Once Is Not Enough (30 page)

“Why didn’t that man come along for you?”

“He did. His name is Jesus.”

Then they left the gazebo, and they never spoke about love again. As the summer drew to an end, Sister Thérèse changed the plans about the Warsaw trip. “We must arrange for you to go to England. . . .”

“When?”

“Immediately. I have written to Uncle Otto in London about you. Today I received an answer. He and Tante Bosha will be delighted to have you stay with them while you audition for the Sadlers Wells.”

Karla tried to put her off. “Not for a while. Next year perhaps.”

But Sister Thérèse was insistent. “You must make your plans to leave in ten days. Here is your plane ticket to London.”

Karla stared at the ticket Sister Thérèse had placed in her hand. She shook her head. “No . . . no . . . I don’t want to go.”

“Karla, you must listen to me. War is just seconds away. Germany has signed the nonaggression pact with Russia. Von Ribbentrop went to Moscow last week. Why do you think I said you must not go to Warsaw? You will only be safe in London.”

“But what about you? If it is so dangerous . . . why are you staying?”

“I am protected. I am in the church. Even in wars, the church is not molested. God will protect me. Jesus watches over us all.”

“Then let Him watch over me.”

“No. You have your own calling.”

The following day there were no classes as all the students and teachers huddled around the radio and listened to the news that Hitler had served notice on England and France that Germany wanted Danzig and the Polish Corridor. There was talk . . . groups huddled together—how would war affect the ballet? But the following day all the students were back to their bar work and rehearsals went on as usual. But reality and fear hit the Prasinski Ballet on August 31, when Hitler offered Poland sixteen conditions of peace and Poland rejected the terms. Suddenly there was frenzied activity at Prasinski. Classes ended. Suitcases were dragged out. Instructors tried to get train reservations to get back to their homes. That night everyone gathered in nervous little groups, whispering together. Students who had to part to return to homes in distant cities sat together, their arms around each other, openly professing their love. Karla sat alone and thought about Sister Thérèse. What was she doing? Praying with the other nuns? Was she thinking about her?

The following morning at dawn, without any formal notice of war, Germany invaded Poland. Students no longer waited
for proper trains. They left on foot. They sat at railroad stations waiting for any train. Karla was fortunate. She managed to get a lift from a milk farmer who had land near her parents.

When she finally reached the farm, she found her parents sitting in front of the radio in a somnambulistic stupor. Their sons had left the university to join the army . . . everything they had worked for was gone. Karla had never read newspapers, but now she went to the village to buy the daily paper. She read about things she couldn’t understand. She suddenly realized she knew so little about anything other than ballet. She knew all about Nijinsky—his wife, his manager, his instructors. But she knew nothing of the world she lived in. She had been aware of the peril of Hitler . . . but the full impact of war had never permeated the Prasinski Ballet.

Now the most important moments were the broadcasts from Radio Warsaw—listening to it sign on with the first few notes of the Chopin Polonaise in A Major. When she learned German mechanized units had reached the outskirts of the capital and had opened fire on Warsaw, she knew it was time to leave. She must get to London and Uncle Otto. She packed her bag, kissed her parents goodbye, and walked the two miles to the convent to tell Sister Thérèse.

When she arrived, Sister Thérèse was sitting at the radio, fingering her rosary, her eyes staring into space. All night she had tried to get through to her parents in Warsaw, but the lines were down. When she saw Natalia’s bag and heard she planned to go to London, she shook her head with a sad smile. “It is too late for that. No planes . . . no trains . . . no more ballet . . . the dream has ended.”

Secretly, Karla was relieved that she would not have to leave Wilno and Sister Thérèse. For the next week she alternated between visiting the convent and sitting with her mother and father at the farm, listening to the radio. The radio became a way of life. Her family couldn’t get through to their relatives in Bialystok . . . obviously they had fled. The escape route was through Rumania. In the village a mass exodus had begun. A constant flow of people carrying bundles, bits of valuable furniture, and even some livestock, were trying to make their way to Rumania. The Polish army was fighting valiantly, but
on the seventeenth of September the Russians began to invade from the east. Andrzej told his wife and daughter to seek refuge at the convent. Maria, fear turning the blue eyes glassy in her round weather-beaten face, refused to leave her husband and their land. But she insisted Karla must go. She stared at the girl as if seeing her for the first time. “You are tall . . . you will be a strong beautiful woman. Go to the convent. Even the Russians will not harm the church.”

