Briar Rose (11 page)

"Jesus!"

"And that no woman ever got out of there alive."

"Hmmmm." His hand went up to his hair automatically an scratched at his scalp as he spoke.

"So-she wasn't there. Or m she had family there or . . ."

"I'm going," Becca said shortly.

"Of course you are." He smiled. "Wish I could come, too."

he went into his office and closed the door.

Becca turned back to the map. "Of course I am," she mutt If it hadn't been settled before, it was now. All she had to do find out how to get there, how much it would cost, and som to do her translating. The only Polish she knew was limit(

food-and the name,of a single camp.

Her University of Massachusetts contacts pointed her to the Department. A professor there told her to check on a book the Atlas Samochodowy Polski, which she got down correctly three wrong tries.

"I'll have it transferred downstairs to the reference libra desk," he said. "If you trace the route, check on road nu eighty-one. I'm pretty sure that's the right one. It goes o Warsaw, to Plock, then to Torun, then to Bydgozcz . . ."

Becca took the names down phonetically, then asked him tc them correctly.

"Chelmno is a half hour from there by car."

"I'm sorry," Becca said, "but the name is Kulmhof.", Briar Rose

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"That's the German name," the professor told her. "When the Germans took over, they called it Kulmhof. Its Polish name-what it's called now-is Chelmrio."

"Chelmno," Becca repeated. It made her shiver in a way that she hadn't before, as if the word itself had been imprinted in her genes.

"Chelmno."

"You will pass through many lovely places," the professor was saying. "These are old cities, not like American cities, and the land around them is mainly flat and green. One of the cities . . ."

She stopped listening. All the pictures she had seen of concentra-Page 56

tion camps came back to her in a rush; her dreams of last night seemed as clear as if she were staring directly at the past.

... to the thirteenth century," he was saying.

"Thank you very much, Professor Radziwicz," Becca said. "Can I call you again if necessary?"

"My pleasure," he said. "And you may want to check also with the Polish Jewish program at the University of Connecticut in Storrs.

It is connected, I believe, with the Polish Jewish Institute in Cracow.17

She took down all the information, thanked him twice more, and hung up. The paper on which she'd taken notes was full, and on the sides, like some sort of horrible marginalia, were rows and rows of swastikas. She had no memory of drawing them.

Standing, she thought Why am I doing this? And answered herself aloud, "For Gemma." But that wasn't right and she knew it. "For all of us." She shook her head. Then she walked into Stan's office without knocking, He glanced up. The light glinting off his glasses blocked his eyes and for a moment he looked blind.

She sat in the chair reserved for visitors. "Tell me again why you searched for your birth mother."

"Because I had to. Blood calling to blood, and all that." He leaned forward across the desk and stared at her. Without the light on the glass, his eyes were so blue she felt cut by them, as if they were ice.

"That's not it," she said.

"Because I was so damned curious, I had to find out or die," he said.

"That's closer."

There was a hush between them that stretched out until it was 90

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simply a thin line. Becca felt herself poised to walk across it caref like a circus acrobat.

"Because . . ." he whispered, "what's past is prologue."

"Shakespeare," she said, quietly. "I forget just where."

"The Tempest," he countered. "But it's true."

"You didn't answer me truly."

"I don't know-truly. I only knew I had to do it."

"Okay." She stood. "I am going to want my two weeks vaca early, and an extra week without pay."

"Will you write the story?"

"If there is one."

"Happy ending or no?" He was serious.

She attempted a smile. "Fairy tales always have a happy endi He leaned back in his chair. "That depends."

"On what?"

"On whether you are Rumplestiltskin or the Queen."

It took longer than she thought to set the trip up. The passpori visa alone was a three week project. The Polish Embassy in Was ton, D.C., was helpful, the Boston passport office was not.

Polish Tourist Office in New York gave her car information. '

can rent through -us," the woman had said, her voice light fruity, with just a touch of an accent.

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"A Fiat Uno for six days than two hundred dollars, and drive from Warsaw. It only four hours."

