Revolution Baby (3 page)

“I need to think about all this. When is your appointment?”

“In two weeks.”

“Give me a day or two. Please, you think about it too, and we'll talk about it again, all right?”

“If you want.”

That was my first victory.

The next day, Emil convinced Lena to raise the issue again with Comrade Goldman. Emil was present at the meeting, and refuted every one of the young woman's arguments. Which led, eventually, to the meeting on the 17th of March . . . But I already told you all about that.

We were in Moscow. I had just been born and registered at the public records office by a certain Michał Gruda, who was in a particularly joyful mood at the time.

The Party granted my parents permission to look after me until the end of their stay in the USSR. In the spring of 1930, the Comintern—the Communist International, the organization responsible for exporting Soviet communism to other countries—decreed that Comrade Helena Rappoport and Comrade Michał Gruda had completed their training, and they were sent back to Poland so that they could resume the bitter struggle on the path to revolution. The moment they arrived in Warsaw, they were reminded of their pledge not to keep little Julian. And thus I became Julian Kryda, the son of Fruzia and Hugo Kryda, who were the sister and brother-in-law of Michał Gruda, formerly my father.

I was not aware of these events that so discombobulated my life, because I was only ten months old when I landed with my aunt and uncle, not long after their youngest daughter had left home. Hugo and Fruzia happily agreed to take in a new child, this miniature version of Emil who reminded Fruzia of the difficult years of her youth, when she had found consolation for the loss of her mother by cuddling her beloved little brother.

My earliest memories date from this period in my life when I believed I was like everyone else, and I lived with the perfectly ordinary certainty that the people I called Papa and Mama were indeed my mother and father; those years have remained etched on my memory.

There were occasional visits from a fat lady who smelled bad and spoke a language I couldn't understand. Every time they would tell me, “A nice lady is coming to see you this afternoon, she's going to bring you a lovely surprise.” For starters, she wasn't nice, she always crushed me against her fat stomach and burst into tears, and then the presents she brought were anything but lovely: tasteless pancakes, sad, dark clothes that I refused to wear; I remember in particular a little round thing in black cloth that she wanted me to put on my head—it was a kippa, but I didn't know that at the time, and I never saw anyone wearing one—and Fruzia begged me to take it out whenever she knew the fat lady was coming. Much later I would find out that this was my maternal grandmother, Helena's mother, and she spoke only Yiddish. Her husband had said Kaddish—the prayer for the dead—for his daughter when he found out that she had had a child out of wedlock and, what was even worse, with a goy, so my grandmother came to see me in secret, under the pretext that she was visiting one of her sisters in Warsaw.

There was also a gang of kids there with whom I had a lot of fun. Fifteen or more boys, all under the age of ten, living in Colony 5, one of the eight housing co-operative complexes in ˚oliborz set up by a left-wing association. Our colony was made up of a series of identical four-story white buildings, surrounding a big shady garden where there was an immense sandbox. From the age of three, I was one of the leaders of the younger group. When the big boys refused to include us in their games, I was often the one who came up with an idea for a game for the little ones, or for a prank. Hugo, who had daughters—daughters who, moreover, were well-behaved—took his role as father and educator very seriously. I wasn't a difficult or turbulent child, but I had a very, shall we say, inventive mind. So I spent many an hour at home being punished, and from time to time my bottom was subjected to a painful reminder of certain rules that I had failed to respect. I remember one particular spanking, one of the biggest I ever got, that I thought was clearly unjustified, because Hugo administered it in response to an idea that to me, for all that I was only five years old, seemed absolutely brilliant.

One summer's day, there were ten or more of us kids squabbling over some business to do with stolen chestnuts. Tadeusz was about to assume his role as referee when we heard someone in the street call out, “Photographs! Photographs for everyone! Memories, bargain price! Come and see me, you won't be disappointed!” I took off at a run out of the courtyard and through the door that gave onto Krasinski Street. A few minutes later I came back accompanied by a young man who was pulling all sorts of photographic equipment on a cart. “He'll take our photo and give it to us afterwards!”

