The Old Brown Suitcase (12 page)

I have just got rid of the other officers!” He laughs. “Come, come,” he urges, helping Mother stand up. She does it with difficulty, as she is now six months pregnant.

“But my daughter must come, too. I will not go without her,” says Mother firmly. He looks at me and hesitates, but finally agrees that I can come along.

It is sheer heaven in the compartment. It has soft seats, and I can just sink into them instead of bracing myself up on a little suitcase. Mother sits on the other side with the officer, who moves closer and closer to her. She pushes him away. Even on the opposite side I can smell alcohol on his breath.

“Maybe a little food?” he asks.

Maybe? Mother and I haven’t eaten all day.

He brings out a can of sardines, a hunk of sausage and a loaf of bread. We eat hungrily. He moves very close to Mother again, and pours her a glass of vodka. She refuses. He begins to down one vodka after another, and suddenly grabs Mother and starts kissing her. Mother jumps up, grasps my hand and pulls me out of the compartment. We return to our old place. Luckily our suitcases were left alone.

The soldiers are now really drunk. They laugh continuously, pointing at us and at the officer’s compartment. After five minutes, the officer comes out again; his face is red and angry. He walks up to Mother and starts touching her. I scream. He recoils. He advances again and I scream louder. He goes back to his compartment, but tries again later. I scream and scream. My throat is on fire, but I must save Mother from this ugly creature.

Eventually half the car is snoring. The officer stops bothering us. The trip seems to take forever; the train stops frequently and stands at the station for long periods of time.

Blessed daylight comes at last. One tired pregnant lady and a little girl with a very sore throat arrive at the Warsaw terminal.

(WARSAW, 1945)

I AM TWELVE
years old.

Warsaw is in ruins. Brick, stone and broken glass lie everywhere in the streets. Twisted steel hangs from buildings ravaged by fire and bombs. Staircases dangle in mid-air.

People walk cautiously, for unexploded bombs lurk among the ruins waiting to blow off a child’s foot or hand.

Drunken Russian soldiers paw helpless women on the streets. Other soldiers lie wounded in the corners, huddled against pieces of concrete or wood. Some are still bleeding and look half-dead.

The streets are so grotesquely changed that it is difficult even for a Warsaw native to distinguish one from the other. There are no cabs, streetcars or telephones; only army trucks drive on the roads, while masses of civilians wander on foot. We walk for what seems like hours.

Unable to take another step, I pause and sit on my suitcase. “Where are we going, Mama?” I ask.

“Papa and I promised that if he doesn’t return to Gloskow within a certain time we’ll meet at our old address on Aleje Jerozolimskie,” she replies. “He is supposed to come there every day to look for us. It’s not far from the train station, but it’s hard to find my way in all this rubble. Just be patient for a little while longer.”

When we have rested, we pick up our suitcases and walk on. With swollen and aching feet, we finally arrive at our old apartment building. Amazingly, it still stands, although it is without windows and fire has blackened its walls.

We walk into the courtyard. The once beautiful garden is covered in snow. Father is nowhere to be seen. Mother decides to wait for him in one of the empty apartments overlooking the courtyard. Dusk approaches and we are almost frozen but glad to be off the street. People can be heard roaming around in the building, but no one bothers us. Mother and I huddle together to keep warm. Half asleep, half awake, I hear a noise.

“Here you are, you two! Wake up!”

It’s Father, smiling and happy to see us.

“Come, I’ve got a royal carriage waiting for you outside,” he says.

Dazed, unable to utter words through our cracked lips, we climb into a broken
dorozhka
, which is pulled by a horse. Parts of the side have been gouged, but the wheels are still good. Everything seems different, except the driver with a whip in his hand, and a heavy dark-blue jacket and matching cap with a brim, slanted over a tanned wrinkled face. Just like the one before the war who drove Mother and me to the dressmaker.

“I don’t guarantee that he will take us all the way,” says Father in good humour. “I found him soon after I returned to Warsaw. He and his horse were starving. I brought them food and drink and persuaded him to come with me.” Father climbs up next to the driver, and the horse ploughs through the debris-laden streets for hours. Periodically someone jumps onto the side of the carriage, rides a way, then jumps off.

