The Old Brown Suitcase (11 page)

When I returned home I found out that Father needed to have an operation as soon as possible.

The week of the operation was a struggle. I couldn’t go to school, because Mother spent all her time at the hospital. Loyal Miriam brought me my homework each day. I was learning fast that if you didn’t do your homework each day, you weren’t going to pass the subject. I didn’t want to fall behind, but it was hard to concentrate when I had to help out at home. I cooked, cleaned, did the dishes and looked after Pyza. That was good, because I got to know her better. She was three years old, only a year older than Basia had been when she left the Ghetto.

I played with her in the bathtub. Then after supper I sang her songs, and played more games with her. I hoped that by doing these things for Pyza, I’d make up for the way I had treated Basia on the last day I saw her.

Father came home from the hospital in time for a great celebration, which we shared with Miriam’s family.

It was May 14, 1948, and Israel was celebrating its forthcoming independence. We all huddled over the radio to hear the news.

There were only two families in the apartment, yet our living room seemed to be filled with people. I felt the presence of shadows from the Ghetto hovering about, listening. It felt as if all of them had gathered here with us. Grandfather, Mrs. Solomon, Sallye, the young teachers, Hala and Fela — and behind them, all the people who died in the concentration camps and on the typhus-ridden streets of the Ghetto. Basia wasn’t a shadow. I could distinctly see her dressed in her coat and hat with her arms stretched out towards me.

Mother spoke of all her sisters, nieces and nephews who had died in concentration camps. Father spoke of his father and Basia, and said that the catastrophe which befell the Jewish people during the war remained as much a tragedy for the living, as for the dead.

Why did I survive, I asked myself? Why me, and not Basia?

(ZALESIE, POLAND, 1944)

I AM ELEVEN.

After I had almost given up seeing them again, my parents appear in Zalesie. It is a beautiful autumn day, but they seem like ghosts, pale, thin and shabby. Above all, silent. They’re tired. I sense their tiredness in the way they greet me. Babushka greets them with exuberance. Vlad offers them his peach liquor and brings out the glasses for special guests, the ones with silver holders.

I sit on Father’s knee while he speaks of the last days of the Warsaw Ghetto. “Your mother left the Ghetto with the last truck of Jewish workers who had permits to work on the Aryan side. We planned her escape. A doctor friend on the Aryan side, a Christian, to whom I had sent word, came to her place of work, and took her away on the grounds that she was ill with an infectious disease, and needed medication. They let her go. Then the doctor and his wife hired her as a maid, and she never returned to the Ghetto. We got her false papers, of course. Her name is now Zofia Mlynarska, and mine is Felix Mlynarski. We didn’t see one another for six months. During that time I was wounded in the arm and hid in a shelter built by the Jewish fighters. One day the Germans set our building on fire to force us out. Since anything was better then getting caught, I took a chance and climbed into the sewers below the building.

“I walked for a long time not knowing where I was. At various manholes, I poked my head out but each time the smell of the burning Ghetto told me to keep going. The tunnels were full of rats and sewage. After many hours, the stench and my own tiredness were too much for me and I realized that I had to get out. At the next manhole, I lifted myself onto a quiet dark street. By some act of mercy I had escaped the Ghetto.

“Then I went to find your mother. Her friends let the two of us stay with them for several days before we left for the country. We went to a village called Gloskow, where a man, who took us for Christians, rented us a part of his house. We still rent there; the man doesn’t suspect that we are Jews.”

My father is weary and stops speaking. Mother continues: “After we were settled we thought that we would see Basia first. So we went to Otwock, where she was staying with some friends of ours named Tomas and Anna, a Gentile couple who were childless. We wanted to take her with us, but Tomas insisted that Basia would be safer with them, so we left her.”

Mother’s face is very sad as she continues. “Tomas has grown very greedy and is now asking us for money. It’s like blackmail. If we don’t give him what he wants, he will not return the child to us. I don’t know how all this will end …” Mother can’t seem to go on talking.

Babushka suggests that they lie down for awhile. They rest for an hour then leave quietly, saying that they will be back but they don’t know when.

Months pass. One day I am sitting by the window on a rainy day, imagining that my parents are coming down the road. Then I see two specks moving along the road. It can’t be them. It
is
them.

