Tailor of Inverness, The (21 page)

My ghosts in their home, here in this church, the only building left standing where they would have gathered.

Mateusz, Kazik and Adam c. 1963

Our time has run out. I want to visit Olga and Tekla. I want to re-visit the cemetery. I’d have liked to have seen Anna Laska’s relatives. I have so many more questions: what was Olga’s school like? How many pupils? How many teachers? What languages were spoken at school? Are there any Poles left in the village? Were there any Jews here? How many local people did my grandparents employ? Michael Boklach! He lived in Newton Mearns in Glasgow. We visited him and his family there a few times. He worked for my grandfather at times. But he’s dead now too. What did Anna Laska look like? What was her personality? When did she and Irena leave for Poland? How many others members of my family lived locally? Where did my grandfather’s brothers live? Did he have any sisters? How long had Zajacs lived here? Did anyone else know of my father’s ‘visit’ in 1944? But we have to go. I make another donation. Hrihoriy dictates an announcement about my visit and donation to the caretaker, to be made at the following morning’s service.

On our way out of the village, back the way we came, we pause to watch a woman milking a cow. Hrihoriy hands a few more newspapers to the woman’s mother and neighbor.
Then we’re off over the fields, passing the crosses and a few workers on their way home, finally freewheeling down the hill and across the river into Pidhaitsi.

As we walk up the steep hill to the main street, we talk about a beer, but choose instead to climb further uphill, past the cemetery to the football ground on the edge of town. And there we ignore torrential rain and have a kickabout. Hrihoriy has told me of Oleg’s footballing prowess. He once played for Berezhany, I guess the equivalent of Ayr United or Darlington. And it shows. There are exceptionally gifted professional
footballers
, like Pele, Zidane and Messi, and then there are the rest and for these players, the line between the top flight and the lower leagues can be very fine. Oleg strikes me as one of these players: he might have made it into the top teams in Ukraine, but for one reason or another, he didn’t.

I’m due back with Hala and Bogdan, and still the rain comes down, the sky weeping its apology for the driest summer they’ve had in years. I clutch the pathetic, whining brakes as we make our way downhill again to Hrihoriy’s house. I say goodbye to him after we exchange addresses and then I pop into the Kalba shop and buy three bottles of
horilka
. I give one to Oleg. We cycle down the street and at the point where we are to part, he asks me to wait. He runs down the lane to his house and returns with gifts for me: an old football pennant and a photograph of him in his trunks, standing on a beach by the Sea of Azov. He walks with me round to Bogdan’s house and we shake hands.

My final evening with Bogdan and Hala is subdued by my impending departure. I wash my hair and my feet and I pack. They press gifts upon me,
horilka
, chocolates for my children, a set of golden tumblers, a ceramic decanter and one of Hala’s home-made tapestries. We eat and drink a few toasts to each other, a safe journey and my return one day. The normally surly Bogdan surprises me by breaking into song –
Kawa
,
Vodka I Zona
– Coffee, Vodka and a Woman.

Bogdan and his family, Pidhaitsi 2003 Bogdan far left, Hala 2nd right

I’m tired. The daily round of heaps of food and drink, the constant effort to bridge the language barrier, the desire to respect my hosts by accepting their generous hospitality and the struggle to understand my father’s past and my connection to it is a combination which has worn me out. I’m leaving with an experience which is to take some time to fully digest. Both my physical and mental digestive systems have been under a lot of strain.

We drive to Lviv, leaving at 8.30am. It was supposed to be 8.00, but Taras was a little late. Then we have to drive a kilometre out of town in the wrong direction to fill the tank and after that we pause back in Pidhaitsi to pick up Lesia and her heavy bag, loaded with jars of mushrooms, oil, sausage, fruit and vegetables for her son Nazar, a forestry student in the city. She normally sends a weekly package of food to him by bus. Bogdan is with us too, the old man determined to fulfil his familial duty and see me safely through the check-in gate.

Taras coaxes his old Niva into life with the throttle. It strains to pull its heavy load up the hill out of town and we’re away. Soon, we’re in beautiful rolling countryside, vivid in the autumn sun, passing forests, leaves burnished all shades of yellow, orange, green and red, fields, ploughed and fallow, small groups of cows, hardly herds, often tended by an old man or woman stoically sitting by them as they graze. Sometimes we see two or three people moving their cattle, an old man, his son and grandson, and others moving into woods to gather mushrooms. Taras has to veer to avoid gaggles of geese on the road several times. There is a whole set of hazards: the geese, hens, cows, horse-drawn carts, sometimes followed by tethered foals, roadside produce sellers, little boys on bicycles which are far too big for them, crumbling tarmac, subsidence and potholes.