“The fact that Mama is pregnant justifies our use of the carriage,” Father explains from above. “So don’t feel guilty.” We finally arrive at an apartment building on Lwowska Street, one of the very few streets that were not destroyed.

Father tells us how lucky he was to have met up with some old friends, who asked him to serve in the legal department of the new provisional Polish government. This position has merited him a place to live and money to buy food.

That night, safe in our new apartment, I sleep my first night in freedom. Mother tells me afterwards that I slept for a day and a half.

Four months later, a round-faced baby girl is born. We call her Pyza. Mother is quite ill afterwards, so Father hires a hefty girl from the country called Marysia to do the housework and help with the baby. The presence of a new baby is like the beginning of a new life for all of us. She almost becomes our second Basia, and some of the gloom is dispelled.

In the meantime, Warsaw is awakening from her nightmare. Polish people who love their country set about restoring her to life.

We love Poland and Warsaw, my family and I, just as much as the Christian Poles do. We watch joyfully as order sets in, more and more each day, defying the ruins. The rubble is being cleared away and schools open. I start attending grade seven. When I am not in school, I roam the streets, watching the reawakening with fascination. I ride the streetcar from one end to the other. The conductors come to know me, and don’t even bother to ask for money. Sometimes I am accompanied by Marysia, as Father doesn’t like me to be on the streets alone, particularly after dark. Marysia loves men, and many soldiers stop her on the street. When she goes off with one, she makes me promise not to tell my parents. While she is away, I continue my daily exploration of the city.

The Polish spirit is surfacing. The pulse of the city beats again, and songs are composed in dedication. The Poles sing an ode to Warsaw:

At the same time, we begin to learn the tragic truth about the fate of Poland’s Jews during the war, as the people emerge from the cellars and attics, and return from concentration camps.

Friends from before the war come to visit my parents. They sit around our dining room table for hours discussing the horrors of Nazi crimes, which they call Genocide. They tell us about their relatives who boarded the trains to the so-called labour camps and never returned. These labour camps were really death camps, they said. When the Jewish people arrived there, all their possessions were taken away and divided into heaps of glasses, shoes, suitcases and other items. Then they were told to undress and take showers. Upon stepping into the showers, they were gassed to death. Millions died that way at camps called Auschwitz, Treblinka and others, where Jews themselves were ordered to dig mass graves.

Someone mentions a familiar name: Dr. Janusz Korczak, the gentle doctor who ran an orphanage in the Ghetto. I still remember him on his balcony watering flowers. They say that Dr. Korczak and his two hundred orphans were put into cattle cars and sent to a camp called Treblinka, never to be heard of again.

Mother has not been able to find any of her relatives. She knows that some of them were sent to concentration camps, and haven’t returned.

My parents always send me to my room when these discussions begin. But I eavesdrop. It seems that the war has not ended for the Jewish people.

In the meantime, my solitary excitement of roaming the streets is short-lived. Father forbids me to go out on my own, except to school and back. The streets are dangerous because of pilfering and drunken soldiers.

I hate school. It is boring and monotonous. They make us memorize masses of history, geography and literature straight out of books, then recite these passages word-for-word, without any explanation, discussion or understanding.

I make friends with a pair of blond, blue-eyed, Gentile twins, named Lola and Maryla. Both have brown, decaying teeth that smell awful, the result of an illness during the war. They are bright and kind, and one day they invite me to their house for tea after school. I don’t ask Father’s permission because I know he will refuse.

The street and the number of the building are easy to find. I open the gate and go through into the courtyard. I cannot believe it. The building on the inside of the courtyard is almost totally destroyed. No one could live here. I must have made a mistake. Then I see the number of their suite on the wall, with an arrow pointing at an apartment high up off the ground. Hanging in mid-air are staircases supported by a wall only on one side.

No elevator of course. That means a climb to the fourth floor. A sign in the courtyard says, THIS BUILDING IS DECLARED DANGEROUS AND MAY ONLY BE USED AT YOUR OWN RISK. I debate with myself. I promised to be there, didn’t I? I am not a coward. At least I don’t think I am. Father wouldn’t be afraid if he promised, and neither would Nina Dzavaha, my storybook heroine.