Somehow Karla knew it was the end of the only life she had known. These two strangers were her parents . . . yet she didn’t know them. She clung to them, but they barely responded. They stood like petrified images of people. They did not know how to give affection . . . or to accept it. They raised their children because they were there. They farmed the barren land because it was there. And now the two sons had vanished from the university . . . and with them went all hope of any tomorrow. Nothing was left but the land.

Sister Thérèse welcomed Karla into the convent. As people fled they left their dogs, cats and even baby lambs on the street. Each day Karla went out and collected the homeless animals. She took them all into the convent. But as the days passed and the Russians drew closer, the Mother Superior said they must be turned out. They were running low on supplies themselves . . . they were God’s creatures, she claimed, and the Lord would take care of them. Karla had pleaded . . . she had grown to love the kittens and the dogs. She begged to be allowed to keep the smallest, but the Mother Superior was adamant. Another nun collected them and turned them out. When Sister Thérèse came to her room, she found Karla sobbing. She looked up and shouted, “I am never going to love anyone . . . not even an animal. It hurts too much when it’s taken away from you.”

Sister Thérèse stroked her hair. “Love the Lord. He will never desert you or be taken away from you. He will be with you throughout eternity.”

“He’ll never leave me?”

“Never. This life is just something to get through as well as we can. But it is only the preparation for the real world—the life we have after death—when we go to Him.”

“Perhaps I could become a nun,” Karla suggested.

Sister Thérèse looked at the girl seriously. “It is too big a decision to make in such a short time. I do not feel you have the calling. You are coming to this decision from fear. But pray to Him . . . ask Him to show you the way.”

And so Karla spent the long days with the Sisters, ate with them, and went to early Mass and evening Chapel with them while the Polish army fought on. After nineteen days of unbelievable resistance to the bombardment of Germany’s superior forces, the battered and heroic defenders of Warsaw surrendered to the Germans. Until the last hour, Radio Warsaw continued to identify itself with the first three notes of the Polonaise.

A few days later several Russian officers arrived at the convent and informed them that they were now living in Russian-occupied territory. Schools were closed, and the remaining citizens were notified that an immediate Sovietization of the Russian occupied areas had begun. Tales began to trickle into the convent of midnight arrests by the Soviet officers. At first they were made on the charge of subversiveness to the new government. By September 30, President Moxcicki had crossed the border into Rumania with the entire government, and the exiles formed a provisional government in exile in Paris.

General Sikorsky, also in exile, acted through some high-ranking Polish officers who had remained in the country, and gradually the Polish Underground began. It was a ground swell that grew larger and larger despite cruel and barbaric reprisals. It became known as the Polish home army—A
RMIA
K
RAJOWS
, whispered among the Poles as the A.K.

No one bothered the nuns, but for safety’s sake, after hearing rumors of rape by drunken army privates, the Mother Superior allowed Karla to wear the habit. Each weekend Karla drove the battered convent car to her parents’ farm and brought them any news that she heard. And she would return to the convent with fresh eggs, which her parents insisted she give to the Sisters. The Soviets had reopened elementary and secondary schools. Nuns were no longer allowed to teach, and the Polish universities at Lwow and Wilno were transformed into centers designated to convert the population to the Soviet
order. Although the convents and churches were not desecrated, religion was frowned upon.

One weekend, just before Christmas, she drove to the farm, just as her mother and father were being herded into a jeep by two Russian officers. She was wearing her nun’s habit and was about to rush to them, but her mother merely nodded and said distantly, “Hello, Sister. Take the eggs for the convent. They are in the kitchen.” She started toward them, but the fear in her father’s eyes also shot her a warning not to speak. The Russian soldiers ignored her, made some jokes among themselves about the ugly black habit, and drove away in the jeep with her parents. She felt helpless. But if she rushed after them and declared they were her parents . . . then what? Be taken off with them and shipped to a labor camp.