Becca hung up, having arranged for the Fiat, a variety of r and information about restaurants and hotels.

On her father's suggestion, she contacted the Polish Jewis~

gram at Storrs for a possible translator and they promised a stl would meet her at the plane. For a small fee (and several pa blue jeans, size twelve, the woman suggested), she would be i capable hands of Magda Bronski.

"Sounds like a novelist's idea of a Polish woman some below a countess," Becca had said.

The woman at Storrs had chuckled, her laugh over the f comforting. "Mother Jewish, father not.

The girl is rediscoverir roots. A lot of them are these days."

"Me, too," Becca said.

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"In Chelmno?" The woman's voice was suddenly dark. "All the roots there were severed."

Becca told Stan of the conversation, but not her parents. He only shook his head and asked her for a due date on another story. It was as if his interest in her trip was purely professional now.

Becca felt

architecturally important monuments "

that withdrawal as a deep loss, and she couldn't say why.

Clearly her father was still troubled about the trip because within days Becca got three phone calls, one from Sylvia, two from Shana.

"This is crazy," Syl shouted into the hone

"I made a promise," Becca said.

"Deathbed promises don't count.

"If deathbed promises don't count " Becca countered "wha kind of promises do?"

Syl made a list of promises, including peace treaties, marriage vows, and New Year's resolutions.

"And all of them are broken regularly," she finished.

"This was a promise to Gemma," said Becca, hanging up and feeling-as she usually did after arguing with one of her sisters-morally oppressed.

Shana called not long after, and Becca was careful not to discuss her trip in terms of the promise to Gemma. "I didn't take a vacation last year because of Gemma and so I have two weeks coming. And by taking a third on my own, I'll get to see a lot of Eastern Europe."

"But Daddy says you're going to a concentration camp. What kind of vacation is that?"

"An extermination camp, but I'll see churches and cathedrals and lots of other historical things."

She shuffled quickly through the many notes she had taken, came across the paper with the swastikas. "I'll see some of the cities on the Vistula. In fact, one of the experts I talked to says there is a thirteenth-century cathedral there that has been designated by the U.N as one of the world's most

"A vacation expert told you this?" Shana wasn't convinced.

"Who else?" She hated to lie but she hated arguments even more.

Shana hung up slightly mollified and called back less than an hour later. "You're going because
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of that promise!" she said. "Not a cathedral."

"You've been talking to Syl."

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"Well, you're not to go. Especially with the political situation there. It's liable to blow up any minute."

"That's the Soviet republics," Becca explained carefully. "That's Yugoslavia. Not Poland. Poland is quite stable at the moment."

"At the moment . . . ."

It took another ten minutes before Shana would let her go, and the whole evening had tired Becca out. She went to bed and finished only a few pages of McKinley's Beauty, a book she read whenever she felt troubled.

Though she'd set June first as a possible travel date, she had to be satisfied with June fifteenth.

"Best laid plans and all that," she explained to Stan. "Slow passport, slow visa, and Baroness Magda's availability."

"A real baroness?"

"Am I a real granddaughter of a princess?"

"I don't know-are you?"

"Sometime after June fifteenth I might actually know." She smiled slightly, but he didn't smile back. "Look, don't tell anyone here what I am doing in Poland."

"It's your story, Becca," he said. "You alone can break the spell."

"Spell?"

"That's what I finally decided. You asked why I had to look for my birth mother and I put you off with quick answers. But in the end, all I could think of-and believe me, I have been thinking about it a lot these past weeks-is that I alone could break the spell. It wasn't so much flnding her as looking for her. And only I could do it." This time he smiled-grinned, actually-and held out his hand.

She took it and felt real pleasure when he squeezed it.

"As far as the office is concerned, it's a vacation mixed with a bit of reporting. When you come back, you can decide how much to tell and who to tell, but . . ." His grin turned wicked, one corner tilting up higher than the other.

"But you want the story."

"In writing."

"It begins Once Upon a Time."