Taking the shortest route, we pass through the village of Brudanka, which roughly translates as ‘muddy village,’ where the road is a long succession of giant puddles, ruts and holes. The village is about one kilometre from end to end. It takes us nearly ten minutes to pass through. We pause to have a look at a stationary bus in the middle of the road, its sump spurting oil back into the deep hole which was responsible for piercing it. The driver looks on, resigned and helpless. I’m glad of my lift – it’s the Pidhaitsi-Lviv bus. After a few more kilometres, it’s Ivanovka and the same story, bar another stricken bus. Taras takes it all in his stride, knowing what to expect. Lesia is rueful when she asks me if such roads exist in Britain. She knows that my answer will be no.

After a couple of hours, we’re skirting the south of Lviv. It looks like a huge white Lego fortress, a massive Soviet housing scheme on the horizon seems to encircle the city. We turn north into an arterial road which takes us between the massive blocks and, in spite of their concrete brutalism, they’re teeming with life. Shops and kiosks line the thoroughfare, people come and
go, wait for buses and just get on with their daily lives. The large spaces around the blocks are green and tree-lined with very little litter about and the buildings themselves are in a reasonable state of repair. I expected something altogether grimmer and as the blocks give way to older terraces, detached houses, petrol stations, supermarkets, shops, it becomes clear that Lviv is far from depressed.

The old cobbled streets of the centre are very bumpy and I marvel again at the fact that the tramlines remain smooth and intact. The centre itself was untouched by serious fighting during World War II. It is dominated by 18
^th
and 19
^th
century architecture, crowned by the stunning neo-classical opera house. A few hundred metres away, down the boulevard, stands a new monument, a 6-metre bronze statue of Shevchenko, the bard, standing before a sweeping bronze relief, a representation of the Ukrainian people. We walk through a little arts and crafts market and I buy a few souvenirs, feeling rushed by the watchful eyes of Bogdan, who’s eager to get to the airport.

First though, we have to deliver Lesia’s bag of food to Nazar. We drive to quite a well-heeled neighbourhood and park behind Nazar’s hall of residence. I carry the bag for Lesia and we find Nazar’s room in a dimly-lit corridor. It’s simply furnished, around 3m x 4m with four narrow beds. Nazar greets us cheerfully, the food is unpacked and stored, Lesia collects the empty jars from Nazar’s previous delivery and we all go down to Taras and Bogdan. The Niva won’t start. I don’t want to miss my plane. We push it and that gets it going.

Twenty minutes later, we’re at the airport. Lesia and Nazar photograph us. I reach the check-in. Bogdan gives me my rucksack. We shake hands and kiss, saying nothing. I can’t say anything. We just look at each other with misty eyes. I blow a kiss to Lesia and Taras and I’m away. The security man takes a cursory look through my rucksack and I deposit my holdall with a baggage handler who takes me into a corner
and tries to wheedle dollars or euros out of me in return for nothing as far as I can tell. I’m exasperated, but I want no complications passing through to the departure lounge. I give him 50
hrivny
. He shakes my hand. It’s my last act in Ukraine before I board the plane.

A few hours later the rain pelts down as we board the plane in Warsaw. In the consumerist limbo of Warsaw Airport, I wonder about my journey into the past and my experience of the present in Ukraine. How do the two relate? I have often asked myself this question, answering glibly, ‘Without an
understanding
of the past, an understanding of the present is
impossible
.’ I do believe this but, as I’ve witnessed the desire to strive towards prosperity, barely nascent in Ukraine, in full stride in Poland, I question my purpose. Is it relevant only to me, when the ostensible vision of those around me, here in Eastern Europe, particularly the young and early middle-aged, is to move forward, forward, forward?

So my father was never in the Polish Army. During the period when he said he’d been in the Polish Army, captured by the Soviets and sent to Uzbekistan, he was actually continuing his work, learning his trade as a tailor under the Russian
occupation
until he was conscripted by the Soviets. I now had the testimonies of two people, Olga and Mykola, along with the photograph of Dad in a Soviet uniform. Some time after his conscription, he had married Anna Laska and Irena was born. Then he was possibly at the Front to resist the German invasion of 1941. There was the story of his capture by the Germans and his starvation in a German POW camp, that he had become a forced labourer in Germany, and the story of his presence on the front near Gnilowody in 1944 as a soldier in the German Army, which Mykola asserted was Dad’s own account, backed up by Uncle Pavlo. This period, ’41-’44, was when he said he had taken the journey of General Anders’ Army out of the Soviet east to Persia, North Africa and Italy.

