Wartime Lies (3 page)

Very tall, very straight, always dressed in black, with a mustache that was still black and white hair cut short in the “porcupine” style then favored by Polish gentry, my grandfather had a way of opening a world of infinite possibilities. His daughter Tania was his favorite; in her eyes, he was the paragon of men. On a word from him, she would bend consecrated rules governing my schedule and manners. As for my cautious, methodical and tender father, in his heart of hearts he thought of his father-in-law as a sort of benevolent centaur. In fact, the old gentleman was happier in the saddle than on the ground. Fondness for the myth (it was my father’s habit to think of people closest to him as characters out of books, so that my grandmother, preoccupied with confitures and jams, was for him Countess Shcherbatskaya, and Bern, egging Tania on to some indiscretion, Rodolphe) and family
piety eased the acceptance of my grandfather’s very personal notions of hygiene in our modern and scientific household. My father was confiding his little Maciek to Chiron.

So it happened that, as soon as I was allowed to go out of the house again, grandfather introduced me to the delights of
miód
, a Polish liquor made of honey and thought by him to possess unique restorative properties. His carriage would wait before the gate. We would climb in, he reclining in the vast black leather seat, bareheaded (which was against the custom), a yellow cigarette in the corner of his mouth, and I on the box. Jan cracked his whip, and we would roll along to the first of my grandfather’s favorite drinking cellars. He was of the view that
miód
could not be properly enjoyed elsewhere, certainly not in a café, that the steamy air of a good cellar, rich with odors of food, pickles and beer, in itself cleared one’s lungs, and that his treatment was already working. He would order a carafe of
miód
and two glasses and pour a thimbleful for me. The idea was that we shared the work: I drank a sip and he took care of his glass and what was left in the carafe. There was another part of the deal: we ate two pairs of steamed sausages, work again being divided so that I ate one sausage while my grandfather polished off three. He showed me that both
miód
and steamed sausages went down faster if accompanied by horseradish—the red kind, mixed with beets, for me, and pure white, which made one’s eyes water, for him. In the second and third cellars our system was the same, except that sometimes he would take herring and vodka for himself. In such a case, I could
have a hard, honey-flavored cake to dip in my glass of
miód
.

As I was indeed becoming stronger and hardly coughed anymore, grandfather kept his promise about teaching me to drive. Tania was invited to come along: he called her his second-best pupil; I was to be the best. As soon as we left T. and reached one of the straight, long, white country roads, with fields of harvested rye and wheat stretching out on either side to distant lines of trees, Jan would rein in the horses, give a few turns to the brake crank, and Tania would climb on the box beside me. Then grandfather jumped on as well, told Jan to check the harness and get in the back, handed the reins to Tania, and released the brake. Tania touched the horses with the whip, and we would travel along at a clattering trot, my grandfather commenting on the smartness of the start and the length of the horses’ gait. Finally, it was my turn. Grandfather seated me between his legs, Tania flushed and happy from the exercise was still beside us, and the horses were settling down to a walk. The secret, grandfather would say, as he handed the reins to me, was to keep the horses awake. But once the reins were in my hands, the pair usually stopped after a few steps. Jan would join in the general hilarity, then call out to the horses; they would start at a satisfactory pace while my grandfather showed me how to keep the reins off the horses’ backs, how one’s hands had to be steady and how one must never, never take one’s eyes off the road ahead. When we reached a crossroad or a village, it was time for a lesson in turning the horses or stopping. Sometimes, we bought freshly laid eggs or
white cow cheese from a peasant woman in a village. She would cross herself at the sight of me driving the carriage and wish us God’s blessings.

T
HE
holidays were over. The season of rains was beginning. Grandmother wanted to use the last few days before their departure to set our house in proper order. She bought new clothes for Zosia, whom she called her big grandchild, inspected Tania’s furs, had a long conference with Tania about Bern and also about the cook and the cook’s dispendious ways with veal and finally turned to putting up preserves. The jams and compotes had been done directly after Yom Kippur; now was the time for pickling cucumbers and preparing sauerkraut.

