It was too early for supper, when we came out of the embassy, and Mother suggested that we walk back, instead of taking a bus. The exercise would do us both good. We walked leisurely past stores, offices, and restaurants, looking in display windows. “Would you like to see me wearing that on my head?” Mother suddenly asked, pointing to an outrageous feathered entity on a stand in a hatter’s window. Kiki and I had used to laugh at hats that we considered outlandish, both in store windows and on women’s heads, and Mother’s keying into this familiar game gave me a very warm feeling. I found myself laughing, and Mother laughed with me.
The next window held office equipment, and I pointed to a calculator, with its long handle and rows of buttons, and asked, “Would you like to see me wearing
that
on my head?” and we both laughed again. Then we were both looking for something else to make a joke about, until Mother pointed to a plate of simulated meat and vegetables in a restaurant display. “Now Yulian, you must eat every one of your vegetables before you can get up from the table,” she said, in a mockery of her own stern tone.
Mother had never done that before. She had never made fun of her own self, and now she had just lifted the entire weight that I had been carrying, right off my shoulders. Suddenly, I was laughing and happy, as I could not remember having been before. Suddenly, I was feeling about my mother as I had never felt about her before. Impulsively, I took Mother’s hand, and we both stepped, with long strides, around the restaurant’s railed sidewalk seating area. Except that the sight of the food display had made me hungry. It was the first time I had felt hunger for quite a while.
Suddenly, we heard a woman’s voice shouting in the unmistakable, sibilant, clipped tone of the Polish language. I remember recognizing the tone before comprehending the words. And those were, “Mrs. Basia! Mrs. Beautiful Basia!”
I turned immediately toward the caller, dropping Mother’s hand in the process. Mother didn’t turn immediately. She stood there for a moment, as though deciding whether it was she being addressed.
A woman was standing at one of the tables, waving her hand, and repeating the exclamation. “Mrs. Basia! Mrs. Beautiful Basia from Warsaw!” A man was sitting at the table with her.
Mother turned slowly to face the woman. She shaded her eyes from the sun, with her hand. Then, hesitantly, almost reluctantly, she began to walk back, towards the restaurant.
“Fela,” the woman prompted, “Fela Brodnik and my husband Bolek from Marszalkowska Street,
please missus
.” She used the awkward, formal form of address as, we approached. She was older than Mother and much heavier, with graying dark hair. The couple had drinks on the glass-topped table.
Mother’s face turned into a smile. “Of course, Mrs. Brodnik. Missus was a friend of Christina Pjasienski, am I right?”
They were shaking hands at this point. “Yes, but poor Christina is still in Warsaw. . . .if she’s alive at all.”
Mother’s face changed instantly. “So many people have been lost,” she said.
“But we’ve heard of what missus did,” the man said, “carrying your son on your back, over the Carpathian Mountains.”
Mother had, certainly, not carried me. Mother couldn’t even lift me. But I had heard our story distorted in that direction before.
“The whole Polish community, here in Rio, knows about what missus did,” the woman said. “We were all hoping that one of us would run into missus, and we did. So many Polish people come to Rio.”
“We hope to be in America soon,” Mother said.
“Missus has a visa?”
“Yes, I have a friend with the Polish embassy in Washington. But we’re waiting for an entry permit.”
“Missus is fortunate.”
“Michael Kwapiszewsi—maybe missus knows him. He’s from Warsaw.”
“I know the name, please missus,” the man said. “But missus has had such an adventure.”
“Life under the Bolsheviks was unbearable,” Mother said. “They were so cruel. But, fortunately, they were also stupid.”
“We were in Belgrade when it all began,” the man said. He looked older than his wife.
“We knew something was going to happen, please missus, and, when Bolek had to go to Belgrade on business, I insisted on going with him,” the woman said.
“But, please missus, missus should sit down,” her husband said.
“Yes, please missus,” the woman said. “Please, please.”
“Well, only for a moment. It’s late, and my son must have his supper.”
“What is your son’s name?” Mr. Brodnik asked.