“They’re really coming,” I shout to Babushka, jumping up and down. She bids me stay inside, while she goes out to greet them and brings them inside the house. That’s where we hug each other.

They don’t look as tired this time, but I can tell from their faces that something is wrong. Father doesn’t even take off his coat when he begins to speak.

“This morning Tomas came to Gloskow; he told us that one of their neighbours saw Mother and recognized her from before the war. This neighbour informed the Germans that Basia is a Jew.

“Last night the soldiers surrounded Tomas’ villa, and the Gestapo came in to question him. They checked all the papers and insisted that Tomas and Anna bring Basia to headquarters. We don’t know how all this will end, and we don’t dare go to Tomas’ house …”

Mother starts to cry.

I run into my room and close the door. I fall to the ground in front of the window and beg God to save my sister.

“Please, dearest God, keep my little sister safe, and forgive me for being so mean, for pushing her away. I didn’t mean it. If you save Basia, dear God, I will be the best person, I promise, and I will never, ever, sin again.”

I feel spent, but I make a pact with myself that if God listens to me this time, I would never again doubt his existence, as I did the day we entered the Ghetto.

My parents leave after supper, telling me to be patient and wait for their return. Days drag by.

I watch and wait.

God is on trial.

Finally Father comes to Babushka’s house. He has aged a hundred years. I have never seen him look like this before, but I know even without his saying anything.

“Basia is dead,” he tells us. “The soldiers have taken her away and murdered her.” Father struggles to get the words out. “To prove to us that she is dead, Tomas uncovered her grave. I saw her legs, her socks. Her face was disfigured, beyond recognition …” Father begins to weep.

“Then you have no real proof that the grave was hers,” says Babushka. “Couldn’t all this have been staged by Tomas and Anna? Maybe they simply didn’t want to give her back to you?”

There is silence.

“Maybe you’re right, Mama. Even so, how can I prove it now? Tomas swears that she is dead,” says Father.

I want to think that Babushka is right, that Basia is alive somewhere. Will I ever know?

After that I stop saying my prayers for good. God didn’t listen, and I am angry with Him for having made us Jewish.

In the spring, Father comes to take me away. I am sorry to leave Babushka, but she is ill. She has fainted several times. Vlad says that it was a mild heart attack. I feel that he blames me for her weak heart.

Father takes me by train to the village of Gloskow.

He holds my hand and explains the strangest thing.

“Listen carefully. In our papers, you are Irena Kominska, and we are Felix and Zofia Mlynarski. From now on you must call us Auntie Zofia and Uncle Felix. We will call you Irenka. No slips must be made or someone may become suspicious and inform on us. We must survive. Do you understand?”

I don’t really.

“Do we have to lie to survive?” I ask.

“We cannot tell people who we really are. That could mean our death,” answers Father.

The train’s monotonous rhythm is putting me to sleep. But Father’s watchful eyes tell me to stay alert. A peasant woman with a basketful of cackling chickens sits down near us. She smells of raspberries, even though they are not in season. A man across the isle reads a book, but every so often his bespeckled eyes look in our direction. The woman gets off at the next station.

I think of Basia. Somebody knew who she really was.

I think of Irka, and what might have happened if I had told her who I really was.

For the first two weeks in Gloskow, I don’t call my parents anything. I stop talking altogether. I listen and observe. Father has a job in the forest cutting trees; Mother cooks and cleans for the man who owns the house we live in.

Mother tells him that I have just been very ill, and that is why she isn’t going to send me to school. He doesn’t seem to suspect anything. There seem to be no other children or people around the place.

“Why don’t you talk?” asks my mother, who is used to my constant chatter.

“I am afraid to call you Auntie. It’s so strange, and what if I forget while the landlord is here?”

“Don’t worry, you won’t slip, and if you do, I will explain that you miss your mother so much that sometimes you forget I am your auntie.”

Little by little I start calling my parents Auntie Zofia and

Uncle Felix. Months pass, and we go about our chores, always tense and careful lest a slip is made and we are discovered.

Mother’s stomach begins to look as it did before she had Basia. When I ask, she tells me that she is three months pregnant. I can’t imagine having another sister now, in these awful times. I spend my days reading my few books over and over. The pages have become yellow and torn. I sit by the window and stare out at the white world, and daydream.