These few words were enough to put an end to our quarrel. In compliance with the photographer's orders, we assembled in a group, some of us on our knees, others standing behind. It didn't take long for pandemonium to break out; no one listened to anyone else; the big boys pulled off the little boys' caps and threw them away, which made them burst into tears; and then there were those who absolutely had to be next to their best friend . . . Finally, the photographer shouted for everyone to shut up, and he warned, “I'm counting to ten, if you are still moving at the count of ten, I'll pack my things and I'll be gone. Do you understand?” A few minutes later, the session was over, and the photographer asked for his fee. Which I hadn't taken into consideration . . . All the children turned to look at me.

“It's my parents who wanted a photo, you'll have to go and see them for your fee. It's not hard to find: you see that door there, the one on the left? Go up to the fourth floor and to number 23. My papa is called Hugo, just say you're the photographer and he'll give you the money.”

“Are you sure about that, kid?”

“Yes, don't worry, my dad is someone you can trust.”

I don't know if, in my five-year-old mind, I really believed that I had just solved the problem. In fact, the problem was only finally solved with a dozen lashes of the belt and my being grounded for several days.

 

Parents are not always easy to understand: they have their own particular logic for determining what's good and what's evil. There was another matter that puzzled me concerning the approach that adults took to rearing their children.

I developed an acute political consciousness at a very early age. There was a lot of talk about politics at home for a start. Although they weren't committed communists, Hugo and Fruzia were sympathizers. I spent many a long evening with my ear glued to my bedroom door, or simply hiding under the table, listening to discussions between my parents and their friends. In Hugo's opinion people were always either too radical or too soft, so he loved getting his guests all worked up.

When Karolka, Fruzia's youngest sister, was arrested, there was talk of little else at home; she was a confirmed spinster who took part in every demonstration, in every militant action. We even went to visit her in prison once. Obviously, at my age, this was a big event. And Karolka's manner, both sad and proud at the same time, made a great impression on me, as if she were saying, “We will never give up.” I was five years old at the time of that visit, and my aunt was a heroine to me, no doubt because I often heard Fruzia and Hugo praising her courage and tenacity. The communist gene was very strong in the family.

My first taste of class warfare dates to that period. One evening, Fruzia had already asked me at least five times to go to bed when there came a knock on the door. My parents were a bit surprised because they weren't expecting anyone, but they went to open the door. A giant wearing a policeman's uniform stood in the doorframe. Before he'd even said a word I was under the table. He spoke with Hugo and Fruzia for a long time; I think it was something to do with some thefts in our building. After a few minutes Fruzia had remembered her duties as a hostess and asked the policeman to have a seat at the kitchen table, and she offered him some tea.

I can clearly recall the policeman's legs beneath the flowered tablecloth, his perfectly polished black shoes. And the hatred that rose in me as I imagined those same feet kicking my Aunt Karolka as she lay in the street and growled, full of conviction, “We will never give up.” And the feeling that it was time for me, too, to make a gesture on behalf of the poor and the oppressed. I looked at those two legs offered so candidly to me. I could see beneath the right trouser leg a muscular, hairy calf. Listening only to my courage, I crept closer, opened my mouth, and bit deep into that tough chunk of meat.

You can imagine the rest: the policeman leapt to his feet with a yell. Fruzia was aghast, the policeman caught me by the scruff of the neck and sent me flying to the other end of the kitchen, then Fruzia brought him a damp towel, apologizing profusely. Hugo watched the scene without batting an eyelid. Once things had calmed down, he looked at the policeman contritely and said, “I'm so sorry, Officer, my son loves to hide under the table and play dog. This is the first time he's ever bitten someone, I am truly sorry. He's in for one hell of a spanking once you're gone.”

Once the policeman was gone, I tried to disappear beneath the blankets on my bed. Hugo came in the room.

“Papa, I wanted to punish him for what he did to Karolka. He's an enemy of communism!”