Grandmother’s views on these subjects were firm. She tolerated neither shortcuts nor excess in spices. Tranquil-faced, with long skirts that almost touched the floor, she was installed in an armchair at our kitchen table. I was in her lap. The cabbage had already been sliced and waited in white enamel vats to be salted, sprinkled with peppercorns and bay leaves, and, last of all, pressed. This was the moment I waited for. The cook heaped the cabbage into wooden barrels, layer by layer, and then Zosia and the chambermaid, because this was the task for the youngest and prettiest, hiked up their skirts above the knees, climbed in, and trod the mixture with bare feet to squeeze out the water. I often saw women’s thighs in the dignified setting of our beach, but these bodies were different from Tania’s and her friends’. Watching them, I felt a mixture of oppression and elation, as I did when Zosia let me caress
her face and neck. My grandmother, whose powers of observation seldom flagged, said that I was a little rascal, that soon I would sell my grandmother and Tania for a good pair of legs, that I was the image of my grandfather, only more sly.

In fact, Tania resembled her father, and photographs of my mother showed the same almost angular features, the same tense and erect bearing. My grandmother had been known as a beauty, but she was all roundness, different from her daughters. Her once-black hair, now completely silver, washed only in rainwater to preserve its rich color, was worn in a large bun. She had large, languid brown eyes. Her nose was small and perfectly formed; a small red mouth that had never been touched by lipstick was set in a gentle, slightly suffering smile. She wore heavy necklaces, bracelets and rings, with which I was allowed to play under her supervision. In spite of her attractions, my grandfather had been irrepressibly and indiscreetly unfaithful, his activities extending beyond the normal Cracow nightlife world to peasants on his property and, during a terrifying interval that preceded my uncle’s death, to my mother’s and Tania’s university friends. My grandmother did not pretend to be uninformed. She did not make scenes and she did not forgive. She was bitter, dignified and frequently sick. Her liver, kidneys and heart were fragile in ways that only my father fully understood. Toward Tania, she was moody and demanding. She did not wish Tania to forget that her having remained unmarried was a bitter disappointment. Secretly, however, Tania’s not finding a husband suited my grandmother: it meant she could devote her life to my father and me.
Grandmother did not blame my father for my mother’s death and considered him the worthiest of husbands and fathers. She would have liked him to marry Tania, according to tradition, but could she wish such a fate for that good man? Tania was her father’s daughter, which in itself said plenty, and, to make matters worse, she was an intellectual, her mother thought. My grandmother was not very intelligent; intelligence, even if it was Tania’s, made her nervous.

My grandfather used our last days together to train me in two new pursuits: jumping over fires and throwing a jackknife. Zosia played an important part in the fire game. Under grandfather’s direction, she and I made piles of raspberry bush cuttings and dry flower stalks, carefully arranged in a straight line within a jump’s distance. My grandfather lit the piles: on his signal, Zosia and I, holding hands, would jump or run over them and collapse breathless in each other’s arms when we had finished. My grandfather waited till the flames were high. Then, having given me a hand salute, he would leap into flame after flame, emerging unscathed and triumphant.

We played with the jackknife sedately and alone. My grandfather wanted me to treat knives with the seriousness they deserved. He would draw a square in the dirt with the point and then small circles within the square. We stood a couple of paces away from the square, legs slightly apart and well balanced, and took turns throwing grandfather’s heavy, much-used jackknife so as to make it land upright as close as possible to the center of each circle.

I would jump over fires with my grandfather during
three more autumns; the game resumed with other companions, after the Warsaw uprising, in the frozen fields of the Mazowsze. By then, violent death was stalking him. But in that golden fall of 1937, while grandmother saw to the packing of their trunks and fussed over the train schedule, I was his hope, the little man to whom he was teaching all his secrets, the heir to his farms and forests and broken dreams.