“He is Yulian. Shake hands with Mr. Brodnik, Yulian.”
I shook hands with the man, as Mother sat down. Then I walked around to the empty chair and sat down as well. I hoped we would end up eating something here, instead of at the hotel, particularly now that my appetite seemed to be back.
“Missus must tell us her story,” the man said, “but first, how about a small vodka?”
“No, no. No thank you, mister.”
“A sherry, perhaps?”
“No, please mister, nothing thank you.”
“Some hot chocolate for the boy?”
“Yes, he would like that.”
Hot chocolate probably meant that we wouldn’t be eating supper here, but I liked hot chocolate. Mr. Brodnik called the waiter over and ordered one for me. “Now, please missus, from the beginning.” He pulled his chair a little closer to the table. “A cigarette?”
Mother took a cigarette from the pack he offered and let Mr. Brodnik light it for her. “Well, I was in Durnoval,” she began, “with my sister-in-law, Edna Tishman and
her
sister-in-law, Paula Herbstein—perhaps mister and missus know them—and their two children, when the Bolsheviks came, and we were living in a hovel, sleeping on the floor, standing in long lines to buy food, the children with legs like matchsticks and sick all the time. We, mothers, couldn’t bear to look at them.”
Mother had left out the fact that Sonia’s governess, Miss Bronia was with us as well, and that it was Miss Bronia who did all the cooking and the sewing, and took care of me when I was upset about my separation from Kiki. I knew that Mother hadn’t forgotten about Miss Bronia, but that her story sounded better if it looked as though she and my aunts did everything. She had also said that we were in Durnoval when the Russians came, which wasn’t true either, since we were on the farm at that time and didn’t get to Durnoval until a few days later, but that was all right, since it didn’t make any difference to the story except simplify the telling of it.
And I also understood Mother’s not correcting Mr. Brodnik when he thought Mother had carried me on her back, over the mountains. That was just the way Mother was.
Mother went on to tell about the commissar who, she laughingly said, fell in love with her and offered to marry her and teach her to drive a tractor on his parents’ collective farm, which Mr. and Mrs. Brodnik laughed at a little, as well, and then about the hired guide who was supposed to carry me over the mountain, but abandoned us. She did not, specifically, say that she carried me, which was probably because I was sitting there, but neither did she say anything to suggest that she didn’t. She also said that I fell into the stream, and she had to pull me out, which was totally untrue as well, but she had told it that way so many times, that she probably believed it. I turned my attention to counting the iron pipes that held the awning over our heads and noticing how they were joined together so that the awning could be retracted.
Then a man whom the Brodniks knew, but mother didn’t, stopped by, and Mrs. Brodnik told him that this was Beautiful Basia from Warsaw, who had escaped from the Bolsheviks, on foot, over the Carpathian Mountains that February and was just in the middle of telling her story.
The man said that, yes, he had heard about the escape and was so glad to meet Mother in person, and wanted to hear her story. He pulled up a chair from another table, and sat down to listen. He was a small man, older than the Brodniks, with a large head of gray hair that needed a barber, thick, gray eyebrows, and stained fingertips. The fingers on his left hand were yellow from cigarettes; the ones on his right were stained black. He had on a very old brown suit that someone had mended, and he kept shrugging his shoulders, as though he were cold and trying to wrap the jacket around himself. His stained fingers kept drumming on the table. The longer that he sat there, the faster the drumming became until, finally, after listening for only a few minutes, he got up, explained that he had to go, kissed the ladies’ hands, and left.
Mrs. Brodnik explained that he had been a journalist in Poland, but, not knowing Portuguese, he had only been able to get a job as a printer’s assistant here in Rio. He earned very little money, and his wife had hanged herself in the stairwell of their apartment building a few months earlier. I felt terrible sadness for the poor man and for his dead wife and wondered whether she had hanged herself because she didn’t want to live in poverty or whether she did it so that he wouldn’t have to share his small salary with her. I didn’t know which I should hope for it to have been. If it was the first, she had done something very selfish and very cruel to her husband. If it was the second, then it was so terribly, terribly noble and sad.
