Mother and Me (37 page)

“Who is Mr. Lupicki?” Auntie Edna asked.

“The little man we picked up on the road outside Lublin,” Auntie Paula told her. With her glasses pushed to the end of her nose, she was counting the stitches on her needle. Her lips moved, but no sound came out.

“Oh, yes, Herman Lupicki,” Auntie Edna said. “A disgusting little man with a gun.”

“He didn't have a gun,” Auntie Paula said. “Fredek only said he had a gun.” She added one more stitch, then switched the needles around to start the next row.

“He had a gun.”

“All right,” Mother said, “he had a gun, he didn't have a gun—it doesn't matter. What matters is that he drives to Lvow every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and he says that they check who gets on the autobus in Durnoval, but not who gets off in Lvow. If we wait at a certain crossroads four kilometers out of town, he'll watch for us and pick us up.”

“I have to care for Fredek,” Auntie Edna said, getting up from the table.

“Edna, this is important,” Mother said with annoyance. “You can tend him in a minute.”

“I'll go check him,” Miss Bronia said.

Auntie Edna ignored them both and walked into the other room.

Mother looked at Auntie Paula.

“Fredek is still congested,” Auntie Paula said. “He's still coughing.” With her bent wrist she pushed the glasses higher up on her nose.

“But he's better than he was, isn't he? Now that the place is warm,” Mother said.

“He's coughing less today,” Miss Bronia said.

“Bronia found goat's milk today,” Auntie Paula said. “Of course, we had to almost force it down his throat.” I didn't know that goats gave milk.

“He'll be able to travel soon,” Mother said. “And once Edna sees some of her old friends and doesn't have to stand in queues all day, she'll pull herself together.”

“I know someone with a wagon who can take us to the rendezvous point,” Miss Bronia said.

“Rendezvous point,” Sonya repeated. “How romantic.”

“Romantic is right,” Auntie Paula said. “How much does your Mr. Lupicki want to be paid for this little service?”

“He didn't mention money. I'm sure that whatever we want to give him …”

“And when you and Yulek are standing at the side of the road,” Auntie Paula interrupted, “in the snow, four kilometers outside of town, he suddenly mentions money.”

Mother gave a sigh. “Paula, why do you always look at the negative side? Look, in Lvow there are also people who will take you over the mountains into Hungary. They are local peasants who know the woods and the mountains like their hand, and they hire out as guides.”

Auntie Paula looked at Mother over her glasses. “And you want to go?”

“Yes,” Mother said.

“That's insane, Basia.”

“What do you mean it's insane?”

“Insane,” and Auntie Paula laughed as she said it. “You're going to drag us over the Carpathian Mountains, across an armed border to Hungary? That's pure craziness. If the border guards don't get us, the wolves will.”

Miss Bronia had gotten up from the table and begun taking clothes off the lines and folding them. “Hungary doesn't border with Poland,” she said.

“It used to be Czechoslovakia before Hitler marched in,” Mother explained. “But he gave a piece to Hungary who had a long-standing claim to it.”

I knew that if it weren't for Fredek's cough, I would have been sent into the other room. I pretended to be very busy with my book, something about a train full of circus people and animals.

“Why are you laughing?” Mother said to Auntie Paula. “The guides have guns against the wolves, and they know where the guards are. People have done it, you know.”

“Who?” Auntie Paula was counting stitches again. I wondered at the way she could speak and keep count at the same time.

“People. I don't know their names.”

“Women and children?”

Mother took a pack of cigarettes out of her purse, then stood up and crossed the room to the stove. Lifting the round lid by its handle, she stuck a cigarette tip part way into the hole. In a moment she pulled it out glowing. Mother took a drag and turned to face us again. She spat a flake of tobacco off her tongue.

“All right,” she said, “at least there is food in Lvow and civilized people. We could all die here in Durnoval before spring. Bawatchov is our friend now, but he could be transferred any day, he told me. That's the way they work. They're not trusted to stay too long in any one place.”