I
BEGAN
to eat better. My father said such improvement often followed a long fever. New tastes appealed to me. Grandmother made little toasts in the kitchen fireplace, holding the bread over the fire with long tongs. On the toast she put a duck or chicken liver grilled by the same method. When she and grandfather returned to Cracow, Zosia took over. She would laugh and feel me for fat, like a hen at the market, as she prepared the fourth or fifth liver of the morning. My father thought it best to have my progress verified. We went to Lwów, the nearest university city, to consult a lung specialist. He wore a beard, a pince-nez and a green eyeshade. When I asked him whether he liked me, which was then my opening conversational move with strangers, he begged Tania to remind me that children were not to be heard except when replying to a grown-up’s question. The professor’s stethoscope was very cold, the auscultation interminable; then Tania and I were asked to step into the waiting room while my father received his colleague’s opinion. He emerged from the consultation room radiant. According to the great man, my lungs were clear but I behaved like
a spoiled girl. I should be in the fresh air as much as possible. It would make my head as clear as my lungs. In consequence, my father required that the daily schedule be changed. So long as the weather continued sunny and dry, I would go sledding with Zosia every morning. Reading, piano lessons and such like could wait until the afternoon. A season of enchantment began. On the other side of T., beyond the railroad station, was a hill sloping to the riverbank. A horse-drawn sleigh took Zosia and me and our sled there every morning and came back at noon to fetch us. We slid from the highest point, down the steepest slope, at first Zosia steering and I lying on top of her. Then she taught me to steer by leaning or dragging my boot on the snow, and she helped only if we were headed into a clump of trees. We were alone; older children had classes, and the hillside was too distant for nurses who had to pull their charges behind them. Zosia said this was our kingdom; I was the king and she the queen. We made snowmen and brought gilded paper crowns to put on their heads.

Tania and my father were gratified by the results: I looked sturdier and I was growing. I stopped talking about the giant and after one story from Tania was prepared to say good-night and close my eyes. Exercise and good food alone were not responsible for this particular improvement. Since my fever fell, and my father no longer thought it necessary to look in on me in the night to listen to my breathing, Zosia had told me that I could sleep in her bed. She was sure that no giant would think of looking for me there. Therefore, as soon as Tania had
given me the last of her sleep-well kisses, I would tiptoe into Zosia’s room. She would be laughing or growling giant noises until I slipped under her huge goose feather bed. Our old agreements still held: I could play with her hair and touch her on the face and on the neck. I could also put my arms around her, and she would caress me until I fell asleep. Then if I thought the giant might come, I would quickly awaken her. She would be all warm and wet from sleep, often her nightshirt had worked its way up, and when she pressed me against her I felt her naked legs, her stomach. She would talk to me very softly: giants and mean dwarfs were cowards. They might pick on a little boy all alone. But I was a big boy now, and, with her, I would never be alone. I would tell her I was still afraid and tug at her shirt so that as much of me as possible was right next to her, inside her smell and warmth. She would laugh. I was a little rascal and had to learn to behave, but in the meantime she would tickle me until I was quite sure the giant was not coming that night, and this worked so well that she agreed that, from then on, as soon as I came into her bed, she would pull up her shirt or let me creep under it, and I could touch her as much as I wished if I promised never, never to tickle her, even though she could tickle me as much as she liked. We honored this pact. Often, after she had fallen asleep, I stayed very quiet, with my eyes closed, and passed my hands over her breasts and her stomach. Her naked buttocks were pressed against my legs. My heart beat very fast; then I too would fall asleep. And, though the fear is still vivid in my memory when I think of the door to my
father’s study and the porcelain stove beside it, the giant has never returned in my dreams again.

T
HE
next March the Anschluss took place. My father listened to the BBC news explaining names and places. The fabric of his youth was unraveling. Hitler on Kärntner-strasse! Paradoxically, my father canceled the cruise that was to have taken Tania, him and me to the Mediterranean that summer. He said it was no time to be so far from home. Tania and he argued. She told him it was precisely the time to leave Poland, while it was still possible; there was talk that one could get visas for Australia and Brazil. My father said that was all right for the grandparents and her; they could even have me with them for a while, and I could return to T. when everybody felt calm again. But his place, his duty, were in Poland. Tania said he was a fool. How could he imagine my grandfather in Australia at the head of the family? If we were going abroad we needed him.