“I h. . . ad a v. . . ery g. . . ood time w. . . ith P. . . aolo, M. . . onsieur,” I said. I remembered the secret that Paolo had shared with me. I wondered if the senhor knew about it. Then, for the senhor’s sake, and, in a way, for Paolo’s as well, I pushed on into unknown territory. “I th. . . ink P. . . .aolo is v. . . ery b. . . rave, th. . . e way he d. . . oes th. . . ings with h. . . is wh. . . eelchair, M. . . onsieur,” I said. I had never made that kind of statement about another boy before. It felt grown up.
“Yes, I think so too. But, I think you’re also very brave, the way you struggle with your speech, Julien.”
Nobody, nobody had ever said anything like that to me before. I was very embarrassed. If the senhor was expecting a verbal response, he wasn’t getting any. I was much too confused.
After a minute or two, he said, “You and Paolo could be good friends, you know.”
I wanted to tell him how much I agreed, but I was not about to open my mouth. I nodded my head vigorously, though I wasn’t sure that he saw me.
“Paolo, you know, goes to school, just like you do. It’s not a special school or anything, and the boys play football after school” he went on, “Paolo helps the teacher who’s in charge of the football. Your mother tells me that you’re a very fast runner.”
At his mention of my running, the picture of Gustavo appeared again. I shut my eyes tight, grimaced, and shook my head in an effort to dispel it.
“What’s wrong, Julien?” the senhor asked.
“N. . . othing, M. . . onsieur.”
The senhor seemed satisfied by my answer. “You and Paolo can go fishing in the stream behind his house,” he continued. “Paolo has a fishing pole with a reel to wind the line in, and you could have one of your own too.”
What Sr. Segiera was doing was trying to make me want Mother to marry him. I would live with Paolo and his grandmother, and Mother and Sr. Segiera would come and visit us. I thought that I would like that. I nodded my head and smiled.
“And I’m sure that, after a while, your stutter would go away.”
That was wonderful news.
“It’s all in your mind, you know,” he went on. “You have the power to make it go away, except that you, first, have to find the key to that power. Do you understand what I’m saying? There is something in your mind, something you don’t understand, and I don’t understand, and your mother doesn’t understand, that wants you to stutter, because of something that happened to you in Hungary. But, just as soon as you figure out what that something is, you can tell it to stop. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.”
He laughed as he said the last sentence, and I understood that he was trying to make light of the heavy things he had just said. I made myself laugh as well, to show him that I wasn’t insulted or anything by what he said.
The airport wasn’t anything like what I had imagined. I had seen photographs of paved runways with giant hangars, shiny, metal, multi-engine planes and a “control tower” with a striped “windsock.” This one had none of those, except for the windsock. The windsock flew from a metal pole on the side of a large, green field. At one end there stood a small, wooden hangar with the familiar curved roof and wide doors. There were a few open-cockpit airplanes to one side of the hangar, and then some that were similar to the one in the picture the senhor had given me, standing on the other. One plane was just starting to taxi away, and a man was doing something to the side of one of the others.
Sr. Segiera parked the Chevrolet near some other cars and we started walking towards the airplanes. I was pretty sure I recognized the one in the picture by the shape of its tail. It was a blue airplane. As we passed the man who was doing something to one of the planes, Sr. Segiera stopped to exchange a few words.
I saw what the man was doing. He had a large needle and thread, and he was sewing up the material that covered the side of the airplane. I was surprised—I had thought the airplane would have been all-metal, or, at least, solid wood. Looking more closely at the airplane, I could see its ribs showing as humps through the skin and realized that it must have been covered with fabric all over. I had had no idea that airplanes weren’t built as solidly as cars. It sent a slight shiver up my spine. Suddenly, I wasn’t at all happy about going flying.
