Dobryd (2 page)

“What are you scared of, you old fool?” the soldiers teased him. “They're people just like you and me. You take good care of them for a few days and you'll see how well they'll look. Now come on, give us a hand.”

The farmer stumbled backwards seeking a way out. The soldiers raised their guns and he turned to follow them.

Three of the survivors were carried inside. When they were settled, one of the soldiers stayed behind to guard them, and our cart moved on.

Soon we stopped in front of another farmhouse. Two soldiers gave their orders and we waited while the people inside prepared our beds. Yuri, my friend, came over to us. He lifted me out and sat me down in the grass. Then he turned towards the old woman whom I had been taught to call Grandmother during the months in the loft. She lay motionless in his arms, as she had been throughout the ride. Yuri looked at her closely. It was hard to see anything in the dark. He called to his friend who came over with a flashlight. They shone it on her face. I could see that her eyes were open, yet she looked as if she were asleep. Before the light went out I saw the soldier close her eyes and put her back into the wagon.

I was too tired to question them. I felt myself carried inside and put to bed. I fell asleep, warm and comfortable. I was in a real bed for the first time that I could remember. For a moment I thought of Grandmother, and I wondered why they had left her outside alone in the cart. I decided I would wait till morning to ask my mother about it.

The next day there was no sign of Grandmother, and I forgot all about her. New experiences and pleasures closed out everything else. Yesterday's events were already part of a half-remembered nightmare.

III

It was decided that we would remain in the village until the Russians were ready to advance.

The Germans were retreating. Small bands of them, cut off from the main line of retreat, still roamed the countryside making the roads impassable and dangerous. Alone, we would never make it back to our home in Dobryd. After such a long absence, my mother and my aunt resigned themselves to waiting out the last few weeks of war a few kilometres from their home.

My cousin Alexander was no longer with us. This was the only painful event that I experienced during the first weeks of freedom. As soon as he had recovered his strength he decided to join a local band of partisans and fight the Germans. My aunt and my mother pleaded with him not to go. The war was almost over. The Germans were already defeated. Why should he now risk the life that they had saved against such odds?

Alex heard them out, but there was nothing they could say to change his mind. He had always wanted to fight. He had remained in the loft only because of our need for him.

Now that we were free and protected he could at last do what he had so often talked about. He was eighteen, burning with the need for revenge, and so he left us. We missed him terribly. Yet so much was happening to me during those first weeks of freedom that I was never sad for long. I had no idea that he was in danger and so it was easy to think of other things.

War still raged around us, but miraculously the village that sheltered us remained untouched and seemingly unconcerned. We awoke each morning to the crowing of roosters and the distant firing of artillery shells. The peasants went through their morning chores. The animals waited to be fed. The repetitive pattern of farm life continued, unaltered from one day to the next, as it had from generation to generation, so that it had acquired the permanence of nature itself.

Danger seemed unlikely in this setting. Each day I felt safer and more secure. After a while it seemed to me that my own life was part of the peaceful, rooted existence of the village. I discarded the past as eagerly as I took to my new life.

Now the outside world was within reach. The room I slept in, the yard out front, the neighbouring houses, the trees, the animals and the sky were all unquestionably real. I began to think of my months in the loft as a story that had happened to someone else. Everything in me turned towards the new world, the real world, as a plant bends towards the sun.

I suppose the world in which I found shelter did not really exist, at least not in the way that I perceived it.

These same peasants who under Russian orders fed us from supplies hoarded with the reflex of their forefathers, who fussed over us with home remedies and peasant potions, would have considered it a fine amusement two months earlier to turn us over to the Germans and watch our execution. Our presence among them was only another load in an already burdened existence. They sheltered us when they had to, or if it were profitable. Otherwise they would turn us out with no remorse. Centuries of occupation and maltreatment had developed in them the capacity for flexible neutrality; they satisfied their masters, whoever they might be, and at the same time they continued to survive and to outlast them.

I had no suspicion of this at the time. While my mother and my aunt remained unmoved by the reverence and attention which they received from our hosts, I was completely won over. I liked the old couple, Djunek and Marisia, but most of all I liked their daughter, Kazia. They, of course, realized what a natural ally they had in me and made the most of it. They fussed over me, exaggerated my qualities, showered me with endearments, and I repaid them with utter devotion. My family's attempts at restraint were hopeless. With a child's typical hedonism in the face of pleasure I would not allow any criticism of my new friends.

One day Kazia called me into her room. “I have a surprise for you,” she said. As I held back, considering for a moment whether the word surprise meant something pleasant or unpleasant, Kazia came over and picked me up. We went into her room. I noticed a photograph of her husband, in uniform, smiling at us. She put me down on the bed, piled so high with quilts that I sank into it as into deep water.

She got down on her knees and pulled out a box from beneath the bed. I took it from her and looked inside. There was a doll that Kazia had made from bits of cloth and stuffed with straw. She had two braids, as I did, and a cheerful smile had been embroidered on her face.

“Do you like it? Take it. I made it for you. It's yours to keep. Forever. There's only one thing you have to do. You must promise to tell Kazia everything that she asks you.” I promised eagerly.

“All right. Did you ever see your mother or your aunt putting anything in the ground? Think hard for a moment. This is very important.”

I did as Kazia told me, but there was nothing for me to remember. I shook my head.

“Did you ever hear them talk of hiding anything? No? But it's not possible. They must have put it somewhere. You see little one, I know who your grandfather was. His estate was not too far from this village. He and his family must have buried all kinds of treasures. Try again. Promise me if it ever comes to you, you'll come right away and tell me. Kazia will be very good to you. I'll make more dolls and I'll make you pretty clothes for them.”

