Briar Rose (14 page)

"Because this is where my grandmother's trail seems, to b don't know why."

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"Perhaps she lived in one of the nearby towns, or in the Lodz ghetto. The Jewish ghetto," Magda said. "It is written here in the pamphlet that the Nazis rounded up-that is the word?-yes, rounded up thousands from Lodz and the little Jewish towns and brought them by cart and by railroad to Chelmno. Maybe your grandmother's family died that way but she was somehow hidden, undiscovered. It could have happened."

"Yes, it could have. No woman escaped from Chelmno," Becca said. "At least that is what I was told." She shivered, "We do not have to go there. We can go instead to the Biaiowieza Forest. It is not far. The Polish kings used to go to the hunt there.

It still has bison. You know bison? And . . ." She stopped because Becca stood up abruptly. "You are not interested in forests and the bison."

Becca turned. "No."

"You are not interested in the hunting places of kings."

"I am sorry, but no."

"I am not either. But . Magda shrugged. "Sometimes it is important for a friend to ask these things."

Becca nodded, "I'll be ready shortly."

They headed northeast along route 83 and several small towns later came into the city of Swiecle.

There they turned south, crossing over the winding Narew River, broad and slow-moving. A little further along the flat, unvarying route, they came to a small sign: CHELMNO.

Ahead was a white church spire.

The grey day at that very moment decided to shake off its dull coat. The sun shone through the
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fragments of clouds with such sudden ferocity that as they came into the village, Becca was tempo-rarily blinded. When she could see again, they were almost upon a large wooden wagon with high plank back and sides. She braked quickly, throwing them both forward against the seat belts.

"Ouf!" Magda said, and followed it with something sharp in Polish.

"Horse-drawn wagons," commented Becca. "It's another century here."

Magda giggled and smoothed down her hair. "I have seen this in an American movie. Going back to the past."

The drive through the town-once

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took less than five minutes. Chelmno was a mud-colored except for the church, which gleamed white and solid and ve of place in the dun village. The houses lining the street wer some looked rotted through. Then the greyness of the d reasserted by the overhead clouds, and it was as if the air b the same color as the buildings.

Becca turned at the far end of the village and headed back, p up next to the church. Shutting off the engine, she asked

"What do you think?"

"It is a very odd place."

"Odd for a Polish village?"

"No. It is very Polish. But odd because to read the pamp was a place of such horror. Where would you put 300,000 p even dead?"

Becca shuddered at her matter-of-fact tone.

"And it is so ordinary. So quiet. So undistinguished."

Opening her door, Becca stepped out. She took a deep bre if that might bring her some scent of an evil that was fifty disguised. All she smelt was the horse pulling the cart as it ca even with the car and went past. Magda got out and stood n her silently.

An old woman in a drab, proletarian coat reaching her walked by across the street.

"Ask her," Becca urged Magda. "Ask her."

"Ask her what?"

"Ask her-where was the concentration camp. What hap here? Is there anyone around who was here then? Would sh at my grandmother's photos? Anything."

Magda nodded and ran across the muddy road. Whe reached the old woman, she began to speak quickly, ges eagerly with her hands. The old woman turned her head o look at Magda, then turned and walked away, head down.

few more steps, Magda quit following her and crossed back

"Well?"

"You saw. She would not speak with me."

They looked up and down the road. "There!" Becca said.

are some men. Let's ask them." She pulled Magda along.

The small knot of men they approached were in dark cloth stared at the strangers with sullen eyes. There were five of

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three smoking cigarettes with such ferocity Becca was sure their moustaches were in danger of going up in flames. Magda began to speak even before they were close. One man growled something that sounded like "Braaaagh," and turned away sharply, his hand suggesting they leave. A second suddenly found great interest in his own pockets, searching for what eventually turned out to be a cigarette and matches. The third and fourth merely glared at them, but the fifth, a man no more than fifty, wearing a dark cloth cap, spoke volumes with his hands as he talked in rapid Polish. Becca was glad she didn't understand the words.

Magda held her own hands up as if to contain the waterfall of words. Finally, without replying, she grabbed Becca and turned her around, shepherding them both back to the car, away from the man whose voice seemed to rise in direct proportion to their escape.

"What did he say?" Becca asked when they were close to the sanctuary of the Fiat.

"He said nothing worth the repeat."

"He said a lot."

"It was filth. Better not to know."

"I must," Becca put her hands on Magda's shoulder and looked directly into her eyes. "I must."

"He said that nothing happened here and that we should take our Jew questions away or that the nothing would happen again."

Magda's shoulders were shaking.

"Prezepraszam, " It was the old woman who had refused Magda's questions earlier.

"Prezepraszam. "

Magda turned to her and the old woman spoke quickly, pointing towards the church where, as it happened, a round-faced priest in a black cassock was emerging. Then ducking her head, as if warding off a blow, the old woman scurried, beetlelike, down the street.

"What did she say?" Becca asked. "Why did she point to the church?"

"She said that the only one who could tell us anything is the priest. He is the only one who will talk to us about these things.

She said not to ask the people anything. Especially not the men. But the priest, she said, is the one to ask."

"Enter the priest," Becca said. "Right on cue. Do you think he knows anything? He doesn't look old enough to have been here fifty

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"Priests in these little villages know all the secrets," M

"After all, they hear confession."

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"But I thought," Becca whispered, "I thought confes secret."

"Secret does not include history," Magda said. She wal church path and intercepted the priest, speaking quickly a

"It is okay," the priest said, loud enough for Becca to h a year in America. In Boston College. I am speaking Eng to call me Father Stashu."

"I am Rebecca Berlin and this is my friend-and my

Magda Bronski," Becca called back.

