Lilac Girls (39 page)

I
screamed most of Wednesday, March 25, 1947. At People's Hospital in Lublin, we nurses were happy to hear such screams, for it meant a healthy mother. A quiet birth was often a sad one. I was pleased that my baby's lung function was productive as well, for as a maternity nurse myself, I'd seen things go wrong in seconds. Breech births. Blue babies. Our doctors were excellent (including my sister), but it was the maternity division nurses who made it hum. I was lucky it was a routine labor, since pain medication and other drugs were in short supply.

Pietrik stood next to my bed, swaddled baby in his arms, and every nurse on the floor gathered around him. He wore a white hospital smock over his factory coveralls and held her in a most natural way, not stiff and awkward like so many new fathers. As kind as my visitors were, I just wanted to be alone with the baby and get to know our girl.

“Give her back, Pietrik,” I said, my vocal cords raw.

Pietrik laid the baby back in my arms. I was soon sleepy, since it was warm for such a large ward—over fifty beds. My ward supervisor had reserved the best one for me, on the far wall away from the drafty windows, next to the radiator. I breathed the baby's sweet-sour scent and watched the fontanel atop her head beat out a soft rhythm. She was as blond as Mrs. Mikelsky's baby. Jagoda would have been how old by now? Eight? Should we name our baby Jagoda? That might be too sad. Maybe a name like Irenka.

Hope.

Pietrik lobbied for the name Halina, arguing my mother would have wanted that. But didn't he see it would be too painful to say my dead mother's name ten times a day?

The series of bells signaling visitor time rang, and the nurses scattered. Marthe was first to arrive. She carried a plate of
paczkis
in one hand, napkins in the other.

“We come bearing gifts,” she said. “
Paczki
for the mother?” Papa brought up the rear bearing Marthe's purse.

“No, thank you,” I said. I felt as round and fat as a
paczki
myself. When would Zuzanna be back to fend off Marthe? She'd assisted at the delivery but had been called away to set a fracture.

Marthe placed a sugar-frosted
paczki
on a napkin and set it next to me. “This is no time for a slenderizing course.”

I resisted sweets since I not only had baby fat to lose, but a cavity in my left canine tooth as well, a souvenir from Ravensbrück, and which stung when it met with sugar.

My father kissed my hand, then my forehead and the baby's too. “How are you, Kasia?”

Pietrik lifted the baby from my arms, leaving me cold. He handed Papa the baby, Marthe's purse still on Papa's arm.

“We are thinking of naming her Halina,” Pietrik said.

“Well, I like the name Irenka,” I said. “It means hope—”

“Halina, of course,” Papa said. “How nice.”

Were those tears in his eyes?

“She favors you, Pietrik,” Marthe said. “Will you christen her at home? Don't even think about a church.”

She was right. The Polish Workers' Party no longer simply suggested a ban on religious ceremonies, including baptisms and weddings. It openly discouraged them and made life terribly difficult for those who disobeyed. Marthe and Papa were still not married, though many priests wed couples in secret.

Marthe scooped the baby from Papa's arms. “This may be hard for you, Kasia, with your bad leg once you come home. I will take care of the baby.”

As Marthe cooed over the baby, a dark wave crashed over me. Why wasn't my mother here? Matka would walk the ward with the baby and show her off. She would tell me stories of myself as a child and make me laugh about it all.

All at once, my face was wet with tears. I'd helped hundreds of mothers fight baby blues, but it was harder than it appeared, like being sucked down into a dark hole.

“I need the baby back, please,” I said.

Suddenly I wanted them all gone, Pietrik too. If I couldn't have my mother, I wanted no one.

Pietrik took the baby from Marthe, who looked pained to release her, and placed her back in my arms.

“Kasia needs to rest,” he said.

Marthe gathered her plate of
paczkis.
“We'll be back tomorrow with pierogies.”

“No thank you,” I said. “They feed us well here.”

Once they left and Pietrik went back to the factory, the baby and I drifted in and out of sleep. When the radiator started hissing steam, I woke with a start thinking I was back on the train to Ravensbrück, the train's whistle screaming as we came to the platform. My heart raced, but I calmed once I looked at the baby. She shifted in my arms.

Halina? So she would have my mother's name after all? As it was, I could barely look at my mother's picture without falling to pieces. More terrifying, could the child's name somehow cause her to follow Matka's terrible path? To live a wonderful life, cut short? A shiver ran through me. Stranger things have happened.

Once Pietrik and Papa started calling the baby Halina, I gave in and soon called her that myself. I needed to grow up after all. I was a mother now, with responsibilities, no longer a child. Plus, everyone said it was a beautiful name, and it suited the baby. It honored my mother, and she would have been pleased.

But somehow I couldn't shake the notion I should have named her Hope.

O
nce I found the child and arranged for her parents to fetch her, I stayed in Paris doing my best to avoid Paul. He was a father now, and I wanted no part in disrupting his family. It was easy to avoid him since they remained at Rena's house in Rouen.

