The Mascot (41 page)

T
he following morning my father and I stood on the concourse at the Riga railway station. “This is where I always arrived when I came to Riga,” my father said, “and that's where the limousine was waiting the time Kulis took me to Uncle.”

He pointed at the entrance that we had just passed through. “I marched across here ahead of Kulis as if I were in command. People passing by stopped and stared at me, a boy of no more than seven or eight by that time, in my uniform with jodhpurs and knee-high polished boots. Some civilians even applauded me and, of course, soldiers on the concourse saluted me.” My father beamed broadly to himself, caught up in his recollection.

Suddenly he snapped out of it. “Come on,” he said. “We've got to find the train.”

The train would take us to Carnikava, where we hoped to find the Dzenises' dacha, or holiday house, still standing. My father had only his memory to go by.

“Once we're on the platform of Carnikava station,” he said confidently, “I'll know the way like the back of my hand. After all, Auntie and I would make the journey from Riga almost every weekend when I was with the Dzenis family.”

While my father went to find out train times and buy our tickets, I waited on the concourse. It was nothing like the gleaming airport, its drabness alleviated only by a solitary flower stall. My father soon reappeared waving two tickets in the air. “I got them
so
cheap,” he said proudly, as if he'd been involved in barter for them. The express was a series of dilapidated carriages drawn by an ancient engine, which at that moment let out a whistle to indicate its imminent departure. The train began to groan and move slowly forward.

“Hurry,” my father shouted above the din. He grabbed me by the arm and dragged me on board.

I had dozed off and, on waking, found myself confused about where I was. I caught sight of my father's face reflected in the windowpane of the train car. Whatever he was looking at, judging by the delicate and considered smile on his face, it seemed to give him much pleasure. Suddenly the reflection of his eyes met mine and instantly I sensed his shyness at having been observed unawares. He gave me a comical and slightly wry look, but it was as if a veil had suddenly descended over his true mood.

The couple of hours spent in the train en route to Carnikava were a welcome respite from the hectic schedule of our journey across Europe thus far. I was exhausted and must have have dozed off a second time, for the next thing I recalled hearing at the edge of my consciousness was “Carnikava” over and over. It turned out to be the conductor's voice echoing loudly over the loudspeaker. It brought me to with a start. My father was already preparing to leave the carriage. He climbed across me and began to make his way down the aisle.

After the train ground to a stop, I joined my father on the deserted platform. Nobody else had disembarked.

“So what do we do now?” I asked, watching the rear of the train as it pulled away. “Find somebody who can give us directions to the house?”

“What on earth for?” My father was astounded by my suggestion. “I can remember the way.” With that, he tightened his grip on his case and strode confidently toward the station exit.

I hovered beside my father and quietly watched as, hand held to cheek, he turned in all directions, getting his bearings. Suddenly a cloud seemed to lift as his face broke into a broad smile.

“This was the shortcut we always took,” he declared and strode down a narrow track barely discernible in the tall grass. I hurried after him as he disappeared from sight. Less than a minute later, on a bend in the path, my father stopped.

“Lost your way already?” I asked.

“Of course not!” he said dismissively. “Somewhere around here we should come to a fork in the path that joins up again farther on. Auntie and I would each take a different path and race to see who'd get to the other end first. Auntie would take off her shoes and count down, ‘Three, two, one!' Then she'd make a great show of waiting before whispering ‘Go!' and off I'd run.

“I always got there ahead of Auntie, who'd arrive breathless from running and laughing. We'd both sit in the grass, trying to get our breath back. Then Auntie would present me with a sweet or a chocolate, usually from Laima. ‘To the champion, Corporal Uldis Kurzemnieks,' she'd declare seriously.”

“So even Auntie thought of you as a soldier?” I asked.

My father thought for several moments. “Yes and no,” he said. “She was always respectful. She didn't make fun of me being a soldier like some people did. As if I were an oddity, like a toy soldier.”

“A small boy in an SS uniform would strike most people as pretty odd,” I said. “Didn't you feel strange yourself?”

“I knew it was an SS uniform, but I didn't understand what that meant. I simply thought of it as a soldier's uniform and I was proud of that. But going back to Auntie, I know she also didn't like me in the uniform. On a couple of occasions I overheard her and Uncle discussing it. Auntie said that it wasn't right for a child to wear such a hideous outfit. She said I should be allowed to be a child. I remember from the sound of Uncle's voice that he seemed to agree with her, but he warned her not to say such things in front of other people.”

My father moved on. Not fifty yards ahead he came to an abrupt halt and turned to look at me. “I told you it was here,” he called out excitedly.

The main path led directly ahead, but branching off to the left was a narrow trail overgrown with grass and weeds and barely visible. It looked as if nobody had used it since my father as a young boy.

“Do you want to race me now, Dad?” I joked. In fact, I was half-serious about my suggestion. I sensed within my father the exuberance of the young boy as he raced along the path, and I was keen to share this happy experience with him. He laughed gleefully but then gently dismissed my idea, saying, “Nah. Too old for that now, son.”