At that moment I still loved Kazia. I would have done anything to please her, without a second thought for my mother's warnings. But I had never heard of any buried treasure. There was nothing I could tell.

She finally released me, with my new doll, and I never mentioned the incident to my mother. From then on, however, I was uncomfortable in her presence. I was afraid that she might press me again for information, and still I would have nothing to tell her. I dreaded the thought of disappointing her and from then on I tried to avoid being alone with Kazia.

IV

My days in the village were so different from what had preceded them that it often seemed to me as if my real life began at the moment of liberation. It pleased me to think I had been born into the world at the age of five in this farmhouse. Like the newborn, I was quick to forget my previous existence.

The first few days were very simple and alike. I was too weak to do more than rest and eat and sleep. But even then, at the very beginning, each new day began as a strange adventure in discovery. Every morning, as I lay under a light eiderdown cover, surrounded by unfamiliar sounds and odours, I gave myself over to the pleasures of anticipation. Everything seemed possible in those moments, and I was content to let the waiting go on forever. The mood of those mornings set a pattern for the future: in the years to come the feeling of anticipation became more pleasurable for me than its realization.

My first explorations began with food. The taste of food alone, food other than the bread or potatoes that had kept me alive in the loft, provided me with more stimulus than I could cope with at the start.

The first morning, Marisia, the old woman, brought me some fresh milk fortified by a raw egg. The mixture looked strange to me, and the odour made me feel faint, but I was so eager to begin my new life that I gulped it down quickly. The result was disastrous. Suddenly I was ill and vomiting, and it took hours for the attack to subside.

The violence of this beginning frightened the adults. As I lay weak and dizzy I heard them whispering about me. It was decided that I would have to be introduced to food as slowly as a baby. But I had no time for such procedures. I was impatient and greedy. Not so much for food itself but for what it represented to me—the richness and variety of my new life. I was propelled towards it by a powerful force that was set in motion the first time I stepped outside the world of the barn.

With food, there was soon the added pleasure of being able to stand upright. In our hiding place I had spent most of my time lying down or sitting. Our little loft was not very high and the eight of us, when we stretched out, filled it completely. Most of the time we had also been too weak to move around. Now I discovered the freedom of having space to move in.

The idea of endless space fascinated me. At first the main room of the house, where I remained most of the day, seemed to me infinite. Often, I explored its vastness with my eyes closed. Whenever my mother caught me doing this she became very annoyed with me. I could not make her understand the pleasure I found in the extended distances I created for myself by coming upon physical limits unexpectedly.

Once the interior became familiar and finite I ventured outside. At first it frightened me to go out of the house. Somehow it seemed to me a shameful exposure. But my desire to continue this adventure proved to be stronger than my timidity. My mother warned me not to wander away. I had to remain within sight of the house, but this did not restrict my pleasure. In any case, I don't think I would have dared to go farther than the familiar landmarks of the farmyard.

When the weather was fine I stayed outside as much as I could. I was alone most of the time. The villagers avoided us through superstition. They had not yet made up their minds whether we would bring bad or good luck to the village. This was no trivial matter to them and they were not taking any chances. Sometimes I would feel that I was being stared at. Faces would appear, and disappear quickly when I looked in their direction.

Every day the children of the village would run past the house. But their curiosity was always restrained by the warnings their parents gave about strangers. They never failed, as they ran by, to shout insults and curses. For them these were spells to ward off the evil eye, but I began to wonder if indeed there was not something evil in our presence in this calm landscape.

One afternoon a man came to see us. He had a little girl with him. He was our first civilian visitor. Once he had worked in my grandfather's stables and somehow he was not bound by the fears of the other villagers. He came, he said, to pay his respects to my mother and my aunt. While they talked, his daughter and I stared at each other. We were told to go outside and play, but both of us preferred to stay with the familiar.

This was the closest I had ever come to another child. I stared at her with such intensity that she became uneasy and hid in her father's arms. Throughout the entire visit we never said a word to each other.

When it was time for them to leave the man leaned over my aunt and kissed her hand. He repeated this gesture with my mother. Then he turned to his daughter and asked her to do the same. I watched with fascination as she obeyed.

During these farewells I noticed that my mother and my aunt suddenly looked different. The presence of this man, a brief reminder of the past, had greatly affected them. A forgotten sense of pride seemed to have straightened their bodies and rearranged their shabby clothes.

Instinctively I adopted their pose. I felt my body stretching and becoming taller. I turned to the little girl and held out my hand. For a moment she hesitated, and then she imitated her father. The grownups smiled at us. From that moment on I felt more comfortable about my presence in the village. Now when the children rushed by our yard I stared at them openly. Their insults no longer meant anything to me.

Other thoughts held my interest. I found myself preoccupied by what seemed to me endless views of continuous space. Where did they begin or end, I wondered. What lay beyond these fields, these woods, at the point where details blurred on the horizon?

The village of Ochorna stood on a hilltop. Below it stretched the farmers' fields, subdivided by tall poplars. The wooden houses, leaning close together, formed a humble circle around the village church. I had never been near the church, but I could see its spire from our yard. It was the tallest structure in the village. I often tried to imagine how the land would look from such a height. In the distance I saw the bell tower of the next village. I visualized long rows of tall spires marching away from me to some unknown point. At other times I saw them as masts of ships, while the hills on which they stood became rolling waves, without beginning or end.

The more I thought about it the surer I became that this house, this yard, the animals, I and the people around me, were all at the very centre of the world. I promised myself that one day I would explore all the directions that radiated from me.