You might think there is no better place to salve a wounded psyche than the City of Love, but that year, after the war ended, every park bench teemed with lovers kissing in public, some before breakfast, vivid reminders of my lost love. Even the news from home was grim, for Roger wrote that our elevator boy, Cuddy, had been killed in action in the Pacific.

I became like a drug addict, the withdrawal from Paul hellish. No sleep, no appetite. Why could I not move on to a higher purpose? So I would remain unmarried, alone for the rest of my life. Worse things had happened to people.

It didn't help that letters from Paul choked our letter box. Mother lobbed each one into a basket in the living room with a labored stage sigh. More than once I flipped through them admiring Paul's handwriting and held a few to the light. But why read them? It would only prolong the agony.

I felt like Paris had cheated on me. We'd both been dealt a blow, but only she was recovering, starting to rebuild and clear the rubble. If the fashion industry was any indication, Paris was back, already holding elaborate fashion shows in the grand haute couture houses and magazine shoots against backdrops of ruined buildings, while I was still reduced to tears by a crippled pigeon or an old fruit man with three wormy apples arranged on a towel to sell.

M
ONTHS PASSED.
I
WOKE
one November morning and vowed to immerse myself in work and not think of Paul even once more that day. There were no new letters in the basket, and fortunately there was still much to be done in Paris since rebuilding was in full swing. Turning oneself to the misfortunes of others is the best way to dispense with personal troubles. Hadn't Lord Byron himself said, “The busy have no time for tears”?

Gasoline remained in short supply, so Parisians still rode their bicycles everywhere. Things like plates, matches, and shoe leather were still in short supply, not to mention decent food. Workers continued to cultivate beans and potatoes on the Esplanade des Invalides with horse and plow, but there were few eggs to be found, and ridiculously long lines formed at the bread and butcher shops at the hint of a rumor that a few scraps were available.

Mother secured a supply of old K rations from a friend at the military post exchange store to supplement our diets. Each cardboard rectangle held a miniature American breakfast: a tin of diced ham and eggs, Nescafé coffee, cellophaned crackers, a pack of Wrigley's gum, and a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes. It was a miracle our boys had stayed alive to fight in spite of those breakfasts, but any food was precious then.

Mother volunteered for the ADIR, the National Association of Deportees and Internees of the Resistance, a new organization that helped women deportees returning from Nazi concentration camps get back on their feet. These “lucky” women often had lost everything. Their husbands and children. Their homes. To make matters worse, the French government focused on the men who returned, military men especially, but any males who'd survived the war. Somehow the returning women were an afterthought.

I volunteered here and there as well. Since so many children in Paris lacked coats, Mother and I appealed to Le Bon Marché department store to allow us to set up a donation station just outside the store's doors and they agreed. They carted out coatracks and folding tables to the cordoned-off area, and Mother and I hung donated children's coats by size. The price of admission into our little shop was one child's coat. A parent could choose from any of our coats and jackets in a larger size, and the donated garment was cleaned and redistributed. Le Bon Marché even advertised our event, running a grim little photograph of Mother and me at the bottom of their newspaper ad.

We chose a perfect sunny November day to set up, when all of Paris was out to see what fashions the stores held for the coming season. Dior had debuted his revolutionary New Look, with its nipped waists and full skirts, that spring, and Paris was abuzz about what he'd unveil next. It was hard not to feel optimistic that day, with the scent of roasting chestnuts in the air and the one-man band in the adjacent park playing a lively version of “Le Chaland qui passe.”

Soon people queued up and crowded in. Mother had left me in charge, for she'd already achieved field marshal status in the post–World War II French charitable world and had gone to oversee a soup kitchen on the other side of town. I was thrilled, for I desperately needed a new mission of my own. Besides, I'd become good at picking the perfect coat for a child. The key was in the coloring. This was Paris after all. A yellow coat on a sallow child was almost worse than no coat at all.

The coat exchange was packed by midmorning when I realized I'd never opened my ration box. Before I could reach for it, an elderly woman approached me.

“Excuse me, Mademoiselle, would you assist me, please?”

She was gaunt but had the bearing of a countess, well dressed in her wool skirt and cardigan and clean white gloves. She wore a faded pink Hermès Saumur scarf fastened with a jeweled partridge brooch, the belly of which was a South Sea pearl. Even in dire circumstances, or perhaps because of them, the women of Paris continued to pull themselves together with unexpected touches, still subscribing to the fashion truism that too much simplicity is timid. In one hand the woman held a white paper package, a malacca walking stick hooked over her wrist. In the other she held the leash of an ebony-colored standard poodle. It was a magnificent animal and, like its owner, thin but beautifully groomed.

“I have brought a coat,” she said.

I took the package, broke the cellophane tape, and lifted out the coat, releasing a musky scent of rose and lavender. I'd seen many lovely garments that day, some with hand-embroidered flower plackets and enameled buttons or glorious rabbit fur linings, but this coat was in a category all its own. Cashmere? It was the color of a robin's egg and surprisingly heavy, but soft and lined with quilted white satin.

