Authors: Ann Charney
A piece of flimsy white material found in the rubble of a nearby building became another of our special treasures. We did not know where it came from. Possibly it had once been a part of someone's white tulle curtains. It became to us our magic mantle. When any one of us carried it we felt ourselves invested with the presence of the people and the events we re-enacted through our games.
One of our favourite games originated in an event portrayed in the photographs. It was a wedding party on the point of leaving church after the ceremony. We knew little of what this meant but we understood that it was a celebration of some kind. Lacking precise details we recreated our own version of this event with immense pleasure. Our bit of tulle became a bridal veil. Around it we created a sequence of events which became increasingly elaborate and complex. After a time we began to have difficulty in remembering all the steps required in the rites we ourselves had invented.
Unlike ordinary children we did not parody reality. Somehow we had an enormous need to forget it. Instead of recreating the roles of adults as we saw them, we preferred fantasy and invention. Yet there was little to encourage us in that direction. We had to rely totally on our own resources, and these seemed to bloom in response to our needs. Our times together were filled with rich and inventive games that I recall, even now, with pleasure.
From that time on, fantasy-playing became an essential daily routine of my life. When my friends were not around I carried on by myself. I never thought of it as an escape or a substitute for the sad drabness of our life. For me it was part of the reality of our life, just as much as my visits to the marketplace or the stories my aunt told me about the past.
I grew up thinking that all children spent their free time in this way, participating vigorously in an imaginary world that was as vivid as anything that they actually experienced. It came as a great surprise to me in later years to discover how different other people's childhoods had been.
PART THREE
I
Life inside our flat was beginning to change. Inevitably, like everyone around us, my family was making its adjustments to the world in which we lived. Their behaviour acquired a semblance of conformity, and I was relieved that we were no longer avoided as we had been in the army camp. For the time being, the past which separated my mother and aunt from other survivors had been successfully camouflaged.
I began to notice a change in them. While I had been totally occupied with exploring the world of children, games, the streets, the marketplace, they had returned to life. I suddenly realized that not only could I become like other children but they too were beginning to resemble, more and more each day, other “normal” adults.
Now when we walked together through the streets of Dobryd, they were indistinguishable from other passers-by. Like everyone else they wore drab army-surplus clothes. Their hair was long, braided and twisted around their heads in thick coronets. Their bodies were no longer skeletal, but filled out and rounded like my own. Their anonymity was further enhanced by the fact that the post-war population of Dobryd was almost entirely new. People did not talk easily about their former lives. Old social and class distinctions had no meaning in this setting. My mother and my aunt were treated by their neighbours with the familiarity of equals, and they in turn were content not to evoke the past in the presence of strangers.
When the three of us were alone, however, it was another matter. Then the present receded like a clever but flimsy backdrop. My mother and my aunt abandoned their ordinary, everyday masks worn for outsiders, and became different people. With my aunt as guide, I was led away from the familiar, in another direction: towards the past. Not the immediate past which I remembered vaguely, but to a time further back whose distance from the present seemed to me inconceivable.
Slowly, over a period of months, through different, often unrelated stories, I became aware of a remote world, the world that had vanished before my birth. I still continued to live in the present, and in the intervals between my aunt's stories I often forgot about the other world, but somehow I was no longer as satisfied with the present as I had been before the stories began.
Even at that early age, I resented that other world which returned to mock my own. When I grew older, it seemed to me that all my particular problems had their source in this profound gulf between the present and the past, across which I was expected to build a new life. At different times I turned against one and then the other, pretending in turn that they didn't matter, until I felt forced to admit that they did. In any case, in both worlds I always thought of myself as an intruder, an imposter, doomed to live in perpetual exile.
II
It all began innocently enough with my aunt's attempts to amuse and distract me by telling stories whenever I was being difficult or impatient. In no time at all I was addicted, hanging on to her every word, begging her to go on and on.
The first stories are associated in my mind with an unpleasant routine, which makes their content particularly unreal and troubling for me.
The table has been cleared, the kerosene lamp removed from its hook on the wall and placed on the table. A familiar procedure is about to begin, one which I both look forward to and dislike: the light is used to search out the lice in my hair. To take my mind off this activity which I find so tedious, my aunt will amuse me with storytelling.
The only thing that keeps the lice partly under control are these nightly searches. My mother is by now very good at this work. Every time she spots a louse she lowers the lamp and I feel the slight crunch as it is squashed between her thumbnails.
Eventually I become impatient. I don't want to keep still. My head hurts from leaning back. But it's not time for me to get up. The acceptable quota of dead lice for each evening has not been reached. My aunt is called to help out.
She pulls her chair over so that she is sitting facing me, but because of the way I'm sitting, I can't see her face. My eyes are on the ceiling but after a while I get tired of watching the insect colony that thrives up there. I prefer to close my eyes and “see” my aunt's story. Her voice, detached from her face, seems to come from far away. Her stories are never the kind that begin “once upon a time”. They are “real,” but the effect is the same.
Above all, my aunt preferred the stories of her youth. Perhaps like all children I once said to her “Please tell me about when you were a little girl,” and a pattern between us was established.
We have returned to the beginning of this century. She is a young girl again, describing the joys of summer holidays spent in the family's country home:
“I was always sad when summer ended. It seems to me I lived from one summer to the next, wishing the time in between would pass more quickly. Not that I didn't like school in Vienna. The teachers were very nice to me. I had many friends. On Sundays I went to your grandfather's cousin's house, where there were always a lot of young people and parties and dances. Vienna itself was a beautiful, rich city. There was so much to see and do. The one afternoon a week we were allowed to go out on our own seemed all too short.
