“Hello Basia,” the man said, and he kissed Mother’s cheek.
“How are you, Yulian?” she responded.
So the man’s name was Yulian. Well, that
was
a surprise, since I had never met another one, but hardly worth all that excitement. Now she was leaning down to kiss the woman.
Then she turned to introduce me. “Yulian,” she said to me, “this is Yulian Tuwim.”
It took absolutely no time for the name to register. Yulian Tuwim was the poet who had written the
Locomotive
poem that Kiki and I loved so much. He was a famous poet.
Mr. Tuwim had his hand out. “I’m glad to finally meet you, Yulian. You’re a poet too.”
Something, about what he said, struck me as odd. He had not, I realized, said anything like,
I hear,
or,
Your mother tells me.
“Your poems are very
g
ood,” he said, as I put my hand into his.
He had read my poems? How did he get them?
“I hope you’ll keep on writing,” he said.
“Say something to Mr. Tuwim, Yulian,” Mother said.
“He does his speaking with his pen,” Mr. Tuwim said, with a little laugh.
Mother laughed too, a little. “He used to have such beautiful manners, in Poland.”
“He should keep writing, you know,” he said to Mother.
“Oh, I’ll have some of that,” Mother said, pointing to the teapot on the table, as she sat down. The waiter went to get her a cup. “Do you think he has enough talent to become famous?” she asked Mr. Tuwim.
“Well, Basia, fame is so much a matter of chance.”
“I know that. But does he have the talent?”
“He’s very young still. Who knows what he’ll be interested in when he gets older. He may want to build bridges.”
That was all silly talk. Mother talked as though we weren’t Jewish. She pretended that we weren’t, which was all fine for her. But people would find out and they wouldn’t want to read my poems. Jews didn’t become famous people.
The waiter brought me a
milchek
, which I must have ordered without even realizing it. The grownups were in conversation, now, about something that didn’t have anything to do with me or my poems. Mother must have found my poems under my shirts, in the bureau drawer, where I had been hiding them, and given them to Mr. Tuwim some time ago. I had a hard time keeping my eyes from the big brown spot on Mr. Tuwim’s cheek. I remembered the fact that I had been introduced to the man who had written the
Locomotive
poem, in our Warsaw apartment, some years ago, though I could not remember the actual event. I certainly didn’t remember the brown spot on his cheek.
There was something different about Mr. Tuwim—different from other men I knew. There was a gentleness about the way he spoke, even the way he moved, that was different. He moved his hands a lot, when he spoke, but not quickly. Those hands, with their long fingers, had written
The Locomotive
and the one about the farm family trying to pull a turnip out of the ground. I would have loved to become a poet like Mr. Tuwim. I didn’t need to fly airplanes or be a soldier or a cowboy, or even build bridges. I wanted to write poems that people read and loved, the way Kiki and I loved
The Locomotive,
and talk gently like Mr. Tuwim.
But I knew that would not be possible for me.
I wrote two more poems, over the next couple of weeks, and Mother promised that she would show them to Mr. Tuwim as well.
One evening, when she came home from work, Mother said to Irenka, “I think we need to go and buy you a tennis dress.”
I could tell that Irenka was as surprised by this statement as I was. “I don’t know how to play tennis,” she said.
By the smile on Mother’s face, I could tell that she was enjoying the confusion she had just created.
Then Irenka seemed to grasp something that I didn’t. “Oh yes?” she said. “Your friend?”
“He wants me,” Mother said, walking on into the bathroom and speaking as she went, “to go with him to the home of some friends of his for the weekend, where, he says, there will be tennis and swimming and dancing. You should like that.”
Irenka followed her into the bedroom and spoke through the closed bathroom door. “It sounds like you would have a good time,” she said. “Don’t you want to go? And I don’t know how to play tennis.”
“I’m sure he’ll be happy to teach you. I don’t need tennis or swimming or dancing. And I just don’t want to go overnight with him. I don’t know what’s on his mind. It would be different with you—you’ll have just met. It’s not exactly the meeting I had in mind, but I think it will work out fine. And I really
don’t
want to go.”
I guessed that they must be talking about Andre, since Irenka knew Sr. Segiera, and that there must have been a whole lot more to the conversation prior to all this, that I had missed out on.
“Would he want to bring a total stranger to his friends?” Irenka asked the same question that was on my mind.
I heard Mother come out of the bathroom. “Once he meets you,” she said, “that’s exactly what he’ll want to do.”
“No, really.”
“Yes, really.”
“Are you sure?”
“I’m sure.”
Mother did not come out into the living room, and I guessed that she was changing her clothes. “He’s a perfect gentleman, you know,” I heard her say. “It’s just that I’ve been out enough times with him now, that he’s likely to be having ideas. That’s how men are. The worst thing that can happen to you, is that you’ll have to slap his face once. You’ll have a good time. Now go fix your face.”
Then somebody closed the door, and there was more talk going on, that I couldn’t quite hear.
Then we were in the store and Irenka was trying on tennis dresses. She came out of the dressing room in a knee-length white dress with blue trim, shook her head, and said, “I can’t do this.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?” Mother said. “Don’t you like the dress? I don’t like it either. Try another one.”
Irenka shook her head again. “It’s not the dress. I can’t pretend.”
“Pretend what?”
“You know. It was all right when Tadek and I were pretending together. He did all the talking.”
“And now, Andre will do all the talking. Believe me. All you’ll need to do is smile and say,
yes
and
no
.”
“But I’d be lying to your friend.”
“What do you mean
lying
?”
“Who I am.”
“Who are you? This isn’t Poland. Nobody knows who your parents are. You were brought up in a good house. You speak well—you have good manners. You’re not going to pick up your soup bowl and drink from it. Don’t be stupid. Try a different dress—I don’t like the way this one fits around your bust.”