She drove back to the convent, and as she got out of the car, she noticed a good-looking young Russian officer turn to stare at her on the street. She rushed inside and bolted the door, and that night when she looked at herself in the small bathroom mirror she realized that although the coif hid her hair, it only served to make her prominent cheekbones and large eyes more effective. She stared at herself from every angle. Yes . . . she was beautiful . . . not petitely beautiful like Sister Thérèse . . . but the way the Russian officer had stared . . . she knew a man would find her desirable. But she was now serious about becoming a nun, and in her daily prayers she asked guidance and pleaded for the Lord to make her love Him more and Sister Thérèse less. But as arrests grew more frequent, her days became too busy for daydreams about Sister Thérèse. Half of the chapel had now been converted into bed-space for the children found wandering in the streets . . . children whose parents had been taken off in the night. And the library which had been the Mother Superior’s office held cribs with five infants. Mothers who knew they were being taken away hid their children in closets and warned them against crying out. They often bundled up their infants and hid them in the yard, praying a more fortunate neighbor would care for them. The neighbors invariably brought them to the convent. And as the days passed, more children streamed into the convents. People who had been arrested as “political” prisoners
were now arrested for being nothing other than Poles and were forced into slave labor.

As the stories of rape grew, women began to wear thick glasses to make themselves unattractive to the Russian soldiers. Some carried a handkerchief and a small penknife. If a soldier approached, they cut their finger and let the fresh blood stain the handkerchief. Then if the soldier reached for them, they’d pretend to cough into the handkerchief, show the fresh blood, and say “Tuberculosis.” It was an effective ruse, and it forced many soldiers into an abrupt change of mind.

Both Sister Thérèse and Karla had acquired thick glasses brought to them by the children. They came with their pitiful possessions. A lock of the mother’s hair . . . the father’s glasses . . . the family Bible.

Winter came early the year of 1939. By October there was snow on the ground, and when dusk came they could hear the soldiers singing songs of their homeland. But when they were drunk, their songs were raucous and often they loitered near the convent. Many nuns grew frightened, but Sister Thérèse would constantly remind them, “They are God’s children too. It is a war between countries . . . not
people
. Remember, they are in a strange land . . . away from their loved ones. Conquerors can be the loneliest of all.”

A few weeks later, Karla was in the children’s dormitory, hearing the children’s prayers. She was about to turn out the lights when she heard the thundering noise downstairs at the front door of the convent. The children began to scream when they heard the sounds of Russian voices and heavy boots. She quickly put on her thick glasses and commanded the children to be quiet. She slipped out of the dormitory and tiptoed down the stairs. The sight in the reception room turned her rigid with terror. A surge of nausea ripped through her, and she clamped her hand over her mouth to kill the scream that started in her throat. She wanted to run, but she was paralyzed as she clung to the wall in the safe darkness. She wanted to cover her eyes but her horror held her transfixed.

The Mother Superior was naked. She had always seemed such a powerful and domineering figure as she marched into Chapel, shrouded in the thick black habit with the massive
silver cross hanging down her ample front. But stripped of her habit, she had diminished into a skinny old woman, with long flat hanging breasts, blue-veined legs, a quivering object of ridicule to the drunken soldiers who laughed every time they glanced her way. She stood huddled in a corner, praying, as the Russian soldiers boisterously and methodically raped all the other nuns who were lying nude on the floor, their helpless arms and legs flapping under the weight of their merciless captors.

And then Karla saw Sister Thérèse. Blood was smeared between her thighs as one Russian got off her. Another picked her up by the neck and kissed her violently. Then his mouth began to ravage her body, beginning at the breasts as he chewed away on each of them, his dirty fingers groping between her legs. While he was enjoying himself, slobbering down her body, another soldier approached her from the back, spread her buttocks apart and rammed into her. At the same moment, the soldier in front opened his pants and also rammed into her. Karla couldn’t believe it—two men tearing at her insides . . . one from the front . . . one inside her back! Mercifully, Sister Thérèse passed out.