When we walked on and approached the blue plane that I had thought was the senhor’s, I had a feeling of dread. The senhor opened the door for me to look inside. It wasn’t at all like the interior of a car. The seats were one in front of the other, and, instead of being upholstered, they were plain metal with cushions that didn’t even look attached. The side windows were of some kind of transparent material that wasn’t glass, because it was flexible and all scratched. And there wasn’t even any steering wheel, only a stick in front of each seat.
The senhor told me to get in the front seat, but not to touch any of the controls. I wished I hadn’t come. As I waited in the cockpit, the senhor walked all around the airplane, checking things. There were oil and gasoline smells in the airplane. Then Sr. Segiera made me pull myself up, while he slipped an extra cushion under me and one behind me, and then began strapping me in. I didn’t like the feeling of being strapped in. In a moment he was sitting behind me, and he pulled the door closed. It didn’t make a solid sound like a car door, but more of a slap, as though it could open again, if you leaned against it. I saw the stick in front of me moving in all four directions, and realized that it must be attached to the one in front of the senhor, and that he must be checking out the controls.
Two men had appeared at the sides of our airplane, holding lines that attached to wood blocks under the wheels. Then the engine started with a terrible noise, and the plane began to shake. ”Here we go,” the senhor yelled above the noise of the engine. I saw the men pull the blocks out from under the wheels. We began to roll forward. I was about to grab a little black handle on my left, but I saw it move, and realized that it was one of the controls. I knew enough not to touch the stick in front of me. I didn’t know what I could hold on to.
We were bumping along on the grass now, and I wasn’t feeling well at all. I had a feeling in my stomach like the one I had had on the ship one windy day. I had almost thrown up that day, but managed to keep it down. Then we were turning, and I saw a long stretch of well-worn grass ahead of us. We stopped and the engine began to roar much louder, and the airplane shook.
With a lurch, we began rolling forward again, but faster than before. We were bouncing along the grass, going faster and faster. And, suddenly, I was vomiting all over my lap and the floor.
The silly thing was that, after Sr. Segiera had slowed the plane down again, and, instead of taking off, we taxied back to the hangar, I didn’t feel sick anymore. Of course, I did feel very embarrassed and angry at myself.
“Don’t worry,” the senhor had assured me, as he sponged me off in the bathroom. “I got sick the first time I flew too. And I was a lot older than you.”
But, we had never even gotten into the air. The senhor had told Mother, earlier that day, that Paolo had actually flown with him and loved it. I doubted that the senhor considered me an adequate companion for his son now, even though he probably didn’t even know that I was Jewish.
CHAPTER XII
When Sr. Segiera brought me home, I could tell by Mother’s tense face and the state of the ashtrays in the room, that things had not been going well in my absence. “I don’t like this,” she said to the senhor. “Don’t ever do this to me again!”
“He is a boy, Basia,” the senhor said. “Boys need to experience these things.”
“He doesn’t need to experience going up in an airplane.”
I noticed that Irenka was not in the room and the door to the bedroom was closed.
“Basia, please be reasonable. I wouldn’t do it if it was dangerous. I’ve brought Paolo up.”
“Because Paolo’s mother is dead.”
“Basia.”
“I don’t want to see you right now.”
“I’ll go home and change and pick you up.”
“I don’t want to see you.”
“Basia, we are expected at the Salazars.”
“I’m not going. Go by yourself. Say that I have a headache.”
“It’s you they want to meet.”
“Me? He’s your supervisor.”
“I told him something of your story, and they want to hear it from you and to meet you.”
Mother sighed. “I have to take a bath. Look at how I look. And I have no idea what to wear.”
“You’ll find something.”
“You think it’s easy?”
“Basia, I know that you’re an artist about your clothes, and you work hard at making the exactly right impression. And when I get back, you will look terrific again.”
“Well, don’t hurry. You know it takes me a lot longer than it does you.”
“I know, Basia. I’ll see you in a while.”