When Irenka had gone back into the changing room, Mother said, “She can’t pretend. What does she want to do, go back to being somebody’s maid?” This was one of those times when she was talking partly to me and partly to herself. Then she turned to me and said, “Yulian, do you remember how you pretended to be sick, when we were staying on the farm, last fall?” That was when we were afraid of the Ukrainian peasants, right after the Russians had come. But the Ukrainians didn’t show up that day, and I waited, all day, in bed and never, actually, got a chance to pretend. Now I nodded my head.
“Well, tomorrow, I want you to pretend you’re sick again. Would you do that for me?”
I nodded again.
“When Andre comes, you’ll pretend to be sick, and I’ll tell him how sorry I am, but we can’t go with him.”
“A. . . nd th. . . en I. . . renka w. . . ill go w. . . ith h. . . im?” I asked excited to, finally, be included in the subterfuge.
Mother nodded her head, a conspiratory look on her face.
I loved it when Mother was like that. It was like the time we were walking back from the American embassy and making fun of things in shop windows.
“I think I w. . . ill h. . . ave as. . . .thma,” I said, as though I were selecting from a menu and remembering my cousin Fredek having an asthma attack in those damp rooms in Durnoval, before Mother and I escaped.
“We don’t need anything quite that dramatic,” Mother said, a little laugh in her voice. “How about a nice, quiet sore throat?”
“A s. . . ore th. . . roat it w. . . ill be,” I agreed, glad to be on the team.
The following morning, when Andre came to pick us up, I was in bed, on my sofa, Mother’s scarf around my throat. I had suggested a wet cloth on my forehead, but Mother had rejected it.
The look of disappointment on Andre’s face, when Mother told him that we couldn’t go, could have been mistaken for nothing else. He had on his blue jacket, with its brass buttons, and white pants and white shoes. “Why doesn’t your friend stay with him?” he suggested.
Seeing an opportunity to ad lib here, I put a look of terror on my face. “He really needs to be with me,” Mother said. “I’m sorry, but he’s terrified to be separated from me at night. He’s been through so much, you know.”
“You’re supposed to be my tennis partner, this afternoon,” Andre said, with almost a wail in his voice.
“And I’ve found you a new partner. You’ll have to teach her to play, of course, but she’s a wonderful dancer.”
I wanted to add that he would have to teach her to swim, too, but realized that I would be stepping out of character.
Andre tilted his head to one side. “Is she good-looking?” he asked.
“That you’ll have to judge for yourself. She is from a very old Polish family. And you’ll be able to speak Portuguese to her. She doesn’t speak French.”
Mother’s exaggerations no longer surprised me, though, technically speaking, Irenka’s family went back to Adam and Eve, just like anyone else’s.
Now Mother walked to the bedroom door, opened it only enough to pass through, and closed it behind her.
Andre looked at me, a worried look on his face. “Is she good-looking?” he whispered.
I nodded, reassuringly. The look remained. He lit a cigarette, then paced back and forth across the room, glancing at the closed door. “It’s the woman who lives with you?” he whispered.
I nodded again. Andre did not seem reassured. I could not imagine what was taking so long in the bedroom. Irenka had been ready and waiting before he arrived, and only ducked into the bedroom when Mother told her to, after the desk clerk called. Andre looked nervously at his watch, then at the door again.
Finally the door opened. Andre spun around to face it, but it was only Mother. “Irena will be right out,” she said. She had her little brown suitcase in her hand, and she set it down by the front door.
“Irena?” Andre repeated.
“Don’t you think it’s a beautiful name?”
“Yes, yes, very beautiful,” Andre agreed. Then I saw his mouth drop open.
Facing Andre, I had not seen Irenka step through the door. She was wearing her beige, silk blouse and a very full blue skirt that I had not seen before, with her sunglasses on top of her lush, wavy, brown hair. I had never seen anyone so beautiful. She was looking down at the floor. “She’s very shy,” Mother half whispered in French.
Then, turning to Irenka and straining the limits of her Portuguese, Mother said, “Irena, let me present Sr. Andre O’Brien,” her tone suddenly formal, a smile fixed on her face. “Andre, this is Senhorita Irena Troboska.” Then she whispered in Polish, the one word, “Hand,” the smile still on her face. In French, she said, “Brought up by the good sisters.”
Irenka extended her hand, and Andre flew across the room to shake it. They exchanged formal greetings.
Mother and I went to the beach that afternoon and to the movies on Sunday. Irenka was sitting in the living room, when we got back. “It was awful,” she said. I could tell that she had been crying.
“Awful?” Mother said. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened. I just didn’t know what to say—I couldn’t hit a tennis ball, and I made Andre lose terribly. Then I didn’t know any funny stories. I didn’t know any of the people or the places they talked about. I know I embarrassed him.”
“Nonsense. Andre doesn’t know how to be embarrassed.”
“He was very nice to me all the time. And I was so stupid.”
“Of course he was very nice to you. You’re a very beautiful woman.”
“I’m stupid.”
“You’re not stupid. You’re being stupid now. You don’t know any people in Rio because you just got here. You don’t know funny stories or how to play tennis. So what? You were brought up by the Sisters. Go fix your makeup, and we’ll go somewhere for supper.”
“You told him I was brought up by the Sisters? That’s blasphemy.”
“It’s not blasphemy. Go fix your face.”
“I don’t want supper.”
“Yes, you do. We’ll sit down someplace nice, you’ll have a cocktail and tell me all about the weekend.”
“You watch,” Mother said to me a few days later. “Andre is coming to take us all out to dinner tonight. But what he really wants is to take Irena out and thinks he’s going to hurt my feelings, if he doesn’t ask me too.”