We found the point where the two paths rejoined, just as he had predicted. He smiled proudly at me, seeming to want recognition or even approval for the veracity of his memory. I did not hesitate.

“Your memory…” I said, shaking my head in amazement. My father had kept this path somewhere in his mind for over fifty years.

He strode away into the waist-high grass. A short distance on, he pointed off to the left. “Beyond that field,” he said, “is a stream where Auntie sometimes let me play. Carnikava is close now.”

He headed off to the right, with me trailing behind, until finally we came out onto an unpaved road. “The house is over there,” my father said, “behind those trees.” We passed several seemingly deserted houses and entered a wood.

Through the thin wall of trees, a house, a square two-story edifice guarded by iron gates and a stone wall, came into view. “Carnikava!” my father exclaimed. He moved forward and rattled the gates. “Locked!” He looked crestfallen.

My father was still gripping the bars when suddenly we were startled by a voice from behind us. We both spun around at the same time. An elderly man in overalls stood before us. As tiny as a dwarf, he was bald and had no teeth, judging by his toothless smile.

“What do you want here?” he demanded, a touch imperiously.

“We've come from Australia,” my father replied, in his friendly, casual way.

“Is that so?” The man was unimpressed.

“Did you know the people who lived here during the war?” my father asked.

The old man eyed us both suspiciously for a moment before deciding to continue to speak to us. “Only by sight. From Riga, they were. There were three daughters—didn't see much of them. Then the war came…”

“There were no other children?”

The man shook his head. Then something occurred to him. “No, I'm wrong,” he said. “There was a boy who suddenly appeared in their midst during the war.” The old man laughed to himself.

“He was quite a sight, getting about in a soldier's uniform. An SS uniform, in fact. The family must have had some important connections because many of their guests, too, were officers from the SS, coming and going in their fancy cars. I've no idea what became of them, though.”

“They emigrated to Australia,” my father replied.

“That so?” the man said warily. “You knew the family?”

My father nodded and then began to pace up and down in front of the barred gates like a caged tiger, staring in at the house. “Who owns the place now?” he asked.

The Dzenises' holiday home in Carnikava, outside Riga, where my father spent some happy days in 1943.

“No idea. It's been empty for years.”

“How can we get in?” My father looked at the man with a pleading expression.

The man rubbed the back of his neck and then walked away from us, indicating that we should follow him. About fifty yards along the stone wall, we came to a narrow section of the fence that had collapsed.

“Welcome to Carnikava!” the old chap cackled.

My father and I climbed through, gingerly navigating the pile of broken rocks. My father glanced at me and then called back to the man, “Thank you, sir!”

“For what?” I frowned.

“Not quite sure yet,” he answered.

The house loomed before us like an enormous frog.

“How did Uncle get this place?” I asked.

“From Lacplesis. A reward for bravery. For fighting for Latvian independence against the Bolsheviks, the Soviet occupiers.” But my father wasn't even remotely interested, at this moment, in the history of Latvia.

I remained at some distance from the house and let my father approach it by himself. He circled it cautiously, as if at any moment it might lash out and snatch him in its jaws. When my father finally reached its facade, he tentatively stretched out his arm until it came to rest on the wall. He stood there silently for several moments, as if communing with the entire house. Then he began to move, one hand still touching the wall of the house, as if he were somehow placating it so that he could safely close in on his memories.

Farther along he came to a window placed high in the wall. He pulled a handkerchief from his trouser pocket and began to rub vigorously at the pane, but he was unable to break up the thick, encrusted dirt. Annoyed, he turned his back on the house and walked away from it.

As he approached me, it was not difficult to see the mixture of anxiety and impatience contorting his features. “How could they let the place get so run-down!” he exclaimed to himself in a disgusted tone. With an almost childlike directness, he added petulantly, “I want to get inside. Where'd that old guy get to? He might be able to show us a secret way.”

The man had disappeared as suddenly as he had first appeared. My father scratched his head, looking in all directions before giving me a bewildered shrug and joining me where I'd now positioned myself—on the steps in front of the building's entrance.

“They used to lock me inside sometimes,” he reminisced. “It was my fault. I'd be rebellious and try to run away, but I'd never get any farther than the beach down that track over there.” He pointed to a path that ran alongside the property.

“I loved the seashore,” my father said, “as long as I didn't have to go in the water. As I said before, the first time I ever saw the sea was at Carnikava, and I was awed by its power.

“I'd practice doing handstands in the sand,” he said, taking a seat beside me on the steps. “Most of all I loved walking along the beach hunting for amber. It used to wash up on the Baltic shoreline like common seashells. I'd collect it in my pockets and, before I'd head back to Carnikava, I'd divide it up: half in one pocket for Auntie and the other half I'd wrap in my hankie and hide in my other pocket. That half was for my escape. I figured that if I ever got away from the Latvians, I'd have to bribe people—the police and ships' captains and the like—to get me to another country. I always hoped it was America, even though I didn't know where America was. I just thought of it as paradise—sunny and warm with happy, smiling people in nice clothes.”

My father looked around for several moments before he spoke again. “Remember me telling you about the film they made about me?” he said.