Mother and Me (35 page)

The lieutenant took a glass off a shelf and rinsed it under the sink faucet. Into it he poured a little of the concentrated tea from the small pot and then filled it with hot water from the little spigot on the samovar. This he handed to me without a word.

“Thank you,” I said in Polish, and he grunted.

The glass was very hot, and I had to pass it from hand to hand. It proved still too hot so I put it down on the floor.

“Gariache,” the lieutenant said. It meant hot in Russian.

Realizing he was trying to teach me Russian words, I repeated it after him.

The serious expression on his face softened a little. “Harasho,” he said, meaning, good.

“Harasho,” I repeated, playing dumb.

“No, I mean …” he began, then grew embarrassed and shook his head, holding his hands palms out to indicate the end of the lesson. I answered with my well-practiced blank look.

The lieutenant took a sugar cube out of an open tin can. “Sahar,” he said, the Russian for sugar. I continued to look blank.

He pointed at me and in enunciated “Sah-ar.” I pointed to my chest and repeated, “Sah-ar.”

The young lieutenant's face grew red again. He shook his head and once more raised his open palms. Then he held up one finger, the same way my teacher in Warsaw used to do to call our attention. He pointed to the sugar cube in his other hand. “Sah-ar,” he said again. Then he pointed the finger at me. “Yulli,” he said.

I nodded my head. “Sah-ar,” I said pointing to the sugar. Then I pointed to myself and said, “Yulli.” The lieutenant's face brightened. He handed me the sugar cube and pointed to himself. “Gregor,” he said.

“Gregor,” I repeated. The lieutenant smiled. He took another glass from the shelf and, without bothering to rinse it, filled it with tea. In the meanwhile, I placed the sugar cube between my teeth as I had seen others do and picked my glass up off the floor with both hands. I brought the glass carefully up to my lips, but it grew too hot, and I had to put it down again.

Seeing my problem, the lieutenant handed me a cloth to wrap around the glass. I noticed that he had no trouble holding his glass in one hand.

With the help of a cloth, I got the glass up to my lips, but the sugar cube was in the way. I realized that I had it sticking out too far. In the meantime, the back end of the cube, melting in my mouth, was heavenly. It had been some time since I had had any sweets.

I adjusted the sugar between my teeth and tried again. This time it worked.

Lieutenant Rostov was drinking his the same way. He smiled at me, then pointed to his glass again. “Chai,” he said, the Russian for tea.

I put on my most confused look. Pointing to my glass I said the word for hot which he had given me earlier, gariachi.

“Chai,” he said again.

“Gariachi,” I repeated, innocently. I saw the lieutenant roll his eyes in frustration. It was the first time I had done this to someone intentionally, and I found myself enjoying it. I felt myself smarter than the very serious lieutenant, and I knew the sense of power.

But I also knew it wasn't being nice. “Gariachi chai,” I said.

The lieutenant was much relieved. “Gariachi chai,” he repeated, then he blew into his glass.

“Gariachi chai,” I repeated.

“Haroshi chai,” he said rubbing his stomach, using the word for good.

“Haroshi chai,” I dutifully repeated.

“Ochin haroshoi,” very good, he said.

“Ochin haroshi,” I repeated. “Ochin haroshoi chai.”

The lieutenant was delighted. He pointed to the brass sconce on the wall, said the word for lamp, and I repeated it.

In similar fashion we covered the ceiling, wall, door, floor, and water. Then another officer came in. He expressed surprise at seeing me, and Lt. Rostov explained that he was taking care of me while the colonel was blah-blahing my mother.

The other officer laughed. Then he unbuttoned his trousers lowered them, and sat down on the toilet.

I was mortified. Before I knew it, I had run out into the hall, and to my utter shame I had begun to cry.

Lt. Rostov came out after me. At first he was laughing, but when he saw me crying, quickly grew serious. I don't know whether it was because of my crying, but soon there were others in the hall. Lt. Rostov was explaining that he was taking care of me for the colonel and making me tea and then the other man had come in to take a blah-blah, and I had started to cry and ran out. And now the colonel was going to have his blah-blah.