It was all so sketchy. I needed more hard facts. I continued my search. I wrote to the Polish Army Archive: as I expected, it had no record of him being in the 51st Infantry Regiment. I wrote to the Germany Army Archive: they too had no record
of a Mateusz Zajac. I thought he might have given a false name. I tried Mateusz Baldys, but no luck with that. I wrote to the Russian Army archive: they asked me to specify which unit he had been in. It may be that with some comprehensive detective work, I could establish which Soviet Army units were recruiting in the Podhajce region in 1940, but that would entail a prohibitively expensive and quite possibly fruitless trip to Russia, so for now that was a dead end too. I wrote to the Red Cross Tracing Service to see if they had a record of him as a displaced person. That source may yet come up with an answer although, with a huge backlog of enquiries, the waiting time can be more than 8 years.

I listened to the tapes again with a more forensic ear. The pauses for thought, the hesitations, the struggles with names, places and dates took on new meaning. I checked the date of Stalin’s declaration of the amnesty for Polish POWs. It was 30
^th
July 1941, not the beginning of 1942 as my father said. I found the exact location of Proskurov, the town where he said he’d found the Polish officer after the escape he had claimed he made from Uzbekistan. Proskurov is now called Khmelnitsky. It’s in Ukraine, a small city around 3000 kilometres from Uzbekistan. It’s only 180 kilometres east of Gnilowody. It was under German occupation during the period in question, impossible as a place of Polish recruitment. He could only have been in Proskurov as a Soviet defender, a German occupier or a fugitive from either the Soviets or the Germans.

All this research was carried out in parallel with what had become my new, overriding priority: finding Irena.

I needed to see his British Army Record. In order to do that, I needed to get my mother’s written permission. She refused to give it. She told me that she couldn’t understand why I needed to see it, why I needed to dig up all that old stuff. She told me that I should show more respect to my dead father, who had been such a good man, who had given me so much. She suggested I was simply looking to exploit his life. But in her heart, she understood that a child has the right to know his father. She knew that I loved and respected him and though she was afraid for herself, for what might be discovered, for what I might expose, for what her community of friends in Inverness might think should unpalatable facts become known, she relented. After many months
and several attempts at persuasion, she wrote her letter of authorisation.

So now I had incontrovertible evidence that my father was never in Anders’ Army, never in Persia, North Africa and the invasion of Italy. To have joined up with the British Army in June 1945 in Italy, a month after the German surrender, he must either have gone through a displaced person’s camp, probably in Germany, or been captured as an enemy soldier and identified as a Pole before transfer to the Polish 2
^nd
Corps, or both.

The two conflicting statements came from his own mouth. The first is clearer than the second and, in my view, much closer to the truth. The first was made on enlistment on June 3
^rd
1945, the second nearly two years later, on March 18
^th
1947 on enlistment into the Polish Resettlement Corps. He had had nearly two years to learn of the war’s outcome, the new political settlement, and the beginnings of the Cold War. By the time of this second statement, he would have known that a return to Poland was out of the question. As a former member of the Red Army who had fallen into the hands of the Germans, and then as a former member of the German Army, there would have been only one destination for him at the hands of the Communist authorities: the gulag. His only option was to settle in the west, among a population which had fought Germany and which was becoming increasingly hostile towards the Soviet Union. Out of fear and the survival instinct which had kept him alive during the war, he had begun to construct his new post-war identity in his new refuge. Why would he want people in Britain to know he had fought in the armies of both these enemy powers?

His admission of membership of the Red Army in his British Army Record simply confirmed the photographic evidence and the accounts of Mykola and Olga. His admission of
membership
of the German Army also confirmed Mykola’s claims, though there is confusion about the dates. Aniela’s letter of 2
^nd
December 2003 provides a possible explanation of his
movement from the Soviets to the Germans: ‘The fact that he had been in the Russian army was not his fault and if he hadn’t gone into hiding they would have exiled him to Siberia and he would have perished there, because those who were from here and were hiding not wanting to join the army were caught by the Russians and transported to Siberia and murdered there.’