Mother got up on her tiptoes and gave the senhor a quick kiss on his closed lips. Then the senhor left, and I heard Mother say, as she passed through the bedroom, “Irenka dear, would you please iron my blue skirt and the green blouse. You know, the one with the little cuffs?” I could hear that Irenka was already filling Mother’s tub. Then, later, I heard Mother say from the bathtub, “He keeps dragging me to meet these dreary, people, but, I suppose, it’s important for his career, so I go.”
Sr. Segiera had said nothing about my throwing up, or even about the fact that we never got off the ground. In fact, there had been nothing for Mother to be worried about. In fact, also, Mother had sounded very enthusiastic about my going up in the plane, when she mentioned it yesterday.
The senhor and I had stopped for lunch at a funny little restaurant that was open to the street, with no front wall. The senhor ordered for me, and I had a sandwich of some sort and a delicious, chocolate drink called a
milchek
. Some months later, I would learn to pronounce it
milk shake.
The senhor didn’t seem the least bit angry with me. But he didn’t say anything more about me and Paolo doing things together.
When Mother and Sr. Segiera came back to our suite that night, I wasn’t asleep, though I pretended to be. They didn’t turn the light on, but they whispered together for a minute or two, and I heard Mother giggle twice. There was a long silence, and then the senhor left.
It was two or three weeks later that I came home from school, when it was raining, and suggested to Irenka that we put on our raincoats and walk to the movies. From the bus, I had seen some new posters that showed soldiers in frilly, three-cornered hats confronting men in round, fur hats, with the animal’s tail hanging from them. I recognized the outfits from a book I had had in Warsaw, and knew that the story took place in America, before they had streets and skyscrapers.
But Irenka said that we couldn’t go because Mother was coming home early to take me to that café where Polish people met. She had a surprise for me.
A surprise for me at the café, meant meeting some person or persons. It could have been my aunts, Edna and Paula with Miss Bronia and my cousins, Fredek and Sonia, all of whom we had left in Durnoval before our escape. The only one of them that it would have been a pleasant surprise to see, would have been Miss Bronia. Or, maybe, Mademoiselle, who had taught me French in Lvoof. Or it could even have been my governess, Kiki!
Suddenly, I was frightened. I had changed so much since Kiki and I had parted. What would I say to her? How was I supposed to act toward her now, now that I could walk in the street by myself, buy things in stores, and had those strange, embarrassing desires regarding Irenka.
I didn’t miss Kiki anymore, and I certainly didn’t want to go back to our old relationship. I grew quite anxious, waiting for Mother. I could handle the others, but I didn’t want to face Kiki. But then I realized that the probability of its being any one of these people was very slight. Mother and I were the only people we knew, who had escaped from Poland after the war. And none of the people whom I was afraid of meeting was the type to go climbing the Carpathian Mountains. The only exception was my cousin, Fredek, but he was six months younger than me.
“I have a surprise for you, Yulian,” Mother said, when she came home, and I could tell that she was very pleased with that fact.
“Is it Kiki?” I asked. While the odds were very small, as long as the possibility existed, I wanted to be prepared.
Mother’s tone softened immediately, “No darling, it’s not Kiki,” she said. In an uncharacteristic gesture, she stroked my head. Evidently, she had mistaken my concern for a longing. “I have no news about Kiki. But I’m sure you’ll be very excited.”
All the way to the café I was trying to figure out who the surprise could possibly be. The number of people that I knew and cared about was very limited. My concentration on the question was so great that when we arrived at the café, I realized that I had, actually, been holding Mother’s hand.
There were people sitting at three tables, but I didn’t recognize any of them. I was relieved to see that none of them was a child. Of course, my “surprise” may not have arrived yet. We would sit at an empty table and wait for them.
But Mother did not hesitate to select a table. She led me directly toward a man and woman whom I could not imagine having ever seen before. How this could be my surprise, I could not imagine. The man stood up, as we approached. He had gray hair and a long, triangular face that ended in a narrow chin and a long, sharp nose. On one cheek, there was a large, brown spot.