suppose answering her own question. Then she began to laugh. But it wasn't
a fun laugh. “He's sitting there at Molenski's telling everyone that we've either been shot or arrested. And they're all saying, ‘That crazy Barbara. Serves her right.'”

For some reason, the idea of Mr. Koppleman sitting in a café and telling everyone that we had been shot or arrested, didn't make me laugh as much as it made me aware of the serious nature of what we were doing—this wasn't looking for spies with Fredek.

“All right,” Mother said, a bit of the laugh still in her voice, “now we have to go find that stream. When we do, we'll have some lunch and a drink of cold, clear mountain water.”

Lunch sounded good. “How are we going to find the stream?” I asked, seeing no indication of where even to look.

“Yulian, where does water always flow?”

I couldn't tell whether this was an admonition over something I should have learned and racked my brains for an answer.

“Hmmm? Which direction does water always flow in? You know.” By the tone of her voice, I now knew this was a friendly question, but I still had no clue. Then I had the answer. “Downhill!” I said. “Water always flows downhill. So it must be down there somewhere, doesn't it!” I pointed down the wooded slope.

“That's exactly right! So now we get to go downhill. And when we get to Budapest, we will have a hot bath and a soft warm bed, and eat anything you want.”

“Will we be in Budapest tonight?”

“Probably not tonight. We have to find the village first.”

“Right, follow the stream to the village.”

“Follow the stream to the village! Come on.”

As we started into the woods, I saw that Mother was crying.

Going down was only a little less steep than it had been coming up, except that we did have the trees to hold on to. Mother ran with mincing steps, stopping herself against each tree. I found that locking my knees I could slide from tree to tree. At one point I missed my tree and found myself gathering speed. I passed Mother and was heading straight for a log lying across my path.

Instinctively I sat down. I continued sliding, but at a more controlled pace. I raised both feet and was able to cushion my stop against the log.

“That's a good idea,” Mother said behind me, holding on to a tree. She sat down too and, holding her skirt around her legs, soon joined me against the log. She laughed. “This is fun,” she said. I knew that Mother would much rather have been sitting in a café with a cigarette, but I recognized her good intentions.

I peered into the twilight under the trees for the bottom of the hill and our stream, but could see neither. What if Yanek had lied about the stream as well?

Mother got to her knees, crawled over the log, and sat down on the other side. “Here we go!” she said gaily. Wiggling a little in the snow, she began to move downhill again. Not wanting to wiggle my rear the way she did, I pushed myself off against the log. Bumping our way from tree to tree, we continued down the hill.

Then I saw Mother raise her arm over her head and point somewhere to our left. Looking where she pointed, I could now see jagged sheets of ice and crusted snow that I realized must mark our stream. Coming from somewhere above us on our left, it paralleled our track on a slightly convergent course. On the other side of the stream, the ground rose again, and I had the feeling that we were sliding into the vortex of a giant funnel.

Suddenly, Mother's downward progress stopped with a jolt and a cry of pain in front of me. I lay down on my side,
perpendicular to our path, to avoid crashing into her with my boots. I began to roll, slid on my back, head down, and finally came to rest grabbing a low-hanging tree limb.

Mother was a few yards above me now, her left foot sticking out from under the branch of a fallen tree.

“My leg is stuck under this damned log,” she said.

I worked my way back to where she was. “Can't you pull it out?” I asked.