“And what's the punishment for trying to go to Lvow without a travel permit? Do they send you to Siberia, or do they just shoot you?” Auntie Paula had switched needles again and was starting another row.

“They won't know.”

“Look, Bawatchov already knows you want to go to Lvow. Now, thanks to you, he'll show up for his French lesson and find us gone. He's not stupid.”

“He won't do anything.”

“Won't do anything?”

“No.”

“Didn't he already tell you that we're bourgeoisie who should consider ourselves lucky we weren't shot like in Russia? You, of course, had to tell him. You had to show him pictures of your apartment and your visit to the pyramids.”

“Mikhail isn't like that,” Mother said, but her voice was quieter. She didn't sound so sure of herself now. “Under that
Communist propaganda, he's a human being…. And I think he loves me.”

“Loves you?” Auntie Paula was laughing again. “Barbara, what are you talking about?”

“I think he does,” Mother said. Her voice was quieter still.

“Because he told you so?” Auntie Paula was still almost shouting and still laughing.

“I can tell these things.”

“Like you could tell with the Village Census Committee on the farm or with that grunting pig Boris with his hands all over you? Who was it that was going to establish a salon for Russian officers?”

“All right. So I was wrong.”

“Bawatchov doesn't love you, whatever he may have said.”

“It's not that he said anything—I just feel these things.”

“You feel these things. He's attracted to you, like every man in Warsaw was. You're ‘Beautiful Basia,' and you attract men. But you have absolutely no idea of what goes on inside their heads.”

“That's not true.”

“Yes, it is. You make up stories about swords and your father the general and you think you're controlling the men somehow, making them do what you want. But it all ends up hitting you in the face. You dream about how you would like things to be, and then you make yourself believe that's the way they're going to turn out. Now you'll go wait for your Mr. Lupicki in the middle of nowhere, and won't you be surprised when he doesn't show up or doesn't stop? Then where will you be?”

“For heaven's sakes!” It was Miss Bronia speaking now. “Two grown women … the children!”

Mother and Auntie Paula stopped speaking. Mother took a second cigarette out of the pack and lit it from the first one, which she now dropped into the stove. Then she walked back across the room and sat down next to Auntie Paula. “You're jealous of me,” she said. She said it quietly, so that I could barely hear at the other end of the table.

“You've always been jealous of me—my looks, my house, the kind of people who come to my house, my friends…. You're jealous that the men don't pay attention to you the way they do to me or to Edna.”

“Your friends, Basia?” Auntie Paula answered in the same, quiet voice. “Your friends. Warsaw is wiped out, people are killed, and your friends sit in cafes and laugh at their funny skirts and boots.”

“Oh, poor Paula. That's why men never pay attention to you. You have absolutely no sense of humor. You don't understand that these people are laughing because they're alive. They're laughing because even with all their homes and their businesses destroyed, they're still alive.”

I didn't like Auntie Paula much, but she did talk more sense than Mother. Laughing when other people were killed and you weren't, was cruel. It was like laughing when somebody fell down and skinned her knee. It was certainly un-Christian.

I tried to visualize Lvow. Mother had said it was like a carnival. I knew about carnivals—Kiki and I had read a whole book about a carnival in America, with pictures. There were tents with stripes on them, but the people weren't dressed funny, except for the performers, and they didn't laugh inappropriately. Mother hadn't mentioned anything about tents.

What Mother's description of the laughing people and Russian soldiers with wristwatches all up their arms did sound like, though, was the pictures Kiki had shown me, in a book of hers, of one of the two Polish cities that God had destroyed and turned the people into pillars of salt because they were wicked.

It was in the days before they wore pants and jackets, and in the pictures men and women, instead of obeying God, were all chasing and grabbing at each other. And some were even laughing at others lying dead on the ground. The women were wearing very red lipstick with heavy rouge on their cheeks and all sorts of makeup around their eyes, sometimes, like those
friends of Mother and Lolek's that Kiki and Marta called painted women. I wondered if Lvow was something like that and what God might have in mind for its future.