I proceed carefully towards the staircase. It swings as I place my foot on the first stair. What if it falls, with me on it? It continues to sway all the way up, and when finally I reach the top I feel weak with relief. I try not to think of having to go back down.

I am greeted at the door by the twins.

“You made it, brave girl. Come on in,” they say.

We sit at the table, while their mother serves us tea and cookies. She is a slight lady, with nervous hands. She doesn’t sit with us. We talk for awhile, and the twins tell me that their father went to fight with the partisans, and never came back.

“We don’t know whether our father is dead or alive,” they say.

Father! the word registers in my mind that I must be home before dark, and here it is getting dark already. I collect my hat and coat, thank them for everything, and take a deep breath. One of the twins laughs. “Don’t worry, we do this several times a day. Just take your time walking down,” says Maryla, and closes the rusted door.

The building is dark and silent; there isn’t even an electric light in sight. With each step I take, the staircase swings and creaks.

I can’t see. The staircase seems endless. Something scurries past me. Maybe a rat, or maybe a wild alley cat. My heart is bursting and I can hear it thud. I can’t breathe. I miss a step and fall a couple, hanging onto the swaying railing. I hurt my finger on something rough, and upon touching the sore spot with my mouth, I taste blood.

Finally, I step out onto a dark street. From the darkness come noises of men and women laughing. I feel relieved to know that I am not alone on the street. An old lady passes by with a young Russian soldier following behind her. He snatches her bag. She screams and runs into the nearest building. The soldier smiles stupidly as he walks back past me, putting his face up to mine and saying something I don’t understand. I break into a run and arrive at the door of our apartment. I am scared. What will my parents say?

I ring the bell and the door opens.

“Where have you been?” asks Father in a stern voice.

“At a tea party, Papa, with some friends from school.”

“Did you forget what I said to you?”

“No, Papa, I am sorry, I …”

He snatches me by the back of my school tunic and drags me into my room. He throws me on the bed face down, and starts to spank me.

“Where have you been, where have you been, where have you been?” Over and over.

I stifle my pain by biting on a corner of the pillow. I hate him. I hate him. Then it is over. He leaves the room. My head hurts and my bottom smarts.

This wasn’t my father, I think. He has never laid a hand on me before.

I sit in the dark bedroom for hours, feeling wretched. Someone knocks on the door. It’s Father. He turns on the light.

“I thought that we could all go to a matinee film tomorrow, and then get some ice cream. What do you think?” he asks.

I see it in his eyes. This is an apology.

I nod my head.

That night I hear my parents talking until very late. Mother wants to go to America, but Father doesn’t. He worries about how we would survive in a strange country, unable to speak English, and without money. He is already in his forties, and no longer has the energy of a young man. At least here he has a position and a place to live; he feels himself independent. There he would have to depend on his brother-in-law, uncle Urek, who lives in New York.

Mother argues that she is tired of this war-ruined country.

How will the Russians treat the Jews? Their leader, Stalin, hates them. Besides, all her family died in Treblinka, and Urek is her only brother left. It’s easier to get out of Poland now; later, it might become more difficult. Some of their friends have already escaped to California to start a business with the diamonds they hid in toothpaste tubes.

Nothing is resolved that night. But as months go by I hear other things. Uncle Urek had found us through some agency in New York that searches for lost families in Europe. He writes that he is sending us papers for a visa either to America or Canada. If we want to stay in America, we will first have to spend three years in countries such as Cuba or Canada before we can get permission to live there. Canada is a good place to live, he says, although also difficult to get into.

One day Father takes me to Babushka to say goodbye. Too old and ill, Babushka doesn’t want to come. Everyone is crying; it’s a sad farewell. Poor Babushka, I’ll miss her. On returning home, Father tells me to pack my brown suitcase. I am sad and confused. I don’t want to leave Poland.

“Slava,” says Father gently, “I am sorry that I haven’t discussed this with you sooner. But we are leaving under tense circumstances; the less said the better. We will fly first to Sweden, then leave almost immediately on a ship bound for Halifax. He hugs me and says, “We have a long journey before us. Let us hope that it’s our last.”

A few days later, I am sitting on my first airplane, watching

Warsaw disappear beneath the clouds. Goodbye Poland, will I ever see you again? Goodbye Babushka! And you my little sister, what if you are still alive?