"Pardon me if I ask, but Chelmno is not a usual stop Not even tourists-" and he looked piercingly at Becc Holocaust tours."

Irritated, Becca asked, more pointedly than she mean look Jewish?"

Father Stashu smiled. "Not at all. But Americans wh way to this part of Poland are almost always looking for ments. There are no monuments here in Chelmno. And do not like to talk about what happened."

"Father Stashu," Magda said, "I do not wish to be i your intelligence or ours, but 300,000 people died here you not want to talk of it?"

The priest's pink cheeks turned even pinker, as if bu her remarks. "I did not say, my child, that I would no

I have made a great study of the evil that happened he people who lived through it do not like to discuss it. Es to strangers. It is making them uncomfortable."

"Uncomfortable!" Becca exclaimed.

"When I first came here twenty years ago, I thought place ... a career in the church. A few years in little pla move on to larger city, and maybe become bishop. Y

Polish priest can aspire to greatness in these times." H

but when they did not join in his little joke, he quic

"But when I began to learn what happened here fifty well, it was only thirty years ago then-I knew I had to these poor ptople cleanse their souls. It became my lif

"How can you cleanse them . . ." Magda began.

". . . if they will not talk about it?" Becca finished I

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"Come, my daughters, walk a bit with me, and I will explain it to you." He led them, an arm through each of theirs, across the street, stepping over a small ditch filled with muddy water.

"This, you see, was where the Nazi schoolteacher and his wife lived. There were Nazis imported here, homesteading, you see. They brought in good party members to colonize-to make German-this town. They

gave it a new name."

"Kulmhof " Becca whisDered.

"Ah, yes-you have done your homework. There are no Germans left here now. Only Poles. But that does not excuse them, my poor people. If you ask them, they will tell you they were as much victims as were the Jews. But they do not in their very hearts believe that. Only sometimes in the confessional will they cry to me. Only sometimes, on their deathbeds, will they tell me they fear dying because they will have to confront the souls of all those murdered Jews. And Gypsies. And other Poles, too-Communists and protest-ers. And a few priests, as well."

They were walking along the road now, away from the church and Fa er Stashu guided them past a dirty barricade, past some broken-down stone outbuildings, the whole thing the color of the muddy road.

"And I say to them that if they are truly repentant, God will forgive them. And if God forgives them, they will also be forgiven by the souls of the Jews and Gypsies and Communists and priests."

He srniled, but the corners of his mouth turned down instead of up and his eyes did not look as if they were smiling

"You do not sound-forgive me for saying this, Father-terribl) convinced," Magda said.

Becca bit her lower lip. It was just what she had been thinking.

"When I was twenty-three and coming here for the first time, I was convinced of the truth of what I have just told you, But I have been here now twenty years, and each year I learn more about what happened then. It is hard to keep one's faith with that knowledge.

But I try." He stopped and released their arms. "This, schlo5s, for example."

"Schloss! Schloss! This is a schloss!" Magda's voice had rise*n.

"Magda, what is it?" Becca asked, a sudden chill descending upon her. The sun was completely behind the clouds now and an

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ominous rumbling came from the north, thunder of cou somehow also like the sound of trucks over cobbles.

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"A schloss is a castle, Becca. A castle. "

Becca turned around quickly. The ruined buildings look like farm stockbarns than anything else.

The cobbled stone road were uneven, many of them missing. "Castle?"

"It was an old castle once. Ruined in World War I," d explained. "But it was here that the prisoners were brou

Nazis said it was for baths, for delousing. But it was only for Becca reached out a hand and Magda took it, steadying castle," she said.

"Not much of one, really," Father Stashu was saying.

before World War L"

But Becca did not hear him. She was trying her best to c breath, to stop shaking. With Magda's arms around breathed deeply several times. Father Stashu looked at her i

"My child . . ."

Magda looked up. "She is all right, Father. Perhaps we s back now to the car."

"Come to the church. I will make us coffee. I have so cakes. You will be fine. Now you see why I could not leaN

is much here that needs to be atoned for. You feel it, too Downstairs in the church, in the priest's study, they sat an cakes and some of his very strong coffee in the same kind ceramic mugs they had drunk from in the Tor6n cafe. Fath spoke about spring and summer in the Lublin Upland, whe been born, with its long, narrow fields, gentle slopes of hi ing ravines, old untouched forests.

"I rarely get there now," he said. "But when I do, it re soul."

"This coffee and these cakes have renewed mine," Be

"Thanks." She was no longer shaking.

"Did you have family who died at Chelmno, then?

Stashu asked. He took the empty cups from them and put a little serving table. "Or are you more than a little psychic the word?" 4

"I don't know," Becca said. "I came here to find that o MY family. yy

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Father Stashu sat back in his chair. He folded his hands, lacing his fingers artlessly under his chin.

The pink spots on his cheeks were pale in the greying light of the room. "Where are you staying?"

"In Bydgoszcz, at the Brda Hotel," Magda said.

"That is good. I have a friend who is in Bydgoszcz-Josef Potocki.

He was a partisan in the war. He lives there now, though he could live anywhere in the world.

Like me, he is drawn back by the souls of the dead. If I know much about what happens now in Chelmno, he knows everything about what happened then. But unlike my poor flock, he will tell you anything he feels you need to know. Let me call him."

Becca and Magda exchanged quick glances.

"Tell him we will be at the hotel this evening. After dinner. We will have coffee."

Father Stashu smiled, stood, and went to the wall where there was an old-fashioned telephone.

He dialed the number, turning as he did so to Becca. "He is not always at home, but ... ah, good

...

Josef! " The torrent of Polish that followed was incomprehensible to Becca, but Magda followed it closely, nodding in agreement at the things the priest was saying.

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Before the conversation came to a close, with several obvious effusions, Magda had whispered,