This time I had a good idea of what this blah-blah meant. But I also understood that I had just done something very unmanly,
certainly unmilitary. I could hear a combination of voiced concerns mixed with some snickers. Then another woman soldier was in front of me saying, “Don't be afraid, little boy.”

“You didn't see anything she hasn't seen,” somebody said, and there was laughter.

“Take him back to his mother,” somebody suggested, and Lt. Rostov explained that he couldn't because the colonel was blah-blahing my mother, and there was more laughter.

“Tell the colonel I'm taking him to the blah-blah room,” the woman soldier said, getting to her feet. She took my hand in hers. It was a hard, callused hand, but she held me gently. We started down the hall.

“He doesn't speak any Russian,” Lt. Rostov said behind us.

“You stay here for when the colonel wants him back,” the woman said. Then she and I turned the corner and went downstairs by a back staircase.

This woman soldier wasn't as ugly as the other one, but she still wasn't like any of the women I knew. Maybe she was a little like the peasant women from the farm. Her legs were thick below her skirt and her skin looked coarse. She wore no makeup. Her blond hair was wound in braids around her head. Her eyebrows were so blond that she almost didn't have any.

She took me to an office where another woman soldier sat behind a desk. “Captain Milenoff dropped his pants in the bathroom and frightened him,” the first one explained. “He doesn't understand Russian.”

Like the first two, this woman soldier was also fatter than most women I knew. She had very dark hair and puffy cheeks. “Oh, he's so cute,” she said, and I was glad I wasn't supposed to understand her. “Bring him over here,” she said.

Suddenly I felt myself being lifted onto this latest woman's desk. “Captain Milenoff's blah-blah frightened you, little boy,” she said. “I should show you what I have.”

“Oh, stop that,” the first one said. “He's a little boy and he's frightened.”

“I'm not going to hurt him.” She smiled at me. “He doesn't understand what I'm saying.”

I smiled back, but I hoped she wasn't going to start taking off her clothes.

“Can you imagine what a tiny blah-blah he must have?” she continued. This time I knew exactly what blah-blah meant. She had her hands up, her fingers moving as though anxious to touch me. “The colonel is blah-blahing his mother,” the first woman soldier said, and the second one's hands suddenly stopped their twitter.

“What's his name?” the second one said.

“I don't know.”

“What… is … your … name?” The second one said to me, speaking slower and louder than before.

I did my blank look, not to tease her this time, but because I hoped it would prevent complications.

The woman pointed to her own large chest. “Mina,” she said. Then she pointed to the first woman. “Ania.” Finally she put her finger against my chest. I had little choice. “Yulli,” I said.

“Yulli,” she repeated. “So how big is your blah-blah?”

“Mina!” the first one said.

“He doesn't understand what I'm saying…. Do you?”

I almost shook my head.

“Would you like to show your little blah-blah to your Auntie Mina?”

I was sure she was only teasing, in her peculiar way. I knew Ania wasn't going to let her do anything bad to me, but it didn't stop me from wishing this would all end.

“Give him some candy,” Ania said.

Mina opened a drawer in the desk on which I was still standing and took out a piece of hard candy wrapped in paper.

I shook my head. “No, thank you,” I said in Polish. “No, thank you.”

“He doesn't want it,” Mina said

“He's afraid of it. See the look on his face? They've been told not to accept candy from us.”

Mina raised her thick eyebrows. She unwrapped the candy and put it in her own mouth. “Mmmm,” she said, making the appropriate face and massaging her stomach. Then she took a second candy from her desk and held it up for me. In the interest of peace, I put it in my mouth.

“Now let's put you on the floor,” she said as though we were about to play a game. She wrapped her arms around my waist and held me tight against her. I could feel my privates pressed against the bulge of her stomach and her fingers reaching for my rear end.

“What are you doing?” Ania demanded.

“I'm just giving him a little hug,” Mina said. “He's such a sweet little boy.”

Then we heard the door opening, and she set me down quickly. Mother and the colonel were standing in the doorway. The colonel had his boots and his tunic on. “What are you doing?” he demanded.