His grin faded. "Don't count on Happy Ever After. This is the real world."

"I won't. How happy can it be? Gemma's dead, after all." She Briar Rose

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turned away and went back to her desk, packing up everything she would need for the trip. Stan watched her go from the door.

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She waved good-bye to the other reporters and Jim in production came up to give her a big hug.

As she went through the waiting room, Merelle was just bending over to pick up her pocketbook.

"Oh, bye, Becca. I hear you're going off to Poland. You might want to be sure and look at the paper cut-outs. My friend Jannie just went last year and she stayed with her great aunt and uncle.

Had never met them before. They took her to this open air market where there were these paper things."

"I'm going on a story actually," Becca said.

"What kind of story?

"A fairy story," Becca said.

"Gay rights?" Merelle looked puzzled.

"Sleeping Beauty."

"You are such a kidder, Becca," Merelle said. "Have a good trip.

Break a leg."

Becca smiled, nodded her head, and left. "Break a spell would be more appropriate," she said aloud as she walked down the road.

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"The prince sang too, and as he added his voice to theirs, it was w witnessed all their deaths in the thorns. It was as if he had knowledge their lives, past and present and future. "

"How can they have any future lives if they're dead?" Syl had, finally. It was a question the girls had puzzled over in the family ro(

they played with their dollhouse. Shana had wondered flrst and bc older girls had wanted Becca to ask. But she had refused. So Syl, braver that year, had done what they had all wanted.

"How?" Syl asked * again.

Gemma looked over her halfg1asses and said, "The future is when talk about the past. So if the prince knows all their past lives and t the people who are still to come, then the princes live again and h future. "

"Oh, " said Syl, as if she understood, but she hadn't. She said thA when Gemma had flnished the story and the girls were once again I at dolls. "I didn't understand at all. "

"I didn't either, " Shana said, marching the mommy doll from th, room to the kitchen.

"Didn't either, " said Becca, even though she did. But she had Ic learned it was best not to contradict her sisters. They just got mad.

the baby doll into its cradle and went out of the room to their real where Gemma was making a cake.

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"I understand, " she said to Gemma.

'You always understand, " Gemma said, handing her the icing bowl to lick. Becca preferred licking the cake dough bowl, but it was already sitting in the sink with soapy water.

"Always, " Becca agreed, though she wondered if this were really true.

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I

The plane was already an hour late and Becca was long past try to sleep. The pilot had twice promised they would make up time, once when they boarded in Milan and once somewhere o the Italian border. He had not promised since.

Becca unfastened her seatbelt and, careful not to disturb seatmate, bent over to get her pocketbook from the floor. Unzipp it, she took out her passport and the envelope with the photos

Gemma. Then she pulled down the seat tray and spread the pho out, placing the opened passport next to them. It was something had done a hundred times since having her picture taken. Tho

Gemma's photos were in black-and-white, grainy reminders of ti passing, and hers was brilliant-and wrong-in its coloring, the women could have been one. The same surprised eyes, the sa strong mouth, the same broad forehead, the same heart-shaped f narrowing to a chin that missed being pointed by a small cleft.

one had ever commented on how much they looked alike, she Gemma, except of course for the red hair. But then, no one had e seen the pictures of Gemma as a young woman before. Still, resemblance startled Becca anew.

"How many more surprises, Gemma?" Becca whispered.

sound of her voice, even pitched so low, woke her seatmate Briar Rose

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chatty woman with Polish cousins, she started in on her bland reminiscences even before the sleep was fully cast from her eyes.

Becca listened only half-heartedly; the woman tended to repeat herself endlessly. That was the third time she was telling this particular story. Putting away the photos, Bacca kept the passport out a minute longer, opening and closing it. It was so fresh, so new. Soon it would have its first stamps. Polish stamps. Border stamps. Almost a violation, though welcome. Gemma, she remembered suddenly, had had no passport, not in her bank box, not in the rose box. In fact Gemma had often boasted how she was perfectly happy in