One winter day, three truckloads of German soldiers arrive and make their camp in the village not far from our house. They wander about, talking, laughing. One even smiles at me, and it sends shivers right through me. If he only knew.

Then one day, the sound of heavy guns can be heard in the distance. The German soldiers speed by our house in convoys of roaring trucks and cars. I am scared, but my parents are strangely cheerful.

“The Germans are losing the war and running,” says Father grinning happily. “The Russians will be here soon.”

When the news arrives that Warsaw has been liberated, Father decides to go there on foot to find us a place to live. We wait anxiously for his return as the winter days pass.

There is no food in the village. It was all taken by the Germans when they left. Our landlord seems to have disappeared somewhere. I descend to the cellar full of scurrying rats to look through the potato sacks. All I find is a rotten turnip. I throw it to the rats. I return upstairs to collect some old crumbs from the dining table to share with Mother. The thunderous sounds of guns are coming closer and closer. We are so hungry and cold that neither of us has the strength to move. We just lie in our beds.

All of a sudden a stillness descends upon the village. No more thunder. Soon we hear different noises outside: engines, and the voices of men shouting in a familiar-sounding language. It resembles Babushka’s language — Russian.

Suddenly our door is flung open, and a tall young man wearing a sheepskin jacket bursts into our room. He has a cap with sheepskin ears flapping about. Seeing us, he breaks into a grin, exposing a set of the whitest teeth.

“
Zdrastvuite dzievotchki
, hello girls,” he says in Russian. His black eyes flash at us out of a very dark-skinned face.

Mother gets up from the bed with difficulty. Using a mixture of Polish and mime, she tries to communicate with him. They establish that he wants Mother to cook for the officers of his regiment.

More soldiers arrive carrying chunks of lard, sacks of flour and potatoes into the kitchen. Soon Mother has made a potato soup and dumplings with onions fried in lard.

We eat with the officers in the large dining room. They have vodka, cigarettes and even a bag of candy for me. They toast their victory over the Germans.

Little glasses are filled, refilled, and raised in the traditional Russian toast to health —
Za zdorove.
The men down their glasses in one shot, and there is laughter and song. The young man who burst into our room picks me up and whirls me around shouting “
Krasavitza
!” — that I am a pretty girl.

The room spins.

We are free, free. The horrid war is over. I want to scream “Mama!” But I see the landlord. He must have returned and is staring at us. I trust no one. Perhaps it still isn’t safe for people to know our real names.

After the feast, Mother tells me to go and pack my brown suitcase. We’re leaving the next day for Warsaw.

The train station is crowded with the Russian army, triumphant with its victory over Nazis. The cars are packed with soldiers and, even though it is January, all the windows are open, filled with heads and waving arms.

“No civilians!” shouts a soldier in Russian, his rifle barring us from entering the passenger car. We hurry from one car to the other and are always pushed away, but we try once more.

“No civilians!” shouts another soldier.

“It’s all right, they’re with me,” says a loud voice from behind. The soldiers move away and make a path for an officer. He ushers us onto the steps, and we recognize him as one of the men who dined with us the night before. The soldiers let us pass. Mother manages her most beautiful smile of gratitude. The officer salutes us and disappears into a compartment, while we sit down on our cases next to the windows. The compartments are reserved for officers, while the corridors and other seats are for everyone else. There are few civilians aboard besides mother and me. The rest are women whose laughing and talking can be heard coming from the compartments.

The train pulls out of the station.

We are surrounded by Russian soldiers, standing up, sitting or lying on the floor. They shuffle about, and mill back and forth practically stepping over us. Some smoke, drink or sleep. A few have their arms or legs in bandages, and moan in pain. The car smells of sweat, vodka, nicotine and blood.

Once it becomes dark outside, the only light in our corridor enters dimly through the dirty glass windows of the compartment doors.

Mother and I sit on our suitcases in a sea of cigarette butts and empty vodka bottles. The soldiers who have been drinking begin to slur their words and fall over each other with silly laughter. Mother keeps her back to the wall of the train. I am scared.

In front of us, the compartment door opens onto the corridor, and our friend, the officer, comes out. He is short and stocky, very dark, with thick black eyebrows. He pushes his way through the litter towards Mother, and addresses her in broken Polish.

“My dear lady, you should not be sitting on the floor in your condition. Why don’t you come into my compartment?