“We gave the boy some candy, Comrade Colonel,” Ania said.

The colonel used a lot of angry words I didn't understand. His voice was wonderfully deep and commanding, quite different from the way he had spoken upstairs. The two women stood stiffly at attention. I understood that they would be reporting to him in the morning.

“Come here, Yulek,” Mother said. I walked over to where she was standing and took her hand.

“Did they do anything to you?” the colonel asked me.

“Answer the colonel,” Mother said angrily when I didn't answer. “Did they do anything to you?”

“She gave me candy and a hug—that one,” I said pointing to Mina.

“What did he say?” the colonel asked.

“He says that one gave him candy and a hug.”

The colonel said some other words I didn't understand to the two women. Then he turned to Mother “We're going,” he said. “I'll deal with them in the morning.”

I thought of how Ania had tried to stop Mina. “She tried to stop her,” I said to Mother and waited for her to translate. But she didn't. “Don't keep the colonel waiting,” she said. The colonel had already started down the hall. Mother and I followed quickly.

A soldier opened the door of a car standing at the curb in front of the building. The colonel waited while Mother and I got in. I wondered if we were going directly to Lvow. “What is your address, Comrade Barbara?” he asked, getting in beside me. Mother gave our address to the soldier, and we started.

“Tell him that the other woman, the one named Ania tried to stop her from touching me,” I urged Mother.

“What does he want?” the colonel asked.

“He's just telling me about some friends of his,” Mother said.

“Ask him if he'd like to sit up front with the driver,” he said.

“He would love to,” Mother answered for me. She was right. Sitting with the driver was like sitting up on the coachman seat with Grandfather's Adam.

With his hands on my waist, the colonel lifted me up. I tucked my legs, and he dropped me on the soft seat next to the driver. Sitting up very straight, I could see over the dashboard; people in the queues in front of stores looked at us as we passed. “I warn you, Comrade Colonel, our apartment is very dirty,” Mother was saying in the back seat.

“Oh, my God!” Auntie Edna exclaimed as the three of us walked into our apartment. After Mother had introduced her to the colonel, she said, “Fredek has a fever again. It's his tonsils. They're the size of oranges.” Then she excused herself to bring him the tea she had been brewing.

“Edna is an extremely devoted mother,” my mother explained. “Her little son is Yulli's age and has bad tonsils.”

“In the Soviet Union we cut children's tonsils out.”

“We do too. Yulli had his done last year. Edna was waiting with Fredek till next spring.”

“Give him aspirin for the fever,” the colonel said. The three of us were still standing by the barely warm stove where we had met Auntie Edna. The pallet cover that Miss Bronia must have washed that morning was hanging on a line across the room.

“There is no aspirin,” Mother said. “There is almost no firewood. We have tea, but no milk or sugar.” Then she gave a little laugh. “Cigarettes, but no matches.”

“The children have had no fruit for months. This,” she pointed to the wet pallet cover, “is what we sleep on, stuffed with straw. We have one bed for seven people.”

Col. Bawatchov walked to the archway into the other room. Auntie Edna looked up from Fredek's bedside. The colonel marched in and laid his fingers against Fredek's neck. “He has high fever,” he said. Auntie Edna nodded. “Tell him that I'm afraid he will get another asthma attack,” she said. Mother told him.

The colonel walked out of the room and out of our apartment. In a moment he was back. “My driver will bring aspirin,” he said. Mother, who, like me, must have wondered whether he was returning, now sat the colonel down at the table and poured tea with the water that continually simmered on the stove. “Will you have tea with us?” she called to Auntie Edna in the other room. Auntie Edna called back that she wouldn't.

Mother poured the tea into glasses for the three of us, then apologized for there being neither sugar nor milk. I watched to see whether the colonel would produce his own lump of sugar from his pocket the way Capt. Vrushin had, but he did not.

Mother told me to get my book quietly from the other room and then to sit at the other end of the table and not to listen. If I
had wanted to obey, there would have been no way that I could have concentrated on my book with their conversation going on. Fredek and Sonya could do that, but I couldn't.