By the time I was sent to bed, Miss Bronia and Auntie Edna had hung a blanket on a line next to Fredek's bed so that if he coughed during the night, he would not spread his germs over the rest of us. As the next-to-youngest and, supposedly, most vulnerable family member, I was assigned to the corner pallet, diagonally across the room from the sickbed, with Sonya beside me.

“You sleep on your side, facing the wall!” Sonya had commanded me, even though she herself wasn't coming to bed till later. That was fine with me.

When I had settled down and all was quiet in the room, I could hear Fredek's labored breathing. I wondered if it was asthma. Auntie Edna, I presumed, was sitting on the side of his bed, behind the blanket, probably holding his hand. I wondered if Fredek was in danger of dying.

I began to pray for God to spare Fredek, even though he was Jewish. Kiki had told me the trick of praying to Mary and asking Her to talk to God. God was more likely to listen to Her than to me. I realized I was doing something very grownup and very Catholic.

Then, in the middle of my sixth Hail Mary—I kept count on my fingers—it suddenly struck me like a ton. If Mother and I were to go to Lvow and Auntie Paula and Sonya were to stay in Durnoval, then Miss Bronia would certainly stay with them. Suddenly, the bottom had fallen out of my life, and I actually heard myself gasp. I knew that I must not interrupt my communion with the Blessed Mother and bit my lower lip to keep from crying. Apologizing for my gasp, I proceeded to complete the twenty Hail Marys I had declared at the beginning, plus one to replace the interrupted sixth.

Now I was convinced that Lvow was indeed a wicked city, attractive to my mother because of her own vileness. I thought
with irony of my naïve intentions to save her immortal soul through conversion. I knew there was nothing I could do to influence events. Mother and I would go, and Miss Bronia, if that was her intention, would stay, no matter what I might do.

On the other hand, I could pray that Mr. Lupicki wouldn't stop for us. There could be a snowstorm so that he couldn't see us standing by the side of the road. Or what if the colonel were to find out? He definitely didn't want her to go. Was there a way I could tell him? Would he believe me?

With those two possibilities, the ache in my heart was mitigated, which was doubly welcome since I was not comfortable with the idea of the Holy Mother seeing that my own distress was more painful to me than Fredek's mortal peril. Thus assuaged, I fell asleep.

In the morning, it took a moment before my grief of last night descended on me again. Then the prospect of parting from Miss Bronia hit me full force again.

On the other hand, Fredek was visibly and audibly much improved. His breathing had returned to normal, and he wanted to sit up, which his mother wouldn't allow.

“It's God's miracle,” Auntie Paula said of his dramatic recovery. I knew she was just using an expression, but that was because she wasn't aware of my involvement in the matter. As for me, I was thrilled to see the power that my prayers had had. And then I immediately set about purging my mind of any sense of pride that the Mother of God might perceive.

On the other hand, I had seen proof of Kiki's representation that the Holy Mother was a conduit to God. I wondered how many other people were aware of this device and I knew intuitively that its use had to be limited to issues of appropriate worthiness and decorum.

The idea of applying this protocol to my most urgent issue grew slowly in my mind, like the wick of the lamps we had on the farm that begins with a little glow and grows into a bright, light-spreading flame. Kneeling on my pallet, as though I was
cleaning a spot on the wall, I put my problem in Mary's most holy hands, proposing the two solutions I had thought of the night before, namely either Mr. Lupicki missing us in a snowstorm or the colonel discovering Mother's plans. Of the two, I favored the latter since it did not involve making our way back on foot in a snowstorm, but I left it up to the Blessed Mother to present the matter in whatever way She thought most effective. Or it could be up to God Himself to fit it most conveniently into His agenda. On the other hand, if God had a third alternative for thwarting Mother's plans, I was certainly open to it and would be eternally grateful.

While this was undeniably a less selfless request than last night's, I explained, I cited the wickedness prevalent in Lvow and the righteousness of leading us not into temptation. Then I promised forty Hail Marys to be offered that night and another forty upon delivery. I could not help but be aware of the power I now had to influence events.