“None of this compared, however, to the way I felt about our country house. You see, I was born in it, and I could still remember what it was like living there all year around. Your mother was only a baby when your grandfather moved into town for the winters. I was the oldest and I could remember what it had been like. To live in any other place seemed like a cruel banishment to me, and afterwards, whenever I saw the house again, at the beginning of each summer, I felt my exile more deeply than ever. But there was also joy, the joy of coming home after a long absence.
“When we arrived, the servants who lived in the house were already outside waiting for us. As soon as our carriage stopped, a little girl, no bigger than you are now, would come forward to welcome us with bread and salt. I was always the first out and such was my excitement that I had to kiss everyone near me. They would kiss me back with equal enthusiasm.
“In our house there was none of the awkwardness that usually separates servants and masters. It was such a happy household. Some of the younger women had been my playmates when we were children and they felt quite free to tease me about how much I'd grown, what a young lady I'd become, and how my father had better find me a husband before I was an old maid. They, of course, were all married by then, and some had children. These things happened very early in the village. This difference in experience separated us as much as any class differencesâperhaps more so. As married women they belonged to a secret world, and until I was initiated into it there were all sorts of things they couldn't talk about before me. Nevertheless, I still felt as close to them as I used to when we all played together.
“The only person who disapproved of this was your grandmother. As a matter of fact, she objected to a lot of things that were part of our life in the country. She never really felt comfortable away from the city or her relatives. We were the only Jewish landowners in the area and she feared her children were becoming assimilated. Every spring when it was time to prepare for the move she would complain and look for excuses not to go. Your grandfather, I think, was quite capable of leaving her behind for the summer and in the end this always forced her to come along. Once we were there, however, even she softened a bit.
“The house itself was just an ordinary large manor house joined to the village below it by a long avenue of old lime trees. It was its setting and the life we had there that made it so special for me. It stood in the midst of flower gardens, berry bushes, and rows upon rows of fruit trees. The odour that came from these as they flowered was one of the great attractions of living in the house. The beehives behind the orchard produced a honey that tasted like no other I've ever had. I suppose it had something to do with the richness and variety of the blossoms. Beyond these were the woods, where as children we used to play and hide, and where we learned all about picking mushrooms.
“Once a year your great-great aunt from Cracow arrived at our country house to gather certain leaves and herbs that grew in the nearby forest. I remember she never allowed us to go with her on these expeditions. We would try to follow but she always spotted us and made us go back. I don't know what she picked; it was all very mysterious. So were the preparations she made from her pickings. No one ever learned what exactly went into each one. None of us, I suppose, was considered sufficiently gifted to be entrusted with her secret formulas.
“The family treated her as something of a joke. Especially the so-called enlightened members, who despised all local customs and traditions. To them she was a source of embarrassment. Still, she had a great reputation. People came from all over to seek her help and buy her preparations. They certainly worked for her. She remained vigorous and attractive as long as I knew her. Who knows how much longer she could have lived? I remember how she danced with all the young men at your mother's wedding.
“The last time I saw her was the day after you were born. She arrived at your grandfather's house and placed a special necklace around your neck. Baltic amber I think it was, but it wasn't an ordinary necklace of course. Then she was off, without stopping even for a glass of tea. Too many people needed her she said. She was ninety-three when the Germans shot her.
“The necklace? Manya, our seamstress, got it. It wasn't very valuable but she wanted it because it came from your great-great aunt. Peasants like Manya were in great awe of her.
“Where was I? Yes, the house. After a quick run through the garden I would turn to the house. Each room received a short inspection, and the best, my own room, was saved for the last. Then I was in it, and it was just as it had always been, except that the shutters were closed, waiting for me to open them. Beyond lay the richness of the fields, the rooftops of the village, and the mountains. Now I had really come home.
“The days passed quickly, much quicker than in town or at school. What did we do? Let me think. Oh, so many things.
“Well, for one thing, there was all the work that was part of the summer and harvesting. I didn't really have to help but I wanted to. We picked mushrooms, strung them in garlands and hung them up to dry in attic rooms. We gathered baskets full of wild roses for syrups and jams. They seemed to grow more abundantly each year. Then there were berries to pickâred and white currants, gooseberries and blueberries. Some were used for preserves; others were set aside to ferment and eventually were made into liqueurs. The farmers brought us their choicest vegetables, and these too were preserved in glass jars for the winter.
“We were a large family, but over the year we scarcely dented the supplies that were stored at the end of summer in the cellars and pantries. Yet each summer there was the same frantic activity to lay aside more and more preserves. I suppose most of it was habit, but there was also a great generosity in those times. There was always a steady stream of beggars, wanderers and gypsies at our back door who were fed and equipped with supplies. No one was ever turned away empty-handed, and we never went visiting without taking along a basket full of samples from our garden.
“The same useless abundance applied to our linen and undergarments. At some point during our stay, the village seamstress would arrive and move into the house. She would sew all day long, making linens, shifts, towels. There was already enough linen in that house to last us a lifetime. Still, every summer, a new supply was made to fill yet another closet.
“The room where the seamstress worked was usually filled with women, friends of hers who dropped in to keep her company, and some of the servants who wanted to learn from her. There was always a pot of tea brewing, and everyone kept busy working and talking. Whatever the seamstress finished we embroidered with the family's initials, and everything had to be trimmed with the hand-made lace that we all worked on constantly. Downstairs, the servants worked hard plucking geese, preparing the down, and packing it into the huge linen quilts and pillowcases that we sewed upstairs.