I shuddered at the thought, and Mrs. Brodnik said, “Oh, the boy is cold,” which wasn’t true. “Bolek, give him your jacket.”
Mr. Brodnik stood up immediately and removed his jacket.
“I. . . am n. . . ot c. . . old,” I protested. I didn’t like the idea of wearing the man’s jacket.
“Put it over his shoulders,” Mrs. Brodnik instructed, and her husband draped it over me. I really, really didn’t like wearing his jacket, even just draped over my shoulders. I didn’t know why. I wouldn’t have minded wearing Irenka’s jacket, but I realized that I wouldn’t have liked Sr. Segiera’s jacket or Andre’s either. I tucked my elbows close to my sides to make as little contact with the material as possible.
Mother had finished telling her story, but the Brodniks had questions. “The boy needs something to eat,” Mrs. Brodnik then said.
“Yes,” Mr. Brodnik agreed and called the waiter over. He ordered me a ham sandwich.
“Can he eat a ham sandwich, please missus?” Mrs. Brodnik asked Mother, and Mother told her that I liked ham.
I wondered whether the Brodniks knew we were Jewish. Would they be so nice to us if they knew? I recalled hearing a conversation between Kiki and my cousin Fredek’s governess, in which Fredek’s governess said about somebody, “But he isn’t Polish—he’s a Jew.” Then I wasn’t really Polish either. Jewish was a religion, like Catholicism, not a nationality. Kiki had been Catholic
and
Polish, but I was just Jewish. So in America, I wouldn’t be American either, but just Jewish—exactly the same as I was now.
Then the waiter brought me the ham sandwich, but I wasn’t hungry anymore.
I worked at the sandwich, because I didn’t want to hurt Mr. Brodnik’s feelings, while Mother was still answering the Brodniks’ questions, and the Brodniks were telling Mother who, of her Warsaw acquaintances, might be in Rio. Then Mrs. Brodnik asked Mother if she could come back in two days and tell the story all over again to the other Polish people in Rio. She would get the word out tomorrow, and anyone who wanted to hear it would come to this restaurant, which was also a café and a regular meeting place for Polish people.
Mother said she would be happy to, and they agreed on a time. Mother made me thank Mr. Brodnik for the use of his jacket and for the sandwich, and we walked back to our hotel.
I didn’t want to go back to the restaurant/café with Mother, two days later, but she said that I had to. The walk would be good for my appetite. And she also said that it was perfectly all right for me to speak among the Polish people. Back in Portugal, Mother had told me that I should speak as little as possible, when we were with other people, supposedly so I wouldn’t say anything that might alert any German spies to our presence. We had been told by a man from the Polish embassy in Budapest that the Nazis did not want us to reach America, where Mother planned to write her book. But I knew that the real reason that Mother did not want me to speak in front of other people was because of my stammer. And the real reason why she said it was all right for me to speak in front of the Polish people was because my stammer was going to be a part of her story.
So I went and saw fourteen people, including the Brodniks, sitting around some tables that had been pushed together, and all the people stood up and applauded as we walked into the café area.
Mother hugged some of the people, she cried a few times, laughed once, and both laughed and cried at the same time once. All this took some time, and I suddenly felt a pair of woman’s arms around my neck. Turning around, I found myself looking up at a woman I did not recognize.
“Little
Yulechek
,” she said, using the extreme diminutive of my name, “you don’t remember me, do you?”
“N. . . o, p. . . lease m. . . issus,” I said.
“You and your governess came to our apartment, one time when our little grandson, Yanechek was staying with us, and you played t. . . .t. . . .” Suddenly she was crying. She hugged me tight to her large chest, having to bend over to do so.
I understood that something must have happened to her grandson, in the war, or maybe she just didn’t know what had become of him, and this was terribly sad, and I wished there was something I could say to comfort her. I raised up on tiptoe so that, at least, she wouldn’t have to bend as far.