Long afterwards, from my room, I could still hear Hugo and Fruzia's peals of laughter as they told each other the story. And I never got the spanking he'd promised the policeman was in store for me. I concluded that in life it is better to do what seems right without worrying about how your parents might react, because in any case, adults are unpredictable creatures.

When I was Hugo and Fruzia's son, there was a couple who often came to visit us: Aunt Lena and Uncle Emil. They told me funny stories and brought me sweets, and Uncle Emil took me for walks in the Bielany woods where he taught me archery, how to climb trees, and how to do somersaults. He was a tiny man for an adult, and there were times when I thought he was really just a kid disguised as a grown-up.

One day Lena came without Emil. And the following time. And the time after that. I asked her why my uncle wasn't there, why he wasn't coming anymore, because I had to confess that even if I liked the sweets that Aunt Lena brought, I preferred playing with Uncle Emil by a long shot. She replied that he had left on a great journey, but as soon as he got back to Warsaw he would come and see me and bring me a nice present. “And he won't be too old to climb trees?” My question made the adults laugh, but they answered no, I mustn't worry about Emil's age, for he would always be a child at heart. This notion puzzled me. If you were a child at heart, would that still be enough to make an adult body work, even one as small as Emil's?

One day when I asked Lena for the umpteenth time when Uncle Emil would be coming back, and Lena once again said, “Soon, don't worry,” I got that feeling you sometimes get when adults smile at you but their eyes aren't smiling, and then they stroke your hair: something “not for children” was going on. I didn't ask anything more as I could tell from her preoccupied manner that Aunt Lena wasn't going to say any more, even though I wasn't exactly born yesterday: I was six and a half years old. The only explanation I could come up with was that Uncle Emil must be dead, and I thought the grown-ups were being stupid to suppose I wasn't old enough to understand reality and accept it.

Not long after the beginning of this era of conspiracy, Hugo and Fruzia announced that they had something important to tell me.

“This year, for your summer vacation, you will be going on a long holiday.”

“Where to?”

“First of all you'll take a train.”

“A real train?”

“Yes . . . ”

“Yay!”

“You'll be leaving next week, with Aunt Lena. You're going to Paris.”

“I'm going to France?”

“Yes, my dear.”

“And I'm going to see the Eiffel Tower?”

“Yes, you'll see the Eiffel Tower.”

I was ecstatic. The Eiffel Tower! I'd heard so much about it, I'd even seen pictures in a book, I knew that from the top you could see all of Paris. Most of my friends were jealous, others thought I was making it up, that I was just going to the seaside or the mountains and I'd tell them any old thing when I got back.

“If you want us to believe you, you're going to have to bring back some proof,” said Tadeusz, the biggest boy in the playground. “And not just some little souvenir that anyone could have brought you—we're not stupid.”

“He'll have to show us a picture of himself in front of the Eiffel Tower.”

“But the Eiffel Tower is too big to fit on a photo!”

“What are you talking about, Alek? Haven't you ever seen a photo of the Eiffel Tower? Where have you been all these years?”

“Well, I've seen the Eiffel Tower on photos, it's just that I've forgotten, it was when I was little.”

“I'll show you a photo with me on it, that way you'll be obliged to believe me.”

And I told myself that not only would I bring back a photo, I would also try to remember everything that happened, everything I saw during the holidays. When I got back, they would beg me time and time again to tell them about my trip to Paris.

 

One morning in July, 1936, I took the tram to the station with Hugo and Fruzia. I had two big suitcases that Fruzia had packed and repacked several times over the last few days. While I had been on cloud nine ever since they told me about my vacation in France, Fruzia, on the other hand, seemed really put out that we were going. A few minutes before we left the house she was still rushing around and around my room, getting clothes out of the suitcase and putting others in their place. Despite my happiness, it made me sad to see her like that. I tried to reassure her: “Don't worry, Mama, everything will be fine. I'll be good for Lena, nothing bad will happen to me.” Which earned me a hug against Fruzia's breast so tight I nearly died of suffocation, not to mention the fact I almost drowned in a flood of tears, too.