“Thank you for your donation, Madame. Please choose another. We have many good coats, perhaps maybe none as fine as this one—”

“It is lined with goose down. It was made for my granddaughter. Never worn.”

“Help yourself to the rack. What size is your granddaughter now?”

The woman smoothed her hand down the dog's neck. Upon closer inspection, I saw she'd misbuttoned her cardigan, giving her sweater a cockeyed skew. Her jeweled brooch was missing a diamond. Sold or lost?

“Oh, she is gone. Taken with her mother and brother years ago now. My daughter and one of our maids had been printing leaflets in our pantry.”

The underground.

“I'm so sorry…” My sight blurred. How could I comfort others if I couldn't control my own emotions?

“I kept it thinking she might come home, but then they took me. Can you imagine? What would they want with an old woman? My housekeeper kept my dog in Saint-Etienne while I was, well, away. He's my family now.” She shook her head, unable to continue, then straightened. “Perhaps someone can use the coat?”

I returned the coat to the wrapping. “Thank you, Madame. I will make sure it finds a good home. There is hot coffee inside.”

She laid her gloved hand on mine for a long moment, the cotton warm and smooth. “Thank you, dear.”

I pulled a card from my pocket. “This is the ADIR, a charity my mother supports. They help women coming back from, well, from the camps. Run by women who were deportees themselves, out of one of their apartments. Near Le Jardin du Luxembourg.”

“Thank you, Mademoiselle.” She took the card and turned.

“Wait, Madame.” I pulled my K-ration box from beneath the table. “I have an extra. Would you like it?”

She eyed the box. “Oh no, dear, give it to someone more—”

“Please take it.”

“Well, I do have a neighbor—”

I smiled. “A neighbor. Good then. I'm glad it will be well used.”

The woman tucked the box under her arm and made her way out of our little coat exchange, jostled and pushed by the crowd.

There were many such stories that afternoon, and by day's end I was ready to rest, but the crowds only grew larger. To make things worse, the temperature dropped, making me all too aware of my own coatlessness. Mother had mistakenly added our own coats to her donation piles and carted them off, and as a result I had no outerwear of my own. The wind picked up, blowing coats off their slippery wooden hangers.

I stooped to retrieve a jacket and stopped short as I stood. I couldn't miss Paul in the crowd, taller than most, working his way toward me. My first instinct was to dive into the crowd myself and avoid seeing him, but who would man the booth? He'd in all probability moved on by now, I thought. Adjusted to his new life. Forgotten me.

As he came closer, it was hard not to notice he looked good in his aubergine velvet jacket. He had been eating, it seemed—still thin but finally filling out.

Paul made his way to me, both of us jostled about by the crowd. He held out a small tweed coat the color of ripe wheat with a wilted tricolor ribbon pinned to the breast. I took it, careful not to touch him. One touch and I'd be back into it all, and the pain would return. It might even be worse.

“Remember me?” he asked.

It had been almost two years since we'd last seen each other at his kitchen table.

“Thank you for your donation, Monsieur. Please choose another.”

It was Pascaline's coat, of course. Thin and light. A wool-cotton blend? The sleeves had been let down twice, leaving lines, dark as graphite, around each cuff, and two lovely little patches had been sewn into the warp of the tweed with tiny, regular stitches. Rena.

“I'm sorry you have to talk to me, Caroline. You obviously don't want that.”

“We have many good coats—”

“Would you please look at me?” He passed the fingers of his free hand across his lips. Paul nervous? That was a first. The velvet at the elbow of his jacket was worn. Had Rena not cared enough to mend his too?

Paul reached for my arm. “It's been terrible without you, C.”

I stepped away. Was he acting? He was good at that, after all.

“You are free to choose any coat…”

Why could I not stop babbling about coats?

Paul stepped closer. “I'm in a bad way, Caroline.”

If he was acting, he was doing a remarkable job. He clearly hadn't slept anytime recently. Overcome, I turned and held a coatrack to keep it from toppling over in the breeze.

Paul grabbed my wrist and turned me toward him. “Did you even read my letters?”

I shook off his hand. “I've been busy. You should see the apartment. Mother's been boiling cottons on the stove—”

“If you would just read them, you'd know—”

“You should see her on a stool stirring the pot with a canoe paddle.”

I turned away and straightened the coats. He followed.

“So this is it? We'll never be together again?” He stood taller for a moment.

Misery looked good on Paul. Unshaven, messy, lovely misery. I buttoned a tiny pink coat.

Paul stepped back. “I had to see you when I read you'd be here. Hitchhiked all the way from Rouen.”

“You'd better start back soon. It looks like rain.”

“Is it someone else? I've heard you were with a man—”

“What?”

“Holding hands. At Café George. You're well known, Caroline. Word gets around. You at least owe me an explanation.”

I'd lunched with one of Mother's admirers, a bearded count from Amiens twenty years my senior. Disconsolate that Mother had little time for him, he'd spent half the lunch with my hand in his, pleading for me to intervene, keeping me from my vichyssoise.